This week, your hosts Craig Dalton and Randall Jacobs reconnect with the gravel cycling world and their personal lives, sharing insights and experiences from Sea Otter to UNBOUND. Dive into this episode and join the guys as they discuss the latest from Logos Components, Enduro Bearings, ENVE and a little bit of gravel beef.
Links from Episode:
Thesis Bike (Code: 'Community500')
Enduro Bearings Whitepaper
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00]Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week, I'm going to be joined by my co-host Randall Jacobs for a long overdue catch up. And an episode of in the dirt. We're going to jump into, what's been going on in the world of gravel cycling and in our own lives. With that said here's Randall.
[00:00:44]Craig Dalton (host): Hey Randall, how you doing?
[00:00:46]Randall R. Jacobs: Doing well. Good to see you, Craig. It's been a bit since
[00:00:48]Craig Dalton (host): I know I feel like we keep just not finding time to do these catch up calls, so we've got like months of stuff to cover, but I think we'll keep it brief cuz I know we're both pretty busy today.
[00:01:01]Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, and I'll, I'll take responsibility for Ave for not being so available. Um, I've been building largely just like rebuilding a house. Uh, so that's, uh, a pretty big undertaking and, uh, having to learn building science and all these things myself along the way to make sure it's done right. So, uh, very joyful task, but also hasn't left a lot of bandwidth.
[00:01:24]Craig Dalton (host): And for anybody catching the video, we're looking in the backdrop at some of Randall's cabin in Kingston, New York.
[00:01:33]Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, gutted the upstairs so that I could move into it while I renovate the rest of it. So definitely a labor of love, but uh, also very, uh, very all encompassing.
[00:01:44]Craig Dalton (host): Nice. Well, it's exciting. I can't wait to be sort of part of the journey in the background as I see your property evolve, and I know how committed you are to that community.
[00:01:53]Randall R. Jacobs: We'll have to have you out to ride, uh, once it's a little bit further along. I know that you sometimes make trips to New York and, uh, the riding here in the Kingston area and the broader Hudson Valley is, uh, fantastic. In fact, I did a ride last night with some folks, uh, along the Walkhill, uh, bike path up to the area around the Mohawk Preserve.
It was a night ride. And we were up there, uh, on this big, uh, hilltop meadow at about 11 o'clock for the full moon, and it was absolutely fantastic. Riding the dark is delightful and just the area is beautiful.
[00:02:28]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah. Writing in general sounds delightful and I have to be honest, it hasn't been something that I've been doing a ton of. Unfortunately, I've had, I feel like a string of. Setbacks this year. It's just been one of those years that as much as I've been eager to ride my bike, timing health and a bunch of other things haven't allowed me to do so.
So I feel sort of a little bit anxious about where I'm at just cause I wanna be riding more. But uh, also trying to just give myself the grace to know that, you know, it's just not in the cards at the moment and it'll come back around for me.
[00:03:04]Randall R. Jacobs: Well, I, I also have to confess on my end, this was this ride I just mentioned, with the exception of having taken my niece and nephews out a couple of times on several milers was my first real ride of the year. Uh, I've been so swept up in other things. Plus I had had, you know, some, some issues with like, pain in my hands and feet and so on that I had been dealing with it.
I just hadn't been riding at all. And, uh, There's an ebb and flow in the relationship with the bike. That is okay, even if you have a podcast and have, have built a company in the industry and so on. Um,
[00:03:38]Craig Dalton (host): was just gonna announce if we,
[00:03:40]Randall R. Jacobs: the right thing.
[00:03:41]Craig Dalton (host): I was just gonna ask if we fully discredited this podcast in the first five minutes.
[00:03:47]Randall R. Jacobs: I mean, the, the, the bike for me was always a jumping off point and or an excuse for having interesting conversations about other topics. Anyone who's, uh, You know, enjoyed any of the episodes I've done has found that like, even if say we're nerding about bicycle technology, it's actually just a conversation about technology and entrepreneurship.
Or if we're talking about sports psychology, it's actually just a conversation about the human experience. So I think, I think we are credible amongst the types of people who gravitate to this particular, uh, corner of the cycling media landscape, I suppose.
[00:04:23]Craig Dalton (host): Fair enough. We did, however, in April visit the spectacle of all spectacles called Sea Otter, where we got to hang face-to-face at least for a day. I just did a day trip down there. But I know you spent the entire weekend down there. Any sort of thoughts from what you saw that will inform the listener for the year as the new trends or anything going on?
[00:04:46]Randall R. Jacobs: Honestly, I didn't see a lot that excited me. Um, and you know, looking at the press coverage, none of, you know, there wasn't much out there that was found by others either. Um, the, we've talked about, you know, Sam's release of their transmission. So, um, there were a lot of conversations in the background about the implications of that for competition within the bike industry, both with, you know, people in the media and.
At brands, uh, component brands and, and bike brands and so on. But otherwise, I mean, it was a great festival. The, the vibe was great. It was, uh, very well attended. Uh, lots of racers, lots of activities, lots of people out and about. Uh, so as far as that is concerned, it was a big success. But nothing major from a technology standpoint that I found or a trend standpoint.
[00:05:36]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah. I wonder if someone who's sort of better at the history of the cycling industry than I would sort of point to other, other sort of moments in time, whether it's been with mountain biking or other sectors of the sport where you just sort of plateau, where you've, you've sort of, you've got to a point where a lot of the best ideas have been flushed out. Because I feel like if you're coming in to build a bike today, and I'll point to my episode with Envy, with their MOG gravel bike, it's just straight down the center. Like you can't point out anything wrong with that bike. It's gonna do everything great. It's got all the sort of modern, um, tire clearance features that we've been talking about for years, and now there's just sort this sort of.
Mainline point where you can enter the, the, the, the bike gravel bike market and produce something that's really gonna do the job.
[00:06:30]Randall R. Jacobs: If anything, I think that the, the trends that would, that was clearly in play is that gravel is now very mature. And you know, our first conversation when I was a guest on this podcast, It was, you know, I, I recall mentioning like gravel bikes are essentially the all-purpose bikes that we should have been making for normal people all along.
And, uh, that's kind of played itself out. You know, there's quite a few people who have one bike for nearly everything and it's their gravel bike, and there are lots of gravel rides or gravel races. Um, I, uh, Sam, uh, Sam Jackson, my colleague at, at, uh, thesis and Logos and I were volunteering for, uh, enduros, uh, media ride.
And, uh, that was also a mix of road and gravel and people were on gravel bikes with, you know, even if they had oversized road tires on some of them, in some of the cases. Uh, so I think the trend towards having bikes that are more versatile is, is the big thing. And, and gravel is no longer insurgent.
Gravel is very much central in the industry, and if anything, road is more peripheral.
[00:07:35]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah, agreed. Like I look around Mill Valley on the weekends when I see packs and packs of riders riding on the road, and sometimes I do a double take because more often than not, I feel like half the kind of casual pelotons are gravel bikes with just narrower tires on them than they are road bikes these days, which.
Obviously makes a ton of sense. From what, what we've been saying the last couple years on this podcast, you mentioned you were hanging out with the Enduro gang, and I know your wheels were being displayed at the booth. It sounds like after that conversation you had with their founder, Matt on the podcast last year, you've really developed a pretty deep relationship with that team.
[00:08:14]Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, so, you know, it's funny, like Matt and I had a delightful conversation that we've recorded and then we kept going for about an hour and a half after we finished recording. Just, uh, just nerding out about, uh, you know, different concepts that him and I have, have played with over the years. So, uh, I guess nothing that I can, I can reveal in a public forum, but that might bear some fruit in the future.
Uh, and then sometime after I got, uh, a contact from, uh, Rick Sutton, who Rick Sutton for tho has been on the pod. Um, he, I think he was representing, uh, The handlebar company he was
[00:08:52]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah. Coefficient.
[00:08:53]Randall R. Jacobs: Yep.
[00:08:54]Craig Dalton (host): The handlebar company. Yep.
[00:08:55]Randall R. Jacobs: but Rick's also the founder of Sea Otter and, um, is now working with Enduro, helping with their, um, you know, marketing strategy and messaging and so on.
And so he reached out and, uh, we, you know, set up a collaboration where, you know, we have a, a product that we think is based on this, kind of the same sorts of principles that. Particularly their XD 15 product is, is ceramic. Hybrid product is based on, which is having something that performs at a high level yes.
But that is highly durable and serviceable. Uh, and so, so yeah, that's been a collaboration that has been an absolute delight. And um, you know, it's also been a joy to kind of work with that team. So spent a lot of time at Rick's house, uh, just outside of Sea Otter, uh, in Monterey, uh, uh, volunteering with the group rides and the other events that they were hosting there, uh, for their kind of, you know, media and press, uh, efforts and so on.
[00:09:56]Craig Dalton (host): Nice. Nice. And so, I mean, are you using some of the products in your logos, components, wheels now?
[00:10:03]Randall R. Jacobs: exclusively. And in fact, we've used them exclusively in our wheels from day one. Uh, so as soon as we started making our own hubs, we were doing Enduro bearings. Uh, so this is predates, uh, talking to Matt. I reached out to Matt because I liked his bearings, uh, and found out that actually he is a, a nerd, uh, a kindred spirit and his nerdy,
[00:10:25]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah.
[00:10:26]Randall R. Jacobs: uh, by the way, that is an episode.
If any, if any listeners haven't heard it, that I'd strongly recommend, uh, Matt is a. Is really just a, uh, a he delights in the engineering, but also the history of the industry and so on, and so as a deep amount of knowledge about the evolution of the bicycle and where technology seen in bike have played roles in other industries, particularly around Barings.
Interestingly,
[00:10:50]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah, it was a super interesting episode and. Actually really cool to see Matt kind of get out there. I don't know whether it's the collaboration with Rick, but Enduro seems to be doing group rides. I know they did one up here in Marin out of Fairfax that I did. I was invited to one in Boulder, which sadly I could not attend, but just great to see Matt getting out there.
As you said, he's been around the industry. The whole Enduro story is pretty interesting, and just the commitment to quality and the, the way they manufacture things, I think is worth knowing and worth listening to. And regardless of whether you buy their product or someone else's, I think if you're interested in, in the technology that goes behind Barings and what you should be thinking about, that's a great episode to get smart with.
[00:11:35]Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Um, there's also, they released at Sea Otter a white paper, which, um, I, I will grab so that we can put it in the show notes. Definitely worth a read. And what I love, uh, again, about Matt and, and their approach is just very straight shooting. Like, this is how it is, this is how our products perform. Um, this is, you know, this product that we have will perform at this level, this other product and how it compares in the ecosystem.
Ver uh, Compared to, you know, verifiable test results, uh, that have, you know, clearly spelled out protocols and so on, and. You know, as an example, you know, we talk about this in the episode, uh, ceramic bearings are not something that you should really be buying for the performance improvements. The, the difference in drag is pretty trivial in the grand scheme.
Um, uh, that really the benefit when you have something like, uh, an XD 15 ceramic hybrid is that they last much longer. They're basically bombproof and they provide a lifetime warranty. So that's a, a different, a different thing. Uh, so just like sh selling, like promoting things on their merits as opposed to on some, some hype to get people to part with their funds.
[00:12:47]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah, I think that's, you know, it's obviously an interesting journey for a lot of newer cyclists because it's easy to see and become aware of the things that have the hype around them. But I, I, I found, at least for my, myself and my own journey, sort of took a while as a mountain biker back in the day to just sort of go back to what works above and beyond anything else.
I'm not gonna lie, like I had a bunch of no shade against Ringle from back in the day, but I had a bunch of purple anodized parts that I thought looked good. I don't think they were the best performing parts in the world. And eventually, you know, I just sort of went back to some stock stuff and and focused on things that would really improve the quality of my experience, like upgrading wheels, for example.
[00:13:30]Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Well, and it's really hard to know, especially, especially as somebody who's just entering the sport, but honestly, even as someone who's been in the industry for some time, like it took me years to really get to the bottom of what was real and, and what was, you know, marketing Huey. Um, and that came through talking with the engineers behind it and like hearing from them, oh yeah, this is something that our marketers wanted us to do and we actually despise it.
Um, or this is something the bean counters wanted us to do and we, and we wish we didn't have to. Um, but that's information that you only get if you're talking to say, like the head of QC at some large brand or, you know, the lead engineer or something like this. Uh, which is what we get to do here sometimes, which is great.
[00:14:17]Craig Dalton (host): That said, if putting an anodized piece of part on your bike makes you happy, makes you smile, makes you ride more, more, go ahead and do it. I've certainly got my, my fair share of colorful parts on my new bike, so happy to, uh, happy to make people smile when I roll. Roll by.
[00:14:34]Randall R. Jacobs: Oh yeah. I think, I think the moral there is not to is, is not to forego style. It's just to don't, don't compromise on the, uh, the fundamental function of the, of the components when adding that style elements.
[00:14:47]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, hey, I know you've been busy with Logos Wheels. Have you guys, I think you've added another wheel or two to the lineup. Am I correct in that?
[00:14:59]Randall R. Jacobs: So we hinted, uh, uh, we, we hinted this in our newsletter. Uh, we'll have another one going out actually today as of the, this, uh, publication. Um, but we have three more that we're about to release. Uh, one is a, uh, an Arrow road model, uh, 50 deep, 21 internal, 30 external. A cross-country model, which is 28 internal, and then a, uh, Enduro, uh, an all Mountain Enduro version of our current, uh, Uday wheel, uh, which is a 31 internal.
And all of those use the same kind of principles and components. Just, you know, broadening the line to, you know, hit, hit more the, uh, the sub niches for each, you know, product category.
[00:15:45]Craig Dalton (host): Gotcha and all. Were those in DU bearings you mentioned earlier?
[00:15:49]Randall R. Jacobs: All of those Enduro bearings. Uh, we are planning on releasing a, an XD 15 line later in the year. Uh, right now it's all their, um, uh, their, uh, stainless steel bearings.
[00:16:01]Craig Dalton (host): Okay. Gotcha, gotcha. Well, we won't drill too much into those new wheels just simply cuz they're a little bit outside of the gravel market, but you've still got your 700 C gravel wheel and a six 50 B gravel wheel.
[00:16:13]Randall R. Jacobs: Yes. And, uh, those have been doing really well and we've been building out our dealer program for that too, which has been a lot of fun. Actually, I, I plan on bringing on some dealers to talk about, you know, the nature of running a bike shop at some point. Cause it's just been a, an absolute delight to, to connect with local businesses.
[00:16:30]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah, I mean I think that's just sort of, I think running a bike shop, there's never a dull moment. Right. I know. I think we were gathering from a lot of, a lot of partners in the industry at Sea Otter that there's just been a glut of inventory
[00:16:45]Randall R. Jacobs: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:46]Craig Dalton (host): market and that's kind of jamming a lot of, a lot of shops up in some interesting ways.
[00:16:51]Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. And for those curious, um, so I mean, we all saw the shortages that happened during covid, um, along with the boom and demand. Um, so in boom and quantity demanded. So shifting out the demand curve, um, and. As a consequence, a lot of shops essentially ordered whatever they could from wherever they could and, uh, including, you know, Ordering the same thing from multiple places.
And these agreements, uh, were not agreements that could be canceled. These, these, uh, pos And so everything came, and everything came all at once at the end of last season, which is when it's. You know, when things are generally quieter at the shop. So this just this glut of inventory that's kind of working its way through the system.
Um, and, you know, that's still ongoing for some shops. Uh, but for the most part, the shops I've been talking to have been able to, to, you know, navigate it. Uh, and are, are still, you know, doing just fine.
[00:17:51]Craig Dalton (host): I feel like this might finally break the sort of product year introduction life cycle that's been starting to break, and maybe less so for components, but I think more so maybe for smaller frame builders and brands that can just kind of bring bikes into the world when it's an opportune time to have a conversation about them versus.
These seasonal experiences we used to have in the bike industry.
[00:18:15]Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and certainly, um, I mean, there have been complaints about model years on bicycles from shops for, you know, probably since, since there were bike shops and brands were doing this as a way of kind of, um, you know, planned obsolescence. And so it's, it hasn't been healthy for shops. You essentially have brands that will force feed a bunch of product and then immediately release the next thing in the middle of the season.
Cuz they want, you know, cuz they're all competing with the other brands to release the new thing, uh, during the peak of the season. And it's just been pretty, um, Pretty harmful to these small businesses that have been essential to growing some of these larger brands. Uh, it's one of the reasons actually that I left, um, that I decided not to work, um, at a big brand because I, I really found the dealer agreements to be very pernicious and model years are very much part of that, um, you know, extractive relationship.
[00:19:12]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So at, AT, and then at Thesis, you've still got, you're still working on, uh, you've still got full bike builds available right?
[00:19:23]Randall R. Jacobs: Oh yeah. And in fact we, um, we just launched a summer special where it is, uh, $500 off of our OB one Access custom. And, um, for members of the community, uh, there is an additional $500, uh, just for community members, and that's using the Code Community 500. So if you're listening, uh, thank you for supporting this podcast and, uh, being along for the ride.
And, uh, yeah, if you need a bike, reach out.
[00:19:51]Craig Dalton (host): I need to widen my camera. I've got my, my OB one in the background right on the wall.
[00:19:58]Randall R. Jacobs: Very cool. Oh, pinky.
[00:19:59]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah, that's right. Speaking of the cool bikes, I got word about a new trade show up in Portland called Made This August, which sounds exciting. I think it in some ways it hearkens to the, the National Handmade Bicycle Show, but a little different vibe. A ton of cool frame builders are gonna be up there.
And it's both, uh, sort of a media show as well as the consumer show. So if you're in the Pacific Northwest or you know, close to Portland or fancy a bike geek holiday, that seems like a really cool show.
[00:20:34]Randall R. Jacobs: Yep, I'll be there. Sam will be there with me as well. Um, and we'll have a few, um, wheels on bikes and, uh, enduros gonna be there too. Uh, so we'll probably collaborate with them on some stuff.
[00:20:46]Craig Dalton (host): Cool.
[00:20:46]Randall R. Jacobs: but yeah, I'm really excited to see, um, more, well, there's, there's long, there's a long tradition of domestic, uh, custom bike making in the us.
Um, but to really see how, um, particularly in metal, um, how more domestic fame fabrication can happen at scale. And so that'll, those will be some of the conversations that I'll be having while I'm
[00:21:12]Craig Dalton (host): Nice.
[00:21:13]Randall R. Jacobs: In addition to just seeing all the eye candy,
[00:21:15]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah, I, I definitely miss going to nabs and just having that experience and it was always such a great opportunity for Frame Builders to kind of roll out something special or something unique that showed their creativity and, uh, yeah, just always got me jazzed about bikes.
[00:21:33]Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and it's, it is the case that what happens at these custom bike shows influences what happens in the broader market. Um, it is no secret that the big brands are there looking at, you know, what the next trend is going to be. And in fact, there's a, a famous story about, uh, you know, Tom Richie's early mountain bike being brought over to Japan by, uh, the leader of another, uh, major brand, and that becoming a, uh, I think the stump jumper.
[00:22:03]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah. Yeah, I remember hearing that story. The other cool one that's going on actually this month in June out in Ogden, Utah, is the Envy Groo. So it's a a ride slash kind of builder partner event. Similar kind of jam where it's just like amazing custom builders coming out. So that one's a favorite of mine because you get a great gravel ride combined with this fun bike show.
And I hope, I don't know, but I hope at Maid they're gonna do some group rides or some other ways to engage the community.
[00:22:36]Randall R. Jacobs: I suspect so. And if in fact I'll just come out and say like, if no one's doing it, then maybe we'll kick off something. Uh, cuz we got some friends in that area that could help create a route. And it would definitely be great to get some riding in the Pacific Northwest Riding is pretty fantastic.
[00:22:51]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah, I think that's an amazing idea. You should go forward with that.
[00:22:55]Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Um, I have, uh, given a hostage to Fortune, and I suppose I now have to create this groove ride.
[00:23:04]Craig Dalton (host): What else is, what else are you seeing out there?
[00:23:08]Randall R. Jacobs: Uh, so again, like I haven't seen a ton interesting that the, the main thing. Uh, so Camp Nolo has kind of been a distant third in terms of group sets in recent years with, uh, you know, the Swam Shao duopoly being quite dominant. Uh, but they just released a road focused, uh, wireless electronic group. Uh, so it, it does kind of, you know, this doesn't have a clutch, so it's definitely two by tight gearing roady focused.
But it does beg the question, when are they gonna come out with a, an, you know, an ecar, like gravel focused one by version and will that have 13 speed and so
[00:23:48]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah, you would think by next year or so, I, I've always heard that Ecar, gravel groupo is super well regarded and performs well.
[00:23:56]Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Yeah, I hear great things about it. Um, the other interesting thing is, uh, in the article, I'll, I'll just quote, uh, quote the folks at bike rumor. Uh, they're talking about the fact that there are two different batteries used in the front derailer in the rear derailer. And, uh, uh, quote. An important note here is that both use different batteries and both have a different mechanism to secure the battery in place.
This was apparently a direct workaround, str access patents. So I haven't explored the patents, uh, in this much detail, but if it is possible to patent the idea of a single battery being shared amongst multiple, Bicycle components. There's something wrong with our patent system. Uh, this isn't serving riders or, you know, competition, healthy competition or things like that.
It's just supporting incumbents and, you know, it's anti-competitive. That's, I'd be interested to see what the specifics are there.
[00:24:53]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah, that is interesting cuz there's no logical reason not to take advantage of having swappable batteries. It's just so useful in my in sh shram setup.
[00:25:05]Randall R. Jacobs: This is, uh, I, I'm definitely of the opinion. Uh, the more I explore how our patent system works, that it is, it exists less to support, um, the small, independent inventor, uh, and more to keep incumbents incumbent.
[00:25:25]Craig Dalton (host): It certainly has those
[00:25:26]Randall R. Jacobs: bot Botton paid for.
[00:25:27]Craig Dalton (host): It certainly has those tendencies.
[00:25:30]Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Uh, what
[00:25:33]Craig Dalton (host): Well, I haven't been, uh, riding a lot. I have been appreciating the gravel racing scene starting up for the year, and I'm always sort of bemused and enjoy kind of following some of these bigger events on social media. And obviously like just, just this past weekend Unbound happened and I think some of the bigger stories there were, you know, big Rainstorm came in.
And mile 10 or 11, there was a huge mud bog hike, a bike section that lasted minutes and destroyed the hopes and dreams of many of an athlete. From what I understand, derailers getting clogged sounds like one of those days that choosing a one buy was a way better choice than a two buy for people's drive trains.
[00:26:25]Randall R. Jacobs: That race is already just like a notorious supper fest,
[00:26:29]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah,
[00:26:30]Randall R. Jacobs: so,
[00:26:31]Craig Dalton (host): someone made the point that, you know, they, they thought and were, were sort of saddened that all these athletes who had, you know, spent months and months and months preparing for a 200 mile event, many of them had their day destroyed by a mud bog 10 miles into the race. Whereas, you know, potentially maybe there was a reroute potential for the course that could have made it less of a suffer fest than it already was.
[00:26:58]Randall R. Jacobs: You know, it, it, it, for me, it brings up granted taking, I've, I've never done this event, haven't part, haven't, uh, been to this event, uh, have, have nothing to say about this particular event. Um, but it, for me does reinforce the idea of like, the value of smaller local events. And, you know, taking precedent over some of these like, high profile types of events.
Like you can find a, a 200 miler in New England. There's, there's, in fact a, a couple I think that go longer than that. Uh, it's just, it won't be the one that, um, will have shown up in the media a whole
[00:27:35]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah, I mean the counterpoint to that, Randall, and I would say this kind of goes for like my Ironman triathlon experience. There is something magical about being part of the spectacle and I'm not,
[00:27:47]Randall R. Jacobs: true, true, true.
[00:27:49]Craig Dalton (host): Again, I haven't been out there, I haven't done it, but I've spoken to plenty of people who have, who espouse its virtues, and I, and I do.
I would like to do it one day again, just to have that spectacle moment. I have a hard time getting my head around riding 200 miles, to be honest with you, and making that seem like it's gonna be a fun day for me. But I do appreciate it and I do acknowledge, like anybody who's, who's crossed that finish line, that is a.
[00:28:15]Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, that's, that's a huge accomplishment.
[00:28:18]Craig Dalton (host): especially if you had an inclement weather year like this one sounded like it was with not only rain preceding it and, and obviously creating that mud bog, but I know for some of the athletes who were out there, you know, the 10 plus hours, the majority of them were caught in very, very heavy rain at one point in their day.
[00:28:39]Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, I'm recognizing there's a little bit of like, um, retired former PAC fodder, racer curmudgeons coming out me. So like I should be, uh, yeah, I, it's easy for me to say don't go to the, you know, prioritize smaller events when I got to participate in some big events and kind of get it out of my system too,
[00:28:58]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah, there's something to be said for both. At the end of the day, there's no, no doubt it, no doubt about it. Speaking of your curmudgeonly, old racer days, I, I've got one that that may potentially rally you up. So this was the other one. People jokingly have the last couple years have talked about gravel beef, and inevitably like, and in any given year, someone's angry about something and I, I caught wind.
Via a sort of shady post from Ian Boswell, a former professional road athlete after this gravel lo race where Canadian, Adam Rob ended up winning. And the shade was basically that, uh, Adam didn't work in the race. And, and for those of you who maybe aren't familiar with that terminology, by working it means rotating through, taking some of the wind, hitting the front of the race, setting the pace.
Um, apparently he did none of that. Is that, I mean, is that fair racing in your mind? If you go back to your racing days?
[00:29:58]Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Yeah, that's totally fair. I mean, granted, I I'm not as accomplished of a rider as, as Ian Boswell, um, by any means. Not even remotely close. I might have been, but, um, yeah, I, I mean it's, it's a race. And you know that now, as a racer, you need to keep in mind that you know, these other participants are people that you're gonna be racing with in the future.
And so when you need a pull or something like that, you know, you might not get that support. But at the end of the day, um, at racing, at that elite level, it is highly competitive. And if that is a tactic that works, then others need to adjust their tactics accordingly. Um, It doesn't feel great, but at the same time, like it's not against the rules and that's what dictates what's okay in racing.
[00:30:49]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah, it, it's been interesting sort of watching the scuttle bit on this, cuz I tend to agree with you. My, my first reaction, and I, I, I sort of stand by this, is, it's fair racing. And in fact, prior to in the runup to gravel Locos, a number of pros had commented that there was no technical feature, no climb.
In that race that was likely to separate the strongest athletes and undoubtedly it was gonna be a, a pretty big lead group. With that said, it's pretty natural that some people are gonna try to conserve their energy. I think it's a, it's sort of in important it, tactically speaking, other athletes needed to take that on and try to sort of break them free, if you will, earlier in the race, if people are hanging on.
[00:31:38]Randall R. Jacobs: Well, also, it, it al it sounds like maybe the chorus was more conducive to this type of strategy where a sprinter could preserve their energy as much as possible, and then ultimately it's a sprint that wins. I don't know if that was the case here, um, but it's just, uh, you know, whatever strategy gets you over the line first that's within the rules and is not, um, You know, is, is not unsportsmanlike.
It, it makes me think of a example. Like, uh, you know, in, in the, in some of the grand tours and actually even in some amateur stage road stage races I've been involved in, you know, there'll be a consensus amongst the, the dominant riders in the field that it's time to pull over and pee
[00:32:21]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah.
[00:32:21]Randall R. Jacobs: and the whole group will pull over at once and pee.
And if you're like sprinting off of that, I mean it, that would be pushing the limits for me in terms of that's a totally legal strategy, but that's also a pretty lousy one. Um, but what I'm hearing with this one doesn't, doesn't seem
[00:32:41]Craig Dalton (host): And I, I think, I mean, if we go back to last year's gravel beef, it was all around s n n, not stopping at aid stations and like, you know, carrying water in a camelback or the like, which again seems like
[00:32:53]Randall R. Jacobs: Oh, yeah. If, if you're carrying your own stuff, that's totally legit. Like that's a smart, like, I, I could imagine too, if I was racing these days and I was attending a really hot race, I'd have a camel back That wa, that I had frozen the night before said I was keeping my body cold. And that would be totally legitimate.
And just because other people didn't think of it, doesn't mean it's
[00:33:11]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah. Yeah,
[00:33:12]Randall R. Jacobs: Um, so I, it's, but everyone has their lines, I
[00:33:15]Craig Dalton (host): exactly. And I think what you, one point you brought up early on, which I think is, is so true, there's both what's legal and illegal in racing, but also the social dynamics of future races. And the likelihood that people are gonna help one another. And I mean, I, again, I feel a little bit bad for all the shade that that Adam's been catching.
And I don't imagine anybody helping him bridge any gaps or working with him, which is, which is a shame and a little bit unfair. But again, people are gonna take offense to how people ride and they're gonna wanna work with people and not work with people.
[00:33:51]Randall R. Jacobs: I don't know, man. Like, if, if that's, uh, a strategy that works and you know, there are other ride, like if you're, if there are other riders who are stronger and then you're able to come up with a, a more clever strategy, uh, that seems legit to me.
[00:34:07]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah,
[00:34:09]Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah.
[00:34:10]Craig Dalton (host): my usual strategy is, is suck wheels and then get dropped. No one seems, no one seems to complain too much about that with me. That said, that said, I aspire to develop some sort of fitness on my bike this year, attend some events later in the year, and just kind of bring this year back together for me on the gravel bike.
[00:34:35]Randall R. Jacobs: Well, I don't know about, uh, cycling fitness, but, um, if you're ever inclined to build fitness through carrying rocks and building materials and swinging a hammer, uh, I know somebody who, uh, would happily, uh, give you free training.
[00:34:49]Craig Dalton (host): I love it, Randall. Well, my friend, good to connect with you again. Good to see the progress on the cabin. I can't wait to, uh, to see how it goes, and hopefully we'll hook up again this summer.
[00:35:00]Randall R. Jacobs: Very good. Good to see you, my friend.
[00:35:02]Craig Dalton (host): Take care.
That's going to do it for this week's edition of in the dirt, from the gravel ride podcast. I hope you enjoyed catching up with Randall and myself this week. If you have topics you're interested in us covering whether it's interviewing other people in the industry or athletes, please reach out to us. You can do that via social media or via the ridership. That's www.theridership.com.
If you're able to support the show, ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. Or if you're able, you can visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride to support the show financially. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
🚴♀️ Have you ever wondered what it takes to create cutting-edge technology in the professional cycling world? In our latest episode, host Craig Dalton 🎙️ sits down with Lori Barrett, Managing Director of the Americas for Rotor, a Spanish-based company that is revolutionizing the biking industry.
Together, Craig and Lori take us deep into the story of Rotor 🔧 - from its inception by Pablo Carrasco who sought to resolve the dead spot in riders' pedal strokes, to its current reputation as a game changer in the cycling arena. Lori enlightens us with breakthrough innovations such as Rotor's oval chain rings, proportional length cranks, power meters, and the latest hydraulic drivetrain. 🚲
Lori gives listeners an exclusive look into how the company relentlessly works to transform cycling experiences for athletes and weekend warriors alike. 🏆 Don't miss this chance to ride along with Craig and Lori as they discuss all things Rotor and the fascinating world of professional cycling technology. Pedal on and listen to our latest episode now!🎧🚴✨
Listerners get a 20% discount on Rotor Components using the code THEGRAVELRIDE20 at Rotor America.
Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (code: THEGRAVELRIDE for free heart rate monitor strap)
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00]Lori Barrett: Hey Lori, welcome to the show.
[00:00:04]Craig Dalton: Hi. Thanks for having me. Super excited to talk with you today.
[00:00:08]Lori Barrett: Yeah, and I love that background you have there in Utah. It looks like you live in a beautiful place.
[00:00:13]Craig Dalton: I do, I'm sorry. Like, probably all you're seeing right now are the, the beautiful puffy sky, uh, clouds, um, kind of reflected in the window, but, uh, from what I'm looking at, I have a little screen and then I have beautiful meadows and mountains, so
[00:00:26]Lori Barrett: Not a bad spot
[00:00:27]Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's all right.
[00:00:28]Lori Barrett: to start out the conversation, Lord. Where did, where did you grow up and how did you find the bike?
[00:00:33]Craig Dalton: Oh gosh. Um, so I'm from Austin, Texas, and um, like even from college, like I had, our household had an outpost for, um, the yellow Bike project. So a San Francisco based collective that tries to, um, repurpose bikes and provide bikes for people that don't have them basically. So even back then, We were all into bike culture and my roommates all worked at bike shops, things like that.
Um, I was sort of a casual rider and commuter, you know, for college and everything else, uh, until a little later. And then, um, somebody handed me a road bike and I pedaled off. And the first like official road ride that I did, uh, was like maybe 45 miles, which, you know, not insignificant for a first drive and kind of never stopped pedaling after that.
Um, Kind of, um, just loved it. Um, ended up racing road bikes full-time with, uh, an elite domestic team out of Austin. And, uh, ended up running that team and helping cultivate newer talent, um, some of whom, you know, are still out there, which is really cool. I saw you saw, had Whitney Allison, uh, on your podcast.
She was one of my rioters. Um, and, uh, Lauren Stevens was on our team. Anyway, it's just, it's really cool. We had a great group of women that. Some of whom have stayed in the industry and, you know, continue to love and race their bikes. Yeah. Anyway, now I'm not fast anymore. I raced on the road, I raced on the track, I raced mountain bikes.
I've done everything from match sprints to um, Enduro mountain bike races. So
[00:02:13]Lori Barrett: love
[00:02:13]Craig Dalton: of all forms of wheeled, um, travel. I have a lot of commuters now. I think my next one's gonna be an e cargo bike, which I'm kind of excited about. Um, yeah. Anyway. All of it. Mm-hmm.
[00:02:26]Lori Barrett: that's, that's amazing. So from your origins in Austin racing on the road, you discovered a little mountain biking. When did you discover gravel riding and how does that fit into what you enjoy doing?
[00:02:40]Craig Dalton: Well, yeah, I was just talking with someone about this the other day. So our, uh, roads around Austin, I mean, what I loved about where I lived there is that I had from my house on the east side of town, I had loops that I could do that were 30 miles, 45 miles. You could kind of just add these kind of like, uh, farmland roads.
And for us, the sign of a good ride, and we call them road rides, was basically what we call Rube. Um, so basically, uh, caliche or gravel sections that we would spend miles on because then you knew you didn't have traffic. So, and you know, and also however many, um, Cattle guards you went over. That was the other, the other hallmark.
But, so that was, we were riding, I mean, I don't know, probably 30% of our road rides if you went over, you know, 50 or 60 miles were at least partially gravel. And so we were doing that on, you know, back then 23 mill tires kind of build your tolerance for, uh, for a little bit of rough road. Um, but yeah, so I would say that's when.
[00:03:45]Lori Barrett: Nice. Yeah, it, I was listening to someone the other day and they were talking about their experience as a road rider and riding dirt roads. I think it was out in Boulder, Colorado. And how now it, they don't, they're not affected in the same way others are when they're riding their quote unquote road bikes in the dirt sections of B W R, for example, because it's something they've been doing for a while.
[00:04:07]Craig Dalton: Yeah. Decades. I mean, it's funny actually. I did a really fun road ride. Road a little bit in air quotes out in Boulder. Um, that included a fun dirt section and I got to petta wallaby. It was with some of the cycling tips guys, and um, actually one of my, you know, whatever my wins in my past, you know, have been for, as a bike racer, I got a top 10 on a Boulder road ride.
And all I can say is that's probably one of the great achievements, achievements of my professional cycling career.
[00:04:39]Lori Barrett: Too bad they don't have a leader's jersey for that
[00:04:41]Craig Dalton: I know, right? I've probably, I'm sure I was bumped years ago now, but whatever, I'll, I'm still holding onto it.
[00:04:47]Lori Barrett: So it sounds like you sort of went from a racer to a little bit of team management. And then how did you find your way into the bike industry beyond the racing side of things?
[00:04:57]Craig Dalton: Yeah. So, um, well basically I'd been, you know, racing bicycles and I started off working for Cliff Bar and I ran event and athlete sponsorship for them out of Texas. And, um, after a few years of it, I felt kind of like it wasn't really challenging me professionally anymore. Um, you know, it's interesting.
I mean, the way, the simplified way to explain it is that I had a pot of money and a pot of product, and my job was to figure out strategic ways to allocate these things that supported the sales team ultimately. And in retrospect, it was actually a really good, um, a really good kind of strategic way to consider.
How you invest resources. And it kind of prepared me later for, for other things. But, uh, at once I decided it was kind of time to move on, I ended up taking a job with a sales agency, so within the bicycle industry. So I was a sales rep for someone else's agency. And after a couple of years of that, I left and I started my own.
And after a couple of years of that, um, I had an offer to be a national sales manager for Reynolds, the wheel company. And that's actually what moved me to Utah from Texas. So I sold my sales agency there. It still exists. I've hired them back for rotor, which is pretty cool.
[00:06:10]Lori Barrett: Nice. And just so, so people understand, like a sales agency in the bike industry, as I
[00:06:15]Craig Dalton: Oh yeah.
[00:06:16]Lori Barrett: it and, and have have observed it, you've got independent sales reps that can be hired by multiple brands at a time. And these are individuals that go to shop, shop by shop by shop in their territory and sell Reynolds wheels or Oakley sunglasses or Jira helmets, whatever they are to the shop owners.
[00:06:34]Craig Dalton: exactly. So, and thank you for clarifying that. You know, it's the problem because, um, non-endemic listeners, which I imagine most are, it would be a pretty kind of vague thing. Um, yeah. So, like for instance, maybe my Texas sales reps work with to Fosi and Pivot Mountain Bikes and, um, you know, uh, Met helmets and you know, it's just kind of a, a package of brands, a portfolio really.
And they try not to have competing brands, so obviously they're not gonna have Pivot Yeti or you know, whatever. Um, yeah. So it's, uh, that way they can work with all of the local bike shops and, um, like, you know, we're just talking about Texas, so usually a region, the region depends on the territory, but like in Texas's case, it's Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas.
So you have these four states and so you have multiple sales reps and you know, tech reps and it's sort of its own little, it's an agency model. So we had a few reps and a few tech reps and, you know, tried to take great care of the bike shops with that.
[00:07:38]Lori Barrett: Got it. So then you moved on to the company side with Reynolds, and then where do you go from there?
[00:07:44]Craig Dalton: So with Reynolds it was an interesting opportunity and I learned a lot, um, you know, running all the sales reps and kind of managing the positions I'd been in prior. Um, but then when the position came open to be the managing director for Rotor, it was, you know, kind of a chance to continue learning.
I call it the do it yourself mba. So it's, um, it's a chance to keep, you know, keep myself from getting bored and, uh, keep kind of being able to pull more and more of the levers within a, within a brand and a within a company.
[00:08:18]Lori Barrett: Let's, we'll come back to kind of your arrival at Rotor, but because the company was founded prior to that point, I imagine, let's take a step back and, and talk about rotor and. As you understand it, what was the inspiration behind starting Rotor? What products did they begin with? And then we can talk a little bit about how it's evolved and, and when you joined.
It's a Spanish based company, so obviously opening up and having a managing director in the US is a step in the progression. But let's start at the beginning and what's Rotor, how, why was it founded? What was it all about?
[00:08:52]Craig Dalton: So, uh, you have a guy named Pablo Carrasco, who is sort of like the mad scientist and he wants to create solutions to problems. And the problem that he saw was the dead spot in writer's pedal strokes, right? So, You know, when we, um, if you look at like a, a torque analysis of your pedal stroke, not to get too data nerdy here, then obviously most people know that most of the force that they put down on a pedal is down.
You aren't really able to, even with clipless pedals, maybe there's some amount that, you know, is pulling up, but for the most part, that's not where you have a dead spot. Let's say if you're looking at a clock face between, you know, Seven and 9:00 PM on the clock base where you're putting out very little force.
So Pablo came up with a few different solutions, um, some of which were more commercially viable than others. So there was an entire rotor bike that had a, like, it had, uh, two spindles. Anyway, there's, there's some bananas stuff that he had created, which is wildly efficient. For pedal stroke, but also, you know, weighed 30 pounds or something absurd like that.
So came up with the compromise of the, um, the curings, the rotor, oval chain rings. And so with a, um, which basically are, everybody always thinks about it from the perspective of maximizing the force that you're able, or the use that you're able to get outta the force that you put downward. But really it's about decreasing the amount of time that you spend in the dead spot of the pedal stroke,
[00:10:23]Lori Barrett: Yeah. Yep. Yeah, I remember sort of, gosh, just being a fan of road racing and I don't even know how many years this would be ago, 25 years with. Bobby Gik coming out
[00:10:35]Craig Dalton: Oh yeah.
[00:10:35]Lori Barrett: riding oval chain rings and really espousing the virtue of, again, eliminating that dead spot in the pedal stroke to maximize the power that is in the, you know, the nondead spots.
[00:10:47]Craig Dalton: Absolutely. And you know, that was, you know, it. It was really, once, you know, we started having adoption within the Tor de Frances and we had, you know, a, a winner in the yellow Jersey, you know, winner of the Tor de Frances that it, it kind of became more, Hmm, you know, not socially acceptable, but that, you know, it just kind of became more normalized, I guess.
Um, and it's still, you know, it's, I've had people, you know, if I'm in a group of people that. Don't know me or my affiliation with rotor, what oval chain rings are. If I'm riding people, I've had people say, oh, there's something wrong with your chain ring. And I'm like, because they're looking at it. And if you're just looking at it, it, I don't know.
It's, it looks less round, obviously. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a funny thing.
[00:11:34]Lori Barrett: And did he come at it from a, a scientific background and sort of identify like if we're, if we're measuring power around the pedal stroke, that empirically speaking, there is this dead spot and you can improve one's power output via an ized chain ring.
[00:11:51]Craig Dalton: Yeah, and I mean, so his background is engineering. He's a mechanical engineer. Um, and so he approached it from an engineering standpoint. But yeah, basically the same thing. What's interesting now is that our, um, our power meters all come with a software that includes a pedal stroke analysis. If you've ever ridden like the old school, like, uh, comp compute trainers or something, there was a, you could make a little peanut shape with your pedal stroke left and right and what that was doing.
Was measuring your power output on the left, your power output on the right, and that was the left and right halves of the peanut and the split in the middle. The bifurcation was basically the dead spot at the back of your pedal stroke. If you could pedal with a hundred percent efficiency, then you would actually make a circle instead of a peanut.
Right. What's interesting, so we do, you know, um, like, I don't know, at events and stuff, we'll have ones that people can hop on and just kind of play with. And like at Sea Otter, we did gold sprints for, uh, for fun and prizes, which was, was super fun. But, um, you know, of course if we're having an event set up, we have platform pedals on it so people can just hop on in their sneakers.
Um, you can actually change the, um, the pedal to a platform pedal. Or the, I'm sorry, excuse me. Change the ring to an oval chain ring with the platform pedal and you see the split that bifurcation go down. So basically you see the reduction in time spent in the dead spot, you see kind of quantified the, uh, improvement in efficiency with the use of an oval chain ring.
And you know, like we make, we make round chain rings also. So, but this is, it's just an interesting anecdotal. Piece. I mean, if you're sprinting and you're gonna stomp on it, you know, or if you're on a track bike, you know, a round ring, uh, can make more sense. But like time trialists all day long.
[00:13:45]Lori Barrett: Yeah. Yeah. So interesting. So it started out, and can you, um, tell us what year it started out. So what year did the first rotor chain ring hit the market?
[00:13:55]Craig Dalton: So, uh, 25 years ago, so that would be, uh, 20. Now it's 26 years. Esther was our 25th anniversary, so that would be, uh, let's see. It's, oh, so 1997.
[00:14:11]Lori Barrett: Okay. And am I correct that it was in Madrid that the company was founded?
[00:14:14]Craig Dalton: based out of Madrid. Mm-hmm.
[00:14:16]Lori Barrett: Yeah. Gotcha. And so why don't we trace a little bit of the evolution of the product line from that origin story of chain rings and. What was the next opportunities that, that he saw in the development of the product?
[00:14:29]Craig Dalton: Well, I mean, Pablo's goal has always been to make the most efficient, you know, to increase the efficiency. For a rider within, you know, within the context of enjoying their time on a bicycle. So, you know, when something like a complete rotor system bike didn't really make sense, which it doesn't, uh, then he started looking at other ways, avenues to bring that to light.
So one thing that we've seen a big rise in is the interest in shorter cranks. You know, for your listeners who can't see me, I'm five four. Historically, you know, when I was racing full-time, I ran a one 70 crank, one 70 mill link crank. Um, if I bought a extra small or a small mountain bike, it still came with a 1 75 crank.
And you know, it took me a while to figure out that. The crank link for me really made a big difference in like, I always say that, you know, you're either a spinner or a masher in your pedal stroke style, and I tend to bounce around a lot. This is kinda how my brain works, so feel free to refocus me if, if that's helpful.
Um, but. I'm a spinner, so I'm not like a pedal masher, that's just like churning big gears. I'm not a big powerful rider, kind of small, and so the way that I make power is I spin up a gear and if my crank is too long, I can't turn it over quickly enough to generate the power I need to, and it's not like all of a sudden I become muscle type wise, like a mashing, you know, a big powerful writer.
So it just means I'm actually fatiguing myself and less effective in my writing. So, Crank link. My long answer to that question is crank link became a thing and then as power meters.
[00:16:14]Lori Barrett: so that was a that I was just gonna say, so that was an opportunity for them to convince riders that there was a reason to upgrade cranks. And build the case that rotor is making a crank that is worthy of the upgrade. In those early days, I imagine it was one of very few options that had multiple lengths proportional lengths available.
You know, it used to be one 70 and 1 75. Were the only ones in town, and as longtime listeners of the show will attest, like we've had conversations, a lot of conversations about. Proportional crank lengths and the importance and benefits of it. So totally get that. How did, when they started making cranks, what was, was there something about the manufacturing pro process, what materials were they using
[00:16:58]Craig Dalton: Ooh.
[00:16:58]Lori Barrett: were, again, in a, in addition to attracting people to the length, what, what were the other attributes that riders were considering when upgrading?
[00:17:06]Craig Dalton: So here's something, um, well first of all, wait, but, uh, something that I don't know if everybody knows, we actually manufacture in Spain, so everybody says, oh, designed in Italy. We actually have our factories in Madrid. It's, it's pretty amazing. I mean, I'm obviously, we're primarily from a country that isn't really a manufacturing country that much anymore.
So going to a place, it's like going into Willy Wonka's, you know, factory. You're just, It's, you know, amazing bike parts and like machines like C n C machines and, you know, lifelong C n C technicians that are milling these out. So kind of within that, so they came up with a, some of our older cranks were called 3d and that actually meant for, uh, three drilling.
So we use a seven series, an aeronautic grade aluminum, so it's a harder aluminum, um, which allows us to take out more material. It's more expensive. It's stiffer. Um, a six series, which is what, like, for instance, most shaman is made out of. And what our lower series cranks are made out of, um, that has a little more, a little more flex.
Um, and uh, and also you have to leave in more material in order to make it as as strong. Does that make sense?
[00:18:19]Lori Barrett: Yep.
[00:18:19]Craig Dalton: So, um, the seven series is, allows us to take out the maximum amount of material, allows us to make a super light super stiff. Crank. Um, a couple years ago we released, um, a new modular system, which took.
The total parts for a crank and ring set from 22 down to 14, which means you have fewer interfaces for creaking and you know, wobbling loose and all of the things that happen when you have interfaces. Um, what it also meant is that it took, let's say if a duce crank set was 650 grams, it took it down to 600 grams and that's still for alloy.
So a very, very durable material. Uh, we do have some carbon cranks as well, and those are, Even lighter. I think on the mountain bike side, it's the la la lightest mountain bike power meter on the market. And on the roadside it's, I believe, the lightest next to something like a T H M. So it's just, and, you know, half the price or a third the price.
So it's just absolutely, uh, as we say, it's sick light. So there's a pretty cool material story in addition to, um, yeah. And, and manufacturing. In addition to the manufacturing. Yeah.
[00:19:34]Lori Barrett: And when. When do you think about selling carbon cranks? Are there any concerns about durability or is the, the way they're dur, they're manufactured as durable as an aluminum crank.
[00:19:45]Craig Dalton: I mean, to me a carbon crank is almost never going to be as, as durable as aluminum. So that's actually one of the things that I think increases the applicability for somebody that's riding on and offroad combined. But you know, everybody's got a different set of considerations. You know, um, maybe most of the gravel you ride isn't flying up and hitting your cranks.
I don't know. I mean, you know, maybe it's cder as we call it. Um, so perhaps a carbon crank is going to be just as durable, but really, You have to leave a lot of material. I mean, there are other crank manufacturers that do very heavy carbon cranks that are heavier than our aluminum cranks, and maybe those are as durable, but at that point, what's the point?
You know? I mean, I guess you have the carbon look, but
[00:20:30]Lori Barrett: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then so it, it seems like with all that focus on chain rings and cranks, it was probably natural, although a giant leap to start offering a power meter. Can you talk about sort of, uh, Why the company decided to jump into that market and what perspective they brought that might have been different than other power meters that were out on the market.
[00:20:54]Craig Dalton: Well, you have a few different pieces. One, it was becoming more common, you know, back when Pablo started the company, it was something that even professionals didn't have on their bikes. Right? And then it was professionals and then now it's just that, you know, it's kind of a standard piece of equipment.
Like a heart rate monitor was 20 years ago, right? Um, so I think the fact that it became something that was going to be more within reach for consumers was important. But really, you know, rotor is all about, um, performance and staying in line. You know, we're working with these Tour de France teams this year.
Of course, it's with Inter Marshe. We worked with Dimension Data for a long time. Israel Premier Tech, you know, all of these teams, and they needed a power meter and we don't want them running someone else's power meter, of course. So, um, Yeah, so they started, but it was, it was a huge project. I mean, and we partnered with, uh, Indra, which is a, um, a company that provides, you know, strain gauges, basically the hardware for, um, pieces of the Spanish government, which is pretty wild to, to basically help us with the, the internals.
And then we created our own software and it pairs, obviously with all the a n T plus Bluetooth. You know, wahoo, head units, Garmin, you know, you name it, all of them. Um, but we wanted to have our own software as well. The other thing, and we already touched upon oval rings, of course, is that, um, again, not to like go too deep down a tech nerd hole, but it's, um, if you don't, if your rate of record for a power meter isn't frequent enough, it will give you an incorrect reading.
On an oval chain ring because if you're only sampling data at two points on the chain ring, well because the chain ring is not round and it's maximizing it here and minimizing it here, then it's going to not give you accurate power readings. So we needed to make a power meter that gave, you know, that was actually reading essentially in real time.
So our power meters have the most rapid rate of record of any power meter in the industry. I mean in part by virtue of wanting to make sure we're giving accurate power readouts with one of our flagship products, eeg, the oval rings.
[00:23:10]Lori Barrett: Got it. Got it. Taking a step back for a second just to kind of set the stage, and I imagine I'm not alone in being a little bit, um, less familiar with power meters, so. I recall kind of originally there were hub based power meters and then later crank based power meters. How does the system actually work?
Like where is the, where are those, um, where are those data points coming from within the rotor system and how maybe does that differ from other, in the people in the market's approach to getting power data?
[00:23:45]Craig Dalton: Well, we have a few different models, so they kind of, they rerecord a little differently, but like if you take our twin power, which actually is one of the only power meters that's recording left and right data independently, right? Um, then there are, um, two sets of paired strain gauges in the axle. Two sets of paired strain gauges in the drive side arm.
And they are reading, um, the left and right leg basically,
[00:24:10]Lori Barrett: that, and just for clarity, that's in the crank axle and each crank arm.
[00:24:14]Craig Dalton: Mm-hmm. Right. And so, uh, one of the other interesting pieces is we were just talking about, wait, I feel like I'm getting so deep in the weeds here. Tell me, like, I can go, I can go down this, but like, I'm like going back into materials science.
Um, so, uh, one of the things you have is you always have exper uh, metal, um, Excuse me, material expansion and contraction and so with temperature, right. You know, that's, that's just a thing. And so one of the pieces of programming that you have to, uh, account for in all of your power units is it's, it's basically got a thermometer in it.
I mean, it's the, the technology behind these things. It's, it's, to me, it's kind of amazing. And then you have accelerometers and all of the different pieces that allow it to provide. Uh, incredibly reliable data. So two plus minus one and a half percent, which is one of the most accurate on the market. And I actually, I was talking with the power meter engineer last year at Eurobike, and I was asking her about it.
I was like, well, why don't you know? She's like, well, we have to. I was asking her why it's not more accurate. Basically, she's like, well, If it were actually reading in real time, if it we, if we didn't do that power smoothing of one and a half percent, then the numbers would change so fast you wouldn't be able to read them to use them.
I was like, oh, who knew? Um, yeah, so the, we also have other units that are, um, spider based and so then it's a, you know, single-sided with a virtual dual-sided, um, One of the other
[00:25:51]Lori Barrett: in that scenario with the spider based one, then it's making some assumptions around your left, left leg as well as your right leg.
[00:25:58]Craig Dalton: Correct. It's using fancy math. Um, and one of the, one of the other pieces though, is that you have to make sure that they're very impact resistant.
All of our power meters are. I P X seven. Um, we actually just released a new in spider for, um, which is the spider based power system, right? Um, the, a new in spider MTV for, uh, obviously for the mountain bike. And one of the cool things there, it's is I P X seven. Plus, I think is what it's called. I p x seven basically means it's a rating that tells you you can, uh, take it up to a meter underwater for up to 30 minutes before it'll be contaminated.
So that means, especially if you're riding off road, let's say in a gravel circumstance, if you have a creek crossing, you don't have to worry about contamination for your power meter. You're not gonna short circuit anything. The electronics are electronics are all gonna be fine. With the seven plus, it also means that it's sealed against really fine Culver, really fine dust, which might be really germane as well on, um, an off-road circumstance, obviously.
[00:27:03]Lori Barrett: To help the, to help us understand, like, so to get one of these power meters on your, your bike. You need to get a rotor crank set right? So there's the, the two two crank arm version that you can replace your existing crank arm with the spider version. Are you still getting that with a crank set?
[00:27:22]Craig Dalton: Yes. So the interface is for our cranks. Um, and, um, I know there are other power meter brands that offer a single crank upgrade. You know, we did that for a while and, um, it just, it wasn't as good a system as providing the whole crank and power meter unit. I know there are also. Power meters that you can just replace the axle, but then you have problems.
They all have their own problems. So we wanted one that was going to be as reliable and as accurate as possible. So we felt like the best solution for that was providing the whole crank and chain ring, uh, solution.
[00:28:03]Lori Barrett: That makes sense. So for your interest in the gravel market, I know you guys have been active out there at various events, both participating and having trade show booths there. Where, what products are you seeing gravel riders kind of, uh, focus on in your lineup?
[00:28:21]Craig Dalton: So, um, I mean, the simple answer is, uh, like the cranks and the power meters. I mean, we do a direct mount chain ring that's a 48 32. Uh, again, this was part of the design award. We, uh, because. The direct mount chain ring is a single piece of mild. It's actually, it's, it's like a work of art, honestly.
Um, a 48 32, which normally you can't do smaller than a 42, 40, 34 2 ring on a spider based system. That's why Shao struggled for so long before grx, right? Um, was that you have to have at least a one 10 B, c, d, the bolt count diameter in order to, you know, for, for their cranks, right? So we have the 42 30, um, 40, 48, 32.
We have the 46 30 s, which are specific gravel gearings. Um, we're also doing full one by ranges in that are 11 and 12 speed compatible. We launched last year Universal Tooth Technology, which means it'll work with your Shaman 12 speed as well as Youram 12 speed, as well as your. You know, whatever, whatever you're running rotor.
Um, so it's, it's pretty cool because it kind of, I, it seems so dorky, but, um, the, uh, tooth technology is a little bit like an arms race. Each company is always trying to make something that no one else is double work with to kind of lock you into a system. And so to be able to, um, have the intellectual property that allows you to kind of thread that.
You know, the, that needle, it's, it's pretty cool. So one by rings that work with everybody's, you know, everybody's product. Um, I mean, from a 28 all the way up to, uh, 58. Honestly, that's pretty wild.
[00:30:13]Lori Barrett: Okay. If one was looking to upgrade to a rotor crank set, uh, do they need to replace their bottom bracket in order to do so?
[00:30:21]Craig Dalton: Ooh, that's a good question also. Um, so the, the easy answer is no. We make cranks in a 24 and 30 mil axle. Again, I kind of start to, I'm like, ah, how, how deep into the weeds am I gonna go? Um, but we also, we make bottom brackets that are, we use in Duro bearings and, um, they're absolutely, they're just top best in class.
Um, we manufacture all the shells and everything in Spain. Again, it's just really good quality product. And replacing, quite frankly, replacing bottom brackets is something that we should all do if you're riding a lot of miles. Multiple times a year. If you're not riding a lot of miles at least once a year.
And especially, you know, we were talking about creek crossings, bottom brackets, anyone's bottom bracket after a creek crossing or two, take that apart. Give it a little love. Anyway, your bearings will thank you. You know,
[00:31:11]Lori Barrett: So if I've got, so if I've got a shaman bottom bracket in there, it's a one-to-one replacement. Is that the same with a shram, a Shram Dub BB, for example.
[00:31:20]Craig Dalton: So yes it is. And so the shaman only uses 24 mil spindle. So again, back into our fun material science, uh, 24 mill spindle has to be steel rotor prefers the 30 mill aluminum simply because it's stiffer Steel, of course, has flex. That's why we don't ride steel bikes anymore. Um, and it's also lighter aluminum is lighter than steel.
Um, the reason that Shama likes the 24 mil spindle is that uh, you can run a slightly bigger bearing size with that bottom bracket. Right. Um, which, Adds to bottom bracket durability, however, you know, you're talking a $30 a year difference in, in material costs as far as like replacing your bottom bracket if you went with the 30 mil, more efficient, lighter uh, spindle.
That being said, we do make a 24 mil axle. It's just not our favorite.
[00:32:20]Lori Barrett: Got
[00:32:20]Craig Dalton: So if you, if you were replacing it on your shaman bottom bracket, you would replace it with the 24 mil. Axle, uh, version of our cranks.
[00:32:29]Lori Barrett: Got it. While this next product I'm gonna ask about isn't something that you guys are from intending from a marketing perspective to be for the gravel rider, I think I'd be remiss in having a conversation with rotor without talking about it. And that's your hydraulic drive train. Can you kinda explain how that works?
[00:32:48]Craig Dalton: Oh, it's amazing. Um, and honestly, I feel like gravel is the best application, but. You know this, it's the, I have a one by 13 setup on my gravel bike. Um, we had a rider win, you know, the, uh, gravel world on it a couple of times. Um, you know, a few years ago. And it's been, it's been raced at Unbound.
It's been, yeah, it's been kind of raised in all of these
[00:33:14]Lori Barrett: let, let's talk about what it is. Because I think that won't be clear at this point. So we're talking about a derailer shifters cassette, and not only are we talking about those things, we're talking about the mechanism for shifting being hydraulic, like many of us are most aware of hydraulics with respect to disc brakes.
So explain how a hydraulic powered derailer works.
[00:33:43]Craig Dalton: Well, so it's mechanical hydraulic, right? And so when you use the gear shifter, it basically triggers a little lever that then shifts the, um, the rear derailer. And it's a one by system. It's a push push system. So then when you go to shift up, uh, basically there's a, you know, the hydraulic fluid releases a little spring and then it like, You know, goes up the cassette, right?
[00:34:09]Lori Barrett: Okay, so we're imagining sort of, we've got a much like a break. Yeah, hose Going through the frame, we've got a hydraulic hose going through the, through the shift lever with Hy Mineral oil in it. When I throw the lever, I'm basically pushing that mineral oil, which is then shifting the driller up, and then as I'm releasing it via the lever lever, I'm kind of releasing a little bit of oil.
Ergo that Thera is shifting a little bit more.
[00:34:35]Craig Dalton: Yeah. And so it's a closed system so you don't end up with, you know, like with a cable system, you end up with friction and replacing cables and all that. Um, I'm like, I get very um, You know, in most of my life I'm very digitally involved, right? When I ride my bicycle, I'm pretty darn analog.
Of course, I still have a power meter and I, you know, occasionally bust out my head unit so I can see the numbers, although that's more depressing now than anything else. But I, I don't wanna have to remember to charge my bike. You know, yesterday I was gonna try and ride midday, and then it started storming.
So, I didn't get to ride. I kind of threw a little tantrum and you know, cleaned some of the house and then, uh, went out yesterday evening. And if I had kind of decided for a last minute ride without having charged my bike and then my bike's not, you know, like my derailer is not charged, how bummed am I?
Like it's one thing to have a power meter and I don't get to have my power read out and that's just shame on me. But it's another thing if it keeps me from riding my bike anyway, so I'm just. You know, I get kind of, kind of salty about it.
[00:35:47]Lori Barrett: When did the drive train get introduced and are any of the pro road teams that you're working with riding on that drive train?
[00:35:54]Craig Dalton: Um, so we brought out the first one, which was called the UNO Group, um, in 20 17, 20 18. And, um, long story short, the last year or during the pandemic, we sold 100% of production to. A couple of European oes and so there were none for, you know, you know, for, I mean, we had a couple, like of individual athletes, but when you, when you supply a per road team, you're giving them 200 group sets, like, and that's it is because we manufactured a hundred percent of the parts in Spain, like we're talking molding the hoods, you know, like this is so far from like milling, you know, C n C cranks.
But you know, you figure it out, you learn to do it. But there's so many parts that it is kind of a, a, it's a, it's a crown jewel, but it's also like a loss leader. It's not our bread and butter, if you will. Um, the other thing is, I think we saw a few years ago with, uh, the Aqua Sapone team, um, in one of the early spring races, uh, you will pry a front derailer from the roadies.
Cold dead hands, like gravel rider's a lot more flexible. I don't, I mean, I don't need a front, you know, but like roadies, I mean, heck, they went on strike in the nineties when people made 'em start wearing, you know, the UCI started making 'em wear helmets, like, you know, how long's it gonna take them? I mean, tubeless technology just brakes anyway, like, whatever, you know, we, uh, we get to be the, uh, the vanguard, correct.
Gravel
[00:37:30]Lori Barrett: I think it's, I think it's super interesting, just the hydraulic powered, derailer
[00:37:35]Craig Dalton: Oh, it's great.
[00:37:36]Lori Barrett: being the pro power's probably the wrong word, but hydraulic activated actuated there. I knew I would get there anyway. Super cool. Laura, I appreciate the overview of rotor. Um, put a link in the show notes to Rotor America's website.
So. People can check out the crank sets, which I think again, as we said, is probably the most interesting product, particularly if you are interested in either considering a power meter or equally important considering optimizing your crank length based on your body type and style. Rotor's a a great option for people to consider.
[00:38:10]Craig Dalton: It's really, it's some neat stuff. I mean, it's worthwhile to check out. We have a great customer service team out of Salt Lake City, um, technical support, um, and really, you know, like kind of coming back to the power meters. It's, again, for me, I just wanna enjoy the experience of riding my bike. And sometimes I, I want data as well, but mostly I want to have something that's extremely reliable and, you know, and doesn't, doesn't get in my way, doesn't keep me from getting on the bike.
Certainly. And so for me, you know, the power meters and the cranks, it's all, it's just set and forget, you know, you leave it alone. Um, yeah, it's fun.
[00:38:50]Lori Barrett: Right on. Well, thanks for all the time, Lori.
[00:38:52]Craig Dalton: Yeah. Thanks for having me. It was, uh, great, great talking with you.
Hey gravel fans! 🚵♂️ Welcome to The Gravel Ride Podcast, where we delve into all things gravel. In this special episode, Neil Shirley joins me to discuss Enve's new MOG bike, a game-changer in the gravel scene. 🚴♀️🌄 Enve, based in Utah, has been producing premium carbon wheels for various bike disciplines for 16 years. Their 2023 release, the MOG bike, showcases the company’s dedication to meeting evolving expectations within the gravel market. 🛠🔥 Key features of the MOG bike include tire clearance for 50mm, achieved through creative narrow chain stay design, and different fork rakes available for each of the five sizes (49, 52, 54, 56, and 58) to ensure optimal handling. The MOG bike caters to racers and weekend bike-packers alike, offering versatile performance. 🎯🏁 Find out more about the Enve MOG bike, from tire width to custom frame builders, in this exciting episode of The Gravel Ride Podcast. Don't miss out; tune in now! 🎧🌟
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00]Craig Dalton: Neil, welcome back to the show.
[00:00:02]Neil Shirley: Thanks Craig. It's good to be back.
[00:00:06]Craig Dalton: I've been waiting a while to invite you back because you didn't have a gravel bike at Envy, and and now you do. So the wait is over. So welcome
[00:00:15]Neil Shirley: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Um, well, good things come to those who wait as they say. So here we are.
[00:00:23]Craig Dalton: Exactly as I mentioned to you offline, like I was preparing to heap you a bunch of crap for not having a gravel bike until this moment. And then as like a step back and I thought about my. Um, understanding of the envy brand and how deep you are in all the other sectors of the sport. And I see from your marketing materials, like you're sponsoring pro tour teams in the tour of France and the Jro.
You guys are all over the world. And then I'm remembering back to my mountain bike days, we're having an envy wheel set was exactly what every rider wanted, so I need to step back and say I should have been more patient. Neil, you guys have a lot on your plate. But I'm glad the envy MOG is in the world at this point.
[00:01:03]Neil Shirley: Yeah. Well, uh, I will, I will say, you know, I, I, I felt your pain, um, the, uh, having. Having the MOG for me was kind of a long time coming and, uh, something I, I was anxious for, for quite a while. And so, you know, but the really, the, the iterative process and it's something we've been working on for quite a while.
Um, and that, that process to get to where we were and where we are today with this, with this bike, like it took a while to really work on some refining it and getting the exact product we wanted to come to market.
[00:01:41]Craig Dalton: Yeah, that makes sense. And I know you guys are very thoughtful about the product development process. And just to set the stage a little bit, I'm gonna refer people earlier in my intro to some other episodes we did together where we talked about the custom road bike and, and earlier when you first got there at Envy.
But just to set the stage, can you just talk about where Envy's located and what's the core competency of the
[00:02:04]Neil Shirley: Yeah, so, um, we're, we're in Ogden, Utah. Um, we've been here, this is our 16th year in business. And we started, uh, initially with producing, you know, we were the first ones to do full carbon mountain bike wheels, um, and really just grew the premium, uh, carbon wheel business for, for road and then gravel, triathlon, you name it.
Um, and then, Two and a half years, two years. Just over two years ago, we introduced the custom road, so our first envy road bike, um, and that, that that bike is made, uh, completely here in Ogden as well.
[00:02:46]Craig Dalton: And am I correct in recalling that prior to that you had been working on supplying some tubes or some technology to some other frame builders along the way to kind of earn some of your chops in the in the frame world?
[00:02:56]Neil Shirley: Uh, from the very early years we were, uh, we were rolling carbon tubes and selling them to, um, cal quite a few of the custom builders. Um, then we also worked on projects. Uh, we did, uh, You know, I don't know if you recall the Cervelo P five x, uh, triathlon, um, triathlon bike. We did, uh, we, we did the fork, uh, and front end, uh, design for Cervelo.
Um, we did, uh, a carbon rear end for Santa Cruz on one of their mountain bikes. So kind of the frame world. Um, We're we're not necess even though we hadn't produced a bike with the NV aim on it until two years ago. Like we were, we were not new in, in, in kind of the, the frame business.
[00:03:42]Craig Dalton: Yeah. And then on the buildup of the product, uh, products that envy produces, starting from the wheel set, then you then obviously built a name for yourself in carbon forks, later stems, handle bars, seat posts, kind of everything around the cockpit.
[00:04:00]Neil Shirley: exactly. The, the component world. And I, I mean, we learned, we learned so much with, with wheels, um, especially when it came to the roadside with, you know, just aerodynamics. How, how, um, You know, how to make the fastest wheels in the world and, you know, uh, support world tour, uh, race teams. And so we took a lot of those learnings and that's, that's what we really started applying to our frames.
How, uh, aerodynamically, how, how a frame and the wheels can work together.
[00:04:32]Craig Dalton: And if you could talk a little bit about carbon and carbon layups. I think one of the things I found interesting in going to your facility there was the multitude of ways in which you can kind of produce the base material and then think about how it goes into any one of these products from a wheel
[00:04:48]Neil Shirley: Yeah. Um, there's, you know, there's always, in the industry, there's, there's a lot of marketing spin on a particular type of material or the modus of, of that material. And the reality is, um, pretty much everyone in the bike industry has access to the same, to the same materials. Um, You know, a, a certain bike brand doesn't have access to anything that, that we don't have and vice versa.
So it's really not, it, it's not about the, the material itself that differentiates product. It's, it's what you put into the mold and basically the recipe and how, how that layup is designed. And that's really where it's where the engineering team comes in and you know, we have. 12, you know, a dozen engineers here, um, full-time at Envy.
Um, and that's really what most of 'em are, are looking at is, is what the, what the laminate is. And, and that's where, you know, Because we're, because we're making those rims right here in Ogden, um, we can really manipulate and change the ride quality through, through these, the development process. And again, it's a very iter iterative process where we can change, change the, the layup just slightly, um, go, you know, do a 45 degree angle, uh, for, for some of the material and.
Basically bake that rim and be riding it a couple days later and take that feedback and make another iteration if necessary. So, um, that happens. That happens a lot in the process, and I think that's really one of the things that has allowed us to get to where we are, you know, in the premium wheel category.
[00:06:33]Craig Dalton: So in 2021, as you mentioned, you guys introduced the custom road. Set up and that provided people the opportunity to order a, a custom bicycle for you. Kinda interesting, I'm curious to get the perspective is why go custom right away versus a a, a standard product line?
[00:06:49]Neil Shirley: Uh, I think it's because we. We could, um, it simply, it's because within the building we had everything we needed to be able to do that. Um, we felt that, we felt that there was a hole in the market in having a, you know, there's, there's a lot of amazing custom builders out there. Um, and there are a lot of really high tech, uh, integrated aero carbon frames out there, but there were not.
There wasn't really anyone combining those two. So we came up with, with a process where we could do custom geometry with, um, kind of a modern carbon road frame with aero shaping integration. Um, so we felt that the custom road, you know, kind of filled that void that was, that was out there on the market and, and really the process of how we build that bike, it makes no difference if you know it.
Every, basically all the tubes are cut, cut to length, so there, there really is nothing stock where each, each frame is so, um, uniquely made that to be able to offer custom geometry didn't, didn't make it any more challenging for us.
[00:08:07]Craig Dalton: Yeah, it in some ways it's a brilliant marketing strategy just to kind of set the, the, um, riders, just look at those bikes out on the, on the, on the, on the roads with their custom paint jobs, the, the custom geometry with a great deal of lust, and then to later introduce the melee, which was a, a sta a standard frame sized road bike.
I think that was 2022. It just sort of made it more accessible. For riders who might have been lusting after the custom road
[00:08:37]Neil Shirley: Yeah, exactly. We, we really took, um, the learnings from the custom road, applied that, uh, to the melee. And when you look at the two side by side, I mean, you, you can obviously see how much, uh, d design cues they, they share. Um, but the, the melee, the stock geometry bike is really with the custom road. We, on a good week, we produce four.
Four of those, um, you know, just the, the custom nature, the, the paint job, everything takes a long time. Um, so, uh, that doesn't, the custom road doesn't really allow us to scale and be the bike brand that, that we. We envision being, and we, you know, our, our, our goal of, of being. Um, and it, it was really the stock geometry bikes that, you know, that allows us to do that.
They're, they're not made here in-house. Um, they're, you know, made by, uh, one of our overseas vendors. But we are the ones that, you know, controlled that process from, from design to layup through, you know, all the way throughout.
[00:09:44]Craig Dalton: Yeah, so even with that, that partnership, you guys are able to take your engineering, your, your desires as to how the layups are put into the mold, et cetera, and have them executed by a trusted
[00:09:55]Neil Shirley: Exactly. Yeah. And now, you know, the, the melee, um, and now the mog, uh, It allows us to, you know, have a, have a bike in our retail partners across, you know, not just across the country, but across the globe. Um, so you can go in, you know, to your local envy dealer and, you know, have a bike on the, you know, rated a ride right off the floor.
[00:10:19]Craig Dalton: And with, with the melee, was it introduced as a complete bike or was it sold as a, as a chassis?
[00:10:24]Neil Shirley: it, it was a, it was a chassis only. Um, and actually just this week, um, we're now introducing complete builds. Obviously for the end consumer that's dealing with their, their local retailer. You know, that for the most part they're, they're buying a. They're working with their dealer to buy a complete bike.
We're now offering, uh, a few different build options for the dealers. So get, it just allows us to be a little more competitive with our pricing.
[00:10:53]Craig Dalton: Yeah. Got you. So for just a little clarity for the uninitiated, a chassis would include the frame fork, stem bar seat post. Am I getting 'em? All right. Yeah. Yeah. And then as you mentioned, like chances are your local shop is gonna be filling in the details and getting you your dream bike, but as you mentioned, you've now added on the ability for dealers to purchase a, a completely built up bike to put on the showroom floor rather than them taking that step of getting the components, et cetera.
[00:11:25]Neil Shirley: Yep. So, so yeah, we're just kind of starting to slowly chip away and grow growing into a real bike brand.
[00:11:34]Craig Dalton: So the MOG has been on your mind for a while, but it took till 2023 for that to come out. You know, why? Why wait, why, why sequence it in this way? And what were some of the advantages of
[00:11:45]Neil Shirley: Um, I think with gravel or I know with gravel, it's, it's progressing and changing so quickly. Um, not just how, not just how people are riding the bikes, but I think what the expectations are in, in the bike that you get, um, and. It's capabilities, it's versatility. Um, so we, we really did our homework on the mog and you know, we had a few, you know, there were a couple of us in the building that had like some very firm, uh, things that we wa features of the bike.
And so we kind of laid those out and took it over to the engineering team and said, okay. You guys are the smart ones. You figure out how to, how to do this. But these, these are the key elements we want on the bike. And they were able to, to achieve that. Um, I get, you know, tire clearance, tire clearance for 50 millimeters.
It was, was a, was a big one. We don't, you know, the trend is bigger, bigger, bigger. I don't see that slowing down anytime soon. I think you will get to a point where, You know, you might as well be on a mountain bike, but, um, I felt like 50. Being able to run a 50 millimeter tire right now is, is pretty sweet.
Most of the time you don't ever need that, but it's nice to know that you can. So,
[00:13:08]Craig Dalton: Absolutely. I'm actually curious to get a little bit of your opinion on this, cause I know your, your experience in Gravel goes way back and riding Franken bikes at Crusher and the Tusher and just riding what you got. And I know you're a very capable rider and you probably have ridden your. Custom road on gravel roads at this point without much issue, kinda where do you stand personally on that?
Like as someone who like made do, let's call it that, like it was, we made do with the tire clearance we had. Now that you have that massive clearance, where do you find yourself most excited to ride from a tire width
[00:13:42]Neil Shirley: I, I'm typically, you know, between a 42 and a 44 for most of the riding I'm doing, um, here in, you know, here in, in Northern Utah. And, you know, you've ridden the groo course, our, our gravel event that we put on here. And so, you know how rocky and kind of gnarly, even just like the, the forestry roads are, you know, A mountain bike is probably better suited to it.
Um, so for some of that stuff, you know, 44 is, is really nice. Um, you know, I could, I have ridden with a 50, but you know, I still, I feel like kind of that sweet spot of performance and capability is kind of in that 42 to 44 range.
[00:14:27]Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, I know, and I, I think you said you guys have like a lunch road ride over at Envy, and I'm sure it gets quite spirited and you've got a background riding on the road. So I, I was just curious to get your perspective on that, whether, you know, when you have the fifties on there, it, it feels as spunky as you want it to feel.
[00:14:45]Neil Shirley: Yeah. Um, I think for Forio this year, I think I'm gonna run, I'll plan to run 48, um, because. When you're in a group and they're, uh, they're fast guys that you, you want to try and keep up with through, through technical sections, you take, you know, you take bigger risks and, uh, you know, with gravel bikes for so many years, we, we've been underbid most of the time when we're, when we're descending or you're on, you know, technical train.
And I think the, the MOG and kind of like these. These latest generations of some of the, the other gravel bikes out there, all of a sudden are, are kind of bridging that, where you really can ride up to your level, you know, within reason. Of course, if it gets too rocky, obviously you don't have suspension and all that, but, um, just with the volume of tires that we can run now, uh, it's, it's incredible what you can do with tire pressure and I feel, I feel so confident now on, on big tires.
[00:15:46]Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting. I've got a set of fifties that I've just been too lazy to put on the bike, but the, the current bikes, uh, the current 44 s are well worn past their date. And I, I just need to find the time and remount these tires so I can experience what a 50 feels like. But I do, I agree.
Like, I think that's the interesting thing, uh, about this moment in time with gravel bike and gravel bike design now that you are achieving. High performing frame design around a 700 by 50. I don't think you need to talk about six 50 B anymore. It's just not part of the conversation. As I was mentioning to you earlier, my first set of gravel bikes, like I needed two sets of wheels because I just couldn't have the range that I was looking for.
But I, I don't envision for me even bike packing that I would ever want more than a, than a 50
[00:16:36]Neil Shirley: Yeah. And, and that's kind of what we settled on. I mean, one of those, one of those key things we really wanted, um, we, we did, uh, There are a couple of us that spent a lot of time between our 700 C, you know, 700 by 40, 700 by 42, um, and six 50. And we really liked, you know, we liked it when we were writing six 50, but then as we stepped back to really think, what did we like about it?
It was, it was the tire size, it was the volume, not necessarily the wheel size. And so we're like, okay. We really want to be, ultimately 700 is what we want to be. It's just the current frame designs limited that size. So if we could do 700 by 50, you'd get the best of both worlds.
[00:17:25]Craig Dalton: Was it a, was there some sort of magic design bullet that people arrived on? Was it dual drop stays? What was the unlock that made it possible that we weren't thinking about four years
[00:17:36]Neil Shirley: Um, yeah, that's a really good question cuz you see, you know, if you look at some of the most popular, you know, gravel, gravel bikes on the market right now that do achieve decent, decent amount of clearance, you see everything, you know, from the, from the drop stay, um, to the elevated to the elevated stay.
Uh, we wanted, we really wanted to keep a traditional looking. You know, chains stay designed. Um, and that's, that's where our engineers had to get creative and uh, they were able to, to maintain standard looking Right. Chains stay, but what, what they. To, you know, to get the tire clearance and chain ring clearance, they made the right chainstay, um, incredibly narrow, um, so narrow that you wouldn't, you normally wouldn't be able to achieve it.
But, um, they made it solid carbon, so it's a solid carbon stay from the, from the bottom bracket shell for, to the next, you know, six centimeters or so. And then, um, That allowed us to get the stiffness and the strength needed, you know, for it to be that narrow, so,
[00:18:49]Craig Dalton: Yeah, that makes sense. That's exactly what I arrived at with a custom tie frame I had built. I just needed to have like a little solid piece of titanium to give me that little bit extra room that I needed to make it all come together.
[00:19:01]Neil Shirley: So then, you know, routing the. The derailer, the rear derailer cable gets, you know, gets tricky. So what they, you know what the, the design they came up with was popping, popping it out, um, just behind the bottom bracket. And our chainstay cover actually covers it until it goes. Until it goes back into the frame.
So, um, it's really, really clean. You can't, you have no idea until, you know, until you listen to the podcast or, or you pull off your chain, stay protector and realize, oh, the, the cable's external there for, you know, for a section. But yeah, I mean, those are, those are kind of some of the fun things that the engineers, the engineers are able to achieve when you're just like, Hey, this is, this is what we want, you know, go to work, make it happen.
[00:19:46]Craig Dalton: I love it. I love it. Um, let's talk about some of those other neat features that they were able to build in, into this bike, cuz I think there's a few ones that are out of the ordinary or maybe becoming ordinary, but they're, they're not on everybody's bike. Certainly if you've had it in your garage a few years,
[00:20:01]Neil Shirley: The, um, the storage, you know, uh, internal storage was, was something. It, it's not, you know, we, we didn't invent it. There are a number of, uh, brands that have done it. You know, executed it very well before we did. Uh, but I will say it took our hatch design. So basically the, uh, the water bottle cage, uh, is on a door on the down tube.
So you have a hatch, uh, hatch door that you know can. Just pulls off and then you have access to the entire down tube. Um, that whole door design took one of our engineers about six months to, to design, um, because it was one of those things like if we, we, we really wanted this feature in the frame, but it's really easy to make it a nightmare or six months down the road.
You know, it's rattling or it's just, it's not strong enough. So, so that was something we put a lot of attention into. Um, and they did a, they did a phenomenal job on it. So, uh, with, with the entire down tube is storage. I fit personally on my bike. I fit my flat tire, all the repair stuff kind of in the lower portion of the down tube.
And then the upper portion, I usually have a, you know, a thin windbreaker or, you know, you could, Jam some bars or whatever you wanted up there. So it's not like you have room for a full bike packing set up in the down tube. Um, but for the essentials, like I don't, if I'm going and doing a normal four or five or six hour gravel ride, like I have everything.
I don't even have a seat pack. So the bike looks clean, it's nothing bouncing around, it's just all contained.
[00:21:48]Craig Dalton: I love it and I'm gonna acknowledge I'm jealous. Super, super cool. And you know, I think one of the other things about that design is like, obviously you need to think about, as a frame designer, you no longer have a, a complete tube at that point. So what does that do structurally to the design? And how do you, how do you make compensations in the amount of carbon you have in that
[00:22:09]Neil Shirley: Yeah. Um, I, I don't think that. I don't, I really don't think it needed to be reinforced in any way. Um, one of the reasons we decided to kind of keep, keep it open for the whole down tube rather than adding, um, any barriers it was, was really about weight. Um, but strength-wise, structurally, uh, it, it, there wasn't additional reinforcement that needed to be added there.
[00:22:35]Craig Dalton: And are there cables going through there that needed to be protected or, you know, so your, your jacket isn't messing with
[00:22:41]Neil Shirley: Yes. Um, and we, we kind of have a really nice, uh, cable hose containment, containment system so that they don't, they don't mess with anything that you're sliding in and out. So just kind of, it, it's really all about those details because yeah, if you had, you know, wires and your, your rear brake hose flopping around in there, rattling and getting, getting caught on other stuff, it, it would be, it would be a mess.
But yeah, all those details have been minded.
[00:23:12]Craig Dalton: Nice. So let's get to some, some details on the bike, how many stock sizes are available.
[00:23:18]Neil Shirley: so we do 49, 52, 54, 56, and 58 for the gravel bike. So five sizes.
[00:23:28]Craig Dalton: Okay. And are there, are there any details that change proportionally as you go from a 49 to the largest
[00:23:35]Neil Shirley: Yeah, so kind of with our, with our background as a fork manufacturer, um, we, we really believe that, um, the fork r is, is important, so, uh, and, and different fork rs for different sizes. And so with the melee, um, we, we provide, I think we have four. Four different fork raks for the different sizes of the melee.
And for the, for the mog, we have three different fork raks, so that when you get to the, the smallest sizes, um, middle and and largest sizes, that they truly handle how they're designed. And we're not just. Getting cheap and we're, we're doing one mold for the fork and it has to accommodate the whole, the whole size, the whole size range.
So we're not, we're not kind of optimizing geometry around a 56 and then everything on either end of that is, is compromised. So that's something we're, that's something we're proud of. Um, we really think that, you know, I think most, most consumers probably don't, don't realize really what that does, but it.
For us, we're confident and when we're selling these, you know, this vast size range of bikes, that that really, the handling is we're delivering. The handling it was designed for,
[00:24:53]Craig Dalton: Yeah. You're doing it right. You're not cutting any corners. We talked a little bit about, a lot about wheel size going into as a design input and a few other things, but as you guys set off to spec the vision for this bike and who you're gonna sell it to, what kind of bike were you trying to make?
[00:25:11]Neil Shirley: Yeah, that's, uh, it is funny, you know, around the, around the launch of it or, or leading into the launch when, you know, we're coming up with the marketing materials and, you know, a bit of the story as I, I asked myself that a lot and I kind of kept coming to the. The sense that it seemed really generic in a way because we're trying to say like, this is, this is the bike for, to kind of check off all the types of riding you want to do.
Um, but at the end of the day, that's kind of where we're still coming in at because, you know, we, we have, we have a, a geometry, um, and the level of integration on the bike that it's, it's a fast, it's a, it's, it's a. It's a bike that literally could win, unbound it, you know, it could be raced at the front, you know, the pointy end of any of the biggest gravel races.
Um, and then,
[00:26:11]Craig Dalton: And I know, and I just to pin on that, I, and I know you have athletes that are expecting that
[00:26:15]Neil Shirley: Yeah. Yeah. And, and that, that was it. I mean, we, we, as a performance brand, like that's, that's a big part of our dna. And we, we do have the athletes, you know, we have Alex Verlin, you know, Whitney Allison, both, both athletes that are at the front of, you know, these fastest gravel events. So we wanted to deliver, you know, the, the tools they needed to, to be competitive.
Um, but then we added in features, uh, like the fork mounts, um, Different eyelets that if you want to use it as a, as a weekend, you know, bike packing getaway, like those are, those are kind of, when we talk about the versatility, like those are the add-on features that don't diminish the performance in any way.
It's not gonna keep you from winning any race, but you know, for. For 99% of us that use, you know, one bike or you know, one gravel bike to kind of do everything, like, it just allows you to, to do, do more with it, not, not be limited in what you want to do. So,
[00:27:21]Craig Dalton: It. I hear you. You know, it's, it, it's interesting and I appreciate your comments on it because I, I think you, you guys did deliver a bike that works across that entire spectrum. I struggle to think if you were working with Alexi and you said, Alexi, we wanna build you your dream bike.
Possibly, there's eyelets that come off, pos possibly. There's a few things on the margins that make it a a little lighter weight.
[00:27:48]Neil Shirley: But at the end of,
[00:27:48]Craig Dalton: But at the end of the day, that's such a rarefied space in gra in the gravel world, someone who just can afford to have a, a kind of a throwaway race bike that says light everywhere as it possibly could be.
That's just simply not practical for the average person who's gonna buy a
[00:28:03]Neil Shirley: yeah, exactly. And then, you know, on the, you know, the other end of it, it, it was like, you know, we didn't want to compromise, we didn't want to add additional weight in terms of like, uh, extreme arrow shaping that you, that you see on some bite on some gravel bikes. Um, compromise Ride quality. So we really tried to, to get.
You know, get the MOG to achieve. Again, everyone has their own ideas of what the, the, you know, the priorities are, but for, for us internally and working with our athletes, uh, we really, we really did look at what the priorities were and that's, you know, the MOG is a result of that.
[00:28:51]Craig Dalton: Yeah, it makes sense. It's such a great time to buy a gravel bike. Whenever I get asked by people these days, I'm like, fortunately now it's harder to go wrong. When I first started the podcast, I think one of the whole reasons I started this podcast is I did get it wrong in my first gravel bike purchase, and you were always forced to make decisions around.
I. Tire width and different things that just are non-issues today, which is wonderful.
[00:29:16]Neil Shirley: you're, you're totally right. I, I think I, I remember, you know, and you referenced it, you know, do. Building a custom bike, you know, because gravel bikes weren't on the market yet. For my first crusher in the Tusher event I did. And to think back like the, I knew what I wanted. Well it, it's, you know, I wasn't even thinking big enough cause I would've never imagined, you know, the equipment that we have today.
But I knew I wanted more at that time. And that was only 11 years ago, 12 years ago, something like that. Um, but. The, there were such limitations on what you, what you could get, you were dealing with, um, cyclocross tires, or if you went with something bigger, it wasn't Tube bliss and it was just, you know, and then if you did get, uh, uh, the actual size of tire you wanted, you were limited on the frames.
They would, they would, it would work on. So you're just compromising, you know, pretty much everywhere. And so today, like new riders getting into the market, like. It's amazing because everything there are, there is so much good equipment out there that truly is like purpose-built for gravel.
[00:30:26]Craig Dalton: Yep. Yeah, and that whole spectrum, you know, you put a pair of 32, you see tires on. An env mog, you're, you can go and do your group rides and be entirely proficient, and then you can go up to fifties and you can put the bike packing bags on
[00:30:41]Neil Shirley: Yeah.
[00:30:42]Craig Dalton: and everything in between. Nice. As, as listeners are looking to, to learn more about the bike, what, what's the best place to go and what's the shop network?
How can people find where they might be able to throw a leg over one and take a look at it more in more
[00:30:56]Neil Shirley: Yeah, so on, uh, on our website, nv e n v e.com. Uh, we have the, the MOG there, so all the, all the information if you want to read about it, you know, some of the design design elements, um, the features of the bike, it's all there. Or if you wanna just look at some cool photos of people riding MOGs. Um, but we also have a dealer locator.
Right on the website. So you can go through, um, you can select envy, you know, envy bikes, and it'll show, it'll pull up retailers, uh, near you. And, and honestly, pretty much all, you know, envy, envy ride centers, which are kind of our premium shops across the country, which I think we have about 60 of those. Um, everyone has, everyone has MOGs in stock, so yeah.
[00:31:44]Craig Dalton: And you've also doing, doing a bunch of events this year. I know I saw you guys at Sea Otter and sounds like you'll be out at Unbound at a few other
[00:31:51]Neil Shirley: Yeah, we'll be at Unbound. Um, we'll be at Crusher, uh, if anyone's interested in coming to Envy and, uh, taking part in the rodeo, our own, our own event. There are still some entries left for that as well. So
[00:32:05]Craig Dalton: Awesome. And is that in June again
[00:32:07]Neil Shirley: June 24 and 25.
[00:32:10]Craig Dalton: Awesome. And you additionally held one in Jer,
[00:32:14]Neil Shirley: Oh, yeah, yeah. Last October we did the Jero. Um, so Oh,
[00:32:19]Craig Dalton: that go?
[00:32:19]Neil Shirley: it was great. Um, anyone that's rid, have you ridden in Jer before?
[00:32:24]Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's so funny, Neil, I missed it by one week. I had a pre-planned trip and I was like, I, I caught wind on social media that you were doing the event. And I was like, I will lose my mind if the event I've already booked a ticket for coincides with the gro deal. I would love that. But unfortunately I was like a week displaced.
But to answer your question, yeah, I did a week of riding in Jer last
[00:32:46]Neil Shirley: So you, you know how special it is. I mean, whether you're, whether you're riding on the road or gravel or mountain biking or just, I mean, the, the town, you, you can't beat it. It's really like, it, it's a dream. I, uh, Told my wife, I, I might not come home, but yeah, no. So, so yeah, that was a, that was a great event.
We're doing that again this year. Um, so late, late October.
[00:33:10]Craig Dalton: Awesome. And you were teamed up with the service course. Is that one of your premier shops over there?
[00:33:15]Neil Shirley: So they did, they actually have, uh, MOGs as part of their rental fleet. So someone's going there for vacations. It's, it's a hot bed for, um, you know, cycl cycling tourists coming in. So yeah, they can, you can rent a MOG and go, go check it out.
[00:33:33]Craig Dalton: Cool. And just so it's not missed at the GRIO event in Utah, envy does an open house. They bring a bunch of frame builders in. It's just a totally magical weekend of great eye candy, great riding, great people, and a whole lot of fun. Did he try to achieve a similar kind of custom builder vibe in
[00:33:52]Neil Shirley: Yeah. Yeah, we tried to take that same model. Um, here, here in Ogden, we typically have about two dozen custom frame builders in Jerron. I think they had about, I think there were. 12. Um, mostly, mostly European focus, although we did have Argonaut in Mosaic out there as well. Um, cuz I, I mean really for a lot of us in the industry, like we just do these things as an excuse so we can go ride our bike in super cool places.
And so yeah, we had, we had some good, uh, we had some great builders out there. Um, good food killer riding, good time.
[00:34:29]Craig Dalton: Yeah, awesome. I got to see a few of the leftover custom bikes in the Service Core shop while I was there, so yeah, you guys do it right over there.
[00:34:38]Neil Shirley: Yep.
[00:34:40]Craig Dalton: Yeah, I appreciate all the time Neil. I appreciate getting back up to speed on the mog. I love how it turned out and I, while I was impatient, you guys delivered.
[00:34:49]Neil Shirley: Well, thanks Craig. And, uh, you know my number, if, if you want to jump on one and, uh, take, take some time on it.
[00:34:58]Craig Dalton: Of course, man. I hope to see you
[00:34:59]Neil Shirley: Thank you.
🚴♂️ Get ready, gravel riders! In this episode of The Gravel Ride Podcast, we're joined by Andrew Vontz, a passionate podcaster (Choose the Hard Way) and OG gravel enthusiast (although he may refute this!). I asked Andrew to share his experience at the Rasputitsa gravel event, his journey discovering gravel cycling and how Choose the Hard Way came to be. 🌟 Come along as we explore Andrew's experiences at Rasputitsa, the lessons he learned during the event and how this all connects to his podcast 🏔️. Fueled by the joy of the ride, our conversation will reignite your motivation for cycling and choosing the hard way 💪.
Episode Sponsor: Dynamic Cyclist (use THEGRAVELRIDE for 15% off)
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00]Craig Dalton: Andrew, welcome to the show.
[00:00:03]Andrew Vontz: Hey, thanks for having me here, Craig. It's great to be back together after having you over on Choose The Hard Way. It was a blast.
[00:00:10]Craig Dalton: I know I feel like we're, we're becoming fast friends and, uh, as podcasters, as contemporaries, as cyclists and how we discovered the sport and some of the cycling eras we've kind of gone through together. It's been fun. Talking to you on your podcast, which I wanna get into a bit a bit later. Um, but just sharing text messages and seeing and hearing about what you've been up to on your podcast.
Really is what sparked this conversation you had made mention in your podcast about doing Rasa in Vermont? A gravel event that I'd had on the podcast. I had to check the date. It's going back to 2018, that I had Heidi Meyers on the podcast. So it was episode 12 of the Gravel Ride podcast for anybody who's going back in the feed and wants to listen to that.
But it's an event that, you know, is super well regarded and super interesting. So long, long way of saying welcome to the show, Andrew.
[00:01:05]Andrew Vontz: Thanks for having me here. And I would say, you know, I know we're gonna get there, but I would say Rasa is definitely one of the monuments of gravel generally in the entire world and certainly here on the East Coast. And I'm excited to share a bit about how I got dragged into, into doing it and what I learned.
But you know, Yeah, I think this is the magic of the bike, right Craig? It brings people together. It, you know, you form these bonds and it, uh, it's really amazing the way communities and friendships form around the bike and the freedom it gives us and the places it takes us. And I think this is just another example of that and why I personally love the bike so much and always have.
[00:01:47]Craig Dalton: Yeah, a hundred percent. I don't know if you've, you've done this event multiple times and we can get into that, but just going back to events year after year, it's kind of almost like summer camp. Where you see the same people, like maybe you have a crew that goes from your local community, but there's also the broader cycling community that you're like, oh, I rode with you.
We were at the same pace last year, and friends you make on the road or trail, it's just such an amazing part of the sport.
[00:02:12]Andrew Vontz: Yeah, absolutely. And this was my first time at Rasa and I may have mentioned this. When I had you on Choose the hard way, but I really felt like I had hit the point of kind of being retired from big gravel as I, I would call it, um, the kind of like these marquee bucket list events. And I definitely, I'll explain why when we get into it and what ended up happening when I, I got there to one of these big bucket list events.
But it was definitely an exciting and interesting experience for sure.
[00:02:43]Craig Dalton: where did you grow up and how did you find your way to the bike originally?
[00:02:47]Andrew Vontz: Yeah, I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, and the bike found me, I didn't find the bike. Uh, a bike showed up one day. My cousins, Jason and Grady had an old Schwinn Stingray. I'm dating myself here, but it was a green sparkle, Schwinn Stingray with a sparkle banana seat, which at the time that I received this bicycle, which was a secondhand bicycle.
They just showed up one day and they're like, Hey, here's this bike for you. This is, you know, this is your bike now. It's a very exciting moment in my life when I got this bike, uh, it was not, uh, the style of bike that other kids were riding. Most kids were riding B M X bikes. This is like the era of et if anybody remembers that, like the B M X bike with ET and the basket.
Nonetheless, I was just loved the bike. I loved getting on. It. Started out like everybody else on training wheels. Then they came off. Went from there onto other bikes and then when I was about, did a lot of, you know, playing around with B M X freestyle when I was a kid, skateboarding, and then got into geared bikes in probably 1988 or 89, and then Lamont's victory at the tour in 89 really helped me to fall in love with the idea of riding geared bikes because at the time I, uh, certainly was not great at it.
[00:04:09]Craig Dalton: And how did you find your way to those geared bikes? I mean, obviously like at that point, I don't know where you are chronologically in your age, but um, you know, you have to be able to afford the bike. You have to make a decision. Am I gonna buy one of these early mountain bikes, which you start hearing about in, in the late eighties, or am I gonna get a drop bar bike?
[00:04:26]Andrew Vontz: Yeah, exactly. For me, the path to all of those things was standing behind a lawnmower and pushing it. Uh, you know, my dad got me out there in my neighborhood, not, and my mom, they were like, Hey, if you want money, if you wanna get a bike, go knock on some doors and mow some lawns. So that's what I did, and that's actually what I ended up doing for about the next decade.
I started a lawn business called The Yard Barber. Eventually my good friend Nicholas Crump, became my partner. We merged two companies. Uh, that was my first experience in m and a at a young age. And, um, yeah, but lawn mowing really is what fueled my, uh, my passion for cycling. We had a family friend, pat Twin, and she was into triathlon, which in Kansas City was a pretty bizarre thing at that time and place, but she was an early adopter.
And she took me out on one of my first rides on geared bikes. I took my mom's Shwe Morado, which was pink and had flat bars. And my dad had gotten that for my mom for Mother's Day. When I was, maybe, I'm gonna say like 11 or 12, I started riding around on this bike. I went out on a ride, uh, with Mrs. Twitter.
She graciously kind of introduced me to the world of geared bikes. And then on that ride, We came up to an intersection, I wasn't paying attention, and I rode into the back of her bike, and that was my first experience of being yelled at on a bike ride, which was totally appropriate.
[00:05:51]Craig Dalton: That's the way you learn. I definitely came up in that the school of no one's gonna give you anything when you start riding with them, and they're gonna sort of treat you with a little bit of disdain until you learn the rules of the road.
[00:06:04]Andrew Vontz: Yeah, that's certainly how it was during that time and place. And that's also, you know, how I learned how to move around in a pack and ride in a group safely and not hurt anyone, uh, or myself too badly. Only sometimes.
[00:06:18]Craig Dalton: And was there a point in which you got drawn into some sort of competitive cycling activity?
[00:06:22]Andrew Vontz: Yeah. I always, you know, ever since I saw Lamont on the shops of, in 89, I always had this fantasy of. Competing at cycling and honestly, when I was a kid and I got my, my first, my own first gear bike, which was a trek, I think it was like a Trek 400 touring bike, I soon realized, oh my gosh, this thing has three chain rings.
I'm not that cool. I have a touring bike. Then I ended up getting awin circuit, um, that I saved up lawn mowing money and purchased, which had a double crank set. Started doing some stuff with the Kansas City Bicycle Club, met some mentors and. You know, I, I would not say that I had a world tour engine Craig, but I had a lot of fun and it was just something that I always had a passion for.
I became kind of obsessed with cycling through print cycling media when I was a kid, started following that winning magazine. If anyone out there is of our vintage, they might remember that Bella News. And from there is, you know, doing a little bit of crit racing. Got into mountain biking, started doing a lot of mountain bike racing, not at your level, um, but just some amateur stuff around the Midwest.
And it's just always been a part of my life ever since. It's been like a very core part of what I do. I once heard Chris Carmichael, uh, actually I was interviewing Chris Carmichael at one point and he talked about how he thinks about the bike and training. Is like a misk plus for his life. And I thought that's like a very apt description and it's, it's really kind of how I think about it.
It kind of organizes everything else in my life and brings balance and a lot of joy and, and friendship and other benefits to me. I don't know how my family always feels about it, but you know.
[00:08:11]Craig Dalton: You cycling also played a role in some of your professional, your early professional life as well. I think it's important just to kind of set the stage with that as well.
[00:08:20]Andrew Vontz: Yeah, for sure. So, like a quick thumbnail on me professionally, I, uh, I moved to California. I moved to LA to get an MFA in creative writing. While I was doing that, I started freelancing for magazines. I quickly found my way to challenge publications located in Canoga Park, California. Uh, they had a publication called Mountain Biking.
I started working there for, I believe, $8 an hour as an intern. So that was like, Uh, that wasn't my first, uh, paycheck as a writer. My first paycheck as a writer came from Vice Magazine, which was a print publication at the time. I started working at Mountain Biking. I did that for about a year, and then I moved on to be a freelance journalist for about a decade.
Wrote for outlets like Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Times Outside Magazine. Broadly, I wrote about people, places, and things at the limits of human experience. There was some cycling mixed in there over the years. I, I wrote about the tour to France for a couple of tours. Did daily commentary for Fox Sports on their website, and a number of other cycling related things.
But cycling wasn't the core focus, but it was always something I stayed really in touch with. I also, in LA I was really involved in. There was a community called Midnight Riders that's started taking off. It wasn't critical mass, it was more just like people getting out on bikes and having fun doing themed rides.
So I was doing that a lot for a long time. From that started with like a dozen people and I was there from like a dozen people to several thousand over the years. And then I also had a foot in the world of crit racing and doing other stuff. Later I would be the head of content at T R X, the human performance company started by Randy Hetrick, the former Navy Seal.
And then I was at Strava for seven years where I was a communications executive and oversaw media relations, public relations, crisis communications and crisis management and public policy. And um, and then I decided to leave Strava a little over a year ago. I have my podcast, choose the hard way. I'm also the co-host of Beyond the Peloton with Spencer Martin, a pro cycling analysis podcast.
And then I also do some strategic narrative consulting and advising. And I'm actually like everyone in tech, I am now working on a startup, um, with David Ls, who is a, uh, fellow executive at Strava. We're working on something we're really excited about, not quite ready to share with the world.
[00:10:50]Craig Dalton: Nice. Well, you have to come back and tell us about it at some point.
[00:10:53]Andrew Vontz: absolutely.
[00:10:54]Craig Dalton: So at some point along the way, you've, so you've discovered, uh, road riding, crit racing, mountain biking. Did, when did gravel racing come into the fold, and what type of events had you pursued previously?
[00:11:06]Andrew Vontz: Yeah. So I started, I became fascinated with gravel racing around 2005, and that's when I became aware of guitar, Ted and Jeff. Kurt Covey, who was at the time a bike shop employee in Iowa. Those guys started an event that your listeners are probably familiar with called Trans Iowa. And I thought, wow, this is just completely nuts.
And when I was growing up, I'd always heard about Rag Bri. I ended up, uh, doing Rag Bry twice. I rodee a feature story about it for Bicycling Magazine in the early two thousands. So there was always. You know, people think about the epicenters of cycling community in the United States as being Boulder, Colorado, the Bay Area.
I mean, later I would learn. Los Angeles has a pretty unparalleled cycling culture and community in my view, as well as access to such a huge variety of terrain. But the Midwest also has this huge cycling culture and, and. Has, you know, for a very long time, and this kind of like d i y ethos that Jeff and Guitars had had putting this event together, people going out and doing this thing that just seemed really inadvisable and the manner in which they were repurposing terrain that I think a lot of people think about as just kind of dull.
Uh, and turning it into something really interesting and like this Grand, grand adventure that really captivated my imagination. I wrote about that for Mountain Bike Magazine. I was a contributing editor for a while in the mid two thousands. Interviewed Jeff and then just kind of in the back of my head for the longest time.
I was like, I really want to go and try one of these things. Fast forward. I was doing whatever. I was training, I was doing a little bit of racing, and then I heard about the event that at the time was known as Dirty Kansas, and I just felt this gravitational pull. I was like, I gotta go try this thing.
I'll also tell you, Craig, I never had any interest in doing the full 200 mile version of that event. I, I know that people have a lot of passion for it, but for me that was just like the far side of something that would actually be fun. So I ended up doing the, you know, the half pint, which is advertised as a hundred, was actually about 105.
I first did that in 2013. It was amazing. It was an incredible event. I was so naive about what the event might actually be like. I over prepared. I actually had a physical compass. In my bag because it was like on, it was on the gear list. It's like you have to have a compass and lights and all this stuff.
And I was like, I don't know. Do they, are they gonna check my bag before I start? I had no idea. And so that was kind of my. First introduction to the world of Gravel. I've been doing a lot of cross racing at that time, and then I trained for that event. I went there, uh, with my then girlfriend, now wife, Molly.
She was my support at the halfway point, and she ended up waiting a very long time because, The signage was not the world's best at that time. At,
[00:14:20]Craig Dalton: But you have the compass, Andrew, you have
[00:14:21]Andrew Vontz: yeah, I know I had the compass. I should have taken it out because at mile 20, I turned left onto the 200 mile course and realized about 20 miles later I was not on the correct course.
I had to backtrack. So I had a very, you know, I think I did what, 135 or 140 miles that day. And I was like, okay, I gotta come back. And then I went back. In, uh, 20 14, 20 15. I got second in the hundred both times. And then I did a bunch of other gravel events in between the gravel gauntlet. I don't know if any of your listeners might remember that, but a Bay Area promoter, Murphy Mac had a gravel series that went on for a while.
It was quite interesting and had some pretty cool races. So yeah, that's kind of, that's how I got into gravel.
[00:15:09]Craig Dalton: I didn't realize cuz we didn't dig in this deeply that how OG you are to gravel riding. That's going back ways
[00:15:17]Andrew Vontz: It's, yeah, I be, I've been doing it for a minute. Yeah.
[00:15:20]Craig Dalton: love it. I love it. And then what, what have the, like what was last year like, had you, had you done a bunch, we'll get into like why you decided to sign up for Rasa and, but I'm curious like, have you remained active over the last year in events?
[00:15:35]Andrew Vontz: So I'm now living in mid coast Maine. I live in Hope Maine, which is a beautiful place. And one of the things that I discovered here was, uh, you know, like we were talking about at the beginning, the bike is an amazing thing. You can find community, you can find friendships, you can find some pretty amazing stuff through bicycles.
I connected with the small community of rider here, and when I say small, I, I reflect on this sometimes because when I was living in the Bay Area and commuting, when I would go from Bart to Strava, I mean Craig, I would see what, probably like 500 people on bikes easily in the two mile stretch. If I went on a group ride and or just like rolled down on my bike in Oakland or went over to Marin again, you're gonna see hundreds of people fully kitted up going out here in the mid coast area.
You know, a big group ride is about six people. Um, but I met this awesome crew here. They're great people. And that's how I discovered something called the main Gravel series, which is a small series of gravel fondos here, and they're just incredible events. And so I did that whole series last year. It was a blast.
They're not super long events, but. They're just right. I like to say that I'm a gravel sprint distance specialist now. Um, so you know, those events were all sub four hours, but they were a lot of fun. And then somebody in that small crew that I've been rolling with here a couple of months ago said, Hey, my RAs pizza entries up for grabs cuz I have to travel somewhere that week.
And I had kind of sworn off. Doing big gravel events anymore. Both things that are longer than three hours and events that have a very large number of people. I just had decided, you know what? I don't think that these things are for me anymore. And then this opportunity came up and I thought I had a couple of my buddies from here going, my friends Morgan and Jamie.
I thought, you know what, I should, I should just do this thing. So that's kind of how I got suckered back into big gravel.
[00:17:45]Craig Dalton: Got it. Were, were there some elements of big gravel that just weren't to your liking?
[00:17:50]Andrew Vontz: Yeah, I mean, even when I think back on the dirty cans of Half Pint, uh, today known as the Unbound 100. I mean, you know how it is, Craig, like the first hour of those events where you have a mass start where you're either in a pen or you're like constrained on a city street, you either have to show up two hours early and stand there until the event starts, or you have to find some way to worm your way into the spot on the grid where you want to be.
From what I understand, Unbound has changed that and they now. Similar to Leadville. I think they have pens based on what you anticipate your starting time to be. But when, I mean, when I went there in 20 14, 20 15, my intent was I want to win this race. So I just did a Davis Finney. If anybody's not familiar with Davis Finney, legendary.
American pro road racer and his big move, when he would go to crits, everyone would line up and then he would just ride the course backwards and back into the front of the grid. Uh, you know, don't try this at home folks, or maybe do, if, if you want to get a really good spot on a starting grid. Um,
[00:18:58]Craig Dalton: Yeah, you just have to be willing to accept, you know, a couple minutes of nasty looks
[00:19:03]Andrew Vontz: yeah. I mean, yeah, ex exactly. It's, uh, but anyhow, so like kind of that aspect of it and what I found. Uh, and during Unbound, gosh, just that first hour, um, at the time it was fine from a risk management point of view. I just like being that proximate to so many people on roads. You're really not that familiar with.
When you know that you're gonna be at some point. You're just gonna ride into a pothole or something, people are gonna be wrecking all over the place, and that was fine at that time and place in my life. I think as I've gotten older, now that I've got. Kids. My kids are a four and six. And now that I've thought more about like, Hey, I've got kids.
I, uh, you know, I want to whatever. I don't want to go to one of these events and get injured. I just think that that's like a bit more top of mind for me now and just like being caught in that really what seems like a very unnecessary mosh at the beginning of an event. And I, I get it. Like that's part of the excitement.
Some people really enjoy that. But for me, I, I'm just not sure if that's like the best way to run an event anymore or that I want to do that. So that was one of the factors. And then the other factor for me, uh, following Unbound 2015, I developed AFib. And again, for people who are listening, uh, if you haven't had AFib yourself, if you've done this for a really long time, I bet you know, two or three people who've had cardiac ablations.
I ended up being able to. Manage mine through non-surgical, um, means, but I just became cognizant of, okay, I have, like, at this point I have a 30 plus year, very deep training history, which has a lot of benefits for your health. And you know, part of what I discovered in 2013 to 2016, because I was racing a full, really intense cross season, probably 20 plus races a year.
Uh, racing at an elite master's level eventually, and just getting totally waxed. Um, but doing that and then putting in really big miles to get ready for unbound, I actually felt like I had crossed a tipping point and going from like, this is something that's physically healthy to, I think I'm kind of damaging my body at this point.
I need to dial it back. And so I think that was another big factor for me in gravitating more towards the gravel sprint distance and away from the, we're gonna ride our bikes for infinity.
[00:21:38]Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So as you're contemplating rasp, It's a different kind of vibe, like that's, they've intentionally tried to create something different. And I've heard from Heidi, obviously, and followed the race over the years. But I'd love to get your perspective going into it. You, you knew you didn't wanna go to a, a big time gravel event.
Maybe this had a longer distance and certainly more participants than you've been used to. But what was your expectation going in as to how the event would feel for you?
[00:22:08]Andrew Vontz: Yeah, I mean, my expectation was this is really the first event like this that I entered as a completer. Not as a computer, right? So I was like, okay, I'm gonna go to this event. I'm going to complete the event. I'm going to get to experience a new place. I hadn't been to Vermont actually, so I was like, cool, I'm gonna get to see this new place.
I'm gonna get to meet some new people. I don't know how you feel, Craig, when you go to a race, but part of what I love about it is, I mean, I'm even thinking about it right now. Like, you have such a cool bike on the wall behind you, and now I'm like, oh wow. Like, What's that chain ring that looks so cool? Is there a power meter?
Um, but I'm a total gear dork, so it's really fun for me to be around a thousand plus people, all of whom have all of these different, you know, that's like horses for courses. Just seeing like, Hey, what's everybody running? What tires do they have? All of that. So that's a lot of fun. And just being around the energy of people who.
Have decided, you know, kind of going back to the thesis of my podcast, choose the Hard Way, which is hard things. Build stronger humans and doing hard things is fun. You know, I like being around people who have that mindset and attitude and being around people who've, you know, decided I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna do this thing that's, it's gonna be fun.
And I guarantee for every person who was that event, including I Boswell and the other elite competitors, there was some moment in that day when they felt. Intensely uncomfortable and ask themselves like, what am I doing? Why am I here? But like, that's why we do this stuff, right? So I, I, for me, I just felt like it was time to like step back into the fire and, um, experience like part of the magic of what happens when people come together with the intention of doing something hard together.
[00:23:59]Craig Dalton: And was there something particular about the magic of Raspy that you had been led to understand, either through your friends or through research that, uh, made you more excited than just going out on a bike race?
[00:24:10]Andrew Vontz: Yeah, I mean I had definitely heard a lot about the vibe. My friends, uh, Jamie Morgan, Greg, they had all done the event in previous years, and yeah, they said, Hey, like the vibe of this event is great, really strong community feel. Really supportive. Bobby from the mid-south also. Now I, I don't know if they've always worked together, but they're working together in this coordinated manner.
And, um, yeah, so those things were all things that jumped out at me as signatures of an event that would be a lot of fun and. Where the vibe would be good. And, uh, and the course itself I knew was pretty brutal. I, I'm a larger human being. I'm six two and depending on what my relationship with ice cream is, like at any period of time, I'm typically between like 180 or 190 pounds.
I'm not, I'm not particularly built for going uphill for long periods of time. And this race has. 7,200 feet of climbing. So I was like, perfect. This will be really hard for me to do and I'll train hard for it, and we'll see how that goes. So that appealed to me as well,
[00:25:19]Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's interesting. A little under 60 miles, but 7,000 plus feet of climbing is climbing all over the place on that course as it would sound.
[00:25:28]Andrew Vontz: Yeah, it's, it's infinity climbing and they're, you know, kind of a wild card for me. When I do gravel loops locally, like I actually did one not long before this, uh, before this podcast where I live, it's glaciated train and there are small mountains and you are not riding on a flat road for any period of time.
So you're always going up or down. And you know, it would be typical here, like the main gravel series to do four or 5,000 feet of climbing and two and a half to three hours. So there's a lot of climbing where I live. What I didn't know with raspy ti, I didn't, I mean, I could have looked online and figured this out, but I was kind of in, in an ignorance's bliss kind of mindset about this.
But the amplitude of the climbs was much greater and. Uh, for anybody who's listening, who's in the Bay Area, I used to do a ton of training on my cross bike, then gravel bike in the Marin Headlands. I don't know if this is the correct name of the trail, but it might be Marin Cello. Is that a really long climb?
And yeah. So I used to go do like LT repeats on that thing. And uh, one day, I believe it was in 2017, I was listening to Phil Collins. I can hear, I can feel it coming in the air tonight. I still remember the track going down, just like bombing down that after doing an interval, I felt so cool, Craig. I was like, my gravel descending is like so dialed in now I'm really comfortable.
And that of course was the moment that I, my bike like, went completely out from under me while going around a, a turn at like 30 miles an hour, ripped off most of my right knee. Was gushing blood and then had to ride back home to the inner sunset at the time. But that kind of changed my personal relationship with being comfortable going downhill fast on gravel.
So I knew going into rasa it's like, okay, 7,200 feet of climbing, I'm not so sure about. What is the descending going to be like? And then once I got there, I found out.
[00:27:44]Craig Dalton: Yeah, and I want that's in, I want to get into those details cause I think that's so useful for others. But I wanna start out with like the beginning of your day. You, you know, you had expressed that this was gonna be a bit longer of an event than you had done previously. So a little bit of like potential anxiety for like, you know, can I step up to this longer distance?
But you've also said you're not going in there at a mindset of being competitive. You're just wanting to, to finish the day and have a good time. Did that change the way you kind of showed up in the morning? Were you as like dialed as before or were you not?
[00:28:20]Andrew Vontz: Uh, Craig, in some fantasy world, I would be really calm the morning of doing a big event. Uh, the reality of it for me is, Uh, my fitness was really fantastic going into the event, and as I got closer to the event and was looking at, you know, my wattage and analyzing my performance, I started to feel like, wow, I think I can go pretty fast at this event.
I, I just had this feeling, you know, I think I can go pretty quick, and that started to amplify my expectations of what the event. Might be like, and then when I was going to the event, for some reason Google Map sent me off-road for the final 20 miles going into Burke. And that's when I realized, oh, these downhills are going to be way gnarlier than I thought they would be.
And again, for a lot of people, it's probably whatever they might feel super comfortable going downhill on gravel at high speeds. But because of that wreck I had, I just don't feel that comfortable doing that anymore, and I knew like, yeah, I'm just here to complete this. But also I was feeling this tension of, yeah, but I think I'm in really good shape.
The long and short of it is I ended up not getting a good night of sleep. I woke up and I was, you know, nonetheless, my equipment was dialed, my nutrition was dialed. I was ready to go. And that's when I texted my buddy Jamie, who was up in the parking lot at the event I had misread. The event schedule. And he was like, Hey man, what time are you coming up here?
And I was like, oh, I think I'm gonna come up around eight. Because him and my buddy Morgan had gone up there at like six 30 in the morning. I was like, you guys are crazy. You're just gonna sit around up there. And Jamie was like, that's cool man. But the race starts at eight, so you like just gonna jump in when it comes down to hell.
So, and I had just eaten a pile of pancakes, so I was like, all right, I guess I'm leaving right now. And then I just got on my bike. And pedaled up the hill to the start. And that's, you know, that was how my day started. So the, the morning was a little, I wanted it to be chill and it turned out to be a little bit anxious.
[00:30:35]Craig Dalton: Did you get swept up in the start? You know, everybody sort of, you tend to ride above your means when it starts, regardless of your discipline.
[00:30:44]Andrew Vontz: Yeah. The reality for me was I had gotten such a bad night of sleep. I honestly, I think I slept like 45 minutes or an hour, and for me, that's not super uncommon the night before doing a big event, I just typically don't sleep that well. It's been interesting on my podcast to talk to a lot of different elite athletes.
Some of them like Alexi Vermin, who I know you've interviewed, he shared with me. I mean, if you watch Alexi's videos, he's like tinkering on his bike at midnight the night before a race. He's like, yeah, you know, I, I typically, my sleep's not awesome. Then I've had other people on who are like, yeah, I sleep 10 hours a night before a race, so I'm more in the, I'm typically not getting a ton of sleep.
But that morning I woke up and I was so exhausted that I actually called my wife and I was like, Hey, you know what? I didn't sleep at all last night. I, I don't really know how I feel about doing this. And then my kids in the background were like, you gotta do it Ted. So I was like, okay, I guess, I guess I'm doing the event.
Um, so like once I got to the start, uh, the way the start is at this race, which I think this is very important information, I couldn't find it online. So you're not actually in a pen. You're in this giant parking lot at Burke Mountain. I think it's the lodge, so it's like the lower part of the mountain. So it's a giant dirt parking lot.
And I was able to just kind of slot in from the side where I wanted to position myself. And the tricky thing about the start, so it um, they do have a race vehicle that leads the race out, but you're on a dirt road in a parking lot and. got there, I would say like a half hour before the event, they started lining up.
I got there about 20 minutes before I slotted in where I wanted to. The event starts, you go a couple hundred yards on this dirt road, you turn left, and then it's a. Downhill. Um, both lanes are blocked, so they're at that point the course is close and you go, you descend a couple a hundred feet and less than a mile.
So you're going at a very high speed in a group of 500 people. And you know, I don't know what everyone else did over the winter here in the northeast, but this was. For me the third time I had been on a bicycle outside in six months. So you know, I've gone from swift to I'm, you know, elbow to elbow with 500 people going, going down a hill like 45 miles an hour.
And then at the bottom of that hill it's a hard left onto a dirt road. And then that's the first kind of sorting out of the day. Uh, but that was not my favorite thing in life, to go down that descent. Even in a relatively controlled manner.
[00:33:40]Craig Dalton: Yeah, I can only imagine. It's just like get your heart rate go. You don't want your heart rate to be pumping that much when you're just going downhill. Slightly terrified of what could happen around you as anything could with with that many people. Elbow to elbow and then turning into a dirt corner sounds like a recipe for disaster.
[00:33:58]Andrew Vontz: Yeah, not my favorite thing in the world. And like any road in the Northeast after winter, lots of just, you know, there are potholes, there's stuff that you can't see which anybody listening to this who does gravel events, you're used to that. The difference is, Like you're moving pretty quick when you go down this hill.
But again, for some people that's just whatever. For me, it's, it's not my favorite thing to do on a bike. But then once we got to the bottom of the hill, turned left, and then it was just full gas for the next probably three miles. So there's a really nice long climb with some really quite steep pitches right out of the gate that really starts to sort things out.
[00:34:39]Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yep. And then it starts to spread out a little bit and you can find smaller groups.
[00:34:44]Andrew Vontz: Yeah, exactly.
[00:34:46]Craig Dalton: And are you, are the roads just sort of wide dirt roads at that point?
[00:34:51]Andrew Vontz: Yeah. So if anybody has done unbound or if you've ridden in California's Central Valley, Those roads. So like Midwest gravel, you're gonna get generally chunkier, gravel, looser gravel. Gravel you might sink. In West Coast, it's a bit different. It's more, you know, I, I know there's a variety of styles of gravel on the West coast, but it tends to be more hard packed dirt or gravel roads.
These roads were quite compact. It had rained quite a bit prior to the event. The research that I had done. Range from, Hey, it'll be a complete mud fest if it rains, because they used to have a five mile quote unquote cyclo cross section in the race. And I'll get to that because there was a, a surprise that was not in the G P X file that they had provided to participants in the race.
And I also had read, Hey, don't worry about rain. The roads drain really fast. And if it. If it rains, it's just gonna be harder packed and dry. I know people are also probably wondering about tires. I asked around quite a bit. I also recently had Dylan Johnson on my podcast and he of course is at the forefront of the whiter is Better Movement.
Uh, I personally, for this event, I ran forties. I ran Pelli. Hs. I, yeah, I think it's like the hard pack Perelli tire. They've got a bit of side knob, but fast rolling. That was an excellent tire choice. I would recommend something like that, whether it's going to be wet or dry, cuz that's going to shed mud. If it's muddy and if it's dry, it's like the perfect tire.
Something like that. So something with um, You know, either a smooth or a semis slick center knob, and then maybe a bit of edge because there is a lot of high speed downhilling. But the course itself, for the most part was pretty hard packed. But then there was, this was just like classic, lots of marly loose stuff in places you might not want it to be.
Right. Which I'm describing every gravel race ever. Um, but yeah. And then there were only a handful. There were a handful of short sections. That had fresh, just like fresh rocks dumped on them much later in the course. Um, but I think that was, uh, that was abnormal from what I could tell. I don't know why that they had just freshly dumped rocks on the road there, but for the most part, pretty hard packed.
Yeah.
[00:37:26]Craig Dalton: And then what, what was the unexpected section of the
[00:37:29]Andrew Vontz: Oh wow. Um, so the unexpected section of the course, it was probably around mile. I'm guessing it was like mile 47. And I, I also will say that the course had excellent signage. This course had the best signage of any event I have ever participated in. I don't know what your experience has been, but I just expect that in a hundred percent of events like this I participate in, I'm going to get totally lost at some point, or a sign will be pointing the wrong way or whatever.
It actually didn't happen this time, uh, which, which was amazing. I got to this one section and I was fo, I knew I was following the signs that had said a hundred k course go this way. I turned and then I started to get the, you know, the dreaded off course notification on my garments. I'm like, okay, what's going on?
There are people here? I think this is the right way, maybe not. And then I quickly kind of deduce was like, okay. Then it channeled us onto. Some double track and single track that was just really sloppy, relatively deep mud. And I don't know if that was not included in the G P X file on purpose as kind of a surprise to participants or what the deal was, but that was about a three, three and a half mile section with a lot of single track.
And I don't, I, I guess it's just the nature of the soil in this one section that it was actually like quite thick. Mud and, you know, I was like, great, I can ride in muddy single track. I've done a ton of cyclo cross. This is kind of fun. Um, and then there were a couple of sections in there where it made more sense to get off and just like push through a couple of stream crossings and stuff.
It wasn't a big deal. It was nothing like what I'd read online about. I, I don't know if this was like the historic, horrible slug through the mud that I'd read about. It didn't really seem like that. It seemed kind of fun.
[00:39:33]Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think, if I'm not mistaken, RAs says a Russian word for sort of spring mud,
[00:39:38]Andrew Vontz: Yes. Yeah.
[00:39:40]Craig Dalton: like it would be off brand if they didn't have mud there for you to some degree.
[00:39:43]Andrew Vontz: well, they had it. They had it. And, uh, it was a, that was like a nice little reprieve because other than the descents, which were long, some of them were very high speed. Other than that, it's like you were climbing the entire day, right? You're either climbing a long climb or you're going down a pretty gnarly descent.
And then some weather was blowing in in like the final two hours of the race. So once we were on some open stretches, cuz there were a couple small stretches of road there, there's pretty serious head crosswinds. So this little downhill dive into the mud was like a nice respite. And then the race finishes.
With a very, to me, I mean by Marin standards, it's just like whatever, it's another write up railroad grade, but it was like quite a long climb at the finish of the race with some pretty steep sections.
[00:40:35]Craig Dalton: Were you able to stick together with riders for some time? I know it's often challenging when you got climbing and descending as people have different skillset sets, but what was your experience?
[00:40:44]Andrew Vontz: My experience was I started the day and then I continued to go backwards the entire day.
[00:40:50]Craig Dalton: That's a strategy I often employ
[00:40:52]Andrew Vontz: Yeah. Yeah. And um, I, I, you know, it's interesting cuz I had done some really hard training rides, almost a full distance of this race. But at mile 40 for me, the wheels just completely came off. And I started to get those like full leg cramps where you're like, Oh, I think my abductors and hamstrings are going to tear off the bone if I don't get off my bike right now.
So I was that guy on the side of the road and then I did a lot more walking than I've actually done in any event, which again, I went to this event to challenge myself and do something I don't normally do, and I got that challenge.
[00:41:36]Craig Dalton: Yeah. And yeah. And ultimately you made it to the finish line, right?
[00:41:39]Andrew Vontz: Yeah, totally. Yeah. I made it to the finish line. I did.
[00:41:42]Craig Dalton: Awesome. And what, what was greeting you at the finish line? What kind of experience did they have there?
[00:41:48]Andrew Vontz: Um, so at the finish line, it finishes at a hotel of, uh, lodge thing that's higher up on the mountain and giant crowd of people and. Really nice finishing shoot the mood. You know, I, it was a bit more subdued than I had anticipated. It being based on what I had read about the event and had seen described in the media, uh, from what I gathered.
Shortly after finishing a writer was killed on course, and by the time that I finish. I think that they, they had more or less shut it down. Um, and I don't know if they were pulling writers from the course or what was going on, and my, one of my friends was like, Hey, somebody got killed today. There was a statement on social media from the organizers about that, and I think that, you know, understandably, it was a much more somber mood than I think it might have typically have been at the finish.
[00:42:47]Craig Dalton: That makes sense. I also read about that tragic news and, and such a tough loss for that cycling community. For sure.
[00:42:53]Andrew Vontz: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:42:55]Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. Well, good. I mean, I appreciate that overview of the race. Like it's, ever since I had Heidi on the show in episode 12, it's always been one that had had sort of just tickled my fancy because I, I, I, I feel like they've, Purposely kept the event weird and they kept it on point and on brand for them.
They're not trying to make this a full-time vocation. They're just trying to put on a great event for the community that represents their values, which all the evidence I've seen over the years is they hold those values close and strong, which I appreciate.
[00:43:30]Andrew Vontz: Yeah, absolutely. And I didn't mention this. But they did have, there were a number of, um, you know, in tech, I can't believe I'm using like corporate nomenclature, but like, we would call these like surprise and delight moments, right? So like when you're out on the course, you come around the corner and you know, there's a dance party with people in costumes, stuff like that.
And then of course the classic like, Hey, people giving you bacon or tons of people out there on the side of the road. With coolers full of beer if you wanna stop and drink a beer. Um, you know, so there's, there's a lot of fun stuff like that that's going on. And then following the event, they had a grunge themed party afterwards.
Grunge is back. Everybody. If in case, in case you haven't been sticking with it for the last, um, 25, 30 years, grunge is back. It's big, it's big here in the Northeast. So yeah, there was a lot of, uh, there was a lot of fun stuff. I also feel like Craig, I would be remiss. If I didn't address the conundrum, I know everyone will have planning for this event as they do for all events.
So there's no outside support allowed. They have three water and aid stations on the course. They're not car accessible. Um, so you have to make that decision of what is my hydration strategy? Am I running a pack? Or am I going with bottles? I would say the chorus is definitely smooth enough that running bottles is fine if you don't mind stopping and taking time to refill your bottles or do mix.
Uh, the guys I rode with Morgan and Jamie, they both ran. Pack and then one bottle. So kind of depending on your finishing time and whether you're just there to have a, a chill, you know, a chill ride with 7,200 feet of climbing or, or you wanna try to finish as quickly as possible. You kind of have to do that calculus.
If you want to go really fast, I would say wear a pack and bring a bottle and that's probably gonna be enough if you can finish and sub three hours and 30 minutes. Um, for me, I ended up doing four bottles. And yeah, I stopped at the 35 Mile aid station to refill my bottles cuz I was a, I was a completer.
[00:45:44]Craig Dalton: I can't resist that stopping. And if you wanna know about the aerodynamics of Camelback wearing, you can watch one of Dylan Johnson's recent great videos, which you may have covered on your podcast.
[00:45:54]Andrew Vontz: I, I think that may have come out after we did the episode, but yeah, that was pretty interesting and in line with what I've seen previously, I think, I mean, that's why they're banned in road racing because they're so aerodynamic.
[00:46:08]Craig Dalton: I do wanna touch on the podcast just real quickly. I know we're getting press on time, but can you talk about the Choose the Hard Way podcast and what was your vision when starting it? I know talking to cyclists and, and cycling personalities is only a small component of it, but I'd love for you just to talk about the broader goal of it, cuz I think it's such a fascinating topic that resonates super strongly with me.
[00:46:31]Andrew Vontz: Uh, awesome. I'm glad to hear that Craig. And I hope that, um, if people enjoyed this podcast and you like doing things like going and doing gravel events, I think you would dig the show and I invite you to come check us out. You can find us@choosethehardway.com and we're on all listening platforms and on social at Hardware Pod.
The origin of the show for me. Was when I was a communications executive at Strava. I loved what I was doing. I was deeply passionate about it and grateful that I got to do it, and I've really, really missed certain parts of what I got to do as a journalist. And the thing I missed the most was just the opportunity that I had to get to spend time with some of the world's most talented, highest achieving people, and more specifically, a learning that I had from my time as a journalist early on.
Um, was just that some of the world's most talented, most successful people face the same struggles, moments of self-doubt as everybody else. And I know that there's a lot of talk about authenticity and so forth these days, and I just don't feel like a lot of stories are actually getting told that, um, are truly unfiltered and really give you a look at what does it actually take.
To do things at the highest level in different disciplines. So the purpose of the show was, I'm just a deeply curious person, and this was an area of curiosity that I wanted to pursue. I wanted to become I, at that point in time, I bet I'd done more than 500 if not a thousand interviews as a journalist with different sources for different stories, and I just wanted to keep.
Getting better at being an interviewer and to do something in a completely different format because what we do here, what I do on my podcast, it, it's somewhat similar to what you might do as a journalist, but everything about it is actually completely different. So I had to learn a whole new skill set, and I just really valued getting to share these stories with as many people as possible just based around this idea that.
You know, hard things build stronger humans and that doing hard things is fun. Which ironically I started the show in 2018 and since then I bet there have been no less than half a dozen books and businesses started around like this whole idea of like do hard things, et cetera, which is cool. I think it's awesome.
The more people embrace that kind of mindset, the better. And what I like doing on my show is, is getting people at the top of their game on and. Just learning more about like, Hey, what does it actually take to do that? What has the path been and where do they want to go?
[00:49:18]Craig Dalton: Yeah, I love it. Thanks for that Andrew. Everyone go out and subscribe to that podcast. Give it a listen. As I said, start, if you wanna go easy, start with the cycling ones. You get the flow, you get into it and then dip into that deeper catalog cuz you, you've got a lot of great guests on the show.
[00:49:34]Andrew Vontz: Thank you.
[00:49:35]Craig Dalton: Yeah. Cool.
Well thanks for all the time. I appreciate, uh, a, getting to know you in the course of recording on your podcast. B, just getting to know your experience as a cyclist. I knew we would sort of, our histories would align the way I afforded. My first spikes were, were painting houses, so you were pushing, I was swiping paintbrushes on houses.
[00:49:59]Andrew Vontz: Yeah. Yeah. One of my, Craig, one of my least favorite jobs that I ever had was scraping paint, so I hope that you got to focus on painting and not
[00:50:07]Craig Dalton: Oh, the scraping was the worst. I
[00:50:09]Andrew Vontz: Oh, it's so bad.
[00:50:10]Craig Dalton: they sell you on the painting and then you learn that you have to scrape in order to paint,
[00:50:15]Andrew Vontz: Yeah. That's kind of like the rest of life, right?
[00:50:19]Craig Dalton: if you know, you know.
[00:50:21]Andrew Vontz: Yeah.
[00:50:22]Craig Dalton: With that, I'll let you go, Andrew. Have a great night and we'll talk again soon.
[00:50:26]Andrew Vontz: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, and I look forward to us catching a ride when I'm out in the Bay Area.
[00:50:31]Craig Dalton: Cheers.
[00:50:32]Andrew Vontz: Thank you.
Hey listeners! Are you a bike enthusiast always looking for better products to improve your riding experience? Then you don't want to miss this latest episode featuring Pius Kobler, founder of milKit.
Pius Kobler's passion for cycling started during his childhood in Switzerland where he grew up riding bikes and joining his family on biking holidays. He studied mechanical engineering at university in Zurich, and his love for biking took him on various long-distance rides and expeditions, including one from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.
Pius worked for a design bureau that provided product development and design services for companies in the bike industry, such as Scott and BMC. Then, during a bike trip across the US, he got a flat tire in Colorado due to the dried-out tubular tires caused by the heat. This incident inspired him to create milKit, a company that offers a tire sealant solution that allows cyclists to check the amount and quality of the sealant inside their tires.
The importance of maintaining the sealant in tubeless bikes is emphasized; still, many bike owners neglect to check their sealant levels regularly. Pius came up with a valve system with a rubber foot that allows the air pressure to remain in the tire when checking the sealant levels. The technology allows for easy maintenance of tubeless bikes and prevents sealant from spilling out. But it doesn't end there! Pius also created the GTA Booster, a portable aluminum drinking bottle that helps push the tire bead out to the side and secure it in place. The booster delivers more air in one second than a compressor and is efficient in changing and installing new tires.
But that's not all; milKit's product line now includes additional consumables like rim tape and sealant that have unique features making them an essential tool for all bike enthusiasts. The company has also released a multi-tool with storage compartments for the plugs and other functions like a chain breaker. The latest trend in bike segments is having quick and easily accessible solutions, and Milk Kit has developed a solution in a compact way. The kit is super light and can be strapped to the bike or screwed to the frame.
Craig Dalton had a pleasure talking to Pius Kobler, who designed milKit systems with thought behind them. Don't miss this exciting episode - tune in now to hear all about Pius Kobler and his innovative products!
Visit milKit online
Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (use code: thegravelride)
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the show. We welcome Swiss-based founder and rider PS cobbler to the show to talk about his company. Milk it. And the system they've developed. Around tubeless tires and a brand new product that they've created.
To support that system in the form of a multi-tool. I happened to meet PS on the trail, on a group ride. I went on. Last week as he was in town for seawater classic. And we got to chatting about his entrepreneurial journey and his rider first perspective of design. And I thought it'd be great to have him on the show. And I was fortunate to grab him on a Friday night over in Switzerland.
To talk more about the company and the company's journey and some of the products I know you'll get value out of being aware of. I encourage you to check out some of the links on the show notes as some of the nuances of the product design, maybe best seen in a video. If you're watching the video of the podcast, you'll see PS reference and hold some of his products in his hands.
As part of the conversation, but detailed videos are available on the website, which is over at milk it's dot bike. Before we jump in, I do need to thank this. Week's sponsor hammerhead, hammerhead, and the crew to computer have been longtime sponsors of the show. As you know, The crew too, is the most advanced GPS cycling computer available today with industry leading mapping navigation, routing capabilities that set it apart from other GPS options out on the market.
Over the course of my conversation with PS, we talk a lot about rider oriented design hammerhead, and the team over a crew to definitely take that perspective. And they're constantly. Updating their products with bi-weekly software updates. There's nothing cooler to me on the hammerhead crew to then.
Getting that notification. That a software updates available because I know they're adding things. That are going to be of interest to me. Whether it's today or down the line. One of the biggest updates I received that I love is the climber feature, which has predictive path technology. Which basically shows you what's ahead of you on a climb.
While that may not necessarily be important on your daily routes for me when I'm doing an event or I've borrowed a route from someone that I've never done before. I'd love. Knowing is this a short, punchy climb ahead of me? Or do I really need to settle in for a longer climb? For a limited time offer our listeners can get a free heart rate monitor with the purchase of our hammerhead crew to simply visit hammerhead.io right now, and use the promo code, the gravel ride.
At checkout to get yours today, this is an exclusive limited time offer. So don't forget to use the promo code. The gravel ride.
Simply add that heart rate monitor, strap to your purchase cart. When you're checking out on the e-commerce system. At hammerhead.io, use the promo code. The gravel ride and that heart rate monitor will be yours for free. With that said let's jump right into my conversation with ps cobbler
PS welcome to the show.
[00:03:39] Pius Kobler: Thank you.
[00:03:40] Craig Dalton: You have the honor of being our first Swiss guest,
[00:03:43] Pius Kobler: Oh, I'm very honored. Yeah.
[00:03:46] Craig Dalton: and how cool was it that we got to ride together
[00:03:48] Pius Kobler: how cool
[00:03:49] Craig Dalton: prior to recording?
[00:03:50] Pius Kobler: other like three days later across an ocean? Yeah.
[00:03:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I love it. You know, I'd, I, as I mentioned to you on that ride, I'd been familiar with the, the Milk IT brand and some of the products specific to the, the Tire Sealant solution, um, for a number of years. But I'm, I'm curious to kind of just step back and learn a little bit about. More about you and then the formation of the company.
Cuz as the listener of this podcast knows, like, I'm super keen on the entrepreneurial ideas and, and journey as an entrepreneur myself. So let's start off by kind of where you grew up and how you discovered the bike. And then we'll get into how you decided to form this company.
[00:04:28] Pius Kobler: Yeah. Yeah. I grew up in Switzerland and I was always a cyclist, like I cycled to school. What's that? Um, 12 miles every day. Two ways. So, so when I was 14 or so, so yeah. And then with my family, we always went on bike trips in holidays. I, I, I literally grew up on bikes more or less. But then man, biking came quite late.
I, I, I started Mecca Mechanical Engineering at, um, et h Zurich here. And after studying, I. Um, took my recumbent and rode it from Alaska to Te del Fugo for one and a half years. So I've been cycling a bit.
[00:05:09] Craig Dalton: You spent some time on a bike. I see.
[00:05:11] Pius Kobler: Yeah, I was, I was in in the Bay Area earlier already passing through. Yeah. And,
[00:05:19] Craig Dalton: That's interesting. You know it's funny when you even mentioned the word recumbent as a style of bicycle. That's in my mind, that's such an engineering type vehicle. Why did you choose to tour on that?
[00:05:30] Pius Kobler: the perfect nerd in personification, uh, that you can have sometimes as in the US it was most fun. We were getting off recumbent and people go, oh, but you are not handicapped. Why would you, why are you riding one of these?
[00:05:47] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And, and not, not, and not to derail the conversation too much, but is, is it from an engineering perspective, is riding a recumbent sort of mechanically or aero aerodynamically better for long distances than other style bikes
[00:06:02] Pius Kobler: There is no, no doubt. No.
[00:06:05] Craig Dalton: Really?
[00:06:05] Pius Kobler: so much for long distances. There is no discussion actually, but nobody knows and, and everybody thinks that they can't be good because then more people will be doing it. You, you don't have any. Pain in your wrists, neck, uh, butt. Wherever you, you have a relaxed sitting position.
You have a third less wind drag. You have several of these advantages. You have a lower, um, center of gravity. You have a much better curve stability. You have a longer wheel base, more stability. But then the main, the main factor for me is, You are, you have a completely different way of sitting on the bike.
It's not, you're not sitting like this and staring on the road in front of you. You're sitting like this open, you like, like on a couch riding through the countryside. You know, it's for traveling by far the best. But I would never use it in a city or so, like daily life. I don't have one. You know, I, I sold it after I traveled.
[00:07:03] Craig Dalton: That's so interesting yet. So off topic for this podcast.
[00:07:07] Pius Kobler: Yeah, this was the perfectly wrong start for this, for this episode.
[00:07:11] Craig Dalton: Right. And then, you know, I feel like now there's this, uh, potential that a listener isn't imagining you being some nerdy bike nerd on a recumbent yet. My interaction with you was on a mountain bike where you tackled every complicated shoot that we came in front of on Mount
[00:07:30] Pius Kobler: rich in Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.
[00:07:34] Craig Dalton: Great. Okay, so we, we've, we've established engineering degree. We've established you spent a lot of time on a bike. This is a big leap, leap before, you know, between getting an engineering degree and obviously looking at bicycles from a mechanical engineering perspective, and then starting a company. What was the journey like to that point?
[00:07:55] Pius Kobler: Yeah, basically when I came back, I, I haven't, I haven't done kind of performance cycling. It was always holiday or, or work or whatever, traveling. But when I came back, I was in, in okay shape, let's say, and a body of mine was in man biking. So I joined him for some longer rides. And that's how I got into man biking only after I did that trip.
And, um, Basically I, I started working, that's the coincidence that led to things. I started working in a, in a company that, it's a design bureau, you could say it's a, they, they do product development and design as a service for large companies. We, you could say we were professional inventors, uh, uh, and we were, we were developing products.
For many companies in the bike industry as well. Like we were working for Scott for B m c, for, for these brands here in Switzerland among others. And we were, um, a group of bikers in that company. So one thing led to another and, and what made the. The, the deciding point for for to go into tubeless was basically a, a bit later, after that long trip, I, I had the chance to take an unpaid leave for eight weeks and.
Go to the us, buy a van and drive it from one I M b A epic ride to the other for eight weeks, which was amazing. I might have ridden more trails in the US than most Americans, you could say. Here.
[00:09:31] Craig Dalton: I bet you have.
[00:09:32] Pius Kobler: Yeah. No, that that was really, really good. But the not so smart part about it is W we were going to Colorado and Utah in July, which is not the right moment.
It's like 120 degrees or so over there. So we was a bit warmer that than we were used to. And. We ended up with a flat because our tubeless tires were completely dried out because it was so warm. And so I, I'm in the middle of nowhere, somewhere on the continental divide in Colorado with that dried out tire, putting a tube in what everybody hates when you write tubeless, you know, to take the whole thing apart and put the tube in.
And that's when I, when I, when I. Started thinking, you know, I had few weeks more to go and which means a lot of time to think and, and I said, wait, if I'm me as a bike freak and, and, and tech developer, like, if I have this problem of, of not being able to maintain my steel and I should other people do it, you know,
[00:10:37] Craig Dalton: And when you thought about that problem, p was it, it was, if I'm articulating this correctly, the problem was you just weren't aware of the level of sealant that was remaining in the tire.
[00:10:49] Pius Kobler: I had no idea. I had no idea that it was just drying up faster because it was a bit warmer, you know?
[00:10:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I and I, and I encourage, like everyone listening right now, think about your bike, think about the sealant, and think if you have any idea whether there's enough sealant in there or not. I can guarantee looking around my garage right now, I would say 80% of the bikes I have. They have to be bone dry.
It's like without a question, but I don't know. And I'm a bit lazy to find out, right? Like, it's like if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But to your point, you get out there and you have the situation where sealant is a godsend, right? It steals that hole and it's not there. That's that. That's a problem.
[00:11:35] Pius Kobler: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's basically we say if you split up bikers into people that ride tubeless and don't, then the ones who are ride tubeless, you can basically split them up into the ones who know that you have to maintain it and the ones who don't know and find it out a bit later. And then the ones who know how to maintain.
They have to maintain it. Um, a good part of those things. Yeah. I'm always feeling a bit sealed in and it's fine, but the not, not so big part know that they should look at what, in what's inside. Like they should check the old sealant or get it out before they push in the new ones or you have a, a really good working sealant in there and, and yeah,
[00:12:19] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So you, you sort of recognize, you recognize this problem, which when you articulated is pretty obvious, I think, to us. All right, we, no one wants to look inside their tires. What's the solution? How do you go about solving that problem?
[00:12:33] Pius Kobler: Yeah, that, that was, uh, as, as often in product development. It, it was a step by step process where, where first we had the idea we need to drill a second hole into the rim to somehow look in there and then, Refill through the valve, and then eventually we, no, we are not gonna have a second hole. We have to make it through the hole that's already there.
So eventually we were going through the valve, but then we still had a, because the, the first thing you think about is a dipstick. You know, you need to, to go in and check the sealant, and then you fill and then, By coincidence, like by using it, by having prototypes realized weight. And, and maybe at this point I should explain the, the whole valve.
Basically what we do is we have a normal tubeless valve, uh, that you install into the rim like any tubeless valve. But at the, at the bottom, the. At the bottom of the rubber foot, the, the, the rubber is closed and it's slid into, into rubber flaps. So when you unscrew the valve core, the, the air stays in the tire because these rubber flaps at the bottom are closed.
And now we have, uh, we have a syringe, kind of a syringe and needle with a, with a flexible extension. And, and the sealant regulator that you connect together.
[00:13:53] Craig Dalton: Let's take a pause for one second PS and just so the listener understands. So if you can imagine that your normal valve core for tubeless, you've got a, a, a, a section that is inside the rim and obviously the section you see outside the rim and what you've described and shown to people who are on the video, you've got sort of on that inside piece, a rubber gasket that its natural state is to be closed.
So if you're not pushing air or something else through it, Nothing's coming back through it. No air's coming back through it, et cetera. And then you've,
[00:14:26] Pius Kobler: the ketchup bottles, you know, you have to ketchup bottles that have these, these, these flaps on the top. That's a, that's the function. More or less we have,
[00:14:34] Craig Dalton: I love it. I love it. Take taking a, a commonplace design concept and putting it in something technical on the bike. So then you just, you just had picked up the syringe and you knows some people are used to using just sort of their bottle of sealant and pouring it directly into the tire. Some years ago, I started adopting the syringe for more precise measurement and the ability to insert through the valve core.
It's possible in a standard valve cord to do that, but it's kind of difficult in, in a number of ways, which I think you'll get into in describing the value of having that seal on the inside of the valve and how that interacts with the sort of plunger, if you will. I don't know if that's gonna be the right term that's attached to the syringe.
[00:15:22] Pius Kobler: yeah. Like the wording is we, we, the, the part inside the, the inside the tire. Inside the rim, we call it the rubber foot. And then you have the, the, the aluminum part, uh, that you screw onto the rim, that's the valve stem. And then you have the valve cord that goes into the valve stem. And we removed the valve core.
And the air is still the, the, the, the. The tire remains pressurized because the rubber flaps are closed. And now the trick is that with this needle here that we have connected to the syringe, you can push through the rubber flaps into the tire with the air pressure still being in the tire. That's the, the core of our technology because now you with the needle, you go to the bottom of the tire, the sealant has accumulated at the bottom of the tire, and, and now basically all you have to do is you open the sealant to regulator.
And the, the, the air pressure in the tire is pushing the sealant into your syringe. You don't even have to suck it out. It's, it's pushing out, it's, it's automatically flowing into your syringe
[00:16:24] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that was a point you had made to me on the trail the other day, which was the aha moment for me. Cuz when you first described the mechanism, I was like, oh, that's great. You know, you. You push the syringe kind of legs into that, the bottom of your tire, and you can touch the sealant. But that nuance there that since you've left the air in the tire, you have air pressure, which you can then draw out the, the sealant into the tube with the air pressure pushing it effectively into the syringe, and you can see the exact measurement of what remains in the tire at that point.
[00:17:01] Pius Kobler: And the main reason, back in the days when we invented this, the main reason why it was important to to, to have the pressure remain in the tire is when you release the air from the, uh, from the tire back then the tire would fall back into your rim, you know, and then you would have trouble inflating it again.
Nowadays, this is becoming better because you have these rims where the, the tire stays outside when you deflated, but it's still. A cool feature to not breaking the bead, to not, um, losing any sealant and not having some, some sealant getting out on, on the side and it, and it's just, Literally more fun doing a tubeless maintenance.
If you go in, it comes out automatically and you just push it back. So once you've extracted that sealant, you see how much was left, you might realize, oh, that wasn't, that wasn't much left and. This, this looks bad. I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw this off. So you disconnect the syringe, you throw it out, or you just top it up with new one.
And then what you do is you push against the tire pressure. You push the ceiling back into the tire with with your syringe, and that was the original idea. To, to be able to measure and refill the sealant in a minute or two without, without a drop spilled, you know, and that's, that's literally our claim.
You can install a tubeless tire and maintain it without ever seeing a drop of sealant.
[00:18:27] Craig Dalton: And that, that to me is a godsend. When I sort of think about my process for updating tires and sealants and whatnot, like I think I, in my mind it's so laborious that I don't even wanna do it. And that's exactly the bad. It's exactly a bad approach, cuz that's why 80% of my tires are bone dry right now.
[00:18:47] Pius Kobler: Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's the, the challenge. That's our chance. We, we, we, what we do, and it's our challenge. At the same time, you know, we, we, we really solve something that hassle that people have, but still, we have so many customers that we. Don't get to sell our product because they, they haven't started looking into it yet, even, you know.
[00:19:11] Craig Dalton: Yeah. There's definitely like a journey that I went on, which was like, first I had a good friend who would help me every time I needed to. Change or put sealant in the tire and he would handle it. Then I got some of the tools myself, particularly an inflater, like a booster to help seal the tire. But still to this day, like the, the, the maintenance of it is beyond me.
And I, I am super keen to get these installed on my bike just so I can be more diligent about checking the sealant, particularly when I go off to events and it's been. You know, three, four months between checking and I'm concerned, do I have any sealant in there in a day, or, you know, a big mountain adventure that really counts.
I wanna know and be confident that I have the sealant I need.
[00:19:56] Pius Kobler: It's actually interesting you saying that because that's my answer. When people ask us how often do I have to re have, do I have to check my sealant? And my answer is that I can't give you a number. No way. Uh, I can give you a time span because the guy riding in Mexico summer or in let's say Utah in summer, riding every day having his bike in a, in a shed, in, in, in the heat, that guy and the other guy in Montana riding a maybe.
Double ply downhill tire or, or something every second week. That's com two completely different cases. The one has to, to measure four times more often than the other. And, and, and what we say is exactly what you just said. Measure your sealant before an important race, before, uh, uh, a weakened with your bodies because before you go to the holidays, Just do the check quickly and you have to peace of mind.
My tubal system's gonna be perfect for that occasion and be because you do that, you'll, you'll eventually realize, oh, my, my system with that setup every three, four months is fine. And, and another will see, oh shit, I have to do this every second month.
[00:21:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah. Interesting. So as you guys have designed the product and brought it to manufacturing, where, where did you end up manufacturing this product?
[00:21:17] Pius Kobler: that's, that's, uh, that's, uh, one of these startup stories. You know, we, we, we literally started in the south of Switzerland to the Italian border where you get. Italian manufacturing pricing and, and, and across the border some, some legal, um, opportunities. Like it was just easier due to be in Switzerland.
And, um, that worked well from the, let's say, from the quality perspective, but then, uh, logistics and organization were. Um, how to not be unpolite, um, to towards Italians. Uh, it wasn't optimal. And then we did, we did some risk diversification where we went to the, the future of, uh, cycling industry in, in Europe, which is Portugal, which.
Might be true, but only if you really know what you're doing when you're sourcing a manufacturing partner, which we didn't entirely know back then. So we ran into into quality problems, which actually led to one of the. Darkest hours of our startup. We, I, I'm gonna come to the booster, to our, our inflater.
We, we had a recall on that product just after releasing it because of some quality problems in production. Uh, you can imagine how, how, how that feels when you release your second product as a startup and, and, and you're gonna recall it from, from everywhere. So, so that led us to. Basically learn the lesson and, and say when you are, when you are an early stage startup, it's so much more important that you, that it works, that you have a production that works.
The price, the 20% more cost for your product doesn't matter in the beginning. And we went to Germany and, and we, and we are still in Germany because having a reliable system, having, having. Production that you, you can just rely on is up, up till, till. Today's super important and, and we, we, we are now stretching out towards other regions because the, the, the numbers are getting higher, but for a long time you can, you better go for reliable than for, for cheap.
That's
[00:23:40] Craig Dalton: Yeah, for sure, for sure. And um, I can definitely commiserate with that hardware development and production journey that you just described. Just so everyone understands, when was the company first founded? What year?
[00:23:54] Pius Kobler: Um, basically that trip to the US was in 13, summer 13. Then, The original idea was to, that job that I had at that at product developing company was really cool. So, so I was, I was perfectly happy there. And, and the idea was to develop the whole system and sell it on an on, in an online store besides working there, which sounds a bit naive now looking back, but, but that was the original plan.
And step by step we realized, no, no, no, you, you have to do this. Properly or, or there is no chance. And so in summer 14, I quit my job there and started bootstrapping. We, we, we, in Switzerland, you have, um, let's say not so optimal investment, um, environment like, like in, in, especially in the Bay Area and in the US in general.
But what's very good is the, the start of support ecosystem. Like you, you have many coaching programs and, and. Prizes and, and we were lucky enough to win some, some startup prizes, uh, because the story was good. And, and, and, and I had a, a co-founder who already had started a startup before and I was this e t h engineer bike guy.
So that, that was a good mix. And, um, that, that's basically how we started bootstrapping. And then in 2015 we started the company and did, uh, raised a, a financing round to, to get production started and everything that there was, there was capital needed for that.
[00:25:26] Craig Dalton: It's such a hard business. Any, any business that involves inventory, there's just so much additional risk beyond your own personal sacrifice and time to get the business up and running.
[00:25:38] Pius Kobler: And that's where you're, you're, you're from the very beginning in Mm, how to say you're, you're not perfectly independent from the very beginning because you already have your shareholders that you, that you have to justify always what you're doing, you know? So the pressure is on from the first minute kind of,
[00:25:58] Craig Dalton: yeah, for sure. So we went through sort of the valve system and then you had just mentioned the, the booster. And I think the booster actually is where I first came, encountered, encountered the brand. So can you describe the, what the functionality of a booster is? What does it, what does it do for a rider?
Cuz I, I imagine many people don't have that type of product.
[00:26:17] Pius Kobler: Yeah, maybe let me just quickly finish, uh, the, the valve system there, the, the original idea was to do that measuring and the refilling, which, which is still the, one of the major usps. But then that's a also a nice story. I, one day I was, I was installing a tire. I, you removed the valve core because you need a good airflow.
I inflated the tire and literally I was. The air wasn't coming out because I, I was holding my, usually you hold your finger on the valve stem and then you really quickly, you screw your, your valve core back, you know? And I was, I wanted to do that and then realized, The air isn't coming out. That's how we, we, we basically invented or realized our second big U s P is the air stays inside.
You have like a one-way valve with these rubber flaps, so well, it changes the whole installation of a tubeless tire where whereas normally you, nowadays you fill in the ceiling into the tire, then you push the tire on the, onto your rim, then you inflate it and while popping it, some, some seal this.
Spilling over. You know, that's the messy part. When you're inflating a tire with our valves, you, you take the valve core out, you have the full airflow and the tire. They do that without sealant in the tire. So you have a dry installing of the tire and once it sits well, Then you take the syringe and add the sealant into the already installed tire.
So that's, that's the, the, the no drops build part is, is, is with installation also, because you do that new sequence of installing. And then the third big advantage is the rubber flaps are closed at the bottom. That means no sealant gets to the valve core, which means you don't have the, the clock valve cores anymore.
The, the, you can release the air reliably, you know,
[00:28:05] Craig Dalton: Yeah. That's my other embarrassing situation on one of my wheels right now. I can literally remove the valve core. And no air will come out. I've got a, I've got a, I've got a jam, a very tiny Alan wrench, Alan Key in there to, uh, pop it open, and even then it just trickles out.
[00:28:22] Pius Kobler: Yeah. So that, that's basically the three to three major USPS of the valve system. That That, yeah. Summarizes
[00:28:30] Craig Dalton: There's a, there's a ton of nuance in this and I definitely encourage people to go to your website cuz you've got detailed videos on how it plays out, but is very thoughtfully designed. And those small benefits add up to what we were talking before. It just means you're going to address your sealant more frequently.
You're not gonna have any trepidation. You're gonna know exactly what's going on in those key moments and days when you need to know.
[00:28:59] Pius Kobler: Yeah. And then basically having that problem solved, we, we went to, each year we go to fin, famous, famous riding place, uh, by the sea there in Italy and we. Uh, one of us had a, a problem with the tire. We needed to change a tire. So in the evening we are in the shed there trying to change a tire. We have a floor pump, but nothing else.
And the tire wouldn't sit, you know, and so we say we we're product developers. We are these. By tech freak. So we say, let's do a, a GTA booster. You know, the one with the big Coke bottle. You take a coke bottle, you drill a hole into the cap, you install a bike valve, and then you drill a second hole and you have a piece of tube and, and you kink it.
That's how you hold the air. Then you inflate it and then you hold it on the valve. And that's the GTA booster, you know, and
[00:29:49] Craig Dalton: I love talking to engineers.
[00:29:52] Pius Kobler: and, and. We, we, we nearly managed to inflate, like we managed to inflate the tire, but it wouldn't hold. So we, we just didn't get there. And so we had to drive through the gas station to use the compressor, and that's how we got the, the tire installed.
And that's when we said, said, this is, this is another problem that we have to address. And, and basically we, we could, we professionalized the, the, the ghetto booster. And what it turned out to be is, um, it's, it's now, um, Not a p e t plastic bottle, but it's, uh, it's an. Aluminum drinking bottle that you basically, you have that head that you screw on your bottle.
It's a, it's a plastic, a plastic part that you screw on the bottle. You get the bottle with a drinking cap, so you can actually use it as a drinking bottle, which, uh, being in a gravel podcast is very interesting for backpacking. You know, some people going to really remote areas might be interested in.
Generally, this isn't the, the story of it being so portable because it's a water bottle. It's a nice story and media love to write about it. But this is a, this is a product that you have in your workshop normally or in your pickup by, by the trail. By the trail head or something like, or going to holiday like we in, in Italy.
It's perfectly light, uh, uh, and inexpensive. So it's a good product to have with you. But, and, and the backpacking, like the remote part is for some, an interesting part as well. So basically, It's this plastic part that you screw on the bottle. You have, um, a bicycle valve, uh, core that allows you to inflate the whole thing up to 160 psi, which is a lot, but uh, 120 PSI is just fine.
And then, It has a little opening and the slider inside. So you basically push the head onto your valve stem and the slider inside opens and on all the air, um, pushes, rushes into your tire. And, and
[00:31:55] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:31:56] Pius Kobler: the, because there is no hose, that's a bit of tech, tech, uh, details here in a hose, you lose a lot of pressure.
So because there is no hose, you have all the pressure right by the valves and it that means, It is instant, like it's an explosion. We, we call it the booster effect. When when I do the live presentation and I push that booster on the wheel, I look into the faces of people because it's so funny to see, holy shit, that was really fast.
So that's the booster effect.
[00:32:28] Craig Dalton: And I think that's, that's the key. And, and again, just to kind of come back in case it's, it's a l it's unclear. You've got kind of this, uh, aluminum water bottle with a, a, a cap that you can screw into it. You then attach your home pump pump up, which pressurizes all the air in that canister. And then much like a, uh, you know, a cartridge.
When you're inflating your, your, your tire, you're just putting it onto the valve core, where, where you've removed the tip of the valve core, you're putting it onto the valve, and it's spitting very quickly a burst of air, which for the uninitiated, that's what's required to push the bead out to the side of the tire and get it into that locked and secured position that you need.
And that's what you generally cannot achieve just with a floor pump. You need that pressure and that burst.
[00:33:15] Pius Kobler: don't have a tube inside and the air is just ex escaping between the tire and the rim. So if you are slowly pumping, the tire is just move is not moving. So you need, you need that fast push of air to push the tire out. Yeah.
[00:33:29] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. And I, if you do not have one of these in your garage, go out and get one today. It is like indispensable, in my opinion for.
[00:33:39] Pius Kobler: potential is very high to trying to in. Sometimes you're lucky and you can do it with a, with a floor pump, and if you're not lucky, it's very frustrating.
[00:33:47] Craig Dalton: and then I used to go to the gas station and I could never get adequate pressure out of those gas station versions. So when I got this product first, I was like, I, I'm now fully capable to change tires, install new tires.
[00:34:03] Pius Kobler: cool thing is it's a small bottle, you know, it's, it's, um, 20 ounces and 34 ounces. Uh, the, the sizes we have, this is not a lot of of volume, but because it's so fast flowing, because it makes it very efficient, it doesn't matter how long the air flows, it matters how much air flows in one second, you know, that's when the tire is pushed outside.
And that's why we did with this booster, you can. If you can't inflate the uh, tire with this booster, then then you have a problem. Then even the compressor, compressor doesn't deliver as much air in a second, like the booster, you know?
[00:34:39] Craig Dalton: so you just mentioned you have two different sizes for, you know, a typical gravel cyclist, maybe a 700 by 40. Is there a a product size that you'd recommend?
[00:34:48] Pius Kobler: Uh, basically talking about the us we only have the big, the, the, the, the 34 version available over there. The, the, the older, smaller version is, is basically not gonna be continued. There are some, some still available in Europe, but yeah, the, the, the, the, the, the 32, uh, 34, 32, um, version is, is just fine. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:35:11] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Cool. Yeah, I think it's a, it to, in my mind, the bigger, the better, right? If you've got that pressure, it's just gonna make sure you, you, you only need to do it once, and you get the tire seated the way you want.
[00:35:21] Pius Kobler: Mm-hmm. Yeah, the, there is an interesting story about that, uh, that booster effect. Um, I was at sea other, some four years ago or so, and I was doing that booster live presentation and a guy from Bike Magazine comes, comes to, to, to see, and I, I, I do the presentation. I look into his face when I present the booster and he goes literally, Holy shit.
This was so cool. Can you do this again? I need to shoot the video. So he takes his mobile phone, shoots the video of me screwing the thing together, inflating it, pushing it on, pulling it off. And because our valves played together nicely with the booster, because you pushed the booster on without the valve core, you pull it off and the air stays inside because of the rubber flaps.
You can use it with any press, the valve with, with ours, you have that advantage. And so he does a video of that sequence. He puts it on. On their Facebook. And now, what would you say, what would you impress you as if view count of that video a year later?
[00:36:23] Craig Dalton: Uh, a million.
[00:36:25] Pius Kobler: That would be pretty impressive. You are good because many people say, oh, hundred thousand would be really much.
It was 3.2 million a year later, and now it's at 8.6 million views.
[00:36:37] Craig Dalton: Amazing.
[00:36:38] Pius Kobler: And I'm, I'm telling, I'm telling that story because. The, the whole tubeless story as we were talking, it's something that you don't really wanna touch. You don't really wanna look into it, you don't really want to be talking about, but then there is a lot of interest around it.
You know, people, many, many people realize that the topic is there and it's kind of, they have to look into it. So, so reaching that number is kind of a sign how, how important that that topic is.
[00:37:07] Craig Dalton: I think it's just a huge unlock. And to your point, like there's countless people who leave the bike shop with tubeless installed already and don't think about it, don't understand it, don't know about it, and you know, the minute they have to deal with their tire, they're completely ill-equipped to address it.
[00:37:24] Pius Kobler: Oh, that's, that's another, another good point. I, I mean, the reason why we met is because we were at sea o you know, we, we, we basically go to to sea other, and then we go a bit of riding once we are over there, um, at sea. Other, this year my key learning was I was talking to many brand managers of, of Mike brands and.
They love our system. They know what it does, and, and, and I say, okay, let's, let's, let's look into how we can equip this with your bags. And they say, yeah. The thing is, especially us customers, and that's interesting in the US things even more than in Europe, they have to be easy. It has to be easy and, and simple.
And, and, and, and when, when, when, when, when they sell a bike, they want to make the, the sale quick and easy and nice. It has to be a nice experience, you know? So what they don't wanna do is talk about some tech things, tubeless, when they sell a bank. Quite understandably, but that also means they send the customer home with a hundred percent sure problem.
That, that, that they're gonna have, you know, if they, if they convert it to tubeless. So it's a paradox really. They don't want to talk about it, but they should absolutely somehow talk about it.
[00:38:41] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that's why I'm, I'm sort of pleased to do this episode with you and just dig in a little bit deeper because again, it's easy for most riders to just forget and not think about it. But when you get to a product that's really thoughtfully designed around a solution, like it's, it's a really nice thing to have on your bike and a really nice thing to have in your garage.
[00:39:00] Pius Kobler: And I mean, that's exactly you, you can literally, if you are the right kind of person, let, let's say you can. It can be fun. Maintaining your tubeless after a while. Like I, I'm so used to it. I, I like doing it because it's so quick and so easy. It's, it's satisfying of, of doing it so quickly. But then obviously still even with our products, tubeless is not for everyone.
You know that there is people who just. Won't ever do that, which is fine. And for them it's, it's, it's good for the, for the mechanic, you know, for the shop where they bring it in. The shop can install the valves and then can do a, a much quicker job. When the, when the customer brings the bike in, in, in a minute, they have the, the tubes checked.
Done.
[00:39:43] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that makes sense. So continuing on the kind of product journey chronologically, where are you at now? Are there additional products in the product line?
[00:39:51] Pius Kobler: Yeah, so the, the plan was from the beginning to, to the, the booster and the valve cord and the valve system. That's basically what we call our, our backbone products. That's, that's also what we have patented. And, and, and the, the idea was to build the brand on these unique products and then be able to sell consumables like a rim tape and sealant.
Which, which we do, I, I, I don't have to go too much into the rim tape, even though rim tape is one of the, Biggest, um, factor of frustration in, in tubeless. Everybody who has, uh, installed a rim tape and it wasn't tight, and then take the whole thing apart again. Monster frustration, you know, so, so our rim tape does a really good job because it has a, a pressure activated glue.
It, it, it feels reli more reliably. It's, it's very strong. But let's not go into too much detail here. The, the, the more interesting part is, is the sealant where the idea was to, to, with the brand, be able to sell a sealant, but now the sealant has become its own sales driver because we, we have a different approach to the sealant where, oops.
I'm I'm saying. It fulfills all the, all it checks, all the boxes that a modern ceiling has to fulfill, like white temperature range. Um, Environmental friendly. It's water based. Um, it, it comes in a hundred percent recycled CO2 bottles. It's a natural, uh, it's, it's synthetic. Latex doesn't contain ammonia. It doesn't contain aggressive ingredients, so it, it's CO2 proof.
That's, uh, a big plus as well. It checks all these boxes. Uh, But then what, what makes it really different is, as you can see here, or the ones who don't see it, it, it, there is no particles at the bottom of the bottle. When you turn the bottle around that, uh, that accumulation, and then you have to shake it to, to get these particles, the, the, these crystals into solution that.
You don't have to do that with anymore. It just is in solution. So you just take with the syringe, you push it into your tire without the hurry, like shaking the bottle, and then really quickly fill it in because you might not get the right amount of, of particle in there. That's not a thing anymore. But then more importantly, It stays homogenous also in the tire, which means you don't have this separation where you have these rubbery leftovers, rubber balls.
It's, it's cold. Sometimes you don't have this separation into rubbery leftovers and watery leftovers, but it stays constant. It stays homogenous over time, so that leads to a, a, a longer, more reliable function. We,
[00:42:49] Craig Dalton: I've seen those, those rubber balls in certain tires when I've taken them off. Uh, so I know that effectively they're, that's dried up material, so it's not gonna act as a sealant, presumably. And if, if I'm hearing you correctly, by the way, your product is blended and stays consistent, doesn't need shaking, like as long as there's solution in the tire.
It will function as designed versus something that's separated into elements that need to be combined in order to work.
[00:43:19] Pius Kobler: Oh some. Some of the well-known sealants, if you wait a bit too long and you open the tire, you have basically a puddle of water like brownish, greenish, watery. Thing leftover, which is not sealant at all anymore. It's none. It has, has not been working for quite a while. And, and, and our sealant remains homogenous.
And it covers like the tire looks the same one day or, or, or a year after, after installing it. It's just covered like wet from the sealant, which is important. Uh, but then it doesn't accumulate, it doesn't leave these, add these robbery leftovers and, and. We, we have it nicely printed on our bottle here on our ceiling, but we, we won the, the seal test in, in this larger bike magazine here.
I, I always say we, we won by a, by a bit, uh, just a bit better than the other from function, you know, ceiling function. But I say if, if they's done the test two months later, we would've won by, by big margin. You know, because it's still working more constantly. And that's, that's a, that's a big advantage.
And the third, the third advantage of, of it's staying homogenous, and that's very important for, for users, is it doesn't go bad in the bottle because it stays stable, homogenous. You don't have to throw the bottle away after. Half a year or two a year, something like that, because it goes bad in the bottles.
So there, there is no separation in the bottle as well, which in the end is, uh, quite, uh, an environmental impact. You know, a lot of seal being thrown away and it's a financial aspect as well. You, you, you can buy a bigger bottle and use next year.
[00:45:06] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. No, that is nice.
[00:45:08] Pius Kobler: So that being said, the the sealant is not just a sealant that we also sell with, with our, with our brand like we planned originally.
It's really, it's really a game changer. And, and talking about gravel, we, we, this is. This is originally we come from the mountain bike sector. You know, the whole tubus comes from the mountain bike sector or originally, but now with gravel and road coming, the, the challenges are different for, for sealants and, and there is two major differences.
One with the higher pressures, you have a lot more water loss ceilings dry up because, Tires are porous and tires are never perfectly tight. So you, you, you lose water through any tire and, and in a gravel or roads bike, because it's, the pressure is higher, you lose water faster, so it dries up faster than, than a mountain bike tire.
And that's why we, we, we are gonna actually now in May, we are gonna release our road and gravel sealant, which is a bit thinner and, and, and it's longer lasting. So, so that's the. One thing we adjusted. And the other thing is it seals cuts better at high pressures. So that's the be because sealing at high pressures is obviously a big challenge for sealants.
It's the higher the pressure, the the more difficult. So we, we, we've adjusted our formula to, to cover these two important factors for, for travelers and roadies.
[00:46:39] Craig Dalton: Interesting. I'm excited to see that as it's tested out, but I, I love that you're thinking kind of from first principles and thinking about the tire pressure differences and how they'll play out and affect the product.
[00:46:52] Pius Kobler: Yeah.
[00:46:53] Craig Dalton: And, and now going to the, your latest product that I think you just released at Sea Otter and I was able to see last weekend when we rode.
Tell me about the journey to creating a multi-tool. And obviously it's a category everybody's familiar with. Everybody has had one or many over the years. Like what may, what was the design perspective that you came to, to achieve this product? And then we can get into. How cleverly it was executed and the multitude of functions you have built into it.
[00:47:26] Pius Kobler: Basically the, the, the approach is the same as, as with any of the products that we brought. Um, there is still some, some, some trouble left, you know, some things to solve. And, and what's, what was missing for us is there are cuts in the tire that are too big to be sealed by the sealant, and that's when you need a block solution, you need to push something through that hole or slit from the outside.
To, to mechanically close that, that hole and then the ceiling can do the job to, to close off the rest. And so we, we knew, we, we've been, we, we've known for, for a long time that we have to bring some kind of a pl plug solution. We just never really knew where to put it and how to store it. You know, you can go into the handlebar, you can go into the stem, you can go somewhere.
What's. What's really popular now, and this is a really hot topic in, in, in any bike segment, is. Having it quickly accessible, you know, having a solution for in the backpacker or somewhere that's not really a solution that you wanna offer today. So it has to be quickly accessible. You might still hold, have your finger on the hole because what you can do is you're losing air your hold the finger on your hole.
So, so you can stop the, the, the air leak and then you have one hand left and you have to grab that tool with one hand very quickly. And so it has to be somewhere. We, we didn't wanna go into the handle bar or in the stem because you have a lot of compatibility, compatibility issues. So what we decided to do is we, we, we want to go to that formerly bottle cage interface.
We call it standard interface now, because there is sometimes like three or four on a bike or at least two. So we, we basically have a small box that you can screw onto your frame using this screw interface. And the, the original idea of having these plugs is you have, you have, um, rubber cover that you can open on the side and then you can pull out that handle with the plug right there.
So, Literally with one hand, you can open the thing and pull the plug out and then push it in.
[00:49:42] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:49:43] Pius Kobler: And we, we have, that's maybe a bit too detailed, but we have a side loading fork that makes it easier to load the, the plug into your fork tool. We have a twist shape of the fork tool because when the plug is twisted, when you push it into the tire, when you pu pull the tool out, the plug sticks better in the, in the tire.
Some, some details about using that plug. So this was, this was basically the tool that we had to bring, that we wanted to bring out. But then we said, now that we have this presence on the bike frame, now that we have this box anyway, we are adding something that anybody needs anyway. And that's, that, it's a, it's a little multi tool.
And what I'm holding into the camera now, for the ones who don't see it, it's, it's, it's, uh, like an L and key. It's a L-shaped L key, and it has on the side, it has a bit in bit technology, so the small bits are stored in the larger bits, and you can magnetically remove them, flip them around. And put them back.
So, and on both sides, on the long side and on the short side, you can exchange these bits. And this makes from one a key that is, Um, super lightweight, let's say compared to a folding tool. With all these functions, you have a proper tool that you have a lot of torque and, and good accessibility, and you have eight functions.
You have from two to eight millimeter, all Alan Keys, plus you have a Torque 25 all in one tool, and that's, that's a very attractive solution that you have, right? At the front, you know, you open that rubber cover, you pull that tool out, and you are ready to go. You, you need that often. I, I, I, I just went riding for four days over Easter.
I used it nine times in four days, and I didn't use it because I wanted to count higher. So literally to, to tighten the axle of the wheel, the handlebar was twisted. I had to put my seat post a bit higher. You need. Very often you need to, to adjust or tighten something. So this is very handy to have it quickly available. And then,
[00:51:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:51:54] Pius Kobler: sorry. This is basically level one usability. Use that tool often, but then this tool clips. Magnetically into, into a tire lever. This is like people have to go online to see, to see the form factor. This is the impressive part. You know how that L-shaped tool is clipping into the tire lever where you have a chain link storage, and then you have a chain breaker that clips into the chain breaker, into the tire lever, so it's all compactly stored together.
And then the, the last thing that we added is there was some more space. So we added a little cutter tool, a little Swiss army knife, scissors tool that you can open. And then it has this, this, this cutting function. This is, this is pretty fun tool as well. And it, it, it, it's also the storage for your replacement plugs.
So, In, in short, it's a very compact, um, way of having many, many solutions. The, the, the main solutions that you need, the tools in a, in a small box that's, um, super light to 835 grams, which is, let me check how many ounce Ansys
[00:53:07] Craig Dalton: think even in the US we think about grams when we think about bike parts.
[00:53:11] Pius Kobler: we say lighter than your phone. It's, it's lighter than your mobile phone, so yeah.
[00:53:18] Craig Dalton: that makes sense. And, and you mentioned this, I mean, and, and calling it like a, the shape of a deck of cards is not completely accurate because it's thinner than that. Um, and a lot less weight as you said. So you, you mentioned you've got the ability to both mount it to where any water bottles would've been mounted, and if I'm correct, you also have a way of strapping it to the bike.
[00:53:43] Pius Kobler: Exactly that. That's that. That's basically now. Now we have that box and. You screw that box onto your frame with two screws and basically with the two screws, we also screw this interface on top. It's a, it's like an aluminum bar. It's a sliding interface that's also on the side of the kit. So you have two of these interfaces and now you have what we call a strap clip.
It's a plastic part that you can slide onto onto that interface, and then you have a Velcro wrap where you can. Attach your pump, your CO2 cartridge, your tube, your banana, whatever you wanna bring along. And the idea is to have one clip on each of these items. So before you write, you decide, oh, today I need a pump.
You slide it on today, I need to bring my tube. And you slide it on. And sometimes you go without anything. So you have a modular system with these interfaces around your base box.
[00:54:41] Craig Dalton: yeah, yeah. It's super slickly designed and as you articulated, like everything kind of nestles into one another, and I like the thoughtfulness around. The plug is the thing you wanna access quickly, fast, and ideally with one hand, and making that kind of first and foremost in the design. And then if you need to dig out some of the other tools, they're all right there, but they're not as quickly accessible because you've aired towards what you need on the go fast.
[00:55:12] Pius Kobler: Yeah, and maybe to f to finish that, the top interface that is held in place by the two screws, you can leave the interface away and just put your bottle cage on top of, of the whole kit. And that's actually the. Primary idea you have that it's, it's so small, it's only half an inch thick, you know, so you have half an inch under your bottle cage and, uh, and it, it basically disappears under your bottle cage, but you can still acc accesses for access it from the side, and you can still slide your pump or whatever to the side with your bottle being on top.
That's the, the core idea of that, of that kit.
[00:55:51] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Thanks for clarifying that because when I saw it on your bike over the weekend, you did not have a bottle cage on top of
[00:55:58] Pius Kobler: Because then nobody would see it. You know,
[00:56:02] Craig Dalton: I love it. Good gorilla marketing.
[00:56:05] Pius Kobler: it worked. I'm here.
[00:56:07] Craig Dalton: Exactly. Well, this was amazing. I'm so glad that I, I met you and ran into you. Like I said, I've been familiar with the brand. You guys have been doing it for a, uh, quite some time now and great to kind of just dig into both your history as a product designer. How you always design from a writer first perspective and just hearing the totality of the systems you've built and the thought behind it.
It was a real pleasure to get to know you and I, I hope for the listeners they, they hit up milk it bike. I'll include that link in the show notes so everybody can see some of the videos and cool graphics that you have on the site to understand everything you've been describing.
[00:56:47] Pius Kobler: Thank you very much for having me. It was a pleasure.
[00:56:50] Craig Dalton: Yeah, great to talk to you.
[00:56:52] Pius Kobler: Yeah, thanks. Bye.
[00:56:54] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with PS. As much as I did, how fortunate was it that I was able to run into him on the trail and how interesting a journey he had to creating the milk at brand and the valve core system and the entire system that he described super happy to have made his acquaintance and get to know those products.
A big, thank you. Goes out to our friends at hammerhead and the hammerhead crew to, to crew. And the hammer had crew to computer. Remember, if you visit hammerhead.io and use the code, the gravel ride. You can get a free heart rate, monitor strap with your purchase of that career, to your computer.
If you're interested in giving me any feedback on the show or connecting with other gravel cyclists around the world. I encourage you to join the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. Everything's for free and it's simply a forum that allows you to connect with. Other athletes around the world. If you're able to support the show.
Please visit, buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride or ratings and reviews are hugely helpful in getting this podcast in front of new listeners. Until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels.
Have you heard of the Great Northern Bikepacking Route? Uncover the origin story of the Great Northern Bikepacking Route with founder Matt Kadey. Matt will walk through the vision for the first West to East Cross Canada Bike Packing route. Through 10 provinces and a brief sojourn into the U.S., the GNBR covers a whooping 8700 miles. Like all bikepacking routes, GNBR will evolve over time and local contributions are encourages to continue to improve the route.
The Great Northern Bikepacking Route Website
Episode Sponsor: Athletic Greens
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
In this episode, you will be able to:
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Unearth the fascinating tale of the Great Northern Bikepacking Route's conception.
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Embrace the sheer beauty, multifaceted trail systems, and wide-ranging terrain difficulties to expect on this adventure.
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Gain valuable insights regarding the accessibility, security, and services availability for a well-rounded experience.
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Probe the grueling provinces and exceptional trail characteristics that set this route apart from others.
My special guest is Matt Kadey
Meet Matt Kadey, an accomplished bikepacker who has made it his mission to design the ultimate off-road adventure by connecting Canada's diverse landscapes through the Great Northern Bikepacking Route. His dedication to creating an engaging and challenging experience for fellow bikepackers has resulted in a route that encompasses 8700 miles across ten provinces. Matt's expertise in route planning and collaboration with local riders ensures that adventurers can enjoy a memorable and ever-evolving journey across Canada's stunning terrain.
The resources mentioned in this episode are:
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Visit the Great Northern Bikepacking Route website (greatnorthernbikepackingroute.com) to explore the 8,700-mile route across Canada.
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Join regional bikepacking Facebook groups to connect with local riders for input and suggestions.
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Utilize Ride With GPS as a user-friendly platform for plotting and editing bikepacking routes.
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Consider a more rugged bike setup for tackling the diverse terrain of the Great Northern Bikepacking Route, as seen on bikepacking.com's Rigs of the Divide or other similar races.
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Reach out to Matt Kadey and offer input or suggestions for the Great Northern Bikepacking Route, particularly if you are familiar with specific segments.
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Keep an eye out for future alternative route options on the Great Northern Bikepacking Route website, offering more manageable options for some sections.
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Explore bikepacking routes in your local area, such as the BT 700 in Ontario, to gain experience and build up to longer routes like the Great Northern Bikepacking Route.
Bike Selection for the Route
The Great Northern Bike Packing Route encompasses various terrains and conditions, challenging riders to be prepared for anything. As such, choosing the right bike for the adventure is crucial. Matt Kadey recommends a sturdy setup similar to those used in long haul bikepacking events like the Tour Divide, Silk Race, or Moroccan Atlas Race. In the episode, Kadey explains that while some sections of the route can be navigated on a traditional gravel bike with 700x38 tires, other areas require something more robust due to rocky, trail-heavy, and sharp descents. His practical advice helps riders better prepare for the upcoming journey and ensures they have an enjoyable and safe experience.
Segmenting the Route
To make the Great Northern Bike Packing Route more accessible to a broader range of cyclists, Matt Kadey has divided the route into individual province and state segments that can be tackled separately. This innovative approach allows cyclists to experience the beauty and challenges of the route at their own pace without feeling overwhelmed by the sheer distance of the entire project. During the podcast, Kadey talks about the difficulty of piecing together existing bikepacking routes and finding the best off-road stretches to connect them. He mentions using local riders and Facebook groups for advice and direction, as well as employing the Ride With GPS platform to make changes and edits to the route easily. This collaborative process demonstrates his commitment to creating the best possible experience for all cyclists.
Bypassing Problem Areas
During the development of the Great Northern Bike Packing Route, Matt Kadey acknowledged some potentially dangerous areas that warranted bypassing. One example is a stretch of road in northwestern Ontario that is heavily trafficked by trucks. To avoid this treacherous section, he discovered an existing bikepacking route through Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Kadey discusses incorporating this southern United States route into the Great Northern Bike Packing Route, thus bypassing the hazardous area and ensuring rider safety. His proactive approach to addressing problem areas further emphasizes his commitment to creating a remarkable and enjoyable cycling adventure for all riders.
This we sit down with Andrew Juskatis from Giant Bicycles to discuss the Giant Revolt X gravel bike. With 50 years in the bicycle business, Giant brings massive engineering and manufacturing resources to the sport. The Revolt X model features front suspension matched with a compliant rear end and dropper post. Sounds like my kind of ride!
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the podcast. We welcome Andrew. from giant bicycles to the show. Andrew is a global product marketing manager. And had a hand in the launch of the new revolt acts, gravel bike. I have to say after I saw former Gaston friend, URI has walled. Old riding this new giant bicycle where the RockShox suspension fork on it. I couldn't resist reaching out to the team at giant to learn a little bit more.
I'd been curious as to when we'd start to see larger manufacturers bring suspension forks into the gravel bike world. I know it is a topic. That many of you feel very passionately one way or the other about, but I thought it would be interesting to talk to Andrew about that decision
and how they see the market evolving. Giant is a close to 50, maybe 50 plus year old company. That's been producing bikes for many, many other brands, as well as developing their own brand. Back in the eighties, they've got a huge amount of research and development and organizational strength in the engineering department.
So it was exciting to talk to them about what they were seeing with this bicycle. Obviously they have models available. With, and without that rock shock, we talk about the revolt X model as well as one of the other models that shares a similar chassis, but not an identical chassis. And we'll get into why giant was uniquely capable of producing something specific.
For running a suspension fork versus just slapping something on the same bike or the same frame that they had produced for the non suspension. Model. Anyway, I look forward to you listening to this conversation, Andrew and I are contemporary. So we share some stories about our early experience in the mountain bike market and the evolution of that market. And some of the parallels were.
We're seeing in the gravel world. With that said, let's jump right into my conversation with Andrew. Andrew, welcome to the show.
[00:02:29] Andrew Juskatis: Hey, thanks for having me, Craig.
[00:02:31] Craig Dalton: It's good to, good to have you. I'm, I feel like I've been wanting to have someone on from Giant for a few years now, and I couldn't resist reaching out through my friend Yuri Oswald, who just started riding for Giant u s A. Uh, when I saw the new Revolt acts, it seemed like too, too much of a bike that was right up my alley not to get someone on the show to talk about.
[00:02:53] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's, it's a new launch for us. It just came out this February. Um, so it's still new, it's still hot, and it's an interesting product from Giant.
[00:03:02] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. Before we dig into that, let's just get a little bit about your history. Where, where did you grow up and how did you discover the bike, and ultimately, how did you end up working in the bike industry?
[00:03:13] Andrew Juskatis: cow. That's a long story, but I will try and make it short for you so, I'm coming up on 50 years old. I've been riding and racing bikes, specifically mountain bikes since I was 14 years old. I grew up in Southern California. I started ri erasing and then riding, you know, around 87, 88. So I've, I've been through the f almost the full trajectory of mountain biking as, as a result of that, my love and for cycling has grown.
So Southern California. Um, you know, went to college at University of Utah and just absolutely fell in love with the sport of mountain biking. But out of that, I took my first job, um, working for cycling publications. So over a period of nine years, I worked for five different magazines starting in 1996, working for Mountain Biking, mountain Biker Bike Magazine, bicycling, and then eventually finished off my tenure at Venu and throughout the entire.
I was the tech editor for all those publications. I did a lot of product testing, um, and, and had a pretty good gig doing all that, but it was 2004 when I was an editor. I flew from Colorado out to Southern California to be a guest at Giant Bicycles when they were introducing their maestro suspension technology.
And I remember specifically as an. Riding that product, meeting the people behind the product and saying, Hey, giant has something going on for it. Like this is legit. Not only is this technology legit, but the people behind it are serious about what they're doing, and it really put, honestly put Giant on my radar for what is going to be my next job.
Lo and behold, position opened up in their marketing department in 2005. I took the job at Giant, and here I am, what, some 18 years later. On the other end of the stick here, talking to editors around the world.
[00:04:58] Craig Dalton: Amazing. I love that we're in the same age range and went through sort of our coming up and mountain biking around the same time. I know we could probably share a lot of stories that might not be interesting to our gravel riding audience, but thanks for sharing that. And just for a little bit of context, can you just talk about the origins of the giant, uh, giant company and the giant.
[00:05:19] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, for sure. And for, for those listeners who aren't aware, you know, we're ob. OB obviously a legacy brand. We just celebrated our 50th anniversary. And again, another really long story short, the reason why giant exists is way back in the seventies when Schwinn was having its bicycle boom, Schwinn was manufacturing the great majority of their product.
You know, here in the United States. They realized that they needed to expand, they needed to bring prices down to some more affordability. So they sent off kind of their Lewis and Clark guys over to Asia to source out, uh, bicycle manufacturing over in Asia. And one of those guys ventured over to Taiwan, which at the time wasn't.
Producing anything to do with bicycles and fortuitously stumbled across a fledgling little company, manufacturing company called Giant at the time. Um, at the time they were not making bicycles, but had the capability to do so well. Long story short. Giant became the main manufacturer of Schwinn bicycles kind of in the, in the late seventies there.
And so they were pumping out the great majority of Schwinn bikes that maybe our parents grew up with, or we grew up as, grew up with as kids. That grew and grew and grew. The manufacturing business continued to improve. The factory got bigger and bigger. We got better at it. And then in the, um, early eighties, we started our own brand, and that's the brand that I worked for, which is Giant, that's the brand that most of your listeners are familiar with.
So, early eighties on that, we started making our own product, unique product, own designed, um, manufactured and engineered by us. And that's the brand that we're talking about today.
[00:06:55] Craig Dalton: I remember in the very late eighties selling a giant iguana or two on the mountain bike side. If I can name, drop that little bit of history to
[00:07:04] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, that's still a running joke I get all the time. What do you feed the Johnny Iguana? I, I love oldie, but goodie.
[00:07:11] Craig Dalton: And I also remember obviously like, you know, in addition to that Schwinn product line that they were producing for many years, they then expanded to a lot of product for a lot of different manufacturers. And I remember sort of learning that as I was working in a bike shop on the East coast and realizing that, you know, of the seven brands that we were selling, it was three or four of them were actually produced in the same factory, um, via Giant, which was kind of interesting at the.
[00:07:38] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, for sure. So our manufacturing side of the business. Does produce bicycles for some other brands out there, but the great majority of of product that comes out of our factory is giant. And just to clarify, you know, anything that comes out of our factory is engineered and, and designed by that brand.
So everything is unique. Like the giant brand is completely different than anything else that might come out of that factory. Um, but I'm here today to talk about, you know, giant product and the giant brand. So excited to get.
[00:08:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And you know, as we trace back kind of the brand history as you've been there the last 18 years or so, obviously Giant is a full service brand, meaning they're doing everything from kids' bikes, Tor de France and you know, U C I downhill bikes across the product line. When you think about how the brand kind of approaches.
Entire suite of product. Is it, does it, does it sort of come from the top down and you're trying to make the best product possible? Or is each, each kind of division kind of focused on like, oh, I'm trying to make an affordable bike, or commuter bike, or what have you, and really just trying to be best of class in the area that it's competing in.
[00:08:49] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, first things first is we make sure that we have the right people leading the right categories. From that, every one of those category managers, their goal is to build the absolute best in class for that. Whether it be, uh, a youth bike, whether it be a road gravel or mountain bike, we always wanna shoot for the top.
Only after we have all those, these pieces in place, do we start thinking about price points. How do we want to, you know, what price points do we want to hit? We look at, maybe sometimes we'll look at our competitors and see what they're doing and see how we can, you know, beat them. But for the great majority of time, because our factory, we are the factory.
We have the greatest buying power in the entire cycling industry. If you think about it. I mean, we buy more D R X T rear derailers than any other brand on Earth. So normally we're, we're always gonna get the best pricing out of that. We don't normally focus on pricing. You know, your, your, your listeners can certainly do their own shopping and, and look at different brands and different prices, but that's certainly something where we differentiate our categories.
Um, how do we break it down? And that's something we can talk about when we talk about Revolt X. What are, what are the prices here in the United.
[00:09:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I'm curious and excited given your tenure at Giant, just when you started to see like a gravel bike first emerge in the lineup, and obviously the date you dropped to me earlier I think was 2013. The category barely existed at that point. So I'm curious if you recall, like why was that bike created originally?
[00:10:14] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, that's a really good question. And I, I, I don't wanna say it was created by accident, but at the time, w. You know, the category managers, the marketing staff, we're in touch with the market. We ride a lot. It's our passion. So we're out there and seeing what, what people are doing. Gravel at the time from a mass production level really didn't exist.
This is over a decade ago, like you just indicated. The consumers were, you know, maybe the, the elite that bleeding edge was kind of experimenting with, you know, taking a road bike and putting on the biggest tires possible and riding it in more aggressive terrain. I would say we caught onto that, that, that, that trend and it was, it was just a developing trend way back then.
And we said, Hey, you know what, let's experiment. It seems like it makes sense. This might actually go somewhere. This, this might not be a fad. Like single speeding, right? Like that came and went for the most part. This actually has legs given the trends at the time of. Generally speaking, you know, road bike sales were just beginning to slump off.
People might, might have started getting turned off a little bit about road riding just because of safety issues or just because of wanting to explore their terrain a little bit more than a traditional road bike could take them. Um, so it was kind of a culmination of a lot of a different events. Let us dip our toe in the water with the first Revolt series, and that was like over a decade ago.
And looking back at the bike, looking at the geometry, looking at the max tire size, you know, I'm not gonna say it was wrong in every way, but it was an experiment, right? It was our first mass production toe dipped in the water, and we learned a tremendous amount from that first generation. So here we are today talking about our latest generation, which is the Revolt X, which as your listeners know, is a front suspension, gravel bike, and definitely happy to talk about that.
[00:12:06] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's so interesting. I feel like back in that 20 13, 20 14, 20 15, like there was this pocket of riders that weren't necessarily, you know, riding gravel. They were just happened to be riding on dirt roads or wanted a more durable drop bar bike for commuting. And so there was like enough of a pocket in there despite like.
People wanting to use the bike for many different things. That type of bike made a lot of sense. And then, you know, as we moved forward into 20 15, 20 16, you started to sort of see this very much more specialized gravel event happen and people like really leaning into a gravel bike as a replacement for a road bike potentially in certain scenarios.
So talk a little bit, if you can, at, at sort of a broad level. How you saw the revolt model evolve over those early years into, you know, 20 16 20 17?
[00:13:00] Andrew Juskatis: Right. And so just like you indicated, Craig, you know, the, the racing scene at that time was. Just starting to bubble up more local events, little kind of underground events, but we, when we a, anytime we create a new product, we do ask ourselves. Okay. Is this product going to be raced or is this product going to be ridden?
Is this for the adventure rider or is this for the guy, you know, shaves his legs and has the liker, uh, one piece kit on and is going, going for the number plate thing? So at that time we said no on racing, cuz racing really didn't seem like it was that big a deal. So the original revolt was geared more towards a.
Was more towards exploration, was riding those b and C level roads, or even some, you know, all all, maybe at the time very light single track kind of stuff. But it was not
[00:13:47] Craig Dalton: it originally a, was it a carbon bike originally?
[00:13:50] Andrew Juskatis: no, no, no. Again, I, I would use the term experimental at the time, and so first generation, I think we talked about this a little bit offline, but committing to composite cutting molds.
Is an entirely different thing than building an aluminum bike. Aluminum bikes obviously take a lot of engineering. There is a lot of technology in it, but the commitment level to building an aluminum bike from a, from a mass production standpoint is. Significantly less than committing to composites. So, like I said, bit of an experiment.
The first revolt, um, we want to dip our toe in the water. It was aluminum and so really easy if we needed to second generation, if we needed to change geometry. It's very, very easy to do that once you cut molds, and, and I know you and I know a lot of your listeners know this, but once you cut those molds for composite, there's no going.
And you know, I think we talked about this offline, the commitment level to cutting molds for a composite bike can can be darn near a hundred thousand dollars per size. So you need to think about your return on investment when you're committing to composite.
[00:14:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah, for sure, for sure. Amazing. Like I love taking this journey with you. And then, you know, as I mentioned to you offline, like I became super attracted, I think, to the revolt aesthetic and performance attributes in that like 2018 timeframe, maybe, maybe 2019. But found that it was sort of oriented towards a, a narrower tire size at that time.
Does that kind of track with the, the sort of design and performance objectives at that time for that model?
[00:15:26] Andrew Juskatis: for sure. At that time when we, you know, we're trying to look into our, our crystal ball of the future, just, you know, point of reference when we build, uh, or create a new range or series of bicycles, you know, we're looking at a three year lifespan. No more, absolutely no more than a five year lifespan before we're gonna come out with the next generation.
So three years generally. But we need to look at our crystal ball because we need to see what trends are happening, what trends are, are, are growing. What trends are faltering At the time, we, um, wanted to kind of maximize tire size without going bonkers. And I know a lot of folks, including yourself, kept screaming for larger and larger tire size at that, like that second generation revolt.
Um, we didn't feel it was necessary, but when we move into this next generation here, like especially with Revolt X, we can talk about larger tire.
[00:16:14] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, let's get into it. Let's get into the revolt. Um, and, and maybe you can sort of break down. You've got one series that has the Rock Shock Suspension Fork and a Dropper Post, which I love the idea of. And then you've got the other, the other sort of, uh, standard rigid bike.
[00:16:33] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, that, I mean, that's a, a great takeoff point. And, and kind of just for the record, let me, let me state our, our view of what you, just, what you just talked about. So, currently in our line, um, we launched this, uh, a little over a year ago was our Revolt Advanced Pro, and that's her composite, um, revolt bike.
That's the bike you're gonna see our, um, professional racers on. Um, you're gonna. With most folks should probably pick that bike if they're gonna put a number plate on for most type of terrain. Um, and we certainly in our marketing materials and our communications, we talk about racing openly, freely, and, and proudly with that bike.
No, it is not just a race bike. It's a very lightweight, it can be used for exploration or simply, you know, riding on ruffle roads. That's fine. But you will hear us talk about racing quite a bit with that, with that current model of revolt advance. The bike that we're focusing on today is the re, is the Revolt X Advance Pro.
And so that has a suspension fork, just like you said. Just like you love, and it has the suspension seat post on it. It does have a little bit of suspension on it if you notice that in the spec, but the dropper as well, so. Not to say that's not a race bike, but we're not gonna be positioning it. Our professional racers probably won't be seen racing on that bike.
It's a bit more for exploration really. Those all day adventure rides down rougher, rougher terrain, which there is certainly a trend for, but just to put it in perspective, um, in terms of sales numbers, You're gonna still see most people choosing the Revolt Advances Pro, that that composite line, um, for their everyday writing, this Revolt X is for a unique person like yourself or maybe some of your listeners who want and are asking for more.
[00:18:15] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's interesting, you know, as when rock shock and sh tram launched that fork, gosh, maybe a year ago,
[00:18:21] Andrew Juskatis: Right? Mm-hmm.
[00:18:23] Craig Dalton: like I realized that, you know, the early adopters of that fork were likely gonna have to either retrofit it and deal with the geometric changes that it's gonna apply to their bike or get a custom frame built because, The larger manufacturers just weren't ready to kind of jump on that trend.
I think it made sense to like allow rock shock to put it out there in the world alongside, um, what Fox had been doing for some time earlier than that and just see where it was gonna sit. But I was sort of eagerly waiting for a larger brand like Giant to put one on a bike just to expose the world to the attributes of something that was purpose built and designed.
Around that fork because to your point, not everybody's racing and it seems like there is a world and there are locations in the world where this type of suspended gravel bike, while it's still oriented around. Gravel riding, right? You're still gonna ride it on the road and mix train or whatever. But giving the rider an advantage, whether it's more comfort or stability, or safety or performance, with that suspension fork was gonna be something that is gonna appeal to yet these ever more refined niches of gravel that are emerging.
[00:19:38] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, it, it, it's interesting, Craig, you know, you and I were talking offline before and I, I learned a, a bit about your history, um, certainly with mountain biking and, and we all remember way back in the day when, you know, the rock chalks RS one first came out, it seemed like a gimmick, maybe a novelty, and manufacturers, pretty much all of them simply took that suspension fork and threw it on an existing frame and frames back then were all steel, but, You know, that was one way to kind of dip their toe in the water to try out suspension and see if it's gonna stick and, and all of that.
But they were taking a new product. That seriously altered the geometry and putting it on an existing frame, and that would've been the easy way for us to approach this. It certainly would've been the more economical way. Again, you know, we think about commitment to cutting molds is so expensive in order to open a new mold for composite frame.
But we said, and we believe, you me, we argued about this a lot, um, within the company is do we fully commit if we're gonna put a suspension. On a revolt, do we fully commit to creating an entirely new series of molds? And the answer was, we either do it or we don't. And so we did it and we committed to a full size.
Um, of new frames that are suspension, augmented, or suspension adjusted to accept a 40 millimeter fork. Um, it's a gamble. Uh, we will see about how sales are, um, universally again, um, it's, it's, it's definitely a risky move cuz we invested a lot into this frame to make sure that it, it handles correctly. We didn't want it to be, you know, a tugboat and really sluggish.
If you put. A longer fork on an existing frame, it would slack out the front end so much so that it would, it would kill the characteristics of the bike. We didn't want to do that.
[00:21:23] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think that's a critical balance. And for the, for the listener who can kind of, can't visualize, like with the suspension fork, your head tube has to, there has to be a little bit more space, right? Cuz those forks are longer in order to add that 40 millimeters or whatnot of suspension in there. So there has to be an adjustment and if you just slap it on your average, It's gonna make it a little bit more relaxed, and maybe that is actually appropriate for how you're gonna ride, said bike, but is not the intended geometry that the designer put underneath you to begin with.
So it is important to have someone thinking about those adjustments and designing them into the frame. Geometrically speaking, but also you mentioned to me that you, you also added a little bit more beef to the head tube in an understanding that the bike is gonna face different challenges and obstacles out there.
[00:22:12] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, th That's exactly right, Craig. So if you think about this, so our existing revolt, advanced Pro, all size medium, has a head two length of about 150 millimeters in order to properly compensate for the kind of that axle to crown length of a suspension fork. The Revolt X Advanced Pro that we're talking about today is 115 millimeter head tube, so that head tube is significantly shorter in order to accommodate that longer lever arm of a suspension fork.
And just like you indicated, um, in order to make sure that the bike would be safe, strong enough to handle that longer lever, lever arm, the engineering of the frame is a bit different In order to handle that, that suspension fork.
[00:22:54] Craig Dalton: Now, I know you've got a ton of experience personally and passionately about mountain bikes in the mountain bike world. When it came to putting a dropper post on that bike, what were you thinking and how do you feel that, you know, the dropper post adds value in that particular bike?
[00:23:09] Andrew Juskatis: For me it was easy because I am a mountain biker and it, within the company I was early adopter of, of a drop seat post and. I can't imagine riding a bike today without a drop seat post. It just has become part of the ride experience. And maybe I'm even more radical in thinking that pretty much every bicycle should have a drop seat post on it.
And, and I know I'm joking about the roadside of things, but maybe I'm not joking about the roadside of things when it came to this product, especially considering its intent of being rid ridden over more rough terrain, vari. Yeah. I mean, that was a no-brainer. And so there is a, a dropper seat post on all of the models of the Revolt X.
[00:23:52] Craig Dalton: Okay. Yeah. Well, you'll get no objection from me here. As everybody well knows, big fan, I considered an upgrade to any bicycle I have underneath me, but I will get off my soapbox or maybe not even mount it today because I've been on it many times before on the pod.
[00:24:07] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah.
[00:24:10] Craig Dalton: We've talked a little bit about the, the fork and the, the dropper post, but let's talk about the frame and some of the other attributes.
I know that there's some shared attributes. The revolt, advance, and the Xs. In terms of like that flip chip, let's drill into what that means and let's talk about the tire size and capability of the bike.
[00:24:26] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, for sure. So some of the similarities between the two, uh, ranges. So that's the, the Revolt Advanced Pro and this new Revolt X Advanced Pro is, and that's one of the features you just mentioned, is the flip chip dropout. Flip Chip dropout is simply a flippable chip that is located in the rear dropout of the frame.
That dropout, whether it can be shifted from its low. Or to its high position, that's 10 millimeters of difference, what that 10 millimeters does for yourself and for your listeners, you do understand that that will elongate the wheel base, making it more stable ride. Um, I think more significantly than that even is that it allows for different tire size.
So in its short position, when the flip chip is, is shifted forward, that allows for a 42 millimeter maximum tire size. If you really.
[00:25:14] Craig Dalton: On the 700 Seari.
[00:25:16] Andrew Juskatis: 700 C. Yeah. If you wanna flip to the, um, long position that allows for a 53 millimeter tire, um, in that long position, that's,
[00:25:25] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:25:25] Andrew Juskatis: that's pretty meaty
[00:25:27] Craig Dalton: What are the, what are the different lenses of the stays, if you recall?
[00:25:31] Andrew Juskatis: off top of my head. I, I don't know, but it is a 10 millimeter difference from the short position to the long position for sure. All geometries are available on our website, so you can see. And that, that is size specific as well, that change.
[00:25:44] Craig Dalton: Got it. And then on the, on the rigid fork, on the advance, is there a flip ship up front
[00:25:49] Andrew Juskatis: No, no, we didn't see the need for a flip chip up front. Um, you can run, you know, a 53 millimeter tire. It doesn't matter. Um, there is no flip chip up front. That's, you know, we, we, we ask ourselves these questions when we're creating the product. That starts to get down the wormhole of how much is too much.
You start adding, A lot of features to a product like this. Obviously that adds complication. That can add complexity and maintenance, and it can also add weight. So what is really gonna make a difference for the rider is something we always ask ourselves.
[00:26:21] Craig Dalton: And when you design these bikes, are you designing strictly around a 700 sea wheel set, or are you also, you know, accommodating a six 50?
[00:26:28] Andrew Juskatis: No, we, we think about 700 c I mean, the majority of of consumers who are gonna purchase this product are interested in purchasing this product. Certainly will ride a 700 C wheel. I know others, including yourself, might wanna run a different size wheel. Um, you're obviously free to do that as well, but are geometries listed.
Don't get in, go down that, that rabbit hole of what if you use this size.
[00:26:50] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's interesting, you know, several years ago, I think just sort of the, the design constraints or the vision at that moment was. You needed to do six 50 B wheels in order to get that bigger tire size. And now that you and you, like many others, are able to run 700 by 50 tires without changing geometry.
To me, who was a big proponent of six 50 b a number of years ago, I'm, I'm sort of more open to the idea that, you know, at 700 c you. you could need. If you can go up to 700 by, you know, in your case 53, like I don't see a need for, for much more than someone on the bike packing margins to ever want.
More than that. And then to your point, like the bike, both aesthetically and performance-wise, you go down to a 700 by 40, which maybe is a sort of standardish race size. You can take that tighter, uh, rear end with that flip chip. And you've gotta have the supercharged race bike underneath.
[00:27:50] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so it does have that, that variability in it, and we're just seeing, I don't, we are seeing less six 50 B out there in the market because again, um, we've been able to compensate very well for 700 C so we're, we're pretty satisfied with that decision.
[00:28:06] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Any other attributes of the bike that you would typically point out?
[00:28:12] Andrew Juskatis: Well, the, the neat thing about it is, you know, if you're a reader or if your, uh, listeners are familiar with the Revolt Advanced Pro, one of the, the core features on that is what we call our, our diffuse handlebar and diffuse seat post. Um, in general, you know, kind of taking a big step back with Giant, one thing we've always been really proud of is not promoting, not creating gim.
Um, integrated suspension systems, you know, really, really complex things, unique to frames like that. We try and avoid doing that kind of stuff because we see a lot of our competitors making those decisions to add whatever their own integrated suspension system and, That's not our angle. That's not what we're pro we're proud of.
So when we introduce the technology, we want it to be effective, but we want it to be simple as well. Diffuse is our kind of flexible handlebar and flexible seat post. It's a D shaped seat post. It's a D shaped handlebar. It offers a little bit of compliance. It's a little bit of compliance. No weight penalty, simplicity, you know, it's not gonna break.
It doesn't require maintenance, and it's something that riders can feel. Now obviously the Revolt X that we're talking about today, um, doesn't have that diffuse seat post. It has a, a dropper seat post, which does have a little bit of suspension in it, about 20 mils of suspension. Um, But the point I'm trying to make here is that there are options for seatpost.
If you don't wanna run a dropper, you can run a traditional round, uh, seatpost if you want, or you can run our defuse seatpost, which offers, I'll call it a 10 millimeters of four AF travel on it as well. So options for the, uh, for the rider, for the owner.
[00:29:54] Craig Dalton: And for clarity, so that the diffuse C Post it, it's the, the frame accommodates a round C post, but the diffuse has a D shape somewhere in the. In the post.
[00:30:06] Andrew Juskatis: No. Well, so the entire seatpost itself is D shaped. It's using a series of shims you can put in, um, that D shaped into our round seat tube, or you can use a different shim to put in a, you know, a round seat post.
[00:30:19] Craig Dalton: Okay,
[00:30:20] Andrew Juskatis: So options, the bottom line is options.
[00:30:23] Craig Dalton: one of the hallmarks I always think visually of the giant design has been that sort of dropped seat stay. And I know it's not just an aesthetic decision. What's the kind of design philosophy behind that?
[00:30:37] Andrew Juskatis: Rudimentary suspension. If you think about it, it kind of creates a pivot point for the seat tube. If you think about it, your listeners can visualize this. The actual flexing of the seat tube is kind of pivoted off that drop. Um, That drops stay. If you put the stay up in a old school traditional format, it would kind of negate that.
So, long story short, it offers a tiny bit of overall seat tube suspension as the seat post, as your seat, as your weight. Kind of pivots off that pivot point.
[00:31:09] Craig Dalton: that makes sense. And am, am I correct, does that technology also translator or maybe it originated on the road side of Giant's business? Are the road bikes kind of leaning into that compliance as
[00:31:20] Andrew Juskatis: Started way back when everything we just talked about started from the Cyclecross side of things. Um, started with our Tcx Tcx featured a lot of what we're talking about today. That was our test bed for Diffuse. Um, that was our test bed for kind of the, the, the drop stays because it, and, and you know, we all know how the sport of cycle cross has gone.
It, it's, it's kind of been superseded by, uh, by gravel. But everything we just talked about today was tried on our cyclecross bike first We proved it and it moved on to revolt. And then a little bit, we'll move on to, you know, endurance road bikes as well, and then to some degree onto high performance road racing as well.
[00:32:06] Craig Dalton: Yeah, interesting. I just had this other giant model name pop into my head and I, I think it might have been officially my first proper road bike I bought as an adult was a giant kdx.
[00:32:17] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, that's a really, uh, that's, that's a poignant topic you're bringing up. So KX was our first line of carbon fiber bicycles, you know, way back when, first one of the first mass produced, um, not the first, but one of the first mass produced carbon fiber bikes that consumers could buy, both road and mountain.
That was innovative at the time, really complex to make, reasonably successful for us, but that went away. Um, today, the KX net name lives on in our extremely high performance range of componentry that is separate from giant. Um, those components can be found on many other brands as well, but that KX name lives on, um, moving into the.
[00:33:03] Craig Dalton: I reme, I recall it being reintroduced, uh, as a brand for those components. And I, sorry, I can't help but jump on the way back train when I'm talking to you.
[00:33:14] Andrew Juskatis: it, it's totally, it's totally appropriate. I, I, I love jumping on the way back machine and, and looking back because you know, the, the topic of. The conversation of the comments that certainly come up with Revolt X are, my gosh, you know, it looks like an old school mountain bike. And, and I, I'll be honest with you, Craig, I just hopped in the garage.
I have a revolted Revolt X advanced Pro zero sitting in my garage. It's size extra large, and I just wanted to weigh it. Just, you know, this is actual production. This is the same bike you can buy again, size, extra large. I'm a pretty tall rider, but it was 20 pounds, 15 ounces, uh, without pedals. So, you know.
That, that, that's fairly heavy. And you know, I think you could get a hard tail mountain bike somewhere down within that realm of range. But these are two totally different products that are geared towards two different riding experiences. So you can draw your similarities, but it's different.
[00:34:08] Craig Dalton: yeah. You know, I get, I get drawn into those debates as well, and I, I, you know, living in the Bay Area and formally living in San Francisco itself, I had a hard tail mountain bike. And I can tell you that while I touch the same terrain that I, I did back in my hard tail mountain biking days, I definitely ride it differently and create different loops because of the drop bars and the gravel bike.
It gets definitely like it. It exists and it's hard to describe potentially. It definitely exists in a different space in my mind and in my garage in terms of like where I'm gonna go when I get on a gravel bike versus a mountain.
[00:34:43] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, for sure. I mean, uh, we're speaking of generalities here, but I'm sure as heck not going to ride my mountain bike 15, 20 miles on the road to get to some. Mixed conditions. You know, I'm not, I'm not gonna do that on my mountain bike. You can, but I, it's just not traditionally done. I would gladly do it on Revolt X, right?
You pump up the tires and, and go for a 15, 20 mile, 30 mile road ride to get to those interesting BC roads or light, single track, different experience altogether.
[00:35:14] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that's so true. Like you would consider that a failure of a mountain bike ride. If you had to ride for an hour, rode 30 minutes of dirt, and then rode an hour home on the road, that would not be a mountain bike ride. Whereas it's a perfectly fine gravel ride.
[00:35:27] Andrew Juskatis: it's exactly what we intended when we created Revolt X.
[00:35:31] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. I will, uh, Andrew, I'll put uh, links in the show notes so everybody can find images of these bikes and find where to buy them from their local, giant dealer.
And I very much appreciated you coming on the show and talking a little bit about your history and the history of Giant, because it's such a, A storied brand that many of us have been familiar with for obviously, you know, our entire cycling careers, that it's great to see it come full circle and for you guys to have such a, what I think is sort of a spot on spec for a modern gravel bike.
[00:36:03] Andrew Juskatis: Well, great. Thanks for having me, Craig. I mean, I, I think it's a really interesting story, not only with this particular product, but kind of where it came from, what we were thinking and, and how Giant was able to make it unique in the marketplace.
[00:36:14] Craig Dalton: Yeah, and I think it's also like, you know, the economics of the bike industry are important to consider and the, the sort of, uh, engineering and manufacturing might that a giant can put forth just kind of provides a lot of confidence, I think, for owners that, you know, the bike has been well engineered, well tested, and didn't come out before it was ready.
[00:36:33] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for noticing that and that that really was, you know, a massive argument within the company. If we're gonna do it, let's do it right, and let's commit to a frame that is suspension adjusted. So thanks for noticing that.
[00:36:46] Craig Dalton: Yeah, of course. It was a pleasure talking to Andrew.
[00:36:48] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, thanks Craig.
[00:36:51] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks to Andrew for joining the show and talking a little bit about Giant's history and a lot about that. Interesting revolt acts, gravel bike. That is now available. In the United States. I look forward to seeing more front suspension, running gravel riders out there in the world to join me.
I certainly enjoy it in my local terrain. If you're interested in connecting with me, please visit www.theridership.com. The ridership is a free global cycling community, where you can connect with athletes around the world to talk all things, gravel and gravel riding.
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This week we sit down with Bovine Classic founder, Bryan Yates to learn more about the 2023 event. Run out of the central California town of Atascadero, the event highlights this unique part of California with its combination of wineries, rolling hills and views of the Pacific Ocean.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the show. We welcome Brian Yates, the founder of the bovine classic gravel event in California. Brian. And I got connected last year, which was the inaugural year of the bovine classic. And I was super excited about his concept. Super excited about the location of the event. Down there in the mid section of California by Morro bay and San Luis Obispo, being that closest major city to the event in arrest the Darrow.
As you'll hear Brian has put together a course that highlights the rolling Hills, the larger climbs. The vineyards, the breweries, the single track. Everything you'd want to touch in that region. And packaged it all together for a great weekend for family and writers alike. As you'll hear the event has a couple of warm-up rides and shakedown rides in the days approaching it. And then four options of routes to explore the area, depending on how big of an appetite you have for gravel in that given weekend.
The event happens in October. And I encourage you to check it out and I encourage you to listen to the conversation. I'm going to apologize in advance for a few technical hiccups we had during recording.
I did my best to edit it down, but certainly didn't want to lose this conversation and wanted to make sure, obviously that everybody is familiar with the bovine classic. Before we jump in, I did need to thank this week. Sponsor hammerhead. And the hammer had Caru to computer.
The hammer had crew two is the most advanced GPS cycling computer available today with industry leading mapping navigation and routing capabilities that set it apart from other GPS options. As Brian describes the course later in this podcast. I couldn't help, but think about.
The climber with predictive path technology feature that hammer had rolled out last year. This is the type of feature that'll let you know. Are you facing, what are those 45 minute long climbs ahead of you? Or is it some of the punchy stuff that Brian will describe? I found that invaluable when going on routes that I hadn't been on before, because it just gave me, uh, the right mindset for approaching a longer climb or potentially trying to push a little bit. If I knew it was.
Are rolling climb. That's just one of the many features I enjoy on the hammerhead. Kuru to hammerhead software updates and new feature releases allow your crew to, to evolve and improve. Ensuring that the device you get today will be even better tomorrow. I've got my personal device connected to both Strava and ride with GPS.
I can import routes directly to the device. I can export routes. I can do everything that you'd want to do. I also just became aware since I'm borrowing an e-bike right now. That the crew too has a new e-bike integration that delivers detailed battery usage rights to your display. So I need to set that up. If I'm going to be hanging onto this e-bike for a little while.
Right now our listeners can get a free heart rate monitor with the purchase of a hammerhead kuru two. Visit hammerhead IO. Oh right now. And use the promo code, the gravel ride at checkout to get yours today. This is an exclusive offer. So don't forget to use the promo code, the gravel ride. You'll get a free heart rate monitor with your purchase of the Karoo to computer.
Just visit hammerhead. Dot IO today. Add both items to your card. Use that promo code and boom. The heart rate monitor price will disappear.
With that said let's jump right in to my conversation. Brian, welcome to the show.
[00:04:15] Bryan Yates: Craig. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
[00:04:17] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's good to finally get you on the podcast to record and see you face-to-face. I know we first connected about a year ago, and it was gonna be the first year of the Bovine Classic, and there was a lot of unknowns. You hadn't done it before, so great to finally have you.
[00:04:34] Bryan Yates: Yeah, it's great to actually earn my spot in the seat this time,
[00:04:38] Craig Dalton: I'm sometimes sheepish about bringing first year events on that haven't actually happened yet because it's so much of an unknown. Um, not that I had those fears for you because I know in talking to you and just seeing the materials around the bovine classic, you were putting a lot of energy and intention.
On making the event a success, but at least now we have 2022 behind us and we can talk about it in real terms and we can talk about what's changing and why people should be excited for 2023.
[00:05:09] Bryan Yates: Well, let's be clear, I'm still PT baring this thing, right? It's still a lot of smoke and mirrors and a lot of just my enthusiasm.
[00:05:16] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I mean, it seems like the first five years of any event, there's just a lot of learning that goes. Oh,
[00:05:21] Bryan Yates: for sure. Yeah, for sure. I mean, we learned a lot. So
[00:05:23] Craig Dalton: let's start off by setting the stage a little bit, Brian. Yeah, for sure. Let's set the stage where, where are you in California? Just to set the stage for the listener.
[00:05:33] Bryan Yates: All right. I am exactly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, so it is exactly the midpoint. We are about 17 miles inland from the coast, so. Cambria. Moro Bay is out on the coast, but those are our neighbor, neighbor towns. We're on the inland side where things look ranchy farming and Tuscan. And we're also, so our nearest big city is San Louis Obispo.
[00:06:08] Craig Dalton: Got it. So stepping back for a second, how did you get involved with the idea of creating events? How did you get into cycling? I know there's a lot to this question, but I think it's important as so much of event organizing and course design is sort of a love letter to where you've been riding. So how did you arrive at this point and how did you get into gravel cycling?
[00:06:30] Bryan Yates: Oh man, I love that question. That's like one of my favorite questions. So I, I was a really avid cyclist as a teenager. I was the kid who had, you know, spent all of his allowance on in the eighties, the $3,000 Italian bike. Right. And then, Uh, and then I, I, I left the sport behind for a lot of bad habits for a while, and came back.
Came back, you know, like a lot of us do. I kind of popped my head up in my late thirties. What have I been doing? What have, and I came back to cycling, came back to racing. Uh, Racing, uh, cause I'm not very good at it. Right? Completely, uh, completely just above average. So I came back to that and then I'd been coaching, I started really coaching cyclists for about 10, 12 years.
And had been deeply involved with a pediatric and pediatric cancer ride that I'd been the team director and Cocha for many years called PAB Bluff across America. And I'd been living in Los Angeles for, you know, a long time. And about four years ago, uh, my wife and I decided that. We were done with Los Angeles and that our careers were portable enough that we were looking for a place to move, and we ended up in this town called Atascadero, which is just below, uh, pastor Robles California.
For those of you who know that, you know, basically what we're known for here is. It's essentially like the frontier land of Disney. It's sort of a flyover town. We have the mental hos state mental hospital and uh, it's an emerging, it's an up and coming emerging town. But we moved here and we were. Really welcomed by the community super fast, and I took a gap year that first year.
Ended up riding my bike everywhere, riding all the time. In fact, we moved here and I dropped my bags and. I was taking a group of cyclists to New Zealand to go ride and I dropped my bags and said, I gotta go train cuz I'm gonna be riding like hundreds of miles per week for the next, you know, three weeks.
And my wife's like, great, get outta here. I don't want you actually putting anything away. She was like, go ride. Went to New Zealand, then came back, came back and was riding a bunch here. It was like, it's 2019 and it, we had a lot of rain that year as well and everything was super green and I end up all of these places.
You know, writing in a new place is a lot like learning a new language. I think it rewires your brain in a different way because you have to sort of get lost intentionally and find this new persona. Yeah. And find your way around. And I started discovering all these things like this is every bit as good and all of these things I was doing in New Zealand, this is stunning.
And I'd ridden through here a bunch, taking the Pablo crew, but I'd never gone deep. So let's fast forward a little bit. I'm a big Yuri household and I, I have been friends for a million years and I'm a big fan of his Bantam Classic race. It's this little underground race. Can I say that, Yuri? I hope so.
It's his, uh, I, it's a little less underground now, and I, I love it. It's up in Petaluma. It's not a gravel race, but it is, you know, as we talked about Sonoma Road. So come with fat tires. And I kind of thought I got down here, I was like, you know, maybe I'll do a, a fall answer to that, something really cheeky, and we'll call it the bovine Classic, and then I put it away.
And I had been working out of the Atascadero Chamber of Commerce, had my office there for a little bit and was checking out cuz my home office was built. And at the time I was going off to go work with a bunch of the executive athletes that I was coaching and the president of, uh, the Chamber of Commerce said, oh, what are you doing?
I said, this is what we're doing. Gonna go ride a bunch. He said, anywhere Interesting. I was like, yeah. Here, here, here, here. As a complete aside, this was a complete throwaway comment, like I didn't think twice about it. I said, and we have world class cycling here and nobody's talking about it. Nobody's telling that story.
And said, do you wanna do an event? I was like, absolutely not. So what we ended up doing is I've done a bunch of work. Yeah. I've done a bunch of work with Peloton Magazine in the past as a consulting brand manager and digital manager, and also have had written a bunch for Peloton. I thought, why don't we bring my crew down and we'll do a full on.
Like year long, tell the story of what's going on here and really market it as a, as a cycling destination, as kind of like a Lake Garda minus the lake for cycling. Well, here's the thing. Anyone who's gonna give you money for that wants an immediate return. And so what I quickly found was the only way anyone was gonna do anything is if we were putting heads in.
So the idea of Yeah, that makes sense. Taking Yeah, the idea of taking the slow approach wasn't gonna work. And so all my internal resistance was futile. So we, I, we pivoted and we, I hate that term. We, we, we changed directions and put together a really great story. Um, and a, you know, a long time ago I used to be a, a, a producer at Disney.
And so, you know, you can take the boy outta Disney, but you can't take the Disney out of the boy. And so it was all about the story and started creating this great story and started getting local buy-in. And once I got local buy-in, it was like, crap, we have to do this thing now. That's the long story for our, and now we have to do it.
[00:12:20] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I love that. You know, it's so interesting the different welcoming reception you get from a smaller community that can benefit from 400 more people coming into the community. And that can have a really significant impact on the livelihood of the hoteliers, the, you know, the, the restaurants, et cetera.
And everybody can get stoked. Versus in larger communities, there's a resistance to bringing anybody else in.
[00:12:48] Bryan Yates: I don't think we could have done this in San Lu Obispo, I don't think. We certainly couldn't have done anything like this in Los Angeles. It, it, it had to be somewhere small and it had to tell a story where people were going, oh, hey, that's interesting.
You know, it's so funny. That's why I, I presented in front of. The tourism board here in Atascadero and like the former mayors on the board, he's like, okay, I want you to come over a Friday and we're gonna have, we're gonna have drinks and dinner with the mayors of San, of, of Pastor Robles and Atascadero.
You're gonna tell, because I love your story. We're gonna, so you know, the next thing I know, I'm like sitting there having, having, having happy hour with the mayors, which is just so.
[00:13:32] Craig Dalton: I love that. It's probably a l I suppose, in the, in the, again, in these like rural markets, like you do get that kind of reception and the event organizers are kind of brought in in a collaborative fashion, which I imagine just sort of opens up a lot of doors for you, whether it's. You know, going through ranch private learn ranch land, and just getting the right introductions to allow access to some of these areas that may not push through in, you know, non race day.
[00:13:59] Bryan Yates: That's really a great, a great question and point, and it's absolutely true. You can get things done a lot more quickly, uh, in these smaller communities when they're receptive. Um, you know, atascadero in some ways. It is in the heart of the Pa Robles wine region, which is arguably one of the most beautiful regions in the world.
And by the way, I, I wanna come back to that just a moment on a, from a cycling standpoint, and yet most people don't know about Atascadero. So some of the work that we had to do was, is around the marketing of saying we, this is the wine region. It's not just the town of Paso Robles. And I think. There might have been a little resistance from, say, the Paso Hotel Ice, which have more money than a Tascadero a hotel ice.
Like, why are we doing this even though you're not gonna be here? So cuz we're selling the whole region and people are gonna stay with you, and we're. Pitching that, and the, the downstream effect is that people are gonna come to your resorts and stay with you when they're not here at the race. So, yeah.
And, but it, it's definitely, it takes a little bit of work. But, you know, we, at one of the meetings with the Paso people, the, the city's, um, deputy manager or economic development director has seen my pitch, seen my pitch a couple times. He piped in, he was like, yeah, let's give this thing money. And frankly, I'm absolutely ecstatic and delighted to know that our dirt roads are actually a luxury item that we can, that we can market.
So when you're telling a story to people that they're not used to hearing, that also goes a long way.
[00:15:42] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You talked a little bit earlier about how you fell in love with the area through all the riding and exploration you were doing. As you started to think about specifics for the bovine classic, based on the terrain you had available, kinda where did you net out? Like what was your philosophy going in?
A lot of races have mixed terrain. A lot of races now have single track in it. How did you net out in expressing like, what's the. The area has to offer.
[00:16:12] Bryan Yates: So the first thing that I want to come back to, and I'm gonna get into this cuz it's related, is that if you look at the Paso Robs wine region, that total mass is about two thirds the size of the land.
Mass. Mass. If you've put Sonoma and Napa together. But, so we're about two-thirds of that size, so we're huge, but we have one-tenth of the population. So the easy story there is that what happens is that you, I can go out on a five hour bike ride and see 15 cars. So from a cycling standpoint, it's like, this is what happens if, uh, you know, Disneyland creates bicycle land.
Right. And the other thing that, that we really had while moved here is that a couple of bonds came, came due, and there's been a ton of investment just in the actual. Roads themselves. So the tarmac is, the roads themselves are, are a joy to ride on. So the way it went netted out is that we have some public roads that include, uh, that include these dirt roads that are all just marvelous and they cut through different climates within the Paso region.
So, you know, east Paso is very different than what happens to West on on the West Paso. And there are a lot of little surprises that happened on these public roads, just like visual surprises. And uh, we wanted to showcase those. And, you know, there are other rides that have gone through here and done this.
And we haven't done anything incredibly unique with the course. We just let the course be for this year, for last year, and this year as it is. I mean, one thing we did want to add is that because we were coming back into a task at Arrow, pardon? What we wanted to do is that we have, uh, lawn Branch Saloon was one of our, is one of our sponsors, and they're out in, uh, the town of Creston, which is about 15 miles east of Paso.
And we do a pre ride out of there on Fridays called The Fried Pickle Ride cuz it's known for their fried pickles. Uh, but it also has this amazing single track and probably one of the most beautiful that ends up on one of the most beautiful dirt farm roads I know. In the county. I was like, well, we gotta, we have to find a way to put that in.
And it was really, we wanted, there's no way you could do a hundred miles of straight gravel here. Right? I just don't know that that exists in most of California. But what we could do was, Was a course that I sometimes like to call the Estrada Bryon, and it was this combination of dirt to asphalt, to dirt, to asphalt.
And you know, when people come, when riders come off onto the asphalt, they're greeted with beautiful asphalt, with twisty, windy roads. So everything was gonna be. Part of the experience. And then we wanted to hit some wineries along the way. Like we have, we had one winery that opened up doors and they said, yeah, cut through, we'll let you cut through our vineyards to skip this thing.
And I mean, I think it freaked some people out a little bit cuz it had a really hairy descent. But for the ones who were at the front, I was like, yeah, this is great. I love it. Others were, you know, sliding about. That's one of the things that we're also working on is, you know, this is getting that trust that you alluded to, um, down the road.
Like one of our mission pillars is to. Make friends with the, uh, ranching community so that we can change our course up and so that we can do different things to get access to areas that others don't have access to. And so, you know, right now we start with getting small, segmented at. Access to, to vineyards cuz there's all these awesome roads that go through vineyards, dirt roads.
So we get access to that and then hopefully just keep earning trust and keep expanding and earning trust and expanding. And, you know, down the road maybe we will get lucky and be able to turn this into something like Rebecca's the, you know, Rebecca's, uh, stage race. And so we have multiple days of official rides.
That would be, that would be the dream. Amazing.
[00:20:31] Craig Dalton: So where did you net out on sort of the available course distances and course options for riders
[00:20:39] Bryan Yates: for this year or last year?
[00:20:40] Craig Dalton: Uh, if you want to contextualize it with last year, but let's, yeah. We can talk about this year as well.
[00:20:45] Bryan Yates: Yeah. We had, uh, three courses last year.
We had the big bovine, which was about 97 miles and 9,000 feet of climbing. So, you know, I call us America's fourth hardest Cal themed gravel ride in a California wine country in America. Partially cuz we're cheeky. But I think the other part is that it's no joke. I mean, you know, 9,000 feet and 97 miles is no joke of riding.
And we're very serious about that. We want it to be a challenge. So we had the big bovine and then we had, uh, the happy bovine, which was. 65 miles and 6,000 feet of climbing. We had the baby bovine, which was 42 miles and 2,800 feet of climbing This year. This year we have the big bovine again. I keep wanting to add this river section that's as a last segment That is right.
That skirts a tascadero. But we pulled it out last year cuz it seemed kind of unduly cruel at the end of the ride. And we thought, okay, we're gonna put it in this year. And now that whole section has been decimated by all of the rain. So I'm still not sure that we could, like we said, we'll put it in, but I don't know that it's gonna be worth it to go in.
But assuming we can, the big bow vine goes up to 101 miles. And just over 9,000 feet of climbing. Then there's the feisty bovine, which is about 76 miles, and we've added a fourth course, which is the new new happy bovine course, which. Gis, a couple of climb, but it's still like 70 miles and that goes out on some single track.
So that cuts off a different part of the course. And then we have the happy bovine, which is pretty much the same as last year.
[00:22:46] Craig Dalton: On the, longest course, how is that climbing accumulated? Are we, we talking about, you know, a thousand foot long climbs or 25 different a hundred foot climb?
[00:22:57] Bryan Yates: That's a, it's, it's just a proper mix. You know, the funny thing is, okay, when I moved up here from Los Angeles, I used to be a pretty binary rider, cuz that's how the climbing was.
You go up and you come down and you go, and here it is way more Belgian, right? There's so many rollers. Just so, so many rollers. And, uh, you know, those rollers can. Pitch up at 17%. It's no joke. Right? So you accumulate a lot of a rolling and this is a, this is a great question that I should go back and look at the specific percentages, but then we have several long climbs.
There's Kyler Canyon is a five mile ish climb, and so you probably gain 900 feet. Cyprus is. A good 45 minute climb. And so that's probably another, another 900, 900 feet or more. And then Santa Rita Road will probably get, what is that, 1300 feet of climbing and then, And then the single track out on Rocky Canyon is about a mile or so.
So you don't get that much climbing, but you get some tech. It's technical, so, and it comes at mile 72, so it hits you when you're hot and fatigued at that point. For sure. But again, that's all, all that stuff is punctuated with a lot of that, a lot of the rollers.
[00:24:20] Craig Dalton: How long do you think it takes? The bulk of people to finish that. Is this like a, a 10 hour day at that point?
[00:24:27] Bryan Yates: You know, I think our final rider actually, we took off at 8:00 AM last year. And I think our fi, our lantern moge came in at four o'clock. But I mean, he just got sidetracked by something.
Um, it wasn't really anything. So I think he came in at four or four 30, was our final rider last year. So yeah, it's a long day, but I don't think it was a 10 hour day. I mean, I've definitely, um, you know, I was kind of slow last year and actually I was really slow last year and I sat out and did it myself one day to just as a little empathy check for our riders.
And I think it took me seven and a half, eight hours to do it.
[00:25:05] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I was gonna ask about aid stations and what your philosophy was there.
[00:25:10] Bryan Yates: Great. I love that. So our f. Philosophy. You know, we did well in some parts of our aid stations last year, and we did less well in others. The overall philosophy is that I want them to be expressions of what's cool about the area.
And we have a lot of businesses doing a lot of boutique stuff. I mean, it's a wine region, right? So people are inherently doing creative storytelling through wine and distilleries and products. So our first aid station is a beautiful winery and they were excited to have us, and it came at about mile 20, and it was kind of a bummer that a lot of people skipped it.
Uh, their thing was they were serving hand ups of homegrown home cured homemade prosciutto. So, uh, like stuff that they had grown from, grown and made from their farm was like, here you go. And they were serving it with these apples that the, that the pigs had been fed on. They're like, oh no, you have to taste it with the apples.
So, uh, so we want it to be those kinds of things. And then STR did an amazing aid station out. Top of one of these mountains where people get up, they're exhausted, they're pissed off at me, and slams up there throwing a party, and then people go, wait, that's the Pacific Ocean. Holy cow. They, we have these great bakeries.
And so what Ram did last year was basically created a bake shop. They went and bought all of these amazing pa uh, pastries and people get up there or just chow out on locally made pastries. And then our third aid station needed needs some tlc. We need to put some paninis and things like that in. Then I want people to be, you know, I sort of want people to, to go back to the finish line, you know, heavier than when they left.
And if that means they also get a case of like type two diabetes from good food, then that's, I'm okay with that too. Um, and then our fourth aid stop was out at Long Branch Saloon and. It's so funny. They're like, what should we do? I was like, fried pickles. Give 'em fried pickles, give 'em fried pickles.
And so they were serving up fried pickles and that was, you know, people were stopping and, uh, I'm not supposed to tout this for liability, but people were stopping and ordering b ordering burgers and beer at mile 80, hanging out at the a, at hating it out at Long Branch and then, you know, poodle their way back the last 20 miles.
So it's all about showcasing what's cool and what's the character of the place and what makes it special. And I think there was also someone who hopped in. Did an unofficial aid station where, uh, you know, they were serving beverages that they shouldn't have been serving, but they did it in the middle of nowhere.
They, we love, we loved that they were there, but at the same time it was like, Ugh, I don't wanna own that liability.
[00:28:04] Craig Dalton: may have to check in with that Lantern Rouge winner and see if they ordered a burger at the brewery and, and stopped for libations at mile 80.
, given the, the course you've laid out, what type of equipment are you recommending riders arrive with in terms of like tires, for example?
[00:28:23] Bryan Yates: So I think it's gonna be a little early to tell, because I don't know what the turf is going to be. I will tell you what my standard tire is and then y'all can make decisions what however you want based on this.
But we will get a little, we'll get more to it as we get closer. So generally, I will run, um, The Pathfinder 40 twos because I'm old and lazy and like a plush or the Pelli Cido ages because there's a lot of, there's a lot of, of terrain of asphalt and. And I don't want you to be bummed out by the asphalt.
It's actually super exciting. People get so stoked on those descends because it turns into like roller coasters. So the centra h uh, I mean, during the winter I've been running the rmba, the specialized rambus up front and a pathfinder in back. But it's gonna depend on what kind of trail work gets done on Rocky Canyon, which is our single.
It's going to depend on what happens to some of the dirt roads that we go on because we've had some, some of the dirt roads that y'all road last year have basically fallen into the ravine cuz they've just been so saturated. So the county's been really great about getting in there and fixing stuff. But let's wait until we get a little bit closer.
But right now, you know, the, the Pathfinder's a pretty solid choice. It rolls beautifully. It holds the road beautifully, and you know, it actually for like a 42 seat tire has a relatively low rolling resistance, which makes it fast and fun.
[00:30:03] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think that's so much fun when, I mean, you wanna hate your bike or your tires at least once during an an event to sort of push you and force a decision one way or the other. Where do you want comfort? Do you want speed? At some point there's gonna be a trade off.
[00:30:17] Bryan Yates: It's gonna be true if I talk to, uh, I mean a lot.
The guy who ends up in a lot of our Instagram photos, this is my usual ride buddy. And, you know, he's leaps and bounds stronger than I am and he is talking about riding 32 c Pathfinders for next year is like, you be you, dude. That's, if that's what you wanna do, go for it. It's definitely rideable. You know, I would ask someone after we have Yuri and Allison out, I'd get their feedback and see what they want.
But I think that, you know, I think that on the long course we're not gonna see a lot of improvement on the Rocky Canyon single track, which has turned into a proper mountain biking climb. So that's that, uh, for me says stick with, stick with a wider pathfinder and just go cuz of where it lands in the course.
[00:31:07] Craig Dalton: Yep. Got it. There's a couple other things I wanted to point out about the event. As we were talking about offline, you know, there's many rides and events that people roll into that day, do it and go home. It really seems like the way you're orienting this event, With activities several days before. You expect and have experienced that people are staying in the region for a few days.
Can you talk about the sort of notion of planning a long weekend down there and what the riders might experience?
[00:31:36] Bryan Yates: Oh God, I, I can talk about this all day on all night. I didn't know that when I grew up, I was gonna end up being a tourism guy by accident. Yeah, I think so. I, I think, let's, there are some challenges here for the Sprinter set.
All right. Slow County is relatively strict about what it can, what it deems as public outdoor camping. Uh, in fact, they, it, the county has technically made it illegal to even RV camp on someone's property. It's un unpleasable, basically. So I would just say, you know, if you're coming down with a sprinter, call me and let's put, let's hook you up with some, some place where you can park that.
But like as far as events go, come down with your family. Like there's so much. To do. It doesn't just have to be about wine. I mean, it's a beautiful place to tour. Uh, there is south of here a really fun zip line tour, for example, that is over, that goes over a vineyard. And so that's really fun to take kids to.
You can go out to the coast and, I mean, it's a 30 minute drive to the coast and hang out at the beach, go to Cambria or Bay. So there's all of that. I know. We have one of your, you're in Marin and we know, I know one of your, your Marin crew is coming down. We've got about a crew of 15 of yours who will be coming down and kind of staying together.
And one of the things that we've done is, Set them up with a private in-house wine tasting from a, a well-known winemaker who doesn't happen to have a tasting room, but really wants to show up. So, you know, you know, there's sorts of things that we can do. Like you can get introductions to say, wine winemakers who are doing interesting things where you may not actually figure, find out where they are.
Um, and there's, you know, there's great restaurants. Like one of the things we did last year that was a little, that was different than other rides is we don't do t-shirts. Mostly cuz we find like 40% of the people want t-shirts and 60% saying no, I'm just gonna clean the chain with it anyways. So in our rider bags last year we really tried to keep it with local products and there's a company that makes beautiful, fresh and dried pastas and so our rider bags were had.
Pasta had local, locally made granola bars from a bakery. And so we try to keep it with local goods and kind of give people a bag that's like, here's a taste of pasta, or there was locally made jams. So we, that's sort of the approach is really all about showcasing the cool stuff that's being made here.
[00:34:14] Craig Dalton: And what about riding before the event? Do you have pre rides organized? What does that look?
[00:34:20] Bryan Yates: I should have picked up on that question before you. Thanks for teeing me up. So, Thursday night we will have, uh, Thursday evening we'll have a little ride out of Pastor Robles and that, you know, last year we were totally, we were surprised as heck by our, our pre rides last year.
Um, on Thursday we did one. We'll do one out Paso. You know, we had 20 people show up for that, which was fantastic. And uh, canyon was there. And I Canyon, if you're listening, I certainly hope that you'll be there again. Uh, canyon was there. They, they hosted that ride and we did, you know, 20 miles that Thursday evening, Friday we met out at Long Branch Saloon, where the fried pickles are and.
We did a pre ride out of there and it was so funny, like none of us expected what we got. Like we were there, we figured, oh, we'll have 25, 30 people. Uh, we had 70 people show up for that pre ride. It was so it was, you know, people were full on, ready to come out and play, and then everyone stuck around and had had lunch and beers at the saloon afterwards.
We did another pre ride that day. Um, vole the local kit maker. Which is made and manufactured down in, um, in Pismo Beach. So about 30 minutes from here. They hosted a pre ride out of Atascadero in the afternoon for late comers. I don't think we're going to do a third one this year. It's just a lot to juggle.
I think we'll focus on the two Thursday and Friday, and then we have the packet pickup party on Friday evening, and we had 80% of our people picking up the packets the night before, which I think was a reversal. What bike monkey usually experiences, and I do wanna say this is a bike monkey production, like this couldn't happen without them.
And we're really incredibly grateful to be part of their, their network of rides. So that's a, it's a special thing to do a bike monkey event. Yeah,
[00:36:18] Craig Dalton: absolutely. And for those, listen. Listening if you did not hear my interview with Carlos a few episodes back with respect to Truckee Gravel, we do talk about Bike Monkey as a production entity and some of the other great events that Carlos has been working with the last decade.
So certainly a top class organization to have behind you and provides a lot of confidence. I also wanted to make a personal note about the region you're talking about. I've had the pleasure of riding down there a little bit, and I remember when you announced the event last. I was so enthusiastic about it because I totally agree that it's this gem that's within good driving distance of both LA and San Francisco, where you can get down there and have a completely different experience than you're having to the north or to the south of
[00:37:06] Bryan Yates: that area.
It is such a unique experience for sure. I, I, I still, after four years, I still get up and I will end up at certain sections of this, of the, the region is go, I, I, I can't believe, I can't believe I have this, this is phenomenal.
[00:37:23] Craig Dalton: What's, the cycle camp? What's the story behind that?
[00:37:26] Bryan Yates: Yeah, so, uh, this'll be our third. We have a camp coming up in at the end of April, and this is the third annual one that we've done. It usually brings about seven to 10 riders and people just get here and, you know, for a lot of them it's their opportunity to.
This year we have a lot of new riders, but in general it's like for people to come together and just enjoy some different, the course sliced up in different ways over four days. So, you know, we have it coming back up again in a couple, in a couple of weeks, and everyone's, you know, The, uh, the ribbing has already started and people are already talking about their favorite segments that they're looking forward to.
And so, um, you know, and they get, they, they all come back and like, this is great. I love coming here. This is, is amazing. And I forget that it's, you know, three hours from LA and three hours from the Bay Area.
[00:38:15] Craig Dalton: Love it. A couple other things I wanted to mention and a final question for you. I, I did note in your materials that you have discounts for groups, which is amazing. So if you're listening and you want to go down there, whether you're three people, five people, or eight people, they provide discounts, which as we all know, these events are more fun when you go down with your crew.
And then the final thing I wanted to just ask you about and give an opportunity for you to talk about is you've always had a charity component for the event as well. So could you talk about that charity and why it means
[00:38:44] Bryan Yates: something to you? Yeah, this is really, this is really special to me. You know, just because our theme has been all about the local, we found a local charity that's doing really important national work.
It's called Operations Surf. There is a, uh, movie on them on Netflix, and then there's been a, a, a piece that's done on them on E S P N, and it is an organization that creates surf camps and surfing and ocean education for injured returning veterans. As, uh, as, as a gateway to, to a pathway to recovery. And working through P T S D and really, you know, helping save people's lives.
And I got a chance to do that. I go to one of those camps last year as a volunteer and it's absolutely touching and powerful. So what we have done is we have created, it costs $5,000 to send a vet to one of those week long camps. And so last year we created the mor Mariah Will Wilson ride, like Moe.
Operations surf scholarship to raise $5,000 to send one female veteran to a camp. And thankfully, you know, we hit that $5,000 last year and that felt really great. And if. We got to send two female veterans to a camp this year. That would be so, such an impressive legacy for, for mo. And you know, we thought that surfing, surfing communities and gravel communities, there was a lot of interesting overlap in the two of those, and we felt like, They're both strong about the community.
They're both strong about sense of place. They're both strong and so many about being connected through outdoors in a way that a lot of other sports aren't. So that's So Operations surf, check 'em out. It's operations surf.org. We're really, really fortunate to have them as charity partners.
[00:40:43] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that's awesome. So good that you were able to kind of cross that threshold of getting at least one person to attend, another veteran to attend that camp. And hopefully we can get to this year, I'll make sure to put links to the event, which is the last weekend of October this year so people know how to register.
And I'll also share a link to that operations surf so everybody knows how to get in touch with that and familiarize themselves with the importance of that charitable organiz.
[00:41:10] Bryan Yates: I appreciate it. I know they will too. It's absolutely lovely. .
[00:41:13] Craig Dalton: Brian, thanks so much for all the time. Thanks for the efforts in putting together an event in this region.
I'd love to see it and I look forward to seeing it firsthand this year.
[00:41:24] Bryan Yates: Thanks so much for having to me on. We love talking about the event. We love talking about it with passionate people and I love what you're doing with the podcast, Craig, so thanks so much.
[00:41:37] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks to Brian from the bovine classic for joining us. Make sure to check out the bovine classic. You can just search for it, or you can find the URL in my show notes.
Continued. Thanks and appreciation goes out to our friends at hammerhead and the hammerhead kuru to computer. We very much appreciate your support of the show. And if you're interested in that free heart rate monitor, just visit hammerhead.io, but a heart rate monitor in your cart with a crew to computer.
Use the code, the gravel ride, and that heart rate monitor is all yours. If you're interested in connecting with me, please visit the ridership that's www.theridership.com. That's a free global cycling community where you can connect with other gravel and adventure athletes from all around the world.
If you have a moment, ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. And until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
This week the microphone is turned the opposite direction with Dave Mable, host of Bike Talk with Dave, interviewing your host Craig Dalton. Dave had mentioned the many references I’ve made to my career and felt the audience should get to know me better. This is a re-broadcast of the original conversation from the Bike Talk podcast feed.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the podcast, I'm actually going to be the guest. So a little while back I was the guest on bike. Talk with Dave. With host Dave Mabel. Dave reached out to me and said, he's been a long time listener of the podcast. He and I connected earlier via one of his film projects. And he mentioned that he felt like I left a bunch of Easter eggs in each episodes.
Easter eggs about my history or a little mentions of things that I've done in my life. And he was curious to unpeel the onion and get to know me a little bit better. And it dawned on me that so much of my time on this podcast is spent interviewing others that I rarely share that much about my history, how I found a love for the sport of cycling, how I became a podcaster.
And what I do for my day job.
So with Dave's permission, I'm going to republish the conversation I had on bike. Talk with Dave. That was originally found on his feed, just so you can get to know me a little bit. So I hope you enjoy the conversation again for the frequent listener. You'll get to know me a little bit. If this is your first time listening to the gravel ride podcast.
Maybe this isn't the episode to start with, unless you want to get to know a little bit more about me in the meantime, I did want to thank the dynamic cyclist. I mentioned them in the last episode as a long-time sponsor of the show. At this point, dynamic cyclist offers a stretching and strengthening programs specific to cyclists.
It's a video series. Each video is about 15 to 20 minutes long. It's designed to be easy to fit into your life. Something you can do. In addition to all the cycling training you're doing. But it's critically important, especially as you become older, that you really do strengthen and stretch those parts of the body that get overworked. You can imagine as a cyclist, we all sit in this kind of awkward, unique position, and it's important to kind of work other muscles as I'm learning more and more as I'm getting older.
So I encourage you to check out dynamic cyclists, just go to dynamic cyclists.com. They've got a free one week trial. So you really know what you're getting into and very inexpensive, either monthly or annual memberships, if you're a gravel ride podcast listener, which obviously you are, because you're hearing my voice.
Simply enter the code, the gravel ride, and you'll get 15% off. Either one of those programs. So I highly recommend making it part of your routine. And with that free trial, that's a no reason not to try it out. So with that, I'm going to hand over the microphone to Dave Mabel, who is going to interview me.
[00:03:10] Dave Mable: Craig Dalton, I am so thrilled to have you on Bike Talk with Dave. You are the OG of Gravel Podcasts and just talking to you before this thing, I'm just having these flashbacks cuz I do listen to your podcast very, very regularly and even go back to before I started listening to podcasts to hear your old episodes.
But it's a treat to have you on and hear your voice in my. Uh, yet another time today. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks for
[00:03:40] Craig Dalton: Thanks. Yeah, thanks Dave. I'm, I'm appreciative of you having me and looking forward to the conversation.
[00:03:46] Dave Mable: I wanted to have you on because, well, a, you've got a cool podcast and you've done some cool things, but you throw out these little teaser about your past history or past life, and you've just peaked my curiosity to be perfectly honest, and I'm like, I just gotta ask this dude. Who he is and how he came to be.
So first of all, um, where you call it, where, where are you right now?
[00:04:13] Craig Dalton: So I am in Northern California in the town of Mill Valley, so we're right at the base of Mount Tam, which is purportedly the birthplace of mountain biking.
[00:04:22] Dave Mable: bike. No doubt. Do you have an old mountain bike?
[00:04:25] Craig Dalton: I do, I've, I've, despite the Gravel Ride Pods podcast being my main public persona in cycling, I am an avid mountain biker and have been for, for a very long.
[00:04:36] Dave Mable: So I asked you if you had an old mountain bike. How old? What's your oldest mountain bike?
[00:04:42] Craig Dalton: My oldest mountain bike is probably 12 years old,
[00:04:46] Dave Mable: oh, all right. It's getting
[00:04:47] Craig Dalton: so not, yeah, not, not exceptionally old. And I probably, if I had enough room, I probably would've had a few more laying around. I do have one access to.
[00:04:56] Dave Mable: to one
[00:04:58] Craig Dalton: 25 year old Dean titanium mountain bike that is with my father right now. And the long term vision is that'll come back into my life and hopefully that'll be a bike my, my now eight year old son can grow into at some point.
[00:05:13] Dave Mable: a, oh, that's that. That's pretty cool. You better hang onto to that. That's, that's very cool.
[00:05:18] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's got a, you know, in addition to being like a neat titanium bicycle from that, that era, I actually, and we can get into this later, I worked at Dean Titanium. That was my first sort of professional job out of college.
[00:05:32] Dave Mable: Oh, cool. Oh, I, I do wanna get into that cuz that's one of the things you throw out are little, uh, tidbits about you working in the cycling industry, um, and, uh, and being a lifetime cyclist. , I, I feel like cycling often leads us to cycling industry jobs. So am I guessing right that cycling came first in your life?
[00:05:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah it did. And I'll, I'll take you on the way back machine for a minute here, Dave. So my father, my both my mother and father are from England, and my dad was an avid bicycle racer before he came to the us. And a little bit when he set foot on US soil, always a road racer. By the time I was around, he had transitioned into marathon running because having kids wasn't allowing him enough time to ride.
But the bike has always been sort of around my life, but I, I certainly didn't pick it up with great interest. I did a little bit of BMX racing, which my father thought was.
[00:06:35] Dave Mable: was completely
[00:06:36] Craig Dalton: Crazy and uninteresting. He thought that was a, a discipline of cycling. He didn't understand. And thankfully my neighbors raced BMX and they would take me because my parents really had little interest in fostering my BMX career.
[00:06:50] Dave Mable: Did your dad ever use the word silly? I'm just picturing an English guy. What are you doing with that silly sport?
[00:06:58] Craig Dalton: E exactly. I mean, I think his progression to his progression from cycling as he would describe it, First he had a truck bike, so I had to translate that to being like, you know, beach cruiser kind of city bike style and then fell in love in, you know, in, in the UK they have a lot of cycling clubs that are fostering interest for the kids.
So, you know, by the time they're 10 or 12, if they're showing interest. They're getting offered bicycles to use on the weekends and really kind of fostering them and developing them. In fact, my father is one of five boys, and I think four out of the five boys all raced as kind of teenagers into their early twenties.
And it's a, it's been a, a unifying thread for the entire family, just the sport of cycling. In fact, my cousin from Australia, originally from the UK is staying with me right now, and he and I reconnected as an adult via Facebook as a platform and our love of cycling. And we ended up going and riding in Belgium together.
But I completely digress my progression, again, BMX kind of then just used the bike for getting to and from school. My freshman year of high school, my dad took us on a, a bike tour. It was three of us, freshman in high school and him, uh, up through upstate New York and Vermont. We were living in New Jersey at the time, but it was still not a, something I was craving to do, riding a bike.
It was just something. It was a great activity and a lot of fun. It wasn't until my freshman year of college and after my freshman year of college, my dad had bought a mountain bike, and this is to just to date me. That would be sort of around 19 86, 19 85 timeframe. So pretty early on he bought a Cannondale Mountain bike, and while I was home for the summer, I fell in love with it and I decided I really wanted to get a mountain bike.
I was in school in Washington, DC. Um, got a job in a bike shop to bring that cost of entry down and ended up buying a Trek 7,000 aluminum hard tail and started cutting my teeth. Uh, mountain biking in Washington, DC for the uninitiated. Washington DC believe it or not, has a lot of dirt trails. You have to figure out how they're all interconnected and it, you know, it's certainly not like being in, you know, Iowa or Colorado, where there's a lot of open space to kind of pursue these.
But it was there and it was a quite a fun community. So started racing mountain bikes, kind of my junior and senior year and falling in love with it. It coincided with me falling out of love with being a university student. And fortunately, maybe, I dunno, fortunately or unfortunately, I said to myself, if I can get a degree in business, I can apply that to anything.
And in order to finish this degree, my intention is gonna be to go work in the bike.
[00:09:48] Dave Mable: the bike. Oh, cool. Wow. That's pretty intentional.
Did you end up getting the degree?
[00:09:55] Craig Dalton: I did, yeah, I finished my degree and I was managing a bike shop in Washington, DC and I said to my son, you know, I was also bike racing mountain bikes at that time and being fairly competitive at the expert level in the mid-Atlantic region. And I decided, well, if I, if I'm just managing a bike shop, I can do that anywhere.
Why don't I move to Colorado? And at the same time, I was applying to bike companies. Via, gosh, snail mail probably at that
[00:10:21] Dave Mable: Right, right. Licking a stamp.
[00:10:23] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And, uh, I remember, I, I had got some interest from Dean Titanium and Yeti. They both had potential positions available and I said, that's enough. And I packed up all my stuff, moved to Colorado, went down to interview at Yeti.
That didn't work out. Moved to Boulder, got a job in a bike shop, connected with the team at Dean and they, they brought me in for an interview about a month after I. And that led to me becoming National Sales Manager of Dean Titanium.
[00:10:54] Dave Mable: Wow. Cool.
[00:10:56] Craig Dalton: That title would imply some lofty position and experience, but at that time it was, uh, that meant I answered the phone and tried to convince bike shops and customers to buy bikes.
[00:11:09] Dave Mable: Fair enough. Fair enough. So what bike shop in Boulder in what year?
[00:11:14] Craig Dalton: I worked for psychologic.
[00:11:16] Dave Mable: Okay.
[00:11:17] Craig Dalton: And that would've been, uh, 1993.
[00:11:22] Dave Mable: huh? Okay,
[00:11:22] Craig Dalton: And for, yeah, it was a pretty brief stint actually at the, at the shop before I ended up moving over to Dean.
[00:11:27] Dave Mable: actually. Yeah. I had a little history with bike shops in Boulder. A friend of mine was part of the, uh, Morgo Bismarck crew and uh, and then ended up that closed and there was another cycle works, or I don't know.
Anyway.
[00:11:46] Craig Dalton: so many great bike shops there in Boulder.
[00:11:48] Dave Mable: So many great bike shops there in Boulder and so much great riding there in Boulder. I spent a summer in Boulder and, oh, I mean, we still love to go back with our road bikes, believe it or not, and uh, and do some of those road roads either up into the mountains or out into the planes. Like some of those rides out towards Nawat and Longmont and, I don't know, just go east.
Were awesome.
[00:12:14] Craig Dalton: yeah, yeah, for sure.
[00:12:16] Dave Mable: So how long were you at Dean?
[00:12:18] Craig Dalton: I was at Dean for about a year and a half, and then I, I took a break and was focusing a little bit more on, on racing, which I was still doing. Turns out working for a small bike company doesn't actually give you a lot of time to ride and train on your bike, so I took a break and, you know, got some menial job and, and raced.
And then I got an opportunity to move out to California to race for a team that was sponsored by Voodoo Bicycles. And Will Smith and I had a, had made a friend who was out in Palo Alto and got me a place to live out here, so I moved out to race for that team and I was able to get a job with a bicycle computer and accessory manufacturing company called aat.
[00:13:01] Dave Mable: Aset. Awesome. I, I should have gotten 'em, but I've, I probably have three old AEC computers in my garage in some old box somewhere.
[00:13:12] Craig Dalton: I would love to see them.
[00:13:14] Dave Mable: Uh, Avice. I'm thinking of the wrong thing. Who made the Fat Boy? Was that Avice? Did they make
[00:13:22] Craig Dalton: that wasn't. They did, yeah. They did have a very popular slick tire. Their computers were, um, had numbers associated with 'em. So Theat 20,
[00:13:33] Dave Mable: Yeah.
[00:13:34] Craig Dalton: 30, and the AAT 45. And then one of the big innovations that happened while I was there was the aviset vertex. And the vertex was the first. Watch, digital watch that could track elevation, gain and loss.
[00:13:49] Dave Mable: I remember that.
[00:13:51] Craig Dalton: And it was really, I mean, the older listeners will understand this moment. At that time when you were talking to your buddies about a mountain bike ride and the only piece of data you had was mileage. It was really difficult to compare one ride to another, right? So you could say, I rode 10 miles, but if you did 10 miles and 5,000 feet of climbing, that's a lot different experience than 10 miles and a thousand feet of climbing.
So the, the v the vertex became this, this great unlock that we all take for granted today. Like when you go to a course profile for an event, they're always talking about mileage and, and elevation gain that you're gonna experience. But prior to that point, that just wasn't available as a data set. The average consumer.
[00:14:33] Dave Mable: Yeah, it was a big deal, wasn't it? Uh, barometric, fresher based.
[00:14:37] Craig Dalton: That's exactly it. Yep,
[00:14:39] Dave Mable: Yeah, that's pretty interesting and pretty kind of vague. I mean, it's certainly not an exact science,
[00:14:47] Craig Dalton: yep. Yeah. And it drifted, right? The barometric pressure would drift and there have to reset your elevation to a known elevation in order to get it to.
[00:14:56] Dave Mable: yep. I, I remember those days. I never had one, but I do remember that I did have the ACET 20, ACET 30, whatever they got up to.
[00:15:05] Craig Dalton: I think there was definitely a 40 and, and I can't remember if there was a 45, there was one that actually had that Vertex technology into it. Um, that might have been theat 50.
[00:15:16] Dave Mable: yeah.
[00:15:17] Craig Dalton: But my experience there was gr, my experience there was great. I, I ended up, um, uh, going to work on the national mountain bike circuit.
So I would go to all the events and kind of represent AED and have an opportunity to do a little riding myself. I was able to go over to the tour of France once and represent aed. At that time. I mean, the, the thing that, that always, I always come back to with Aset, they used to have these bi, these ads in the bicycle magazines where they would show the front of the, the professional peloton, and every one of those riders had an aviset computer on their bike.
And my favorite tagline was, what 90% of the workforce brings to work?
[00:15:57] Dave Mable: That's awesome. I can picture that ad.
[00:15:59] Craig Dalton: yeah. I was so sold. So I was one of those guys who went over and made sure everybody was dialed when, when onsite changed from their traditional yellow to their Tor De France pink. We gave them all custom pink computers.
[00:16:13] Dave Mable: Nice. Nice. That's awesome. What a fun experience. What a great, great, uh, if you're a cycling enthusiast, what a great gig.
[00:16:24] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think, I mean, the bike industry as an as as you know, like, it, it, it has its ups and downs. I do think, you know, as a young person in their twenties, it's a phenomenal place to work. It's just you have to start questioning your career path later in life. Like, where am I? Where am I gonna get to?
Obviously the bike industry is fairly small. There's some exceptions, but you know, a lot of these businesses, unless you're the owner, it's kind of hard to really move up the food.
[00:16:51] Dave Mable: Yep. And, uh, time is, uh, like if you want to have a family, it's, it's hard to be. At the tour of France for a month every year. And then the tour of Spain, and then the tour of California, and then the et cetera.
Et And then you go to Interbike and then you go to the Outdoor Retailer show and you, you, you can be home, gone from home a lot, lot, lot. So it is a lifestyle for sure, but, uh,
[00:17:18] Craig Dalton: to that, To that exact end, I, I ended up accepting a position with one of a's competitors, Veta and I moved over to Switzerland to be European. I forget, I was European sales and marketing manager. And effectively they, they, they had a person in the position who was um, usurping too much power. As according to the US bosses, and they wanted someone young who they could control, who was willing to live in Europe, travel around country to country and represent the company.
And I was like, that's me. I raised my hand. I'll go. I had a great, I mean I had a great time. The, the company was, was in the course of my brief tenure over there, which was only about six months. The company was bought by a private equity firm and I had some issues getting paid, but I don't. I don't, uh, you know, I had a great experience for six months over in Europe living on someone else's dime.
Again, just talking about bikes with people. But I will say after that experience, I was like, I need to take a professional break from the biking industry and go find something else to do. I'll still love riding my bike. In fact, I may even like it more if I don't have to talk about it, you know, 50 hours.
[00:18:35] Dave Mable: There's true truth to that statement for sure. Uh, so what'd you end up doing? I mean, that's still a while ago.
[00:18:42] Craig Dalton: yeah. Yeah, so I mean, I guess the sort of abbreviated version is, um, moved back to California, ended up going to business school and St studying technology management. Did a series of work for a series of small companies in the mobile. And then, um, in 2010, I founded a company that made iPad and iPhone accessories, a company called Dodo Case.
And, and it ended up taking off, I won't belabor this since this isn't an entrepreneurship show, but ended up building a manufacturing facility in San Francisco. Our products were handmade. I a hundred percent referenced back to my early experience at Dean Titanium in terms. How to build a brand, how to build an aura, how to build quality products, how to, how to stand behind those products and really kind of take and accept consumer input as like the guiding principle of where you take the business.
It was in the early days of social media being here in the Bay Area. We sort of understood the game that needed to be played at that time, and we amassed a pretty big following because we just had a great compelling story. I mean, who's hand building phone and iPad accessories in the United States?
[00:19:58] Dave Mable: iPad. Yeah, nobody,
[00:20:02] Craig Dalton: Exactly. So obviously cycling continued to be part of my life, but it was just a, a recreational activity. I wasn't doing much. I don't think I was attending any, I wasn't going down to Sea Otter, like I let most things come and go. Maybe I would pin a number on here and there as I sort of went out to Leadville and did the Leadville 100.
I had a brief stint doing Ironman triathlons, but it was all just in the, you know, the pursuit of fun and scratching that endurance athletics itch.
[00:20:33] Dave Mable: bag. Do you remember what year you did? Leadville
[00:20:37] Craig Dalton: Um, it would've been either 2007 or 2009.
[00:20:44] Dave Mable: Hmm, I'm gonna have to look. We were in that era, so we might have lined up together.
[00:20:50] Craig Dalton: Amazing.
[00:20:51] Dave Mable: you were probably ahead of us, but, uh, nonetheless, I think my first was like oh, three or four. I did it solo and then I told my wife, I was like, Hey, I think this is tandem about, and she believed me actually. She said, if we get a new tandem, I'll do it.
I'm like, uh, I, I'm calling the bike shop right now.
[00:21:15] Craig Dalton: Oh man, I can't e
[00:21:16] Dave Mable: And she said, yes.
[00:21:19] Craig Dalton: I can't even, I can't imagine going up Columbine nor down Columbine on a tandem.
[00:21:24] Dave Mable: You know, up Columbine was a lot of pushing, as you can well imagine, and down Columbine. Uh, we bought a Ventana full suspension rig with the Maverick Fork. So six inches of travel front and rear, and I needed all six inches.
Like you're going down Columbine and there's people coming up on the other side of the trail. And there's a giant rock in front of you. All you can do is hit it, you know? And so I did, but uh, we always made it down. Uh, the only time we crashed was going up the power line and uh, you know, it's just rocky and hard and.
I, uh, come around a corner and the front wheel like just gets up on a lip and then hits another rock and just stops all of our momentum. And for some reason we leaned to the right and there was nothing but air below our feet. And so down we went. friend of us was, a friend of ours was with us at that moment, and he looked at us, he's like, you guys good?
Yeah, we're all right. He's like, I'm outta here.
[00:22:34] Craig Dalton: Goodbye. It's already been long. If you're on your way back up power line, it's already been long enough of a day. You can't, you can't wait for down soldiers at that point.
[00:22:42] Dave Mable: No, that's true. That's true. We made it home though. Uh, so you have a lot of mountain biking in your history.
Where did Gravel.
[00:22:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah, so the story around gravel, I had moved from San Francisco to Mill Valley where I live today, and I was riding into the city, and for those of you who don't know the geography here, There's actually a lot of, um, there's the coastal range of hills that kind of go right from the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County, so you can actually ride in on the dirt.
And so I had this new commute and I'm, I'm gonna mention that this was also when I discovered listening to podcasts. And we'll put a pin in that statement for a minute here, but I was riding into the city and I had an opportunity to ride on the dirt or ride on the trail. And I had had a cyclocross bike back in the day and I.
[00:23:34] Dave Mable: in the, like
[00:23:35] Craig Dalton: It was, this was would've been around 2015 timeframe just to give a, a, a timestamp there. So I bought a, a niner aluminum gravel bike with a max tire capacity, I think of maybe 33 millimeters. And I started riding that and it had mechanical disc brakes, and I started riding that into the city. And, uh, listening to my podcast and I thought, well, this is sort of an enjoyable hybrid of, you know, it's a drop bar bike, so it's efficient.
So when I get on the pavement, I can ride to my office, which was, it was about a, an hour and 15 minute trip. Um, one way, but with probably 60% of that being on pavement. So again, like playing, playing in that mixed terrain angle. But I also started to recognize, One that I was enjoying it, but two, that the bike didn't have the capabilities that I needed.
The, the hills were steep, so my mechanical disc brakes were requiring too much hand strength to brake, and I, it felt like a huge shortcoming, only having 33 millimeter tires around here. Disclosure, the gravel riding we have around here is, is rough, and many people would argue that it's mountain biking, but it's my cup of tea.
But again, so I, I thought. How was I around the sport of cycling my entire life as we've just discussed? How did I botch this bike purchase and buy something that wasn't suitable? And you know, I was reading about the gravel market. It was obviously early days at that point in terms of like the amount of models that were out there, et cetera.
And I just had like, I want to go all in on this. Like this is the type of riding I really like. I.
[00:25:17] Dave Mable: I get
[00:25:18] Craig Dalton: The best bike that I can afford. I want disc brakes and I want big tire capacity. So after a bunch of research,
[00:25:27] Dave Mable: I think that's called a mountain bike.
[00:25:31] Craig Dalton: possibly, possibly a bunch of research, I ended up, um, selling a road bike and pushing all in on a, an open up with two wheel sets. So I had a road wheel set and, uh, a gravel wheel set. And I absolutely fell in love with it.
[00:25:49] Dave Mable: huh, what was the tire capacity of that?
[00:25:51] Craig Dalton: Oh, I could run 40 sevens, six 50 by 47
[00:25:55] Dave Mable: huh. Wow. That's, I mean, that's, that's pretty early. I mean, those are, if you're talking 15, 16, like we're still riding cross bikes on gravel those days. I mean, that's, you go by a cross bike and that's your gravel bike.
[00:26:10] Craig Dalton: Un unquestionably that open bike was visionary and ahead of its time. It's it. I would still argue that it's spec still holds up with the sweet spot of gravel cycling today.
[00:26:23] Dave Mable: Huh, interesting.
[00:26:24] Craig Dalton: Yeah,
[00:26:26] Dave Mable: So I feel like you dove in Headfirst podcast and you're going all over the freaking world riding a gravel bike.
[00:26:36] Craig Dalton: Yeah, so I, I pushed all in. I realized like one, I had a di, I had a, uh, caliber brake road bike and I was like, this thing's gonna be worthless a few years from now as people go to disc brakes. So I was like, I just need to clear out the garage, take the money I get from that, sell the niner and, and buy this one bike for me.
The type of road riding I do, I found that the open totally cap. As a road bike with, you know, 28 sea tires on 700 sea wheel sets. And then as I said, with those six 50 B 47 s, incredible bike for everything we have in front of us here on Mount Tam. At around the same time. Now this is going to 2017, we ended up selling Doto case.
The business I had. And I had mentioned as a little something, we put a pin in that I had been listening to a bunch of podcasts. Doto case was a manufacturing business. It was also an e-commerce business and a social media business. So I was always in front of a computer, you know, building websites con, you know, trying to convert E-commerce customers to customers.
And I said to myself, I need to do something totally different for a break. And selling the company gave me, I don't have to get a job tomorrow. Money. It did not give me, I don't have to get a job ever money, but you know, it gave me a little bit of a window to just kind of explore my own creativity. So I said I'm enjoying podcasts.
I'm flabbergasted that I managed to screw up this gravel bike purchase. There's so much going on in gravel. I get so many questions about how to spec a bike. I said, why don't I, you know, I took, I took a podcasting course and I began the Gravel Ride podcast in 2018. With this simple vision of, I was gonna interview people, product designers, and event organizers.
[00:28:25] Dave Mable: which I feel like you've stuck to for on five years now.
[00:28:31] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's been pretty much the journey and I still, I mean I, you know, as you and I both as podcasters, there's days where you're like, can I keep up the energy and enthusiasm to do. Obviously being conversational podcasts like we both host, it's important that you're engaged and excited to talk to your guest.
And I still am. I mean, I, I, I do think, you know in, as, as we hit 2023, some of the, the massive innovation in the, the bicycle design maybe is behind us for gravel. There was a long journey of many years. For designers to figuring out like, well, how do we get the right tire capacity? How do we get the right geometry?
And I don't think the, the, there's not one single right answer to that. I think what has emerged is you've got this great category that as writers explore their own interests as they reconcile their own terrain, there's, there's the right bike for. And I'm always the first to say the bike setup I have here is not the bike set up for Kansas, for example.
Like, it's just, it would, it would be way overkill. Um, and there's, there's nothing wrong with what I've set up my bike as, and there's nothing wrong with how you've set up your bike.
[00:29:52] Dave Mable: with Yeah. Well, you would totally make fun of me. I'm still on a, uh, Uh, this is kind of interesting, a trek Crockett, the pink one, and, uh, flat bar, which is interesting. And it is signed by both Gary Fisher and Katie Compton. Which, I don't know, maybe that went down in value a couple years ago, but I feel like it still has value. I, I'm a Katie Compton fan, but uh, it was kind of funny cuz they were, it was at the TRX CX Cup and truth be told, I wanted spend nest to, uh, uh, to sign it. And every time as a journalist, every time he was available, I was working and.
I wasn't working. He was working, coaching, doing whatever. So, uh, I walked past the Katy Compton compound and uh, I was like, Hey, you should sign my bike. She did. Gary Fisher walks by at that moment. He's like, well, how come she gets to sign it? I'm like, dude, here's a pen right here. And then they argue about who had more input into its design, which I just stood back, listened and. But, uh, you know, it's a pretty old sc I mean, it's a cross bike. It's a high, it's a high performance cross bike, and it is a bit sketchy on loose gravel, but on the, when the gravel is concrete, it is awesome. It flies. I have 33 millimeter tires on it, which people are like, I didn't know they still made those.
Oh God, I saved them. But, uh, You know, looking at the, the well, 40 sevens. Holy moly, those are big. Uh, I could envision a pair of forties I could envision, um, you know, the, the benefit of a longer bike. Talking to a guy about, um, fat biking recently, he builds his own bike. You'll want to tune in, um, to Steve McGuire and, and hear how he has come up with his fat bike design.
Um, Is long, like, really long chain stays because it acts like a keel in the loose gravel. And I'm like, oh, that, I mean, that really makes sense. So there is kind of something for everyone. I, I also have to say, like, I talked to a dude, um, the podcast I dropped today. The guy is, uh, the reason he loves gravel is nobody cares what you're.
Nobody cares what you're wearing. Nobody cares how fast you are. They don't care what color your skin is. They don't care how you talk. Like it's just a gravel ride.
[00:32:38] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:32:38] Dave Mable: uh, and he really appreciates that. So, boy, that was a rant, wasn't it?
[00:32:43] Craig Dalton: a little bit, but we learned a lot about your bike.
[00:32:48] Dave Mable: Like I said, there's little Easter eggs we can throw out in these podcasts, right?
[00:32:52] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think that the, the sport of gravel's in an interesting place right now, um, just in terms of like the, for lack of a better term, the professionalization of the front end of the pack and that that's impact on the rest of the field. I mean, obviously like we talk about the spirit of gravel and the type of experience that anybody who's willing to sign up for one of these.
Should have, like, we're generally, we're not at the front. We're really just just there for the experience, but there is this ongoing kind of evolution of what the front end of the pack looks like and act, you know, the requirements for safety and, um, competitiveness that need to be figured out.
[00:33:34] Dave Mable: signal out
[00:33:35] Craig Dalton: I'm. I'm, uh, sort of optimistic.
There's a lot of experimentation going on this year. You know, Unbound just announced that they're gonna start the professional men by themselves, and then the professional women two minutes after that, and then the rest of the field, uh, eight minutes after that, which I think is interesting. I, I do think, you know, in talking to female athletes, it's, it's always been this curious race dynamic of clearly you're working with.
[00:34:03] Dave Mable: men,
[00:34:04] Craig Dalton: And other women throughout the day, like anybody would, right? No one wants to ride by themselves, but so much of that can come into play with who takes the win, right? If you, you could, you know, a strong woman can go off the front and someone drafting men could bridge that gap putting in, you know, 20% less effort.
And that could be the difference between winning and losing and. I, I have no idea what the right answer is, but I, I do like this idea that they're gonna have some time to themselves to kind of strategically do one thing or the other,
[00:34:40] Dave Mable: And
[00:34:41] Craig Dalton: knows what those things will be.
[00:34:42] Dave Mable: right? And at least have the opportunity to see where people are relative to themselves. Like, oh, there's five women ahead of me and there's 25 behind me. And then the men come and you get mixed in there. You still know like, okay, there's still five women ahead of me and 25 behind me, and so I'm in good shape.
As opposed to just not having any idea where the rest of the women are. Cuz you lose them in the, the me.
[00:35:09] Craig Dalton: exactly. So I know the, the Shasta Gravel hugger, which I just did an uh, episode with him a few weeks back. Uh, Ben, he's trying a few things. That'll be interesting to see. We'll see the results of that in, in March. Um, yeah, I just think it's gonna be an interesting year for.
[00:35:23] Dave Mable: for sure. It, it is going to be an interesting year and it was an interesting year, especially with the world UCI, world Championships and that was definitely an interest. I wouldn't call that US style gravel, uh, women raced on a completely different day than the men.
[00:35:44] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Not at, yeah, totally Not at all. US style gravel. In fact, I, I just had, um, the gentleman on, I haven't released the podcast yet, who's got, who's running the UCI world's qualifier out of Fayetteville for the second year in a row. Um, the name of the event is escaping me. It'll come to me in a minute, I'm sure.
But it was interesting talking to him both on the podcast and offline. You know, the, the expectation, I guess, at the USA cycling level for a long period of time was that this first inaugural, um, uci, uh, you know, world Championships was going to be held in the US and I think they just, UCI just wasn't communicating really well with USA cycling.
And ultimately it wasn't until, like the very sort of last quarter of the year that they really figured out and leaned in. Hey, if we're gonna pull this off, it needs to be in Italy. It needs to be somewhere, somewhere where they've run events and it's close to home and they can kind of, they, I think they just felt like that was the only way that they could execute.
[00:36:49] Dave Mable: was, huh.
Interesting. Um, yeah. U S USA cycling, I feel like instead of, it was just interesting who showed up, how they showed up. And then how the race went. And I feel like it was a sep kind of day versus a, or Keegan Swenson for sure. I mean, he probably could have,
[00:37:11] Craig Dalton: Yeah,
[00:37:11] Dave Mable: uh, but, um, but it was such a road race. It was like Perry Rube with gravel sections.
[00:37:18] Craig Dalton: yeah, yeah. And, and obviously like shorter than we're accustomed to. I'm not necessarily opposed to like that shorter length because I do think. An argument to be said, to say, you know, it's hard to be racing after 200 miles, whereas everybody's racing hardcore after a hundred. Um, I don't know what the right answer is, but I'm, I'm like, my gut tells me like those ultra distance ones are like their own special thing.
Um, while I, I just pulled it up. So it's the Highland Gravel Classic in Fayetteville, put on by Bruce Dunn at All Sports Productions. He's got the, the UCI qualifier for this. Um, in Fayetteville again. And I think the interesting thing is, um, you know, who's gonna show up? Like what is the process he and I were talking about, you know, as an age grouper, I could go to Fayetteville and if I'm in the top 25% of my category, I could go compete in the world Championships doesn't mean anything sort of, of my relative ability here in the United States across, you know, any of these big races we have here.
But I have to say that that's, that's a compelling story. Like I, I would go to, I would go to Italy and represent the United States. I'm, look, I'm a tourist cyclist, but to like have that honor of like, in the 50 plus category to go over there, I would, I wouldn't, you know, snub my nose at it.
[00:38:41] Dave Mable: it? Yeah, for sure. I'd, I'd, I'd jump at that chance. I've got a lot of work to do to even hope for top 25% of our group
[00:38:49] Craig Dalton: You, you and me both.
[00:38:51] Dave Mable: but, uh, but nonetheless, you're right. It, it would be super cool. I, I feel like there's room for all of it. You know, if you, I feel like gravel cycling. An analogy is marathon or just running road
[00:39:06] Craig Dalton: Yep.
[00:39:07] Dave Mable: And, uh, anybody can sign up. You can do 5k, you can do the local 5K in your neighborhood and get a t-shirt. Or you can do like the world's largest 5K in, I don't know, Boulder, Colorado. That'd be a 10 K. But, um, same with marathons and uh, you know, Chicago Marathon. 30,000 people, the front line's up at the front and the mid packers line up at their pace and then they go run it.
And I feel like gravel's pretty similar.
[00:39:40] Craig Dalton: I do too. I think, I mean, I think that the moment in time to build a big race, like a thousand plus person race, it's difficult to find a spot on the calendar where that'll work.
[00:39:52] Dave Mable: mm-hmm.
[00:39:53] Craig Dalton: Um, today I do think there are, there are always gonna be geographic opportunities, right? Like if there's not a lot of racing in upstate New York, there's an opportunity for someone to create a great race in upstate new.
It's probably also important that the economics match up, right? So if, if you've got a, if you're gonna make, if a 200 person race is gonna be the size of your race, just understand that going in and don't overinvest, and you know, it's gonna have little, little bit more of a community feel and some of these major events that are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in their product.
[00:40:27] Dave Mable: Yeah, it is kind of amazing having watched this happen. Everything from like the beginning I was in Trans Iowa, number two and uh, to full-time staff, full-time year round staff, multiple full-time year round staff running these gravel events. That's kind of crazy actually. Um, We can dissect the world of gravel forever.
But, uh, I wanna know more about your podcast. Um, you've got a co-host with Randall, and, uh, I'm curious how that works. Uh, how'd you find him? And, uh, how do you guys, how's it work between the two of you?
[00:41:08] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that's a good question. So Randall and I got connected. Randall Jacobs is the founder of Thesis Spike and more recently Logos components, which making, uh, some great carbon wheels. He and I connected because he started that business in San Francisco. He was offering people demo rides of the bikes, and, uh, Randall was an ex specialized employee, helped design the original diverge.
I got to know him and appreciate his, his personality, his technical acumen. Um, ultimately ended up buying a thesis bike and riding one. So I transitioned from the open to the thesis. The thesis is a fraction of the price of the open.
[00:41:48] Dave Mable: Yeah.
[00:41:49] Craig Dalton: Incredibly capable. In fact, for anybody on video, it's the, the pink bike right behind me is my thesis.
Bicycle,
[00:41:56] Dave Mable: I love that pink bike.
[00:41:59] Craig Dalton: but very much like the open. Anyway, so, um, he and I just became friends and became people. We, we rode together. We, we saw many elements of the, the, the industry and the world. Similarly, I also recognize that Randall became my go-to guy for technical question.
[00:42:15] Dave Mable: guys
[00:42:16] Craig Dalton: And it started out, um, first did an episode about thesis bikes and got to know him a little bit, and then I invited him to do a gravel bike 1 0 1 episode.
So in kind of quizzing the community, what they were looking for, I realized, you know, a lot of time the starting point of our discussions on the podcast are a little bit more. I'll make the point that I absolutely endeavor to start at the beginning and try not to make too many assumptions, and I'm not trying to be a tech podcast at all.
Um, but I brought Randall on and I was able to, he and I were able to have a discussion of, what do you look for when you buy a bike? Let's break it down. Let's help the listener understand at the time in which we recorded the first one, what should you be thinking?
[00:43:03] Dave Mable: about?
[00:43:04] Craig Dalton: We did the same thing a year later because I felt like the industry kept changing and it was just this great thing to have in the podcast feed, you know, 2019 Gravel bike 1 0 1 episode.
Um, as he and I continued to communicate, it became clear, like there were probably some themes, some discussions, et cetera, with people in the industry that he was going to be a. Person to interview them with. So, Randall's episodes tend to either be more highly technical than mine. So for example, he did a great episode with Matt from Enduro Bend, uh, Barings.
Where, where they really kind of dug into ceramic and stainless steel bearings and the viscosities of oil and stuff. That's kind of, you know, I can sort of, I'm smart enough to be, you know, it sounds somewhat intelligent about, but I definitely don't know everything those, those guys and girls know. So I said I'm loose on that.
And then the other big thing he's super keen on is just community and the community of cycling and the, uh, frankly, the mental health value of cycling as an activity. Uh, and cycling the cycling community as something that, you know, we benefit from not only physiologically as athletes, but. Emotionally in that it, it, it does become this, this release for us when we get out there.
And it is one of the things that's always attracted me about riding Off Road is that, you know, you ride a technical section and you just stop and you wait for the next guy or girl to come through and High five 'em, whether they crash or clean it, it's just, it's the best feeling in the world.
[00:44:48] Dave Mable: No doubt, no doubt. I it really is. You mentioned community and you started a thing called the ridership. Uh, tell our listeners what it is and what's, why'd you start it?
What,
[00:45:03] Craig Dalton: Yeah, the the rider, the ridership, a free global cycling community. It has a sort of orientation towards gravel and adventure cyclists, but, Everybody's welcome. It serves two purposes. One, you know, I, I definitely wanted to have a, a easier back channel to me as a podcast host. I wanted people to be able to chat with me directly and, uh, but I also realized like I'm, I'm, I'm potentially a authority in the world of gravel cycling, but I'm not the a.
And to my earlier comments about, you know, my technical shortcomings, I realized that, you know, I had this amazing community of listeners that are very capable of interacting with ano one another and they have hundreds of different experiences than my own, or, or Randall's, for that matter. So we're basically built, uh, a community on Slack, and that may not be, Going forward platform, but Slack, for those who don't know, it's just a, a program or an application you can get on your computer or phone and we can sort of segment the conversations into what are called channels.
So we have a channel on tires, we have a channels on nutrition, and we have also have regional channels. And the vision was, you know, as gravel cyclists, when you're a road cyclist, it, it, to me, it seemed easy to find. Like I could go and there wasn't a lot of questions. Like as long as I knew the mileage and maybe the elevation gainer loss, like I kind of knew what I was gonna be pedalling on.
But gravel, I feel, I felt like you, you missed the real gems. Like it's easy for me to tell you to go up old railroad grade and come down here on Mount Tam, but I've got 20 different, you know, little paths that I can take you on that are gonna create those high five.
[00:46:53] Dave Mable: s
[00:46:53] Craig Dalton: And we all do. And I wanted, so if I go to Iowa, I want someone in Iowa to tell me where I should go gravel ride, and I wanna ask questions of them.
If I go to Europe, I wanna ask questions of someone who lives in the country that I'm visiting. So we started out with that basic premise that everybody's welcome. We've created this open platform that's free to use. Its devoid of any advertis. We, you know, I originally had like a Facebook group for the podcast, and it's like, I don't want to bring you into Facebook to have other ads shoved in your face.
I want you to get out on your damn bike. So we wanted something that was like, come talk about bikes to your heart, heart's content, then put it away. We're not looking to be part of the attention economy. I'm not. Monetize your attention. We're just trying to create this community where we can share, share, and exchange value.
[00:47:50] Dave Mable: can. Is it working?
[00:47:52] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it is, you know, we've got a, a pretty passionate group in there. There's probably, I haven't checked lately, but probably around 2000 people that participate in the forum. The channel, you know, every day you go in, the channels are lighting up from, you know, people. Having a mechanical question that they're getting someone more technical to answer, or we tend to get a, a bunch of like event organizers who get in the mix there saying, Hey, you know, Shasta gravel huggers coming up.
If you have any questions, I'm Ben, I'm the promoter. Just, you know, I'm happy I'm here to answer things like that. And then, you know, a lot of direct messaging, people sell stuff there to, you know, when they're getting rid of a bike or a wheel set or what have you. So yeah. Yeah, I would say it's working.
It's not my day job. So, you know, we've, I believe we've created a thoughtful structure. We don't, we haven't had any issues that we've needed to police. Everybody's self-selecting as someone who's just there for information and the enjoyment of the sport.
[00:48:51] Dave Mable: there. One of the, there are no rules in gravel, but one of the rules is don't be a dick. So maybe you have people who abide by the rules and are not dicks.
[00:49:04] Craig Dalton: That. That's pretty much it, and for anybody who's listening, it's just go to the the www.theridership.com and you'll get a free invite to join.
[00:49:13] Dave Mable: Perfect. I love it. I love it. So I want to ask a couple of podcast questions. Who is the guest that you were most surprised? Said yes.
[00:49:29] Craig Dalton: Uh, I'll answer this in two ways. I think Rebecca Rush was that guest and the, the second part of that is she could not be a nicer person.
[00:49:39] Dave Mable: correct. That is a true statement.
[00:49:43] Craig Dalton: Unbelievably engaging, inquisitive, generous with her time like. That's the one I point to that I just, one super stoked that she came on and two super stoked to see that she is every, she shows up in a podcast interview as much as she does on her social media.
[00:50:02] Dave Mable: on. Yeah. That's cool. That's kind of fun. What was a surprising moment for you with a guest?
[00:50:10] Craig Dalton: Gosh. I mean, I mean there's, there's sort of tricky moments, I think, in any podcast interview sometimes, you know, I don't, I don't do a lot of, um, like pre-show interviewing because it's conversational. Like I just generally want it to happen. I've had a few guests who weren't as. Verbose as I would like them to be.
[00:50:35] Dave Mable: or you have to like pull those words out of their mouth.
[00:50:40] Craig Dalton: Exactly. I mean, we're obviously an audio medium and, uh, you know, we need people to talk and we need people to tell stories. And, you know, I, I wouldn't invite someone on who I didn't think had an amazing story. I've just had a, a few odd occasions where, you know, they weren't good at telling their own.
[00:50:57] Dave Mable: occasions. Yeah. Yeah. I, I can relate to that. And only 50 some in, but, uh, yeah, you, you are right about that. Where, what's your vision? Where do you want it to go?
[00:51:11] Craig Dalton: Yeah. You know, I think, as I mentioned earlier, like I, I still am excited to pull the mic in front of me and have these conversations. Um, if I wasn't, I wouldn't keep doing.
[00:51:23] Dave Mable: a,
[00:51:23] Craig Dalton: scratches an itch for me. As we said earlier, like I've been around bikes and bike racing my entire life, and I do enjoy. Having a foothold in this world and the Gravel Ride Podcast has provided me, you know, opportunity to build an audience and build a community and build relationships within the bicycle industry.
I'm fortunate enough that I've got a handful of sponsors that'll come in and help me pay for some of the overhead of the podcast, and on a rare occasion, you know, give me an opportunity. Go to an event or attend something that otherwise might be difficult to get into. And that, you know, that, that to me was the in, in my mind when I started the podcast.
That was the reward I was looking for since I'm going to be involved in this sport anyway, having a little perks here and there and, and opportunities because of the, the hours and hours of effort that I put into this podcast seemed like a fair, fair.
[00:52:25] Dave Mable: fair, yeah. I actually had somebody ask me today, is this your full-time gig?
[00:52:31] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:52:32] Dave Mable: So Craig, is this your full-time gig
[00:52:34] Craig Dalton: you don't really understand the economics if you're asking that question.
[00:52:37] Dave Mable: You're right. No, I did not win the, was it the Powerball $1.1 billion thing? I did not win that.
[00:52:46] Craig Dalton: right. Any of you think about it? You mentioned when we were offline about some recent interviews we've been doing with cycling media. Uh, journalists and, you know, with outside laying off a bunch of staff and a bunch of publications, kind of grappling with what the future of media is. You know, I've always felt very blessed in the fact that I, the podcast has never had to provide income for my family.
It has never had to put food on the table because that, that's complicated. I mean, the economics don't really work out. For this could not be a full-time position for me. And I am, I'm certainly empathetic to the plight of people who have dedicated their lives to become proper journalists, um, and who are struggling to sort of make ends meet in this current environment.
[00:53:38] Dave Mable: Yeah, it's, uh, it's definitely a challenge. I actually was editor of a actual paper magazine that was printed on real life paper and you like, sat on the toilet and read it. Um,
[00:53:54] Craig Dalton: Love it.
[00:53:56] Dave Mable: And I feel like I am a Cartwright in 1912 when people are st starting to buy the, the Ford model A or whatever, and that I'm seeing the writing on the wall that like, in a few years, there will be no more Cartwrights.
[00:54:15] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, I, I think it's a super difficult transition because, I mean, the obvious answer is like, consumers should pay for the content that they consume, whether it's audio or the written word, but the, frankly, like even if there's a willingness to do that, the mechanisms to do so are still klugy and create, you know, the minor hurdles for people to get over.
Right. Do I want to get out my credit card to read a particular article that I, you know, became exposed to? N no. But if it was like embedded into my web pay, like into my web browser, like this micro transaction that could be made simple, like I would, I would do that. So I'm sort of, I'm stuck in that, like there are definitely content channels that I pay for, but there are certainly other bits of content that I enjoy consuming.
That I like the mechanisms for paying for them. Just the, the friction's just too much for me to do. So, and you know, you, you as podcasters, we see this all the time, right? We, we occupy this very intimate place with the listener, right? We, we've spending, they spend an hour a week with us. And if you think about like that, that attention that we're, we're fortunate enough to garner from our listeners, that's a massive amount.
Attention. People know a a lot about me from the years of podcasting and my myself on the mic. Yet
[00:55:46] Dave Mable: Yet
[00:55:47] Craig Dalton: it's very difficult for anybody to figure out how to compensate me for their appreciation of my words.
[00:55:53] Dave Mable: Right, right. They could buy you a coffee.
[00:55:57] Craig Dalton: Yeah, indeed. Yes. That's a little, I appreciate the plug, Dave. I mean, I have, I've always had this sort. Super modest, buy me a coffee account, buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. And I mean, I'm always like super appreciative if someone takes a moment and does that cuz it's not, it's not first and foremost, it's sort of like something I do mention, but I, I don't push it and I don't have a, like a, a really elaborate Patreon program that allows you to get bonus episodes.
And if I had more time, I would love to do that. Cause I, I. A hundred percent like to provide more value for those people who, who are supporting me.
[00:56:35] Dave Mable: yeah, I send, uh, my supporters as sticker. So it's, I mean, it's something, but you're right, it's, it's, it's a treat to get an email that says, uh, Hey, somebody bought you a coffee. Like, ah, that's super nice because it's, I mean, they do have to log on and they do have to like, get out their credit card and punch a bunch of things on their computer and push send and, and, uh, it's time outta their day to show their appreciation for what, what you're doing and, and what you're bringing them.
And you're right. Uh, an hour a week and we're like, Like drilled into people's heads through their ears. Like that's,
[00:57:14] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:57:14] Dave Mable: that's, uh, that's privileged space and time, isn't it?
[00:57:21] Craig Dalton: Yeah, for sure. And I will say like, I think just to give the listeners some perspective, I think for every hour we publish probably is three hours of combined effort to kind of get to that hour. That's, that's sort of my, like back of the envelope math around like the effort it takes to kind of produce the podcast.
[00:57:39] Dave Mable: Yeah, I feel like you're more efficient than me.
[00:57:45] Craig Dalton: I mean either that Dave or my editing is, is really low pro.
[00:57:49] Dave Mable: Oh, I don't know. You should listen to the podcast I dropped today. There was a moment where I just drew a blank in this conversation and I said to the guy, I was like, you ever like just have a blank moment and you can't come up with whatever you're gonna say?
And he's like, yeah. And I was like, yeah, it sucks cuz I did not want to edit this and I'm gonna have to. And then as I was listening to it, as I was editing, I'm leaving that in there. Like, that's raw me. I'm leaving that in there. So I
[00:58:17] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I do have to say Dave, like I, I, I had that issue early on in the podcast where I felt like I wasn't eloquent enough and I wanted to go in and edit everything out. And, you know, eventually I came to the conclusion like, the, the effort is not worth the. Meaning like people came for this kind of raw conversation and the fact that I may have stumbled over my words, et cetera, like that's just part of the conversation and yeah, just gotta go with it.
[00:58:48] Dave Mable: Yeah. And it's, it's a, okay, uh, Don, uh, Dan Patrick says, um, quite a bit,
[00:58:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:58:55] Dave Mable: you know what I mean?
[00:58:57] Craig Dalton: exactly.
[00:58:58] Dave Mable: Well listen, we've been, uh, just about an hour. I really have enjoyed getting to know you face to face here. I'd love to meet you on the bike sometime, whether I make it to Cal, California, whether you make it to Iowa or we meet somewhere in between.
Uh, do you have any big rides planned this year?
[00:59:18] Craig Dalton: I'm still like, I'm still thinking about my schedule and I probably spend too much time thinking about that. This is the off that one of those positive offshoots of like, I feel like I have the opportunity. If I, if I'm, if I can afford it and get the time off from the family and work, like, there's a ton of things that I can do.
Um, and I, I need to get my head around here in January, like, what are the things I really wanna advocate for myself? There's a few races that I'm super keen to do. One being Rebecca's private Idaho. The second being, uh, the Oregon Trail gravel grinder. The weeklong stage. Both, you know, super great reputations.
I love the idea of multiple day events because I feel like when you travel to go do one of these events, um,
[01:00:10] Dave Mable: events,
[01:00:11] Craig Dalton: you're taking up the time anyway, so you might as well ride and enjoy that area for multiple days versus popping in, being super anxious about a race and then just doing that race. So I'm really trying to think about that.
I had the great fortune of going to Jer with track travel in November, and that was fantastic. So I'm super bullish on like just the general idea of gravel travel. So, Long answer to your question, definitely you'll see me at at at a handful of events this year, and definitely like I hope to do at least one cycling vacation type trip.
[01:00:46] Dave Mable: Ah, very. Very cool. Well, you're, you're welcome to come out and put your 28 millimeter road tires on and do rag Bry with us. It's a fifth 50th anniversary of Rag Bry and I'm an old hat at Rag Bry, so if you want to come out and spend a week riding on the road and eating pie drinking beer, that's about it.
That's about what we do. Ride our bikes. Eat pine, drink beer. Uh, you're always
[01:01:13] Craig Dalton: uh, I appreciate that, Dave. I've had a couple Iowans on the podcast talking about various events there, and gosh, we, there's so many places to go. I would love to end up in Iowa, one of these years.
[01:01:24] Dave Mable: Yeah. Well, you, you've got a, a friendly face here and you got my number, so look me up. Yep.
[01:01:30] Craig Dalton: Right on.
[01:01:31] Dave Mable: All right. Well thanks tons and, uh, good luck with the pod. Say hey to Randall. Tell 'em I enjoy listening to, uh, his conversations as well as yours and keep up the good work.
[01:01:41] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I definitely will, and it was a pleasure being on the show, Dave. I appreciate what you're doing.
[01:01:45] Dave Mable: I, uh, I appreciate that you're, uh, a good, um, role model for me.
[01:01:49] Craig Dalton: Chairs.
So that's going to do it for this week's conversation. Big, thanks to Dave Mabel for having me on bike. Talk with Dave. I hope you as a loyal listener, enjoyed getting to know me a little bit better. If you have any questions about the things that I've done or want to get connected with me. I encourage you to join the ridership. That's simply www.theridership.com.
That's a free global cycling community. We created to connect gravel and adventure, cyclists. From all around the world.
So I think we'll leave it at that this week. And as always until next time. Here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels.
On this week’s episode, Stephen Frothingham, Editor in Chief of Bicycle Retailer & Industry News at Outside, Inc, joins Randall to share his unique perspective on bicycle industry dynamics in general and the bike shop and OEM ecosystem in particular. Steve is an industry veteran who approaches his work with a warmth and curiosity we’ve long appreciated, and his reporting continues to serve as an influential resource for all of us who work in the space.
Episdoe sponsor: Dynamic Cyclist (Promo code THEGRAVELRIDE for 15% off)
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the podcast, I'm going to hand the microphone over to my co-host Randall Jacobs. Who's got Steven Frothingham editor and chief of bicycle retailer and industry news on the show to discuss his unique perspective on bicycle industry dynamics. The general bike shop and OEM ecosystem in particular, Steve is an industry veteran who approaches his work with warmth and curiosity that is so appreciated. His reporting continues to serve as an influential resource to everyone who works in the bicycle retail space.
I think you'll get a lot out of this episode, learning a little bit more of the ins and outs of the industry as it all trickles down and has an effect. On us as riders. Before we jump in, I do need to thank this week. Sponsor, dynamic cyclist.
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If that sounds like it's up your alley, I hope you give it a try again. They've got that free one week trial. So why the hell not. With that said, I'm going to hand the microphone off to my co-host Randall Jacobs. And jump right into this conversation with Steven Frothingham.
[00:03:11] Randall:
You're an old hand in the bike industry in the journalism space.
Give us a little bit of background about that.
[00:03:17] steve: , know, I started at Brain, I think I was the first editor hired back in think 92. And then I left and worked for the Associated Press twice and then came back into the bike industry to work for, be News for a few years. Uh, left them, went back to Brain, and then the company that owned Be News bought Brain. I ended up back in that same company again, which became outside. So it, yeah, it kind of feels like, uh, even though I don't work for ERs again, I feel like I'm back with the same crew. Uh, I literally was in the same, same desk, same office for a little while. So, uh, that, that seems to be, seems to be the pattern in my career here.
[00:03:55] Randall: Just to clarify for our listeners, brain is bicycle retailer where you are currently, uh, editor-in-chief. Correct.
[00:04:01] steve: Mm-hmm.
[00:04:03] Randall: Tell us a little bit about the nature of that publication. So what role does it serve in the industry?
[00:04:09] steve: well, when we started it in 92, you know, the full name is Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. And, uh, the, and was important back then because the, um, the other trade magazines, and believe it or not, there were three others back then were all print magazines. We were the fourth. Um, but they had this real focus on. Kind of this old school dealer thing, like, you know, we're gonna profile this retailer this month. We're gonna do a story on, know, uh, how to hire kids for the summer. We're gonna do a story about how to display your tires. Um, and we're not really gonna write about the industry, the supplier side. So we came along and we were bicycle retailer and industry news. And we used to kinda joke that what we're doing is reporting. We're telling the retailers what the, uh, suppliers are doing to them this month. Um, which is maybe a little bit too cynical, but we, we reported on what the industry was doing. We reported the news of what the supplier side was doing for the most part, which is what the retailers want to read. Um, most retailers, they might say that they'd like to read a story about how to merchandise their tires, but that's kind of broccoli. You know what they were, what really wanna, wanna have is the, uh, the steak and potatoes of, uh, finding out what one of their suppliers, uh, just bought another company or just went bankrupt or just switched factories in Taiwan or, or something like that.
And that's the kinda stuff that the, uh, the other titles we're not doing back in the nineties, which is why, uh, this is gonna bring out the competitive bike racer jerk in me. But we, we put the other three out of business in three or four years, I think. Um, it wasn't very long before Brain was the only, uh, industry title in the US and, um, to some extent we're still doing the same thing.
Obviously we've had to adapt to social media and the internet, which didn't exist when, when we started the magazine. But, um, we're still doing the same thing. We, we focus on news and, um, You know, we like to do some, we like to profile important retailers once in a while, but for the most part, uh, we still report on what the supplier side is doing with the knowledge that most of our readers are, uh, are retailers independent?
[00:06:37] Randall: I actually hadn't appreciated that you were on the founding team for bicycle retailer. So can you share a little bit more about that and who else was involved and how that came to be?
[00:06:47] steve: Well, I didn't have an investment unfortunately. Uh, I was, I think I was 22 years old or something, so I was just the first hired gun there. Uh, mark, who still writes for us, was the founding editor, uh, and a partner early on. There was another partner named Bill Sandler, who, uh, passed away quite a few years ago now. Uh, so Mark and Bill were, were really the founders um, Uh, I think they hired a, uh, an office lady named Kathy, and then they hired me. And, uh, that was kind of the start of the fun and, um, you know, and then the company went through various different ownerships, uh, some of which happened when, after I left, when I was, uh, outside the bike world for while. Uh, sometimes I forget it went through three or four different ownerships. Uh, when I came back it was owned by Nielsen of the famous Nielsen Ratings Nielsen, which, uh, owned, uh, trade shows including interbike. And, uh, we were actually operated by the National Bicycle Dealers Association, the nonprofit dealer trade group. Um, so we were owned by Nielsen, which was kind of renamed as Emerald Expositions. Uh, so I think my paycheck came from, now my paycheck came from the Mbda a you know, we went through quite a few years of being run by a very small nonprofit trade association. And then, and then it changed hands. Uh, M BDA a had some financial problems and, uh, we were not exactly helping things. So, uh, we got handed off to, uh, what was then called Pocket Outdoor Media, the company that owned Velo News. They owned Velo Press Draft, fleet Magazine. At that point, uh, Robin Thurston was a minority investor, I believe, in pocket outdoor media. And then, uh, you know, about a year or so after, uh, brain became part of that group, became the ceo, um, started raising money to buy a whole bunch of titles, which you've probably heard about, including Pink Bike Cycling Tips, um, some, uh, some bike events in Colorado.
And then eventually the big purchase was raising the money to buy outside Magazine. And, um, company Pocket Outdoor Media was, I think, I think Robin had actually hired a marketing company to come up with a new name for Pocket Outdoor Media, because people thought Pocket Outdoor Media was a billboard company. Uh, and the sales reps didn't like that. Uh, so they were, you know, doing the marketing thing of, of bouncing all these ideas off the wall, coming, trying to come up with a new idea and a new name. And then after they bought Outside magazine, they're like, well, why don't we just, you know, renamed the company outside? we became outside, which things have been moving very quickly. It's, you know, it's a big change for me moving from for a very tiny, little underfunded non-profit trade association from bicycle shops N bda, to working for this multi billion dollar startup basically a tech company. Um, change. And that's why the, the time, you know, I mean, I think back it seems like, you know, a decade ago, but it's only been like two and half years.
[00:10:23] Randall: So Robin Thurston is the current c e o of outside the group. And he previously founded is it, uh, map my.
[00:10:31] steve: Map my ride, map my run my companies, sold to Under Armor.
[00:10:35] Randall: I think that was like 160 million acquisition or something. I remember having this number offhand because it was part of my pitch deck for another company that I was trying to raise money for. It's like, oh here's a comparison point of this company that was acquired in the space.
[00:10:50] steve: Yeah, I mean map where I was kind of ahead of the curve with doing some of the stuff that Strava's doing now, and uh, now and outside. We have Gaia, which is a, mapping app that's primarily used by hikers and skiers. And then trail Forks, which was developed by Pink Bike as a mapping app mostly for mountain bikers.
[00:11:12] Randall: It's quite well regarded of, of seen in some of the forums. People are very keen on that particular application in the quality of the routes there
[00:11:19] steve: are really good. They do have their niches. I use Gaia for backcountry skiing and it, it works really well. And it's, uh, uh, you know, we could go way down a rabbit hole, but you know, why I choose to use Gaia when I'm skiing and why I use trail forks when I'm mountain biking and why I use, don't know what else when I'm road biking.
I don't know. But, you know, each has its own, uh, its own advantages in different spaces. So, yeah. Robin, made his fortune, I think, fair to say, selling that company to, uh, under Armour. And then he worked for Under Armour for a while. I think he was the Chief Technology Officer at Under Armor, uh, left and did some other stuff, and then eventually came back to this group.
[00:12:02] Randall: So you started when you were 22, essentially first hire for bicycle retailer, this fledgling industry magazine with a particular point of view that resonated with dealers. What drew you to this particular space? You studied journalism in college. Were you an avid cyclist?
[00:12:18] steve: Yeah. All that. Yeah. Uh, I was a cyclist. From day one, I started in B BMX when I was a little turd. Uh, I'm definitely, I'm totally of that age now where, you know, I'm 55 now and I go to the shows and I see these retro BMX bikes that some of the companies are doing. My light up, oh, there's that red that I wanted when I was, now I buy it. I've resisted so far, but yeah, I started in bmx. I did mountain bike races back in the eighties and road racing and, and, uh, and yeah, then I, I got a journalism degree and I did work completely outside the bike world for about 10 years, the Associated Press, covering presidential politics in New Hampshire where the presidential primary is a big deal.
So that was really fun. I think I covered three or four primaries in New Hampshire. Plus the usual AP stuff of plane crashes and lost hikers and syrup and lost mooses and stuff like that.
[00:13:18] Track 1: Standard, Northeast Fair.
[00:13:19] steve: Yeah. Typical New Hampshire stuff.
[00:13:21] Track 1: And remind me where you grew up.
[00:13:24] steve: in New England. Uh, I was born just a little north of where you are in Salisbury, Massachusetts. And, uh, my family moved up into New Hampshire when I was a teenager. And then when I came back, when I worked for the Associated Press, I lived in Wolfborough, New Hampshire for about 10 years.
[00:13:38] Track 1: So you and I when we chat tend to go off in various tangents so, where would you like to go? Or, or we can start with the email that you sent me yesterday about shaman cues.
[00:13:49] steve: yeah. I could interview you on that. What do you know?
[00:13:52] Track 1: Well, you're the one, the inside line. Yeah. You saw the press release.
[00:13:56] steve: the inside line yet. You know, I'm just starting my research and I'm, I'm going to Taiwan next week, so hopefully I'll learn a lot more over there. But, it looks like a fairly significant development, this cues thing. I was sitting through a, I think it was an hour long video recording from Shaman about it yesterday. And, I got antsy halfway through and started calling people and emailing people, and, uh, video was moving too slowly. So like, I need some more need. I need to check in with some people around the industry here to see what they think.
[00:14:27] Track 1: For those listening, shaman released a new, not just group set, but family of group sets on their kind of entry to entry, mid-level. And, it's significant for reasons that go beyond simply, here's some new parts.
They have a reputation for using constantly varying standards and interfaces and pull ratios, which is the ratio of cable pull to, gear shifting. so how much cable pulls results in how much movement of the derailer constantly varying that, not just year to year, but from group to group in order to avoid cross compatibility with third party components and even within their own groups so that brands don't mix and match.
Say you want a higher end quote unquote, set of levers connected to a lower injury derail because you don't see the value in the higher end derailer. Well, they preclude that by adjusting the pull ratios from group to group. And so what they've done with cues is make it such.
The pull ratio is the same across all the groups, even with different speeds. And the thing that the major differentiator between the different levels is the number of years. the cog spacing in the back is the same. , and I think that that's quite significant. and it signals something too. I think it's very much in favor of riders. And it helps shops as well. I think it helps the industry more generally, but it's also indicative of a shift in the power dynamic in the bike industry. , in many ways is the new shaman, they're in the ascendant. They have, , a number of standards that they have put out there that have gotten adoption, that they have defended through patents and, in some cases, litigation
and so I, I view it in the context of, innovation and competitiveness in the bike industry.
[00:16:09] steve: Yeah, that makes sense. I think even Shaman used the word realistic, meaning that the new groups, they like to say that the technology that makes them special is in the cogs. Not in the chain. not so much in the crank set or the derailer. which allows mix and match
so if somebody wants to spec a cassette, whether it's, Nine, 10 or 11 speed with a different crank, with a different chain, it'll still work okay, because there's nothing, it doesn't require any kind of special chain and the, the magic isn't in the chain. It's in the cassettes. So yeah, I think it's more realistic. I mean, obviously the development of this began before the pandemic and the part shortage that was through the pandemic. But, what happened in the pandemic with all these, new third party, fourth party parts coming up, getting a second look, people taking a second look at, whether it's micro shift or, uh, tetra breaks or whatever.
Anything they can get. this really kind of seals the deal. This kind of tells you that, , For the next few years, we're probably gonna see more and more of these mixed groups, at least at the lower price. this is all below 1 0 5 on the road, below Dior, 12 speed or 11 speed on the mountain bike side. So everything that was cheaper than Dior and down on the mountain bike, everything that was cheaper than 1 0 5 is now queues
[00:17:39] Randall: Which is to say en entry level to, uh, lower mid-level stuff, which is also good stuff. They have, clutch derails 11 speed. It does look to be quality components.
[00:17:49] steve: Yep.
[00:17:50] Track 1: Yeah.
[00:17:50] steve: it's not the electric shifting, it's not the 12 speed.
[00:17:52] Track 1: Oh, of course not. No. That, that stuff's still locked down. So, um, in fact, uh,
[00:17:58] steve: is a di two group as part of this, as the, um, more, more for the mountain bike, E mountain bike group, there's a DI two.
[00:18:06] Track 1: presumably sharing a battery, I haven't dived into that yet. Um,
[00:18:11] steve: the one that has the uh, uh, the front freewheeling system and the antilock brakes that they launched at Eurobike last year.
[00:18:18] Track 1: got it.
[00:18:19] steve: Yeah.
[00:18:20] Track 1: Yeah, it's, it's interesting. You, you'll, you may recall that in the past I was looking to, uh, create an open platform for bicycle electronics, and. And was trying to corral the support of that. Um, all those third parties that, that Taiwan vendor base that was shut out of the theam shaman duopoly. Um, I think, uh, probably a little bit before its time.
Uh, certainly the, the appetite wasn't there for investments. Um, there was, there was interest, but not in, not any investment dollars coming in from the Taiwan side at that time. Uh, but since then we've seen, I mean, electronic is, well now you have a protocol that you can lock down and so you don't have to vary.
It used to be that you vary pull ratios or some sort of mechanical, mechanical interface between components. Now you lock down the communication protocol and the power grid, and in that way you, you constrain interoperability between components from third parties. . Uh, and then you have a lot of patents around the grifter, which is, um, I would argue the, the center, the nexus of power in the bicycle industry, um, is arguably the road grifter, the road brake shift lever.
And with it now, the, you know, the, the cas and, uh, you know, with electronic, the electronic protocol, power grid, things like that. Because if you control, you know, even if you just control all, you've patented every single way that you can make a lever swing,
[00:19:47] steve: Right.
[00:19:48] Track 1: and you know, and that, and then now you control this lever, well, that lever dictates that the caliper has to be from the same.
Producer as well, because of safety reasons. You can't mix and match a caliper with a different hydraulic brake system. And then for the electronic, same deal, you know, it controls like you, you just have a closed protocol and nobody else can connect with that. And now you control the interfaces between the levers, the cas, the derails, um, and the bike itself.
And now you can dictate, you know, we, we want this particular break interface. And so we see, you know, uh, flat mounts and so on. We see the new universal derail your hangar, uh, that STR introduced, which I haven't, I haven't gone deep on the patent yet, but I, I wonder, do you know if that precludes other companies from attaching a derailer in the same way if they, if they forego that universal hangar?
[00:20:45] steve: No, I think Sharon's being pretty open with, with giving licenses to it, but I dunno about other third party. I mean, and at what point are we gonna have another, you know, swam shaman lawsuit, like from back in the eighties or nineties, whenever that was, that the bundling, you know? So at what point did the electronic, um, protocols become open source because of an antitrust law?
The antitrust lawsuit? I think it's unlikely. Cause I don't know who would challenge 'em at this point.
[00:21:18] Track 1: it's, uh, the bike co.
[00:21:20] steve: you got something planned.
[00:21:21] Track 1: Um, you know, we're, we're a tiny little blip on, on the grander, um, bike industry and, uh, you know,
[00:21:29] steve: 1991.
[00:21:30] Track 1: yeah. Well, so is it, is it true or, or answer this however you like? Um, I have, I wasn't around, um, for. At the time that that was happening. And so I get, I have second in hand information from people who were there or were adjacent to it.
And then I have what I've read, but my understanding is, um, so was originally grip shift. Grip shift had a different way, uh, twisting the grip on a flat bar lever to shift a rear dera and Shao would try to preclude compatibility by again, changing the pull ratios so that Sam's grip shift wouldn't work with their deras.
But then also by having these bundling deals where they go to a bike company, an o e m, uh, original equipment manufacturer. So in this case, like thesis is a, my company is an o e em specializes an no e em truck as no em, and would say, okay, you can buy these components individually, but if you buy the complete group set I e you don't buy's thing, then you get a 20% discount.
I think is, is what it was.
[00:22:35] steve: Could be.
[00:22:36] Track 1: yeah, and there was an antitrust suit that STR filed against Shaman, um, and STR one. And as I understand it, that essentially funded Sam's early rise. That's the reason why we have STR in many ways.
[00:22:51] steve: all. I mean, I think there's some other money behind
[00:22:53] Track 1: Mm-hmm.
[00:22:54] steve: uh, yeah, that's always been sort of the, uh, the, uh, the urban myth. I don't know the, the STR used that money to go out and, you know, buy all, all the things that they've bought. Rock shocks, true native, um, zip
[00:23:11] Track 1: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:12] steve: whatever. And, uh, sax, which nobody really remembers now, but that was a pretty significant purchase. Uhs, not Richard Sax the, uh, frame builder from Connecticut, but, uh, sax of Germany, which, uh, made all the internal hubs and also made derailers and stuff,
[00:23:29] Track 1: And chains too. Right? Because I think.
[00:23:31] steve: chains, um, became s chains, which became Ram chains. Um,
[00:23:37] Track 1: are still made in Portugal, I believe.
[00:23:39] steve: I think so,
[00:23:40] Track 1: Yeah.
[00:23:41] steve: so yeah, they, they acquired that factory.
Haven't, you know, chain factory is no small thing. And, um, anyway, that's always been the, you know, um, the rumor Yeah. Is that they used that cash settlement or, or judgment from Shaman to fund those. Uh, I don't know how true that is. Like I said, I know that there is some other money behind Swam and there still is. Um, some of those companies that they bought were, uh, pretty distressed
[00:24:12] Track 1: Mm-hmm.
[00:24:13] steve: You know, rock Jocks had had an IPO that, uh, were living at the top of the world there for a couple years
[00:24:19] Track 1: The mountain bike. The mountain bike. Boom.
[00:24:22] steve: Yeah. And then that kind of crashed and that's about when, when into the Suspension Fork business.
[00:24:28] Track 1: Yeah.
[00:24:30] steve: So they've been pretty savvy about the, uh, the acquisitions they made Mo most of which were back, back in the nineties. Although, what have they bought recently? They bought,
[00:24:40] Track 1: Hammerhead.
[00:24:42] steve: hammerhead.
[00:24:43] Track 1: Yeah.
[00:24:44] steve: one.
[00:24:44] Track 1: Yeah.
[00:24:45] steve: Yeah. And, uh, and the Power Meter company. I don't, the power tab, which they kinda put
[00:24:51] Track 1: cork.
[00:24:52] steve: then,
[00:24:52] Track 1: Cork, um, was power meters. Um,
[00:24:55] steve: power Tap, which they bought from cs,
[00:24:58] Track 1: oh, that's right.
[00:24:59] steve: what was
[00:25:00] Track 1: Uh, shocks.
[00:25:02] steve: Jacquez
[00:25:03] Track 1: Yeah.
[00:25:04] steve: and uh, what was the other one I was gonna say they bought something else. Oh, time pedals.
[00:25:14] Track 1: Hmm. So that really gives them, you know, a lot of different, um, components and IP that they can then, uh, interconnect through that. The access, uh, protocol, which is a closed, I believe, ZigBee based, um, protocol. Um, and so, you know, getting back to, you know, open versus closed standards and ecosystems and things like that, um, it seems to be the trend in the industry as, as always to, um, to have walled gardens.
[00:25:41] steve: Yeah. And that's been fun. You know, it was fun to see when, when Hammerhead, was, had had some di I two integration that Shaman shut him down
[00:25:53] Track 1: Yep.
[00:25:54] steve: on after Bottom, which was, um, some pretty good industry gossip right there. Um, but yeah, I mean, everybody, it's been really fun speculating about what's gonna happen, you know, with RAM owning, uh, you know, the power meter company owning a pedal company, owning a, you know, power tap, which made, which used to make power meter pedals. Um, and then owning a, a head unit GPS company on top of that. And then, like you said, the whole integration with access and, uh, it's pretty fun.
[00:26:26] Track 1: Yeah, it's the full stack in a way. I mean,
[00:26:28] steve: them battling, you know, setting up this not only with Shaman, but with, with, uh, with Fox Factory also.
[00:26:38] Track 1: I'm waiting to, for, it seems very natural that a next step for them would to be, would be to buy, say a, a company that makes home trainers or even a company that does training software that, um, they might not want to go direct head-to-head with Swift, cuz Wif has such a dominant position in that space and they don't want to alienate them or get shut off of that platform.
But, um, it seems like a natural next step to get into this burgeoning home cycling, uh, space, which granted has. Tapered off a little bit since, you know, post pandemic, but I think is still, you're, you know, there's a whole, there's a whole range of cyclists who primarily ride at home and are doing competitions in virtual worlds, and I don't think that that's going to change as the technology gets better.
[00:27:22] steve: Yeah.
[00:27:24] Track 1: Yeah.
[00:27:24] steve: Yeah, that would make sense. I'm sure there's been all sorts of conversations and there's been a couple brands that have come and gone, um, that, uh, you know, maybe, uh, ceramic has kind of hit its lip and said, no, we're, we're not gonna bid on that one. Or we're not gonna, we're not gonna overpay for that one.
I don't know. But, you know, you can look at the, the number of indoor brands that have, uh, had financial problems in the last, uh, year and a half, and, uh, even once before that, that just disappeared. Um, have you seen a kinetic trainer on the market in a couple years? I.
[00:28:02] Track 1: Yeah. So what else do you see happening in the bike industry? Um, so obviously parts shortages were the big story during the pandemic. Now we have, uh, parts being, you know, liquidated through various channels and presumably is that's going to accelerate, uh, post Taipei show coming up in, uh, in Taiwan in, uh, the end of March
[00:28:25] steve: Yeah, I think so. I think there's still some, some shortages I hear on the road bike component side. I guess you'd know more about that than, than I would. Um,
[00:28:34] Track 1: saying group sets or.
[00:28:37] steve: yeah, and, and the bikes that those group sets. Hang on. You know, I think, um, know, if you talk to dealers, it's, uh, yeah, they have all the $900 mountain bikes.
They can, they can eat, uh, or even I think the 1500, $1,900 bikes, but the, um, the mid to high price mountain bikes are, are a little bit harder to get. And I think also the, um, mid to high price road bikes are hard to get. And, um, and there's kind of a shortage of, there's kind of a dearth of, of. Of really affordable road bikes.
[00:29:13] Track 1: Hmm.
[00:29:14] steve: I think, uh, there's not a lot of groups there, you know, I mean, tram's got and then, you know, shaman hasn't been, had a real good road group, uh, below 1 0 5 for years. So, you know, it'd be interesting and see how cues affects, affects that.
[00:29:34] Track 1: Well, and their, their transition to 12 speed too. Um, and they had a, a factory catch on fire just before the pandemic, right.
[00:29:43] steve: Yeah. What was that? It was a, was it like an ANOT factory or something? I know they were making some real high end stuff. Like they were making like the xtr crank, you know, when, when Xtr went to 12 speed, I think they couldn't get a crank for it for like two years. Right.
[00:29:59] Track 1: Hmm.
[00:29:59] steve: they were like, relabeling, theor, xt cranks. people were pissed about and Uh, yeah, I don't know. It it's, yeah. Fires in the bike in factory fires in the bike industry. That's, that's been, uh, yeah, that's been a gossipy thing going back, you know, 50 years. I think you can get some old timers telling you about famous fires and how they couldn't get such and such for, for five years after that fire.
And sometimes I wonder much of it's urban myth, you know, and people just blaming things on their inability to produce stuff. They blame it on a factory fire. Didn't you hear about that? Come on. Giant factory burned out last year. And uh, I think especially before the internet, who would check, you know, it's like, ah, I don't know.
I heard that like the van sneaker factory burned down last year. Didn't you hear about that? That's why I can't get those van sneakers I've been looking for. before the internet it was pretty hard to look that up. Now it's a little bit easier, you know?
[00:30:55] Randall: Now you've been, so I think probably both of us have been talking to a lot of dealers lately for different reasons. Um, with, with me, we've been building out our, our dealer network for our logo spiel program. Um, and I'm curious to hear, I'll share a little bit about what I've been hearing and I'm curious how that, um, relates to, you know, some of the things that you've been hearing from dealers.
So some of the things I've heard is, um, well one, you have, uh, essentially you weren't able to get product for a long time. A lot of dealers over ordered or ordered the same thing from multiple sources, hoping to get it from somewhere, um, sooner rather than later. And then all of it got dumped on the, on dealers in the fall and over the winter at exactly the time when.
you know, nothing is selling generally, it's, it's the, the doldrums of the, the bike, uh, selling season and cycling season in North America anyways. But then also, you know, people, uh, with, with the country opening up post covid, um, you know, the bike boom was, was coming to an end and it wasn't clear. You know, where things will, you know, how that will level off and how much lag there will be, where everyone who got a b wanted a bike, got a bike and you know, the, you know, at at what point and, and you know, the secondhand market will start coming down in price and that'll become more compelling.
So how long will it take for this lag of, of certain types of components to work its way through the space? Um, and it's been interesting too, you see, um, an ex, am I right that there's an acceleration of the big brands buying shops?
[00:32:27] steve: Uh, depends on what time scale you're looking at. I, you know, I don't, I think, um, I think that's slowed down in the last six months or, or nine months. There was a big acceleration, you know, in, in 21, especially, uh, I think it was 21 when, you know, track had been buying shops left and right. Uh, specialized had not.
[00:32:50] Track 1: Yep.
[00:32:51] steve: um, when Mike's bikes sold to, uh, to pawn in, I think, I wanna say that was 2021.
[00:32:59] Track 1: Pawn being the owner of, uh, Cervelo Santa Cruz and a handful of other brands. And Mike Spikes being a big multi-store chain, mostly in, in the NorCal, um, you know, bay Area. Yeah,
[00:33:12] steve: Yeah. And they were the, I think the single biggest specialized dealer in the country and one of the, or maybe the most important markets in the country, the
[00:33:19] Track 1: I think, I think Eric's was their biggest, I think Mike's bikes was number two.
[00:33:24] steve: could
[00:33:24] Track 1: but certainly the Bay Area is huge and a lot of, um, you see a lot of. S works, you know, $15,000 bikes rolling around the Bay Area.
[00:33:35] steve: Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot more of the high end stuff than, than Eric's sell, I'm sure.
[00:33:40] Track 1: Yeah.
[00:33:41] steve: Um, and it did, and it did kind of seem like Specialized had all their eggs in that basket. Um, they didn't have a lot of other dealers. It was just Eric. I mean, uh, Mike's just ruled the rot anyway, so Yeah. Specialized really woke up. Uh, that was, that was the wake up call for Mike Ard was, oh my God, we're, we're losing our distribution. Um, and it came on, they lost some other big dis uh, big retail distributions like, uh, um, ables in, in, uh, hill Abel down in Austin, Texas, which was a huge specialized dealer that Trek walked in and bought, um, all of a sudden specialized, lost its biggest dealer in Austin, Texas, which is another, you know, another one of the handful of very biggest markets in the country.
[00:34:27] Track 1: And growing, growing rapidly with a lot of deep pocketed folks as well who tend to buy their, their high-end stuff. Yeah.
[00:34:34] steve: So all of a sudden specialized, uh, said we've gotta get into buying shops. And, uh, they were running around buying a lot of shops. Um, I think they did not have the system set up that Trekk did for, uh, processing these shops once they had acquired 'em. Uh, so it was a little bit more chaotic, whereas I think Trekk had built up to it slowly and they had, you know, from what the stories I've heard of, you know, TREKK has these SWAT teams that come in when they buy a shop.
You know, there's just woo uh, you know, 20, 20 people come down from Waterloo and, and fill up the hotel rooms and whatever town that they just bought the dealership in and just handle that transition. You know, they usually shut down for a week or so, pop up some new signs, change over the website, uh, make some people some offers, and, uh, and they're, you know, kick out all the other brands and, uh, they're up and running again in a couple weeks. And, um, They've got it down to a science now and uh, I don't think specialized ever quite got to that. It was more like, uh, yeah, okay, we bought you, um, keep running. We'll talk to you in a few months when we need something from you. Uh, that was some of the impression I got anyway. I think specialized also was overpaying for some of the shops from some of the stories I heard, but, um, but I think it all slowed down a lot last, last year, I think with the, um, you know, with the economy and I think, um, the cashflow for companies like Specialized Amtrak I think became harder.
And there's been a handful of acquisitions in the last nine months, but it, it really slowed down a lot um, I haven't heard it very many recently. We don't hear about 'em all cuz both, both track and specialize. Uh, tend to be really quiet when they buy a, a shop or a chain of shops. Uh, but I haven't heard many rumors in the last three or four months.
[00:36:26] Track 1: I've heard, granted, I don't know the, uh, the dates on these, but as I've been talking to dealers, I've heard about offers being made, but those offers may have been made, you know, six, nine months ago, a year ago or something like that. Um, but there's definitely been a lot of, um, a lot of conversations being had along those lines over the past year, year and a half or so.
Um, and it's interesting, you know, there's this long standing conversation in the bike industry about, um, you know, the dynamic between, or the balance between, uh, direct to consumer sales over the internet, which is growing for obvious reasons. And the pivotal role that the bicycle shop, particularly independent shops play, um, as a hub for the cycling community.
And how do you. You know, how do you maintain this critical bit of community infrastructure, um, in a, in a world where, you know, increasingly people can buy things very conveniently over the internet and have it delivered, um, you know, directly to them. Now there's, you know, service has for a long time, um, been the bread and butter of shops.
And a lot of shops pre pandemic were at least telling me, um, that they, as much as they spent a lot of their money on having bikes on the floor, most of their income, most of their net profit was coming from, um, service and parts and accessories. Uh, which is in some ways, you know, supplemental to service.
Cuz when you go in for maintenance, you're getting chains and, and other service parts. Um, but how do you, how do you see that evolving over time from your vantage point?
[00:38:07] steve: It's been hard. I mean, uh, when you hear that, you think, well, why don't you do a service only place? And,
[00:38:15] Track 1: of folks are
[00:38:17] steve: a few folks are, I'm not finding a whole lot of great examples of people that have been raging successes doing that. Um, Uh, you know, the whole, the whole mobile service thing has been at best for the last two or three years. Um, you know, I know that, um, a few people that have gone that way in, um, in the Boulder area haven't been hugely successful. I think there might be a couple that are still running, but, um, the problem is that you just lose that volume. You know, whether you make a lot of money on a bike sale or not, it's still, you know, thousand, 2000, 3000, $5,000 bike sale.
You know, for some shops in Boulders, I know you were and visited some of them, you know, they pretty regularly are selling 10,000 and
[00:39:08] Track 1: sure.
[00:39:09] steve: uh, bikes. And, you know, the profit margin on that not be huge. And you might say, well, why does that guy even, you know, still sell mo bikes? Um, he can make more money building a wheel or, you know, just charging someone a few hundred dollars to install a new campy group on a moot spring. Um, but he nee he needs that, that dollar volume, uh, from the bike sale to pay the rent. Um, so there, there haven't been as many examples of that as you would think. you know, going back five years, going back 20, 30 years, people have been talking about, well, hey, we make all our money in service. Why don't we just do service hasn't worked for many people. Um, I think people expect bike shops to have bikes and, uh, I think the bike shops need that, that volume to make it work. Um, you know, some shops have been, have found some supplemental income doing more different types of service, whether it's, you know, whether it's bike fits, whether it's click and collect fulfillment. Or, uh, doing warranty service. You know, I know I, I talked to a guy at Caba who does warranty service for one of the better known to consumer e-bike brands. And, uh, he makes a pretty significant, high margin chunk of money, uh, just from dealing with warranty service from people that buy these bikes online and then have, have whatever troubles and the, uh, the brand reimburses him, uh, pretty generously.
[00:40:46] Track 1: Yeah.
[00:40:47] steve: so there's all sorts of, uh, kind of ancillary things around the edges that people fill in, but that guy, he still sound a lot of bicycles.
[00:40:55] Track 1: Mm-hmm.
[00:40:56] steve: Uh, he still has a warehouse full of 'em, and, uh, um,
[00:41:01] Track 1: as do a lot of people right now, especially as we, we were saying on the, on the more entry level, um, in particular,
[00:41:09] steve: Yeah. So I don't know. I haven't seen, there's, there's examples here and there. Yeah. Of, of the people who are, who are focusing on the service or are looking into, you know, more of the showrooming, uh, fulfillment click and collect kind of models. And there, you know, there's a million different models as you know,
[00:41:27] Track 1: Mm-hmm. Well and, and click and collect and,
[00:41:31] steve: not, I'm not finding, but like wholesale, you know, all the bike shops going outta business and all of a sudden we have a whole bunch of just little fulfillment showrooms around. Um, is happening, but not on a huge scale, you know, I mean, what specializes do, I don't know how many of these fulfillment centers they have. Uh, that's one of the things they did up in Northern California where, um, after they lost Mikes was opening up these little fulfillment centers. They would just rent a warehouse space in the, you know, in the business park somewhere and hire a couple people to assemble bikes and give 'em a truck, and they would run around and deliver 'em.
[00:42:10] Track 1: Oh, that wa that was basically, um, velo, fix's pitch to the OEMs in the day. Yeah. Uh, Veli fix, uh, being a van based service operator,
[00:42:21] steve: Yeah.
[00:42:21] Track 1: I know you know this
[00:42:22] steve: to be doing a better job of that than, than maybe be, was, um,
[00:42:29] Track 1: velo fix. I,
[00:42:30] steve: model.
[00:42:30] Track 1: yeah. I had spoken with Velix a couple of times, and not only could I not understand the value to us as an o e em as a brand, but I couldn't understand a, you know, they, they required a huge upfront and, uh, investment from their franchisees to not just buy a van but outfitted a particular way and have it beli, fixed, branded.
Um, and then, you know, you're paying a, uh, I think an, um, it might have been an upfront fee and then a recurring fee, and then a percentage of your income. To this company and this company, uh, is supposed to drive business to your franchise, but really in a way, they're kind of intermediating you. And at the end of the day, you know, and the co I, I'm curious, what do you think about this?
Um, I, I had always talked, uh, spoken to the van based folks that I knew and said like, you know, at the end of the day, your, your brand is yourself and the quality of service and your engagement with your local community. And, you know, there's no big, um, company, uh, I think can substitute for that. And I think the bike space is, is that might be more so the case than in other spaces.
Like you have this particular mechanic, uh, because the difference between a good mechanic, a skilled mechanic, a mechanic who cares, uh, and, and does a good job, um, and is engaged in, in their community. The difference between that and. Somebody who doesn't, somebody who doesn't have the skills. Somebody who, you know, it could be the difference between a safe bike and an unsafe bike amongst other things.
Yeah. Um, well, so another topic that you and I have touched on in the past is, uh, you. The supply chain and risks to the supply chain. Uh, I've seen a couple of articles, I believe in your publication, uh, talking about, um, the increasing concerns about exposure to, uh, growing hostilities between, uh, the US and China over, uh, Taiwan.
And I'm curious, what have you been hearing, seeing, uh, with regards to, um, any sort of changes being made on the, uh, upstream for a lot of companies, um, both, um, OEMs who are sourcing in Asia, but then also say Taiwanese companies and so on, uh, who are producing, um, you know, what, what changes are you seeing?
Are people, is that accelerating at all with the, uh, increasingly hostile rhetoric?
[00:45:07] steve: Uh, yeah, but you know, slower than maybe I would've expected. Um, and that, you know, that might not be due to reluctance, but just the fact that it's, it's a hard task, um,
[00:45:19] Track 1: Yeah.
[00:45:20] steve: setting up a, a bike factory or, uh, in a new country and building the infrastructure around it, uh, to make that work, particularly during a pandemic.
[00:45:30] Track 1: Yeah, yeah.
[00:45:31] steve: so, you know, going back to stories I was writing two years ago, you know, I, I think I saw just recently that Velo Saddle opened their factory in Vietnam, I think it was,
[00:45:44] Track 1: Makes sense.
[00:45:45] steve: that they had been working on for like three years. Um, and then they just, they were ready to turn it on when the pandemic started, and then they just, um, sat on those plans for a couple years. But yeah, Velo moving outta Taiwan supplementing their Taiwan factory with uh, a Vietnam factory is a big deal. And, um, You know, and at Eurobike last year, I had a lot of talks with people about, them setting up different factories in Eastern Europe to serve the European market. Um, but, uh, you know, we just saw investing in a new factory in Taiwan, so, uh, there's not a, there's not a mess exodus yet, and I think people are, are finding it's, um, fairly hard to operate in some of these other countries.
Cambodia, I think, turned out to be more of a challenge than some people thought.
[00:46:44] Track 1: Sure
[00:46:45] steve: Um, you know, there's stuff moving towards Malaysia and Singapore, I think. Um,
[00:46:52] Track 1: in the.
[00:46:53] steve: Vietnam has been up and down. They had more covid problems than, than some areas, I think. yeah, it's a very slow movement. I think, you know, um, you know, Trek hasn't broken ground on a giant new factory in, in Waterloo, as far as I know.
Or, or, or in Mexico or in, uh, Bulgaria. You know,
[00:47:16] Track 1: Well, that, that's a whole, I mean, it's a related conversation, um, and a whole other can of worms that we can crack open. Um, so one, you know, we, we have looked, um, at various times over the years at what it would take, um, both for us to do more production domestically, um, but then also, um, for more production to be done domestically in a general sense.
And, uh, I'll give an example. Um, recently I was looking at, uh, you know, developing and sourcing a metal frame, either steel or titanium. Um, we'll, we'll stick with steel. It's an easier example. So, um, called, uh, a few different outfits and, uh, well one, there isn't really anyone who's mass producing steel frames in the US When I say mass producing, like doing, you know, thousand of units at a go.
Um, with the exception of maybe Kent.
[00:48:09] steve: Detroit.
[00:48:11] Track 1: Uh, Detroit bikes
[00:48:13] steve: Mm-hmm.
[00:48:14] Track 1: they, and they're serving as a contract manufacturer?
[00:48:17] steve: Mm-hmm.
[00:48:20] Track 1: Might ask for an intro at some point. Um,
[00:48:22] steve: That's Tony Kirklands,
[00:48:24] Track 1: oh, okay.
[00:48:25] steve: who bought, um, he and his partner bought time,
[00:48:30] Track 1: Mm-hmm.
[00:48:30] steve: is making carbon frames in Europe somewhere. Slovenia,
[00:48:36] Track 1: Okay.
[00:48:36] steve: of those European companies,
[00:48:37] Track 1: Yeah,
[00:48:38] steve: Um, and then that company car, it's called Cardinal Bicycle Works, I think, uh, also bought Detroit. Uh, they're, they claim to be the biggest steel frame maker in the US and uh, they're making stuff under their own. Name and they're doing a couple other contract
[00:48:58] Track 1: that.
[00:48:58] steve: some, they made some Schwinn Varsities a couple years ago. I mean, I think that was only a few hundred units or a or so. But they actually, they brought Backy made, made Detroit?
[00:49:11] Track 1: Well, one of the, the things that's great to hear, and I'm gonna follow up on that, um, one of the things that kept coming up as I was having conversations here was there are essentially two primary, um, sources, uh, brands that are selling, uh, tube sets. Unless you're sourcing factory direct outta somewhere in Asia, uh, I think you have colo.
You have, uh, what Columbus some in some Reynolds. And one of, one of them has been struggling with supply and both of them are, are quite expensive in the US vis-a-vis what you can get comparable tube sets for in Asia. And so when you combine those two factors of both more expensive raw stock and the fact that you can't, you don't know it's going to be available and you only have two supply, two primary suppliers versus if I want to make, uh, a frame somewhere in Asia, I have.
Countless tube suppliers now don't necessarily want to use just any of them, but even the, the higher end ones, of which there may be a handful, they still have the, all these other factories kind of nipping at their heels. And that, you know, drives innovation. That drives, uh, you know, them to build this sort of, um, you know, production facilities that can handle scale, that are responsive.
Uh, they know if they can't deliver on a tight timeframe for a reasonable price, that someone else is gonna develop that capacity to do so. Um, and that goes across every single thing that you could want to source for a bicycle, whether it's something like a carbon component you want to develop. You have any number of facilities where you could co-develop that, that component.
And they'll even provide the engineering, in some cases, they'll latize the tooling over the, over the units, which is to say, like, spread the cost of the tooling over the units, the, the tooling costs. You know, my tooling costs for a frame is on the order of like 8,000 bucks a size. . Um, and I could have that built into the price if I do enough volume.
That's, you know, you combine all of these factors and, you know, going back to the issue of, of Taiwan, yeah, it doesn't surprise me that you're not seeing moves and mass just because you have such deep and interconnected supply chains there. And even like when you get your goods quoted, they quote it, um, not out of the factory.
They deliver it to your door. And that's just expected. And when they say they're gonna deliver it, generally they're pretty on time. Um, particularly, you know, the, the, the better vendors out there, the more professional ones, the velo, uh, you know, velo makes not just saddles, but bar tape and they do most of the high-end stuff in the industry.
Uh, still there are a couple competitors, but, um, and it's because they just do such a great job. Um, and that efficiency. And, uh, another example, I was sourcing stems years ago. and I was like, oh, I'm, yeah. I lived in a, I lived in China for a number of years. Uh, I bet you I can find a better deal somewhere in China.
I couldn't, Taiwan had better pricing on a superior product. Um, and it's because Taiwan had, um, invested in, you know, factories like, uh, jd, um, their trade name is Trans X.
[00:52:15] steve: mm-hmm.
[00:52:15] Track 1: they manufacture for any number of brands. They did all of our, uh, cockpit stuff, uh, for thesis, and they just have a very well run production facility in these huge forging machines and really high quality tooling.
And they can just crank out high quality 3D forg stems all day with that high quality and without a, a huge, with a less and less human intervention in that process. Um, and, you know, do it at a price that makes it such that, you know, there's no point in going somewhere else. Um, because most of the cost is not associated with the labor.
[00:52:52] steve: Yeah.
[00:52:53] Track 1: Um, so yeah, that, that makes sense. It'll be interesting. Uh, you know, I'm, as you know, I did my, my graduate studies in US-China relations, and so it's a situation I've been following quite closely. Um, I guess, uh, if something does happen there, uh, the availability of bike parks, it will be the, the least of everybody's issues,
[00:53:13] steve: Yeah. Yeah, that's a thing. I mean, there, there won't be many parts of the economy that won't be affected, um, if something happens there. But, um, bike industry will not be an exception,
[00:53:24] Track 1: now,
[00:53:25] steve: um, except for maybe on the service part. Right. Still, uh, we can still maybe
[00:53:31] Track 1: secondhand stuff will be, um, the secondary market will be booming,
[00:53:35] steve: Yeah.
[00:53:35] Track 1: so,
[00:53:36] steve: up now by your, uh, by your HP cassettes now. Yeah.
[00:53:43] Track 1: well, so to, you know, to wrap up here, um, what do you see going forward, um, from, and, and very open-ended question, uh, what are you excited about from a technology standpoint? What are you seeing, um, in terms of, uh, you know, innovative business models or distribution models or, uh, just trends in the, in industry more generally.
[00:54:10] steve: Well, there's one word that we haven't used so far in this call. You like,
[00:54:16] Track 1: Sure.
[00:54:17] steve: you know, there's still, there's still some growth there, I think. Um,
[00:54:21] Track 1: What do those stats look like right now?
[00:54:23] steve: it's not good stats. There aren't any, I don't know. You know, you can just read the T leaves and see that, you know, there's been some discounting and there. Um, even some of the low price brands that were scaring the hell out of everybody a year ago, um, are now blowing out prices, which is not good news, but still, um, kind of suggests that the, uh, the, uh, demand has, has slowed a little bit.
[00:54:51] Track 1: Mm-hmm.
[00:54:52] steve: but you know, it's exciting to see, uh, the growth and the cargo bikes, you know, um, you know, I know Specialized finally did their public launch of their globe. The Globe this week.
[00:55:02] Track 1: Mm-hmm.
[00:55:03] steve: launched the Ecar bike a month or two ago. I think. there's some others coming around. Turn seems to be kicking ass. Um, And, uh, not to mention rad power. Um, so, you know, that's, that's still exciting. There's still growth potential there. Uh, you know, I don't think you're gonna get to European numbers where, you know, like in the Netherlands where, I don't know, or 70% of the bikes sold, there are e-bikes. Now, you know, we're in the US it's probably 12% or something.
I don't know. not gonna get there. I've been saying that for years, but, you know, even if we go from 12% to 18%, that's, uh, a lot of growth. And it's also, um, you know, a high average selling price of these things. You know,
[00:55:53] Track 1: Mm-hmm.
[00:55:53] steve: to talk about Kent selling $89, 20, 20 inch wheel bikes to Walmart.
But when you're talking about somebody, you know, when you know the low price leader is selling bikes for 1400 bucks, uh, e-bikes.
[00:56:07] Track 1: Yeah.
[00:56:08] steve: You know, and then, you know, and, and specialized just brought out their, you know, their discounted, affordable e cargo bike, which I think starts at 2,500 bucks or something. It's a big, it's a big difference there.
[00:56:20] Track 1: Well,
[00:56:22] steve: so, you know, Turin is selling these, you know, these little electric mini band bikes, uh, you know, for three, four or $5,000 regularly then, then another thousand dollars in accessories on top of it. Um, so, uh, not to be too focused on the dollars and cents here, but I am, I am from a business magazine,
[00:56:43] Track 1: Sure. Yeah.
[00:56:44] steve: um, so yeah, there's exciting and, uh, you know, yeah, there's, there's, it's, it's fun to see the growth in the gravel bikes. and uh, and the activity around that, uh, the way the events are going and the competition is, is really interesting. Um,
[00:57:05] Track 1: And the, and the community dynamics in the gravel space too, it seems to have remained a lot more accessible even as you have more elite level events and so on, showing, showing up. You still have, you know, lots of local events and it's a, it's a version of cycling that is, well, it's a very versatile machine and it gets you off the road.
Which addresses, uh, the, the thing that comes up in survey after survey as the biggest limiter, uh, for people getting on bikes, which is fear of cars, you know, the safety concerns.
[00:57:39] steve: yeah, yeah. And I'm not sure what I think about that. I think it is more accessible than, you know, old school, you know, USA cycling, road racing, um, I guess, uh, but you know, last night, I mean, for me, I don't have a whole lot of interest personally in doing a lot of the events. Maybe a couple a year, but, you know, mostly I, what I like about gravel writing is just being able to go out and explore and. Um, ride by myself or with a, a couple friends, but not necessarily pin a number on. Even if I do pin a number on, it's not really to raise, it's just, uh, you know, an excuse to ride with some people and have some rest areas where I can get free food along the way,
[00:58:21] Track 1: Yeah.
[00:58:22] steve: of having to fill up my water bottles in a creek somewhere. So, um, but I don't know. I went to a, I went to a big gravel race, um, last spring and. It, it didn't look very accessible to me. You know, I saw a lot of people pulling up in Sprinter vans with a couple, you know, $8,000 bikes on the back bumper and, you know, the carbon wheels and, you know, there was a nice dinner out and it was during Covid, so everybody was eating outside and they had the streets blocked off.
We're all sitting out on the tables on the street. And, uh, it was, it was kind of fun. It reminded me of, you know, no racing from back in the day. But, uh, but then, but then, yeah, I'm looking around and I'm seeing a lot of pretty well-healed middle class
[00:59:06] Track 1: Yep.
[00:59:07] steve: people with nice cars and carbon bikes, with carbon wheels and a whole lot of money invested.
And I'm like, I,
[00:59:15] Track 1: Well, and
[00:59:16] steve: accessibility of this.
[00:59:17] Track 1: well, and, and yes, that absolutely exists. And that's a, that's a perfectly fine thing. Um, you know, there's, there's a place for everybody. I, I think what I'm referring to more is, well, one, what you're describing as like going out solo or with some friends and, you know, going out on the road, leaving from your back door and then going out on adventure and like experiencing your area from a different vantage point.
Um, there's also kind of along those lines, uh, the bike packing phenomenon, which to some degree is a little bit like the s u V phenomenon, that people are buying bikes that they could go bike packing with, um, but not necessarily doing it, but you, but you see more and more of that people doing an overnight or a couple days or something.
[00:59:57] steve: Mm.
[00:59:58] Track 1: but then lots of just, uh, at least here in New England, I've been to a few very kind of small, intimate types of events. Maybe you have a, a couple hundred people show up and there's a, a, you know, a, a wood fired, um, uh, pizza oven going and, you know, local, uh, brewery supporting, and it's to support, uh, some local cause and maybe they have a podium.
Um, but, but not really. It's like, that's not the point
[01:00:26] steve: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I think, uh, the whole, the way the competition goes, um, you know, I don't know how many people are interested in the, and even, uh, from a spectator point of view in the racers, I, I, a few people are, I mean, we
[01:00:44] Track 1: It's, it's not, it's not super interesting
[01:00:47] steve: right? I mean, I, I'm a nerd. I mean, I'll, I'll, man, I, last week was, I, I was watching Melan, I mean, not Melan. Perry Neese and Toreno Rko, you know, back to back every morning. I mean, I'm a total bike race nerd. I love it. You know, I did used to be the editor of T com, uh, and I couldn't even tell you who the top gravel racers are, you know, in the US and I don't know how many people care. I know, you know, we at outside@beonnews.com and cycling tips.com.
We write a bit about that. Betsy Welch is doing a great job, but, I, I don't know how many, you know, I'm, I'm interested in doing gravel events. I'm interested in the gravel equipment. when I hear about an event, I think, oh, that might be nice to go to some year. I'd like to do that and see what it's like to ride in that part of the country on those kind of roads. Uh, but do I want to read, uh, a 2000 word interview with the guy that won the pro race? Uh, maybe not. I dunno.
[01:01:55] Track 1: I'm, I'm with you. I think that the, um, the more interesting story is the, the story of your own experience of the events. You know, you go and you do something that is long and maybe has some technical sections, and you are, um, linking up with different groups along the way, unlike, say, a, a cross-country race.
Um, so cross-country race, you tend to be, you know, it's a, it's a time trial in which you have some people in the way sometimes, um, and road,
[01:02:20] steve: in the way.
[01:02:21] Track 1: yeah. and then Ro
[01:02:23] steve: usually the one that's in the way of some other people, but yeah.
[01:02:26] Track 1: Yeah. Um, that, that was my discipline back in the day. Uh, but with gravel, you have, I mean, uh, I know quite a few people, myself included. At this point.
I'm no longer. I no longer do these events to compete, I do it as a way of connecting with folks, like being out on a ride and you end up just, uh, linking up with different groups and having this kind of shared ordeal of slogging up that hill with a group or riding into the wind with another group and, you know, making friends along the way.
And those are the types of dynamics that, you know, I have, I haven't done a ton of the, um, you know, the, the big, the big banner events for, you know, gravel series and so on. Uh, but those are the dynamics that I'm seeing at the, again, these more intimate, local types of events that I think when I talk about accessibility, that's, that's where, um, my heart is, you know, things that are much more about bringing people together and, and providing a shared experience, a platform for a shared experience that people, uh, find, um, meaningful and not just a competition.
[01:03:28] steve: Yeah. And just from a, you know, from an event point of view, just the practicality of it now. I mean, we're, we're, we're losing paved roads where we can have a race. I mean, even just watching, watching the two races in Europe last week, how, how many of 'em they have to go through these damn traffic circles? I mean, the, the last 10 kilometers are scary now cause there's a, there's a traffic circle every five blocks.
[01:03:51] Track 1: Yeah,
[01:03:52] steve: uh, all these, you know, the road furniture is just getting worse and worse. And that's been happening in the for years. You know, there's all sorts that had to be canceled just because of all the development and the traffic and road designs make it impossible. The road there anymore.
[01:04:08] Track 1: yeah,
[01:04:09] steve: mogul Bismark circuit outside of Boulder is just unable now. Because of all the traffic circles
[01:04:16] Track 1: yeah. Um, Boulder's a very, boulder's a very particular place. Um, you've been there for how many years now?
[01:04:25] steve: Uh, about 15.
[01:04:27] Track 1: Yeah, uh, I haven't been going there quite that long, but, um, I did do the whole kind of dirt bag, private tier pro thing at one point. Um, so got to ride at a bunch of different places and obviously for my work, I'm traveling a fair amount and the, um, the number of strong riders you have where you are is pretty outstanding.
It's kind of hard to go out on a ride and not cross paths with some past or current national champion or Olympian. Um, and you also have, um, unique in the US is some of the best bike infrastructure anywhere. And that actually to maybe we close up the conversation with, um, you know, you had talked about how.
you know, we could say modal share, uh, the share of, uh, trips taken by bike or the number of bikes being sold, um, not just for recreation, but for utility. You know, e-bikes primarily fall into a utility, uh, space with the exception of, you know, some performance mountain bikes and so on. But the, uh, you were saying how Europe has seen far more adoption.
Uh, what do you see as the differences between the European and US markets and, you know, the, the things that would have to happen here, uh, to see greater adoption of bicycles as a modality for, you know, not just, uh, enthusiast riders, but recreation and, and, you know, more importantly as a, I think as a, a replacement for a number of automobile trips, which is where these cargo bikes come in.
[01:05:56] steve: Right. Yeah. It's all about the facilities. You know, it's all about building out the infrastructure to, to make that viable. Um, you know, I mean, it's funny, I heard somebody else recently talk about Boulder and what great infrastructure we have.
[01:06:12] Track 1: Relatively, relatively speaking.
[01:06:14] steve: Yeah, it must mean the rest of the country's really pretty bad because there's a lot , there's a lot of improvements that could still be made in Boulder.
It's still pretty, awful. Uh, I think, um, and I, you know, I haven't traveled as much the last few years because of Covid, but before that I did a lot. And, um, you know, I think, uh, places like, you know, I think of Vancouver primarily. Uh, they've done some amazing things there with their infrastructure and they've been just pretty ruthless about coveted and saying, yeah, we're gonna redo this entire, you know, intersection that used to be some, uh, you know, horrendous clover leaf.
And we're just gonna slow it down and we're gonna build like, past, through the middle of it to, um, to make it easier to get through here on a bike. And yes, it's gonna slow down cars. Um, and, uh, unfortunately it's harder to do that in the us. Uh, it's
[01:07:05] Track 1: sure.
[01:07:06] steve: to build. Infrastructure. Uh, there's a lot of NIMBYs, there's a lot of regulations, there's a lot of, cost factors that, um, slow a lot of that stuff down a lot. so, you know, the good news is there's a lot of potential to improve. I mean, I look at Boulder and, you know, yeah, it has great infrastructure. It also has a ton of car traffic. There's a ton of people in single occupant cars sitting in traffic all day. There's people backed up around the block waiting to go through the coffee, drive through in
[01:07:36] Track 1: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.
[01:07:37] steve: occupancy car that they're sitting there and idling in,
[01:07:40] Track 1: Yep.
[01:07:41] steve: pumping out.
And that's Boulder, you know.
[01:07:43] Track 1: Yeah. Burn, burning, subsidized gas.
[01:07:46] steve: Yeah.
[01:07:47] Track 1: Yeah.
[01:07:48] steve: Um, so yeah, like I said, the good news is there's a lot, there's a lot of room for improvement, even in Boulder and much less, uh, um, some other places.
[01:07:57] Track 1: Yeah. I think.
[01:07:58] steve: um, but you know, every, every time there's a little bit of improvement that's, you know, that's another, uh, it's another a hundred e cargo bikes sold, maybe, uh, it's too bad it's not hundred thousand more sold, but it's, it's hundred more sold. And, um, so.
[01:08:18] Track 1: Yeah, I think there's this, um, you know, you, you get slightly better infrastructure and that gets a few more people on the road, which in turn gets a slightly bigger constituency to push for better infrastructure and gets drivers slightly more accustomed to, you know, sharing the roads with, with cyclists.
But early on, you know, I, I, the numbers I've seen are generally around 5% is where there's something of a phase shift in terms of those dynamics. And you start to s you know, it starts to get a little bit easier to get further adoption. Um,
[01:08:49] steve: some kind of tipping 0.5% of what,
[01:08:53] Track 1: Uh, modal share. So of, of all trips taken, um, 5% by bike and I believe places like the Netherlands, um, uh, actually, uh, just had Anna Mariah Rook, uh, on the pod not too long ago. She might know this, she's from there. Um, but I recall reading like on the order of like, you know, 30, 40, 50% modal share, maybe more.
I have to, uh, look that up at some point. And that's a, a fundamentally. Different dynamic. It's, it's highly normalized, it's abnormal to, um, you know, to take a car for no good reason. And the infrastructure's there to support it, in part because there're enough people to agitate for the infrastructure. Um, and then you get into congestion charges and downtowns and things like this that might, um, help to nudge some of this, um, you know, convenient for the driver, but, um, detrimental to everyone else's behavior of, uh, single occupancy vehicles going for short distances to do everything that you could otherwise do with a, a knee cargo bike or, or even just on foot, frankly.
Um, um, but, uh,
[01:09:57] steve: It's a hard push and it's just, it's just these little marginal improvements, you know? I mean, uh, I'm in Longmont right now. If, if, um, you know, if they could figure out how to make a east, west bike route in this city so that I could get from here to, uh, where, where I want to go on the, on the east side of town without having to go through, you know, umpteen really horrible, unsafe intersections and,
[01:10:24] Track 1: Yeah.
[01:10:25] steve: um, it would increase. You know, that, that, that would be, that would be 10 more e cargo bikes sold in Longmont this year. Um, but it, you know, it takes that one, project and there's just a million of those projects all around the country, everywhere you look, you know, including in progressive places like Boulder
[01:10:42] Track 1: Well, in, I mean, places like Boulder and Longmont were built in the car era. And so you have European cities where, which were built when, you know, having a horse was a big deal, , so things tend to be closer together. And, uh, also the zoning tended to be, um, more co-mingled with businesses and shops and, and, uh, residential versus the way we do it here.
You have a bunch of residential and then a bunch of big box stores, and then maybe you have a downtown that's, uh, being threatened by the big box stores, or that's really high end in boutiquey.
[01:11:14] steve: Yeah. you know, Boston was famously laid out before the automobile, so there's some potential there.
[01:11:22] Track 1: Let the cows out of the pasture follow where they go and lay out the roads that way.
[01:11:26] steve: Right. Yeah. Just like, you know, I used to live in Santa Fe and it was, uh, we were, uh, lobbying to get some, uh, bike infrastructure built there. And the mayor said something about, you know, when they laid out this city of Santa Fe in 1612, they weren't thinking of bicycles. I'm like, well, they weren't thinking of SUVs either in 1612, you know,
[01:11:47] Track 1: Yeah.
[01:11:48] steve: burs. I think the burs are a little closer to a bicycle than, than your, uh, undre is. But, uh, there aren't that many cities in the US that, that were, uh, laid out that way.
[01:11:59] Track 1: Yeah. Bikes. Bikes also, uh, uh, you kind of touched upon, um, they, they kind of fall into the broader culture wars. , I think in a, in a big way for, for some people like bike infrastructure means you're gonna get the, uh, you know, these, uh, a certain type of person that they don't identify with. Uh, just put it that way.
[01:12:18] steve: Yeah.
[01:12:21] Track 1: Um,
[01:12:21] steve: it falls on that somehow. It's, it's a, it's a, uh, woke conspiracy of bicycles.
[01:12:27] Track 1: yeah.
[01:12:27] steve: Um, I, I saw a headline yesterday that, uh, Pete Budgie is being blamed for the, uh, e-bike fires in New York City. So, um,
[01:12:36] Track 1: Yeah, that makes sense.
[01:12:37] steve: cause he is the head of transportation.
[01:12:42] Track 1: And the, uh, the fight, the fight against the regulatory, the, the, actually, um, Anna Mariah, uh, brought this up too, cause she's been doing, uh, a bit of reporting, uh, on that, uh, the, the various fires happening there. And well, you know, some of those parties may be the same pushing for, you know, uh, pushing against any sort of regulation of business activities.
And, you know, that's a, that is very much a, a regulatory issue, you know, having, uh, consumer protections as an example in that particular case of these dangerous batteries. Um,
[01:13:17] steve: yep. It's.
[01:13:18] Track 1: well, Steve,
[01:13:19] steve: I, I got into the whole New York thing with some people a few weeks ago, and, uh, yeah, it's very deep. You can, you can go down a really, really deep rabbit hole there.
[01:13:29] Track 1: Well, it's, you know, you get a, you, I mean, one of the challenges is you get rid of these low-cost e-bikes and all of a sudden the livelihoods of a huge swath of the, uh, population generally, um, immigrant population are outta work. Um, and who are they serving? Well, it's, it's all these delivery companies, um, that are, you know, sending food and whatever Nick Impulse buy, uh, to, you know, wealthier people nearby.
And so you don't have to walk outta your house to, to go get your knickknack.
[01:13:59] steve: I guess. Yeah, I don't know. I, you know, what I know about New York, I, you know, is from watching Seinfeld, but, you know, it appears to me that, uh, these people live in tiny apartments with no kitchens, and so they rely on getting, uh, Chinese takeout, uh, five nights a week,
[01:14:14] Track 1: Yeah,
[01:14:16] steve: apparently now requires. Low cost e-bikes.
[01:14:19] Track 1: yeah. Yeah.
[01:14:20] steve: Um, so, you know, cracking down on UL listed batteries means, you know, Jerry and, uh, Kramer can't get their Chinese food every night. So I don't know. The
[01:14:35] Track 1: there's soup. Or there's soup which you have to show up in person for and maybe they don't give you.
[01:14:39] steve: guess so. You got, you can't, the super delivery,
[01:14:40] Track 1: Yeah. Um, well, Steve, it's uh, always a pleasure to catch up with you. I look forward to doing it again in a few months as, as we tend to do every so often.
[01:14:51] steve: Yeah.
[01:14:51] Track 1: um,
[01:14:52] steve: Come out the boulder again. There's plenty of, lots more riding to do.
[01:14:56] Track 1: Sounds good. Thanks Steve.
[01:14:57] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Between Randall and Steven. I know I learned a lot and always good to hear Steven's voice. Big, thanks to our friends at dynamic cyclist for supporting the show this week. Remember, they've got a one week free trial of their stretching and strengthening routines over@dynamiccyclists.com. And if you're interested in continuing on with their program, they're offering gravel ride podcasts, listeners, 15% off using the code, the gravel ride.
If you're able to support the show, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Or take a minute to give us a rating or review those five star ratings go a long way in. Helping other gravel, cyclists discover our content. You can always catch up with myself and Randall at the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. That's a free global cycling community.
We created a couple of years ago to connect gravel and adventure, cyclists from all over the world. Until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels.
This week Randall and Craig have along overdue catch up and discuss SRAM’s new XX SL Eagle ‘hanger-less’ derailleur and its implications for the gravel market.
Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (use code: THEGRAVELRIDE for free HRM strap)
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the podcast, I'm joined by my co-host Randall Jacobs for another edition of, in the dirt. We're going to take a look at Schram's new mountain bike derailer group. Oh, and the removal of the derailleur hanger. It's quite big news and has big implications. We've already seen a couple of gravel bikes with this type of dropout ready for this new type of derailer system. Perhaps some mullet systems will be up and running as we speak. And as we record this podcast,
It has ramifications in terms of compatibility, both backwards and forwards. And we asked some questions about how Shamana will play into this new paradigm. The new derailer has some super nifty design elements to it. And a lot of thought was clearly put into it by the folks at SRAM. Speaking of the folks at SRAM, I need to thank this week. Sponsor hammerhead and the hammerhead Caru to computer. They hammered crew two is the most advanced GPS cycling computer available today.
With industry leading mapping navigation and routing capabilities that set it apart from other GPS options. It has free global maps with points of interests included like cafes and campsites. So you can explore with confidence and on the go flexibility. As I've mentioned before, one of my favorite features is hammerheads exclusive climber feature with predictive path technology that lets you visualize and prepare for upcoming gradient changes in real time.
With or without a root loaded. I was using this feature today. In fact, I was adding on to one of my favorite rides, the Dawn patrol here in Marin county on Mount Tam. And I decided to extend the day. And honestly, by the time I dropped down to mirror woods, I decided I'd climb up the roads because I did not have the legs to go up the trail system, knowing that that trail up middle green gold Chaz. Gosh, it's probably about a 20% climb. I opted for the road and I had my face glued.
To the hammerhead crew to screen, as I was watching those gradients change. And my legs were aching. I knew what was ahead of me. I knew how long I had to go and I just kept plugging away. And that kind of knowledge. Whether it's in your home terrain or even more importantly, when you're riding routes that you've loaded on that potentially you haven't written before. It's just great. It works well for me, I tend to like to know how long I need to suffer for up these Hills. So kudos to the team at
as you know, they continually update via over the air software upgrades. So they're keeping the system fresh. They just released a new e-bike integration that brings detailed battery life usage. Right to your display so you can stay attuned to if you're running low on batteries.
Right now for listeners of the podcast, you can get a free heart rate monitor with the purchase of our hammerhead kuru to simply visit hammerhead.io right now, and use that promo code, the gravel ride at checkout to get yours today. This is an exclusive offer. So don't forget to use that promo code, the gravel ride.
Just add that heart rate monitor to your purchase of a kuru to@hammerhead.io. And you'll be good to go. With that said let's jump right into my conversation with my co-host Randall Jacobs.
[00:03:57] Craig Dalton: Hey, Randall. How you doing?
[00:03:59] Randall R. Jacobs: Doing very, very well, Craig. Good to see you buddy. How are
[00:04:02] Craig Dalton: Yeah, good to see you. Yeah, it's been a while. I feel like we've exchanged a few texts here and there over the last, say, 30 or 40 days, but we haven't actually connected.
[00:04:11] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, I think, uh, you've been pretty busy with work and with family and on my end, um, I just bought a house and so that's been occupying a lot of my mindshare and time, uh, which
[00:04:22] Craig Dalton: That's huge. I'm both, I'm both excited for you and then a little sad cuz I think feel like that has more permanence of you on the East coast than not on the West coast.
[00:04:32] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, the good news there is that, um, I will have two different little, uh, guest loft suites in the space. And so come out anytime with the fam and, uh, we'll put you up.
[00:04:43] Craig Dalton: Great. Where is the house located?
[00:04:45] Randall R. Jacobs: Kingston, New York, which, um, folks here may have heard us talk in the past about the Old Positive Festival. Um, and, uh, we actually sponsor that ride and that ride will be the sixth through the eighth and, uh, of October. Um, and the riding out here is beautiful. It's right in the Catskills, the Hudson Rivers there.
It's the original capital of New York State. And so there's a lot to do, a lot to experience, and I can't wait to. I mean, to meet some of the people, um, in our, you know, in the ridership and, and some of our listeners out here now that I'm officially putting down roots.
[00:05:21] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I know you've spent, uh, a bit of time there in the past through the O Positive Festival and other rides you've, you've had with, with friends up there. What's, what's the riding like in that area?
[00:05:31] Randall R. Jacobs: uh, we have mountains. Uh, the biggest mountain in the Catskills is about 4,000 feet. Uh, you can't ride to the summit, but there are plenty of hills, as you might imagine. Uh, and then Kingston is this little. Urban oasis amongst the sea of, you know, towns and, um, you know, and, uh, farms. Uh, there's communes, there's, there's lots of, um, interesting social innovation, new economics type thinking happening here.
Um, and as far as the riding, it's, it. It's like classic northeast riding, um, quiet back roads, plenty of gravel. Uh, there's a rail trail, uh, that comes out of town here and goes up into the, uh, into the mountains. So plenty to do.
[00:06:21] Craig Dalton: And just geographically speaking, so you know, listeners can figure out where is Kingston without going to a map, how would you describe it relative to other big city landmarks?
[00:06:31] Randall R. Jacobs: So it is about an hour and a half to two hours from, uh, Manhattan on the Hudson River. Uh, if you are coming from little further north, uh, I come from Boston, so it's about three hours from, from my hometown of Waltham, uh, out on the 90 and and south from there for about 45 minutes. So right on the border with, with Connecticut on the Hudson River.
[00:06:55] Craig Dalton: Okay. Awesome, awesome. Well, I know like we've had a lot of listeners from that area and I know it's got a great cycling community. I think the interesting thing about um, the east coast cycling communities is you have such good proximity to other communities, right? So if you live in ride in Kingston and you have an opportunity to.
Go to an event in Vermont, like that's feasible, right? Versus going to Vermont for us from the West coast is obviously a bit more of a, of a hike.
[00:07:25] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and there's lots of small local events in the Northeast as well, which is, which is quite great. And I love the vibe at those. Uh, there's a place for the really big events, and we'll talk about Sea Otter in a second. Uh, but the intimacy of an event that has 200, 300 people show up and, you know, everyone's volunteering and it, you know, maybe the funds go towards some local cause, uh, is something that's very New England.
Uh,
[00:07:49] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And I mean, I know you've been operating out of Massachusetts for a while, for, for thesis bike and locus components. Any changes in operation for, for, for the business, for moving up to that area?
[00:08:03] Randall R. Jacobs: Uh, I will need to take my laptop with me from Walham to Kingston, um, and then hook up to an internet connection here, uh, to do all the same things as before. But otherwise, we've always been, uh, a remote distributed team with, uh, you know, warehouses, one in the US and one in Taiwan. So that'll all stay the same.
[00:08:25] Craig Dalton: Yeah, we don't have time to get into it on this podcast, but I have heard about this thing called the internet and how it empowers entrepreneurs to work from around the world.
[00:08:34] Randall R. Jacobs: It's like a series of tubes, um, is what I heard from one, uh, senator in, uh, deliberations at one point. But, uh, I'll, I'll have to read his testimony, uh, you know, in more detail. So let's, let's get in, let's get into something serious here. Um,
so.
[00:08:49] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:08:50] Randall R. Jacobs: Lots of stuff to cover. Um, the, the, we have, you know, escape Collective.
We had Kaylee Fritz on the pod, uh, a few months ago talking about, um, what came next after, uh, he was let go at outside and that's huge. Escape collective.cc. , they have a, a, um, a member funded model for independent cycling media. Uh, they are over subs. They, they more than, uh, achieve their goals in terms of the initial subscribership.
And they've got people like James Huang on board who, you know, as you know, I, I personally respect immensely. He's obvi, arguably the best in the game. Um, and, uh, yeah, they, they seem to be doing it. Uh, I think it's super promising.
[00:09:39] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it was really interesting that interview you had with him earlier in the year and how he was teasing out some ideas, but pretty impressive how quickly they moved from ideation to actually execution and pretty impressive how many other journalists across a number of different disciplines they managed to get involved in the project.
Great to see like, Their community and their following. I think a lot of these journalists have pretty strong individual followings. Good to see those followings all kind of come together and see an enterprise such as Escape Collective garner enough early subscribers to kind of kick it off and become a going concern.
[00:10:26] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, I think it speaks to the quality of the community and the content that they were creating at Cycling Tips, which was founded by Wade Wallace. I remember the early days of cycling tips. I was. It was, you know, my racing days and that was the go-to cycling tips blog. It's where you went to get like inside line on training with power in the latest tech and so on.
And they did such a good job and continued doing a phenomenal job right up until the end. , uh, when unfortunately, you know, economic pressures and, you know, venture capital demands, um, on the model at outside, you know, uh, resulted in a lot of good people being let go and then, um, a lot of people following them after.
But, you know, it's, and the, I, I don't know if you've been in Velo Club. Which was the cycling tips, uh, slack forum,
um, super vibrant, healthy, uh, community there. And those people, I mean, I think, I think it's still active. Actually. I'm, I'm in, I'm in that slack, but they have a new discus, or, or I should say discord and um, you know, those dynamics are continuing.
So
[00:11:33] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:11:34] Randall R. Jacobs: it just goes to show that like, The label of the, the publication mattered a lot less than the integrity and the competency of the people involved with the project. And, uh, yeah, I'll power to them. I, I'm very excited to have this sort of funding model for independent cycling media.
[00:11:51] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. I am as well. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm a member and excited to kind of get it into my routine of sites that I hit for cycling news, and I'm, I'm still trying to get it straight in my head, like, where, why, and what I'm going for there is it, Long form media, is it the podcast, et cetera. But, you know, super excited to support what they're doing.
And I'd love to see the, the sort of media go that direction. I do sort of have some sort of concerns as to, okay, six months from now, eight months from now, a year from now, how does the economic model pan out? Right? Can they, can they get more subscribers? Can they, can they do more? Can they all get paid what they deserve to get paid?
Under this model, I'm, I'm hopeful that there's enough shift in how people want to, uh, pay for the content they're consuming, that they can achieve the goals and make it, you know, a con going concern for years to come.
[00:12:45] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and if anyone knows what the potential is, it's the people on that team because they had the numbers from when they were at cycling tips. Right, so they know what the potential market size is and what the willingness to pay. Um, they had a lot of people paying 99 bucks a year, and that's, that's significant.
Um, but you're right. Yeah. If you have a, a, a crew of, you know, 15 full-time. Uh, journalists, um, you know, that that requires sig significant funding, particularly if you are going to not entirely forego advertising, but, um, have it be largely member funded and, uh, forego, uh, for reasons of, of ethos, um, any sort of like, Pay to play or, you know, um, are, we may earn a small commission when you click this link and buy the product that we just did the review of.
And even if there's journalistic integrity in the review, well, you know, it, it's still isn't a great look. Um, so, so,
Yeah,
[00:13:46] Craig Dalton: it was interesting. I, I was listening to, uh, another podcast the other day, um, and it was reminded of the cycling independent. which was something that was started, you know, maybe 18 months ago. And it's, it's, I'm curious like how both businesses evolve. I mean, I think with the Escape Collective, the journalists involved, they all had big social followings and, uh, a lot of committed kind of listeners and fans and, and readers of their work.
So I think they had an easier time kind of bringing together enough subscribers versus like, I don't hear a ton about the cycling in depend.
[00:14:23] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and I, I think to the community piece, they were really engaged. You look at the, the, I've said this on the pod before, the comment sections in their articles, they were in there and answering questions and providing perspective, and then the forum, um, you know, there are real relationships formed in the forum, as with ours.
But, uh, the scale, or when I say ours, I mean collectively, ours, not you and I, uh, the, the, the ridership community. . Uh, but I think that that is where they really differentiated themselves and it's, it's been an inspiration. There's a reason why I kind of wax on about this is because, uh, for me, I looked at that and it's like, oh, I would love to be involved in building something like that.
Um, you know, just from a distance, not, not that I want to be a cycling journalist. Um, I got, I already have a job, but
[00:15:10] Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I mean, sort of selfishly like it, it's nice to have readers and listeners acknowledge the work that you're doing by paying some amount of. to support what you're doing right. It gives you a little bit of wind in your sails. And obviously like you and I are in positions where this is something we do for fun, obviously, like I want my costs, uh, taken care of ideally by sponsors or contributors to the podcast,
[00:15:38] Randall R. Jacobs: Speaking of which,
[00:15:40] Craig Dalton: on it.
Yeah,
[00:15:41] Randall R. Jacobs: where can people go to, uh, support Craig Dalton in, uh, covering the cost for the Gravel Ride Podcast
[00:15:47] Craig Dalton: uh, buy me a coffee.com/the gravel.
[00:15:51] Randall R. Jacobs: There, you hear it
[00:15:52] Craig Dalton: This. This was not a long-winded plug for that, by the way,
[00:15:58] Randall R. Jacobs: Um, yeah. Every, every single dollar of it goes towards just covering the costs. I certainly don't take a penny, nor do I want a penny. Uh, this has benefits for me that, that more than cover any sort of cost that I could incur. And this is just fun.
[00:16:10] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Well, let's, let's transition into riding and, and, uh, general geekery. One thing I wanted to comment on, so, you know, it's been raining like cats and dogs this winter in California. I mean, it's been, it's been crazy and I've been out here for, for 20 years at this point, and this has been the most disruptive weather.
to my cycling that I've ever experienced in California. Um, so it's, it's driven me indoors a little bit. And one of the funny things I found, like, I think it was like two months ago at this point, stepping back for a second, at the beginning of the pandemic, my wife and I had a discussion around indoor trainer bikes.
I was advocating for a trainer to put my bike on like so I could connect his lift. She wanted to get a Peloton. It was clear she was gonna probably enjoy the indoor cycling more than I was, cuz typically in California I like to ride outside. That's all I do. But we, so we ended up getting a Peloton. And quick aside on Peloton, I did find the platform.
Great. Like it definitely is fun, enjoyable, like I can see why people like it. It, uh, my annoyance with it has more been around, like if someone instructor is telling me to stand up and go 120 RPMs, I'm just like, What are you talking about? I would never do that when actually riding a bicycle and that kind of stuff irks me.
But I have found my instructors who are cyclists and so they don't stay crazy, stuff like that. But at the same token, like this whole, this whole world of Swif obviously has kicked off through the pandemic and see countless friends on Strava posting theirs with files. And I was always curious. I had become aware of a, a Kickstarter project that sort of went over.
Resistance snob on the Peloton, but it never went off the ground. I found out about that, you know, two plus years ago. But just recently I found about, found out about this product. It's a hardware hack, which I love. I love the hardware game. Um, it's called the data Data fitness Connector, and I found it by searching like Pelotons with connection.
And it's this little box that you unplug a couple of the wires that go into the pelo. And kind of create this junction box, if you will. That junction box will take the power data and beam it over to your Z Wif account, in my case, on an iPad. So I've been, the last two months, maybe less than that, I've been kind of experiencing zw and understanding what everybody's been raving about.
And you know, I, it definitely has me working out.
[00:18:50] Randall R. Jacobs: Hmm.
Yeah, just the,
[00:18:53] Craig Dalton: I think it's because Y Yeah, because there is like, there is this sort of sense that you're on a group ride, right? And getting dropped. I now, I don't have to leave my house to get dropped. I can get dropped right in my garage.
[00:19:07] Randall R. Jacobs: Congratulations,
[00:19:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah. But, you know, so anyway, quick aside, I mean, this product exists. I have found it interesting. It's just been nice. Like hopefully we're kind of getting to the other side of this rain period and I can get outside more. But, um, it's kind of kept me busy and definitely worked me over on a couple instances where I, you know, I rarely get off a, an indoor bike needing to go like, get a recovery drink or take a nap.
But that's definitely been the.
[00:19:35] Randall R. Jacobs: I was gonna crack a joke and say, and they have it, folks. Cycling is over. Craig Dalton hosts the Gravel Ride podcast, lives at the base of Mount Tam and is riding in digital worlds instead of going outside. But perfectly reasonable, um, you know, perfectly reasonable to be riding indoors in those conditions.
And in general, I'm, I'm just joking if you lo if you love it. Some, I mean, I hear, I've read stories about serious cyclists who've transitioned almost entirely to indoor cycling as a consequence of just life constraints. Having kids, you know, a lot of busy work schedule and whatever, uh, all power to you.
Not my jam, but I can absolutely understand why it's somebody's jam out there. So,
[00:20:16] Craig Dalton: to underscore how crazy the weather's been out here. So obviously like I'm in the Bay Area, we're getting the rain, but when you go up to Tahoe, these atmospheric rivers are creating. Feet upon feet of snow and I, I just caught wind. I, I'm was hoping and intending to do the, the trucky gravel, Fondo, I forget what they call it.
It just had, uh, Carlos on talking about it a few episodes ago in early June, and I just caught wind that they're talking about having to postpone that event in June because some of the areas where they go will likely still be covered in.
[00:20:53] Randall R. Jacobs: Which Tahoe in that area is beautiful, but I do wonder how like people were buried for two weeks. Um, you have to really love winter sports and, and solitude. I, I feel in order to live up there. Uh, but, uh,
[00:21:10] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I w I was up there to, there you go. I, I thought about that on my last trip to Fatbike, but then a storm came in and the guy told me it was horrible for fat biking in an actual storm. So I tabled that. I was up at a boy scout cabin with my son and his scout t troop, and we had to enter the cabin on the second floor because the snow pack in the field was at 10 feet
[00:21:35] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, isn't that a, a thing in the Tahoe area? Like you, you have an a, a lot of the houses have a second floor en entrance because certain times of year that's where you're getting in. And the only way, and maybe the only way you're getting out
[00:21:46] Craig Dalton: I, I don't know about that, but it certainly is logical this, this winter.
[00:21:51] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Uh, that's funny. That's funny.
[00:21:55] Craig Dalton: Um, but onto more forward thinking, writing plans. I mean, I know we're both hoping to get out to Sea Otter in April, so this coming month.
[00:22:05] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, if anyone's gonna be out there, definitely hit us up in the, uh, in the ridership and let's meet up. Uh, there'll be, uh, I know that Enduro is hosting an event. I don't, uh, have the details offhand here. I'll, I'll make, uh, I'll mention it in the next podcast in case people want to join. Uh, and I'll be there.
And, um, Sam Jackson, my colleague, will be there. And hopefully you'll be there as well if you're, if you happen to be, uh, at the show at that time. Um, and yeah, if we hear any, anything cool going on, we'll definitely announce it here so that we can all meet up cuz uh, it's always good to put faces with some of the names and, and to just connect with folks.
[00:22:44] Craig Dalton: Yeah, un undoubtedly. There'll be group rides, et cetera, in the days surrounding Sea Otter, as people probably know, it's a four or five day long festival at this point, with every single discipline of riding available. And I, I, I'm pretty sure there was when we were down there last year, Thursday and Friday and maybe even Saturday, there was multiple gravel ride options from various vendors and partners out.
[00:23:11] Randall R. Jacobs: I am, I'm trying to type and, um, talk at the same time. I'm wondering how many people attend. Uh, I feel like it's on the order of a hundred thousand or so.
[00:23:19] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think
[00:23:20] Randall R. Jacobs: it's
it's huge. And the facts, I, you know, I love, I love the format. Um, so it has become the industry's de facto most important trade show in North America.
Um, and the fact that it's also a festival and the trade show. Um, largely consumer facing, uh, consumer facing, ugh, uh, rider facing. So you can go and talk to the engineers and the product people at the, you know, who, who are behind the, the things that you use or interested in. Uh, I think is really cool. Uh, so I actually skipped Taipei show this year cause I didn't have any.
Strategic sourcing stuff to do, and it's a long flight and I didn't, you know, didn't wanna go to mainland right now. Um, you know, after that. Um, and, you know, I'm gonna go to Sea Otter and see all those people there. Uh, and yeah, it's, it's a lot of fun. Haven't raced it in a while. Do you have
any races planned or.
[00:24:14] Craig Dalton: you know, last year I did that, the gravel race at Sea Otter, which if the timing works, I would do, and I think it may actually be on Friday. Uh, but I will definitely be riding logos six 50 B wheels this year. Last year I think you were in the final kind of production version, and I wrote the 700 C set that you lent.
Which I loved, but it was not the wheel set for this course. Cause it's so rough that the mountain bikers hammered it. There was a lot of just breaking bumps, et cetera. So this year I feel like I have the full knowledge. I'm bringing my titanium unicorn frame with a suspension fork and six 50 B wide ass tires.
And I'm gonna bomb that course if I can, if I can have the time to.
[00:25:04] Randall R. Jacobs: bomb. That course. Like m o
[00:25:05] Craig Dalton: Ba bomb.
[00:25:07] Randall R. Jacobs: Oh, bomb. That course. Okay. I was like, is this, is this some new, new slang the kids are using these days? Um,
[00:25:14] Craig Dalton: like, you know, my, my kid's slang is not solid, so don't, don't look to me for that. But one of the things I wanted to revisit, um, you had mentioned, and this is so true, it's like Seattle Oder has become this moment in the cycling world's year where they reveal some next new technology. Shram just kind of dropped a bomb this, this week, I think it was.
And I, I think we should dig into that cuz I, it, while it was a, a mountain bike centric release today, it's definitely gonna affect the gravel world.
[00:25:49] Randall R. Jacobs: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's, it's what's next? Um, so where do we wanna start?
[00:25:56] Craig Dalton: Well, why don't you tee up like, what the heck are we talking about? What did I just reference?
[00:26:00] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, so Ceramic has a new, um, group set. It's an electronic mountain bike group set. Um, and the, the key part of this, I, I don't think, you know, the others are covering this in far better detail. Um, escape Collective, actually I think is Dave Rome over there. Um, Yeah, he wrote the, this really long form Well, well done, uh, piece that I'm referencing.
Uh, and I also listened to their podcast discussion on the topic. Um, the key element here is the death of the derailer hangar, um, in the back, which I think is a very good thing, but that has some potentially very negative consequences as well that have nothing to do with the tech and the experience and everything to do with competition and innovation in the bicycle industry.
[00:26:47] Craig Dalton: We'll roll back for a second. The death of the Derailer hangar. How do you, we have derailers. We need derailers. How are we gonna remove the derailer hanger from this equation?
[00:26:57] Randall R. Jacobs: so Derailer hangers, uh, if you go back, um, you know, original Derailers, they had this little extension on the rear drive side dropout of the frame, and it was all metal frames in the early days. Um, and you would have a threaded. You know, a threaded hole that you can screw a derailer into, and if it bent you bent it back out.
It wasn't replaceable. And so if it snapped off, you had to go to a welder or your frame was toast, or it was now a single speed. Um, fast forward you have, you know, the advents of replaceable derailer hangers. Um, and with metal frames, these could be made pretty robust. Um, but every company had their. and anyone who's tried to source a derailer hangar will know.
There's like, this entire business is built around having every single last derailer hanger on hand. Um, which is absurd. And a lot of the designs aren't very good, and even the good ones can be hard to find. Uh, and literally hundreds, hundreds of different skews, um, uh, stocking units. Um, and when you got to composite frame, They needed to be, you know, composite frames, ultra lightweight aluminum frames.
Um, you'd have to make them even lighter so they'd be more prone to bending and braking. and then you add to that wide range drive, trains that use really big cassettes in the back. So this is, you know, it started with 36 and then 42, and now we're at a 52 tooth pie plate in the back. I'm sure somebody will try to one up everyone else and it'll be 53 and you know we'll, we'll, we'll at some point it you'll be riding on your.
Uh, largest cog rather than your tire. Um, and then we'll have 32 ORs and 36 er wheels. But, but anyways, not to go too far down a rabbit hole, but this just resulted in a situation where you had this, this piece that's designed to fail. It's designed to protect the frame and the event of a crash and designed to be replaceable, but it's a pain to replace it cuz there's so many different ones.
Um, and it's just not up to the task. Not to mention it's. um, you know, something that is, that can fail is also not gonna be very stiff. Um, so it's gonna affect shifting. Um, and then the precision with which shifting can be controlled. . It's not just a matter of the derailer alignment. It's also, um, if the derailer is flexing as, uh, sorry, if the hangar is flexing, as the derailer is trying to shift particularly into a larger cog, you know, that's gonna affect shifting performance.
Uh, and then, and, you know, I, I won't be too exhaustive here, but then there's also the fact that you now have another, um, set of tolerances. Between the derailer and the cogs. So, you know, you have the, the cassette itself, you have the end cap, you have the dropout, you have the hangar, and then you finally get to the derailer.
And so that just results in a lot of, of, you know, manufacturing tolerance issues across multiple manufacturers.
So that's how we got here today.
[00:30:05] Craig Dalton: so in the history, so originally metal frame bending, potential for failure there. Um, improvement to that next generation of replaceable derailer hangers, cuz at least if we bent our derailer hangar, we could replace it. It might be hard to replace, but we could replace it. And then what comes next?
[00:30:24] Randall R. Jacobs: so, so, yeah. So we've gotten to a place where, you know, this, this particular solution is no longer. Great. I mean, it's fine. It works. Um, so a direct mount interface, so this is the, um, str, uh, released a few years ago. Their universal derailer hangar, standard U D H, and you can source this anywhere. It's readily available, it's cheap.
Um, it's robust. Um, and a lot of, particularly mountain. Manufacturers have been building to this drive side, rear drive side dropout standard so that it can integrate this universal hangar
[00:31:04] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And as I'm
[00:31:06] Randall R. Jacobs: through axle threads right into.
[00:31:08] Craig Dalton: yeah, so I was gonna say, as I'm kind of visualizing it, that's sort of a largest, large-ish hole in the frame where the axle would go through, and then you're putting the. Derail the replaceable derailer hanger. This, this u d h Derailer hanger through the axle next to the frame.
Kind of in that, in that configuration.
[00:31:28] Randall R. Jacobs: Yes. And that largely solves the issue of having so many different standards. And it is a good standard, it's a well executed, um, derailer hangar as far as derailer hangers go. But it still has
[00:31:42] Craig Dalton: But is that,
[00:31:43] Randall R. Jacobs: in terms of being need, uh, you know, needing to be made in a way that it can fail in the event of a crash.
And if it can fail in the event of a crash, it's gonna be more flexible and so on.
[00:31:54] Craig Dalton: And is that, does that work for both Shram and Shaman? Derailers.
[00:31:59] Randall R. Jacobs: it works for any derailer because it's still the same exact mounting interface for the Derailer. So that's where we get to today with this release. And what I believe is the most, you know, uh, uh, well, I, I think it's, uh, a very significant, um, development, um, in part because of the performance and durability benefits that it provides, but also significantly because of the implications for.
Innovation and comp competition, uh, in the bike industry.
[00:32:31] Craig Dalton: One, one question before we go into that, which is just I think a real critical point to underscore the U D H. Uh, was that an kind of open source design? Could anybody make a U D H Derailer hangar?
[00:32:46] Randall R. Jacobs: Uh, I believe I, I'm not certain, but, um, I wouldn't be surprised because the, um, the strategic benefit of U D H comes from having it implemented across as many bicycles as possible. And so, um, and STRs selling them for cheap, uh, it's not a huge money maker. . I, I, I don't, I can't recall if I said have said this directly on the pod, but I've definitely alluded to such things in other conversations.
You know, I viewed it as a Trojan horse from Day one and a Trojan horse in the sense of, um, you have this hangar. That May is the universal hangar, and it is a Trojan horse for a derailer that bypasses the hangar. And so now my question is, can other derailer makers also attach to the frame in the same way bypassing the hangar.
Or is that unique to str And now STR is the only option that you can have on your bike and a bike manufacturer has to design, has to choose at the design and manufacturing stage, STR or notam, just like they choose Bosch or Shaman or bong at when they're building an e-bike. And that, that would be a rate, a very negative development.
Um, for reasons that we can get into.
[00:34:05] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So we, we leapt forward a little bit, and I just wanna make sure this is not lost because I derailed the conversation. This new d Derailer. Actually does not have that derailer hangar piece. The whole entire derailer, if I'm understanding it correctly, is designed to kind of slot around the frame just as that hangar did, and again, used the uh, through axle as kind of a supporting mechanism that kind of locks it all together.
[00:34:37] Randall R. Jacobs: Um, the, it stays attached without the through axle, but the through axle threads into it. So it attaches to the frames, basically a, a hole, and then it, you know, comes together and, and, and holds itself in place. Um, and it can rotate, uh, and so on. But,
[00:34:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's.
[00:34:54] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, the now this new Derailer, um, which is a good thing, attaches and bypasses that hangar.
Now what do you deal in, you know, how do you deal with, uh, like, uh, a crash, right? How does the new Derailer deal with a crash? Well, first off, it's much more inbound because you don't have that hangar. Um, Design that forces you to, you know, have more components hanging further out of the bike. So it's tighter, so it's, it's less exposed.
Um, but then also ceramic has done a really good job of designing a, uh, like a clutch mechanism or, or like a, I forget what they're calling it, but essentially you can impact this thing with a hammer, and it's going to, it's going to move, it's going to give, and then, Push it back into place and the thing is solid.
Um, it's, it would take quite an impact. Um, I suspect having not ridden it have, having not seen their testing data, it'd take quite an impact for this derail to fail or for it to result in forces to the frame that would cause the frame to fail. Uh, instead of the hang, instead of the
[00:35:58] Craig Dalton: it's, it's so interesting, you know, in a world of iterative designs, when you see a leap like this, it's just super interesting and I encourage people to like source a picture of this to see how it kind of sandwiches around the frame. And as Randall as you just described, you know, because the derailer hangar's not in the equation, you do have more kind of girth and protective material right in there.
That's part of the derailer mechanism itself,
[00:36:24] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Yeah. So, and I, and I would go again, um, not getting paid for this, but I'm, I'm, I'll go ahead and plug Escape Collective dot cc's coverage of this, because it is comprehensive. Um, and it was a, a se one of it was the best one that I dug up in my research about this. Um, though I'd love to, for them to cover some of the economic implications that we can dive into.
[00:36:49] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Well, let's, I mean, let's talk about that. So, I mean, obviously like this requires the frame to have had that u d h kind of dropout set up to begin with. Now suppo, I mean, I, I would imagine like, okay, if you get a frame like that, you have two options. You could choose a, a new derailer like this, like the one they just release.
Or you could still use that original U D H Derailer hanger, say if you wanted to use a Shaman Drive train.
[00:37:21] Randall R. Jacobs: Correct. And as a consequence, shaman and any other, um, competing derail maker will be stuck using this old interface and not the, this new, more robust one. And so it's a, it, you know, being first to market with it and having patented around all the other ways that it could be implemented or attached to.
Um, I, I don't have a definitive answer on whether or not other dreier makers can, uh, attach to a U D h, um, universal dreier hangar equipped bicycle in this same direct mount way. Um, but if STR has precluded others from attaching in that same way, then it truly was the Trojan horse. That I was concerned about when I first saw this, because the benefit of a universal dror hangar is very obvious.
But now you've, we as an industry have given up a tremendous amount of freedom in terms of IOP interoperability and that, you know, you know, that goes into, they're now calling this a transmission. What does transmission, what's the difference between a transmission and a drive? , all I see is that a transmission means you're not allowed to use other people's components. It's all the same parts, but it now, it is now even more of a walled garden.
Um, then, then it already was as a result of having a closed protocol. So different, you know, the, the shift sh third party shifters can't communicate with strand's, derails, you know, a new chain design, which has some benefits but then doesn't work with other, or they, you know, it's claimed not to work with other people's cassettes and chain rings.
Um, you know, they had the new bo, they had the new spindle standard, which again, like, um, that is more. So, you know, the dub, uh, spindle standard, um, and has some other benefits. But, and then you have the fact that like, as an oem, um, already they were not allowing OEMs to mix and match components from third parties even if they, um, Were compatible or, or if the OEM was taking the risk of it not working.
Um, and in fact, you know, so like in our case, we ended up ha having to buy an entire groupo and then just hold on to the stock we didn't want to use so that we could offer some third party components from say, you know, e thirteens cassette or our aluminum cranks for, you know, more budget option or whatever.
Um, uh, you know, and, and then we end up sitting on some extra STR stock that we were forced to.
[00:39:57] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. It's super interesting and just super interesting to kind of play this forward in this, you know, does the, does the historic way a derailer attach go away over time? And what happens if you have a fr old frame and parts don't become available because everything's transitioning to this new format?
[00:40:18] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, I think that there's, you know, again, um, still not clear. I would love if, if any listener has, you know, has or wants to dive into ceramic's patents on this, I'll do so myself at some point. Um, I have some clarity on whether or not other third party derails can attach in the same. , that would be, you know, that would be a, a significant, um, significant thing to know.
Um, and, you know, this, this fits the interesting thing here is, um, it fits a pattern, uh, where so already, like, um, there's a lot of patterns around shift lever design and on a road bike, you know, as soon as you have sh you know, shift leaders in levers integrated with the. . Um, well first it was indexing, so instead of friction shifters you had like indexed, um, which I indexing.
So you have those little clicks that knock it into certain gears, and those clicks are used to correspond with a mechanical system with a certain amount of pull. Like the pull ratio of the cable to actuate the derailer. And so, you know, shaman would constantly vary their pull ratio to make their own compat different group sets not compatible with each other or to preclude.
Ironically, uh, grip shifts the precursor to RAM from getting any market share. Uh, and then when that wasn't working quite well enough, they forced o they, they didn't force, they told OEMs like, if you buy a complete group set, you get a 20% discount, or whatever it was. And as a result, it was no longer economic to s to, um, to spec grip shift on your bike. And the ironic thing is, uh, str sued them, won millions of dollars. Um, it that may, I don't know if that lawsuit was existential for them, but certainly, um, had it gone the other way, we might not have str as we know it. Uh, and now we're seeing what for me looks like very analogous sort of, um, anti-competitive, um, tendencies in the bike industry that will.
Cons, we're seeing innovation, but you have to ask the question, what innovation would we see if more people, if more companies were allowed to innovate on the individual components? Uh, and the, and the, you know, interoperability was something that was, uh, considered from the get-go as opposed to very actively tr you know, thwarted.
[00:42:46] Craig Dalton: Yeah. The battle continues, I suppose, and we'll see whether it's uh, through some sleuthing, through patent. Documents or a year from now, let's say another manufacturer comes out with a derailer that attaches in the same way. It's gonna be interesting to see, as you noted early on, this current announcement is a mountain bike groupo, but I, I know several manufacturers including, uh, envy with their new MOG gravel bike, is using this dropout.
So they're certainly prepared on a going forward basis to use. This type of derailer system should one come out specific, uh, in the Explorer Groupo.
[00:43:25] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. And, um, there's a, a really good case study that I dug up years ago when I was working on the open bike project, which was an attempt to create an open platform for bicycle electronics and software and hardware, um, called Shaman Inside. , uh, and I dug it up and I will make sure that we put it in the show notes for anyone who's curious about the history of, um, you know, Sam and Shaman and, and you know, the evolution of the drier and poll ratios and all this other stuff and how it affects, uh, economics and market dynamics, which as you can tell, I have a little bit of an interest in.
[00:44:01] Craig Dalton: Well, this was fun. I mean, that was big news that came out this week, and certainly if any, you know, if any of our listeners want to jump into the conversation, come into the ridership, that's the ridership, or sorry, www.ridership.com, and look forward to those conversations. I can hold my, I feel like I can hold my own to a certain degree, certainly on the economic side and the game theory and strategy side of things.
But as we get into the deeper technical nuances, you definitely have me in spades.
[00:44:32] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, well, um, I have spent way too much time on this and spoken with, um, When I was doing the open bike projects, you know, every single Taiwanese vendor. Was trying to, uh, get the other Taiwanese vendors to work together on a, on an open platform and things like this. So it's something I've gotten into the weeds in, uh, on, maybe in a uniquely deep way.
Um, so thank you for the opportunity to actually share. I've been wanting to nerd about this sort of thing on the pod since, uh, since joining, and there just hasn't been the appropriate time. But with this, uh, it just seemed like the time. Um, I do wanna close up with one thought on this, um, which is, um, the engineering on this new group set from SCRAM looks outstanding.
They have some super clever stuff in there. Um, and I commend the engineering. The engineering, I, there's a lot of things that. I look at and I was like, wow, what? That never even occurred to me. Like they have this pulley wheel on the hangar that, um, is super skeletal. So it has a lot of space and it's big.
It's one of the, you know, 16 teeth. And they designed it in a way where if, if something gets jammed in there like a stick, well it's an aluminum, um, like spider. That the bearings are in, and then there's a, uh, a plastic, uh, piece that is the actual cogs and that can spin independent of that spider. this is brilliant.
So, so if that wheel, if the something gets jammed in the spider and stops it, that'll keep spinning. Um, so, you know, there's lots of clever stuff like this and so I don't want to at all take away from the design and the engineering, the execution on this and the fact that it is genuine, um, a genuine leap forward and innovation for the industry.
I'm just concerned about the implications for innovation generally, and h. The loss of, uh, competition even until now, meaning that, you know, maybe we would've had these innovations much sooner if we didn't have these dynamics.
[00:46:36] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Important to note and acknowledge that amazing innovation that the design team over there had worked on. You sort of wonder if they were just given a blank slate and said, you know, think about performance in the derailer and the dropout and the hangar. Don't be constrained by anything, and this is what they came up with.
[00:46:57] Randall R. Jacobs: you need a lot of resource and a lot of market power to make something like that work, which is why, you know, you only see, uh, really swam and shaman able to do it these days. And, uh, campy has done a good job with ecar in creating a competitive product. But it's, it's, it's not at, um, you know, it's not electronic.
It's not, it's not really moving the needle that much. It's just an extra cog for the most part. Uh,
[00:47:20] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah,
[00:47:21] Randall R. Jacobs: But,
[00:47:22] Craig Dalton: Well, super good to catch up with you and my friend.
[00:47:24] Randall R. Jacobs: yeah, we've been nerding for a bit. Should we, uh, save, save the other things we had on our list for a future conversation, I suppose.
[00:47:32] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think so. We're good to catch up and we'll, we'll chat again soon and we'll get all these links in the show notes so people can dig deep, read all about this and form their own opinions.
[00:47:43] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, and absolutely drop some comments too in the ridership. Um, I would love to get some external perspective here cuz usually this is just a, you know, industry insider talk and, um, I don't know that this has been discussed in a public forum all that much. So, uh, would love to hear, uh, the community's input.
That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. As Randall just mentioned. We'd love to hear from you on this topic at the ridership, just visit www.theridership.com to join the conversation.
Big, thanks to our friends at hammerhead for sponsoring the show this week. If you're interested in a crew to make sure to use the code, the gravel ride. And add a heart rate monitor to your order and you'll get that heart rate monitor for free. Just simply visit hammerhead.io. If you are interested or able to support the podcast.
Please does it buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride? Or ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated in the podcast world. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
This week we sit down with yet another friend of the pod, Michelle Duffy from Life Time. We catch up on the upcoming kickoff for the 2023 Life Time Grand Prix and some of the changes in store for athletes and fans.
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[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the show, I'm excited to welcome back Michelle Duffy from lifetime to talk about the lifetime grand Prix for 2023. I know this show. Isn't all about racing, but I'm a fan of the sport. I love riding. I love participating in my own way at the back of the pack. But also like following the front of the pack. And I found that the lifetime grand Prix added a lot of fun
to my 2022 fandom. As I was able to follow the battles throughout the year. And even after the season, I was able to relive some of those moments through a YouTube series that lifetime published about the grand Prix that allowed us to get behind the scenes with some of the athletes and see some of the personalities and some of the action and drama we might not have seen.
As a casual fan, the lifetime grand Prix is back for 2023. They've made some tweaks to the number of events you can now drop to events. So I wanted to have Michelle back at the beginning of the season to just talk about some of those changes. To reflect on the action from 2022 and just generally catch up. Michelle puts a lot of energy into the gravel cycling community, and I'm always happy to highlight those efforts.
Before we jump in, I do need to thank this week. Sponsor athletic greens.
Athletic greens and AIG. One is a comprehensive daily nutrition made from simple, powerful ingredients. It's made up of 75 high quality, whole food sourced ingredients. Carefully curated to nourish all the body's systems holistically. As many of you know, I've been an athletic greens user for many, many years, predating the podcast. So I've been super stoked that athletic greens has been a big partner for what I do
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For podcast listeners, our friends at athletic greens have given us a free year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs. If you ordered today. Simply visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride to get your age. The one on the way today.
With that said let's dive right into my conversation with Michelle Duffy.
[00:03:23] Craig Dalton: Hey Michelle, welcome back to the show.
[00:03:25] Michelle Duffy: Thank you for having me back.
[00:03:27] Craig Dalton: It's good to see you. I was looking back in my notes and it looks like it was just, just a little less than a year ago. We sat down at Sea Otter, which was the first event of the inaugural lifetime Grand Prix.
[00:03:40] Michelle Duffy: Yes. It's crazy to think it's almost the otter time again.
[00:03:44] Craig Dalton: I know I've been getting the emails and I'm like, gosh, I gotta get my stuff together, and it's exciting to have it kick off.
[00:03:51] Michelle Duffy: Oh yeah. It's like the kickoff of everyone's cycling year. I feel like.
[00:03:56] Craig Dalton: And such a big one at that with all the, the expo activity and the so many different forms of racing going on, it literally does cover like every discipline of cycling. I feel like.
[00:04:07] Michelle Duffy: I, yeah, that's what's so special, like from the industry perspective, mountain biking, road gravelly, everyone's together. Um, so I'm really looking forward to getting back to Monterey.
[00:04:17] Craig Dalton: Yeah, for sure. I thought it would be a good opportunity to just sit down with you again and reflect back on that inaugural season of the Lifetime Grand Prix. Such a interesting series to kind of infuse into the gravel world, and I'm sure you learned a lot along the way. I just wanted to sort of get your basic reflections of the season.
Maybe some of the key moments that you'd highlight.
[00:04:42] Michelle Duffy: Yeah, definitely. And I'm, I'm excited that sometime has passed too. We, we definitely reflected immediately after and during. Um, but now that sometimes passed and we're heading into the new year, it feels. There's been more time to sit back and think about, you know, both constructively, what we would've changed, but also celebrate our wins, which is often hard at times, um, because you're always looking for ways to be better.
But, uh, enough times pass that. I think we have a clearer vision of what went right and wrong and
[00:05:15] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, and I know, I know from hearing from some of the athletes that you guys were collecting feedback along the way, which was great as well. I know you went into this whole process really talking to athletes, getting a lot of feedback. It was difficult to make a series that was gonna make everybody happy, whether it was the events or the points or what have you.
But it seems like in evidence from talking to athletes, you guys really went out there and just asked questions and got feedback along the way, which is great.
[00:05:49] Michelle Duffy: Yeah. I think in the ideation phase it was easier for us to speak to those athletes that are, you know, in our networks, right? Like, Preexisting relationships. Um, but that doesn't necessarily cover all of the participants that were in the Lifetime Grand Prix. So it was important for us at just over the halfway point, we collected feedback and then, um, at the end of the season, both face to face and through email and phone call, have had many a conversation with athletes and brands and, um, just trying to understand needs.
But at the end of the day, we have. I mean, 75 to 80% of last year's field is back with us this year. So while there were definitely areas for us to, to work through, I also feel like that that's a win. Right. Um, having so many of our inaugural class back.
[00:06:42] Craig Dalton: just to set the stage a little bit, so last year's series was 30 men and 30 women. in the series. The series was, and correct me if I'm wrong here, six events with the option to drop one score.
[00:06:57] Michelle Duffy: That's right. Yes.
[00:06:59] Craig Dalton: Okay. So looking back at 2022, what were some of the biggest surprises that you found throughout the year?
[00:07:07] Michelle Duffy: Um, I think some of the, the major surprises were just the nuances that go into building a series like this. Um, , you know, these events were preexisting for us. So in terms of operationally executing the series, um, that, that comes second nature to the team. But all of the other nuance that comes with building a series, especially one that kind of grew to be, I mean, I don't wanna use, you know, too premium of a word choice here, but, that did become kind of this revered thing in, in North America in just a year.
Um, there were many a time where we had internal conversations and we're like, okay, what are we building? Like, what can, what can the lifetime Grand Prix be if we, um, focus and invest in this properly? And not just financially invest, but. , you know, that gathering the insights, investing the resources and time, um, to really lay the groundwork to build something that can be huge for American cycling five, seven years down the road.
And I think that was the biggest surprise, just like how much it took off and continued. Uh, think we're still seeing like new. New, um, comers to the series through some of the content that we've created and like the momentum there. Um, but then also just the, the nuance that became a, a bit intimidating at times.
[00:08:44] Craig Dalton: when, when you think about sort of the goals you set out for, uh, for the Grand Prix last year. Were you guys successful in achieving them and what were they? Are you looking to kind of, I know you're looking obviously to foster the growth of off-road cycling in the United States. You're presumably also looking to continue to grow the, the Lifetime brand and those specific lifetime events.
Has it had that type of net effect?
[00:09:11] Michelle Duffy: I think so. Well, no, I, I, I do believe, yes, it has, um, our primary goal with the Lifetime Grand Prix is to create fans. I, I mean, most simply put the word we use internally as fandom, but to regenerate the interest from not. Professional cycling enthusiasts, but people who ride a bike to care about what's going on at the, the front of the pack.
And like, why, you know, why does, why should the journey person care? Um, I think it creating fans creates more professionalism around a sport. And, you know, more professionalism inspires youth to wanna ride a bike, be like x to be like Keegan Swenson or Hailey Smith. And. . If we can create that, if we can create more fans of the sport from a particip participatory perspective and then also inspire more youth to want to stay on a bike, then we're inadvertently fostering the growth of the sport of cycling from a mass participation perspective as well.
Um, and do I think we accomplished that? I think yes, but I think it's a long-term commitment to truly, uh, be able to make change. We did, and I think Keegan says this in the docu-series, like there is maybe in the last few minutes of the big sugar episode, people came up to him who previously didn't know who he was, and they.
he inspired them to get on a bike or they became a fan of him through the Lifetime Grand Prix. And that's, that's what we're trying to create, um, this like symbiotic relationship between math participant and elite athlete coming together in one place, a shared goal. Um, and then with the Doerries, which I'm sure.
Get into at some point. But we did create this six episode docu-series that lives on YouTube. By YouTube because there's no barrier of entry because to create fans, you need to eliminate barriers. Um, that audience has, has grown. We're up and over 350,000 views across the series right now. And, you know, we don't have 350,000 participants at our events.
Right? So they're coming from else.
[00:11:28] Craig Dalton: Yeah. That's amazing. I mean, I think going back for a minute, definitely the structure of the season allowed fans to. , like look forward to something. I think prior to the existence of this type of series, you might see someone do well at Unbound and then totally lose them for the rest of the year. So this was a really nice way as a fan to kind of just start to get familiar with the names and have something to look forward to for that next event in the series.
And definitely for me, like it did accumulate over the course of the year so that everything got more interesting. Post crusher in the tusher to figure out, well, who could possibly win this entire series, and, uh, particularly on the women's side. It was just really exciting throughout the entire year.
[00:12:18] Michelle Duffy: Um, yeah. And, and while Keegan rode away with it for a first, for the men's side, there was also a really tight, um, tight field there going on leading into big sugar. So both for the women's and men's, um, overalls there a lot was riding on that last event, which made it really interesting to follow through the whole.
[00:12:40] Craig Dalton: Yeah, and I think what was interesting with only one potential, um, event to drop at the onset, when I heard that, that seemed totally reasonable. But when you saw injuries and illness come into play and people being forced to drop races early in the season, it really did become, uh, pretty onerous for them to make sure that they did well at every remaining event.
[00:13:04] Michelle Duffy: Absolutely. And that, that did, um, come into play when leading into 2023 and some adjustments we've made.
[00:13:11] Craig Dalton: Yeah, and we can get into that. Since you did mention the, the Call of a Lifetime series, which was super well produced. I mean, just speaking from my own perspective, I very much enjoyed watching it, and I encourage everybody to do so on YouTube because you did get a glimpse at some of the interpersonal relationships of the riders, some of the.
Rivalries that exist out there, and just general insight into the personalities. I know originally at the beginning of last year, um, you were working with flow bikes. I'm trying to do some live coverage. Had the call of the Wild Series also been in the works for the entire year or was that something that happened in lieu of flow?
Not really being able to get into the action as you had hoped.
[00:13:54] Michelle Duffy: We were focused on both initiatives. So we contracted Shannon with cold collaborative, uh, prior to Sea Otter, and he was out there recording already. Um, actually, , that was our primary focus, and then later in the conversation flow came in and um, we were excited to be able to provide both opportunities. Um, obviously that didn't pan out all year, uh, but the cold collaborative and Call of a Lifetime series was always in the works.
[00:14:24] Craig Dalton: Got it. It must have been pretty challenging that for them to kind of figure out which athletes to focus on. Were they, were they filming across the board with numerous athletes and we only ended up to getting to see a couple storylines just given the amount of time they had for the episodes.
[00:14:40] Michelle Duffy: Um, I think this was a, a challenge and a learning, but can't, I mean, there's no way that we can really storyline across. 60, 70 athletes. So we'll take a, a slightly different approach this year into to mining those stories. But we pretty much got to meet everyone that spent time on camera. Um, the cold collaborative team, we, we trusted, we trust them and, um, put.
Them in a position where they had creative freedom because they are so amazing at what they do. And so they did mine a lot of the stories and really there's a lot of focus, of course, on the front of pac because it was a more consolidated story for us to be able to tell. Um, some adjustments we're looking for towards next year is like, uh, widening that net and ensuring that we're telling the stories of not just those in the top five with the preexisting platform, but you know, mirroring the.
Fully supported professional athlete with the young rider that's still in college because That's interesting for people too.
[00:15:48] Craig Dalton: Yeah, for sure. I mean, across all those athletes, I'm sure there's, last year there was 30 great female stories, 30 great male stories that could have been told,
[00:15:57] Michelle Duffy: Exactly.
[00:15:59] Craig Dalton: but that's awesome. And it sounds like that project is gonna continue through this year.
[00:16:04] Michelle Duffy: Yep, we're, we're finalizing exactly what our content plan looks like and hopefully we can go out with that soon. You know, we, something that was hard for us all years. We were investing all of this time, effort. Energy finances into producing Call of a Lifetime. But there was no product really to show for it until, you know, the end of end of 2022, beginning of 2023.
Um, but this year, now that we've set the, the groundwork, we'll be able to go out with what our, what our plans are. And we are working right now with Shannon on developing something really cool for
[00:16:39] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think that's, there's an interesting opportunity there. Cause I had, I sort of totally forgot frankly, about like the possibility of a video series and then when you announced it earlier this year, I was super enthusiastic to watch it. But, I would've probably liked to have seen snippets from other athletes earlier in the year, even if it's just on social media, just to get to know them and again, increase my fandom of someone that I wasn't familiar with prior to the season.
[00:17:06] Michelle Duffy: Yep, exactly. And we, we partnered with Mazda and, and have a multi-year commitment with them to produce these athlete vignettes. So we did dig a little bit deeper into six of their stories, and those are available on YouTube as well. Um, shameless plug, but, uh, we'll be digging in and, and telling more stories.
This year, um, whether that's from the Grand Prix perspective or just the community that rallies around the Grand Prix, I think both of those are really interesting and, um, throughout the planning of the Grand Prix, it was important for us to outline like, who is our audience. And I always talk about it in this like reverse funnel where you have your bullseye, that's this person's an avid cyclist and they know who is winning the events.
And then it kind of, the net gets broader, um, from there. But it's important that the content that we're creating doesn't just speak to the preexisting cycling. , um, which I think the series does a really good job of being relatable, broader than that. But if you take that out, then it's like, okay, who, what about the person that rides a bike, but maybe they don't necessarily participate in events?
What inspires them to wanna participate in events? And then it's set further than that. It's like the outdoor recreator. I'm a backcountry skier, but I understand the content that you're producing. And now I'm inspired to get on a bike. And so like they're all kind of working. making someone a fan, but first they need to get on a bike.
And then when they get on a bike, they participate and then they get to meet the athlete. And, um, then they really care about what you're produc.
[00:18:37] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that's true. You know, it's interesting, I was talking to an athlete yesterday and I think one of the challenges, obviously like the, the marquee distance and the professional distance of these races is quite challenging. Regardless of whether it's an Unbound 200 or the climbing at Crusher and the Tusher, they can seem very intimidating, obviously, to the new athlete.
Yet almost all these events, probably all of 'em do have shorter distances, which are. To be more inviting for the recreational athlete to pin on their first number. And I think there's probably an opportunity for all of us in in interested in events to kind of continue to embrace and make sure that audience feels welcome and accomplished for finishing a 40 mile event.
They don't need to do a 200 mile event.
[00:19:23] Michelle Duffy: Exactly. Yeah. And that's the Grand Prix is so amazing and uh, we were already seeing more elites coming to the events and that kind of inspire the Grand Prix, right? It's like this is happening, people are making a living off of participating in these events and we can ignore the fact that it's happening or we can create something.
produces good for the mass participant as well, because at the end of the day, the, the paying customer or a mass participant like that is the ethos of the event. That's the person that's one supporting the events in the business that we're creating. They're supporting the communities that they're visiting, and we, we can't get, we can't let the Grand Prix distract us from like what the actual heartbeat of the event is.
And that'll be important for us this year in storytelling as well as like, This is happening at the front of the event, and that's super special. And let's let you peek behind the curtain and understand that, you know, Sarah Stern felt a ton of pressure going to all of these events the same way. You probably put a lot of pressure on yourself going to these events, but, but it's different.
But you can relate, um, But also what about the community that's making up these events? Because that is what the elites are coming to be a part of. It's not the in, it's the inverse for some, some are now coming to some of these events because the elites are there, but the elites wanted to come to be a part of the mass participant experience.
Um, so it'll be really important for us to, I mean, never lose focus of that. That's our north.
[00:20:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's been interesting as some of the announcements came out around the changes of for Unbound and the professional and the rules as they apply to the Mass Start and Arrow bars, how clearly you guys were conscious of the fact that. , just because you're making a decision for the professional athletes doesn't mean that same decision should apply to the recreational athletes, specifically around the idea of arrow bars.
I thought that discussion was quite interesting.
[00:21:23] Michelle Duffy: Yeah. And look like there's no right answer to a lot of these things because the space is evolving and gravel cycling while it has existed for. At, well, it's existed forever. You could always ride on gravel, but as a quantifiable sport for 15 plus years, you know, going on 20 years now, that's still new.
It's junior, like the game of basketball has existed for over a century. Um, so we're still in this like new phase. The athlete, the professional. , you know, we've been trying to listen and make decisions that are the best decisions for the safety of the athlete and the integrity of the event. Um, that doesn't mean it's the solution for everyone right now.
And as we were going through, what does, you know, arrow bars or no arrow bars and all the, like the drama, um, surrounding the elites as they're figuring out what it means to be an elite in the sport. is the person that's coming from Alabama that's gonna take them, you know, the maximum amount of time to complete 200 miles, and they're gonna ride majority of the event out there solo.
And they need to have the ability to be in comfort positions just for them to get across the finish line. And that's always been a part of the experience. So while we were having a lot of internal debate and external debate, when we stepped back and thought about it, it's like, well, who's to say? if they're, I've always stood really strong in like, no, they're coming out here to experience the mass participant experience, and that's why the elites started to come.
At the same time, they're making a livelihood and we need to ensure that in order for them to continue to make that livelihood, we're providing. an experience that, you know, someone taking them out with arrow bars in the first seven miles doesn't make or break the paycheck that they bring home. That's not the case for everyone.
So if we separate these two starts, it allows us to ensure that the integrity of the event for those that are racing for their livelihood and their paycheck , um, we can isolate that experience.
[00:23:41] Craig Dalton: Yeah,
[00:23:42] Michelle Duffy: And, you know, we made the joke like, we're gonna get you the heck outta Dodge, but like, let's get the. out of there, and then we can provide the same experience we've provided for 16 years to everybody else.
[00:23:54] Craig Dalton: yeah. And I mean, obviously it's up to each individual rider to make good decisions around when they should be in arrow bars. That's the challenge, right? Like some, it's like they're perfectly fine if you're out there by yourself, but cornering and doing the things that you shouldn't do in Aerobars, that's just, people just need to make good choices there.
[00:24:11] Michelle Duffy: Yeah. Agree. And, and there's other events in our portfolio that remove, we are removing the use of Arrow bars in general, an event like Crusher has never allowed Arrow bars because you climb up and you descend and there's never a time that you're on flats and should be in arrow bars in that event.
[00:24:28] Craig Dalton: Yeah. The other thing that obviously you've had to grapple with is just, uh, the women and men starting together or separate. Do you wanna talk about like, the thought process behind how that's panning out this year?
[00:24:42] Michelle Duffy: Yeah. I mean, continuing to, to listen. I think there. I mean, there's been a couple years now of debate on what is the right, the right way to approach at a mass participation event, the start of the women to ensure that they have a level playing field. Um, our approach is varying, depending on course, uh, speaking for, you know, sea Otter and Schwam again, and Crusher, for example.
Women do have their own start. , but for an event like Unbound, they've always been in with the masses and there's just a huge difference between the field sizes and um, that many people rolling out of Emporia as well as from a media coverage perspective. It's super challenging. Um, To cover and we, I think, have done a very good job of making a cognizant effort to ensure we assign a team specific to the women.
However, to give that like equal playing field from a media coverage perspective, a safety perspective rolling out of town, and then also an awareness of where the competitors are. For Unbound, the women will have their own elite women will have their own separate. two minutes after the elite men and eight minutes before the masses.
Uh, an event like Big Sugar or the Rad we're still evaluating, but that very well could be a mass. A mass start there.
[00:26:08] Craig Dalton: yeah. I think it's super interesting and a lot of event organizers I've spoken to this year. Are just playing around with different models and I think to your point, a lot of it will be course dependent. A lot of it will be just affording tens of minutes with the women having their own isolated experience, cuz obviously once.
The rest of the mass participants start several minutes before. Eventually there will be intermingling and there will be the same types of drafting opportunities that have been in the sport forever for the women. But I do think it's meaningful that the women will be able to understand who is ahead of them, who is behind them at that moment in time in which integration happens.
And then most of the women athletes that I've spoken to kind of acknowledge that, you know, there's a strategy around drafting with men, and sometimes you're gonna get in over your head and you're gonna go too hard. But that might be an investment in your strategy to get ahead early on in the race and then plug away on your own while others will roll the dice and play the strategy a little differently.
[00:27:11] Michelle Duffy: Yeah, exactly. And. , um, I think through, through the Grand Prix. I hope and, and believe that it has also deepened the field, um, of women out there. And if you look at an event like Big Sugar, we saw more women riding together at big sugar. Granted, there were points on the line, and so a lot of them did stay together.
But I mean, there was a pack of nine women in places, you know, two through 10 working together for, for much of that event. And, um, we haven't seen that at a, at a lot of events. Usually the women are dispersed, so I think their strategies are changing as.
[00:27:55] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. And I, yeah, I mean, and all this comes into play in the background with the points of the Grand Prix in general, like how they need to ride, how aggressive they need to be on a, on a particular day. I do imagine that you'll start seeing athletes just really taking a lot of risk because they've got nothing to lose.
Like you think about Page. Big sugar, like she had nothing to lose at that point, to roll the dice and go long in solo and see what happened.
[00:28:22] Michelle Duffy: Yeah, exactly.
[00:28:24] Craig Dalton: Yeah. As you look back to 2022, and I know we've drifted a little bit into 2023 already, but were there any sort of favorite or surprising moments that stood out for you?
[00:28:34] Michelle Duffy: Yeah, I mean, you just touched on one, but, uh, Paige on Weller and Brayton Langs wins at Big Sugar and Schwam again, I. Love the underdog dark horse story. Um, PA both Paige and Braden were, I mean, transparently were fringe riders for us in the selection process going into 2022. Um, There were a few team members, myself included, making cases for each of them as to why they should be selected.
And, um, they were, they were both dark courses and, um, it was really, really special for not just myself, but members of our team to see those two take a win. You know, Braden being the youngest male in the field last year and an up and coming talent, you just love to see and hope that it inspires. The other individuals riding in his age range, where it'll often we see drop off on the bike, um, you know, if they can, you know, see what he's accomplishing.
Maybe it inspires them to keep riding or those young riders that have looked up to him. And this year we have even younger riders as part of the Grand Prix. And then someone like Paige coming from a running background. We dug into, into her during the application process and saw, you know, she was fifth at gravel world on a borrowed bike and , she was doing some eSports on Swift and, um, there was potential there we thought.
And to see that come to fruition for her was really, really special.
[00:30:10] Craig Dalton: Yeah, and super cool. I had her on at the end of last year just to see her be afforded the sponsorship support to really lean into it and not have to, you know, do double duty between her work and the hospital is, it's great to see.
[00:30:25] Michelle Duffy: Yeah. Agree. I mean, I think that's the case for, for both of those two, honestly, that those wins for both Braden and Paige. I think. Um, Allowed them, the opportunity enabled, helped enable them to have some of the sponsorship opportunities that they have this year,
[00:30:44] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:30:45] Michelle Duffy: and it switched things up. We were talking about the same few riders all year because that top three was kind of interchanging, so that was cool
[00:30:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah, absolutely. So as we talk about 2023, what are kind of the major changes that have happened kind of structurally in the Grand Prix that we should be aware of?
[00:31:04] Michelle Duffy: Yeah, I think our goal with the Grand Prix, is to keep things simple so that people can follow it. Um, you know, no slight to, to the world tour, but it can be hard to follow things like the Tour de France because if you're not ingrained in the sport, it's like how many points did they get? And what does this Jersey mean
Um, our goal is really to keep things simple so that, you know, those that are new to following cycling can follow it and, and. Still the goal this year we evaluated our point structure because right now it's just waterfall point structure. Um, your points are the inverse of your place. So last year we had 30 men and women.
So if you finished first, you got 30 points. If you finished second, you got 29. And so it flowed. So this year we decided to keep the point structure the same. Um, however we are. , uh, looking at 70 athletes, 35 men and 35 women. So an extra five men and women. Um, I think we're gonna stay at this number. Uh, I don't, you know, next year's I hope isn't gonna be 40 and, and so on.
Um, but the intent for that change is the drop off that occurred throughout the year. Um, by the end of the season, we had just over 20 men and 20 women remain. . And so our, our goal is to have, you know, a, a deep field and ensure that it's, it's deep across every event. So that extra five on each side, also just based on demand, uh, felt like the right move.
And then additionally, instead of six events, um, we are going to have seven, one of which we called the wild cards. So Grand Prix athletes applied for the series before we revealed what that seventh event will be. And noting that our intent is that our events do. So next year, um, in 2024, I don't, it may not just be the wild card event that rotates.
We may switch up all of the events. Um, you know, we'll probably have a few, like an Unbound and a Leadville and a big sugar that would remain. But we could see some of the other events, uh, switching up each year. Um, but one will remain a wild card in which athletes don't know what it will be. and, um, they can drop two events instead of one.
And this was something, this was a decision that we made after overwhelming feedback in our surveys around, um, some of the challenges. And you mentioned it earlier in the call with injury and sickness. Um, Were forced to drop out even if they weren't prepared because maybe they, uh, flattered and dnf at an event and that still counts.
But then they got sick and had to miss an event. Like they're pretty much out of the points now because they have two zeros on their scorecard. So allowing them the ability to miss two events for everything we're hearing is like athletes intend to come to just about every event. Um, but the other thing that it does allow, , and this is important, is understanding that our season is demanding and it spans from April to October and it is the primary focus on, on the calendar.
But there are other events that, um, there's either sponsor obligations to attend or just like for the health of the sport. It can't just be lifetime events that these riders are attending. So, Hope and obviously expect that athletes are showing up to, to at least five and, and hope they come to more than that, but it does allow if there's a conflict with another event them to go and attend that event as well.
[00:34:51] Craig Dalton: Yeah, like everything, I think it's just gonna be interesting to see whether it, it, you know, in many cases this past year, it would've allowed, you know, like Payson or someone who had to miss two events to be competitive in the standings, having missed those two events. But for athletes that it were healthy throughout the year.
If we start seeing strategy around dropping an event, knowing that they have to, you know, they're, I think with the exception, Unbound and maybe crusher that have their own very specific skillset, maybe that is required for them. You know, whether some people just opt out of one or two of those just saying, Hey, I'm not a climber.
It's not worth burying myself to try to be competitive and crusher because I have these two drop races that I can apply.
[00:35:36] Michelle Duffy: I do think that's true, and I kind of view that as like the negative to having the two drop events. But I think it's the right move. We believe it's the right move. Um, just for like the health of. The athlete. What we also don't want to happen is an athlete feel like, like Pete, he wrote on a broken hand at Sea Otter because he knew that like with his wife expecting there was a chance he was gonna miss another event.
So it was really important for him to finish that event. Um, whereas like knowing that there could have been two drops, like we don't want an athlete, Hannah Otto, she. Unbound consciously. Like she didn't want to bury herself at Unbound. And then she followed concussion protocol, but felt the pressure to it to participate in, um, schwa again, because otherwise she'd be out of the series and she did not, you know, enjoy the experience out there.
And it was probably premature. Would she have made a different decision had we. allowed two drops last year maybe. And I think that's something that's also really important I didn't touch on is the, just the overall health of the athlete. And we heard that too in the feedback like there's pressure to show up and race sick because you, you could have only dropped one event.
So I think this change will, I mean, it's seemingly well received. The negative is. You know, athletes that aren't good on a mountain bike, and so they're just gonna drop two mountain bike events and or like, not wanna bury themselves like you said. So they're gonna skip unbound and let Bill. That's, we hope that we don't see too much of that, but risk like those, that those that were in the top 10 pretty much were consistent in their attendance across the whole series.
[00:37:24] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think it strikes the right balance. I mean, obviously we'll have this conversation a year from now and we'll see how it came to play, but I don't suspect, to your point, like the people at the front end of both categories, they're not gonna make, they're not gonna drop things willy nilly. In fact, I was speaking to a professional athlete yesterday and they were like, look, if someone was hyper-competitive in the Grand Prix and did not do un.
There may very well be an asterisk in their victory at the end of the year to say like, but they didn't do this one thing,
[00:37:55] Michelle Duffy: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think just looking at, at the overall scorecard and talking to many of the athletes, it's like, well, of course we're gonna show up to all of the events. Like that's our intent. Because if you can knock off a. A bad day, a 10th place that could make or break your odds of being in the top three.
[00:38:15] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You mentioned the expansion of the rider numbers from 30 to 35 in each category. Um, super cool to see. Did you see like a different profile of athlete, whether it be different nationalities or what have you start to come to the table this year? Cause I understand, and you commented on this earlier, that, you know, the first year it was the first year, people didn't know.
It seemed like it was gonna be a great idea, but I did talk to a few athletes. Well, I just dunno how it's gonna pan out. I already had my schedule figured out, so I didn't, didn't apply. Just curious like what this year's application looked like and, and what were your takeaways from it?
[00:38:53] Michelle Duffy: Yeah. Well, we had more applications in year two than year one and more qualified applicants. And I don't, I don't mean to, um, that as a, any, uh, derogatory, uh, towards the VA first year's applications, but in year one there was a lot of. either jokes, , some, some people that were, I don't know if they were joking around or, you know, just not in contention.
Um, at the everyday cyclist, you know, some applicant applications that said things around, like, I've applied for the Leadville lottery four times and this is, you know, just another opportunity for me to, to apply. Um, there was also a lot of, uh, like sub. Applications that came through in the first year. And of course there were dozens of elite applications that came through because look at the depth of field.
I think in year two what we saw happen is elites, many, many of them, um, that live here in the US and Canada, but then also internationally. And then we had to make some hard decisions around like equal athlete, um, athletic ability. Someone lives internationally versus domestically. And we do have an international field this year with riders coming from, you know, South Africa and Australia and um, Canada and a few other countries.
But, uh, those that were like fringe , we, I, we did prioritize domestic, um, because. you know, our, our hope is to create some, some heroes here in the us.
[00:40:42] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that's interesting. Sometimes it's easy to forget that lifetime is a business as well. And you know, growing an international audience only has certain value to you guys versus domestic audience.
[00:40:55] Michelle Duffy: Yeah, and it's actually like we talked about that at length because. Having all of these different countries represented would be really cool. But beyond the business piece of it, it's like the health of cycling fandom in Europe is doing just fine. But if you have a bike race in Europe, like. And you can get access to the downtown of a major city and you have tens of thousands of people show up to cheer 'em in and they're lining the streets.
You have a bike race here and it's like, look at like road cycling. They're far and few between. There's barely any fans that show up. And so the goal, like we're, we can't lose sight of the goal and that's to make sure that we're converting people who live here into fans of the sport. Not even. from a future participatory perspective, but just in, you know, to become fans simply.
[00:41:51] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. One of the things we didn't dig into was the addition of that wildcard event and what that wildcard event ended up being. Can you talk about which event you selected and why?
[00:42:05] Michelle Duffy: Yeah, we selected an event in Trinidad, Colorado going into its third year called the Rad Dirt Fest. Um, it is a gravel event. The distance is 110 miles, and it's a high altitude, gravel, gravel race. Um, the difference between this and like a big sugar beyond the altitude is it's, uh, big long climbing miles and.
It's fast gravel, . It's, you know, champagne gravel, as they say. It's, it's almost like road in many ways. It's not very technical at all. Um, we. . There's a few reasons why this became the Wild Card. Part of it is schedule because our 2023 event calendar is already planned, and we wanted to give some breathing room between events because some of our events kind of stack up against one another.
For example, like Tahoe Trail, mountain Bike Race is the week after Crusher and the Tusher. Um, so getting from Utah to Tahoe, and coming right off of Crusher, like that just wasn't super viable. So if you like go through the list, there's also like some Northwood events that we have, like lut in 99 er, but they're already going up there for Schwam again.
So wanna be mindful of travel costs because while it's not expensive to stay in cable, Wisconsin, it's expensive to get there, and um, to have someone, to have a rider go up for loosen as well, like that's just a big. , it has a big impact on them and travel. The travel expenses to do the series are super high.
So those were factors as well as like we do care deeply about the communities that these events are taking place in. And Trinidad is a community that. is up and coming. I kind of view it as like an Emporia many years ago with a completely different personality. It's a hidden gem right on the border of New Mexico.
It's funky, spunky, artsy down home. Like if there, if Lifetime was capable of producing a grassroots, gravel event, the Rad Dirt Fest, is it? And after seeing the. Elation out of athletes after Schwam again, which is like a good down home mountain bike event up in northern Wisconsin. This feels like the gravel version of that.
It's just, it's truly like an endearing, eclectic place. And the vibes are good and the just, it's a, it's such a fun event. Um, our team actually says it's like one of our favorite events in the portfolio. and then selfishly, like, I hope the event grows . I'll just be be honest about that. Like we're into the third event, uh, third year and, um, that wasn't the deciding factor at all.
But I really do hope that the event grows because I really will. Even Trinidad as a community, they're, they're being heavily invested in right now, just from people moving out of Denver. But, um, hopefully they can, they can keep up, keep up with that. They've been a boomer bus town, but they're really focused on outdoor.
[00:45:16] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's a town that listeners of the podcast may be familiar with because we had, uh, local one Del Roka on who. Developed the original Trinidad Gravel field guide and put down some amazing routes down there, and came on the podcast just to talk all those things about the community. So I do think it's really interested and, and I'm excited to see that event grow as well, and hopefully just contributed to that town and that community in the same way that Unbound has contributed to Emporia.
[00:45:45] Michelle Duffy: Yeah. Juan has kind of been that, um, steer head in that, in that community and, and showing people. These roads, you can go out and, and utilize them with your bicycle and, uh, you know, the big hu hunting culture around there, but how are we celebrating outdoor rec? And they've also just brought in really great figureheads for their, like, economic development and, um, outdoor recreation, et cetera.
So I, I, I'm excited to see how that town.
[00:46:16] Craig Dalton: Yeah. On that, on that decision to make the Rad Fest, uh, the wildcard event. You mentioned the many things that kind of went into that. One of the kind of things that have been hanging over the Grand Prix for a few years is just this balance of mountain bikey gravel racing. How are you guys trying to strike that balance?
Because obviously adding another pure gravel event into the series isn't making it any more technical for the mountain bike cruise.
[00:46:45] Michelle Duffy: Yeah, it's not, and that could change in 2024. Um, I think it's important to note that like this is an off-road series surrounding mass participation events and some of the like super technical type courses that have kind of been thrown our way. It's like, well that doesn't necessarily always cater to the mass participant.
And that's the most important thing is that we're marry. This series with mass participation events. So like that is one factor. The second is there's seven events, so there's gonna be an off kilter there between mountain bike and gravel, but um, that can change every year. And maybe we'll see more mountain bike in 2024.
Um, I think that there's a good chance that we will, but, for this year. I mean, it's an off-road series. I, I think there's so many sensitivities and I totally respect all of the elite athletes. So I say this tongue in cheek, but I'm also like, you guys get over it. Like this is the lineup and it's gonna be a good time.
And I mean, yeah.
[00:47:58] Craig Dalton: I think one of the most exciting things that you've revealed in this podcast is just the notion that 2024 could look a lot different.
[00:48:06] Michelle Duffy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's like part of the, the freedom that we have because we're playing within the confines of like all of these events are, are lifetime events and it's, you know, the same team working on the production of the event and the Grand Prix, and it gives us the ability to be flexible now.
five years down the road, are we ending up in a structure that it doesn't have as much freedom because this thing's so established that it has to be the same events? I don't know the answer to that question, but um, we're still in test phase and that's what I think, you know, earlier I said we've had time to celebrate some of our wins.
I think that. So important, like early on we definitely received some, you know, there was like tension and criticism and like welcome all of it from, you know, athlete and fan alike. It's also so important to remember and like communicating even to our teams that are on the frontline, like. , these are humans putting on the event.
And we're humans that are really just trying to, and supported by a company who is also just trying to make a difference. Like the Grand Prix is not a revenue driver for our, for our company, but we're trying to align ourself with like positive change in cycling and there's gonna be growing pains with that.
Um, but I don't even view them as growing pains. Right. It's like they're just, it's a developmental. Of, of establishing something that hopefully changes the face of North American cycling. And you know what? There's a couple more series on the calendar this year, and I think that's really rad. I, I don't wanna attest that to the Grand Prix, but I think it's super cool to see that other groups are thinking in the same way, whether that's like happening on the road with the N C L, whether that survives or not.
But they're trying. And you have the group that's putting together a true mountain bike series around the country and like all of these different things are gonna start to create more fans in, in the us and that's super cool. It's, we're really, I feel like everyone in, in the cycling space right now, like what a cool time to be involved in, in.
[00:50:17] Craig Dalton: Yeah, a hundred percent. Like I think we all need to be thankful for Lifetime's involvement in this series and everybody else who's putting energy into North American cycling because agree, like. I think we're in a great place in terms of the equipment and the joy that gravel bikes can bring to athletes.
I think there's plenty of great events out there in the world, but it takes a lot of energy and financial commitment to make these events happen and you guys are putting a lot of money behind this series and investing in growing fandom in the United States, and that's amazing because I think we do need more fans of racing.
I'm quick to acknowledge like this podcast is definitely not about the front end of the pack for the most part. Well, I certainly enjoy talking to the professional athletes and learning how they get into the sport at the end of the day, like it's really the, the mass participant that gets me most excited cuz that's certainly where I sit in these events.
Um, so it's super cool that you guys continue to invest and I appreciate you taking the time and just walking me through last year and this year and hopefully we get to see each other in a few months down in Monte.
[00:51:20] Michelle Duffy: I know we will. Thank you,
[00:51:23] Craig Dalton: Thanks, Rashelle.
That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks to Michelle for joining us and bringing us up to speed on the lifetime grand Prix. We are now just around the corner from the first event in April. And I'm excited. As I'm sure some of you are to watch the action.
Down at the seawater classic and kick off another year. Big thanks to athletic greens and AIG one for supporting the podcast. Simply visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. And you can get that free one-year supply of vitamin D and B12. If you're interested in connecting with me. Please visit the ridership. That's www.theridership.com.
Or if you have a moment, ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated in the podcast game, it really helps with our discoverability. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we catch up with Amanda Nauman to discuss all things gravel. We touch on the Mammoth Tuff gravel race, Tuff Camps and how to continue to invite women into the sport. Amanda is an OG in the sport and friend of the pod which made for a super enjoyable conversation.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the podcast, I'm super stoked to invite back. Amanda Naaman. Amanda is a big time friend of the pod. A podcast or herself as the co-host of the grody. Podcast. A very accomplished off-road athlete. With notable wins twice. At Unbound 200. Five times at the rock cobbler, .
We touch on rock cobbler this year, and some of the help she provided Sam aims with inviting and encouraging more female athletes to toe the line at this year's rock cobbler event.
She and Dave Sheik are also the co-founders of the mammoth tough event in mammoth, California, which occurs in September. Each year She's a member of the gravel cycling hall of fame advisory board. And according to her.
She's Walter, the dog's favorite. I'm not going to get into that domestic squabble, but we'll leave it at that. I'm excited to bring you a followup conversation with our friend, Amanda Naaman.
Hi, Craig. How are you? I am doing great. It's so good
[00:01:32] Amanda Nauman: to see you. Yeah, likewise. I'm excited. What, almost two and a half years
[00:01:36] Craig Dalton: later. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, the funny thing about our first recording I was recalling, we were doing an Instagram live at the same time. It was back when everybody was trying to figure out Instagram Live, so we were doing that.
And recording our conversation and I ultimately posted it to the podcast Feed .
[00:01:54] Amanda Nauman: Nice, nice. .
[00:01:56] Craig Dalton: What am I sort of, I would say to the failed endeavor into Instagram Live. It's not something I, I jam on. I'm much more comfortable in the podcast format where I can just talk to people and publish it later.
[00:02:08] Amanda Nauman: Yeah.
Yeah. No, it's hard and distracting. You get all the messages, you're like, what? What is that question? ? .
[00:02:14] Craig Dalton: I feel like we have so much ground to cover. We were chatting a little bit offline, but I, I thought what would be an interesting place to start knowing you participated in the Lifetime Grand Prix in in 2020 2, 20 22.
I just wanted to get your kind of overall perceptions as someone who's been around gravel racing for many years with that structure of your season. infused onto your life. H uh, how did it go and what were your thoughts on the, the lifetime Grand Prix in general?
[00:02:42] Amanda Nauman: Yeah, I signed up probably on the last day that was possible to turn in the applications that, um, winter before, cuz I really contemplated whether or not it was something that I wanted to do for a while cuz I knew.
You know, I had done Unbound Excel. They had put Leadville on the list for the Grand Prix, and I was like, man, I've always wanted to do Leadville. I can kind of shape my calendar around the rest of the series as well. So ultimately I decided to sign up for it knowing, you know, it's kind of a shoe-in to Leadville, which is one thing I had always wanted to do.
And at the same time, I get to do some gravel and some other mountain bike races that I hadn't necessarily done before. So I was very optimistic and excited about the Grand Prix last. . It didn't necessarily go how I had planned or anticipated, but uh, yeah, I think what they have created in the series and the opportunities for athletes to go race that, I think it's a great, a great thing and great structure for a lot of people, but it wasn't necessarily, let's say, the right fit for me last year.
[00:03:44] Craig Dalton: Did that make sense? I mean, just for the listener's sake, like if you go back a few years before that as a gravel racer, how would you go about picking your Cal.
[00:03:53] Amanda Nauman: Yeah, I mean, there's just some of the marquee events that. I would've picked, you know, in 2019, like for sure rock cobbler, mid-South Belgian waffle ride San Diego.
And then you'd go into Unbound, like for I think a California racer. That was sort of the way you would go. And then as summer happened, you know, you could pick and choose events. S B T I think was a was happening at that time. So it was a good summer. One gravel worlds. And then R P I. Was kind of sort of a season ender a little bit before you hit fall, and some people would race cycle lacrosse and whatnot.
So that was kind of the loose structure, I think, at least in 2019. And then 20 20, 20 21, everything kind of changed and there was a big reevaluation of what was important in terms of picking events, going to events or not , and then, Yeah, in 2022, everybody had the opportunity to apply for the Grand Prix, so that changed things.
But beforehand it was sort of what events were some of the big names going to, which ones had the most prestige, and, and if you were looking for sponsorship and stuff, you wanted to make sure you were at an event where there's enough competition there to show that let's say your results are are worth not.
[00:05:11] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. It's so interesting to think, like, think of it from the professional athlete's perspective, going back prior to the existence of the Grand Prix, just the flexibility to kind of go do whatever you wanted and whatever was exciting to you. And then to see athletes be, uh, forced because as you said, this amazing opportunity and I think the Grand Prix.
Fits so many people's needs right now. It does exclude certain events and it certainly does drive your calendar and just looking at it from the outside and maybe talking to a few athletes along the way, there's definitely an increased stress when you've, you've got this season long endeavor that you're pursuing and you're trying to get points at every stop.
[00:05:51] Amanda Nauman: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I think that was where it caused me some stress last year because I got sick a couple times and the kind of sick where had it been a normal year, I just would've like pulled the plug and not gone to Sea Otter, for example, cuz that was the first one that I was sick for. and in hindsight, like I probably should have done that, but when you're in the moment you're like, no, I can't skip this cuz I only have one scratch race.
I had to skip Schwa again because of Mammoth. So I was already in a tough situation of like, I have to do all of these other ones no matter what. And that was the stress for me, I think was feeling like I had to do this thing. And especially because last year we paid for it. So I was also like financially invested in the decision that I had made.
Um, so yeah, for me, like I said, that that feeling. Wasn't perfect for me because. Bike racing isn't my only source of income. So it, I've always tried to go towards what I'm doing has to be fun because if not, then like, what's the point? It's not like the money puts food on the table for me. So I have that ability to say, Hey, I need to pick and choose things that are important to me.
And I think I've come back a little bit more to that, uh, in 2023, which I would say I was at in 2019 for sure. Um, and then a period. A few years floundering of what, what was important for me, .
[00:07:13] Craig Dalton: I know you guys at the Groo podcast did a really great episode with, I think it was Michelle Duffy talking, just talking about your, how you felt the season went at the Lifetime Grand Prix, and some suggestions and some questions.
What were some of the key takeaways if you look back on that season to say, What would you recommend they changed in that program and did they ultimately end up doing that for
[00:07:36] Amanda Nauman: 23? Yeah, I definitely, I asked some hard questions. I think he, I told chemo I was going to ask some hard questions and he was like, yeah, okay,
But I, you know, I pulled some of them from like actual trolls on the internet that would say like these most. Outlandish things and you're like, really? Like, did you even pay attention at all? But I wanted to give them the opportunity to respond to some of that stuff. Like, like did, did social media matter?
Or you know, how could you charge everyone money and all the ENT entry fees to go do this stuff? And kind of. Pinpoint some of the things that people had complained about, I would say. Um, and yeah, they changed a lot. I mean, at that time they had already made 2023, like no fees so people don't have to pay for the entry fees.
Um, and I think they're doing a much better job with social media. And that was. , one of my major points that I wanted to drive with them was like the stuff that I was seeing, they had relied so heavily on the flow bikes deal that they had made. Yeah. And doing that live coverage and really just making sure that flow was going to do the storytelling for them and it just never happened.
And that was my, my main frustration. in March, like before we went to Mid-South, Flo did one-on-one interviews with probably everyone, and they had all this great content that they put out before Sea Otter, and it was very in depth and it felt like everybody was telling their story and it was fun to follow that part of it.
And then after Unbound, it just stopped. And then they had the issues in Utah and. . So ultimately for somebody like me, where being in the top 10 wasn't necessarily realistic and being in that midfield to back of the pack zone, I kept saying like, what is the point for somebody like me and somebody let, and now let's say somebody in the 20 to 30 range, what's the point of being in it if you're not giving me the exposure?
that I want if I'm gonna be in the series and like, invest in this with you. And so I hope that that's the biggest thing that they change for this year is not relying on the flow stuff, probably expanding the storytelling to more than the top five at each event. Yeah. And, and being able to tell more of the story of everyone
[00:09:52] Craig Dalton: I.
Yeah, that would be interesting. I, I sort of, when I look through the list of writers, both male and female, and I think about like who, oh, who might I interview over the cross cost of the cross of the season, as you know, this isn't specifically a racing podcast. Yeah. But even if it was like, I can't get to all those athletes and it's almost like I just need to get a dart board, just throw a dart and pick someone that I don't know and interview because I think you're right.
There's interesting. Across the board and the more that they can kind of create those personal connections with the athletes, the more excited people are gonna be to follow.
[00:10:27] Amanda Nauman: Yeah, for sure. And I think, like chemo said, his major goal was to get non-endemic sponsorship into the sport and to get these athletes able to make a living off of it.
Like those were his two main goals in making this series. And I was like, okay, if you do that, like you need to work more on the marketing side of it and you need to tell. All of the stories because if we're just gonna talk about the top five and we're only gonna pay the top 10, then what's the point of going 30 deep
So . Yeah, like that's, I think, I think they get that now and they'll probably work more on that this year. But for sure, like I'm, I'm gonna have Anna Ya mochi on Groo next. And she just won rock cobbler and she's doing the Grand Prix and she's one of those like up and coming names where it's a really exciting story to follow and if they go the same route they did as last year, which is like, well, let's just focus on the top five hopefuls at each event, like she's never gonna get any coverage then
So yeah, if they can expand the way that they tell those stories, I think that would be,
[00:11:31] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Similarly, I just launched an episode with, uh, Ian Lopez, San Ramon, nice. 19 year old out of Northern California who's joined. He's the youngest person who's part of the series. Yeah, and it's just, I think it's just gonna be an interesting timestamp for.
He and I to like look at this interview where he is at, what he's thinking about with his career in cycling and yeah, follow him throughout the
[00:11:52] Amanda Nauman: year. Yeah, I love that
[00:11:53] Craig Dalton: stuff. I love it. Yeah. So did you decide to, to throw your hat in the ring for 2023 in the Grand
[00:12:00] Amanda Nauman: Prix? I did not, and mostly because I think of the experiences that I had in 2022 and not enjoying that stuck feeling.
Um, if they had. another deal or contract, or if they had presented a way that they were going to do marketing for all of the athletes, I might have reconsidered it, but because we were just going blindly on the hope of like, yeah, we're gonna make it better than the year before, I was like, well, I'd rather focus on more of the stuff I think that I wanna do personally.
Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm optimistic about the things that they do change for this year. I just think it would've been cool for them to maybe present that upfront.
[00:12:42] Craig Dalton: When you saw the call of a Lifetime series on YouTube, did that make you. They might be approaching it differently or what were your thoughts on that series?
[00:12:50] Amanda Nauman: Yeah, I, I loved it. I think they, you know, they had told us initially that it was going to happen and before every race weekend they had said, Hey, if you're in the top three men or women, cuz they alternated. Genders throughout the the series. They told us all of that upfront and they said, if you are going to be in this top group, please make sure you make time for the interviews and all of that.
So that part of it we knew was for sure happening. And they made some of the vignette videos highlighting some of the athletes, but it just wasn't, it wasn't everyone, and it wasn't clear how they were picking the stories to tell essentially. Um, So, yeah, I think they did a really good job with the series though.
I, I joked that it's, like they said, make it like drive to survive with a little less drama, but, and a lot more cool bike racing. I think they nailed it pretty good.
[00:13:42] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I enjoyed it as well. Yeah. With with the idea that you can drop two races and now it's up to seven races, do you think that would meaningfully change, like what your experience would've been?
If that was the scenario last
[00:13:54] Amanda Nauman: year, yeah. It would've eliminated some of that stress of feeling stuck or knowing that. you had a little bit more flexibility. Uh, yeah, I think that, that that format will be healthier for people and I think that is for sure something that they realized last year with some of the injuries that happened already, like Pete racing through when maybe he shouldn't have with his hand still hurting and pacing.
So, um, yeah, just lessons learned, growing pains of how you set up a series from the get-go.
[00:14:23] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think that'll be interesting. I also think it'll be interesting if someone is riding through the series healthy. And just decides not to do something, you know, unbound obviously being a huge effort that maybe some people might not be suited for.
At least that was the speculation last year. Yeah. Um, wondering like whether they'll just opt out of one and save one in their pocket for either a bad day or an illness or injury.
[00:14:48] Amanda Nauman: Yeah, everybody was afraid of that and I felt like there were a lot of rumblings of like, oh, so-and-so's gonna skip unbound cuz they can.
But I think peer pressure might have just went on that and most of them ended up just doing it. So maybe that'll keep happening. I think everybody kind of feels that is the marquee one and if you skip it, cuz it doesn't suit you and you one people will probably be like, well they didn't do unbound. So
Yeah,
[00:15:12] Craig Dalton: I could see. Yeah. Little, a little asterisks, by the way.
[00:15:14] Amanda Nauman: Exactly, exactly. Uh, well they chickened out on that one. . .
[00:15:19] Craig Dalton: Love it. So what, what are some of your plans for 2023? Obviously, like over the last couple years, you've. Uh, become an event organizer with Mammoth Tuff, which we'll get into. Also started dabbling in gravel camps, which sound amazing.
But why don't you just, let's talk through what 2023 is gonna look like for you for both erasing and other gravel endeavor perspective.
[00:15:42] Amanda Nauman: Yeah, I, yeah, quite, quite a few people have asked me this, and I think it's important to. also reminds people again that like, this isn't my job, per se. You know, like I have a regular desk job.
And so the way that I've approached anything has always been fun first in doing things that I want to do. Um, and last year my dad got sick a couple times and the business that I work for is my parents own it. And so, and it's just me and my brother that work for them. So I think we kind of had this like revelation of.
All of this other stuff that we're doing isn't quite as important and putting my dad's health first and focusing on that kind of was, and it's one of those things where it puts stuff into perspective. And I'm like, yeah, I've been doing this bike racing stuff for a decade. It is, it has been a very selfish endeavor.
And there are kind of other things. in my life that I would like to focus on. Um, so yeah, that, that's, that's the background to all of it, essentially. You know, it's not as easy of a decision as like, oh, well I'd rather race mid-south than Unbound. Like, it was, it was never really that simple for me. For 2023, it was kind of more like, mammoth is very important to me.
Doing camps is very important to me. Having more time at work is also important to me. And, um, Going back to the goal that I had in 2020 of finishing the calera 500 was also a goal and something I wanted to do last year, but like I said, the like shiny object of the Grand Prix got in the way and I was like, oh, I could do this thing.
So I just put that on hold for another year. Um, so I'd like to, to go back to that and try and finish it. Awesome.
[00:17:20] Craig Dalton: Can you describe that, that attempt at Calera and what that
[00:17:24] Amanda Nauman: is? Yeah. So it is the Calera 500. Um, the person who started it, his name is Alan Jacoby and he lives in Idaho now. So he doesn't live in Mammoth anymore, but he was a big tour divide fanatic.
Um, and he came back to Mammoth after doing tour divide and was like, I need to do something similar here in my backyard. So he came up with Calera, which is a hundred fifty, two hundred fifty North and South Loops. And then the Calera 500, which is the big Mamma Jamma one. And most all of this is like, An Excel spreadsheet of maps and queues and like very rudimentary stuff.
I think over the course of the next year or so, it will be a little bit more updated Ever since, um, one of the bike packing.com people did a feature story on it cuz he finished the 500 last fall. So with more attention, more eyeballs, I think it's going to gain popularity. But essentially they're just like really stupid hard bike packing routes in the area.
And I think the fastest time on the 500 is just under five days. . So it's not really something that can be done in a couple, and it's more walking than you think, and it's, uh, a lot harder just because of the elevation and the massive climbs in the Eastern Sierra. So, . Yeah, that's, that's the backstory.
There's a cool video that Niner put out in 2020 when I had first started it and kind of the goal of finishing it has is still, is still there looming over my head. I've had a couple of times that didn't go right,
[00:19:01] Craig Dalton: and is it the type of thing now that in the bike packing community, it's this, Entity and people are starting to sort of check it off their list and make attempts to go at it fast.
[00:19:12] Amanda Nauman: Barely. That's why I said like I think it'll gain popularity now that bike packing.com did a feature on it because I think they're only five or six guys that have ever finished the 500. I'm the only person to ever finish the one 50 South Loop. Um, yeah. So it's very, very grassroots. I mean, there are probably.
200 people in the Facebook group that know about it. Um, but yeah, if you are interested, there is a Facebook group. It is private, so you can just request access for it for anybody listening. But yeah, I would love to see it blow up. Like I think it's a, it's a really beautiful route. It's very challenging and hard, but if you're looking for a good reason to, to get away, it's a, it's a good one.
[00:19:53] Craig Dalton: How did you fall in love with that area in the Eastern Sierra?
[00:19:57] Amanda Nauman: M uh, growing up, I think, um, yeah, we probably talked about this a few years ago, but my parents always took us to Mammoth growing up and same thing with David's parents. And so we both sort of fell in love with it in a parallel way as we were younger.
And then once we met, um, we were like, oh man, this place is awesome. And my parents saved up enough money to get a house there, I think in 20. 15 or 16 I think. And because of that opportunity to be there and stay there, I ended up doing a lot of my training for, at the time, DK Now Unbound. And so I attribute a lot of the success I had winning in 15 and 16 to training up there because it was just the most like wide open.
Not California, like in the way that you would think about California gravel. It was just more Midwest than anything I'd ever found in the state. And because of that, it gave me the opportunity to put my head down and go hard the way that you would in the in the back roads of Kansas . So that was sort of how we fell in love with it.
Definitely skiing and snowboarding first, then mountain biking over the years, and then, hey, like let's go down this road that looks like it goes off to nowhere. . Yeah.
[00:21:14] Craig Dalton: Love it. And then which year was the, was 2020 was the first year that you guys attempted to put on Mammoth Tough, right? Right.
[00:21:22] Amanda Nauman: Yeah. We came up with the idea in like, well, I'd say late 2018 or so.
Um, I don't know if I've ever told this story publicly, but we actually went. Maybe half a year of doing it with Lifetime and thinking it was gonna be a lifetime event. And ultimately Dave and I decided we wanted to do it on our own. And so in 20, late 2019, we were like, okay, we're gonna do it ourselves cuz this is how we wanna do it and present it.
And, and then with the intention of it kicking off in 2020
[00:21:54] Craig Dalton: and what year did it actually kick off?
[00:21:56] Amanda Nauman: Yeah, last year ,
so,
[00:21:59] Craig Dalton: yeah. Yeah. I couldn't remember if it happened once or twice already. Yeah. No. So you got got one
[00:22:03] Amanda Nauman: under your belt. Yeah. Covid. And then 2021 was wildfires, unfortunately. And then, yeah, 2022 finally happened last year.
Which, one thing I do wanna mention, I just set up bike ride for. this in 2023. For me, I'm the tough, and they have a new insurance policy option for their event promoters where there's like a natural disaster thing. You can pay a fee into this insurance thing where they will cover refunds for natural disasters like wildfires, which is huge, especially so any promoter's listening in California, think about it.
It's only like 2.2% of your fees or whatever, and I think. The state that we're in and with, you know, some of the things that could happen in our areas like that is a, a pretty good opportunity for promoters. .
[00:22:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that sounds like it. Yeah. So the events in September, so end of the year each, each season.
[00:22:59] Amanda Nauman: Yes. Yeah, it is the weekend after Labor Day. So traditionally the Mammoth Grand Fondo has Labor Day weekend, and then we are that next Saturday after that, which is the closing weekend of the Mountain bike park. So we had a lot of people that were up there. You know, you have siblings or other family members that wanna just go ride park all day and.
Go do your little grapple adventure.
[00:23:22] Craig Dalton: Nice. A little I'd I'd do a little bit of both if given the opportunity. .
[00:23:26] Amanda Nauman: Yeah. A lot of people went and rode mountain bikes on Sunday. .
[00:23:29] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Um, and tell us a little bit about the event. Like if someone's considering it for their calendar, what, what is it like? Obviously Mammoth Mountain is at a high elevation as you referenced before, but how did you design the, the, the event?
What are the, the roads and trails like up.
[00:23:45] Amanda Nauman: Yeah, it's one thing. So when we first started it, we had a short course and a long course. We were gonna do a 40 mile and a hundred mile option ish. And then in 2020, One, we had a bunch of people come out and we tested sort of a medium route. Even though the event was canceled, we were like, Hey, go ride part of this and tell us what you think.
And that was the genesis of the medium distance. So in 2022 last year, we had three routes, even though that was never the initial plan, but some people felt like, oh, the short one's too easy and the long one's too hard. So we need an in between. And that was where we came up with the idea of doing three different ones and they.
Very different. Like they're in completely different sections of the, of the valley of the mountain. They go in different areas. So I wanted to be able to sell a different experience for each distance and sort of have it as a stepping stone leading up to challenging yourself over a hundred if you want to, and letting those first two on the way kind.
get you ready for what to expect for the, for the long one, cuz the long one you go pretty much all the way to Bishop and back essentially is the route.
[00:24:57] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And how much climbing is in the long one?
[00:25:00] Amanda Nauman: 7,500 or so? It's not too bad, it's not like raw cobbler where it's a hundred feet per every mile. It's a little bit less than that.
So I think it's, um, it's not as like punchy and brutal in that regard. .
[00:25:15] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Are you doing sort of long duration climbs on the course or is it
[00:25:19] Amanda Nauman: rolling? Yeah, it's mostly you just like kind of get in the zone and climb for. Good chunks of time. It's a lot less, like five minutes as hard as you can go. You're kind of like, yeah.
All right. Kick it into gear for the next hour, essentially. . .
[00:25:37] Craig Dalton: Nice. And then the, the, um, the, the short and the medium courses, what are those
[00:25:42] Amanda Nauman: distances? Yeah, the short is about 40 miles, very palatable. You go by, uh, the the Hot Creek area, which is cool, so you can stop and go down there. And then the medium distance is about 75 miles or so, and it has some pretty technical descending in it, I would say.
And for folks who aren't used to riding or navigating sand as much, that feeling. Riding in Palmist stone is very different from anything else in the state, essentially, cuz you're just riding in old lava fields. So, . It's very unique. So I had a lot of people tell me last year like, oh man, you weren't kidding when you said it was gonna be hard.
I'm like, yeah. It wasn't, it wasn't like some like silly marketing ploy to be like, this is gonna be the hardest event ever. I was like, I was serious. Like it's not easy. Um, and so it was, it was funny to have a bunch of people come up to me afterwards and being like, yeah, you were right. Like I know I wouldn't lie to you
[00:26:40] Craig Dalton: What does that end up translating wise for equipment? Like what do you sort of recommend people ride up?
[00:26:46] Amanda Nauman: Yeah, 40 minimum tire width. And I tell people like, go with as wide as your frame would allow, essentially. So like I could fit a 48 Oracle ridge on my R L t if I, if I needed to. And I think that would be the most fun realistically for the day if you were just looking to have a good time.
And a lot of it is because some of the softer stuff, if you're not used to the like fish taily feeling of your bike, With when it has two narrow tires and sand, then go wider because you, it'll be more stable and a lot less like wiggly, I guess. So it kind of depends on. Number one, people's handling abilities and number two, what your frame can allow.
And then, yeah, just go big. It's safer. ,
[00:27:32] Craig Dalton: did people listen to you or were people showing up on 30 twos? Yeah,
[00:27:35] Amanda Nauman: no, people listened. I think that was, that was the thing we tried to scare everyone with. I was like, if you go under 40, you're not gonna have a good time. Just trust me. .
[00:27:45] Craig Dalton: I love it. I love it. So overall, how was the first year of the event?
Did it meet your expectations?
[00:27:51] Amanda Nauman: Yeah, yeah, it was, it was great. I think the one thing, I don't like gloating, but I will toot my horn on the safety aspect because the one thing about that area is there's, you have very little cell service. You're kind of really, truly in the middle of nowhere and the only people who ever go out there are just going in their side by sides or motorcycles to, to get away.
So we made it an an emphasis on safety and having a hundred percent rider accountability, which you'd be surprised looking into events that you're trying to sign up for that. That's not really the case for most events that you go to. Promoters kind of put it on you to, oh, well, if you're out there, you're kind of on your own and if you don't get back like, and you tried calling, sag, whatever, like you'll figure out how to get back essentially.
And there's not really making sure that everybody is back. Okay. Whereas in our case, if you get out there and you get lost or. Can't find your way back. Like there's a, like you go into the risk of like making it out alive essentially, cuz temperatures can drop overnight and there's kind of more risk factors involved.
So we wanted to make sure that we knew where everyone was. And TBG timing had a really good setup where you could text them if you dnf, if you got back to your hotel room on your own. And then if you got picked up by people, obviously we knew where you were. We got that idea from, there's a, there's an ultra, a Bishop Ultra that happens in May every year, and they have a policy where if you don't report your DNF or like that you left the course and just went home, you're never allowed back.
like they have a very like hard. Stance on that, and they just don't want people back that disregard that rule. So we were like, well, we don't wanna be that strict, but we want to make sure people know that we care about where they are out there. Um, so yeah, safety, I think was, was the biggest thing that we wanted to, to shoot for.
And hopefully everybody's told me like, you're never gonna be able to scale that if you have 2000 people. And I don't know, I'd like to take on that challenge just because I think making sure everyone's safe is, is always gonna be our biggest priority. Yeah, for sure.
[00:30:03] Craig Dalton: That sounds great. I remember in the first year you guys were advertising that it was kind of co-located alongside Octoberfest in Mammoth.
Did that turn out to be the case?
[00:30:13] Amanda Nauman: It didn't. They, uh, they ended up canceling their festival. They like, I. Covid stuff and the people who ran octoberfest have other businesses in town that they were kind of more worried about than, than putting on the festival last year. So they canceled. And so that is why we did our own beer run on Friday.
So we ended up doing what used to be theirs. They handed it off to us and they're like, yeah, if you wanna do this, Stupid beer run. Go for it. Which we did cuz I had done it the year before and I was like, this is awesome. Um, so we took that over and, and we obviously last year didn't have time to like throw together a full on music festival like they had had in the past, but cuz they canceled sort of last minute.
So this year the village is kind of helping us. Get talent involved for kind of having it be a little bit more of a festival and live music and entertainment for Saturday. Um, so yeah, no more October Fest, but, but we're trying to make the party .
[00:31:10] Craig Dalton: Love it. Um, now I know you guys have been through the ringer as far as event organizers are concerned between the pandemic and the fires.
But let's put those two years of waiting aside. Like how would you, what. , how do you think about the amount of effort required to put on Mammoth? Tough. And was it a satisfying enterprise for you guys to put together, or was being an event organizer just like this crazy amount of work you never anticipated?
[00:31:40] Amanda Nauman: It was a crazy amount of work. I never anticipated a hundred percent. Um, I think that Sunday after the award ceremony when we were all cleaning up, I was like, somebody asked David, like, oh, are you guys gonna do this next year? David was like, uh, I don't know. And I was like, yes, . So we had very different, I think, immediate reactions to it.
David ended up doing a lot more of like the manual labor, I would say, and I did a lot more of like the computer work and logistics and all of that. So we came at it from different perspectives, but in, even though it was more work than we had anticipated, I would say it was a lot more rewarding than we had anticipated as well.
because I have always told the story that Mammoth was like the special place to us. Like so much so that we thought about just keeping it a secret and not really like displaying it as this gravel destination, I guess you could say. But doing that and having the opportunity to share this place that has meant so much to us, I think was.
Ultimately the biggest gift and the thing that we were the most proud of because everybody was like, yeah, I come up and ski here in snowboard and mountain bike. I never thought to bring my gravel bike and just go explore. And people have spent so much time on the 3 95 and just never really thought about those roads that are out there.
So that part to me was very rewarding. I think Visit Mammoth now knows that it is a really great destination to, for people to go bring a gravel bike and explore. and that part I think will be the thing will, will always be the most proud of is kind of sharing that adventurous spirit up there.
[00:33:17] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Did you think about the event from like, um, you want this to be a hyper-competitive event or was it something else in your mind when you conceived of it?
[00:33:27] Amanda Nauman: Um, that's it. That's kind of hard for me because I am so competitive. So we wanted this fine balance of making everybody feel like they were competing for something, um, because I don't want to exclude all of those people. Like I always appreciated that Sam aims with the rock cobbler. He was always like, this isn't a race, but two people are going to win.
Like he's always said that. and he's always acknowledged me or whoever else was winning those years, but he didn't like do categories for all, you know, the age groups and whatnot. But re I really wanted to do that for our event because, As a swimmer, as a triathlete, having those goals for everyday regular people was something that was important to me, cuz it was important to me a decade ago before I got into anything super competitive.
So I think it's important to reward. . Um, yeah. The people that are doing the thing and going how they can as fast as they can for their certain categories, I think is still important to me. Um, but in that sense, I also just wanna make sure people can come and have a good time and not feel like the pressure to, to perform.
[00:34:37] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Well, it sounds like you've covered both bases, right? You've, you've, you, you've allowed the racer types to go at it, go hard and get some recognition at the end, but you've also built that safety net to make sure that there's no man or woman left
[00:34:50] Amanda Nauman: behind. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. , .
[00:34:54] Craig Dalton: The other thing I wanted to touch on that seems like it's been growing in your portfolio of gravel offerings has been the camp.
what can you just tell me about like what a tough camp is like and what are tough? What's the vision for 2023? Yeah.
[00:35:10] Amanda Nauman: Yeah. I. I will go as, I'm gonna go a decade back real quick. So when I was, uh, I finished my master's degree in 2012 and I had planned a trip to Europe with my best friend from high school, and we signed up for one of those like v i p experiences with the Tour de France.
And so we did like this like. 10 days in the NY sort of thing and blew all of the money that I had made in college to go do this trip. Cuz I was like, whatever, I'm starting work after this. Like I can make money later. And it was like a very, I don't know, transformative, life-changing trip that we did. And I think, you know, the, the people I had spent a week with, I still talked to you today and uh, I think that experience was important for me cuz it made me realize how much.
Travel and sharing cool experiences on two wheels was to me. And then, you know, shortly after that, I met David, I was working at, felt all of these things kind of stumbled into bike racing and bike racing became the catalyst to going cool places and riding bikes with friends. and then now I am like moving that pendulum sort of back into to what was really important to me 10 years ago, which was like just going and doing these trips and riding with people for fun and like sharing kind of all of the experiences that I've had in the past decade.
So that was the impetus of it. And like I knew we were gonna have this conversation and I was thinking a lot. Why I wanted to do camps and why they were so important to me and Dave working as a coach for Carmichael Training Systems, like they have always done a really amazing job with camps, and I've had the pleasure of helping coach some of those and being a part of them.
And every time I'm like, this is where it's at, like the like intimate, like group setting. You know, you have good food, you hang out, you just talk about important life stuff. That I think is always something I enjoyed. So that was the impetus of of all of it. We started some of the camps in 2020, a couple more in 2021, a couple more last year, and to where we are at today, making all of them sort of under the Tough Ventures umbrella and expanding it to a couple camps in Kansas.
[00:37:31] Craig Dalton: Super cool. I do, I do think for many cyclists, the idea of a camp evokes this. Training camp mentality, which is like, oh, I'm going because I'm trying to do well at Unbound, or what have you. Yeah, and I think it's an inter really interesting opportunity to kind of shift that mindset to more what you're saying, which is like, I'm gonna go somewhere cool.
I'm gonna ride my ass off for four days. I'm not doing that for necessarily for anything beyond the sheer pleasure of writing. For four days and getting access to people who are knowledgeable about the sport and learning a thing or two.
[00:38:07] Amanda Nauman: Yeah, exactly. I think it's a middle ground of a training camp and like a vacation trip, , because I want, I want to bring value and the way I've been explaining it to everyone is like, Dave and I made a lot of mistakes in the past 10 years.
We did everything the wrong way and I would like to make sure that people coming into this discipline now, Kind of learn from our mistakes, start doing everything the right way, because you will have a much more pleasant experience doing these long adventures if you have, you know, some, some semblance of like how you should take care of yourself essentially.
[00:38:42] Craig Dalton: Yeah, definitely. There's just a lot of low hanging fruit in terms of if someone just tells you something simple like make sure you eat every hour in these long events. Yeah, yeah. You're gonna be a lot better off than
[00:38:52] Amanda Nauman: or some people that are like, oh man, I only had a bottle in four hours. I'm like, well, that's why you feel like crap.
[00:38:58] Craig Dalton: Yeah, . Exactly. I like you had the benefit of doing triathlons. You sort of learned those lessons very quickly. Yeah. If you didn't fuel in one activity for the next one, you were pretty much
[00:39:09] Amanda Nauman: hosed, right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And I, again, one of the other things that happened was we had so many people that came to Mammoth and did the short route last year, and it was like their first gravel event.
And that was very intimidating for me cuz I was like, this is going to be like their introduction to this experience and this discipline. and I wanted it to be good, and I wanted them to have resources at their disposal to make it comfortable. So much so. I feel like I over-delivered and overshared on some of that information.
And I had a couple people emailing me and say like, you know, you don't really have to like handhold so much for all these people. I was like, yeah, I do, because some of them literally have no idea. So like if it's annoying to you that I'm telling you to drink a bottle an hour, like just ignore me. Then , this isn't for you.
[00:40:03] Craig Dalton: So most of the camps, well all the camps last year were up at Mammoth. And obviously like just being able to showcase all the great trails and roads up at Mammoth was an obvious thing for you to do both in terms of getting people pumped about that region that you love so much and getting people excited, maybe specifically for your event, but now you're expanding to Kansas.
Let's talk about like, what's the orientation of those camps in Kansas? Is it just yet another great place to ride that people should go? Or is it trying to get you ready for any particular event?
[00:40:35] Amanda Nauman: Uh, yeah. Yeah, they, so the first one is with the Flint Hills gravel ride, and the second one in July is with the Rockridge gravel.
And so both of those events are run by Bobby Thompson and Dave and I met Bobby. . Like way back in 2017, the Dirty Kansas production or promotion company was the company that was, that DK was under at the time. They had dabbled in this idea of travel trips as well. So they did this like test run to do the Dirty River in the uk and Bobby was on that trip.
So we met Bobby in that like travel trip, bike thing, atmosphere, and we became really fast good friends, and they had come out to Mammoth a couple times, um, in 2020 or 2021 and 2022. So we have always had this relationship with Bobby and he wanted to build his. Camps, or sorry, his events in Kansas that were more of like grassroots, like OG gravel style there.
And that's very much the stuff that Dave and I fell in love with and we were like, well, , let's see if we can do tough camps in Kansas. Because Bobby came to me and said like, Hey, I'm not getting enough women signing up for these. Like, what am I doing wrong? And I was like, well, I don't think you're doing anything wrong necessarily.
I think just like what you're offering is still intimidating for women. So let's try and maybe bring this camp idea to to soften. That experience or make it feel more palatable for women and for anyone as a whole. Um, so that was where that idea came from to build those camps there. And o obviously I have a really good reputation and love for that area in terms of what I've been able to do, um, with Unbound and all of.
The experience that Dave and I have with that event. So I think sharing what we know and doing that and again in a place that um, means a lot to us was kind of why we wanted to do. .
[00:42:35] Craig Dalton: So will those camps actually culminate in participation in the those events?
[00:42:40] Amanda Nauman: Yeah, so that's how we structured. It was like a three day leading up to that event so that that final day you get to sort of execute everything that you've learned in the three days prior, which is, which is a fun way to do it.
[00:42:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that's super interesting. I want to touch on something that you mentioned offline, but just kind of reference there about just. Finding a way to bring more female athletes into the sport. And you mentioned some work you were doing with Sam at Rock Cobbler this year. , can you describe what you were doing?
[00:43:11] Amanda Nauman: Yeah, yeah, so Chris Hall was on the marketing team helping Sam out this year, and he sent me a message a couple months ago and was like, Hey, Sam's at like 16% female participation. And he was like, how do we make that bigger? I'm not happy with it. And I was like, yeah, I'm not happy with that either. That's not a great number.
So I was like, well, let's, you know, open 50 spots on the backend for any women. Sign up after it sells out. And I was like, I will volunteer my time if people wanna ask me any questions about it, if they're nervous, cuz maybe women don't necessarily want to email Sam or an unknown face behind an event and say like, Hey, is this for me?
Maybe they'll feel more comfortable if it's for me. So they put a whole special section of the website called Ask Pan. People could email me their questions if they were concerned about stuff, and we got quite a few people that emailed and women that were just uncomfortable. Or didn't feel great about doing the short distance cuz it, it didn't feel like enough or they felt like a failure cuz they wanted to do the peb.
And it was very eye-opening in the sense that I was like, yeah, maybe just women need that safe space to be able to say, Hey, I am uncomfortable. And they need somebody to tell them like, it's gonna be okay and you are fully capable of doing this. or maybe you're not fully capable and it's okay to do this other part of it instead, you know, it was, um, yeah, again, just a very eye-opening thing because women traditionally can just have a lot more self-doubt, I think, than men, and that idea that they perhaps might not feel like it's a space or.
a discipline that's for them necessarily. So the more that I can try and crack that code on making women feel like they're more capable, I think that that's something that I'd like to, to focus on in the
[00:45:09] Craig Dalton: future. . Yeah, I think that's super cool takeaway for a lot of event organizers listening. It's just like, find a female athlete that can be supportive and be open to questions like that, just to make people feel welcome.
Yeah.
[00:45:22] Amanda Nauman: Yeah. It seems so simple, but really like, and again, a lot of that has, has stemmed from talking to other women or like even my best friend, the one that I was talking to, that we went to Europe together. I always kind of use her as my litmus test. Like a better representation of all women in terms of how they're looking at the stuff.
And she'll always second guess herself or say like, I don't think I can do that. And most of the times it's, cuz I feel like she's comparing it maybe to things that I do or things that she sees other women do, these like epic things and she's like, yeah, that's not for me. I'm like, no, it is like, you have no idea that you are fully capable of doing this if you want to.
And a lot of times they, they won't even take the step to do it because. They're unsure. So the more that I can help, like, no, you can do it. If you want to do it, you should do X, Y, Z to, to get there. Um, yeah, those conversations I think are so important and for men listening to this too. You all have also a responsibility I think in to like make your female friends feel comfortable.
Because a lot of times, like women just are too afraid to ask or they think that their questions are stupid. So the more that men. dads especially, um, brothers, the more that you all can make your female counterparts more comfortable, I think the better off we'll all be. Cuz it's not necessarily my job, only either , I think it's everyone's job to, to make it, to make it feel like something that they can do.
[00:46:55] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for doing that by the way. Yeah. Yeah. It's important you've got a busy calendar of your own activities. , are there any events for the rest of the year that you're excited about doing?
[00:47:09] Amanda Nauman: Oh, I don't know. I sort of don't, I don't really, I don't think I have anything. I was like super excited about rock cobbler and I even just did the short one this year.
Um, yeah, I'm, I think I'm putting all of my eggs in the, the camp and mammoth basket and really focusing on calera because it is something that, Of steep learning curve, like obviously I haven't, I haven't finished it twice. So there's a reason why, and it's just a lot of like learning things the hard way I think when it comes to backpacking.
So the idea of like even more self-sufficiency than I've been used to in the past is the, like that learning thing that I'm most excited about for this.
[00:47:53] Craig Dalton: Is, was that the, if you could point to like the reasons why you haven't been able to complete the route, or is it a self-sufficiency issue?
[00:48:02] Amanda Nauman: I would say it's equipment, honestly.
Like the, well, the first year I couldn't even start it cuz of wildfires. So that was, that was a whole nother thing. Yeah. And then the second time I got stuck in like a lightning storm and on top of that my knee was bugging me cause I had picked. , I had made wrong equipment decisions, essentially. Yeah. And it's something where, you know, if I'm used to a certain position riding style and I have so many hours in that same position, I was jumping into something different, more weight on my bike, more everything.
More walking. Yeah. . So it was just a, yeah, a learning curve of equipment and how I need to manage like, I don't know, just a very different style. Goal chasing essentially.
[00:48:49] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's so, it's so different. Yeah. I mean, just, just, just having a loaded bike in and of itself is like a game changer in what, how your knees feel in particular.
[00:48:59] Amanda Nauman: Exactly, exactly. Because I, so I had like a frame bag on my frame, and so I thought, well, I'll make my Q factor wider so that my knees aren't rubbing my frame and that. Q factor thing, just royally effed up my left knee . That was the thing that ultimately did me in, was changing one thing that I thought was gonna help me.
But really, like your bodies are so fine tuned to a certain feel that if you throw that off and you're trying to do it for five days in a row, like, forget it. . Yeah.
[00:49:27] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And cycling because of the repetitive nature of it, it's. , you get something wrong it you're doing over and over and over and over and over again.
Eventually it's gonna add
[00:49:36] Amanda Nauman: up. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Just again, stupid things where if I was telling somebody, I would say like, yeah, nothing new on race day. That's like one of my main mantras, and I of course, like I did something different for this major goal that I shouldn't have. ,
[00:49:53] Craig Dalton: something that was even harder than race day.
Arguably. Yes, exactly. , . I love it. Well, I'm super excited for all the camps. I think for anybody listening like that is a good way to spend four days. Yeah, and I love that Mammoth tough went off well, and I'm excited for you guys doing it again. And obviously I'll put um, a link in the show notes to registration, which just opened up so.
People listening, make sure to go out and grab your spot.
[00:50:18] Amanda Nauman: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks Craig. Yeah. I think, and for anybody that's listening to this that does, hasn't listened to a bunch of the, the Gravel Ride episodes, go back and listen to the one that Craig did with Trek Travel in Jerron and. just be inspired to go, to go do a fun bike trip cuz I think yeah.
I'm, I'm really gonna push that more for a lot of people who are, you know, race or event anxious and just need, like, need a good reason to go explore and do it in a different way. Yeah.
[00:50:50] Craig Dalton: Gravel travel, it's where it's
[00:50:52] Amanda Nauman: at. Yeah. Yes, exactly. .
[00:50:55] Craig Dalton: So good to spend some time with you again and hopefully we catch up later this year.
[00:50:59] Amanda Nauman: Yeah, thanks Craig. I appreciate it.
[00:51:02] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Amanda as much as I did. She's such a great member of the gravel cycling community. I always learn a lot listening to the grody IO podcast and appreciate her perspective.
She's been doing all these gravel events for a while. So just offers a great historical view as to what it was like, what it's like now and what are some of the ways that we can chart the course forward. I encourage you to check out all the tough ventures work. It's tough.ventures. As she mentioned during the show, they're doing the mammoth tough event, but they're also doing a series of camps this year, which I think will be super fun and informative to anybody who can attend.
If you're interested in connecting with me, I encourage you to join the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. If you're able to support the show, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride or ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. Until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels.
This week we sit down with cycling travel industry veteran, Brad Sauber to discuss the new Alaskan Gravel Expedition trip from Raid Cycling. This point to point trip brings gravel cyclists to some of the most remote terrain in the United States for an incredibly memorable ride.
Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (use promo code: TheGravelRide for free HRM)
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the show. We welcome Brad. Sobber from raid cycling to the broadcast. Brad is a veteran of the cycling industry. Having worked for a number of cycling travel businesses over the last few decades.
Raid cycling focuses on putting together the most memorable trips to the most memorable destinations. You can imagine. When we get into this Alaskan gravel expedition that we're talking about on today's episode, I encourage you to augment your listening by visiting the raid cycling.cc website. To see some of the pictures as most of us can imagine, Alaska is a vast, vast wilderness.
At a scale. That's really hard to describe. In an audio podcast. So I encourage you to, to take a look at the pictures, listen to the description of this particular trip, because it's absolutely amazing. Nice. Dais point to point in the Alaskan wilderness.
Culminating with a prop plane trip back to your original starting point, the trip sounds absolutely spectacular. And I think you'll see from Brad's description, his whole emo in this cycling travel world has been to create once in a lifetime bucket list trips for his clients. I'm super excited to introduce you to red cycling in this broadcast today.
I'm super excited to introduce you to Brad and raid cycling today. Before we jump in, I need to thank this week. Sponsor hammerhead and the hammerhead crew to bicycle computer.
As I've become accustomed to hammerhead just recently sent another update to my career, to computer. They do this, I think every two weeks so they can keep you. In the latest and greatest technology that their minds over there can come up with. I noted in this week's edition, they're adding e-bike battery monitoring to one of the screens that optional screen for you.
I've got an E gravel bike, supposedly on the way for testing. So I'm excited to integrate that directly into my hammer, head, head unit. So I will know when the battery is about to die. As you guys probably know hammerhead crew too, is the most advanced GPS cycling computer available today. It's got industry leading mapping navigation and routing capabilities.
That set it apart from other GPS options, it's got free global maps and points of interest included like cafes and campsites. So you can explore with confidence with on the go flexibility. I recall in my recent trip to Jarana Spain, that before I left, I downloaded the maps of Spain and I was able to use the computer.
Just as if it was in my local terrain here in California.
I recently ran into a cycling neighbor of mine who was telling me about a new route that he had developed. That was a mixed terrain route through some local trails that I hadn't. Really explored that much. So I went over to Strava, found the route on his profile, downloaded it and saved it. I'm going to put that directly onto my career too, so I can go out there and ride with confidence. You know, if you're like me, anytime you actually have to navigate, when think about the navigation, it really slows down the overall route.
So having those cues preloaded into my career too, is going to make that ride a lot more enjoyable. Right now our listeners can get a free heart rate monitor with purchase of a hammerhead crew to just visit hammerhead.io right now and use the promo code, the gravel ride. At checkout today, this is an exclusive offer for our listeners. So don't forget the promo code, the gravel ride. You'll get that free heart rate monitor with purchase of your career. To go to hammerhead IO today, add both items to your cart and use that promo code.
Without business behind us. Let's jump right into that conversation with Brad, from raid cycling.
[00:04:26] Craig Dalton: Brad, welcome to the show.
[00:04:27] Brad Sauber: Hey, thanks Craig. It's great. Uh, great to be here. Looking forward to the
[00:04:30] Craig Dalton: chat. Yeah, good to see you again. I appreciate you reaching out and uh, I love what I'm seeing on this Alaska gravel trip. So, we'll, we'll get into that in a minute, but we always start out with learning a little bit about your background as a writer.
Where'd you grow up and how'd you find the bike?
[00:04:48] Brad Sauber: Oh, I've lost you there. It cut out. Um,
[00:04:52] Craig Dalton: yeah, no worries. Let me, can you, can you hear me now? Yeah. That was
[00:04:56] Brad Sauber: weird. Wonder why I did that?
[00:04:58] Craig Dalton: Yeah, no worries. I'll just, uh, I'll just start off again and I can, it's easy to, it's easy to cut. Things like that. Hang on one second.
Cool. All right, shall we? Yeah. Okay.
[00:05:10] Brad Sauber: Brad, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks, Greg. This is, uh, exciting to be here. I'm looking forward to, uh, the conversation.
[00:05:16] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's good to see you. It's probably been a couple years since we first connected in, in Mill Valley or shared somewhat
[00:05:23] Brad Sauber: hometowns for you backyard.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a good day. We went out for a ride. I remember that.
[00:05:27] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So I'm, I'm, uh, really excited to get into the Alaska gravel Expedit. Seeing it, reading the overview just looks spectacular. But before we go there, yeah, let's just get a little bit about your background. Brad. Where did you grow up and how did you discover the bike originally?
[00:05:44] Brad Sauber: Yeah, so I'm from the northwest, uh, Seattle is where I would call home. Um, lived my first 30, 35 years, um, in the Seattle metro area. Um, started out in high school as a, uh, as a baseball and basketball player. I, I preferred, uh, being on the bike, so I picked up the road bike a little bit and then, uh, kind of that early, early nineties, late eighties, uh, when mountain biking was blowing up.
Uh, I took to that quickly growing up as a kid, I was on BMX bikes all the time in the neighborhood and enjoyed a little bit of that, of, of racing, but then really got into the mountain biking quite hardcore. So, Early nineties, um, a lot of big adventures on the, on the mountain bikes. And, uh, a lot of the 24 hour races, a hundred mile endurance events and things like that really led to a love of cycling.
Um, and then, yeah, once I went off into college, um, fell in love with, uh, more road riding, more crit racing. Most of that was just to kind of stay fit for you can do bigger mountain bike races and such. And then that led me into 1992, decided to take off to New Zealand, um, with a buddy of mine. We got a six month visa and we took our mountain bikes and pan years and, uh, went and did six months of riding on the gravel roads and craziness and dirt roads in, uh, in New Zealand and hiking all over that amazing country.
And, and as a result of that, I thought, man, I've gotta figure out how to do this for a living. I just fell in love with being on the bike guiding. doing all sorts of wonderful adventures and came back and applied for a, uh, uh, a degree program at a small state college in Washington called Central Washington University.
They had an outdoor rec program, um, and then also a travel and tourism, uh, degree program. So I jumped into both of those and they were, they basically allowed me to create my entire curriculum around cycling and cycling. So even my senior thesis at college for my bachelor's degree was, um, about international cycling and international cycling tour operations.
And then that just led from there one amazing adventure after the next, um, at a cross-country trip that I guided, um, boy, it was a 2006 or so across the United States, uh, that was 60 days of a small. . And then that just led to, uh, starting another mountain bike travel company. We ran that for a couple years and sold it.
And yeah, that just kind of led into more expeditionary type stuff through Asia. Um, spent, um, quite a few years working, uh, in India, Nepal, Tibet and the Himalaya for a number of years, back and forth. Uh, doing mountain bike trips, cycling tours through India and um, some more high altitude trekking and things like.
You know, I'm going back quite a few years, but you know, we're, I've been in this business for about 30, 35 years at this point, but that then finally led to me starting another, um, a travel company called Brad. So destinations, which I ran for a couple years until 2001. When nine 11 happened and it kind of shut that whole destination and that whole region for me down, I was focused on India and Nepal and those kind of areas, but unfortunately with uh, nine 11, I had to, uh, shift and kind of reinvent myself.
And that's when I found a small bike touring company at the time called Bicycle Adventures. They were founded in 1984. Just the year after, um, Tom Hale started Back Roads and, uh, they were hiring tour guides. So I went through their hiring weekend and was hired. You know, in 1999, uh, 2000 and started guiding for them.
Um, and that led to my goodness, uh, about six or seven years of full-time guiding about 150 to 200 days a year on the road. Um, working with anywhere from 250 to 300 clients each season on, uh, multi-day, uh, bike tours and multi-sport tours all over the western us, Canada, Hawaii, New Zealand. And then finally in 2003, 2004, they asked me to come on and run the operations for the business.
And that was a booming time, 2004, 2005. If you remember back then, that's when Lance was, uh, doing quite well. Cycling was huge. And um, our business then went up to about 170 departures with over 2000 clients. So we had a lot of trips, a lot of equipment, and I was running the whole operation back in for the owner at the time.
Uh, who was, his name was Bob Clark. And I did that all the way up until about 2011, um, you know, building that business up. Uh, then they decided to, uh, sell the, the business. Um, and I kind of moved down. I did move down to California with my wife at the time. who, and I had met actually on a bicycle Adventures tour back in 2004 and she was based in the Bay Area.
So I moved down there and, um, met, uh, Joah Cara, who was an ex-pro, uh, living in Mill Valley. And he and I started riding quite a bit, getting to know one another. And one night, um, on a napkin at Beer Works in town, I said, listen, we should start a bike tour company. And his experience was, uh, training in Kiati in.
and, um, he said, look, I'm gonna take some buddies over there. Why don't you to come and we'll have a look at this experience. And so we spent six days with a few people, uh, riding the roads that he used to train on, and we came back. We both basically quit our jobs. He quit LinkedIn and I had just had resigned from my role at Bicycle Ventures and we started in gamba.
So that would've been, oh, probably 2011 was when we basically started that business and it was self-funded. We had a third partner, but Joel and I, Joel and I were the ones that basically got that thing up and running. And that was an amazing experience. You know, it was basically a, um, you know, a fantasy camper cyclist.
We had all these amazing pros that were around us on all these cool trips in, in Italy. And then I was branching out into, uh, in France as well, doing some things around the Tour de France, and then also bringing some of the tours back, the United States. And, um, he had a great time. Um, but it was hard to self-finance a business.
It was hard bit of a, you know, hard road as a, as a partnership as well. And at that time in, um, you know, after founding in Gamba, I'd had, uh, reconnected with, uh, Simon Matram over at Rafa, and he and I first met back in like 2004, uh, 2005. He'd just launched the Rafa brand and I did a small private ride with him in California when he came over to look at one of their first, uh, retail spaces.
Studio Velo actually actually was the bike shop that was one of their first companies that carried their brand. And we went to dinner that night in Mill Valley. He en slated Olson and I and a few others. And I remember looking at him and saying, Hey, listen, I think you're primed to do some sort of a, uh, lifestyle travel vertical, if you ever want to do that within the Roth of space.
You know, keep me in mind. So that was literally 2004, 2005. And then crazy enough when um, you know, Joel and I founded in Gama there 2011, 2012, um, that's when Simon reached out and said, Hey listen, we're ready. We've got a bunch of capital we're taking on Team Sky as well that same year in 2012, and we want to break into more of a lifestyle concept.
And he asked if I was interested in. Leaving my wife in Mill Valley and moving to London and starting a travel vertical for Rafa. And that's really where everything really came together for me in many ways. It was an, an amazing experience, um, to have that kind of a mentor working side by side of Simon and it really refined.
I guess for me, all those years of working in the, uh, multi-sport travel space, it, we just wanted to create really inspirational, hard and unique cycling trips around the world, and that's what we did. Our first season at Rafa, we launched five trips and they sold out overnight. Which was quite a surprise to me.
Usually it's a bit of a hustle to get people to travel with you, but overnight, uh, we launched the website and in the morning we, uh, woke up and they, the sales had literally shut down the site. So we had to think about, geez, how can we do this? So off we were running on that very first year with five trips sold out, and in our five seasons of running tours, we worked our way up to over a hundred departures.
So it was quite a bit of growth. All in-house, running the whole show out of our London office and building it in just all inside with our own team, all our own resource. We didn't outsource anything and we didn't work with any other contractors or vendors. Uh, we did everything in-house, so I helped build an an assemble, an extraordinary team of people.
uh, in-house all the way from, uh, accountants to, you know, assistants and, uh, office staff, all to all the staff and guides out in the field. And then we started branching out, uh, all over Europe, the us, uh, Asia Pac, running trips in Japan. Um, and then it just kind of kept going from there. So it was a busy, uh, few years for me.
Uh, and then I finally moved back, um, about 2000, uh, 2000. late two thousands I guess. Um, and finally Simon ended up, uh, selling the, the business. And so that just kinda led to me, uh, thinking about what else I wanted to do. And we had all these incredible people that came out of the Rafa travel space and they said, look, can we keep this going?
And I said, sure, let's do it. So we started raid cycling at that point.
[00:14:39] Craig Dalton: Got it. There's a, there's a ton to unpack there, Brad.
[00:14:42] Brad Sauber: Yeah, there's a lot
[00:14:43] Craig Dalton: there. . Yeah. Yeah. No, I think, I mean, it's, I appreciate you sharing that story because I think it's super interesting, at least to me, to sort of look at the travel industry from.
What it's like to be a guide to what it's like to operating the business and to what it's like to operate a business at scale. Yeah, and as you've described, you've played all those roles, so just maybe to, I mean, to set the stage a little bit, guiding is something that a bunch of athletes do, typically, a young person's vocation, you get.
Handhold and take care of the guides. Ideally share your local knowledge and your love of the sport. But typically people are staying in that role for, you know, I would guess like two to five years. Right? Does that sound
[00:15:29] Brad Sauber: right? Yeah, that's right. I mean, that's how I started out in my early twenties guiding, uh, but I always knew that I wanted to do something more.
My background really is more operational, uh, and logistics. That's what I kind of enjoy more. I of course, like being out in the field, I. Training staff. I like working alongside of them, but I also like to get them to that point where, , you know, they're just super confident. They have a lot of autonomy, they have a lot of freedom, and then they can run with it and run their own experience.
And then I kind of, in the background, of course, working on other new departures, creating new trips. That's, that's kind of my sweet spot. Um, yeah, so I kind of left the full-time guiding, uh, thing, you know, probably by the time I was 30, 32. Um, I was in the background running, you know, a very large operation for many years.
And then, back with Rafa Travel. I trained an amazing group of people, worked with incredible staff. They pretty much ran all those trips. And I would kind of be in the background and I'd float around a fair bit. Um, but
[00:16:21] Craig Dalton: yeah. Yeah. And when you talk about the logistics, just so the, the listener is crystal clear on this?
Yeah. You, you're typically get, you're going to have some local infrastructure, whether or not you're providing bikes, you're gonna have vans, you're gonna, you know, have to arrange hotels. There's a ton of work that goes into creating these experiences. and it has to be done pretty far in advance in order to lock down the accommodations, et cetera.
Can you just go into some of like the logistics of what it was like at a bigger organization? What was that? What was the footprint of the, the logistics side of the organization? What did that look like?
[00:17:00] Brad Sauber: Well, if you go back to bicycle adventures, I mean, that was, um, one of the largest players in the bike travel space.
You know, 170 departures. We had a. 12,000 square foot facility, 700 bicycles, 18 custom vans, uh, 20 custom trailers, and all the equipment that goes along with each one of those, um, kind of operations. It's a moving bicycle shop. It's got full racks for all, every, you know, we carry 20 bikes on these R vehicles.
You carry 15 people, A lot of equipment, a lot of investment into that overhead. So that was just a constant, you know, maintenance cycle on all of these vehicles and equipment. You're always moving bikes in and out of that operation and it's, it's pretty intense. The, the unique experience for me was when I went to Rafa and, um, you know, Simon said, Hey, we need to get some vehicles, let's get some Jaguars and, and Land Rovers.
And I thought, wow, I didn't know we had the budget to do that. And he's like, well, what do we need a budget for? Let's just bring them in for a meeting and ask them for free vehicles. And I have to say, I don't think that happens with many of the other companies out there. I, I don't think, um, any of the other big players have ever been able to, uh, just call on any car manufacturer, especially one, um, , you know, like a Jaguar and ask for a whole fleet of private vehicles.
And that's what we did. It was, it was quite unique because of the name and the brand recognition that Rafa had from around the world. You know, in walks the team from, uh, you know, Jaguar and they said, yeah, what do you guys need? And in exchange, really, they just wanted to have access for our client base a little bit.
We would brand, you know, It was kind of a brand partnership deal. Um, but that first two years, what happened was because we were the main sponsor, clothing sponsor for Team Sky, Jaguar was supplying them all their vehicles. Well, they had to provide new vehicles to the team, team Sky every season. So then they would just take those custom vehicles from Team Sky and give 'em directly to us.
So we got them a year after they were used by the team. So we had all these amazing, uh, Jaguar sport breaks, which were actually custom made vehicles from the ground up. They didn't even have VIN numbers. They were so unique. Um, these were vehicles that were made specifically for the Swanee team, uh, that worked at Team Sky and they had all these regulations on the width of the backend and how bad the, how tall the hatchback would come up.
And so these were incredible, unbelievable, top of the line Jaguars. And so then they just gave us the whole fleet of these vehicles and we'd rebrand them, uh, under Rafa Travel. And then a few of the, uh, the most expensive high-end, um, you know, range Rovers as well. We had on board to pick people up and, and.
Ferry people around on these experiences. But it was pretty amazing to have the Team Sky vehicles. You know, we always had a lot of issues. We had all these low profile racing tires I'd often pull into, in the middle of the tour, uh, I'd meet the team mechanics for Team Sky. I'd call 'em, I'd say, Hey, listen guys, I've, I've got these low profile wheels.
They don't work very well on our trips. And they'd like, Hey, bring 'em in. We think the coolest things and we'll just swap 'em out. So there were a few times we'd show up and, you know, stage four of the tour niece and with three, four vehicles in the middle of. And I'd rock up and we would just swap the, the wheels and tires right off of their vehicles and put 'em on ours,
It was pretty amazing to have that sort of relationship, uh, with Team Sky back in that day. So that was quite unique. But, you know, we had vehicles moving around all over the place. Um, I remember one time we had a vehicle breakdown in Corsica, uh, but the local Jaguar dealership wouldn't talk, it, wouldn't touch it because it was a, it didn't even have a VIN number on it, so they didn't even know what the heck this vehicle was.
So they actually had to send a truck all the way from London, um, down through France Drive, take the ferry all the way over to Corsica to actually pick the vehicle up as it sat there for about a week and a half on the side of the road. And it was broken down. So there was a lot of logistics moving vehicles around, um, and having.
You know, delivered into France. We had a big service course in, um, in Italy, and then also one in, in East as well. So bikes and gear moving around. It was, it was quite unique with, uh, Rafa Travel. Yeah,
[00:20:46] Craig Dalton: it sounds like it. So, as you've described this kind of personal journey in the bicycle travel industry, you've, yeah.
You've started out as a guide. You've, you've gone into a big enterprise with bicycle adventures. Then you had an opportunity to work with Rafa, which sounds like, would it be considered sort of a, a mid-sized. Travel. Provider at that point?
[00:21:07] Brad Sauber: Well, you know, five season in into it, we became one of the, one of the larger bike travel companies out there that mainly just focused on bicycling tours.
I mean, a hundred departures is a pretty good size, uh, operation. You know, that was literally in about the sixth season that we ran. Um, , we hit those kind of numbers. It's nothing compared to like the back roads, which are up a thousand departures a year. But they're very multi-sport and they do other things besides, uh, just cycling.
Um, but I would say that Rafa Travel at the peak was probably one of the top one or two, uh, companies out there as far as size and in destination, um, you know, expertise. And we were kind of all over it. We were practically on every. From Africa, south America, um, AsiaPac us and so we were running quite a large operation.
Um, At
[00:21:51] Craig Dalton: that point. Got it. My line of questioning is really around, as you as the Rafa travel experience had to wind down for reasons totally unrelated to its success or presence in the market. Obviously when you moved over and decided to start raid cycling, you had seen big, small, you'd grown companies from small to big, et cetera.
Sure. What was your, what was your vision for. ,
[00:22:18] Brad Sauber: well really raid came out of, uh, the, the combination of all those years, uh, guiding out in the field, working in a lot of the multi-sport things. I, I enjoyed those experiences. I, I think, um, working with people and, and facilitating really fun, uh, experiences for folks was really rewarding for me.
But as soon as I got to work with, uh, Simon directly and, um, kind of had his mentorship and his support in taking, um, Rafa travel to exactly that, that. That point that I really wanted it to be at, which was, you know, really stretching the elastic for people, putting them in a little bit out of their comfort zone on the bike, um, but also wrapping a lot of care and attention around it so that people can accomplish something really unique and.
You can do that anywhere in the world on a bike. There are beautiful places to ride everywhere. But I wanted to specifically keep it focused on destinations that had a history, uh, of cycling and cycling. Racing. So in the early days of Rafa Travel, I had a very narrow window of destinations that I really wanted to look at creating departures, but they always had to connect back to the sport of.
Was really the, the endeavor. Yeah. Um, you know, we wouldn't go to Costa Rica for example. I mean, we, there were places that yes, we could go and ride, but there, if they didn't have a big, you know, history of the, of the connection to the sport of, of racing, we wouldn't do it. So Simon really allowed me to craft those experiences and those destinations, you know, being Japan being a really unique experience.
I mean, that was two years of work for me to put together that, that point A to point B experience. And that's, that's really what I, I found my niche at, uh, Rafa really allowed me to, I guess, just distill down all those experiences, get very specific about what it is, of the experience that I was looking for and the challenges that I wanted to put in front of people, and we were able to refine it and.
When we shut down Rafa, of course, a lot of people were disappointed, A lot of staff, but also a lot of our clients that have been traveling on this for all those years. I walked away with a lot of people emailing me saying, Hey, let's try to keep the spirit of this moving forward. And really that's where RAID came out of it.
And. You know, the third year of, um, Rafa Travel, we actually broke our number of departures down to two different types of verticals. We had, we had a ronay, which is point A to point B. We had retreats, we had these climbing, uh, retreats as well. And then we also designed a, uh, a tour called a Raid, which is a French term for point A to point B cycling experience.
And so I took. Kind of from the, the Rafa travel side of things is I like the spirit behind what the word ray, what, what the word Ray means. And that's how we founded that. And most of the team from Rafa Travel came over with me. My, all of my Japan staff that have been with us since 2000, well boy, 2014, 2015, they're still with me to this day.
They've ran every departure that we've ever done, both as Rafa Travel and as as Raid. And we've developed new trips over there, uh, just for the RAID brand as. And then a lot of the US team, the Ben Lie's, um, a lot of the, kind of the guys that have been with Rafa for many years are still with me to this day.
Um, you know, yeah, they're all, they're all there, they're all available. We, uh, run trips all the time. So that was really the, the impetus to starting raid was just after, uh, we shut down Rafa Travel.
[00:25:30] Craig Dalton: Nice. Let's talk about when you started to see gravel become something interesting for you and how, obviously with Rafa you were known for creating unique, challenging experiences, which undoubtedly touched a little bit of dirt here and there, but when did you start thinking about gravel as its own unique opportunity to kind of create these adventures you like to.
[00:25:54] Brad Sauber: You know, it's interesting. Um, I was hesitant in the beginning. Um, I harken back to my days of trying to develop a mountain bike travel company and we did that with a company called Bike Trucks International. Not many people had probably ever heard about it, but you know, we really struggled for a few years.
The old saying that, uh, the old saying that goes, that has always stuck with me is the more specialized you r in your activity, the more independent you. , and if you apply that to cycling, mountain biking is a very specialized activity, and typically the people that love mountain biking, love the outdoors, love to be in remote locations and like to do it alone.
right? Yeah. When we go out on these big adventures, we want the challenge, but we also like that solitude and so to create, um, mountain bike tours, there's only been a few companies in the world that have ever done it and done it well. You know, Western Spirit's probably the best name out there, and they've been doing it for 30 plus years.
It's really hard to take that type of activity, which is more technical and create it for the mass. . Yeah. So, yeah, so when, when we really started seeing gravel come around and I started seeing all these huge events happening, um, you know, I think early on when I started doing some of the Grasshopper events, the early grasshoppers there in, uh, NorCal, which I know you're familiar with, you know, a lot of those were showing up and we were, you know, port road bikes through small creeks.
We were hitting single track trail. You know, and finishing on, uh, Willow Creek on Little Dirt Trails and I thought, wow, this is really interesting. More road cyclists are kind of coming for these events. And that's when I started to kind of see an uptick in it. And I thought, why don't I include little bits of this in some of these Rafa travel experiences?
But you also have to know that Rafa's travel, Rafa Rafa's history with gravel riding goes back quite a few days back in the old continental days, what were called the gentleman's races back in the day, the first, you know, one day. A hundred to 200 mile races that they used to put on. They always used to throw in a little, little touch gravel, little bit of technicality.
And so when we finally did the whole Rafa travel thing, that's when I said, look, we should probably look at adding and peppering in these experiences with some of the, uh, the dirt roads that we used to ride in the continental events and things like that. And, you know, it worked pretty. Um, but y you know, I still experienced a lot of Hess hesitancy from people.
Even though people were strong writers, they could ride 150 mile days. Yeah. You put five miles of gravel on them and they were like, wow, that's intense. I don't wanna do that again. . And then, you know, then we built a, um, uh, a Utah trip which had some, you know, 15, 20 mile sectors of gravel and they would come out of that going, wow, that's enough.
I don't want any more. And then that just kind of led me to going into, into, uh, with raid cycling, let's, let's actually try to do some gravel specific things. So three or four years ago we launched our LA and Catalina Island Gravel Experience, which literally was a hundred percent gravel. And we had a great response and wonderful group of people that, uh, have done those trips.
And that's when I kind of started seeing that as a result of the big events, the steamboat events and things where these thousands of people would show up. , it became somewhat the norm then for people to actually ride, uh, these styles of bikes on the roads
[00:28:57] Craig Dalton: and trail. Yeah. It's certainly not without its challenges.
I imagine just, you know, with, with road climbs, like everybody's gonna make it up the road, you know, they might be slower or faster that there's so many elements of gravel riding. You not just have to get up the hill, but you have to be confident going down the hill. Yeah. People's technical abilities, it always shocks me.
You know, I can bring someone who's 10 times the athlete I am out on, on the road, bring 'em on the trail. All of a sudden I'm dusting them. They can't stay with me. Right. Yeah. So, I mean, I gotta imagine it's like it, it would've taken time for gravel travelers or cycling travelers to really understand what's ahead of them.
To your point, experience things like S P T Gravel, do these big events and start to understand, like I've got, now I've got the skills to sign up for the LA to Catalina trip, for example.
[00:29:48] Brad Sauber: Yeah, I mean, I've had a few trips where, you know, we've put, uh, people that are extremely strong cyclists. These are people that we're, uh, doing a hundred, 150 mile days with, you know, 10 to 15,000 feet of climbing and, and then we throw in five miles of gravel and they, they fall apart.
We've certainly seen that on a number of experiences, but I think now with the level of bikes and the gearing that's out there, that's really made a big difference. Size of tires you can run. Um, I think it's just a fantastic sport and I'm noticing more and more people want to do it. Hence, you know, we've moved into the, uh, kind of Alaska experience and, um, yeah, we're really looking forward to these strips.
[00:30:23] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think that's a great segue to this Alaskan gravel expedition, such an ambitious itinerary. I'd love for you to first start off by just like give a, give the short overview of what this trip's
[00:30:36] Brad Sauber: all about. Well in Covid, uh, one of my ride leaders, ride captains, um, Sean Martin, who's a native Alaskan from Anchorage, um, you know, our business basically shut down.
And so we just kind of turned inward and started looking at maps and started thinking about where these destinations that we wanna ride. And he kept saying, Alaska, Alaska, this is where we need to go. You know, we need to look towards the, uh, this Great Northwest destination. And I thought, okay. I've only known a few businesses.
There are companies that have ever ran trips there. They kind of focused on certain destinations within Alaska and did small, kind of four to six day trips. And I specialize in point A to point, kind of point B destinations. So I wanted to look at the distances. I wanted to look at all these gravel roads that, uh, existed there and see how we can kind of connect them and make them a more well-rounded experience.
And because my clientele is, is global, they're from all over the world. I needed to be, I needed it to be more of a challenge than say four to six days of riding. So when I started penciling, this whole concept together with the help of Sean and peering out over all these maps and learning about some of these dirt roads, it all came together in a nine to 10 day package.
And that's a really good fit for people to invest the time and energy to fly here from London or. Copenhagen and wherever a lot of these people are coming from Australia, New Zealand, it's gotta be enough for them to invest that time of energy and then money to get there. So it came, it came together quite easily once we kind of opened up our mind and looked at the grand distances between a hotel to hotel and, and, and in Alaska there, you know, there's one section, there's 165 miles of gravel road and there's only one.
And so it just kind of landed in my lap that, wow, this place actually exists and I could book it and, um, we could break that 135 mile day or whatever it is, up into 2 65 or 70 mile days on gravel, which makes it quite approachable. And it just kind of fell in my lap. And then the further west or the further east, we kept looking, um, to the Wrangles St.
Elias National Park, which I'm ashamed to say I didn't even realize was the largest national park in the United. Um, I thought, wow, this is amazing. And then learning about the McCarthy, uh, road, which is 65 mile gravel, one one way road out to a dead end to this extraordinary, uh, vast wilderness. It's possibly one of the most remote road roads in, in North America, um, to this little hamlet of McCarthy, uh, which then sits right next door to Kennecott, which was an old gold mining destination in the early 19 hundreds.
Um, and it just started falling together for us. And, um, we added in, of course, the Denali Road inside the park. and I was just blown away, uh, by what this experience could do. Why these hotels
[00:33:16] Craig Dalton: even exist
[00:33:17] Brad Sauber: up there. , well, they're actually hunting lodges. Um, okay. You know, outside of Denali and, um, kind of that, that region that's just north of, uh, Anchorage, of course, that's a lot of bus tours and, and train goes up in Denali.
People come to go to Denali. But once you go east on the Denali Highway, which is this, you know, dirt road, it's 135 miles of dirt. There's only one hotel out there. And. , you know, I called them up and it's a hunting lodge where they literally hunt for bear and caribou and moose. And it's a small family that run this place.
They keep it open most of the year. And uh, I asked about two different dates in July and August and they said, yeah, they're available. So I had to book out the entire property. They're gonna be
[00:33:57] Craig Dalton: scratching their heads when a bunch of like reclad cyclist
[00:34:01] Brad Sauber: show. Exactly. I know, exactly. And I have a, I've had a great story.
I actually met someone recently who had stayed there and he says, oh, it's an amazing experience. He said, one morning I woke up and I went out into the dirt parking lot and there was a guy Skinnying a bear. You know, in the parking lot, and it's a pretty wild experience, but I'm really looking forward to the wonderful people that own it.
It's a family operation. You know, when we arrive, we're gonna have a big family dinner in their little, it's like their home. And they have a beautiful tavern inside this, uh, old, um, hunting lodge. And, uh, we'll have a great dinner. And the rooms are simple. The staff are actually sleeping in bunk beds, um, outside in an unheated, uh, no power.
Little, little shack, uh, but the clients are inside the main lodge and they all, they'll have some nice clean, uh, ri for them as well. And then the other property, uh, that we go to on the next day got, Kona Lodge was built in 1914. It's actually the oldest Roadhouse in Alaska. Again, it's a family, uh, run operation.
Um, Husband and wife run it with their small daughter, their young daughter. And this place has a lot of history. You know, back in the early 19 hundreds it was a gold mining, uh, rush there. And so it was just amazing adventurous and people that came to that region looking for gold, copper. And so we'll spend the night there and, uh, have a great glass of whiskey and a killer dinner that night.
A big, um, beautiful festival of, uh, dinners that evening. I think the family's really looking forward to having this group there. And then the last two nights out in Kennecott is inside the national park at this old mine that the, you know, the national Park has, um, remodeled and made into this really, really cool um, I'd say semi luxury property, but have a great restaurant on site as well.
And so we have to book two nights there cuz it's two night minimum. Um, but yeah, I was just kind of blown away by the whole itinerary and it's just come together so well. I mean, the distances are quite long between hotel to hotel and that's kind of what, how I advertise my trips cuz they're point A to point b, hotel to hotel.
So yeah, we might have a distance of 130 miles from hotel to the next hotel. It doesn't necessarily mean we're gonna ride every inch of that. Um, but I think most days people are gonna be riding anywhere from 80 to a hundred miles each day. It's kind of what most people come to do. Um, and of course with all the, the sunlight.
You know, we have plenty of daylight hours to, uh, tackle as much distance as they really want to. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:36:12] Craig Dalton: That's great. That must be a luxury to have though. So much daylight hours. . Yeah.
[00:36:16] Brad Sauber: I'm a, I'm nervous. I've never had that before. .
[00:36:18] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I don't know how you guys are gonna sleep, but question. So you arrive in Anchorage, Alaska, and Yeah.
Are you riding directly from Anchorage to start, or is there a
[00:36:30] Brad Sauber: transfer? Yeah, so day one actually on arrival, um, we're going to take people, Sean's gonna take people on a little local loop of some single track and some kind of back country riding around Anchorage. It should be really cool. And then that evening we'll have a great dinner in town, but then the next morning we have about a a 45 minute transfer.
We had just north, uh, where we come up to a little teeny town and we start from there. And our first, uh, major climb is up over Hatcher Pass, which is about a 12 mile climb, and most of that's on dirt with anywhere from 10 to 14%. Great pitching up here and there. And then we'll have, uh, on the backside of Hatcher Pass, it's an all downhill, uh, about I think 12 to 13 miles or so of gravel.
Off of Hatcher Pass. If you looked up Hatcher Pass Road, you'll see these magnificent views of just this high alpine setting above the tree line, incredibly lush and green. This windy strip of, uh, one lane dirt road that just passes through this region is really spectacular. Um, that's day one. And then they'll cycle all the way into tna, which is kind of the, um, the kickoff, um, place for, you know, the climbers that go up into Denali.
So we'll spend the evening in Ta Kitna, and then the following day, Is an all road day. Um, it'll be between, you know, 85 and 130 mile day for them as they make their way all the way up the highway, which is called a Parks Highway, which goes all the way up into Denali. And, um, then we'll spend two nights up there, uh, readying ourselves for our big day inside the park on the, uh, Denali Park Highway, which currently, um, in its current state.
A year or so, year and a half ago, there was a big slide at mile marker 42 on the Denali Park Highway, and it wa it washed out this whole insection of road and it won't be, um, repaired for another two years. And so it's actually a good thing for us because I think it's going to limit the amount of park vehicles that are on the road.
but that'll be literally an 84 mile out and back road, um, road ride that day inside the park. And about 55 miles of that will be on dirt road and hopefully with just limited vehicles. And it's an interesting logistic thing for me to consider because I can't take a, my personal support vehicle inside the park.
And so people are gonna be, um, set up with all the gear and equipment and be prepared for an 85 mile day on their own. And there's really no water and there's no food out. And a lot of bears . So they're going to be, uh, ready with their bear spray and they're gonna ride inside the park kind of as much as they want or as little as they want.
Um, there is an option where the park runs these, um, little shuttle buses and they each have two bicycle racks on each shuttle bus. And so I'm going to purchase bike passes for everyone. So anyone at any time can jump on these buses and, and move either further out or. Turn around and come back if the conditions get too crazy or if people just have had enough.
But I think most of these riders are gonna ride all the way out to mile 42 and then all the way back, so it'll be over 80 plus miles with over 10,000 feet of climbing. It's a pretty big outing.
[00:39:24] Craig Dalton: What type of equipment are you recommending that riders bring with them? Yeah,
[00:39:28] Brad Sauber: it's just your standard gravel bikes.
You know, disc brake is preferable. Um, the, the dirt roads in Alaska are hard pack and super fast and super smooth under the most ideal conditions. So you kind of have to be prepared for everything from warm days to, you know, possible, you know, high wind. Heavy rain as well. Just never know what you're gonna experience and weather changes there from, you know, minute to minute.
So as far as gearing, uh, I'm mostly telling people to ride a double on their gravel bike if they can. Uh, there will be some just with a, with a single as well, and probably 700 by 42 at the smallest. I'd probably encourage people to probably go 45 to 48 on the tire size, uh, for the gravel bikes. and I'm not providing any of the gravel bikes.
People tend to bring their own on these tours. You know, when you're riding a hundred plus mile days, 10,000 feet. I do recommend people have their own bike that they've trained on. I mean, just the slightest difference in a saddle position, you know, could give someone a pretty serious knee problem on day three of an experience like this and it just, they don't have the ability to ride the rest of the tour.
So, yeah, rather than me just providing, you know, bikes, I think people really should bring their own and, and everyone is. So that makes
[00:40:36] Craig Dalton: sense. Is there any technicality in terms of like the descending off some of those passes? Or is it pretty much, you know, as you described, these roads are pretty, pretty predictable gravel and you can, you can open it up without too much concern.
[00:40:51] Brad Sauber: Yeah, I think, but as we all know, you know, driving on and or riding on gravel roads, you get those little marbles that, uh, that, that sit on the sides and down the center of these roots. So you do have to be careful of course, on that. And any of these roads are gonna be, Especially Hatcher Pass on day one.
I mean, people will be excited and ready to really kind of throw down the hammer, I'm sure as often they do on day one. But we really have to keep them, you know, in control and safe and kind of really work with them on that descent. I mean, 10 plus miles on a gravel road is, is never easy no matter what the conditions are.
Um, but you throw in a little bit of rain or something and then it could be turned a little bit slippery road as well. As far as the park road goes, um, it's always in great condition. They maintain that road quite a bit. The Denali Highway, which is the one that we ride for two days, the next day, that's gonna be a little different.
That is above, um, the tree line, the entire distance. A lot of tundra, a lot of open wind, a lot of open, um, kind of just exposed scenery. A lot of potholes, I'm sure. Um, they do. It's not, not many vehicles drive that road. There'll be a few buses out there moving people around, but it's a very remote stretch of, uh, dirt road that we'll see very little traffic.
And then the McCarthy Road is one that most Alaskan, um, rental car companies don't even allow rental cars to drive it. Um, I'm, I'm expecting, um, you know, lots of gravel, uh, a lot of potholes. Um, you know, all the people that have talked to me about driving that road say, you really can't drive more than about 20, 25 miles an hour.
And that's 65 miles of gravel, just one way. So that journey will probably take me three to four hours just to drive up in there supporting people. Um, but yeah, I think in under ideal conditions, these roads are really amazing to ride and really fun. But if we do throw in some, uh, some rain and or some hail, uh, they could be a little, um, a little more difficult.
Little sticky, little slippery, a little more of an adventure.
[00:42:39] Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. We, we've sort of glanced over this a little bit, but I wanna make sure to drive the point home how remote. Does it feel when you're riding these
[00:42:49] Brad Sauber: roads? Oh man, this literally every kind of animal that you could possibly think of from caribou to elk and bear are just gonna be everywhere from what I've been told.
You know, when you ride out there on these long expanses of, uh, these dirt roads with very little, uh, vehicle, um, impact. I think you're gonna see everything from the smallest little weasel to rabbits to some really big intense animals. Uh, I've spent a lot of time on the phone with, um, Denali National Park Rangers talking about that experience of riding.
Um, and, you know, from the local people that have looked over this itinerary, uh, from Outfitters that looked at it, I mean, people have randomly reached out to me and said, man, this is really ambitious and super exciting to have you guys come up here and, and attempt this sort of thing. and I'm really, really looking forward to it.
And just the expanse of these, these gravel roads, the distances and the remoteness, it's really something. I mean, it's so remote that on the last day, on day nine of the trip, I have to charter two private sesnas to fly everybody out in a two and a half hour flight to get them back to Anchorage. So, and, you know, moving vehicles and, uh, 10 bicycles out of there is a seven hour drive just for me to get back to Anchorage while everyone will be riding in comfort in their own private planes.
So two planes will be, um, chartered just to get people out of, uh, out of St. Elias National Park. It's a pretty remote area. As we're
[00:44:09] Craig Dalton: riding on these each day, what is the scenery like? I mean, are we, are we sort of far enough off of Denali that we get a perspective of the size and scale of that? Amazing mountain for sure.
You
[00:44:23] Brad Sauber: will be, um, you'll feel very small in this landscape. I mean, it's, it's every mountain range you could possibly think of up there from the wrangles to the, the Alaskan range. We're riding along huge rivers like the Copper River. So yeah, you're gonna be just witnessing these incredible rivers, incredible mountain ranges.
And of course, Dali's gonna be looming over us for the first three and a half to four days where in every direction that you ride and look, it's gonna be right there staring. And I mean, when we ride the Denali Highway going into the park, the Denali Park Road, I mean, you're looking at this massive mountain straight ahead the whole time.
I mean, it's just right there. So that's your, your, your North Star. You might say, you know, for Alaska. Yeah. Combine that with just the remoteness and all the wildlife. Uh, this is really, truly gonna be a unique experience for people. And, um, people will feel very small. I think it'll be as close as you can get to a religious experience on a.
Yeah.
[00:45:11] Craig Dalton: It's so hard to describe in an audio podcast, , the visuals that I, you know, I've just, the, the basic visuals I've seen on your website, so I'll certainly direct people over there to kind of have a, a little visual guide to what we've been talking about this whole time.
[00:45:25] Brad Sauber: Yeah, for sure. No, I appreciate that.
That'd be great.
[00:45:27] Craig Dalton: That's amazing. I, I appreciate the audacity of planning these trips. I can't wait to hear how the, the first two go off this year. I know, and we don't have a lot of time for this, but I know you do run a couple other gravel experiences throughout the year. Do you want to talk about those real quick?
[00:45:42] Brad Sauber: Well, you know, I've ran them over years, over the years. Uh, we've specialized in some pretty remarkable gravel events in Utah along with the national parks. Um, that's a place I've been running tours for nearly 25 or 30 years. I do have a private trip coming up in April in New Mexico, which is one of my favorite destinations.
And after I finished that nine day trip, I'm actually staying on board for another week and creating a point A to point B, uh, New Mexico gravel experience. and um, that is really interesting. Special. Yeah. That's gonna be connecting Albuquerque all the way through, um, out to, uh, Taos and then all the way to Santa Fe and then all the way back into Albuquerque.
Super cool. Mostly dirt roads. It's funny,
[00:46:20] Craig Dalton: you know, you hear about it, um, from a mountain bike perspective, a lot of people rave about New Mexico, but it hasn't really kind of tipped into the gravel market yet, to my knowledge. So that's, that's really interesting to hear you explore.
[00:46:33] Brad Sauber: I'm really excited for that place.
I've been running tours there for 30 plus years. I absolutely love. New Mexico as a destination. To me, it's one of the most unique states culturally, um, from a food perspective, the hotels, uh, the history, uh, it just blows people's minds and especially when people call me from Europe and ask me where they should go.
I first say New Mexico. I think it's really a, a diverse place and it's also a place with a lot of value. You know, it's still not, it's not that expensive for people. So we can run some pretty affordable experiences there for people and make it very access. . Um, and the gravel riding is going to be, uh, phenomenal.
It, it's gonna be a really special event. I mean, eight days of gravel riding, connecting, you know, Taos, New Mexico, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, all these remote places. Abaki, we are gonna come on this. We come into the backside of Abaki on a dirt road. Um, that I, from what I can tell and what I'm looking at, is just gonna be one of the finest rides that you could have in your life.
Yeah. I
[00:47:30] Craig Dalton: love it. Well, Brad, thank you for coming on and talking about what you're doing at Raid Cycling. I, I do love your passion and perspective to make everything you put and make available to cyclists incredibly memorable and that certainly shows in like the thoughtfulness of your comments and the trip design.
So thanks for sharing all that with
[00:47:49] Brad Sauber: us. Well, thank you for the time. I really appreciate it. I really enjoyed chatting with you, Craig. Look forward getting back on the bike
[00:47:55] Craig Dalton: with. Yeah, exactly. You'll get back to Mill Valley one of these days, , for sure. Cheers. Thanks,
[00:48:00] Brad Sauber: Brad. All right. Thank you, Greg. Cheers.
[00:48:04] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks to Brad and raid cycling for joining us and telling us about that spectacular Alaskan gravel expedition. Big, thanks to hammerhead and the hammer, head crew to computer for supporting the show. I remember, use the promo code, the gravel ride for that free heart rate monitor with your purchase of the crew to computer.
If you're interested in connecting with me, please join the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. If you're able to support the show, ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated or you're welcome to visit. Buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
What are the stories and motivations behind our local bike shops and those who run them? In this first of a series of conversations we’ll be having on this topic, Katya Morzhueva joins Randall to share how she went from growing up in Siberia, to traveling the world (including an eventful stint in China), to founding Cool Cat Cycles and leading group rides in her chosen home of Katy, Texas. Katya’s is a story of curiousity, compassion, resiliency, and service to others, and is exemplary of transformative energy that the best shops bring to their local communities. Visit Katya and Cool Cat Cycles at 22010 Westheimer Pkwy in Katy, TX.
Episode Sponsor: Dynamic Cyclist (code THEGRAVELRIDE for 15% off)
Web: www.coolcatcycles.com
Instagram: @coolcatcycles
Facebook: @coolcatcycles
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the broadcast, I'm going to hand the microphone over to my co-host Randall Jacobs. Who's got Katia Morris waver from cool cat cycles in Katy, Texas on the show to talk about the community she's building around the shop and leading group rides in her hometown. Before we jump in, I need to thank this week. Sponsor, dynamic cyclist.
As you know, I've been working with a dynamic cyclist stretching routines for a couple of months now working on increasing my mobility and support of strengthening my lower back. Dynamic cyclist has hundreds of cycling, specific stretching routines for you to work through, including some very specific injury prevention routines. I myself am working on the low back injury prevention routine right now.
The team at dynamic cyclists has a free trial for all their programs. So head on over to dynamic cyclists.com and check out what they have to offer. Additionally for podcast listeners using the code, the gravel ride. You'll get 15% off all programs. They have both a monthly membership model as well as an inexpensive annual model to cover all your stretching.
And strength training needs again, that's dynamic cyclists.com and the coupon code, the gravel ride. Would that business behind us? Let's hand the microphone off to my co-host Randall Jacobs.
[00:01:52] Randall: What are the stories behind our local bike shops and those who run them. In the first of a series of conversations we'll be having on this topic, Katia Morzhueva joins me to share how she went from growing up in Siberia, to traveling the world, including an eventful stint in China that we'll get into in a moment, to founding Cool Cat Cycles and leading group rides in your chosen home of Katy, Texas. Katia is a story of curiosity, compassion, resiliency, and service to others, and is exemplary of the transformative energy that the best shops bring to their local communities.
We dive right in here. So I hope you enjoyed the conversation. And now we bring to you Katia Morzhueva.
[00:02:28] Randall: Do you have like a meditation practice
[00:02:30] katya: uh, you know, we can talk about this a little bit more if we start talking about my injury in China. Cuz when you are alone with a broken back, nobody to talk to because you don't speak the language. All you can do is meditate. You know, I, in a, in a irony, like black humor sort of way, a good way to lose weight and become a Buddhist is break a back in a foreign country.
[00:03:00] Randall: I'm fortunate in that I had a somewhat parallel experience of breaking my neck in China, I was a bike touring through Hine Island in the South China Sea, but I had zero dislocation. I just ripped a process off a C3 through C five and I was in a neck brace, for a few days and then I saw a specialist and they're like, yeah, you're probably more likely to injure yourself due to muscle atrophy than, to aggravate the injury.
And so I was back on my bike in two weeks, which is a very different thing.
[00:03:29] katya: Yes,
[00:03:29] Randall: so I had version of that
Yeah. I'm seeing you shared this picture of your spine with a bunch of rods and pins holding what looks like some of your upper lumbar,
[00:03:42] katya: Five vertebrae. Yeah, it's T 12 to T nine.
[00:03:47] Randall: Yeah
[00:03:48] katya: right. Um, yeah, so I have two plates and 10 screws they're holding five vertu bread together, but it's only one that shattered. So one, actually, the piece fell off and they went in to connect T 12 to 10 and to nine, but then, um, a T 11 to 10. But then the, he was not happy with the result of the surgery, my surgeon.
he came back and he said, you want to be active in the future, we want to go back in, redo the surgery, but we will have to connect more vertebrae. And he gave me like half a day to think about it I just went ahead with it. So they went in again, um, you know, 12 hour surgery again, and now I'm like a myoni woman,
[00:04:45] Randall: Uh, well, let's, so let's, let's take a step back and kind of talk about how we ended up having this conversation.
So
um, I think Craig and I had put out word in the ridership looking for, um, you know, recommendations from the community on a guest. And one of the members, uh, had reached out and be like, you have to talk to Kaia.
She does, uh, a, you know, an outstanding job building community, uh, in your community out there in, uh, uh, what part of Texas is this? Remind me.
[00:05:15] katya: Um, we are west of Houston. We're about 20 miles west of Houston and Katy.
[00:05:21] Randall: Yeah. And I had seen, uh, some of the rides that you organize. You have a beautiful shop that you've started, um, you are of Russian descent. Spent some time in, uh, living in China. Uh, really just a fascinating story and a lot of kind of values and ethos, alignments around community and so on. So, where do we start?
Where do we want to kick off?
[00:05:44] katya: Whew. Um, well, I think we're wanna start in 2016 when we moved back to Houston from China,
[00:05:57] Randall: Uhhuh
[00:05:57] katya: because that was, um, that was a pivotal moment when decided to get into a business ownership and open a local bike shop,
[00:06:08] Randall: this is you and,
[00:06:10] katya: And it's me and my husband. Um, we traveled a lot with oil and gas. We both were in oil and gas.
Uh, and when we moved back here, um, the community where we are has a lot of potential and there was no bike shop to work with that potential. Um, and I, you know, I would be riding my bike everywhere. Uh, we ended up, Even though we have a child who ended up having only one car, which is very unusual. Um, and as I was commuting everywhere by bike, uh, or I would be working and taking the car and Robert would be riding around everywhere and my son could ride to school.
we found out that there's nowhere for us to go is bike commuters, just to get basic service, to get a rack and piners that would fit my bike. Um, and there was a little, you know, there are a couple of places that I thought wouldn't it be nice to have a bike shop right here? Cause I would bike pasted it all the time on my commune and yeah, just come to thousand 17, we opened a shop
[00:07:15] Randall: That's, uh, so you, so have you always been avid cyclists, you and your husband?
[00:07:21] katya: Uh, no. Uh, but I was, I was always. Not a human powered commuter. my first car, um, I got my first car, I was 30 years old. Uh, and before, before that I lived in about six countries as a resident with oil and gas. I was born in Russia. Um, you know, for my first 20 years of life, I spent as, as a pedestrian walking, using public transportation.
Um, even though family had, we had one car, I never used it. Um, and then, you know, Australia, Dubai, New Zealand, uh, traveling all over Europe, never felt like I needed a car. And then we moved to Houston and the reality hits you here and it's just so shocking because I think Houston is epitome or Texas of car dependency in, in America.
And it was such a shock to my system and I think largely, Um, that formed me as, as almost an American. I'm an American who doesn't have a car.
[00:08:30] Randall: Yeah. It's, uh, all too common for the cities here to have been built. Uh, especially the further west you go around automobiles is the primary way of getting around you. Some places you can't even cross the street cuz it's lanes and there's a fence in the middle. a lot of cities were built, at a time when the automobile was already present versus older European Asian cities where, it's much more walking or horse path oriented.
Uh, so, so yeah, it is, uh, something that fortunately cities are, a lot of cities are starting to. backfill, uh, human-centered, uh, transportation infrastructure, uh, and bike lanes and things like this. But, uh, my understanding is that Houston is tough for infrastructure and also for weather.
[00:09:13] katya: hmm. Well, you know, in my firm belief, uh, I was born in Siberia, so Siberia is not too far from Polar Circle. Um, in, my opinion, you can ride all year around here. actually if you look, um, at professional cyclists in the US, quite a few of them come from Texas. Um, so Emily Newsom, um, she was raised in Tour de France this year.
She's from Fort Worth, that's Dallas. Um, a bunch of people like Beon, MCCA, McCan, they are from, uh, hill country, like Austin area. So, um, I think. The heat of Texas is underestimated. I realized that when we actually moved here, cuz we came from Dubai in summer and we arrived in in August and the second day we went to Zoo and, and everybody was telling us that we were crazy to go to the Zoo Park in August.
We're the only people there with a two year old and tow. But we came from the desert and this felt amazing. It actually cools off from a hundred degrees to 98 at night. , is relative. Uh, one thing that you learn when you travel and when you leave is anat in many countries. It all depends on your frame framework.
[00:10:37] Randall: And so, uh, you mentioned some of the countries you've been an expat in this. Was this all working with
[00:10:43] katya: With oil and gas, yes. In the same company. My husband and I, we met in Neighbors Drilling International. It was the biggest land drilling contractor in the world. I was their first Russian employee working for them in a Russian, in the territory of Russia. But I'm a linguist. I'm not AUM engineer. I have masters and linguistics.
[00:11:01] Randall: Oh, interesting. So how many languages do you have?
[00:11:04] katya: Uh, I studied a bunch of dead ones.
[00:11:07] Randall: Okay
[00:11:08] katya: like you have to, uh, ladin an old Greek old Russian old English. Um, I speak English and Russian. Russian is my native. Um, . I speak French a little bit if I, I studied it in college, but it's been such a long time since I actually spoke French. But I think I will pick up pretty fast.
I said at Mandarin in China.
[00:11:29] Randall: Uhhuh.
[00:11:30] katya: Um, I found Mandarin and writing to be extremely interesting. and I would recommend everybody to go and look it up. find that it's like plain Lego where you have a couple of bricks, well, a lot of bricks, and you can build anything you want if you know how to combine those bricks together.
It's so interesting. Um, great intellectual challenge. I could not speak Mandarin because I could not understand the tones. Even though I play piano and I have musical ear, I should be able to, I could not, I was never understood. I would go to the market in Dion and try to say that I, I want to buy this, or this is my name and nobody would understand what I'm saying.
I know I'm saying it correctly if I was to write it in, transcribe it in in Pinine,
[00:12:19] Randall: Yep.
[00:12:20] katya: but nobody could understand what I'm saying.
[00:12:22] Randall: Well, and there's a certain, um, certainly coming from an English background, there were a lot of sound. Oh, there were a few sounds that we don't have in English. . So getting those mastered was critical cuz the subtlety is, is a critical piece. And then you have the tones and then you have the way that the tones relative to each other. So um, you know, it's really easy to call out a non-native, native speaker because even if they get the tones right, generally they, we, um, you know, the, they won't have the musicality of a native speaker. Um, it was something I had to pay a lot of attention to,
[00:12:54] katya: How did you, I know you, you speak Mandarin, right? Or Cantonese.
[00:12:59] Randall: uh, I speak Mandarin, uh, fairly fluently and then enough Cantonese to, you know, convince uh, somebody that I speak Cantonese before I switch to Mandarin.
[00:13:09] katya: Okay. How long did it take you to capture the tones?
[00:13:13] Randall: Uh, I, Hmm. Um, I would say it was like my second trip. So I was, I taught there for a semester as an undergrad, and then I went and studied for a semester at a university, uh, junction University in Guang Jo, for one semester, and really paid attention to tones and got a, a, a firm foundation in grammar and so on at that time.
Uh, and so, you know, that made me very aware and I would constantly ask if I got the tones right or check the tones.
I had a I
act actually let my little pocket dictionary over there, uh, that I would have with me at all times. And so I was, I had to be very intentional about it, but once I got the hang of it, I, it, it was very natural.
So for the most part, you know, uh, my tones are pretty good. Like I can order, I can order food over the phone and then show up and they're looking for a Chinese person,
[00:14:08] katya: Oh that's amazing Yes Congratulations Uh um my my dissertation and my specialty in college uh was to teach Russian as a foreign language to grad students and freshmen who come to college in Russia to get their degree in Russia but they would come from foreign countries um I have so much appreciation for anybody who can at adult age capture a foreign language you know acquire it to an extent that they can actually freely communicate
[00:14:43] Randall: And yet so many people, uh, especially here in the us, uh, do that. There's, know, they don't get credit. It's more like, you know, why, why do you have an accent? Is kind of the response that is often, you know, that people often get and uh, I, having gone through that journey myself, I definitely have a lot of respect. And from what I hear, Russian is especially difficult to learn because of the number of tenses and things of this
[00:15:12] katya: Yes Russian is pretty hard Um but I would recommend if you ever wanted to to just immerse yourself and um you'll get it It's hard to learn it on your own for sure uh I assume mentoring would be the same if you just try to use dual lingo
[00:15:31] Randall: The
uh, the, the grammar of Mandarin is really easy and that helps a lot. So I found it easier than Spanish.
[00:15:38] katya: Oh yes But just being able to converse
[00:15:40] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Um, so, okay, so you had a background in linguistics and teaching, uh, Russian to foreigners. Um and then you went into the oil and gas industry, traveled around the world husband ended up in, outside of Houston, Texas, and you have this idea to start a bike shop. So let's what what, is that journey like? Like what was your analysis? Uh, like what has, what has it been like actually running a small business and dealing with the, the ups and downs and the, the risks and the vendors and all this other,
[00:16:12] katya: Yes Um well we definitely had no idea what we were getting ourselves into I just had this dream so need to back off back off a little bit and explain Um so you know coming first I arrived in Houston in 2010 and I saw this as an extremely car-centric community society city with no real urban planning Um and then you know then I would go to China Then I returned in 2016 and we moved to a completely different area and suddenly I realized that there are a lot of bikeways here Uh the bikeways were built by um well some are shared use pathways so they're like extended sidewalks uh you can say And some are actual bikeways that follow the bayou So as you know Houston floods this area floods everybody remembers Harvey We have a diversion channel system to remove the water um into the Gulf And uh this neighborhood is crisscross but a lot of bayou e and it's Bayou uh has easements So they actually own the land around the bayou So imagine that this channels uh that Water grass a lot of land and the local management of this channels will afford drainage district are run by wonderful people who understand the value of investing back in the community So they have realized with the help of some bike advocates cuz none of the board members actually ride bikes or not much but they have realized that there's a huge value in investing into bikeways along these channels So all of this community has about 30 miles of bike trails just through our little you know there's about 7,000 homes here So it's not huge and the amount of bikeways per square mile is pretty impressive Uh every kid can bike to elementary school here so with middle and high school it's a little bit more longer to commute But every kid can get to school by bike walk or on a scooter When we came here it's pretty impressive And there's about five elementary schools here but when we came in 2016 I was shocked how empty those paths are Just made me really sad I would be the only person riding around you know to local grocery store or very few other people There maybe were other people I could never see many Um there were a bunch of kids who would go to school but also even now you know we have the streets that are full of carpool parents people who said for 30 minutes and they only have to cross from one street to the other that would do have infrastructure to support their kids bike into school So it just made me really sad And then I thought you know believe there was a bike shop and they they could do some advocacy They could maybe you know help the community to realize the potential that they have to see that this investment is done for them to improve their life quality um and to you know reduce carbon monoxide pollution It's that simple Right Um and We had the resources to do it So you know we started to look around and we thought well let's try So right We opened the shop we get all the wholesalers on board And then um and then it became very interesting because um one thing I did not realize you know speaking of being woman in the in the industry think I had a blind spot for any um like uh misconception about what women can do Uh because you know coming from Russia Russian women deal with uh slightly different issues In the World War ii huge population of Russian men was um just disappeared as victims of war and Russian women had to carry the economy essentially on their shoulders We had female sks we had women factory directors we had female drivers like women could always do everything Uh my mother is a doctor Super typical Um you know there was never an issue that oh well she's a woman and she will have a harder time going to school or whatever my grandmothers have college education Um it was never even a question Um you know working in oil and gas as well I have never felt um that I'm less then Amen And then here ran in a local bike shop in Texas opened my eyes towards some of the biases that are out there And I remember just not even recognizing that and I would just think oh well that was strange interaction which has just happened But I wouldn't have somebody from here And it typically would be a man some of my friends And she would come and say oh you know they talk to you like that because you're a woman So first of all they think you don't know anything Uh they probably make an assumption that you are $8 an hour who just comes here to say hi Bye
[00:21:17] Randall: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:18] katya: And we're a very small shop So initially when we opened it was May and my tech uh Michael who is African American and an Eastern European woman and we are running a bike shop in a suburb of Houston
[00:21:35] Randall: Text
[00:21:36] katya: So you can only imagine Uh but know despite all that I think we brought um so much interesting um so many interesting characteristics like from our our personalities and backgrounds that it it works out
[00:21:55] Randall: So what has been the, uh, the learning curve as you've been both preneur and in terms of, you know, maybe specifics to the industry or the machine?
[00:22:03] katya: Oh gosh Well I'm trying to be positive and all I'm seeing is a Potential for um and I think you know honestly COVID has opened a lot of people's eyes to what's possible when uh you don't have to commute long hours in traffic to work and you can work from home and what's possible um for a local Environments to be built more human centered Uh so many cities in Europe uh have um revamped their urban planning and even here in the US I see potential with electric bikes Um I really hope that understanding of climate change and the human impact in on climate will help as well So in terms of bike commute I see a lot of potential with sports and bi bi cycling is a sport It's a little bit different story This is where I see gravel is playing a huge role
[00:23:08] Randall: Mm-hmm
[00:23:08] katya: um and adventure by bike Um and that I think is
[00:23:14] Randall: with you there.
[00:23:15] katya: right and I think that's something that not just I learned as you know as we went into the business I think everybody figured that out in the industry that this is kind of where we're heading uh for um in terms of know just running a small business uh in this part of of um the us mean it's what it is You learn the skills You you you know you help you try to stay positive uh you try to work with community Um yeah it's it's been quite a journey
[00:23:52] Randall: So talk about, um, some of the, like what do you carry, what type of shop, and then how have you gotten the word out and how do you engage with the community where you are?
[00:24:01] katya: Ryan So we started the idea was to have a community centered shop to help people quote unquote to get out on bikes our initial focus was mostly bike commute so we were the kind of shop that always carried bunch of cruisers step throughs uh single speeds racks fenders commuter backs veneers Cute helmets um you know a bunch of gear for commuters And then we have evolved a lot uh with gravel uh with all I was a roadie even before I opened the shop Um I actually started psych I was in track and field in school and then my knees just started to get really bad when I was In like late twenties I couldn't run as much Um so I you know I had miles and I would ride with him in the trailer and like try to fight the roadies on the local loop with my cruiser bike and a kid and a trainer then I thought well maybe it's time for me to get an actual road bike So I started you know I love the fitness aspect of Cyclone for sure but roads here are pretty unsafe Uh where we are in in our little pocket in It's tolerable You can actually I don't mind doing solo 20 30 mile ride out here with uh a good portion of it being in traffic you can only do it on certain times of the day only uncertain roads The rest of the roads are just so crazy fast and dangerous Uh but we have a gravel levy two miles from the shop you can go there 24 hours Uh it's always empty You will see a bunch of deer very few people You're totally safe And uh we started to train out there uh and then we introduced a bunch of people to the levee and now we have rides out there But my true gravel rides are about an hour from here in the car we drive out in the country And that's when you have your hundreds and hundreds of miles of gravel
[00:26:05] Randall: Got it. Very, very cool.
[00:26:07] katya: So yeah it it has moved a little bit and then bike packing you know that kind of jumped on board Natural progression I do feel like if you have a gravel bike and then tell it to my customers who come to get a bike and say well think you only wanna do 20 miles of this little gravel path over here but look at this this is what you could do And we have this big photographs of backpacking trips on the walls so people can see and hopefully get inspired and you know and go to one of our cuz we do this beginner backpacking trips I have one coming up this weekend by the way
[00:26:39] Randall: Oh, no kidding.
[00:26:40] katya: Yeah Mm
[00:26:41] Randall: That's great. And it is part, um, so I'm fully on board with you. I've been, I mean, gravel bikes have existed in, in other forms. For a long time people were riding road bikes with 23 roads, long before there was something called a gravel bike. And people have been bike packing since before it was called bike
[00:26:59] katya: Mm-hmm
[00:27:00] Randall: but the fact that there's this focus on making versatile machines that can, you know, really tackle a variety of road surfaces and have mounting points for different gear and so on, just makes it so well, why not get a machine that can do a lot more? And then it just begs the question, and why don't you get out there and have some of these experiences?
And there's a, a lot of people who do good work. So, so having, having a group activity, like what you're putting on, I would imagine just radically reduces the barrier to entry for a lot of people.
[00:27:31] katya: Hmm You know I remember uh when I got my first road bike and in general and in it's gonna be a little bit philosophical but me cycling became an entry into society here when we moved from Dubai That was in 2010 when we first arrived in Texas in Houston and I didn't know anybody Um it is people are super friendly here and it's very international and you do start making friends very quickly And you know I had a kid um so you know making friends with other parents was relatively easy but I didn't I wasn't here long enough to start going to school or to get a job I was still uh getting my green card then And I met so many people through recycling My best friends here in Houston were all mad through recycling group but I remember that when I got my bike I was still really shy I didn't know anyone and I ride alone I would ride every single day by myself or have a kid and tow or have you know a babysitter looking or my husband looking o after him And I would go and do loops by myself in the same time just as a way to stay fit And I did that for about a year before I was brave enough to join in a group And I remember I was Intimidated uh when you're a beginner and and you and you don't you don't know if you're gonna be safe out there and you don't know if you're gonna act right and you gonna you know say right things especially you know my language is improving hopefully but you know it's so far from where it could be and just being so anxious about it And then all the friends that I made through cycling were so friendly so helpful I think that experience allows me to be that helpful and friendly face in the shop when I have somebody who comes in and these are my favorite customers my favorite person in the shop is someone who wants to get into biking Maybe they want to get their first bike or maybe they want to start biking for groceries or to work uh because I know what they experience And as someone who taught in college I know how to break down activities into steps so I can just really kind of micromanage their entry Uh I do beginner road rides where anybody's welcome on bike We will talk about what hand to use how to ride together in a group how not to bump into each other how to act with traffic What is the safest road to ride I just love helping people in that way because you never know where are they gonna end up Maybe they're gonna be like me and open a bike shop years later
[00:30:27] Randall: It's, I, I can't tell you how many examples, uh, including my own, uh, of people who have used the bicycle. As you know, I, I've said many times on this podcast a vehicle for connection.
And
so like, you know, I, the, the, the thing that I recall, like the first thing I recall being able to do on my own pretty much at any time for extended periods and really enjoy my own company, was riding a bicycle. the rolling meditation part of it.
The going out
and exploring a place from a different vantage point. Like if wherever you live, you're going to experience it very differently on a bicycle, especially a bicycle that you can take off and explore the back trails and parks and the roads that you don't take, cuz it's not the direct line between any A and b. and then the community element of it. You know, rolling up next to somebody, striking up a conversation, going to your first group ride, you know, showing up in jorts in a, in an old helmet and a bike that's falling apart and whatever. And then slowly like learning the ropes and going through that, that rite of passage.
Uh, and then I also resonate very much with, um, the opportunity for folks like ourselves who've kind of gone through a lot of that journey to just make it easier for others, you know, reduce the, the friction, make it so that there's educational materials, make it so that there are rides that are accessible.
Make it so that there's content like this conversations where people can hear like, oh, I'm, I'm. Uh, unique in my slight awkwardness in getting into this. Um, you know, even the, the people that seem all put together and the cool kids on the bikes were, uh, well, I'll speak for myself. I was definitely, definitely a socially awkward awkward in general when I first started riding.
And, um, very much the bike has been kind of a, a, a means of, uh, I mean career, uh, relationships all around the world, uh, opportunities and so on. And even if you don't take this extreme path or taking, you know, starting a bike shop, um, just the friendships that, you get cultivated
or like
the, the healthy habits that get developed,
the reduced
stress and how that impacts one's entire life.
[00:32:43] katya: Well and you know with going back to how we may appear all put together on our rides um I when I first meet people who are interested in something like a gravel rod like say they're roadies and they're hear about gravel rods but they're not sure if they have the skills or if they can tackle this you know climb and the ground under you shifting all the time and you're sleeping And I always say look uh when I broke my back I was still I was told I'll never get a bike again And I was told that if I can I should not And with all this screws that I have in there I'm still out there you know and I'm 42 year old mother and I'm riding bikes and I'm doing this you know crazy adventures My next trace is 280 miles
[00:33:37] Randall: All in one
[00:33:39] katya: Oh in one go Yeah It's it's an ultra bike fucking thing Shout out to bikes or Death it East Texas Showdown
[00:33:47] Randall: All right. When is this?
[00:33:49] katya: I uh I'm a month from now so I've been geeking out on tires and setups but I've done that before though it's not my first show so
[00:33:58] Randall: of course. Well, well bravo on that. You definitely, I've never done a ride that long. Longest I've ever done was, uh, a 300 k ride when I was, uh, training in Europe for a couple of weeks. And, uh, that was the hardest day I've ever put in the saddle. So
[00:34:14] katya: 300 K That would be about 200 miles
[00:34:17] Randall: yeah, a hundred. And I think it ended up being like 188 or 189 miles.
Um,
180 6 I
think is, is 200, 300
K
[00:34:26] katya: or off road
[00:34:27] Randall: road.
[00:34:28] katya: Yeah
[00:34:29] Randall: Yeah. So very different
animal right
Road is easier. Even with the mountain passes road is definitely easier to cut. And I was in a, I was in a Peloton with a bunch of other fast riders and we were like, you know, so I was, I got carried through certain sections. I mean, had to do the climbs, but on the, on the flats we were doing 25 and I was probably putting out 150 watts and just kind of cruising.
[00:34:50] katya: We'll be doing 12
[00:34:52] Randall: Yeah.
[00:34:53] katya: miles an hour It's off road or 70% offroad
[00:34:58] Randall: That's awesome. Very, very cool.
[00:35:01] katya: So if I can do it anyone can
[00:35:04] Randall: Well, and so I also, I didn't appreciate, this at all. When, um, you know, when, when I first reached out, I only knew about a little bit about your background, um, and, uh, that you had this shop that was very community focused, but, you know, you spent, so you broke your back cycling in China. That's not the, the full extent of your, your China story.
So especially as someone who spent so much time there myself, I want to hear more about how'd you end up there? Uh, you were working at, with, for an orphanage there as well.
[00:35:37] katya: Uh yeah So with China it was the the time when my husband was still fully involved in oil and gas and um he was Offered an opportunity to manage a huge huge project in Dion that's just across from South Korea On on the Sea Uh there's several massive shipyards so whatever we receive over here a lot of that stuff when it comes from China it comes from Dion or that area generically It's about two hour flight north from Beijing And um yeah we all decided to go So um I was going to school here but I you know I said you know that's such an awesome opportunity to discover that part of Asia I haven't been there before and it's very close to Russia as well So uh we moved and um yes I ended up um I was cycling there ended up hurting myself really bad about a month in South Korea Um my injury quite extensive so I had to be Placed uh in a jet and taken over to Samsung Medical Center in in Seoul for spinal surgeries Um it was easier from Dian It was easier to go to se than to Beijing for the style of surgery that I had because it was faster and I had collapsed lung so I couldn't be on the plane for a long time as well So they needed to move me somewhere where it's close and uh good quality of healthcare
[00:37:11] Randall: Mm-hmm
[00:37:11] katya: And yeah Seoul was the closest place where they took me And when I returned from so I spent about a month my son and my husband were in China I was in Korea uh in the hospital for about a month Uh then I moved back when I was allowed to walk Um and when I arrived in Darlin I thought well I can't ride my bike uh and I can't I I can't really go anywhere far Um what am I going to do And there was a community Now Dion is not very well known among Westerners most of expats who go to that part of China are Chinese or Cor uh Japanese or Korean So I was surrounded by um awesome awesome families from Japan and Korea We made a lot of friends especially if we could speak Yeah if they knew a little bit of English that would help Um but yeah there were not very many expats at all So I tried to like find myself in that community And there was a little group of women who were going to a local orphanage uh just to help out Um cuz the orphanage was understaffed It's a public orphanage I don't know the number the name Just kind of know where it's located I could not ever read exactly what it said and then I so I would come and I would just help help the nurses help Daise to take care of little kids then I heard that they this orphanage was selected to participate in an program where older kids so age seven and up uh would possibly go to the US and would be possibly adopted in the US at that old I think the limit is 15 years old So between wanna say between seven and two 15 that age group I suggested you know as a linguist I said oh they have to be speaking English a little bit Um because it's gonna be such a trauma for a child even you know we might think with a white person complex that we're doing this amazing thing by removing this child into a Western society but it's a huge trauma cuz they're going from a familiar environment you know people who take care of them they're friends uh and they're dropped in you know this com like on the moon and they don't they can't even express that they're hungry or that they need to go to the bathroom or you know any discomfort that they have And insisted it took about a month to get a permission I think the orphanage was very concerned about teaching something that's not correct I don't know maybe some know it's very political right Um so I had to be I had to be persuasive but also I had to be you know very precise and say look this is what I'm going to do These are the books I'm going to use It's gonna be so simple It's gonna be just conversational language so that the kids don't suffer as much as they would with the separation anxiety from their environment And eventually they allowed me to come I had a group of about maybe 10 kids and it would change some would join and some would leave And eventually um about half of them were adopted in the US and it was uh it the program became so good I mean I would be there several times a week regularly with lessons plans Uh I had typically one of the teachers stay with me The the orphanage uh supervisors stay with me so they get to learn as well And it became so good And the demand was so good for this type of lessons that I trained other uh English speaking women in uh our little community so they could come and do this And there were some women who had teaching backgrounds so they got it really quickly and they could come and work with kids There was documentary made I mean I had a TV crew to come and film I think it was made for the prospective parents to see that you know this orphanage has this program so you will be able to communicate with kids I've never seen the end product but to me that was a sign that something that I'm doing is helpful I was not paid It was just totally volunteering but I really enjoyed it Really enjoyed it and it's something that I know how to do So
[00:42:02] Randall: that's. , really wonderful. Truly, truly wonderful. And something that, you know, when I, when you had shared that with me again, uh, was very resonant. One I've, I taught in, in, I
taught English was teaching
uh, high school students and I got to create my own curricula. I actually had 40 classes and they would rotate every two weeks.
So I get an each class every two weeks. And so I would create curricula around, um, you know, there one where we did, uh, song lyrics. So we you know, singing Beatles tracks and things
like that
Um, and then others were, you know, just a, the creative element of being able to create, uh, um, a curriculum for an audience that was really stoked just to interact.
Um and
this was back in 2004, so China was a very different place. Um, the changes have been so, . And then also I, I also recall, uh, so I lived in Guang Jo for a period and a lot of the adoptions go through, uh, Shanda in, Guang Jo in, um, it's the, uh, the US consulate there.
Mm
I think it's Beijing and Guang Jo is where most of them go And so you'll, I remember going to that part of town and seeing, you know, mostly Caucasian American families there adopting these mostly, uh, uh, female Chinese
[00:43:26] katya: Mm-hmm
[00:43:27] Randall: And it didn't occur to me at the time, um, just how, I mean, just how traumatic, even at that age that is, kids have already gone through the trauma of like not having their mother,
[00:43:42] katya: mm
[00:43:43] Randall: which.
You know, it's something I, I didn't appreciate, uh, until doing a whole lot of, uh, therapy and me meditation and various other things, just how critical that early is. to imagine what you're describing of, you know, someone who's a teenager and mm is, is very much, uh, uh, in many ways formed.
Mm-hmm constantly changing, but there's a lot of deeply ingrained patterns. There's language, there's familiarity. Then you go to a place where maybe there's no one who looks like you
[00:44:15] katya: Mm
[00:44:16] Randall: and maybe it's not welcoming.
[00:44:18] katya: mm
[00:44:18] Randall: Yeah
who, who want to love you but don't know how to speak.
Not just language with words, but your language with behaviors and Um, were the, I'm curious, were the kids, um, in general, were they excited about the prospect of go being adopted outside of China or,
[00:44:37] katya: They were but they were also very scared
[00:44:41] Randall: Yeah
[00:44:42] katya: I think And it's it's going it's very sad what I'll say right now But I still remember when we were talking we had lessons when some fa some kids were already selected they knew they were moving one kid is trying to explain push like he shows this poof poof that people shoot that something that he maybe has seen in the movies mass media the guns in America And that's one thing he shows to me and he is trying to explain I'm scared that there are a lot of guns and and maybe I will be killed People shoot in America a lot So I then have to explain and of course their language you know they've been taking classes maybe for six months prior their language is quite limited But I'm trying to explain will not be shot in the America There are a lot of very good people and kind people and they will love you and they will take care of you And look I lived in America I never seen a gun in America never Nowhere on the street there was a person with a gun You will not see the gun But that that's one thing they told me immediately
[00:45:56] Randall: Mm-hmm. . It
[00:45:58] katya: It's sad This is these are the stereotypes that
[00:46:01] Randall: well, and those stereotypes go very heavily in both directions. I
remember when
I was first going to China, um, Uh, family members being, uh, certain family members being deeply concerned. You know, it's a communist country. And, um, there's all these, you it comes from, comes from ignorance ultimately.
Um, but you know, the, it's people often fear what they don't understand. Um, my experience there was profoundly different and, you know, it's been in, in my very limited way in my circles. Like, I consider it a real opportunity to have been, uh, immersed in that culture. It's, it's my second culture and be able to dispel a lot of those myths actually.
Um, yes, there's the Chinese Communist Party and yes, it has, uh, you know, a fairly authoritarian bent, but, um, here's a mirror on our culture and in many ways, like you, Communism in China doesn't mean what you think it means
[00:47:00] katya: mm
[00:47:00] Randall: it's largely capitalist in some ways, more capitalist ways that have their own problems.
Um, and more fundamentally at the end of the day, like people are people.
That's the thing that
I have learned, um, and that I think learning a another language and immersing in other culture teaches more than anything is that we all have, you know, we all have, um, hopes and fears. We all have, you know, basic needs that are largely common, like, you know, and shelter and food and companionship and esteem and things like this.
Um, and while culture can result in various seemingly disparate manifestations at our core, there's a hell of a lot more in common. In fact, I, I find that at the end of the day, if I can identify someone, something in someone else, positive or negative, um, That I have it in myself as well.
[00:47:58] katya: Hmm mm-hmm Yes You know through all the travels that I've done I've figured out we've really need so little uh to well I maybe I speak for myself but I think most people and I've seen it in other expats um if you have a job you have self-fulfilment fulfillment and you have friends and you have um you know close people that you love and take care of and and that's pretty much all you need And it doesn't matter where you are you can be uh you know in uh beautiful So in China we lived in Shula so you know Shilla
[00:48:41] Randall: Yeah. The
[00:48:42] katya: right So in Dion Shangrila Hotel had apartment complex next to it and it was just so luxurious right And then in Australia we lived in a tiny little farmhouse uh in the middle of nowhere And I all my life I lived in small apartments in Save or in Moscow Uh and it doesn't matter where you are if you have family good health hopefully um know basic needs are met Uh you're good so simple
[00:49:16] Randall: Now this actually brings up, uh, what I think might be an interesting topic, which is, I mean, you're of Russian descent. you lived in Russia, you spent most of life in Russia. Um, there's a conflict between, well, there's a perceived conflict between Russia and the West at the moment. There's a lot of.
I think concern in, in American society, uh, and in European society about But, uh, maybe we can, well, I think already this conversation should dispel some myths from, uh, of Yeah. Amongst people who've never heard, uh, you know, truly heard the voice of a, of a native, uh, Russian in terms of just how much love and kindness and so on, uh, you bring to the table.
But, uh,
What
[00:50:00] katya: Uh yeah know my biggest takeaway from this whole conflict right now is protect media and freedom of speech But but for the media especially I have respect for those big resources uh like Washington Post or like New York Times or like b C you know these big channels because once they get controlled by someone uh it's so easy Even in modern society with all the access to information that we have is so easy for them to block it Whoever is in control of the narrative controls the mind controls the politics the Russian society is uh really divided right now And um sorry to say it but I think it's heavily brainwashed And the reason it's brainwashed is precisely because uh all the media were banned the free speech So to speak uh media were banned uh right now The Russian the Russian platform that I personally follow they have been uh broadcasting from Europe since 24th of February When the war started they were banned immediately so they had to move out and start broadcasts from Europe The only way to listen to them in Russia towards them would be through vpn but just very recently they were called pretty much a terrorist organization and anybody who shares a screenshot uh an audio recording a screen grab from a video from the program anybody who shares on their social platform private Like Facebook's band Instagram's band So it would be Telegram Okay Telegram is still allowed If you share you are looking at potential arrest in jail time uh because you are supporting terrorism This is how far it's gone since 24th of February last year Um and you know if somebody told me a year ago that you cannot control the whole of Russian population you cannot switch all of the internet Well now my answer is yes you can If you make people if you if people are so afraid to share um the you know their conversations become very personal They maybe will talk face to face and they will say you know what saw that Russia just has bombed this houses and 10 children died and these were not military um you know groups It was just a house You can say that in conversation but you cannot broadcast it on any any social platform And that's how you just slowly slowly you're closing closing it up And people who are brave enough to speak out they either end up in jail or they get out
[00:53:14] Randall: Mm-hmm.
[00:53:15] katya: and yeah
[00:53:16] Randall: Well, and just for anyone who is, uh, listening and is somewhat sat self-satisfied, thinking that it can't happen here, these same forces are at play in, um, you know, quote unquote democratic societies.
[00:53:31] katya: Mm-hmm it can happen anywhere
[00:53:34] Randall: can happen anywhere. There's definitely, uh, you know, consolidation of media. There's definitely.
you know, certain, you know, there have been times when having certain opinions could, can get you shouted down, can get you essentially canceled in a way. you know, I remember when the, the Iraq war was being debated
[00:53:54] katya: Mm
[00:53:55] Randall: you know, the buildup towards that. And if you had a dissenting opinion, uh, you were, you know, anti-American.
Um
well, you know, it's, uh, in, in retrospect it seems like a number of people on both sides of the political spectrum, uh, look at that conflict as not, uh, having born the fruits that were promised
[00:54:16] katya: Mm-hmm yes
[00:54:17] Randall: Um, and you know, the point that I would make is, You know, we all have our beliefs, we all have our, uh, predispositions.
Um, but you know, another form of this that seems quite pervasive here is the bubbles.
You know I only
you know, I, I only read certain types of media and the other media is bad. And
then the people on
the other side have the same sort of perspective. And so getting, having a diverse diet, including of opinions you don't like, including of opinions you don't agree with from parties that you, um, don't, uh, necessarily resonate with, but treating them like people who are doing their best and who may look at you in the same way and have some merits in that perspective, uh, I think is tremendously valuable and is also essential in not having a society progress in
the direction
towards extreme polarity, I factionalism and so on.
[00:55:11] katya: Mm
[00:55:13] Randall: Oh
[00:55:14] katya: You know I think one of the best thing each of us can do to combat our own biases step out of our own echo chambers the more even if you have very polarized opinions around yourself the Opinions you surround yourself with the better your selection is the you know the more the wider the picture you see And even you know being a extremely liberal super left leaning person in Texas um you know I'm surrounded by people who don't feel the same that I do But for you know for many reasons I want to know where they're coming from because there's no way for me to br to build the bridge towards that side If I ignore that side is there you have to see the other bank to be able to reach out to it So I know there is a lot of you know there's so much polarization whereas some people say oh I proudly don't I'm not going to include in my circle This type of person who thinks that way like for me would be a gun owner I would say oh well but hey you want to have as many opinions around yourself and you know to get a full picture And uh you know my message to my son who's 13 and who's super interested in ev in all politics right now um in being of Russian descent as well loves so socialism communism he loves the iconography of it he would wear Russian C C C P U society t-shirt before the now he's not But uh you know my message to him and everybody in his age group is Hey critical thinking is what you want And to develop critical thinking you wanna have a lot of sources of of information know how to process information know how to you know digest it find the key moments and don't just trust the loudest wa voice in the room And in Russia going back to that in Russia right now um all the loudest voices have extremely conservative They're very polarizing It is hard but that gives me even more appreciation for anybody who stands out And there are still people who are out there protesting Uh there are a lot of women who protest cons The wives of those you know guys imagine that Imagine you're an IT specialist or you're a banker You have nothing against Ukraine never had you have relatives over there Uh you are very peaceful never had a gun in your hand You maybe have two kids at home and a dog and then somebody shows up To your office cuz they do it They can script now through offices uh they come to your boss and they bring him the name of the list of names and they're saying we know that such and such works Here you will be responsible for distributing the conscription notes And the boss comes into the room They don't even know what's going on You're just okay guys you were all conscripted because as soon as you receive the paper you acknowledge that you know you've been called and you can't really back out So you can hide and not open the door if they come to your house People literally have been hiding Russian men have been running from their homes There is a guy who build a camp in the woods like in Taiga Forest so that the people don't find him He's got no address Nobody knows where he is because once they see your face and once you receive it in your hand they got you And yeah imagine this Bankers go to war and a month later the wife gets a note that he's dead This is what happens to Russian soldiers and these poor women know now they have kids they have a dead husband in the war they it wasn't his defined uh there is a story of uh of an it or yeah someone from administrative you know side of life who was hired a lawyer to fight his conscription because by law he was not supposed to be conscripted He was killed while the lawyer was protesting his conscription he was killed at the war zone Um not I not trying to you know Russia look like a victim is an aggressor and I'm terribly ashamed what my country does And when people come to the shop and they ask me oh where's your accent from It is so difficult to answer this question like it's always been cuz I don't wanna be stereotyped as someone who's Russian or someone someone at all Like I don't want you to know like I live to so many places who knows what has formed me as as a woman right now but right now especially it's really hard And I always give a disclaimer and I say yes I'm from Russia I support Ukraine I feel like I have to say because I don't want Anybody to think because there are so many who do support the war unfortunately it's hard Um it's very difficult
[01:00:23] Randall: Well,
and, and again, like to, before we bring it full circle, like, you know, I, I, I sus, I wonder if there are, you know, if, if there are any Vietnam veterans who might be listening who might with some of that experience. I mean, we are immune to this in, uh, in the us And furthermore, you know, in my own travels, um, you know, I've been to places where I've been asked to account for the choices of the government, of the country I come from particularly, um, back in the, you know, 2004, 2005, 2006.
Um, and, um, it, you know, as much as, uh, there's an American. Belief in, you know, a certain set of values and like this idea that we, uh, are promulgating these values in the world. Well, oftentimes the things that are, are that the population here is not paying attention to are going counter, uh, to the narrative that's being put out.
But, um, we've, we've gone gonna, I think you and I will end up having another conversation
[01:01:25] katya: Yes. Yes.
[01:01:27] Randall: sort of thing, but to, to bring it full circle, you know, talking about like connecting with people
[01:01:34] katya: Mm.
[01:01:34] Randall: who have different perspectives and backgrounds and so on. Um, I don't think it's at all trite to say that like, this is an experience that you can have on a bicycle.
Like on
a bicycle. You go show up for a group ride and you know, you can find rides where everyone, you know, is a skinny, shaved shave legged white guy and Lyra going, going hammering on the road ride. But there's a lot of diversity to be had as well if you find your group and there's nothing quite like the shared ordeal of a long bike ride, um, to break down barriers and help realize the humanity of another person.
[01:02:10] katya: Oh, for sure. And, you know, speaking of diversity in Cycline, um, I, I really do feel, and it's, you know, it's not just, you know, thinking someone's tune or what's the phrase that. Adventures. Cycline in general does that, and by that I mean gravel events. So I'm not specifically not saying racing, but gravel events, bike packing events.
I feel like my contribution, um, to build in or to help in reach out is because I'm a female and I'm not from here. And, you know, English is my foreign language and I'm just trying to have a good time on the bike. So for me, I'm coming from this, you know, vantage point where I really don't care you look like, how old you are, what your bike is like.
I just want us to go out there and have a great time and I want you to have a very good experience. Um, and you know, the fact that Cy. Still perceived as, you know, middle-aged men or younger men, super fed, um, out in old matching kid, you know, beautiful bike. think it's very, uh, retro. I think it's dying out.
Um, the people that I see, uh, are becoming a lot more how would just different, you know, come with what you have. And I'm so happy that, uh, at least on the gravel side of things, is really welcoming. There's so many women's clinics, they're, you know, there are these pros who do great videos and they write it in these amazing places where in Jordans and flip flops.
Um, I think that is actually super encouraging too. Like everybody, and it's funny, I do some advocacy here where I go out and meet some decision makers, um, for local infrastructure investments. Like when there is some, I just want to a, a meeting about an extension of a highway, you know, stuff like that. I make sure if I can, I make sure to come on my bike in a skirt and like flip flops or not to look at all as a cyclist.
Um, just to, to say, look, we look the same. We are the same, we speak the same language. Like there's nothing that really separates me from you. I think there's nothing worse than going to places like that full decked out and Lyra and, and screaming pretty much, I am so different from you. Um, know, at the end of the day we wanna find more commonalities than, you know, something that separates us.
And, uh, biking for sure can be both. Uh, and I think that's why I gravitate to commuting by bike. Fuck adventure though I love road cycling for sport. It's amazing. increases my F tp hopefully.
[01:05:10] Randall: Yeah,
[01:05:11] katya: I follow my metrics. I do my intervals
[01:05:15] Randall: well, Katy, um, it's been really, really lovely connecting with you, hearing your story. I'm sure that, uh, you know, some of the members of the community will, will appreciate it as well. Uh, if folks want to find your shop, find information about, uh, the work that you're doing, how, how would they go about doing
so
[01:05:33] katya: Um, well, thank you very much. It was very nice. Uh, I, I should have mentioned that I got to know your podcast through my 20 hour drive to Colorado, and I listened to 15, 15 episodes in a row, just binged on my drive, so I'm extremely honored. , don't even know how honored I am to be here. Two years ago when I was driving to Timbo, it was Timbo gravel race I would've never, ever imagined.
Um, but to find us, um, cool Cat Cycles website, cool Cat Cycles is just one cat and she cycles with c ccc. Easy to remember. Cool cat cycles. Um, dot com and then Facebook page. All my events are on Facebook. We are also ambassadors and right with gps, so you might be able to find cool cat cycles. Uh, there is at least one word there, backpacking route.
Um, and then Instagram. Cool cat cycles as well. I answer all the messages quickly. Uh, I love sharing my roots. All my roots are right with gps. My personal roots are public. I'll be very happy to send a bike back in route, the gravel route. I'm out in the country, uh, about 50 minutes from here, twice a week, riding gravel, and I know those roads like my 10 fingers.
[01:06:59] Randall: Well, um, for anyone listening who happens to be in the area around katy,
Texas
[01:07:05] katya: Cat cycles.
[01:07:06] Randall: Cycles strongly encourage you to pay them a visit and join one of their rides. And I also just wanna say that it's been an honor and a privilege chatting with you as well.
It's one of the joys of this role, and it's something I don't take lightly. So thank you for coming on.
[01:07:20] katya: Thank you so much Randall.
[01:07:21] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big thank you to Randall and Katia for that interesting conversation. And big, thanks to our friends at dynamic cyclist. Remember, use the coupon code, the gravel ride to get 15% off
any dynamic cyclist program. If you're interested in connecting with me or Randall or Katia for that matter, I encourage you to join the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. That's a free global cycling community where you can connect with other riders around the world. To trade information about roots and rides, parts and equipment.
Anything that's in your gravel vocabulary.
If you're able to support the show, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel wide. Or ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
.
This week we sit down with Patrick Engleman founder of the Lu Lacko Wyco Hundo gravel event in Pennsylvania. In its 10th running this year, LLWH is a staple of the Pennsylvania gravel scene.
Episode sponsor: Athletic Greens
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
[00:00:28] Craig Dalton: This week on the show. We welcome Patrick angle. Then from Lou LACO Waco. Hundo. It's a real tongue twister of an event. Out in Pennsylvania. That's been going on for 11 years. This is the 10th edition as Patrick will describe another one of those great events. That's been flying a little bit under the radar.
Unless you lived in that Pennsylvania and mid Atlantic area where it's on everybody's to do list. I wanted to get you guys to know this event because it's another one of those great events. That's started by someone who just loves the community that they ride in. And wanted to highlight it and bring friends.
Patrick's done a great job of growing the event and talk to anybody in that region. And they'll definitely reference some of the memorable experiences. They've had over the years with this event. Before we jump in, I need to thank this week. Sponsor athletic greens.
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Would that important business out of the way, let's jump right into my conversation with Patrick.
[00:03:14] Craig Dalton: Patrick, welcome to the show. Oh, thanks for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation. I'm gonna make my attempt at pronouncing the event name first, and I'm just gonna take my best guess. Okay. Try it. Lulac Waco
[00:03:28] Patrick Engleman: Hyundai. That's kill, you're killing it for, especially for a west coaster. Uh, that was perfect.
[00:03:32] Craig Dalton: Um, I don't think I could do it fast. It took me, I like trained myself several times prior to hitting record to say that
[00:03:39] Patrick Engleman: it's all part of the. Right is how many times you have to repeat it to say it. And also it has been shortened to lulac, uh, just because it's much easier for folks. But it's the lulac, uh, it's the Luzerne, Lakana and Wyoming counties and it's a hundred miles.
Uh, so that's kind of where it started was the three counties that we ride through and I just kind of pulled from there. And started the name, and actually I started the, I got the name if you wanna know this a little bit. Um, I was resting at the top of a long climb and there happened to be carvings of Native Americans, like wood carvings of Native Americans on, I guess someone's driveway.
And there were three of them. And part of the genesis of this was I, I looked out of the over the valley and said, what would they have? Of what I'm seeing right now and, and kind of thought about them as three separate people and them thinking about their account, like represented at that time and you know, all these other stuff.
So that's kind of where the name came from and, you know, my little inspiration point, uh, out somewhere in the middle of nowhere right on the bike, . So. Nice,
[00:04:37] Craig Dalton: nice. Well, we're gonna get into that a bit and it's, uh, is it the 10th year or the 11th year coming up?
[00:04:42] Patrick Engleman: So it, because of Covid, I've obviously, we know it's the, this is the 11th year, it's the 10th ride.
So we, we lost a ride.
[00:04:49] Craig Dalton: We lost a ride in there. Gotcha. And from having Dave Pryor on the podcast and from previously listening to Celine talk on podcasts, I'd heard the name on our number of occasions in the context of like, oh, these are the ones we do every year in Pennsylvania. They're just part of what everybody does, and it's the kind of coming together of the community.
So we'll get into that, but let's talk first. Where are you
[00:05:18] Patrick Engleman: in the world? So I'm currently sitting, uh, in a town called WinCo, Pennsylvania, which is just in the, uh, suburbs of Philadelphia, the northeast suburbs of Philadelphia.
[00:05:27] Craig Dalton: Okay. And where is
[00:05:28] Patrick Engleman: the event? The event starts in Pittston, Pennsylvania, my hometown, uh, which is the northeast, which is the northeast corner of Pennsylvania.
Uh, not, not just northeast, uh, suburbs of Philadelphia. So
[00:05:40] Craig Dalton: you're drawing, if geographically you're drawing it sounds like. riders in New York, riders in Eastern and western pa riders in DC jersey maybe can all get you within two to four
[00:05:52] Patrick Engleman: hours. Yep. Yeah, generally, um, we usually say the Megapoli, so like the Boston and DC uh, or Bo Boston and now Northern North Carolina seems to be where it's at.
And then Western and then way some, some folks, our, uh, one of our folks, uh, is, comes in from Alaska every year. Uh, but he's a, he's a local, but he does come in from Alaska every year. It's like one of his trips. Yeah,
[00:06:13] Craig Dalton: nice. Stepping back for a minute, let's just start, set the stage for kind of your background as a cyclist.
Um, you mentioned where you grew up and, and some of the love that you found early on as a child. .
[00:06:26] Patrick Engleman: Yeah, I mean, I, I grew up, you know, like riding like everybody, I'm, I'm the youngest of all my cousins, so I got the hand me downs of the hand me downs with the hand me downs. So I, I wrote anything there was, and that's kinda what we did in my neighborhood.
Like, I was very lucky to have lots of friends in my neighborhood and we just rode and spent a lot of time in the woods. Uh, I grew up with just a ba My backyard is, It goes into, you know, so, so far when we were kids, it was so many miles of woods and, you know, there's just so much to explore. So I just grew up riding mount, you know, we were riding mountain bikes on our bmx, uh, when we were, you know, little kids.
And also, yeah. Um, part of my riding background is, is my, my dad didn't drive, uh, for a lot of my life and he didn't, uh, for lots of reasons, but where I grew up, there's not a lot of mass transit. Um, so we had a little, we had like a bus, like every hour. Um, so. He rode. He rode or walked. So I rodee or walked because I, there's no other way to get around.
My mom sometimes worked mid. Yeah. Uh, uh, second shift. So like we just rode all the time. Yeah. What,
[00:07:22] Craig Dalton: what was, uh, you know, as you got a little bit older, was there a Pennsylvania cycling scene that started to draw you in? Or were you like many athletes you. You know, cycling as we think of it now, really wasn't part of your life until, you know, your twenties or what have you.
[00:07:37] Patrick Engleman: I I, I was in it pretty young. I mean, I think because, because of where I grew up and there was a, a decent, um, mountain bike scene, uh, growing. I, I, I grew up you high school in the mid nineties, and I was very lucky to find, uh, a great, a great local bike shop that kind of took me in as like their like baby brother.
Uh, they were all in their twenties and a little older and racing mountain bikes, but I was. The shop rat who wouldn't go home and, you know, could also kind of hang with them. And that's where it all, where it all kind of came from. So I was riding mountain bikes in high school and, you know, continued on.
Uh, and then while once I went to college, uh, I became, I became a bike messenger. I went to Temple University in Philly and I became a bike messenger and kind of got in that world while still racing mountain bikes and riding mountain bikes and, um, have kind of stayed with it, worked in shops and did all the things.
It's definitely been a part of my life for a long.
[00:08:26] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's something, you know, it's, you know, people on the West coast may not know this, but Pennsylvania in general has such a great cycling community. And to your point, I was in school in Washington, DC in that early nineties period in college and all the mountain bike racing.
A lot of it we, what we did was go up to Pennsylvania at, to race mountain bikes. Mm-hmm. , it was great and so many. Just great like community style events where the terrain was awesome, but the community was even better. Mm-hmm. . Yeah, we had
[00:08:58] Patrick Engleman: a lot, we had a lot of that. We were very lucky to have a lot of great events and great places to ride.
I grew up not far from Jim Thorpe, which is, you know, any, any, any person of our vintage. Here's Jim Thorpe in the East Coast, knows how legendary it was. And, you know, uh, UCCI wasn't, is not far from where, from me and like, you know, just a bunch of really classic places. But also, like I said, my backyard is pretty amazing , so it still is.
[00:09:20] Craig Dalton: And then as you, as you transitioned to your kind of professional career, were you. Kind of racing mountain bikes once a year. Do you define the road? What was your kind of transition in those, those later
[00:09:30] Patrick Engleman: years? Uh, those later years? I was, so I was, uh, teaching actually in Northern Virginia, uh, like we were talking about.
And I, um, I ride to work. I mean, and I, and I was working, I was working at a shop part-time. I'm a teacher, so I was like, make a couple bucks and I had the summer off and I'm just used to being a shop rat. So I was working at City Bikes in DC Nice. And kind of stuck, kind of stuck with it. I've raced cross for a, a little while there.
Um, still once in a while I'll line up on a mountain bike, but I, a lot of my time now is just kind of riding with friends and, you know, checking out new places to go and, you know, traveling a bit. Um, I also mentioned, I, I helped found the Pennsylvania Inters Classic Cycling League, so it takes a lot of, uh, a lot of my time riding is kind of transitioned into bringing more kids in, in more, more adults.
Uh, I was coaching, coaching the coaches for a long time, uh, so bringing a lot of the coaches into it and, you know, kind of instructing that. So stuck with it and, but I've done a bunch of different. Right on.
[00:10:21] Craig Dalton: And by the way, just thank you for doing the work with Scholastic Mountain biking. I think it's great.
I mean, obviously here in Northern California we've got this great Nike scene out here and yeah. Gosh, I wish it existed when, when I was growing up. Yeah. And I know that. Takes a lot of effort from a coaching perspective, from an infrastructure perspective, and it takes someone to just hold up their hand and be willing to put in the work.
So thank you for doing that.
[00:10:45] Patrick Engleman: Yeah, no problem. I'm, I'm, I'm, it's, it's, it's, it's, seriously, like I, I wrote a long time ago what my dream job would be, and it was teaching mountain biking. and I got to do it, you know, I got, I got to do it for, you know, a few thousand kids and a bunch of coaches. So I, I definitely got to live my dream.
So I'm, now I step back a little bit to do some more work on this, but I'm still on the board of, uh, board of advisors for the Pennsylvania League, and I work a little bit with, with Nica as a whole and do some of that stuff. Cause I, I love it. You know, I love, I, I'm, I'm a teacher, so I love, I obviously love kids, but I love mountain biking too, and I get to do both, um, you know,
[00:11:15] Craig Dalton: both passionate.
Yeah. You know, it sounds like from, from your description and all the different types of bikes you were riding, having a cyclocross bike, you know, 20 years ago or whenever you did, did the emergence of gravel, as we talk about it today, was it just one of those things that you'd already been doing that effectively on those bikes?
[00:11:34] Patrick Engleman: Uh, yeah, effectively, I mean, I was riding, um, I was riding, we got invited to a Rafa ride, uh, and we, we rode some of actually where, what an event Dave Pryor promotes now called Monkey Night Fight. Um, at the time he wasn't, he wasn't the promoter yet, but we rode some of those trails and some of those, uh, places in, in Lehigh Valley, uh, that were dirt roads.
And we got to go up all these coal, these coal mountains and see all this cool stuff. And we're doing it on essentially road bikes, uh, road bikes with some those giant 25 CC tires. Do you remember those giant. Yeah, so I, I LULAC was actually founded on a, a gravel, or sorry, they can't, gravel. Yeah, they didn't exist yet.
It was founded on a 25 CC touring bike. Uh, my indie fab touring bike is what I went out on because it had the most clearance, uh, to fit the biggest tires. And those tires, like I said at the time, were 25 c. And then of course, I, I had a cross, a cross bike and I'm like, oh, I could take this one out too. And, uh, and, and check it out on, on the cross bike.
And that definitely helped, especially when disc brakes come in and, you know, a wide range of gearing and those sorts of things. But yeah, I've, I've done, I've done it all with the, the, the prospect. I'm like, this is the best thing ever. And now we and now we're out. Where, where we.
[00:12:43] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of what I was getting at.
You know, thinking about starting the event 11 years ago, you know, the equipment obviously wasn't there. What was the motivation to create the event and what was the type of terrain that you took the riders on in that first year?
[00:13:02] Patrick Engleman: Uh, . The first, so the first year, uh, the, the motivation, I'll ask the fir the first part of your question.
The motivat. Was, I, I love Northeastern Pennsylvania. I don't happen to live there, but like my, I still call it home if I stand going home. Almost all my friends now I'm going to Northeastern Pennsylvania. So to, to pitched into the Scranton area. So I love it so much there, but I, and I do, I go back and visit my, my, almost my entire family's there.
Um, so I go there a lot and I love the outdoors. I've, I grew up in the outdoors and I just wanted people to come see it. Um, my friends here are, you know, they, they're suburban nights. They live around, around Philly and, you know, they're kind of used to that suburban lifestyle. And I was like, let me take 'em up to where I'm from.
Cause I would tell 'em all these fantastical stories of the rides and the R roads and everything else. And I'm like, Invite my buddies, you know, like to come up here and go for a ride. Uh, and that's how we got Dave and Celine. You know, there, there were the, there were two of the first 18, uh, that came out and tried it.
And then that first year, um, I initially built this to be almost like a spring classic. And because the spring classics happened around Easter, I did it for the first year, was on, on Palm Sunday. And Palm Sunday was near the end of March, and in northeastern Pennsylvania, it snows a bunch, uh, or at least it used to.
And, uh, we had snow on the sides of the road and mud and everything else. Uh, and it was, it was chilly. It was a chilly, chilly day. And that course, Had a blend of road and, and gravel or dirt. Um, there's some single track in there. Uh, we start off the ride still to this day with, with the single track that I grew up on, uh, in my neighborhood.
And then we go off onto some of those dirt roads and the, and the course has not changed dramatically. , but there were definitely some spots that were like, nah, we don't need that anymore. Or I found other roads from being out there and, and, and doing more exploring. Yeah. And other, and other riding. So, um, the course, there's some parts this, like I said, are, are still the same and that people expect to find, like we have, um, we have one waterfall or 33 miles.
So we have, uh, so I, so those, those waterfalls are, are an important part of the ride and people expect to see them and expect to, to hear them. And so like that stuff has stayed the same. And this year for our, our 10th ride, we're actually gonna go back to a little bit of the first route in a couple places.
Uh, so people can see where the first, like, first like one, two, or three years went, um, versus what it, what it is now. Plus it changes it up for, for people who just started the last couple. It's now gonna change up the course for them and kind of, uh, for me, bring a, a, you know, a nod back to the good old days.
[00:15:31] Craig Dalton: Yeah. When you think back to those first few years, and you looked around the start line, what kind of bikes were people on? Was it a, was it road bikes, cross bikes, mountain bikes.
[00:15:41] Patrick Engleman: Uh, definitely a blend. I mean, like I said, the time cross was huge and everyone raised cross and, and there were, there were a lot, a lot of folks were on cross bikes because they just didn't know what to expect.
Um, but I, I'll shout out forever. My buddy Tim Wood showed up on a single speed road bike and said, is this okay? And I'm like, I don't think so, , but you could try it. And I thought he was joke, I thought he was joking. I thought he just had like an extra bike in his car and he brought it over to me thinking it was cause I warned everybody what was, what was gonna happen to them.
And um, cuz lulac we'll probably get into a little more, but LULAC is 103 miles and almost two vertical mi, almost two vertical miles of climbing. Uh, so a single speeded road bike does, does not, uh, you know, a track bike in the city does not quite cut it. Um, but there were a few, most, most had curly bars that first year.
I don't think there was any. There was one mountain biker. Um, but every else had some, at least some form of curly bars that were, looked more like abike than anything. And, um, that had, we have, we Go ahead.
[00:16:34] Craig Dalton: I was gonna say, so that first year you brought at and a, your friends and convinced him to drive a couple hours from Philly to Experie.
What you'd been talking to them about for, for many years, I presume. Yeah. Going forward to that second year, did it become a thing where there was a registration and, you know, more, a proper event in your mind at
[00:16:52] Patrick Engleman: that point? Yeah, it ki it definitely, it, it necessitated a little bit. Like that first year I remember it saying to my mom, cause she was like, well, where's this thing gonna start?
I'm like, I don't know. The park down the street and like, I'll get a porta potty and we'll be cool. And like where people could come to the house and change. And she was like, What, you know, like, and then luckily a, a brewery that was just starting, that was actually a long story short, but basically they were, they were just starting and this, we were their first event they ever did.
And I called him like, Hey, can we do this? And the luckily, one of the co-founders used to put on Ride for the Roses in Texas and he was like, yeah, of course, no problem. And so the second year we're like, okay, we've got, we've got to go to Brewing Company, so we're good on that. Uh, we have all these things.
So it's just kind of almost like started itself as an. Where like I don't have to worry about like putting a porta potty at the park down the shape of my mom's house. I could just go to this brewery that has the, some of the infrastructure that we need. Amazing.
[00:17:45] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Amazing. So then what, what is, you know, if we talk, if you think about, um, the progression over the 11 years, what type of attendance numbers were you looking at and how did that change, like your stress level, the amount of work you had to put in and, and your enthusiasm one way or the other?
[00:18:05] Patrick Engleman: Yeah, I mean, I'm still psyched about it. I mean, it's, it's, it's, some days I'm like, oh man, like, uh, this sometimes is, there's a little bit of a monkey on my back, but like, I'm still psyched every day that I get to do this. I'm like, this is, this is cool. You know, this is, this is a lot of fun. And, you know, it's, it's, um, you know, it's nice to hear people's stories every time, every time I run into people, they tell me stories about their rides and some of the stuff.
But, um, the attendance numbers, I kept it limited because the infrastructure where I, where I'm from, and also this is put on by my family and. . And I don't, I I was listening to one of one of your podcasts with like this big professional, uh, situation and like I'm. I feel it's professional, but it definitely took a while to get there.
And, uh, and I always relied on that. And also, yeah, I have a, a background in punk rock where like, like we didn't invite, not that we weren't inviting, is that it was DIY and we were trying to keep it as low, low profile as possible. And, you know, that's, that's okay until it starts selling out in a couple minutes.
and, and so we kept it like three 50 or so for a wa for a few years, and then I bumped it up to like 500 people. Uh, and I think it was 19 is when I finally bumped it. I'm like, okay, we can take on a few more. I think I got this thing took me a little bit of like, okay, we got 300. This is easy. No problem.
And then we bumped it. We bumped it at five and it was like, and then it poured rain. and was 40 degrees, but that's a whole, that's another story for another day. Um, yeah. So, so, so this year we're, we're up again, uh, looking. 6 57, like, uh, or so. Um, and we'll see kinda where, where we get to. So at over the years, it, it, the stress level of course changes, but you learn a lot and, you know, if you, you could, you learn and adapt as you go and, and you learn every year and you also find your other mentors.
You know, I, I, I'm lucky enough to have, have mentors in this space, uh, that I'm very close with. Uh, , uh, Dave Pryor, of course I mentioned, and, and, uh, and, and some other folks, uh, Mike Koon, who puts, who now puts on grand, who put on, used to put on Sylvania Epic. Um, you know, so Mike and I are very, very close.
So like there's a few, uh, folks that are just help, help out all the time, you know, with, with anything I can bounce off of them. So I very, very lucky to know some, some pretty incredible promoters. So that, but that stress level, I've just changed processes, you know, like I have more information on my website now and like this year with some of the stuff that we've got going on.
Like I want to do more intro, like about like this kind of stuff, like the podcast like. Who are we? What are we? Because people hear about this name. Yeah. And it's promoted and their friends are doing it and they've heard, you know, it's been around and they're like, who the heck is this person? And I sometimes expect, everyone knows the whole story and people are like, yeah, I have no idea.
You know, like last year and I went to the, the whole, the race hotel the next, the next morning. And I got breakfast with some friends and I saw some folks wearing a lulac a t-shirt. And I'm like, Hey, did you guys do the ride yesterday? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, well thanks a lot. That's really cool.
And they were asking, they just started telling their story and I. adding to their, you know, adding on and telling them little bits. And then finally they go, who are you? And I was like, I'm, I'm, I'm Pat Engleman, I'm on the, I started the ride. And they're like, holy crap. Like, I didn't know, like that was you.
And, and it was cool. But it was also I think, a failure on my point that like they didn't know who it was. And not that they need to know who I am, I really care less. It's that, the fact that I feel so personal to me that I, yeah, they should know at least who I am or I should have at least said hi. And thank you so.
[00:21:22] Craig Dalton: I think it's, you know, it's so interesting as you were talking to me earlier, just saying, you know, um, how you brought this back to your hometown and it starts off on the single track you used to ride as a child, and it was really about showcasing the great terrain where you grew up to your new friends and you know, family that live couple hours away.
That's such a, like, interesting origin story and I, I feel like for me, that helps connect me with an. To kind of know why you're putting it there. Yeah, which I, which I loved. I also, I do love some of the information you've got out in the FAQs and some of the way it's phrases phrased. I'm gonna read one for you.
I am the best racer ever. I plan on winning this event. What do I get if I win?
[00:22:09] Patrick Engleman: And the, the answer is, um, they get a hatchet with their name en engraved on it, and there's only two. First two people, the fir, they get that and everybody else, uh, they do get, I, I should have grabbed one. They do get a little finisher's medal and it's, I, I sometimes call it finisher's medal.
Cause that's what people understand. And I, I basically call it like an accomplishment medal. And it's like you, it's just on the table when you come in and you check in, it's on the table and like, grab your medal if you want one. And really what it is, is did you start out and you wanna do a hundred? And you got out there and realized this is ridiculous, and I did and you did 80 and you're still psyched, grab your metal.
Did you do the whole hundred and like, you feel great, grab your medal. Did you only make it 30? Cause you got a flat, you couldn't fix it. Now you don't want that medal cause you gotta come back next year. Don't, don't take it. And that's your thing. So, and that's really what it is. It's a, you know, challenge by choice and you know, do you want to go out there and do it?
Great. And you want the metal, some people hang them up. It's really cool. I see cold displays of all the years. We, we have, it's just literally like a, a die cut me, uh, metal from a, a local fabricator. Uh, we do different colors every year and people have a whole like collection of 'em now. Uh, cause the first two years we actually had a, a jeweler, uh, the fir the first year I have one of them that's made a silver.
Uh, the first finisher's medal, there were like 20 of them. Wow. And then, uh, the second one, we had a couple, we, we were doing the jeweler, uh, for a couple years with only 18, and then we would just get 'em out randomly. But now there's just so many people, it's hard, it's people also get angry, uh, if they don't get the, the, the fancy ones.
So we noticed everyone gets their, the little.
[00:23:37] Craig Dalton: So as you've taken that journey from 18 to three 50 now to 6, 6 50, you know, what kind of logistical challenges has that created for you? I'm always curious cause I, I know how much work it takes to put on an event. Yeah. So I'm curious to kind of extract a few of these details for any.
Would be event organizers who are kind of thinking about this journey or who are on it on their own? Yeah.
[00:24:01] Patrick Engleman: Um, I, I gotta tell you the, the logistical, the first thing I solved and the, uh, and I, I guess not, probably the first thing, all the biggest impact I feel that I solved was I got a storage locker . And I felt like such a, like a big deal.
I finally got a storage locker cause it was all, all the stuff was stored in my mom's basement and in my parents' basement and like, Have to go up the stairs into downstairs and then turn the corner and it's like a little small in there for me. And man, that saved so much time to back up a sprinter and dump everything in and dump everything back out now.
So that was huge. So would be event organizers, once you get to a certain point, spend the money, get it, get it. It's so much, so much, uh, it's, it's such a value to everyone that's involved that you can just go to the, go there, do inventory, do all the things you need to do, but logistics on the ride and, and,
[00:24:47] Craig Dalton: okay.
And. Pat one, one question. Do you, with your peers, and I know there's like more than a handful of events in PA and you mentioned being friends with a number of those event organizers, do you guys share any logistics issue? You know, do you share, like we all borrow a stage from one another or whatever you need?
Yeah,
[00:25:05] Patrick Engleman: anything is up progress. I mean, like we have, I I, I could ask any of them for anything and, and they, and they know the same for me. And, and that's, and that's for anybody. I mean, like, I have friends, uh, you know, I was. To your podcast the other day. People ask all the time, like, can I borrow a tent? Sure, no problem.
Because I know I would've loved to add that tent. And it was a big ask, you know, like 10 years ago for me to get a tent for somebody. And now like they're just sitting there most of the year, you know, like, come, come borrow something. And um, so yeah, we share radios, uh, share those sorts of things. We're actually looking at, um, getting some of those like spot, not the spot trackers, but the, um, the more like, uh, like satellite phones and having a co and like starting.
Grow a selection of those, uh, because I know we're not, we're not Northern California remote, but we're hills and valleys remote, where like you can't, yeah, you might be close to a city, but there's no, there's zero communication in some of these places. So, and as we go further out, the communication is a disaster.
So we're, uh, and Omic and, and Dave and myself and a couple others, we've talked about like kind of starting to grow that, uh, infrastructure of those very expensive pieces of equipment to share and share. .
[00:26:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. And I think before I interrupted you, you were gonna start talking about like the course and the impact that 600 riders has versus.
[00:26:18] Patrick Engleman: 18. Yeah. So yeah, logistics, uh, literally went from the, the back, the, uh, the trunk of my dad's car, uh, to, and like the, you know, the, the, uh, tailgate of my, of my car, uh, to now logistics. The number one logistic issue is we have, is we at mile 54 on top of the, almost the highest point on the course, we have a full-blown taco stand.
Uh, so you get to mile 54 ish, Cland giant hill. And there is tacos, uh, for you to, to take. And, um, this year Shram is sponsor is sponsoring that, uh, which is really cool to get them involved. Um, but they're, um, getting water there and getting. Food and all the, and then the trash home is always for me, it's like, oh yeah, we gotta take this stuff home.
And finding those locations and finding cool folks who are willing to be like, yeah, sure. Just hang out in my front yard for the day. Uh, and we've, we've been very lucky to find those people who they want nothing in return. I've tried to bring them beer, you know, I've done all those things and they're like, oh yeah, cool.
Thank you. You know, that's about it. That's all I want. Case, you know, I bring them case of your, and thank you. And that's all. And it's been awesome to find those people, but finding those people. Takes time, you know, and, and, and takes the guts to knock on a door in the middle of nowhere too. So , I am, I'm willing to do, I'm willing to do that, but I've definitely, uh, have been, you know, a little nervous dealing that once in a while.
But that's what it takes. So I think the biggest thing is, is, um, , it's getting water and things out there. Plus, on our course we have a, uh, the Que River runs, uh, directly through the middle of it. So we only have two river crossings, uh, two bridges, uh, for the entire course. Uh, so if you're on one spot of the course, you've gotta get to the other and you've gotta get to a, a, a bridge to get there.
So sometimes having. Support services on one half of the course, and they stay on the east side of the river and we go to the west side of the river and stuff like that. Um, and the last one I would say is, is, is course marking. And anyone out there who wants to do this become a great course marker. And I, I, I would give a shout out to Brian and Nate, uh, and, and, um, and so, and, and the, and the other folks who do monkey night fight.
They helped me and made me think about approaching this at speed, making a turn and confirming your turn. Right. And so two ahead, one confirmer. Yeah. Is all, is the way we always go. And, and Mo I I, you can do this course without a computer and I get that question all the time. Like, I have a computer, how do I get around?
Just look at the ground. You would, you have to try hard to get lost. People do. You've gotta try pretty, pretty hard, uh, to get lost. Yeah. If you just look at the, at the L Arrows and my directions is, are. Look at the arrows, and if you didn't find one, go back to the last one you saw and then follow 'em again because you, you can't get, you can't get lost out there.
[00:29:02] Craig Dalton: So what's, what's our lost number for the last 11 years? Any lost riders out there?
[00:29:07] Patrick Engleman: Yeah, we have, we have one, uh, one, he happens to be one of my best buddies, and, and he got, he kind of, he, he kind of bailed out a little early and I was like, go this way and do this thing. and, and a couple hours later he calls me.
I'm like, where are you? He's like, I'm standing here. I got, I'm like, tell me what's around you tell me street names and everything else. And he's like, I got the, I said, look at the church across the street. You see the red door? Yeah. Pulled up your right hand and, and then follow that and you'll get, you'll get along the river and you'll be home in like half an hour, 10 minutes, you know, half an hour, 15 minutes, whatever.
Four hours later he calls me. He's like, I'm like, where you at? He's like, I got back to the church somehow, . I said, which way did you go, ? He's like, I think I went left and you told me to go right. And, uh, so yeah, he's, he's one of the most, most legendary ones. But I, I have, uh, we've had a few, uh, the year that it rained, I, I, I sort of, I was, um, 2019 is legendary for the rain and the weather.
Uh, we started off, when I said to the group, I said, oh, here's your Rube day. You know, here's the day you're gonna look like such a hard ass. You're gonna, you're gonna be George NC Capy covered in mud. This is the day you get to do that, and you get to, and then, uh, this was like sprinkling and like mid forties.
And by mile 10 it. Low forties, high thirties and pouring. And uh, so we got to the first rest stop and, uh, some people were kept alive by some hot pizza. We moved out there and, and a couple propane heaters that we were able to get. Um, and then I, a lot of people on that day, uh, were great and they took, and I luckily had myself and a couple others who were like, this is the way home from here.
Don't, don't deviate from that. And most people, , uh, mo most people did, didn't make it nice, but there's still some, you know, some folks who, uh, didn't quite, didn't quite make it. They may have made the left when I told 'em, make the right and then spent a long day out there in the cold. .
[00:30:57] Craig Dalton: Quick aside, the last time I saw Celine was in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Pre-writing the big sugar course, it poured with rain. It was similar, similarly cold. Yeah. And I remember we, we hit this brewery and there was a fire and she had a complete change of clothes. To continue on and my dumb ass had nothing. Mm-hmm. . So I had to pull the plug and take the broom wagon home cuz I was freezing and not prepared at
[00:31:25] Patrick Engleman: all.
Celine's a pro for a reason, and I hope, and I hope she hear, I hope she hears this. She's a pro for a reason and for lo for lots of them. She's, she's, you know, one of the strongest writers I think on the planet. Uh, hands down. I mean she against anybody at any age except for following a gps. She can't do that to save her life
And she knows, we all know that. , but her and Dave and another friend of ours named Dave on that ride that was so cold and miserable, they went to a, a diner in the, in one of the small towns and sat and ate, ate a bunch of soup and hung out and just waited out and then looked at the weather app and I got a message and, uh, one of the Star Wars had just come out and Dave said, if we watch Star Wars in Tocan, and we were late, can you come pick us up?
I was like, why watch, why are you watch Star Wars? She's like, well, if we watch Star Wars, the weather rain will be over . So there's no pro her day bar like that. Like, look at the weather app and look at the theater across the street and say, man, three hours of Silver Wars, we can fi we can finish this thing and that.
And they, and they, and they totally could. Um, Celine is just a, I love it. I love it. Give more Celine love here for one more second. She is the only female winner of LULAC ever, meaning that she has won every year. She has tried to win. She has. So there's been zero other amazing first female finishers outside of ELE here.
So come get it come. Amazing. She's, she's had some competitors, but usually, um, you know, that's, uh, that, that lasts for only a little while and it's just, you know, knowledge of the area and also her being who she is.
[00:32:51] Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanna get into the course a little bit, but one more question. Um, I just was curious about, you know, we hear, talk about the impact of these events on the community, and when you talk about 600 riders coming in, does the community there?
Like, are you, are you talking to the local city council? Are you filling up the hotels? Is, is everybody stoked because you've got 600 plus, you know, partners and families coming into town and spending money in the community. How's it become a
[00:33:20] Patrick Engleman: thing? Yeah, so, so I, I was smiling because this year, this year's the first year, not that it's, hasn't been, been a thing for years, like.
The brewery loves it. The hotels, we sell the hotels all the time. Uh, sell out the state park for people want to camp, um, all those things. But I've kept it away from the community outside of like getting in the newspaper or getting on TV or whatever. Um, until this year and this year, uh, the town of Pitton, like where I grew up and, you know, near and dear to me, has done a lot of work.
Uh, coming back, you know, we're a coal mining town that got smoked after coal mining left and, you know, had a, a tough time in the seventies and eighties and, and, and it's a part of the nineties and now it's coming back and it's like one of those places it looks like Bentonville because it's a small town that like all these new things are popping up every day and you're like, oh my God, they got a New Mexico place now they got like this, this little we get just got the other day.
This. , uh, used to be a bank like kiosk, like for like a drive up, and it just became a tiny, um, cafe where it's now a drive up instead of the bank. It's not a drive up cafe. So like we're getting like this, this, this dope stuff in town. So I, I reached out to town and said, Hey, every year, for the last couple years, I bring like around a thousand people here town a year.
You don't even know I exist. And they called me within an hour, and we've been working together since. And so this year, yeah, with the, um, the, the Downtown Piston partnership, um, the Saturday before the ride, uh, we're starting in downtown Piston for the first time ever. Uh, we've always started at, at a fire haul just outside of town.
And, um, when I met with them, I'm like, yeah, the fire haul, the fire, haul the fire. I'm like, how do we start downtown? And, uh, so we're starting downtown for the first time. A little bit nervous with this, you know, it's, it's new for me, uh, but we're also doing an outdoors and, uh, an arts expo, uh, the day before, and we've never done that.
I've always wanted everyone, something like that. And, uh, so working with town and like town recognizes the impact of, of cycling. And, and I always tell people my vision for my hometown is that it becomes a place like, like Bend, uh, Oregon, where it was an environment, you know, a town that. Ravaged by the industry and then came back in an environment.
It's a place where everyone enjoys the environment and the economy is based on, on tourism and bringing people in to ride, to hunt, to atv, to ski, to do all the things they can do, uh, the place that we're from and Northeastern PA has literally, you can kayak. Canoe on the river. You can ski, you could hunt, you can ride ATV trails, you could do all sorts of different stuff up there.
And there's no reason why we don't do that. And that's like a life mission for me is to get to make that economy up there. A tourism based economy where people are coming there, people are buying second homes and everything else, and people go to the Poconos and it's right there next to the Poconos.
Like how can we get people to go there more and recreate on their weekends and recreate all the time and spend money in the town? I grew up. .
[00:35:57] Craig Dalton: Yeah. That's amazing. I love that. Shifting gears a little bit into the course, I know you, you now have several different lengths of the course. Yep. The Hondo being the kind of the big Una, the primary one, but you, I presumably, you wanna be inclusive and give newer riders the opportunity to kind of get out there and experience a little bit of what it has to offer.
Yeah. But for the purposes of this conversation, let's talk about the Hyundai. Like, what's the terrain like in there if from coming from outta state, and I don't, I've never put rubber on, on uh, trail in Pennsylvania, what do I need to know in my head? You have
[00:36:32] Patrick Engleman: to know that you, you should ride the bike that you feel comfortable on.
And we say that all the time. And we've had mountain bikes, we've had fat bikes, we had tandems, we've had everything. Um, and you can, you can ride LULAC on a road bike. I will say that over and over again. You can ride LULAC on a, on a road bike. It's hella uncomfortable to do so. But you could, um, I like. , big tires, hydro, hydraulic disc brakes, and lots of gears.
And that's a good way for me to spend my day. But if you want to murder yourself on a 52 chain ring, uh, you have at it. I could care less , but, but I know how I enjoy my day. So, um, there's a mix of road, uh, a ro, a mix of road road and, and as we call 'em up, they're dirt roads or gravel roads. Um, and the paved parts of the roads are some of the.
Abusive parts of the road. It's Northeastern Pennsylvania after the, after the thaw. And there are manhole covers the size, sorry. There are, there are potholes, the size of me. Uh, and they're everywhere. And, and they're, you know, the roads are not, are, it's a rural area and the roads are not necessarily well maintained.
They do their best, but it's a really hard environment to, to maintain roads on. So I, uh, all, all the paved parts I try to explain to people. I, I did a video last year where, cause everyone was like, oh, it's, it's a road ride. It's a road ride. And I, and I rode one of the roads, put my camera down, and I was like, do you want, this is your road, just so we're clear.
And it might look like a paved road on, on the map. And it, I will call it a paved road. But it's blown to pieces and like you've gotta be on it. Um, and the rest of it. So we have, uh, a very clay, uh, if you're on the, on the gravel scale, I think they did like a gravel, like a candy scale, like from like the tinies up to like a stop or whatever.
Um, we're in the solidly in the, like the pea gravel. with clay underneath. Um, so it definitely gives their, like their lines, especially when it's wet. It's kind of cool cause you end up with like a train track and just follow the train track you could. Um, but it's definitely a bunch of clay with some p gravel kind of in there.
Um, some rocks and roots. Um, the first section of single track, there's two sections of single track at the beginning. Um, and neither of them are anything that you would couldn't ride across by, on or couldn't. I mean, I grew up on, so they're nothing crazy. And they're also only. Two miles max of that whole section.
So people always like, wanna pick a bike for that? And I'm like, you're better off running it if you're gonna, if you're so nervous about it. And we have, we have great photos of people carrying their bikes while other people are just bombing it, you know, so there's, there's a blend of that. And depending on the, on the weather, it could be a total mud Pitt, uh, or it dries a bone, you just fly through it.
So it's, um, the whole, the whole course overall, I think you're a great, modern gravel bike is fantastic because like I said, it's. at the end when you're climbing the la those last couple hills, you're gonna want that larger chain ring. Outback. You're gonna really want that. And none of the, there's a couple parts on the road that you can move, you know, they use it for, uh, the locals use it for uh, time trial course.
Um, so you can definitely move on it and it's rolling. But man, I love some, having me some gears cuz there's some big steep hills and people are like, what the heck did he do to us? So some why. Yeah,
[00:39:33] Craig Dalton: I was looking at the, I was looking at the elevation course profile. On ride with G P s and it looks like, you know, within the first call it 10 miles, you start a pretty substantial climb.
That's the sort of predominant feature of the beginning half of the course. But even after you crust that you're still doing a bunch of up and down, which is what my memory of Pennsylvania is all about. A lot of, a lot of up and downs. And then you, you kind of do dip down back. Similar elevation as the start, and then you've got another big climb, you know, in the 60 to 70 mile range that you still have to tackle.
Before what looks like a ripping downhill, maybe the last 10 miles.
[00:40:11] Patrick Engleman: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. The la the last 10 is fun. And then you get onto a, then you get onto the river and, and some people think that's gonna be the easiest part. We have the, the river levy, uh, trail that we use, and then that, and then that, that, that side of town.
Um, but you get on that river and sometimes that wind is just blowing off the river and people get so disappointed because they're like, they're looking at their gps and they're like, man, that. Bit is totally flat and they think they're gonna fly. And then unfortunately, sometimes the, the wind is against them and they're having a tough time.
But yeah, that last little bit is, is a nice, you rip down, uh, an old railroad bed, uh, that's, that's, you know, it's a, it's a trail now, so it's, it's been taken care of. Um, you do at , I think it might be the only ride around mile 87 89, you climb a set of, You have to climb a set of stairs to get on and there's a little bike bike roller next to it, but you gotta climb a set of stairs to get onto the last rail trail.
Um, but yeah, we have tho those are, those are fun when people realize that they have to go up to the steps. It's like, what, are you kidding me? This is like mile 87 or so. Last rest stops over and now I've gotta climb a giant set of stairs. So, it happens.
[00:41:12] Craig Dalton: And then when they get back to cross the finish line, what type of experience do you have waiting for
[00:41:17] Patrick Engleman: them?
Uh, welcome, welcome them all back, just being so happy they're home. Uh, and, and giving them all we can, uh, to show 'em how, how happy we are to see them back. And they, they turn in their, their timing chip, and, uh, then they're handed pizza and beer as fast as possible. Uh, and that's, that's what we, we've gone to.
Pandemic kind of brought us to pizza. Uh, because post pandemic, like, like I said, it's my family and my family and friends and my family are getting. Uh, so I want to keep them as covid safe as possible. So we started, uh, with pizza from someone who used to babysit me when I was a kid. Uh, our, our, a friend of our family, uh, named Nora and she makes this amazing, like deep dish pizza and people love it.
I mean, we, we used to do like a sit down dinner and that kind of changed. And then post covid, people love just like tailgating in the parking lot. Pizza. Pizza. Yeah. And it's really, it's kind of changed the vibe, which is cool. Like the, the tailgate vibe. People love. Cause we used to like come in and we'd sit and dinner and they'd just sit there and you're, you'd eat this giant pasta and all kinds of stuff my mom would make and people would bring in and then you'd just sit there the rest of the day, you know, like, what the heck has happened to me?
Where now like the pizza and beer, uh, experience is a little bit more, uh, like a tailgate style, which is cool. People just hang out and tell stories and we encourage people to. Tell us all, all they can about the day. And, um, people filter in and out. They wait for their buddies. They, and they just have a good time.
So it's definitely, yeah. So totally laid back. It's nothing, you know, like I've been to some of the, some of the biggest events there are. And it's not like you go here and you hang out here and this is your, here is your thing that we made 30,000 of. And here's the thing, you go and you walk away and you've never seen 'em again.
It's like, No, like, I'm gonna bring you a beer over and we're gonna talk about what you just did. You know you're gonna share, you know, man, that ride was crazy. This thing was this, or whatever. It's just, just fun.
[00:43:00] Craig Dalton: That's awesome. What, what is sort of the time range, like from first person to last person to complete the course?
[00:43:06] Patrick Engleman: Um, man, it's tough cuz I think we the full, so here's, here's the, here's the deep dark secret of Luca. . It'd be much better if I just called the LULAC 83. Cause that's what a lot of people do. They won't tell you they did the 83 cuz there's a cutoff that they can do. So a lot of them do cut it off a little early when they get out there and they're like, this is just bonkers.
Why am I still doing this ? And there's a, uh, there's a decision point where we have a, a, you may have seen some of the pictures on, on Instagram, just like it's a party. It's our unofficial rest stop. But it's our local trail group is like, Hey, do you really want to do this? Or would you like a shot? And you go that way downhill.
And there's a lot of people that take that, take that shot and and turn that's a hard choice. And turn at 83 and, and, and go and go for home. Instead of doing the hundred, there's plenty to do. The hundred. So to, to tell you that answer. People start rolling in. So we don't, now we, with post covid, we've also gone to a rolling start, so you could start anytime between eight and 10.
Um, so with that, it's a little bit tough to say, but on time on course we're probably looking at seven hours. Most people are. are around there, uh, for, for the hundred, so seven hours or so, up to like nine hours. Um, folks are out there. Uh, we've had people push it to the 10 hour mark. Um, my role is dark. Is dark.
Just be in by dark. Uh, well, we usually have a pretty good beat on who's out there. By the end, we've, we've got tracking, uh, tracking technology, and then also lots of eyeballs all over the course and support. So we've got a pretty good eye on who's where. Um, but dark is our cutoff and we haven't had dark in a.
So, which is, you know, knock on wood, we haven't had dark
[00:44:40] Craig Dalton: Yeah. In a few years now. Yeah. It seems like riders are usually smart enough on a rolling start that if they feel like they're gonna be, have, uh, be a long time out there, they'll roll up on the earlier side rather than taking
[00:44:49] Patrick Engleman: off at 10. That's me.
I'm a, you know, like unpaid unpaved. This year I was psyched to finish to be a 12, have a 12 hour average. and I, I, we left early knowing where we cold and, but we knew we were gonna have his Max Max. I'd rather have those extra two hours of sunlight than sleep for that extra little bit because I, I would be nervous Yeah.
The whole time if I didn't have it. Cause I'm not, I mean, I'm. I keep moving, you know, like plucking along a hundred miles or 12 miles an hour for the day isn't bad, but I, uh, but I'm not, you know, going 18, 20 all day. So I wanna make sure I have the maximum time. And I also see my friends at the end too, see my, see my Celine, uh, this year.
Uh, speaking of her again, I got to drag her into the finish of unpaid, which was, we, uh, the unpaid finishes on a long, a long rail trail. And she knows from many of our rides that she just sits behind me and I'm a giant wind sail, and she was just, you know, cruising, cruising in behind me. So it was, it was a good.
[00:45:40] Craig Dalton: That's great. Are you still in April for the event?
[00:45:44] Patrick Engleman: Yep. April, April 23rd this year. Yeah. So we, we,
[00:45:48] Craig Dalton: okay. And has, has, is registration opened already?
[00:45:50] Patrick Engleman: Yep. Registration. Registration is open. I think there's like three or so, three or so hundred people in there right now. Um, and, um, actually, uh, tomorrow, uh, TREKK, uh, is our title sponsor for this year.
And they're gonna start a pretty serious, uh, blitz on marketing for, uh, starting tomorrow. Uh, so that's, uh, they're gonna do some, some stuff with, um, You know, just, just marketing through their, their channels and also within their stores and stuff like that. So it's been, it's been cool to have a, have a partner like them come in.
[00:46:21] Craig Dalton: Yeah. That's awesome. I think it's like a testament to the reputation that the event must have garnered over the last 11 years. That track would come in and, and, and wanna help you out. And, and you mentioned Ramer earlier, so it's great to. Here you're getting some industry support. Yeah.
[00:46:34] Patrick Engleman: Yeah. It's, it's been great.
People, people have been awesome for years. We've had, we've had a lot of great sponsors, uh, over the year and, and this year hearing from hearing from track was like, wait, who, who, who's this ? You know, like, do you have the right number? Uh, and, and know, and, but it, but it is, it's, it's definitely, it's, it's humbling.
Uh, but also, but also kind of justifies all the work we've done over the years to, to get someone like, like track to, you know, get their eyeballs on, on our little, our little.
[00:47:00] Craig Dalton: Yeah, for sure. Well, this was awesome, pat. I really enjoyed the conversation. I always enjoyed thinking about Pennsylvania as a cycling destination cuz as I said, I had some, so many great experiences there when I was younger.
Yeah. On the mountain bike and I, I recognized. What a beautiful, and underappreciated is not the right word, but it's such a, it's such a big state with a lot of really cool outdoor activities that D doesn't get the shine like, you know, Colorado might, for example, and it's such a great area
[00:47:31] Patrick Engleman: and so , you're allowed to say California.
It's okay. We know
[00:47:35] Craig Dalton: we get a little bit of shine, we
[00:47:36] Patrick Engleman: get a little bit of. Yeah, the, uh, but I, I appreciate, I appreciate you saying that because it's true. And, and I love, I love Colorado. I love California, Utah, Idaho, all those places. And they get, they've got the big mountains and it's mag, it's the, the majesty.
And, you know, you look out on this vista and, you know, Pennsylvania's got these tough little coal towns and they're just surrounded by the same majesty. You've gotta look differently. Right. And that's, and that's really what it is, is like I go to Colorado. I'm, I'm in total awe. I'm, I'm like, I sh shivers when I see it, or Northern California or Idaho.
And I'm like, oh my God. , but then I also do the same thing back home, you know? And, and, and it is possible. So I, I really, I'm really happy. You, you, you mentioned that like the East coast, east coast does have some cool stuff, you know, you don't have to necessarily be out west all the time.
[00:48:19] Craig Dalton: You know, and I just love that, that life goal of yours to just shine a little bit of light on this area and perhaps play a little part in the community, understanding the value of the outdoors, and when you throw up that outdoor flag and do things like you're doing with this event.
You start to get that draw and you get the people from Boston, you get the people from DC coming in there and it becomes sort of a habitual part of where they want a vacation and where they wanna spend money. Yeah. Which is so important to these communities that, you know, their, their earlier livelihoods are not available
[00:48:50] Patrick Engleman: anymore.
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And and I, and we have it in states. We have so much, so much land and so many places to go, so I'm really excited to see what happens. Yeah. And I may not see it all, but I'm, I'm happy to see it, to, to start to hopefully start this off and help the other people who also up there are working on this.
[00:49:05] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I love it. I love it. Well, I'll make sure all the details are in the show notes so people know how to find you. Hopefully this will serve as a little bit of a guide to athletes who are curious about your origin story and make sure they recognize you and give you the high five you deserve for all this
[00:49:19] Patrick Engleman: effort.
Thanks Craig. And I'm, I'm, I'm excited to have a, a more of a, a national audience on this. I know we, we've been on some local podcasts and, uh, but it's nice to, you know, you, you're doing this for not just California, not just not just the big guys, you know, and, and I love the big guys and I, I love hearing their stories and uh, and also learning a lot from all of them.
And that's also funny to hear them like, oh yeah, we've been doing this for 10 years, or We've doing this for seven years, or whatever. I'm. Man, you know, like I've been doing this for a long time, but I've also kept it quiet kind of on, on purpose to a certain extent. Yeah. So, um, yeah,
[00:49:49] Craig Dalton: you know, I mean, that's the way you get sort of, you talk about authentic growth and I think that's where, that's where these really well run, well thought out events come from where you're not just like, , I want to go big from day one.
I wanna have a thousand person event when you have no business and our, our understanding on how to pull that off. Mm-hmm. , I, I, I mean I, from the outside, I feel like you've done it right, pat, and kudos to you for that. I appreciate
[00:50:11] Patrick Engleman: it, Craig. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. Have a good evening. You too. Thank you.
That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks to Patrick for joining the show. And talking about this great event out there in Pennsylvania.
Also a shout out to our friends at athletic greens and One for their support of the show. If you're interested in checking out their product, simply visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. And you'll get that free. One-year Sunpro. Free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs. If you're interested in connecting with me, please join the ridership. That's www.theridership.com.
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Reviews are surprisingly important in podcast discovery. So it helps me connect with other gravel cyclists from around the world. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we have gravel racer, Ian Lopez de San Roman in the studio to talk about his upcoming season. At 19 years old, Ian will be the youngest competitor in the Life Time Grand Prix. With early season results in the Grasshopper series and Rockcobbler, Ian is certainly an athlete to watch.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the show. I want to introduce you to ian Lopez de Santa Ramon. A 19 year old from Sonoma county here in Northern California, who got accepted to participate as a professional athlete in the lifetime grand Prix series in 2023. As you'll see this young athlete found his way to the bike.
Not super early and didn't see remarkable results as a junior in his own words. But yet over the last few years, he's really found his stride cutting his teeth, both on the grasshopper series. Here in Northern California, as well as impressing Michael Marks when participating in the Belgian waffle ride series.
As we enter the 2023 grand Prix. I thought we'd take a chance and get to know Ian.
I managed to catch the Inn on his way, home from a bike fit and Monterey. And so how did over in the studio for quick conversation?
Before we jump in, I need to thank this week. Sponsor logos components. You may recall my episode with my co-host Randall Jacobs around the launch of logos components and the three new sets of carbon wheels that they're bringing to market. At the end of 2020. They're 29 or wheelset received .
Bike packing dot comes gear of the year award, which is pretty amazing. We've talked about the many details you need to look through and think about when purchasing a carbon wheel set. And I encourage you to reference that episode, whether you're looking at the logos wheel sets or something else.
Randall does an excellent job of breaking down from the rim to the hub, to the spokes, all the things you should be considering and looking at. As you match. Which wheel set is going to be right for the type of writing you do.
If you're considering getting a new carbon wheelset this year, I encourage you to go check out logos components.com. I'll put that link in the show notes. Logos offers three different wheel sizes, 700 C six 50 B and 20 Niner. I personally am rocking the six 50 bees out of my garage. It's got an internal width of 28 millimeters. So you get that nice kind of C shape. When you're running larger volume tires.
Again, check them out at logos components. Dot com when you have a second.
With that said let's dive right into my conversation with Ian.
[00:02:48] Craig Dalton: Ian, welcome to the studio.
[00:02:50] Ian Lopez de San Roman: Thanks for making it happen. It was a little last minute.
[00:02:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Studio is a euphemism for the shed office in my backyard, but I appreciate you coming over and it was actually pretty cool to see your bikes getting out of the car.
[00:03:03] Ian Lopez de San Roman: Yeah. You got a, you got a sweet set up here.
[00:03:05] Craig Dalton: It was a shed that held the bikes and then we hired a contractor to drywall and put it all together. So it's kind of a covid investment, so I could have an
[00:03:12] Ian Lopez de San Roman: office at home. Nice. It looks, it looks legit. It looks well made,
[00:03:16] Craig Dalton: and I got my bikes on the wall, so That's all right.
[00:03:19] Ian Lopez de San Roman: Something to look at.
[00:03:19] Craig Dalton: So, you're actually just coming off competing at low gap, right? In one of the grasshoppers. Yep. How'd that go yesterday?
[00:03:27] Ian Lopez de San Roman: I made a lot of mistakes.
Yeah, let's talk about it a little bit.
Yeah. So I went into the race and I was like, , I kind of really wanna win this race. It's kind of like my home race and I know Pete's on good form and everybody there is like really fast. So I just decided like I, I'm not usually not nervous for races, but I was actually nervous for low gap, which is weird.
So I slept kind of weird. Started the race, , it was like super hot on the first climb. And then I, I was thinking about what I did the night before the race. Mid race for some reason. And then I was like, dude, I didn't charge my shifting. And then I look back and I see the blinking red light on the axis and I'm like, dude, really?
You forgot to charge your shifting. And so I think it was like halfway through the race I roll up to the aid station. So the shifting died on this like cement climb and then I roll into the aid station, I'm yelling, Blake, give me an access battery. Blake, which is like my friend. . Everyone from the shop I used to work for was there, and I was like, dude, I'm gonna get so roasted about this later.
I'm gonna, yeah, people are gonna have, this is gonna be the story people are telling. And so they didn't have an access battery. Usually they have a pile of 'em and they just sell 'em out and give 'em to I see my old Nica coach, Mike, Mike Warren is there and he's I was like, Mike, Mike, I see you're here.
Gimme your access battery. And he's no, man, no man. I have to ride outta here. Come on. Come on. And then I was like, I'm racing gimme your access battery. He's no, no, no, no, no. And so I got in, like I spent like a minute and a half like arguing him and finally I get his battery. And so I go in and he's dude, you're really stranded me out here.
You owe me. And he is he was like really mad. And so I took his battery and then I'm still kind of working out a couple kinks on the new bike. And so I dropped my chain, lost some more time, but then, I think my fitness is pretty good right now. So then I caught up to Lance who is in. , which I guess was like fourth place.
And then we caught up the Tyler, which was third place, and then we see Chris Blevins right down the road. And then I was all like, I was like, yeah, okay, maybe I'll sudden a little flyer at the end and try to get these two Legion Crisp printers. But I didn't really think I had a very good chance.
And then half a mile from the finish, I flatted. , and I was like, like my rear tire was kind of bouncy and I could feel the rim. And I was like, really? This is so stupid. So then Tyler went, he did 1500 watts and he got third. And then I took Lance to the line. Like I, I made him fight for it, but I, I got fifth.
So, not a bad
[00:05:44] Craig Dalton: result. You would've thought with all that negotiating to try to get an access battery, you wouldn't even be part.
[00:05:50] Ian Lopez de San Roman: The event. It wasn't a very, I didn't have very good luck that day. Like right after the race, me and like Stan and a couple other people went and rode around and then like we rode up the old low gap finish and then like my friend Taj was like next to me and then he like got too close and hit my rear brake going or my front brake going like 20 and then I crashed and flooded my other tire on the front.
And then, It was always like lying on the ground with another flat tire, like after the race. And I was like, what am I doing? So then like a log a truck with some logs came by and then we put my bike in the back and I held onto the back like a garbage man and rode five miles down the road on the back of this truck.
And then I was like, I was just like so bummed, but whatever. Not a, not a
[00:06:32] Craig Dalton: terrible result. And best to get that bad
[00:06:34] Ian Lopez de San Roman: luck out of the way. This part of the season. Yeah. Something to improve on. And so we'll go from there and see.
[00:06:38] Craig Dalton: Let's start at, let's take a step back and just understand one, you're from Sonoma County in California, right?
Yeah. And two, you've, you were the youngest person to get accepted in the Lifetime Grand PR pre for 2023.
[00:06:54] Ian Lopez de San Roman: Yeah. Yeah. Super excited on that. And your age is? I'm 19.
[00:06:59] Craig Dalton: Okay. So at 19, how did you find the bike? Like when did you find the bike originally, and what was your progression like? How does a 19 year old find the.
with the capability and skill to race at a professional level on the gravel scene?
[00:07:11] Ian Lopez de San Roman: Yeah. Honestly, I don't really know how I'm, how I'm here, , I started like actually kind of riding when I was like third or fourth grade. Like me and my mom would kind.
Be like, yeah, yeah, we should, we used, started mountain biking. So my aunt is a pro. She went to the Olympics like twice I think. And so we always kind of, me and my sister kind of looked at it like, man, that's, that's kind of cool. And then we just we just had some like really crappy, like old bikes. And so we started kind of riding a little bit, and then there's like a local Wednesday night race called dirt C crits.
And then we I had ridden like maybe like a total of like couple days like cumulatively like a one. Not like one week, but you know what I'm saying, like seven total days over a couple months. And I was like, my friend invited me to this local race. I went and I was like, man, that was pretty fun.
And then like my sister came and showed up and watched and she's nah, never. I'm never riding a bike like that. I'm never riding a bike. And then like I kind of just kept riding from there. And now my sister's racing, cycling cross in Belgium. And I'm here in the Grand Prix . I don't know I honestly don't know, like in, I feel like we're missing a few
[00:08:17] Craig Dalton: pieces there.
So then you, you sort of, you discover it through the local dirt Cris series
[00:08:22] Ian Lopez de San Roman: at Local Dirt Cris. And then I kind of slowly, I raised that whole series and it was just like every Wednesday night you go and it's just like juniors beat down. Like it's just like a fight with ev all the juniors. It was so fun.
the bike pedler, like they didn't put like the winner got $150 gift card. It was like super cool. They, they cm c h at the time, right? Yeah. And they'd take these old like motorbike trophies and it was awesome. And so, yeah, I kind of just kept going through and then my sister and I got a coach.
Did you get, did you get involved in the Nica scene? Yeah. So we got involved in the Nika scene when I was in like fifth or sixth. I want to say like I started riding with him and then like pretty quickly, like I was always kind of riding with the varsity group and so if you've been riding with a varsity group since you were in like fifth or sixth grade, once you're actually in the Nike varsity, it's a little bit weird.
, but it must have been nice to
[00:09:15] Craig Dalton: have those older student athletes just kind of teaching you the ropes a little bit and showing you like, Yeah, you're capable of riding a 35 mile mountain bike
[00:09:24] Ian Lopez de San Roman: ride or whatever it was at the time.
Yeah. Back in the day, we barely rode it all. 15 miles was like such a big day. , it was good. We didn't have, we had a pretty strong scene, but it was like the people who were like a year or two older than me that were good, the people that were like, Older that we were actually in were, were like, I feel like the level was a little different then.
But yeah, it was super solid. We got the kind of ride like every Saturday. But from there I don't know, we just kind of rode a lot. And then as you were, as you were in
[00:09:53] Craig Dalton: high school, competing in
[00:09:55] Ian Lopez de San Roman: like a mountain bike races? Yeah. Actually now I remember. So the point where it actually got serious was like, I think it was like 2016.
, we like worked, did like a couple cycle cross races, and then we met this kid Paul, and then his dad like coached people and then like his brother Gavin had been to like Europe as a pro and then was kind of on the way out. And so then he just kinda took us under his wing and was like, , I'm gonna coach you guys.
And he was a super cool dude. He was like, well, I'm, he was like super religious and he was like, well, I don't charge you guys anything. We're coasting coaching. So I can say a prayer before the races. And he'd get you together. And he'd be like, God, what He was, he was an awesome guy, awesome guy.
Love that guy. He got us pretty serious. He gave us psycho cross drills and then we just like kind of kept going from there.. It was weird. Like I wasn't a very good junior.
Like I always followed exactly like exactly what the coach gave me, but , it like was not working. And so, it's really weird to say, but junior racing is a lot of who develops first? . And so I was like super late and so I was going to these Nire races and I was just getting likes like o obliterated.
Yeah. In every single race. And I was like, I was getting like super done with it and I was like, I'm falling all this coaching, like nothing's working. And then, , it was covid, COVID year is when I think it, like when I really got serious, it was like three years ago. And then I, I think I like, back then I thought I had three months.
of writing, and I was like, dude, I'm gonna be done in three months. And I never really thought like I actually had a future as a pro. Like I just thought, I wasn't you're not built for it. Yeah. And so, I was like, all right, like I had a really bad relationship with my previous coach. I don't really want to like, like talk trash or anything, but then I just like switched coaches and then I was like, it.
A couple months later, I was like, whoa. I'm like actually getting like faster, like really quick. And then it's just been like a, like an up from there. And , it honestly might be a good thing because like it kind of kept me hungry and I had no success. Obviously sucks to lose races, but if you're, if you're out there every single weekend just getting your face kicked in, like I feel like at some.
You're gonna, you're gonna win. And hopefully that's this year. Yeah. I think, I
[00:12:14] Craig Dalton: mean, that's part of the process, right? Yeah. We all start out as this lowest person on the ride. And you, you know, you get to the top of a climb and you're the last person there and everybody's ready to leave. And you keep doing that, you keep plugging away and next thing you know, you're not the last person to arrive at the top of the climb.
And I think that's, you know, the nature of developing as a cyclist. It's interesting in your case, like developing as a young cyclist and having to have that patience. , you know, ultimately discovering Hey, I actually am talented even though I've been getting my teeth kicked in for a few years.
[00:12:45] Ian Lopez de San Roman: Yeah, yeah.
And yeah, junior cycling is interesting. Like it's, it's funny how like a result as a as a good junior can like really land you on a team, but it's also like those kids like long term, might not be in the sport. And so, I've once I kind of figured out like you actually could do.
I kind of had the mentality like maybe I'm not the most like naturally talented, but I'll be there, I'll be there to take these kids sponsors once they burn out, or, it was kind of my joke. I don't wanna say it like that, but I'll be, I'll be there like to put in all the work and then it's all the work you don't see.
And I feel like a lot of people were kind of like, well, where did this Ian kid come out of? And it's I, the past three years, it's like I, I. Missed a day of training without being like, oh, I'm sick, or whatever. Right. So so a certain point, process point
[00:13:30] Craig Dalton: sounds like in the last three years is really when you picked up road cycling and
[00:13:34] Ian Lopez de San Roman: gravel cycling.
. I would say like more two years for the road. I I'm super green on the road. I think it like it helps that I like, I'm naturally like fit, like I have experience in the pack on gravel, like a little bit, but I've just kind of. I just I went to a couple South American like road tours and just threw myself in the deep end.
Let's get some handling skills and let's, let's go ride. And that that's super fun and I really had nothing to lose and like people down there really had all to lose, right? Because like I was just some like random American kid no one had heard of and then I was just down there having a good time.
Nice.
[00:14:08] Craig Dalton: And so as you thought about like where you wanted to go with your cycling, there's obvious. going on the road and there's sort of a process for ultimately getting into the world tour, and that may start with development teams. It may start with kind of going and finding your own opportunities in Europe.
How were you thinking about what was gonna be next for you as, as we came to 2023?
[00:14:32] Ian Lopez de San Roman: Yeah, I mean like are you asking about what my decision, my decision.
[00:14:38] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It sounds you know, in getting to know you a little bit, you did have an opportunity to kind of stake your claim and say, I'm, I'm going to kind of go down the road path full, full force Yeah.
Where there's this other opportunity to go gravel and potentially there's another one where it's kind of a little bit of
[00:14:53] Ian Lopez de San Roman: both. Yeah, yeah. What do you, what are you thinking? It's hard. Like I, there's not really a, like a, a manual for how to do this, and I'm like super on the untraditional side of this.
there's like the regular use act development path where you kind of hop around the teams and then you go race with the national team and like I've never raced for the national team. I, yeah, I would love to, but I just haven't. And so I've kind of been like, I've been under the radar and so yeah, I, I like when I went to these South American Road race,
I like I got noticed by an agent and he was like, yeah, I'll put you on a road team. So I sent him some power numbers and he got me a spot on a team. And then, is it north of Spain? And so like the road scene there is or the amateur road scene is what it was for. So it's like super high level races every weekend.
They're very underrated, like very hard races. Yeah, I had an opportunity to go there. I was gonna sit in an apartment with this like Costa Rican kid I met in Panama. And it was gonna be pretty cool. And I was pretty, I was pretty, decided I was doing that. And so, and then what happened was I had negotiated this guest ride spot for, to go to B W R Kansas In B w R or no, no big sugar in Arkansas.
And yeah, I like. . I just got picked up by the ma la team and I was just like, the vibe of the team was really good and I was like, man, you guys are making this, this decision a lot harder. And I literally had a decision to decide like that week. And you had to, you had a
[00:16:29] Craig Dalton: successful gravel season last year in 2022, right?
You did.
Yeah.
[00:16:33] Ian Lopez de San Roman: People say it was like this breakout season, but I mean I didn't even have that crazy of results or anything. I just kind. Just put my, put myself in as many races as I could. Like I basically had no sponsors. Supportful helped me out a little bit with some kits and I just was like, all right let's make a mark.
And yeah, I just got myself like I see like where I had friends in the country and be like, all right, I'll go to that gravel race. I can stay at their house. And so,
[00:16:58] Craig Dalton: and also probably fortunate that you've got the Grasshopper series in your backyard. Yeah. So you can hit all those. At this point, MIGS done such an amazing job with that series.
They're both so much fun and so competitive that if you can get your name on the top step there for the series as you did, that's huge. Like people are gonna take
[00:17:17] Ian Lopez de San Roman: notice. Yeah. I don't know. I don't, I feel like the series win wasn't that big of a deal last year. Like I, I was like, whatever. It's just it's another series when I didn't actually win the race.
[00:17:28] Craig Dalton: ,
I'm gonna have to hype you up as that is a big deal winning the Grasshopper series. And why don't you talk about some of the other races that you did and how they performed at the
[00:17:36] Ian Lopez de San Roman: bws. I switched to gravel as I was like, I'm traveling all over the country and then I have this series in my backyard that's like world class.
And so that's where my kind of switch to gravel came. And I was like, I always knew I wanted to do longer events and I realized my power profiles more built for that. And so like I switched to that. I kind of started over a year off with some grasshoppers and then I went to B W R San Diego.
And I, like I met, , Michael Marks the, the kind of BWR founder. And the story is like I double flighted the first day. I like made it like I, I closed this big old gap. I made it back to the front group. People were like, whoa, whoa, okay, who is this little kid in the group? And then, and then I like, and then I started like barfing at like hour five or six or something and I was like, gone.
Gone. And I finished like 17th. So it wasn't like a super great day. And then I. And then they hit the wafer the next day and I was like, yeah, let's trace the wafer. Like this will be, this will be super fun. And then it was in a front group, and then I. , like I hit a pothole going like 35 and no one had called it out in the group of four of us.
I was holding on my water bottle and I just yard sailed and so I like cracked my bar. I was like, I was super scraped up and so then Michael Marks picked me up off the road and he was like, dude, and like you were about to get second. And he was like super, he was like super bummed for me and so I actually it was kind of a get, I don't know, it was kind of weird, like it was that really.
That was a kind of pivotal moment in the season where he I met him, we had a really great like connection and so then we kinda drove around the rest of the day. I was like bleeding all over the inside of his Bronco and yeah, like he had kind of helped me. He was like, dude, you're really fast.
He kinda helped me get to the rest of his races. And so then I did the B W R series and then I finished fifth like overall. And so I didn't like, I didn't really think that was possible, but it was a pretty big result with. with having STNA win and then like Griffin and Brennan. So like it was kind of big names and I was like, whoa.
Like I'm really standing on the podium with Yeah. Giants right now. Yeah,
[00:19:38] Craig Dalton: that's huge. So then you decided, as you mentioned, you kind of made that connection with the La Mazda team. Yeah. You got an opportunity to race with them as an option in 2023. Yeah. Did you decide to do that before you got accepted to the Grand Prix?
[00:19:53] Ian Lopez de San Roman: Yeah, I did kind of take that gamble cuz I. . If I, if I don't get in the Grand Prix, like everyone kept telling me I could get in and I was like, I, I don't know. There's a chance I don't get in. And yeah I was kind of planning on doing most of the races anyways, except and maybe I probably wouldn't have done Unbound if I hadn't got in.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. But
[00:20:13] Craig Dalton: obviously like the, the Grand Prix creates a lot of structure to the season. Yeah, because you've got. Seven events, six, you know, you get to drop whatever that you need to focus on as you think. Does that change your mentality going into the year or do you and your coach have that kind of figured out like how you're gonna prepare for these different
[00:20:31] Ian Lopez de San Roman: events?
I think we're gonna play it like, and see how it starts out and so I don't know. I'll go in the sea with pretty good farm hopefully, and then we'll see how it goes from there. Yeah, I don't know, it doesn't really change anything. I think. I like, I think it, I find it I can kind of race into form and so I can, yeah, like I basically was doing like last, last season, I think there was like, I had six consecutive race weekends and it was just like Grasshopper, Nike race, other gravel race, grasshopper.
And it was just like back to back to back to back. And it like, I was hitting at a hundred, like after Sea Otter, I came out with 150 ctl and then, . I got one of the whatever, like Sea Otter sickness was going around that like everyone had. I got something in there and I was like so wiped out for Sea Otter last year.
It was so bad. But yeah, I don't know. I'm excited for the season. I don't really, I'm not gonna put too much oh, what's the Grand Prix? I'm just gonna treat it as another race. Yeah. Do your
[00:21:29] Craig Dalton: thing and be consistent along the way. It sounds like given your background with the Nica mountain bike racing and obviously the gravel experience you have, it's not.
A roadie going into the series being intimidated by, you know, the mountain bike style racing, the mountain, actual mountain bikes race you're gonna do. Is there anything on the calendar that does seem intimidating in the
[00:21:49] Ian Lopez de San Roman: Grand Prix to you? Obviously Unbound, but honestly I think big sugar is the one I'm like the most apprehensive about.
Cuz like this last year I went to Pig Sugar and I got six. And I was just like, so done. So I finished the race. I don't even know why I finished the race. It's just part of I don't, I don't really quit on races, but it was just so stupid. Like it was like 17 miles in. I flatted it and then I like put all my like CO2 s and plugs in that tire and then like it was gone.
And then I was like, well, and then I had tube and so I went. , I went to this Arkansas local's house. I like knocked on his door and was like, yo, you got a pump? And so I rode up his driveway and everything. So I went to his garage and I just tuned my bike up, like we pumped up my tires. And so like I had already lost like 20 minutes in the first like 17 miles of the race.
And then it was just like flat after flat after flat. And then like it was so early in the race, no one was giving me tubes. So yeah, I was honestly like a little. I'm, I'm honestly like, oh, I have to really go back to big sugar. That's like what I'm not looking forward to, but whatever it'll be. Yeah.
Maybe some tire
[00:22:54] Craig Dalton: inserts and some different tires,
[00:22:56] Ian Lopez de San Roman: man, next year. Oh, like the bike I was running, I could only fit, like I was running 30 eights that measured forties and that was like the biggest, and it was like rub on the front derailer and there was like rubbing on the frame, and so I. I'm maxed, I'm totally maxed.
And every, I was running like 45 psi, which is like, everyone was like, well, like Ste had told me, no wonder you flat as you just bounced off the rocks. And and I was like, come on. Like I'll doing everything I can. Not flat , but. So
[00:23:24] Craig Dalton: this, this season what, what is your equipment choice?
[00:23:27] Ian Lopez de San Roman: What are you riding?
I'm on the LA sla. Yeah, it's a sweet bike. It's pretty light. Yeah, I have a couple different setups. I can kind of run it. But yeah,
[00:23:34] Craig Dalton: having just helped you take it off your car, it's definitely a light rig. Yeah. It look like it could take a bigger tire than what you were describing from last
[00:23:40] Ian Lopez de San Roman: year.
It takes if you can put like a 2.5 on it, and I, I'll just say I'll never, I'm not gonna be running that ever. But , it's cool. I I have mud clearance. Yeah. If Unbounding is mud, you know,
[00:23:54] Craig Dalton: I think pros of these days, everybody likes to take a little bike packing trip, so maybe you can
[00:23:58] Ian Lopez de San Roman: get some two fines off.
Yeah, maybe I'll do that.
[00:23:59] Craig Dalton: Is there any particular event in, in the Lifetime series or otherwise that you're very excited about
[00:24:05] Ian Lopez de San Roman: for this year? I would say Leadville, like I kind of showed up last year and like I feel like I kind of showed that like I did have some potential to do a little better at that event and so I'm excited for that one.
I think I'll probably I'll, that's probably like my, that Target one, maybe Crusher and the Tusher as well. . I don't know, as I live at two level, but I seem to actually like the altitude. Like I can adjust. I think at least I think I can adjust pretty quick. And
[00:24:30] Craig Dalton: do you, do you feel like, the way you're built and the way you ride, are you, would you categorize yourself as more of a climber?
[00:24:36] Ian Lopez de San Roman: Yeah, I still haven't hit those those world tour power numbers, like the people in the, the series. But I would say I have the body type of a climber and I'm, I. I'm on the way to developing the numbers to have as a climber.
[00:24:48] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Nice. Well, it's gonna be super exciting to see how you do. I am always rooting for the NorCal guys and
[00:24:55] Ian Lopez de San Roman: girls to do well.
Thank you. Yeah, I'm excited. I think we've got some of the
[00:24:59] Craig Dalton: best training in the world, and, , you're a product of that environment. Just all the great roads and great mountain bike trails you have up in Sonoma County.
[00:25:07] Ian Lopez de San Roman: Yeah, yeah. We definitely have it going on here. Yeah, I'm super excited.
Yeah. Well,
[00:25:14] Craig Dalton: awesome. Well, thanks for coming over to the studio and if I don't see you before, I'll see you down at Sea
[00:25:19] Ian Lopez de San Roman: Otter. Yeah, I'll see you there. Thank you.
Big, thanks to Ian for stopping by and talking to us. I hope you enjoyed getting to know em, and you are as excited as I am to see how he fairs throughout the year and the lifetime grand Prix. As you guys know, I've got a strong bias to the Northern California athletes. So I'm super excited to see another one joining our strong contingent to compete throughout this gravel season.
A big, thanks goes out to our friends at logos components for sponsoring this episode. Make sure to check them out@logoscomponents.com. If you're interested in connecting with me, I encourage you to join the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. That's a free global cycling community. If you're able to support the show, please buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride or ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
This week we sit down with Carlos Perez, founder of Bike Monkey to discuss the upcoming 2023 Truckee Tahoe Gravel event. We dig into why Truckee Tahoe is such an amazing area for gravel riding and Carlos’ definition of influencers.
Episode Sponsor: Dynamic Cyclist (Code: TheGravelRide 15% off)
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the show, I'm thrilled to have Carlos Perez talking about Truckee Tahoe, gravel. Carlos is the founder of bike monkey. If you live in California or maybe in the surrounding area, undoubtedly, you've done a bike monkey event. Carlos and his team have produced Levi's Gran Fondo bogs fish rock hammer road, rally.
Wente the list goes on and on of the events that Carlos has had a hand in producing. I've had a number of friends that have done the Truckee Tahoe gravel event in the past and had a great time. So I'm finally got around to pinning Carlos down and getting him on the podcast to talk about this year's event.
They've made a couple changes to the event, which I wanted to have an opportunity for him to highlight, but all in all, it's just one of those events here in Northern California, that is well-regarded from an athlete's perspective. It's certainly taking place in a beautiful area. We'll get into why Tahoe is so special for cyclists and why it's a region that you can bring the whole family to.
On that point, we did also dig into when Carlos and his team create events. They think about influencers, but not influencers. In terms of someone on Tik, TOK or Instagram, they think about influencers from the perspective of the family that might be joining you, whether it's your husband or your wife, joining you while you go out and ride, it's always great to have a location where the whole family can enjoy the event and have an event organizer.
Who's thinking about that broader community. Versus just simply the athletes themselves. So I'm excited for you to hear about the Truckee Tahoe gravel event. But before we jump in, I want to thank this week sponsor. Dynamic cyclist.
If you scroll back your feed to episode 1 54, you can hear my interview with Sarah from dynamic cyclist.
Dynamic cyclist is a video based mobility, strength and injury prevention program designed specifically for cyclists. I am probably about 30, 35 episodes into my stretching routine and my low back injury prevention routine. My low back has been a big issue for me the last couple years, and probably the most gating feature of my body in terms of how long and how hard I can ride.
So this winter, I was definitely determined to do the thing we all should be doing, which is stretching. I've struggled, even though I've known the stretches that I need to do. I frankly, struggled to fit it in and having dynamic cyclist in my life and the 15 to 20 minute long routines available for me each night. Has gotten me focused on something easy. That I can do.
And I found it really easy to follow, and I've been impressed in terms of the different tweaks and orientations that they've encouraged me to do throughout the routines to get to different parts of my muscles. And I'm very excited about this being part of my daily routine, because I think we all know that stretching.
Is the number one way in which we can prevent injuries and make sure we're taking care of our bodies. But anyway, I encourage you to check out dynamic cyclists. They have a seven day free trial.
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To check it out, just head on over to dynamics, cyclists.com. With that said, let's jump right into my interview with Carlos.
[00:04:10] Craig Dalton: Carlos, welcome to the show.
[00:04:12] Carlos Perez: Thanks, Craig. Happy to
[00:04:13] Craig Dalton: Good. Yeah, good to see you. It took us a little while to get this scheduled, but I'm stoked to finally have you and, and get you on to talk about the Truckee Tahoe Gravel event.
[00:04:22] Carlos Perez: Yeah, it can be a little hard to pin me down sometimes, so I'm glad that we made it work.
[00:04:27] Craig Dalton: It sounds like it's especially hard to pin you down in the spring and summer months cuz with Bike Monkey you're producing events all over California and also outside of the.
[00:04:38] Carlos Perez: Yeah. Yeah, our spring's very busy.
[00:04:41] Craig Dalton: Let's take a step back before we kind of jump into Bike Monkey and into the gravel event up in Tahoe. How did you get into cycling originally? And then let's talk about how you got into event production.
[00:04:54] Carlos Perez: Uh, well, it can be, I'll, I'll keep it as short as I can. . Um, we, I was working for a, a medical manufacturer company as a software developer. And, um, my boss at the time, Russell Briggs actually, uh, was like, yo, dude, let's go mountain biking. And I didn't really have a mountain bike at the time, so I went and I bought a mountain bike and he took me into Adel State Park and I was like 20 at the.
And I was like, what the heck is this is amazing. Like, I want to do this and that. That was where I got the bug for, for riding bikes. And did that for several years. Uh, and then ultimately one day, uh, some friends of mine were around, you know, trying to do some fundraising for a cause that was important to us.
And I kind of raised my hand and said, Hey, you know, like I'd like to actually organize a bike race. And so that's where it started. And we organized a small. Mountain bike race with, you know, like one truck full of supplies for about 80 people. And um, that's kind of where the spirit of Bike Monkey was born.
And I, I got the bug.
[00:06:04] Craig Dalton: And to set the stage a little bit for people. So you're, you're based in Northern California, right?
[00:06:09] Carlos Perez: Yeah. We're based in Santa Rosa, which is in the middle. It's the biggest city in Sonoma County, uh, which actually has. roads more paved and gravel roads per capita than I think almost anywhere in the state.
[00:06:26] Craig Dalton: Absolutely. And then that that first event was called Bogs, and where was that located?
[00:06:32] Carlos Perez: uh, it was actually wasn't in Sonoma County, it was just outside of Sonoma County in little town of Cobb. In this demonstration state Forest called Boggs. and we'd gone mountain biking up there a bunch in the past, and so it's about an hour and 15 minutes outside of Santa Rosa.
[00:06:51] Craig Dalton: It's such a great spot. I mean, you talk about a riding in Annadale, getting, getting you hooked. If you have the opportunity to ride in bogs, you'll also get hooked on mountain biking. It's just so good up there and I had the pleasure of doing that event. God, it was must have been eight or 10 years ago, I feel like.
[00:07:08] Carlos Perez: Yeah, bogs. There's a, a lot of history with us and bogs, you know, we, uh, resurrected mountain bike racing there. When we first produced our eight hour event, there had been a multi-year hiatus of mountain bike racing in that space before we came along. And then that event ran for 10 or 11 years before the valley fire blew through that area and just decimated the entire forest.
And so it was off limits. Probably three years, four years at least before we were able to actually go back and host the event again, which it returned last year for the first time in, in a long while. Actually, I take that back, I think it was closer to seven years that nobody had been riding or racing in bogs.
So that was a big milestone for us to be able to go back and get back to our.
[00:07:58] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I remember the word spreading amongst my local bike community that it was back and people were super stoked cuz I think everybody has great memories from racing at bogs. It's such a fun place to ride and doing an eight hour event, whether it's solo or where the teammate is. Always just something that's special.
[00:08:15] Carlos Perez: Yeah, it really is. It's, there's so much camaraderie and hanging out and you know, taking it casually or taking it seriously. It is such a good mix of racing and fun. Um, there really, for me, there's no event that's more fun than our eight hour mountain bike races.
[00:08:38] Craig Dalton: Yeah, there's just like, you know, it's, there's an interesting dynamic when you're doing one of these events with a partner. Because you can decide, you know, the laps are typically 45 minutes or an hour in length. You can decide to do two laps, one lap. If you're tired and your partner wants to keep going, you can do that.
There's all kinds of strategy that just makes it fun. And there's rules around obviously, like how and when you cross the finish line within that eight hours that come into play. And so you have to have a little strategy in in your mind as you start to figure out your lap times.
[00:09:10] Carlos Perez: Yeah, there's tons of strategy around it. It's really cool you see people coming through going, trying to ask us like, should they go back out for another lap? And we're trying to figure it out and you know, we've got it down to a science where like, you do need to go cuz somebody's like nipping at your heels and if you don't and they do, it's game over.
You go from first to third pretty quick.
[00:09:30] Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. So that's amazing. So from that or original sort of beginnings of like, Hey, I'm willing to throw my hands up because I think I can produce an event. I'm willing to do this as a fundraiser. What was the path towards you doing it again and, and then expanding to other events?
[00:09:47] Carlos Perez: Well, I, I, after that first event, I definitely had to do some soul searching because, you know, I had a full-time job as a software developer and it paid. L. Um, but I was still young and I just, um, I saw an opportunity to do something that I was really passionate about and I had some close friends really pushing me to try and.
achieve that, and they're like, basically, we're gonna disown you if you don't take a stab at this. And so I took a big risk and I kind of threw all my chips at race production because I just loved it. I loved what it did for the community. I loved that we were able to raise money for a good cause. It just had, uh, all the good stuff around it. it didn't feel like work. So it was that second year, after that second year that I decided, you know, I need to really take this seriously because if I don't, that opportunity's gonna pass me up. And so I took a risk. Uh, I quit my job, cold Turkey, and, you know, kind of lived, uh, hand to mouth for a while, uh, figuring it out.
And then we just, it just grew, you know, what we were doing made a lot of sense. I brought on my first. . And then my second, and then, uh, Levi Leipheimer lived in the area. We were a super small production company at that time, and we were only doing some small mountain bike races and cross races, and he wanted to, he had this idea of putting on a Fondo because him and a friend of his, uh, you know, were on a ride and his friend being Italian was telling him about these amazing events that they have in Italy.
And he's like, you know, Levi, you should do that. Uh, through, again, a mutual friend through Yuri. Uh, somehow Levi came to us, uh, and, um, we said, yeah, we're, we can do this. Nobody had ever done that in the United States actually before. We were the first big grand Fondo on US soil. And, uh, well, I guess technically the second.
There was one in San Diego that had happened a year prior and no one really knew about it. It was, it was relatively.
[00:12:06] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I feel like it, it's impossible not to know about the Levi's Grand Fondo if you ride a road ride road in California, but I imagine that statement probably holds for almost the entire US at this point. It's such a popular road, grand Fondo.
[00:12:21] Carlos Perez: yeah, yeah. And it exploded. You know, we went the very first year we had 3,500 people, and it was in the heyday of Levi having, uh, he was heading into winning his third tour of California. So he was huge in California. and a very popular cyclist at the time. So it was the right timing. So there was, there was kind of that golden moment for us where we had to work really hard to do something really big and really outside of the box.
And we grew really fast, uh, like from a production standpoint. It forced us to grow up really quick.
[00:12:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah, what is, what does that look like? Just to explain to the listener and frankly myself as well, for event production, what type of organiz, what are, what are you doing at the event, and what type of equipment do you need to own in order to provide these services to something like Levi's Grand Fondo?
[00:13:13] Carlos Perez: well, you've got some event organizers that maybe are purely volunteer based and they're kind of scrapping to pull together as much rental equipment as they can and outsourcing a lot of it to produce. And then you've got other nonprofits like the Santa Rosa Cycling Club, which own a ton of equipment that they've just amassed or built over the years.
and multiple trailers that they'll use to move things out to produce stuff. every race organizer. And I, I always, I find this topic really interesting because as race organizers we do talk to each other and we share ideas, uh, on things like simple stuff like how are you calculating how much water you need to have at an aid station and what mechanism we're using to transport that water out there?
Cuz it's heavy, right? And it takes time to fill up a lot of jugs versus it doesn't take as much time to fill up one big jug. You know, how are you getting it out? That kind of stuff. The, the logistics behind the scenes, I think people, they don't have enough information to really appreciate what goes into producing an event and setting up an aid station and marking a course.
Um, but we have, I mean, we're, I'm in my office right now, which is adjacent to a, a warehouse full of equip. Ranging from course stakes to snow fencing, to stage material, to water jugs, to weight down tents, the tents, the tables, the chairs, the timing equipment, um, the arch to make stuff look fancy, and the list goes on.
We've got a lot of equipment too that we use, electronic equipment that we use for radio communications and for R F I D timing tags. and it's just a lot of weird stuff too. It's not the kind of stuff that you would see in like a typical business.
[00:15:06] Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think it's important to note, I mean, everybody, when you go, it's easy to think of like, oh, I'm just putting it together, a group ride. And when you're doing that for 20 people, there's, there's next to no infrastructure that's involved in that. But anybody who's been to one of these events, you start to look around and you see like, oh, the aid station has a table there.
And oh, there's this massive container of water that somehow got it out into the wilderness. Someone needs to do that and someone needs to provide the equipment. Uh, it's a really fascinating space and I think more and more as I interview event organizers, I'm uncovering that there are entities like bike, bike monkey in other states and other places that are carrying the load for lots of these events in the background.
[00:15:49] Carlos Perez: Yeah. A lot of people will get in touch with us and say, you know, we, we wanna produce a bike race, but we really don't know where to start. Um, and, and a lot of times it starts with the vision of what it is that you wanna produce, but a lot of times people don't, they underestimate how far into the weeds you really need to get simple things.
you know, putting a label on a, on an envelope and putting the rider's information inside of that label and then putting the stuff in the packet so that you can streamline packet pickup or the process of capturing their information in a way that, uh, makes that whole experience smooth. Because it starts when you show up.
If you have to wait two hours to get your packet because the line's too long, well, something's not right already. Little, little tons of, little, little details that you really. , uh, there's no school for this kind of stuff. That's the, I think the thing that probably is one of the most unique characteristics that all event organizers probably share is we all learn, learn through experience and through trial and error, working events and seeing what does and doesn't work.
And that's, that's one of the crucial components. You have to be the type of person that's willing to just continu. Bumble and fail and try to make corrections, and you have to stay committed to that. Cause if you're not, then you're, you're just not gonna make it. It's, it's too much learning that has to happen on the job.
[00:17:25] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. It's a big lift to put on any of these events. So you were talking about how Levi's, grand Fondo kind of was a big break in terms. Pushing you guys to create more infrastructure, more discipline, understand how to manage a 3,500 plus person event. When did gravel start to become part of the pitcher for bike monkey?
[00:17:47] Carlos Perez: Well, interestingly, we started doing gravel. In 2012, so before it really exploded, right? And it was because of Levi's Grand Fondo, Rebecca Rush came to that event as a guest and at the end of it just came up to us and said, Hey, this was amazing, and I wanna do something like this in my hometown of Keem, Idaho, but I want you guys to help me do it.
I want to do it on gravel, on dirt roads. And we're like, that sounds amazing. Yeah, let's do it. And so we actually started Rebecca's Private Idaho with her, and we ran it for two years. At the time, we weren't really a consulting company, we were in the pattern of just building our own events from scratch and putting them on.
And so we weren't structured the right. To continue to run that event. So we stepped away and let her run with it on her own. And she did that for about seven years and then came back to us last year and was like, can you guys please, please, please come back and run this event for me? Because it's really hard to do and we just need a solid team.
While over that nearly decade that passed, we did become a consulting. and, uh, we came back and, and produced it last year and we're producing it again this year. And it, it's amazing and it, it feels right at home with us and for her. And so we're super excited about it. But that was where we started our first gravel event.
And then gravel kind of exploded everywhere. And the next one that we did, um, officially was, uh, you know, Sagan Fondo, Truckee Gravel. , which takes place on June 10th of this year.
[00:19:48] Craig Dalton: Interesting. So let, yeah, let's go back to that origin story cuz I think it's so interesting. You had mentioned to me offline that obviously like being in this region, the idea of putting on an event out of Truckee had been in your head for a while. Let's talk through like. What, what transpired prior to Sagan's team contacting you, and then what was that like to get that call?
[00:20:11] Carlos Perez: Yeah, it, it's funny, I mean, I always find myself looking back and going, wow, how did the stars align for this? Like, what was it that caused us to go up and start looking around in Truckee for gravel roads to, you know, to go and ride? And it was just, uh, some rides that I had seen people. , just a couple people do.
They were like, wow, check this cool stuff out north of Truckee. And then, um, you know, that's when the gravel scene was starting to pick up a little bit. But in Sonoma County, we don't have a whole lot of gravel. There's, there's gravel roads, but it's not like you have in other parts of the state. But we also knew through experience that in order for an event to have teeth, we needed to have a place that appealed to.
the family component. So we started looking at different towns and we love Truckee and you know, we've been up there so much and it's just, uh, it's got so much going for it. It's got such a cool vibe and culture. The ski scene is amazing, but the Artisan Craft brewing at 50 50 Brewing company and some of the others like alibi and the um, the food scene and the bakery scene and the coffee scene and like the.
Stuff and the outdoor stuff, it was all just, it's just bumping all the time. So it was like, you know, we really should start exploring trucking. And so we spent some time looking around up there. And then we got the call from uh, Peter Sagan's team of people. It was actually through Osmo. Ben Caprin over Osmo reached out to us and we've been associates for quite some time, and he said, Hey, Peter's looking to, Peter and his team are looking to do an event in the US and I recommended that it be you guys because of what you're able to do around here.
And so we started talking and decided to choose Truckee. Uh, we actually persuaded them to move their off-road event to Truckee that they wanted to create and change it from mountain biking to. And that's where it actually was born. Uh, and then we teamed up with, uh, Kurt Gen Shaer, who formerly angry single speeder and now a Trail whisperer.
He's a big in the mountain bike scene in that region and big with Sierra Trail Stewardship. Uh, he was really familiar with that area and lives in Verdi. and so him and I started exploring. He drove me all over these roads. They're basically his backyard. He's also built a lot of trail up there, and we came up with the gnarliest gravel event that I think anybody had ever really ridden at that point.
We kind of nicknamed it Segundo you, you. Left Truckee and you went up into Tahoe National Forest and you went past, uh, a handful of pretty large reservoirs and you went up over Sarine Peak. This huge summit dropped down, uh, towards Loyalton. So you're getting way north now. And then we turned and we came up this trail, this Jeep Road, uh, called Badden off Canyon Road, and it was just, Freaking junkyard of people trying to ride these baby head rocks all the way back.
So we definitely, like, I think, overshot in some aspects that first year. But again, everything's a learning experience and we were exploring, but anybody who did that first Saigon Fondo event definitely earned, earned their keep
[00:23:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I.
[00:23:54] Carlos Perez: someone capable of riding a gravel.
[00:23:58] Craig Dalton: I know, I love it. I, I have a neighbor who is constantly scratching his head about gravel bikes and is like, why don't I just ride my hard tail? And he always chooses his hard tail. And he happened to do that event on his hard tail, and he came back and he was like, this thing, this event was amazing, but I don't know how anybody wrote it on a gravel bike,
[00:24:18] Carlos Perez: a lot of people did not ride that section on their gravel bike. And it was long. It wasn't like this, you know, moderate quarter mile long section of, you know, tough to ride stuff. It was probably two miles of climbing on just really technical, uh, stuff, but beautiful country and, you know, I, I'm always intrigued by what our events do to like the Strava heat maps, because prior to us having that, Nobody was riding out there like probably old crusty dudes that, you know, don't use Strava.
You had ridden out there for, you know, eons. Right. But nobody, uh, was going out there and riding with any frequency and now that place is just full of gravel bikes since that event.
[00:25:07] Craig Dalton: So the, the original event was called, was it the Sagan Dirt Fondo? Am I recalling that correctly? And so that happened for, was it two editions under his branding?
[00:25:18] Carlos Perez: Yeah,
[00:25:19] Craig Dalton: Yes. and then it transitioned to the current Truckee Tahoe gravel.
[00:25:24] Carlos Perez: yeah, yeah. Then it transitioned into Trucky, uh, well, it was Trucky Dirt Fondo, and then we rebranded Trucky Tahoe Gravel. But our short name and like the, the operative name is Trucky Gravel. Tahoe is, is part of our name because, um, There's the marketing tactic in there. A lot of people from outside of the state or even further outside of the country maybe aren't as familiar with Truckee.
So it's important that we capture the region and our partners at Visit Truckee Tahoe, uh, are also influential in the naming of it. So we have a strong partnership with Visit Truckee Tahoe. . And so, uh, last year we rebranded the event Truckee Gravel and the long form name is Trucky Tahoe Gravel.
[00:26:15] Craig Dalton: as you're talking about the event to rider from around the world, how would you talk about Tahoe as a destination? Let's set aside like the gravel experience, which I definitely wanna get into, but there may be people out there who just don't understand what Tahoe is.
[00:26:32] Carlos Perez: Yeah. Well, I mean, the lake is the first thing that comes to mind. I mean, you have this ancient crystal clear lake. that has been there for millennia and it, it is one of the most beautiful places on the planet Earth. And it's surrounded by, you know, the lake sits at over 6,000 feet. Uh, and around that basin are the Sierra Nevada mountains.
And, you know, they go up to, you know, 11,000 feet in some areas, and you've got ski resorts in every direct. and you've got mountain bike trails and hiking trails and off-road trails and climbing and hiking and you know, all the stuff that comes with being able to do something on the lake. And then you go almost any direction from Lake Tahoe and you have these other communities like Meyers and um, you know, Carson City and Reno and Truckee.
Um, you've got. more of that in these towns that live up in this area. And so the entire region as a whole has an incredible mix of every type of outdoor activity that you could imagine. And it's just, if you appreciate the outdoors, it's all there. Everything, it's all there. And it's, you know, it's, it's a populated area because of.
It's about as populated as it can get right now, especially during the pandemic. Like everyone went up there. We kind of missed our window cuz we were interested in, in getting a place up there. But that ship kind of sailed during the pandemic
[00:28:17] Craig Dalton: Yeah, no, you're, I mean, you're a hundred percent spot on. It's such a magical part of the country that if you're interested in, if you enjoy being in the mountains, if you enjoy being around lakes, it's just stunning. , and to your point, like 360 degrees around that lake is mountains and ski resorts, and there's so much beautiful terrain regardless of whether you're on a bike or on foot that you can explore out there.
One of the things you alluded to, and you certainly mentioned it to me offline very strongly, was as you think about producing events, you're not just thinking about the riders, you're thinking about their families and what the experie. They are gonna be having at these events. Can you just talk a little bit about that and why that's important to you?
[00:29:02] Carlos Perez: Yeah. Well, so there, there are a lot of different types of events. There are events that are designed for the The Racer that's chasing points, right. And they're just like, there's an event every single weekend. And. Sometimes they're just like in the event promoter's backyard, because it's easy to do that.
You are gonna use the, the local park and you're gonna put on a cross race or a mountain bike race or a road crit. And those are great for the sport of cycling as a competitive sport. Um, we always have, um, strived to produce events that are a little bigger. Chasing points. We we're always, we've always had this mantra of putting on events that are appealing to what we call the influencers and not influencers like on social media, you know, influencers on Instagram or Facebook, but the influencers are my family members, so my kids, my.
They might not race their bikes, they might not be able to participate in this event that I wanna go and do, but there's something in it for them. When you do it in a place like Truckee, or you do it in a place like the Wente Scout reservation, or you do it in a place like Carson City or um, you know, you name it someplace, that has a lot more going on for it.
So I can be out racing my bike for four hours. and they might wait for me. They might go out to an aid station or they might just go shopping, or they might go get on the lake and wait for me, or they'll see, we'll see you at the brewery. Uh, we'll see you at the climbing gym. Uh, but then there's the before and after as well.
So we stay there for multiple days and most people do. It becomes a destination for the whole family. as opposed to just another race that I have to somehow finagle time away to go and do that. And it's, I drive up, I do it, I turn around and I go back home.
[00:31:06] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I feel like that's such an important component for so many of us gravel athletes that are, you know, not super concerned about the pointy end of the race. We're really looking to have a good. Had a hard day out there on the bike, but also wanna share time with our families and not make cycling.
Always something that takes us away from home.
[00:31:23] Carlos Perez: Yeah. And I think that that mentality has shifted as a whole too. It's not just, it's not just, uh, that we are focused on those events, but I think the appeal has shifted over the last few years, a little bit away from racing and a little bit more towards that whole experience that you get from going and having races, and you see that.
You know, the conversations that a lot of pro-athletes are now having about, you know, I raced my bike for a while and that was important and it got me here, but I also wanna ride with my friends. Like, I started riding a bike as a kid because it was fun and I enjoyed it. And then I got serious. And being serious is exhausting, you know, it's like, it is like you can't, almost cannot have fun when you have to be so serious about bike racing and when you can let go of that a little bit at our events and not take it so seriously.
There's a lot more room to enjoy yourself. There's a lot more room to be okay not standing on the podium and riding with your friends and just being there in the moment and, and experiencing what everyone else.
[00:32:38] Craig Dalton: Yeah, a hundred percent. I took us on a little bit of a detour. You had started talking about how in that first year the course was maybe a little bit more technical than, uh, it is today. Can we talk about what the course will look like for 2023?
[00:32:54] Carlos Perez: Yeah, totally. So, um, it's changed a little bit over the years, you know, not necessarily because. It had to, um, well, I guess in some, in some ways it, it did have to, there were some years where the snow was so deep that we just, we couldn't go over Sarine peak. Right. And so the elevation ended up having to be a little bit lower that year because the snow pack was too high.
Ultimately, we pushed the event from. To a later date in June. And so we're in a pretty good spot now where unless it's like crazy snowy in March, we should be able to get over Sardine Peak. That's one of the signature high points on the courses that we design up there that um, you know, it makes sense to go up Sardine Peak.
[00:33:45] Craig Dalton: And when you're, when you're, when you're getting up there, uh, Carlos, like what kind of terrain is that climb and is it like, you know, one of these long sustained efforts?
[00:33:56] Carlos Perez: It is. Um, so once you get to the base of starting peak, you're at about 6,000 feet and it tops out just over 8,000 feet. And it, it starts off at like, you know, four or five, 6% grades. And then as you get near the top, you're pushing, you know, 11, 10, 11% pretty consistently. , you, you don't have to stay seated for this stuff, but it, you definitely are putting out some watts to carry yourself to the top of this climb.
And then as soon as you get over the top, it is just a ripping, white knuckle descent all the way down. Um, about to the same elevation in the past. This year, there's a change. We're actually extending the course, so last year we were about 64 miles in length for that. this year we're gonna be 75, and so it's, or maybe it was 67.
We've, we've increased it by several miles and we're going a lot further north towards Loyalton, and so that dissent off of Sardine Peak goes from 8,000 feet all the way down to 5,300 feet over the course. Probably 10 miles. So you just have this constant descent. It's such a reward to get that after finally making it to the top of Sardine Peak.
And then once you get to that part just south of Loyalton, you turn and you climb a gradual, really well graded and maintained gravel road. And so your return isn't like, arduous, painful journey back. You can really get into a rhythm and warm yourself up and, and keep the pace going. Pretty good.
[00:35:45] Craig Dalton: As we're coming down off Sardine Peak, is that, is it a fire road and is it, is it kind of loose? Are we, are we sort of white-knuckling scared, or
[00:35:53] Carlos Perez: it
[00:35:54] Craig Dalton: it pretty, pretty flowing?
[00:35:55] Carlos Perez: can be rutted. And so it changes a little bit every year. And what happens is we go out there right before the race, like a couple days before the race and we're cutting down trees that have fallen. We're cutting down branches where, you know, maybe there's a spot where it's really bad, there's like a lot of rocks that we're exposed.
We actually go out there and try to fix some of that stuff up where it might be deemed. Unsafe. Uh, and then we mark the crap out of it. So we've got a signed guy, this guy Cole Rasmussen, who goes out there. Um, this actually this past year, it was, um, it was an associate of his, went out there and, uh, marked the course over, over two or three days.
And we take these big, you know, it's like, it's a big deal. We're not just putting. Uh, flags in the ground or hanging ribbon in the tree. We're driving a stake in the ground and then we're putting a big two foot sign on it with an arrow for each of the route colors telling you where to go, or that it says hazard or, you know, sharp turn or, you know, cattle guard things that are important.
Um, for riders to not only be able to race safely, but also to make sure that no one gets lost, cuz it's hard to find 'em once they do. Um, and so anyway, I, I got a little off track with what we're doing out there. The course. On that diss descent off of Sardine Peak. Uh, it varies each year, but it can be a little bit hairy.
And so we do advise people like really pay attention, try to control their speed because you can come around some areas where all of a sudden there are ruts, you know, and how, how that feels. How you pucker when you're like riding next to a rut that's like a train track and you're trying to stay out of it.
[00:37:40] Craig Dalton: Sometimes you do exactly the wrong thing when you see those
[00:37:43] Carlos Perez: you look at it, that's the problem.
[00:37:46] Craig Dalton: Yep. Exactly. Yeah, I was looking at the course profile and I see that big prominent sardine peak, and then to your point, you actually looks like you descend to a lower elevation than kind of the baseline to begin with, and then you've got that one gradual bump and a few bumps, but largely kind of progressively downhill on the way back to the start finish.
[00:38:10] Carlos Perez: Yeah. Yeah. And there is. , there's one descent. Uh, after you get back up to your next peak at about 7,000 feet. That next descent, uh, is a little harrowing. Also, it has some baby head sticking out of it and some ruts and things and roots and stuff. So it's definitely like an o hv road, not, not like a gravel road, but totally doable on a gravel.
You just have to pay attention to where your line is. And like I said, we go out there every year with my beat up Nissan Titan, and we carry tools and we clean it up and get it as prepped as we can For the
[00:38:48] Craig Dalton: I imagine for people listening, there's a couple camps. There's one people like me who are like, that sounds awesome. And there are others that are like, maybe I won't really like that part of this event.
[00:39:00] Carlos Perez: we do not produce events that are easy. , we just don't, uh, there's, there's a sense of accomplishment. Having completed any one of bike monkeys races, whether it be a mountain bike race or a mixed gravel and road event like fish rock or hammer road rally, or a road event like Levi's, grand Fondo, or a gravel event like Truckee or Rebecca's private Idaho.
There is always an element of pretty extreme challenge. We have shorter routes, right? We're talking about the big route right now. We have shorter options for people that do forego having to take on some of those tougher challenges. and that option's there. And there's even time cuts too. So if you don't make it, you know, to the base of starting peak by a certain time, you're not gonna be allowed to go back over that.
Uh, we can't restrain you. You could climb over it if you wanted to, but your support is not guaranteed at that point.
[00:40:05] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And it's nice that you have the easy, moderate, and hard courses. Available for people. If you, when you think about kind of advising riders, and I know this is like a horribly tricky thing to do, but when you think about ad advising riders as to what sort of tires they should be thinking about running, what are you putting out there in the world about the the Trucky Gravel event?
[00:40:26] Carlos Perez: Well, I mean, tire technology has changed a lot over the years, right? Like it's really improved. We used to, everybody used to think that, um,
[00:40:36] Craig Dalton: I.
[00:40:36] Carlos Perez: a big tire. Was gonna slow you down. Um, that's really not the case. And, and even just the science behind it really. Um, we, we advise you guys as big as, as you want, really.
I mean, it's, uh, as long as you feel like it's fast rolling enough for you, the challenges that you're gonna see and running a small. on any of these events is that when you do get to the rough sections, you risk, uh, you take on more risk in losing control in an area, um, or pinch flattening. Uh, so, you know, and a bigger type volume tire allows you to run tubeless easier and that improves the quality of the race or the ride.
So, you know, 40 C plus, uh, you know, easily, I wouldn't, I wouldn't go smaller than that. . Um, but some people do, you know, it really does come down to preference, but generally bigger riders are gonna want bigger tires and smaller riders might be able to get away with something that might be a little bit faster rolling on some of the flat stuff.
But at the end of the day, I think the tire technology that we're dealing with today has improved so much that. you know, a good volume gravel tire is gonna be the perfect choice for this event. And we see people come out there on mountain bikes and do pretty good. Actually, you know, one of the, one of the, um, photos of the lead group on our homepage is you're scrolling down.
Actually has a dude like with that lead pack, like on a mountain bike, just going for it.
[00:42:11] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I, I mean to each their own, right. There's a lot of fast, hard tail mountain bikers out there that can keep up with the best gravel racers, I'm sure. when you think about,
[00:42:21] Carlos Perez: is like one of the most common questions that we get is like, what tire do I pick? And honestly, like the, the, it's really up to the racer. Uh, the best we can do is explain the course profile and then you have to make your own choice.
[00:42:37] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And look, I mean, I think at the end of the day, a lot of people. Just don't bother changing their tires and run what you brung, right? Run, run what you're comfortable with. There's no, no need to kind of spend money to kind of get somewhere you don't need in your home terrain. That said, I'm, I'm with you.
Like I enjoy the bigger tires and certainly on those descents with baby heads, like it's just nice to have that volume to be able to slam through things even if it's not purposeful.
[00:43:03] Carlos Perez: I think at the point where people start asking and trying to make critical decisions around tire. You're almost splitting hairs at that point. You're really getting into the, to the nitty gritty of like, how am I gonna get that little extra edge what it comes down to. I mean, unless you're on, like, you're talking about running 30 c you know, slicks on your bike, on road bike, then you know, maybe that's a little extreme, but, uh, you know, we're talking like mountain bike size tire versus like a, a bigger gravel size.
[00:43:39] Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm always like, for me, that performance edge is just around comfort and control, and I'll error that wave over speed any day of the week, even though I totally agree with you. Like the modern high volume tire is not any slower than some of these smaller tires at all.
[00:43:56] Carlos Perez: Yeah.
[00:43:58] Craig Dalton: Yeah. When we talk about sort of the racing element of this event, like is that something you're leaning into?
Is that something that you're kind of craving as an event promoter to get the fastest men, men and women around to the table and, and see them throw down? Or is that a, a secondary consideration for the event?
[00:44:16] Carlos Perez: For me, that's secondary. Uh, I've never been one of the camp to really invest in. Making sure that the professional road racer with a ton of followers is showing up at our events. I wanna make the events appealing enough that they, they want to be there. Um, and so, and there is a competitive component to these events and they often do end up standing on the podium, but I really want to cater to the families.
because that's just how my business is built. It's really built around family experience and. Yeah. So we're not like the, we're not like the lifetime events where it's just hyper-competitive, you know, super like you're, we're . You don't really read about us in Bellow news that often cuz we're not catering to that professional market.
We want professionals to come to our event and because they wanna be there and enjoy themselves, and many of them do. And we make sure they have a good time just like everybody else. And we try to put on a good event for them, but that's not our. that's not by design for us. We really are designing events that are, uh, meant for people to come and have an amazing time with their friends, with their family, and hopefully not take it too seriously.
Um, but we do a professional scoring operation and we give away amazing awards. I mean, behind me and you know, I mean people are mostly gonna see this on nut or listen. On an audio podcast, but we work with graphic designers to make these posters for each of our events, and every one of 'em is fully custom.
And this is kind of the touch that we put on giving awards away. Last year, Forte's Painter, I actually made, uh, We, we handmade, or I hand cast silver ingots because it's in the silver state and we gave away bars of silver that I made myself. That's the kind of stuff that people get to walk away with from our events.
We don't do like cash prizes or, you know, stupid metals. Like everybody's got a drawer full of metals. It's useless, and I hate giving that stuff away. So we don't do it. You know, we give you something that's like either a work of. A real keepsake. Uh, occasionally we might do like a bottle opener, but we just, you know, people have enough junk.
So we try to give people something useful for their efforts that they really feel good about, that we've put our heart into.
[00:46:56] Craig Dalton: I love it. I noted one thing that I thought was interesting. It, it, it looked like on the site that the sort of the race, quote unquote, ends at the, before the last aid station.
[00:47:07] Carlos Perez: Yeah.
[00:47:07] Craig Dalton: Is that sort of purposeful because it's unsafe to race the last eight miles, or was there other intention there?
[00:47:13] Carlos Perez: There's two reasons for it. Uh, one, uh, safety is important and you're in a very remote area when you finish. So you're finishing next to Boca Reservoir. next to a dam. Uh, part two is there. It's beautiful there. And we want people to be able to stop and maybe regroup with somebody that they were racing with before and do the high five and they get actually like a nice, uh, return back to the Riverview Sports Park where we have our festival.
and they don't have to race it. It's on a shared use bike path, and it's important that we don't have racers going the opposite direction of a mom with a stroller and her kids or a dog walker. And so there's the safety component is number one, but number two, we get the added benefit of people being able to do a pretty decent cool down ride after they just throttled themselves for 50, 60 miles.
[00:48:13] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I thought that was a fun concept as I was thinking about. It is nice to your point, to just be able to kind of reconnect with people you might have dropped or been dropped by a few miles back, and then just chill as you have a cool down and then get to the, to the sort of the end point. Just be ready to transition into enjoying the community.
[00:48:33] Carlos Perez: Yeah, and Truckee Gravel is one of the few events that we have where there is a long sustained racing portion of the event. A lot of the events that we're producing now actually have segments. that you add up over time because it's actually really fun to, it's almost like how we ride with our friends in a group nowadays is we ride and then it's like we go hit a segment and then we regroup.
and we ride together and we're bringing that element to a lot of our events and legitimizing it by accumulating segments. And what it means is that you race for a little while, but then you ride with your friends and then you race for a little while and you ride with your friends and it makes the whole experience so enjoyable because you still race, but you don't have to race the entire time and destroy yourself.
But with Truckee Dirt Fonda, we do have more of a traditional longer duration race, and I think that's important. You know, each event we evaluate for what the best experience is gonna be, and Truckee's one of those where we want people to really go out there and work hard.
[00:49:34] Craig Dalton: Fun. And final question, Carlos, around the post-race experience there, I think you mentioned it was Riverside Park. What, what is it like, what's the, what should the, uh, the riders expect at the end there?
[00:49:46] Carlos Perez: Riverview Sports Park is right next to the Truckee River. And so people that are, you know, at that park can actually walk down to the river, which is super cool, you know, and there's a path that takes you down there and it's a really beautiful area. But the park itself, uh, is a pretty neat facility.
There's lots of trees and shade and grass and. It's next to this awesome bike park that the Truckee Bike Park organization has been building over the years. Uh, Brooks Millon, uh, has, has, and, uh, a partner of his have been building this thing and it's amazing and you can. Take your mountain bike or your cross bike or your gravel bike and ride on, uh, the pump track or these features and just, it's a real cool skill building thing.
And they have events there. There's a little pump track for kids. So, uh, it's really is like a, a cycling maker. Mountain bikers make a. It's a really neat place to finish the race at and we're actually partnering up with them this year and we're gonna do some really cool stuff. Activations with that bike park that's part of Riverview Sports Park.
[00:50:58] Craig Dalton: Fun. And then is, is there, are there food and beverages available at the end there?
[00:51:02] Carlos Perez: Oh yeah, absolutely. We, uh, we always have a beer partner that, um, you know, both NA and traditional beer. So we've been working with Best Day Brewing Company, uh, and Truckee. We've worked with 50 50 Brewing Company and, you know, they're right there. Obviously, uh, that changes up every year. So we might have another partner this year.
and then we bring in some really cool food trucks to make sure everybody's fed well afterwards. I think we had three different options for folks last year. Uh, we usually have some music going and it's just a really cool atmosphere to hang out and, and kind of recap the day.
[00:51:41] Craig Dalton: That's awesome, Carlos. Thanks so much for giving us this overview of everything that Bike Monkey's about. I know we only touched on probably like a quarter of the events you have your hand in, so I definitely encourage people to go check out the Bike Monkey site. I'll link to it in the show notes. I also very much appreciate the intention that you've put into all these events and how you make.
Really a community experience in the way that, you know, I certainly look for in events. So thanks for all your hard work over the years.
[00:52:11] Carlos Perez: Yeah, of course. Craig, thanks for talking to me about it and letting us kind of tell a little bit about our story
[00:52:17] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Awesome. And thanks for getting everybody stoked on, uh, trucky Tahoe Gravel 23
[00:52:22] Carlos Perez: Is the place to be on June 10th.
[00:52:25] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Thank you for joining us and big, thanks to Carlos for a putting on all these great events over the years and B for working so hard to make the Truckee Tahoe gravel event. So amazing.
Another. Thank you. Goes out to dynamic cyclists for supporting the show. I remember you can use the code, the gravel ride@dynamiccyclists.com to get 15% off your order. They have monthly and annual subscriptions available. If you're looking to connect with me, please join the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. That's a free online cycling community for gravel cyclists.
If you're able to support the show, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride or ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated and helpful in our discovery. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
This week, Randall connects with Anne-Marije Rook, North American Editor at Cycling Weekly with an exploration of how she got into cycling and from there into cycling journalism, with fun tangents into competitive cycling, exploding e-bikes, and a bit of gear nerdy.
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[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the broadcast, I'm handing the microphone off over to my co-host Randall Jacobs.
Who's got an Mariah Rook on the broadcast. She's the north American editor at cycling weekly
randall will take us on an exploration on how she got into cycling. And from there into cycling journalism, with fun tangents, into competitive cycling. Exploring e-bikes and a bit of the gear nerdery that Randall is famous for. Before we jump in and hand that microphone off to Randall. I do need to thank this week. Sponsor athletic greens.
Athletic greens and AIG. One is a comprehensive daily nutrition made from simple, powerful ingredients. It's made up of 75 high quality, whole food sourced ingredients. Carefully curated to nourish all the body's systems holistically. As many of you know, I've been an athletic greens user for many, many years, predating the podcast. So I've been super stoked that athletic greens has been a big partner for what I do
The key to ag one is that it replaces key health products in one simple scoop. AIG one combines nine health products working together as one, replacing your multivitamin. Multimineral. Pre and probiotics. Immunity support and more, that means ag one does more for your body and saves you time, money and confusion compared to taking multiple unique products.
And that is a hundred percent key for me. I do one scoop in the morning, mixed up with a little bit of ice, and I feel like I've got some of my nutritional basis started before I've even begun the day.
If you're interested in learning more about athletic greens, go to www.athleticgreens.com/the gravel ride.
For podcast listeners, our friends at athletic greens have given us a free year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs. If you ordered today. Simply visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride to get your age. The one on the way today. With that said i'm going to hand over the microphone to my co-host randall jacobs
[00:02:35] Randall R. Jacobs: Let's talk about how you got into this particular field. How did you end up as a cycling journalist?
[00:02:42] Anne-Marije Rook: Sure. Yeah. So I was actually, uh, a real journalist before, um, not that second journalist aren't real journalists, but, uh, I did a lot heavier topics, um, you know, worked at newspapers, just straight up outta college, became a newspaper journalist, and then, , uh, at some point, I think I was 22, I started racing bikes myself, and when I did, I, I was looking for content and I realized there wasn't a lot of women's seconding content coming out of the us.
So I started kind of dabbling with that on the side. And, uh, then started riding for some different publications and eventually seconding tips reached out and were like, Let's do something. So we founded Ella Cycling Tips, which was the, the women's side of Cycling Tips. And then, um, yeah, just stayed in the field.
I quit my day job and started doing cycling journalism while still racing, and I've been doing it ever since, going on 10, 11 years now.
[00:03:39] Randall R. Jacobs: and was your educational background in writing in journalism specifically?
[00:03:44] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah, I did, uh, journalism, German and French. So interestingly enough I get to use all of that nowadays
[00:03:51] Randall R. Jacobs: Are you native in any of those other languages?
[00:03:53] Anne-Marije Rook: In Dutch. So I was born and raised in the Nets, the, the biking country, and then, uh, lived in Germany for three years and then ended up in the US uh, when I was almost 16.
[00:04:04] Randall R. Jacobs: That's quite a skill to have, and makes me think of a joke about Americans. What do you call someone who's speaks three languages trilingual, two languages bilingual and one language. We have US Americans.
[00:04:13] Anne-Marije Rook: I think a lot of people actually do, you know, they dabble in Spanish and some other languages. I think, uh, you shouldn't sell yourself so short.
[00:04:22] Randall R. Jacobs: True, maybe I'm projecting a little bit. In my personal case, I studied six years of Spanish in middle school and high school and was able to get by during a month stint in Peru. But, it didn't seem immediately relevant at the time. And so later on in life, I moved to China and learned Mandarin and actually being present and having to use it in day-to-day life just makes such a, a world of difference. And for I think a lot of people who are born in the us and who don't grow up in a household or another, the language is spoken, there's just not. That impetus versus in Europe you have surrounding countries where with different languages or maybe even within one's own country there are different dialects or different languages being spoken.
[00:05:04] Anne-Marije Rook: That's really good though. So you're a trilingual.
[00:05:06] Randall R. Jacobs: I wouldn't go as far as to say trilingual, other than in the sense of trying , a little bit of Spanish and enough, what I call cab driver Cantonese in order to be able to fool somebody that I speak some Cantonese before switching over to Mandarin.
[00:05:21] Anne-Marije Rook: That's, I mean, that's pretty impressive. Those are really difficult languages. I never studied, uh, Cantonese from Mandarin. I, I studied Japanese and just having to learn a whole new way of, of writing, uh, is, is, yeah, it's difficult to do.
[00:05:34] Randall R. Jacobs: that's probably the hardest part. I would say that , Mandarin the scripts for sure. It's a very abstracted pictographic script. To be able to read a newspaper, you need, two, 3000 different characters and to have a higher level of sophistication, you need 5,000, 10,000 characters. And, even a native speaker. , especially in this day and age, we'll have difficulty remembering how to write a character.
Cuz everything is being tight.
[00:06:00] Anne-Marije Rook: Hmm.
[00:06:01] Randall R. Jacobs: But on the other hand the grammar is really simple.
So in English we say, yesterday I went to the store and we have to go and we conjugate it as went, which actually comes from an entirely different language family than to go.
and in Chinese you just say, ah, yesterday, go store.
[00:06:20] Anne-Marije Rook: Ah, yeah.
[00:06:21] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. English also has way more synonyms because it's such a hodgepodge amalgamation of other languages, whereas Chinese also has external influences, but it's arguably more insular versus English.
You have Germanic, you have Latin, you have Greek, you have various forms of cockney and so on that are all in there and the occasional Chinese phrases, very little that comes over for Chinese. Uh, one example being longtime nok, which is a direct translation from the Chinese
[00:06:50] Anne-Marije Rook: Really, that's fun.
Here's the thing I I discover with my language skills or lack thereof, is that, um, learning all the bike parts, for example, I had, like, I never learned those in my native tongues. So like suddenly I had to learn like, oh shit, what's the railer or what's, what's the railer hanger in Dutch or in German or whatever.
And it's been fun learning those terms for the first time, even though, yeah, I grew up with that.
[00:07:19] Randall R. Jacobs: that's actually a common phenomenon and one that I definitely resonate in my own experience too. I have friends who were born in China, but largely grew up here or even who came over to go to college. And, they're native speakers. I'm not at that level but I will have terms that I know that they don't because I am in this highly technical context of the bike industry of manufacturing, materials and production processes and so on. Um, and so it's kind of the same, same sort of phenomenon.
[00:07:50] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of a fun thing where I was like, wow, I never learned any of these terms in those languages. Yeah,
[00:07:55] Randall R. Jacobs: So you've been doing cycling journalism for, you said about 10, 11 years now.
[00:08:00] Anne-Marije Rook: yeah, yeah. It's been a minute.
[00:08:02] Randall R. Jacobs: I'm curious to hear more about the project at Cycling tips. How'd you get brought into that and, and how did that come about?
[00:08:09] Anne-Marije Rook: So they, uh, I think they found me on Twitter. Uh, Twitter was really where. , um, women's cycling was, was living for quite a while cuz there was very little streaming and you can watch any of these races live, so you followed them online and Twitter had a really wonderful community of, of women's cycling fans and it still does to a certain extent, but yeah, that's where it used to.
Live and I did a lot of, you know, uh, I would watch races and Life tweet and, you know, uh, was pretty active on, on Twitter and um, was writing for Podium Cafe, which is a nation site at the time, and they were looking to start a women's cycling component. Uh, and so they like reached out to various people and, you know, did a job interview and, you know, got going that way.
[00:08:54] Randall R. Jacobs: And this was when? Who was there at the time? Kaylee and James and,
[00:08:59] Anne-Marije Rook: No, this was before Kaylee. Um, this was, it was just, uh, Matt dif and, and Wade.
[00:09:05] Randall R. Jacobs: Oh, okay.
[00:09:06] Anne-Marije Rook: Um, Andy was there already, and then it was Jesse Braverman and myself who came on to do the women's cycling.
[00:09:12] Randall R. Jacobs: Let's talk about women's cycling for a little bit. what are the areas in women's cycling that you find most interesting, most compelling, and that also you think that are maybe, under discussed underreported.
[00:09:23] Anne-Marije Rook: Oh yeah. The nice thing about women's cycling is that it's been growing so much in the last 10 years or so, so that it's uh, people get to see it a bit more and I think what. , uh, intrigue me about women's second from the get-go is just how aggressive the racing is and how, um, while there was a definite period of like modern force dominating, and then we had and then we have anique.
The nice thing about women's acting, I think is because it has grown so much is that you never really know who's gonna win. and it makes a racing very exciting. Cause it, it, like I said, it is so aggressive cuz the races are shorter, so you have fewer opportunities to make, you know, a break stick. So there tends to be more attacking and, uh, you, you don't really experience that unless you're watching it.
I think the nice thing about. Where we are now, we can actually watch in the Tour de France Femme showed this, like watching women's cycling is actually very entertaining. And you know, in France alone, like millions of people tuned in every single day. So it is, it's different and I think that's, uh, something we should celebrate.
rather than point out like, you know, women's cycling is, is men's cycling, but in shorter distances, and that's not at all true. I think women's cycling is a bit of its own sport in, in terms of tactics and the way the races play out. And, uh, in psycho cross especially, that's been very apparent. You know, people have shorter attention spans.
So if you can sit down for a, you know, a 45, 50 minute bike race, you'll see basically what women's cycling is like on. On a heightened level, and it's extremely entertaining. You don't know who's gonna win. There's a lot of good candidates and, uh, it's, yeah, it's aggressive from the gun.
[00:11:03] Randall R. Jacobs: At least in the us it seems that women's cyclocross racing was most prominent, most early. Mary McConnellogue is one example I remember from my racing days, I don't remember hearing as much reporting about women's road racing at the time.
Maybe that was just what I was tuning into, but cyclocross. I remember getting similar billing to men's cyclocross
[00:11:24] Anne-Marije Rook: yeah, I think the, the heyday of women's cycling really was the 1980s, early nineties. You know, we had the course classic and we had some, some really great names. Um, and. That has dwindled down. There were a lot of lack of races. Uh, we've had some great road racers in the US you know, with, with uh, Christian Armstrong and, uh, e Evelyn Stevens, and we've had some really Mara Abod and the Jro, like some really great road racers.
You just don't hear about 'em as much . I do remember a particular race where I like looked to my right and it was like Kristen Armstrong and I looked to my left and it was Evelyn Stevens and I was like, ah. This is gonna suck today, It's gonna be a fast one.
[00:12:04] Randall R. Jacobs: Let's talk about that, let's talk about you're racing background.
So you mentioned that you got into cycling in your early twenties. How did that come about and what was that like for you?
[00:12:13] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah, so I've, uh, coming from the Netherlands, I've been a bike commuter since I was, I don't know, six. Uh, and so I just like grew up on the bike. It's just how I got around. And in college I just rode everywhere. And there were a couple times where people were like, Hey, you should maybe consider. Racing or, or doing like, you know, grand Fonds or something.
And I was like, ah, this is just my vehicle. And then, uh, I moved to Seattle and did the Seattle, the Portland, which is uh, like a 220 mile bike ride between the two cities. And there were some teams that were doing it. And, uh, you know, again, people were like, have you considered racing? You're pretty strong.
And I'd be like, no. I mean, it's kind of like, Hey, do you like driving? You should do nascar. You know, like it's, it was just such a foreign concept to me. Um, which is funny cuz I grew up in the Netherlands, but like, uh, and my grandpa was super into bike racing, but it wasn't, uh, ever like, exposed to me or con like, wasn't just like, oh, you like riding bikes, you should become a bike race.
It just wasn't a thing. It wasn't really a, a sport I was exposed to, uh, in the northern part of the. . And so I was kind of intrigued and, and I had enjoyed training for the 200 mile event, so I, I went to the, the tryout, so to speak, and start racing and. as a Cat four. And I remember my first race weekend was a double header, so Saturday and Sunday and Saturday I, I think I got eighth and I got, I was like, oh, okay, this is cool.
Top 10. And I was like, I wonder if I can get better. And the next day I got fifth. And, you know, that's, that's all it took for me to get super into it and trying to see where, where I could take it. And, uh, I think I was racing UCI like the next season.
[00:13:54] Randall R. Jacobs: Oh wow.
[00:13:55] Anne-Marije Rook: mostly, uh, or at first in cross and then, uh, road and track as well.
But um, yeah, it's, it's an interesting place to be in, in, in the US in that you can be racing as a pro. And I use pro here very loosely because it's called pro level, but no one's actually getting paid to race their bikes. Like I would never consider myself a pro. Uh, I just raced in the UCI one, two levels and it's kind of weird that we throw it all.
Um, when really, yeah, very few people are actually getting paid to, to race their bikes.
[00:14:29] Randall R. Jacobs: I definitely fall on that boat as well. I think my best season, I didn't quite break even as a, as a Pac fodder Cross Country Pro. Mid pack was pretty good at the national level. And then you have a good regional results here and there.
[00:14:42] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a good season for me, like, I loved crits, so that's where the money was at for me. You know, if I walked away with three grand at the end of the summer, I, I was pretty stoked.
[00:14:51] Randall R. Jacobs: Oh, I never saw that. That sort of money and crits, crits always terrified me. There's a certain attitude that you have to have going into a crit, like a fearlessness that I, I dunno. Mountain biking always felt safer for me.
[00:15:03] Anne-Marije Rook: It is, it is. And I, I quit racing after getting injured too many times. Like you can only hit your head so many times and, you know, if, if I list my, my laundry list of injuries, it's, it's definitely evident that, uh, yeah, quit racing is, is rather dangerous and asphalt is hard. And, you know, trees don't jump out on you.
Where's Razor Smith?
[00:15:23] Randall R. Jacobs: Yep. And pavement is like sandpaper when you're skidding across it in spandex.
[00:15:27] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah. There's not a lot of protection there. Um, but it was all, it was all good fun. And you know, I, I wish I'd gotten into it earlier in my life, but I had a, a lot of fun during my twenties and early thirties.
[00:15:38] Randall R. Jacobs: what'd you love about it?
[00:15:40] Anne-Marije Rook: Uh, I liked the, the challenge of like the, the personal level, like how fit can I be? How strong can I get? Um, and then there's the direct correlation between what you put in that, that you get out, um, and then. Especially with crit racing. I liked, uh, the team tactics. I liked the aggressiveness. Like I was definitely that area that went like super hard on the front, on the first lap, just trying to get as many people off the back and then like would go for pre after, pre, pre and then in the last two laps found that I had no legs left and someone else had to finish it up.
But, um, Yeah, I, I like the aggressiveness. I liked, I, I'm really a team sports person, and I think road racing, uh, doesn't get enough credit for the team sport that it is. And I think, like, personally, not to get on like a, a whole nother side spiel, but in, in
[00:16:27] Randall R. Jacobs: No, let's do it. Let's do it. Go there.
[00:16:29] Anne-Marije Rook: In Olympic racing, like why does only one person get a gold medal?
Like in soccer? The whole team gets a gold medal. And I think, uh, you know, road racing especially is such a steam sport that everyone should be getting a medal. It's only, you know, six or seven medals versus 11. So,
[00:16:47] Randall R. Jacobs: I mean, that's one of the, that's one of the things that's nice about the grand tours. There's lots of ways to win. There's the points, there's the stages, there's the gc, there's the most aggressive rider, so something more subjective. there's all these different ways in which to be acknowledged, but I'm definitely with you.
It would quite a feat to show up at an Olympic level road race. Solo and
[00:17:09] Anne-Marije Rook: went away. Yeah.
[00:17:11] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Yeah. No one to defend you, no one to pull you up. You'd have to be very, very lucky. And also be doing a lot of riding on people's wheels the entire time
[00:17:20] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah. And I think as a racer I enjoyed that. You know, I enjoyed the team aspect. I enjoyed the, the collective effort it took to, to win the race. Sure, one person was the first across the line, but it took all of us to, to get that person there. And like, there's, to me as a, as a racer, there's a few things as as beautiful as, as a well executed, uh, lead out at the end of the race.
You know, like where everyone has a role every. You know, executes it perfectly, like a little team train. Like the, those things don't happen very often on the, on the non, you know, world tour level. And it, it's really, it, it feels amazing as a, as a racer to be part of that.
[00:17:56] Randall R. Jacobs: I've had limited crit racing experience and you note about the intensity of it. There are a few things more intense because not only do you have the, the digging really deep, not just at the end, but every single time a gap opens up or every ti single time there's a break and it's such a short, tight circuit, and a short duration of an event that you really can't let anything open up.
And people can sustain a lot more over 30 minutes to an hour than they can over the course of a four hour road race or a long gravel race . And there are curbs and there are other people and there are bottles and there are people taking shady lines. And that person who just passed you is on a trajectory where there's no way they're gonna be able to come around the corner without hitting the outside curb on the other side.
Especially at the early levels like cat four or cat three, where you have strong riders coming over from other disciplines. and just don't have the chops.
[00:18:50] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah, I did a, I did a, a number of, of races in, in the men's field just to get more, uh, racing my legs. And, you know, the, the groups tend to be bigger but also very varied. You know, I'd be running around the course with like 80 dudes and maybe two women in there and be like, terrified of, of the experience.
And at the same time, like that, getting that chariot effect, like having that many people around you, you're kind of just like, Kind of going with the flow and, and being dragged around the course, which was kind of fun too. But I think it's a pure adrenaline rush and I feel like I'm too old for that now.
trying to hold those kind of efforts. My heart rate doesn't go up that high anymore. I mean, it used to go up pretty easily over 200 and I think now I'd be on the sidelines vomiting if I had 200,
[00:19:33] Randall R. Jacobs: that's almost hummingbird level
[00:19:36] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah, yeah. You know, young and fit. . Yeah, I miss that. I think I miss being that fit. I do not miss having to put in the kind of effort to be that fit.
[00:19:45] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and more recently you've been doing a lot with gravel. is most of your riding gravel at this point?
[00:19:49] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah. And I've always done gravel, like back when we just called it road bikes off road, you know, there wasn't any special gear just riding 20 threes over gravel and, uh, I've always liked gravel and adventuring. I've always liked being underbid. Um, so I've been doing gravel for a long time and I think, uh, I've definitely, since quitting, uh, racing, I've done mostly off-road.
I think nowadays if I have like two hours to kill, I'll most definitely ride through the forest rather than go on a road ride.
[00:20:19] Randall R. Jacobs: You're based currently in Portland
[00:20:21] Anne-Marije Rook: portland,
[00:20:22] Randall R. Jacobs: yeah. So you have fantastic outdoors right out your door in the Portland area and decent bike infrastructure as well,
at least by, by our US standards.
[00:20:31] Anne-Marije Rook: yeah. I mean, I chose, so I live in a, in a neighborhood called St. John's and I, I chose that specifically cause I go over across the bridge and I'm in the, in Forest Park, which is a, uh, a really big, and I think the long shill, there's 30 miles or so. So it's like, it's a, a really big forested area with gravel roads.
Yeah, I'm, I'm there all the time. Uh, I also really got into mountain biking after I quit racing. So, you know, like all, all Mountain, uh, I used to do mostly XE and definitely been working on my skills and, uh, since quitting. Uh, just it's nice to be away from cars. I think the gist of that.
[00:21:07] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, I think that, in addition to the exploratory element of it, is one of the things that led me to transition to primarily gravel riding . And I do think it's a major reason why gravel cycling has taken off in general.
Not only are the bikes really versatile, so if you're only gonna have one bike while you can do all these different things, but then also I remember reading a. Some years ago a university study that was looking at the reasons, that people cite for not riding more. And safety is always number one by.
I think that study was maybe eight or nine years ago, so in a few places the infrastructure has gotten a little bit better, but still not enough.
And the attitudes of drivers. Have gotten better, but , still you get out of a certain zone of safety and you still have people angry at you for being on the road.
[00:21:58] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah, I mean, like as a lifelong commuter, I, I've been hit quite a few times. I got hit twice during the pandemic alone, uh, while riding around town. And so, uh, It is the sa Yeah, I understand. The safety team. The thing a hundred percent, like you don't, uh, wanna take your life in your own hands when you're out riding.
And, uh, it, it's, it's a big problem in the US that the infrastructure is still so lacking. And on one hand you're telling people to, you know, go get on your bike and be more sustainable and healthy. And at the same time, they're not offering a lot of, uh, insurances in terms of, you know, uh, infrastructure and whatnot to, to make that.
[00:22:34] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Now I'm, I'm curious as a journalist, what have been some of the areas that you've found most interesting to report on or that, you know, you've been able to dive into as a consequence of having that credential?
[00:22:46] Anne-Marije Rook: Hmm. Uh, I'm, I always love people. I, I, I like to know what makes them tick. You know, especially those people on, on like the, the very top end of the sport. Like what makes 'em tick? How, how are they able to do this? And at the same time, uh, this year, one of the things I've been really interested in is, um, ebi.
in terms of like the, the regulations around, um, lit I and, uh, batteries and, and the, the fact that there's so many fires and then the legislation around it and wish there is none yet, but that's coming. And so, uh, looking into a bit more of where these bags are coming from and, and what it takes. To control these, these devices a bit more has been very interesting.
And it's not something that gets a lot of rates or gets clicks and whatnot, but it's something I find very interesting cuz it'll have a lot of, uh, repercussions I think in, in the next couple years as to which eBags are on the market, which products you can and cannot buy. And, uh, hopefully the safety of it all.
[00:23:50] Randall R. Jacobs: What are some of the things that you've uncovered in that exploration?
[00:23:54] Anne-Marije Rook: Well, the fact that there is absolutely, at the moment no legislation whatsoever, uh, for the consumer. So you can buy whatever you can find on the internet, and there's, there's no guarantee that it's not gonna set your house on fire. There's no safety around it, and that's, that's changing right now. New York City is currently, uh, considering banning the sale of secondhand or, uh, like.
Uh, tested products, which would have massive repercussions cuz there's like 65,000 delivery workers in, uh, New York City alone. And these people are mostly relying on e-bikes to do their jobs, right? It's their livelihood. And so the moment you, you control these products, uh, it'll have a financial impact on these people as well.
Well, third party testing and safety device. It costs more on the, on the manufacturers and therefore it'll have a higher price tag, price tag for the consumer as well. Um, but at the same time, you know, they ha are also dealing with 200 fires already this year. Um, specifically
[00:24:56] Randall R. Jacobs: just the city of New York.
[00:24:58] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah, just the city of New York relating to um, e mobility devices like E-Bikes, ESCOs, hoverboards, e Unicycles, that kind of stuff, which is a lot, you know, that's a lot for one city, specifically around these mobility devices.
[00:25:12] Randall R. Jacobs: Sure, especially when you have such immense density. So a fire in New York City is not a standalone house that's oftentimes a building with dozens of families and a lot of people get displaced.
[00:25:24] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah. Luckily they've, they've only, I should say that in, in quotation marks, they've had six fatalities and, and over 130, uh, injuries related to those fires. So, relatively speaking, that's not a high number, but it's, it's something that could be prevented with proper legislation. So I think for me, what's interesting is just like, The, the, the concept was that you can just import products that don't get tested and, you know, people will buy 'em because it's popular and it's, it's, uh, affordable and, and there's a reason, you know, items cost as much as, as they do and, you know, as, as someone who, uh, creates consumer goods.
So, yeah. Anyway, that's, that's a long wind winded way of saying that's been a very interesting, uh, passion project of mine.
[00:26:07] Randall R. Jacobs: well, on that particular topic, I know that there's, there's also kind of a cultural backlash against, say, in New York City, these e-bike, service providers out doing deliveries and if you look at who it is that is taking on those jobs, generally immigrant, , generally it's the first opportunity that they have in order to survive and make a living, getting a foundation here.
So it's not as easy as simply, we're gonna band all these things , it's some, it's somebody's livelihood.
[00:26:35] Anne-Marije Rook: And like as you said, it's a, it's a culture issue. It's a class issue. It's, it's not, not as simple as like, well, these items are unsafe, so we'll just ban them.
[00:26:45] Randall R. Jacobs: And that, kind of speaks to, broader issues , that we could talk about in the bike space. Like we have this concept of a sidewalk bicycle, a more pejorative way of saying it would be a, bicycle shaped object. So these are, bikes that are generally built to a very low standard, generally sold through non, specialty retail , poorly assembled, and even if they were well assembled generally of parts that are of questionable quality.
So poor breaking things like this, and they aren't required to. Hold up to the same standards as a bicycle that you buy at a bike shop that is designated for commuter use or other sorts of use. And, in the more premium end of the spectrum, which for a lot of people who aren't cyclists, would be any bike that's more than three, $400.
There's detailed, is. International standards organization criteria for testing that. But that's another example of the same thing where, well, you could require that all bikes be built to a certain standard, but then new bikes would be inaccessible to lower income demographics.
Though frankly, I think another outcome of that would probably be that you see more refurbishing of better quality. older used bikes and so that could be a net positive, especially given that they're likely to hold up a lot better.
[00:28:01] Anne-Marije Rook: Mm-hmm.
[00:28:01] Randall R. Jacobs: So, so that's another area
[00:28:03] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah, I mean to that, like, I could ask that a lot and, and we've, we're about to enter another recession. Um, it's, it's apparent in another country already and, and we're headed that way as well. And, and so a big topic becomes budget bikes, like how much do you spend on a bike and new bikes that are. of a certain budget , I always tell people, go, go shop for a, a used bike and, and refurbish it. You're, you're better off than a cheap brand new bike. And there, I think for a long time there was this, this rather like attitude towards buying secondhand. , uh, products, especially, you know, around carbon bikes, like people were worried that they were broken or cracked, and I think there's a huge misconception around carbon, specifically in, in terms of the strength and like a carbon bike, if it doesn't, if it's not cracked, will last you an entire lifetime.
Like, they don't deteriorate. Like, you know, metals will cor. And the restin in carbon doesn't necessarily break apart. Like if maintained well, a carbon bike will last you a lifetime, the end, right? You sure it breaks and you have to maybe get it checked over by, uh, an expert. But I think, uh, now that we have been in this carbon age for a bit longer, there's, there's nothing wrong with a used carbon bike
[00:29:23] Randall R. Jacobs: I think that that is often true. There's a couple of challenges there though, with a metal bike, if there's something wrong with it, you generally see it unless it's cracking. Uh, and, and even a crack, you'd be able to see, but you'd be able to see that with a carbon bike too.
But what you wouldn't be able to see is an impact that causes delamination in a tube but doesn't result in visual cracking or damage. The construction has gotten much, much better, so they are vastly more reliable, but there's been this push for, as light as possible, which means there's not a lot of buffer and there's a lot of higher modus carbons that are not as impact resistant. So I agree with you that the concerns are overblown. but at the same time, actually this is something that, was talking to, Kaylee Fretz about when he was on not too long ago.
The merits of metal bikes, and I think that. Especially on the more economical end of the spectrum, it would be great to see more, steel bikes.
[00:30:19] Anne-Marije Rook: Oh, for sure. I love, I I myself, steel roadie. I, I think I would love to have a titanium bike for sure. Um, I just think that from a sustainability point of view, for the last, I don't know, 10, 15 years, we've been cranking out one carbon bike after another and they're not being recycled, uh, because. Well, you can, but it's very, very cost prohibit, pro prohibitive to, um, try to get around the re resin and recycle that carbon.
And so I think I would rather see some of these older frames be picked up and, and reuse in one way or another. Um, you know, slap a new group set on and it's a good bike. I'm also. , um, privilege in that. In Portland, we have a great company called Ruckus Composites, and they for, for fee, but it's not a significant fee.
They will scan your carbon frame to make sure there aren't any, uh, cracks or whatever that, that you can't see, um, simply with your eyeballs.
[00:31:17] Randall R. Jacobs: That's a great service and one that if anyone has access to, especially if they're buying secondhand or if they've crashed, absolutely worth it., the cost of not doing it is, potentially nothing or potentially catastrophic
[00:31:29] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah. Yeah. And I think I'm, I'm more worried about people buying these really cheaply made. Carbon bikes cuz they're like, it's carbon and it'll be good. And I'm like, there is such a thing as bad carbon and uh, budget bikes that just, um, yeah, they, they don't stand the test of time. Whereas good carbon bikes will, like I said, last your lifetime, uh, obviously.
You know, metal is, is, this is the safer bet. But, um, yeah, we, we just have so many carbon frames out there right now, and I just don't, don't see them being used, uh, ending up in landfill. I don't know. I think that's one of the things that if I could ask the industry to do anything, it's to be a bit more, uh, sustainable in, in what they crank out and, and looking for the opportunities to recycle some of the products that they create.
[00:32:14] Randall R. Jacobs: There is talk about this within the industry. Craig was at the people for Bike Summit and there was a lot of talk around sustainability. It may have been more around packaging and the like, being discussed there. some of this is, the facilities haven't existed.
So carbon recycling, for example, you need specialized facilities. fortunately there's new, ways in which recycled carbon can be utilized cuz it is a degraded material, right? So you're not going to get the long pure fibers that you're getting purely homogenous, resin with and so on.
So you need to be able to create forged carbon components and the like, and you're starting to see that, um, That whole recycling infrastructure, like all recycling infrastructure, for the most part in this country, is not keeping up with the sheer amount of stuff that we're creating and discarding.
[00:33:04] Anne-Marije Rook: No, absolutely not. And uh, I think especially after. You know, uh, right before, um, gravel got real big, I think the industry was just sitting on, on thousands of, of car, like mid-level carbon bikes with, with 10 speed group sets. And luckily in some ways, luckily the, um, pandemic created, um, this, this delay in, in, in the.
Um, in, in getting new components. And I think that that forced people to go back and be like, can we use this nine or 10 speed group set? And there's an interesting amount of, of nine and seven speed groups that's on the market right now that just like got picked up cuz they were laying around. And uh, you see those especially in, in, uh, super adventure bikes or e-bikes where they use older group sets.
And I think it's great cuz we, we need to use the, the things that we've produced.
[00:33:55] Randall R. Jacobs: you've been following some of the supply chain changes.
[00:33:59] Anne-Marije Rook: of course. Yeah. I mean, that's been the story for the last few years for the industry and, uh, it, it is a struggle. I, I can't imagine being one of those businesses that, that relies on. Uh, you know, uh, pretty much anything at the moment. But, uh, seeing, see, I think it's, it's really fun to see some innovations happening around, um, using the stuff that we already have.
And, uh, there's a lot of, you know, maybe I'm just a super bike nerd, but a lot of different ways you can get more gears out of a you a seven speed trailer or like, you know, using micro shift and, and using all the different. uh, like innovative, uh, little handy tools out there to, to make what's old, new.
[00:34:44] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, a hundred percent with you there. And some of the organizations that we've sought to support, as a company have been around taking old bikes and making them new again.
[00:34:53] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah. And down to sh shifters, I've been seeing a lot of those and, and just like old friction shifters being used again, which I thought was very fun because, uh, it's a cheap way to build an adventure bike. You know, you just go with, with, uh, , straight up brake levers, no shifting in the, in, in your handlebars, which leaves more room for bags and whatever else.
And then, um, little bar end shifters or shifters, which never thought I'd see those come back again.
[00:35:18] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, also provides a lot more options in terms of what you can spec, because there's really only three major players in that space currently. STR and Shao being the dominant two.
[00:35:28] Anne-Marije Rook: What, uh, what's the coolest thing you've seen done with a, with a thesis?
[00:35:32] Randall R. Jacobs: We did have a rider do this really stunning, metallic flake paint job With a painter out of the Boulder, Denver area. So those sorts of customizations have been neat otherwise. we have a lot of people who've done extended bike packing trips.
We have a channel in an online community that we help to set up which is dedicated to bike packing. So there've been whole reports on people's setups, and that's been really cool to see. One. Has become normal at this point. But I think that we were relatively early with was dropper posts.
So had a dropper post in second wheel sets. So had a hypothesis early on, that people would have a single bike for a lot of things and about 50% of people got two wheel sets and pushing 90% of our riders have gotten dropper posts.
[00:36:22] Anne-Marije Rook: Really? That's, that's a, surprises me. That's a, a large percentage of people. Um, do they actually use 'em? Like, do they get shredding enough to where you need a, a drop or post?
[00:36:33] Randall R. Jacobs: I've seen several examples of folks that have either discarded the dropper or who were really concerned about weight, and so you're trying to figure out how to swap it easily. But in general, like the typical response was, yeah, game changer. And, from, me personally, especially living in the Bay Area where there's so much fast and steep road descending, I'd used it all the time. The argument that I make is it adds say three quarters of a.
[00:37:00] Anne-Marije Rook: Mm-hmm.
[00:37:02] Randall R. Jacobs: one, you're, you're faster and more confident, less likely to crash in all of those technical or high speed sorts of situations. But then also, to be able to scoot your butt off the back of the saddle, you need to often compromise your satellite a little bit. . And so that means that you're no longer setting up your bike for pure comfort, pure efficiency, pure performance.
And so that three quarters of a pound, I'm 165, so I'm probably pushing, let's say, round up to 200 pounds with gear and so on. Three quarters of a pound is as a percentage, less than half a percent. So am I getting half a percent more efficient, on a climb because I'm in the right position? I think that that's pretty plausible.
Never. The rest of the time. So that, that's my pitch for droppers. I know that not everyone is sold on them, but I, I think that it's, uh, it is the thing that makes a bike that is otherwise really good on flat and smooth train, something that you can get really rowdy with.
[00:38:00] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah, I mean, I like to get rowdy on, on gravel bikes very much. It's, it's kind of like my, my favorite thing to do is see how far I can take it, uh, to the end I will say, uh, you know, I've, I've come around, I mentioned this to you in email, but I've come around on six 50 bees finally. That took me a long time, uh, to get, but having that actual rubber does, does allow me to get, uh, a little bit more rowdy than, than on 700.
[00:38:27] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. And I, I had shared some thinking about why that might have been, but I'm curious, what did you find different and hard to adjust to switching from 700 to six 50?
[00:38:36] Anne-Marije Rook: Uh, I think initially it was like, oh, this feels slow, and, um, You know, given my background, I, I, I liked really quick and, and fast responses and lively rides, and it felt like it did the opposite. Like it became a bit more, more twitchy, which makes for a bit more engaging. Right? But it just felt a little slower.
Um, and it just, the handling was different than what I was used to on 700 seats, which also had to do with the, the tire width that was running, you know, going from, uh, 700 by. F maybe 40 to, you know, six 50 to 47. That's a huge difference in terms of like your, your rolling surface that you have and, and how that feels around the corners.
Um, but then it got real rainy and muddy and I was riding the, this, this rather, uh, you know, Rudy Mound, bikey terrain. And that's when I noticed the difference of like, oh yeah, this really allows me to stay planted a bit better and, and, uh, maneuver these roots. . Um, I also like it, it started off like, oh, I understand this form, like a technical point of view.
And then for comfort, it is really darn comfortable to just like crank out the miles on on more rubber. And it just, yeah, it's cushy and uh, I can see now why, you know, randomers and such opt for that, that tire size. But it took me a while. I, I will say maybe I'm just old school, but um, I finally got around to it.
[00:40:01] Randall R. Jacobs: I can definitely relate to , at least the sensation of it, potentially feeling a little bit slower rolling. And there's definitely circumstances and this is, , Casing dependent as well, where, you know it very well may be, but at the same time, remember the first time you gave up 20 threes and put on 20 fives or 20 eights or thirties and how different that felt.
And it's like, I'm not getting all of that, that road. It just feels slow all of a sudden. But, , data said otherwise, but I mean, six 50 s have their place. There's a reason why a lot of racers in certain types of events run 700 by, I mean, in the case of Belgian waffle Ride in San Diego, I think people are running like 32 slicks,
[00:40:44] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense, right? Like it's if when you have that much, uh, ground to cover and, uh, a fair bit of road in that as well, I believe, um, you would opt for that. But yeah, I've, I've come around. I'm a hundred percent a six 50 B believer. Now I do think you need two wheel sets. Um, for different, different occasions.
But yeah, it was, it was a fun experiment for me. This, uh, this fall.
[00:41:10] Randall R. Jacobs: When you say two wheel sets, you mean 2 6 50 wheel sets or, or one seven hundred and one six fifty.
[00:41:15] Anne-Marije Rook: The latter. Yeah. 1 700, 1 6 50. Yeah. There's definitely days that, you know, if I know I'm gonna go long, I, I just feel like I'm. covering more ground then, then I'll do that on a, a 700. But yeah, for my, my most, like my lunch rides, that's up in, in, in the trails, that's definitely six 50 now.
[00:41:34] Randall R. Jacobs: So what else have you found surprising or delightful in terms of products or insight into the sport or, experiences you've had of late.
[00:41:43] Anne-Marije Rook: Uh, well, sticking with gravel, I think we're starting to see a, a really broad spectrum. of bikes that are either super capable, have suspension, you know, there's an increasing amount of bikes and suspension. And then on the other side, the ones that are, are really going for speed. , um, where you basically have a road bike, um, that's, that's slightly more capable, you know, so like if you wanna go with specialized, you've got the, the new s C r with the sus, the rear end suspension and front end suspension versus the crux, which is, uh, you know, a very capable cyros bike basically, and feathery light.
And I think we're seeing more of that divide happening, which is pretty quick given that gravel as a category hasn't been around for all that long. Um, and it's, it. I think it's a very interesting development just to see what people are gonna go for and how much we're we're differentiating between gravel racing and gravel adventuring and bike packing.
And like the difference now, like you can't just say gravel anymore. You have to specify whether you're talking about gravel racing or, or adventuring. Cuz those are two very different. Sides of the industry now, which is, it's interesting and it's really fun to watch. Um, and I, I think personally, I like the adventure side from a tech nerdiness a bit more because we know what a fast road bike look like and what it can do, but like, how capable can you make, um, a drop bar bike and how, like watching people bring back rigid mountain bikes and, and just like drawing on, on, uh, old technology and, and, and seeing things.
Redshift and connect with their suspension posts that, you know, remind me of Soft Ride and like it is just from a tech point of view, it's, it's, it's an interesting development and really fun to watch.
[00:43:27] Randall R. Jacobs: It's kind of like, um fashion in, in a way, like what's old is new. I mean, it's definitely radically better with, composites and wide and tubeless and disc brakes, in particular. But in a lot of ways we're riding the original mountain bikes again.
[00:43:42] Anne-Marije Rook: We totally are, we're just writing, you know, those, those spring loaded , what were they? Canadas the ones with the, the head tube springs.
[00:43:51] Randall R. Jacobs: Oh, the head shock.
[00:43:52] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah. Yeah. , which I mean future shock is that, you know, connect and Redshift is basically a soft ride. It's just everything is, is new again. And it's really fun to watch.
And I think what I geek out a lot more is just seeing what people are coming up with in their own shops and how people perhaps are learning for the first time to be a bit more hands-on and, and, uh, mechanical and. Exploring with their own setups. I mean, how many people don't know how to fix their own tire?
Uh, and I think nowadays watching them experiment and building super machines, it's, it's just really fun.
[00:44:27] Randall R. Jacobs: So given that we're kind of coming to the end of the., favorite products of 2022 and then in a general sense, products, racing. Otherwise. What are you most excited about in the new year?
[00:44:39] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah, so my favorite products, uh, some of 'em are things that I bought myself or own, like, uh, my Brompton was one I found on Craigslist, which is super random, but I. I wanted something to travel with, um, that's compact and wouldn't require me having an extra bag or anything like that. And, uh, my Bronson and I have been to the Tour de France fem together.
We've been to the Netherlands, to London, to the Sac Cross World Championships. So that bike goes with me everywhere, which was a really fun, uh, crux purchase that I didn't need, but has given me a lot of joy.
[00:45:13] Randall R. Jacobs: Are you doing a lot of long rides on that, or is it more getting around and being able to get that 20 miler in?
[00:45:18] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah. Yeah. Getting around the, it's not , it's not very comfortable. Talk about like slow rolling, tiny. Like try, try 16 inch wheels, like no. Uh, but
[00:45:28] Randall R. Jacobs: seen dispatches from people doing extended tours on a Bronson, which I've always found super impressive.
[00:45:34] Anne-Marije Rook: I mean, good on them. I like, I, I, I applaud them. I, I don't, I don't enjoy that very much. Um, but it's been a great bike to travel with and, and it's just a really silly, really fun purchase. Um, I also got a ultra cleaner for the first. Which is great for, uh, you know, the position northwest is really wet, really muddy.
Um, our, our gear gets just absolutely destroyed and so keeping it clean, uh, extends the, the lifetime of, of your components. And uh, that's really been a fun way to, um, get like that super shiny clean drive train.
[00:46:14] Randall R. Jacobs: mm-hmm.
[00:46:15] Anne-Marije Rook: Uh, and that was just a birthday present, so it's not something that was sent to me to review.
Um, and then the best shoes I had were to live, uh, much shoes. Um, they are bright purple. Uh, they look great. Everyone is always asking me about 'em, and I keep asking them to make 'em into a gravel shoe because I don't spend enough time on my road back anymore to wear them. Um, go ahead.
[00:46:42] Randall R. Jacobs: Do you love them for their styling or some other
[00:46:44] Anne-Marije Rook: No, they're, they're, they're a pure race shoe, like you're locked in.
They're some of the stiffest shoes I've ever worn, but they also are an absolute head turner.
[00:46:52] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah.
[00:46:53] Anne-Marije Rook: so it's a two for one package. Um, and, and the gravel side of things, uh, the SW RS tires were super impressive. Um, they're so fast and, uh, I've yet to flat them, which is pretty incredible given a, my, my history and B uh, just how much I've written.
[00:47:11] Randall R. Jacobs: What size are you running them in?
[00:47:13] Anne-Marije Rook: I have, uh, 40 twos, I think is when I was running last, and I, I mean, I took 'em with me traveling. Like I, I did the, uh, Finland gravel and I did not know what I was getting myself into. And, and so getting a file, like bringing a file thread, Racy Tire is a bit of a risk. Um, but they did really well and, uh, they're probably the best tires I've had in no while.
And I'd say in general, the market, it has gotten so much better. Like the, it's so easy to set up two plus tires now, whereas like even two years ago I, it was quite struggle sometimes getting those seated in your, in your garage. Yeah.
[00:47:52] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, absolutely. Though I, I will say, um, and this is a hobby horse I often jump on, um, you know, road, road, tubeless hook, less road tubeless scares me,
[00:48:04] Anne-Marije Rook: I tried to, I, I got a few to review this year and I, I tried to see if I could make them explode, but I think I reached my, like, comfort level far before, or the end of my comfort level far before the tires did. So there's that.
[00:48:18] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and then going into 2023 and this doesn't have to be gear, it can be events, it can be, personal adventures. What are you excited about coming into the new year?
[00:48:29] Anne-Marije Rook: Uh, yeah, I'm gonna go even more into gravel and attending some more gravel events. So I'm very excited to return to Unbound and to do s p d Gravel. There's talk about, uh, me and a colleague of mine setting an F K T. So there's some really fun challenges and, um, since stepping away from racing and, uh, you know, getting married, buying a house, I've definitely spent less time on.
On the bike as I would like. So getting something to train for, for me personally, is, is uh, it's kind of exciting to get back to it.
[00:49:01] Randall R. Jacobs: By the way, congratulations on those milestones.
[00:49:04] Anne-Marije Rook: thanks. It was an exciting two years of the pandemic. Yeah.
[00:49:07] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Um, well, alright, um, so where can people find you on Twitter? Uh, you're at cycling weekly. How do, how do people get ahold of you or see what you're, what you're writing about?
[00:49:18] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah, definitely on second weekly.com and then on social media Am Rook is my handle across every platform, including the ones that are popping up now that Twitter is taking a t.
[00:49:29] Randall R. Jacobs: All right. Well, Anne-Marie, it's a pleasure to finally sit down and properly chat and very much looking forward to seeing you at Sea Otter and other industry events now that that's a thing again, and we can be out in the wild seeing each other.
[00:49:41] Anne-Marije Rook: That's right.
[00:49:42] Randall R. Jacobs: All right.
[00:49:43] Anne-Marije Rook: for having me.
[00:49:44] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks to Anne Mariah. For having that conversation with Randall, I hope you guys learned a lot and I hope you do follow her on Twitter and follow her work as north American editor at cycling weekly. Huge. Thanks to our friends at athletic greens. Remember head on over to athletic greens.com/the gravel ride to check out ag one.
One today. If you're interested in connecting with me or Randall, I encourage you to join the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. If you're able to support the podcast, you can visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Or ratings and reviews are hugely important. In us connecting with other gravel athletes from around the world.
Until next time. I hope you're well. And here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
This week we sit down with Sarah Wallensteen from Dynamic Cyclist to learn more about stretching and injury prevention. Dynamic Cyclist offers a comprehensive video based stretching program designed specifically for cyclists by cyclists. Each session is designed to be completed in under 20 minutes to easily fit into our lives.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the show, we're welcoming Sarah Wallenstein from dynamic cyclist, from British Columbia to talk to us about stretching and strength training and how important it is for us as gravel cyclist. Dynamic cyclist has been around for five years, providing a video based stretching and strength training program for cyclists.
It was developed specifically because the founders. Saw the need in their lives for stretching and strength training. To support their cycling endeavors. I had a super fun conversation with sarah and i can't wait to get into it
Hey, Sarah, welcome to the show. Hi. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to dig into all things stretching. I feel like every winter period I start thinking about stretching and then forget about it in the summer period, but it's super poignant for me every winter as I'm like, What can I do to really make sure I'm gonna have a fun and productive cycling season?
[00:01:31] Sarah Wallensteen: Yeah, that's funny how that works though. As soon as we're back on our bike, we, uh, we let it go.
[00:01:37] Craig Dalton: and everybody else, everybody I've spoken to in terms of recovery, PT, performance, like they always say stretching or yoga, like it has to be part of your program and mm-hmm. , I've certainly been hung up on this as a, an aging.
Just of how to keep my performances high, and it is so often not about riding my bike more or, you know, doing intervals or anything like that. It's just about creating a, a body that can, you know, just be, have the flexibility and have the resilience. To handle gravel cycling.
[00:02:17] Sarah Wallensteen: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:02:18] Craig Dalton: Yeah. We all start off by the show by learning a little bit more about you.
So Sarah, can you tell us where, where you're located, um, and maybe just a little bit about your background as a cyclist and maybe something you're excited for this cycling season.
[00:02:32] Sarah Wallensteen: Sure. Um, my name is Sarah Wallenstein and, um, I live in Cologna, bc so beautiful cycling here. Pretty much any kind. I have, you know, the classic road gravel mountain bike shed.
Um, I grew up cycling. It's very much a part of my family's culture. Um, my parents for their honeymoon rode across both islands in New Zealand. Um, my aunt and uncle toured most of Europe. Um, so it's just, it's something that has always been a part of our family. And then as we grew up kind of seeing that, uh, in the adults in our lives, it was just natural that we would also hop on bikes and go places, and um, uh, explore that way.
So it's, yeah. Biking has always been such an important part of my.
[00:03:20] Craig Dalton: Amazing. And was it, um, when did gravel cycling come into your cycling worldview and what's the gravel cycling near you like? Yeah,
[00:03:29] Sarah Wallensteen: it definitely, it came in last. Um, so I started off on road, um, and doing triathlon when I was, I did my first triathlon when I was 12.
And then I morphed into mountain biking cuz that was the fun adrenaline while I was a teenager and I raced, um, cross country, mountain biking all through high school. Uh, gravel has definitely been, it's within the last couple years. I mean, it's exploded in popularity within the last couple years. Um, and just as roads have become more and more busy, I still love my road bike, but I love the quiet that you can, can, you can get on gravel and just go.
you know, for six hours and not see anyone else. . I love, I love that part of it. Um, cause I also come from, I did some ultra running as well and I've loved that. Just getting lost in the woods and you can achieve that on a gravel. Um, and in the Okanagan we are so blessed. We have the K V R, which is just such a nice intro to grapple of riding.
Cause you can go, um, You can go for days and you're just on railroad grade, uh, cuz it's the old railroad, uh, track. So it's no more than 2% incline . So it's just an amazing way to explore our valley. So that's the main, um, the main kind of route that I do a lot on my gravel riding on. Cuz it's just, it's e it's easy, it's beautiful.
It's fun. We. You know these amazing wood trestles that you get to go across in canyons and it's stunning and it's 10 minutes from my house, so can't really beat
[00:05:02] Craig Dalton: it. Amazing. And given the prevalence of mountain bike trails, do you in that area as well, do you tend to. Kind of under bike and explore those trails on your gravel bike?
Or is it kind of more that rails to trail type riding that you like to enjoy? No,
[00:05:18] Sarah Wallensteen: I've definitely, I've definitely pushed my gravel bike on onto single track and trying to test out how that feels. Um, I am signed up for the BC Epic this year, and that does include some single track. So I've been wanting to kind of test my , tell us how that feels.
Um, And it just, it opens up where you can go too in exploring, you know, discontinued, uh, logging roads that are a lot rock, but, uh, can get you to some cool places.
[00:05:46] Craig Dalton: What is the
[00:05:47] Sarah Wallensteen: BC epic? Um, so it's a thousand kilometer ride that takes you from merit to Furney. Uh, and it's all, they have a breakdown of what it is, but I think it's, it's 80% gravel, 10% single track, and then 10% road.
Um, So you basically have however long it's going to take you, and you start out as a group. It's not a paid race, it's just an event that you just start with a group of like-minded people and then. Spread out over the days to come . So I, it's amazing.
[00:06:19] Craig Dalton: Is it, is it a bike packing style race where you have a grand depar and however you wanna handle it, you handle it?
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Super cool. Yeah. Is your vision that you'll, you'll, um, bike pack it in the context, like you'll be camping every night or are you gonna credit card toward, is that even possible? Um,
[00:06:38] Sarah Wallensteen: you can, quite a few people especially, um, Last year it was, there was like a heat dome during the race time, which was really unfortunate.
Um, so a quite a few riders did get a couple hotels along the ridges to cool down, which is totally fair. Uh, I'm hoping it'll be a lot cooler, uh, and I wanna do it all camping. Um, okay. There's only two nights that you could possibly spend in a town. Yes. And
[00:07:04] Craig Dalton: do you have a vision for how long that'll take you?
[00:07:08] Sarah Wallensteen: Days, um, yeah, I'm thinking seven days. I'd like to do it in a week. Uh, the course record. Is free in a bit, so very fast. But I like my sleeve way too much. So
[00:07:19] Craig Dalton: sleep , I hear you on that. Well, it sounds like we could do a whole episode on that endeavor cause that sounds super exciting and I, I hope you'll keep me posted on how it goes cuz it's will do.
Fascinated by that kind of thing. But we're here to talk about dynamic cyclists. Yes. So why don't, why don't we start by what is dynamic cyclist? When was it founded? And we can go from.
[00:07:42] Sarah Wallensteen: Sure. Uh, dynamic Cyclist is, um, an online video-based program that provides stretching and strength training specifically designed for cyclists.
That's the sales pitch. That's what we are. Um, we started back in 2018 and it kind of came about in a random way. So myself and the two co-founders, um, they actually hired me on as a blog writer, um, for a site called I love bicycling.com. And I'd just come out of a newsroom I'd, I'd kind of tested the waters of journalism.
It wasn't what I wanted it to be. I was looking for an out, so this writing job came up to ride about bikes and I, uh, jumped on that. And from there, the blog. , it was kind of hard cuz it's like the end of when blogging could make money. So , they were just kind of paying me out of pocket and just, okay, we'll eventually do something.
We'll figure something out. Um, and we were just sitting around one day and just talking about cycling and what is missing in the cycling world. And it came down to both Lee and I, one of the co-founders were both cyclists and he said, I know I should be stretching. I never do, but what can we offer? In that world, can we create something that we ourselves want to use that will help us, therefore it will help other cyclists.
And that's kind of how dynamic Cyclists was born. So I took that idea and built the website and worked with a physiotherapist and sports therapist to put together the programming and record the videos and we went from there. That's
[00:09:20] Craig Dalton: super interesting. I mean, obviously like the best entrepreneurial stories.
Much very similar to that. Right. It was just like, what is missing from the world? And I think many cyclists can own up to the fact that we've been aware of cycling our, or sorry, stretching our entire lives. Mm-hmm. , but not doing enough of it. Mm-hmm. . I also find it interesting that you, you know, you started from a content perspective because I've been aware of the brand for many years, and it's always been sort of in that context of like, you're, you've been putting good content in front of me.
Clearly, like as I mentioned earlier, I think about stretching hardcore every winter and click through and you know, obviously you were chasing me around the internet with your ads for forever, and I'm, I'm glad I finally clicked through and in fact, I'll mention this and we'll come back to it. It couldn't be easier because you offer seven day free trials.
So if you're curious what it's all about, just jump in and try it. Mm-hmm. . But to put a point, a fine point on. What is the type of programming you offer specifically? It's a video, right?
[00:10:25] Sarah Wallensteen: Yes. Yeah, we, we designed it with ourselves in mind, which sounds weird, but as cyclists, you know, I've tried yoga and no offense, yoga is amazing and works for so many people, but I would get bored, and I think a lot of cyclists are the same.
We're a certain type of people that have to be on the move. Right? So doing an hour long class just isn't appealing. I'm gonna go once and then I'm not gonna go again. , what we were aiming to do and what the website is, is trying to keep that video, that routine to 15 to 20 minutes tops. Um, , it's bite size.
That's, that's doable. You know, it's funny, human nature, anything above 20 minutes and we're like, ah, I don't have 20 minutes. But , you do. I promise. You do. Um, and we wanted it to just be you. Click play, you follow along. You don't have to think about it. You know, you're targeting the right areas for you as a cyclist.
and then you're done. Then you can, you know, get on with your day, hop on your bike, whatever else you
[00:11:27] Craig Dalton: wanna do. Yeah. Yeah. I think those two points landed very well with me. Just this a, this idea that yes, yoga would be a great thing, and if I had a yoga routine, That would be amazing, but it is an hour long and I struggle with finding enough workout time for my cycling passion, let alone adding something like that in and 20 minutes is available to me.
Mm-hmm. , hopefully it's available to all of us. You can, I, I've found a little time, like if my son's watching tv, I just have it up on my phone and I do stretches where normally I might just be cuddling with him and watching a show that has no interest to an adult. Right.
[00:12:05] Sarah Wallensteen: Yeah. . Um, yeah, no, that's perfect.
[00:12:09] Craig Dalton: And the, what type of equipment is typically involved? Like what do I have to have in my home in order to successfully complete the program? Yeah,
[00:12:18] Sarah Wallensteen: we've tried to keep it as minimal as possible or things you can use that are around the house. The list has grown over the years as we've added more content, cuz you know, the more we add, the more we're trying to find new ways, new exciting ways to stretch your hamstrings.
You know, get creative. Uh, but for the stretching program, all you'll. Is just a mat or a space to do it. Um, blocks you can use books, um, a strap, use a belt, it works. Um, and then a broomstick, believe it or not, we use it as like a pole that you can do some upper mobility stuff with. Um, and that's all you need.
To get started and then a foam roller, if you wanna include the, we do include some foam rolling and, uh, release stuff,
[00:13:00] Craig Dalton: so, yep. Yeah. Yeah. I think when I, when I think about starting the program each night, I'm thinking about foam roller block and a strap. Like those are my, those are my, those are the main days.
Yeah. I do like, and I have done a little bit of broom work and it is interesting how it adds, um, just a little something, uh, additional to your twisting.
[00:13:21] Sarah Wallensteen: Activities. Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:13:23] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So it, it's, it's such an interesting concept and we talk about stretching, but why is stretching important for cyclists?
[00:13:33] Sarah Wallensteen: Yeah. This is, this is the big thing. It's, it's important for cyclists of course, but it really is important for everyone. But why cyclists specifically? Um, when you think about when you're on the bike and the pedaling motion, you're taking your muscles through a linear range of motion for one. So you're moving in one direction.
You're not going out to either side. and you're also never taking the hip, the knee, or the ankle joint to its fullest range of motion. So we're never straightening out those joints. There's always a little bend, which can c just put a lot of pressure on those muscles and those joints cuz they're not fully extending.
Um, so just what this can do, you're also taking it through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of repetitions on the bike, right? So it's, of course cycling is so good for you and it's amazing for your joints cuz it's low impact. , but you are taking it through the exact same range of motion over and over.
Um, and we're bent over, which doesn't help us, uh, especially with our modern lifestyles, which we spend a lot of time at desks driving, sitting on the couch. And then it's just more time spent with our hips crunched, our back, hunched. Um, so all that kind of accumulates to. Muscle imbalance or posture. Uh, we all know , you know, we all hunt forward, uh, slowly over time.
And it also just, it turns our quads into powerhouses and then our weak little hamstrings can't handle it and they weaken and, uh, loosen and it can just throw off the whole pelvis. It's essentially what happens. .
[00:15:10] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. It's so true. I mean, if we just, if you're out there listening and you think about how many hours in you eat in your week, you pedal a bike, and how many weeks in your life you've been a cyclist, we become very good at doing one thing and mm-hmm.
I always tell that to people like, you know, I feel like I'm a, a decent endurance athlete on a bike , but, but I am not a decent endurance athlete in many other things. Yeah. Because the rest of my body is, Not conditioned to do it. Mm-hmm. , and I've been making concerted effort to kind of diversify my, my personal sporting interests with just the sense that I'm not gonna be able to continue cycling if I don't consider other muscle groups.
Mm-hmm. , you know, the, just general wellbeing of my body. I recently joined a gym, don't you know, God forbid I finally did it, , but one of the offers they had was like a, a full 360 body. And the person who was interpreting for it for me was talking about my muscle mass and my fat and where they're distributed.
And we were talking about like my inner thigh area. I think that's the adductor. Mm-hmm. and how it was so underdeveloped compared to the rest of my leg muscles. Yeah, and to your point, as you were describing that pedal motion, like we're doing one thing and it's evolving a lot of muscle groups in our legs.
but not all the muscle groups in our legs
[00:16:35] Sarah Wallensteen: and yeah, sorry. Another thing that can happen, you just, you brought up the abductors and they're the perfect example. Um, and a lot of endurance cyclists will understand this, that. You know when you're at hour 4, 5, 6 on a bike and those powerhouse muscles are starting to fatigue, it's those stabilizing ones that we don't ask to do anything for us that start to be recruited like the abductors, and that's when you can get insane cramping or.
Fatigue. Cause those just fatigued so quickly. Cause they're not up to the task. You ask them to help and they're just these weak little things I can't do. can't
[00:17:12] Craig Dalton: do it. So it's so funny you say that because in the instances where I have had those vicious cramps, latent an event, it's been the abductor.
Yeah. And it's been a frigging disaster. . Yeah, .
[00:17:25] Sarah Wallensteen: The calves will do that to you too. .
[00:17:28] Craig Dalton: And the other thing we were exploring, as you know, this woman was sort of analyzing my, my issues was just how my muscles that, as you were saying, aren't the strongest. late in the day when I'm riding are compensating mm-hmm.
and causing all kinds of problems in my back. And yeah. So we've just kind of brought together this, this idea that you need to stretch more and we do need to look at a more holistic, weightlifting routine mm-hmm. to strengthen these other areas.
[00:17:57] Sarah Wallensteen: Yeah. As much as our, our core programming and where we started was with stretching, it's almost, we had to ease ourselves into it.
And therefore our members, you know, it's like, okay, you know, you need to stretch. You should. and then we just snuck strength training in there as well. Yeah. It's equally as important and just as much of a foundation of our programming. Wait. We just have to kind of be a little quieter about it. Cuz when you ask people to stretch and strengthen, I don't have time for that.
But we do have, uh, routines that combine them. Right. That combine the mobility work and the stability work. Yeah. To make that as easy
[00:18:31] Craig Dalton: as possible. And I've got a bone to pick with you because , I'm quite sure I'm doing AB and core work. Yes, yes,
[00:18:40] Sarah Wallensteen: you are . Um, the core is one of the most neglected things that's like this.
Uh, they don't understand the importance of, and I mean, low back pain is the number one thing that comes up for cyclists. Um, I don't care what level you are. If you ride your bike for over an hour, your low back is going to start hurting. If your core is not strong, and all that is, is your core and your hamstrings and your.
are the supporters for your low back and your pelvis. And so if your core isn't up to the job, your low back is just going to have the little wave in it. It's gonna cave in and your low back will have pain on and off the bike. Um, , but you need a strong core. There's no way to sugarcoat
[00:19:27] Craig Dalton: it. Yeah, . Yeah. Yeah.
And I think it's, you know, it's interesting as we age as athletes, you can kind of fake a lot of things in your twenties and maybe early thirties if you're lucky. Mm-hmm. . But as you get into your forties and fifties and beyond, It, it starts to add up and that's my, certainly my advice and takeaway to younger athletes is get a routine and build those strength systems earlier rather than later.
Mm-hmm. , it's probably obvious if you're a high performing professional cyclist that you need to do that, but even for amateur cyclists, like if you wanna be long into. Game of cycling. And cycling can be a sport that'll be around your entire life. Yeah. But you still have to play a few other cards in order to make sure you're, you've got the right platform to enjoy cycling.
[00:20:12] Sarah Wallensteen: Yeah, absolutely. It's been interesting over there the past five years that we've had dynamic cyclists, cuz our, our membership in the beginning was very much, you know, 50. , um, older athletes who, who wanna keep riding but are experiencing those pain points. So we're, you know, ready to jump on a solution. But the longer we've been around, the more and more the 20 somethings, 30 somethings are getting in there cuz they're seeing the value of that as well.
Of, okay, I wanna be doing this in 30 years. So what I have to do now to, to make sure that can happen. .
[00:20:48] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. So you've got, uh, can you describe the program just a little bit? You've got the sort of basic strength, or sorry, the basic stretching program mm-hmm. , but you've also got some derivative programs to specific parts of the body or ailments.
[00:21:04] Sarah Wallensteen: Yes. Um, so yeah, as I said, the core of our programming is a daily stretching video. We have over two years of content in that you'll have a, a new routine every day. Um, that are stretching and some mo we sneak some mobility and like dynamic exercises in there as well. You, you wanna be moving through the range of motion, not just doing static stretches.
So, um, that's the core of the program. And then we have various different strength training programs. So we have like a beginner, intermediate, advanced and then a winter strength training program that was designed where you're not as on your bike as much cuz it does fatigue. Powerhouse muscles you're gonna be using on the bike that you may not need to work those while you're riding as much.
Um, and then we do have our injury programming, which has become kind of our more popular programming. So we have a low back programming program, a knee, a hip. An ankle reset and foot, which, you know, a lot of people don't understand. You know, like that seems kind of random, but it is very important to start at the base and work up.
Um, and what these programs do is they combine into 20 minutes the mobility, stretching work, and the strength training that you need to be doing to correct, um, the muscle imbalance that is likely causing pain in those areas. Yes, you're gonna be do doing core strength in a hip program because it's all connected.
So you're, you're working on stretching and strengthening those surrounding muscles around that joint to make sure, um, that it is balanced.
[00:22:35] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I went through the, the seven day introductory kind of trial period for the basic, uh, stretching mm-hmm. , and then went right into, I think I'm like 21 days into the low back.
Yeah. Uh, phase one
[00:22:50] Sarah Wallensteen: training, right? Yeah. . Yeah. The, the injury programs are, they're gonna be at least six weeks. Um, just because that is what it takes to experience. , um, I promise you can do it. 20 minutes a day. Even if it takes you, you know, two months, three months to get through that one program, you're still, uh, doing your body a huge service.
[00:23:12] Craig Dalton: That's good to know. And I didn't internalize that concept. Maybe I saw at some level that the first phase was six weeks. Mm-hmm. , but that's what your. Research or experience has shown that it takes six weeks to kind of get a little bit of impact in that area. Yeah,
[00:23:25] Sarah Wallensteen: you will feel results right away. You're, you're gonna have faster recovery, you're gonna just feel better.
Um, but to actually start to change, um, those structures and the way the muscles recover and the length of muscles takes four to six weeks. Yeah.
[00:23:40] Craig Dalton: And how about with the, uh, the basic stretching routine? I mean, you just mentioned, you know, you'll start to feel some more elasticity potentially mm-hmm. in your areas, but is there a particular amount of time that you really want people to stay on the program for every year?
[00:23:57] Sarah Wallensteen: Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, ideally, , you continue on forever. not with dynamic cyclists, but you continue this mobility practice. Yeah, we have a ton of members who have been with us since the beginning and you know, they reach a point that they're like, you know what? I've learned so much from you guys.
Loved it. and they move on cuz they've, they've made it so a part of their routine and their life. They know all the exercises they should be doing. They're good to just put on music and do their own routine at this point. Yeah. And we're totally happy with that. If, if you can learn from us to put together your own routines, your own injury prevention, that's great.
Um,
[00:24:36] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Job well done at that point. Yeah. ,
[00:24:38] Sarah Wallensteen: we'll pat ourselves on the back and wish you well. . .
[00:24:42] Craig Dalton: Yeah. When you think about cycling, what are the, and, and if you wanted to impart the listener with like three focal areas you think that they should spend most of their time thinking about and, and working on from a stretching, um, perspective, what would those.
That's
[00:25:00] Sarah Wallensteen: an interesting question cuz it's, you know, I, I would go to say like, hamstrings are the number one thing, um, but they're kind of a different problem for everyone. They're super tight, but they may not be, um, shortened as you think they might be. But it might be the overdevelopment of the, that's pulling it so there's no stretch there cuz it's stretched to the point of its limit.
Um, So there's a bunch of things that go into fixing that, but the hamstrings are more important. Of course, you should be stretching them, but you should be strengthening them. Those need to go hand in hand. That would be my number one. . Does the
[00:25:37] Craig Dalton: hamstring, does it connect to other, well, obviously it does, but where does it connect and what other parts of the body does?
Like poor hamstring maintenance, uh, attributes, problems to,
[00:25:49] Sarah Wallensteen: yeah. The poor hamstring, mainten. is a large cause of the low back pain as well. Um, cuz it connects to the pelvis at the top. Um, and then as well it comes around and the quads and the hamstrings were so connected. So like what is happening with one, uh, is gonna affect the other.
Yeah. Um, but that's where a lot of both knee and hip pain comes from is hamstring and then what it does as it like goes down the chain. Got
[00:26:15] Craig Dalton: it. Yeah. Okay, so that's first is our hamstring area. Hamstring. What, what would you put.
[00:26:21] Sarah Wallensteen: Uh, we've already talked about it, but I would say low back and core, um, are the next biggest things.
Just cuz that is gonna be the thing that, um, we've found injury-wise. It's, there's some things like knee pain, you'll get off the bike and you'll be walking and it goes away and it may hurt just when you're on your bike. Low back pain sticks around. It'll hurt when you go to pick up your groceries or whatever.
Yeah. So it's just one of the most important things you should hop on as soon as you feel that little tweak , you know, before it gets any. .
[00:26:51] Craig Dalton: And you mentioned earlier the sort of the, the importance of core strength. Mm-hmm. when you perhaps are, are fatigued on the bike because without core strength, other, other areas of your back may be taking the brunt of mm-hmm.
holding you in the, in the correct position. So core strength. And so core strengthening is one element of that. How do you access and what type of stretching do you recommend for the.
[00:27:20] Sarah Wallensteen: Um, the most important stretching, uh, is like twists that you can do in the spine. Um, cause we don't, we don't actually ask a lot from our back, especially on the bike.
You know, we're in one position holding, so anything that we can work on, you know, the thoracic spine and how important that is to just have that range of motion, um, will impact the low back as well. . Um, and as , it may sound weird, but the quads are so important to stretch, rule release. Um, just break up that tension cuz cyclists are known for our overdeveloped quads.
That's the, that's the main thing. So, um, that's one
[00:28:03] Craig Dalton: of the most important areas. Yeah. That and the it band and the IT band's con contributions to low back have been something mm-hmm. That I've definitely acknowledged in my own body. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so that was two, and I'm not gonna command you to get me a third , but if you have a third, let's
[00:28:20] Sarah Wallensteen: hear it.
Um, yeah, the hip flexor, we actually just released a intensive hip program. Um, our new injury programming includes, uh, an informational piece cuz we want people to understand why they're doing these things and why it's important. So we brought in. Dr. Ben, we like to call him, um, to just, he's really good at explaining the joint and why these injuries happen.
Um, and the hip is so important because it's number one, just the biggest joint in the body, most complex, most, you know, elements going in there. Um, and it's also one that, as I mentioned before, in the way that most of our, most of us live our lives. is just crunched all the time at a 90 degree angle. You know, um, standing desks and stuff like that help, but.
our hips are notoriously tight and weak. I mean, you try to go into a pigeon pose, you go to a yoga class, you know that your hips are tight, , you know that, that, that doesn't feel good. Um, and again, that can impact you on the bike. If that hip flexor muscle, which again gets recruited as the quads fatigue, if it's not up to it, you're going to, uh, start feeling it in other areas.
So has to both again, be stretched and strengthened.
[00:29:40] Craig Dalton: Yeah. A hundred percent. And I'm a hundred percent guilty of that and have felt that on many occasions. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that, you know, a lot of times we learn how to stretch and we learn the basic stretch, and one of the neat things about the program that I've observed was positioning your feet at different angles while you're doing stretches.
Mm-hmm. , you know, if you're doing like sort of a, a bent overstretch, for lack of a better definition of what I'm talking about. Yeah. It was super interesting to. to really feel how probably limiting my approach had been previously. Mm-hmm. without doing the different feet positions to access different parts of that muscle.
Yeah. And
[00:30:23] Sarah Wallensteen: that's something that has come up the longer we've been doing this and also working with professionals who, who can pull from these amazing libraries in their brains of, you know, how to reach those harder to get muscles. And like for an example, I think we have like five different versions of a low lunge because you know, the basic one, but.
The position of your foot matters. What you're doing, engaging your pelvis matters. You put a pole out in front that changes it entirely. So we're always trying to introduce, um, you know, everyone knows how to do a lunge, but how can we make this, um, target different muscles? And it's really interesting to feel when you add just a little variant and it hits a different place entire.
[00:31:07] Craig Dalton: Yeah. For me it was immediate. The body gave me that feedback. Mm-hmm. , and I was like, whoa. It, it made, made a ton of sense once I did it, but never thought about it prior to doing it. ,
[00:31:16] Sarah Wallensteen: why am I turning my toes
[00:31:18] Craig Dalton: in ? Yeah, . Exactly. I know you've got some other sort of minor parts of the, the offering in like training plans and I did just want to give you an opportunity to mention.
[00:31:29] Sarah Wallensteen: Sure. Um, because we have been around for five years at this point, we've been constantly working with our members, um, to offer them more value, more of what they want and need in their cycling journey. And so we worked with, um, one of Canada's best, uh, triathletes, Jasper Blake, to put together four different training plans and integrate that with our stretching and strength programming to make that just all encompassing and as easy as possible.
We do integrate with training peaks on that level, but it is very basic inter integration cuz we're not a tech company. So it is what it is. It exists on training peaks. You can use that in your training peaks. Yeah. Um, we have the training plans, we do have some skills courses as well for it's very beginner cyclist stuff, you know, like how to clip in for the first time, had a corner.
Um, and then we do have. Um, you know, yoga, Pilates roll and release section. Just learning how to roll out the different parts of your body and why. . Um, and I think that's,
[00:32:34] Craig Dalton: that. Is it ? Yeah. I was, I was impressed when I, when I got into my dashboard and saw mm-hmm. , all those different opportunities mm-hmm. to learn about stretching and strength training.
It was super cool. There's like a lot there. It's really easy to use. Everything's seems to be pretty straightforward and mm-hmm. in terms of how it's organized and I, I basically, I, I feel like I, I've accessed it from three different devices now. My, my personal computer, my phone, and my iPad. Yeah. I just log in and it sort of knows exactly where I left off and is ready to serve me up that video.
Mm-hmm. . , which I appreciate because I don't have to spend a lot of time futzing around like mm-hmm. , I believe I have the 20 minutes. I don't believe I have 22, so I wanna get right into it. ,
[00:33:17] Sarah Wallensteen: no, again, we, we were the first product testers and we had to be no more than two clicks . So, uh, we try to make it as easy as possible and, and we love hearing from our members as well and just what we can offer them.
And you know, like the ankle injury program that we have, um, that was requested by members. You know, like, this is an area that I'm having issues with. Can you put something together? And we did. And so we love, we love bringing our team, um, together to solve problems like
[00:33:46] Craig Dalton: that. . That's great. That's great.
Well, I, I appreciate everything you guys are doing. It's been an interesting program for me. I mean, I think I, I clearly have not hit that six week mark yet, , so I need to keep doubling down on my efforts and make this part of my 2023 routine. Mm-hmm. , I also appreciate just hearing about the business story behind dynamic cyclist, and I, I love that entrepreneurial journey.
Hey, this is missing. We love cycling. This would be a great part of our lives. Let's see if it would fit into the broader cycling community. So, mm-hmm. , kudos to you guys for just getting off the dime and creating something, and five years later, having this vast catalog of content that we're now lucky enough to tap into.
[00:34:30] Sarah Wallensteen: Yeah, it's been a, it's been an awesome journey and, uh, so much fun working with, you know, different sports therapists and physios and I've learned so much. I didn't come into this as a physio. I came from, you know, the content side, like you said. And so it's, uh, it's been awesome.
[00:34:46] Craig Dalton: Super cool. What's the best way for people to find out about dynamic cyclists?
[00:34:51] Sarah Wallensteen: Yeah, just, uh, Google Us or go to dynamic cyclist.com. Um, this Sunday, exciting news, we are launching our own custom app. Finally, uh, so you will be able to search dynamic cyclists on the app store, um, and purchase from there. Try. Tried the seven day trial. Um, and that'll just make the whole, um, multi-use streaming.
You know, if you wanna cast your tv, it's just gonna be a lot easier. And also one of the biggest features that our members have been asking for. Cause we do have a lot of bike packers, endurance cyclists. Is, uh, download, like offload, um, offline viewing feature, which the app now has. So you can preload, you know, a couple weeks of programming, do it on your phone, you know, on the side of the road, you know, make sure you go well off the side.
But, um, we wanted to, uh, give that to our members as
[00:35:42] Craig Dalton: well. Awesome. Super exciting. Yeah. Feels like one less click that I am now away from. Exactly. Getting the content. Yes. . Sarah, thanks so much for the overview. This was awesome. And I, you know, like I said, I encourage people to go check out dynamic cyclist.com and see if it's a fit
[00:35:59] Sarah Wallensteen: for you.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. And feel free to reach out to us on Instagram or Facebook. Uh, our team is always checking and we'd love to hear from you. Right on. Awesome.
[00:36:10] Craig Dalton: Big, thanks to Sarah for joining the show today. I hope you enjoyed that conversation and I hope even further that you're embracing, stretching as part of your cycling routine. I know how important it is. So many people have told me I need to be doing more of it over the years. And I only wish I did it earlier. Personal experience with dynamic cyclist has been.
Pretty easy to find those time slots. The format's quite easy and engaging to do. And I do see clear benefits in what I'm experiencing. If you're interested in learning more head on over to dynamic cyclist. Sarah has shared a discount code with me, simply use the gravel ride and you'll get 15% off any of their plans. They have that free trial. So head on over, give it a go. If it seems like a fit for you, feel free to enroll. If not. Just remember. Keep stretching.
If you're looking to connect with me, the easiest way is to head on over to the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. That's a free online community. We started. To connect gravel, cyclists from all over the world. I'm certainly no expert on everything in the sport. And I've found immeasurable amounts of knowledge from the other community members. It's over 1500 riders strong at this point from all over the world. So go check it out. If that sounds of interest to you.
If you're able to support the podcast, there's a couple easy ways in which you can do that. If you have the financial means, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. I'd love your ongoing support for the podcast. Separately ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. It really helps with the discoverability of the podcast. So if you have the ability to share with a friend or write a rating or review in your favorite podcast app, amazing. I love you for it. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with Bruce Dunn of All Sports Productions. Bruce is the event organizer of the Highlands Gravel Classic, the only UCI World Gravel Championship Qualifier in the United States for 2023 in Fayetteville, AR.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the broadcast. We welcome Bruce Dunn from all sports productions out of Fayetteville, Arkansas, Bruce and his company had been around the cycling production business for many decades. But recently have come into frame, putting on several gravel events in the Fayetteville area. Specifically, I invited Bruce on the show to talk about the Highlands gravel classic.
While it's well, trod territory that fant veil in Bentonville and Arkansas in general have great gravel riding opportunities. What's interesting about the Highlands gravel classic. Is that it's the only United States world qualifier for the UCI gravel worlds. They held this similar position last year, and many in the gravel community were scratching their heads about what's UCI doing in gravel. Why the hell are they putting the world championships?
Over in Italy. But one thing's for sure. The UCI world gravel championships offer opportunity. Not only for the professional athletes we follow. But also for age group athletes. And that was a super interesting part of the discussion was Bruce. It was just as an age group athlete. What does it look like? What's the experience for going to a world championships?
And why should it be on your radar? I found the conversation. Super interesting. . I think it's worth exploring and having a conversation about this there's room for all styles of racing. In gravel?
So I'm hopeful will come out of this conversation, understanding a little bit more about the Highlands, gravel classic, and what kind of experience you can have that day, but also what that journey looks like to the UCI world gravel championships and what that might mean for you as an age group athlete.
In addition to what the professional athletes might experience this year. Would that said let's jump right into my conversation with bruce
Bruce, welcome to the show. Oh, it's great to
[00:02:27] Bruce Dunn: be here and thanks for
[00:02:27] Craig Dalton: having me. Yeah, I'm excited to have this conversation about the Highlands Gravel Classic, but we always like to start off by getting a little bit about your background, and I think it's so interesting. Why don't you let us know sort of where you're located in the US and then we have to jump in and talk about just your your company and the productions you've been doing for the last couple decades.
So let's dive right.
[00:02:51] Bruce Dunn: Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, all sports productions, uh, we just celebrated 20 years and at the end of 2022, uh, started in the road scene. Joe Martin, stage race, uh, it's actually the oldest, uh, road stage race in the country, uh, 45 years last year. So some big enterprise countries and and so yeah, we do, we promote triathlons, running events, uh, gravel events, grand Fondo road rides.
and we're, we're a little all over the place. Cycling certainly is personally at my heart. I've been on a bike most of my life. It's been really unique ride, no pun intended. And we're excited about 2023, getting on the back, getting on this side of the pandemic. . And seeing again what we're talking about today where the Highlands Gravel Classic takes us, which, you know, I, I think is a kind of a new, uh, a new statement in the gravel world.
[00:03:46] Craig Dalton: I thought you, you told me an interesting story offline about the Joe Martin stage race and really how you got into production. Do you wanna kind of relay, cause I think it just underscores kind of your passion to just roll up your sleeves and get out there and do something for the. Yeah.
[00:03:59] Bruce Dunn: I had a great job at the University of Arkansas doing fundraising raising millions of dollars for one of the colleges, and it was a, and it was an amazing couple years there.
But I've, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I, I self-employed before that, and I'd been promoting the Joe Martin stage race as president of one of the local cycling teams and. Anyway, flew out to U S A cycling, uh, I'm not sure I even scheduled an appointment. I just flew out and said I wanna put the Joe Martin on the national race calendar.
I believe they said, where's Arkansas? By the way, you asked where I am of where In Fayetteville, Arkansas. And and thankfully they, they took my $75, which I think that's what it cost back then to be on the calendar. And you know, we celebrate 20 years.
[00:04:46] Craig Dalton: That's amazing. Amazing. And then, and across that journey, obviously you've, you've mentioned that you've picked up multiple sports.
What has kind of that journey been like and what sports have you added on along the way? And are there any other, uh, events that you're super proud of that you would name drop in each of those categories?
[00:05:03] Bruce Dunn: Yeah, well, Ozark Valley Triathlon was my first, uh, other event that year. And I had done triathlons with my wife who was a, been a longtime triathlete.
And, and we actually met on the bike during the, the as members of the cycling team, but, triathlon is near and dear to my heart just because of the uniqueness of the sport. But you know, why be mediocre with ? Why be good at one when you can be mediocre? Three is what I like to say in triathlon . Now, my triathletes may get a little upset with me, but that, you know, that those are valley, it'll celebrate, it's celebrated 20 years.
So that was one that it's still around. And we have the national championships, by the way, in gravel triathlon. And mountain bike triathlon for U S A triathlon. So that event has grown to the point that we got, uh, we were able to secure the national championships for those two disciplines. Gravel triathlon, first year, last year were in national championship.
[00:06:02] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's, you know, event production's such a, such a challenging logistical operation. There's so much equipment needed and so much knowledge that you've learned across, along the way. You know, as someone who's put on very, very tiny events, it was pretty clear right from the get-go that to scale any of these things, the complexity involved just to get permits or make sure everybody's safe.
They're, they're pretty huge. What, what was it like, kind of that learning curve to figure all that stuff?
[00:06:33] Bruce Dunn: You know, it's interesting you say that. I've probably been doing events all my life. I just didn't realize it. I'd always volunteered to be on some committee. I, I loved being part of events. If I'd go to event, I was looking at the details and not the show, if you will, but the early days were much, were much different back then than they are today.
And so, uh, but what I didn't know, I didn't. Until I had to literally go through it and I probably didn't understand event production until probably 10 plus years into the, into it. Tom Spiegel, you know, big Bear Productions he, he, he made a comment that I don't think people understand until they're, you know, 15 to 20 years into race production.
And I would agree it's, there's a lot going on. It really.
[00:07:21] Craig Dalton: Yeah, for sure, for sure. I'm curious, along the way, being in Fayetteville, just as, as a personal cyclist, were you riding off road all this time or was, did you start out on the road? Where were your passions lying?
[00:07:34] Bruce Dunn: Roadie, a hundred percent . I had a c lacrosse bike and I had a mountain bike to do adventure racing, but I was pretty much all road.
In fact, I didn't understand people that liked to get dirty on their mountain, on their mountain bikes. But you know, something definitely changed a few years ago in the trail systems. , know, they lowered the barriers to entry and and in the northwest Arkansas especially, it is a v it was very technical 20 years ago, even 10 years ago.
And so, uh, that's one of the really interesting changes is that you know, mountain biking's become a much more inclusive sport. It's, it's that green, blue, black. Way of building trails today and it's certainly helped me. Uh, my, my roadie mountain bike. Friends would just laugh, laugh at me cuz it's like, oh my God, you're gonna kill yourself on the mountain bike.
And then, you know, I told you the story about gravel that I grew up in a really small town and I hated gravel roads, . So we're now talking about the Highlands Gravel Classic. I love that. .
[00:08:35] Craig Dalton: I love it. Well, your reasoning back then was that it was destroying everybody's cars and it was a pain in the ass to drive on.
So I think we could separate that from the sport of gravel cycling.
[00:08:45] Bruce Dunn: Abso, I mean, you know, it's fun now. I love gravel and and it's fun just to go out. It was like it was 20, 25 years ago. Here in Fayetteville, we have one of the most road friendly areas, and we have, even with the population that's grown, our road system is really good.
The pro, the pro road cycling Peloton tells us. Good it is to ride here. But it's become busier and so now I can go back to what I used to do 20 plus years ago on my gravel bike and just go out on my own and, you know, shut the world out. It's fun.
[00:09:18] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's such, such a, such a great region from my limited experience there visiting Bentonville.
Yep. The other thing I wanted to come back to, just because I think it's gonna be germane to later parts of this conversation. You know, you mentioned your entire career in event, event production, you've been interacting with the governing bodies of cycling. Can you just talk about sort of the, maybe some of the requirements that putting on these races that are sanctioned, uh, puts forth for you?
[00:09:46] Bruce Dunn: Yeah. You know, I've I've served on you know, pro road sport committees or the race director committee at USA Triathlon and, and I was kind of surprised that What was required of someone to put on a. And the barriers that, or the hoops or the bar you would have to step over seemed very low, in my opinion, given the complexity or the danger of doing an event.
And I've always been a big advocate for a. Professional development. But to be fair, this is what I do for a living. But I also believe no matter if you're doing it part-time or full-time, you need to have a level of expectation, safety, uh, protocols in place. And so for me, whatever. Whatever permitting or whatever requirements in the sanctioning process, I, I just felt that was a good professional development.
It was a good checklist to make me a better promoter. And so I've I've been one that, I've been pretty, you know, I've been pretty vocal about we need those checks and balances in place. . Let's be real clear. I can get very upset if my costs rise one penny . But but the, you know, going through those checks and balances I think is very important for any promoter no matter what the, uh, what type of event you're promoting.
[00:11:08] Craig Dalton: When did gravel cycling events start to come into view for you?
[00:11:13] Bruce Dunn: You know, that's very interesting. Some I had, I had some really good friends that I'd bike racers. They had done a little bit of promotion. You've got to get into gravel, you've got to get into gravel. And I'm hearing this probably 2014 maybe.
And, and when Unbound, those first three or four years, it was just red Clay. and people from northwest Arkansas were coming back going, I had to quit after 30 miles cuz I'd been pushing my bike who, uh, weighed 30, uh, 40 pounds I couldn't go anymore. And I'm thinking that didn't sound fun at all. . So I, that was my, that was my kind of experience.
Besides what we would do locally is we would get on a mountain bike and ride on a Forest Service Road, but I didn't consider that, but I'm, I'm starting to hear this, but immediately I kind of tuned it out because of that just one experience I kept hearing, and it happened two or three years in a row.
But then some more events started happening, obviously, and the bigger and bigger became And so, you know, BS on the radar, but then again you hear, eh, it's more roady oriented. It's just some rough pavement. Rouge Rebe was my first experience and I'd say a gravel event, but we were all roadies going down to, you know, Louisiana and you'd get on some rough pavement.
But certainly everybody was on a road bike back then. , but I, I kept resisting it. I just couldn't find the new reason to have another event. And and so yeah, 2 15, 2 20 16, that's when it really started to register.
[00:12:50] Craig Dalton: I think you mentioned you, you put a little bit of a dirt section into a Grand Fondo in 2016.
Mm-hmm. , but your first kind of standalone gravel event wasn't until 2018.
[00:12:59] Bruce Dunn: Yes, exactly. And it was a one mile single track at the end. ,
[00:13:06] Craig Dalton: just to make the roadies a little bit nervous before they got there. After, after event beer.
[00:13:11] Bruce Dunn: Yes, exactly. We I mean, I mean, most people, about half the group walked it.
I mean they could, it was, it was a true single track mountain bike trail that was rough. And I thought, you know, here's something unique, right? And I don't know. It may have been too much .
[00:13:27] Craig Dalton: Firstly, Bruce, I like it. I think a little adversity. That's, that's, you remember that you're gonna tell stories for years about that Grand Fondo you did on your road bike that had single track at the.
Yeah,
[00:13:37] Bruce Dunn: exactly. . Exactly right. I love it.
[00:13:40] Craig Dalton: Well, let's fast forward a little bit to the Highlands Gravel Classic, I think. Started in 2022. Yeah. And made a name for itself because it was a U c i Gravel World's Series qualifier. In fact, the only one in the United States. Yes. Si signing up for that. At that moment in time in 2022, you must have known you were, we would take a bunch of heat from the, just the gravel cycling community.
Just talk about the process of, you know, how you got involved why you thought that you were excited to, to bring this UCI event to the United States.
[00:14:18] Bruce Dunn: Yeah. Well, that had been my eighth year of promoting a UCI men's and women's stage. And so I'm very familiar with the uci. Spoke to U S a cycling at the World Championships in January.
They said, Bruce, we're gonna have this gravel World series that's gonna come online. We're, uh, we want to be involved, and we think, uh, you know, you're the, you've got the perfect organization to put on this, uh, gravel, uh, race. And, and I, and I love the fact. This was something new because you know, the, as you well know, the gravel calendar is very, very busy.
And I thought, if you're gonna have something that's going to say something new in the marketplace and you wanna make a hit right away, this is probably where you need to push your chips in. And so, I was excited about it. I really was.
[00:15:12] Craig Dalton: Were there, were there specific criteria that putting on a U C I event was gonna dictate in terms of the format, the length, anything different than what you would and had been producing in other gravel events you were doing?
Not
[00:15:28] Bruce Dunn: really. I mean, honestly, uh, one of the things that was important to me is I wanted it to be 90 plus percent gravel, and the UCI I think was 70 or 75, and I said, okay, we're gonna do something different. We're gonna go and find. 90 plus percent gravel. And so that was in the back of my mind, the, the age group classifications having different distance for a different age group.
Having a tech guide signage. Those were all things we had already been doing in the road world. Certainly they were different than our other, other gravel events, but if you come to most of our events, we're trying to always raise the bar for the production level. And so I, I think we were already at that point and so I wasn't feeling the pressure of doing something that was required of me that I hadn't been doing in some other
[00:16:17] Craig Dalton: type event.
Got it. You made mention of the different distances per categories. Mm-hmm. , can you describe like what the regulations were about that?
[00:16:29] Bruce Dunn: Yeah. So, you know, there's a, it's, uh, the minimum age is 19. So in, in the women's race it's 19 to 59 and then 60 and, I'm sorry, 19 to 49 and then 50 plus. And then the men, it's 19 to 59 and 60 plus.
And so we I think the one thing that. People were pushing for is being over a hundred miles for the long, you know, the younger, distant, uh, the younger ages. And I, I really, the more the UCI wanted to have a little bit it was gonna be a full on race. And so in that respect, I didn't, I think they didn't want it to be a s slugfest, right?
This, the last person standing. Because this is an age group qualifier, right? Top 25%. Five year age group is gonna qualify to go to the world championships. And so, the distances were pretty, you know, 50, 50 miles for the younger, I mean, the older and 70 miles for the younger groups was about the the sweet spot for that.
There were, okay. You definitely had parameters though. I mean, you, I mean, you could be a little shorter and you could definitely be longer for sure. So there was, okay, there was some definite leeway.
[00:17:42] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's interesting to see how we're sort of blending both the European vision of gravel and the American vision of gravel and how some of those just some of those beliefs or criteria have to come into play and there's gotta be compromise along the way.
I'm, I'm not a super fan of the ultra distance. Racing mm-hmm. , because I do, I mean, I hear you like at 200 miles, like, are we really racing or is it really just a survival thing? Yeah.
[00:18:09] Bruce Dunn: Yeah. I mean, let's be real clear. I'm I don't think you are racing at those distances and, and especially if you are going to have age group qualifying, right?
I mean, if you don't have that, if you're taking some of these things off the table, then yeah, let's go all in. Let's do 200 miles and. And we know the front end's gonna race, and we know everyone else is just going to be out there and participating or racing as hard as they can. But if you truly want to compete against your age group of five years, you've got to have a, a distance that somewhat works for the top 30% of each age, in my
[00:18:49] Craig Dalton: opinion.
Yeah, it's interesting. This year I, or sorry, last year I did an event where I backed down to the sort of medium. . And honestly, it was the first race in several years that I felt like I was actually racing because I wasn't terrified. You know, is it possible for my body to get across a hundred mile race?
[00:19:09] Bruce Dunn: Oh, Vince, think about it. And gravel. I mean, you're doing a hundred miles. Unless you are really fit you're, you're probably out there just to complete it. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's kind of interesting, right? You kinda look at it like, Hey, I want to compete today. Maybe I will back it.
[00:19:24] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:19:25] Bruce Dunn: Yeah. I'm, by the way, Craig, I only had one person that wanted that race to be longer after they finished.
And, and, and so we, you know, I'm sure we'll get into what happened in 2022 and what we're doing for 2023, but no one wanted any further, uh, anymore. Uh, this, I promise you,
[00:19:45] Craig Dalton: it's gotta be all those, uh, Arkansas punchy climbs that add.
[00:19:49] Bruce Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. very much It did.
[00:19:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I don't, you know, I don't want the conversation to get lost on UCI versus non UCI racing, because at the end of the day, people are gonna come to the event.
That'll be a component of why some people show up, but at the end of the event, they're looking for a great day out there, a great gravel experience. So in any of these conversations, that's what I really wanna get outta you, Bruce. It's like for someone considering the Highlands Gravel, What kind of gravel are they getting in front of?
What does the riding experience look like? What do they need to think about for their bike when they're coming to race this event? Sure.
[00:20:26] Bruce Dunn: I mean, I think that's the oh, my light's kind of going off. I mean, h hold on. Our podcasters that are just listening in the You know, the, the gravel, it's interesting, I think I've mentioned this to you, that Fayetteville has a really unique topography in that geology in that true south of Fayetteville is one type of gravel due West is another, and the Highlands gravel.
Classics due East and Due East has some very punchy climbs, a lot more big rock as far as a base underneath the gravel. So you have, you know, this kind of topography that's really interesting, but, Generally speaking, if, if the rain and the grading and all that's done, you've got a very smooth surface out there.
Right? And so most people are you know, most people are running, uh, uh, a 42 on the front 38, quite frankly, on the back. I don't think you have to go any bigger than that if you're want to, if you're. , right. Uh, you're gonna have a much bigger, a different setup. But if you, if you're all in racing year 42, 38 is what I saw this year or in 2022.
[00:21:34] Craig Dalton: Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. From my experience in the region, I mean mm-hmm. , having that bigger, bigger front tire just would enable you to have more confidence when you're slamming down those, those hills.
[00:21:45] Bruce Dunn: That is the one thing. Yeah, you could absolutely run a 38 in the front, no doubt. Yeah, I just think that we had, there were some pretty technical downhills.
You probably saw that in big sugar, cuz I know exactly the, the couple of downhills you were probably on and it's like, uh, this, this is sketchy and I'm a pretty good bike handler. .
[00:22:03] Craig Dalton: Yeah, no, it was, it was super interesting in that particular event for me with, I happened to have a suspension fork on my. And have confidence descending.
So I felt totally comfortable just going as fast as I could, turn the pedals down the hill, but saw a whole bunch of people to the side of me grabbing the brakes and really taking a lot more time on that downhill.
[00:22:25] Bruce Dunn: Yeah, that was smart. That, that's a good idea. I, we had, we had people come back and start talking about that.
Yeah,
[00:22:31] Craig Dalton: yeah, yeah. I mean, it's always a trade off, right? You're slogging a little bit more uphill, but the confidence that can lead you on the downhills is just off the. Yep,
[00:22:40] Bruce Dunn: that's for sure. And
[00:22:42] Craig Dalton: yeah, I was gonna say the Highlands course though for next year, and presumably it's quite similar. Mm-hmm. next year, 66 miles, just under 5,000 feet of climbing for that event.
Was it similar in 22?
[00:22:54] Bruce Dunn: Yeah, uh, 22. That, that is the course we might make, we may make one change. And the one piece of feedback we got is there was no place for anyone ever to sit. I mean, and you know, you go over those courses time and time again, you ride 'em and it's like, what do you mean there's no place to sit up?
And it's like, no, you are either racing through this area or you're trying to recover, or you're going downhill or you're going up hill. But I never truly had a place where I could. And so we, we've identified a couple sections. We may want to do that. But we want to keep it with that 95% gravel cuz we believe that's such a unique, uh, element to this
[00:23:31] Craig Dalton: event.
Yeah, that's such an Arts two course design to take that feedback in. Were you also, did you have feed zones and were there any specific requirements about the feed zones for the event? We
[00:23:43] Bruce Dunn: didn't, uh, yes, we had feed zones and so we had neutral support. We didn't, we didn't do hand ups. And you know, I think that, we'll, we'll, we'll see if it, that becomes one of those.
You know, you can only have feed in a certain area. I haven't seen that come down the pike yet. But I, you know, like a lot of things, things, you know, change. You just saw what out? Unbound dropped arrow bars for the elites. Yeah. And so I think things are always changing no matter where you are.
Right. and, but the feed zones were certainly used because it was abnormally warm for this time of year. I mean in, in that, that time of year in 2022.
[00:24:22] Craig Dalton: Got it. And how did the race unfold? Did it, did it sort of, transpire in a way different than you expected or did, did the course kind of dictate? What was gonna happen?
What's your kind of play by play?
[00:24:34] Bruce Dunn: The course kicked everybody's ass. I mean, just flat beats, punched him in the nose, put 'em on the ground, drug him around a little bit, and then, you know, threw 'em in the garbage can. I've you know, I've raced with a lot of these guys before and, uh, it's kind of interesting, a lot of the roadies in, uh, the central part of this area that I used to race with 20 plus years.
Are now getting into gravel, which I never would've thought. And it's their race again. Right. And they were telling me about Bruce's, this is the toughest 66 miles I've ever done. And I'm thinking, what, and I think it was heat, it was gravel. Certainly the terrain, right? I mean, you know, it's a lot of climbing in that type of, uh, conditions.
And people were racing. They, they showed up. They wanted, they wanted their 25%, even if they didn't go to Italy. There was a lot of elements going on, Craig, that. I hadn't quite , you know, planned for. But, and then the back end people were hurting. They really were. It was, it was a tough day. It was a tough day.
[00:25:41] Craig Dalton: Did you find, like overall, just given the, the type of promotion ended up being a u c i, gravel world's qualifier, that most of the athletes coming in were intentional, like, I'm here to race, or did you still get the feeling. This is an event that is accessible to everybody and the back end is a party, and the front end is where the people are racing.
[00:26:02] Bruce Dunn: we definitely had that element. There's no doubt about it. You know, the one thing, and it, and certainly you, you can go on and look at, you know, a couple publications about the, uh, I think it was anemic attendance. It's just because we couldn't advertise because, you know, the whole reason for a Gravel World Series is for a world championship and to have the date and the location still a lot of uncertainty.
We weren't able to advertise to the larger group. We really. We just didn't want to advertise something until we knew all the facts. But of that 140 people that, you know, showed up, I mean, there were people from South Florida that were there to fully race California, Maine. I mean, it was across the country.
It was like 20. Eight states came last year. It was crazy. Yeah. But they were there, but they were there to race. And then there was the other group. They absolutely were there because of the type of event it was, knowing that they were never gonna qualify. And so, like you say, uh, it was a party for them and an experie.
Yeah,
[00:27:11] Craig Dalton: going into 2023, obviously the UCI has got one World Championship behind them. They're putting out an ambitious global calendar of which you're a part of, and the only. Race in the United States. I guess there's one race up in Canada, so going forward, obviously the, the kimonos open, you can market freely like you're part of this big series.
What, what kind of changes are you making in 2023? Or is it really just about getting the word out and inviting athletes who are interested in this style racing to come, come visit you?
[00:27:43] Bruce Dunn: It, it really Craig, we, we just, we wanna replicate everything we did year one. I mean, we, we felt like we knocked it out of the park as far as the venue.
We didn't, and honestly, I said at some point, you know what we're gonna put on the very best race we can. And I say that for every new event we do. , I don't care if it's a 5K run, it's you know, it's a fun run. Do the very best you can and eventually people will come. And so that, and, but you put, you hit the nail in the head.
No one knew about it, quite frankly, even with all the pu publicity, quote unquote. So that's our goal this year. Right? Tell everybody, hopefully they'll, you know, come have this experie.
[00:28:24] Craig Dalton: and I think that age group story is actually really interesting cuz a lot of times people might look at the the letters UCI before a race and think, oh, this is only intended for professional athletes.
This, unlike the Road World Championships, is a totally different beast as I understand it and I don't understand it very well. But I think isn't this similar to like the UCI Grand Fondo
[00:28:46] Bruce Dunn: series? Exactly the same, you know, that's, and then I mentioned that u s a triathlon follows that, uh, model of their age group, uh, national championships.
You qualify for the world championships. So I was familiar with that. And you're right, the the U C I Grand Fondo Road has that same model and you know, the pros are just going to add to this narrative, in my opinion. Because when you go to the event, it's a world championship for an age grouper.
If you ever had gone to one the USA Triathlon s USA Triathlon World Championships, it's a parade of nations. Yeah. You know, a 48 year old is feeling like they literally arrived at the Olympics. And I think that there's something to that for people that want to do that.
[00:29:29] Craig Dalton: Oh yeah, a hundred percent.
If, if the listener allows themselves to fantasize for a moment and you know, has the capability to get in that top 25%, the ability to go to the world championships in in Italy next year and represent your country for your age category like the spirit of gravel, notwithstanding, like that would be an amazing experience.
There's no doubt about. .
[00:29:52] Bruce Dunn: Yeah. And, and you know, I think I know my wife and I do, we sometimes on our, we're looking at vacations how can we roll in, you know, a cycling trip with that? Right? And so I think that's maybe the other extra point to this is that, you know, we like to travel and maybe we'll qualify or maybe one of us will and the other one won't, but we're still gonna do this.
And, and the bonus. Is that world championship. So I think there's a lot of different elements all the way to I know the people that went to the World Championships this year couple of 'em are local and they've already signed up and you can tell they're training for it already. .
[00:30:31] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I was gonna ask you that, like if you had any sort of sense of the people who were in that top 25% of their category, who was able to make the trip over to, to Italy and part.
[00:30:42] Bruce Dunn: Yeah, I mean, you know, of the, uh, four or five, I, again, I think it was you know, that first year was just a bit of a, you know, it was such an unknown, right? Yeah. Now I think you're gonna have quite a few more people. I mean, Craig, we already have 29 states that have signed up. And, and, and I'm thinking, and we, and, and guess here's what's crazy.
The second most represented state outside Arkansas is Florida, and they're all from South Florida. Like, you know, I'm thinking to myself, what, why are you doing this? I mean, that's great, right? I mean, I'm loving it, but you, you see that this mentality of we want to do this and we're getting out of, I mean, we're coming from South Florida and we're not coming to Fayetteville just for the hell of it.
Right? And you know, they're coming, uh, you know, they're coming to qualify. Yeah, I
[00:31:35] Craig Dalton: love it. I mean, I think it just sort of adds this just interesting element like that journey, like you're talking about, go, go over Fayetteville, try to qualify, qualify, go represent your country. Like that's gonna be an amazing journey.
Yeah. Bruce, I, I appreciate the time. Super thankful to have you on the podcast and talk about this event and wish you best of luck and can't wait to see how it goes down this.
[00:32:00] Bruce Dunn: Yeah, we're very excited. I it's, you know, we, when you have new events and you, you really don't know what the first year's gonna be, but the expectations always for us are the second year.
And our, our expectations are very high. And I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm pretty excited, uh, so far, uh, by the early registrations.
[00:32:20] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Awesome. Well, I'll put out all the information in our show notes so people know how to register and get in touch with you if they have, if they have any additional questions.
[00:32:27] Bruce Dunn: Great. Craig, thank you so much for having us. Yeah. Enjoyed
[00:32:31] Craig Dalton: the conversation. Cheers. Cheers.
[00:32:33] Bruce Dunn: Bye-Bye.
[00:32:34] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks to Bruce for coming on the show and talking through the Highlands. Gravel classic. And the UCI world championship qualifier. Out there in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I'll put a link in the show notes, so you can find out all the details for the Highland gravel classic.
If you're interested in connecting with me, I encourage you to join the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. That's a free global cycling community where you can interact with me directly, as well as thousands of other members of the gravel cycling community. No pressure, totally free to join, but a great back channel and a great way to connect with other gravel cyclists.
If you're able to support the show, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Additionally ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. It's a great way for me to get discovered by more gravel, cyclists. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
This week we sit down with Amy Davison from Trek Travel to discuss the explosion of gravel travel trips in the 2023 line up. With three North American trips (Bentonville, Vermont and Virginia) and three European trips (Girona, Tuscany and Swiss Alps), Trek Travel has some amazing gravel trips planned using the local knowledge of their experienced guides.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the broadcast. We welcome Amy Davison from track travel. Trek travel is literally having an explosion of gravel trips for 2023. They've been in the gravel game for a few years with their gerona gravel trip, which I took at the end of 22, but they're back for 23 with an expanded roster of six trips, three in north America and three in Europe. I'm excited to sit down with Amy and go over all the details. Before we jump in i need to thank this week sponsor athletic. athletic greens
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Amy, welcome to the show.
[00:02:52] Amy Davison: Thank you for having me.
[00:02:55] Craig Dalton: I'm excited. I just learned about the massive expansion of gravel travel trips the Trek is gonna be offering in 2023. After my wonderful experience in Gerona, I had to get you on the line and talk about everything that's going on before we dig into some of those trips.
Let's just start by, uh, let the listener know where you're from, who you work for, how long you've been working at Track Travel.
[00:03:20] Amy Davison: Sure. I live in Spearfish, South Dakota at the North Edge of the, the Black Hills, the great place to ride. I work for Trek Travel and I I'm a trip designer for trip travel, but I started back in 2005 as a.
So, had a couple different roles here. I absolutely love working in the cycling industry, so it's, uh, led to
[00:03:44] Craig Dalton: a long career. Yeah. I imagine all that time guiding yourself has left you with a pretty good sense of what it takes to design a trip. As a trip designer, what does that really mean?
[00:03:58] Amy Davison: Hmm. Well, trip designers are the ones who build the structure.
We book the hotels, we design the routes and build the routes in the software and book all the restaurants and basically just put the shell together. And then we convey it. We're sort of the, the hub of the wheel. We convey it to every team within trick travel. Explain it to sales. And then we hand it over to the guides when it's time to run.
And when they're running the trip, it's really their baby. And then we work very closely with them to sort of tweak it and modify it. But we then sort of take it back at the end of the season and massage out anything we wanna change and then get it ready for the next year. So we're actually planning, we're working in about three years.
at once. So it's very different than being a guide when you're, when you're out there guiding, you are laser focused on each day of each trip and really the hospitality end of taking care of the guests. So it's, uh, it was incredibly beneficial for me to be a guide and then turn into a trip designer.
And that's how most of our trip design teams won. They were. and they then sort of wore both hats. And then some of us just moved into the trip design world and some of us continue to
[00:05:18] Craig Dalton: wear both hats. That makes sense. How long has truck travel been in business?
[00:05:24] Amy Davison: This our 21st year.
[00:05:27] Craig Dalton: Wow. And, yeah. Has historically, have the trips always been on the road or were there off-road c.
[00:05:33] Amy Davison: Mostly on the road. We did have mountain bike trips for a while, but this is our first foray into gravel, aside from Giana gravel that's been around for a couple of years. But, uh, yeah, primarily
[00:05:46] Craig Dalton: road far. Interesting. So, you know, obviously I've got personal experience on that Jer Gravel tour. What was it that was sort of suggesting that an expansion would be, uh, you know, greeted with enthusiasm from your, from your.
Well, just the growth
[00:06:03] Amy Davison: of gravel in general. I mean, it's just exploded over the last several years. And all of our well met a big contingent of our guides and our team loves to ride gravel, and that's what they're doing in their free time, whether they're bike packing, they're just out riding the gravel.
And so we've been talking about it for, for a few years because it's just, become such a big industry and the, the pandemic probably delayed this launch by, by a bit, but because of the scarcity of bikes and the uncertainty of everything basically. But
[00:06:40] Craig Dalton: When you, as you introduced J, the Gerona gravel trip originally, were there, what kind of things were going through your mind in terms of bringing some of these, a newer athletes to gravel offroad?
Like how do you think about trip design to make sure that everybody joining the trip is comfortable with the progression of technicality or amount of climbing or what have you? Mm-hmm. .
[00:07:04] Amy Davison: We have what we call rider levels and we rate every trip and we, so we are going for a variety of trips. And then we rate each trip going to the rider level and we spell out on our, on our website how difficult it is.
And that includes distance, terrain so how hilly is it? And also surface type because, you know, gravel. Very broad, and we do our best to sort of, put them into a matrix so people can see the range of trips that we offer, and then select what might be the best for them. And then we, I spend a lot of time with our trip consultants sort of explaining all this in detail so they can help steer people in the right direction.
So we do try to offer a a, a breadth. Of options for people who may have more experience or less experience. And then we also, when we're designing the trip on each day of the trip, we have multiple ride options. So we try to allow, uh, for different rider levels, like on any given day, the guides will help steer people toward what option might be best for them any day of the week.
Because as you experience sun, Each day's ride is quite different as well. And Jerome, I know they, the rides kind of build in technicality throughout the week and other trips like Shenandoah Valley, they build to a big climb at the end of the week. Uh, but the, the climb is an epic ride in their area, but it's actually paved the climb and the sun paved.
It's just part of a, a larger loop and much of the loop is gravel. So each trip is different. And really the goal is you identify an area that is desirable, would be a, would be a great place for the trip, and has of course wonderful gravel riding. And then I like to say, you see what the area offers you and then you take advantage of it.
So I don't go in with a preconceived notion of, I'm gonna design this trip in this way and it's gonna be for these people. I go in with a, let me learn about this region. Let's see what the best, you know, what it has to offer, and then we'll design accordingly. And then we'll describe accordingly. Because, you know, we, our, our, even our regular trips there's a, there's a wide variety of types of trips.
So we don't try to force anything, we just try to call it what it is and,
[00:09:38] Craig Dalton: uh, make it shine. . Yeah, it was, it was definitely interesting, and I noted it in those, the first day of the J travel, the, the gravel tour was just that assessing of the rider's abilities. Mm-hmm. , and it was pretty easy, you know, it was casual.
It wasn't like anybody was testing mm-hmm. , you know, can you break, can you skid, can you go over a log or what have you. Yeah. But you could tell that the guides were being conscious of like, okay, what's the, what's the dynamic of this group? What are people's eagerness? Do people wanna ride? All day long, do they wanna not ride some days?
And it became surprisingly easy to strike that balance in our group. Mm-hmm. , you know, the few, few guys from California that I went over with, we were eager, eager to ride as much as humanly possible, so mm-hmm. , you know, on occasion we'd come home and say, we, Hey Mickey, we wanna ride some more. And he would give us a GPS route and we would just go out there.
Pedal to our heart's content while others were electing to take days off. And to your point, like there definitely was a progression in, in skills, in elevation and everything along the way. I don't think anything would've you know, been out of reach of, you know, most gravel cyclists, but there definitely would've been days that if you were a beginner, and one of the guys in my crew was a little bit more of a beginner that mm-hmm.
a couple of the. made him think a little bit more. You don't really get that. Yeah. On a road bike, you put on the brakes, and even if you're descending aldus, you just keep the bike in control and it's, you know, it's no harder than your local mountain. But with the gravel, I think with everything, you know, all the natural terrain in front of you, it's often a little bit challenging and your eyes get wide and you think, can these bikes really withstand this treatment?
Yeah.
[00:11:22] Amy Davison: Yeah. It's. , it's definitely some, like you said, you have to, you have to think more and gravel and really watch your speed on this descent. And the guides are incredible. They, their wheels are turning before you meet them. They, they get a little intel on everybody and, uh, their wheels are turning immediately cuz they always wanna make it the best trip and.
For every single person on the trip. And that first day is critical in sort of getting to know people a little bit during the bike event, and then sort of, you know, as assessing how everyone's doing during the ride because they're, they're already planning the next day, the next day and the next day. So yeah, it's.
It's, it's quite a feat, but they're, they're really good at it. And when they know the terrain like Nikki, you know, it's local and j it's uh, it's pretty special what they can do, even with a larger group of people. Like, like you said, they, they're more than happy to give you some extra routes or, you know, go on another ride with you after everyone else is done and having close ride beers.
. So it's, yeah, it's really, it's
[00:12:39] Craig Dalton: really a fun time. You mentioned the bike fit element of it, and this was my first trip where I've ever ridden a bike provided by the organization. Mm-hmm. , obviously I was excited them being truck bicycles. In Jer in 2022, it was the, the Dnet, but I believe for, for 2023, you're moving over to the checkpoint.
Mm-hmm. .
[00:13:00] Amy Davison: We are, yeah. Very exciting. Checkpoint SR seven. Top of the line, electronic shifting. It's, uh, shaman, it's, and it's a two by, so a two by 11 speed. Uh, we'll set it up to bliss and we're gonna bump the wheels to 40 fives instead of the stock forties that come on them. And, uh, yeah, it's gonna be a great ride.
And I think that the rationale is we really want these trips to be accessible. Everyone and we thought this is the bike that provides the most comfort and the most stability and can handle the widest variety of terrain, cuz we also have to select a single bike for all of these trips.
[00:13:44] Craig Dalton: That we all thought would work.
I, I think you're spot on there. I think, you know, it's, it actually to me it has two benefits. One, for newer riders, having the fatter tire is gonna make 'em more comfortable. It's gonna make it roll over stuff easier. A little sp smoother ride. But for more experienced riders, those 40 fives are gonna allow you to really tear it up and get after things and have a lot of fun.
Mm-hmm. ?
[00:14:06] Amy Davison: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. I have a, have the same bike here at home, so I've been really enjoying. Trying it out and it's just, and it actually rolls great on pavement too, so, it's, they're just so, there's such versatile bites
[00:14:21] Craig Dalton: there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I have to say I was a little bit jealous cuz Mickey was already on a checkpoint and I was eyeing his big tires that from time to time as we got in the roof for terrain, cuz that's what I typically ride at home.
Yeah.
[00:14:34] Amy Davison: Yeah. The. All, I would say, all the guides who could get their hands on a checkpoint in the last couple years, uh, who ride gravel have, have absolutely
[00:14:42] Craig Dalton: taken advantage of that. Yeah. So we, we we're moving from one gravel trip in 2022, all the way to six gravel trips, both in North America and in Europe.
I'd love to just kind of talk to you about a, let's first get on the table, where are we going in 2023, and then B, let's just talk a little bit about each.
[00:15:04] Amy Davison: Sure. Yeah. Yeah, it's very exciting. This has been the, the better part of the second half of 2022, and my world has been spent putting these together in collaboration with, uh, a lot of our guides and other tDCS.
So we have three North America and three in Europe. In the North American trips in, in order are Batonville and Vermont and Shenandoah Valley, and. , the European trips are post J with that, the spring trip. And then we'll do Tuscany and then we'll do Swiss Alps and then we'll come back to Jer.
[00:15:41] Craig Dalton: Amazing. And when you say an order, is that a chronological order throughout the year when the trips are offered? Alright.
[00:15:48] Amy Davison: Spring. Yeah, by season.
[00:15:51] Craig Dalton: Gotcha. Well sort of taking 'em one by one. And let's start in North America to begin. Bentonville, Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, and then Vermont. Mm-hmm.
What attracted you to those areas? And maybe as we go through one by one, just kind of give a highlight of what, what people might expect on that trip. Sure.
[00:16:09] Amy Davison: Boy, we, we, we debated many, many, many destinations and at the end of the day, we were. Kind of zeroed in on destinations where we have guides who live there.
That was a big factor because planning gravel, uh, having local knowledge is indispensable in, in planning the best routes. And, and so that was one big factor. And then all kinds of things sort of come into play. But we were. Pretty quickly narrowed it down to three that were relatively close to each other.
And and then of course you have to cherry pick the best times to ride in these places. So, you can't pick all spring destinations, for example, so you're playing with all kinds of things and put, putting the puzzle together. But Batonville we, we actually had a, a good shell of a. Put together for Bentonville that we offered as the self-guided trip a couple years ago.
And we have a guy who lives there. And, uh, so we, that one was, that one was a no-brainer because Bentonville has got the, all the infrastructures, everyone knows it's the mountain biking capital of the world. It's, it is incredible for mountain biking, but it is also incredible for gravel. You talk to any of the locals there, they're like, yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty special.
And the beauty of this trip is it's five days and so you can always tack on a few days on either end, grab a rental mountain bike and go hit the trails either before or after. But the gravel there is outstanding without being too difficult. It really is. We're riding mostly in Rolling Farm. And the, the highlight of the trip is of course modeled after the big sugar race.
So the gravel on the, uh, sort of northern side of town is absolutely epic. It's fast. Yeah. And it's, it's fun And it's beautiful. So you've got that, but you also have a great hotel in town. The 21 C Museum Hotel, which is an art museum, turned into a hotel on the square and the food is incredible. So we're going to eat at the preacher's son and Conifer and the hive at the hotel for dinners.
So this trip is absolutely packed, and I didn't even mention the art. We're gonna also visit Crystal Bridge's art museum in addition to riding through it, but, , we're gonna visit the campus for like an introductory tour so that that trip is just absolutely
[00:18:39] Craig Dalton: packed. Great stuff. Yeah. It's such a great community and it's mm-hmm.
dark when you arrive there, just how infused cycling culture is. There's bike paths everywhere you need to go and yeah. You know, as you said, the gravel is great. It's very accessible, but it's a hell of a lot of fun as an experienced athlete too, as you, you know, as you ramp up the speed going down those hills.
Oh yeah. Rocks on those. You know, it, it's exciting and exhilarating. Yeah. But again, like if you're, if you're going a little bit slower, it's totally accessible to a lot of riders and then all those great things to do in Bentonville, like it definitely, I can see why that made it high up on your list of places to put a trip.
[00:19:19] Amy Davison: Yeah. I mean the, it's really special when you arrive in a town. You just feel like, oh, this is home for cyclists. Like they love bikes, they love bike people, they're everywhere. Yeah. How about
[00:19:34] Craig Dalton: that was really special. Yeah. Yeah. And to your point about like geographically locating the trips, you know, within a reasonable distance, it's probably lost on many listeners that you've got a lot of logistics.
You've got vans you need to bring to bear. You have the actual bicycle. You need spare bicycles, spare parts. So there's a lot of moving pieces to this trip that make it logistically complicated for you at Trek Travel. But honestly, logistically simple for the guest because we just arrived with our shammy and our helmet and our shoes.
And you'll take care of the rest.
[00:20:10] Amy Davison: Yeah, and we don't even have to bring a helmet cause we have those too. But that is one, I think one thing. always has set travel apart is our partnership of Trek and the bikes that we provide. And if you look at gravel whether the gravel tourism industry most, uh, well, I can't name that's not true.
Most do not include a bike and I will just say no and include the bike like a checkpoint SLR seven. Electronic shifting. I mean, it's all the bells and whistles just like our damani is for our regular trip. And, and so that that is one really exciting sort of piece of the puzzle that, that sets us apart.
And it, it absolutely, yeah, our business is complicated. It always will be, but we all tend to thrive in the chaos and do our best to present a, a seamless experience for the guests. That's the. .
[00:21:10] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And then I guess if we're going chronologically, next step would be domestically would be the Vermont Gravel Bike tour.
Mm-hmm. , do you wanna jump into that experience?
[00:21:18] Amy Davison: Yeah, absolutely. So Vermont has been in the tri travel portfolio since the company began. Uh, we've always run trips outta Sto Vermont in the Green Mountains, so that, that's where this trip begins. We'll start at the Green Mountain in Insto, uh, and do a couple of rides around there.
We'll do a sugar tasting there, or a sugar tour. Learning about maple syrup and how it's made, and of course, do a taste of it. So you get a little Vermont flavor in there. And then from there we're gonna ride from hotel to hotel, and we're gonna go to the northeast kingdom and stay in a, in, out in the country.
Just outside of Eastbrook. So a lot of people know that area for great mountain biking as well, but there are endless gravel roads. I'm think of Vermont as the home of gravel really. They've been riding gravel there before. Gravel was cool because they have more gravel than pavement. It's just everywhere.
So, the rides there are about 70% gravel. And, and they're hilly. Can you go from the Green Mountains up to. It's equally hilly in the Northeast Kingdom, but, uh, very rural. I would say the highlight is the ride from hotel to hotel. You pass through prospering, which is a small town very accustomed to cyclists and outdoor enthusiast of all sorts.
And we'll have lunch at the general store called Jenny. As we pass through. I think that's gonna be a, a great experience just to. I feel like experienced small town life in, in Vermont. And then we will end with at, at the, we're staying at a small in, in, at Brooklyn to end the trip and they are cycling enthusiasts there and they also put on fabulous meals.
So I'm, and I think it'll be, it'll be This spectacular trip. Incredible food throughout high-end accommodations and phenomenal dirt road
[00:23:20] Craig Dalton: riding. That's so fun. It's such a pretty state. I've only ever ridden on the road there, but, but definitely aspire to ride gravel once I get back there.
[00:23:29] Amy Davison: Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it, it's gonna be good one for sure.
[00:23:34] Craig Dalton: And then next up on your, your summer tour of gravel in the United States is the Shenandoah. In Virginia, that was probably the one on your list that I was most surprised about. So can you talk a little bit about that trip?
[00:23:47] Amy Davison: Yeah, absolutely. I was actually looking at another region and it just sort of wasn't panning out and I I just kept driving and went, uh, to Harrisonburg.
One of our trip consultants lives there and we've kind of had it on the radar for a while. We also have a contingent that lives in North Carolina and. Loves to come up to Virginia to ride. So it is a well kept secret and that's is another place where as soon as I got into town unannounced I started knocking on doors and immediately I was like, yes, this is a bike funded town.
These people love to ride. They're excited about bringing more cycling, tourism to the area. And it's , it's unique in that it, it's a valley, obviously Shindo Valley, but it's got the mountains on both sides. The Allegheny Mountains and the Smoky Mountains. So you've really got everything at your disposal.
So we've got riding in rolling Farm country, and then you've got Epic climbs on either side of the, so we're gonna feature. I climb to what's called reddish knob, which is one of the high points of the state. It's on the West Virginia border and that, that's actually a paved climb through National Forest and a paved descent, but the rest of that loop is gravel.
So it's gonna be an epic day at the end of that trip. Panoramic views at the top and a nice change up from the rest of, of the writing, but, It's a destination where I think it'll surprise and, and delight people because maybe you haven't heard of it, but if you dig just a little bit, you'll, you'll see that there's a, there's quite a cycling culture there, great mountain biking as well, and almost anywhere there's gonna be great mountain biking.
Gravel is gonna go hand in hand,
[00:25:41] Craig Dalton: so, . Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a lot of people in Virginia right now listening who are saying, hallelujah, . Yeah. Don't let the secret out, but, but we are proud of where we ride. I told Yeah, ,
[00:25:53] Amy Davison: I feel a little bad about that. But
[00:25:56] Craig Dalton: yeah. You know, gravel riders we're, we're sort of, we can blend in.
Right. I, I yeah, I have a little bit of experience in that area on the mountain bike, as you, you were mentioning. It's a great mountain bike area, and when I was cutting my teeth as a young mountain biker out of Washington DC we would get into that region on our mountain bikes to go race some of that kind of classic East Coast races down
[00:26:16] Amy Davison: there.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's and I also, I recall having guests on a trip in California, uh, years ago who were like, you've gotta come to Virginia. They were live, they live near DC and they were like, it's absolutely epic. You would love it. It's the riding is endless. Like you have to come to Virginia. So, Hopefully they're listening and they're probably like, it's about time
It's been so long.
[00:26:46] Craig Dalton: Nice. So now let's hop over to the, uh, to the European trips. I forget the chronological order. Are we starting in Gerona over there? We're starting
[00:26:54] Amy Davison: in Gerona, yeah. Yeah, because Okay. It's just. got great weather spring and and fall. So we're starting in j that is our, uh, only level four trip, which means it's a little more advanced.
So the, some of the gravel riding is more technical. We, it's the only trip where we incorporate some single track and some connectors that say are unmaintained roads, so they get a little more gnarly. What we've been seeking out elsewhere. So that that is one thing that sets Jonah apart. And the other thing is, we've had it running for a couple years now, so it's a well-oiled machine.
We have a handful of local guides there who love it. And it's, it's really their trip. I mean, they, they've made it what it. So a lot of a lot of culture, uh, infused there, a lot of local knowledge infused there and great little hotel in the center of this charming little town. So, yeah,
[00:27:58] Craig Dalton: absolutely, and I'll, I'll refer the listener back to a couple episodes where I've interviewed both our guides while I was over there and gave a little bit of my day to.
Of that trip as well as an original episode going back, gosh, I think mid pandemic when I was hoping to go very early on, maybe in Oh wow. 2020 that, uh, that you Yuen came on and talked about that trip as well, so, oh, we've covered that territory. I'm a big fan of Jer. I feel like anybody who's. Into cycling knows that that's just a hub and a, a great place to be.
[00:28:28] Amy Davison: Absolutely. Yeah. But what I guess I didn't realize is how epic the, the gravel is there in addition to the road driving.
[00:28:36] Craig Dalton: So Yeah, a hundred percent. Like the, just so much of the Mickey was saying, you know, they had all these old rail lines that then got, uh, you know, repurposed into gravel roads and they just, they litter the town from every direct.
Yeah.
[00:28:50] Amy Davison: Yeah, it's, I'm heading there in uh, February, so I can't wait to do a couple of the rides that you got to go
[00:28:58] Craig Dalton: on. Awesome. Yeah. Awesome. And then what's up O next Over in Europe.
[00:29:03] Amy Davison: Tuscany. Yeah. Okay.
[00:29:05] Craig Dalton: So Tus is
[00:29:07] Amy Davison: another Tuscany. Oh yeah, the Bianchi. It's gonna be amazing. It's another region that Tel has, you know, been, uh, running trips in forever.
And we all love it. Uh, it just never gets old. I got to guide there in 2015 and got to ride some of this gravel. So anyone who is a gravel enthusiast probably knows about the race throughout Bianchi and also the aka uh, vintage cycling race. And our trip really blends those two together. So we spend some time around Oli and, and near Sienna first hotels near Sie.
Uh, riding some of the bki and AKA roots. But you get to experience wine country and you get to have lunch, I think it is in Oli, and visit the AKA store. And you also get to have coffee and a little tour of Sienna where you're watching the end of any race. So it's like from clop cross races, Toki, they end.
In the Piazza in Sienna, and it's just like an incredible experience. So we're, we're going to, uh, do that on the trip and then we're gonna finish near Ticino a little bit further south. And the riding just goes on and on. And it was some of my favorite writing when I was there in Southern Tuscany where it's a little less touristy and you're sort of getting off the beaten path.
And we have a couple of guides who, you know, one in particular who really rides gravel a lot there and knows all the ins and outs of the gravel roads. So he got to put this together and, uh, he's, uh, I think really made it shine. The other fun piece of it is that the second hotel is actually in equator, which we don't typically stay in.
So it's like a working farm that also is a hotel. You know, it's the definition of farm to table dining, basically. This, uh, a agrima is very high end. It's absolutely beautiful. And our final night will be a, a meal that is paired with wines from their cellar. Some of their, some of their older favorite ones.
So it's going to be an absolutely epic trip with great riding. And of course, I mean, you're in Tuscan, so outstanding food and. ,
[00:31:36] Craig Dalton: uh, to pair with it. Yeah. Super cool. I imagine, and, and I've never ridden there myself, but just seeing strata Bianca, that the dirt roads are, I mean, relative in the spectrum of these gravel trips in Ima, it seems like these are sort of smoother dirt roads than elsewhere.
[00:31:52] Amy Davison: I would say, yeah. Honestly, for all of our trips, the goal was to find. Smoothest gravel roads that we possibly could. So we're not trying to search out the most difficult, gnarly technical riding. We're trying to make these accessible to, to everyone who has even a bit of gravel experience. So they're just comfortable riding on loose surfaces.
Cuz you can't avoid hills and cornering and so you need a little bit of experience. But these, I, I would say Vermont. . The dirt, the dirt roads are super hard packed and like sometimes they're just dirt. You, you don't even have, you have very little gravel and Tuscany probably have more gravel consistently.
But the roads are, are fairly smooth. They're just healing.
[00:32:42] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And are they sort of the punchy style climb?
[00:32:46] Amy Davison: Yeah, I would say Vermont and Tuscany are known for short, steep hills. That's just the nature of the riding there. Uh, you really can't get away from it. So, similar to our, our regular Vermont trip and our regular Tuscany trip.
These are, these are hilly trips. Batonville is a little flatter. It's more like rolling farmland, Ando Valley, more rolling farmland with the big. . So they all are, you know, slightly different, but in general you can never escape hills and, uh, we're looking for mostly smooth dirt roads with a, not a crazy amount of gravel, so relatively non-technical
[00:33:28] Craig Dalton: ready.
Got it. Got it. And then that final trip of the year heading over to the Swiss Alps.
[00:33:34] Amy Davison: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. This one is super exciting. Again, one of our guides lives there at the, this trip is on the eastern side of Switzerland in the Anine Valley, and it starts in a town called school. And one of our long standing, amazing guides lives there.
And she's been dreaming about getting this trip on the, on our docket for years. So she put this together in addition with one of our troop designers who is a ski instructor in St. So that's where the trip ends on the other side of the valley, uh, near St. Maritz. And you're basically riding in the valley surrounded by the Alps and glaciers the entire time.
So that means that the terrain is hilly. Inevitably when you leave the valley, you're going, you're going up. So it's more long, gradual climbs. But the, uh, what's unique about this one is it's mostly, uh, most of the gravel is on bike pads, and then most of the other riding that's not gravel is still a designated bike route.
So it's very little traffic there. I mean, that's to be expected when you're riding gravel to begin with, but here it'll be. Very, very little traffic and a combination of gravel bike pond and really narrow paved lanes going from town to town up and down this valley. Then of course there will be a fondu dinner.
So people get to experience that and just incredible views of the, of the valley and the, it's pristine. I just look at the pictures for that trip. . I, I, I have to
[00:35:19] Craig Dalton: go. It's, yeah, I was gonna say that's the only one I haven't seen The pictures on the website are just ridiculous how scenic it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's beautiful. I love it. Well, that's super exciting just to one, get the overview of all these great trips that you have planned for 2023, and I'm super excited for you guys to continue to get feedback from riders as to what they like and don't like about 'em and mm-hmm. . You knows what an exciting journey to, to sort of have six new trips on the calendar.
[00:35:51] Amy Davison: Yeah, it's, uh, I've been doing this for a while and this is like unprecedented for me in terms of, you know, what I get to do on, on the day to day. So I'm really excited to get this out there. I know that our guides are too, I mean, everyone who helped design these trips is gonna be working them next year, and I know that they'll evolve.
It's absolutely the way. All of our trips work. We take feedback from the guides, from the guests, and the more we sink into a region, the more we learn about it, the better the trips become. So this will definitely evolve, and as we learn, I sure hope that the entire category just continues to grow. .
[00:36:31] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
You know, as I've said many times on the podcast before, I'm just, I'm a big fan of this idea of gravel travel and as much as I like going to do events and races, for me it's more about being in that region and sampling a bit more. And sometimes I get drawn into, whether it's the length of the event or just, you know, wanting to perform.
I'd limit my riding because I just wanna be able to complete that one day ride. And sometimes I leave those regions thinking, gosh, like I wish I was just riding every single day a little bit less. Yeah. Than putting all my eggs into this one one day.
[00:37:08] Amy Davison: Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's the beauty of, of these vacations is you really can, you really get to sink into a region and see and ride day after day after day.
It's kind of
[00:37:20] Craig Dalton: hard to go. . Yeah, yeah, totally. After that. Totally. Yeah. There's something to be said for having nothing to do, but ride all day and pretty much have the logistics all taken care of for you. Mm-hmm. .
[00:37:34] Amy Davison: Yeah, I mean, I hear that from, from my friends. It's, it's truly what I love to do and my free time as well.
So now that I live in a place that is full of gravel, I. We have people visiting and we go out for, for four days, and it's, for me, it's the best vacation I've ever had. And for them, they feel like they're on a TR trail trip, so.
[00:37:58] Craig Dalton: It's, uh, I bet that's really fun. You bet. You better watch out. You may have some listeners knocking at your door wanting a person to turn
Hey,
[00:38:06] Amy Davison: bring it on. I, I already have a planned .
[00:38:11] Craig Dalton: Thanks again, Amy. I really appreciate the time and I'm excited to revisit this conversation at the end of the year and see how everything goes. Yeah,
[00:38:19] Amy Davison: me too. Awesome. Thank you for having us and for bringing attention. Gravel travel. Hopefully it's just gonna keep growing and I look forward to doing more myself discovering more destinations.
[00:38:33] Craig Dalton: Big, thanks to Amy for joining the show today. I'm super excited to hear that Trek travel is doubling down on gravel travel for 2023.
I don't know about you, but they're more than a handful of those destinations. I'd love to ride in myself. I've covered a few, but absolutely. I encourage you to go to the truck, travel.com website and check out those pictures, particularly for the Swiss trip. It just looks absolutely spectacular. A huge, thanks to athletic greens for being a long time supporter of the show.
Remember head on over to athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. To get your free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs. Added to your order. If you're interested in connecting with me, please. Join the ridership that's www.theridership.com. That's a free online cycling community where you can connect with me and other gravel athletes for around the world.
If you have the ability to support the show. Please visit, buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with Michigan based, professional gravel racer, Paige Onweller. Paige, a former runner, had her ups and downs throughout the 2022 season, but ended it with a bang with a victory at Big Sugar Gravel in October. She is looking forward to doubling down on her efforts for the 2023 season.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the broadcast. We welcome page on Weller. Uh, gravel racer from grand rapids, Michigan. Paige participated in the inaugural lifetime grand Prix in 2022. And has been selected for the grand Prix. Again in 2023, she finished the season with a big victory at big sugar gravel in Bentonville, Arkansas this year, and is really excited to be able to dedicate more time to the sport. Pages and other one of those amazing female athletes who discovered the sport after a career, as a runner. Only a few years ago, she was riding a trainer and figuring out how to ride a bike outdoors. Pedro we'll get into how she got into the sport of cycling, what our journey's been over the last couple of years. And what our experience has been joining the lifetime grand Prix and racing throughout the year with all the best female athletes in the gravel cycling world.
With that said let's jump right into my conversation with Paige.
Paige, welcome to the show.
[00:01:26] Paige Onweller: Thanks, Craig. Glad I'm here
[00:01:28] Craig Dalton: Good to see you. Yeah, it sounded like you had a busy day in the er, so I'm pleased you're making time for us this evening,
[00:01:34] Paige Onweller: Yeah. Yeah. I was a little, a little late to this meeting, so thank you for being flexible. The ER is a little busy these days.
[00:01:40] Craig Dalton: Yeah, no, of course. My pleasure. Hey, I always love to start off Paige by getting to know you a little bit about your background, like where did you grow up?
[00:01:48] Paige Onweller: So I grew up in kind of a smaller town called Lapeer. Uh, it's in Michigan, kind of in the thumb area. Uh, maybe like an hour north of Ann Arbor, uh, if people know that as a reference point. Um, yeah. And then I went to undergrad at Fair State University up in Big Rapids, also in Michigan, and then, uh, grad school in Grand Rapids.
And I've been settled in Grand Rapids for the last, about 10.
[00:02:11] Craig Dalton: Got it. And were you a, were you a sporty young lady?
[00:02:14] Paige Onweller: Uh, kind of, my parents kind of made us get into sports. Like I think they wanted to keep us out of trouble and keep us busy. And so, um, yeah, I did like, uh, swimming and diving and softball, volleyball track, cross country. Um, I was a big runner. Uh, I actually got a scholarship to, to run at Ferris and that's, you know, cross country and track.
So I did running. Many years of my life and was a very dedicated runner, even after college on some post collegiate elite teams. Um, that's kind of where most of my athletic background was.
[00:02:46] Craig Dalton: what was that journey like as a, as a runner would, did you sort of materialize in high school that you had a good endurance endurance engine or. Wear of a sprinter at that point.
[00:02:55] Paige Onweller: I was more middle distance. To be honest. I never really, I kind of wasn't all around her. Like I, I definitely wasn't a sprinter, but I kind of excelled at. 400 meters and anything up to two mile, uh, at least in high school. Uh, but more focused on like the mile and 800. And then in college was similar. I was more middle distance, uh, 1500 meter, um, was kind of my specialty in, in track.
And then in cross country it's just a six K for uh, ncaa. Um, so that was kind of my specialty overall. Um, but I got injured a lot and. , I think, you know, I could have done much better, like in the 10 K or 5k, I think would've suited me more. Um, but I think I was just always injured that we kind of kept doing the middle distance, shorter volume, you know, or, or less volume.
Uh, but then after college is kind of when I started to hit my stride a bit in the endurance events, um, like I did at Ultra-Marathon in Grand Canyon. and that was like 55 miles, um, like rim to rim, to rim it's called. Um, and started doing like more half marathons and those longer distance events. And that's when I, like, I was beating all of my college times and just really excelling.
So I think after college, once I was healthy and not getting injured as much, I was able to kind of, you know, consistency really helps with endurance . So if you're not getting injured and you can keep running, then you're gonna do.
[00:04:15] Craig Dalton: That's quite a huge journey from where you started out as a runner to doing ultra-marathons, as you progressively grabbed hold of longer distance events. Was that, did it feel sort of more comfortable and more what you were built for?
[00:04:30] Paige Onweller: I don't know. I, I mean, I was still running similar mileage throughout the week, but a lot of it was like power hiking up hills and like getting used to like the vertical gain because in running, like. Ultra-marathons are very, um, there's a lot more climbing and descending, and you have to get your quads ready for like that descending load, um, and the, the EENT changes that occur.
And so I feel like. It was similar but yet very different. The volume was similar, but the intensity was much lower. Um, and I think that probably helped. Um, but honestly, like I just love being outside and being outdoors and I just like working out . And so, um, yeah, I mean, I think the little longer stuff was.
Was fun to me and obviously more challenging just in a different way though, like, you know, a half marathon and 10 miles, like what I loved. And those are like, you know, hour, hour and 20 minute all out efforts, um, relative to like an endurance ultra marathon, which is like the whole day. So just kind of a different type of pain, I guess, , but I enjoyed the process for both and, and how you train for.
[00:05:38] Craig Dalton: Yeah. They're so distinctly different as running disciplines. I've done a little bit of ultra marathoning myself and I I hear you like it's this descending that really adds up. But for me, the interesting thing was it was a complete mentality shift, right? Because you'll, you're running in the woods, you come up to a big hill and the 10 K in, you wants to run hard over everything.
But every ultra-marathon and coach or colleague or friend is gonna tell. Just shift into another gear and walk up this hill. Yeah, to power hike up the
[00:06:08] Paige Onweller: yeah, no, for sure. And it's, it's funny you say that, like the, the mental change is, you know, more than anything, and I've been a coach for many years and when I was coaching ultra marathoners, like one of the primary focus, you know, in, in the season was focusing and developing why they wanted to do that race.
And cuz there was studies and research to show. Having an emotional bond to those longer events gets you through it versus like, you know, an hour and a half. So that's like a whole different way to train and it's like more mental training than the shorter distances. And I always thought that was fun.
And you know, my medical background kind of makes me a little bit more intrigued into that as well.
[00:06:45] Craig Dalton: Yeah, a hundred percent. Like you just have to believe and you have to always put a foot forward. And I think, I'm sure we'll get into this later, just how the, the parallels with gravel racing, particularly the long stuff, you just, you gotta keep going and know that your body's capable of much more than you probably think it is capable of.
[00:07:02] Paige Onweller: Yeah, for sure.
[00:07:03] Craig Dalton: So did you discover cycling at any point in that journey so far?
[00:07:08] Paige Onweller: Um, I mean, you know, I would hop on a spin bike when I was injured, right? But it was always dreadful. I'm like, oh, I'd rather be running and I'm here in spin class. This is lame. Um, but you know, it was like, I didn't know any of the numbers meant, and it was always kind of a punishment for me. So, I had no idea what, you know, it was always like, What I had to do to stay in shape for running.
Every time I was injured, I'd go on the bike. Um, and it was usually a stationary bike or a spin bike, but it wasn't until the pandemic, uh, so about two years ago is when I started biking outside. Um, and that was terrifying, like the clipping in for the first time. And I was like, what am I doing? You know, I'm like, this is horrendous.
I'm gonna a crash. Um, let's see my, see my colleagues at the medical clinic. Um, but yeah, I think. For me, that's kind of when I first started, but it was still because I wanted to get better at running. So what I was doing is I was running like 40 to 50 miles a week, and then I would be trying to hit like, five to six hours on the bike a week as well.
Um, and then I started biking more and realizing like, well, this is actually a lot of fun. And I started, you know, getting Strava kms and I was like, oh, well I'm beating these cyclists like maybe I'm, you know, pretty good at it. And I just think I started to enjoy it. But it wasn't a competitive, um, component for me.
It was like just simply to get in more of. Aerobic training and cardiovascular training did benefit my running. And I did the ultra-marathon that fall. Um, and that was, so that would've been 2020 and did the ultra-marathon. So I kind of stopped biking for a little while to help with the legs. And then that, that winter I was like, okay, I'm gonna get whiffed and I'm gonna have an indoor setup because I liked biking this summer and I can do that throughout the winter.
So I signed up for Zift and then, you know, a couple of local friends were like, you should do this with Community League. And I was like, oh, that sounds fun. do the community races. So I do started doing those first. When I signed up, it was like all out from the gate, um, swift, I think I dropped hard, like finished near the back and I was like, well, this is hard
Um, and I was like, what am I doing? And eventually I just kept showing up and learning, you know, the tactics within thew world and then started winning the community events and that, that's kind of how I got recruited to my first pro team, um, was for eSports on Zift because of you. Essentially my raw power.
Um, yeah. And that's when I first started to realize like, I'm just a competitive person and so you put me in a situation where I have the potential to win. I'm like, oh yeah, I wanna do that again, . So, uh, that's when I was like, oh, maybe I should race bikes, you know, like that, that could be fun. Um, so that's when that transition.
Transition started, um, and I actually did sign up for a triathlon. I did, um, St. George, uh, 70.3 as my first, uh, triathlon. And then that was the last one I ever did, , cuz I realized biking is way better,
[00:10:00] Craig Dalton: I don't wanna glance over something that I think every athlete goes through. You were also building a, another career in the background post-college. So do you wanna talk about what you've been doing professionally that has been effectively financing some of your racing endeavors in the running world, at least to date?
[00:10:17] Paige Onweller: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I end up finding a lot of my cycling stuff too. Um, which, you know, I don't, we, it's a whole nother topic right there, but I don't think people understand that as much, you know, when you race pro, like they assume you have all the support. Uh, but we can get into that later. But yeah, so I work as a physician assistant.
Uh, I've been a PA now eight years, and I've. Worked and practice all in acute care. Uh, so either urgent care or emergency medicine. Um, and I work for an emergency medicine group right now. Um, and I've had various roles, uh, very career driven, you know, I'm just an eager, motivated person, and so I've had.
department lead roles where I'm help managing and more of an administrative role in the department. Um, so yeah, I've been a PA eight years and just a very busy person. Um, and it's, it's a great job, but medicine has changed a lot. If you talk to any medical provider, particularly some, someone that works in the ER or the urgent care, um, they will say medicine has definitely changed over the last few, few years, and part of that is covid, but we live in a very, Demanding world.
And that floats over to medicine as well where patients are, uh, coming in and it's, it's not like they're always asking for medical advice, which is what we're trained to give, um, and use evidence-based medicine. It's more like demands and that can sometimes be a little exhausting. Um, cuz you know, we're there to help people and use science and, um, you know, there's a lot of stuff on the internet that patients come in and.
you know, talk to us about. Um, but it's a, it's a hard job. Uh, it's very rewarding. But, you know, I've had to tell patients they have, you know, a new mask that's likely cancer. Um, you know, just today I had to tell a woman she's mis discouraging and telling her what I saw on her exam and. , you know, just helping patients process and essentially my job is if someone comes in, they have a problem and I'm supposed to fix it and make sure they're not dying.
So, uh, it's rewarding, but it's also very mentally exhausting and it is, it's a hard job.
[00:12:17] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I wanted to make sure to highlight that. Cause I know like many athletes as you, as you said before, like there's this aura that your name is inve and you must be having a full ride with your sponsors and all you do is train. But I think you'll probably attest that, you know, probably 90% of the pro Peloton has other jobs behind them allowing them to do these things.
[00:12:40] Paige Onweller: Yeah. And you know, it's best. And I also, um, you know, I own a coaching business and I coach, um, and that has allowed me to have work that's more mobile and, you know, a little bit more relaxing work, I should say. Not as mentally demanding or physically demanding too. Cuz right now, like, I don't know if people understand, like this last year, like I still had to work my weekend requirement, which is every other weekend.
or every third weekend depending on which job I was at. And so, you know, basically I would like stack my hours in the ER and urgent care work, crazy amount of hours, like 56, 50, 60 hours, you know, in a week or a little over a week. And then I'd fly to a race, race bikes for a week, come back, work in the er, urgent care.
So it was like this constant yo-yo of two lives. And I knew it wasn't sustainable for too long, but I knew I could do it for one year. Like anything's tolerable. Like if you have an end. Um, and I also knew, like I had so much potential in cycling, I just hadn't had the opportunity to get the support that I needed.
Um, and you have to earn that. Like, there, I never expected to have, you know, to only be able to race bikes. Like I was thinking it'd be a five year process for me to get financial support. Um, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's. very hard. And I do think, you know, for example, social media is a good example. We're posting all the positives and, and that's a good thing.
We want to do that. Um, but at the end of the day, the reality is like, it's not always as glamorous as people may, you know, assume that it is.
[00:14:06] Craig Dalton: Yeah, so you were just touching on your journey. You got identified as, uh, a strong athlete via the zw kind of experience. Fast forward. When did you start racing outside on a bike, you know, kind of formally. And then let's jump into how the heck you got selected for the 2022 Lifetime Grand Prix.
[00:14:30] Paige Onweller: yeah, yeah. So, , I think like, and I'm sorry, I'm gonna mute my, I'm not sure if you're getting notified. Um, I apologize. I just wanna make sure that you're not getting, are you hearing the dinging on your
[00:14:43] Craig Dalton: No, no,
[00:14:44] Paige Onweller: Oh, you are? Okay, cool. Yeah, won't worry about that then. Um, yeah, so I first started racing bikes, um, . So I basically did, started Swift the winter of 2020 to 2021 and then I was racing the premier leg ands with, after doing all the validation testing and making sure that like, you know, I was legit and not weight doping and, and power doping and all that stuff.
Um, and then so my first like main, you know, race was, um, , you know, I did some time trials, so I got an coach coaches' exception to race U s a Pro Road Nationals in 2021. So that was one of my first like main races. I did a local, uh, time trial, Willow tt, uh, before that, but really like that was one of my first outdoor races, which is, Somewhat terrifying to show up at like Pro Road Nationals and like barely riding your bike outside.
Um, I didn't know how to do a U-turn. Like I just really was afraid to ride the disc. Um, had no idea what I was doing to be, to be honest. Um, and it was kind of a disappointing, I think I was 11th there, which honestly is not that bad. Um, my, my power was really good, but again, like I lost so much time in the U-turns and I really wasn't maintaining an arrow position because I think.
Guarded. And you know, if you barely know how to ride a bike and then you put an 80 mill up front, a disc on the back and then tell someone to get a really aggressive TT position, you're probably not gonna hold that . So, um, I kind of, you know, I was a little jaded after that experience because I had a coach at the time that kind of.
Kind of dropped me, uh, I think because I had a disappointing, um, uh, race according to them and the team that I was previously on. And that honestly like little fire under my ass, uh, pardon of my language. Um, and so I was kind of told like, well, you don't need a coach. Like you just need to learn how to ride your bike.
And in my mind I'm like, well, that's why I need a coach. And so I went and hired my own coach, paid my own money. Um, and then I signed up for the biggest mass dark gravel race that I could find. And I said, gravel doesn't have all these rules, like with road. I was working a lot of weekends and I live in the Midwest.
There's not access to road races to do all the category upgrades, and it just didn't make sense for me. And Gravel seemed like a good way to like try to prove myself, um, and have the opportunity to race against the guys and really show like I was strong. So sign Up for Gravel Worlds. That was August of last year.
That was my very. Mass start, bike race. Um, my very first ever bike race was the March bef, uh, so the march that, uh, March in 2021, but they did Covid wave, so I really don't count that as a mass start race. Um, so I would say, yeah, August, 2021 Gravel Worlds was my first mass start race, and I kind of told myself like, okay.
Don't die because I like had barely rid it in a pack before. I didn't know what I was doing. And that race also starts in a dark, so it's like dark. There's like gravel flying everywhere. You're in a pack. I'm like, I'm gonna die. Like what am I doing? Um, But I didn't die. Uh, I definitely did. Okay. I was fifth.
Um, but I remember thinking like, a, I had fun. B I did decently well relative to like, my experience. And I was like dangling off the Peloton, right? Like I wasn't in the middle. I didn't know how to draft. And so there's just all these things where I was like, okay, I think there's something here. Um, and again, more importantly, like I had fun.
The community was great. That event is very inclusive, and so it was just a really good. First experience. Um, and so then I signed up and I did Barry Rebe that fall, and I ended up getting second there. Um, and yeah, I kind of thought to myself, you know, maybe I have a, have a future in this. I did iceman, you know, I barely rid a mountain bike.
Borrowed a mountain bike from a local guy. His name's Peter. He had messaged me. He is like, you should do this. And I'm like, what? Single track? No way. Um, so yeah, last year was kind of like my first experience without all that. And then when I heard about the lifetime Grand pr. I kind, I applied thinking like, there's no way I'll get in, but
[00:18:31] Craig Dalton: And was your, was your application sort. , Hey, I was this, this runner. I had this career in running and I've transitioned. I've shown these sort of glimmers of potential already kind of thing.
[00:18:43] Paige Onweller: Yeah, and I, I had just highlighted and said like, I need more opportunity to show how strong I am and I need help with that. Like, I didn't even know about race centuries. You have to register and get into the lotteries. Like, before I even knew, I didn't even know what S B T was like, I was that new.
People don't understand, like I have no idea even what these races are like. And so I didn't know there was a lottery. I had never even heard of the race before now. And so yeah, I kind of entered and my application was mostly. Hey, like, I think I'm strong, but I haven't had the opportunity. I've had bad experiences.
Um, I've been put down and I'm a female and, and I feel like I have an opportunity to prove myself. So I kind of, I think I framed it in that way. Um, honestly, it was like a year ago. I'm not exactly sure what I put, um, but I do remember saying like, I'm not an influencer. I barely, I think I had like, I don't know, 800, you know, Instagram followers.
So I told them. I'm not here to influence. Um, I don't know if social media's important to you, but I think I'm strong. And if you look at my story, I was fifth at gravel worlds against all these people. And uh, I was second at Barry Rebe and I was top 10 at Iceman. I think there's something there, like, please give me a chance.
Um, and I didn't have any expectations. Of course you want to get in, but I was out on a training ride with a friend. I remember checking my email and I, I remember getting in and being like, oh no, I gotta buy a mountain bike. No. Like I was, you know, what did I get myself into? Um, so that was like very, very scary, if I'm being honest.
Uh, and I was also working, um, and so I was worried about fitting everything in. Um, I was on a gravel. for this last year. So I did not have any mountain bike support. I had to source my own bike, pay for my own bike, uh, you know, all of that stuff. So yeah, I was like very excited I got in, but I was also scared and recognizing like I had to fund the mountain bike portion of my season.
Um, but I also knew like worst case scenario, I would just really get experience in learning and I just am so new that I needed that experience. So of course I was gonna give it a whirl,
[00:20:47] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Amazing. And obviously the Lifetime Grand Prix is a variety of different races, as you noted, both mountain bike and gravel cycling. How did you feel sort of at Sea Otter kicking off the year? There's a bunch of single track there. You have to get pretty aggressive to sort of do well in a race like that to get out and get, get out in front and be able to stay out in front
[00:21:09] Paige Onweller: Yeah. And Sea Otter was horrible if I'm being totally transparent. Uh, so to put things into perspective, uh, my very first time riding a mountain bike was that fall, like that October, 2021. And then I live in Michigan, so I have no mountains here to train. We have the winters and so sea otter's in April and our trails like, really aren't that rideable.
Um, and so I went to see ot. with like very minimal experience. Um, and I remember going there on a pre ride, um, and I literally crashed, I think it was like four, three or four times on the one pre ride and I broke my fork. Um, thankfully the guys at Fox replaced it for me. It was incredible. Um, but the reality is like, I remember crying on the sideline of the trail thinking.
what am I doing? Like, I, I can't do this. Like, I can't even pre ride and stay upright. There's no way I can race in, in this course. immediately, I had to change perspective and say like, I can't view this as a race. I'm a very competitive person. If I view this as a race, like I will be competitive. So in my mind, I said, Seattle's gonna be my wash race.
I'm just gonna do this as a skills day. Like literally view it as a skills day. Stay upright. Don't ruin your whole season. And then drop the race and you'll be fine. And so, um, yeah, I'm not gonna lie, I hated it. It was not a fun race for me because like, I just, you know, the descending, like the climbs, gimme a climb any, any day I will climb my heart out.
I love climbing. My power to weight ratio is great. So climbs I excel at. But the reality is like you climb, you pass a bunch of people and those same people are passing you, not pedaling, doesn't make you feel the greatest. And
[00:22:47] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I feel like many people who are listening may not be mountain bikers or have mountain bike racing experience, and it is definitely different being out there on the single track. And it's amazing, you know, if you're just not comfortable with the single, with the flow of the single track, or going fast through single track on the descents, make you nervous.
[00:23:06] Paige Onweller: Right,
[00:23:06] Craig Dalton: is like, you know, minutes and tens of minutes of time that can be lost versus someone who's just has the experience to be comfortable and, and let the bike flow.
[00:23:15] Paige Onweller: For sure, for sure. And I don't think people realize like the type of mountain biking definitely changes. Like I was used to like tacky dirt in the Midwest, um, on our trails in the woods in sc Otter, it's like rock with like kitty litter and like you can't corner the same way you would in the Midwest.
And so. , I think like pros that have been writing many years and have all these experiences across different terrains, like really have that knowledge. Um, and for me, like that was the first time I'm like, why am I going down? Like I know I'm cornering the right body position. Like I studied this. Um, and then I'm just like, oh, well it's totally different terrain.
It's, you know, then someone said, oh, you're writing on kitty litter. I'd never heard that term before. Um, and I was like, yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense.
[00:23:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I always, I thought that was interesting when the Lifetime Grand Prix came up and, and I understood the type of racing they were gonna have the athletes do, because it really does require that you've got a full bag of tricks. So it's interesting, you know, and I, I'm interested as we fast forward through this conversation at the end of 22, like, you know, how your skillsets have evolved and your comfort level, and as we go into 23, what that means for.
Potential in these races. But so you start off at Sea Otter, have some ups and downs there, and then I forget what's next in the calendar. But why don't you quickly walk us through some of the other racing through the
[00:24:31] Paige Onweller: Yeah. Yeah. So Seattle Oter. Um, and then unfortunately after Seattle Oter, uh, I was really gunning for Unbound. Unbound suits me very well, that course profile and like my power strengths and how I ride. Um, so Unbound was like the big priority of the race. Um, and I had like set a goal to podium at Unbound, um, top three.
And so I was like, okay, like this is gonna be a good year, unbounds of my race. This is right up my skillset. And I was out on a training ride back in April and ended up crashing. Um, a cross wind kind of took me out in a really loose section. It was not ideal. Ended up having to have, uh, surgery to remove, uh, like a surgical debridement of my left knee cuz of all the gravel debris.
Um, and that really set me back. I had like a month of like minimal to no riding and that my leg was immobilized and non-weightbearing. And so, Yeah, going into Unbound, I had been off the bike for like, literally a whole month and I started riding like, uh, three weeks, three or four weeks before Unbound.
And so I was really trying to say like, I just need to not do Unbound. Um, but I also knew, like I have very little experience with Mass Start races and I know Unbound is very chaotic in the beginning, and so I kind of told myself, do the. Go all out, like you would act like you're in shape, behave like you're in shape, race, like you're in shape, knowing that I probably will blow up and that's fine, but I, I wanted that experience and then I would just, you know, maybe a miracle would happen and I'd pull it together.
But, um, I mostly did it because I knew I needed the experience with a ma start. So, uh, showed up with very, very, very little fitness. Um, and then also a little bit like scared because after you have a crash with a surgery like. You know, you're very, you're a little bit more timid and I'm already timid at that point,
So that was a challenge in itself just to show up and race. So, ended up getting through and I, I did fairly well. I started off a little bit more conservatively, then I started checking it off people, but then I totally bonked. Um, and it was like so painful, a painful death. And then I ended up crashing, like.
at mile one 30 and hurt the knee. That, and so anyways, I, I ended up DN Fing at Unbound and I had never DN FD a race before. Um, so that was Unbound and then, then I was like, okay, crusher's next and starting to get fitness back. Um, then I got covid like two weeks before, um, crusher and I have asthma. I did not do well with Covid.
I got very sick. that derailed, trailing or training yet again. So I showed up to Crusher, was like, do I do this? Do I not do this? You know, I was like, do it for the experience. Uh, ended up, you know, not doing very well there. I think I was like 15 through 18th or something like that. And so at that point my season just was not going very well and I was racing pretty poorly.
I was like, do I even finish out the Grand Prix series? Like. , this is costing money for me. Like a time, like I'm taking all this time off of work to go to these events and travel. Um, and I was just struggling mentally, like just really wasn't happy with where I was at. Um, and so I actually kind of did something different and I went and did a ran nearing event and ran nearing is basically, um, , I don't know if you're familiar with it or not, but it's not a race.
It's like ultra endurance cycling where you show up and the camaraderie is the main goal of the event, not competition. And a close friend of mine in training partner was doing a 750 miler. So basically we you ride from New York up to Montreal, then back to New York again. And so. . I was like, this seems kind of wild, but I just needed something different to remove, like the disappointment of having a poor season.
And so I ended up doing that for him, just thinking it'd be a good mental reset, get me in shape, you know, for the rest of the year. But it was like 10 days before Leadville. So uh, I had like a 33 hour week, uh, leading into to Leadville. Not an ideal taper. Uh, you know, I joke and I call that the anti taper.
Um, but it really was the mental reset that I needed. And I think too many times people set a calendar at the beginning of the year, especially pro riders because there's a lot on the line for us. The sponsors need to know, you know, there's, we plan our whole year around this and I think there needs to be some flexibility because you don't know what's gonna happen in eight months, six months, or whatever case may be.
And for me, I knew my mental, where I was at mentally. Is going to impact where I finished in a race more than what people I think recognize. And so for me that mental reset at that event was really, really important. I showed up to Leadville with the anti taper as I talk about, and ended up doing really well.
I was seventh there. And then, um, s B T was a bit of a struggle, I think just because of all the subsequent fatigue, uh, in the earlier weeks, and then ended up getting fourth, that lead boat. Um, and that's when I started to feel like my normal self again. I said, okay. Performance is getting back to where I think it should be.
And, uh, I was starting to feel like I was racing again. Leadville was hard just because of the descending, and I'm not used to that. Um, and I've never raced a altitude either, so that was like a whole nother animal in itself. Um, yeah, so that was kind of through the summer and then, Schwa again, was after that, and Schwa again was a Med Fest.
I've barely, I've barely ridden in any mud. You know, I've, there's a lot of racing, uh, that I haven't done, um, in a variety of conditions, but I felt like I always joke and say, schwa again was my very first CY Lacrosse race. And that's what it felt like to me. I was like, if I were to ever do cycl cost, this is what I would imagine it'd be like, except on skinnier tires.
Um, ended up crashing at Schwam again, no surprise there because it was so muddy and I don't have that experience. Um, but I, I fought my way back, you know, fell off the group and then time trialed my way back and motor mooted through, you know, the chorus as much as I can and got seventh there. Um, so still a respectable finish
[00:30:16] Craig Dalton: Yeah, very much so. Even on the ones that you said were, you know, like, oh, I, you know, didn't do that well or went in with a light mentality like you were consistently performing, you know, you weren't maybe knocking on the door of the podium on any of these yet.
[00:30:28] Paige Onweller: Right.
[00:30:29] Craig Dalton: but you, you were up there.
[00:30:30] Paige Onweller: Yeah. Yeah. And I was kind of like, that's why I always joke, you know, before big sugar, you know, I did that, uh, news article with Vela News that I was kind of the dark horse because I was kind of like there under the radar. And you know, the unfortunate part with this sport and with any support is that like you really don't get the attention unless you're winning.
Right. Um, and you know, there's some exceptions to that and there's, there's nothing wrong with that. Um, but I do think there's a lot of really strong athletes that are like consistent. , you know, performing quite well. Um, but they might not get the spotlight as as much. Um, and so for me, like, you know, I was.
Okay. You know, I just, you know, this is something I'm always struggling with too, is just to be happy with what you have that day. Um, because I'm always, I'm always wanting more. Right. Um, and some of that is knowing what I'm capable of. And part of that is like wanting to prove, like, Who I am and what I, what my worth is in this sport.
Mostly because I had, I had some rejection last year. My very first, you know, year in the sport, I was rejected by, you know, someone that I respected and I looked up to, and that was my coach. And then, you know, so I think like that kind of always had stayed with me a bit. Um, you know, and I admit that, you know, And I don't know if I should admit that, but I think there is some truth to that.
And, and as an athlete, you need to assess like where the drive is coming from and you need to make sure it's from a healthy place. Um, so I did a lot of that this year in making sure that like, I wanna win because it's for me. Um, and not having anything to prove either. And I say that like I had had to prove myself, had to prove myself.
I think I'm at a place now. I know what I'm capable of and other people know that too. Um, but in gravel it's such an unpredictable sport that you can be there, you can have the legs for the, for the win, but it doesn't mean that you're going to win. Um,
[00:32:22] Craig Dalton: I think, yeah, I think as you go back to races every year the weather conditions can change. You can have a mechanical, you can have nutritional issues. There's so many things that can go wrong in these long events that it's, it's really, it's hard to keep going and cuz you always know, it's like something went wrong.
I'm sure even in like a great day, winning big sugar, something still went long wrong along the way that you had to cure and keep.
[00:32:46] Paige Onweller: for sure. Yeah. I think the biggest thing is, uh, you just have to be really good at losing . And, uh, I always, you know, in setting goals, I kind of tell myself I wanna be in the position to podium or the position to win. Knowing like if I tell myself, well, I wanna win, most people aren't gonna win. And even the best athletes, like, you're, you're not gonna win.
Um, but if you set the goal that you wanna be in a position to win, then it's a little bit different because, . Yeah. Like I said, you have to be good at losing, and if you're not, , you're not gonna be sustainable in the sport long term. Like, I'm not here to race for one or two more years, like I'm here to race for another 10 years.
And so you need to have the right mindset and be okay with those losses and, uh, be happy with what you brought to the table on those days. And, and that's not easy for someone that's competitive and. At my level, like I'm not a magical, you know, unicorn. Like we're all this way, we're all competitive, we all wanna win.
And so I think the athletes that maybe have a more sustainable future in the sport, um, have a little bit better mindset or healthier mindset with, with or losing.
[00:33:50] Craig Dalton: When you looked at that big sugar course in Bentonville, Arkansas, was that something you were naturally drawn to, that it was a course you could do well at?
[00:33:59] Paige Onweller: Yeah, I mean, I think the rolling hills are good. Um, I had heard that course was a little scary with the off-camera descending. Um, and I actually re-wrote all of the course, uh, on the days leading up to it. Um, and I remember. You know, as I'm going through the course, um, thinking the course actually wasn't suited for me, uh, because of the descending.
Uh, so looking at it on paper, I liked the climbs. I thought, you know, the course could do well with my strengths. Um, but then when I was out there pre-writing and I pre-rolled with like my, uh, friend John, and he just like bombs down, you know, the, the descents. And I'm like trailing a minute back and I'm like, oh my goodness.
Like if this is how it is in a race, like there's no way I'm gonna win. So I remember kind of having some moments of panic during the pre ride. Um, so my goal and mindset completely changed in how I approached the race. Um, so I was like, well, if I know my descending is the weakness, then I wanna be at the front of all the descending so I can pick my line and people can go around me.
Um, cuz it's easy to be a timid to sender and say, well, I don't wanna block anyone. I'll just, you know, enter from the back. So I don't get in any way anyone's way. But for me, I said no, like, I'm gonna push the uphills and then that way I would mitigate any losses, uh, on the time, on the descending. Um, but what I'm learning, and, and I don't know if this is relatable to other athletes, is for whatever reason, I'm a very different writer on race day and I do things on race day that I could never replicate in training.
Um, or I haven't figured out how to replicate in training. And I think that's because I'm just very competitive and I do take more risk. and then you just kind of let the bike do its thing and you trust the process. And so on race day, like I really wasn't, I was descending quite well, much better than what I did on the pre rides.
Um, but there's also a lot , you know, on a line too, so,
[00:35:54] Craig Dalton: yeah, yeah. So, so, you know, one of the big things that weekend was that there was a forecast for heavy winds that did materialize. Did that go through your mind at any point, and did you make a calculation that that was a particularly good thing or bad thing for you?
[00:36:11] Paige Onweller: Yeah, so whenever the race gets harder for a longer period of time, that will almost always benefit me, um, because I, the harder the day, the longer the day, the better. . And so, uh, when I saw the forecast and saw the wind, um, I, I liked that. I was like, yes, bring it on. Especially the headwind for the last 40 miles.
I was like, uh, bring it on. Like, make it heavier winds. That's great. Um, so I, I liked that and I, I think that's important to. Have that mindset because how you think about things in a race or leading into a race will impact how you approach it. And so people that dread headwind or complain about it or maybe have a more negative mindset, um, maybe they don't do as well.
I don't know. That's just my theory. Um, so I ended up making a move pretty early and it was risky, like without a doubt because I was with a pretty solid group of most of like the lead. and then I left that group to ride with one other person, one other person, one other guy came with me. And what ended up working in my favor is that we were both very strong and motivated to like keep going.
And so we started picking up all these men that were falling off the league group. Um, and good strong guys like. You know, famous pro gravel guys. Um, and I just remember like the group kind of swelling and, um, that really benefited me into the, into the headwind section. So oftentimes, like if you're with a group and you leave them into a headwind, like it's a risk because you're with a smaller group, but then all the people that you just passed now catch back up to you.
That's a possibility. Um, but I also knew at that point, like I was feeling pretty good. So if I had to like buckle down and just, you know, solo TT. Maybe I could have pulled that off. But the reality is like it worked out well and we started catching other men off the leads group and you know that that seemed to work well.
And in gravel, like I'm sure you've maybe experienced this, like your group is really dependent on how you do and so, , sometimes you're with a group and we're all working well together and especially in wind sections, you know, having that even rotation, someone peeling off and not having this yo-yo of pace.
Um, and the group I was with was doing, doing well with that and that helped.
[00:38:28] Craig Dalton: yeah, yeah. Absolutely. That was huge for me that weekend as well. I just got, I happened to make a selection early on through one of the pinch points in the early port of the. And then I just happened to be with congenial, well-working simpatico people, and I was burying myself to stay with them because I knew, to your point, like if I was off by myself, it was gonna be a dramatically different day.
And sort of as it turned out, I, like, I finished way ahead of where I ever would've predicted. I would've finished simply because of a, a coup couple good decisions, a decent amount of effort, but also a lot of just good luck of riding with people.
[00:39:05] Paige Onweller: yeah, yeah. And like you said, like sometimes you do bury yourself and. That last hour of that race was really challenging for me, um, cuz I was at my limit. And um, I just remember thinking like, if you fall off, it's gonna suck a lot more than what it's doing. What, what is sucking right now? ? So I just remember thinking like, hang on, hang on just a little longer.
Um, yeah. And I remember like Ted King kind of like made an attack, like, I don't know how many miles we were from the finish and I was just like, yep, see you later, . I was like, there's no way I'm going with any, anyone that makes any move right now. . But it's also hard cuz I didn't have any time gaps. Like I had no idea.
And I remember thinking like going into the finish and I hadn't really seen a lot of media cars in the last half too. And so, . I remember thinking, I was like, is there something else in front of me? Like, do I put my hands up across the line? Like, did I really, am I really winning? Like I, I knew in my mind I was, but yeah, it's sometimes really hard cuz you're like, not thinking straight.
You're working so hard. No one's told you you're in first, like, you know, an actual official or something like that. And yeah, like the lack of media and, and time gaps like sometimes. You don't really know, um, because we're not like the men where there's no other rider in front of us. There's all these men.
And so it can get really confusing for the females. Um, and, and I get bummed about that sometimes. I think there's some opportunity for races to improve what that looks like. You know, a, a lead moto car for the women, right? Perfect example. Um, you know, that sort of stuff. I think there's some room for improvement there.
[00:40:33] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Interesting. So when, when you crossed the finish line and someone confirms that you are indeed the first place women athlete, uh, how did you feel? I mean, you had a whole season where things weren't coming together necessarily. What was that like?
[00:40:48] Paige Onweller: Yeah, I mean it felt so good. Like I, you know, I kind of like, I think I remember joking with a friend, I was like, you know, if, if I win I'll thank you for picking up my groceries or something. And you know, I think they probably chuckled like, yeah, you're not gonna win. And I just remember like, just being, I felt validating like these are things I knew I was capable of having a big win this year.
Um, and you know, some of those beliefs are, things that I've learned and observed in racing, like knowing that I'm, that I'm strong and, and seeing and feeling that, but for me, like it just felt so validating to get that whim. But I also, like no one else really knew the struggles that I had during the year.
I mean, some people that follow my process, but when you look at race results, you don't know, like she just had surgery a month ago, or she had covid 10 days ago. You just think they have a bad race and. , what I've learned this year is that race results do not tell the whole story. And so for me, like the wind was great and I'm sure a lot of people would be like, yeah, big breakthrough race, you know, she got lucky or good for her.
But the reality is like it's so much deeper than that. And like those. , you know, feelings like are so personal and really the only people that know that are like, the people are closest to you and your family. And so I just remember being overwhelmed and like immediately wanting to call my family and talk to my sisters and my mom and dad and, and just, yeah, just felt so good.
Um, and I was excited. Like I knew, like I had raced a little differently. I raced more aggressively and I came up with a plan and I stuck to it. And I wasn't afraid to like make the moves. And I think before like I was maybe more timid and more reactive to how I raced and you know, that was like eye-opening for me.
So I remember thinking as I finished. I think I learned how to ride my bike today, . So, um, and what I mean by that is like just being more ballsy and when you make a move, you stick to it. Um, . So it made me really excited. Like I immediately wanted to be like, is it 2023 yet? Can I race more? You know, everyone's like tired and they want the season to be over and I'm just like getting started, you know?
Um, so I remember just being, you know, validated, excited. Um, yeah, I just, I just felt really good. Um, but of course, like, you know, you get pulled away to get a drug test. I didn't have my phone, like I didn't eat after for a while and anyways. , it was a, a blur after that. Um, yeah. And then for me, it's like you win a big bike race and it's like this huge career defining moment for me to win big sugar.
And then it's like immediately fly back and then go to work in the er. And you know, it's like people in the er, like they don't, they don't know what big sugar is. They don't even know that I was gone racing bikes. And so I just go back to work, see patients and blah, da da da, da, and then try to deal with all these sponsor, you know, decisions for next year.
So it was like two worlds and um, yeah. , definitely an adjustment coming back home.
[00:43:37] Craig Dalton: That's crazy and exciting and I'm glad I was able to witness it and I'm glad I was able to revisit it with you. Now, so you talked about your eagerness for 2023. I'm not sure exactly when this will post, but probably in January of 2023, I just saw the announcement that you've signed on board for another year of the Grand Prix.
[00:43:57] Paige Onweller: Yeah. Yeah. So put my name in the hat. Uh, year two of the Lifetime Grand Prix. Um, so yeah, got accepted into that. So they upped the ante a bit with 35 athletes for the women and 35 for the men. Um, they seem to have a good lineup. And yeah, I mean that series really gave me a good opportunity and I really feel like Lifetime is trying to.
make some good changes, some positive changes. Uh, it's the most competitive female, uh, pro Peloton. You know, you go to other races and you don't see the depth of women that the lifetime events are bringing. So that to me is like, if I'm racing, I wanna race against the best. Um, and I love that. So that's been awesome.
They're also trying to make sure that this is a, a. Sport by doing drug testing and they're gonna be increasing that. And I very much support that. I think that's awesome. Um, and so, yeah, I just think there's so many positives that, uh, lifetime Grand Prix series is bringing in and, you know, it's not perfect.
Nothing is, uh, but they're willing to listen to the athletes and get input and, you know, hopefully I can be a part of the change that's happening in American.
[00:45:05] Craig Dalton: You must be happy that you did gut it out and attend all the events, so now you have at least a bit of knowledge of what those courses look like, et cetera.
[00:45:14] Paige Onweller: yeah, for sure. For sure.
[00:45:16] Craig Dalton: And then they have added a seventh event that they haven't announced. That's gonna be a wild card. And the fact that you can drop two events, does that meaningfully change the way you approach the season, those variables, or do you think it more is just an accommodation?
That stuff happens to athletes along the way, and it's just giving a little bit more of a breathing room for, you know, getting covid, having a crash, et
[00:45:39] Paige Onweller: right. Yeah. I think if you would've asked me that question last year, you know, I very much had the mindset of this is the race dropping and these are the ones I'm doing well at. But I think at this level of racing, like you better bring your A game to all seven and then like you're probably not, you're gonna get a flat or mechanical or an illness.
So my mindset is to race hard, there will be races that will be more important to me personally, that I'll target. Uh, but for the most part, you know, I'll definitely, um, you know, target all of them and then, you know, just stuff just happens. Um, but you know, for example, sea Otter, like that's not gonna be an a race for me.
Like, you know, I'll probably do the road event the day before. Um, that's, you know, it's just not going to be something that I'm gonna aim to win because of my lack of skillset. Now, will I do better than last, last year? Heck yeah. And I'm gonna have a skills coach that I'm working with this winter, and I'll be out in California and I pre-read the course a lot more.
And there's all these things that I will prepare myself to be better than I was last year. But knowing like, you know, I only can go so far in one year, so,
[00:46:43] Craig Dalton: Yeah, you talked about the rush of kind of, uh, talking to sponsors and media attention that happened after Big Sugar. I know you're not able to kind of reveal your sponsor program for 2023, but is it safe to say that it's expanded? You're gonna have more opportunities, a little bit more time and energy to focus and less stress on, uh, the rest of your life, so to speak.
[00:47:07] Paige Onweller: Yeah, for sure. Like, as we talked about earlier, like I've been juggling a lot this year and it's been very difficult. Um, even though I act like I'm handling myself well, like it's been a struggle a lot of the time. So I am excited that in 2023, um, I will no longer be working as a pa. I will be racing bikes full-time and I'm extremely grateful to the, all the sponsors that I'll be bringing on board.
That see my potential and wanna invest in, in what I'm potentially capable of doing. Um, cuz I am a new writer and um, you know, I think, you know, there's other people in this sport that may have the level of support that I'm going to be having, that have been doing this a very long time. And so I don't take for granted that these are sponsors that.
See potential in me. Um, you can't just win one bike race and expect that, you know, you're gonna be able to race full-time and, and have that support. Um, so yeah, I'm very excited about that. Um, my last day in the ER is January 3rd, and then, yeah, I'll drive directly to California after that to escape the winter snow here in Michigan.
Um, and get some big training blocking and yeah, start, uh, start learning more in 2020.
[00:48:13] Craig Dalton: That's so amazing and congratulations for that all coming together. It's just gotta mean so much to just have the opportunity to kind of go after it in 23 and really see what your potential is.
[00:48:25] Paige Onweller: Yeah, no, I am excited and, and I'll be doing a private tier program and I think what I love about it is that the, you get to work directly with the sponsors and, um, , you have input into products and equipment and um, you know, you feel like you have a voice and you work with people that you respect and value, and it just feels like a family.
Um, it already has felt that way with me, uh, for the sponsors that I'll be working with and. I'm just excited. And the other part of that is that when you are privateering, like you have a platform for advocating for what you believe in. And, you know, I wanna race well, but I also have some goals off the bike too.
And, um, I think those are important for me to start building towards in the cycling world. Um, so it's just fun to have that freedom and opportunity to, to work with brands that believe in that too.
[00:49:15] Craig Dalton: Yeah. That's awesome. Well, I'll certainly be following along with you in 2023, and I think you've got a lot of new fans that wanna see. How you're gonna do out there. So best of luck. The conversation was a lot of fun. And again, I wish you all the best.
[00:49:30] Paige Onweller: Thank you. Thank you.
[00:49:32] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks to Paige for joining us. We wish her all the best in the 2023 season as usual.
The women's lifetime grand Prix is setting up to be one of the more exciting series to watch and follow throughout the year. If you're interested in connecting with me, I encourage you to join the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. That's a free global cycling community to connect with other gravel cyclists around the world.
If you're able to support the podcast. Please visit, buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Or ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated and a great way for other gravel cyclists to discover the podcast. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
This week we sit down with event organizer, Ben Brainard to discuss the Shasta Gravel Hugger. Founded in 2020, this March event in Northern California has proven to be a great season opener for many gravel cyclists.
Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the show. We welcome Ben Bernard, the founder of the Shasta gravel hugger event in Northern California taking place in March each year for the last four years. It's become a real great early season option. For those of you looking to test your metal in the early parts of the year and not able to go out to some of the Midwest gravel races, like the mid south.
Ben has a real interesting approach to the race. He's got a great area to play with around Mount Shasta. If you've never been there before, it's a real amazing. Landmark. In the region, if you're driving, say from San Francisco up to Oregon, you pass through the town of Mount Shasta and then around on the north side of the mountain and the views are absolutely spectacular.
I've got a number of friends from Marin county who love this event and have been up on a number of occasions. As Ben will describe the weather sometimes plays a factor in the event and really dramatically affects your choice of equipment for this early season race. Before we jump in i need to thank this week sponsor hammerhead and the hammerhead caru to computer
this ad read for my friends at hammerhead is very timely. As I literally just got in my inbox, my email for my latest. Software update. The hammerhead crew. Two's the most advanced GPS cycling computer available today. With industry leading mapping navigation and routing capabilities.
That set us apart from other GPS options. So you can explore with confidence and on the go flexibility. That keeps getting underscored every single time I get one of these software updates, because I know the team at hammerhead are a listening. And be working and pushing out responses. So I love that about the crew to the crew too. If you don't know, it's got a touch screen display that's intuitive and responsive and full color. So your navigation experience is more like a smartphone than that, of a typical GPS device.
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With or without the root loaded. I love this when going to gravel events, because I'm someone who just, I like to know if I'm going to sit in and grind or whether I should try to power over something. Because it's a short climb. This is all available in real time on the crew too. That's why I trust it as my head unit this year and I will do so again, next year.
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You can get a new hammerhead to computer in front of you for your next year's riding endeavors. With all that said let's jump right into my conversation with ben
[00:04:04] Craig: Ben. Welcome to the gravel ride podcast.
Cast
[00:04:07] Ben: Thanks for having me. It's, it's an honor.
[00:04:09] Craig: I'm excited. I, you know, Shasta being not dramatically far away from my, from where I live and certainly a place that I've been before, ever since I started seeing the Shasta gravel hugger on the calendar. I've been excited to talk to you cuz it's a beautiful area and I wanna learn, learn more about the event.
[00:04:27] Ben: Excellent. You got it. It is a beautiful area. I've just loved going, riding my bike down there, especially in the winter, as I've said before this time of year it is, it is perfect. We got great smooth roads and the weather is usually pretty stinking good except for on race day. Yeah. I wanna
[00:04:43] Craig: step back and talk about that a little bit later.
But before we get get into the race itself, why don't we just learn a little bit about yourself? How did you find your way into that region? How'd you find your way to gravel cycling? .
[00:04:55] Ben: Yeah, I've been in the valley here for I guess about 22 years. The Rogue Valley that is, so I'm, I'm north of where the race is by about a 45 minute drive.
You know, like most people work brought us here. And then I got immersed in, in work for several years and, and finally when that led up a little bit, Picked up my bike about, you know, from, from a young age I was riding bikes, but, but not racing bikes. And about 12 years ago I started racing and then slowly found my way into gravel and then yeah, eventually promotion.
It's crazy. So,
[00:05:34] Craig: so to set the context for our listeners, I've been up to Shasta, I've been north of Shasta. On my way to Bend, I think is what normally I go by Shasta and, and, and continue up that road. It's a pretty rural part of Northern California. So can you des just sort of describe the area and maybe paint a picture for, you know, what brings people there?
What's the sort of the economic engine of the region, et cetera.
[00:05:59] Ben: Yeah, I would say timber is what developed this area. And, and so, so that's the main thing. We've seen less and less timber. I. In this area, you know, the mills have kind of dwindled down to where there's, you know, one big one or something.
And, and so I would say now this particular area is recreation is a big, a big thing. And then secondary would be tourism yeah, tourism. And, and I just slipped me, what was the, the other one I was gonna say. But but yeah, it's a beautiful area and it's a great place to visit. . Yeah,
[00:06:33] Craig: certainly Mount Shasta.
I guess I first became aware of it because of the mountain at Mount Shasta and the desire to climb it and go up. It, it's just sort of, it's an attainable, quote unquote mountaineering experience for a lot of people. And I know they've got, you know, a great outfitter right there in, in, in downtown Mount Shasta to help you get up the mountain.
And that's where I first got exposed to it and mm-hmm. , it was clear. Obviously there's a lot of wilderness around that area. I stopped there once on my mountain bike on the way home from Ben to explore a little bit, but just kind of got the, the tip of the iceberg for what the terrain is around there.
When you think about like where you live now and around Shasta itself, how would you describe the, the, the gravel biking terrain that.
[00:07:18] Ben: Yeah. Oh man. We have so many gravel roads. So, you know, I live just over the border in Oregon in the rogue Valley. And our gravel roads are for the most part, very pristine, like very well developed gravel roads.
The problem we have around here is they almost all go up the side of a mountain. And so, , they're great roads to ride in the summer, but in the wintertime, you're gonna, you're gonna bump into, into snow pretty early on and get turned around a lot of the time. And so that's what led me to, to going down into the Shasta area because I, I can ride these awesome gravel roads the strata Bianchi roads and, and, and stay below, let's say 3000 feet most of the time.
And that way I, I can, I can stay outta the. Interesting.
[00:08:06] Craig: Yeah, that it, it didn't dawn on me that actually Shasta would have better weather than where you are.
[00:08:13] Ben: Yeah, it's, I would say it has a few more sunny days in this area. I mean, I could, I could have drizzle here, go up over the Siskiyou, pass in, into Siskiyou County and, and voila, it's a sunny day.
It's, yeah, it's quite a bit about the weather in the wintertime, especially. .
[00:08:30] Craig: Interesting. So you mentioned you sort of rediscovered the bicycle about a dozen years ago, and eventually during that path you started riding off road. Was that by virtue of the fact that there's just so many dirt roads around where you
[00:08:42] Ben: were?
Yeah, well, I, I would say that I found gravel and dirt roads from a good friend Tom Neland, who started putting on the honey badge Arise, which are, are are pretty fun event around here. A free event. And he's the one that introduced me to the gravel roads in the Mount Shasta area. So I had, I had an old Hardtail mountain bike that I used for commuting, and they had some, I don't know, two inch slicks on it or something like that.
26 er. And, and I went to one of his honey Badger rides, which they kind of focus. unique courses and, and gravel. And and that's how I found the gravel bike. And from there it was just riding cross bikes. And I actually been, I, geez, I guess three or four years that I've been racing gravel pretty seriously.
I mean, as. as a primary source for, for my events that I attend. And, but I got my first gravel bike this last year. It's right here behind me. But most of the roads around here are so nice that a cross bike is absolutely fine. I mean, if you don't need to go beyond 30 fives
[00:09:48] Craig: usually. Yeah. Yeah.
So there's a, a quite a big leap between finding a love of riding gravel bikes and riding on dirt roads to creating an event. , what made you decide to take that leap? And remind me when the first Shaster gravel hugger event was?
[00:10:06] Ben: The first event was in 2000, March of 2000. So, it's four years. This next year will be our fourth year of putting, no,
[00:10:14] Craig: 2020, sorry.
Yeah, 2020 was the first
[00:10:16] Ben: one. Yeah. Yeah. 2020. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. And it's grown steadily ever since.
[00:10:21] Craig: and was the first one. Did you just sort of put it out there, Hey, come one, come all, or did you put a little organization, a lot of organization behind it?
[00:10:30] Ben: Yeah. You know, in 2020 there were some, some big rides, obviously some big races, and, and I was drawn to those events and so I'm like, well, geez, we have these beautiful roads here.
You know, we need an. In this region, they're, of which they're, you'd have to go to Bend to get a gravel race or, or, or, or the Grasshopper series in Northern California, which are still several hours south of here. And so, so yeah, I just decided that these, these roads kind of reminded me of the strata Bianca Roads, these beautiful white crush granite roads.
, wanted to mimic the, the Strata Bianchi and the Peru Bay. That was the original plan, but we had a couple promoters around here and they like to put on events and, and, and like small little local events, and I wanted to try to make this more of a regional national type of event. And so I figured.
Someone that had the passion for, and the vision for this particular type of a race probably should be at the helm. And so I decided, you know, the whole, I guess I'll do it myself kind of a thing. And, and it, it must take off. So it's great. And did you, was it
[00:11:40] Craig: always sitting in early March as the time it was held?
[00:11:44] Ben: Yeah. I originally had plans to, to call it strata something, you know, mimicking the strata Bianchi roads. But eventually I just didn't want the conflict with that particular race. And it's on the same exact day as strata Bianchi. And so we kind of, I wanted to put it early in the year because as we all know, as the summer goes on, the race counter gets more and more competi.
This particular week is one week ahead of Midsouth. I did not want to try to go up against the Midsouth. If I'm trying to be a a national type race, then, then, then you wouldn't automatically go up against Midsouth. Yeah. And so I kind of placed it on the calendar right here for those two reasons originally.
And, and then the third thing is when, when I was training riding turbos in, in the, in the winter. , I wanted to get out and do an early event. You know, like even if you're just, you know, doing some base work or something like that, you still kind of want to go out and test yourself and, and, and this is perfect.
It, it, it fit into how it, it fit in exactly to a spot that I would want a race personally. Yeah. So, yeah. That's kind of, that
[00:12:51] Craig: makes a lot of sense how either there, yeah. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. Like I know any Wouldbe race organizer at this point, there's gravel events throughout the. And to your point, like if you want to create an event that can occupy a little bit more of a national profile and kind of be a destination, that early season spot is one that's open and granted, not everybody's gonna have the wherewithal to go to Mid-South, but it certainly has the name and.
The recognition and sponsors that is gonna draw a lot of athletes and not head going head-to-head with it, but also similarly for recreational athletes. Providing that early season goal and opportunity I think makes a ton of sense with that March date. As I've seen pictures over the years. , you have experienced some dramatic weather.
Can you kind of describe kind of the, you know, just the many different personalities the course can have based on the weather conditions?
[00:13:49] Ben: Yeah. Like I've said, this area has fantastic weather in the wintertime, but we have been, I don't blessed cursed. I don't know what, but we. all three years that we've had the race so far, we've had snow on course at some point, you know, and so year number one was probably the worst year if you ask me.
It was cold, it was raining at the start, and then by the time we got to the highest point of the race, there was snow on the ground. So you dig back in the photos of, of that first race and, and it, and it was pretty sloppy and, and and. The next year we had snow overnight, but it was a beautiful sunny day and it just created these just in incredible pitchers.
The course was good except for, you know, the infamous Jeep Trail, which which was just saturated actually, and so it, it, it didn't have a chance to dry out, but But these roads, for the most part, with the exception of this Jeep Road, east Louis Jeep Road, that seems to be pretty famous in this race.
The roads hold up to all kinds of weather, so well the majority of 'em are gonna be just if you get some rain in the week ahead. They are faster than most pavement roads. So they're big, wide open county maintained gravel roads that are really smooth. Most of the.
[00:15:07] Craig: Yeah, I was, when I was on the Shasta Gravel hugger website, I was looking at the tire recommendations as I often do for, for travel events.
And you made mention like totally capable in a, in a dry ish road, gravel day 30 twos to 37. You're, you're, you're all good. Mm-hmm. . But if it's actually wet on the course, all of a sudden it's a different.
[00:15:29] Ben: Yeah. We have, we've had road bikes do well, so Luke lamp party came up here and raced on a road bike with, he could stuff some 30 millimeters in there.
And it was one of the years it was super wet. Could he have been higher than third place with, with a proper gravel bike? Possibly that particular year, but like last year, I would say that. He, he might have been able to win it on a, on a road bike. And that's the fun thing about this particular race, like we call it gravel and it, it, it attracts a lot of people, but it is almost half pavement.
So. It is a real, I try to do the build up the sectors. And the reason we have sectors is because there's gravel sections. And then of course we have, you know, maybe, I think our longest one's like a 12 mile section of pavement. And, and so yeah, picking the right tires is, is huge. And, and if you can get away with running some 32 millimeter slicks, like I write it a lot.
my cross bike with, with kind of a road ish wheel on 'em, and, and it does fine. So yeah, let's dig
[00:16:34] Craig: into the courses that are available to riders now for the 2023 edition. What, what course options do you have?
[00:16:41] Ben: Yeah, our big one is called the Full Hug and it's a hundred miles and it has about 4,500 feet of climbing in it.
I wanna. And then we have the half hug. I kind of like the bro hug. It's like it's half, half that. It's, it's a hundred kilometers. It is just a, just I think 65 miles with about 4,000 feet of climbing. So it's, it's close. Most of the climbing's in the second half of the, of the race. And then brand new this year, we are adding a more social.
Loop, which is gonna be 35 miles. And, and we have also added an e-bike, which is something that's brand new for me to include an e-bike option in, in, in the
[00:17:21] Craig: race. So, interesting. And it sounds like, from what you were saying before in our tire discussion, from a technical perspective, no one should be too nervous about what they're gonna get into up there.
[00:17:32] Ben: Yeah. I mean, we have one high speed descent. Might, would definitely make you wish you had some different tires on if you're, if you went small. But all aid, all ages, all levels. We'd be fine. Just, you know, you gotta be careful. People can recognize when, when it's getting dangerous and slow down, so, yeah.
Yeah, for the most part, roads are
[00:17:51] Craig: fantastic. And then are you providing aid stations out there on the course for the riders?
[00:17:56] Ben: Yeah, so we have, last year we had two main aid stations and then a third. Third was just in an emergency aid station that wasn't quite stocked as much close to the end in case someone was crashing and boning or something like that.
Most people didn't stop at that one, but yeah, fully supported. We encourage everyone to use our aid stations as opposed to try to seek outside help along along the way. You know, we try to discourage and make it fair enough for everybody if they don't have a, a dad to hand water bottles up in random spots.
So we encourage everyone to, if they do want something special from, from a teammate or a family member, then do it in our, in our speed zones.
[00:18:35] Craig: Yeah. When you think about how you're promoting the event and the types of athletes that you're trying to attract, Are you categorizing this as a full throttle race?
You know, if there's a spectrum between like hardcore race and gravel ride, where are you trying to sit? And I realize that you could answer that differently for the 10% at the front of the race versus the rest of us. But I'd just be interested to kind of get your thought process on how you're, you're categorizing it.
[00:19:01] Ben: Yeah, I mean, I would, I, I'd categorize it as a race, like, yeah, we're chip timed, we are keeping track of different age groups, so yeah, full on race. But it, it falls into the, the gravel theme of you know, the molet, you know, we have let the racers race and then if anyone wants to, you know, just go out there and knock off a, a big, long day, then.
We'd love to have them too, so, so yeah. It's, yeah, it's, it's definitely a, a party for some and, and, But we always try to maintain that there's a race going on and we try to promote the race piece of it too. Because, you know, we're trying to attract these big professional racers to come, which will, you know, create excitement for the everyday person to come and see how they stack up against people.
So it's been fun.
[00:19:52] Craig: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And if I look back over the last few years, for whatever reason, whatever you've done, the timing, the location, the ethos you have managed to attract, Several or dozens of elite riders to come and chest their metal there in March.
[00:20:08] Ben: Yeah. Yeah. Originally, you know, it's an interesting story.
So you're number two. So you're number one is, was the start of covid. So we're in March of 2000 2020, excuse me. And. And there's some grumbling about Covid of course. And then we pretty much shut down, right? And then there was hardly any races that year. And then the next year is like in the early spring it felt like, okay, things are starting to, to open up and, and a county like Siski I don't know.
They, they would kind of, I just think they kind of poo-pooed the, the co covid thing in that area, the maj majority of people. And, and so they were welcoming of us trying to do something that year. And so year number two, we really quickly threw it together and And the funny story is that I noticed that Pete Stetner was, was liking some of my Instagram posts.
And so I'm like, huh. So we shot Pete a quick message and he's like, yeah, I'm, I'm open that week and I'd love, love to come, kind of a thing. And, and . And so I would say he was the start of the, the professionals showing up to the race. And then we were able to leverage that Pete, you know, hey, Pete's coming and you know, we got Jacob Rath Raey come down from, from the Portland area.
So we had a couple of pros in year number two. And then in year number two, the women's field was, was even probably more stacked top to bottom. There was, I think only 13 of the, the women's pros, but we had Clara Hansinger, we had Maude Farrell, and then of course Moe Wilson. That was, that was our, our, our, our podium with ma taking the wind.
Mo second and Clara Haunting are third. So, so yeah, it, it's definitely. The interest of the, the regional pros. And then last year Adam, Rob, you know, he's coming all the way over from Quebec, but he just wanted one, an event and one that wasn't in, in snow and winter. And so he came out here and, and yeah, we got Brennan words coming up from, from the Marin County and, and, and had a great showdown last year with some really strong writers.
Yeah.
[00:22:13] Craig: Yeah. It's, it's been, it's been fun to watch the kind of growth, and I, I think you'll continue to see people get attracted to it. Again, it's just good part of the calendar. Mm-hmm. , clearly it's got enough ca like enough quality terrain and racers up there to make it a, a worthwhile early season test of your fitness.
[00:22:32] Ben: Yeah, exactly. This next year though, the calendar has become quite a bit more competitive on my, my day because Belgian Waffle Wright has. That they are gonna be holding a, an event in Arizona on the same weekend. So the, so now the work is for me to try to, you know, attract these, these pros to come to my event over, over heading to Arizona, which, I mean, March in Arizona sounds pretty good to me but but yeah,
[00:23:00] Craig: yeah, yeah. I think there's room for, you know, if you put on great events, , there's room for multiple events on the same day at the end of the day. Mm-hmm. , there's people looking for different things. I think you also mentioned over email some, some initiatives that you've put forth and maybe some changes in how you're kind of rolling people out during the day.
Do you wanna talk about some of those 20, 23 initiatives?
[00:23:21] Ben: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, there's. There's been some chatter amongst the, the female racers. Now a lot of them like to see how they stack up, up, up against the men, but there's also been a decent amount of chatter about how unsafe it is for them to try to be going out there and competing in these, these massive, this mass participation events that that have a ton of guys that they're trying to jockey with.
And so this next year if as long as we get enough in the field to make it worthwhile, we are going to ship the women off 15, 15 minutes ahead of the men's race so that they don't have to go deal with that first sector and the chaos associated with that. They will, we'll also be able to give them a chance to, to kind of highlight the women and, and announce who's here and who's competing and, and, and give their sponsors a sh a shout out and.
and then, then we send them off and then we can go about bringing the guys up 15 minutes later. And then, you know, I just ahead
[00:24:21] Craig: a follow up question on that, Ben, when you, when you think about that first sector, is there elevation, is there technicality? What do you imagine happening during those first 15 minutes that allow the women to sort of have a sense of more autonomous racing for that portion?
[00:24:37] Ben: Yeah, so the first sector is, is I, I wanna say it's about six miles. It's relatively flat. The first, the first quarter of a mile last year was in relatively loose gravel, and then it got pretty nice and smooth after that. So, so the first quarter of a mile it was, it was pretty chaotic. It was pretty dusty, and, and it was definitely, If you weren't in the preferred two lines, you know, you are out in some, some loose gravel and so, so yeah, I, it made for a hairy first couple of minutes of the race and, and the race ha at that point was already on.
I, I think the original attack with with Adam and Br Brennan was right before they went onto that sector, so it was already full race mode. So yeah, it was extremely hectic.
[00:25:26] Craig: Yeah, it's interesting. And before I ask this next question, I wanna state, I don't know the right answer to this mm-hmm. and I think.
Over time, it's gonna evolve, and it may even be on an event by event basis, but as the women are, are set out 15 minutes ahead and granted it will give them a clean look at that first sector and the ability for some women to attack one another and perhaps to kind of stretch out the field. At some point the front end of the men's race is going to start interacting with those female athletes out front.
And I don't know if you've gotten this feedback from the women. As the, as the elite men start to come through, obviously there's gonna be women who have fitness who attempt to glom onto some wheels and, and kind of get caught up in the momentum of the men's peloton. How do you kind of imagine that playing out?
[00:26:16] Ben: That's a great question. And I think, I think it's one that I'm gonna look, I'm gonna probably look to a few of our, our professional ladies that are coming in to help guide me on that. So, so the big question is like, do we do. tell them like, Hey, don't jump on wheels. This you're in your own little race.
Or, or like year number two, when we had wave starts they just were able to jump on whatever they wanted to. And, and so I, I don't know the answer to that question, but we as. By the time we roll off on race day, I hope to have a, a very clear explanation to all the racers about what we're, what we hope to see out there.
[00:26:58] Craig: Yeah, I think that's a good, that's a good approach. I mean, obviously like the women should be leading this conversation about what makes sense, I suspect, but don't know that, you know, they will think it's fair game to grab wheels. Like it's, it's implausible that over a hundred mile day mm-hmm. . Racers are gonna work with racers.
That's just sort of the nature of bike racing, right? So it's hard to imagine everybody's saying like, okay, we all agree cause it's just gonna be super hard to police. But I just think it's interesting and I, again, like I've, I've seen a number of races attempt this approach where they're giving a 15 minute head start.
We've obviously seen the co-mingled starts. We've seen lots of different derivatives of this, and I do think that as a community, as we put these offers out there, it's just important to be open and say like, Hey, we don't know what the right solution is. But potentially after the year of 2023, at a bunch of these tests, if you will, going out and getting feedback from women, we'll arrive at something that makes sense, that still has that community feel, but elevates the safety, elevates the ability for the sport to high.
Female athletes as much as oftentimes the ma male athletes get
[00:28:15] Ben: highlighted. Exactly. That's been, that's definitely been my initiative for the, for the last several years is, is to try to, to, to give these ladies a, a chance, I mean, . We originally had ideas of doing a, a reverse discrimination prize purse because, you know, women's cycling has been so underfunded or, you know, the rewards or or prize money was, was so minuscule compared to, to the men's races that, that that we wanted to like highlight that as, as one of the things, we have a prize purse for the women only.
but with permitting in California, that's not allowed. , you can't have discriminatory prize purses anymore, which is great for, for women across all the different events. But but yeah, we're trying to highlight these ladies and, and probably some of 'em have a harder time, you know, making the same kind of sponsorship money as, as a, a guy of similar skills.
So,
[00:29:07] Craig: yeah. Yeah, it's certainly an interesting problem and I think the important thing is, people are talking about it. And again, that the, the women who are involved are having the lion share of opinion and we can just use their opinions as guidance as it relates to the race in its entirety. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.
And so, how large of a field do you typically see at the Shasta Gravel hogger hugger?
[00:29:30] Ben: Yeah, so last year we had 400 people take the sign up for the race, and then we had about 335, I wanna say that actually went across our start line. So yeah, I mean that's kind of, that's kind of where we were last year.
We, we have grown every single year that we've been in existence, so hopefully, you know, we can see something north of 500 this year.
[00:29:52] Craig: And great. When, when we, I mean we've talked through what to exper, what to expect in terms of the course terrain and what type of equipment you'd like to see people ride at the end of the event.
What does that experience look like if someone's making time to spend their weekend up with you at, in Shasta, what, what expectations should they have after the race?
[00:30:12] Ben: Yeah, we definitely wanna try to bring the party to the after. After the race. So yeah, we have a burrito truck last year and most likely they'll be back again this year.
So nice big burrito to finish off the day. Beer and and then of course, everyone telling their war stories, so. people hung, hung around until dark last year. And so yeah, there's a, there's a nice little after party. Last year we had a band the brothers Reid, and they absolutely killed it. But I found like most people weren't paying attention to the band.
They were. Telling their war stories. And so probably not gonna bring a band back. We'll just be playing, you know, some good music in the background and, and let the racers chat about what they, what happened out there, . Nice.
[00:30:56] Craig: And so give the listener a few benchmarks. So if you were coming from San Francisco, for example, how, how long does it take to get up to Shasta or if you're coming from somewhere in Oregon?
[00:31:05] Ben: Yeah, I, I mean, you can get, I think it's about four hours from Portland down. And then similar from, from the Bay Area maybe a little bit less because there's 45 minutes, I guess to here. But so yeah, it's, it's, it's a pretty easy drive. I wouldn't suggest doing it before a 9:00 AM start, but you probably could from the Bay Area if you were got up nice and
early.
[00:31:28] Craig: Yeah, I was gonna ask that. Are people typically staying overnight in Shasta, the nights before?
[00:31:32] Ben: Yeah. The, there's Yreka is the closest town with hotels. That's only about a 10 minute drive or probably even less than that. And there's plenty of hotel rooms there. A lot of people stay in weed and Mount Shasta, which Are also great places, but I wanna say 25 to 40 miles away.
Okay. 25 to weed. So, so yeah, there's more like rental properties. If you're like doing a VRBO or Airbnb or something like that, there's more in the Mount Shasta area. That tends to be a little more of a, of a recreation type town. So, so there's, yeah, there's plenty of options. But the thing, one of the things that we've.
Every year so far is in the parking lot. Next to the, the start finish line is, is plenty of room and we've allowed camping on site. So if you van camping, RV camping, if you can get your, if you can get your rig in there and, and not get stuck, then, then and then yeah, it's have at it free. Yeah.
[00:32:29] Craig: For a hot second there. I just had in my mind, oh, it's in Mount Shas. The mountain of Shasta is obviously covers a vast area, and certainly, yeah, again, remembering my, my, my trips up to Oregon. Once you get past Shasta and Shasta, the town, and on the other side of the mountain, amazing, spectacular views of Mount Shasta through that valley.
[00:32:51] Ben: Yeah, we we're kind of, we're, we're almost all north of Mount Shasta, so I mean, we, we go down and we touch weed, which would, I would kind of say is like the southern part of the Shasta Valley. And then Mount Shasta would be further south and more like on the side of the mountain. And so if you want the great views of the mountain, then the North, north Valley is where you want to be.
And we. . Oh, just so many. Incredible. If the, if the mountain is out as they like to say, it's, it's absolutely stunning from many, many different spots on on the course. Some, some have even said it's distracting. It's, it's so, It's so beautiful.
[00:33:32] Craig: So yeah. Yeah, I would agree. It's one of the like the beautiful things about driving through that valley, which often seems like a, it takes forever, but the nice thing is you've got that amazing mountain view the entire time.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, I'm super glad to finally get you on the show, Ben, to talk about this event. I love the sounds of it. I love that area. Like I totally recommend it from a, a visual perspective and everything you've talked about, the writing makes me believe that it is a great early season event.
[00:33:59] Ben: Yeah, I sure hope so. And, and hope to see this thing continue to grow through, through the next couple of years. So hope to make some nice announcements here soon about cool people that are attending. So people are starting to finalize their. Schedules for this next year and, and yeah, hope to make some announcements.
Right
[00:34:17] Craig: on. And I'll throw the gravel hugger.com link in the show notes so people know how to find you. But they can also just search Shasta gravel hugger and they'll get to the right location.
[00:34:27] Ben: Absolutely. Super easy. Yep. And if you wanna find out a little bit about what the race is We have a race recap on YouTube.
You can also just google Shasta gravel hugger on YouTube and, and there's a 20 minute recap of what happened last year and we hope to do something similar this next, next year to, to kind of give everyone a feel of what, how the race goes. So,
[00:34:49] Craig: awesome. Thanks, man.
[00:34:51] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel rod podcast. Big thanks to our sponsor hammerhead and the hammerhead kuru. To computer. And huge thanks to ben for coming on i've been curious about the shasta gravel hugger for awhile and was happy to learn more about At The event.
I'll put all the appropriate links in the show notes. So you can go find and check out that video on YouTube that Ben was mentioning. If you're interested in connecting with me or other riders in the area, please join the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. It's a free online cycling community, open to anybody and filled with gravel cyclists from around the world.
If you're interested in able to support the podcast. You can visit, buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Any contribution or support is greatly appreciated. Or if you have a moment, ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. And really help with our discoverability. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
In this week's episode, cycling journalist and former CyclingTips Editor-in-Chief Caley Fretz joins Randall to discuss cycling’s changing media landscape, the economic headwinds facing professional journalists, emerging models for supporting quality reporting and story-telling, and how the meaning of cycling changes as one pedals through life. Also: press-fit bottom brackets, hookless road rims, and too-stiff components and frames.
Episode sponsors: Thesis Bike and Logos Components
Join The Ridership
Links to Caley's work:
The Road to Nairo’s House: https://cyclingtips.com/2018/01/the-road-to-nairos-house/
The Teaching Toe Strap: https://www.velonews.com/news/road/the-toe-strap/
Tales From The Tour: The Rest Day Pose: https://cyclingtips.com/2018/07/tales-from-the-tour-the-rest-day-pose/
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the show, I'm handing the microphone off to my co-host Randall Jacobs. Who's got veteran cycling journalists, Kaylee frets on the pod.
To discuss some of the challenges and opportunities facing cycling journalism. You may know Kaylee from his work as editor in chief, over at cycling tips. And prior to that over at Velo news, both publications have undergone some downsizing of late.
The economic headwinds facing professional journalists. Our strong, particularly in the cycling world. If we want to have quality reporting and storytelling. A new model needs to emerge. I don't know where this is all gonna end up, but
I was super excited that Kaylee agreed to join Randall on the podcast. To just get his perspective and to get into some good old fashioned by geekery. Before we jump in we need to thank this week sponsors from thesis and logos components
As many of you know, I'm a long time it's thesis. OB one rider for a limited time thesis is offering $500 off a thesis, OB one with access custom wireless shifting, and your choice of high-end carbon wheels.
It's a bike that I can personally attest, stands up to every other carbon bike out there on the market at a really great price. One of the things that I've always appreciated about thesis is that they allow. A unique level of customization. So if you want size appropriate cranks down to, I think 160 or 165 millimeters, you can do that. You can get your stem size, you can customize everything.
Based on a free one-on-one consult. So go check out thesis.bike, or contact. Hello at thesis stoplight to get started. I also want to give a shout out to logos components. Logos just receive huge recognition from bike packing.com and was awarded the gear of the year award for the wheelset category in 2022.
You might recall an episode. We did a while back on how to choose a gravel wheel set, where Randall went through detail by detail on the design considerations When constructing a carbon wheelset I encourage you to listen to that as it provided a lot of riders with reflection on what they were looking for and what all the different things were, all logos wheels are built on proven open standards with non-proprietary components and with a manufacturing precision. That rivals anybody in the industry, the wheels are backed by Logus is five-year warranty, lifetime at-cost incident protection. And a US-based warehouse and support team to keep you rolling for many years to come.
So head on over to logos components.com and use the code community free shipping all one word to take advantage of a free shipping offer. With that business behind us I'm going to pass the microphone back over to randall and his conversation with kaylee frets
[00:03:06] Randall R. Jacobs: It's been quite a bit. I think I last saw you at Sea Otter. How have you been? What's going on in your world?
[00:03:11] Caley Fretz: Well, I'm unemployed as of November 15th. I mean, yeah, let's just, we can get that one right outta the way. Right. I was part of the layoffs at Outside Inc. To be somewhat differentiated from Outside Magazine for anybody out there. I mean, outside Inc. Does own outside magazine, but it also owns lots and lots of other things.
Yeah, myself the editor-in-Chief of Venu as well and two of the CT staff, two really core CT staff. Matt, our managing editor, and Dave Rome, one of our tech editors and, and kinda a legend in space. We're all let go on the same day on November 15th. So I am currently super fun employed and I think after we chat today, I'm probably gonna go skiing cuz it's snowing up in the mountains right now.
And so I'm, I'm somewhat enjoying myself. But, you know, fun employment brings with it some level of stress as well, . So that's, that's how I'm doing right now. Yeah.
[00:03:59] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and I appreciate you sharing. I think last we rode together. You were still living in Boulder and you've since moved to beautiful Durango. When was that move?
[00:04:07] Caley Fretz: That was shortly after we had our, our first child. My wife grew up here and, and we have grandparents here to help with childcare and all the rest. And we just wanted to get off the front range. No offense to the front range. There's too many people and there's fewer people here. And I can go skiing 18 minutes from here, from my door, and I can't really complain about that.
[00:04:27] Randall R. Jacobs: Housing costs are probably a little bit less bonkers out that way as well. I was in Denver and particularly Boulderer lately, and it is nuts.
[00:04:34] Caley Fretz: it's a little bit better here, although not as, Not as good as it was four or five years ago. It, it, it's a zoom town, right? So in the last couple years it has, it's gone up like 28% or something ridiculous in, in 2021. We love it here. It's amazing. Durango, the bike community here is, is unbelievable.
The mountain biking is unbelievable. And there's nobody that, you have not as many people to share all the trails with. So I, we like that bit of it as well.
[00:04:59] Randall R. Jacobs: Very, very cool. And so let's just dive into, cuz, cuz I've been curious share a bit about your background. So I, I've only known you as, you know, in your role as, as a journalist and editor at Cycling Tips. But how do you end up on this path?
[00:05:13] Caley Fretz: Oh I mean, how far back do you want to go? I, I, I started racing mountain bikes at 12 or 13 years old. My dad was a cyclist. My dad was, I think one of the founding members of the Penn State cycling team, collegiate cycling team back in the day. So I grew up around bikes and I grew up around bike racing and watching the tour and all these things.
And yeah, started racing when my family moved to Burlington, Vermont back in the day at Catamount Family Centers. Anybody who, yep. Very, very northeast connection. That's where I, that was all my youth. Yeah. Any, any any new
[00:05:45] Randall R. Jacobs: and, and your dad is still in Vermont, if I recall
[00:05:48] Caley Fretz: Yeah, yeah. He he actually just retired, but he, he used to run a small like sort of children's museum aquarium thing called Echo on the, on the waterfront in Burlington.
And yeah so, so grew up, grew up racing, grew up around bikes, and went to school out here in Colorado. Mostly to ride by bike to, to ma major in bike racing, pre primarily . Much to my parents chagrin, I would say. And let's see what it, what would've been like junior year, summer in between junior and senior year of, of college.
Shout out to a friend of mine, Brian Holcomb, who's still in, in the bike world basically came to me and was like, Hey, you should, you should be an intern at Be News. And so I did that and I, and I, I became an intern at Bean News and worked the summer there. And Ben Delaney was the editor-in-chief at the time, and Ben was, Ben was kind enough to bring me on in a, in a kind of part-time capacity that fall.
and then it kind of just went from there. So, so yeah, a couple folks who were still floating around the bike world, I, I owe a lot to at this point. Ben and, and Brian and Zach Vest, who was sort of one of my first mentors and has been a, a marketing manager at Niner and a other, a Scott and a couple other places recently.
Math yeah, and just kinda worked from there. So I was a tech editor at sort of tech writer at Be News for a couple years, tech editor at Be News for a couple years. And then kinda worked my way into bigger and broader beats basically, and, and kind of stepped into the racing space a little bit more.
Became, I think it was like think it was senior editor or whatever the title was at the end of my, my Bella News tenure which was 2017 which is when Wade Wallace got in touch from cycling tips and he was actually just looking for a person to fill a somewhat similar role, kind of like a features writer do a bit of everything kind of writer.
And I loved the idea. I loved cycling tips. I loved the brand. I loved everything that stood for, I loved the fact that it was kinda an up and comer and I had been at Villa News long enough that I was just was looking for a change basically. And so I, I jumped ship from one to the other, from Helen News to ct.
Remained really good friends with lots of folks at, at vn particularly guys like Andrew Hood who had done a bunch of Tour de France with and things like that. It's like no hard feelings in that, in that jump. Just wanted something new. And within about a year of that for a number of different reasons Wade had promoted me to editor-in-chief at ct.
So that was around 20, mid middle of 2018. And it was an interesting time kind of from a business perspective cuz it was near the end of a period when, when CT was owned by bike Exchange in Australia and we were about to be purchased by Pink Bike. And with all of that happening and then in particular with the purchase from Pink Bike we got a bunch more resource and really could expand into what I think most people probably know, cycline tips as now or maybe we'll say six months ago what they knew it as up, up until quite recently.
And yeah. I'm trying to think this, there's not my time. My my time as EIC of, of CIP is, is obviously I think what most listeners out there would probably know, if not of me, then you at least know CIP and you know what we were trying to do there.
[00:08:52] Randall R. Jacobs: I know how much grief there is out there for, that core team having been broken up. A lot of people, myself included, who value the perspective that you bring to the industry. It's not simply you know, flipping press releases which, you know, there's a place for like, there's, you know, some people that's, they wanna see what the press releases are but doing really interesting journalism.
One of your colleagues Ian tralo, he's done some interesting pieces on Central Asian despots in their role in cycling and on the Afghan women's cycling team. And the controversy with how the UCI was prioritizing getting certain members of that team and the organization out of Afghanistan when the US was backing out.
Like, this is not your standard bike industry journalism. And that's an angle that I think is going to be very much missed in the vacuum that's created by your departure and the departure of others from that team.
[00:09:42] Caley Fretz: Yeah. It's a sad thing. I think the overwhelming emotion for a lot of us is, is just sadness because we spend a lot of time building this thing and a lot of time and energy and effort and, and yeah. No blood, but probably some sweat and tears in there. And yeah, and it feels that's just sad. You know, I. I enjoyed my time there tremendously. I enjoyed working with people like Ian, with James Huang, with Dave, who got laid off alongside me. It was just a really, I can't say it was massively surprising giving a number of things that I can't actually talk about. But I I, oh, I am still very saddened by it.
Yeah, I mean, it's not gonna be what it was because a bunch of the people are gone like that, that, that I can say . Yeah.
[00:10:28] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Now, remind me, when did James join the team? Because he, he's someone I've admired for years
[00:10:33] Caley Fretz: yeah. He, he joined a, I think about 18 months before I did. So when, when bike exchange, when, when Wade first sold a, a large portion of cycling tips to bike exchange that was sort of the first. Let's say capital infusion that, that the company got. And a lot of that was used to pick up kind of high profile folks, particularly in the United States which is what's sort of their next, the next market that, that Wade wanted to go after.
So that was, they picked up James and they picked up Neil Rogers in the us as well as some other folks like, like Shane Stokes in the uk or Ireland, I believe he is right now. Yeah, so, so that was all a little bit before I got there. And part of my, sort of what they asked me to do, what Wade asked me to do when, when I became editor in chief was to figure out exactly how to best use people like James, who do phenomenal work.
I mean, I, I, I maintain to this day that the three-person team, the three-person tech team that, that we had at Zeman Tips over the last year which would be James and Dave Rome and Ronan McLaughlin in Ireland as well. Was the best anywhere in cycling media? There's no, there's no question in my mind about that.
And so basically trying to figure out how to steer that talent was one of the big things that I was tasked with doing over the last three, four years.
[00:11:44] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and you know, when you read a review from any of those team members that you're, you're getting it straight you know, for better or for worse for the brands that are at the mercy of, of that team. But honestly, it keeps the industry honest. And I recall early in my career in the bike particularly James' writing be being something that I referenced constantly.
And in fact, when I was at one of the big players, if I needed to make an argument, I would oftentimes grab an article from someone like him to bring to the argument like, no press fit is not acceptable. And we're gonna spend the extra money and add the weight, and we're gonna tell a story about how a two piece thread together is a better solution.
And honestly, it's a solution to fix what was broken when you went, you know, but that's, that's a, that's a, a hobby horse that I think we've all been riding for some time.
[00:12:29] Caley Fretz: love hearing that though. I, I genuinely love hearing that because I mean, oh, first of all, James would also love hearing that. He'd be very proud of that fact. I think and yeah, like we, we know that that was the case, right? I mean, we, we the three of us have been making a, a podcast called Nerd Alert for, for, for the last year and a half or two years or whatever.
And I got a fair number of, of Less than pleased emails off the back of, of that podcast. Cause we were quite honest in our assessment of what we thought was happening in the industry. And in particular, like I haven't been a tech editor for. Eight, nine years. I'm just a cyclist at this point. But Dave and James are so deep inside it and think they spend so much of their lives thinking about that stuff that yeah.
You, you can't ignore their opinions, right? You absolutely can't ignore their opinions. And I think that's, that's a testament to one, the fact that they do their research. And two the fact that they've been right a number of times. And like over the years, I would say that CT is, was known as the anti press fit media outlet, right?
Which is like, there are worse things to be associated with, I think, than hating on creaky bottom brackets. Like, who, who wouldn't wanna hate 'em? Creaky bottom brackets. That makes perfect sense to me.
[00:13:33] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and it, and it's deeper than just a creaky bottom bracket. It's detracting from this experience that we are all so passionate about. And so, I think that having someone out there who has influence saying no, this is not the way it should be. Hear the arguments and, and, you know, let a case be made.
Hey, you know, come on the podcast and talk about why you think press fit is, is the best way to go about it if you really wanna make that case. But yeah, it's an approach that I, you know, I, I'll take you up on it, but I, I'd probably be on the same side with you on more or less every issue with the exception of maybe a few nuances here and there.
But yeah, actually let's have some fun with this. Other stuff other than press fit bottom brackets that would be your hill to die on.
[00:14:15] Caley Fretz: well. So actually Dave Ro and I so reminder, Dave Ro and I were both just recently laid off. And so our free, we, we are free to do whatever we want. I don't have a non-compete or anything like that. Right. So, we've kicked, we've kicked off a little podcast and.
[00:14:28] Randall R. Jacobs: What is it called?
[00:14:29] Caley Fretz: It's called,
[00:14:29] Randall R. Jacobs: do people find it?
[00:14:30] Caley Fretz: well at the moment it's called the redundant placeholders because we have no idea what to call it.
So if you search it, I think any of the, any of the podcast platforms, if you search redundant placeholders, able to find it, you can also find it on, on any of my social channels. I'm at K Fretz on everything cause I'm the only person on the planet with my name. So that's very handy. Anyway David and I were talking about like, okay, so if we were actually literally talking about this yesterday, which is why it's funny that you bring up bottom brackets.
Like if, if the bottom bracket the anti press fit bandwagon was the one that we were leading before, what's our, what's our new thing that we get to hate on? And we've actually decided that one of the things that we're most interested in pushing, and if you listen to the episode from this week, you would, you would hear this is bikes that are too stiff and just stuff that's too stiff.
So specifically Dave, this, this week brought up the topic of of handlebars that are just like, Way too stiff. Right? Just, just ridiculously stiff. We were talking about the, the 35 mill trend on in mountain bikes, which I hate. And like, I've got a, you know, I've got a giant, I've got a giant trail bike with 170 Mill fork, and then I wanna stick like a, just a two by four in my hands.
I don't really understand why I want to do that. And I've ended up with like, like more sort of hand cramp and hand pain on this bike than I've ever had previously. And it's got more travel than any bike that I've, I've had previously. So that, those two things don't really line up in, in my head, right?
And, and so Dave and I were basically talking about pushing, pushing back on this need for for stiffer and stiffer and stiffer and stiffer all the time. And the fact that a lot of us don't need that, or really don't want it either. Not only do we not need it, we really don't want it because it makes the broad experience worse.
I told a little story about how one of the best bikes I've ever ridden was a not particularly expensive mazzi steel frame, steel fork, steel frame. Then I put a pair of zip 3 0 3 carbon wheels on, so nice, nice light stiff wheel set with a somewhat flexi bike, flexi fork, flexi flexi frame. But it rode like an absolute dream, you know, 27 2 post it might have even had, it might have even not had oversized bars.
I can't remember. This is, this is like eight, nine years ago now. And I loved it. I absolutely loved this bike. It, it, it got up and went when I asked it to, and I think the wheel set made a huge difference in, in that. But then it, it cornered like an absolute dream and it was comfortable and it was, it was just beautiful.
And it was a, a not particularly expensive steel mozzie, right? Like . So that's, that's, that's the that's the high horse upon which we find ourselves now. The fight for less stiff. Bicycles, I think is what we're gonna go after next.
[00:17:06] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and you can kind of take that a step further, talking about steel frames, for example. If you get a steel frame, even a, a pretty decent steel frame at say o e m cost is going to be quite a bit less than a monocot carbon frame. And you don't have all the tooling costs and everything else, and you can change the geometry if you need to without having to retool.
And those bikes are gonna be inherently more affordable at the same time. And unless you're an elite racer who's having to sprint off the line or so on, you know, you either spend less money for an equivalent bike that suits your needs well and is comfortable, or you spend the same money and you put it into say, better wheels.
You don't get the cheap out wheels with the three Paul hubs that fall apart and in a year and what have you. Yeah, that's one I'll join you on.
[00:17:46] Caley Fretz: So that, so
[00:17:47] Randall R. Jacobs: right. So I'm joining the battalion. What?
[00:17:50] Caley Fretz: That's what we're pushing from
[00:17:51] Randall R. Jacobs: I've got another one for you. And, and this, this one I don't think you'll disagree with cuz we talked about sea otter hooks, bead hooks. So bead bead hooks on any real wheels that are marketed for use with road tubeless.
[00:18:05] Caley Fretz: I, yeah. I, I don't feel like I am, I, I like having this conversation with James or Dave around because they know the actual technical reasons. You, yourself probably in the same boat. You know, the actual tech technical reasons why this is, this is a, a terrible idea or a good idea, I guess if, if you're talking other direction.
I just know that as a, essentially, like I am kind of just a consumer these days, right? Like I said, I, I, I have not been a tech editor. It has not been my job to follow. Bicycle technology for close to a decade now. So I'm basically just a, a, a heavily invested consumer who pays, you know, quite close attention, right?
And as a heavily invested consumer, I cannot figure out if my wheels and tires are going to kill me at the moment. And I think that that is not really an acceptable way forward. I don't , I don't think that that should be allowed in the cycling space. And I, and I, every single time I say that, I get a bunch of hook list aficionados coming back at me saying that, oh, it's quite easy.
This works with this and this. I'm like, yeah, but I, I, as a person who does not want to go through a bunch of like charts to figure out what tire to run, I don't want that. Just put hooks back on my rims. I don't care about the 40 grams or whatever. It's, I just don't care.
[00:19:14] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, would you like some more ammo for those arguments when they come up?
[00:19:17] Caley Fretz: give me more. Am.
[00:19:18] Randall R. Jacobs: All right. So, so first off the, it used to be the case that it was a substantial, you know, a reasonable weight penalty and higher cost that is substantially mitigated by new forming techniques for the bead hooks and mini hooks that you can create that have the same impact resistance as hook list, add about five, maybe 10 grams per rim at the high end.
And cost, yeah, the cost is a little bit higher, but, you know, insurance premiums aren't cheap either. And if you have a single incident, that's gonna be a problem. So, you know, it was an obvious investment when we made that choice for any wheel that we're marketing for use with anything, say smaller than a 34.
Plus you get the compatibility with non tules as you well know. But the other part is you think about the fact that there are compatibility charts that exist, right?
[00:20:05] Caley Fretz: I don't want
[00:20:06] Randall R. Jacobs: that
[00:20:06] Caley Fretz: in charts.
[00:20:08] Randall R. Jacobs: yeah. It, it's like if that is the case, then maybe the tolerances are too tight and it, it's actually, I'll tell you from the inside, it, it's actually worse than that because any good company is going to check every single rim for its bead seat circumference, right?
So those are pretty easy to get within spec. And then the tires, the tires are not all checked. To my knowledge. They're kind of randomly checked. So, okay, now you, now you could have a variation. You only need one. That's not to tolerance, but let's say both of those are in are intolerance. Well, now you have the.
and if the tape is too thick or too thin, or someone puts two layers on, they replace the tape or whatever. Maybe it was intolerance initially, but, and then you change it and you know, you do two layers. Now the bead is too tight, it wants to drop into the channel and then pop over the edge of the, of the hook.
And so it's just not good. It's just all sorts of not good
[00:21:03] Caley Fretz: I hate it so much. It's just, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I always, I was cognizant when, back in, when we were making the Nerd Alert podcast that, you know, we didn't just want to complain about things. Right? Like, we didn't just want to tell the industry that it was, it was doing things wrong. Cuz most of the time this industry does great things and they build lots of amazing bikes that I love to ride.
There's just a couple things like this that are like, what, what are we doing? Like, is, is this, is this the beam counters? Is it the gram counters? What counters are, are causing ? This particular, it must be the bean counters at this point. But I hate it either
[00:21:42] Randall R. Jacobs: Bean counter. And then, then also the, the marketing hypers. Right? So there's a new thing. Hopeless is a new thing. Car, car wheels don't have hooks. Why do bicycle school wheels have hooks? Well, you know, because it's 110 p s i that people are sometimes putting in there. That's why
[00:21:57] Caley Fretz: car wheels have 33 Psi . Yeah. It's like a mountain bike tire. Yes. Well, I, we agree on that point. And I, I think that that is one that we will continue to complain about. And I will just continue to be annoyed that I, that I can't feel confident in what I'm writing without doing a bunch of, of searching and Google searching, and I don't want to have to do that.
[00:22:15] Randall R. Jacobs: Nor should your average rider need to rely on that in order to be safe like that. That's the part that I find kind of, kind of bonkers.
[00:22:23] Caley Fretz: Average rider doesn't even know to do that. That's the problem.
[00:22:26] Randall R. Jacobs: yeah. True. And the la the last part of that is why do the tire pressure recommendation charts kind of go to 70 proportional with the weight and then they just kind of taper off. You know, that that also kind of tells you something about the confidence in this you know, particular combination of tire and rim and, and pressure and so on.
But all right. Should we, well, I guess we hop off this high horse then. That was good fun. I could do this all day. So you mentioned Ben Delaney, and he's an interesting person to bring up because he's a, a mutual acquaintance. Also somebody who's writing, I've been reading since my early days in the industry and also somebody who has been trying to figure out how to navigate the changing landscape in cycling media, which the business model for, for media in general has undergone a dramatic shift. And in his case, he's has his new YouTube channel and is doing freelance work for certain publications and is making a go of it that way.
But how would you describe the industry dynamics as having changed during your time in the media side?
[00:23:29] Caley Fretz: Oh, I mean, I would say I was relatively insulated from it personally for a long time. And until I kind of reached a, a, a level of management, so to speak, that it became my problem , I didn't spend a whole lot of time thinking about it. Yeah, Ben was unfortunately the, the, the, the victim of a, an outside layoff a, a while ago.
So he's been making a solo go of it since I think May or June of, of, of last year. Or this year, 2022. And yeah, like his, his he's experimenting and, and it's, it's good to, I like watching him trying to figure this out, right, because I feel like he's kind of doing it for all of us at the moment and, and trying to figure out exactly, you know, various ways to, to make this thing work and. He is, got his, his YouTube channel's. Great. I mean, I watch it all the time. I'm actually gonna be on it sometime soon. I just, just recorded a thing with him picking our favorite products of the year. I think I went in a slight, I think I went in a slightly different direction than, than probably most of his guests.
Cause my favorite product was bar Mitz for my cargo bike. So slightly different place than, than probably a lot of folks he's talking to. But the, the media as a whole, I mean, it's rough out there. It's rough out there, right? Like I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about this and trying to figure this out over the last couple years as has like weighed my former boss at C T E before he left over the summer.
As is everybody, I mean, frankly, like as is Robin Thurston the CEO of outside, right? Like he is genuinely trying to make this thing work. And at the moment as layoffs kind of. It's hard, right? It's really, really hard to, to get people to pay for something that they haven't had to pay for historically, you're, you're trying to put the genie back in the bottle, right?
That's what we are trying to do. And it's really, really, really difficult. And then, frankly, it's one of the things we were most proud of at Cycline Tips is that we did have this core, hyper engaged audience that was willing to pay us for, for what we did. And not only just pay us for like, the content that they had access to, but pay us for the whole community that we had built.
Right. I mean there, there's a, there's a Velo Club, which is the, the sort of membership program. Atip, there's a Slack group for Velo Club which I, which I'm concerned about right now. But that group of people, couple thousand people not, it's not the entirety of the membership. It's, it's like sort of the most hardcore of the membership, I would say.
And it's a couple thousand people. It's sort of like its own little private forum, right? And, and they support each other and they ask each other questions, and they ask us questions asked, past tense, asked us questions. You know, when, when, when they had a tech question, they, they, they ping James and they had a racing question.
They, they would, they would ping me or they would ping Matt e or something like that. And they would also just answer each other's questions. And they've built this, this incredible community there. That for me, underpins any successful, particularly sort of niche media or, or, or, or vertical media business.
Because those are the people that not only are they giving you money to, to keep lights on, but they're, they're your, they're your biggest advocates, right? They're your, your most important advocates in the space. They're the people that, that tell their friends. They're the people that get other people signed up.
They are, they're more important than any marketing spend you could, you could ever possibly utilize. Right? So that, that was one of the things we were really proud of the last couple years. And I think that that is a model in some ways for, for, for going forward. So, you know, like I said, I'm, I don't have a non-compete.
I can start anything I want right now and, and I, and to be, to be very blunt, like I fully plan to I think that,
[00:26:54] Randall R. Jacobs: think you absolutely should at this. You clearly have an audience that that misses your voice and that values what you brought to the table.
[00:27:00] Caley Fretz: Yeah. And, and I would say it like, honestly, it's, it's even, it's less my voice and it's more like Dave Rome and Matt and like the rest of the crew because I, I, I do like to put, you know, put the folks that that were writing day, day in, day out for ct, like, well ahead of anything that I was doing. But I, I did spend more time than they did thinking about how to, how to build a media business.
And so, yeah, I, you know, we wanna, we wanna, we wanna do something here. That there's it's only been a couple weeks since we were, we were. Let go. So we're still figuring out what the details are. But like I said, you know, we've already kicked off a little podcast. We know that there's a lot of people out there that are kind of waiting for this.
And we will, we will just try to give them what they want, I guess. I mean, my, in my mind, the, ideal sort of media entity of the future and I, I've used this term a couple times with, with Dave in, in talking about these things is, is essentially an aggregation of niches or niches if, depending on which pronunciation you prefer.
So rather than try to go really broad and talk about a little bit of everything, which, which tends to be kind of the model across most of cycling media, I prefer a concept where you, you essentially allow editors to. To dive into their, their interests and their strengths. Right? You know, you take, you take Dave Rome and you say, Dave, you love tools.
You're real weirdo about it. But we appreciate your weirdness and we, we, we embrace it and, and do it. Like, tell me everything you can possibly tell me about tools, because I'm pretty sure there's an audience there. And even if it's not that big, even if it's a couple thousand people, if they are hyper engaged with you, a couple thousand people in a recurring membership model, recurring revenue model is enough to pay Dave plus some, right?
And then you sort of, you take that concept and you, and you expand it out. And yeah, it's, it's, it becomes the basis by which you can build a, a, a media entity. That I think is, is sustainable. Not none, nothing I'm saying here is wholly original, right? Like this is the broadly the direction that a lot of different media entities are going.
Anybody sort of follows that world. There's, there's like, there's a new politics site called S four that is essentially the same rough concept, right? You, you dive headlong into, into particular beats. You provide a ton of depth in those beats. You hit the, the audience, people who, who really care about that particular topic, and you pull that group in and then you do the same thing over here and you pull that group in, you do the same thing over here, and you pull that group in.
And there's for sure people that care about more than one obviously. But you really, like, you focus really deep on each one of these things. And that's the, that's the, if I could build something and, and I, you know, like I said, I, I intend to try, that's the concept. I think that that makes the most sense to me from a. from a business perspective, from an editorial perspective, from from every perspective I can, I can think of, basically.
[00:29:59] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, so I've had folks like Russ Roca from PathLessPedaled. On the pod. He has a YouTube channel you may or may not be familiar with, but that's become his livelihood, right. And he has sustainers through Patreon. He doesn't do endorsements and things like that.
I don't think he's doing any sort of sponsored episodes or anything of that sort. And he's been able to make a living. And there are obviously plenty of YouTuber influencer types who may have less scruples about promoting things and things of that sort.
But who I'm curious, either within bike or, or outside a bike what projects do you see succeeding in the model that you could imagine emulating or building upon? Because I've seen a bunch of attempts at it and it's, it's a really tough nut to
[00:30:43] Caley Fretz: it's a tough not to crack. I, I would say that the biggest and most obvious is the athletic, which was just purchased by the New York Times for something like, I think it was 425 million. Now, so the sort of caveat around that is that that's probably less than they were actually hoping for. This is a, a VC funded media entity that, that primarily covers ball sports.
And their whole thing was you take, you, you, you essentially apply the beat reporter model of like a local newspaper. You know, you, you, the, the, the Denver Post for example, will have a Broncos beat reporter. Then all they do is talk about the Broncos, right? And, and they're even allowed to kind of be fans of the Broncos a little bit.
They take that and they apply it to every single ball sport. So both types of football, you know, baseball, basketball, all the rest. And they apply a beat reporter to every major team. And sometimes more than one beat reporter to, to really big teams. You know, like if we're talking English, English Premier League you know, Manchester United has a couple different writers on it.
Aston Villa has probably won, right? So, but, but, but even so, if you're a massive Aston Villa fan and you just want your Aston Villa News, you can go, you know that the athletics gonna have it cuz they have a person who is dedicated to your team and nothing else but your team. So you can also get like, okay, well I want some broader, I want World Cup news, I want, I want the Manchester United news.
I want the Ronaldo news, but I really want my Aston Villa guy, right. That is essentially the same model that I'm talking about where like, I believe that people really want Dave Rome's tool. They probably also care about lots of other things that, that we will write about. But they really want Dave room's tool stuff.
And that's probably the thing that's actually gonna get them across the line from a, from a membership perspective, right? Is that deep, deep, deep love of this one thing that a content creator they like is talking about. That's the kind of thing that, that, that moves the needle in. So yeah, the athletic is, is kind of the biggest, most obvious example of this kind of working.
They made I think some strategic areas early on in the way that they pulled staff together that made it quite an expensive organization to run. And I think that's part, probably part of the reason why they didn't get quite as much cash for it as they thought. But still building a media a media entity from nothing in the last, I think it started five years ago or so.
I remember sitting at a Tor de France press buffet with some of the. The British. So at the time it was, you know, sky Era. A lot of big name British sport writers, sports writers were coming over the tour, and a couple of those guys were talking about job offers from the athletic and actually like how insanely well paid they were going to be
So I think
[00:33:13] Randall R. Jacobs: And the, these are full, full-time positions. We're not
[00:33:15] Caley Fretz: oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:33:16] Randall R. Jacobs: Just shifting everything to freelance. Like so
[00:33:18] Caley Fretz: No, no, no. These are, yeah,
[00:33:20] Randall R. Jacobs: models Do.
[00:33:21] Caley Fretz: no, I mean, I don't, I mean, perhaps they're contractors or something, but like, you know, the, the, these individuals are writing a, a story a day most of the time about the particular beat that they're talking about. A story every other day, depending on the, on the, on the writer probably.
But anyway, yeah, about about five years ago. So you see, you know, you've got a media entity that's only about five years old and just sold to the New York Times for half a million or whatever it was, or sorry, half a billion.
[00:33:43] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah.
[00:33:43] Caley Fretz: a pretty, that's a success story in my mind. And shows that the. The model can work, I think. There's no guarantees and that's a scale that I don't really have any need, want, or desire to come anywhere near. But I do think that the core essentially value proposition of membership that they, that they showed worked, can work elsewhere. It can work in cycling, can work across endurance media, I think.
[00:34:12] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and again, with my kind of very cursory understanding of the space, they were required by the New York Times, which itself went through its own economic model crisis and had to make the switch to a paywall. And the quality of the content was sufficient that they're, they're making such large acquisitions, so they must be doing something right. They're, they're not the failing New York Times. As some folks called them a few years ago. I think there's also something to be said for consolidating quality and having the interaction of the sort that you did at at cycling tips, not just through Velo Club but also just the comments section. It, it was a very unique space and your team was in there.
Interacting and the, the nature of the communication that I saw, the way that your readers were engaging there, it didn't seem hierarchical at all. It was a conversation with, with you and your team and that that was very, very cool to see. And that was something quite special that I think is more a consequence of the people involved than of the particular platform as special as cycling tips was.
And I was one of the early readers that was, those are my racing days when it was literally just the blog and it was pointers on how to train. It was the cool thing at the time. And. Actual cycling tips. Yeah. That name was, was a direct, directly correlated with the contents. But I don't know if I've shared this with you, but in addition to the podcast, which is founded by Craig Dalton we also started this Slack community called the Ridership, which also is bit over a couple thousand members, and also has these like healthy dynamics. We call it a, a community of Rogers Helping Riders. And that was directly inspired by what you guys do at Velo. like saw what you were doing over there was just something that wanted to emulate, found inspiring saw a place for.
And I'd be curious one of the things that Craig and I have talked about, is some form of shared platform that's somehow democratically governed. Where content creators and those who are engaging with their content who wanna support them and so on, can all meet and having that be something centralized in the sense that it's all meeting in the same place, but decentralized in terms of the governance structure, and then maybe even set up as a non-profit. I'm curious if you've had any thoughts around that sort of thing.
[00:36:35] Caley Fretz: Yeah, I've actually sort of played around with similar ideas. We, yeah. In this, well, and again, in the sort of couple weeks that I've been thinking about, really thinking about this now we thought through, so, so ironically, one of the things that. There's been a fair number of complaints around with outside was was essentially like web three and, and NFT stuff.
However some of that technology would actually make something like what you're talking about potentially work quite a bit better. Again, I haven't spent, we, we didn't go too far down this, this, this rabbit hole cause we feel like getting something off the ground relatively quickly is, is, is a priority.
But I agree that, that something platforms work, right? Like that's essentially, that, that's all YouTube is, is just a platform for other people to, to, to put content on. They monetize it over top. They give you a cut, they take most of it. That's a, it's a pretty good business actually. So like could you do that for endurance sports, perhaps? Probably. Are there enough? Are there enough really high quality individual content creators out there to make that work? Probably, maybe like, are, are there enough Ben Delaney's, who would love to probably work with a platform that, that increased their visibility?
But, you know, in, in exchange for a cut of whatever he's making, probably. I mean, that's essentially the, the deal that he's made with YouTube, right? Like we were saying. I think there's something there. I don't, I think it'd, I think it'd be incredibly difficult to, to get off the ground and would almost have to be quite organic and you'd have to be kind of willing to, to sit on it and let it grow for quite some time or, or sit on a bunch of investment money and, and do it that way.
Which I don't necessarily have the time for at this point in time, but I like the idea. I really, I like, I genuinely, you know, I've, I've had a lot of conversations with other people in, in bike media over the last couple weeks because for obvious reasons, people giving me a ring. They're saying a lot of 'em are saying basically like, Hey, I'm sorry just checking in on you.
Stuff like that. And we, and we get to talking about this sort of thing. And one of the things that keeps coming up is this desire to stop competing so directly with each other as bike media, right? Like the space is too small. We all do our own thing. We talk to maybe the same audience in general, but we talk to them in very different ways.
And you know, like I I I, I, I've been on the phone with editor in chiefs of, of, of a couple different major bike outlets in the last week and all have said something along those lines. And I think that some sort of collective would, would hit the same. Yeah, it would hit, it would hit the same. there, right?
Of a, of a desire to provide a space for everybody to just create really good work that they actually get paid for. Cuz that's the hard thing again, you're still talking about putting the genie back in the bottle. You're still talking about trying to get people to pay for, for something that they historically haven't paid for, or you're running an advertising based model, which is incredibly difficult.
And in part, and this particular moment is very, very difficult. I mean, you know, Robin, the CEO of outside mentioned that specifically in the letter that came along with with these layoffs is like the advertising world out there right now, particularly in endemic media, like cycling is bad. It is bad news.
You know, they're, they're looking into 2023 and seeing and seeing steep drop-offs in the amount that that is being spent. So you've run up against kind of similar problems, I think with that model. But it is certainly something that is The incentives to me feel like they're lined up for creators in a, in a model like that, right?
Because they, if done right, they would directly benefit from their, their work. Whereas, you know, something that's always kind of frustrated me in this space is like, the value of myself and, and, and editorial teams have increased the value of entities tremendously o over my career. And then they get sold and I see none of it
And so like that, that the incentive,
[00:40:24] Randall R. Jacobs: and
[00:40:25] Caley Fretz: structure is not, is not great within most of bike media
[00:40:29] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. It's bad enough in the tech space where there are stock options, but generally to the founder goes most of the spoils. Even though and I say this as a founder, I don't create most of the value, right? Nothing that, that I could do would get off the ground without all the other people who make it happen. And so, it's only right that there be a distribution of ownership and a sharing of the rewards if there's success, which in turn incentivizes success. In the case of cycling tips, in reading the comments it's very clear that the readership knows it. They're not there for cycling tips. Cycling tips is the bander under which all the people whose perspectives they valued. It's where those people are.
And so, your standalone brand and that of your colleagues, has value and has value in particular, if it's brought in a single place where people can interact with you as, as they had in the past it's a terrible thing to lose.
And you know, whatever the reasons for it, obviously there are economic headwinds. But it's, it's unfortunate. But there's a saying that I, I live by that seems to apply, which is change happens when the fear of change is less than the pain of staying the same.
[00:41:36] Caley Fretz: Hmm.
[00:41:37] Randall R. Jacobs: And there's nothing quite like a radically changing economic model or layoffs or things like that that make staying the same, really painful. And so whether the fear has changed or not, time to take the leap and people like yourself and Ben and others have been making that leap. I wonder you mentioned that some sort of platform would have to. Either be funded by a bunch of VC money, which honestly I don't, if you wanna end up with a small fortune, start with a big one. Throwing VC money at things is a really good way to end up with Juicero. I don't know if you recall that
[00:42:10] Caley Fretz: Oh, yes.
[00:42:11] Randall R. Jacobs: 130 or 160 million of Sandhill Road money lit on fire for a a glorified electric press for
If anyone's curious, look this up. It is. It'll, it'll make you feel that yeah, it, it'll make you question the judgment of, of Silicon Valley in a way that I have learned too from the inside over the years. But the organic piece let's, let's unpack that cuz I, I have a couple of ideas that I'd like to bounce off of you.
So platforms like YouTube, I suspect it's gonna be very hard for somebody who has an audience on YouTube or who wants to build an audience to leave YouTube. But having a platform that is essentially an a.
So if you're a content creator, wherever your content is, this is the one place where you can find all of it along with, categorized content from other players. So you want to learn about tools you have, Dave Romes YouTube videos about tools. You have his podcast about tools. You have other content creators content there.
And then it becomes kind of platform agnostic like you can be anywhere, but this is the place where you go to find it. And this is the place where you go to interact. Cuz the YouTube comments, that's not an interaction space that's largely a trolling space or, or it's a largely one directional sorts of conversation happening.
Even, even the healthiest version of it is still not a conversation. But if you have a YouTube video embedded in a a community,
[00:43:27] Caley Fretz: Mm-hmm.
[00:43:28] Randall R. Jacobs: Now all of a sudden people are in digital community together and not just over say Dave and his tool-based content or his tool focused content.
Not to say that's all he does, but using that as an example, but also Dave in community, in his local chapter, right. In his local riding community. And in the context of a place where people are also going for, James' bike reviews and you know, your Twitter de France coverage and, and things like this that's one model that I've wondered, like if there was such a platform.
[00:43:59] Caley Fretz: how, how, how do you monetize it? Is it, is it pay? Walled,
[00:44:03] Randall R. Jacobs: That's a big question, right?
[00:44:04] Caley Fretz: Well, so, so, the reason I ask is because I, I, like, I would see a couple different options, right? And, and we're getting into real sort of media theory here, but ,
[00:44:11] Randall R. Jacobs: This, this was actually part of the conversation I wanted to have with you long before all these changes. And it's something we've discussed on the pod before as well with other content creators.
[00:44:19] Caley Fretz: I, I think So I, I'll say that first and foremost that I'm, I'm not anti paywall. I know some of the, some others are in, in the media space, but I fundamentally believe that if done properly you're essentially only targeting. So, so, so I'm, I'm a big advocate of what, what we call meter paywall, which is basically you get a couple free stories in a given amount of time whatever the number is, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, whatever you want.
And then at some point you, you pay right? Now, the nice thing about that is that you know, if we, if we take a, let's take a hypothetical cycling media outlet with somewhere in, you know, we, we'll call it, we'll call it 2 million unique users a month, right? You've got 2 million people showing up at a website every month.
The number of people who are actually gonna get to the paywall that are gonna go to enough stories to get to that paywall is probably something in the neighborhood of like, Less than 5% of those people. It's a tiny, tiny, tiny number because a huge number of those people are coming in from Google.
They're, they're, they're seo, they're coming into SEO stories, they're coming into, you know, how to bet in my disc brakes. And they're, they're in and they find out how to do that and they're out. Right? And that's the only interaction you have with them. And they're useful from a page view perspective if you're monetizing that.
But they're not particularly useful from a membership perspective cuz who's gonna pay to get one story, right. That, that's, that doesn't make any sense. So you're really only trying to monetize your super users. So your super users are that 5%, the people that actually end up hitting paywall. And part of the reason why I'm not anti paywall is because those people that, that, that small group of people that is coming back day after day after day after day, they value you. And if they truly value you, they should pay for you. , like, I don't have any problem with, you know, we put a ton of time and energy and effort into this and it is our jobs. And we need to get paid. And if people, if people appreciate what we're doing enough to come back every single day and they're not willing to pay for that, then as far as I'm concerned, they need to look at themselves and, and, and ask why.
Right? Like, all I'm asking for is, is, you know, eight bucks a month or whatever to continue doing so that, so that you can do something that you do every single day that you enjoy, that you, that you gain information and entertainment from inspiration from even. I think that that's a pretty reasonable trade off.
I don't really have any problem asking the super user to do that. I think that there are other paywall versions of a paywall that, that I, that I don't agree with, sort of philosophically, I don't agree with paywall in a hundred percent of content. I also think that that just ruins your discoverability and it, it, it doesn't allow anybody
[00:46:49] Randall R. Jacobs: was, I was gonna say, is
[00:46:50] Caley Fretz: Yeah.
Then nobody,
[00:46:53] Randall R. Jacobs: thing or is it more just practically like, you're, you're gonna cut off all the channels for discovery?
[00:46:58] Caley Fretz: Both. Yeah. I, I, it, it realistically, yeah. Like I said, your discoverability goes to zero. People can't tell that you make good content. I have kind of a similar issue with the, the like premium content model. So you, you know, you give away your, your crappy stuff for free and the really good stuff you gotta pay for, like, I don't like that either.
Cause why then anybody's strolling around your website, it's gonna be like, well, it's the only thing is I can read are crap. So why would I pay for the, i, I don't know that
[00:47:23] Randall R. Jacobs: poor, it's a poor pitch.
[00:47:24] Caley Fretz: It's a bad pitch. So, so I have issues with that. I also just like philosophically, you know, the, the sort of fully hard pay wall that you can't read anything without paying beyond the discovery of discoverability problems.
I just kinda have issues with that because like if we do write a, how to bet in your disc brake so they don't make noise story. Like, I want people to be able to access that, right? Like, then I don't have to listen up. people's loud disc breaks. You know, like people, I, I have no problem sort of providing that much content to somebody for free.
And I think that the fully pay well in that is, is, is isn't great. But again, I I'm not against paywalls in general. Meter paywalls I think work quite well. They yeah, we know that they're effective. They can be incredibly effective, particularly if you have this sort of requisite essentially story volume to make them work and, and sort of audience size to make them work.
So given that like the, the sort of concept that you are talking about, paywall seems like a, like a, a, a good way forward because again, you're sort of avoiding the avoiding the need to, to chase advertising dollars constantly. And this is, this is gonna be somewhat a reflection of what I'm thinking for, for.
For myself going forward, obviously you're avoiding, you're, you're avoiding chasing advertising dollars incessantly, which, you know, I'm not against advertising either. I think the right advertising partners can be, can be crucial, right? They provide lots of actually value to an audience at some point, right.
You know, the fact that you get bikes to test the fact that you have a good relationship there. Those, those are all valuable things. So not, not anti advertising either. I'm just more anti, constantly chasing every single cent you can possibly get out of advertising. And the, and the sort of the, the, the extra resource that, that very concept requires.
And so yeah, some sort of like membership driven thing lines up with the sort of ethos of what you're talking about, which is very community driven. We know communities are willing to invest in their own space where they can be a community. And so that would make sense as well. And if you start to do things like add too much advertising to something like that, then you do the incentives start to shift.
Cuz you start working for the advertisers instead of working for the community. And that I think goes against the whole ethos that you're talking about of the sort of communal thing. So that would be my, that would be my 2 cents on, on, on how to build something like that. Like I said, it is a concept that, that we played around with and I've played around with in my head for, for some time actually.
I personally, again, it's more of a, more of a time issue for me than anything. Not that I don't think it could be cool and don't think it could work. I just think that the, to build that community would take quite a bit of time. And also figuring out the precise method of paying. So the other roadblock that I, that I came across when I was thinking through this was the precise method of paying content creators in that scenario, it's quite complicated.
Cause are you paying them? Are you paying them by page view? Are you paying them? Is there a tip jar? Is there some sort of, of, you know, rank voting system when people sign up, like, I like these three creators and I don't like these three, and so the top three get, get my money. And the, and the other three don't.
That starts to create some perverse incentives toward bad content as well, right? And, and essentially that's the, that is the YouTube problem. The YouTube problem is that YouTube is incentivized for clickbait. It's incentivized for garbage content, , because that's, that's the stuff that gets picked up.
And think about, think about your average, like YouTube headline or YouTube sort of, title card. Versus what you would find on a, a site like cycling tips these days. Right. It's a dramatic difference. Like we, we would have to change headlines depending on whether it was going on YouTube or going on on the site back in the day.
Cuz YouTube is incentivized to be like all caps and exclamation points and somebody crashing in the title card and all these things that we kind of hate because that's what you end
[00:51:25] Randall R. Jacobs: Kaylee, Fritz destroys X, Y,
[00:51:27] Caley Fretz: Exactly. So after the monetization question, how do you actually split up that money with the content creators?
It's a, it's a, again, I like, I love the, the idea, I love the concept, but the sort of those particular decisions. Be crucial to success and crucial to it actually working for the people that, that you, that you know, that you want, want, would want it to work for. And it'd be hard. It'd be really hard. I I don't have the solution to those questions, which is why I, again, thought through a lot of this and, and thought through a similar concept, not, not identical but a similar concept and, and basically came to the conclusion that in the near term, a a slightly more traditional model is not the worst thing in the world, right?
Like, build really good content, pay people for it make people pay for it. , that's essentially the, that's the, the, the three part business plan of most membership driven media entities these days. Does that all make sense? I feel like I went in a bit of rant there.
[00:52:31] Randall R. Jacobs: Not at all. Not at all. And in fact, it's a conversation I'd like to continue cuz I have a few ideas that probably we, we don't want to dedicate a whole episode to just this conversation. But certainly appreciate you pulling back a curtain on the sorts of questions that you as an editor in the space and an editor for one of the most respected publications in the space and for good reason, providing that perspective in the sorts of things that you are thinking about from this new Vantage point is very much appreciative.
So thank you for that. I wanna go in a completely different direction. What are the pieces that you've written that you most enjoyed or found most challenging, or that were most meaningful for you as a writer?
[00:53:08] Caley Fretz: Hmm. Internally at cycling tips. We called them riddles. It was a, it was a coin, a term that I intro coined for his little, the little essays. Right. There's a couple of those that I, that I really enjoyed writing and, and liked writing. It's just sort of the pure act of, of, of sort of language, basically like playing with language.
Which is still fundamentally like why I started doing this to begin with is cause I really enjoyed doing that. And the last couple years have stepped away from writing almost entirely. Not entirely, but almost entirely. And, and so when I did get a chance to write, it was always, it was always meaningful and I, and I liked it.
That tended to be at things like the Tor de Frances where, you know, I would essentially send to myself cuz I, I wanted to go cover the to Frances again. I had plenty, plenty, plenty of, plenty of talented, talented writers that, that reporters that could have gone instead of me. But at some point you pull the boss card and I'm like, I'm gonna the tour
So, so yeah, there's a couple pieces on that front. Actually one of the first pieces I ever wrote for segment tips it's, it was called The Road to Niro's House. And it was about a trip that my wife and I and two friends took to Columbia. And it, it, like half the photos are broken on it now. It's, it's, it's from like 2017 like 6,500 words of a trip around Columbia and all the sort of things that, that riding in Columbia.
Particularly in 2017 meant sort of keeping in mind that that, you know, a relatively large and disastrous war there only kind of wrapped up around the 2010 mark depending on who you ask . So I, I, I really enjoyed that piece. And then, yeah, like these, these little riddles, you know, there's a couple that I've written over my career that I that you tend to write them in 20 minutes, right?
Because something just hits you in the head and, and you just, I mean, you just get it out, but it, because of that, it's, they're very pure. I think. I wrote one about the toe strap that my dad would use to attach a sock full of Tube tire, co2, you know, flat fixing implements underneath his saddle.
Right? And he would, he would strap this thing underneath his saddle with a, with a strap, like a tube sock underneath his saddle with a, with a, with a tow strap, like a leather tow strap. And, and I, and I wrote this story about how, like, you know, I just remember when I was 12, 13 years old. And you know, my dad is obviously a much stronger cycl cyclist than me at that point.
And just like, you know, trying to stay on his wheel with this like, toe strap dangling in front of me as like the, you know, I'm just, I'm just, I just need to stay on the tow strap. Wrote a piece about that at some point that I, that I ended up, I, I really liked. And it was meaningful to me because of my, my relationship with my dad is like very tied into my relationship with cycling because we grew up doing it together and, and still ride together when we can and things like that.
There was one about eating Castle and Carcassone during a rest day, Tor de France that I liked. Again, these, you know,
[00:55:59] Randall R. Jacobs: Castle in Per,
[00:56:01] Caley Fretz: Castle is is like a,
[00:56:03] Randall R. Jacobs: I'm, I'm, I'm not so
[00:56:04] Caley Fretz: is like, is like a meat, like a meaty stew thing you know, white beans and, and, and some, some meat. And Carcassone is a town in southern France with a big kind of world heritage site castle over top of it.
And it's always hot as hell there. They often have restage there at the torque. It's always hot as hell. And I have yet to find a hotel or an Airbnb there that has air conditioning. So you're always just like baking, you know, second rest day of the Tor De France. You know, I, I think I was sitting in a cafe.
And I had a couple roses like you do and, and eating a castle, which is also hot. So I'm like, I'm hot eating a hot castle and just watching the world kind of go by like the sort of Tor de France rest day world go going by and, you know, like Greg Van Ama coming up and, and stopping at a red light. I'm this, I've wrote the story a while ago and I'm trying to remember what I even talked about.
You know, Gregory, he came up and stopped at the red light while a bunch of amateur cyclists like blew right through it. And he's like, nah, I'm gonna stop the red light, the proper professional cyclist. Yeah, just , just, just silly, silly stories like that that stick in my mind. And interestingly, like I, I finally, they tend to stick in, in reader's minds when I, when I got laid off.
Those are the kind of stories that people were sending me being like, Hey, I love this when you wrote it. Thanks for everything you've done, kinda thing. Which is, yeah, I mean, as, as somebody who creates things for a living, when you realize that people actually read them. And liked them. That's a, that's a pretty special thing.
So, yeah, rode in Niro's house
rest day, something at a Tour de France. I can't remember what the headline was. And I think it was called the teaching Toe Strap, which was actually Avenu story back in the day. Those are probably three of my, three of my favorites.
[00:57:42] Randall R. Jacobs: You know, I, I have never been much of a writer. I barely got out of undergrad and grad school, largely because I struggled with the thesis papers for each. So, writing has always been a challenge for me too much for perfectionists with not enough of a honed mastery of the skill.
But there is something, that I get as a product creator, you know, there are the things that you create because you have to create them. Now there are things that you create because you just have to, like, you, you have to feel your own reasons. And when people resonate with that it's just immensely gratifying.
And, you know, I've appreciated your work and the work of your colleagues at cycling tips during your tenure there. And you definitely built something special there. So excited to see what you do in this next chapter.
[00:58:22] Caley Fretz: Thank you. Thank you.
[00:58:24] Randall R. Jacobs: So, you already hinted a little bit at this, but what does the bike mean for you? What role has it played in your life? Why, why do you care so much about this, this two-wheeled vehicle?
[00:58:34] Caley Fretz: hmm. I, I mean, it's changed so many times for me. I think that, that, that's, it's almost an impossible thing to answer cuz you, you could ask me that as a 13, 14 year. You know, showing up in spandex to, to high school and getting lots of weird looks, and it would be in a very different thing to me then as, as it did when I was, you know, 20, 21 and, and, and, you know, weighing up a quote unquote professional contract for $3,000 a year and live in a van to, you know, the middle of my VE era to now where, you know, like the bike that I rode more than any other bike in 2022 was a cargo bucket bike.
That, that I ride my daughter to her to, to daycare in every single day. You know, I I, I, I've rode that thing 2,700 miles in one year, three miles at a time, . So like,
[00:59:31] Randall R. Jacobs: So with your daughter in it half, half the
[00:59:34] Caley Fretz: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, you know, they're, they're, they're, and back every
[00:59:37] Randall R. Jacobs: quality father daughter time.
[00:59:39] Caley Fretz: Totally. They're, they're back every morning.
They're back every afternoon. And, and yeah, quality father, daughter time, and you know, one of the most, sort of enjoyable half hour of, of my, of my day. So, so, yeah. It's almost an impossible question for me to, for me to answer at this point other than like, it's, they're the, they're the through line for everything in my life since I was 10.
You know, that it, it's just that's the, the thread that holds it all together, right? That, that, that it was the thing that made me weird in high school. It was the thing that, that consumed me in, in college to the point of probably the detriment of my actual grades. It was the thing that, that, that provided me a, a, a step into what has become a very enjoyable career.
And now it's a thing that, that yeah, that I use to, to just get my daughter around, which is, which is like, Special in its own sort of indescribable way. So yeah, I guess that's the answer. It's the, it's the thread. It's the thing that holds all the other things together, basically.
[01:00:40] Randall R. Jacobs: It reminds me of a quote about marriage, which is , I've been married many times. It just so happens to have been to the same person.
[01:00:47] Caley Fretz: Yeah.
[01:00:47] Randall R. Jacobs: this reinvention, this new relationship to ostensibly the same thing. I can very much relate to that with the bike as well.
But but yeah, it has been a delight being able to finally sit down and have this sort of nearly focused quality conversation with you, Kayleigh, and wish you the best with your future endeavors. And let's absolutely keep in touch. Maybe have you back on when you have, the next thing that you're talking about.
[01:01:09] Caley Fretz: Yeah, talk to me in January. That's what we're looking
[01:01:13] Randall R. Jacobs: good, amigo. All right. Take care of my friend.
[01:01:15] Caley Fretz: Thanks.
[01:01:16] Craig Dalton: Big, thanks to Randall and Kaylee for having that conversation. Super fascinating subject matter. When you think about the economics of cycling journalism. And how consumers are willing to pay for it. I hope every listener of the podcast here, values cycling journalists. And find ways to contribute to their ongoing efforts to cover the sport. We love.
If you're interested in connecting with myself or Randall or potentially even Kaylee. Please join the ridership. It's over@wwwdottheridership.com. That's a free global cycling community where you can connect and talk about all the things you love. About gravel cycling. If you're interested in supporting the podcast, ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. So if you enjoyed this episode, please go to your favorite podcast platform.
And just drop us a quick review. And if you're feeling especially helpful. Feel free to share this episode with a friend. That's a great way to get new people involved in the gravel ride podcast. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week Randall and Craig have a long overdue catch up session about their Fall gravel travel trips. Covering Bentonville, Girona, Boulder, Austin, Reno and SF, between the two a lot of dirt was covered.
Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
In the Dirt[00:00:00] Craig Dalton:
Hello and welcome to in the dirt from the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host, Craig Dalton. I'm going to be joined shortly by my cohost Randall Jacobs.
It's been a while since we've been able to catch up on the microphone, as we both been traveling and doing our own things. I've been super busy this last quarter. So it was great to catch up with my buddy Randall. And just dig into what we've both been up to. Before we jump in, I need to thank this week, sponsor the hammer head and the hammer head crew two computer hammer heads been a sponsor throughout the year. So I very much appreciate their support. I can't recall if I've ever mentioned this on the show, but.
In my early twenties, I worked for a bicycle computer company called Avocet. And at the time Avocet introduced a product called the vertex. Which provided for the first time an elevation tracking device for bicycle, it was quite game changing, particularly at that time in the world of mountain biking, because it was so difficult to compare one ride to the other.
I still to this day, find vertical feet climbed or the vertical feet of a particular course or an event that I'm riding to be the most important fact. That I need to have in my head in terms of preparing. So if you're going out to a race or an event that has 8,000 feet of climbing,
I know I need to put in the work across my training schedule. I find myself often thinking back to that, as I enjoy the hammerhead crew too, I really very much enjoy the climber feature as anytime I update a course or even now it's got the maps added in there in real time. I can see when I approach a climb exactly what is ahead of me, how long the climb is going to be in terms of miles.
But most importantly, how much elevation am I gaining? It comes into play in a number of different ways. One. I know if it's a longer climb, I need to settle in. I need to climb patiently and just stay within myself or in the case of my recent experience at big sugar, gravel, as I was seeing that these climbs were shorter in nature, I knew exactly sort of how many candles I could burn as I was attacking them.
Attacking them being a generous term for any of my performance. In any event I do these days. Anyway, it was super valuable to know what kind of verb was in front of me. And that climber feature is just always been something I've taken to. The other big thing that I really enjoy has been the navigation features. I mean, it is something that the crew too has always offered in spades, above and beyond anything else out there in the marketplace.
Based on an Android operating system. It kind of has the same kind of mapping capabilities that you see on your phone. So very visual, very easy to see trails and roads and where they lead to pinch and zoom and everything you'd expect. From a phone you get there right there on the screen. It also has a super cool feature I've mentioned before, which is sort of a find my way home feature. Whereas if you're kind of mucking around and a little bit lost, you can just kind of press this button returned to start, and it's going to navigate you directly to your home or the place where you started the ride.
The other thing I just saw pushed to me in a latest software update. Was a choice of preferred terrain. So now layering on top. Oh, Hey, I want a ride home on gravel versus pavement is going to give you different results. So I thought that was super cool. And it's another feature that I've always loved from the team in hammerhead is just the idea that you have software updates. Every two weeks. I feel like I'm getting something pushed to the device.
That's adding a new feature and I get an email describing it. And some of them. You know, background, improvements or something that's maybe only applicable if you have a power meter. But other ones super applicable, like this choice of terrain. I always like to be able to tell my computer that if you're routing me somewhere, take me on the dirt because that's what I'm all about. So anyway, as we approach this holiday season, if you're looking for a new cycling GPS computer, I highly recommend checking out hammerhead there@hammerhead.io for gravel ride podcast listeners, they're throwing in a free heart rate, monitor strap.
So just make sure to put. Put it in your cart and add the code. The gravel ride to any of your hammerhead purchases for that crew to computer. Without business behind us let's jump right into my conversation with randall
Randall.
[00:04:28] Craig Dalton: Randall. Good to see you, my friend.
[00:04:30] Randall R. Jacobs: Good to see you, Craig. It's been a bit, we've both been traveling. How you been?
[00:04:33] Craig Dalton: yeah, I've been, I've been okay. You know, life continues to throw on challenges in front of me and haven't been on the bike as much as I'd like. But happy to be here. Happy to be chatting bikes for a few minutes.
[00:04:45] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, yeah. I've been very much looking forward to it. Um, you've been, you were in Jerron for a bit and I think you were in, uh, Bentonville, Arkansas before that.
[00:04:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I feel like I stacked all my trips into one period of time, which turned out to be more stressful than I would've liked from a family dynamic perspective. It seemed like I was gone all the time, and I think in the weeks proceeding my. Bentonville trip. There was like a local group ride that I had to, like, wanted to prioritize and kind of block off some time away from the family then.
And then in between Bentonville and Gerona, there was a couple things that seemed like it was all about Craig. When I, you know, obviously I wanna be a, uh, you know, equal participant in my family life as, as my wife.
[00:05:33] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, I can. Uh, I don't have the same family obligations, um, for better or for worse, uh, but can definitely relate to packing all of one's travels all in one go, and having that be, um, while effective, uh, requiring some recovery. I was on the road for three and a half weeks in my case and never stayed in the same place, more in a couple of days.
[00:05:53] Craig Dalton: that's a lot. And I wanna hear about the trip cuz I kept seeing it pop up in the ridership like where you were and shouting out locals and, you know, bringing people together. So it, it sounds like it was an exciting trip and I'm super excited to talk about it with you.
[00:06:07] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Well let's hear about Bentonville first, cuz that's a place that I've explored a little bit, but really wanna spend some more time in. You're there for what? Big sugar.
[00:06:15] Craig Dalton: I was there for big sugar and I was able to go down there. I actually went for the People for Bikes conference, so as, as some people know, I, I do spend some time with a, a non-profit called Bike index. Bike index act org. A little plug for everybody out there. It's a bicycle registry, stolen bike recovery platform.
People for Bikes is sort of the biggest non-profit advocacy organization in the industry by my likes, and they put together a conference called Shift and another one in the spring, but Shift was in Bentonville and I saw the opportunity, hey, if I can, if I'm already getting to Bentonville, I should go to that conference on behalf of Bike.
It was super fruitful and interesting. Lot of interesting topics. There was, there was a, a big thread around diversity and inclusion, which is an important topic in the cycling industry, and an additional thread about sustainability and climate, which again, important across all industries if we wanna keep doing what we're doing out there in the world.
So that was like a really valuable add-on two days to that.
[00:07:21] Randall R. Jacobs: I'm kind of curious, um, cuz actually I didn't realize that you had gone to that conference. Uh, I'm curious to hear a little bit more about the, the topics and the angles and and so on in that experience.
[00:07:32] Craig Dalton: yeah. I'd probably have to bring up the, uh, the, uh, agenda to kind of give you a full, a couple months out. Now, my brain is a little foggy, but on the sustainability front, it was great. They had a, an expert who had written a book about bringing sustainability into the cycling industry, and I could share that in the show notes and I'll certainly share it with you personally.
Um, we went through an exercise of. How would you reinvent your business with a sustainability angle? How do you think about bicycle ownership differently? How do you think about supply chains differently and what are the net effects, both positive and negative to either your price point or your customer relationship?
And I, I've thought it was pretty interesting. I. In a group with the bike flights team. So bike flights provides a service to ship bikes from, from one place to another. And they have these cardboard boxes you can use either like one of your own or you can actually buy a box from them, which is ideally reusable, but you, you know, it's only reusable to a certain extent.
So we were just sort of riffing. How could you extend the reusability of that? How could you use different materials for that with achieving the same result of getting your, your bike from point A to point B safely without damage?
[00:08:54] Randall R. Jacobs: I'd be curious if you, um, I'd be curious to read the report and pull out, you know, one or a couple of the experts potentially to bring on, because it's something that we're thinking about as well. And so, you know, we take the opportunity for, for us to learn, well, at the same time sharing what's going on with, uh, the listenership.
[00:09:10] Craig Dalton: That's a great idea. I'll definitely, I can definitely connect you with the author of that book. The other interesting thing we were riffing about, and as we're both wearing our logos caps today, um, we were talking about, I was talking with another wheel manufacturer and we were talking about, okay, you deliver the wheels in a box.
What could that box be used for down the line? Like is there anything in the garage that it could be converted to that you have like, you know, sort of Lego style instructions of like, cut your box in this way and all of a sudden you can, you know, have a wheel stand for example. You know, if you can imagine if you cut holes in the box, you might be able to like drop the wheels in and that would be a cool way to display your extra set of.
[00:09:52] Randall R. Jacobs: You know, um, that's actually brilliant in that, um, this will, we'll talk about this in a moment, but we're in the process of, uh, building out our dealer network, our, our shop network. Uh, that was the, the pur the main purpose of this recent trip. And one of the things I kept coming up was like, how do I display this in a really attractive way in my shop?
And so that would be a really great development exercise where it's like the box that it comes in gets, you know, has some perforations and. You know, you cut it and you fold it and all of a sudden it is this really interesting display stand with a story. I like that a lot. I'm
[00:10:24] Craig Dalton: Good. I look forward to seeing that. So that was super interesting. You know, I always, whenever I, you know, I do, I've done business development in my career for, for ages and conferences are sort of the bane of my existence cuz you have to go to them and you think you're gonna meet so and so, but you never necessarily do.
But it's important to show up because you do make these random connections.
[00:10:47] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah,
[00:10:48] Craig Dalton: Always yield value. So I feel like a couple of those were.
[00:10:53] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, it's the thing that I, I, uh, one of the things I mourn most about Covid is, um, you know, I'm one of these people who loves going to trade shows. So like I used to go, you know, I still go to Seattle O every year, haven't been to Asia in years. Uh, some folks who are listening will know that I lived in Asia a number of years, uh, mostly in China, um, and a Mandarin speaker and like was doing some, uh, you know, sourcing and product development work for various companies, both in and outta bike.
And it's, it's a big part of me. And, and those relationships are not just great professional relationships where interesting ideas emerge out of, but also, you know, people I really. People whose families I know, um, and people I've stayed with. Uh, and so yeah, that's, that's something that, um, I'm really looking forward to in 2023 is attending more of those, uh, conferences and trade events and things like that.
[00:11:45] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely, I mean, it's so critical. I think when you've sort of broken bread with someone and then do business with 'em, you're just so much more likely to be successful in that relationship.
[00:11:56] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, you start to understand people at a different level when say, you know, you're with the owner of this very large factory and you're trying to understand each other, and you do so over a cheap bowl of noodles at his favorite noodle shop down the street from the factory. And that's, and you know, or you, you know, you have.
Uh, dinner with him and his wife and, and kids or her and her, you know, family or what have you, uh, which is the sort of thing that used to happen all the time. Uh, pre covid and hopefully Taiwan is open. Um, and so Taipei will be, uh, in person this year. It looks like in March. China is still closed, uh, effectively, unless you want to quarantine and risk being stuck there for,
[00:12:35] Craig Dalton: Yeah, but, but showing some signs. I was just listening to an economist this morning showing some signs of easing their zero covid policy, which is interesting.
[00:12:46] Randall R. Jacobs: It's interesting and, uh, there's a whole, if we wanna get into, uh, geopolitics and so on, there's a whole conversation we could have there about, um, how that, that might go. They have a huge unvaccinated elderly population, so that's a, a huge concern. And they've largely, uh, uh, rejected, you know, more effective Western developed vaccines in
[00:13:08] Craig Dalton: Yeah. That's the
[00:13:08] Randall R. Jacobs: less effective homegrown ones and they haven't deployed them.
And, and so, Yeah. And, and there's reasons for that. That is, is, uh, again, a whole conversation on geopolitics we don't need to dive into. Um,
[00:13:20] Craig Dalton: indeed. The final thing I'll mention about people for bikes is that they did reveal some statistics around sort of the bike industry and some of the things we already knew about. The sort of ebb and flow of supply chain constraints and how early on in the pandemic there was a lot of people flooding to cycling.
Then some of the supply chain finally caught up and, and then there became a little bit of a glut of bicycles in some categories out there in the market. Then now combined with a softening of demand, the sort of supply and demand curves look really funny over the years, and they're sort of,
[00:13:56] Randall R. Jacobs: Hm.
[00:13:57] Craig Dalton: In synchronous, um, out of synchronicity.
And I think we'll continue to be that way. Cause now with an impending recession potentially, it's just, it's gonna be interesting to see where supply meets demand in this coming period.
[00:14:12] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. And we also are in the low of the season because, you know, when people talk about the bike industry, um, oftentimes they're talking about the upper end, you know, and, and when I say upper end, I mean anything that's not a department store bike. So like, you know, anything you'd buy at a bike shop, so like a bike that's, you know, has a minimum level of spec, at least maybe $400 and above.
Um, and you know, the, there's, there's a cycle for that. And most of those, that level of bike is, is in the northern hemisphere. And so as the winter approach is like, demand always goes down anyways, so the question is what will it look like in April when you know the next season is kicking in?
[00:14:53] Craig Dalton: yeah, yeah, exactly. So super fascinating stuff.
[00:14:57] Randall R. Jacobs: you mentioned, uh, about diversity as well
[00:15:00] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't, I, you know, you and I were talking offline like how difficult it is to find safe women who work in the industry to interview for the podcast. At times, I was saying like it's easy to find women athletes, which is great to see, but often I think there's just, it's just been such a male dominated industry.
So there's certainly discussion around gender inclusion, but more of kind of race and ethnicity inclusion. We had the founder of Legion Bicycle, Justin Williams, just talking about, um, you know, just showing younger athletes, younger black athletes, that there was a world where they're included in the space in, you know, he's got an interesting vision around, you know, rebuilding city based criter racing and creating a league and providing ownership.
To the writers, which I think is fascinating. There's a lot of stuff going on. It just, you know, it's always depressing how long these initiatives take to really show some impact.
[00:16:05] Randall R. Jacobs: It does take a long time to get a critical mass of people who say, you know, look like me, whatever, you know, whatever your me looks like. Uh, so, so yeah. That makes sense. And, um, for anyone listening, hearing us talk about how it can be difficult to find, you know, uh, women or minority, uh, well, uh, Yeah, people of color, um, to represent, uh, the industry, to bring on the pod.
If you have ideas, please reach out and let us know. You can let us know when the ridership in the, um, the Gravel Ride podcast, uh, channel, um, or drop us an email. Um, there's an email set up for the pod I call.
[00:16:43] Craig Dalton: There's not, there might have been
[00:16:45] Randall R. Jacobs: Okay. Well anyways,
[00:16:47] Craig Dalton: you know where to find us.
[00:16:48] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. You know how to find us, find Craig or I, um, cuz always looking for, uh, people to have interesting conversations with and we definitely have a few in the queue.
Um, alright, so Bentonville and then, uh, how about the event itself?
[00:16:59] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So great event. I mean, I really enjoyed it, not my, it was the terrain. I did the little sugar event at Big Sugar. Big Sugar Gravel is the final of the Lifetime Grand Prix series for the year, but it's also been running, I think. This might have been the third year this thing actually went off. Anyway, Bentonville, great community, embraces cycling in a big way, very kind of undulating, so a lot of short, punchy climbs, which isn't necessarily what I'm trained for.
If you can call what I am trained for anything. But the terrain was, I mean, it was loose and rocky. I had my, my rock shock equipped titanium bike with 700 by 40 fives on. I felt super confident and it showed anytime it went downhill on the course. I was rifling by people. You know, I also have a dropper post.
I was looking, you know, people were looking incredibly nervous as I was just absolutely flying by them, and I was talking to a friend after the fact and I mentioned like, I felt like I was racing, which felt good. I like, honestly, I haven't felt like I was racing. In a long time, and it wasn't intentional.
I didn't go in with a lot of fitness, but by happenstance it was a, a road, a road rollout. We were on pavement. there was, uh, Molly Cameron, who's a transgender athlete. Friend of mine, was out in sort of the front of the pack and there was a few quick step pros from Europe over there and I was just kind of curious to kind of be around them.
And I wanted to say hi to Molly. So I am fairly comfortable riding in packs and I got to the front and I front ish, I would say like top 20% of of riders. And I started to realize that I knew there was a heavy, heavy choke. Not like eight miles in where it had to go. You had to, everybody had to go down to sort of almost a single track, and it was a gully that was gonna give people some trepidation.
And so I found myself in the top 20% there, and I can only imagine the carnage that happened behind me
[00:19:04] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah.
[00:19:06] Craig Dalton: Randall, I finished 40th or something out of 400. and I rode, I rode hard to my ability. I was fortunate. It was super windy. I was fortunate that like I, I was always riding with at least one other person and occasionally we'd balloon up to, you know, 10 people or whatever.
But I was riding hard over every hill. I certainly was riding the descent, hard to catch back on when I was getting dropped, but I just wasn't getting past five people and it started to dawn on me that, so, Some carnage happened back there because no one was catching me this entire day.
[00:19:42] Randall R. Jacobs: That's, um, I've actually used the course profiles like that to my advantage in my racing days. It's like, okay, here's a course that starts on a big climb and at the top of the climb goes into a tight single track when no one can pass. I'm gonna be at the top of the climb first, and then I'm gonna, hopefully someone behind me is a lousy technical rider.
[00:19:58] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's almost the only thing that mattered,
[00:20:00] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, good for you. Nonetheless, it's takes something to, to be in the, in the front for that long anyways, so Bravo.
[00:20:08] Craig Dalton: so it was, it was fun. Like I, I just like, I felt good about myself on the bike and it was, granted, it was the shorter course or whatever, but it was fun and it just sort of reminded me that, you know, getting out there and having sort of just the encouragement of event day to go a little harder, go a little deeper is just something I enjoy.
[00:20:27] Randall R. Jacobs: It's a very different experience, like psychologically going, being in an event or even being, uh, you know, as I experienced in, in Boulder in particular on a, on a spirited group ride and just having to hold on right Knowing like, oh, not, it's not only. That you want to finish the overall event, um, in a good time and, and be towards the front, but if you get dropped, you're gonna be out in the wind on your own.
And so you're just like holding onto that wheel, uh, for dear life, knowing that as hard as that is, it's gonna be that much worse. The moment a gap, uh, opens up and you're just doing half the speed on your own.
[00:21:02] Craig Dalton: a hundred percent. It, that went through my mind constantly in, in Bentonville. I was just like, I, it doesn't matter. Bury yourself, because if you fall off this wheel, you're, it's gonna be, you know, you're gonna be out here a lot longer.
[00:21:17] Randall R. Jacobs: Um,
[00:21:18] Craig Dalton: I love it. I love it. So, you know, in some, I know we got, we have a short amount of time and, and ground to cover, but I, I really liked Beville.
I really liked the big sugar gravel event. I, I definitely recommend it if you're a mountain biker. There's so much terrain down there to ride. Um, one, one real just funny anecdote to talk about, like Bentonville as a cycling community, I was staying at a hotel a couple miles, kind of away from down. And as I was riding back, and this happened two or three times, I would come to a crosswalk on a bike path and there'd be a car in the way.
Not doing anything malicious, just kind of peeking out, trying to make their turn, and the car would back up. And I, I was just like shocked. Like of the, of the courtesy towards bicyclists.
[00:22:02] Randall R. Jacobs: did they honk at you? Did they throw anything?
[00:22:05] Craig Dalton: There is no gestures. Maybe even just like a friendly gesture, like, oh, I'm sorry, I was in your.
[00:22:10] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, it's, um, I've visited, uh, Bentonville. I've, uh, some friends, uh, who moved down that way in part for, in, in no small part for the reason that you're siting there. The infrastructure there is incredible is, um, a lot of Walton money, so a lot of Walmart money. Cause that's their headquarters that's gone into, I mean, some of the, like, I've seen bridges that go over, you know, small little gaps that, you know, you could just ride down, ride up the other side and like these ornates, you know, rot, iron bridges that are done, you know, by a local artist, you know, um, real architecture in there.
And, uh, yeah, this is just a, a lot of investment in that scene and it shows and it's pretty cool that, you know, you're starting to see some big events down. Did you bump into, uh, Benini Per chance or,
[00:22:58] Craig Dalton: Um, no, I, no, I didn't. I think I might've saw him down there, but I didn't speak to him. I ran it to a bunch of other journalists along the way
[00:23:07] Randall R. Jacobs: okay. Uh, I, I saw him in, uh, in Boulder. He has his, the ride with, uh, Ben Delaney YouTube channel. So I know that he had done a video from there. So curious if you cross paths. Um,
[00:23:20] Craig Dalton: And then not a few weeks later, I found myself finally going to J in Spain.
[00:23:25] Randall R. Jacobs: Tell me about it. That's a, that's a place that keeps coming up in conversation.
[00:23:29] Craig Dalton: yeah, I mean, gosh, it was two years in the making. I've been talking to Trek Travel about joining their Jer Gravel bike tour, uh, five day trip outta Jer. Um, finally, you know, due to covid delays, it finally happened.
I had a couple buddies from the Bay Area join me. We were a group of six. We had two great guides, Mickey and Rafa. Mickey was a local, so he kind of knew all the little goat paths and different ways. In fact, you know, we were given, we were able to use Trek bicycles for the entire trip, and we had a GPS from Garmin that had all the roots on it.
But oftentimes when we were going outta town, if Mickey was leading us, he would just take us through the little goat path at the little trails, which were a heck of a lot of fun. Gerona appears to have gravel in every direct. And a lot of different style gravels. You know, they set us up on these trek demos with a 35 C tire, so, you know, very small tire and very kind of road plessy setup from compared to what, what you and I normally ride.
But the bikes were, were very capable and a ton of fun for the type of gravel we were experiencing. We did a few rides out to the Mediterranean coast, which was amazing, but then got into some technical stuff and what I, what I really enjoyed about the trip was that there was a little bit of everything.
It was clear the way they designed the days that they could sort of test people's appetite and their metal and their experience for, you know, the days that would come as they did get progressively more technical.
[00:25:03] Randall R. Jacobs: Hmm. I would imagine it's challenging if you, like, if they have a more eclectic group of people who don't know each other and you know, you, you really, I wonder if they do some, uh, pre-screening before they put. People on a ride together to make sure that the abilities are, are roughly equal because when they vary widely, uh, you end up, you know, going at the pace of whomever the slowest rider is, which is fine for a certain type of riding.
Uh,
[00:25:28] Craig Dalton: Yeah, no, I, I did acknowledge that and I spoke to the guides a little bit about that, and we did feel fortunate that although we did have some varying ability levels in the group, um, a couple of the riders decided to stop at lunch one day and get in the van or opted to do tourist things one day and not actually ride.
So it did feel very much like the pace was dictated by myself and my, my close friends. More than anything else, which was nice. Um, you know, I think on one day we had a guide all to ourselves, so it was just like ripping around Spain and doing, doing what we do. And they, they were very gracious about like, if we didn't have enough riding in any given day, we just, we would just go out and ride more and our, our guide would give us an additional route.
So I think on two occasions, we, we set out in the afternoon after coming back from our, you know, our group.
[00:26:19] Randall R. Jacobs: So am I right in saying that the terrain was like a lot of hard pack, relatively smooth given the the equipment that you were on?
[00:26:28] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So yes, in that there's a lot of kind of rails to trails activity, like long stretches of, of, of former rail lines that are now just basically smooth bike paths that just go from, from miles and miles, but then some, some fairly chunky. Gravel climbs, um, and some fairly technical loose descents.
Honestly, like I, I felt like it was maybe a bit more challenging than I would've thought would've been designed, but they always had out outs for people, I think, you know, if you didn't, if you didn't wanna do a certain section or feeling a little bit too beat up. So I was pleasantly surprised. I think I did an episode about it, just kind of with my contemporaneous thoughts that I recorded well in Jer.
You know, on, on, uh, I think it was day three or four, like it was very similar to riding Tam, like we were on some steep descents. I was, I was wishing for my dropper post cuz it was getting a little bit, a little bit loose. Granted, like with the 35 C tires, maybe if I was on my bigger tire bike, it would've been like, I would've experienced it differently, but still, like, I felt reasonably challenged and satisfied.
[00:27:38] Randall R. Jacobs: Sounds outstanding and, um, I you would, I think it was you who sent me the picture of you and Russ from Pathless Pedaled.
[00:27:47] Craig Dalton: So how random is this? So I'm, I'm out, we're sort of halfway through, I think day four. We had just done a climb that is apparently is George Hank's favorite climb on the road after traversing to it on the dirt. And then we did this big dirt road climb and I was feeling spicy and I, I wanted to , I jokingly said to my friend if, if Rafa, our guide's responsibility, To stay with the lead rider.
I'm gonna make it really hard for him today. And I was just on a day, like I was feeling strong and so I attacked on the climb, attacked, you know, but I just felt good and was pushing the pace and I decided since I had the gps, I was just gonna keep going. So I'm like 45 minutes to the top of this climb and I see a couple riding by me.
And you know, Russ is, Russ often rides in flannel. He's got a, uh, you
[00:28:39] Randall R. Jacobs: fishing shirts.
[00:28:41] Craig Dalton: Yeah, and he's got a, you know, he is got that, uh, bike bag a certain way. Like he's got a visual aesthetic to him that if you've seen him ride you, you know, you kind of recognize it, recognize him, and it, I was like, God, I know that guy, but he went by and I'm like, well, I'm pretty sure that was Russ Pathos.
Pedaled. But I didn't, didn't, wasn't able to connect with him. And then the. Was it the next day, I, I, I pass him in the town of Jerron when we're both riding different directions and I yell, pathless Pedaled and I sort of see him acknowledge, but like, we cannot stop, like, we're just not in a position to, and so I'm like, I've confirmed it's him.
And then later on that afternoon, I actually run into him and Laura and was able to chat and grab a picture with him. And he, he, they've been over there a month as j as a base.
[00:29:33] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Oh, so cool. Yeah, I got a, um, I got an email from him one day just with a picture of him at Tata Bikes, which is a, a really cool shop in Gerona. Um, they're, they're built in. Did you visit their shop, their facility? I
[00:29:47] Craig Dalton: I didn't visit that shop.
[00:29:48] Randall R. Jacobs: It's built in out of an old building, so it's like this beautiful stone, uh, building right in the heart of things.
Um, and, you know, they happen to have a fleet of our bikes for rentals and so Russ had a picture of himself with our, with our bikes at ta, uh, which I thought was, was pretty sweet. Um,
[00:30:04] Craig Dalton: I love it. I love it. Yeah. So much, such a great cycle in community when we visited the new Castelli community store there and uh, we happened upon them when they were bringing together a night ride and we were all kicking ourselves for not having lights cuz it looked like it was gonna be a heck of a lot of fun.
There's probably like 30 riders there and I have a snippet on the last episode with my conversation with Oscar, who's the manager there and really cool and lots of different local brands there. And it's, you know, It's fun to like go to a restaurant and then have bike hooks for you and those little details that happen when you're in a, you know, a cycling first community.
[00:30:43] Randall R. Jacobs: That, that sounds outstanding. I really need to make it out there before too long
[00:30:47] Craig Dalton: Yeah, highly recommend Jer. Hopefully I can get back at some point, but I know we're pressed for time and I, I definitely wanna hear about your trip.
[00:30:55] Randall R. Jacobs: Sure. So, uh, three and a half weeks on the road, uh, started in Boston where I'm now based and was in Austin, Texas, Denver and Boulder, then in Reno and then, uh, stopped in Sacramento and route to the Bay Area, uh, against, seldom staying in the place for same place for more than a couple of days. Um, And it was a, a mix of, uh, visiting bike shops.
So we're in the process of building a network of shops for logos and, uh, eventually for thesis, which by the way, uh, anyone who's interested in our wheels, who wants to buy them from a local shop, drop us a note. And, uh, with your local shop and. Um, the wheels you want, and we'll reach out and we'll get that taken care of for you.
Uh, so really focusing on, um, you know, collaboration with, with these shops that are so, you know, critical to supporting the right experience. Uh,
[00:31:45] Craig Dalton: just for, uh, so I know we've talked about the wheel set, on the wheel sets on the podcast before, but just for as a refresher, what sizes and styles do you have available?
[00:31:55] Randall R. Jacobs: So 6 50, 700, 2 9, and we'll be introducing some more in each of those sizes coming up. And then we have, uh, you know, various end cap solutions, free hubs and so on for people who have different drive trains. Uh, and we have a very particular philosophy, which if you're interested, we did do, uh, you and I an episode on what makes a great wheel set, uh, where we go, uh, deep into the weeds there.
Uh, you can find that a few episodes back.
[00:32:19] Craig Dalton: Nice.
[00:32:20] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Um, so that was, uh, that was wonderful, just like getting to one, get a sense of the landscape once again. And two, you know, really sitting down with, uh, small business owners and understanding like, you know, what's their experience, how do they get into this, uh, what is the nature of their business?
And seeing all the different ways in which people serve, um, their particular part of the cycling community, uh, and
[00:32:44] Craig Dalton: How did you, uh,
[00:32:45] Randall R. Jacobs: and.
[00:32:46] Craig Dalton: how did you decide where you were going and what shops to visit? Was it led by the shops you wanted to visit or the locations you wanted to, to have a presence?
[00:32:54] Randall R. Jacobs: Uh, a mix of both. So Austin was somewhat opportunistic. I had a couple of friends who just had their second kiddo, and so I wanted to, to play with the toddler and, and hold the, the, the newborn while they were both on leave. Uh, and then, you know, visited, uh, a co-founder on another project while there. And then was in Denver and Boulder.
That was, um, again, got a bunch of friends in that area. Haven't been there since the pandemics, uh, or at least haven't spent a good amount of time there since the pandemic. Um, and a lot of the cycling media is centered in Boulder. So meeting with a, a bunch of, you know, industry people in journalists. Yeah.
[00:33:31] Craig Dalton: you, uh, were you driving the Prius?
[00:33:34] Randall R. Jacobs: No, no, I, I flew this time. I'm . I don't really care. I've done the cross country drive eight times now, um, between my racing days and then when I was, you know, moving out to the west coast and when I moved back this way. And, uh, yeah, I could see doing it again at some point maybe, you know, with a, with a partner some years down the road when, you know, you do van life for a few months.
But yeah. Um, rent
[00:34:01] Craig Dalton: Were you, uh,
[00:34:02] Randall R. Jacobs: needed.
[00:34:03] Craig Dalton: were you traveling with, with three wheel sets?
[00:34:05] Randall R. Jacobs: Just the one, I have, the six 50 s with a, a byway semi slick in the rear and a, a venture, um, file tread up front. And that was my everything wheel set, which worked out well though, I'll say that in the Denver Boulder area, um, the. So I, I joined, uh, several group rides out there. People are fast, people are super fast, and the terrain, uh, that, that the group rides are on is generally pretty tame.
So, you know, uh, mixer road, hard packed dirt roads, uh, even the single track is not overly technical. Um, I did hit a little bit of a, uh, technical single track, uh, with actually Ben I just mentioned. Uh, him and I rode together while I was out there and, but, um, Yeah, I was definitely, uh, was riding with some people on, you know, full on road bikes and could have used that little bit of extra edge as it was.
I, I did the aides because, uh, I have the pride of a former racer, I suppose, uh, but was definitely just holding on for dear life, a good chunk of the time.
[00:35:08] Craig Dalton: right. Nice.
[00:35:11] Randall R. Jacobs: yeah.
[00:35:12] Craig Dalton: fun. Should we bring, you brought your bike along with you? As well.
[00:35:15] Randall R. Jacobs: So brought the bike along, group rides, visiting with friends, rolling into shops, talking, talking with shop, uh, uh, team members and owners and so on. Um, some really cool shops, uh, that I got to visit. In that area. And then Reno was visiting friends. Um, again, few shops out that way, but uh, in terms of activities, trail running and so on, in the mountains outside of there, uh, and did some hiking in, in Tahoe, which is stunning, um, at all times of year.
But I'd never been in winter. Uh, there was already quite a bit of snow that we were hiking on, in, in spikes. Uh, and then the Bay Area, which was, I was all over the bay.
[00:35:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So bummed to miss that you being out here. It
[00:35:56] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, well, I'll, I'll be out this way. I'll be out your way again before too, too long at the latest, uh, sea Otter and, uh, probably the highlight of that trip, uh, was put on like a, just, just put out there, uh, a ridership sf, um, ride meet up and probably had 25 or so people show. And it was great. A lot of people who, uh, I haven't, haven't met before, a few friends, a few people I've known for a while.
Um, and then some people I've interacted with over email and so on, uh, or seen in the ridership. And, uh, everyone was stoked to be there and it was really neat to see. Um, We did the headlands and then out to Tennessee Valley. So revisiting these areas that I used to ride twice a week, you know, when I was developing the OB one, those were the, the, uh, the, uh, the test loop.
Uh, and then just. When everyone was out for pizza, uh, afterwards, just seeing people really connecting and exchanging numbers and taking photos and all that. And it was just such a great vibe. And, um, I remember when you and I used to do such things, uh, host rides together and so let's definitely make it a point to do that.
Next time I'm out your way.
[00:37:05] Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like, I mean, gosh, I can't believe it's December and looking back at the lack of group rides I tried to put together this year, cause I really do enjoy it and such, like I said, it's not, it's not about the riding, it's just about the people I.
[00:37:20] Randall R. Jacobs: We also, um, we used the, so we're still kind of playing around with this, uh, mighty Networks tool, um, for like a a 2.0 version of the ridership that's not in Slack. And so like organizing the events in there actually made things a lot easier. So when the time comes, kind of you market it however you wanna market it, and then, uh, just create the actual event and link to.
In the ridership.org. And if anyone else is looking to either organize group rides or manage their clubs, we have a couple of clubs that are managing their teams, uh, within the ridership.org. Uh, if you have any questions on it, just drop us a note in the current ridership, but, um, that, that actually proved really effective.
[00:38:00] Craig Dalton: Were you able to do like messaging to the people who had registered for the
[00:38:04] Randall R. Jacobs: You can do messaging. Uh, people who are registered can also put in comments and so on. Um, and for coordination, uh, you can, you know, if you send an update, everyone can get emailed. Uh, you can have all the, the ride details in the, uh, invite as well. You see who has signed up. Uh, and you can share with people who are outside of the network though to, to rsvp.
You just have to create a. Everything is free. It's really straightforward. So, uh, yeah, it was, it was a useful tool, um,
[00:38:32] Craig Dalton: I'm, I'm glad you're able to go through that. I know like, you know, we've, we've certainly put in many hours in developing that prototype over there and glad to see you using it and getting that real world kind of experience of like, is this tool beneficial to the community?
[00:38:48] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, it's the sort of thing where I think the events are the most obvious application where anyone can start using it immediately. And, um, and again, for, for club membership of which events is a, a, a, you know, a critical component, uh, it's great for that. And again, free, just get your people in there. Um, if you're, if you're a club manager, then uh, reach out, we'll create a separate space.
It's almost like having. Like your own private Facebook. If Facebook didn't have like algorithmic feed and like was, wasn't extracting all your data and would just leave you the hell alone. Um, and without all the, the advertising and fluff and everything else, it's literally just like your own defined space where you can.
You know, coordinate communications amongst your teams and, and manage events. You could even have your membership in there, uh, if you want membership dues and so on. The platform supports that. Uh, so it's a really neat platform and each club can have its own either club or if you're an event organizer, um, you can have your own space within the broader ridership that is, you know, it can be private or public.
Uh, it's pretty cool. So just gotta invest some more time in it. Now that we've got logos launched and I have a little bit more bandwidth,
[00:40:01] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I know the vision's always been to just create a, a, a safe community place for people who love bikes and, you know, have a devoid of distractions, like you're coming there just to enjoy bikes in the community.
[00:40:15] Randall R. Jacobs: yep.
[00:40:15] Craig Dalton: No one's gonna advertise to you. No one's gonna try to draw you away. It's not meant to be a time sink.
I mean, one of our core shared value is, is that we want people to get outside. We're not, we've never looked to kind of create a community to keep people in front of their computers. We wanna,
[00:40:32] Randall R. Jacobs: Quite,
[00:40:32] Craig Dalton: you're in front of your computer Yeah, exactly. We want this to be inspirational. To get outside.
[00:40:37] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Yeah. It's a, a vehicle for connection, you know, as, as with all things we try to do. Um, the, the last thing I'll share is I visited Enduro Barings. Visited their,
[00:40:47] Craig Dalton: Oh, their facility.
[00:40:48] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. And, um, it's not their ma they, they have, um, other manufacturing facilities, um, but got to tour the warehouse and see the testing that they're doing, um, on their bearings and comparison testing and so on.
And, uh, it was a really great experience, uh, was with Matt Harvey, who I had on the pod before. If you haven't heard that episode. Um, a lot of deep nerdy on, on, uh, Barings and then Rick Sutton, who you've spoken to before as a representative. Um, uh, HBAR coefficient cycling. Um, I think I'm gonna bring on again to talk about his founding of Sea Oder.
Uh, and he's also with, uh, you know, helping Enduro with marketing, but got to go really, really that much deeper in the weeds on, um, how bearings or designed and the materials and the testing regimens and all this other stuff. Uh, and it just made me that much more impressed with their XD 15. It's the only bearing that they've tested and I, I looked at the tests and it's a, it's a robust protocol.
The only bearing they've tested that gets better as you use it. Pretty much every bear, every bearing, degrades and, and generally degrades, um, somewhat quickly and it gets better over
[00:42:00] Craig Dalton: it's. It's so fascinating when you, when you meet these individuals who are so focused on their specific craft, their specific part of the industry, and you realize like a generalist could never produce a product as good as this person who was obsessed over this thing for their entire
[00:42:18] Randall R. Jacobs: Uh, yeah. Well, and even, even if you, even then you could be obsessed your entire career, but in, you know, in their case, um, you know, getting access to that alloy, they're buying this in like solid bar stock and machining away like 97, 90 8% of it to make these races out of this XD 15 steel, which is the, the designation of the particular alloy. And you know, it's, uh, it's really cool stuff and worth it, frankly. Like I have, I now have an XD 15 bottom bracket in my bike, and that'll probably be the last bottom bracket I ever own.
[00:42:52] Craig Dalton: The last one you
[00:42:53] Randall R. Jacobs: to other bikes. Yeah.
[00:42:55] Craig Dalton: So, so cool. So cool.
[00:42:58] Randall R. Jacobs: So
[00:42:59] Craig Dalton: Amazing to catch up. I wish we had more time today, but we'll do this again soon.
[00:43:03] Randall R. Jacobs: Sounds good.
[00:43:05] Craig Dalton: Cheers.
[00:43:06] Randall R. Jacobs: Be well.
[00:43:07] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of in the dirt, from the gravel ride podcast. I appreciate you spending a little bit of your December with us this year. Big, thanks to hammerhead and the crew too, for sponsoring this episode . And be sure to use the code, the gravel ride for that free heart rate monitor strap. When you order your new crew to computer.
If you're interested in connecting with myself or Randall, please join us in the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. It's a free global cycling community. We'd lot of great conversations going on every day. If you're interested in supporting the podcast, you can visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride.
All your support is greatly appreciated. And if you have a moment, ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels.
This week I recount my recent trip to Girona, Spain with Trek Travel. Our knowledgeable guides took us on a 5 day adventure throughout the region exposing us to Girona’s plentiful and diverse gravel. As a bonus, we were able to connect with a number of local cycling brands contributing to Girona’s reputation as the hub of European cycling.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Girona Gravel Live[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the show, I'm releasing some recordings I did during the tractor on a gravel tour. I participated in, in November. It was a great trip. I encourage you to check it out on Trek's website and I appreciate Trek's support in getting the over there to have this wonderful experience.
With my friend. Was able to sit down with our guides as well as some other members of the Jarana cycling community. To give you a flavor for this wonderful cycling city. I hope you enjoy and let's dive right in
Day 1[00:00:56] Craig Dalton: Right here we are, day one, Trek Gerona Gravel tour here in Gerona, Spain here in the hotel. Nord got set up on my Trek demo bike. Not the one you'd expect for these gravel trips, but it turns out the gravel roads here in Gerona are pretty smooth and you don't need the big wide tires that I typically ride at home.
So we're riding a 35 C Pirelli tire on these Damani bikes. The great thing was, Sent them over. My fit measurements had everything dialed, so it was just some quick adjustments Right before the ride. Today we did about 25 miles today as a shakeout ride. Riding along, essentially along the river, out and back on either side of the river, which a lot of fun.
We got into some single track. Super smooth. Not a lot of elevation today. That's gonna come tomorrow where I'm excited that we're riding off to the Mediterranean. So great first day. Great intro. The guides. Rafa and Mickey are awesome. Mickey's a local here in Jerron and Rafa's from London. Bringing a little bit of international flavor to the trip.
We've got a group of about six of us, so it's pretty easy to keep people together. I've got two friends from San Francisco along for the ride, so that is a joy and a pleasure. More later in the week, and I'll get some commentary, a little bit more specifics about the writing from Mickey Rafa along the way to to give you an idea about what to expect.
It's a five day experience here in the Jonah Gravel tour. They've got some other options I think, coming online next year, but super excited for the days to come as the mileage is gonna creep up, and I'm told the technicality is gonna creep up as well. So super excited for that. We'll see how these 35 C tires on the demos go, but I'm confident we've got the right equipment for the job.
Day 2[00:02:50] Craig Dalton: Okay, so on day two of the Trek Gerona gravel tour today, we did about 60 miles of gravel, about 1800 feet of climbing on our way to the Mediterranean beach, the Mediterranean Ocean. We started in Gerona and followed the prominent river all the way to the east. Surprisingly, the whole ride, we were on gravel roads, beautiful gravel.
Started out getting outta town on some small paths right next to the river. Some real fun single track to wake you up and then onto some amazing roads through forests. There's a lot of forests here. We were told that the trees that were being planted there were for the paper industry. They were super beautiful tall trees and lined in rows, and we just weaved throughout them until 29 kilometers later.
We met the van, the Trek travel van, and our second guide Mickey, who had water refills and food and everything we needed for the second half of our ride out there to the coast where we went through orchards, basically this incredibly smooth gravel road. Very, very little car traffic. I think maybe we saw a few, maybe three vehicles out there the whole day, but super pleasant ride.
Relatively flat for 60 miles, only 1800 feet of climbing. We got to the ocean to meet Mickey in the van again. Had an amazing lunch and a few of us decided we were gonna jump into the. It wasn't exactly warm, but it wasn't unpleasant. It was so fun to kind of get off the gravel bike in the middle of your ride and go for a swim and play around.
And one of the riders, James, my friend from San Francisco, took a nap on the beach while we were in the water and we had to rouse him to get him back on the bike for our 45 kilometer return home. Adding up to, as I said, 60 miles and no idea why I'm converting miles to kilometers and vice versa.
Including them in the same sentences. But anyway, I'm a bit groggy from the ride. The legs are taken a little bit to get used to it, but it's been amazing. The town's been amazing. We, we spent sunset at, on the wall here in Jerome, next to the big church, and you can see the purities and the sun was setting right over the pys.
Pretty incredible Second day. Getting ready for the third day, which I guess is a little bit more technical. I'll get some of the guides on to describe some of the terrain, excuse me, that we're going through and we'll see how the legs hold up.
Day 3[00:05:29] Craig Dalton: Day three of our Jer gravel cycling tour with track travel. Today was a little bit more technical, especially with the 35 Sea Tires. We got out into some rolling farm roads and definitely off into some single track and double track. That was pretty amazing, the first 30 K or so, rolling farm roads.
Just a little bit punchier than we've been experiencing. A little bit looser gravel in most cases. But nothing too technical on the. 30 K of the ride. We had this amazing stop at Ro Roca corba cycling, a new 17th century Chateau kind of building that's being converted into a cycling. Kind of lodge and Airbnb pretty amazing.
They took the kind of areas that used to house the cattle underneath the building and made them into kind of the bike room and a little cafe. It's a super like rustic arc, arc ceilings beautiful stonework on the grounds. This beautiful old building, it's being renovated by a couple professional cyclists, ones who's already retired, and one who's in the Women's Pro tour today.
So that was really special. Kind of get to tour that facility and definitely something. It's about 30 kilometers outside of. Jer. So kind of an interesting place to stay. You know, the ideal might be stay in Gerona for, you know, four or five days and then go out there for three or four days, or two or three days to just get a little bit of different starting point.
It's a little closer to closer to some of the climbs particularly for the roadies. So, you know, if you're interested in getting out and hitting some of those climbs and having a little less distance in your legs from Gerona, that's a good option. Once we left there, the riding got a little bit more technical through some farms.
Took a lot of single track. Some punchier climbs actually reminds me of what I recently experienced at, at big sugar in Arkansas. Kind of loose gravel, the sense definitely some loose gravel pushed the technical capabilities. Clearly. Track is the, has done a really good job of making roots that are gonna explore different areas of your gravel cycling ability again today.
Was definitely on the more technical side, particularly if you were a newer rider of which we had at least one in today's ride. And you know, you could. Some of them were, some of the dissents were definitely making them think, but everybody went through fabulously. We even got to stop at the property, which my one of the guides fathers owned, and I'll get him on to talk about that a little bit.
But it was great being able to reminisce with him and he learned to swim up there. His father owned a restaurants, a typical Catalan food restaurant in this really beautiful building, which was kind of cool to see. Then we rolled back into, I'm always looking at the GPS and amazed that, you know, we could be within seven kilometers of Jerome and still in these amazing forests and woods, riding gravel, basically all the way back into town.
So another great day out there. It's interesting how they've explored. The first day was kind of getting to know your bike a little bit. Second day was that long. Ride out to the beach. Not very technical. Beautiful, beautiful gravel roads today being more technical, and we'll see what the next two days have to bring us.
Day 4[00:08:46] Craig Dalton: All right. Day four, Gerona gravel. Definitely woke up feeling a little tired, not gonna lie. Fourth day riding in a row with some big climbs. Yesterday. Got a massage yesterday afternoon, which was awesome and quite affordable here in Gerona, which was a bonus. Got up this morning, got the bikes ready. We got the route loaded up.
We were riding through the fields. Kesier de Las Selva known for the cork. It's cork production. So they actually, it was kind of interesting. They, the trees kind of about five feet kind of from the ground up. Five feet they chop and that's the cork that they used to make cork bottles, flooring, everything.
So that was super cool to see. We continued rolling through some dirt roads through there, through the mountain range of Lis gravis. Then we tackled a famous road climb called Santa Aea, known as the George hie Climb for Local. This was awesome. I mean, I know we're here to talk about gravel and the gravel was great that first half of the morning, but that road climb was spectacular as well.
I kind of felt like it was a bonus, obviously, like we signed up for a gravel trip, but to be able to do kind of a famous climb, road climb was amazing. It was great gradient, fantastic descent. Right at the bottom of it, we turned up another dirt road and had a a 12 K climb to lunch. Great climb kind of loose.
Actually more similar to riding I do at home than the first couple of days. So that was interesting. Got up to a church where Salvador Dolly was married, had some lunch, then we dropped down the kind of backside of that climb. But before we got to the bottom in Jer, we took another hard right and got into a trail system right above.
Rode some steep descents through and down back into town. Those steep descents were very much like mount ta. You know, maybe 12, 15% grade going down and loose. A lot of fun. I discovered by the time I got back to town that I managed to cut the sidewall of my. But fortunately the sealant held and it was all good for me to roll back into town.
We dropped a few people off and ended up going on an extended loop, a pretty vicious climb on the extended loop they call extended loops for the avid riders. My legs were screaming at me, but it was a, it was a lot of fun. We were kind of just, again, in that same area going up into the ELs Angels climb area.
Steep dirt climbs pretty loose. We grinded that climb for a while, but the descent was a hell of a lot of fun. Pretty gentle loose rock, but pretty easy to handle at speed. Fun. Coming back into the town the way that route did was a lot of fun. It really felt like you were kind of entering a village, not downtown gerona like we've done in some other, the the entrances back into town.
Anyway, another great day out there for day four. Super fun, super varied. The team has done a really good job of kind of making each day feel different and like many areas around the world, kind of directionally where you head outta town, the, the dirt and the gravel. Has just a different feel to it. So it's been fun to explore.
We've got one more day on the official tour, and then I've got an extra day here. So we're gonna do a sixth day of riding where I think we'll head back out to the Mediterranean Ocean. Cuz how, how cool is that?
Day 5[00:12:17] Craig Dalton: All right. Day five of the Jarana. The gravel tour with truck travel, bit of a shorter day, as most of the clients were leaving today, it's the end of the official tour. So our guides took us on a really fun kind of single tracky tour through a different part of the surrounding area that we hadn't visited before.
Lots of fun. Just kind of a great community day where we got to interact with the other riders a bit, and the writing wasn't too challenging nor too long as the ideal schedule had you back by noon and getting checked out of the hotel. Fortunately, we don't have to leave today. So we decided at least a few of us who were staying on a couple extra days to go out and climb the LA angels.
Road climb again. We had such a good time. The day before on that climb, we thought it'd be fun to go back up. And we had some energy in our legs and a little bit of time in the afternoon to go tackle that. So we said goodbye to the other members of our tour group and our guides and headed off on a road loop.
It was great. We talked about the climb a bit the other day. Just a fun group. Growed climb we saw a bunch of pros climbing up at which was always fun got to the top crews back down and put another day behind us in the books
Day 6 and 7[00:13:31] Craig Dalton: All right. Well, the official tour from track is over at day five. We had a couple extra days on our hands over in Gerona and you better believe we wanted to go out there and ride Mickey. One of our guides that you'll hear from later in this broadcast was nice enough to share.
Another route. Out to the coast for us. So we really enjoyed that ride out to the coast, just super satisfying to kind of hit the Mediterranean. I shouldn't come back. Over to Gerona, but he had us go over some great trails on the way out and then a really, really fun road climb. Just gradual great fun descent down into the Mediterranean. You got to the top and you could see the ocean just super satisfying.
We sat around in a cafe for gosh. Probably an hour and a half, just drinking some teas and coffees and having some snacks. We were having a great time, but we realized we needed to head back to Gerona. And Mickey's rude had us go through some similar type of terrain that we were on in our coastal roots, a few days back, those nice long flat undulating gravel trails that seemed to be pervasive in this area. So we're super appreciative of Mickey.
Sharing one of his favorite routes that he loves to do with his friends, with us. So we could get another big day. You know, on the bike. I'll move on to day seven. As I'm recording this after the fact day seven, we didn't have a bunch of time left. So we decided we were going to basically revisit the route from day one, some of that nice single track and double track along by the river, it was actually fun without the group with just two of us remaining on the bikes, the kind of rip the single track a little bit harder.
We were comfortable with the bikes. We'd been on them for seven days at that point. So really fun to just kind of rip the single track and nail it a little bit harder. Knowing that we could go as hard as we wanted because we had an overnight in Barcelona and then we were going to be on a plane saying a sad goodbye to Gerona.
Overall. It was a fantastic trip. Jarana is a very special community. There's a reason why so many cyclists flock there it's clear whether you're a gravel cyclist road cyclist, or even mountain biker that there's ample terrain every direction outside of Jarana. And then the town itself is just really special, special.
Between the old world, the old town roads and the city. City walls, the church walls. It was just a really great experience. Our guides from track were phenomenal and I wanted to introduce you to them. So I've recorded some tracks. That'll play immediately after this commentary. So you can get to know Mickey and Rafa, who were our guides throughout the week for track travel.
I also was able to capture a little bit of audio from a few different sources. We talked a little bit about Roca Corp, but cycling. Both the 17th century Villa that's being converted into a cycling Airbnb, as well as there's Roca, Corbus cycling clothing, which was founded by a gentleman by the name of a test who's happening to be opening his store this month in Jarana. So it was able to get him on the mic. I had Andrew from the Airbnb.
Cycling house. And then also Oscar from Castelli Castelli just opened up a flagship community store in Gerona that week we were there as well. We witnessed a number of group rides going out from the facility. So it was great to hear what Castelli's perspective was for opening that facility. And I was surprised to learn it had.
Had little to do with selling. Jerseys and clothing and bib shorts, as you would imagine, and everything to do with promoting the cycling community and creating yet another hub. In Jarana for cyclists. Which brings us back to why you should all go to Jarana. As i just mentioned it's a great place to go and i highly recommend it and i hope you enjoyed this overview of my experience there.
With that said let's jump right into those conversations
Rapha - Trek Travel Guide[00:17:33] Craig Dalton: Okay, can I get your name and what you do with Trek?
[00:17:36] Rapha: My name is Rafael and I'm a second
[00:17:38] Craig Dalton: guide for Trek Travel. And
[00:17:40] Rapha: where are you from? Well that's a good question cuz originally from the Philippines grew up for most of my life, 20 years in London and now anywhere in Europe. So I'm a resident of France, but I gotta find a place to live , so.
[00:17:54] Craig Dalton: And how long have you been guiding for
truck
[00:17:56] Rapha: travel? This will be my fifth year now, guiding for truck.
[00:17:59] Craig Dalton: And what does that look like? Are you always based here in Jer or are you all over the place? We, we
[00:18:03] Rapha: sort of congregate here in the beginning of the year and then come back at the end of the year, but in between, we're all over
[00:18:09] Craig Dalton: Europe.
And are you leading, I know Trek Travel has got many, many road tours. Probably a lesser degree of gravel tours. Are you leading trips on the road and gravel
[00:18:21] Rapha: for now? Yeah, and we're, we're starting off gravel next year and so it's a mainly road for the beginning. Next year we're gonna bring in unpaved which is gonna be a whole gravel series.
So we have a whole unit of bikes just traveling throughout Europe, and it's gonna be exciting for next year. Yeah,
[00:18:37] Craig Dalton: it's exciting. I heard, I heard from the, the extended team that you're gonna really build out the gravel experiences for next year, which is great. I think if my experience in Jerome with the gravel tour is any indication there's gonna be a lot of magical trips across Europe, helping riders discover gravel all over the.
[00:18:56] Rapha: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I do a lot of the road tours and I'll see just a patch of undiscovered area and I'm thinking, Hey, where does that go? Or I'll be traveling along the hills and in between you're gonna see these gravel patches of fires and you just want to go and explore. And essentially that's what the guides that went into design these trips or, or want to do, they want to do that.
They want to find out those roads. Where does it lead to? Can I connect these dots and see the town and where am I gonna.
[00:19:25] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think it's one of the things I've talked about on the podcast a lot, just the power of local knowledge as we're following the GPX files or following you guys' guides through Jer here.
You know, there's a lot of nuance, a lot of little trails that you can pop onto that would be easy to miss if you just sort of saw a heat map of the area. You might just choose the carriage way instead of the the nice trails. So it's really cool and important. I. To have guides that are local to kind of pick apart the best of the best for us to ride on.
[00:19:57] Rapha: Yeah, I mean this is what we do. We, this is what we do for fun. So on our time off whilst we do a lot of road riding for work on our time off, we want to go out there and ride gravel. And so this is why we get to know the places. We live around here and in the places that we research gravel all we're doing is just riding and riding and riding and then through.
Time, just knowledge. You build up tracks in your head and you wanna put that onto design and then maybe create a trip around it. Find a hotel, find a restaurant, the best restaurants, best hotels to stay and yeah, it's awesome.
[00:20:30] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I feel that way. Whenever anybody comes to Marin County, I just wanna show them the best of the best and not the most obvious trails, but the, the ones only the locals know.
Yeah.
[00:20:41] Rapha: You, you wanna share it? I mean, it's, its more fun riding a gravel. It's more fun with people, friends and random people that you meet up on
[00:20:48] Craig Dalton: trails as well. Yeah. When we were, when we first arrived during the week and you were giving an overview, you were talking about kind of the progression of roots that we'd be doing during the week.
I thought it was very interesting, like the thoughtfulness in, in how you guys conceived of the roots and the, the relative challenges, whether they be distance or technic. Can you talk about, you know, if someone's come coming into one of the spring trips for the Trek Travel Corona gravel tour, what would how would you describe it?
[00:21:16] Rapha: Well, so, well, there was no brief in the beginning, so actually when we rode this, For the research we rode 500 kilometers in five days and it looked like a picture of a lung with all the trees of just dead ends. But once we put it all together, we decided to, okay. Day one is a bit of an introduction.
Let's get you used to the surfaces, the mixed surfaces, but we're gonna keep it flat. And on the second day we're gonna add on a little bit of distance just to make sure you have endurance for grab, because it's a lot of work. You know, you're doing a lot of cadence. Mind work as well, trying to figure out what's coming up.
And then day three we add technicality. Now we're having multi services, soft sand, big rocks, technical climbs, and technical descents, which, you know, your wheels dig in, you gotta react to it. And then we put all of that together for the fourth day where you. Pick up all the skills you've had and we put it all in a fourth day for you to enjoy.
Yeah. Right
[00:22:11] Craig Dalton: on. And can you talk about the bikes that people are offered for this
[00:22:15] Rapha: trip? Okay. For this trip, we are currently running Damani 2019 s SL seven. So it has gravel wheels on it for 35 millimeter. And it's just fun. That's what it is. So it's, it's not an all out gravel. It tests your limits on this ride and you get electronic shifting.
So when you really need that gear on those technical climbs, you're gonna get it. Of course you're gonna prepare for it, but you're gonna get, get the gears. Yeah. When
[00:22:39] Craig Dalton: I first saw that, that was the bike spec, I mean, it almost immediately had me thinking of more the trails that we took out to the coast when the carriageway, the, the, you know, the reclaimed rail line.
Right. But at the end of the day, like now, four days into this, You're pushing the limits of these bikes and it's been a hell of a lot of fun. I mean, it, I really do think it's one of, it is kind of a perfect bike for this situation because it did everything you needed to do if you were ever on the road, it felt snappy and lively and it could withstand some of the abuse we were putting it through today.
[00:23:11] Rapha: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, these, these can do rock gardens and slick rock on, on good terrain. Good. These bikes are perfect around your owner. Of course, you know, you can always go wider. You can get flat bars and you go, world is your oyster. When it comes to gravel. I mean, you ask anybody what is gravel to you and they'll give you a million answers depending on who you're talking to.
So every, everyone's got their preferences, and next year, you know, who knows? We have Wider checkpoints next year and it's it's gonna cater up to 50 mil tires and it's gonna be amazing. So we have sneak preview, we have a few in the warehouse at the moment in, and we can't wait for next
[00:23:48] Craig Dalton: year at a checkpoint.
Yeah, I think it, I mean, the checkpoint's obviously like gonna be a little bit more versatile and you can imagine the opportunity if you have a rider on day one that's seeming a little nervous. Maybe you spec it with a 40 to begin with and maybe you swap out the wheels and maybe you put him or her on 50 millimeters just to give them additional comfort.
And who knows, maybe it's even for day four, we put you on 50 millimeters cuz we know it's gonna be kind of more challenging, technically speaking.
[00:24:17] Rapha: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. We're gonna, as guides, you know, we're gonna test write these. We have a few in now and we're gonna have fun and check it out. So to checkpoint with all this capabil.
It's gonna be more forgiving and hopefully you'll get more people coming in and not be so scared about gravel and check it out and try, try something different from
[00:24:37] Craig Dalton: road riding. Yeah, for sure. As someone who didn't grow up in gerona, what have been some of your favorite things that you've discovered in town?
[00:24:43] Rapha: Oh, you know what? Last night was probably one of the best nights ever because it was random. Mickey invited me down to the cast Telluride, and we did a Night Gravel, which is absolutely epic. Like, it's add just a different layer of difficulty, not seeing too far around and the group dynamic and you know, getting to know people and.
Absolute blast.
[00:25:04] Craig Dalton: Yeah, we were more than a little jealous that we didn't have lights with us and our legs were probably cooked enough that we shouldn't go for another eye, but we probably would've been excited to do so. Craig, maybe next time we're gonna invite you around. Exactly. Outside of Jer, since you've done Trek travel trips in a bunch of different places, what would be like one other trip that you'd recommend?
Gravel or road? Either way. Oh, that's,
[00:25:26] Rapha: it's like choosing between your children really. Like I adore all the trips and, but for me, this. The classic climb of the Alps. It's so stunning. It's beautiful and it's challenging. That's one of my favorite trips. And what,
[00:25:39] Craig Dalton: what classic climbs, if you can recall, some of 'em are on that
[00:25:43] Rapha: trip.
Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, we start in a place LA Luce and the first ride you're doing quarter cord Qure. Okay. And, sorry, my mistake. Yeah. Qure. And it's a, it's a first. Already you're getting like 1500 meters of elevation in a 55 kilometer ride. So it's just day one and you're already getting straight up, okay, we're here to climb and we're gonna go all out the whole week.
Nice. Of course, we, we do the epic outdoors at the end trip, sort of the icing of the cake and so that's the last climb of the,
[00:26:20] Craig Dalton: of the trip. Yeah. It's certainly nice for anybody who's been watching the tour to come over and knock off any one of those climbs that are bucket list.
[00:26:27] Rapha: Yeah, it is, it is a backless trip.
I was fortunate, fortunate enough to climb outdoors on the TDF day in 2022, and the atmosphere there is unbelievable. Just the, the crowd cheering you on it, it just gives you an extra beat and you are just hammering up the hill just because of the people cheering you on. It's absolutely epic. And then of course you get more quieter climbs.
So Wears is a great climb, but like Holyland. It's not celebrated enough for just Serenity, and it's, it's still challenging. It's 21 kilometers and but it's a good, it's a good time. Yeah. It's underrated my opinion. Amazing. My favorite call.
[00:27:05] Craig Dalton: Awesome. I love your passion for it, . Thank you. Cool. And I, again, I wanted to thank you for all your help this week.
It's been great getting to know you and riding with you. If it's, if it's unclear in anything we've said before, Each day we've had one of these guys riding with us and so one person's in the van and we've got one person on a bike with us. So we've had good camaraderie and lots of miles to get to know one another.
So thanks again for everything
[00:27:28] Rapha: this week. Thank you to, to you guys. Cause without you we wouldn't be here. And it's an absolute pleasure to be guiding you around here and it's so fun just doing own gravel. Cheers. Thank you.
Miqui[00:27:38] Craig Dalton: All right, sir, can I get your name and what you do for truck travel?
[00:27:42] Miqui: Yeah, so my name is Mickey Mic Reta, and I'm one of the guides of the truck travel ju gravel.
[00:27:50] Craig Dalton: And not only are you one of the guides, you're a local here
[00:27:52] Miqui: in Gerran. Yeah, I'm local. I'm born and raised in Gerran and I'm very happy to have you guys here in Gerona.
Let's,
let's
[00:28:01] Craig Dalton: actually start with that. You've been in Gerona your whole life as you just. What's it been like growing up here? How has the town changed and as cycling has become more of a hub, how has it been infused into Gerona culture?
[00:28:14] Miqui: So I would say cycling has always been a part of Ger. I remember as a kid going to a bunch of mountain bike races with my brother, probably.
I did my mountain bike race, my first one when I was like six years old. And then, After that, it's just, it's been growing like crazy and I remember probably about eight years ago as one, it just went insane. Like all the pros started moving here and somehow it created a community that is just like a magnet for all the cyclists anywhere in the world up until the point that now I would say Juran is the cycling capital of the.
[00:28:55] Craig Dalton: What is it about the roads and trails around here that you think attracted them people to gerona? Obviously, you've given us a great sample these five days of what the gravel has been like, and it's been spectacular. We've touched on some of these roads. I'd just like to hear in your words, why do you think everybody's coming here?
[00:29:14] Miqui: So I would say Jona has everything you are looking for in. Or anything related to cycling? The weather is good all year round. It's true we have a rainy season, which lasts for a couple weeks or a month. We have a very few weeks in summer, which is very hot in very few weeks in winter, which is very cold.
But the rest of the year is incredible. It has an. Endless options of road riding. If you wanna ride to the peer, you can, it's a long ride, but you can actually do it if you wanna ride from ju to the coast and do a nice short loop, short-ish you can do it if, yeah, I would say in ju you could be riding for almost a month and you would never repeat a single ride.
[00:29:58] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I believe it. I mean, just from sampling it for this week. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, I think it's great that you've. Flat options. You've got hilly options. I think today we were up on kind of the local climb you would probably do after
[00:30:12] Miqui: work. Yeah. You guys were up on Los Angeleses, which. I feel like it's just incredible to have a climb like that starting at three kilometers from the center of Una and yeah, it's, it's a long climb.
It's about 10 kilometers and on top you get views of the purines. You get views of the ocean, well, the sea. Yeah. I feel like we are very lucky
[00:30:33] Craig Dalton: in here. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like it's like probably one of those climbs that every local athlete knows their exact time to the top. Yeah.
[00:30:41] Miqui: I would say that.
People's fitness, you always ask, what's their time of Los Angeles ?
[00:30:47] Craig Dalton: Yeah. That'll tell you if you're a compatible rider with them. So let's talk about the, the Trek Jer Gravel tour. I think you had a hand in a lot of the mapping, being a local and figuring out all the roots. How did you go about kind of, I always say whether it's an event organizer or a tour, it's almost like a love letter to your community and your trails, right?
You're. You've got guests coming in from out of the country or out of the area and you wanna show them the best of the best. How did you go about thinking about the, the trails and roads we were
[00:31:17] Miqui: on? The thing about this trip is that I had, I had to think that I couldn't make it super intense cuz sometimes we are taking guests at not super experienced on, on gravel riding or they just come from the.
So I couldn't make a trip very technical, but as you guys saw, we have a few avid options after the look we do every day, which are a little more technical. But yeah, I feel like I, I was really happy when they actually said, Hey Mickey, do you want to give us a hand with this trip? Because, It's Una, I'm, I'm, that's where I started riding and I love grow riding, so actually my favorite ride of the trip is the one where we go to the coast.
So we start in Una. It's super flat. We actually did on an incredible day. It was super sunny and we stop at the at the sea and yeah, we have lunch by the sea. Then after you guys went for a little swim and then we brought back to Una, we tried to stop at the brewer, which was unfortunately close that day.
But yeah, I just think it's, I was very happy when Trek Travel said, Hey, do you wanna give us a
[00:32:23] Craig Dalton: hand on this? Yeah. It's interesting. I think it's, it's sort of, you know, I imagine Trek travel draws a lot of road athletes Yeah. Onto their trips. So I think it is very approachable, but definitely had moments where you needed some skill.
Not, you know, I think for more experienced gravel riders, riders, there was, there was no fear. It was just fun and exhilaration. But for a couple of the newer rider, When they were going down the looser descents, they were probably a little bit scared but exhilarated when they got to the bottom. Yeah.
[00:32:54] Miqui: I don't think it's, it's nothing crazy.
We haven't put anything on this trip, which would be like dangerous or scary for like total beginners. We've had intellectual, we, we classify rider in four levels, four being the, the most expert. And we've had people on this trip, they're like level twos and they've. They've loved the descents, they love the writing.
Yeah. I think it's, it's got a great balance of hardcore and not hardcore, so. Yeah.
[00:33:23] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's super interesting. I mean, we, we sort of weave through the farmlands and into little villages, and it's been a real pleasure to kind of pop out of some woods and go through some, you know, 17th century sanctuary buildings and then back out onto some trails.
It's, it's super fun. So,
[00:33:39] Miqui: and that's the thing about Juran, right? So everyone, Toronto is for road cycling, but as a local, I'm a hundred percent sure that there is actually a lot more gravel riding than there is road riding in Toronto. Yeah, I
[00:33:56] Craig Dalton: believe you. I mean, I think within four kilometers of town every day we've been on the dirt.
Yeah.
[00:34:01] Miqui: The extension of like farm roads and Yeah, just unpaved roads. I mean, I'm not talking about single track, I'm just talking. Real, what I like to call the real gravel, which is smooth and fast.
[00:34:15] Craig Dalton: Yeah. You were telling me about that railroad line that used to go from the Yeah. The sea to the purities, and now it's all a gravel road.
Yeah,
[00:34:23] Miqui: so I would say it's about 50 years ago when they removed the, the train line, the, well, the railway, which there was a train that went from sun follow g. Which is one of the towns on the coast. And then it run all the way up to Ola and now yeah, they just remove the whole railway and they lay gravel on it and it's just an incredible, it's, it's actually a bike path, so on the weekend it's gonna be full of kids on bikes and yeah, the extension to the Villa Verde, which that it's included on the Villa Verde, is just incredible.
How
[00:35:02] Craig Dalton: many kilometers do you think that that trail. It's over a hundred kilometers. That's amazing. I mean, to be able to cruise, I mean, and relatively flat presumably, until it gets to the purity side. Yeah. It's
[00:35:14] Miqui: totally flat. But since a train used to Yeah. Be on it, so they made sure it was super flat
[00:35:20] Craig Dalton: for it.
Yeah. Miles and miles and miles. Going back to the community in Ger, what are some of your favorite kind of, if a cyclist is coming to town, what are some of the go-to businesses they should
[00:35:30] Miqui: visit? So if a cyclist comes in, ger, I would say most people, they would come here for about at least a week. So you're gonna have time to visit all of them, which they are all a hundred percent worth visiting.
But there is a couple of places. You should a hundred percent go see if you're here for a short period of time. One of them being a coffee shop called La Fabrica, which it's only open in the mornings and lunch, so it's, it's the perfect place to brunch. Yeah.
[00:36:05] Craig Dalton: Quick aside, I literally ran into someone I know, know from the United States today, and they told us to go have brunch at
[00:36:13] Miqui: Left Africa Till Africa is owned by Christian Mayer and Amber Mayer.
He was, well, he's a, he's a former, Yeah, they were the pioneers in Una, so they were the first ones to open a coffee shop, only focused for cyclist, of course, for everyone. And now it has become like a super great, like it's, it's a tourist attraction right now, but that's what kind of triggered the whole cycling movement in Joran.
Okay.
[00:36:41] Craig Dalton: So La Africa, and what's the
[00:36:42] Miqui: second one? La Africa. They also have another coffee shop, which is only for. Which LA Fabric is more like brunch and food. The other coffee shop is called Espresso Mafia, which is one meal walking from La Fabrica, and that's basically where Christian roast the coffee and then you can drink it at Espresso Mafia.
And then another place you should go visit in general, well, mid January. Trek and track travel. It's opening the first track store in the world, which is gonna have truck travel inside of it. And with a rental fleet, we are going to be the biggest, as in space, we're gonna have the biggest bike shop in ju, which it's pretty exciting.
[00:37:29] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that's really exciting. And then finally, what's one sort of cultural place within Jerron that a tourist should visit?
[00:37:36] Miqui: The whole old town itself. If you go to Juna, I highly recommend getting a walking tour of the Old Town because you're really gonna see what our culture is here and how it was in the past.
And everything around the old town is just, it's just incredible.
[00:37:55] Craig Dalton: Yeah. That's fun. You recommended we go up onto the wall for sunset. Yeah. And we've, we missed it the first night. The second night we, we made it up. We may have had to like randomly climb over a fence to make it there in time because we couldn't find the way up.
But we got there and it was spectacular with view. Is that the purities that you're looking at out there? Yeah. You
[00:38:14] Miqui: get to see Purees, you get to see a bunch of things and yeah, there is a restaurant called Aro. Which is in one of the steps. Well, there's like, Juna has 200 million cathedrals, but in one of them.
On the stairs there is a restaurant called , which they actually film Game of Thrones there. And the terrace of the restaurant, it's actually on a little like flat section it has on those stairs. And I think it's a really cool location.
[00:38:45] Craig Dalton: That's super. Cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for all the hospitality this week.
It's been great to getting to know you and the local terrain
[00:38:55] Miqui: here. Yeah. Thank you guys for coming.
Girona Cycling Friends[00:38:57] Andrew - RocaCorba: All right. Can I let me get your name and let me know where we're at. What's this beautiful place? So my name is Edward Green. I'm the guest, the general manager slash I don't know what, at Rocka Culpa cycling. So we are a cycling tourism business just outside of Jer Corona in a town called Bans. We are based on a 17th century Catalan estate, or Maia as it is in Catalan.
And we are basically trying to be a boutique hotel with some villas attached, which is exclusively for cyclists, road, gravel, mountain. Whatever you enjoy on two wheels is, is what we wanna do. And how far away from Ger are we? So we are currently 18 kilometers from Gerona, or 10 or 11 miles depending.
Country. And about a 30 to 45 minute ride depending on, on how you get to us. Can you describe where we are in, in the villa right now? So we're downstairs basically in what used to be the old like area for the animals. So we've got some troughs around us, but we've done huge renovations to basically create our cycling dungeon down here.
So we've got beautiful old vaulted Catalan ceiling. Rustic concrete floors, beautiful stone work, and then cycling history all around us with some beautiful frames. Cycling jerseys. Good coffee from the rocket espresso machine. Everything you can need for a good cycling stay. And what time of year is best to come here?
Pretty much all, all year. To be honest. I don't think there's necessarily a bad month anymore, like December and Januarys tends to be quite quiet, but we see strong gravel riding in October, November, and the rest of the year is a lot of road riding. Summer is quite warm, so unless you like waking up early, probably avoid summer a little bit.
But like June and September, October, probably buffer the. I'll note when you said strong gravel riding, you looked right at exactly a hundred percent. You are the epitome of what we see in November. . Tell us a little bit about the rest of the. So we are on 37 hectares and it's basically an old, what was an old family estate of the Campier family.
The estate dates back to the 17th century, so 1673, and it was with the same family until 2018 when we took it over to create. What we want to create is basically cycling paradise all you need in one place. Out in the countryside, but close to Gerrin. And how many rooms do you have available here? So currently we're at eight rooms, but we'll be at 13 by April next year.
So we're currently in the process literally starting today, which is very exciting of putting in five beautiful unsweet rooms in this main can poly manor house, partially they'll have views over down towards the lake onto some vineyards, but also into the courtyard and just generally over the rolling hills of, of Jerome.
And tell us a little bit about the village. So just on our doorstep, we have the town of Olas which has a beautiful lake in it. It's where they had the rowing for the 92 Barcelona Olympic. It's a great place for like active people, for families, et cetera. But there's a lot of rowing. A lot of of the British university teams come out and train here.
A lot of the national teams come and train as well, but generally just a fantastic place to be. Good quality of life and just down to earth and authentic. Amazing. And how do people find out about staying here? So if you have a look on Rocka coba cycling.cc, you'll find us and you can kind of do anything from there.
Or if you are enjoy climbing, just Google Rocka Coba, you'll find the climb, and then you'll find us and the clothing. Amazing. Thank you. Perfect. That was great.
[00:42:14] Oscar - Castilli: Okay. Can I get your name? Hi, my name is Oscar. And Oscar. Where are we standing today? Well, today we are in the, the first flag shipper store in the, in the war from Costelli here in Una. And what's the plan for the store? What are you trying to do with the community here? Well, una, you know, is the Jamaica for for European cyclists, I think all over the world.
So, right now Castelli store, it's coming to. The big cycling club in Giona and well, why not in Spain? Nice. And we, we rolled by here last night and there was a big group ride going out on the gravel. Yeah. We have almost 40 people doing the full moon ride. It was amazing. So always we keep a surprise for all the riders.
We stop in a food truck in the middle of the forest with fire. Some dinner and and beer. So it was super fun. That's amazing. And if someone's coming to Jerone to, to visit, do you have a calendar of events that they can look at? Yeah, they can, they can follow us on our Instagram and yeah, you can check.
So, but every week we have a ride, so, and 2023, especially now it's coming a low season for the weather, but from February. So it's coming. A lot of events. Yeah. Amazing. Thanks Oscar, and congratulations on opening the new Castelli store. Yeah, big pleasure. Thanks for coming.
[00:43:30] Mattias - Rococorba Clothing: All right. Right. Can you tell me your name and your shop? Mattias from Roco, COBA Clothing, Giron Mattias. Tell us a little bit about the brand. Yeah, it's a brand. It started in 2017 in the top of the mountain of Roco Coba. It's a very famous climb here in Giron, and I decided to, to put a food truck up there and to start at the same time closing brand called Roca corba.
And yes, five years. Later. I just opened a new shop in GI selling all my stuff, selling online, gold wide, and really happy too. Have, what are some of the products that you sell? I sell Jersey t-shirts, shorts accessories, bags, Macs, beat ons. A lot of things sucks. Yeah. Amazing. These jerseys I see on the wall are beautiful, very colorful, very expressive.
What inspires you and the, the designs? Yeah. Yeah. Right now I have like more or less 50, 60 different designs and I inspir it from everywhere. My slogan is cycling apparel inspired by the rob because we have so many different landscapes or different places and always I, I have inspired inspiration in the.
In our region. Yeah. And when is the shop opening up? I hope next Thursday it will be open. Now it's ready and I have to do some things, little things, but next Thursday, big opening here in J in the center. Amazing. I'm excited. We got a preview. We are able to pick up some of your lovely clothing. You said you, you're available worldwide.
Where can people find you on the. Yeah, we can find in ro.com. We have online shop with all the products and we we ship worldwide. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Pleasure, .
[00:45:22] Craig Dalton: So that's going to do it for this first international version of the gravel ride podcast. I've been talking and dreaming about international gravel travel for some time. So I was super excited to have this opportunity with track travel. To explore Durona with their Gravel cycling tour. It was amazing trip. As I said before, I highly encourage you to check it out.
As Raffa mentioned. They're unveiling a whole new series of gravel adventures for 2023. So they're really leaning into this gravel travel concept. What I loved about it was that unlike a gravel event where you might be focused on. Simply one ride when you visit somewhere amazing. Here. We were able to focus on riding every single day and there was no one ride that we needed to save ourselves for to get across the finish line. It was really about.
Exploring as much as our legs could handle. I wasn't as fit as I had normally been when I've gone over to Europe in the, in the past, but it was still an amazing trip, still an amazing experience that I highly, highly recommend. If you're interested in connecting and learning more about the trip, please visit truck travel.com. If you're interested in pinging me, please visit the ridership's that's www.theridership.com. If you're able to support the show, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride or ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with Matt Conte, Co-Founder of Outbound Lighting. Matt discusses the origin story of the business and details the benefits of Outbound’s approach to lighting (hint: it has its origins in the automotive world).
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Outbound Lighting[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the show, we welcome Matt Conti, one of the founders of outbound lighting. You may remember outbound from a number of years ago when they originally launched the company via Kickstarter project. I, for one, pay a lot of attention to Kickstarter cycling projects. For some reason, I'm a sucker for them, and I was sort of curious, you know, with so many industry stalwarts in the lighting business, how this company was gonna make a mark.
Well, they successfully funded the campaign and have successfully built a. Manufacturing in the United States, which is absolutely amazing. But what was equally amazing was Matt's description of the technology that he applied to the bicycle lighting industry. He came from automotive lighting and had a lot of, advanced engineering skills specific to how to light the world in front of you at night.
And it was fascinating to just hear his take on the existing bicycle light in. Further how he evolved the very specific lighting options that outbound uses and offers customers. Today I've been using their helmet mounted light as well as their bar mounted light and definitely appreciate a number of things about the design that Matt will get into you for you during this episode.
So I hope you enjoy it. And just a quick note, I apologize. A little bit of sporadic release of episodes these days. I've been traveling and had a ton on my plate, and it's been a real struggle to get to the editing and everything else involved in the podcast, so I appreciate your patience. There certainly will be another couple weeks towards the end of the year where I take off just to decompress, but look forward to getting many, many more great episodes out the door to you in the coming year.
With that said, let's jump right into my conversation with Matt. Matt, welcome to the show.
[00:02:16] Matt Conte: Hey, glad pleasure to be here. I'm
[00:02:19] Craig Dalton: excited to dig in and learn a little bit more about outbound lighting. Why don't we start by just letting the listeners know where you are in the world, and then let's talk about what led to you starting outbound light lighting in the first place.
[00:02:32] Matt Conte: Yeah, so we are located in just north of Chicago, Illinois in Skokie, just kind of a middle suburb and stuff. And then we got Tom, my co-owner. He's out in Olympia, Washington. Kind of the Mecca Mountain biking out there for him. Couldn't convince him to move to the city, unfortunately, but yeah, so we are, we got our headquarters here.
It's where we design, assemble, ship, every bike light that we make. And yeah, I guess from like far as what got us to start this company like you sort of mentions that kind of interestingly, like I'm not that kind of guy who. Hardcore biker who saw an opportunity to make something. I came from the automotive lighting ex world.
Used to design l e d headlights, off road lights stuff like that, like Baja trucks and things like that. And I was really into rally car racing where you're on gravel roads, slinging cars, and a hundred miles an hour at night through the woods to blast. But at the time I was kind of looking to how.
Basically branch out and take my experience from developing lighting products to something else. I just kind of wanted to do my own thing. And so I looked at experimental aircraft. I looked at exterior architectural lighting and all that kind of stuff. And wasn't until a friend of mine posted on Facebook basically a selfie of him writing at night Asia being like, Oh yeah, I heard night riding.
And I was like, Huh, that's. You got a couple headlights on your bike, like what is that? Like, what are you using? And oh, I got the night rider, 1800 pros, the best light out there, all that kind of stuff. And I looked it up and it was like 350 bucks and I was like, it's a flashlight. And talked to him for a bit, kind of like, Hey, can I come over and check this thing out?
Kind of seems like this is possibly an opportunity to take what we, what I've done in the automotive space and bring it to bikes. And so yeah, he took me out on a ride and I enjoyed it. Had a lot of fun and kind of was like, Yeah, I could definitely do way better than this. And from there I designed a prototype gave it to him.
He liked it, loved it. Ran a Kickstarter campaign, was able to wait enough money to pay for the initial tool in the product, and bought a bing, bought a boom. Five years later. Here we are and we've now got three different products. We've gone through a couple iterations of stuff and yeah, now the goal is basically just continue to build the best bike lights that we can using all of the experience that I used to have from the automotive sector.
Interesting.
[00:04:50] Craig Dalton: So that was, that goes back to, was it 2017 for that original Kickstarter
[00:04:54] Matt Conte: project? Yeah, just about I think I was starting to kick the idea around like 2016 or so. And then, They drew out some sketches, made some models pro, pretty printed a bunch of stuff, and I was doing this all like after hours from my normal job.
Kind of trying to keep those two things completely separate. And yeah, so it was about a six months, eight months of just prototyping, validating, doing a bunch of stuff until it was like, All right, we've got something that looks production enough. Let's make a Kickstarter campaign and let's see what happens.
I kind of use that as sort of that litmus test of either all my friends and family are wrong and it's not really a great product, or we do have something that other people who are outside of our little in sphere of influence actually find useful and want to have and all that kind of stuff. So that was kind of my testing ground just to see if this is what people wanted and turns out enough people wanted it that we were able to get that started and into production and all that kind of.
That's
[00:05:53] Craig Dalton: such an interesting kind of validating ground for new products Kickstarter. It's, it's got both incredible advantages, but also risks in terms of like getting, getting your fundraising across the finish line, et cetera.
[00:06:07] Matt Conte: Yeah, it's certainly not as good as it used to be. Like I feel like Kickstarter usefulness, we were on the tail end of it.
Not as ma a lot of people have been burned in the past by products that just never came to market, all that kind of stuff, and. It was kind of a challenge to like advertise and get the word out that this is what we're doing. And it's even harder nowadays. I think Kickstart has sort of pivoted their entire model away from my products to artists and creators and games and all that kind of stuff.
So yeah, it's certainly not as, not as good as it used to be but it's definitely one of the best spots to kind of figure. Is this what people want? Yeah. And it's sort of a low cost, low risk kind of method before you go and dump two 50, $60,000 worth of tooling just to find out that you don't have a market, which I'm sure some people have done that, unfortunately, but that's.
The way it goes.
[00:06:58] Craig Dalton: I do remember when the product came to market on Kickstarter, simply because I sort of follow Kickstarter and certainly bike projects on Kickstarter with a lot of interest. And it had me thinking about the sort of decades of bike lights that I have experienced or have in the garage dating back to when you used to have the battery in your water bottle cage.
Attached by a wire to your headlight and if you could get 250 lumens out of that setup, it was sort of miraculous. Yeah. And then I remember the sort of escalation of lumens being the sort of main driver of innovation. Like the, the form factors weren't changing too much. I just kept seeing this escalation of lighting power so much so that you know, when you got up to even north of 500, 600 lumen.
You were getting outshined from behind. If the person behind you had a brighter light than you, it created this weird shadow, and it was worse than having your own light on the bike because they were so powerful behind you. And I think we'll get into this a little bit, but they were very sort of flashlight like and very directional in their beams.
So it's, it's interesting and I wanna get into it for sure, your form factor and how that evolved. But let's, let's start what, you mentioned that you had a cyclic fr cycling front. You kind of showed you his lights that were state of the art at that moment in time. What did you see in that light that, given your experience in the automotive industry, you felt was, you know, dramatic shortcoming and the thing you could improve upon very easily?
[00:08:32] Matt Conte: Yeah, definitely. So the first thing that. I kind of noticed just because a lot of the bike lights were kind of similar to sort of like the cheap off-road lights that I'd see in the automotive side where it was basically just an l e d sitting inside of a reflect bowl. It's kind of your most common, typical.
Standard flashlight type of optic. And the problem with that is that gives you one pattern. It's just gonna be a straight up circle. You're gonna have a tight hotpot from where all of the light was bouncing off through a reflector size and concentrating on the middle. And then you're gonna have like a secondary ring of all the spill light coming straight from the l e d.
So you end up. A very concentrated hotspot, an outer sort of just dimmer ring, and then a hard, sharp edge around the outside. And that's sort of what creates that sort of tunnel vision effect, like when you're riding quickly with behind one of those kind of lights. Basically we have not done that in the automotive sector since the sixties.
We've all been shaped light with lots of, I mean, if you look at any headlight on a car anywhere the ones that are super basic with just a reflective, even like the old hoens, they're all segment reflectors and they're all doing very little things to redirect the light into certain. Because the automotive lighting inject is so heavily regulated.
You have lighting targets that you have to hit, you have to get a certain amount of light at zero degrees, zero left and right, and zero degrees up and down. Like it has to be a hundred. I'm thinking off the top of my head, like 200 Ls or something like that, but then off to the left by 15 degrees up, five degrees down, you have to have a certain amount of Candela requirements to legally sell a vehicle.
So the D o T and all that kind of stuff have set up basically all these lighting standards for high beam, low beam turn signals, brake lights, every kind of lighting you can think of. It's been standardized for targets, but in the bike lighting world, Especially offroad kind of step, especially in the US It's kind of very interesting how Europe and US are completely segmented.
We can get into that later, but in the US there's absolutely no targets. There's no requirements. So the goal there was always just build a brighter looking light. Not always necessarily make it more useful. And I kind of feel like that segment was always so small and niche. Nobody was taking the advanced software packages that we use in the automotive side to bikes because I have personally designed reflectors and stuff for clients and things like that, and it gets expensive really quick.
The software package that we use costs 25 to $30,000 a year just to license because it's such a niche automotive specific lighting package. There's only maybe 50 companies in the world that are using it. But it is what lets us redirect and shape light the way it is. And so when I rode with those older night Rider lights, and I, I don't want to call 'em out specifically cuz pretty much every brand is almost the same.
That kind of what I noticed that these were all just flashlights. They were the same beam patterns that you would expect. From a flashlight that you're gonna use around your house, walking down the woods and all that kind of stuff. And I saw that opportunity to basically be like, All right, let me sit here as a driver.
Not so much a writer, but like, how do I, how would I approach this problem if I was doing this from an automotive perspective? I could, Okay, I'm gonna be my eyesight eyelines here. My lights mounted two and a half feet below me. Six inches in front. Okay. I know that I want to be able to see with a reaction time of 10 seconds while riding at 35 miles an hour, the fastest, like super fast downhill.
I know that I need I know that in order to recognize an object, you need three to five looks of light. Okay? If I know I'm doing 35 miles an hour. And I want 10 seconds, I can figure out that distance that I need to have something illuminated with three to five lus and then backtrack that to figure out how much cannella that I need.
And that sets my minimum target in the center. And then basically I can then shape the beam pattern so that we hit that minimum target so it feels bright enough. And then we take all the other lumens that we have and kind of spread that around so that we build essentially a wall of light. Which is exactly how we do it in the automotive sector.
A lot of fine tuning and figuring out what targets we wanna hit at what beam angles. All right, let's go into our software programs. Let's spend a couple weeks iterating, optimizing, simulating all these different types of beam patterns. Tweaking, reflect your facets individually until we get what we feel is inappropriate beam powdering for that Pacific type of light.
Then we can prototype it. Test. Make changes. It's a very iterative process there. But yeah, it was pretty much that first night ride that I had was very eye-opening as far as, yeah, like if this is the best we can do so much better. And there's so much more opportunity to develop good lighting, utilizing the automotive sector and bring it to bikes rather than being just another bike and enthusiast who's putting together a really bright l e.
Into an off the shelf reflector and calling it a bike light kind of thing. So, that's kind of how I see like our paths to arriving here being a little bit different than other companies especially in the logging space. But it does seem like a lot of biking companies start from bike and enthusiast, which obviously that makes sense.
And so that's kind of how we arrived to that point and got. Yeah, it's super
[00:14:12] Craig Dalton: interesting taking it with a kind of first principal's fresh eyes look and taking what you learned in the automotive industry. You know, one of the, the sort of hallmarks of the outbound lighting visual is it's sort of wider.
You know, you think of a lot of these lights and they're, you know, essentially akin to a flashlight or circular or just square light right in the center kicking out a lot of lumens. As you just described, the outbound lighting profile is quite a bit wider. What do you do with that extra space? You mentioned how you sort of can really fine tune where you want the, the extra lumens to go to, et cetera.
What are you doing across that big visual front plate of lights?
[00:14:51] Matt Conte: Yeah, so that's also kind of playing into the whole like physiological way that our eyes respond to light. Our eyes prefer very. Evenly lit spaces as you can kind of imagine, like when you're riding in, driving in a tunnel and you come outta the tunnel and you get that like big flash of brightness, how it takes a little bit for your eyes to like auto expose.
I guess like from a camera perspective. The same thing happens when you're riding a night. If you're riding behind a light that's like very bright, the center and has harsh edges, when that light is moving around, like your eyes are constantly trying to balance. This bright object moving around in front of you versus when you have a very wide even beam pattern, it feels a lot more like daylight.
And that's kind of like why we feel so comfortable right around in the day because everything is evenly lit from, not only from like where you're trying to look, but also all the ground in front of you from like where you're looking all the way out to the front of your tire. And so that is definitely like one of the biggest challenges.
And as far as like developing an optic. Is to set up the, the beam, and again, the, the surfaces on these things have to be so precise. The tooling for them is very expensive, but it's part of like, why it's so good. Basically what we're doing after we set that target hotspot that we want to hit, then like you said, we're taking all that extra lumens and stuff.
And then first of all, I'm trying to like make the lighting from the, where you're looking all the way to the front of your. As evenly as even as possible on the ground. So I'm able to basically set up like a sensor plane in my software for brightness and then set up like a driver perspective, or in this case a writer perspective.
But since we use an automotive software, we're always using driver. So I set that up and then basically I'm able to like do cross sectional curves and make sure that we don't have any like weird ripples or really. Peaks which you can kind of see if you study a lot of different beam pattern all over the spectrum from like the cheapest lights to the most expensive lights.
You'll see, like there's blotchy areas where lights just gets a little bit more concentrated. You might not notice it, but isn't until someone like me points it out kind of thing. But it's a really, really tough job to try and do that. And that's sort of like where I find the value in the software that we.
To be so valuable because yeah, once we set like the ground plane to be evenly lit from the front of your tire all the way out you're looking, then that's where I try to expand the width and then more importantly, try to taper the brightness so that it's, you get all this peripheral spill light to decide that never shows up in pictures, never shows up in video because it's just so.
That camera sensors can't really pick it up unless you start pull a Photoshop and brightening stuff and all that kind of stuff. But our eyes are incredibly sensitive optical in instruments, so our eyes start to pick this stuff up and then from the very outside corners, I very progressively try to ramp up that brightness to the center so it feels very smooth and progressive.
And that's sort of one of those things. . That's why like when you shine one of our lights, like against the garage wall or the back wall, it's not gonna seem as bright compared to some other lights because we spread it out so much. But it is one of those things like once you're on a trail, on a road pitch dark, and you turn on our step and you give your eyes a few minutes to adjust, and it's one of those things that people just never wanna go back to another type of light.
And it really is all those little. Details and days of simulating and tweaking and simulating and tweaking, and simulating, tweaking over and over and over that it really pays off. And I'm pretty sure that, I mean, I notice kind of like why our lives have been so well received. It's a, yeah, it's, it's something that no one else has really done before.
Because it is a very expensive it of process that if you try to hire that out to somebody, . Like you have to give them the targets. You have to say, I wanted to be this bright, I've got this much light I can do, make it work and that, and I'll give you 10 or $15,000. And that guy's gonna do two days, three days worth of work and be like, Oh, here you go.
Versus like us, we're obsessive about it. I've been up till two or three in the morning just simulating, tweaking. Cuz every time I simulate I'm like, All right, I'm gonna let this simulate. I'm gonna go to bed and be. Wait five minutes, like, Oh, but I'm so close. Let me tweak this again. And Right another five minutes, ah, if I just move this another degree to the left, it'll be all right.
And then boom, three o'clock in the morning. And my wife's wondering why I'm not in bed yet. It's, it's that kind of obsession with lighting is like, it's why I enjoy what we do. I love what we're doing, making lights and all that kind of stuff. And I think that really shows in the products. And customer.
Yeah,
[00:19:39] Craig Dalton: there's a lot of, there's a lot of detail we can get into on the lights. So after the Kickstarter project goes off, you've, you've amassed a little bit of capital to presumably pay for some tooling and get some of the basic products off the ground. What was your vision for how you would, you would assemble the product?
Where are the components coming from and did that change from the original Kickstarter first version to, to what you guys are doing now?
[00:20:02] Matt Conte: Yeah, so. At first, like the previous company I was at before, we did a lot of stuff overseas. Just cause like the tooling's cheap, all that kind of stuff. And so initially, like after we ran the Kickstarter, we raised like 30 grand.
I still needed like another 40, so I ended up getting a home equity line of credit against our house at the time. So I was literally betting the house on this working. Thankfully it did but. It was one of those things where I wanted to work with domestic tooling companies and all that kind of stuff.
But the problem is, is that you need a lot of scale. So these guys usually don't even wanna like start talking to you until you're doing like 5,000 units, 10,000 units. At the time I needed 500. I just needed enough to get going. So in order to get the company off the ground, we had to go overseas as far as like getting the tooling going because they'll do the tooling cheap and they'll do it with low minimum quantities, cuz all they really care about is the tooling.
While domestic suppliers are more for the recurring orders that come in every day or every quarter or whatever. And so we were able to get stuff started and make the initial shipments and all that kind of stuff. And the tooling, all the tooling was done overseas. The PCBs the actual printed circuit boards and the assembly was done still stateside.
At the time I was using a company out in Kansas City. We've always kept the electronics state side because that's, that's the part of developing these products. Needs a lot of hands on experience and needs a lot of like quick turn reaction parts will be out of stock and alright, quickly we gotta find another resistor that can drop into this and all that kind of stuff.
And that's where you need that good kind of communication lanes which don't always get going overseas, but when it comes to like a rubber strap or just a guy cast piece, like yeah, you can go overseas and do that kind of stuff. My goal was always to try and build the company up to the scale that we could do more domestic manufacturing.
And we finally have kind of reached that point where we're building 10,000 EVAs this year, well, I think we did about eight or 10,000 this year. And once you get to about six to eight to 10,000 units per year, that's when domestic manufacturing makes a lot of sense. Not just from, but the tooling's gonna be more expensive.
The lead time's a little bit longer, but the per unit cost is gonna be a little bit cheaper. And more importantly, you're gonna save a ton on shipping shipping, tariffs, all that kind of stuff. And so, as well as just being able to quickly react to different changes and things like that. So we now have a fantastic supplier out in Michigan.
They, they do automotive components as their bread and butter, but they also like working with small manufacturers like ourself and. , we're able to now utilize a lot more advanced materials. We're using thermally conductive plastics and everything, which I think is an industry first. We're able to get it.
It's one of those things, like the quality just gets so much better as you're able to bring things domestically, but you can't do that until you get the scale. And so it's kind of like a chicken before the egg thing where either you're gonna have a ton of money and you can do it right away and just make a big risk, which I couldn't do because we didn't have investors.
We didn't have anything. It. Me betting the house against some tooling that I hope works in an industry that I don't have a ton of experience in. But now we've gotten to that point where every single new product that we develop is almost a hun a hundred percent stateside developed. We do all the assembly and manufacturing in-house.
I've invested a lot into automation, robotics stuff like that. Mostly because I love playing with them. I'm an engineer and I love programming them and trying to figure out how to make things better, faster, quicker. Not just from lights, but also how we can build things better. So we're able to build 30,000 lights a year, which is one production guy overseeing three or four different robotics systems.
Wow. That autonomously dispense grease. They autonomously sold. I've got an order right now for a cobot arm, so we're gonna have like an arm that's picking up pieces, snapping 'em together, checking the torque on all the screws, checking the force to snap those pieces together. Basically, you can turn it on on an optical sensor, make sure that the light output is exactly what it needs to be.
If it's not great, kick it off to the side. Someone else will look at it. But for the most part, trying to do everything I can. Basically make this business run as smoothly as possible so that we can just continue to focus on building better products and as well as like the customer service and all that kind of stuff.
Cause yeah, for me it's one of those things that as if you build a great product first, everything else becomes easy. If you build a product that just works every time, you don't need a huge customer service department that's handling warranties and all this kind of stuff. Build a product that's just simple to operate.
You don't need complex instruction manuals telling you how to turn on the light. Like it's just turns on, it goes and all that kind of stuff. So to me it's kind of one of those things like we'll always spend the extra couple bucks on genuine components and all that kind of stuff automotive grade sealants and plastics so that this stuff just won't break.
And if it does break, we just fix it. We just. You know, if it breaks, it's an engineering issue, we'll be able to figure out how to make it not break and we'll be able to work with our suppliers quickly to modify the tool, and three months later we'll have the product with that problem solved. And so our stuff is incredibly iterative.
The product that you buy a year from now is probably gonna be very slightly different than what you would get today, just because we're constantly trying to stamp out every little issue that comes up. And so, Yeah. Yeah, I love
[00:25:41] Craig Dalton: that. I love that that benefit of us manufacturing and having that tight relationship.
So you can take the customer feedback if you're listening and just put it right back into the product. And sometimes it's minor, but it's always a step in the right direction, whether it's for performance, durability,
[00:25:57] Matt Conte: what have you. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's, yeah, it's one of those things that it sounds easy on paper.
It's shocking, like how many companies don't actually do that. Yeah.
[00:26:07] Craig Dalton: Listening to customers is surprisingly hard and actually doing something about it, I found.
[00:26:12] Matt Conte: Yeah. Yeah. It definitely is. But, you know, let's,
[00:26:15] Craig Dalton: let's, let's talk about the, the outbound and lighting lineup as of today. What are the different models?
And I'd love to just talk a little bit about the intention of the various
[00:26:24] Matt Conte: models. Yeah, yeah. So like, that's sort of another one of those things that makes us unique in this space is, We make a different light for each specific purpose. We're not just making one light at three different power levels or five different power levels.
We first, we've got our like bread and butter, which is more for mountain biking. Its so a trail evo that's like a handlebar mounted bike light that's designed to go into handle bars. It's pretty heavy, so it's not gonna fit on your helmet. And it's just an incredibly wide even beam pattern. So that you can be moving your handlebars, you know, 30 degrees to the left and you'll still be able to see where you're going.
And then we have our hangover light, which is an ultra lightweight, very slim, low profile helmet light that's designed to go on your helmet can work on the handlebar, but it's not great because it is a narrower spot. Because wherever your head is pointed is probably your eyes are looking. So we can kind of take that beam powder and narrow it down.
And still get, have half the lumens, but still the same peak output as I like handlebar light, if not a little bit more. That's so
[00:27:28] Craig Dalton: interesting and, and sorry to interrupt Matt, but I, I spent a bunch of time with the, the helmet mounted light. The hangover recently Loved it by the way. And hearing you describe kind of the very purposeful difference, honestly, my entire lighting.
I've stuck handlebar mounted lights on my helmet. Yeah, and there was no distinction between the two. It was just like, Okay, great. For the uninitiated night rider, like having a helmet light is important because as you turn your head, as you're going through sweeping corners, A lot of times, certainly with traditional lights, the the light on your bar can disappear.
All of a sudden you're going through this arcing turn and you're actually not seeing the trail you're seeing off in the woods. And, you know, you've touched on this in a couple different ways. One, on your handlebar lights you've described how you've tried to purposely widen that, that lighting profile mm-hmm.
so that you can turn that 30 degrees and still be in. But the addition of the handle, or sorry, the, the helmet mounted light just gives you that additional ability to kind of look even further. So from by my likes when I'm mountain biking, the ultimate combination is definitely that Evo Plus hangover helmet.
Helmet mounted light.
[00:28:38] Matt Conte: Yeah, definitely. And that's where those two lights, we also designed to work in concert with each other. So like, the exact same color tempera. Pretty similar being punched strain, so you're not like one light isn't overpowering the other, but it is once you're like looking off down into a hair pan or something like that, that's where it's like you get the brightness of the helmet light.
But we make sure that the peripheral spill blends well enough that you're not ending up looking at like two distinct lights. Like it's still feels like an unbroken wall. And so that was like a really important part of the design constraints that we set up when we set the initial lighting targets.
Both of these lights was they need to work well together, so, I think it was like 135 degrees off center is like what I aimed for. So basically you're looking your hand, the bars are dead ahead and you're looking like way back behind you. And I still wanted to make sure that there light was blending a little bit so it didn't feel like you saw a black hole basically in between.
Yep. Where you're looking and where your hand of eyes are pointing. So it always feels unbroken. Cause as long as you do that, then your eyes are not gonna like. I keep saying like auto exposure, but it's not really the terminology. But basically your eyes aren't trying to adjust for the blackness here and the bright intensity.
So as long as it keeps it unbroken. Yeah. Also it's like as you write with it longer, your eye, your pupils start to open up. Cuz they're so used to it, they're not having to contract and expand and contract and expand with the varying brightness levels. As long as it's consistent, you have people who can slowly expand and take in more light.
So even though we're working with Lower Lu. Because we wanna have a longer battery life. By just having that unbroken wall of light, it ends up feeling brighter as you get used to it because of the fact that you were, i your eyes are physically opening up more and able to take in more light. Just like when you sit in a room for five minutes in the dark, your eyes start to open up and you can start to see a little bit better.
The same thing effect happens with just dim lighting. And all that kind of stuff. And so that's sort of where that philosophy of make sure everything's evenly lit, ultimately ends up helping a lot more as far as like having to like feel a lot brighter, even though the numbers on paper don't seem that impressive.
But of course that's one of those things that you can't really, you can't break that down into a one line item on an ad. You can't show that in a picture. You can't show that in video. It's one of. . You just gotta get out there. You gotta ride with it. You gotta try it. And so that's why like word of mouth for us is our biggest yeah.
Seller pretty much. Well hopefully
[00:31:10] Craig Dalton: this deep dive in the podcast will be a good mechanism for people understanding like the depth of the. Engineering that go into these products and the thoughtfulness that you guys have put in there. Yeah. I think at, before I interrupted you, you were gonna talk about the third lineup, Third light, your lineup.
Yeah.
[00:31:28] Matt Conte: Yeah. So that's our newest light which is called Detour. It's basically like a road beam headlight. It's designed for gravel riding and road riding. The main difference is being, is that it's, it's basically like a low beam on a car headlight. It's got a cutoff. Where, basically a horizontal line where the light doesn't go above it.
So that way you can aim the light up and flat and still be able to see really far down the road where you want to go. Cuz you can put the brightest part of the beam right there, but you're not blinding oncoming traffic. Which is a big deal especially for gravel riders, road riders, or you're approach.
Other rider coming towards you, pedestrians and stuff like that. Definitely don't really need it for mountain biking. Cuz a moose doesn't really care if you don't blind him or not. He's still gonna be in the middle of the trail. So, so yeah, that's our newest one. Which again, it's a very specific type of light.
It's designed to be a hand of our light, designed to be front and center on your bike. And designed to be aimed in a certain way so that you're not blinding oncoming traffic and stuff. And that's still very wide beam pattern, very progressive lighting from where you're looking all the way out to the front of your tire.
I've got side market lights and stuff, so you have better side visibility for traffic or things like that. But yeah, it's just another one of those like. We're not gonna come out with a detour of 1500 or detour 2000 like it's, that's, this is the light. It does around 1200 lumens. You're able to get a lot brighter hotspot because the fact that you, you're not putting half that light in the sky, but to get the cutoff beam pattern so it feels brighter than actually is, you can get good run times and all that kind of stuff.
So, Yeah. Cause I was, it's still,
[00:33:06] Craig Dalton: it still boggles my mind as someone who started out with a 200 lumen light back then as being like the pinnacle of performance that now you can get 1200 lumens in this incredibly small package. No battery, no external battery. It's all right in there. It's, it's just
[00:33:23] Matt Conte: astounding.
And you still get an hour and a half, two hours of run time and weighs, was it 135 grams or something? Yeah, and I mean we've got some other designs in play right now that get set even smaller. I'm really, that's sort of like, you know, looking towards the future. Cause you know, like you said, it, it started out with like halogens and car batteries.
That was kind of how it started out 20 years ago, 30 years ago. And then IDs bulbs came in and they came out with a little really miniature IDs that again, they did 250, 300 lumens. But they were power sucks. As you waste most of that energy and just heat, like heat coming out of the lamp. But then in around 2005, 2006 is kind of when LEDs became a lot more mainstream.
You were able to get them cheap enough that you could build cheap products with. So you saw that explosion, not only the automotive side. Cause that was like when I was really into that, went. The H I d Offroad Lights to Rigid Industries coming out with all their LED D stuff. And the same thing, the bike side.
That's like when Night Rider came out, their first I think it was the new or the Lua, their first Lua, like 2005, 2006. Again, 300 lumens. 400 lumens maybe. All that kind of stuff. But then over the last 10 to 15 years, LEDs have gotten, I'd say there's about a five or 10 year stretch where LEDs just every year, just huge leaps.
Huge leaps, huge leaps, and then kind of slowed down and stuff. Now the biggest technological leaps in LEDs have basically come from the miniaturization of them. So, And that ultimate that's been driven by the automotive sector, that the automotive sector requires smaller and smaller optics, which means that you need a smaller and smaller source, AKA D L E D.
The l e d has to be as tiny as possible so that we can control the rays that are coming, the rays of light coming outta the l e d. So we can control that on a very small optic, and you can put that exactly where you need to. Cause if you put a huge l e. Inside of a tiny optic, you're just gonna get scatter everywhere.
It's not gonna be well optimized and all that kind of stuff. So the automotive sector has driven the LEDs to become smaller and smaller and smaller, and they come out like the lumen values don't look impressive on paper. They'll be like, Oh, it's only 300 lumens on this. But that's kind of like why our trail Evo has nine of these LEDs.
Cuz you can put these tiny, tiny LEDs into a tiny optic. And still get incredible beam control versus if you try to take like a Cree X H P 3.0 whatever, whatever the biggest l e D is that can do 1300, 2000 lumens, but it's massive. It's like a centimeter wide. You need a ginormous optical reflector to put that into for it to be of any use.
Otherwise, you're just scattering light everywhere, uncontrolled. And you see that a lot on a lot of cheap lights. You could tell. They looked at the data sheet, they saw who? 1300 lumens. That looks great. And they're like, Well, let's just, but we gotta fit in this little thing, so let's just taste this l e d, slap it into that.
Cool. We got a really bright light. And it's like, Yeah, but it doesn't do anything. Well, it's either extremely concentrated or it's just blown out. Uh um, and so, man, I kind of go off on tangents a lot if you can't tell So, yeah, like the technological jumps, LEDs have kind of slowed down a bunch. And now there's incredibly tiny, incredibly power dense and it's great for us, but there's not, there's not much more that LEDs can do.
Like we've kind of reached the final form, I guess you could say. But the next big technological leaf that's gonna be really interesting to jump into is batteries. You know, all these automotive company, again, automotive is leading the, the sector to kind of then drips down into bikes. All of the solid state batteries that every single automotive company is investing into companies like solid power, all that kind of stuff.
They're basically promising these batteries that can charge instantly, they can put out huge amounts of power. They won't be as affected by thermals as much. So you can run 'em really cold or really hot and they won't lose a lot of life. And just a lot more power dense. And so to me that's gonna be like the next big generational leap.
Not gonna happen next year. It's not gonna happen two years from now, but maybe like five or six years. We hope that we can get, you know, 21 700 cell batteries in a solid state battery for a reasonable price. And that's, These bike flights can either be twice as bright for the same run time, or last twice as long for the same brightness.
And that's gonna be, and also incredibly lightweight. Those graphing batteries, I think are like half the weight of a single 21 700 cell. Wow. So that's gonna be, that'd be refreshing. Yeah. And that's gonna be really exciting once those can start coming online. But again, that's probably five years until that becomes more mainstream.
They have these technological breakthroughs that they keep promising. Thankfully it's not as vaporware as like hydrogen energy, but we're getting close I feel like. And so a couple
[00:38:29] Craig Dalton: nuance things I wanted to point out before we let you go is correct me if I'm wrong, but you can actually charge the light while you're running it.
[00:38:37] Matt Conte: Yeah, that's, Yeah. Which of the,
[00:38:38] Craig Dalton: It may seem counterintuitive to people that, that doesn't exist across the board, but mm-hmm. , I'd say the vast majority of lights I've ever run. You could not have an external battery pack to kind of top it off if you needed to.
[00:38:50] Matt Conte: Yeah. Yeah, pretty much most bike flights, you do have your external battery pack that you have to plug in into, and once you unplug it, it dies.
Cause obviously you don't have any power or you plug it in, you can't turn it on because it's just simply charging. Or if you can plug it in and turn it on, it's just gonna be stuck in a low mode because the charging current going into the light isn't enough to like actually power the light. So what we've done knowing that we had a lot of customers who do 24 hour races and all that kind of stuff we do USBC pass through charging where you can basically plug in the light and sort of the way that we can do it is that the.
Is being powered off the battery, but we're charging the battery with an external power bank. So you can technically, if you're running like Evo on high with a sort of a low current battery pack, you can technically outrun the battery pack and end up running down. But if you're running like a medium or low, you basically the battery pack charging the battery faster than the LEDs are pulling the power out.
So we're not trying to do like a straight through, like the light isn't being powered by the external battery. The external battery package, charging the battery inside the light, which is then being used. So yeah, that was basically just kind of like, as one of those like customer requests, like, Hey, how can we use a cheap Amazon power bank to power my light?
Can I do that? And like, Oh yeah, we, we can, I don't see why not. Like you just set up the charging protocols and all that kind of stuff so you could allow that to happen. It gets really complex. Turns out USB stuff is not as easy as it seems. All these like handshakes that have to happen between two different components and it's a real pain in the us But Tom, my co-founder or co-owner out in Seattle, he loves that stuff.
So while I'm up at 3:00 AM tweaking beam patterns, he's up at 3:00 AM trying to tweak USB charging protocol. I love it kind of stuff. So yeah, that Love it. Unique features. Yeah.
[00:40:47] Craig Dalton: The final detail I wanted to talk about was just the mounting mechanisms that you guys have designed cuz I found them to be very clever and slick and unobtrusive, which is not something I could say about a lot of the mounting mechanisms I've had to endure from other lights.
[00:41:00] Matt Conte: Yeah, I mean, you should have seen some of the prototypes that we came up with before we landed on this one. They were large Oakley or Vinicky and not great. But the current one that we use for the Well, for Hangover, we just simply just use what everyone has used for the last 15 years, which is just a standard action camera.
I can't officially say GoPro anymore because now they clamp down on that, but it's a GoPro mal. So everyone's used to that. It works great. Low profile. A lot of bikes have, It was built into it, so why not just make sure our helmet light works with that out of the box, which is why Hangover has. Action camera tabs on the back of it.
But for Evo and Detour that mounting system was one of those like real hard design challenges because like, like we obviously buy like every single competitor light we can get our hands on. And all of them, they always have at least like one or two good design features. And I'm like, that's a good idea.
I'm gonna just take this and put this in mind. But when it came to mounting, I literally could not find anything. I was like, This is great. Cause a lot of the mounting things were, if they were secure, they were really hard to put on. Like, you could not take 'em off with like a pair of thick winter writing thick winter writing gloves.
Which for me, that's always been like a design standard. Make sure that we can operate anything on a light with a thick pair of winter writing gloves because most of our customers are ready at night in the. And it sucks to not have to be, not be able to turn on your light or mount it or anything like that.
So we went through a lot of iterations trying to figure out how in the world we're gonna mount this light so that it can quickly be taken on and off and all that kind of stuff. Until one of my friends not related at all the bikes or anything, he's a big camera nerd. He like, Hey, you should look at man photos, camera lights, or camera mounts that were the tripod stuff.
Super simple. People have used it for literally 40 years. I bought one of them. I'm like, Huh, this is a really good idea. Just a little, It's
[00:42:57] Craig Dalton: so interesting that you say that. Now that you say that, I'm like, Oh yeah, that makes sense. I've seen that before and
[00:43:02] Matt Conte: that's where I've seen it. Yeah. Yeah. So basically I took the man photo design.
I checked photo patents. They all expired in like the late nineties. They patented like in the seventies or 80. And so with basically a free for all you could use it you're not gonna infringe on anything. And basically I took what they did, miniaturized it and tried to make sure that it works so that no matter what, you could have it mounted bird according to light.
Disney just gonna fall to the ground. So we put in a little notches and stuff like that to capture it. But for the most part, it's a man foot camera. Designed for bikes or for bike lights. And so all of our lights or all of our handlebar lights have that basically standard n size on the back, a a man photo camera base plate that can slot right into our quick release mount and.
Click it in, push it back, closes the plunger torsion spring snaps it shut, and you just push down in the lever to really secure it in place. Little serrated teeth with a big thumb screw that can again, easily be operated when you're wearing a pair of gloves. So you can adjust the beam angle without having to over tighten the amount or anything like that.
Yeah, it's one of. The, that mount is on its third iteration. We've already got a fourth one in work right now cause we want to get rid of the, the he screw and all that kind of stuff. So we're gonna try to do like an overcame mechanism and everything. Yeah, it's, I don't know if you ever got to experience the first ones where I did 'em, amount of die cast aluminum and powder coding and ugh, that was one of those hindsight.
2020. I really wish I hadn't done that. But now, last fiber amounts. They work great. The smooth action, all that kind of stuff. It's again, goes back to that whole situation of like, every, let's just iterate. Let's quickly make changes. Don't worry that this cool tool cost five grand. Like we've gotta make the product good.
If it's not easy to operate for customers, then no one's gonna like it. Yeah, and all that kinda stuff. So,
[00:44:54] Craig Dalton: Awesome. Well, thanks for walking us through the lineup and that backstory. I love, I love hearing your journey. I love, it's sort of admirable to get out there and Kickstarter and put yourself out there on the line.
As a former small business owner myself, I, I feel your, I feel that pain of when you mortgaged your house just to get the, the product off the ground and congrats for. Ultimately bringing it back to the US for manufacturing, as you mentioned, so many advantages there, let alone helping the economy, but just advantages that you can continue to roll out better and better performance and take that customer feedback to heart every time it comes through.
Yeah,
[00:45:30] Matt Conte: yeah, definitely. Yeah, it's always the golds yeah, it's, it makes business sense from a money profit standpoint, and it makes sense just from. The product standpoint, we're able to, and it's, the goal is to just continually advance ourselves further. So like these thermally conducted materials it was something I wanted to use for almost a decade.
But we just never had the volume to justify it. Cuz I have to purchase three to 4,000 pounds of this material, just like the minimum order quantity, which is equivalent to like 10,000 units. And when you're starting out, you only have 500 or a thousand for the entire years, like, I can't, I can't justify that.
But that's sort of our business goal is like just continually advance and kind of pull away from the competition by integrating these technologies that is not as easy to integrate from the start. Or you need the scale. So, yeah, that's where, yeah, we've got a lot of fun things planned. We've got a long list of things we want to do.
We're trying to push into. Bike shops. Next year, like we finally, we've got our manufacturing dial. We've got the robots in place, like we can finally like outpace building from our retail website demand. So now we're kind of trying to expand into bike shops. We're getting like retail, this display developed and all that kind of stuff.
And so that's sort of what we're hoping, you know, if anybody shot you listening, you can always go to outbound lighting.com and talk to us, get connected, get you all hooked up and everything. . Yeah. That's where if anybody ideas and stuff like that, always open to listening. If you email us, it's gonna be either come to me, it's gonna come to Tom, like there's literally four people in the company.
That's it. And so it's very personable. You're gonna talk to a real person. We don't have any bots running, thankfully. .
[00:47:05] Craig Dalton: Right on. Matt, thanks again for the time. I'll make sure everybody knows how to get in touch with you and super informative and congrats.
[00:47:12] Matt Conte: Yeah, I appreciate it. It's been great chatting.
[00:47:14] Craig Dalton: That's gonna do it for this week's edition of The Gravel Ride podcast. Big thanks to Matt for coming on the show. I hope you, like I did, learned a lot about lighting and the nuances around the lighting choices we can make as cyclists. If you're interested in supporting the show, you can visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride, or ratings and reviews are hugely important.
If you're interested in connecting with me, I encourage you to join the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. That's a free global cycling community. Tons of people, and interesting conversations going on in any given day.
So I encourage you to join that. Until next time, here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
This week we sit down with Lizard Skin founder, Brian Fruit to learn the original story of the brand founded in 1993. From cycling bar tape and accessories now to baseball, hockey and lacrosse, the brand has had an interesting journey making its products in the United States.
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Lizard Skins[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show. We welcome Brian fruit, the founder of lizard skins. Was there a skin spin part of the cycling industry since 1993. It's been quite an incredible journey for the company. Y'all know how much I love the business side stories behind the brands we know and love. So I was super excited to get into it with Brian and just learn more about the journey.
With respect to their bar tape. What I find is interesting is that the material they have is definitely. Sort of on the gummy air side and you'll hear Brian, describe a bit about that product. But also it's worth noting. They offer four different sizes of kind of the diameter. Of the bar tape, which really changes the feel you can go from super thin. I E a lot of bar feel all the way out to kind of pair Ruby style, super cush.
Which I think is an interesting option that you don't see across the board. A lot of times when you go into your local bike shop, You see only one diameter tape that's available. So it's an interesting thing to play around with and something I've enjoyed while testing out some of the lizard skin tape.
Just before we jump in, I need to thank this week sponsor the hammerhead crew to. I am literally in Spain as you're listening to this, I'm recording this intro just before I'm boarding my flight and definitely thinking about all the adventures I'm going to have on the roads of Jarana. I thought about borrowing a computer from the group that I'm going with, but it was from another brand that I had a little bit of a bad experience with back way back when.
I've come to love many things about my hammerhead computer. And I am convinced it's the most advanced GPS cycling computer available today. It's got industry leading mapping navigation and routing capabilities that set it apart from other GPS options. Free global maps with points of interest included like cafes and campsites.
Mean that my riding in Gerona. I won't be without information. I'll have everything at my fingertips. As I'm saying all this, I'm literally reminding myself that I should go download the country maps. So I've got everything on hand. In my hammerhead crew to device. Hammerhead gives bi-weekly software updates. So the features are always up to date.
And they're always listening. You can provide feedback to the team in hammerhead and potentially it's going to end up in a software update. You're not locked to a particular software package because they're always upgrading it. I really look for the climber feature. That's one of my favorite features these days. It was particularly poignant for me when I was riding in, uh, Bentonville Arkansas, a few weeks back at the big sugar gravel event, all those punchy climbs. I was really on the limit. I'm much more of a sit and grind on the coastal range here in California.
So this punchy climbs or something I wasn't used to. So understanding exactly how far I was to the top and how many candles I could burn staying with the groups I was desperate to stay with really came in handy. So very much recommend the hammerhead crew to it's my exclusive computer. For gosh, probably over a year now.
I'm not the only one singing its praises. It was named bicycling magazines, editors choice in GPS, cycling computers. For the past two years. Take a look on their websites for a limited time offer our listeners can get a free heart rate monitor with the purchase of a hammerhead crew to just visit hammerhead IO right now, and use the promo code, the gravel ride at checkout to get yours today. Remember it's an exclusive limited time offer for our podcast listeners.
So don't forget that promo code, the gravel ride for that free heart rate monitor strap. Would that business behind us, let's jump right into my conversation with Brian.
Hey Brian, welcome to the show.
[00:04:27] Brian Fruit: Awesome. Super glad to be beyond today.
[00:04:30] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I'm excited to dig into Lizard Skins a little bit, but I'd love to start out, as we always do, by a little bit about your history and how you ultimately got into cycling, and let's talk about the origin story of lizard skin.
[00:04:44] Brian Fruit: Well, that's a, that's a good one. Yeah, it's been. Three decades ago now dating myself a little bit I was a college student at BYU and I got my first mountain bike. I worked, you know, most of the summer and saved up some money and got a mountain bike and, and thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it.
Not just for the awesome writing that we were able to do in the mountains. Just as a way to get around campus and commute. It was just so much more liberating than fighting the parking spots. So I just fell in love with cycling. I think I'd, you know, from a very small age, I've always loved everything with wheels on it.
And then this mountain bike was, that was a revelation. So fast forward a few more years and I'm a senior about to graduate and there's a company. Called Reflex bikes.
[00:05:35] Craig Dalton: I remembered them.
[00:05:36] Brian Fruit: yeah, they made these cool lugged frames. You know, some of them were aluminum tubes, some of 'em were carbon tubes, and they sold to another company.
Look, that makes, you know, pedals and things like that.
[00:05:49] Craig Dalton: And did Reflex have some sort of Utah connection or were you just familiar?
[00:05:54] Brian Fruit: they were making 'em here in Utah,
[00:05:56] Craig Dalton: I, Wow, I didn't know that. I had a girlfriend who had that one of those bikes in the very early nineties.
[00:06:02] Brian Fruit: Did it creak?
[00:06:03] Craig Dalton: It creeped. And the one thing I remembered too about it was that there was some really challenging cable routing. So when it came time to build it up, it was like a nightmare.
Getting something through the bottom bracket, I think was what I struggled with.
[00:06:17] Brian Fruit: Yeah. So it was a cool bike and it had a great designer and, and he had sold the business. And, and moved over to Europe actually to, to work on design there. And, and apparently there was a, a trademark issue on the name reflex. And the people that owned it were no longer willing to allow that name to be used.
And so, Look just said, I think we're just done with this, but this doesn't make sense for us to be involved with. So they decided to liquidate everything. So rims and cranks and headsets, and you name it, bottom brackets, shifters, handlebar. And, and so they sent out these postcards to all these stores, and my friend worked as a bike patrol at Sundance Ski Resort, brought the.
Postcard home. And I'm like, that's kind of interesting. So I drove up there the next day and I bought $300 worth of bike parts. Didn't have any money. I was just a college student and all the way home like, Oh, what am I doing? I don't have 300 bucks is the worst decision ever. And I sold all those parts that night to just random people in the apartment complex and friends that I rode with.
It's cuz there was no social media back then. This is, you know, early 90. 92, I believe. And and the next day I went up there again, like, you know, being drawn to the, you know, bike parts, like the bug to the blue light zapper, and bought like $300 of the parts again and all the way home. Like, Oh, what am I doing?
This is the worst decision ever. Sold all those parts again. And that was it. You know, over the next six weeks I was buying and selling parts and I sold them to bike stores and I sold them to individuals and I, I sold about $30,000 worth of parts, made a decent amount of money on that, bought my wife a wedding ring and saved up a little money for us to get married.
And, and that's kind of how how my life got started. You know, in the bike world, I just kind of fell in love with the whole, the whole scene and, and not the people, but even like the smells when you walk into a bike store, I just like the smell of a bike store. It just, I know that sounds weird, but it just feels right in bike stores.
I, even, when I'm on vacation, I like to go try to find a bike store to pop my head in and look around, so,
[00:08:49] Craig Dalton: What an, that's an amazing kind of origin story, and I love the name dropping of reflex. It brings back very, very fond memories for me. So did you continue sort of pursuing kind of like a distribution type business model?
[00:09:04] Brian Fruit: So, that lasted for about six weeks. You know, they were selling all those parts at this big discount and that just kind of made me think, man, something in the bike industry would be really fun. And we looked at two or three ideas and, and. None of 'em actually worked out. And then a friend introduced me to another friend and that guy's name was Lance Larson.
And Lance had this idea of making neoprene and Velcro accessories for bicycles and calling 'em lizard skin. and but Lance wasn't a, a writer and he wasn't really familiar with the space. So he and I connected and, and in the simplest terms, the original, you know, premise was that he would make the products and I would sell 'em.
It, it didn't really work out exactly like that. There was a lot more crossing over, back and forth, but Lance and I got to work together for eight and a half years. And, and built the company from nothing. The very first month we did $350 of annual sales.
[00:10:09] Craig Dalton: Do you remember what the first product was that you came out with?
[00:10:12] Brian Fruit: Yeah, yeah, it was the little neoprine and Velcro chainstay protector and man, they were small back then.
It was like a really small length and really small diameter. And now, you know, they make the tubes so much larger. You know, the, the old one wouldn't even fit on a bike today.
[00:10:29] Craig Dalton: Yep. Yeah. If you think about those old steel tube change stays that used to wrap, they were tiny, like the, like the size of your pink.
[00:10:36] Brian Fruit: Yeah, so small. Exactly. And we made all kinds of fun colors and, and we made these little headset seals that would keep the dirt and grim out of the headset. And then eventually we started making fork boots, which would keep the dirt out of the front fork because the seals back then weren't very good.
And then we made a same kind of a boot for the rear shock. And eventually started making rubber injection molded grips. And then we added in some BMX products. We made BMX pad sets and BMX plates and BMX shin guards and elbow guards. And and then, you know, I bought my partner out and, and that, that took several years and there wasn't a lot of extra cash, you know, cuz.
Everything just seemed to go to him to, to buy him out. And, and eventually we got that all done. And, and then we were able to really kind of move forward more dramatically because we had, you know, some money to work with.
[00:11:34] Craig Dalton: Right, Right, right. Yeah, I, I think back across that period that you're describing, and I do remember those original lizard skin chain guards, but I probably, I remember more. Like the arrival of color, cuz back in the early nineties, certainly on the mountain bike scene, that was the heyday of anize parts and finding any, any way to make your bike a little bit more colorful and have a little flare to it.
[00:11:59] Brian Fruit: Oh, people were putting on Coca Cranks and Cook Brothers and, and you know, Paul components and everything was purple and red and yellow and, you know, green and yeah, you could buy a, a Chris King headset and it was all Rastafari and
[00:12:16] Craig Dalton: Yeah, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. So, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was, it was like there was so much innovation going on back then in the world of mountain bikes, and I mean, I think that's what I've enjoyed about the last several years in the gravel bike world is you just see that kind of innovation.
No one knows exactly what's right. The bike designers have been given a lot of freedom to design bikes that, you know, range from a road plus bike to a full on bike packing bike, and they're all in this, this quote unquote new genre of gravel cycling.
[00:12:49] Brian Fruit: It is fun. I rode a friend of mine's you know, bike packing bike just earlier this week, and. It was super fun, you know, it just had a, a cool geometry to it. And, and he had, he had outfitted mountain bike breaks onto his, you know, drop bar controls, and it had some significant breaks. You know, he's a bike store guy and he figured out how to do it.
It was awesome.
[00:13:16] Craig Dalton: at what year did you sort of transition your business partner out and start to think really like what new products could you innovate?
[00:13:24] Brian Fruit: Yeah, so I bought him out in 2001 you know, early part of 2001. And you know, we, the philosophy then was like, turn over every rock just. If nothing else to see what was under underneath. And you know, we bought different equipment to do our manufacturing with. We, we just really tightened up to try to make everything more frankly more profitable and more efficient.
[00:13:50] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I meant to ask earlier, did you, at what point did you bring manufacturing in-house and what does that look like from an equipment perspective?
[00:13:59] Brian Fruit: So we were making these little neoprine and Velcro accessories in the United States from day one and, and still do 30 years later. So what it takes is, I mean, we did it differently. You know, in the old days, the equipment we used wasn't very efficient. We've got. Good stuff now. And so it's a dye press with a still rule dye and then that allows you to cut the fabric out in these perfect shapes. And anybody that's working on the dye press the first day, you know, you have to make sure and tell 'em, you know, if, if you're dropping the dye or if the dye is slipping outta your hands, just let it hit the ground. Like don't try to catch it, you know, cuz it's
[00:14:45] Craig Dalton: Sharp all over. Yep.
[00:14:47] Brian Fruit: we can, we can fix the, we can fix the dye.
It's
[00:14:50] Craig Dalton: And then after you, after you're dye cutting the neo printer, are you then going into a sewing process?
[00:14:57] Brian Fruit: We have really nice commercial sewing machines. We use a zigzag stitch on it and we sew that in-house with different sizes of Velcro on each side. And then kind of do some trimming to make it look. And then we package it up all, you know, done in the us. So, you know, that was a good thing and we were able to make a super high quality product and, and we sold a lot of those.
Eventually a lot of the brands started adding some type of a. Chain protector or you know, chain stay guard to the bikes and it, and definitely impacted our sales. But we added these other products, you know, injection molded grips, and eventually we created a great relationship with odi where they made a.
a significant line of lock on grips for us under their, under their patent and technology, but sold by us, under our name and, and to our customers.
[00:15:53] Craig Dalton: With ODI manufacturing in the US as well.
[00:15:56] Brian Fruit: That's correct. Yep. They're out in California actually, so, you know, it's like, double hard in the United States and California , but great product and they, they have great tooling and they could make these grips just so crisp and clean and, and the technology they have just, and still have is, is second to none.
So we teamed up with them on, on lock, on grips. And then eventually we really wanted to come up with a lightweight mountain by grip that was just different. And so we checked into another industry and we made some appointments and we started visiting factories, hoping to get this lightweight grip you know, maybe for cross country racing.
And, and unfortunately we weren't successful in finding, you know, that. You know, through maybe another industry. But on that trip we figured out that we found a company that could make tape for us. And it was literally my, my general manager, Brad Barker. And he and I were on this trip together, and as we were about to walk out the, the the building, the business, he kind of turned around and asked them.
It was like, Hey, could you guys make tape for. And they're like, Oh yeah, we could totally do that. He says, Great. I'll, I'll, I'll be in touch. So, you know, he says, Brian, I really wanna try this. I really wanna, you know, sink my teeth into it. So, you know, he was working with the factory back and forth about nine months and making samples for handlebar tape for road bikes.
The first sample was like, what, 12 or 18 inches long? And we're like, Well, this is not gonna work. And then the next sample was, you know, really long, but the product didn't stretch. Well, that's not gonna work. And so we went through rendition, after rendition after rendition, frankly, not knowing how to create the proper tech kit to speed the process along, but just trial and error and.
[00:18:01] Craig Dalton: was there something in the road bike market that you felt was missing like some type of performance out of the grip that you guys saw as an opportunity?
[00:18:09] Brian Fruit: Yeah, that's a great a great question. We, we did feel like that there could be something different. Most of the tape that was available at that time was the synthetic cork and you know, gets dirty and it kind of slippery and it wasn't really any. as to it or any technical, anything. So when we came out with ours, it was completely different and had a much different texture and feel.
It, it actually felt softer even though it was the same thickness and way more grippy and it was cleanable. You could just take a little alcohol and a, and a clean, you know, white rag or something. You could clean it right up and, and it wasn't stained and dirty. So we ended up finding a product that was gonna work and we were really proud of, of the product we had designed.
And then the factory told us how much it was gonna cost and it was like one of those, you know, stressful moments and we're like, Ugh, how's this ever gonna work? Cuz Bar Tape at that time sold for 15 to $20 for, you know, the common synthetic co.
[00:19:18] Craig Dalton: Yep.
[00:19:19] Brian Fruit: Ours was gonna be $35. . And so we're just like, Oh, this is gonna be tough.
But everybody that touched our tape loved it. And so we're like, Well, we just gotta get people to touch it, you know? Cuz once they do, they'll love it. And that's the phrase, Touch it, feel it, love it came from
[00:19:39] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I, you know, it's so, it is poignant when you put your hands on some lizard skin tape, it feels different. You know, I'm riding it on my, my bike right now and. Everything you've just described is what I've felt about it, like it feels When I'm barehanded I often ride barehanded and I, I feel much more connected to the grip because of the sort of, I dunno, stickiness is the right word, but this kind of sticky quality that I feel when riding it that's quite different than court grip.
[00:20:12] Brian Fruit: Yeah, it's, it's grippy, you know, and it's from this patented, you know, technology and material that that our partner supplier created in tandem with us. And and it's just been absolutely wonderful.
[00:20:28] Craig Dalton: So it's, so, it's so interesting to me as, Sorry to interrupt Brian. Just as like a business journey, you sort of realize, hey, we've got something unique here, but I can't tell you about it. You've gotta feel it and touch it to believe and see. I can imagine, like in the bike industry, that's a challenge, right?
To kind of just translate that into the hands of enough people to develop a passionate following to say, I'm willing to pay this premium price for this performance now that I know about it.
[00:20:59] Brian Fruit: So I happened to be on a, a family trip, and again, I love bike stores, right? So we have a distributor in Guatemala that, that was selling our product and they had a bike store. So I went and visited that store while we were on this family trip. And there was a customer that came in and he had a road bike, I think it was a tri bike actually.
And the handlebar tape was all falling off and, and I just happened to hand him my handlebar sample that I had and he just fell in love with it. And he told the, the manager owner of the store there, he's like, I want this. And and we told him kind of what the price was, and that's a lot of money in Guatemala.
and he's like, No, no, I want that tape. Like, so give me that tape. And, and that's kind of how it's worked. Like we pay a ton more for our tape. It's not that we make a lot of money on it. We actually have a pretty tight margin on it, but the manufacturing cost is just a lot more because of what the product is and the, the materials that are, that are used.
But once you feel it, it's like, . Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna splurge and I'm, I'm, This is what I want.
[00:22:12] Craig Dalton: So are you still using the same manufacturing partner
[00:22:15] Brian Fruit: We are, Yeah. And they've come up with, you know, new technology and, and you know, improvements to the polymer to make it, you know, even more grippy and even more durable. So it's been nice. You know, we did a complete redesign on the tape a couple years ago, two or three years ago now. And the new tape actually has a pattern on it.
And if you looked at that pattern with like a, a jeweler's loop or a magnifying glass, you would see that the pattern is like, It, it's multi depth. So some of the little bumps are really deep, some are less deep, some are really shallow, just to maximize the feel and control on the bike you know, with, with these different dimensions into the pattern.
So pretty technical.
[00:23:05] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I think as as riders, we benefit from your obsession over this one little part of the bike. Say, how can we make it the best it can be?
[00:23:15] Brian Fruit: I mean down that same conversation, and this is not a, This is me telling a bad story about myself. Unfortunately, not a good business story, but our plug that we had was really cool looking and was shiny and, and had the little lizard on it, but it did have a tendency to fall out. You know, if you didn't leave enough tape tucked in.
So some people, it worked great and it never fell out, but other people, it fell out. So I wanted to get a new screw in plug and, and unfortunately we allowed ourselves to run out of plugs during that process. And probably lost a million dollars of sales just because we didn't. The actual plug that I wanted and I didn't want to go back to the old plug, cuz in my mind it already moved on to the new plug and the supplier for the new plug was being a Turkey and not making a for us.
And, and we had to actually switch, you know, suppliers and, and but honestly now we have an amazing screw and plug which is a super simple thing and like, it shouldn't even be like a big thought, but. It probably cost me a ton of money making that transition, just cuz we didn't, we didn't wanna continue on with the old one and we didn't have our ducks in a row on the new one we thought we did.
But but
[00:24:32] Craig Dalton: I think anybody who's ever manufactured anything can commiserate with that story, myself included.
[00:24:39] Brian Fruit: So, but now we got a great plug and the supplier's good and, and everything's, everything's functioning well.
[00:24:46] Craig Dalton: You know, one of the, one of the things when you visit the lizards in skin site as a customer is that the first thing you see is an array of colors. And you're like, Great, if I wanna create some accent color, like you just have so many different unique colors available for the bar tape. But when you select your color and you get into it, you also then realize there's this secondary, probably much more important from a performance perspective, opportunity to choose your thick.
Of color. For most riders, you probably buy bar tape and you don't even think about it. I don't know what the average is. Maybe it's a two and a half millimeter, but on your site you've got, I think it's 1.8 millimeter, 2.5, 3.2, and 4.6 millimeter bar tape, which is a pretty wide array.
[00:25:35] Brian Fruit: So when we started this journey on making Hbar tape And we really tried to figure out what everybody else was doing and trying to get understanding. So we were out there with a micrometer trying to measure it and, and kind of the normal standard tape out there was about 2.5 millimeters, but nobody ever called that out.
There was never any technical data. It was just a box and it. You know, Hbar tape with no detail. So we came out originally with the 2.5, which is still our very best seller and it's kind of the most common that you would see. But we had a request for some thinner tape, and there were some customers that said, Oh man, you know, you need to make it a little thinner.
So then we came out with a 1.8 in limited colors. And, and we found that certain people in, in certain, you know, applications really like the thinner product and especially people with a little bit smaller hand because they just couldn't get their hand comfortably around, you know, this big fat bar. Big fat tape.
Then we had a lot of people was like, Oh, why don't you make a thicker tape? You know? And I think they were like, Man, if you're gonna make a thinner one, why don't you make a thicker one? So then we came out with a 3.2 and you know, the packaging was bigger. Everything about the, the thing is just bigger.
And people loved it. Like, man, it, it quickly became a great seller for us. Not better than the 2.5, but it was better than the one eight in fact. And so we've done real well with the three, two, and it lays down nice. And then we just had certain customers you know, wanting to do gravel rides, you know, cobbles, maybe they just have hands that hurt.
You know, they have, could be an injury, just could be the way they are on the bike. But their hands just go numb and get sore. They. They wanted more cued. And so some people would like double wrap their bars. You know, but that, that has some challenges to it. So it came out with this 4.6 and it's a beast.
It is a big, old fat role. But super comfortable when you get it on. It is a little harder to lay it down, you know? And. In all honesty, if you're wrapping 2.5, that's pretty easy. 3.2 takes a little more finesse and 4.6, it takes a decent amount of experience to make it lay nice and flat, but.
[00:28:07] Craig Dalton: interesting to layer in those op those options for gravel cyclists. Obviously, like on this podcast we've got had lots of discussions around, you know, how do you create suspension? You start with your body, then the tires. Then grip tape's gonna play. Play a role in there. And again, for all the reasons you're just talking about, for some people, they're really taking a lot of abuse in their hands for one reason or another.
Maybe they've got an injury and I, I could see having that option available to them, even if it's for a special purpose, a special event, wrapping your bars in a separate way. I remember back in the Perry Ru Bay classic days. When you're talking about people doing double wrap bar tape, everybody was consorting themselves in the prop peloton to find some way to make their bikes more comfortable.
For days like Perry rba.
[00:28:57] Brian Fruit: Yeah, and there's been a few different products made, you know, like, little gel packs and little foam pieces and stuff to put underneath there, and. And, and they work to some degree, but you know, the gel packs are break or they'll get kind of wiggly and the handlebar tape doesn't work well with it. And by doing this nice 4.6 and the 3.2, like, it just fits.
It's just there. It's solid. You don't have to worry about a bump or a weird spot on there. And it, and it's been successful.
[00:29:30] Craig Dalton: And as I understand things, you've been also getting feedback from a couple pro tour teams for the bar tape.
[00:29:36] Brian Fruit: We were very fortunate to get a pro tour team to use the HA Bar tape many, many years ago. That first team was the con and this was kind of like a Forest Gump moment. But they were using our tape and one of their writers Johnny Hoer. Always being indebted to him. He was leading the polka dot jersey competition, the mountain mountain points in the tour, Frances, and it was a flat part of the beginning of the, of the tour.
So ultimately he was doing breakaways and getting these points and on one of those days that he was in a breakaway, you know, getting a, a handful of mountain. A press car bumped him and another rider. And they went off the road and into a Bob wire fence. They hit that fence so hard that it actually pulled the P wood post outta the ground.
And as just hardcore professionals, they got back on the bike, all cut up and dazed and, and jerseys and shorts all ripped up from the Bob wire. And, you know, their team gives 'em a push and off they go. You. At the end of the race, you know, Johnny gets off and he had been bandaged by the medical car and you know, they're trying to bandage him as he was riding his bike.
So by the time he finished the race, you know, most of the bandages were falling off. It was a mess. And they interviewed him afterward and his attitude was like, this was an accident. I wished it wouldn't happened. This is gonna really mess up my opportunities at the tour, but it could have been worse.
Let's move on. The other gentleman, writer that got hit had a very different take. His team was trying to find out who was responsible, who was gonna pay. It was just very bitter and, and interestingly enough, everyone fell in love with Johnny. And they started looking at his bike and once those chain rings he used and what kind of bike it was and what was his saddle and what kind of handlebar tape he used.
Oh my goodness. Our handlebar tape started selling like crazy.
[00:31:55] Brian: So all the distributors started having a run on the product and they ran out of, you know, lizards, skins, bar tape, and and boom. That was it. That was our four Gump moment. Handlebar tape became the most popular aftermarket tape in the world. And it was because, you know, one guy was was cool, you know,
[00:32:17] Craig: And thrown into and thrown into a barb wire fence. I remember those images.
[00:32:22] Brian: Oh. But you know, he just handled it right. You know, I think a lot of times in life we all have bad things that happen to us that are out of our control, but it's how we handle those things that kind of impact, you know. How we interact with the rest of the world
[00:32:42] Craig: Yeah, as you remind me of that story, I remember very viscerally thinking about, gosh, this is gonna be another Primadonna roadie that has a tantrum. And I remember how you describe like the other team, the other writer. It was just this big to do and you know, who's gonna pay for this and how do we replace how he would've done throughout this tour juxtaposed to how Johnny handled it and how their team handled it.
[00:33:10] Brian: Yeah, it was it was, it was pretty crazy. So, taught me, you know, a great lesson, right, of, you know, it's important to manage how we react you know, to, to potentially bad things, you know, happening to. So, you know, how we behave can really, you know, change overall how something goes down.
[00:33:34] Craig: Yeah. Such, such an amazing journey and so cool that you've been able to do it using us manufacturing all this time. I love that part of the story. Before I let you go, Brian, I did wanna touch on one other thing because I think it's interesting. I mean, the gravel cyclist should go to your site and check out the different dimensions of bar tape and all those cool colors.
You have great product. It definitely delivers that kind of grippiness and unique feel that we were talking about earlier. But I was also bemused to learn that you're also into several different sports, and I think the listeners would kind of dig hearing just a little bit about your journey into those other sports.
[00:34:13] Brian: Y. So Hannah Bar tape was, was doing extremely well. And one of the guys from work Brad Barker that helped design the tape. Originally, he loved baseball. He had boys that were playing on baseball teams. Had another friend from college that, that gave me that little postcard for the sale at at Reflex actually.
He. He was one of the guys that helped me feed my mountain bike passion. He had three boys that loved baseball and they were all putting this tape on baseball bats, bicycle tape on baseball bats. So it, it, it was like, Huh, is there something there? So we started making two thicknesses of baseball grip.
We made a 1.1. Which is kind of the traditional thickness for baseball. And we made a 1.8, which is a little thicker. You know, think of the 3.2 in cycling, that kind of thing. And we put it out there. We won best of show for the first trade show we went to, and, and you know, nothing really happened.
But when we sold the stuff into a store, it, it, it did. . So we figured out, it's like, well, we just have to increase the amount of stores. So we eventually got a bunch of stores selling it, and then there was a local probe by the name of John Buck. He connected up with us and wanted to go to a trade show and we said, That'd be great.
You can share our booth and you can show your product in our booth and it, and it'll be fun. So we start that and at that show, . He brings his bats and we wrap 'em for him. And the whole time he's like feeling the bat, you know, while talking to customers about his products. And at the end of the show he's like, you know, if you made this thinner, I would use it in the pros and I would get other people to use it in the pros and I think have something.
So Brad came back from that show and we talked and he says, this is, this is the convers. and we both looked at each other like 130 years of history with people using like sticky stuff, pine tar on baseball bats. Like, how in the world are we gonna change that tradition? Like, that's never gonna happen. And they were like, Yeah, probably not.
And they were like, What? What should we do? And we both agreed it's a pro player, we should probably make it. So we did, we made a, a thinner version, one or a 0.5, really, really. and John started using it. Hunter Penn started using it. Big Poppy started using it like, you know, Miguel Cabret, I mean, just tons of these great players and they were sluggers and and eventually we got invited to go to the Equipment Manager show for Major League Baseball, which then led to us getting a license of Major League Baseball where we became the official bat grip on field license.
for Major League Baseball and, and it was amazing and our sales grew, grew, grew, which allowed us to hire more people and get into a bigger, you know, better facility and you know, hire more designers and then continue to make more products and and grow the company.
[00:37:33] Craig: Yeah, cuz now you're in baseball, hockey, lacrosse as well as cycling.
[00:37:39] Brian: and recently we just added pickle.
[00:37:42] Craig: Of course, the rise of pickleball, that is the moment in time we're in
[00:37:48] Brian: So it and each of these sports, the product is different. So we're not just repackaging, we're actually redesigning the product each time. So you know how long it needs to be, what's the thickness, what type of a backing do we use? For cycling, we use an EVA backing, but for baseball we use afil.
[00:38:09] Craig: Yeah.
[00:38:10] Brian: you know, different patterns and the gripping qualities on the patterns are very different.
So, we've, we've replicated ourself effectively in all these different sports.
[00:38:23] Craig: When you, when you think about the business now, what percentage is cycling versus everything else?
[00:38:29] Brian: Wow. I mean, in 2020, you know, there was a surge and cycling was the biggest part of the. 2021, it was still great. 2022. You know, cycling sales have, have slowed a little bit because there's a lot of inventory that's been shipped out there. So baseball is now the biggest part of the, of the business.
Cycling is second, and then hockey would be third.
[00:38:52] Craig: Gotcha.
[00:38:53] Brian: So,
[00:38:55] Craig: Yeah, super interesting story. Totally appreciate you sharing the journey with me. I enjoyed the conversation.
[00:39:02] Brian: Oh, you bet. It, it's been a lot of fun. You know, I look back I, I wouldn't have wanted to go a different route, you know, I've loved the cycling industry and I actually started lizard scans and then several years later I, I started a bike store and then a couple years later I bought another bike store and, and I still have those bike stores.
They're, they're great. I love 'em. And, and it, it just, it feels like walking into the Cheers bar, you know, from, from that sitcom. So when you go in the bike store, that's what it feels like, you know, it's just like, it, it's just, it's another home, right?
[00:39:42] Craig: absolutely. Yeah. We all, I I hope that many of the listeners out there have that kind of relationship with their local bike shop, cuz I certainly do in my town. I love going there, I love seeing all the team that works there and, and just saying hi and having that familiar, you know, love of the sport that you can share.
[00:40:00] Brian: Yeah, it's just, you know, fun getting to have friends continue to come in and get to see 'em. I mean, it's almost like a little mini fan family reunion, like every day that you go in the store. So
[00:40:12] Craig: Yeah, absolutely. Well, have a great weekend, Brian, and we'll talk again soon.
[00:40:17] Brian: appreciate it. Take.
[00:40:19] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks to Brian from lizard skin for joining I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about his journey and are intrigued by some of the other product categories that they've found themselves in over the years. Definitely go check them out@lizardskins.com.
Uh, as I mentioned earlier, that bar tape's been, it's been interesting trying out the different diameters. I'm still in the 2.4 camp,
But I am curious about that 1.8 thickness bar tape as well.
If you're interested in connecting with me, please join the ridership.
That's w w w dot the ridership.com. That's a free global cycling community. It's hosted on slack. So it's basically a slack channel that you can communicate with other gravel, cyclists. From all around the world. If you're able to support the show, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Or ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated until next time. Here's the finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with Protect our Winters ambassador and gravel athlete, Matt Lieto to talk about the importance of voting in relation to protecting the environment we love to ride in.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Matt Lieto
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the show. I welcome Matt. Lieto from bend Oregon onto the show matzoh, former triathletes. We'll get into that a little bit. And a gravel racer been doing it out of bend for a number of years has been involved in organizing some of the great events up there in Oregon.
But more importantly for today's show, Matt's been involved with protect our winters,
a nonprofit organization founded by snowboarder Jeremy Jones back in 2007. But the basic premise that he was seeing the world that he calls home out there in the big mountains. Getting destroyed by climate change. He wasn't seeing the same kind of snowpack. He was observing change and decided to make some change. He decided that athletes outdoor enthusiasts of all kinds, we have a voice in the political process and he set about to create an organization to help passionate outdoor people, productive places, and lifestyle. They love.
From climate change.
We're sitting here in the first week in November next week's the midterm elections. There's still time to get out there and vote. Do your civic duty. I'm a little bit on a soap box with Matt during this conversation, but I think it's important. Head on over to protect your winters.org. You can find out everything you need to know about the voting process.
In your local community, there's still time in many states to get registered and absolutely there's time to prepare your ballot and get it submitted for the midterm elections. Without said. Let's jump right into my conversation with Hey, Matt, welcome to the show.
[00:01:59] Matt Lieto: Thanks, man. Appreciate you having me Excited.
[00:02:01] Craig Dalton: I am looking forward to getting into gravel, your background, but I'm most excited to talk about p and we'll get into that later.
[00:02:09] Matt Lieto: Yeah, it's, it's okay if you if you prioritize climate and the world in, in, in front of getting to know me, that's fine. I'll let it go.
[00:02:16] Craig Dalton: Wow. Very modest ego. I like it.
So Matt, we always start out just by getting a little bit of background about you, how you got into the sport, and how you got into gravel. We gotta talk a little bit about your, your, your skinny bike background and that arrow position you used to have, but not too much. I don't wanna scare the listeners off.
[00:02:33] Matt Lieto: I can't ignore it. I know there's a, you know, no matter what the, the triathletes do and the time trialists do, they're always gonna have, they're gonna have their, their work cut out for 'em for sure. But the reason I've like always got along with Mount biker's, cyclists, and why I'm one myself as I don't mind making fun of myself.
Self deprecation is my, my biggest strength slash weakness. So let's go
[00:02:55] Craig Dalton: It's important. It's important that the regular listener will know that I have admitted to my Ironman triathlon past. I don't wear it like a badge, but I, I'm not afraid to say that I did that.
[00:03:06] Matt Lieto: So you literally, like you don't have a tattoo or anything.
[00:03:10] Craig Dalton: No, no, I would, if I could aim the camera down there, I would show you my calf. There's
[00:03:15] Matt Lieto: don't move your,
[00:03:16] Craig Dalton: down there,
[00:03:17] Matt Lieto: I don't wanna see you. Move your canvas south, man. Keep it up.
[00:03:21] Craig Dalton: So how did you, you're up in, you're up in Bend these days. Is that where you kind of found the bike and found triathlon originally?
[00:03:28] Matt Lieto: No, actually I had started doing try when I lived in Northern California. So like, 98 maybe. And kind of the cheesy story is my brother actually was a, a great professional triathlete, was second at Kona and another world championships a couple times. And I watched him race a race in Hawaii and at the time I was like 260 pounds.
And I was like, Wow, these guys are, have more fun than me. And Losts a bunch of weight. Went home and started training for triathlon, trying to get it across the finish line on one of those things. And turned out I. Decent at it and was training with my brother, had a good guide and you know, just kind of kept plugging away.
Became a professional triathlete after maybe three years of that. And yeah, kind of just enjoyed that experience. And I, I'm telling you, off air, like the. If I would've started younger and if I had the better pain tolerance I probably would've tried to be a cyclist. Cause that was kind of my, my strength and what I loved doing.
But turns out I'm kind of mediocre at three sports. So triathlon worked for me.
[00:04:28] Craig Dalton: Nice. What distances were you running and racing in? Triathlon.
[00:04:31] Matt Lieto: I did, I've done 'em all. Like I did the
[00:04:34] Craig Dalton: Okay.
[00:04:34] Matt Lieto: Olympic distance did Xera cuz again, I, I just enjoy riding all kinds of kinds of bikes. So I went to National World champs a couple times for Xera. I did half Ironman was probably my strength in triathlon, just because you could, like, as a cyclist you could Ironman at least then, or for me, was. What watts can you hold for the whole thing and not crack where the half distance is, Oh, I'm faster than you and I'm gonna try to rip your legs off. Like that to me was fun cuz I just love riding a bike hard. And then yeah, that's pretty much it. Did d Athlon, d Athlon, National Champion once, way back in the day.
And yeah, just kind of, kind of did it all. But through all that I did road racing, crits, raced a bunch of pro like NRC stage races and all that good stuff. So
[00:05:20] Craig Dalton: Gotcha, gotcha. And was finding kind of gravel, just a natural thing up there and bend.
[00:05:25] Matt Lieto: Yeah, I mean it's, you know, we, we've got winter here, or we had winter. We'll get, you know, this great segue into what we'll talk about here eventually. But you know, so cinders on the roads, you know, instead of salt to, to keep the roads clear. Here we have cinders, so, those can be a little bit sketchy if you're riding a road bike.
So, originally when I moved to town, I was working at a bike shop, wrenching and stuff. Bought a cross bike for that. And then once I had my cross bike, I was like, and I have good buddies with like Carl Decker and Rancher boat and those guys. And every ride we just ended up on dirt every, you know, whether it be single track or whatever.
And after a while, like I. And there, those guys are all capable of anything, right? So we'd be on a ride and I'd be on my TT bike and we'd end up on single track and I'm like, Guys, this is like not that awesome. my time trail bike. So eventually I got the right, right bike for the job. And yeah. And in Bandish there's so many dirt and gravel roads, certainly in the winter to be able to to ride when a lot of the pavement isn't clear and you're going slower.
So it's. You're less cold, you know, it's 35 degrees outside, going 20 on a road bike doesn't sound that fun. But going 12 on a travel bike is pretty sweet. So
[00:06:35] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And when did you start to see like the gravel bike events take off and capture your attention?
[00:06:40] Matt Lieto: Well yeah, in Oregon we had, we had like kind of a, we have a rad, I think a really cool like road racing scene. Are we used to? And. A guy actually ended up working with. Now, Chads Barry helped him put on the Oregon Trail gravel grinder. He'd been putting on road races for years and there was a road race.
Man, I wanna say. He must have started in oh five, but it was a gorge Rube called it, and we had like six miles of gravel on every lap that was like a 20 mile lap. And it was a cat one, like proper full on road race. And I think one year like net overran was out there with us and like all sorts of like fast dudes.
And so we we're riding 23 c. Road tires on gravel, you know, in oh eight or oh nine. And then we slowly started, like after that race he put on a race, he's like, Why don't we just do a race that's totally on gravel? And I think maybe started that in, in 12 and then obviously with everybody else kind of catching up.
It was kind of, kind of natural, but it was, it was funny. It was almost weird going to races where we're riding like 30 plus c like cross tires for gravel cuz we're so used to like picking through everything on 20 fives. But,
[00:07:47] Craig Dalton: I think my first, in fact, I know my first gravel event was one of those events outside of Bend, maybe in Sisters, and I went up there. I had like a first gen niner. Gravel bike, maybe 30 twos on it. But my buddy that came with me only had a road bike and we kind of read and they were like, You can do it on a road bike.
So he was out on a road bike on that. He did get the ship beat out of him, I will say, in all the stutter bumps, but he may manage to survive it.
[00:08:16] Matt Lieto: Yeah. Was that the, the, was that the gorge or was it at in Bend? Like near Bend.
[00:08:21] Craig Dalton: It was near bend.
[00:08:23] Matt Lieto: Okay. Yeah. I mean, dude, yeah, more power. More power to him for sure. And all this being said, like when we were doing this stuff, you know, there was one year when we went from going from like the race with just the eight mile segment to like the full race.
I mean, there must have been. 25 guys that flatted in the race, like I've flatted 20 miles in and like the support vehicles like do we're well outta tubes, man. Like you're on your own. So there's definitely like growing pains with how we tried to do it, but it's it's pretty fun. Pretty
[00:08:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, we talk about it a lot here just how the equipment has evolved to just make the disasters less frequent, right? Like I just, I had a cross bike back in the day and every time I rode it hard off road on Mount Tam, I would flat and I was just like, Why am I bothering doing this?
I might as well just ride a mountain bike and not flat.
[00:09:11] Matt Lieto: Yeah, totally. It's, yeah, it's crazy. I think people forget at times what the technology has allowed for us. Like right now I'm looking, I'm, my studio is also where my trainer is, right? So I'm looking at my cella sitting on there and it's, I mean, there, gravel riding wouldn't be around if there would, if disc brakes weren't a thing, right?
Like if, if, if we didn't make that move, we wouldn't be doing this. That's why the biggest tires I could ride at those old gravel races were 28. Cause that was on, you know, if you had a cross bike, obviously you could ride something bigger, but it's yeah, it's, it's cool. It's fun. Interesting to see where, where it all goes and where we like stop and we're like, Okay, I'm now riding a mountain bike again.
[00:09:51] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I'm, I'm very much there. I mean, people look at my gravel bike. I now have one of those Rudy Suspension forks on it, and I tell people like, you know, where I ride? It's just, it's better, it's faster, it's safer. I'm more comfortable. I go straight up and down the coastal range, there's no in between and I'm flying into things and having the suspension just means I flat less and have more fun.
[00:10:13] Matt Lieto: Totally. And so we're, we're on the same page. We're gonna geek out here for a second, but, so I also have, I have the competitor to yours. I have the fox fork. I'm on the East Overland gravel team. We've got Fox and it's, you know, Before that somebody, somebody said, Hey, I want a bike with a fork on it.
I'm like, Dude, if you're gonna ride something where you need a suspension fork, ride your fricking mountain bike. Right? Like that was always my line. And they sent me one. They're like, Try it out. And I'm like, just mind blown. Right? Like it is. So much fun. And I'm not even, I used to say, I'm embarrassed to say, I'm not embarrassed to say anymore.
It is my favorite bike and I do have like an embarrassment of riches that I've got a couple of my as sparrows. So I have one set up without and one with, and it's just for old dudes with neck issues and like, just everything that comes with being old. It is so much more comfortable, so much more fun. And I did this huge well, not that huge bike packing trip from.
Boulderer to Steamboat with Decker this summer and I had my front suspension on and bike packing. It was like game changer cuz like, you're going down embedded rock at 20 miles an hour with all that weight on. Like when you see it, you just like, ugh. This one, I'm like trying to jump stuff and going off little drops and stuff.
It's great.
[00:11:30] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. Same way. Same
[00:11:32] Matt Lieto: it'll be, it'll be, it'll be interesting to see where it, where it goes.
[00:11:36] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I'm, I'm super interested to see like when the kind of average cyclist starts to see that as being an advantage. Cuz you, you would imagine like people who are really into the sport, like you and I, like, we could suffer, like we could take the abuse if we wanted with a rigid fork and you know, we could make that choice, but we're not, we would seemingly be more willing to take that abuse than the average cyclist should.
[00:11:58] Matt Lieto: Totally. And, and, and this is what is, It's like a, I think gravel hit the accelerator when we hit Covid right On like where it was gonna go. Like I'm, I don't know if anybody buys a road bike as their first bike anymore. Right. But a bunch of people buy gravel bikes for their first bike, which is great. I mean, dude, more people on bikes is all great things.
I love it. But it's interesting that the, it seems like I, I see people move to Bend and people that live in Bend are on forums and like, Hey, I can, I, can I ride this single track on the gravel bike or da da da, and I'm. That you shouldn't, you shouldn't be doing all this on a full rigid bike. Like, it actually doesn't, like, it's not fun.
Like I, I encourage you, like I, I'm, I'm sure you can and I'll support you in trying, but you'll have way more fun if you're on a bike that actually is like, suited for it. And I think, I think those bikes and dude, like, I'm probably a year away from thinking e gravel bikes are the best thing ever. You know, just, you know, seeing people, like I know people, Carl's.
Rides an e-bike and they go on 60 mile rides now, where that couldn't happen before. You know, it's just cool. There's, it's great to see where renovation has taken us for for sure.
[00:13:07] Craig Dalton: Yeah, a hundred percent. I didn't know I'd see alignment with you so well on these subjects.
[00:13:13] Matt Lieto: Oh, it's just Man, Cupid's Cupid's shooting his arrow over here.
[00:13:18] Craig Dalton: as you got sucked into kind of gravel racing and I, I remember a few years back you were part of the Eastern Overland team. Sounds like you still are. Did that become more of like where you were getting your kind of racing outta your system?
[00:13:33] Matt Lieto: Yeah. Compared to triathlon. Yeah, for sure. And I, when, when I, when I stopped racing triathlon, I, I mean, probably for the last few years I didn't, like, I didn't love it and I, I might not have ever been the person that like loved it, but going from my background as an overweight dude to someone who's.
Flying around the world, making a living in a professional sport, it was like pinching me, right? But I always was bummed when I couldn't do the stuff that I really wanted to do. You know, racing bikes and skiing and that and that sort of thing. So when I had the opportunity, you know, Easton Overland, it was probably after my first year at Unbound, I raised with.
Craig Richie and some other Michael Vanderham and some dudes there and were like, Hey, we should start this team. They're like, Hey, do you wanna be on this team? I'm like, Okay. And this is way back in the day. And this is funny, like looking back at it now, they're like okay, what will it take you to be on the team?
And I said, Okay. Two things. You can never refer to me as a professional gravel racer. Because at the time that didn't exist. Right. And I'm like, Don't do that. And second, you can't pay me anything. , Of course now it's like the, the opposite, going ahead, but just a, a rad group of people and it's all kind of a hobby for us.
And you know, the goal is trying to find people that could maybe use gravel as a platform to become athletes, right. And make living off of it. And like we fell into finding Amity the first year and like three months later. One Unbound and it's like, All of us were like, we get no credit for that because we didn't.
No offense. Amity, if you're listening, we didn't think you were gonna win on down that first year. Right? So, we are, and she's still involved and she's, she's a sweetheart and she, yeah, she's awesome to still, still be around, but So we continue wanting to try to open doors for people that might not have it.
And then for old timers like us that just kind of wanna still have a good time, it allows me to to be around cool folks and ride cool equipment and still go on adventures, which is sweet.
[00:15:25] Craig Dalton: Yeah, absolutely. When you think about like the experience of a gravel event, a good gravel event, and then you compare that to like an Ironman day. Are there similarities, like just sort of how you feel, the accomplishment, the journey you have to take throughout some of these events?
[00:15:42] Matt Lieto: For for sure. And I definitely, and I think the most similar was Unbound and because it just, I did it in 18 and it, it gave me challenges in ways I didn't think mostly like I flatted three times and that was like, I kind of had some assumption that that would happen, but not to that extent and like, Getting back to the front group till the last flat, like kept going.
Like that was, you know, it was like all these, and then you're used to that in triathlon where it's like, it's never the person that has the clean race that wins cuz nobody does. Right. So it's like adapting and, and that I love. So that was really similar but the, the depth of like, it's hard cuz I think I'm gonna get crap for this, but I think every gravel race besides Unbound in my experience is.
Way easier than an Ironman. And that's because you're not running, man. And maybe if you're a great runner, you would not say the thing. But I was a shitty runner and I was just trying to get to the finish line every time. Right? So like coasting when you're really freaking tired. That wasn't a thing in triathlon and it is in gravel.
So like for me, the shorter ones totally like up to six hours, way easier the unbound. Because you can keep going when you're tired. The like depth of how fatigued you get is like a different level cuz Ironman, I've done it like nine hours max. And if you're struggling it's your like legs that are tweaking out or like you like stop where in.
In Kansas, you're just, you have to keep going and you're like, your, your level is well below E so it's it's cool. Like you definitely have to like figure out where, where your energy's coming from. And again, the similarities for me, the, the problem solving is, is fun. I mean, the last, the last aid, the last stop at Unbound, after I had, I'd finally kind of cracked after the third flat.
And I call into the guys and I'm like, It's. Coke and gummy orange slices, and they're like, What do you mean? I'm like, Everything . And they like changed it. I literally ate like, you know, three pounds of orange slices you get at the gas station and, you know, 96 ounces of Coke to get to the finish line. Like it's, it's, it's chaos.
It's awesome. It's super awesome.
[00:18:10] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I, you know, it's interesting, you know, I enjoy talking to people with a triathlon background cuz I was a hobbyist triathlete. Like, I'm like a, I don't know, a 11 and a half hour Iron man kind of guy. But what I learned early on was like, you just, you can't cut corners. Like you have to think about your nutrition.
You have to think about what's next. Something's always gonna go wrong. And then when I started doing these gravel events, it was the same way. It was like, not like I was an exceptional athlete, but I just. Get bothered if stuff went wrong. Like my bike was gonna break, I was gonna fix it. I was gonna keep going.
I was gonna bonk, but you know, half the people ahead of me were gonna go through the same thing and it's just a matter of keeping the pedals going forward.
[00:18:49] Matt Lieto: Totally. And I think you get to the point where when something happens and you have a struggle, whether it's nutrition or mechanical, like as quickly as possible, you figure out and triage like, is this fixable? Okay. If it's not, then like, what's my clears out? Like how do I get what I need? And then, Then you keep going.
It's, yeah, it's super fun. And that being said, like I don't know that I've ever not finished a gravel race. And in most cases, like again, like at Unbound, that first year, Not that like, whatever, but a lot of people then didn't know what they do now, and people would've been like, Okay, my race is over. But it's like, No, stick a plug in it, Chase back on blah, blah, blah.
Like I was still in the race till, you know, 140 miles or something, till I got my third one. So it's like, it's not the way you'd wanna do it, but it's like there's always opportunities and all that being said, game has changed since then. I'm not, that's not an option I don't think at the the frog group anymore over
[00:19:42] Craig Dalton: Yeah, Yeah, yeah. I think you're right. All right. I wanna take a pretty hard detour and talk about protect our winters. Can you just kind of give the listener an overview? What, what the heck is it?
[00:19:56] Matt Lieto: So it's Protect Our Winners is a nonprofit that was started actually by. Jeremy Jones I wanna say it was like 2007. And he's a professional snowboarder. Now runs a company called Jones Snowboards. The people, if you search for him, you'll, you'll find him. Pretty, pretty rad dude. Pretty, pretty cool.
Like in hindsight, now looking at him, I went to DC with him and it's like, it's hilarious. It's like, You know, Broey snowboarder dudes like started this like full machine. That's like helping us survive the next little bit on earth. But yeah, I think I won't assume what his story was cause like, I won't tell it as well as he did, but basically just going out in the, and exploring the, the zones that he loved, but also obviously depended on to make a living.
He saw that it was all changing, right? Like the winters. I mean, it's a very, it is a very yeah, I mean, he, he, he, he definitely saw, he saw the issue and was like, Man, what can I do to fix this? And like, I think it was a very bold, at the time, thought to be like, I'm gonna be able to make a difference. But I think he and I, dude, I mean, I'm sure if he talked to him now, there's no way he, he would.
Protector what is, would be where it's at. But basically he's, you know, trying to, to make a change and use voices of, you know, obviously it started in winter sport, so winter sport athletes to to, you know, he obviously had a platform to talk to people that were fans of snowboarding and for him specifically to be like, Hey, This is real.
The, the world is changing and it's, it's not going in the right direction for us to be able to do what we want to do for fun. And then started obviously using other people in winter sports and then summer sports and so on and so on. To try to, to broaden the, you know, I think it, it was not lucky, but like maybe a little bit lucky. The growth of protect our winners happened at the same time. Is social media kind of taking off because the kind of ambassadors and alliance members that these guys have aligned with are able to reach a lot of people that care about where they live, but maybe don't think that they can have an impact or do anything with it.
And I think that the overarching vibe I get from protect our winners and talking to the folks is just like, Man, you. You can be involved, you can make a difference. And if, And right now, especially like voting is, is huge. And if these alliance members or these, you know, people like Jeremy can, you know, influence or followers to no matter what your viewpoint is, to go out and and vote.
And preferably if you're part of what we refer to as an outdoor state, which is anybody that participates in outdoor sports, whether you're a hunter or fisherman or whatever, like you probably. About what's gonna happen to our planet in the next little bit. Whether it's cuz it's what you do for spare time or you know, for me, living in Bend, know, it affects the community.
You know, like fire is real and fire season has always, always kind of been a thing. But now it's like fire season is like a month and it might.
[00:23:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:23:10] Matt Lieto: Two weeks, man, where like the AQI is over 400 and you're not going outside to do anything if, and like if you're inside, you got an air filter and you're still not doing anything, right.
So it's, for me, that was kind of the, the crux was, was getting out and you know, seeing that, that there's a problem that needs to be solved. But again, I think protect our winners does a good job and be like, there is. Something that you can do to, to help. And I mean, I know you've got a similar, you know, viewpoint and concern and you know, wanting to to impact as well.
What was it like for you to try to be like, Okay, I'm this like little dot, how do I like, I think that's the first thing, right? Is like, well, there's nothing I can do. Right? Like me recycling isn't gonna
[00:23:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, you know, going back to Jeremy's like the origin story, like it's really natural, like as a snowboarder who goes back to the same mountain year after year, to kind of understand visually like where the snow pack level is, where you know what's possible to ride and that's what's not possible to ride.
And I think what I started seeing in California, With the droughts and the wildfires is like the reservoirs I would go by were just shockingly low. And then combine that with, as you were just saying, like having to actually know what AQI is and get a little app on my phone to look at it every single year to see the effect of smoke blowing into our community from forest fires.
It was just really stark. . And that's what I found interesting about the Athletes Alliance is like anybody who touches the outdoors, if you're a gravel cyclist, a rock climber, you're seeing it firsthand happening in front of you.
[00:24:48] Matt Lieto: Oh for sure. And it's, it's funny you say that cuz you know, living in Bend and I grew up in Northern California and cut my teeth raising bikes and stuff down there and I'll go down for MIGS races in Grasshopper stuff and in Norco. And I mean, one year on the way back, I had to like go a different way home because the way I was wanted to go home was on fire.
And it's, you know, not the same as it used to be. And it's it's sketchy, right? And it's it's, it's real. But again, honestly like. I've got buddies that are involved with Protect our winners. And that's why I kind of got involved myself is them just chatting and thinking I had a platform, and obviously knowing that I'm aligned politically and care about the same things, but for me, and I don't know if it's the same for you, but for me it was like, well, what, what the heck can I do?
Right? Like if, if I, I think the, the last few years people just feel like be down. Like we're not gonna be able to, to change anything. Right? Like, where, where are you? Where's your head?
[00:25:48] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I think, you know, early on in my, my sort of life post college, I used to think about politics, honestly, like every four years in the filter of. Who's the presidential candidate that I get behind and is probably the last kind of maybe eight to 12 years that I just started to realize, like having a say in who's representing you locally and having those preponderance of voices.
Starts to, to make a difference. And I did some phone banking to try to get people out to vote for candidates. And I started to realize there was like this huge disconnect for people. Like, they just didn't even make a plan to vote. They didn't make it a priority. And I, I just started to think to myself like, it's only a few times a year you're asked to vote.
It's not that big a deal and spend a little time getting educat. About what the candidates are there for, and if it whatever lands for you, support them, do it. This is like our civic responsibility not to be up on a
[00:26:49] Matt Lieto: Yeah, for sure. And it, yeah, it's not, it's not, again, it's not that hard and depending, and I'm speaking from a, a place of privilege, right? For me, it's not that hard. For you, it's probably not that hard either. In Oregon we have male and voting, so it's like incredibly easy. If someone in Oregon said it's hard, it's because they're lazy in my opinion.
Or you. I shouldn't judge. But anyways, it, it is pretty darn easy compared to, to what it used to be. We're not standing in line for an hour at a time. Right. It's, it's pretty simple and it. It's impactful. Right? And I think that's the important thing and, and there's so many resources to be able to, It's not like these days, like clearly you can go and get the pamphlet they send you and read through everything, or you can, I mean, you could probably Google, what should I vote for having this opinion?
And I'll find it conveniently. Here's a plug. Stoked the Vote Campaign from Powell. You can actually just text 6 5 3 51 text stoke to that number and they'll like tell you where their nearest polling spot is. And if you want, they'll actually give you you know, some, a voter guide that kind of tells you who to vote for or what This is under the action fund of protect our winners, kind of a sister, sister company and they'll, they'll tell you kind of where to vote and what line to vote on.
Your concern is the environment and specifically this go around. It's like Montana, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado. I think Utah are like super, super important. So if you live in any of those states and you happen to be listening text 65, 3 51 and they'll let you know. But like, I mean, me and my buddies and, you know, cycling I think is a very social pastime and me and my cycling buddies every year. Every four years or every two years, we'll, like have a dinner party and everybody brings their, like, not their ballots necessarily brings their pamphlets and will like talk about it. Right. And like, we're never getting in arguments or anything. We're just like saying what everything is and kind of, I don't know.
I, I think it's it brings something more to our like friendship and like our casual hanging out more than just like talking about bikes. And it's, it's kind of fun to like hash it out, you know.
[00:28:58] Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I was visiting the protect our winters.org site today and clicked on the Stok Stoke vote and saw that whole process that you mentioned over text message, like I put in my name, my address clicked through, told me all about the California deadlines, how to return the ballot, how to track the ballot.
And I think I was, I was reading cuz they had, it sort of had an interesting breakdown. The fundamentals. It's like, okay, make sure you're registered to vote and how can kind of help facilitate you finding that information out. If you're not registered to vote, make a plan to vote. So make it easy. Get the stuff in front of you so you can figure out how physically you're gonna vote, whether you're gonna mail it in, whether you're gonna walk in and, and, and submit the ballot and cast your vote.
And again, how, how you should be looking at your local ballot measures from the context of we all love this thing, gravel cycling. Whether you believe it or not, it's happening that it's, it's it's being impacted and whether it's massive rainstorms in the Midwest for the early season, mid-south gravel races or mammoth tough getting canceled because of California wildfires.
Same thing's happening in Oregon. Like all this stuff, it's right as our, at our doorstep as gravel athletes and you cannot close your eyes. You have to get out there.
[00:30:18] Matt Lieto: No. Totally. Yeah, a hundred percent. You you said it said it perfectly and I think it's hard too, cuz I think at at times with how crazy our political environment is right now, that people just, you know, don't believe. Everything, you know, people have, have some people have doubts in the political system in general that is like, look at the facts.
We're not gonna go down that, that rabbit hole. But even if it is, like, try, like all you can do is try, right? And I, I'm pretty confident that my vote's gonna make a difference. But I think the big thing that you can ignore is I think sometimes, especially in you know, where I live from where I live and my beliefs, people just, we just assume, like you look at the polls, you're like, everything's.
It's like, no dude, do not trust the polls. Like we, That is not something that we can rely on and I think for so many reasons outside of what we're talking about now, even it's so important this next election and, and I think it's hard because I think a lot of the people that are disillusioned a little bit, Are folks that are young folks and a lot of those people aren't voting.
And a lot of people that like myself are kind of live in a, a area of, of privilege to a certain extent. You think, Wow, whatever. Everything's fine. Like, I don't need to vote, But it's like, man, no, you do. And no matter what, where you live and what your socioeconomic zone is or what you do for a past time, Something in this next election is going to affect you.
Right? So if you care about it or you care about, it's certainly gonna affect someone you love. So get out there and get off your ass. And in my case, I don't even have to get off my ass. They just send the ballot to me and I put it in my mailbox and send it back. So there's yeah, it's, it's, it's a, it's a great time to want to be involved,
[00:32:06] Craig Dalton: And I think there's, there's such a thing as political will and just whether you're in a region that has climate favorable policies and that's the prevailing kind of political, political wisdom, great. You still need to st show up and show that we've got massive amounts of support. For these kind of things because there's other parts in the country that you know, don't have the same kind of support, have a lot more headwinds to addressing climate change, and every little bit helps.
[00:32:36] Matt Lieto: For sure. And I think there's the, even the, the other side of it is there's, and me. The first, when I first got involved with P I was like, Man, I'm not gonna be able to make a difference. Like, People have been trying to, to make a change in this for years. It's, you know, there's still people that don't believe that climate change is real and all this stuff.
Right? And then I went, I was lucky enough to be able to go to Washington DC with protect our winners and, and a bunch of folks through the Athlete Alliance and the Creative Inside Alliance and like sitting down and talking to senators and congressmen and stuff, and, Crazy. I'm like, Whatever. I'm here.
We'll see if you guys think I can make a difference, whatever. Not that I'm, I think that I did, but in every conversation we're sitting down with very conservative representatives and not one of them did we spend any time debating whether or not it's real and like, that's stinking huge man. Like that was not the case four years ago.
And like I was in a couple meetings with Jeremy Jones and he left. He's like, Dude that is, That is not how this used to be. So keeping like being annoying and knocking on the door and saying, Hey, this is important to me. And of course like we're going there with the like facts, like, hey, the outdoor state is, you know, over 600 million people and this many dollars is going into it.
So you start talking their language a little bit, be like, Hey, if my town burns down, then they're gonna lose this much money and blah, blah, blah, whatever it is. But like to leave that. Have the, like, conservative Congress people like High Five and be like, Hey, send me an email. Let us know how we can help.
Is like awesome. It's really cool.
[00:34:15] Craig Dalton: Yeah. That's amazing. What an amazing experience to see government working like that. Maybe it's not working fast enough, but just to, to be there and having the conversation like that's important.
[00:34:25] Matt Lieto: totally. And, and you know, and, and, and p is definitely. I feel lucky being able to have that firsthand experience. But anybody who's involved in power or supporting p is, you know, helping all that infrastructure be around for us to go there and do that. And like, you know, before the last vote for the bill for you know, bunch of money going to climate change and relief and stuff, you know, I was like, email.
Swing voting representatives, right? It's like, that's crazy, man. They're emailing back like, it's pretty cool. So like, you know, bragging a little bit about what Powell does, like there's a bunch of stinking smart people making the right moves and. It's hard too. Cause I think go a little bit of a tangent.
I think, and this was my barrier to being involved with Powell. And if it wasn't for my buddies, I probably wouldn't have been because man, I don't know how good you are at like sorting your recycling, but like, I'm not very good like, I'm, I'm imperfect when it comes to this stuff. Right? And one of P's big things is it's imperfect advocacy, man.
Like in the end, like I'm still trying to get better at all that, Right? And like, I want to eventually get an ev cuz it makes a lot of sense on a bunch of different levels. And, you know, I, I recycle and I try to do everything. I can take my bag to like everything I can, but in the end, the, the personal change isn't really as big of an impact.
And I'm being polite. It's the systemic change that is gonna get us out of this shit. And that's what protect our winners is, is shooting for. And they're like combining all these resources of these people to go where it actually matters. And if we can get, you know, every ski resort to change to, to being more efficient and, you know, you know, government to be able to, to, to function at a level where we're using renewable resources and things that we can do now.
And that's one big thing with POW two is that right now they're just like, Keep an eye down the road, but like we're looking like right now, like near horizon stuff, stuff we can change now because if we can convince people in the government to put, give energy into doing something like let's do the stuff that we can take care of now.
And so they're like kind of cleaving on that, where I think there's, there's a lot of other people looking down towards the road, you know, further down the road.
[00:36:39] Craig Dalton: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so glad this conversation was able to happen now, and you know, I kind of turned myself a little bit inside out thinking, Oh, I got a couple podcasts I'm supposed to put out there. Then it dawned on me like, What, what, what am I doing? Like we got one week until the midterm elections, If we can change the couple minds and get some people to make a plan to vote.
If we can expose them to Powell's efforts over the long term, like that's what I need to be doing and I hate to be soak boxy to the listener. As I mentioned to you offline, Like I tend to sit back and not say a whole hell of a lot, but I really do believe it's important to get out there and make a plan and vote, and you've got time to do it this year.
[00:37:17] Matt Lieto: dude. For sure. For sure. And I mean, I, I, I don't mean to diminish as I did in the past, like, you know, I've been a slacker in the past too. I mean, when I was younger I didn't vote because I was lazy or whatever. But. And I'm sure there were issues that were very, very important then that I ignored. But I think now it's kind of hard to, to look and think that this election specifically isn't super important.
And again, kind of the, the, the, the moves that have been made just in the last couple months to help in climate change. You know, if everything changes in two weeks. They can cleave a bunch of that and take that stuff back, right? Like the way our, our system works. So it's like we're all celebrating high fiving that we've got this thing across the line, but in the end, if we vote the wrong people in in two weeks, then that's gone and we're back at ground zero.
Right?
[00:38:08] Craig Dalton: Yeah, you're back at Mile one 50. The Unbound 200, right, right. Again,
[00:38:12] Matt Lieto: That's the worst place to.
[00:38:15] Craig Dalton: Exactly.
[00:38:16] Matt Lieto: That's the worst place to be. So close, but yet so far. That's a great analogy. I think we're gonna start using that at Powell one 50 at
[00:38:23] Craig Dalton: Right on.
[00:38:24] Matt Lieto: Yeah. That's too funny. Well, dude, yeah, no, and it, I will echo what you just said. And again, I, I'm similar to you.
I don't assume that people wanna listen to my opinion very often, but it comes to a point where, like, right now I don't care. So I apologize if you, you guys don't wanna hear my opinion, but in the end, I don't even care who you vote for or what you vote for. Go out and vote, right? Like that's your responsibility and we're able to do that in this country.
And I don't think we should take that for granted. Clearly. I'd, I'd like you to support you know, voters or people that are coming in to, to help with climate change cuz it's affecting what we're doing, gravel racing, what we're doing in winter sports and, you know, us surviving the next. The next century.
So, if you've got the capability, get out, get out and vote.
[00:39:10] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Goodness. Said it better myself, Matt. Cool. Well, great to get to know you a little bit. I can't wait to run into you at some of these gravel events down the line, and I appreciate all your.
[00:39:20] Matt Lieto: Yeah. Thanks. The, thanks for having me on and bringing a little attention, Toal and, yeah, we'll, we'll get some, we'll get some gravel riding in a bend or Norco. I'll be down there soon enough.
[00:39:29] Craig Dalton: Right on.
[00:39:30] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Normally I would be taking a moment to ask for your support with a rating or review. But this week, I just want you to get out there and vote. Make sure you're organized. Make sure you've got your ballot. If you're not registered already figure out if it's possible to register at this moment in your state.
But get out there and do it. No excuses this year.
Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we come to you with recordings live from the Big Sugar Gravel event in Bentonville, AR. Conversations with Litespeed, Obed, Kuat, BMC, HED, ROTOR, Allied, and more.
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In this week’s episode, Randall has Josh Poertner on to talk aerodynamics. In a wide-ranging conversation, the two touch upon Josh’s time as Technical Director at Zipp, involvement in the development of computational models for rotating wheels, early collaboration with Cervelo founders Phil White and Gerard Vroomen, founding and leadership of the product brand Silca and The Marginal Gains Podcast, and ongoing consulting work with elite athletes and teams.
Silca Website
Marginal Gains Podcast
Episode Sponsor: Logos Components
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Silca - Josh Poertner[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the show, I'm handing the microphone back to my co-host Randall Jacobs.
Who's got Josh Portner, the CEO of Silka on the shout out a wide range in conversation about the sport and high performance. Many of you may be familiar with the storied Silka brand. It's been around for close to a hundred years. But josh took over back in 2013 with a mission of merging the highest quality materials and craftsmanship with cutting edge design and manufacturing
When you visit the Silca website, you notice a tagline, the pursuit of perfection, never settling, always improving. And I think that embodies how Josh approaches the sport. . So I'm excited to pass you over to Randall to dig into this conversation. Before we jump in i want to thank this week sponsor logos components
Yeah, I've been itching to get back on a set of six 50 B wheels, and I've been waiting for my logo's components, wheels to arrive. They literally just arrived last night and I'm super stoked. But yet disappointed because I have to go away for the weekend and I won't be able to actually ride them
until sometime next week. I chose the Atara six 50 B model. As you know, I'm sort of big on the big tires, big fun philosophy. So I've been eager on my unicorn, which I've been riding on a 700 SEASET for a while now. To get into the six 50 bees again and see what a six 50 by 50 combined with that rock shock fork is going to yield for me on the trails here in Marin. You guys may remember.
Me sitting down with Randall, talking about what makes a great gravel wheel set and everything that went into these logos component wheels. I encourage you to go back to that conversation because whether or not the logo's wheel set is for you or not. I think Randall does an excellent job of teasing out.
All the various considerations. You should be having when considering buying a gravel wheelset,
It is no small expense when getting into a carbon wheel set, but the team at logos has endeavored with their direct consumer model. Uh, to make it as affordable as possible and make them as durable and high performing as anything out there on the market. I written wheels designed by Randall for the last three years. So I'm super excited.
To see his latest vision come to fruition. With these new wheels and I'll have them underneath me soon enough. I encourage you to check them out@logoscomponents.com. Randall's also an active member of the ridership community. So if you have questions for him, feel free to join us over there at the ridership and connect with other riders. I seen people paying that their wheels have arrived so you can get some real, real people answering your questions.
About whether they're enjoying the wheelset and how they perform, et cetera. And I'll have more on this in future additions.
At this point. I'm going to hand the microphone over to Randall. And i hope you enjoy this conversation with josh
[00:03:30] Randall: Josh Portner, thank you for joining us on the podcast. This is a conversation I've been looking forward to for quite some time. Some deep bike nerdy is probably about to ensue, so, uh, let's dive, let's hope. Dive right into it.
[00:03:43] Josh: Well, thank you for having me.
Always, always up for some deep bike. Nerdy. I like that.
[00:03:49] Randall: So a number of our listeners will already know who you are, but just give folks a high level summary of what you do now.
[00:03:55] Josh: Oh gosh. So I own Silca, um, or I own Arrow Mind, which, uh, owns the Silca brand and trademark, um, and, and all that that entails.
And then we also have a, uh, we own Marginal Gains, which is a podcast and a YouTube channel. And, um, Yeah, our goal is to, a mind works with a lot of pro riders, pro teams, world tour teams. Um, you know, we do everything, Excuse me. We do everything from, you know, performance consulting, uh, modeling, uh, you know, setting up our record attempts for people or, or helping them design our record attempts.
Um, you know, we do tire pressure work with pros. We do equipment choices for teams. We think some of the most interesting stuff we do, um, is around where like, uh, teams or national federations don't trust the equipment they're getting from somebody. And they'll come to us and say, you know, the, you know, bike brand X says that this does this, and our writers don't think so.
Can you tell us what's true? And. We'll find a way to make that happen. So we, we've had some pretty interesting ones of those with, uh, particularly around the Olympics with the national federations. You know, no, nobody wants to have another Under Armor speeds skating suit, uh, situation, , right? Where all the, all the athletes think something is true and therefore it becomes true and, and nobody knows.
And so, um, you know, so we do a lot of that. Arrow mind does that, essentially. And so that's a lot of the performance work I was doing in my old world. I was technical director at ZIP for almost 15 years. Um, and, and then Silca is the product arm of the company. Uh, that's probably how, you know, most people know us.
You know, we make pumps and tools and, and, but we also make a lot of crazy things that people look at me and go, Oh, where the hell did that come from? Well, that probably came from some project or another. We did it in the Arrow Mind side of the business, Um mm-hmm. . So that's how we've gotten into sealants and lubricants and 3D printing and, and all sorts of other craziness.
Right? That's sort of how the one flows into the other. And then, you know, Marginal Gains is a podcast and, and YouTube channel where we talk about it all and, and we, we typically with a, a team or a company have like a two year. Secrecy period on a technology. And then after that we can do something with it and, and talk about it and tell the story.
So, you know, it's always, it's always fun to go through those periods where like, Oh, thank God we can talk about that now, . Cause you know, we're talking about it internally all the time. And, and you're like, Oh, can we put that in the podcast? I don't know. So, so that, that's what I do now. We, I, I play with bikes basically.
[00:06:34] Randall: Very, very cool. And, um, when you talk about the consulting work you do, is this kind of full stack performance consulting, is it very a focused, is it all technical sides, including say, like bearing drag or, or things like this? Is it, um, obviously positioning falls into Arrow Nutrition. Like where, where do you, ooh, where does your domain physiology start?
[00:06:57] Josh: And I draw the line at physiology, you know, there's a whole, there, there are people who are, are like my equivalent in that world. And, and my God, I can never even dream to. You know, clean their shoes. So, um, no, you, you need someone to talk physiology, you know, And I'll, I'll pull my phone out and we'll call Allen Li or somebody, you know, Yeah.
With a bunch of contacts. But, uh, you know, Alan's one of my favorite go-tos for things like that and be like, Oh dude, I've been over my head help . You know,
[00:07:21] Randall: he, he's, um, he's actually been on the pod before, but Craig interviewed him, so I might bring him on in the future to do, you know, my, my more kind of nerdy type of interview.
Alan's great. Yeah, no,
[00:07:31] Josh: he's, he's a lovely guy. He's a lovely guy. And, and I just love, I mean, he, you know, like I find myself pretty quickly sometimes getting into places where people's eyes just glaze over, like, what the hell is this guy talking about? And, you know, I love that Alan can do that to me in about 30 seconds, you know, we're talking about the stuff that he does.
You're like, Oh, whoa, shit, way over my head way. I, I didn't even recognize the last four words that you used in that sentence, . And, uh, so it's, it's awesome to be able to be surrounded by people with that. But no, you know, we. The stuff that they come to us for. I mean, you know, when I left sip and started soak, of course everybody and their brother, you know, came and said, Oh, design us a wheel.
I'm like, well, like I can't do that for a couple years. But also I'm kind of just done with that, you know, like I've lived that life. I, you know, it, it was fun. But, you know, we, we continually updated wheels for 15 years, but it, it really is kinda like doing the same thing over and over again, you know? And, and so it just wasn't fun for me.
So, you know, they'll come and say, um, you know, help us design this cockpit, or we, we do a lot of, with our, our in-house, uh, 3D titanium printing, we do a lot of custom cockpits for, uh, teams, riders, things like that. You know, where we laser scan the rider, get the position, lock that down to the wind tunnel, design the part, 3D print it, um, you know, stuff like that, that, that's really exciting.
We, we'd get a lot of, you know what, um, You know, help us optimize for this time trial at the tour or the Olympics or whatever, where, you know, what tires should we run and we can, we have systems and tools and, and spreadsheets and a million other things that we can, um, Yeah. Help, help them determine. And then a lot of times we, you know, we get companies coming to us, um, really just wanting to know, like, you know, if, like, which of their sponsor products should they use and when should they go off sponsor?
You know, you'll see that a lot at like, the tour where, excuse me. Um, you know, like they, they ride the sponsor correct product, you know, 98% of the time, and then they're gonna sneak it in here or there when it's really critical. So, you know, what, what are those really critical points? And then, you know, if, if they're gonna risk getting in trouble or outright get in trouble, like it needs to be worth it, right?
And so they might come to us with like, okay, you know, we need. I need a time trial tire for this rider for this day. You know, what should we do? And, and we'll help him with that. But yeah, you know, if you, if you were a, a brand, uh, or a world tour team there, or approach our athlete that wanted to go to the win tunnel, you know, you might pay us to come along.
Um, a lot of what I do too is kind of fun is just act as like a fly on the wall in these team to sponsor interactions. You know, I think I was probably at half a dozen wind tunnel tests last year where I really had pretty much nothing to contribute other than being the neutral third party in the room, um mm-hmm.
you know, so that everybody was comfortable that everybody was. Comfortable .
[00:10:26] Randall: Well, I would imagine there's a mix of the, uh, the political, if you're talking about, you know, what should be using our own sponsors gear versus slipping something else in all the way to, um, balancing the competing goals of say, like comfort and pure power output on the bike versus aerodynamics.
Um, if you're talking about a time trial position. Yeah.
[00:10:47] Josh: Oh yeah, for sure. And, and I think even down to, you know, and I think as much as we love to talk science and testing and, and try to be as scientific as possible, I mean, this stuff is really, it's emotionally hard. It's politically hard. It's, you know, companies will bring new equipment in, they're with their engineers.
I mean, those guys and girls want that stuff to work so bad. And you know, sometimes you just see things coming out where, Oh yeah, that's clearly faster. And you're like, Well, actually, the way I would interpret that is it's probably about. The same, um, or mm-hmm. , you know, let's, let's rerun that test or, um, you know, it's always, I don't know, it, it, they, they like, people like to get themselves in these loops where, you know, Oh, we did this and it's 10 seconds faster and it's that, And I feel like back in the, you know, when I was with zip, we did this a lot during the Lance Armstrong area and he was writing our disc and, and we were coming in as consultants for the first probably five tours or whatever.
And um, you know, every wind tunnel test you'd get to the end and they would have this chart that's like, we just made him 90 seconds faster. And it's like, look guys, that. There is no 90 seconds faster. I mean, you know? Mm-hmm. like, like that is not gonna happen. You know, you, you just did a whole bunch of stuff that's not sustainable that he can't hold his head like that.
Mm-hmm. that helmet tails gonna come off the back, you know, I mean, cuz he, people do things like, Oh, oh, the helmet tail moved, rerun. You're like, Yep guys, when you ride in the real world, like the tail's gonna move. Like you don't, you know, people like to, they select data, um, without even realize they're selecting data.
And so, you know, it is, it's just good always to have a third party in the room. Um, you know, it's kinda like funny story, you know, back to, you know, my zip days, how Firecrest came about, you know, Firecrest was literally the name of the prototype that, that kind of blew all of our minds. And the reason the prototypes had weird bird names was that we had to double blind them across engineers because you just didn't want anybody.
Kind of, you know, having an effect on their product, right? I mean, we all, you know, we all fall in love with our children, right? . And, and in this world, like you, you can't love your children. Um, and you have to be willing to kill them when they're not good. And, um, you know, we would do this double blind thing where we would like assign them all a number and then we would assign bird name, these bird names a number, and then we would randomize it and then they would get all put up.
And then nobody really knew whose idea was what, when you were in the tunnel. Um, that's necessary, right? Cause you're, you know, you can be your own worst enemy at that stuff. I think we've, you know, we've all been guilty of that a time or two in our lives. But, uh, you see it all the time, particularly in these performance, um, improvement coaching type things where, you know, people just wanna will something into existence even when it's not.
Yeah.
[00:13:38] Randall: Well, and I can see, um, you know, the marketing oftentimes has it much more, uh, presented, much more like a, you know, this is just, it's physics. It's more, it's more exact, it's more, um, it's more controlled. And, um, there are competing variables, particularly when you have, you know, a monkey in the middle.
You have to, this, this, you know, this animal needs to be comfortable. This animal needs to be fueled, This animal needs to be able to control this machine through a varied environment. And that varied environment may be varying in real time if weather changes or things like this. Um, and so there's just all these competing interests.
And so when you see, you know, I often laugh at like, You add up all the different arrow benefits that, you know, different companies claim for components and you should be doing. Right. Right. You know, you might be looking at, um, uh, relativistic effects potentially at some of the speeds you'd be able to achieve.
Uh, Jen, just like how, how many watts can be saved. Totally. Being a little bit facetious there.
[00:14:37] Josh: Yeah. No, no, it's totally true. I mean, and I still have this photo somewhere, I think I even showed it a couple years ago on social media. But as this, this really great photo that I love that ended up, um, on the wall at the Texas A and Wind tunnel, but it's me with next to Lance Armstrong, um, in the, what became the Nike Swift spin suit, um, that had been flown down there from, you know, Seattle.
And it's, uh, oh God, the guy in from his book college or whatever he calls him, and then a guy from Nike, so it's the four of us. And I'm kind of standing there like doing, you know, like pointing at something on his back and it, like, a college student took it for the school newspaper and then they had him autograph it and it ended up on the wall.
And so like, Oh, that's me. You know, it's kind of funny. But, but the real story there was that suit, you know, they were paying like 3000 bucks a meter for this suit. They'd been putting it on a mannequin in the tunnel. I mean, it was gonna save three minutes per 40 k. And you're just sitting like going, guys, like, I, I mean, just quick doing the math, like three minutes for Lance Armstrong, you know, like the guys already, That's not possible.
And, and of course we get it. We put it on him. Um, the whole thing, you know, it, it's, it's cool, it's fancy, it was very red and it does nothing. I mean, it literally, we were, and the Nike people are there and they're like, Oh, that's not possible. It, it can't do nothing like whole. Let's run it again. Okay. Now get 'em out of it.
Put 'em in the normal suit. Run that one. You're like, it, it just doesn't do anything. And, and they just kept going. Well run it again. Well do this. Let's, let's close pin it up. Let's tighten it. Let's, do, you know, I mean, I bet we, we lost two hours trying to make that stupid thing look like it would do anything.
You know, And again, it's, it's just people being people and we've all done it. But
[00:16:21] Randall: I hear like something of stages, of, stages of grief. Like, you have your baby and like first it's denial, and then you, then you have bargaining. Yeah. Yes. Put so much into this. Yeah, that's exactly,
[00:16:32] Josh: that is exactly what it is.
And, and you know, the, the crazy reality with that one was, you know, three months later at the tour, they launched it anyway, and they said it saved three minutes and he , you know mm-hmm. . And we, we. It, you know, I just had to laugh. I mean, I remember, you know him, you know, winning whatever one of the time, trials by like a minute and like going, No.
So Nike's essentially saying he would've lost that time trial by two minutes had it not been, had he not been wearing that suit. Come on guys. Um, yeah.
[00:17:00] Randall: Well, and I think that, that maybe that's, um, you know, headline number one from this interview is don't believe everything you read, especially if it's coming from a party, has a financial interest in it.
[00:17:10] Josh: That is true. That is true. Yeah. I, I, I tell don't, don't even believe yourself. Right? I mean, truly like you, you are a bad, um, a bad predictor of things and, and you're a bad feeler of things and nobody wants to admit that. Um, but it's just true. You know, that's, I've been preaching that gospel for, for years.
But, you know, I mean, 90, I, I would say 90% of the things you. That you feel when you're on your bike. Total, total crap. Um, and, and we know that cuz we, we've done blind testing with riders. I mean, like unbelievable world class rider. And if you blind them to what they're actually riding, they can't tell you almost any Yeah.
Um, you know, all that perception, but still, but the stories away, the
[00:17:56] Randall: stories we tell ourselves are powerful. There is a strong placebo effect. Oh, for sure. Uh, for sure. But it has to be acknowledged that that is the placebo. And if you actually had those beliefs about things that had genuine benefits, you would get both, You would get the actual
[00:18:11] Josh: benefits.
Yes. The, the most powerful thing in the world is a placebo that actually works. Right. , where you get, it's like a, it's a double whammy benefit. Um, and so yeah. That, that's where, you know, I mean, in a nutshell that's a lot of what, you know, I've made my career doing right, is trying to help, help sway people towards the, the, the placebos that, that actually do have a, a, a benefit for them.
[00:18:34] Randall: So this has the conversation going in a slightly different direction than I was anticipating, which I'm really enjoying. So I've been, I've been diving into this lecture series from this guy Robert Sapolsky at Stanford. It's on, um, the, uh, uh, behavioral biology, and it's looking at all the different ways in which studies go wrong.
And so there's like, you know, beliefs about something, uh, for a long period of time, you know, eminence, people in the field, uh, promulgate these, you know, these ideas. And then it's shown that, you know, the study was, was not, uh, taken, uh, done properly or what have you. And so I'm curious, let's dive more into things that go wrong in the study of aerodynamics and, um, maybe kind of the edge of, say, human performance where interfaces with aerodynamics
[00:19:17] Josh: Hmm, ooh.
Interest. So, I mean, a, a good. I would say career defining for me, example of that was, um, you know, we, from like 2009 to 2012, we were really all in on developing, uh, CFD for the, for bicycle wheels. And it, it just wasn't working right. Everybody was talking about it and showing papers, and, but I mean, it just, the reality was like the CFD just never looked like the wind tunnel.
The curve shapes were different. The data was, we're, we're talking It
[00:19:47] Randall: wasn't mid, mid
[00:19:48] Josh: nineties, right? Oh, no, Mid, mid late two thousands. Yeah. Like mid, late, late
[00:19:53] Randall: thousands. Okay. Yeah. And you're not using, you're having to develop something ground up or you're having to, uh, adapt something from Desso or, or one of these bigger
[00:20:02] Josh: vendors.
Yeah, So I think the question at the time was, you know, how do you, how do you really properly model the spinning wheel in, in flow that's also translating, right? And you look at. You know, all the CFD stuff with aircraft, um, you know, there's no rotational flow, you know, and then you look at, there's special models that people have built to look at, like, um, turbine jet, turbine engine combustion or whatever.
But those are incredibly unique. And they're also, you know, there's RO flow rotating, but in a different access and Yeah.
[00:20:36] Randall: The F1 guys perpendicular access.
[00:20:38] Josh: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so, and then you got the F1 guys who weren't really modeling, um, they were modeling the rotation of the wheels, but they were doing it by modeling a rotational component at the surface of the tire.
So you were, you weren't essentially like spinning the wheel, you were just saying, Oh, there's a induced rotation a about this surface. Um, which has been in the, the solvers forever. So
[00:21:02] Randall: in interesting, this is taught because the, those wheels are traveling so quickly, especially the top of the wheel. If you're doing 200 miles an hour, the top of the tire is traveling at 400.
And so you're having sign significant turbulence at that interface, right? Well,
[00:21:15] Josh: and you, you have like Magnus effect, right? You're actually getting pressure differential top to bottom, um, you know, from , the direction of the wheel spinning. And so, you know, we, we could do stuff like that pretty accurately, right?
You know, you could look at the, you know, a rotating baseball and, and predict the direction that's gonna curve. I mean, things like that were possible. But, you know, every single, and, you know, my God, I used to get, I still do occasionally, but I, I used to probably get 20 PhD papers a year from kids all over the world.
Um, you know, Oh, what do you think of my paper on, you know, CFD of bicycle wheel? And we're like, Oh, it's beautiful pictures, but your data's crap. Um, . And it just wasn't figured out. And, and in 2009, I, I met a guy, Matt, uh, Godo, who's a triathlete, but he also worked for a company called FieldView. And they had built all of the CFD automation for, uh, Red Bull F one, um, and probably half the F1 grid, but his, his big account was Red Bull.
Um, and he, I met him at Interbike and he had a paper that he was working on. He said, I think, I think I might have figured this out, but I really need to be able to like, Like, build a wind tunnel in the computer and then look at it so we can directly compare them back and forth. And, and so we, we did that.
We published a paper at the a I a, which was at MIT that year, and it went over really well and people liked it. And we published another paper the next year, um, at, at the a i A conference. And that went well. And then we got this big grant, like an $80,000 grant from Intel, um, to really tackle this problem.
Cause the, the head technologist at Intel at the time was a guy, uh, Bill Fry Rise, and one, one of the coolest guys I ever met. Um, you know, the kind of guy who, whose resume just has like a five year period that says like Los Alamos , like,
[00:23:01] Randall: okay, you're cool. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Not, not allowed to talk about it.
What do you do? Yes. Uh, yes, exactly. .
But,
[00:23:08] Josh: uh, but he was a cyclist and he was some senior, somebody at Intel. And, and, um, And they, they gave us this money and we, we, we really went hard at this and we ended up developing a, essentially all of the little nuance details. Uh, we did it in star ccm. We post processed it in field view.
I think we processed it on like a thousand cores, which for 2010 was, you know, a lot. Right.
[00:23:33] Randall: Um, and these are, these are, um, CPUs and not GPUs for that era. Right. A lot of the stuff of that era GPUs now, right?
[00:23:40] Josh: Yeah. Yeah. I remember we, yeah, I mean, that was the beginning of, uh, that was the beginning of the cloud.
It was pretty cool, like 2008, 2009, people were still traveling. I remember at one point in that process there was discussion that like, we might have to travel, um, to, Oh God, what is it? The, the university over there in Illinois had a huge, had like a 1200 core machine and they're like, Okay, we, we might have to go there and, and buy, you know, two days of time.
And then as that was happening, cloud. Kind of the beginnings of cloud was there. And I remember we, we met a guy who had a cloud thing, and they had just been bought by Dell. And, uh, we were at a conference and he's like, Oh, no, you know, with our, our thing, What was that called? But, uh, with our thing, you, you can just do it like up in the ether.
We're like, Whoa. You had never heard of that before. Yeah. Um, it was just exciting times and, and, uh, but, but we, you know, had this great team. We pulled it together. I mean, that's really where Firecrest came from, right? It was, it was largely designed using, um, Hundreds of iterations of capes predicted to be fast, uh, using this cfd.
And, and ultimately we won. We, we became like, I think the first non university and non-governmental group to ever win a, uh, uh, innovation excellence award from the Supercomputing Society. So it was pretty cool. Salt Lake City's like this huge super computing conference and you know, it's like darpa, this and university of that.
And it was like these four guys from this bike brand and, you know, was, uh, it was a pretty cool experience. But, but in that, so that's like a huge tangent. No,
[00:25:17] Randall: no, this is, this is great. And, and just to take a, uh, stop for a second, CFD computational Fluid Dynamics software that is used to model complex multi-variate systems where there's second order effects and, you know, fluids and, and things like this.
So anyone who's not, uh, who's not with us on that, like complicated software for complicated system models, in your
[00:25:39] Josh: ideal world, it's like a wind tunnel on your laptop, right? In the, in the George Jetson's version of things. It, it's the wind tunnel on the laptop. And in the reality of things, it's kind of more like, eh, it's about as good as guessing most of the time.
But, but, but sometimes it's really good at finding certain really specific things. So I won't, uh, I won't knock it too hard, but why the thing I wanna
[00:25:59] Randall: dive in a little bit
[00:26:00] Josh: here. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. Well, let me, so let me finish the, the thing that we discovered in this process that was super cool. Um, was that once we had all of these transient, we were solving for all these transients, um, and we really started looking at not just like the, you know, the, the side force or the yaw force or you think of um, you know, the whole thing with like wheels and handling, right?
This all came out of this project cuz you could, you could predict the steering torque on the wheel, which, you know, none of the balances being used to test wheels at the time even had torque sensing, right? You had drag side force and lift, but none of them had the rotational components in there. And so that for us at first was like, oh shit, we've never thought about torque cuz we weren't measuring it.
Right? It's sort of one of those, yeah, like you've biased your study all along, but then the big one was looking at the predicted, um, data and there were all of these, uh, harmonic effects. and we kind of looked at each other and we're like, Oh my God, every wind tunnel you've ever been in, Right? The first thing everybody discusses is, you know, what's the, what's the, the time across which you're taking the data and at what frequency?
And then you're averaging that data, right? Cuz we're all after a data point. And you could look at the tunnel data and the CFD data, and when you pulled them out of their point form into their wave form, essentially you could see the harmonics kind of lined up, the frequencies match when, oh shit, we've been averaging out a really important piece of data for 30 years.
You know, this harmonic thing is big. Like what's your,
[00:27:39] Randall: your standard? So it's operating on a, it's operating on a frequency that is smaller than the sample rate. Or how
[00:27:46] Josh: was it essentially? Essentially we were just idiots and we were just, we were just time averaging the all of that out. Right. I mean, it's, you know, if you need to Okay.
Any wind tunnel you, you went to in the world and be like, Oh, well, we'll take, we here, we take data for 30 seconds at, you know, whatever, a hundred hertz, 60 hertz, 120, or whatever it is, and then we'll, we'll take an average. Oh, okay. That, that's fine. Got it. You're averaging out in there is real, um, uh, like amplitude changes, uh, largely due to vortex shedding is, as it turns out with bicycle wheels.
But a lot of that high frequency handling stuff, particularly as wheels get deep, um, , sorry, I'm in, uh, I'm in our studio, which is off of our kitchen and somebody's lunchbox just, just leapt off of the top of the
[00:28:34] Randall: refrigerator. Um, yeah, sometimes I'll have a niece or nephew come in screaming, so No worries.
Yeah. So, but,
[00:28:39] Josh: uh, but no, we, we realized there, there was a, a. About a factor of five difference in amplitude between wheels in terms of that, those oscillating effects. Right. Which typically it's just, it's generally vortex shedding. And the CFD can predict that really well, right? Where your little pressure builds up, sheds off, sets off a counter rotation that sheds off.
Um, but as a, as a cyclist, you, you feel that as the wheel, you know, kind of oscillating left to right. Um, and we, and let's, let's for 20 years, you know,
[00:29:12] Randall: Yeah. So you're just taking the, the lump, you know, 30 seconds averaged out data and saying, Okay, it gives you this amount of benefit and you're not seeing those.
Um, I mean, really what we're talking about is, uh, you know, instability that may. Or, you know, otherwise result in, in control issues on the bike. And I want to take a moment to just like, define some terms, uh, because not, you know, many of our listeners are not overly technical. Um, but uh, I think some of these concepts are easy enough to get your head around, like, so, you know, describe at a very high level you're talking about vs.
So, you know, maybe describe lader flow and flow attachments and vortices sheddings. How, how does this, how does this, uh, how can you understand this without a, a technical background?
[00:29:59] Josh: Oh, those are awesome questions. Okay. So Lader LaMer flow is kind of what you. What the, the world wants you to think of in the wind tunnel.
You see the wind tunnel picture and they've got like the, the 10 lines of smoke and they're all kind of flowing together cleanly and beautifully. That's, that's meant to, to evoke lam or flow, right. That if you were to drop a, a smoke or a particle in there, that they would all flow in lamini, you know, like sheets of paper.
Um, yeah. Uh, so, so
[00:30:29] Randall: it's going in a straight line. Smooth,
[00:30:31] Josh: controlled, Predictable, yeah. Flow. And it, it follows the contours of the thing that it's flowing against. So,
[00:30:38] Randall: so kinda like water flowing down a river sort of thing. It's not perfectly laminate, but it's all going roughly in the same direction. And there's not a lot of water
[00:30:46] Josh: in a pipe disturbance, you know, would be in a pipe better example, presumably pretty laminate, right?
And then you start to add stuff, you know, water in the river. Now you're, you're, you know, you've got a rock and now all of a sudden there's a disturbance and it starts to swirl. Um, and so you, you get into, you know, more complicated types of flow. I, I think the, the big ones, you know, for us to think about are, you know, most, so most drag that we deal with comes from, um, uh, pressure related things.
So you either have like the, the high pressure on the front of the rider, right? The wind that you're pushing into this when you stick your hand out the car window, right? The mm-hmm. the air you feel hitting your hand, you know, that's, uh, that's a pressure drag, uh, in the positive direction. And then you have the flow, the vacuum in the back.
Yeah. The flow will detach off of the object and that'll create a vacuum behind. And so that's a suction drag, um mm-hmm. . And then when you have something like vortex shedding, it's when, uh, the, the. Description I ever have for vortex sheddings. If you've ever driven an old car with, uh, like the metal antenna on the hood, you know, at some speed on the highway, that antenna starts vibrating, oscillating sideways, which is like the last thing on earth you think it would do, right?
Like your brain's like, well, it should just keep bending backwards with speed. Mm-hmm. , why is it going sideways? Well, that's that you get this thing where you have a little, uh, a little curl of flow will kind of detach more on one side than the other, and that creates a side force. Mm-hmm. . But in doing so, the suction that that has now left behind will pull a similar vortex from the opposite side.
Mm-hmm. . And that creates an opposite side force. And so you get these, see an oscillation, you get these oscillations and uh, you know, that's, it's huge in architecture and mm-hmm. , it, it's why you see so many of those super tall buildings or kind of have pyramid shapes or might have some sort of like, feature that spirals down them to, to kind of break that up.
I, I
live
[00:32:46] Randall: in Boston. We actually have, um, a skyscraper here that was flexing so much, the windows were popping out. This is, you know, decades ago. And, you know, it's still, you know, they have this like funnel of air that's going through there and just the nature of the shape of it and how air gets funneled in, it was causing enough torsion to, um, you know, cause window de bonding.
Um, so yeah. That's crazy. Uh, so then, you know, think applying this to the bike and particularly a wheel, um, you know, this is the biggest effect is, is presumably your front wheel where you're having this oscillation, this shift in pressure from one side to the other at a very high, high level, um, that's causing instability.
It's making it so that you may lose control of the bike. It's not predictable.
[00:33:34] Josh: Yeah. Correct. Correct. And, and the, the other thing we learned through CFD that it was doing, which is not obvious until you think about it, but so you think of the. So you might have, say it that the trailing edge of the front half of the rim, you're, you, you set up a little vortex shedding situation.
Mm-hmm. . Um, and so you've got a little side force, but it's kind of at the, the trailing edge of the rim there. Right? So it's got a little bit of leverage on your steering, but the other thing that's happening is that alternating attachment and detachment of flow, um, changing the side force, but you're a side force at an angle.
So there's a lift component, right? Which is how the drag is being reduced. And as that happens, what, what's also now changing is what we call like the center of pressure. And the center of pressure. You think of like the wheel from the side, like, like the sum, the aggregate of all the, the arrow forces on that has a center point about which it's balanced.
It's kinda like a center of mass. Um, you know, so it's, it'd be center of pressure. Well, that center of pressure when you have. Shedding happening somewhere that's now moving forwards and backwards and very
[00:34:40] Randall: rapidly
[00:34:41] Josh: as well. Potentially, Yeah. Rather rapidly. I mean, and, and when you really look, look in on it, it, the frequency actually can be quite close to, um, the, uh, speed wobble frequency, right?
Which is somewhere in that like three to four hertz range. Uh, which also happens to be really close to the frequency of human, uh, shivering, which is kind of cool's why you're more likely to, to speed wobble when you're really cold. Um,
[00:35:05] Randall: and not everyone just push will have experienced speed wobble. But if, you know, if this is basically your, you, you hit a certain resonant frequency of, of the frame based on the frames geometry, uh, the head tube angle, the what are the factors that go into that,
[00:35:20] Josh: Uh, it's top tube stiffness is big and so, yeah.
Yeah. And it's actually this speed wobble's. Interesting. It's. It starts as a residency issue, but it's really a, it's a hop bifurcation and, um, a hop B. Okay. And so, yeah. And so what you have in a hop, uh, bifurcation is you essentially have two st two stability, um, would be the best way to think of it. And you are jumping from the one to the other.
And so like, right up until that, so the
[00:35:48] Randall: system wants to be in one state or the other, but not in the middle
[00:35:51] Josh: and there's no middle. Right. And, and what's, what's so cool, like, like early in, um, uh, early in covid, you know, we were all talking about this, you know, what is it the are not value, the, you know, like if it's above or below one.
And when you, you line that out that are not, when are not crosses one, it's a hop bifurcation that looks just like the speed wobble, bifurcation, I mean the graph. It's amazing how like, cool those things, you know, mathematically you're like, Oh yeah, that's exactly the same as this. It's just here, it's in a, you know, you get the exact same graph if you're looking at, um, Uh, wing flutter in an aircraft, uh, in the wing tunnel.
Mm-hmm. , similar bifurcation problem, but yeah. So you, you, you have essentially two states and the system can get tripped from one end into the other. And in the one the bike is stable and wants to go straight, and in the other it wants to oscillate because each oscillation mm-hmm. is setting up the, the counter oscillation.
Um, and so like, it, it's, you know, in resonance it's more of like a runaway you, you think of like the, how that's tradition. Yeah. It amplifi forcing. Yeah. It, it just keeps growing and growing and growing. Um, and in this one it just, it, it, it's not growing and growing, but it just trips you into this spot where like it's really bad.
Um mm-hmm. and it will just shake the crap outta you at the front end. And um, and in fact motorcycles quite
[00:37:07] Randall: scary. The high performance motorcycles will sometimes have a steering damper for this very reason. Um, because you'll, yeah, you'll get these speed wobbles. And so the damper is essentially making it so there's some exponentially increasing resistance.
Um, I, I know you know this, I'm explaining it for our, our audience just in, you know, cause again, I wanna keep bringing it back down to earth, but, you know, having just like your, your suspension, you don't just have a a just a spring, you have some sort of damping circuit so it doesn't feel like a pogo stick.
Um, which is a related effect. Um, but, uh, very cool. And are not for our listeners as well.
[00:37:47] Josh: Funny. I hadn't thought about that. I haven't thought about that in like two years as we were talking like, Oh, I remember now. That was, uh, yeah. Yeah, that was, uh, But what or not was the, um, Oh shit. It was the. The contagion ratio or whatever, like how, how many people, each person would transmit to mm-hmm.
And so if it's, which makes sense, right? If every person's gonna transmit it to 1.1, it grows. If you're gonna transmit it to 0.8, it, it dies. Um,
[00:38:12] Randall: so the analogy here is that, that the increasing amplitude of that, you know, those pressure differentials, sending it to the, the system to one state or the other and causing that increasing oscillation, Is that a exactly correct characterization?
[00:38:26] Josh: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like you, you can take it right up to a line, um, and you don't have a problem. And then as soon as you cross the line, you're in a different state. Mm-hmm. . And, and that's where I think, you know, speed wobble for those of you who've experienced it or chase tried chasing it on a bicycle, um, you can solve it sometimes with like, the stupidest stuff.
Um, you know, one of the, the common ones is to just put a little bit of like, um, like, like a heavier bar tape or a little bit of lead weight in like your, um, Uh, your plugs. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . You can oftentimes change it with a tire pressure or a different tire cuz you can add just enough damping at the contact patch.
Um, that it just pushes it up high. You know, if, if, cause typically what people will find is like, Oh, it's, I'm totally fine. Then I hit, you know, 38.5 miles an hour and all hell breaks loose. Well. Mm-hmm. , you change the mass at the top of the system a little bit and maybe you've now pushed that point out to 45 miles an.
but if you never go 45 miles an hour, you've affected, that's not a problem. Right? Yeah, yeah. Like, oh yeah, I
[00:39:28] Randall: fixed it. I think another example that people may have experienced too is like, uh, sometimes you'll have an issue with your car that, you know, won't notice except that certain speeds and it's because of those speeds.
There is some, you know, oscillation that's happening. If it's a tire and balance or something in your drive train or the like. Um, you know, I've, I once had a vehicle that was really good up to 60 and then like 60, 61, it was problematic and then it would smooth out a bit after that and it was just like this wobbling effect that would balance out beyond that, that speed.
Um, alright, so then bringing things back down to earth. Um, this is delightful by the way. I, I could do this all day, . Um, and I, I hadn't quite appreciated. Um, the, the basic r and d and like basic science and tool building that you were involved in. Uh, so. That's, its its own topic. That's probably not one for, for a podcast of this particular
[00:40:22] Josh: def.
Yeah. I, I will say on that, I think that's the part that I think never, you know, the marketing never really tells that side of the story cuz it's just too complicated. Yeah. But if you're, if you're out there and you're, you're into this stuff, like that's the fun stuff. Like, I love launching product and, and the product itself.
But like, that crazy journey to get there is usually like, that's where all the fun is happening. And, and, and typically cuz we're, you know, you're doing it wrong, like 90% of the time you're like, you know, it's just can be months or years of like, we suck, you know, this doesn't work, we're getting our sasses kicked.
And then you, you know, if you persevere long enough, you will come out the other end and it's like, wow, we, we needed all that stuff. Like, we needed to get our heads handed to us over and over again, or we never would've figured this stuff out. Um, Yeah. I really, really enjoy that part of, um, of, of technology development or whatever you wanna call it.
[00:41:16] Randall: Yeah. Basic, like real basic r and d right down to building the tools that you need to do the r and d you want to do, um, Right. . Yeah. Very cool. And obviously like the compute power and the, the algorithms available and, you know, the switch to GPUs and all these other things that have, um, changed since you were developing that make it such that today's models are both vastly more powerful and still yet trivial in complexity relative to the system itself.
[00:41:44] Josh: Yeah, totally.
[00:41:46] Randall: Yeah. Um, well let's dive into some more practical topics. So let's talk about like, alright, so a lot of our listeners we're the Gravel Ride podcast, right? So thinking about that particular experience, um, what should, what are, what is worth, um, a gravel rider thinking about. Uh, with relation to arrow.
Uh, so things that can be done that will improve aerodynamics, but then not take away from the ride experience that a lot of riders are after, particularly when they're going to grab, you know, they wanna be comfortable, they wanna have a good time, they wanna have good control over a variety of different terrain and so on.
So what are the arrow? Um, and, and they don't wanna look silly, so they might not be, want wanting to wear a skin suit or something like that. Not that it looks silly, but, but you know, a more, a more serious enthusiast type of rider. Uh, what are the Yeah, what are the things to think about?
[00:42:36] Josh: Oh, gosh. That's, that's a good question.
Um, I mean, I think it really depends on, on what. Th the particular rider, you know, is after, I mean, are you, are you racing? Do you wanna go fast? Do you wanna not get dropped? Mm-hmm. , um, you know, do you need to carry stuff? I mean, I would say one of, one of the big ones that I, I just see and, and you know, we, we make a ton of stuff in our company and one of, one of them being bags.
And, you know, we're constantly accused of not making bags that are big enough. And so I've been on this mission for a couple years of like, you know, what is in there, , Like Really? Mm-hmm. what's in there. Yeah. And it is amazing to me just how much crap people are carrying. You know, you, you open some of these monster seat bags, it's like, man, just because you bought it doesn't mean you need to fill it or use it.
Um, you know, it, and, and absolutely there's, there's like time and place for it. But, um, you know, I. Some of the stuff like that, like, Oh, okay. You've, you know, do you, you show up on the local gravel right here and you know, people look like they're, they're almost like bike packing, like mm-hmm. , you just don't need, you know, it, it's a 40 mile loop, you know, that starts and ends at a bike shop.
Like, you, you don't need to bring a bike
[00:43:49] Randall: shop with you. Well, you, you need your coffee grinder, you need your, your mini stove and you need your neuro press. Yeah, Yeah. Um, different experience. You know, let's assume that we're going after like a performance rider who's, um, like doing, doing, you know, a hundred, uh, a hundred mile events than they're, they're training for it and they wanna squeeze out more performance, um, out of their existing setup.
Or they're considering, you know, what bike to get, what wheels to get, what, um, how to set it up, even considering bike fit. Yeah. Or, you know, clip on arrow bars and the, like, what are the different things that people can do and what are the compromises and so on.
[00:44:24] Josh: Yeah. I mean, the, I, I think certainly for gravel.
The one clear cut, no compromise. Better all around product that I can just always recommend is like a, an arrow top drop bar. I mean, it is amazing how much faster those things are than round section bars. I mean, any really, you know, like pro vibe or the zip fuca or whatever, you know, there's, I think every company makes one.
It's that big, you know. Oh, it's hu I mean it like wind tunnel speeds. It's a flattop bar can be like 28 to 30 watts. I mean, it's nuts. Yeah. Cause you're, you're replacing round covered in tape with something that's like pretty thin and shaped Well, sure. Or it can be massive, but, but the,
[00:45:05] Randall: I didn't, cuz the cross sectional areas is not that big compared to, you know, the rider and the, the rest of the bike and so on.
Some
[00:45:12] Josh: No, it's, it's, well and in gravel it has the double effect of being, you know, shaped or ized in the direction that is also gonna add compliance, right? Yeah, yeah. And, and comfort. And so you, you know, it's one of the few products I can really look at and go, okay, that thing is more arrow and more comfortable and has more service area for your right.
I mean, better all around. Um, that's a pretty easy one to, to go with. And, and similarly, you know, if you've, you've got the money. I mean some of these, the, the integrated cockpit solutions that are out there are even faster, right? Cause it's just even less. Stuff in the wind. Um, so let's talk you, let's
[00:45:48] Randall: talk about that.
That's big, a big serviceability compromise and, and you know, fit can be a concern with that too cause it's harder to swap components and so on. How much of that is coming from, um, simply not having the cables running into the down tube? Like, can you get the vast majority of those benefits with cables coming out from, say, underneath the bar?
If they're tucked in on the bar or even coming out from the bar and dropping underneath the stem into the, the headset from there?
[00:46:14] Josh: Yeah. Yeah. My, my rule of thumb for cables that I always use cuz it's so memorable is, um, You know, Greg Lamond versus Fon in the 89 tour time. Mm-hmm. , So 2020 kilometer time trial.
Um, the eight second gap, there was more or less equivalent to Fons ponytail, Right. As we, we loved to joke about a cyclist, but was also the equivalent of one number two pencil length worth of cable housing. So, and
[00:46:46] Randall: this is, and this is true even if the cable housing is say, in front of the head tube, so it's going to be disturbed by the head tube anyways, cuz you're getting the drag off of it.
Be, you see what I mean? Like, so I, I'm trying to hone my understanding of the
[00:46:59] Josh: Yeah. I mean, you think, Yeah. So I, I would think, uh, good way to put that would be that, Yeah. Putting, putting a slow. Crappy thing in front of a smooth thing, you're, you're still getting the drag of the slow, crappy thing. Yep. Um, and you may actually be worsening the flow, um, on the arrow thing.
So Yeah. Got it. Absolutely. Still, you still have that effect. Um, you know it, and it's hard to say, you know, in some cases, you know, it's, it's close enough or it's just in like the goldilock zone where it's a good distance away where you're like, Ooh, we can kind of make them disappear. And they become, you know, uh, a almost like the cable isn't there, but that's not typically what we see.
And typically, you know, you, you throw a bike in the wind tunnel with that and then you rip the cables out and you run it again and you're, every time it's like, Oh shit. Big difference. Difference. You've, in
[00:47:50] Randall: terms of watts, like a few watts here, like, so, so the handlebar is the big one, you said as much as 30 watts at wind tunnel speeds, which granted gravel riders generally are, are, we're
[00:48:00] Josh: not going that miles an hour.
But you, Yeah, you we're out for a long time. Yeah, but you are out there for a long time, so you don't have the speed. But yeah, you, you definitely have the, the, the potential time saving. So, yeah, I, you know, hidden cables. I agree with you. Total pain in the ass. And, you know, my God, I've spent a career working on world tour bikes and, and you know, Ironman, world champion bikes and things like that.
And I, I feel everybody's pain, you know, people are always like, Why is the industry doing this to us? Like, like, Well, cuz you want it and cuz it works. I mean there's no, like, it, it's a pain in the ass, but it works. Mm-hmm. . So anywhere you can get rid of cable. get rid of cables, um, you know, skin suit. I have to say not everybody loves it, but man, it can be a huge, huge difference.
Uh, I mean, you look at, you know, we were just out at lead, uh, Leadville and Steamboat, and you know, all the top. Guys at Leadville and skin suits now, cuz it, it makes that big of a difference. Um, arrow bars can be huge and, you know, I think that's, that's one I I think everybody's got their own sort of flavor that they like.
But, you know, to me, like for gravel, a stubby, a stubby bar that has functional pads mm-hmm. , um, really can be worth it just because it's a different hand position and it, it's enough that it, it's effectively changing your, kind of, your whole torso position and it, it, it's just giving you a, a break all around.
Right. It's different pressure points in your shammy for the time that you're using it. It's different, you know, muscles in your back. Um, I think there's a good, this is the, the extent of my physi physiological knowledge, but I, I think it's good to, to mix things up. Um, like that. I, I know a lot of people have kind of gone to these super.
Narrow, stubby, I don't even know what you call 'em. Like semia bars that Yeah,
[00:49:46] Randall: mini arrow bars.
[00:49:48] Josh: Nowhere to put your, nowhere to rest your weight. And, and it just feels like everybody I know using those is constantly complaining about their wrists, you know? Um, and so I, I, again, not a physical, but the change
[00:50:00] Randall: in the change in frontal area, um, is that just an unmitigated benefit or are there circumstances where you can reduce frontal area and, you know, have a negative result within the realm of, you know, changing a Roger's position?
[00:50:16] Josh: Yeah, you know, a lot of it depends on your, your baseline and, and how good you are. Positionally, I think, you know, when, you know, we do a lot of position training with top athletes and you know, the. The best place you can be that's not an arrow bar is on the hoods with level forearms. Mm-hmm. , right? Like that's the, and and ideally with relatively narrow bars,
[00:50:37] Randall: so, and perpendicular upper arms as well, presumably,
[00:50:40] Josh: or give or take.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it is, it's, you're gonna roughly get there depending on what the rest of the position looks like and, you know, obviously different body shapes and whatnot. But yeah, I mean, you think horizontal forearms are keeping that pretty much out of the wind. Mm-hmm. , Um, and, and they are also keeping it, it's just hard to hold that position, um, with, in a way that you're also still opening your chest.
Because, you know, you were really trying to keep air from getting blocked up under the chest. And when you get a rider doing that, they just always kind of form, which I say always, I'm sure there's some counterexamples out there, but they, they almost always, um, kind of adjust their back and their shoulders in a way that they kind of turtle their head a little bit.
You know, the head comes down and you're just kind of now pushing more air up over the body and less down into it. Um, but from there, arrow bars are almost always an improvement, right? Cuz you're narrowing the arms, um, you know, you're tightening things up even further and now you're pushing more flow around the sides, um, and less into the chest and less into the hips.
And there's some physiological things. You know, people, you know, wide hips, big hands, certain shoulders, certain back shapes, right? That's why we go to the tunnel, you know, it's, it. 90% of the time, you could look at somebody and go, Oh, do this, this, and that, but man, 10% of the time it looks good and you run it and you're like, That's not good,
We can just find a different solution. Um,
[00:52:10] Randall: yeah. So air bars are huge. Another thing that we're starting to see is, uh, so BMC has their new cas uh, uh, line. They went with a super narrow, uh, handlebar, so narrow at the hoods, and then, you know, flare at the bottom. Uh, that seems like another thing that again, is, Well, I mean, on the one hand, yeah, you're getting narrower, but on the other hand, you're also closing up the chest and maybe, you know, you're not getting as much oxygen, like air turnover or something.
Or like, are there issues where I, so
[00:52:38] Josh: I, I have been beating the narrow handlebar drum for 25 years. Um, you know, I am yet to actually see or be told by a real physiologist that that whole. Oxygen lung thing that we were all told as juniors is true, is an issue. Um, yeah, I I've just, yeah, we've just never, I mean that, that I know of and I'm sure somebody out there will say, Oh, here's a paper.
But, you know, I, I know whenever we've studied it, looked at it, we've looked at it with athletes, I mean, look at what's happening at the world tour. A lot of that is, you know, we've been beating that drum. I'm starting to see that for years, and people are doing it and they're winning. Um, so, you know, and I wonder
[00:53:17] Randall: why aren't we seeing it with extreme flare as well, like a compound flare at least, so that you can still keep a, you know, a reasonably vertical lever position because then you could go even narrower and have, um, still have the leverage for the descending and so on.
Is that a
[00:53:32] Josh: tradition thing? Yeah, I, yeah, I think some of it's that. I think some of it is just, you know, how far do you really wanna push the uci? Um,
[00:53:42] Randall: you know, oh, the UCI cares about the flare in your bars.
[00:53:46] Josh: Oh, they will. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think there are actually rules putting some limits on that, but yeah, at some point it's gonna look funny enough that you're gonna draw attention and they're gonna go, Wait a minute.
Um, and, and you know, we've, we've
[00:53:58] Randall: seen them, I've got a 28 centimeter wide bar with huge flares on there, and I've got specially made levers that come off of it so that I can actually still touch them from the job.
[00:54:07] Josh: We have seen it with, I, I can't remember the name of that bar, but I think it's out of Belgium or something.
But it's got like, you know, uh, 180 millimeters of reach, um, super narrow with long, and you can kind of lay your forearms. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember seeing that and they quickly were like, Nope, that's out. Um, so I, you know, I think we just, people are, people are cautious. I think the, the setups that are working now, um, are very largely built around that, uh, three T track bar.
I can't remember what it's called, but, uh, I know. You know, it's got that kind of cool like wing, like gulling shape to it, but it's super narrow, arrow tops, um, relatively vertical, uh, drops. But, but that's a bar that the ucis allowed for years, right? And so I think that as a, you know, when, when conversations are happening behind closed doors, that's the kind of thing of like, Oh, well this looks enough like that, that if they call us out, we, we go in there and be like, Well, it looks a whole lot like this thing that you've allowed for 20 years.
Um, you know, we, we have tons of those conversations. Yeah. So, so I, you know, I, I think, but I, I will say, I, I think too, that's where, um, you know, a lot of people might look at the pro tour and things that they're writing. Oh, well if this worked, they'd use it. You know? I mean, that was what people told us when we were building zip in the early days.
Well, if they worked, the Pro Pros would ride it. I'm like, Yeah, but they. They don't know what they're, they don't believe in aerodynamics. You know, they, the pros, they don't riding
[00:55:34] Randall: super skinny tires at super high pressures cuz they felt faster for a long time, even though, you know, at least, well, you know this better than than I do.
I mean, the data has been saying for quite some time that it's more efficient. Never mind the accumulated fatigue that you get when your body's just being, you know, rattled at, you know, high frequency over the course of many hours.
[00:55:56] Josh: Yeah, yeah. No, it's, you know, that I would say they're quite often the last, at least as a group to change.
Right. But you, you are seeing it now. I mean the, you know, and, and, and you know, the team like Nios hiring a guy, hiring Dan Bigham to come in and, you know, you, you are seeing some changes, right? Uh, that when teams are bringing full-time people like that in, um, we are gonna start moving the needle there, but it's still a delicate dance with the.
With the UCI and, and all the sport governing bodies, right? Nobody, You hear it all the time. Nobody wants a repeat of the whole fna. Uh, I don't follow swimming, but I was the technical, uh, committee director for cycling at the World Federation of Sporting Good Industries. And, uh, at the time when FNA Band banned all of the super tight, uh, swimming suits, and it was just a cluster, right?
I mean, they just came out and said, Nope, you've pushed it too far. We're done. And if the whole industry was sideways with like, we've invested millions of dollars in this and the records are breaking, and people wanted and on and on and on, and they just said, Nope, you're done. And, uh, I think it took them five years to under undo all that damage.
You know, I mean, you just wanna
[00:57:11] Randall: something parallel with running too with, uh, carbon fiber insoles and like what is, what is allowed in terms of the amount of spring that can be delivered and so on. Um, Yeah, I, I see, I see them showing up on my local run. And, um, I might have to get a set just to keep up with the people I used to beat, to keep up with
[00:57:29] Josh: It's totally true.
[00:57:31] Randall: Uh, that's, I mean, that's, that's, to some degree, that's the nature of the game. And that's why in, in significant part, that's why the gear is as good as it is right now is because, you know, people are looking for, as you would say, those marginal gains. Um, yeah. Um, I wanna dive in. So, uh, I want to put, bring in a few, uh, listener questions.
Uh, so we posted in the ridership that you were gonna be coming on, and so we had some folks asking questions there. Probably the biggest one that came up was, um, talking about, you know, we've, uh, Craig and I brought up the rule of 1 0 5 or 5% on the podcast before, but, you know, citing, citing it, it's not a deep understanding, uh, at all.
So tell us about how that emerged in. How it applies. Um, you know, particularly in the gravel scene where you're looking at tires that are much bigger. Um, and I mentioned, uh, earlier that, you know, specialized as a video for their reval wheels where they're running a a 42 mill tire on i, I think a 35 or less external rim, and they're claiming some arrow benefit.
Does that seem plausible? Is there, uh, given, given, given what you have seen in the wind tunnel and in your modeling?
[00:58:41] Josh: Yeah. Um, yeah, it's totally plausible and I guess, we'll, we'll start with rule of one. Oh, so rule 1 0 5 was really, you know, I, I realized pretty early in my career that you had to come up with sort of rules of thumb for things or nobody would listen to you
Mm-hmm. and, you know, spent two years traveling Europe trying to sell Arrow. Sell World Tour or pro tour at the time, uh, directors and team owners on aerodynamics and you know, I mean literally got thrown out of every single team, team over there. Uh, I mean, it was just, we just got laughed out of the room.
Just imagine
[00:59:20] Randall: any of those team directors could have just adopted it at that time and had this huge advantage and didn't,
[00:59:26] Josh: uh, that was, I mean, I always said, you know, Uli at srm, thank God, you know, he was developing his thing. And when I walked in to pitch Reese, um, he was already on power meters. And so that, that's when it hit me, like really the moment of like, Oh shit, the wa is the, is the currency here.
The wat is the, the lingo Franco, right? Because we talked grams of drag and this and that and, you know, and, and a lot of them were still talking about calories and kilo jewels and, um, bpm, you know, these things. And it was like heart. Exactly. And, and so, and so it was like, Oh, wow. I have Watson, you have Watts.
Okay. We're, you know, Rosetta Stone baby. Like we're, we're on, We, let's now, now it's
[01:00:08] Randall: an optimization function.
[01:00:10] Josh: Right, Right. And, and now it's, it's what's used. But I mean, that was truly the moment of, uh, you know, I left that meeting and we called SM and bought a bunch of, um, a bunch of power meters and then kind of, that became the dog and pony show, right?
Of like, No, no, you can see it in the power. And we can, I mean, it was, you know, this was 2000, 2001. So, I mean, this was like, like very early days, right? I mean, this was like, yeah. Like, you know, like pre power tap, like, oh yeah. Hundred and 60 bpm. Like, well that's, um, which is, or my favorite at the at the time.
Would, you'd get, And the triathletes were great at this, like, like, I, I raced on your wheels and I, nothing changed. And you said like, Oh, well what, what was your race pacing strategy? Oh, 22.5. Like, Yeah. Okay. Well here's the thing. So 22.5 is always 22 5. I bet you ran like a monster. Oh shit. I was like five minutes faster in the run.
Like yeah, cuz you had all the, all that energy left. But, but you know, it's kinda like, note to self, if you ride at 22 and a half miles an hour, it doesn't matter. Nothing else matters. You will only ever go 22.5 miles an hour. Um, yeah, we just, it, it was just a different time. Right. And, and, uh, so I had been, I think 2001 was the, for 2000.
Yeah. 2000 was the first time I was invited to the tunnel with, uh, Lance Armstrong and, and Yohanne and that whole group. And um, you know, obviously they were on zip discs, which truck was buying. Um, but head was their wheel sponsor other officially. And so, um, they had that head three spoke wheel and, and I noticed in the tunnel the bike always had this like continental TT 19 millimeter continental t.
Tire on it. And you know, we had tested that wheel in the tunnel and it just was always just fine. But, you know, the one we had that we tested was our baseline tire at the time was of course, of CX 21, right? I mean like the, probably the most race tire in the history of ever. Um, you know, that thing had like a 30 year dominance at the top of the of the pro Peloton.
And uh, like, wow, that wheel looks amazing with that tire, but it's pretty averaged whenever we tested. And so really fell down this rabbit hole of like, what are the tires doing? And um, Similar time, uh, Craig Willett, who had the bike tech review, one of the first like online blogs of the late nineties, um, about bike technology.
He had, he had gone and done a wind tunnel test of disc wheels and he borrowed a zip disc that had a 23 millimeter tire on it that was pretty, pretty well used and the wheel just looked terrible. And so, you know, we were trying to figure that out and combat, you know, oh, the, the disc cover is way faster than a real disc.
And like yeah, but that had a 19 millimeter tire and so got Andy to let me go to the tunnel and just look at rim tire interaction. And we just spent like a whole week doing just that. And what we came out of there with was this realization that, and it makes sense, um, when you just diagram it out. I've got a YouTube video on this that people can look up rule 1 0 5, but, um, If you're gonna keep flow attachment on the leeward side, right?
So the, you got the Winward side, like the side the wind is coming from, and then the leeward is, you know, the opposite. So this is assuming
[01:03:35] Randall: you're gonna keep, it's coming at an angle. There's some yaw involved at an angle, right? Yeah.
[01:03:38] Josh: Right. Yeah. And it's almost always coming at some bit of angle, right? Yeah.
It's almost never purely straight on. So, so we had to really start thinking in terms of, um, Oh, okay. There's always some crosswind I think that hadn't fully been appreciated. Um, but then, you know, if you wanted leeward side attachment, you the rim couldn't be in the shadow of the tire because the air separates pretty early off the tire.
Yeah. Okay. And so you can just visually look at it and see, oh wow. It, you know, if, if they're equal at two degrees of y the rim is shadowed, right? And so everywhere beyond that, there's, your attachment is hopeless. But if the rim is wider, Especially if the rim is wider up at the tire, we, we could maybe keep that flow attachment quite high.
And so as a result, you know, the, the rims of that era, the sort of V-shaped, U-shaped rims, um, people were doing in the nineties, early two thousands, um, became toroidal and the hybrid toal and, and some of these other variants that we ended up developing. But they started getting wider. And, uh, you went from, you know, the, the flow attachment would break off at between two and a half and five degrees and all of a sudden, I mean, we could keep flow attached at 12 and a half maybe.
You know, I think when we did the 8 0 8 in, uh, 2003, 2004, um, that had flow attachment at like 17 and a half degrees. I mean, that was just a, not never,
[01:05:04] Randall: it's in a, in, in a wind tunnel, right? So the bike isn't moving relative in a to the flow, so you're controlling that angle. Um, Right. Yeah. So 17 and a half degrees, um,
[01:05:13] Josh: which is, yeah, which was nuts, right?
I mean, it was at
[01:05:15] Randall: 30 miles an hour. I mean, that's almost a side wind tunnel. I go, Right. It's almost
[01:05:20] Josh: ridiculous. Yeah, yeah. You, you do the math there and you realize it doesn't happen very often, but Yeah. But what that means is, is you know, the percentage of time that you're writing in conditions where the flow is attached is extremely high.
You know, you think of those early V-shaped rims, you maybe have flow attachment down in the five to 10% of writing time. Mm-hmm. , and by the time we get to 8 0 8 and Tory, and, and some of the shapes we have now, you probably have flow attachment in the 90%, 85 plus percent, uh, of ride time. I mean, it's just a, a much improved experience.
And then where
[01:05:55] Randall: presumably there are, there are different parts of the rim where, uh, that attachment is more, more relevant. Like the top of the rim is traveling at twice the speed of the bike. So it's going forward and you know, the bottom is stationary. And so like, can you tell, talk about like where, where most of the benefits are coming from in terms of where on the wheel and then in terms of like the depth versus the width and, and things like that?
[01:06:18] Josh: Yeah, so for, for pure drag, you're sort of like, uh, three o'clock, nine o'clock positions are really key because that's where your section is shortest relative to flow. Um, and that's also where from a handling perspective, your, uh, your lever arm, so to speak, that the wind has against you is the longest.
Right. So that's where, you know, if the, you know, you think of the wind trying to like torque the bars out of your hand. Well, you know, that's where he's got the largest torque wrench. Um, you know, you get higher in the wheel, it's shorter. Um, but then as you get higher in the wheel, now you're, you know, you should be
[01:06:54] Randall: force.
Well, and you should be able to keep, Am I right that you should be able to keep flow at attach if you have a deep section wheel keep flow attached over a very long distance because you have essentially a continuous four F surface. Yeah. Or as deep as that deep section rim allows. So the deeper the rim.
[01:07:10] Josh: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As you slice a wheel and you keep coming up, you see, you know, you go from like, you know, it's across section, cross sectional shape at three, and now that cross sections getting deeper and deeper and deeper and more elongated. Um, and, and that's why you, you typically, um, even, even bad rim shapes tend to not be that bad as you get higher.
Right? Because the tires become a, a essentially a sharper, uh, leading edge. And, you know, things tend to, you know, your, your section over which the flow is, is, you know, in some cases three, four times as long. Yeah. Um, and so that's where, you know, you, But as you improve that sort of three and six area, you also.
You do end up improving things up there as well. And then of course you get into problems of, you know, like that first 8 0 8 was 27 millimeters wide and designed to be run with 21 millimeter tires. But in an era where the bike makers were obsessed with, Narrow. And so now you all of a sudden have a problem of like, you're damning up airflow between the rim and the fork blade because the, for, you know, well, that's insisted on having their fork blade super squished together and, you know,
[01:08:18] Randall: tight tolerances and now no one can run a bigger tire on those old bikes.
I actually wanted to ask you about the, um, the Lotus, um, bike, the, uh, the Hope HB dot Lotus Track bike. Yep. Um, so this is a, a really radical bike. I'll try to remember to put a link to it in the, um, in the show notes, but it, you know, it seems like the core, the core thing that they've gone after here is pushing those four blades as far away from the wheel as possible and doing the same thing with the chain, uh, the seat stays.
Um, yeah. So talk about that. Like, why, why don't you see that on road bikes? Why don't you see like a, a super wide fork with a skinny tire
[01:08:55] Josh: in the middle? Yeah, So, so it's funny, you know, we, we, we actually. Originally did the late nineties at zip, we, we made a fork that had a hundred millimeter wide crown and vertical legs.
Um, and it was actually welded by a local guy here out of, um, ar strut from an indie car. And, uh, we put that thing in the tunnel and realized like, Holy crap, this is really fast. And, and that's where we also, it, it's kind of a true story around why zip abandoned the three spoke, three spoke wheel only in the tunnel can be pretty quick.
Three, spoke in a fork, was nowhere ever nearly as fast. Um, and oh, because the
[01:09:30] Randall: interaction with the
[01:09:31] Josh: for blades, Right. And, and that's, you know what I always tell people, the easiest way to think of this is the sound. Oh, right. Yeah. Nobody,
[01:09:39] Randall: You're getting these pressure buildups and releases each time the, the, that big spoke goes past the four.
Ah, okay. And then the further way you.
[01:09:49] Josh: Yeah, it gets quiet. And so that's, we actually built it to try to understand that and that's when we, we put it on the zip 3001 and I mean, remember running that? We were just like, Holy shit, that's the fastest bike we've ever tested. That, that, It's funny the guys at zip still take that bike, um, back and, and use it as a benchmark to test.
And it's, I mean, it, it's to this day as fast as almost anything out there, um, even though. 25 years old now or whatever. Um, and do you have
[01:10:14] Randall: to be a certain distance way or is it, is it, does it get exponentially better? It gets further away, or, Well, actually no, it gets the biggest benefit should
[01:10:22] Josh: be, is immediate.
Yeah, no, you, you definitely lose you. It's definitely diminishing returns and that's why, you know, at a hundred millimeters you're fine. Now at a hundred millimeter, you know, that boxy shape, there's some real handling, um, issues to solve. Right. I mean, the fourth wants to kinda like parallelogram, um, Sure.
Yeah. Side loaded. And so, you know, the forks are gonna end up being heavier and there's more service area and all that stuff. Now, what the, the British team guys and Hope did was they took it one step further and said, Well, if we're already gonna come out here and try to build that gap in, let's push it out even further to try to put it in line with the writer's legs.
Mm-hmm. in, in the hope that, um, you talked earlier about, you know, it, it, it's not always very doing much for you to put a crappy thing in front of a fast thing, but it can help you to put a fast thing in front of a crappy thing. Right. And so mm-hmm. , by putting a, a, a very beautiful air foil out directly in front of the rider's legs, they're able to control the, the air downstream condition hitting the leg.
And so now you have the ability to, like, do you wanna turn it most likely outboard? Um, or do you wanna just disrupt it in a way that you're reducing the pressure on the front of the leg? Um, you know, I, I would think of that almost like, you know, you look at, uh, Diving competitions. Right. They always have that like little spray of water that's like breaking the surface tension on the water so that divers don't die when they hit it.
You know? And you can kind of do that aerodynamically, Right. With upstream and downstream effects, you know, you can kind of, um, put a different type of flow onto something that you know is less arrow. Right. So we might like put a little flow energy in there. Um,
[01:12:01] Randall: so you're basically curling, cleaning it up.
You're, you're essentially cleaning up the airflow or like conditioning the airflow before it
[01:12:07] Josh: hits the legs. Yeah. You, you may actually be dirtying it a little bit. Yeah. Before it, it hits the legs. . Hmm. Super interesting. So I, I, I, I wasn't involved in that project, so I can't speak for exactly what they were up to, but yeah, I would, I would be interested to see.
And then, and then they did the same thing in the, the, um, seat stays. And, and there you would wanna, um, you know, you would actually wanna be recapturing and then now cleaning that flow, right? To leave it as smooth as possible. So, you know, you may in the sense be creating sort of a, this, um, interesting like little interstitial area between two air foils where it, you have.
Slightly more optimized condition for this, this mess that is this spinning leg, Right? Especially in track where the legs are huge. Mm-hmm. . Um, and so it's, it's an unique problem to solve. Cause it's really, it's not obvious, right? The, the obvious answer may be completely the opposite of what you actually wanna
[01:13:02] Randall: do.
Well, and let's bring this down to a more practical application of this concept. I mean, I, I don't, I don't think we're gonna see bikes, um, for mainstream audiences that are pushing the fork blades and the seat stays, you know, that far out. That probably doesn't make sense. But pushing them further out relative to the wheel, I'm surprised we don't see that.
Like the, the structural issues. Um, I mean with, with advanced Composites, you can solve that with relatively low weight. Three T has their, you know, has a, a fork that fits a 2.4 inch gravel tire. Yeah. And so that's, I mean, and it has a really, you know, uh, it has a small crown. It's not this big beefy thing and it's quite lightweight, so presumably structurally you could do it.
So I wonder why you don't see it with road bikes.
[01:13:47] Josh: I, I mean, I think you've, you've certainly seen the move in that direction over the last, I I'd call it 10 plus years. Right? I mean, Track Trek was really the first one to go there cuz they knew they had an issue with that three spoke wheel that lands was riding.
I mean, you look at the, you know, the truck TT bikes of the two thousands had way wider fort crowns and, and rear stays than anyone else had. Right? Cause they, they knew what wheel they were working with. Um, you know, you've seen some of this, uh, In road. I would say Trek is still one of the, the big ones, but, um, or probably one of the, the class leaders on this, but also you've just seen other things happening, right?
The tires then got bigger, which made the rims need to get bigger. Um, and then of course everything had to get taller for clearances. And so, you know, now I think they're, were, we're, we're much more threading the needle for like, how can we turn this race bike into a customer bike and vice versa without having to make, you know, a million custom molds and custom sizes.
And cuz cuz the, you know, the, the kind of cool trickle down reality of, of our sport and what we're doing is that, you know, the, the bike that you buy off the shelf really does come from the same mold that the pro bikes come from cuz that's so expensive to make those molds that, you know, nobody's getting custom.
Yeah. Um, You know, it, it, I mean, there a lot of really good stuff has happened, but you do put yourself in some interesting, um, pickles, so to speak, right? Where, oh, well technically this may be the right answer, but will the customer, you know, accept it? Will they understand it? Do we have the money to market it?
You know, a lot of the, a lot of these, especially more out there technologies that are counterintuitive, um, they can take a fortune to market to get people to change their minds. And if, and if you don't have that money, um, you know, then that product becomes a flop. And then that feature that made it flop becomes the thing that doesn't work and keeps you from selling bikes and, you know, and it'll take 20 years to repair that cycle.
So, mm-hmm. , Um, you know, I think there, there's a lot of complexity, uh, behind these things that not everybody. Thinks about or because they don't have to . Yeah. So,
[01:15:58] Randall: yeah. Well, and I spent some time at, um, at one of the big companies, and so got to see just how deep that complexity can be and, and how, uh, and how it truly is the case that we are in a sport where you can ride something that, um, is very much trickled down.
And it's not entirely BS though though, frankly, also you see lots of, uh, things that are added for the purposes of marketing that kind of come and go, you know, magic elastamers that get bolted to a frame and, you know, they tell some sort of resonance, stamping story. Uh, won't name names, desserts, but, um, Yeah, yeah.
[01:16:33] Josh: Yeah, we've, we've had our share of those and, and I think, you know, too, I mean it really, the, the industry continues. I, I enjoy, I mean, it, it continues to be a nice mix. You've got some companies that are like almost just pure marketing companies, right? And you've got some other companies that are almost pure technology development companies and, and a little bit of everything in between and, and, you know, the, the pendulum swings, right?
I mean, it, it is nice to see that the, you know, we certainly lived it with, um, with csc, you know, that, that you had, you know, specialized and Cannondale and Trek were dominating and then our scrappy little, you know, group of misfit toys like showed up with CSC and all this arrow stuff, and all of a sudden we're like punching way above, above our weight, right?
I mean, that was a true, uh, Moneyball situation when you look at it historically, right? I mean this, this team that had an entire team budget of less than Lance Armstrong's salary, um, became the UCI world number one team. And, and we did it not just through the marginal gains, but those marginal improvements of, you know, if you can get every writer to finish on average, Four places higher than they would've, right?
I mean, you're just like, you're just working every last little angle. Um, but all of those aggregate into something, you know, I remember a couple years in we're like, Wow, we're gonna be the top three team this year. Like, that's crazy. You know? Who's your bike sponsor at the time? Velo. Yeah.
[01:17:59] Randall: Okay. I was gonna, I was just gonna say like, that was, um, I'm thinking like Gerard and, and Phil White, uh, Jar Ruman and Phil White.
Um, and yeah, I mean, they just had so I didn't realize that that, that you guys all collaborated. I hadn't found that connection a little bit
[01:18:15] Josh: before my time. Once we, once we got BNA interested in the wheels, he, you know, the, the, uh, Shao Campy at the time, str. A player yet, um, you had to take full grupos.
Mm-hmm. it, which meant, you know, included like wheels and shoes and all this stuff. And so we knew if we were gonna break in, we had to put, like I said, I mean truly, we, we called ourselves the island of misfit toys. Um, and so we went and got Phil and Gerard and we got cloudy at FSA and we got Ram to come in as like a, a cassette and chain sponsor.
And, you know, FSA was cranks. I'm trying to remember. I think we were buying the du shifters. But yeah, I mean, that whole thing was put together. I, I always love, I tell the story, First time I met Phil and Gerard, they were. They were, they were in this, um, hotel at Las Vegas for the Interbike Show called the Tamas Chanter, which was like one of the SLT worst places on the strip.
And, and we, we stayed at this horrible place, uh, off strip, so it was maybe even worse.
[01:19:18] Randall: But those places tend to be really cheap cuz they want to get you into pull their, their one on bandits. I've, I've, I've done that before. Just inter bike
[01:19:26] Josh: backs and it's, Yeah. But, uh, but, but so I, I hear about them through one of the, the team mechanics, like, Oh, you, you need to meet these guys.
You know, they're, they're also looking to break in and, um, Andy and I go over there and there's just this smell, you know, of like lacker, like are they people huffing paint, you know, what are they? . And it's Phil and Gerard are painting the bikes for the show in the parking lot, and they're hanging them to dry in the shower of the room.
Wow. And wow. And he was like, and of course we met him within five minutes. We're like, Okay, you guys are like us. Like let's do this. And so, yeah, over the next, that was probably God, 2099, 2000. But, uh, but yeah, so when, when we had this opportunity to break in it with cse, it was like, okay, let's, like, let's get the band together, you know?
And man, we just got all these crazy folks together and everybody, like if you wanted to come in, it had to be you. You had to have the data. You know, you didn't have to have money, but you had to have the product. And, um, you know, that the, the structural advantage that that team had for the first really four years, I mean, was, was.
Huge. You know, it was like they were just, you know, we, we would joke with them like, you know, you're, you're basically riding a time trail bike compared to what everyone else is riding. And, you know, in time they believed it and it really did be, well we said at the beginning of the show, it became the placebo that was also the real thing.
Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm . Um, you know, and, and, and then you would have team, I mean, I, I think where it got really excited, you, you would have writers come in from other teams and see some of like the power numbers and the, you know, cuz we were there all the time chunk testing and kind of doing that whole thing. And, and then of course the word spreads, right?
And now the other writers know what those guys are doing. And so that becomes like, well shit, that's not fair. What, you know, those guys have these arrow bikes and these arrow wheels and. You know, like they started, I remember like speed play when they, you know, Richard brought the arrow pedal and, you know, there were writers and other teams were just like, Oh fuck.
You know, it was just like, like, Oh wow, we've really got them now. You know, Not, not only is it, is it a placebo for our writers, but , it's totally working against all the other teams. Um, you know, and, and that whole thing. We did that for God. It was a great time. We did, and then we did Cella test team with Cervelo and one of the founding members there.
Yeah. We, it was hell of a hell of a good time.
[01:21:47] Randall: Oh man. I've mean, and changed the sport. We really, Yeah, yeah. Totally. Definitely changed the sport. Definitely. And not just this sport. I mean, Gerard, what he's done with, um, Open and I, I think he's co-owner of Threet now. Um, the open up, I think defined the kind of the one.
What I describe as the one bike segment, it was a bike that could, you could literally have a single bike that does everything in the geometry are allowed for that. And he had the tire clearance and everything else. He had that drop chain stay. And we take all these things for granted now, but he was innovating, you know, as soon as he left Cervelo, um, continued on that path.
Um, but yeah, I, I remember, um, salivating over those bikes, and uh, now, you know, every, every company has an a bike and even their non-a bikes have a lot of arrow considerations built into them. You know, the tarmac being a prime example where they kind of merged it
[01:22:36] Josh: with bench. Yeah. I, I think that's, to me, that's the most exciting thing happening, right.
Is I think we are gonna kind of converge on, it's a bit of a right answer, you know, that, that you are gonna have the, the light bike is gonna be also a very arrow bike and you know, we're already at a point where we're playing the new and hopefully
[01:22:54] Randall: comfortable too, which is another thing that you can get some.
[01:22:59] Josh: Yeah, and I, you know, we, we worked with, uh, when, when Matt Haman won Rub, you know, that was, we had done a bunch of work with, with the team around what bike to ride there and what wheels and tires and pressures. And that was the really, the first time I'd ever seen that Scott was the foil, whatever their, their a bike was, it was equivalent in comfort to their lightweight climbing bike.
And, you know, the riders were kind of on the fence of like, Oh, that's the, a bike, the climbing bike is more comfortable. Like, no guys, it's not like . You have an very unique advantage here that your, a bike is as comfortable as the climbing bike. So you ride the arrow bike and, and you know, if, if you don't know, you don't, you don't know.
But the companies are figuring that stuff out. Man, what a, what a difference, Right? When you can be comfortable and go faster. That's pretty awesome. Well, and that's
[01:23:52] Randall: a very natural segue into, and I, we'll, we'll probably time limit this cuz we're already pushing well over an hour here. Maybe we'll have to get, have you back on at some point.
Uh, cuz this has been a lot of fun. Uh, but tire pressure, like I, you know, I'm of the opinion that, you know, the transition to wider, wider rims and wider tubus tires and lower air pressures and so on is one of the single biggest advancements, uh, in cycling, at least for the recreational slash enthusiast rider that's come around.
It's like the whole gravel segment is essentially enabled by, uh, dis breaks and tubus tires if you think about it, because you can ride that terrain, um, on, you know, what used to be. Actually, I mean, today's gravel bikes are essentially better versions of, you know, the original cross country bikes.
[01:24:38] Josh: Um, Yeah, but a hundred percent.
Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. I, you know, I think that's, I'm right there with you. I think those are the two really most important advancements, um, for people riding today, you know, with Arrow probably in third. Yeah. The, the tire pressure thing, you know, I think is really the, again, it's kinda like the, the arrow top road bar.
I mean, it's one of those places where you really can't have it all, right? Mm-hmm. , Yeah. You can be faster and more comfortable and have better grip and be less likely to puncture. Yeah. If you just get your tire pressure. Right. Um, and you know, it's not always the easiest thing to solve. I mean, we. Hundreds per year, probably hundreds of optimizations for, for teams and athletes.
And, uh, you talk about the, the, so tire pressure calculator, you know, is Yeah. How's
[01:25:26] Randall: that? How does that work? How did you, is that a, a simple or a very complex
[01:25:29] Josh: equation? Um, so, so it, it, it's both. So we, a lot of what we do particularly around like Reba and some of these key events and the Olympics in the world championships and the tours, um, people will have us come in and say, Hey, you know, here's, here's my rider, here's weight distribution, here's the, the course, um, what's the optimal pressure?
And, and you know, tire pressure is a really hard one in that, you know, so much of, of what we're after in cycling are these like maximize, minimize variables, right? You know, I want max stiffness and minimum weight. And with tire pressure, it's like I want just exactly the perfect one that's optimized somewhere in the middle.
You're like, Well what is that number? Ah, we don't know. Um, And so that's where, you know, that's hard, right? Our, our brains love maximize and minimize. That's why we have, you know, that's why we still have so many weight weenies. Like, it's just
[01:26:20] Randall: fun and it's, and it's easy to market as well. You can tell something, it's easy tos lighter, and they can pick it up.
Like, pick up my bike at the coffee shop, See how light it is. Isn't that amazing? And, and, you know, sell 12, it's
[01:26:31] Josh: also, but it's also fun. I mean, you buy that stem that's 40 grams lighter and you take your old one off and you weigh them, you're like, Yeah, it's, you know, like you, you know, you, you, you got what you paid for, right?
And, and with these optimized problems, it's placebo effect, like, yeah, totally. But with these optimized ones, it's hard. Like, well, I don't know. That one doesn't feel faster or it feels different. It's, uh, you know, like how do I see it in the data? Well, we have methods. Uh, the, the CH method is the one that we use with, uh, some other various technologies, but.
You know, we can go out and, and have you ride laps and tell you what the optimal tire pressure is for you on that course, right at your weight with your tire. Um, using
[01:27:16] Randall: acceler, accelerometer and things like this to look at vertical deflection and things like this. We,
[01:27:21] Josh: so we, we actually have a whole bunch of cool things that we use, but all you really need, um, and you, you can do this at home and if you look up the CH Method by Robert Chung, it's also called Virtual elevation.
All you really need is a power meter and a GPS enabled, um, computer that you can get your data out of. And, and you know, Robert, who's a, a dear friend of mine and one of the smartest humans I've ever come across, you know, he's a demographer at Berkeley and, uh, just a brilliant guy. And, but he says it best, you know the thing.
You know, engineers were taught to like, use, ever find ways to get ever cleaner data. And demographers are always stuck with crap data. Mm-hmm. . And so they developed all these other tools to work with bad data. And he had had this idea, I think watching one of the world championship events of like, well if I could just, you know, if I could just fix something, um, if I could just fix a couple variables, I, I could cal try to calculate, um, CDA and cr uh, if I had the power files.
[01:28:28] Randall: Define the terms real quick. Uh, just, Oh,
[01:28:31] Josh: so CDA is, is like your coefficient of drag times your area. Mm-hmm. , um, so it's a, a CD is a one-dimensional coefficient. Engineers love one-dimensional coefficients cuz we hate units. Um, and so we use cd, uh, that, you know, like a. A sphere always has the CD of a sphere, no matter how big it is.
Mm-hmm. . And so you can scale
[01:28:52] Randall: So scale, scale and variance essentially to be a
[01:28:55] Josh: Exactly, Yeah. And so then the A is the area. And so that's times, and that's the scale. So it, it's just a way that we talk to each other cuz it's simpler. Um, and, and, well it's,
[01:29:05] Randall: it's just really is true. Like it's teasing out the thing that's most relevant too.
It, what matters is, is uh, yeah. If it's scale and variant, if it's a scale and variance effect, then you'd only need the Yeah, that makes sense. So CDA and what was the other one? The other term?
[01:29:21] Josh: C r which is coefficient of rolling resistance. Okay. Um, and, and that's same thing that that's, that's a true one-dimensional and it's just a coefficient.
The problem with CR is it's got so many, it's like point when, when we people talk about it, they're always like, it's 0.0, zero, zero, Like people's eyes roll back. Um, and, and it also makes them seem like very small numbers, but when you work them into math eight, It can turn out to be a pretty big number.
Um, but anyway, so Rob, Robert has this idea of how he can find, solve for these two, um, in a situation that he otherwise knows nothing about. And he, from like Strava data on the web realizes he can kind of do it. And so he gets with some other smart people and ultimately they, they develop, um, the, the calculations here and there.
There's a free online tool called Golden Cheetah that you can use to solve, um, to solve for it. And, uh, yeah. And so we, we've used that for God, 10 plus years. And, um, we do a ton of these for, for teams and riders and athletes. And, and the tools have changed, but you know, the numbers kind of stay the same. I mean, we're, you know, we're doing it now on laptops and, and phones and, and the power meters are much more accurate.
But, um, you know, the, the outcome outputs haven't changed all that much. And so it hit me a couple years ago that like, wow, we've. You hear Google and Amazon and these people talk about how, like, how valuable the data is. Like, wow. I think we're sitting on something really valuable, which is that we've got 4,000 real world tire optimizations where we know the tire width, the rider weight, the rider weight distribution.
Mm-hmm. , the surface roughness and the pressure that was the fastest. Right? And so, you know, when you think of, uh, the graph of the rolling coefficient rolling resistance for a tire, it, the challenge we've had for the last 30 years was everybody's mental model of, of what that graph would look like comes from lab testing and, you know, you put a tire on a smooth steel roller and you get this like dropping, uh, line that asymptotically approaches some number as the pressure gets higher, right?
And so mm-hmm. , you just look at that and go, well, higher pressure is faster done. What we've learned in the real world once we had the techniques to do it, is that that curve shape is actually something like a v You know, at some pressure that line kicks up again and the resistance starts to get up. And that's cuz you're now vibrating and, and lifting the bike and the rider system, um, you know, up and down and shaking them to deal with the roughness, the, as the tire gets harder.
Um, and so what our data had was thousand, literally like over 4,000 optimizations where we had solved for that break point, right? The bottom of the v the peak minimum rolling resistance mm-hmm. for a weight and a tire size and a surface roughness. Um, and so I thought, Oh wow, I, I bet we could put this together and start to kind of draw lines of correlation like Sure, you know, rider of this weight across surfaces, across tire widths.
And, and so what our calculator does is it in actually a very simplistic way, it puts all that together and then draws, um, Really lines in between them, right? So we're, we're essentially making curves to fit. You know, a rider of your weight has a curve that looks like this on this tire, and on this tire it looks like this.
And that's all coming from real data, but it's all very simplistically done, uh, when you really get in there and look at it. But we're able to interpolate the missing data points. Um, the other thing that's fun with, with our calculator is like, you know, if you know Peter Sagan's weight on the day that he won his rub and his measured tire width and you plug that in there, you'll get the, you'll get the air pressure that he rode.
Um, cuz cuz that's also how it works, right? Mm-hmm. . So, so there's some, there's some fun gems in there if you, if you know the, the right numbers to key and you, you can get to some really cool little, uh, little things. But, but yeah, we're, we're essentially just saying, Hey, this, this is what's proven to be fastest in the real world and so we're just gonna give it to you in a way that, you know, it's takes 15 seconds to calculate your version of it or,
[01:33:34] Randall: And this is available@soca.cc for anyone listening.
We'll put a link to that in our show notes as well. Um, we actually link to your calculator, um, on the, uh, in our FAQ for, uh, logo's components, uh, just because it's so well done. Cool. Cool. And, um, just to bring this and we'll, we'll close up with this, but, um, so if you're using that calculator, um, I want to kind of tease out how to apply it.
So one way to apply would be just take the numbers and put 'em in. And I think that that probably works really well for a more controlled environment like road. Um, but say gravel, you have a lot more variation, which you've taken into account in your calculator, but. The rider's technical ability, plays subs substantially into the offroad experience and even equipment choices, like a, a drop post that allows you to have, you know, different weight to shift your weight distribution, to have, um, you know, more travel between your body and the bike.
So using your arms and legs is suspension and, you know, if you ride loose versus riding tight, all of these are gonna come into play. And so, you know, you can start with these. I guess my, my perspective, and I'm curious yours on this, is particularly for more technical gravel situations, use it as a starting point, but then find the one that makes you feel most confident for the train that you're riding.
Mm-hmm. . And then maybe bias, you know, you might go slightly lower to get more. Traction or push or whatever it is you're after, you know, pushing, you know, obviously with the limit of not wanting to bang your rims against rocks, uh, but you know, there's a certain technical competency that's required, uh, uh, technical elements and writing style elements.
That's, um, seems, I, I don't, it seems to me more relevant and gravel though, though. You tell me, uh, you, you understand this a lot better.
[01:35:25] Josh: Oh, I, I think there's a, a, a ton of truth to that. I, you know, I think the, the couple, the couple of blind spots we know exist in the calculator, the, the biggest one is that, you know, the, these data points come from, I mean, really the fittest athletes in the world.
Yeah. Yep. And, and they're in most cases riding like the fastest, most supple tires. Yeah. And so a couple things that we know, you know, that the, when you hit the break point, it's because the energy lost to Thetas, right? Or the, um, the inefficiencies of shaking the rider have become greater than the casing losses, uh, of deflecting the tire.
Will, you know, the, the fittest athletes in the world at two and a half percent body fat, their a lot lower ESIS than me. . Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Yep. Yep, yep. So, so if you're, if you were less than the fittest athlete in the world, you were a higher ESIS individual, some of us jiggle more then Yeah. Some of us jiggle more.
Um, and, and so that, that likely will shift your optimal pressure potentially downward, right? As your body fat goes up, that that optimal pressure probably drops. Um, you know, as tires become less supple, um, they have their own. Added hysteresis, which causes a dynamic stiffness problem in high frequency vibration.
And we could do a whole episode on this. It's pretty fascinating, uh, that I know. I think we were the first to really discover and try to like, explain it and quantify it, but, um, You know, static stiffness, like you just push on a tire to pressure, they all look the same. Mm-hmm. , but dynamic stiffness, like stiffness under high frequency vibration.
Oh, you almost get
[01:37:04] Randall: like a ding effect. Yeah. With a stiffer side wall. So the can't respond as quickly.
[01:37:11] Josh: Exactly. Yeah. We, we describe it as being a lot like, um, packing a suspension fork. Yeah. On a wash board. Yeah. Um, or, you know, my favorite analogies are say like, you know, you, you see the um, uh, memory foam mattress commercial where they press the hand in and then they remove the hand and in print stays, you know, that's histories this, Well, think of that now as like a memory foam punching bag.
Like if you just keep punching that same spot. Yeah. It down compact itself. Into like a rigid, it's
[01:37:37] Randall: not even phone. Oh, it hadn't occurred to me that that would be relevant in a, like it'd be a significant, a sufficiently large effect in a tire in order to be relevant though I guess you're dealing with super high frequency vibration.
So
[01:37:49] Josh: Yeah. And it's, it's actually one of the reasons that, that people can feel crappy tires. Yeah. Cause you think, like in the lab, you know, 20 years ago you would inflate a tire push on it with a, an anvil and go like, well it has the same stiffness as, you know. So we used to assign casing stiffnesses like, oh well that has a 0.2 psi casing stiffness.
There's no way you can feel that. Well, you draw theta curve and then you look at the time response. And this is a podcast, so I'm using my hands cuz we're on video. But you know, if you've got a 45 degree slope in your outbound, uh, you know your compression pathway and then your hysteresis drops like this well over certain time frequencies, your.
Um, your stiffness becomes like a line that's connecting the two, the bottom, and so it can become damn near vertical. Um, again, you gotta, I wonder this must you to a blog post to, uh, to understand that, but this is why people stuck with Tubular so long behavior can be No, that was more tradition and pressure, but I, I think it's, um, Okay.
It's, it's one of the, it it ultimately becomes, one of the reasons that people stuck with high pressures for so long, um, is that they equate those high frequency vibrations with speed. Yeah. Yeah. That's not true. I, I made that mistake. Um, and that, and that also makes you not feel that crappy tires are slow because they feel fast, because they have a lot of high frequency vibration.
Right. And so mm-hmm. , you know, you think of like trying to convert people from. You know, poor tires to, to fast tires. They, they might say, Well, it doesn't feel fast and it, it's too comfortable. Or it's too, you know, it's like, well, well it's just not beating the crap out of you cuz it's a, a better tire. But you, we now have the tools that you can see that that's quicker.
But that, but that's another, um, and we've, we've now added a, a compensating factor for that in our calculator. But, you know, if you're training on, you know, armadillos, um, you need a, you need a different optimal pressure than if you're out on your GP five thousands. You know, it's just because of, again, the static stiffness may look similar, but the dynamics stiffness can be quite different.
Yeah. And of all
[01:39:56] Randall: the things that you can do, so those look like, like tires and like tubeless tires and, you know, you can't change your rims without changing your wheels. So tubeless tires being in, but the more supple casing and will, uh, of all the things that you could do to improve your right experience, that's probably highest on the list if I had to guess.
Bike fit
[01:40:14] Josh: the other one. Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:40:16] Randall: Um, we could go all day. This has been absolutely delightful. Maybe if you're interested, have you on again in the future to dive in, uh, on some of the questions that emerged from this conversation. I know that we had, a number of listeners who had posted some questions that we didn't quite get to.
Hopefully we covered things sufficiently here, but Josh, this was a hell of a lot of fun. Really appreciate you joining and let's keep in touch.
[01:40:41] Josh: Awesome. Really enjoyed it. And yeah, let's do it again.
That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks for Randall for taking the hosting duties and having that great conversation with Josh. I hope you enjoyed it and you will check out everything he and the team are doing over at silica. Big, thanks to logos components for sponsoring this week's episode. We could not continue to do what we do without support from companies like logos.
If you're interested in connecting with me, I encourage you to join the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. It's a free global cycling community where you can connect with gravel, cyclists from all around the world. If you're able to support the podcast financially, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Or if you want to just do something, that's a solid for me, leave me a rating or review. It's usually important for our discoverability that we get new reviews in there. And I hope you're enjoying everything that we do and put out there each week. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with professional gravel cyclist, Alexey Vermeulen. Alexey is currently ranked 2nd in the Life Time Grand Prix going into the series finale at Big Sugar. 2022 has been a breakout season for this rising star with a big win at BWR San Diego. In addition to his racing exploits, Alexey is one of the founders of the From The Ground Up Project and the excluse ride partner for the 'fastest known dog', Willie the weiner.
Alexey's website
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Alexey Vermeulen[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the show. We welcome Alexi Vermilion.
Alexi is a professional off-road cyclists competing in the lifetime grand Prix series this year. With only one event left big sugar in Bentonville, Arkansas coming up this month. He is sitting in second in that competition it was a great time to check in with Alexi.
Alexia is not only a great athlete, but also a great ambassador for the sport.
He always seems to be around, to share a smile or a laugh after some of these big events. If you don't know him for his professional cycling career. You may have also seen him with a dog on his back, riding a bike. Yeah. We'll get into his relationship with Willie. And what type of terrain Willie likes to ride?
I'll give you a hint. It's the off-road kind. Before we jump in, I need to thank this week. Sponsor athletic greens and
I've been using athletic greens for many years now. And I like to refer to it as my nutritional insurance. I don't always have the best diet and it just gives me a baseline of some of the nutrients and minerals that I need throughout the day. One tasty scoop of athletic greens contains 75 vitamins minerals and whole food sourced ingredients.
Including a multivitamin multimineral probiotic, green superfood blend. And more, all that work together to fill those nutritional gaps in your diet. Increase energy and focus. Uh, aid with digestion and support a healthy immune system. All without the need to take multiple products or pills. This is what I think I really love. It's simply every morning I have a routine. I get a scoop of the powder, put it over ice and water. Shake it up.
Get some hydration and get all those nutrients and vitamins in me in one fell swoop again on days where I go deep on the bike, sometimes I'll do a second class. I know for me, I start to feel sort of just run down and drained and I don't have the luxury of sitting back with my feet up after a ride.
I often have to jump right into enjoying my son and caring for him. So I love just being able to top off and make sure I've got my recovery.
Athletic greens is offering a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs to all my listeners with their first Simply visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. And join health experts, athletes, and health conscious go getters around the world who are making a daily commitment to their health.
Again, simply visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. And get your free year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs today. Would that business behind us let's jump into my conversation with Alexi.
Alex, welcome to the show.
[00:03:06] Alexey Vermeulen: Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me.
[00:03:07] Craig Dalton: I feel like this is a long time coming, like Cody
[00:03:10] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah. Since what, two years almost now?
[00:03:12] Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. I remember when we met at Rodeo, I had asked Neil Shirley about, you know, just who was gonna be there and who I might talk to, and he's like, Here's Alex. He's the fastest guy in gravel you don't know about yet.
[00:03:26] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah. I think Neil believed in me maybe before I believed in myself. But I think that was my rodeo. Strava kms were the beginning of my success.
[00:03:33] Craig Dalton: Put you on the radar, but you'd been on the radar for a long time. So I, I always start off the podcast with just getting a little bit about your background. So why don't you tell me, tell us where you're from and how you got into cycling, and then ultimately let's talk about that journey into gravel and MTV territory.
[00:03:49] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah. I'll try to keep this somewhat short. If we start at the beginning, I probably, I started in like kids triathlons. My mom was doing em. As with any cycles, I feel like hated this swimming portion. You just like get to the, get to the run and bike and they're like, Okay, let's go. This is fun. Ran with my helmet on my first triathlon.
That was cool. But yeah, it just kind of transitioned to my love of just going fast and pushing boundaries. Right. I think I was 1211 at that portion and my grandfather immigrated from Holland, actually grew up racing. And when he immigrated to Canada, didn't really continue. He did a lot of riding.
That kind of caught on at some point when I was doing triathlons. I remember this very vivid ride. I was on like a 24 inch wheel trek and we did a, like, supposed to be a 30 mile ride, became 60, you know, and like completely bumped 10 miles to go and like the entire last 10 miles, I would like fall back into his hand.
He'd give me a push and I'd spin as hard as I could, you know, for minute and a half. But I think like as I grew up and started doing other sports, I did a lot of things, played hockey, played soccer, cross country. It eventually in high school fell to cross country and cycling. And I was, I think, somewhat naturally gifted.
Just I enjoyed endurance and pushing myself, but it just became a, a choice between the journey, right? Like cycling took me to new places. I got to go to Vermont to scream out stage race. I got to travel. We did family weekends. Cross
[00:05:03] Craig Dalton: you live in a community? Did you live in a community that sort of embraced endurance athletics? Where were you?
[00:05:08] Alexey Vermeulen: So I grew up in Michigan. Yes, it's good. Good job. You're good at this? Yeah. No, I grew up, grew up in Michigan. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, but grew up in Michigan since I was two years old. And that's kinda like, I think just where I was. Ann Arbor about an hour south of Detroit. It's just, it's a big.
Community for the Midwest at least. This big, an AVE Club was there and definitely like, you know, had the Tuesday crib practices. Like there wasn't a, a pathway, wouldn't say there was many kids my age. But there was definitely, like, I remember I hear stories now about, Guys come up and talk to me and they're like, Oh yeah, your dad used to drop you off the local school and just say, don't let him get dropped.
I'll see you guys at the other end. But I didn't know that, you know, I was like, Oh, I'm on this alone. I'm 12 years old. Ah, look at all these guys. You know? So there definitely was, maybe not, maybe unbeknownst to me at the beginning, but I do. I. There's a lot of hard Midwest guys that come out because you don't, I realize that even when I go back, you can't stop peddling Colorado.
I'm like, Oh, I've got three hour ride. I'll climb for two hours and descend and coast down Michigan. You got a three hour ride, you're peddling for three hours.
[00:06:04] Craig Dalton: So I was talking to someone about this the other day. It's so different, like even in California on the coastal range here, I get a lot of breaks where I'm not pedaling. So when I go somewhere where I actually have to continue to turn the pedals for four hours in a row, I'm absolutely crushed.
[00:06:17] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah, it's, it's a big deal. I, yeah, every time I go back I feel like I bon every third ride. Probably my issue with not eating, but another story. But yeah, so it just kind of continued. Probably, so sophomore year of high school was like that deflection point. I won nationals, which I always say somewhat lucky.
Obviously you can put in the work, but there's also 10 other guys doing it at a minimum. And that kind of gave, opened up the financial side of it for my parents, where the national team covered some of the, And I got to go to and I was 16 racing at 17 at the time, and European racing, you just fit me man.
I like, I loved it. The CME style all out. Just like if you're not in the front, you're in the back. I just like, it was everything I had dreamed. I remember I went over there with like 700 euro spending away with my parents and like came back with like 1400, like doubled it and I was like, Oh, this is great.
And just like it was the first moment I remember like not thinking this is my career, but. Like, Oh, I wanna push harder cuz this is really fricking fun. And it's also, you get to be in Europe, right? Your kids are, your friends are back at high school and you're like, you know, you skip three, three weeks, you go home.
But that trip, that was supposed to be three weeks at ces, turned into going to the World Championships in Copenhagen cause I did well. And so that kind of opened up this whole pathway to actually having a chance at something. Juniors. So that was the World Championships in Copenhagen in thousand 11.
You know, cut a race with guys that I grew up watching. Canara, KA Dish. All these guys race up the same course I day to day earlier, which is just like, there's no words for it, right? Like when you grow up dreaming of something or like watching random videos.
[00:07:40] Craig Dalton: Yeah, and unless you've observed or watched one of these things, you just cannot understand like the spectacle of having everybody racing with their country flags on their bodies. No trade teams. Like, it's just such an amazing experience. I, I love, and I've had good fortune of going to two world championships to watch, and it was just electric, both of
[00:07:58] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah, it's, it's unbelievable. And I think it's like, it's, yeah. Something I'll never forget. That kind put me on a pathway in to fast forward this, you know, in cycling there's a couple jumps, right? There's under 23. So when you, when you're 18 years old, jumping into the next category, which is a four year category, but that also coincides with in the, pretty much everywhere, college, university.
And so I made. Little packed with my parents like, Hey, if I have offers from one of one or both of the two big teams in the US at the time, which were lived strong in bmc, it was just coming on that I could def still apply, but defer college for at least two years through that contract and see what I could do.
I was fortunate enough to have an offer from both and ended up choosing bmc. Cause I just loved the racing in Europe and they were, had to schedule it primarily there. And I just, it just kept growing. Like, I feel like this, that first year on bmc, you know, you're not making much, you're making 15 grand or something, but you're, you're 18 years old, you're living in Europe with your best friends.
And it was the first time I was like, Wow, you can make this your job. Like, that's like, where can this go? What, what can I do? And three years on, I was lucky enough to get an email from, from Lato Yobo. And you know what? Transitioned and became the job. And it was that moment where I like, had completed this USA cycling pipeline and I was like, Okay, so what's next?
You know, I signed this big contract and I was, I was stoked. You're 21 years old and it's what you've dreamed of your whole life in a sense. But also felt like I, like, okay, so am I doing this for 15 years or am I doing this for 10 years? Like, it was such a, I questioned a lot of it. Right.
[00:09:23] Craig Dalton: You a, I mean, presumably in those BMC years, you were forced to live that professional lifestyle and make start to begin to make significant sacrifices to continue progressing.
[00:09:36] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah, I think BMC was lucky because you got to see it also, right? So we were at the development team right underneath the Pro World tour team. You know, you got to watch guys like Brent Book, Walter, who's American and Larry War Bass. Go through their version of it, right? Like, help you kind of pick, Hey, if I actually move, if I actually make this jump, where do I wanna live?
Do I wanna live in east? Do I wanna live in drone? And kind of see before you had to deal with it, see the struggles and see the positives of racing at that level. But yeah, like it, it just came down, you know, once I signed that contract, I just, I wanted more and more and more. And it was this weird feeling of like, unless you were winning, You couldn't make, you couldn't do more, You couldn't make an impact on sponsors or people or community.
[00:10:15] Craig Dalton: And this is at at the then the jumbo team at
[00:10:17] Alexey Vermeulen: yeah, yeah. Sorry. So two years on and I loved it, right? You get to race these, like, we all dream of like Lia Best and Lombardia Doe. Right?
[00:10:25] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's probably somewhat lost. It's probably somewhat lost on a listener. I'm sorry to interrupt, but it's somewhat lost that that is. That's the big time. You're, you're on. I mean, everybody knows it now, but it's the one of the biggest and best teams in the world. You sort of made it there, obviously, like it continues to be a journey when you're a neo pro and you've got your first year in these big pro tour teams.
But I think you were just getting into sort of this idea of, okay, now what's my identity? What's my role in this big organization in the biggest league in the world?
[00:10:55] Alexey Vermeulen: yeah. And even in life, to be honest, right? You're 21 years old. I honestly, I think if I. In hindsight, probably would've given myself my last year in under 20 threes. But like when you take a chance, like you don't turn down, like at the time that I went, it had been almost three years since the American had gone to the world tour.
So it was one of those things that like when is the opportunity if going to come again? Like, you're just young, right? You learn everything. Like, I remember my first moment, I, I chose to move to J and I just, I got a, a key mailed to me and I'm like, Google translating the back of a taxi in Spanish. Like, I think is this addressed?
I'm like getting out, trying. It's like nine o'clock at night's dark. I'm like trying to find the lock, like eventually find where I'm going. And there's like life experiences at the same time. That, you know, back to not going to school. I like, kind of feel like I was educated by the bike. Like I learned a lot of like life.
Balance. I don't know, just maybe not directly academic, but I learned a lot about myself in, in that time. And it kind of just transitioned into when I was racing at the top level, what, what is next? What can I do? What do I want to do? And I remember, you know, you kind of mentioned it quickly if I wanted to go to mountain bike or not, but like, I remember thinking like, okay, I can continue doing this.
Maybe get better, right? Because that's 21, 23. But like I didn't, I wanted to be a GC rider. That's what I'd grown up doing. And I kind of felt like I wasn't good enough in a sense. Like you never know you're young, but like I was like, there's a lot of work to be done here to be able to climb like Andy sch Slack or anything that I watch growing up.
Right? So just, you know, in 2018 was like, I kind of wanna just go send it and see what happens. And I was good enough at the business side of her like connection side that I had relationships with Bianchi and kind of took a lot of the sponsors I had on Lato to back into the US and said, Hey, I wanna try this mountain bike thing.
And very quickly realized that the World Cup mountain bike is the exact same as what I was doing. Just different bikes and wider titers. But gravel was growing and so I, you know, I was trying to figure out where I belonged and my identity had kind of changed, but that was the beginning of what I'm doing now, which there's things I miss, but I don't have any regrets.
It's, it's really cool to see what's growing in the us
[00:13:04] Craig Dalton: Yeah, no doubt. So you to just unpack it a little bit, you move over, you get a, you get what maybe described as a private tier program with Bianchi. You start trying the mountain bike thing. Discover it's, it's sort of emotionally and maybe sim physically similar to what you've just been going through in the world tour and leaving the world tour.
You were looking to do something different and have a different relationship with your vocation as a professional cyclist.
[00:13:32] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I think the biggest thing was that I, I wanted to actually positively impact either the companies I worked with or. Individuals community around me, right? Like athletics of any kind are very selfish. You have to be selfish on some level to, to grow as a person, as an athlete. But on the world tour team, you know, you have 28 riders and you have these companies paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to be a part of this team.
And rightfully so, the team wants one answer, not 28 different answers. And I felt like, well, there's eight of us here who could actually make an impact on this company that's giving a lot of money to this team yet. You're blocking it. So I felt like there was kind of a, a backup or like a flaw in the system.
And not that I was the only one that ever saw that, but I was like, I actually like the portion off the bike as well. I like enjoying and talking. Like, it's not exhausting to me. I enjoy, you know, being a human and talking through things, Hey, this worked, this didn't, or like, let's figure out how to do this better.
I'm up for do that content, you know? So I saw that gap kind of existing in the US as things grew. But I don't think I ever thought it would grow into what it is now.
[00:14:36] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And was that sort of just timeline wise, was that the beginning of the pandemic that you had done your mountain bike thing and you were gonna transition into gravel that 2020 season?
[00:14:46] Alexey Vermeulen: 29. I had one full year, 2019. I did a good schedule. Mostly mountain bike, almost all mountain bike. But I did, I like Belgium, Fri, San Diego and Flatted out of, and like I was definitely that year and even with my coach, we were all just like, let's just go test events this year and see what happens, you know?
Had to convince my parents I wasn't being an idiot. But other than that it was easy. And it was just like, it was fun to. Start to build those relationships that we talk about now, right? Like, I pride myself on not ever burning a bridge and like being able to go back to anybody. And like I feel like I talk to companies I've worked with in the past, even just as a consultant nowadays which like is kind of just cool to me.
Like I enjoy, like this is doing well. This is not like, you know, it is just such an interesting space to be in.
[00:15:30] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it really is. And the, I think the athletes that can articulate feedback about the product and the experience, or even the vibe that companies are trying to create, that's gold, right? That's where you wanna be spending your money.
[00:15:42] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah. Yeah. And it's a, it's a battle as you know, like trying to figure out advertising is such an interesting thing especially in sport, because sport is hard to quantify. And like the way I, I mean like, not to give away my secrets, but the way I kind of pitch this thing as an athlete is, It has to be at least three parts, right?
You have to validate equipment on some level, and so that doesn't mean you need to win every race, but you need to be up there validating a new bike, a new set of wheels, a new handlebar. Like does it work at the highest level? Why does it work? But I think that's, you know, 30% of it. Maybe the other part is just being a face for a brand, which to talk about vibe.
Like it means like, you know, not having some sterile company with a tent at an event, like talking through things, real life shit, having a dog, right? Like Willie's been such a. It would make jokes about it. Just such a conversation opener when you're just standing. Like, who? We all want carbon wheels. We're all buying them every day.
No. So how do you just be a person? And the last is the internal feedback, right? That it just takes time and you have to work with a company for a long time for that to actually be beneficial. Right. I think people are like, Oh, Alex had that bike a year before it launched, so he put all the feedback. Dude and I had feedback that'll affect the next generation of that bike, but it's so far in advance that to truly, positively impact a company, you have to be involved really early on.
[00:17:01] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:17:02] Alexey Vermeulen: So I, I think if you put all those together, that's the full athlete, you know, doing well in the US and privateer.
[00:17:07] Craig Dalton: And it seems like one of the things you recognized was this idea that, you know, you will be required to create content as an athlete in this new space, and you took a very proactive vision on what that content was gonna be and how you were gonna show up
[00:17:25] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah, I tried to, I mean, I think it's, especially now, like you look at a race, like on band, I feel like there is almost more videographers than racers sometimes. Right? It's kind of, And content for content sake. Is the bane of my existence. Like I, I, I hate to be, and like even the way you and I just chatted before we started this podcast, like I struggle with podcasts that just jump in and say the same thing the entire time.
Because if you have an i, if you have an agenda and you asked me exact same questions I talked about last week on a different podcast, it doesn't benefit anybody, right? It's just content for content's sake. Cause not that I'm not gonna be listened to, but you could go to some other channel list and the exact same.
Unless, you know, you give me the option to talk through things and figure things out and open up what I wanna get to as well. So I think that's the same thing with what I took into content. I was like, what do I enjoy this sport and why did I change what I'm doing? It's not that I was the best world tour writer, I was very far from it, but I have a, an experience at a different level and I enjoyed the relationship.
So I was like, that's what is interesting to me. So, I've just focused a lot on any content I can. I want to be about relationships and how this works. You know, like my relationship with Neil and Envy, like that's what's interesting to me. And then the humanity of the sport is what actually draws people in or inspires and motivates more than the next, Hey, the widest wheel set, cuz that's, You can find that on the web.
[00:18:46] Craig Dalton: quick, quick follow up on your dog since not everyone is familiar with Willie, although they should be. Just describe Willie and why he's got a little bit of notoriety in the cycling world these days.
[00:18:58] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah, Willie's probably the fastest, fastest known dog in the cycling world. No, but he's a long haired miniature din, looks like a mini golden retriever if you trying to picture it. And early on in the pandemic, I started riding with him when my girlfriend did runs and he just loved it. And it's kind of just grown, I mean, He's done rides as long as seven hours.
He gets out, goes to the bathroom, goes back in the backpack, and we just ride. But he is like, you know, you got his shoulder over his head, over one of your shoulders and it's kind of like, it's great as a training partner also. Like, I'll go ride three hours and come pick him up for an hour at the end.
And I don't have to talk to anybody, but I kind have someone they are with me, like a little training partner and no one yells at you on the bike path. So it's a win, win, win.
[00:19:38] Craig Dalton: does Willie have a preference between road riding and gravel riding?
[00:19:41] Alexey Vermeulen: He probably likes gravel more in Colorado cause he loves prairie dogs. He loves like, you know, hunting from, from up high. He's actually most into mountain biking, which I try to like ride trails before I take him there. But like, he knows when the goggle, he hates the goggles, but he knows when the goggles go on, it's like it's, there's gonna be branches in this face.
It's gonna be time to focus. And he just like, he gets all four legs up on my shoulder, like a par. Just kinda like if there's someone in front of me, he is just like, his head is probably three or four inches in front of my face and just like, he's trying to just like, we have to get back to them. He just, I think he just loves the interactive nature of it.
So I don't take him mountain biking that off and it's probably his favorite.
[00:20:19] Craig Dalton: So podcasting is not the medium to really enjoy Willian, but I encourage the listener to follow you on Instagram cuz I I love it. Everybody loves it. Willie's a hero.
[00:20:28] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah. He makes everyone smile, which is a goal in life, so it's.
[00:20:32] Craig Dalton: you also seem to have linked up with someone who is your, is your frequent video videographer partner, and that seems like be like a really interesting relationship to give us insight into your, your comings and goings and your career and your successes and your failure.
[00:20:47] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah, so that's, that's funny. So like, this is, that was something I started last year. So Avery stu, like he does all my, almost all my photo and video that's not through another company and even if it is but we just started, he DMed me when I was back racing Iceman one year, which is a big mountain bike racing in northern Michigan where I grew up.
And we've just kind of weirdly just been on the same path. He moved out to, to Boulder about three months after I did. And I think we both have an understanding of what the other's job is to get done, right? I think there's a lot of cyclists who just expect, Hey, this car and video, this photographer will follow me and just take pictures.
But like, that's not, it's not that easy, right? It's back and forth and, hey, this is the great, this is the gap. And it's annoying at times. And then the same as he understands I have to get work done right. So he'll just come, Hey, I'm gonna go out in the car with you for four hours. I'm gonna ask you to turn around six or seven times.
But like, so we're able to create really cool content because we both are just in it cuz of our friendship less than money. If I were to like, like I've had people ask me this year, like, Oh, what do you pay? YouPay him hourly. I was like, Are you kidding me? That guy works more hourly with me than I think I could ever pay him in my entire life.
But it's more, Cause it's friendship, right? It's something that just, it, the relationship is the reason that we work together, not anything else. And so this year going in, I was, that was kind of the goal. I was like, I went to companies and I was like, Hey, I, I want to try to bring Avery to all of the races because to me, First off, you'll get pictures after the race, which every company wants if you go do well, but more importantly, I want to show the relationship side of this.
Right? And a really good example of that is if anyone's who made a video at Belgium Welfare Ride that I won this year in San Diego, but there's a moment in there about two thirds the way through where the person I had feeding me just it's kind of shit the bad that day. It's kind of struggling sometimes you just aren't on the same wavelength.
They keep missing you. They don't see your jersey, whatever it is. And Avery literally just stopped filming and handed up two bottles, which was like, ch I would've dropped outta the race, very honestly. And that kind of like moment, that's a relationship thing, right? If I'm paying someone to take pictures and videos, they're gonna do that till the end of the day.
But the relationship side of him knew, Hey, my friend is struggling. Feeding is more important than filming right now. And I will always cherish that because that's what matters more and that's what moves the the world go, not what makes the world go.
[00:22:56] Craig Dalton: yeah. When you, when you were structuring your sponsorship agreements for this year, were you, did you specifically carve out like a dollar amount for him and. This is going to him to make sure he can get everywhere with me.
[00:23:08] Alexey Vermeulen: it was hard. Concepts proven are easier to sell, right? So this year I would say I spent, I spent a good amount of my own money getting in places cuz I, I believe in it, right? And so if anyone's interested, like we have a YouTube channel just like Alexian Avery Which I think we've had, I think it'll be at the end, like 18 videos this year.
But so I had, you know, a couple companies that I think believed in what I was doing, sign on, you know, like Envy for example. Neil was like, that's great that we need this, this is perfect. We want to add humanity to what we do already. And there's other companies that were less excited about it because the thought process and cycling has always been, we wanna pay for this direct photo shoot, not for this like big ambiguous season.
But I think also everyone this year has come back and now, next year I've kind of stipulated it for everybody. Like, Hey, if we're working together, I really need to ask you to put a percentage of, like, I've pretty much said a percentage of my paycheck you need to add in on top of to pay for bravery to come to races cuz you've all benefited from it this year.
And if you haven't then you need to show me where you didn't. Cuz it's just such a organic way of doing things, right? When it's more about the relationship of it and everyone's include. It's just fun. Like I took, I took Avery and our friend tra, we had two videographers at Sea Oder, and it was a blast, right?
It was the three, two of us and Willie hanging out the biggest event all year, right? Like just, I don't know, like the bike race is the smallest portion of it, and that is, it's the biggest portion of my life, but it's, it matters least it's just the vehicles. All of us to go hang out at events and the community of it is what has growing, what I'm a part of.
Right.
[00:24:43] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that's a good point. I think for the outsider, just to understand gravel, it's not about who every section of the race and who's winning. It's about the overall experience. It's the pre rise, the shake down rides. The post ride hang out. That's what makes it so magic.
[00:24:57] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah. And like it's intoxicating, right? Like I think that is the coolest thing. I had a. I had a quote the other day about, you know, at some point in every race, the winner of the pro race is gonna struggle as much as the person finishing lasts. And I think that's beautiful, right? Like we're all riding on the same course and taking on these things and it's just, it's just about the different journey, right?
The struggle is going to be different whether it's mental or physical or mechanical, but in the end, we're all gonna send up, end up sitting the same place, and that is something that never existed where I was at the road.
[00:25:27] Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanna get a little bit into the Grand Prix, but along those lines, the Grand Prix, I mean, I think people, listener's gonna know it's Park Mountain, bike Park gravel racing. As we think about it, when you, just to follow up on the sponsorship thread as you designed your season. Being aware of the Grand Prix and the requirements of having both a, a gravel bike and a proper mountain bike to race these races, how did you kind of figure that all out?
Because I think you had alignment maybe with a gravel bike set up, and maybe the mountain bike was like, Oh shit, where am I gonna get one of those?
[00:25:58] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah, no, I think it's also, again, to start relationships, right? It's easy to, to leave the sponsorship thing and say, Oh, look at this. This company has all, all the bikes I need and this company doesn't. But to me, longevity of the company matters more than getting what you need. If I have to go buy a bike, I'm willing to but I was lucky enough to structure it, so, I ride road and gravel bikes from Envy, which is cool cause it's just a past relationship I've had since I left the road.
And I signed on with Factor for Mountain Bikes, which it's funny cuz both of those companies launched their bikes for the first time this year. So it's been a chaotic year. But it's cool. I mean that's the, also the beauty of this is I feel like both companies in a weird way gain from knowledge that I learned of launching bike.
Simple sides, right? And even if they're not the exact same discipline and it's a weird defined space there cause it doesn't really exist sometimes. , I think. I love that people can understand that and as long as it's like written down and talked about, nobody feels like they're losing out because it's just a, it's about growing the sport more than selling bikes all the time.
[00:26:52] Craig Dalton: And how does the jukebox team fit into all this
[00:26:57] Alexey Vermeulen: yeah. So I got a complicated setup this year. Yeah, so Jukebox is printing company in Vancouver. You know, stickers, business cards, you name it, posters we'll have many willy stickers to. If you're wondering but no, they, Loredo whos the company kind of wanted, he has an image entertainment in Canada and he wanted to grow this, like the community side of it.
He supports Israel Cycling Academy on the world tour stage, but. He had this idea of, Hey, how can you tie athletes together with a title sponsor? Right? So we all have, if you look at someone like Phil Guyman is quote unquote on this team. Pretty much the only sponsor, Phil and I have the same is Jukebox and Phil's not racing, and I'm very ous racing focused right now.
But the goal is that you kind of have this traveling community that fits into all disciplines that you couldn't find the corners of without. Alienating anybody. So I think there's five or six people now. All from different backgrounds.
[00:27:48] Craig Dalton: And is there any sort of I mean, are you guys connected in any meaningful way? Like do you, do you train with Dylan Johnson here and there?
[00:27:56] Alexey Vermeulen: Not really train cause we all live in different places, but like, even like big sugar, we're all gonna be in the same house. Just doing photo stuff and hanging out and I think it's been hard to, with co like as Covid was still tailing off, like, get everyone together. Cause I think that's the goal.
Like there's a lot of talk of getting everyone together in, in Canada and, you know, doing a training camp and things like that. Which I hope happens next year, but this year it was very much focused on. These guys are racing. You know, I've seen Dylan and Ashton and Adam at every race because we're all doing the Grand Prix and that's how it goes.
And then I've seen, I haven't seen Phil once this year, but hopefully that changes, you know? And then there's also people like you know, there's downhill cycle cross racers that I will probably never see cuz I don't do those things.
[00:28:34] Craig Dalton: May, maybe Sea Otter, you
[00:28:36] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. See Otter hopefully. But yeah, it's been weird, but I've actually enjoyed it cuz you, the non-endemic side of the sport is like, when I talk about enjoying the business side and figuring out relationships, it's where it becomes more fun because it takes work and homework to actually figure out how to actually benefit that company.
[00:28:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So onto the Grand Prix, I mean, presumably you found out about this short towards the tail end of last year and. Getting an invite to participate in the series was a big commitment. Obviously, there's six races on the calendar, half mountain bike, half gravel bike. It was really gonna have to take the sort of cornerstone position in your calendar, I presume, for the year if you were gonna intend on being successful.
[00:29:19] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah. In a lifetime, Grand prs been kind of, I probably went into it a little more relaxed than I should have. I. Was excited about racing it, but also cognizant of how it can kind of, it's a long season and mentally it can really drain, drain you. So, you know, going into c was probably a little undercooked and like kind of focused on just building throughout the season and being as consistent as I could.
Back then in April I was like, Oh, I think you can finish top 10 in every race and finish in the podium. I don't think that's true. I think it'd be more consistent than that. And I also don't think I, anyone ever thought Kegan was gonna be as dominant as he has been. If in hindsight I probably would've tried to peak a little more for different races, but I've had this thought process of just being very consistent throughout the year.
Not really peaking for anything, just trying to be fit and be mentally have a lot of mental freedom to, to not feel like I'm ever pressured. And so from, I didn't start racing until April cause that was kind of the goal. I did one race in Michigan, very rbe before Sea Otter, but otherwise was pretty much.
Very fresh. And then throughout the year, I've probably taken almost a month off the bike throughout the year, just finding that balance between things, right? Maybe it's not always off the bike, but not worrying about training. You know? 10 days before Leadville went to watch my girlfriend compete in the Commonwealth Games, which was incredible and.
Maybe lost me half a percent, but like mentally, I had this space to go from Leadville straight into like this very different block to get ready for the final races. I think that's the biggest thing about this is I've, throughout the last six months or seven months said, Okay, here's my calendar, here's the races, and if it's a mountain bike race, I'm gonna spend per most of my time on that bike before the event and do.
Workouts that affect that, but hopefully hold this fitness and just kind of changed little bits to be ready for different things. Got a big climbing race in Utah. Okay. Do some longer threshold efforts. And then the minute Leadville, like in Leadville is obviously a big training camp just to be ready for altitude.
And the minute Leadville finish it was like, okay, full on three to five minute efforts, Endurance Doesn't matter anymore. And that's, that is somewhat the beautiful thing is once you get through unbound, If you have like cycling such a build sport year after year that you can kind of hold endurance most of the year.
I don't have to really focus on that during the week and I can turn a lot of my rides into like, Hey, how hard can I go? Because that's what these races become. Like if we wanna talk numbers like Schwam again, the two hour mountain bike sprint we just did was like 330 normalized for two hours, just like it was, it just on the whole day.
And it's like something I dreamed of, but we haven't done it all year.
[00:31:45] Craig Dalton: It was such a gear shift just as a fan of the sport. To see everybody now have to do like a two hour event, like what the hell?
[00:31:51] Alexey Vermeulen: I loved it. Yeah, and then just like, not to jump away from the grand pretty quickly, but I think that was something that's interesting about my background is there's a lot of really strong guys in the Grand Prix. Guys that I thought were gonna stick out and are probably, are, are coming around like Locklin.
Alex have had some, both of 'em have had some bad luck, but Rob and even Dark Horse, in my opinion, Pete Stat, you have a lot of guys that come from a road background and have the. To do well at all these events. But I think moving two years earlier than a lot of those guys has made a difference for me.
Cuz dude, I struggle a lot with the technical side of the sport on the dirt because it's just different on the road. You just expect you, you find lines and that's it. And, There's a flow to it. Mountain biking and gravel riding's a lot more. Like, you kind of like, Hey, you're gonna slide sideways and you're gonna find your edge and then you're gonna keep moving.
And it's so foreign. And I felt like I really struggled for the two years before this and kind of found my feet at the right time with the Grand Prix. People always act like, like for example, Leadville as a road race, mountain bike, race. Dude, I disagree. Like if when you're going 35 down power line on a hard tail with the, with guys that are pure mountain bike, You have to be able to handle your bike.
[00:32:58] Craig Dalton: sure. Yeah. It, I mean, I, and it depends on the, the weather that particular year, the year I did it, it was pouring with rain, which took another different skill set. I mean, people were just absolutely falling apart during that event. Yeah. Speaking of, I mean, I guess since this is gonna publish in early October, we've got one race remaining.
You're in second place in the Grand Prix. Keegan's obviously been crushing it all year, but I think there are, A couple people within range that if he had a horrible day, like something drastic could happen in the results.
[00:33:33] Alexey Vermeulen: Kegan's theoretically safe now because he can drop a race and he's done so well. So Ke Kegan has won the, won the Grand Prix now but second through, Well, it's just because, it's just because he can drop a race. So theoretically he could not, he has to show up, but he. He can have his worst result and his worst result right now is fourth, which is insane.
His worst result is fourth at Schwam again after he crashed. So if he drops big sugar and finishes 45th, it still doesn't matter cause he has more points than I do right now. But yeah, it'll be interesting. I mean, big sugar being in Batonville is like, it's known for sharp rocks, right? It's a, it's gonna be kind of a race of attrition, Put it all out there, but also be intelligent about it.
For me, I'm definitely gonna err on the side of insurance, you know, like we talked about, inserts a little bit, little extra sealant. But I've never, I've tried to never go into any of these races thinking about the Grand Prix because if, like, if you race to win, you'll be up there. I can't think about where Cole is or Pete or Russell like doesn't help.
I enjoy racing my bike too, so I think, yeah, I mean theoretically all of them I think up to seventh could theoretically pass me. I guess I haven't really done math cause it's kind of hard, like Cole didn't race unbound, so he doesn't have a drop race. So like if he does worse than my tent at Crusher.
He can't beat me. But, you know, it's, it's so, it's really up in the air until you finish. And that's been cool about the point system in a way for me. Yeah, it's hard to say. I'm like, for the first time this year, nervous. Cause I've really tried to not think about the Grand Prix until this point because it's just, it's so up in the air and you have one bad day.
Like, I pulled my front trailer cable out at Crusher. Like, so weird things can happen to anybody. Right.
[00:35:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:35:10] Alexey Vermeulen: But yeah, I, I will say that I'm happy. That I was somewhat a mountain biker's, turf in the mud for two hours in Wisconsin. And I, I fared. And so I think we're a little bit more to my benefit in Bentonville.
[00:35:24] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's, it's, it's got so many punchy climbs in addition to kind of the, the big potential rock hazards there. It will be interesting from a racing perspective, like who's gonna go all in early? Does it stay together? Like, how are you gonna turn the screws to each other? I'm excited.
[00:35:41] Alexey Vermeulen: I'm stoked. I mean, I think it's, you're mainly gonna see guys like Pete that is in fourth and Russell is in fifth, try to make moves because like, at least until we get to the end, like racing wise to win the race, I have no reason to do much before then. But it's also easy to say till you get it in that moment and it's pissing rain or something, weird's happening and just becomes full on chaos for five hours. So, yeah, I don't know. It's, it's kind of, it's weird and everyone's taking different paths to get there too. You know, some guys are still on mountain bikes. I kind of came back and immediately started doing, you know, hard, harder efforts to kind of get ready for a sprint finish. And but yeah, I mean, I, like in the end, yes, I wanna finish on the, putting the gram pretty, but I, I kind of wanna win big sugar, like love kicking to death.
I would like him to not win another fricking race. So that, that would be the, the real goal on top. Cherry on top, like finishing on the podium. Grand PR is great, but de that kid's been dominant this year, so that's probably the biggest goal for me.
[00:36:33] Craig Dalton: and, and best of luck to him this coming weekend in the world. So that's just insane that he's on that team right now.
[00:36:39] Alexey Vermeulen: I just, yeah, I just, I love that there is a transfer between gravel and road because you, you do have a lot of guys come over here that I think think they, because they're really strong on the road, they could just jump in.
Like you look at Nick Tetra at Leadville, obviously he is, that altitude's not used to it, but it's not the same. You gotta be able to put the whole package together to do a lot of these races and to get through a whole season of it. I think the Grand Prix has been the hardest in that sense, right?
That it's pretty much one race a month and that. to peak for six races every month. You kind of have to pick and choose or just be consistent. Yeah, and I think the only person do it perfectly this year is been Kegan and I guess perfection was lost at Swan again, but still, I, I would still say he was perfect.
[00:37:16] Craig Dalton: We'll see. We'll see after big sugar.
[00:37:18] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah.
[00:37:19] Craig Dalton: That's exciting. Well, I'm super excited to ra watch that race, as I said, and hopefully I'm gonna be there myself to watch the action first hand, or at least from way, way behind you guys.
[00:37:29] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah. It, it, it'll be fun. And Bentonville puts on a p puts on a party every time too, which I love. Right. They so much. It's all about cycling in that community right now. And I every, it's intoxicating every time you go there.
[00:37:42] Craig Dalton: A hundred percent. I wanted to take a step back and talk about your other sort of big, I don't know if you call it your personal project, but it's, I think it's just been a big part of your journey the last couple years to Leadville and the from, from the ground up project. Can you talk a little bit about that?
[00:37:55] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah, I think I'm really bad about just giving you a quick synopsis. So I'll start. There is, so from the ground up is we take three riders who haven't been on a bike or haven't raced before to Leadville the hardest mountain of race in the nation, in my opinion. And the goal is just to make the sport less intimidating, more accessible through showing.
The questions and vulnerabilities of people who are going to struggle at the event, let alone the pros. Cuz pros are stupid and don't show it even though we all struggle. So it started in 2021 was the first season we did, the second season this year. And I say season cuz it's a TV series on the back end.
But it's really, it's this pathway just learning how. How hard cycling can be, whether it's lingo or training or getting into this sport financially. And it's, it's been something I've been super passionate about and takes a lot of my time from January to August. But it validates everything.
And the reason I left the road, it's something that like, it's easy to talk about making positive impacts on people, but also very, very difficult to do it while racing as a professional. And I, for the first two years, for 20 18, 20 19, I struggled with that. Like I would say it to companies and then you get to racist and you're like, Dude, I'm getting flogged as it is, like let alone trying to stand out here on my feet all day in the sun talking to people.
And so it's been really cool to see like Covid brought this whole new way of people into the sport and it allowed this access to. People that, you know, literally didn't get on their bike because of Lance or Greg. They got on their bike because they're gym closed. The need of mental sanity. And that is a very different pathway than anything we'd ever seen before.
You know, all of a sudden cycling was like a marathon, you know, It was, it was just to do it. It was just to accomplish something. And I think there was a little bit of a disconnect because of how elitist cycling can. that we struggled to inform people that, hey, maybe Unbound isn't the best first race, you know, Or, Hey, maybe you should figure out how to change a tube before you take on this gravel race.
But in all reality, it still became this big question of how do we keep these people in the sport and make it exciting? And that's what from the ground up has kind of been, you know, it's trying to show that normal everyday people can take on the hardest thing in the world or the hardest thing in the cycling world, in my opinion.
Then go on and you know, even if they don't finish, they can go on and take on normal races and it's never gonna feel very hard. Right. Cuz yeah, you do the 100 at Unbound, it's hard, but it's not at 10,000 feet, it doesn't have 11,000 feet of climbing. It's not with the sense there's so much that that grows and I would equate finishing the Leadville 100 to, to doing an Ironman and we have multiple on film being like, Oh, I finished two Ironmans and this was way harder.
Cuz it's just, it's so mentally taxing, you know. A lot of it is mental, more than physical, and that's really hard.
[00:40:28] Craig Dalton: A hundred percent. Like my personal experience there was I was, I was about ready to quit and honestly, like, I think had my wife been at the feed station before Columbine, I might have quit, but I was like, Well, I don't have a ride home so I might as well continue going. Unfortunately, and miraculously, by the time I came back down, I was feeling good and I was like, I can make it.
[00:40:50] Alexey Vermeulen: But that's how life is too, right? Like that's the coolest part of this is at the same time I go and race my race, I don't know how they're doing. And at the some point on Leadville, if you don't know it's out and back course. So I end up hopefully crossing them if their days are going all right. And that's just so cool to me, right?
That you could have these people taking on something the first time very much in the understanding of how impossible it is and still towing the. That's motivating and inspiring. Right? And like cycling is made for everybody of all sizes, of all shapes, of all anything you want to name it, right? But we don't show that.
We don't say it. It's very hard to talk about because it is primarily white is primarily male and you have to have money to be into it. And I think as that changes, we all. Gain value, like the sport is more important and it doesn't have to be about racing. You can be any type of rider, right? We have, in our first season, Shauna, you know, she finished, she stopped Leadville, I think at the Twin Lakes aid station was like, that's it.
But no, went and took on like fat bike nationals in northern Wisconsin and like a different side of the sport. She's never wanna race laville again, but bikes can be anything. You can go become fricking bike commuter if you want. That's still, that vehicle of the bicycle is the cool part of the project.
[00:42:01] Craig Dalton: Where can people watch the project?
[00:42:04] Alexey Vermeulen: First season was on YouTube the second season I was on outside. But it's not behind a pay wall, so,
[00:42:09] Craig Dalton: Yep,
[00:42:09] Alexey Vermeulen: And there will be a third season. I just, first you heard it first here. But no, the hard part is not to cut you off. Like the hard part is figuring out how do you make it less overwhelming? Cause every year you're like, Wow, this is really sadistic.
Why are we doing this to people?
[00:42:23] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's hard to imagine like someone not just off the couch, but just off the couch wanting to do Leadville. I mean, there's, when they're submitting their application to you, they're submitting it to do Leadville, so at some level they've decided they're willing to do it.
[00:42:38] Alexey Vermeulen: but they don't understand. That's the beautiful part of it, right? They don't have any idea. And there's this process of like growing up and six weeks out we go to like a Leadville training camp, and they get to feel the altitude for their first time and ride the course over three days.
[00:42:50] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:42:51] Alexey Vermeulen: And it is, I cannot tell you how like just wide-eyed, like what the did I sign up for?
And, but none of them quit cuz they're, they've invested so much of their life for the last five months into it. They're like, Shit, I'm here. May as well.
[00:43:06] Craig Dalton: The cards fall.
[00:43:07] Alexey Vermeulen: yeah, I mean that's definitely the balance side of it that I've enjoyed is being able to do something like that. Cause you could never do that when you're racing on the road.
[00:43:13] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's a great, it's a great, I don't know, series I think was the right word that you used. It's a great series. I watched it on outside tv. Super powerful to, I mean, I'm, I'm always impressed when anybody takes on a journey that's bigger than themselves, whether it's a marathon or a gravel race or whatever it is.
There's something absolutely admirable about someone who's willing to tackle something like that, knowing that, like, we may finish, we may not, but I'm gonna do something huge.
[00:43:41] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah, and I think that's the takeaway, right? Is that hopefully like there is a connection between cycling and life and. We have those rolling hills, You come down Columbine and all of a sudden you feel okay again. And that's the reality of all of this. Like most of the days you train, you feel like shit.
That is the majority of cycling. Like even a professional athlete, 99.9% of the time is just bullshit. Get out the door, maybe convince yourself to get a coffee and stop for a couple minutes, but like get the work done and move on cuz you don't feel great every day. And I
[00:44:07] Craig Dalton: I think someone said, said like, if you're not, if you're, if you're feeling good, better than 30% of the time, you're probably not training well.
[00:44:15] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah, it's true and that, but I think that's not, because that's not what we, that's not what anyone shows on social media or anything else. Right. It's always the good time. So yeah, my advice Could yourself, a wiener dog and ride your bike?
[00:44:26] Craig Dalton: I love it, which is the perfect note to end on. Wiener dog promotion, which by the way, I will have another one if I didn't already have two dogs, and that's a long story. We would have a wiener dog cuz that's my wife's jam right
[00:44:38] Alexey Vermeulen: yeah. They're perfect. The right at the right size. That's the, that's the true goal.
[00:44:43] Craig Dalton: Yeah, my actual golden retriever does not fit well on my back and in a backpack,
[00:44:48] Alexey Vermeulen: See, but that is like my goal after my, after my career is I've told my girlfriend I wanna get a golden retriever, not another wiener. So I could just be like, Oh, this one didn't grow.
[00:44:55] Craig Dalton: I love it. I love it. Thanks so much for the time, man. It's great to catch up. Good luck at Big Sugar. Hopefully I see you there and good luck at Belgium Waffle Ride Michigan. I know that will be a, a great one for you being a Michigan.
[00:45:07] Alexey Vermeulen: No, thank you so much. It's, it's exciting. And Yeah, just hope the sport keeps growing and thanks for talking through it.
[00:45:12] Craig Dalton: Of course we'll see you, my man.
[00:45:14] Alexey Vermeulen: See ya.
[00:45:16] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Huge. Thanks to Alexi for joining us and big, thanks to athletic greens and ag one for sponsoring this week's episode. If you're interested in connecting with me, I encourage you to join the ridership. Simply visit www.theridership.com. That's a free global cycling community where you can connect with gravel athletes from around the world. It's also your straight line to having a conversation with me, making episodes, suggestions, et cetera.
If you're able to support the show, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Or ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. It really helps in me connecting with additional gravel cyclist. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with Matt Hawkins, organizer of North Carolina’s Croatan Buck Fifty and founder of Ridge Supply. The special origin story of Ridge Supply and ultimately the Croatan Buck Fifty have lead Matt to create an amazing early season event.
Episode sponsor: Bike Index
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Croatan Buck Fifty[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the podcast, we've got Matt Hawkins. Matt is the founder of Ridge supply, as well as the creator of the CRO 10 buck, 50. Oh, super well-regarded gravel race out in North Carolina. I've been wanting to get Matt on the show for a few years after meeting him at sea Otter. And I'm excited to have you get to know the Crow 10 buck 50.
I believe there's still some spots available for the 2023 edition. It's one of those early season races. So a great way to get tuned up for a fantastic 2023.
Before we jump in. I want to thank this week. Sponsor, bike index. Bike index is a bicycle registry and stolen bike recovery platform. No one likes to think about getting their bikes stolen. I unfortunately have had two stolen over the course
One was a BMX bike when I was a kid. And I feel like that scarred me. I've always been super careful about how I lock my bike up, which is probably a good thing, but ultimately, a garage that housed my bikes in San Francisco got broken into and I lost a track mountain bike. Neither one of them were ever recovered.
Bike index is really the only game in town that focuses on stolen bike recovery. They've built a platform to blast your bike out to local social media channels.
And they can provide you all the best advice on how to increase the chances of success in getting your bicycle recovered
it's a nonprofit. All the services are free. All you need to do is get your serial number and add your make model and color to the platform. And there you go. It's like insurance. That didn't cost you anything. Simply visit www.bike index.org and get your bike registered today. With that said let's jump right into my conversation with matt
[00:02:10] Craig: Hey, Matt, welcome to the show.
[00:02:12] Matt: Hey, Hey Craig,
[00:02:14] Craig: I'm excited to get into the Croatan buck. 50. Am I saying it? Correct?
[00:02:18] Matt: you are, you are a lot of people say Croatian but 50, but I think they do that just to make me mad.
[00:02:24] Craig: Yeah, and we'll get into it. We'll get into it. Cuz I think people are gonna need to get out a map and you're gonna tell us where it is in the country. I, I had to do that myself. I knew it was in North Carolina, but I didn't know exactly where and it's actually pretty interesting part of the state, but we'll table that question for the moment, cuz I was like just starting out by.
Just a little bit about your backstory, where you grew up, how you got into riding. And I think we should talk about your company Ridge supply, because I think it will filter into why you created the event and you know, the vibe behind it.
[00:02:53] Matt: Sure,
[00:02:55] Craig: Yeah. So let's start with that question.
[00:02:57] Matt: wanna know?
[00:02:58] Craig: Yeah. So, where'd you grow up and when did you start riding and when did you decide, when did you discover drop bar gravel riding.
[00:03:04] Matt: Well, I, I my wife and I both are from central Virginia. So up near the Charlottesville area born and raised there. My family's been there a long time, many generations. And I, I grew up in a real rural kind of county, a lot of farming communities there, but we just happen to have a race. That started back when the tour Deon and the tour to Trump rode, they came through our town.
And we had a, we had a local race called the tour to Madison, and I did that with a buddy of mine on some, some Huffies. And we started racing and riding when I was really young. I've literally been riding bikes for, for almost 40 years. And yeah, so that's, that's kind of how I started. I, I of course I, I crashed on my first race and and loved it, loved doing it, but I was a swimmer by trade and I swam my whole life and swam through college.
So I really picked up cycling after college sort of as my primary. And I've been doing that, you know, every, every chance I get as my soul sport really, since I got outta college,
[00:04:18] Craig: Were you, were you more excited about the roadside or did you start off road riding as well back?
[00:04:22] Matt: You know, actually I did a whole lot of mountain biking to start and did used to, you know, race 24 hour team races with, with the, with a team and did some road racing and some crit racing gravel obviously didn't exist back then. When I moved here to North Carolina back in oh five.
I, I, you know, the first place I went to ride was the Croatan because I could go there at night with lights and be off the road. And it felt like, you know, that's where I could take my mountain bike and I could just go kind of ride. And I didn't really know. CRO, Tan's a pretty big, you know, a surface area and it, it has a lot of roads, but they're not all connected.
So a lot of it's kind of sketchy. You're just like, I don't know what's down that road. So we started, you know, exploring a little bit more on road bikes with, you know, 25 sea tires or whatever is probably a bad idea. But we are just seeing, Hey, what's down that road. And I got my first cross bike and started really.
Exploring it and doing, doing proper gravel, if you will, kind of before the gravel boom, but more like 2013, something like that. And and yeah, so I was like one of the first people here in our little town to do Strava. And so I made a lot of the segments originally. And and that's kind of how I got into, got into gravel was the Croatan was, was here and then everywhere I've travel.
That's the bike. I primarily will take, you know, I ride a rodeo labs trail donkey now, and I'll just everywhere. I'm gonna go. I'll take that. So I can, I can ride road or, or gravel or whatever suits a fancy,
[00:06:08] Craig: Yeah, exactly. When you first started on Strava and it probably sounds like the same vintage I did. When you created a segment, you could actually name it, right? Like you could name, you could name the, you name, the climbs, all the climbs. You could put your own names on them.
[00:06:22] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. My, my mother-in-law sends me things all the time. Bless her heart. If she's listening, I love her to death, but she'll just send like a text message with some, with some cycling related news article and. If you, if you're like us and you follow cycling, it's things that you've already heard two or three days before, but when they hit the mainstream media and maybe my mother-in-law would see it, I would always be like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But she sent me this article about Strava, which I'd never heard of before. I think this was 2011. And I kind of clicked on it. I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. And I thought, well, I wonder who's using it around here. and I, I, I downloaded the, it might have been a beta app or something at the time. And, and of course there was no segments anywhere everywhere.
I went for the first six months I was telling you gotta try this, you know? And Yeah, I made all, I made all the segments in the beginning which was kind of funny. And tho the GPS on your phone back then was horrible and it, it was all squarely lines looked like spaghetti everywhere. And so, yeah, Stravos come a long way with better head units and yeah.
You know, all that stuff.
[00:07:28] Craig: Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. So it sounds like the Croton is, is actually rideable from where you live right now. Is that
[00:07:34] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. So we are, we are surrounded by it's 200 miles a road gravel road. And it's right here. It's five, five miles from where I'm sitting right now, so I can ride over there linked together all I can handle and, and come back pretty and it's open, you know, year round. There's no closures.
It's they're public roads.
[00:07:57] Craig: And to position it. So it's in North Carolina, but very close to the coast is what I saw.
[00:08:01] Matt: Yes. Yeah. So we're, we're in Eastern North Carolina. It's totally flat. There's zero elevation. And the Croatan is what's called a pacoin. So, pacoin is like an elevated section of low lands. So there's a lot of water in. In the Croatan and it has nowhere to go because there's no elevation and there's really no drainage.
So what they did was back in the sixties They dug canals to create the roads. So they would go in there, they would scoop out, you know, along the left and the right side, create these canals for drainage and that, and they'd put the earth in the middle and then they'd elevate that section for the roads.
And so a lot of what we're riding on is you know, as gravel roads that were built in a swamp essentially. So, that. It's pretty cool. Like when I first started going in there and riding, I was a little bit like, because you, you can be like 20 miles from nothing, you know, which it's really hard to say that, especially over on the east coast, you know, if you're in Montana or something.
Sure. You could maybe, but like out here, man, you can't be that far from civilization. And we have this beautiful, you know, national forest that is like kind of weirdly isolated We can, we have it right here in our backyard, which is, which is great. So this is a
[00:09:24] Craig: Yeah, isn't
[00:09:25] Matt: to start a start a bike race.
[00:09:27] Craig: Isn't that one of the, that's just one of those amazing things about having a gravel bike. You can just sort of explore and get into these pockets of wilderness. And in, in this case, pretty large pocket considering where you are now in, in the, in the four, is there, what's the canopy, like, are there large trees in there?
Are we looking at kind of
[00:09:45] Matt: Yeah. So Eastern North Carolina is filled with pine. And a lot of it is plantation planted pine. So RO you know, long, straight rows of, of pine Warehouser and places like that own. Ridiculous amount of land down here with just pine trees and the Croatan is essentially mostly that except for there are maybe six pretty big lakes that are in the Croatan.
And then there's a lot of, you know, tributary, swamp creeks that are coming in and out of that, when we. A lot of rain here, which, which is pretty often it's heading towards the coast, which isn't that far away. It's just that we, we tend to we te we tend to fill the sound is right here, where we're at.
So we have the sound and the ocean in a barrier island. That's like 25 miles long. So, it's all connected. And you know, it's three miles off the beach basically is where the, where the place starts.
[00:10:48] Craig: Got it. And are there other kind of offroad recreators in there? Are there, you know, jeepers and four wheelers and
[00:10:55] Matt: Some, some of that, mostly it's hunters in the, in hunting season. And other than that, honestly, it's, it's pretty much just for us. There, none of the roads really connect to each other. So we, we get to use them. A lot of days when I go out there, man, it's like, I can't believe, you know, just it's like, it's just, it's all.
It's just you. And that's, that's, that's a blessing for sure. It also means that the roads aren't maintained as well as they could be. And like we had the, we had hurricane Florence sorry, if you hear that helicopter, just the sound of freedom here. We got the Marine Corps here. So, the hurricane Florence in 2018, which.
Yesterday 2018. I mean, we just got devastated and we still haven't had the roads fixed since then. So that's been four years. You, you just can only imagine the amount of potholes and damage and stuff that's there, but that's what makes our race a little interesting too, is that you never know what the roads are gonna be like
[00:11:56] Craig: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[00:11:57] Matt: the new change.
They're like a lot.
[00:11:59] Craig: before we get into the race itself, let's talk a little bit about Ridge supply and what, what led to you founding the company and the vision? Cause I've when I heard the story, I found it super interesting and frankly made me want to just jump on the website and order some socks.
[00:12:13] Matt: I appreciate that. I, I need that. I need that. Yeah. If, if, for folks who don't know, I, you know, I own and operate Ridge supply, which is a which is a cycling apparel. Running apparel brand. I'm a one man show, so I I've got no employees. I've been doing it seven years and it's an online, only business.
We, we, we primarily sell direct. So you know, the pretty much the only place you can get our product is, is at our our website. And I, I, I ship everything myself. I started doing. Back in 2015 and I didn't know what I was doing. I, I, I knew that I had I had a pretty good job at the time. And I, the, the, the quick story is I, I got I got run over by a pickup truck while I was riding my bike.
And it was a hit and run and I was sort of very, very fortunate to be alive and. Acutely aware of that in the hospital that a lot of folks wanted to know if I was gonna keep riding my bike. And I, I immediately that I had to resolve that was just like, of course I was, I wasn't, it was never like, I'm scared of riding on the road.
I, I certainly was aware of the danger prior to this happening. And I knew that that day I was wearing all black. and that's kind of the easy color to find in cycling apparel. Everybody makes black apparel. And I knew that if I was gonna continue to do it, I wanted to try to figure out how to do it safer.
And so while I was laid up with a broken pelvis, I started doing some research and I put two sort of premises together. One was that Blocked color was more visible than solid color. And what that means is if you have the brightest, you know, pink or orange, that neon pink or orange, and we, we love it in our products.
If you put it by itself and you stick it down the road like you would see from a car, you might, you might not know what that is. It, it, it looks like. anything could look like a road sign. It could look like whatever. It could just be a bright thing that you're not quite identifying yet, but when you put blocked color together like a dark color, a light color and a bright color, it catches the eye in a way that makes it stand out.
It's not necessarily as. As the solid bright color, but it's more eye-catching. So that was one premise and was sort of a scientific premise there. And the other was bio motion mechanics. And what that means is that the human, the human brain recognizes another human's movement. And when that, that happens, that that brain will then acknowledge that that's a human and treat it like a.
and I think what happens in cycling, the phenomenon that we all experience when we're riding is we're not treated like humans at all. And it isn't because people are driving around saying, you know, oh, these Kirsty cyclists, you know, it's actually that when they're driving, they're just not acknowledging that, that thing that they see is.
Another person. It's, it's just an object. It's not, it's not dangerous. But when you think that that's a person, you notice it's a person, you will, then you don't wanna run somebody over. You know, that's not what anybody's trying to do. Then you will start acknowledging that that's person treat 'em like a person.
So I took those two premises together and I said, well, I knew defeat is here in North Carolina. I had been to visit. and I was kind of their neon poster child after my accident. And I realized like I could make my own sock. All I had to do was make 72 pair and. I took the most trite design. If you, if you're seeing this on YouTube or something, it's right behind me.
But I took the blue Ridge mountains that I grew up with in central Virginia. Everything is blue Ridge, blue Ridge, blue Ridge. It's the most trite non-original thing I could have come up with, but I'd never seen it in a sock. And so I took that design and a contour line also was something I had never seen.
I only has it really seen straight. They're easier to knit straight. Or vertical line. So I took that contour line. I made this five color sock and that was my idea was like, if I make a bright eyecatching multicolor sock and it's moving all the time there, you get your bio motion, you get your most visible.
And and yeah, so that's what I did. I mean, I. I, I did that in 2015. I, I had no idea what I was doing. I thought, man, if I could just sell these 144 pair that I ended up buying the first time I maybe I could do a sock of the month club or something. I no idea how to ship them nothing. And I made a phone call to a buddy who owns a bike shop.
And he was like, oh, this is great. You know, I'll buy six pair. And I called another buddy who owns a bike shop. And he was like, oh, I'll order 18. And I was like, oh my gosh, whoa, I've sold 23 pair. What am I gonna do? You know how I was just panicked. And so I, I, I really worked hard for like a week and I like created a website and did got the shipping integrated and I did all these.
Back in 2015, these tools were just becoming available to people like me, who really didn't know what they were doing, but pretty dangerous on a computer, but like, I can't do code, you know, and I could do all these things, like sort of cookie cutter and just like work hard at it and do it. And so that's, that's how I was, it was just dangerous enough to, to get 'em sold.
And then I sold them within two weeks and then I was like, well, I'll just take that. And I'll reinvest it in a new, new color and I just keep flipping it. And that's how my business started in 2015. And I literally never put another dime into it. I bet I was able to do that for a while, while still having a regular job.
And then yes, slowly but surely it's grown to the point. , you know, I think a lot of people think Ridge supply is a lot bigger than it is. But you gotta sell a lot of $17 socks to make a living. And I'm fortunate to sell a lot of socks. So, we that's, that's what I do, which is kind of, kind of crazy when people ask me, like, what do you do?
I'm like, I sell socks and they're like, well, what do you do for a living? I'm like, I sell a lot of socks. I don't know. I mean, that's the deal.
[00:18:43] Craig: I, I love that Matt. And for the listener, like I'll put a, a, a link to Ridge supply, so you can check out the color ways and whatnot. And I think it's the type of design that once you see it, as you said, you've, you've iterated on the color ways. Numbers and numbers and numbers of times now. And there's lots of different options there, but the core elements are generally the same, that skyline design that you've talked about early on from the blue Ridge mountains.
So it's super cool and visual. And I think I also heard you mention to others that, you know, you, you do find that people talk about their socks, which I think is, is interesting. And you know, in probably a great way that has, has helped the company.
[00:19:20] Matt: Yeah. A AB I mean, absolutely. I had no idea. The. The a community nature that was being created. And then the, the virals, not the right word, the personal connection that the Sox would make with other people out in the world. Like I'm always blown away at the number of new customers that rich supply gets every month that I'm not, I'm not advertising to get them.
They're they're coming through grassroots. You know, people on a group ride, people, seeing something on Instagram, people telling somebody else about 'em and that excitement around it is something that is, is the blessing of why this is actually a business. And isn't, wasn't just something I did. And , and, and it, and I can't take credit for it because a lot of that is timing.
And the MIS the, the mistakes or risks that were taken early on with the business that worked at the time when nobody else was really doing that now in revisionist history, it looks like, wow, you really knew, I didn't know what I was doing, you know, like, so, I, I can't sit back now and be like, yeah, look at this.
I, I, I still just in awe and my wife and I will look at each other sometimes and be like, what is going on? Like, we , we both had, you know, Big time jobs and corporate blah, blah, blah. And all of a sudden it's like, we're sell socks for a living. And, and, you know, it's bizarre. It's a bizarre life, but I think I got the best job in the world for me, you know?
So
[00:20:59] Craig: Yeah, that's amazing. And I, I do, I mean, I think as a consumer, we all appreciate like the transparency and authenticity of business owners. Like now that I've heard the story, the origin story about why the SOC design is the way it is. You better believe if anybody asks me about those socks or says like, oh, those are kind of cool.
I'm gonna tell them, oh, they were designed for increased visibility. And like, there's no doubt in my mind that customers relay that story if they hear about it. Because it's just, so it's just an interesting talking point. Like most socks are boring. These aren't.
[00:21:33] Matt: and I appreciate that. And you know, you, can't not, everybody can listen to a 45 minute podcast to let me get long winded about telling that story either. So it's, it's hard to, it's hard to get that message out there. I assume everybody knows it, but of course they don't. And so I'm, I'm happy that you've.
You know, you, you brought it up because it's, it is a, it's not marketing. I it's the last thing from marketing, it's really the, kind of the core design philosophy of what I do. It, it, isn't just, it's either mountain related, you know? So like the names, the style, the design is kind of related. It also has that five color.
I try to do five sometimes I can't, but. And once I that's my brand identity, I don't have a logo that people recognize. I don't have a text that somebody's like, oh yeah, it's it's that. And when I started that in 2015, nobody was doing that. And so when you see my socks in a picture, they really stand out because of that branding.
And that I've I've I like to say like, You know, like a dog, like peed around my tree. So many times, like you come near that tree, you're like, oh, that's where it supplies tree. Whoa. You know? And it's because that's what , that's what that did. And I didn't know that's what was gonna happen. But now I, I, it's funny, like I have like, Social media watchdogs out there.
You know, if somebody does anything with five colors or contour lines, I get these text messages. Like they're stealing from you. You know, it's, it's not that there's only so much you can do on a sock. That's not really what happens, but that's, what's made it unique. Is it it, you can tell what it is without seeing the words or some, you know, a swoosh logo or.
[00:23:17] Craig: Yeah. I love it. I love it. I'm in the listener. Well knows that I can geek out about the basic business behind any enterprise. Cause I love it. I'm fascinated by it, but I definitely wanted to transition to the Caran buck 50. And learn, learn more about the event. So what, when did you get the idea for it and what was the inspiration?
Why, you know, it's a lot of work to put on an event as you can attest. And why did you tackle that?
[00:23:42] Matt: Well, I mean, ignorance is is a great motivator to do something ridiculous because I had no idea. I had never, I don't think I'd ever volunteered for a race and nor had I ever put one on I'd done a lot of them. And I just knew that I knew that our area was kind of unique. Gravel was something that it hadn't quite taken off.
There weren't a lot of big events outside of, you know, like Mid-South and dirty Kansas at the time. And there was really no, and there's there still aren't many events on the east coast, outside of like Vermont. And so I knew we had the Crow team here and I. The better part of six months or so, just kind of riding the Croatan, giving a feel for it and, and trying to come up with something that could work.
The, the one challenge we have most, because we're on the coast, you can't go in our case south, because we're south facing, which is kind of strange. They don't, we're like long island, you know, when you go south, you go into the water. So. We don't have options for loops. You kind of go into the Croatan and the way that it's structured with its lakes and its swamps and stuff, some of the roads just don't go anywhere.
And they're really kind of like fire access. So we couldn't do like a, a traditional loop, like you would normally like almost every course is. So we had to do an out and back. That's interesting. Nobody really does that. And I wasn't sure people are gonna like that. And so I kind of wrote it enough.
So I was like, you know what, I don't hate this. I could do this, you know, and enjoy it. And it is different an out and back's always different. It's going another direction, a different view, different thing, different turns. So, but yeah, in 2017, I, I did that. I, I had a. A buddy at the time that was helping me kind of promote it.
And we got it started. And, and we had 250 people, I think in 2018 come and do it. And I like I've told some other folks too, like I had no idea what I was doing and a lot of bike races, you know, you just kind of show up, they start you and then you finish. Sometimes there's timing. Sometimes there's not.
If you're not on the podium, you just kind of, you know what I mean? Like there's nobody there to finish. I finished races before here, locally, where I got back to the finish line and there was literally nothing there, you know, I've won event like that where I'm like, there's no finish line. There's nobody to, to document it.
You just ride across and you're like, I won. You don't win anything. You're just the first person to finish. So with this race, We just winged it that first year it was a success. People loved it. We do start and stop at the Speedway here, which is, which is one of our crown jewels. We, we have a a, a NASCAR short track.
If you don't know what that is, it's essentially like, you know, less than a half mile track. And it is. they call it the nicest one in the country. And the reason that is, is it's built like a, like a Speedway where it's got, it's got like eight or nine bars. It has grandstands, it has towers. It has a restaurant in the middle.
It's got a garage. It's I mean, it's, it's amazing, but we, we are able to use it for our start and our finish and it, and it provides this ambiance about. The start and finish in a way that is real communal and has the right vibe. And it's right beside the Croatan so short, little, little paved section to get out there and then you're in the woods.
And just that combo together was a good, it just worked in 2018.
[00:27:33] Craig: Yeah. And was it 150 mile race? Or did you have other
[00:27:37] Matt: Yeah, no. So we have three. We call it the buck 50, because there's 150 mile race. We have a race called the buck, which is a hundred miles and we have a race called the 50. That is 50 miles. W the first year we basically had a course that was almost 50 miles and we did one lap, two laps or three laps. It's a mass start.
Everybody started at the same exact time. And we had. We had sections of the course. It changes every year, the course changes a little bit every year, but that first year we had this section of road that was really primitive and abandoned road that was, had a lot of potholes, a lot of mudhole and we called it Savage road.
And that was a section that was about three miles long that really broke the race up. It was the, it was the animated piece. And that was a big hit. We were able to use that the first two years. And since then we haven't been able to use it, which is fine. And we've changed the course a little bit, but now, now we have three races.
The 50 uses that same out and back to start. And then the hundred uses a 60 mile loop and then a 40 mile loop. And then the buck 50 uses 2 75 mile loops. So what's kind of nice is we have all these people out there in the course, and it kind of is three different courses, but there's a big section of the course where it's it's everyone uses it.
So unlike a lot of races, we have a lot of back and forth traffic. So, out there on the course, you will find other riders heading the other direction that are 40 miles. You know, away from you in the race. But the way that we stagger it and that provides a lot of, we found that that provides a lot of positive comradery.
Yeah. There's that small group in the front, that's drilling it for the race lead and they're not waving it people. But everyone else seems to be really encouraging of the other groups. And that community aspect, I think, is something unique about our race that people really like.
[00:29:49] Craig: Yeah, that sounds super interesting. And I agree. I mean, there's, it's very few races where you double back on yourself and see other people. And it, it's fascinating as, you know, as a mid packer to see. to get an opportunity to see the front front leaders of the men's and women's race go by. That's a lot of fun and inspiring to see.
[00:30:06] Matt: Yeah. And I think makes people feel a little bit safer too, you know, if you had a catastrophic situation you're, you're not alone. The Croatan is very remote and you could be. You wouldn't be out there by yourself forever, but the way our race is set up, you know, you're not alone very long. And I think people, like, I think people like that.
[00:30:26] Craig: For sure. You talked a little bit about how the terrain was laid out early on in this conversation. What type of equipment do you see people riding? What kind of tires, et C.
[00:30:36] Matt: Yeah. You know, the more I've tr traveled around and don't know other races and stuff, I, people that have never done this race, they actually, they just don't believe that the terrain, this terrain exists, you know, and they've never really ridden terrain like this because it is it's perfectly flat and what that means for you is that you never are able to coast or, you know, there's no climb, so there's no dissent and you never stop peddling.
And in the course of a 50 mile, even just a 50 mile ride, it can really drain you when you do 150. It is a, it is a serious effort. So as far as gearing and stuff is concerned, you could literally ride. , you know, you could ride road gearing here and be fine. But a lot of folks, you know, this is a great single speed course, because if you get the right gear, that's, you know, the right cadence you want and can get you at the speed you wanna go, you don't need to change your gear.
So it's a perfect course for just grinding out on a single speed tires. You know, we've got really good surface area or surface that is not like sharp rocket rocks at. It can be a little Sandy at times. So a little bit of volume is important, but I mean, the race has been one on like 30 fives and 30 twos.
So I wouldn't ride it on a 32 myself. I'd rather I ride like a 38. And I feel fine on that, but I ride a slick out here all year round. So even, even if it's wet a slick is fine. Our corners. Our corners are a little Sandy. So tires tend to not do anything for you. You just gotta take 'em a little gingerly.
If you go in a corner too hot, you're just gonna eat it. But we don't have many corners, you know, so a lot of the roads are straight and you're what you really have to do is find your line. That's the other thing you can't ever explain to somebody until they come and do it? We have. We we, you call 'em potholes, but like we have small indentations, like a pothole in the gravel and they're everywhere.
They're everywhere. And so imagine you're in a group of 800 people and you're nine, 10 riders back. You're not gonna see any of that. And all of a sudden, you're just like, bam, you hit the bottom of this pothole with your rim. It becomes this thing where as the course opens up and as people start to spread out, picking your line, it's like a snake, you know, and it just winds around and, and the groups are all doing it.
You can be on the left, you can be on the right. If you're in the middle of the road, it is a nightmare because there is just no way that you're not gonna have some catastrophic pothole in your way. It, it's a weird kind of way to race your bike. But one really cool thing is like, you'll never calm down and just like tune out.
You have to be on the Razor's edge mentally the whole time. And I think that's actually a great way to grab a race, you know? Cause if you're just like, you always talk about people, like I just had to grind through this thing, which is so boring. Like this course is not. It's flat and it's an out and back, and that sounds boring to people until they do it.
But then when they do it, you throw in these potholes it's, there's something special about it.
[00:34:03] Craig: A heck of a lot of peddling and a heck of a lot of attention required. It sounds like
[00:34:08] Matt: Yes.
[00:34:09] Craig: when you think about the event, were you looking to put something on the calendar that attracted sort of a highly competitive crowd or what was, what was kind of the vibe and intention of the, the race design in your mind?
[00:34:20] Matt: Yeah. You know, I, I set out to create something that could be the first gravel race you've ever done in the 50. That is like, You know, like, even if you're going pretty slow, you can complete that course in four hours. And I felt like four hours is like, you know, if, if you're really riding and training, some, you can do that.
Even if you never train more than two, you could still pull out a four hour effort. The buck 50. Was always gonna be a challenge just from a time perspective, because like even the fastest people who are blazing this course at like 21 and a half miles an hour, they're still in the seven hour range. And that is that's goes all the way up to 12, you know, depending on who who's doing it.
What I tried to do was make a race. and this is the magic of the Croatan being flat. If you're the, if you're the, the person who just wants to come out and experience it and ride, you can line up against, you know, Ian Boswell, who's gonna go, maybe win it. And you both have. An equally rewarding experience.
It isn't that the person in the back is just lollygagging. The course they're gonna have to do something really special for them to complete it, but the people at the front are gonna get this unique experience of a March race that doesn't have crazy elevation. Doesn't have, you know, high altitude doesn't have extreme weather and yet it's.
But it's just hard enough for wherever your fitness is at. And I think that's one of the sweet spots and we don't bill it. I know it's called the buck 50, but it, we split it about a third. So we have, you know, a third of the people sign up for the 50, a third of the people sign up for the a hundred and a third of people for the buck 50 and.
One of the unique things about our race too, is like, we let you switch the distance up until a month out because people will sign up and then they'll be like, ah, my fitness, isn't what I want it to be. Or they maybe have a great winner and they're like, you know what? I wanna do. I wanna bump up from the a hundred to the 150.
So we allow people to do that and change it on their own. And that's, that's been a big, a big blessing because it, it, we were seeing 150 people. Change, which is a nightmare for a race director to have to deal with all that. So we just let him do that one bike edge until January.
[00:36:53] Craig: Nice. Yeah. It's interesting that March date on the calendar, I think it's like, it's such a great focal point for your energy. Like through the winter to say, oh, I gotta, I gotta stay fit. Cuz I wanna do something big in March and it just sets the table for a great year on the bike. I think if you're fit at that time.
[00:37:10] Matt: Yeah. I think people that we, so registration just opened up yesterday and on, on the 15th of September and it's a long way out, but it really isn't. When you think about your holidays. Your new, year's all these things. And people do use this as their carrot. I know I do. I use it as my, I gotta get on swift.
You know, I gotta do another workout, even though I don't ride it. I just know that that's what people do and then they, it's not, you wanna come outta your, come out of your, you know, to start your season at the buck, 50 Andy blazing, but you know that you don't really have to perform at a weird, you.
Extreme level, you just have to grind and that's, that's kind of a neat way to start your year too. And I think, I think it's worked for people that really wanna set, you know, set a goal, an early season goal and then pick up their June and, you know, July things later, cuz they built that base.
[00:38:08] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like from your description that the, the race track has just created this very important piece of infrastructure. For the overall event, how are you kind of harnessing that? Obviously like a lot of gravel events try to foster a nice after race party or an event or experience for the community.
How do you kind of manage that? And, and what should we expect when we show up?
[00:38:32] Matt: Yeah. You know, we're, we're, we're super blessed. We we've got all of these things in this background where you're you're you're on this NAS. You know, short track it's paved. It has a pit lane. We, we have the finish line there, right? Where, right where the the vending is and the food and all that stuff.
So it's this communal effort once you've, once you either are coming through for a lap, you get to see everybody or at the finish right after you finish you're right there. And it's been an interesting. It's evolved, but it's been an interesting environment because we also have free camping there on site.
So basically like you can literally come in there the night before pitch a tent inside of the track, wake up, you're basically at the start finish line and start the races re reminds me a little bit of the, some of the mountain bike events that you get to do or camping's involved. But we, we offer, you know, meal afterwards and beverage, we typically will have like a, you know, a, a beer, a partner that'll that'll have beer.
We do like. A, a full catered buffet style meal, which, which is kind of nice because just some, you know, where we are. It's not like we got eight, 900 people. There's not a lot of restaurants and stuff, you know, you can't just like, say, Hey, go get yourself something to eat. We kind of have to provide it.
So we do that. And the big thing that because of Ridge supply and because of who I am as a business person, if you will like. I've always made. I've always tried to set out to make this race a value, even though it's not inexpensive race. There's. I feel like there's peer races that are of our size or bigger that are more expensive.
And the return that you get from the buck 50, I've always tried to maximize the return and make every decision that we make. I say we, that I make about the race is rider focus. Because I think what happens with race directors and I'm not pointing any fingers at anyone else, I'm saying this happens, happens to me.
You get this registration, you sell your registration, which is great. Then you have to provide services with that, with the, that revenue and the amount of services you provide. There's like a minimum and a lot of folks stop there. They're just like, this is all you gotta do. . And what I try to do is give back enough a in services, but also in product, we give away a huge swag package.
Nobody does this, but I do it because a that's what I do. I sell stuff, you know? But like this year, when you come and do this race, you're paying for the entry, but you're get, you're gonna get basically a, a, everything that we do is fully custom just for racers too. So it isn't like you can buy this on this, on the website or.
Somebody printed a cooi and gave it to you. It's like you get a custom pair of socks. You get a custom race tee that is not like your typical race tee. It's a legit piece of garment. You get a finisher's hat. When you finish, that's specific to your race, you're gonna get a pair of gloves that are custom long fingered, hand up gloves that you're gonna get.
You may get some other things and I'm not gonna say out loud what they are. Those things all add up. It's well, over a hundred dollars worth of stuff. You get a meal afterwards, you get beverage afterwards, you get free camping. It isn't about what you get back, but when you do all those things, and then the value of the race experience in itself is what it is.
And people do really enjoy doing this event. I hope that they tell other people about it and then they wanna come do it again. Otherwise, you know, it's a giant waste of time. I've found that from, from a race director's standpoint, if, if it stretches me a little bit where I'm just kinda like, oh man, I got, you know, when you have 900 people, every dollar that you spend is a thousand dollars, you know, and those add up very quickly.
And there's a lot of times that that feeling that you have, you're like, well, I don't have to do that. They won't, they don't really, you know, you don't really need that. That's almost the, the surefire indication I need to. And I, the one thing we don't do that a lot of big races have, I don't really have a whole lot.
I really don't have any corporate P partners. I don't sell sponsorship. Nobody's presenting this. And I like that because it keeps it, the vibe is the right vibe for March. I don't think a March race should feel like the world championships of anything. It's like, bro, you're just coming outta hibernation in the Northeast.
This is your first time to see the sunshine and you wanna ride your bike, but you know, you, you don't need all that pressure yet. And so we try to keep it like that. And I think it's translated. I think the, the race track does provide that. And that's kind of what we use it for. It's just a backdrop.
We really don't, you know, you do get to ride around it and finish and you come in and out of it to do your pit. But yeah, I'm not sure if I answered that question correctly, but
[00:43:35] Craig: You you, you, you did for sure, Matt. No, I love it. And I do think, you know, by my likes again, like it's come to me through a number of different sources that this is a fun event. If you can get it on your calendar and you're close to the east coast where you can get there. So I think you're doing all the right things and I'm, I'm happy to have you on the podcast and just hopefully expose this race to a broader audience.
I really love the idea. Encourage encouraging people to travel, to ride gravel in different parts of the country. Cuz as you expressed early on in this conversation, it's such a unique part of our country that has these funny little attributes that you're not gonna experience elsewhere.
[00:44:14] Matt: Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that. It, it is it, when you live here, you're kind of like, why would anybody want to come here and ride our little gravel and then you make the bike race, and then everyone's like, It's amazing. And you're like, really? Is it, you know, and, and that's kind of been an eyeopener too, is that you realize that it is unique.
The art terrain is unique and I've, I, I spent a lot of time in Vermont. I I spent a lot of time in Colorado, kind of all those kind of areas. I'm like, you can't mimic those things. They're just, they are what they are. And they're amazing. It's just that what we have is just. Squished flat and you can get away from everything in a way that is just kind of bizarre.
You know, there's no homes, there's no buildings. There's no nothing. You're just on a gravel road in the middle of a forest, as far as your eyes can see. And that's kind of cool.
[00:45:04] Craig: Yeah. And thank you. Thank you for just putting a hand up in creating this. I mean, it, I always like to express that sentiment to advent organizers cuz it's, it's hard, hard work, but I know it's, it's a virtual, it's a love story to your local community in the, the trails that you've explored the last few years.
[00:45:22] Matt: I appreciate that, man. Yeah. I mean, I would do it again if I, if I knew, but if I knew it was this hard, I would think really hard about starting it. I'm glad, I'm glad the ignorance is, is prevalent for me.
[00:45:35] Craig: it, it totally is. It totally is. I don't think you start a business. If you know everything you're gonna have to go through and you probably don't start an event either if you know everything that's in front of you, but cool. Thanks again, Matt. I really appreciate it.
[00:45:48] Matt: Craig. Appreciate it.
[00:45:48] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel rod podcast. Big, thanks to Matt for coming on board and talking about his backstory for Ridge supply and that amazing sounding Croatan buck 50 race coming up in early 20, 23. Big thanks to bike index for supporting the show this week.
And big thanks to you for listening. I may not say this enough, but I very much appreciate you listening to the show. And making me part of your gravel cycling experience. If you're interested in connecting with me, you can visit the ridership that's www.theridership.com. It's a free global cycling community where you can interact with gravel, cyclists from all over the world.
If you're able to support the show, ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. Or head on over to buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. If you're able to contribute financially. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week Randall and Craig open up the floor to questions from The Ridership.
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
In the Dirt 32[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. I'm going to be joined Really By my co-host randall jacobs for another episode of in the dirt
[00:00:34] Craig: randall, how you doing today?
[00:00:36] Randall: I'm doing well, Craig, good to see you, bud.
[00:00:39] Craig: Yeah. Great to see you too. I mean, I've been looking forward this just a, a little bit of reprieve from everything else that's going on in life. It's just nice to connect with you and just purely have a half hour an hour conversation about bikes.
[00:00:51] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. I know you've been going had a lot going on with your mom and so on. So, you know, definitely sending a lot of love and good vibes to you and your family going through some challenging times.
[00:01:01] Craig: Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, we it's the conversations we've had on the podcast and certainly within the ridership community, just about the value of this pursuit of gravel cycling and just kinda getting outta your head. I I've always loved it in that, like when you're on a, a gravel trail, particularly a technical gravel trail, like I ride you can't really think about anything else, but what's in front of you.
And it's just so, so helpful for me to just sort of think about the bike and performance and riding. Rather than thinking about everything else going on all the time.
[00:01:32] Randall: Yeah. Yeah, I can, I can relate. I've been processing some heavy things in my own life these days. And at the same time returning to the bike, I've been doing a lot more walking, hiking trail running lately as well as like canoeing and kayaking the canoes great with the kids. But there's.
There's that flow state that you can get into on the bicycle that is, you know, people talk about runners high. I've never really had that. I don't think I can run long enough to get to that head space, but on the bicycle, there's just a place where everything is just in sync and the it's. I just feel very connected to everything, but not overwhelmed by it.
If that makes sense.
[00:02:13] Craig: yeah. You know, I was up in lake Tahoe last weekend and did a bunch of standup paddle boarding. I got some good recommendations from people on the ridership as to where I should explore to ride. And I had a bike, but honestly I just left it on the patio because I, it was just enjoying the lake so much.
And to your point, like with standup paddle boarding, I found, you know, I just have to focus on the balance piece. So I, I, it sort. Took me to that same place. I just got in the rhythm of stroking on either side of the standup paddle board and, and being focused on the physicality of it. And, and the moment that I was experiencing, which, which I also really enjoyed.
[00:02:49] Randall: Yeah, standup paddleboards are great. I actually like them. I use them occasionally standing up, but having them as like your own little floating island in the middle of a lake or a pond you know, you can have two adults. I've had, you know, another adult and a, a toddler on one. And so one adult is in the water swimming and the toddler is kind of jumping on and off and, and it's, it's just so much fun.
Yeah,
[00:03:12] Craig: but you've got, you've got something coming up. That's kind of probably forcing you a little bit to get back on the bike. Right.
[00:03:17] Randall: Well, so, well, one I'm wanting to start coordinating more group rides. We've talked about this quite a bit and just life has gotten in the way you know, the logo launch and some things in, in my personal life and so on. So there's that the O positive festival. In Kingston, New York is coming up.
That's the seventh through the 9th of October and community member, Joe conk in the ridership. He is the founder of that festival. And once again, we're gonna be coordinating a gravel ride. Together with a road ride and a a mural tour ride, which will be through the, the city of Kingston and is very family friendly.
As part of that weekend, I believe it's gonna be on the eighth. So we'll be posting more information about that in the ridership and would love to have people come out and join.
[00:04:00] Craig: That's super cool. I remember you talking about the festival last year and some of the riding that you've done with Joe up there. So that sounds awesome. So for anybody on the east coast, that's within range of that, we're able to travel, as Randall said, it'll definitely put some notes out there. Maybe we can talk about it again, more specifically when you lock down the details.
[00:04:17] Randall: Yeah, we're, we're finalizing the route right now and we'll create a page for the event. So if you're interested in staying in touch, we'll definitely announce it here on the pod. I might even bring Joe on for a few minutes to share some more details, but the festival itself, it's, it's arts, it's music, it's community, it's great food and just a wonderful vibe right outside the Catskills and the riding out there is great.
I've done quite a bit of riding out there with him and others. So if you're in that area, definitely come out and join us. We'd love to see you. The, the event is it'll be, the ride will be you know, we may ask like for a recommended donation, which doesn't have to be provided, and that goes towards the artist community in Kingston.
And then, you know, there'll also be an option to get a wristband for the entire festival too. So. So, yeah. And if you wanna be participate in the conversation, definitely join the the Hudson valley channel in the ridership. That's where, where we'll be talking about this
[00:05:07] Craig: Cool. I similarly am trying to get my act together. Cause I signed up to support the Marin county bike coalition and the NorCal NACA league for the eventual adventure revival ride. I think it started three, maybe four years ago. They did had one year that was virtual during the pandemic, but I missed last year cause it sold out.
So I was sure to get on it this year. And it's a great route starting out of Fairfax, California.
So super fun route , very technical it's only 60 miles, but it's got a decent amount of climbing, particularly up the aply named Randall trail. Off of highway one is a, is a grind at the end.
And then you're coming across Fairfax BOS Ridge, but it's a lot of fun. And I believe I saw that Rebecca Rush is joining.
[00:05:51] Randall: oh, great.
[00:05:52] Craig: So that's gonna be cool. She's so nice. Former podcast guest couldn't have been more friendly when I've connected with her and subsequent times when I've ran into her, it's been awesome.
So looking forward to seeing her again.
[00:06:04] Randall: I got to meet her at a dinner hosted around sea Oder some years back. And yeah, she's, she's a rad woman. And a great rider. Very, very cool. Is it the same route as the original cause I did the original one some years back living in the bay.
[00:06:18] Craig: Yeah, I don't, I don't think they've changed anything. I mean, I'll tell you after the 17th, but I I'm pretty sure it's the same route
[00:06:24] Randall: Well, if anyone's considering doing this run higher volume tires and have a properly low gear, cuz you will want both and maybe a suspension stem.
[00:06:34] Craig: and maybe a suspension for Randall.
[00:06:36] Randall: Yeah. And maybe a suspension fork sacrilegious. But yeah.
[00:06:39] Craig: No. Yeah, no, it's a great route and, and totally perfect recommendations Randall, cuz it's, it's, it's technical. It'll push your limits. I mean, I loved it. I just thought it was like one of those roots that favored adventure, like the name, the name is perfect, cuz you're just out there on the mountain.
They're carving the route through rugged terrain, you know, basic fire roads and just this awesome part of the north side of Marin.
[00:07:06] Randall: I mean, it's the location where mountain biking got ITSs start. And frankly, the gravel bikes that we ride are far superior mountain bikes than they were riding back in those days. So
[00:07:14] Craig: Yeah, a hundred percent. I think I recently was at the, at the, the museum up in Fairfax, the mountain Mike museum, and looking at a clunker. And I was just
[00:07:23] Randall: Mm-hmm
[00:07:24] Craig: I can't even imagine with a kickback break, how they even survived going down Mount.
[00:07:29] Randall: well, they had to rebuild those hubs pretty much. Every run is my understanding. So.
[00:07:34] Craig: he hence the name repack downhill.
[00:07:38] Randall: Yeah. I've ridden with a few of the, the OGs of the mountain biking scene and it, it wasn't the good old days. We definitely have it better now speak speaking of which we have a new bike to nerd about.
[00:07:49] Craig: Yeah, not may not maybe a bike that I would take on adventure revival per se, but a very interesting bike for people to take a look at it. It's the BMC now, how do we decide that? It would say pronounce it
[00:08:02] Randall: CAS say it with confidence. It's gotta be KIS, maybe
[00:08:05] Craig: Kay.
[00:08:06] Randall: Ks. Yeah. Something like that.
[00:08:08] Craig: Super racey bike, actually, what I would've thought that BMC would've introduced to begin with kind of in the vein of the Cervelo ESP Sparrow, this bike looks, I mean, this bike could have been a road bike. When, when you see a picture of it.
[00:08:23] Randall: It's stunning. I love they, there's some unique design elements on the top tube that are very BMC. I like how the, you know, the chains, the seat stays are perfectly paralleled with the down tube and it's just a very elegant bike. The, the paint schemes, particularly on that top end model are quite striking and definitely a gravel race bike.
And in fact, I would say a dedicated gravel race bike, which is a little bit different than that as Sparrow.
[00:08:48] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's seven dedicated 700 C. But it still manages a fairly tight change stay and fairly good tire clearance. I mean, 700 by 45 is nothing to sneeze.
[00:09:00] Randall: Yeah, especially in such a, a, you know, a tight change stay. And it's, it's optimized for that. It has 80 milli BB drop, which is to say like the bottom bracket drop relative of relative to the axles. And that's quite a bit, so anyone running longer cranks is. Going to have say like a pedal strike issue.
If they try to run smaller tires, which is why I say, like, it's not quite like the Aspero, the Aspero is much more of a one bike. Like you could use it as a dedicated road bike as well. And it would be great for that sounds like bikes like that or ours, or you know, the, the open up that I always call out.
So this is. The the bottom bracket drop the fact that it's a, a longer top tube, so longer reach relative to the stack, just make it a bike that is very much optimized for bigger 700 seat tires, shorter stems. And all of this works really well. Well, offroad, but kind of takes away from its versatility as a, as a road bike which
[00:09:56] Craig: I also,
[00:09:57] Randall: for what it's designed for.
[00:09:58] Craig: yeah, I mean, it's very intentional, right. I also saw that they speck like a fairly narrow handle bar on there with a wide flare. So like keeping again, keeping that body tight in that race, race position. Yeah.
[00:10:12] Randall: Yeah. Which I, I'm not sure how much I like that. I think it makes a ton of sense on the road. But I, I feel like often, well, we'll, we'll see I think there's, I think there's a place for it. I would probably want if I was gonna go so narrow, I'd probably wanna do a compound flare in order to get even more flare in the drops without having the hoods super kicked out.
Because that, you know, that that extra leverage in the drops is, is nice to have, and it's kind of, but, you know, interesting to see some some difference of perspective there,
[00:10:43] Craig: Yeah, let me be clear. Like I would be terrified to ride. I think it was a 37 millimeter bar hood to hood. I would be terrified to ride that. I mean, that just seems really tight. I have heard of some of the pros kind of going super narrow and maybe on a, a non-technical course, like a S B T gravel, or if you live in a part of the country where it's, you know, you're just basically on dirt roads that might, that might work.
But yeah, for me, I think I'd be terrifi.
[00:11:10] Randall: I think that there's a, a place for this. And you, you see it on, on the road. You've seen some road pros go towards more narrow up top and it does improve arrow. And there a lot of gravel races are not that technical. And so that arrow benefit is meaningful. I just think that there's a little bit more evolution to happen in terms of one getting even more arrow on those narrower hoods.
So maybe like something to support the forearm a little bit. So you can be grabbing the, the top of the, of the hoods, but, and, and have your your forearms perpendicular the ground at parallel the ground in your upper arm perpendicular. So you really get that arrow benefit, but then, you know, again, compound flare to get that, maintain that extra leverage in the drops when you need it.
Nonetheless we're we're getting into deep handlebar nuance here. Let's let's back out and look at the rest of this machine.
[00:11:56] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I do think it's, it is just sort of interesting as you pointed out, like this is for a very specific rider and it's pretty natural. Companies are gonna continue to evolve around speed and ultra performance for one side of the market, not the side of the market, that's gonna attract me per se, but as more and more dollars going into racing and more and more people are looking for super high performance, like it's natural that bike companies are gonna do this type of thing.
[00:12:24] Randall: There's also an element of like, you know, the bike industry likes N plus one. And so this is distinct enough from a, a road bike where you would have your road bike and, and this bike and the type of person who has this bike probably has multiple bikes. I mean, it is a dedicated race bike so that, you know, it makes sense.
[00:12:46] Craig: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You pointed out a few other interesting things about the design as well.
[00:12:50] Randall: Yeah, so I like, I like how they did the inter I'm not a huge fan of integrated cabling through handlebars and stems. And I like how it seems that they kept the, the cabling external to the handlebar and then ran it underneath that new rock shop. That new shock stop stem. I think they're calling it some something different.
They, they built it in using RedShift's suspension, stem tech. And so it stays external until it drops into the upper headset bear. So that could be a lot worse in terms of serviceability and adjustability and so on. The top end model is a one piece HBAR and stem that has fully internal routing looks stunning, looks really, really beautiful but an absolute nightmare to set up and service.
And I wouldn't recommend going that route on any sort of bike period, because even a pro rider needs to be able to get their fit adjusted properly.
[00:13:45] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you and I share the same opinion on like, on elements of bike design that make it constrained from modification, easy modification. So yeah, I'm I'm with you on that. It absolutely looks gorgeous, but knowing me, like, I think I'd be frustrated at the limitations of it.
[00:14:03] Randall: yeah, yeah. But kudos to them on the keeping the, the cabling outside the bars on the Lower end models, which I say lower end, they start at six grand, which is another thing about this bike, which is on trend. Everything is so expensive. It's remarkable. How expensive bikes are these days?
[00:14:19] Craig: Yeah, we gotta, we got a question about that in the, in the ridership, right? Just sort of, why are bikes so expensive and it's yeah, I don't know. You know, when you look at a $10,000 bike or $6,000 bike, it's just that's. I mean, that's a hell of a lot of money. Yeah.
[00:14:33] Randall: I mean, there's, I think there's a few things that go into that. So this was we, we put out some, you know, we asked the, the ridership community for some questions in comments. So this was Matthew Kramer chiming in, you know, asking about why bikes have gotten so expensive. I think a, a big part of it.
I mean, of course there's inflation, right? And one of the major drivers of inflation in recent years are COVID related supply chain constraints. Right. So it's harder to get, it's hard to get parts and it's hard to get complete bikes, which means there's, you know, Up until recently. And there was a flood of, of like stimulus money for example, into the market.
So you had all these dollars chasing less available product. And so by companies focused on the higher end, I mean, we did the same thing. We, we, you know, we actually kind of regret having eliminated the mechanical model cuz but it was because we couldn't get parts and we went with all access, which is really great, but puts it at a, a more premium point.
But.
[00:15:27] Craig: you're layering. You're layering in increased fuel costs for transportation. There's a lot of things that have gone into it.
[00:15:34] Randall: Yeah, that is a factor. But I, I don't think that that's a major driver for this. I think it's more well, honestly, a, a significant part of it is people are paying it. Right. And there's some R and D that goes in here, like the, you know, this, some of these bikes that you see coming out. On the really high end, you know, the volumes are not that great.
And so that R and D has to be incorporated somewhere and with bike companies focusing on the higher end, cuz that's where the bigger margins and dollars are and riders having limited options in the more affordable end of the market, because that's not where bike companies are focusing. I mean, I think it's, it's kind of like the automotive industry right now where, you know, I bought, I bought a used Prius for like seven grand and I've put a bunch of miles into it and like, Like scrape the bumper and things like that.
And I could probably sell it for 11
[00:16:24] Craig: Right.
[00:16:25] Randall: like, you, you just see that in a number of different domains. And I think the B the, the bike space is no different. But you do get bikes are improving in incremental ways. But I, I, it has been a pretty radical shift towards the top of the market. It's is hard to find middle end products that is frankly, just as good in many ways.
[00:16:45] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you hope over time. We know historically it does trickle down and there's, I mean, don't get us wrong. I, I think there's a lot of good entry level bikes out there. It's just getting your hands on one and finding one today is a challenge.
[00:16:59] Randall: When supply chains go from 30 to 60 day lead times to, you know, at one point you know, there were like, you have very limited options for your levers and, and Dils and so on. Right. We have a duopoly in our industry, you know, and can't be is now, you know, they have a, a good product a competitive product in gravel now with their 13 speed stuff ECAR groups.
But you know, that stuff was like one to two years. So when that's the case, you know, if you have a limited buy, where are you gonna focus? You're gonna focus on the higher end and that's that? I think that's part of it too.
[00:17:32] Craig: Yeah, that makes sense. And I also remember you mentioning on an earlier podcast, just the amount of commitment level the component manufacturers are expecting from you. So, you know, in order to get a, a seat at the table, maybe you have to buy 50 of something, which as a small builder, you know, that could, that's a, that's a lot of dollars out of pocket.
[00:17:50] Randall: Well, and the, the smaller builders generally are like, if you're a domestic builder and you're assembling domestically, it's a different supply. You're paying, you're paying more from say like STR for their domestic distributor versus the, you know, their Taiwan based distributor, just because they're manufacturing a lot of that stuff in Taiwan.
But yeah, there were greater constraints. Sometimes you had to put a deposit up front and, you know, you put a deposit on something that is not going to, you're not gonna have for a year and you can't get that deposit back. So the, the risks associated with, you know, well, is something else new gonna come out or what's the market gonna look like in a year?
So there's, there's all these you know, it, it really drives home, just re how remarkable it was prior to the pandemic that supply chains worked so well. I mean, truly it is a miracle of a whole lot of very complex decentralized coordination that, you know, any of this works at all. As a supply chain nerd, it's, it's something that, that is, is is not lost on me.
And yeah, even the current circumstance, it's still pretty amazing what humans do.
[00:18:52] Craig: Yeah.
[00:18:53] Randall: All right. So where do we want to go from here?
[00:18:55] Craig: Yeah. I mean, one thing I did did I thought was interesting that you pointed out about that BMC is that they do have an integrated suspension stem offering from that they've worked with, it sounds like Redshift on
[00:19:05] Randall: Yep.
[00:19:06] Craig: yeah.
[00:19:07] Randall: I thought that was well executed. One downside I believe is that you can't flip the stem and with that beat bike being relatively long and, and on the lower side, like, you know, it's a race bike you know, it's, again, you have more constrained fitment options. I think the standard shock stop, then you can run in the up upward pointing direction.
[00:19:28] Craig: Yeah, you can. I think what's interesting to point out there though. So if this in BMCs designer's mind, this is a flat out thoroughbred race, bike. To have that be an option suggests that designers are coming around to the fact that suspension and suppleness can, can be a performance benefit, like put putting, I mean, you and I have talked about that and obviously I'm sold on it, but it just struck me as like this incredibly arrow stretched out race bike is offering that they must have determined that this is gonna help people win races.
[00:20:02] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Fatigue and control it's material. And they've also done a few things with the frame design, which you see on other bikes like the really the, the seat tube towards the bottom gets really narrow. It gets really thin. So it has a lot more flex built in you saw that with bikes, like, you know, the GT grade is, is kind of an extreme example of that, but compliance is, is a great thing.
That's the reason why we have one of the reasons we have such wide rims now, too. And what's so great about, you know, high volume, supple tubus tires, you know, it, it all, it all improves speed as a system.
[00:20:35] Craig: Yeah. I mentioned this when I had someone from BMC on talking about the S and the S LT. I have a, I have a hard tail BMC, 20 Niner mountain bike from back in the day, like at least a decade ago. And I remember getting on that bike, I came off of a, a similar Niner. Coming to that bike, the back end definitely had a supplement to it.
It had that, that exact drop stay design that you're kind of talking about and it really worked. And I was super impressed. I remember when I got on that bike, it just felt so fast and I could control it so well.
[00:21:10] Randall: Yeah, well, I had you know, you probably heard the conversation I had on the pod with Craig Cal talking about suspension on road bikes and whether or not you fully agree with that thesis. I think it's, I think it's fairly compelling. Definitely higher volume tires. Like I don't see, even, even in Marin, I would be running minimum 28 mill tub plus tires.
Nice low pressures on wide rims. There's no reason to run narrower than that. And you see a lot of the new arrow wheel options for road being built to a width where you can actually get an arrow benefit with those tires, you know, adhering to the rule of one oh 5%, which we had talked about in the wheel episode.
So, so yeah, all of these things are, are good developments.
[00:21:53] Craig: Yeah. You know, speaking of good developments, I managed actually to hook up with Matt Harvey from Enduro Barings, they did a ride. Out of Fairfax, California, a few weeks back. And I, I joined probably 50 people up there, Yuri, Oswald and other podcast guests was on there. And I think a couple others, I, I think I counted four old podcast guests on that ride, which was great, but a hell of a lot of fun.
You had some conversation, some great conversation with him about Enduro Barings, which I hope people will go back in reference. But I think there was a question or a comment about from the ridership about.
[00:22:27] Randall: Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that we covered in that episode, which I had so much fun with Matt he's just has a wealth of knowledge about the bicycle industry. He's an engineer, an engineering mindset clearly cares a lot about what he does. And you know, talking about the merits or lack thereof of a lot of ceramic bearings and long story short, most ceramic bearings.
Rubbish, the ones that are of those that are good, the majority of them require a lot more maintenance to stay. And the, and the benefit is pretty trivial. And then there's this XD 15 bearing that Enduro makes. And I'm sure, you know, others probably have some, some equivalent, but I haven't looked into it, but that I find really interesting.
And this is an Aeros, you know, a, I think a French aerospace alloy used for steel alloy used for the races. And then they have these high, very high grade ceramic ball. And because of this particular steel, which is very expensive and they have to buy it they don't, they can't buy it in tube form.
They have to, you know, buy it in sheets and, and take it from there, I believe. But because of the unique properties of this material You can get you can use ceramic bearings and if it gets any contamination, essentially the contamination gets like pulverized and kicked out as opposed to pitting and, and starting to, to damage the the metal, because in many cases, the ceramic bearings, that metal is a lot less hard than the bearing itself.
And thus, as a consequence, it's the thing to give. We go into a lot more detail in that episode, but yeah, Hans, I'm gonna, I might butcher this. So, bear with me here. Lale I'm guessing L E L L E I L I D he, he brought up this article that James Wong, why admire immensely? He's at cycling tips now wrote about an Enduro bottom bracket with this XD 15 bearing set.
And what James said was incredibly low friction feel phenomenal toughness. We did everything we could to kill it, but this thing is simply incredible. And like that is coming from someone like James Wong. It makes me really think, okay, this is something that we're gonna still do a little bit more investigation and Matt's gonna be sending us some data, but we'll probably, we're strongly considering this in incorporating these into a, a higher end version of our, the logos wheels in the.
[00:24:36] Craig: Got it. Nice. Yeah. I mean, I had enough smart people tell me that that was the way to go and happy that I've got that in my bottom bracket of my, my unicorn. That I've started riding.
[00:24:47] Randall: Oh, it's an XD 15.
[00:24:49] Craig: Yeah, I believe so.
[00:24:49] Randall: Oh, sweet. Yeah. Yeah. Genuine benefits that you don't have to spend a lot of time servicing. In fact, the service, it should essentially be zero service. That's pretty cool.
[00:25:00] Craig: that's what I'm looking for.
[00:25:02] Randall: Not cheap though. Not cheap. So everyone else, high quality steel bearings.
[00:25:07] Craig: Yeah. And I think Hans was also leading the conversation around just kind of, like flared bars, flat pedals, different kinds of like, you know, We're just out there for enjoying the ride kind of features of a bike or ways in which you could set up a bike.
[00:25:22] Randall: Yeah. I mean, I think flare borrows are de rigor. I. Would run flared bars on every drop bar bike, including a pure road performance bike, just with a, maybe a different philosophy on my road bike, I'd go super narrow and get the flares to have more control in the drops for aerodynamics. But flare is here to stay.
You see levers being designed with a little bit of flare. So with flare in mind and you know, any sort of, you know, is there an arrow cost? I have no idea. I, I don't think so. As long as the lever is aligned with. The bar behind it, it should sit in its wake, but if, even if there was the control benefits more than outweigh it.
[00:25:58] Craig: Yeah. I think that co that the arrow part might come into play on the trend towards super wide bars. And as the, as you know, I've played around with that, I mean, I've got, I think I've. A 48 on one of my bikes and my fitter kind of brought me back to a 44. I, I do miss kind of the offroad control the way to rip the bike around that I got out of the wider bars, but I'm, I'm fairly comfortable at 44 as well.
So I, I think I just need to play around with the flare on the bar that I'm running right now. And then it will be the right, right mix for.
[00:26:37] Randall: Well, we've talked about in the the, in the ridership that we're thinking about developing a bar that has a compound flare. So you can get, say like eight degrees on the hoods and then 16 to 20 in the drop. So you kind of get the best of both worlds in that you still get that. You know, that roady fit up top, but then the extra control the, the first bar to do this, I believe was the three T a GI.
And, and I don't even know if I'm pronouncing that right. We've talked about it on the pod
[00:27:02] Craig: Yeah. And I think there was the other one that was like the Whis whiskey components has something similar
[00:27:07] Randall: also does a compound. Yeah, I think compound flare makes a ton of sense for, for all of these bikes.
[00:27:15] Craig: I wish it wasn't so costly. And you, you didn't have to sort of go all in to create a bar, like cuz you can't 3d print, something like this, right?
[00:27:23] Randall: no, but it, it would be easy enough for somebody to create, say a, a high quality aluminum version. It's just another bending process plus testing regime to make sure that it, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't break on you.
[00:27:38] Craig: yeah. I'm gonna keep exploring that. I'm I'm not sort of locked and loaded on my handlebar and stem right now. Still just wanted to make sure that the bike was fitting me correctly. And I feel like I've got enough inputs to figure out which way I wanna go with any one of the cockpit components.
[00:27:55] Randall: Well, depending on your, what your timeframe is, I may have a prototype for you in time, so let's
[00:28:00] Craig: All right.
Many, many reasons why you're a good friend Randall and that's just one of 'em
[00:28:04] Randall: you know, a guy, you know, a guy who can get you stuff.
[00:28:07] Craig: yeah.
[00:28:09] Randall: Tom SHEEO was asking about suspension seat posts. What's your take here?
[00:28:14] Craig: I I'm a yes. So, I mean, I've been running on the thesis. I have a, a, a P N w coast dropper that has both a drop and a suspension, and I found that it's air tuned. So. Very tuneable very predictable. And I came to the conclusion, like anytime it moved, when my first inclination was like, oh crap, I'm losing performance.
Anytime it moved, I wasn't in a fluid pedal stroke. Like I had hit something unexpectedly and it was just saving me. Similarly, although I think it's less active rock shock on the wireless. Their wireless dropper post does have what they call active ride. And I'm probably not tuned correctly on it right now.
Cause I don't feel a lot of movement. The big difference between the two is on the PWC PMC. What am I saying here? Pacific PM. Yes. That one moves when you're fully extended. So it doesn't matter whether you're dropped or not. Like it it'll move. If the amount of pressure applied to it from your, your backside is, is forcing it to move.
Whereas the rock shock post, it has to be lowered a little bit. So if you're in the full position, you're who locked out. It's only active when you're down a little
[00:29:30] Randall: I wonder if that's a design constraint, because meaning something inherent in how they architected it as a dropper post, because from a product standpoint, that's exactly the opposite of what I would want.
[00:29:41] Craig: I'm kind of with you and, and I, you know, in talking to rock shock, they did say some of their riders will actually set it up a little bit high so that they can basically constantly ride it with it on.
[00:29:53] Randall: Yeah. I think that makes sense, especially adjustability. So to, to answer Tom's question, I think we both agree that suspension has its merits. I would definitely get a dropper first though. I like the best suspension you have is your arms and legs. And the, the float between your body and the bike.
That's, that's my strong opinion. And from there you have pneumatic suspension from the tires you can do, you know, a slightly cushier saddle, like, you know, you can have some, some compliance in the frame. There's a whole bunch of things you do before you do a suspension seat, post primary amongst those being a dropper.
[00:30:28] Craig: A hundred percent dropper. Number one, upgrade for gravel bikes, period. You'll never go. I don't know if I've ever met anybody who went back. Honestly, once they had a dropper.
[00:30:37] Randall: Yeah, I mean, I occasionally talk to people, looking at our bikes who are like, oh, well, you know, can I swap in a rigid post? And I was like, well, if that's what you wanna do, get the, you know, the access wireless droppers are really expensive and they're heavy. But you could have a saddle on one of those and, and, you know, a standard post and swap it in, in and out with a single bolt.
So that that's an option.
[00:30:58] Craig: I've got that set up now. And I will tell, I will tell you, I will tell our friends in the community if I ever swap it.
[00:31:05] Randall: Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
[00:31:07] Craig: I don't think, I don't think I will, but
[00:31:09] Randall: yeah. I can see on a city bike or like a burning man rig not having a dropper. That's that's about it. that's a whole, that's a whole separate conversation though.
[00:31:18] Craig: I will argue with you on the city bike, but anyway, you still wanna drop her on the city bike?
[00:31:22] Randall: Let's see. Luke Lopez and Larry Rose were commenting about non-competitive gravel setups, you know, alternative handlebars, flat pedals bags, and fun rides, and so on.
Inspired by our friends over at pathless pedals who very much do a lot to create content around the non-competitive side of cycling. So what are your
[00:31:41] Craig: Yeah. I mean, I think whether or not you set your bike up in a specific way to go out and have this non-competitive experience, or it's just a mindset. I think we're aligned in that gravel, gravel is for everyone. Right. And whatever your jam is going fast, going slow. Just getting out there is important.
I mean, for me, I often change my clothing.
[00:32:04] Randall: Mm-hmm
[00:32:05] Craig: When I'm out there for just a fun ride, like, like I've got some, some, you know, great baggies that I can wear and different things. And it's definitely a different mindset rolling out the door. Not that I'm out there hammering on a general basis, but it's definitely a different mindset when I'm just out there to stop and smell the roses.
[00:32:21] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I appreciate that mindset, but I still vastly prefer Lyra and, and being clipped in and, and, you know, and so on.
[00:32:35] Craig: And I've got a, I've got a mountain bike. So like having a flat bar on a gravel bike, like I I've had that set up on an old cross bike. I loved it. Super fun, nimble, but for me, like if I'm gonna go flat bar right now, it's definitely gonna be more on a mountain bike than a, a traditional gravel bike setup.
[00:32:52] Randall: But at the same time, you see, I can't recall if it was Luke, but you see folks with like an old Bridgestone mountain bike that they've converted into, you know, a flat bar or a drop bar, gravel bike. And it's, you know, they got a, you know, a handlebar bag on there and it's much more of like a let's go out and get lost and have an adventure, maybe do coffee outside or things like this party pace as you know, as Russ likes to say over.
You know, PLP.
[00:33:18] Craig: Yeah. If you've got a quiver by all means like, I, I love all bikes and I'm one who appreciates the nuances between them. So, you know, I just don't have a garage big enough for all these things.
[00:33:28] Randall: yeah, yeah, no, I, I like I like the, I like being able in the middle of a ride to decide that I feel like throwing down a little bit. Sometimes I get that, that little jolt of energy less. Now that I'm 40, I suppose, but, but still
[00:33:41] Craig: I I've seen you have those jolts Randall. I know it's there.
[00:33:45] Randall: Let's see, what else? Oh, Matthew Kramer turned me on to something that I thought was really cool in the ridership, which was E 13. Now has a 12 speed, 9 45 cassette that is compatible with standard 12 speed chains. So you don't need that funky flat top chain. That's fair. Still, you know, pretty proprietary to Ram in order to run a tighter cluster.
[00:34:07] Craig: So is that, is that 12 speed cassette from shrimp? Something you have to run on their product.
[00:34:15] Randall: So the way that SW has set it up, they have migrated all their road. And then now they're dedicated gravel drive trains to this 12 speed flat top chain which is, you know, it, it has a slight benefit in terms of like, You, you get the same cross sectional area of the side plates with a thinner side plate so they can make the chain a little bit thinner.
And that helps with the, the already very tight spacing of those cogs and like, but also makes it so that it's something proprietary. And so they've been expanding that I, I suspect that you'll see it on their mountain bike groups soon enough. And, you know, I really like to adopt, you know, proven open standards and non-pro proprietary stuff whenever possible.
And the fact is that standard 12 speed works really well and nobody was making a tighter cluster for Eagle, like, you know, or for, for like, you know, a mullet set up where you have. A mountain bike rear derailer, but maybe you want a little bit tighter cluster a little bit tighter cassette for your road or your, your certain gravel applications.
[00:35:17] Craig: when you talk about tighter cassette. I remember seeing this pop up and I was like 9 45. Okay. Why do I really care? Talk about the tighter cluster? Cause I think that's an important maybe nuance beyond just like, oh, you got a 45 and a nine.
[00:35:30] Randall: Yeah. So the, the biggest knock that people have against one by drive trains is the jumps between cogs. Right. And yeah, I get it. A lot of this can be mitigated by proportional, crank length, and by having a proper bike fit. Because it allows you to spin at a wider range of cadences without, you know, while still maintaining a smooth pedal stroke.
And I've, I've been fine with my setups. This 9 45 is it's the same as a, a 10 speed, 1138. Which is, you know, a, a larger road cassette from, from a few years ago. And it just adds a, a taller cog and a bigger cog you know, on that same cassette. And so you get, you know, jumps that I think are probably tight enough for the vast majority of roadies to say like, okay, well, if I had any concerns about jumps, now those are mitigated some.
Want it to be like one tooth jumps between cogs and you know, okay. Go ride your road bike. That that's fine. But but yeah, I like, I like to see this. I was actually considering having us develop something if someone else didn't. So I'm glad to see this in the market, I think is a real gap for it.
[00:36:35] Craig: Yeah, it's interesting. I wonder why, like SHA doesn't go to a nine cause you think like, I understand why smaller companies kind of pop up and they see an opportunity like this gap, but E thirteen's been doing this kind of thing for a while.
[00:36:49] Randall: The nine tooth is so it it's gonna wear all else equal same material and everything it's gonna wear itself and the chain more quickly than a 10 tooth or an 11 tooth. Right. And so the, the entire philosophy of the drivetrain changes with a nine tooth in that. You know, I like to think of the nine tooth as an overdrive gear, plus the jump between the nine and the 11 is significant.
Right? So if you're spending a lot of time at the top end of the range, you know, you might not love that, but for me, you pair it with a 42 chain ring and that 42 9. With a, you know, a, a 700 by 28 or 700 by 30 tire is the equivalent of, of a road bike with, you know, 51 11, which is to say, you have plenty of top end.
You're not gonna spin out all the time on, on a high speed descent, but it's not all that often that I'm descending at those sorts of speeds. And so that jump from the 11 to the nine is not a problem for me on that end of the cassette. And so in turn, when you have that nine tooth that also informs the chain ring that you pair.
Because you, you know, you kind of need to set your chain ring based on how you wanna calibrate that range that the cassette has. So yeah, I'm not surprised that Ram didn't go that didn't go that route. But I do think it makes a ton of sense and I love one by drive trains and I'm all about one bikes as well with one by drive trains.
And so the nine two really facilitates that.
[00:38:08] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. Super interesting. And Eli Bingham who often chimes in, in the ridership about some real technical stuff and tends to explore a lot of components. He had a kind of note on this didn't.
[00:38:18] Randall: Yeah. So, one thing you gotta make sure, because of, and again, this gets into like proprietary standards and so on. So like the free hub, the XD XDR free hub standard that this cassette is compatible with is a proprietary standard that you know, Sam made it. So any. It's really easy for a wheel company to create a wheel with a free hub that, that uses the, you know, XD XDR.
But they patented every possible way. They could think of, of attaching a cassette to that so that only they could produce the cassettes. And so E 13 has a came up with a really clever solution, but it requires like a cinch bolt. That clamps around the free hub body. And if that comes loose, it can affect the shifting.
So that's kind of like the one issue that these can have. I've never had that issue with E 13 cassettes and I've run them exclusively for several years now. But it's just something to keep in mind. I find that they shift shift really excellent and they're light and they hold up well, cause they're, you know, most of the cogs or steel.
[00:39:11] Craig: Right. Yeah, right on. And then I think we should end with, I think, which, which was one of my favorite questions coming out of the ridership from our friend, Silas, pat love is the pursuit of a quiet bike without creeks, an achievable goal or a pipe dream.
[00:39:27] Randall: , it depends on what you're starting with. Unfortunately. I think in general I mean, this should AF absolutely be the standard. It, there's no reason why things should be rattling around. And you know, there are ways to get around it. So there, you know, wireless shifting and so on helps. But also like in our case, we run full housing through the frame and then we put it in a, we put it in a foam sleeve and we do that with.
Hydraulic hoses too. And every bite company should be doing that because rattles suck bottom bracket Creek, again, like any bottom bracket will Creek if it gets contaminated. But you know, having a bottom bracket set up that aligns and supports the bearings sufficiently. You know, should eliminate the vast majority of those creeks.
Yeah, it, this, this should entirely be possible. Unfortunately, there are a lot of bikes that, mm let's just say that this sort of thing was an afterthought. So it may cost, it may cost some money and require some expertise to chase out the, you know, all those creeks.
[00:40:25] Craig: I think that's gotta be the worst task as a bike mechanic to be tasked with is when someone comes in and says, my, my bike is creaking. Help me resolve it.
[00:40:34] Randall: Yeah. And, and honestly my experience, it it's a special mechanic. Who's who's really good at. I've had bikes that you know, our, our bikes will have a Creek here and there. And we'll say like, you know, bring it to a mechanic, have them take a look and they can't chase it. And I've actually had an instance where I had the bike shipped to me personally, and I chased it, but I chased it in a way that like, you know, it's I'm trying to remember what it was.
Oh, it wasn't even a Creek. It was just that. Axis rear derailer the hanger on the was ever so slightly misaligned. And then the axis derailer was harder. When it's miscalibrated it makes a lot of noise on the cassette and that was the noise. So we're like, they were looking at the bottom bracket, they were looking at the seat post.
They were looking at the, the headset interface and, and so on. And unless you have that, like the time and that deductive mindset and some experience of like, what things sound like, it's really hard to, to chase. So if you have a mechanic, who's a good chaser. That that's that's someone who really knows their stuff and
[00:41:39] Craig: Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah, my, my go to, I mean, as a non methodical bad mechanic, definitely like I clean my bike when a Creek arrives and that usually, like, it's say 85% of the time solves the problem. And then if, if I need to go further, it's about. You know, greasing things, making sure, just kind of being a little more I inspect of, of what's going on.
I I've generally been pretty lucky that I haven't had creeks that I weren't, that I wasn't clear on how to resolve.
[00:42:10] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'd like to end with a with something that I'm excited about, which is I haven't nailed it down yet, but I had pinged you about coming out west for a bit. And so once those dates are locked down you know, getting a big group ride in the bay area and potentially in a couple other parts of the us.
Something I'm super excited about and to meet some of the riders that are in the forum and that are, are regular listeners and so on. So more on that as we approach. But that would probably be Denver, Boulder, maybe San Diego, and then definitely the bay area.
[00:42:40] Craig: That's super exciting. I feel like, you know, before the pandemic we had kicked off some really amazing group rides and
[00:42:47] Randall: I miss it.
[00:42:48] Craig: you. Yeah. And you and I have been longing for, we've had a lot going on to not kind of be putting that out there ourselves personally, but I think it's, it's a great time to do that and hopefully we can get some knocked out by the end of the year and super excited to see you when you're in the bay area.
[00:43:04] Randall: Likewise. It's been too long.
[00:43:06] Craig: We're good to catch up. My friend,
[00:43:08] Randall: Likewise. All right, my friend.
[00:43:09] Craig: take, take care.
[00:43:10] Randall: See it.
[00:43:11] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of in the dirt. From the gravel ride pod cast
How's a bit of a postscript. I did attend the adventure revival ride up in Marine county, out of Fairfax this past weekend. Quite a lovely event, benefiting Nika. The course is amazing and difficult as I imagined and remembered from the last time I did it such a great route put together by the Marine county bike coalition. Super challenging on a gravel bike. I remember thinking about halfway through. Wow. I'm about halfway through feeling quite beat up. And I was riding my unicorn with a front suspension fork on it. I certainly saw a number of riders out there on mountain bikes, which would not have been a bad choice.
Anyway, phenomenal event, definitely something to have on your radar, down the line. If you're interested in connecting with myself or Randall, please join the ridership. Simply visit www.theridership.com.
That's a free online, global cycling community where you can connect and discuss gravel, cycling with athletes from all over the world. If you're interested in supporting the podcast, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. And remember, ratings and reviews are always hugely appreciated. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
This week we sit down with author and adventurer, Markus Stitz to discuss his new book, Great British Gravel Rides. Markus explores gravel cycling in Great Britain through the eyes of local gravel cyclists to discover amazing routes throughout the region.
Markus Stitz Website
Episode Sponsor: Trek Travel - Come join us on the Girona Gravel Tour November 6th, 2022.
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Great British Gravel Rides[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: This week on the podcast. We welcome Marcus. Stets the author of great British gravel rides, a book of 25 routes throughout England, Wales and Scotland.
. That brings us through the varied terrain in great Britain, through the eyes of community members throughout the aisle each route was designed by a gravel cyclists from that region.
In an attempt to get the best. Gravel routes across England, Scotland and Wales. I enjoyed the conversation a lot and i enjoyed the approach to the book and i hope you will too
Before we get started. I need to thank this week. Sponsor truck travel and the Girona gravel bike tour.
Trek has been offering the Girona gravel bike tour for a number of years. And you may remember an episode I recorded with them about Yorona and what a gem it is for cycling in general, but more specifically gravel. I've been hoping and wanting to go over there myself for a number of years.
And I'm excited to say that I'm going to be joining the November 6th trip. And I'd like you to join me. Yeah, I'm not kidding. Take a step back. You can do this. Come join me and ride gravel bikes in Girona trucks. Got everything organized for us from an, a wonderful hotel, right in the center of Girona as well as access to track bicycles to explore the countryside, we've got local guides that have designed amazing routes for us. So we're going to sample everything the region has to offer in this trip.
I can't wait to get over there in November and I'm hoping you'll be able to join me too. It'll be so good to paddle with some of you listeners and members of the ridership community. I know we've got a handful of people signed up already and I would love to fill the hotel with people we know and love.
As a special bonus, truck's going to give anybody who registers via the podcast or the ridership or free handlebar bag with their trip. So make sure when you go visit Trek, travel.com search Jarana gravel bike tour and mentioned the podcast during your registration process. There's a number of dates this year remaining, but I will be on the November 6th trip.
So I'm hoping we can shape the demand and drive you to that trip. We'll have a great time. And I look forward to seeing you there. Remember that's www.trektravel.com. Search Girona gravel bike tour. With that said let's jump right into my conversation with marcus about the great british gravel rides Marcus welcome to the show.
[00:02:28] Markus: Hello.
[00:02:30] Craig Dalton: It's good to connect with you. I was super excited when I caught wind of this great, great Britain, gravel rides book that you penned and excited to learn a little bit more about your background as a cyclist, and what led to your passion to take on this project and do a great job kind of going throughout Britain and laying out some amazing roots for people.
[00:02:51] Markus: Yeah. It's like, it's been an amazing project to work on and especially like, cuz I guess people who live in Britain have, you know, have a better idea of the country. But if you, if you're outside the country, it's such a diverse place. Like it's, it's, you know, from north to south, I think I've been to many countries in the world and it's like, it's, it's difficult to find a country, which is, which is gotten so many different places too, right.
In terms of the conditions, but also the people. So my idea was really to kind of look at the community. With all the different shapes and forms it comes and, and, and do a book about it and, and recommend roots to people. Pretty much as an inspiration.
[00:03:35] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think that was a super interesting approach and look forward to getting into it with. Before we get started. Why don't we give the listener just a little bit about an idea about your background as a cyclist.
[00:03:46] Markus: Yeah. So I, I think I generally came to cycling. I, I started cycling as a child. I grew up in Germany and you kind of know I'm cycling as default, I think. And I I'd never been in any cycling clubs and I wouldn't call myself like a keen cyclist when I was a child. And then pretty much picked up a mountain bike in, in my years at the university, cuz I lived in a place which had like pretty extensive for is a bit like what you possibly.
Which comes really close to north American travel or the idea what we have, like big metal roads and, you know, loads of pine fors and all pretty straightforward. So it was a quite great location to, to be based and then do that. And then I finished university and went to New Zealand and. Think that spare really picked up the cycle, touring adventure, cycling mountain biking buck spent two years in Wellington, brilliant location.
New Zealand in general is, is just a, a fascinating place to ride and is also one of those places like. There's. Yeah, there's, there's, there's so much outdoor possibilities and you, you know, you wouldn't, you wouldn't come to New Zealand. I would presume if you want like big city life or you want all the belts and visits of massive cities like New York or LA or whatever.
I think I really like the, the mixture between having an outdoorsy life, but also still having a bit of a city lifestyle. Wellington is a capital store. Yeah. We enjoyed it. There did loads of cycling over there. And then. In my time in Wellington, I also decided in some shape or form I want to do around the world trip cycling around the world.
And the initial idea was, was just a circus. So I finished my time in in Wellington and moved back to Europe. I moved to Edinburg. And while I was in Edinburgh, I had this idea, or maybe I could cycle from Edinburgh to Dunedin. Dunedin is one of the Southern cities in New Zealand. Then it's the old name for Edinburg.
So there's interesting connection there. A lot of settled in that part of New Zealand. So like I could a trip from Edburg to dun and then. At some stage, I think that developed further to say, look, if I'm doing half the world anyway, I might as well do the other as well.
[00:05:57] Craig Dalton: And when you, when you were approaching that Marcus, like, were you thinking at that point, like pedaling around the world is something I specifically want to do or were you more, I just wanna travel and experience different cultures and different parts of the world.
[00:06:13] Markus: yeah, I think it's a travel aspect, which is which, which was the most important one. Like, and that's like, I think this is coming. I think if you look at all my work so far, like I'm I'm, I would certainly say like, for me, cycling is an amazing tool to connect with people. Like if you look at. Any cycling community.
It doesn't matter which one you're looking at. I think they're all slightly different, but I think what they all have in common people who ride bike, speak to each. This is, this is I thing it's, it's like, and they either speak about bikes or you, you know, you just happen to have the same mode of transport.
You talk about something else. And, and, and, and for me, that was the important one. I, you know, I was thinking about whether I'm gonna go this. I don't think there's, well, there is no single speed record for going around the world and I could have set that record. Like it would've been an easy task to do because there isn't such a thing.
But that wasn't important for me that never played in my mind. I was just like, you know, it will be, you know, it'd be an interesting thing to do, but it would take away from the trip. So for me around the world trip was to meet interesting people. I met so many. Amazing people in New Zealand simply by being friends with a couple of guys that worked in a bike shop and they kind of introduced me to the cycling community in New Zealand.
And when I back went back to, to Scotland, it was kind of the same. It was interesting. I came back to Scotland at night. Initially, didn't bring my bikes over to Edinburg and it was the first thing I missed. I was just like, I want my bikes here. There's such a convenient way to get around, but also to make friends if you place, that was the main, that was the main consideration.
So yeah, it was, it was like, and is possibly, I guess a lot of people ask why singles speak? Why, why do you take a singles speak bike? And. I guess the most important reason for that one is you don't have to, you don't really need to care about your bike. Like, you know, it's got a chain which needs replacing every now and then there's no F around the bike.
It was a pretty straightforward built. You know, everything was rock solid. Most of them were parts were steel. So, you know, like even, even transporting the bike by plane was super easy. Cuz it just Chuck it in a box. There's no area that bends or any, any other expensive part. So yeah, I think that was the, that is the kind of, and yeah, that comes across very clearly in the book right now as well.
Like I'm, I'm always, there's always people first, you know, it's about. Is about the community and, and how I connect with them. And, you know, cycling is great. I really enjoy cycling. But I would, I don't think I'd be enjoying just the cycling bit as much as, as I do with the people,
[00:08:58] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I mean, I think that's a big element that everybody talks about with our enjoyment of gravel. It's twofold. It's one just sort of getting off the beaten path and two, the community and the friendliness of it all. I think it's just at least today it exceeds any other form. Any other side of the sport of cycling?
I don't think you just, you don't get the camaraderie that you do on the gravel side of.
[00:09:20] Markus: Yeah. Yeah. And this, I mean, just on my, it's interesting to look back on around the world trip, cuz I was on the mountain bike. So I was on a SERE, which is, you know, it's a hard tail. You can, yeah, it's a typical, hard to mountain bike built. Basically. You could put some, I didn't have suspension forks, but it, you know, you could write a bit of suspension fork as well.
But if I look back now and interestingly enough, I went Toor in Kansas. And I wasn't, I wasn't aware of, well, now I'm going, but back then dirty. And I wasn't really aware of that and impor and called Hedman and he introduced me to the whole Yeah, the Kansas travel community. It was awesome. It was amazing.
I think there's still a, we picture in one of the pups of me and sitting, there was really sore on that.
Kansas is flat a pancake and it isn't it's, it's just, that's a trade lie because the east of Kansas is very, very. The for the west, you get the, you know, the, the, the fluter it gets, but yeah, cycling along the east of is no piece of cake at all, but it's just the kinda thing. And so I kind got introduced to the idea of, I heard, you know, I had heard about bikes, but you could, you know, you might as well argue that I've a bike around the world is just, just to different bars.
They have Jones's bars and instead of bars, like, and yeah, it's the, I think it's the least. There's no real conventions yet. There's no, there isn't really anything that you kind of, you don't have to have a certain thing to, to identify as Scrabble, cyclists, but you know, and that, that's the nice thing about it.
It's a bit like. It's like, for me, it feels like I would've been, I, I, I would've loved to be there when mountain biking developed in Mo county. And, you know, kind of was literally about people kind of riding around on bikes, having a good time
[00:11:27] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:11:27] Markus: doing some, doing some crazy things and not really caring about conventions whatsoever.
And I think we are mid travel cycling. It's nice to be in the middle. You know, I think if I think things keep coming back, it's like the early days of the tour farms as well, which I, I basically think later foundations of what you now call ultra cycling. You know, again, there's people, you know, people just having a good time being, you know, also being ambitious about thing.
And you can, you can, you can say the thing about mountain biking as well. You know, those things develop. And I think we're there with travel cycling at the moment, which is great to be right in the thick of it. No doubt. I think it will at some stage diversify as well. You know, we've got suspension forks.
Now we basically have mountain bike tires now onto level bikes, but that's okay. You know, I think it's, you know, this is, this is the evolution where things go, but just being there right there right now is quite.
[00:12:27] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's certainly one of the impetus behind this podcast, beginnings was it was just such an exciting time. I thought in the sport of cycling and someone, as you know, I'd been around cycling my whole life yet. I still made mistakes when I bought my first gravel bike and realized like, oh, I didn't set it up the way I should, or I didn't make the choices I should.
And I was like, if I've been around bikes and worked in bike shops and worked in the bike industry and I still managed to screw up this Purchas. There's a lot of people and a lot of questions and fast forward three years, I, I still find myself having interesting conversations with product designers and seeing interesting innovations and new options that just allow people to personalize this equipment to wherever they call home or whatever they're intending to do.
[00:13:11] Markus: Yeah. And, and I think it is, I think it, it has made pretty big leaps as well. If I, I think one thing for me, which sticks out is tires. Like if I, if I look back in. So I , I think if you wanna put an official day to it, when I started travel, riding was in 2017 when I had a LER and mapped the first bike packing route in Scotland.
And I know back then, I mean, your choice of tires was the 30 yard, the bike. And I could have gone for a Schal G one old round and there were a few other. Tires kicking around on the market. But if you look at right now, just 12 alone has seven different travel tires. Whoa. You know, and, and not speaking about any of the mountain bike tires, you can now, you know, if you look at a fast rolling waste tire for a mountain bike, you can stick that on a co bike these days cuz the, you know, the clearance is wide enough to, to ride those.
And so I think this is where you see like how much. You know how quickly the market or the, the, the industry has progressed in, in, in those kind of aspects. So a choice is, is, is huge right now. And yeah, it's, it's, it's great. But I also think, you know, I think it's interesting because I think one thing the book of working on the book has kind of like forced me to do, and I had a keen interest as well.
It's just kind of, and, and this is, I think this is where Britain is really interesting is to kinda look back to. You know, what, what you can now call pu writing, where, where did it start? And if you look at Britain, like it started in the 1920s here, cause there's been the rough. So there's been an organization called the rough stuff fellowship.
And that that's, if you wanna sum it up, is people starting to ride bikes? Off the beaten track in, in rails, in England and Scotland and various things. And you know, back then, there weren't really any Tomic roads. I don't think, you know, I don't think they had the intention. Like there, there weren't deliberately riding off road, but there they did ride them off road because there was literally no other network.
To use there weren't any Timex cycling paths. You know, there were a few roads back then, but not nearly as much as you have these days and they just simply rode their bikes wherever they're placed to go. And I, I think like, I have that in the introduction of my book for me, that's kind of like where it all originates.
And then you look at Australia, you look at the Overlands who, again, like this is like possibly the very early stages of bike, you know, who went from a to B I think it's tricky, cuz I think what we have now is modern crab bikes. They are definitely much more advanced I'm riding at the moment. I'm riding a 1970s club Butler bike.
So it's one of those bikes, you know, that, that people potentially took when there were rough stuffing and. It's awesome. Fun to ride. I'm really enjoying it for a challenge, but you also see, you know, if you've got a modern gravel bike gear, I mean, this is much more forgiving. Like I was talking to a friend about that, this breaks, for example, whoa.
Like they made such a difference, especially if you ride in Scotland, you know, if you've got wind breaks and you're going down the long downhill, you have to. Three times on the downhill, because otherwise you just, your, your ribs are afterwards. So, you know, things like this, which I found is super like you, I think the concept, I think there's also two, there's interesting.
Two things to clever writing. I think there's clever riding as a concept of off. And then there's bikes, you know, which. Possibly are what we, what we have now as clever bikes, truck bars, you know, a geometry, which is possibly closer to a road bike than it is to a mountain bike. Tie with, I don't think you can define that any longer, because it's been going up and up and, you know, I don't think we're far off having, I don't know if we're ever gonna get the tweet inch tiles on the bike we might do.
Who knows, but I think it's kind of in my book really much picking up on the idea of travel writing as a concept. It's why, when I, when people were asking me, well, like, oh, do I need to have a travel bike? Then it was like, Take whatever bike you think is suitable off road. Bear in mind that the people who will be reading this will potentially be riding this on a 45 millimeter tire to bar bike.
So, you know, there shouldn't be any, any severe to above or whatever in there. But if you ride that on a clever bike, or if you take your full as mountain bike or whatever bike, your, your thing is suit. Please do that. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna restrict anything to that concept.
[00:17:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I thought that I saw that note at the beginning of your book and I think that's spot on. It's like ride. What you have, gravel is more about the sensation, the community. Exploration, all these different ideas above and beyond the type of bike you actually are throwing a leg over.
[00:18:13] Markus: Yeah. Yeah. And this is, and yeah, and, and that, especially in Britain, this , there's many terrains. You can ride your bike over,
[00:18:22] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So just finishing your, your sort of backstory, you finished the round of the world trip, and then obviously like you continue to be inspired by the sport. Of mountain biking and did some other big adventures.
[00:18:36] Markus: Yeah, I think that, so, I mean, if you look at my career, if you want to call it such, I've always been a person who's been, I've been, always been inspired by many things. Like I, you know, I can't, I didn't have a straightforward career path. I did a multitude of things in my life. And when I came back from the round the world trip, but basically I had a, I had a decision to make what I'm gonna do right now.
Am I gonna go back to a nine to five? I never had a nine to five job as such, but, you know, am I gonna go back to to employment and let someone else paying my wages and I'll do my fair bit, or am I gonna use all the experience I have from the, around the world trip? Cause I think what the around the world trip has really taught me is to.
You can take so much stuff out of a year on the bike, into, into the life afterwards, you know, it's about leadership. It's about decision making. It's about adapting to new environ. And so I had all of, you know, all of that came with the trip. It wasn't, it wasn't just about riding a bicycle. And I felt like, you know, you can, it's gonna be a tough one to start something new.
No doubt about that. But. I'm in a good position to be there. So I started working freelance and, and I have designed a route around Edinburg before I left the world. And the feedback for that was great. And I felt like, well, I'm just gonna up there and this, you know, try to establish myself as. Yeah, offering something else in a tourism industry, tourism back then in Scotland was basically bikes didn't happen, you know, bike route.
Didn't really happen either. And I thought like, you know, if I can, if I can make a living out of, of, of really pushing Scotland ahead in terms of cycling route and whatever, then that'd be a great thing. And my, my background before I was marketing so if you combine around the world, trip an interest in developing new roots and having the marketing background, because in the end of the day, You know, a roots only interesting if people know about it and, and actually write it, there's nothing, nothing worse in designing a great route and no one knows about it and no people are not using it.
So I kind checked that all in one goal and then also found myself cause I wanted to have a little bit of financial acuity. So I accepted a two day a week marketing role at the book festival. Back then we we're going back then. And with the idea of writing it, because I always thought like, cool.
If I ever gonna write a book, it will be, would be quite good to have some, some connections in the book trade and in the book world and kinda do that. So that job paid to rent and the, the other work was kind of like, whatever focus I make that direction is gonna be great. And those were the early days of bike in Scotland and, and yeah, that's pretty much progressed since 2017 and yeah.
I don't know, my, my life's taken some interesting turns. I think right now I'm sitting here possibly quite a few people know my films, which is, which is great when I started that. I would've never thought that I've written the book now I've worked with several councils and destination marketing organizations in Scotland to really help them to understand cycling and understand cycle tubing and then, and developing products for them that they can actually put to people and say, look, if you wanna come to this part of Scotland, this is what you can do.
And we help you doing this. And, and that's kind of in a nutshell, this with bike packing Scotland, and this it's not just. It's not just mood planning. It's not just filmmaking. It's not just bike, you know, it's like, there's a mixture of, of all the different things and yeah, it's been a, it's been a great journey.
[00:22:13] Craig Dalton: Amazing. So let's, let's talk a little bit about the book. So you, you, you've sort of endeavored to kind of cover Scotland, England, and Wales, and give gravel riders a view of the entire country, the landscape through not only your eyes, but the eyes of, of very diverse set of athletes, which, as I mentioned earlier, I thought was a really refreshing approach.
Because one of the things in, in my mind, these roots that we find online, they lack personality, right? You're getting a GPX file and you're, you're seeing where something goes, but it's very hard to understand what that's going to feel like. It's very hard to get data on, you know, what kind of bike tires do I need?
What kind of equipment do I need for these. Or even more importantly, like what are the communities gonna be like when I go through them? And, you know, part that's part of the reason I started a community called the ridership, because I just, I wanted an online forum to be able to connect with riders around the world and just get that real world beta, you know, so if I'm going to Scotland, I wanna talk to someone who's ridden these roads and trails and just give you a few of the inside tips about what's going on.
So I'd love for you to just kind of talk about. Why you decided to approach it that way and what it meant to you and how you connected with the, the numerous athletes that helped you design roots throughout the country.
[00:23:34] Markus: Yeah, so I think there's this, this, there there's two basic thoughts I had on the back of my head when I started researching a book, I think the nice thing about clever writing that it seems to be attracting much more women into this sport than, than other. Than other sports in general do. I, I do think that road cycling, although this is changing and it's a good thing to see it changing, but I still feel that road cycling is such a male dominated domain of cycling, you know, and, and, and mountain biking is more diverse.
I think by its very nature, but you know, still I was looking at many cycling magazines and thought like, why is there, why is there always a male, a man in his forties with white shoulders looking angry on the form of the cover? You know, it's just, it didn't really like, it, it didn't appeal to me. And I felt like, you know, I think I, I think it's particularly hard and, and, and I guess it's the same in the us.
We've seen. We've seen cycling, attracting quite a lot of new people, thankfully. And there was mainly two to, to, to the COVID restrictions and people, all of a sudden recognized I can't do anything, but I can still jump on a bicycle and have a good time. So it was possibly one of the, it was one of the good things coming out of a pandemic, but.
I always feel like we didn't really cater for the people who are new to the sport. And, and, and we also didn't really cater for, for, for people of a different ethnic background. It's, you know, is just like, I, I think it was always a bit too narrow and one thing I've found on around the world trip.
That's the cool thing. If you go to different countries, you see how a diverse cycling actually is, you know, how like how, how, how it switches. And that's one thing I wanted to have in there. And then the other thing I was really keen on as well is. It's public transport. Like you gets a really bad reputation in Britain most of the times, and it's nowhere near ideal.
I was, I was born in Germany. And my girlfriend dips in Norway. So there's this, this, this, this country is in the world, which do much, much better at that, but it, I also think that. We're still doing okay. In this country. so I felt like, right. Okay. I want people to get to those places, ideally by train or by bus.
So they don't have to own a car. If they own a car. That's fine. There's nothing, there's nothing wrong with that, but it shouldn't be, it shouldn't be a pre-condition of riding your bike, having to get to those places by car. I want to have a nice mixture of mood. So I want some easy ones in there. I want also some really gnarly ones in there because you know, whoever's gonna buy the book.
They'll be at different stages in their cycling thing cycling career or whatever you wanna call it. And I also want to have landscapes in there, which are where you representative of Britain as such a diverse country. And you can kind of imagine there's a lot of logistic. Kind of like, so I came up with this metrics of kind of like, ideally.
This is kind of what I feel the book should be looked like. And then, and then, and then I feel like, well, I know a few people already Jenny and mark Beaumont and a couple of other people featured in the book. So this is gonna be a great starting point, but then I really want to reach out to people, which I don't know, you know, but to wide travel byte is the only.
Or not even ride travel bikes, you know, they, you happen to be riding off road. I would ly keep it as, as, as, as far as that. And yeah. And then with the help of, of My connections with the sponsors of the book, I was just building this list of people and then the other, I think the additional challenge was also that I kind of needed to slot them in.
So I did the book research within other projects as well. So yeah, and, and, and it, it turned out to work pretty well. Like I was, I was fascinated by the thing and I guess the, the big takeaway for me was. It kind of felt a little bit being transferred back to the process of the round, the world trip, you know, I think around the world trip.
Very much. So the, I, I did ride my bike during the day. And then in the evening I was really looking forward to speak to people, have a conversation. And, and the nice thing about this book research was so there were some people I knew and you know, we rode our bikes together and, you know, it felt like, you know, being out on a great ride with a, with a friend, you unseen for ages.
And then there were the new people in the book, which I didn't know much about it. And it, that was quite as well because, you know, Takes five to 10 minutes. And then you kind of know roughly what you wanna talk about. You know, you wanna talk about the roots and, and the nice thing about this poetry. It really felt like they are taking me on their favorite roots.
And they're really showing me their neck of the roots, not from a tourist perspective, but from a local's perspective, this is where a white. This is a cool cafe. You should be going to cuz they've got amazing priorities. This is the proper we should be stopping at. And, and I think that made the whole experience so much richer.
And, and ultimately also I think for the reader, you know, they, I think one thing I always miss like not so much cycling guidebooks, but if you look at places guide books like lonely planet or, you know, one of the big ones. I think with lonely planet, you used to get a really authentic experience.
You know, it is debatable what the world authentic actually means, but you don't get these days. I don't think so. You know, you'd be shuttled into a range of accommodation and some places, and it's a bit hit or miss some places are good. Some of them. Not so much. , you know, and I think with this approach, I was kind of my, my, my pitch to people was just like, show me around your negative woods.
Take me to the cool places. You know, like take me around as you would have a great ride that it is for you. And that also came up with very different approaches. You know, I had guy who speaked guy Kek. He's super fast so we kinda went fulling to the, to the tee shop, had an iced tea, and then we went fulling again.
It was great. You know, it was like, there was a thing, whereas there were other approaches where everything was a bit slower and, and a bit more relaxed and, and yeah. And yeah, I really lost the process. It was just really personable.
[00:30:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's super interesting. I remember in the early days of the pandemic, when a lot of the big gravel events in the United States were getting canceled, one in particular, put a call out to kind of friends and people in the community to do a virtual event on the day of their race. And what I thought was the output of that exercise is that all around the country, you have these routes created by people who absolutely love the sport and absolutely love where they live.
So it was just basically, I described it as sort of a, a love letter to the gravel cycling community
[00:30:43] Markus: yeah.
[00:30:44] Craig Dalton: this route. And it sounds like you got a lot of that out of this experience and this process that you entered for this.
[00:30:51] Markus: Yeah. Yeah. And it was like, I mean, the pandemic pandemic played. I mean, it played a key role in the book because it was, I mean, the whole idea was, was based out of, I don't know, I've stopped counting how many lockdowns we went through in the process. And cause I initially thought like I didn't. I wouldn't say I had an idea of a book in my head and when the whole thing kicked off, I was just like, maybe this is exactly the right time to do a book.
Because for me writing a book was always, there was always taking, there was always something else that was taking priority. Cuz it's a big daunting project, you know? It's like I spend about it. Yeah. Like a good part of a year doing this book. If. Count in all the things and it's, you know, it, it does take, especially the writing.
It really takes you. You really need to sit down and kind of write. I'm just gonna concentrate on that. And it's, you know, it's just like, it's, it's easier to do smaller projects, no doubt. But yeah, when it all kicked off, I was like, okay, if there's something good about this, You possibly find time to do this now because you'll be less distracted by other stuff you can't, there's no such thing.
And, and also when you, when I, I think the interesting thing about bikes is that when we were sitting in our living rooms or in, you know, in the best case scenario or with our garden and having a bit of nature around us . All the bikes, all the other bikes are quite difficult to ride from your front door.
You can ride a road bike if you happen to live in a place that has some nice roads and is not too busy. You can ride a mountain bike if you happen to live next to mountain bike trails. But. I would say for the majority of people, like there was always something, you know, for roads, either the roads are too busy or the mountain bike twelves they're okay.
But you, you know, they're not great. And with travel bikes in a way, the travel bike is a, is a perfect pandemic bike because you can take it off on roads. So you can ride all of those mountain bike trails, which are okay to ride on a gravel bike. But you possibly get a little bit bored on your full assess.
and you can ride those cycle paths and you can ride those quiet roads, but, you know, it's just, it's such a, it's such a lovely mixture. Like you can get so much out of, of gravel bikes without. You know, having to push for one thing or the other. And, and that became very clear. And then there's one, one interesting story in the book.
And the from Trumper cycles who basically had this idea of building a wooden travel bike, and the idea kind of got shelved initially. And then when lockdown kicked off, that was basically what he focused on and came up with this beautiful piece of work. And, and is all of those little stories I tried to, you know, I think we are all getting a little bit tired of what happened in the last two to three years and you know, it come of a dire consequences for some people as well.
But I also. If, if you're looking the positives to take out of like being forced to reconnect with nature, being really seeing the value that if it all fails, you can still go out there and have a bit of an adventure. And even if it's, I dunno, 10 kilometers away from home, that's, what's coming to quite clearly in the book.
And, and that was an interesting thing as well.
[00:34:19] Craig Dalton: As you thought about the book. And obviously there was a, there was this notion of guide book as a concept, even though you strayed away from that and made it much more personal, but as you thought about great Britain, And across Scotland, England and Wales, presumably you had some notions of like, these are, must have areas that I need to cover.
My question is how much of that drove? What ended up in the book versus people you got connected with and the roots that they were saying, you've gotta, you've gotta put this route in the book.
[00:34:51] Markus: It was, yeah. So I knew Scotland. Well, you know, and I there's, obviously there's some, there's, there's some bits of Scotland I really want to have featured in there. So I think Scotland, if you look at it it was. It was a bit like looking around my personal environment and you know, this is a cool place to write who do I know in that place?
And, you know, do they fit in there? For the other parts of Britain, it was pretty much applying canvas, you know, I and and I think this is, this is, this is quite interesting. I guess there was one another. Bit of a guiding principle behind it is like I'm. If you look at all my work in the UK especially in Scotland, I'm a, think I'm a firm believer in that.
The best places to cycle are actually the places that don't get a lot of tourism that are not overwhelmed by people. Because I, I think. Like the popularity of some glaciers, especially in the last five years with channels like Instagram and TikTok and whatever. Like, I, I, I could name a few people in Scotland places in Scotland.
I wouldn't want to travel to these days because they are just like, It's for me, it's not an authentic version of what Scotland is. Like. It's a very fabricated and, you know, kind of like influencer kind of based version of what the country is like. And, and, and my, especially in Scotland, my vision, my, my picture of Scotland has always been a very different one, you know, a country which has super friendly people who are actually really, really grateful about you being in a.
And, you know, visiting them, whatever. And the other thing I also felt like we, I, I, I do think, you know, I was looking at, so where are people actually living in the UK and, and you will often not find London or Milton Keens or Newcastle upon. In a guidebook because they're big cities and I think your vision of a country to travel to.
So would someone who travels to put and necessarily travel to Newcast possibly not. You know, would they, would they choose London for riding a bike? Maybe not. you know, so I thought like, I want to have some, some, I want to have some odd places in there. You know, I think Oakwood around London is amazing.
Cause you know, this is, this is where like people sit on top of each other. This is exactly the place where people need to go out, have an adventure.
[00:37:24] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I think that approach, it, it sort of serves two masters, right? It, it, one inspires people in London of this idea that they can be a gravel cyclist living in London. And the second thing is, you know, many travelers may find themselves in London. And see that as an opportunity to ride in a place that they never thought they could ride.
I, I think about in the United States, I always loathe going to Las Vegas. And then I learned about this mountain bike terrain rights out outside of Vegas that's world class. And all of a sudden it's like, okay, maybe I, I will accept a trip to Vegas because I can go sneak off and do that and get my feel of the outdoors and then experience the Zs of, of, of Las Vegas.
[00:38:05] Markus: Yeah. And I guess I think the approach that kind of like, I always found, like you can basically move to any place in the world, as long as you have cool people there, you can do stuff with, you know, you, you, you, you might be in the best place in the world to ride bikes. If there, if you know, if you don't know anyone there and, and, and you, you can't connect to the people.
I just, I just think the people are first and, you know, they'll show you. I don't know. And, and then I think you, you get, you get quite, and that's the thing I love about clever riding, you know, you can. There isn't really any, like, there is no such thing as a gravel trail in, especially in Britain, like we don't have those big metal roads.
We have some of them, but is the majority of riding over here? it's I would say varied. You know's. Expect some odd things, you know, expect a bit of single trail expect the odd bit of road or whatever. You know, we, we don't have hundreds and hundreds of miles of long, you know, really, really extensive travel roads as such.
But I think this is also that, that thing that makes it such a unique place, you know, and it's also, it's also, I. What you find when you come to here, it's the oddity of the place, you know, that any place, the thing. And, and that really came through when I traveled to the places and rode there, especially the places I hadn't really been beforehand. Everyone's proud of the place they live in, which is quite like there hasn't been a single place where people say, oh, you know, it's a. You know, mixed? No, no, they were super, you know, they were, they were, they were, they were. Super passionate about the places they live and, you know, they accept it in some cases, you know, if you wanna go riding a new car, so yeah.
You need to go to some areas which are, you know, they're not tourist destinations, but it's, I always find it fascinating. Those are actually the places where you meet some really cool people, some, you know, and you get a really interesting experience. And, and, and that's the thing I. And one thing for me on the political things, we had some, some pretty interesting years in this country of, of division people voted for and against Brexit and Scottish independence were.
So there was loads of stuff that, you know, where people. Pitched against each other. And I, I, I, so one thing for me that came, came across in the whole research is there's actually so much more in the country that kind of unites people than it is that it's. Dividing them, you know, and, and, and, and, and the culture over here, like wherever you wanna go, just find a pop , you'll find some interesting people from all walks of life will happily share, you know, beer with you or whatsoever.
And, and, and, and, and kind of like, that's the thing I loved. And there was only, it was, it was, for me, it was kind of back to the initial reasons why I moved to, to Britain, to Scotland. Cause people were welcoming. The love it. Good chat. The love to help you. And yeah, it's, it's all really welcoming. And that, that hopefully comes across in the book.
[00:41:24] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it definitely does. And again, super interesting approach. I'll put a link to everything in the show notes that people can find this book and some of your other work. And I think it's, it's a fascinating way to explore what gravel looks like in great Britain and get to know a bunch of interesting people along the way.
[00:41:42] Markus: Yeah. Yeah. And and it's also, I think one thing I've forgot, which is probably a bit of improvement. Like it's, it is also, I've always found that like the people featured in the book, they're also really happy to share their knowledge, you know? So, you know, just, yeah. Like yeah. If you happen to see them and meet them, speak to them
[00:42:02] Craig Dalton: absolutely. Cool. Thanks Marcus. Thanks for the time.
[00:42:06] Markus: Yeah. Awesome. Thank you.
[00:42:08] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks to Marcus for coming on the show. . I loved learning more about gravel riding in great Britain. And I hope you enjoyed it too.
Special, thanks to our friends at Trek travel. And that's your own a gravel bike tour. I hope you'll be able to join me. On the November 6th. Trip. Remember, just go to Trek, travel.com and search Girona gravel bike tour during the registration process. Make sure to mention the podcast as they're throwing in a free handlebar bag.
If you're interested in connecting with me, please join the ridership@wwwdottheridership.com. It's a free global cycling community. Where you can interact with riders from around the world that are as passionate about gravel cycling. As you are. If you're able to support the show, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride.
Or ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with Mr. Tutti (AKA Kelly) from the Tutti Gravel Inn. Inspired by the Canadian landscape, Kelly set off on a journey to create a gravel cycling vacation inn in Clinton, BC Canada.
Episode Sponsor: Logos Components
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Tutti Gravel Inn[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the show. We welcome Kelly Servin ski. From a duty gravel in up in Clinton, Canada.
The Inn opened up in 2019. Just in time for the pandemic to make it start a little more stunted than it would have liked, but I became aware of the end and began talking to Kelly about a year ago. And I was keen to explore, you know, what would it look like to create a gravel in many of you may know that over in Europe,
Bike hotels are quite prevalent anywhere. There's a bike hotspot. You can find a hotel that will cater to your needs. With little touches, like having a pump or an area to clean your bike, but just the general friendliness to guess rumbling through the door. Dirty and in their Lycra. Kelly gives us an overview of what his vision was and what inspired him to start to the two D gravel in, in Clinton, Canada.
Before we jump in, I need to thank this week sponsor. Logos components.
Logos Components is introducing their new omnium lineup of wheels. Logos comes from the mind of Randall Jacobs and the team at Thesis bike.
The regular listener knows randall well as the co-host of in the dirt on this podcast but also increasingly a number of individual episodes where randall's taking his deep technical knowledge and interviewing guests for the podcast
we recently recorded episode 136 about what makes a great gravel wheel set.
Where Randall broke down from the hubs to the spokes, to the rims, all the things you should be considering when purchasing a gravel wheel set. As it turns out the Logus omnium collection is the manifestation. Of all those criteria Randall has meticulously gone through and specked each component for what he believes makes the best wheel set out there.
I encourage you to listen to that episode 136, to get an understanding about what these wheel sets have to offer.
The team has launched the wheel set at an introductory price of $999.
And has wheels available in 650, 700 C and 29er. So I encourage you to go check them out at www.logoscomponents.com.
I've personally spent a lot of time on wheels designed by Randall And most recently spent time on the 700 C version of the logos wheels. And I can attest they're completely bomber and on par with the best wheels I've ever written. So go check them out at www.logoscomponents.com. If you have any questions after listening to that episode, 136. Feel free to jump into the ridership and talk to randall directly And or other riders that may have experience on the product With that said let's jump right over to my interview with kelly from d gravel In.
Kelly welcome to the show.
[00:03:16] Kelly: Thanks for having me.
[00:03:17] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I'm excited to get into the conversation and learn a little bit more about the 2d gravel in am. I pronouncing it?
[00:03:24] Kelly: Yeah. It's pronounced Tuti. So Tuti in Italian means everyone or all. So that's a nice word. It's cute, but it's also the spirit of our business. Everyone's welcome here to come gravel ride.
[00:03:37] Craig Dalton: Amazing. Well, let's start off by getting a little bit about your background as a cyclist, and then we'll transition to how you discovered Clinton and, and why creating this, this gravel specific in was in your, in your vision.
[00:03:51] Kelly: Yeah, I mean, pretty random for me with my sort of foray into cycling I loved motorcycles to begin with as a kid. I had a BMX bike, but primarily it was dirt bikes. Grew up in the prairies of Canada, I would say north of Montana. So the province of Saskatchewan. So. Farm country, that kind of thing.
Yeah, cut to the chase. I was out dirt biking with a friend and adventurous, young guys were 15 and we saw a couple of dirt bikers professionals in a, in a magazine high fiving in the air as they jumped and then. You know, we just thought, Hey, we can do that. and yeah, it didn't go so well.
So, yeah, you know, big crash totaled the bike off broke my right femur. My right, pinky finger, my wrist and my elbow in the crash. So, Yeah, my buddy got away a little less worse for wear. He broke his toe, but anyhow, just yeah, long story short bone specialist suggested getting into something other than BMX riding for rehab of the femur.
So he didn't say gravel bikes or road bike or anything like that. But he said, you know, what about these mountain bikes kind of thing? So, yeah, about the the bike that I could afford at the time. So the cheapest bike I could get my hands on that was halfway decent and yeah, started rolling and getting the femur going and then Yeah entered my first race after I was feeling, feeling better and all the cast came off and whatnot and ended up winning the beginner category and then yeah, was hooked and yeah, never touched a dirt bike again until just recently got one again.
But yeah, this was pretty random, but yeah, that's the way it goes in life sometimes. Right. Just like how we've ended up in Clinton. Just yeah. You never know how things are gonna. Shape up. So just the adventure continue.
[00:05:34] Craig Dalton: After those early sort of racing experiences, did you continue racing?
[00:05:38] Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. I I really loved it. I, I wouldn't say you know, yeah, it, it was interesting. I was a young guy trying to find my way in the world. Working night jobs you know, going to university, that kind of thing. Yeah, I really love cycling, you know, for the comradery of it, the people that you met, I met my best friends through cycling over the years and yeah, I did.
Okay. Like focused on cross country and, you know, had some, you know, halfway decent results, I would say here in Canada and Yeah, I really enjoyed it. You know? I wouldn't say I trained maybe the best, you know, the most proper way, but yeah, no, I had had some, had some good times out there but I had the foresight to pack it in and, and not just keep you know, continuing with racing, thinking I'm gonna keep improving.
I sort of saw the writing on the wall, which is. You know, just I thought I got as fast as I could get, so yeah, I ended up going tree planting. So, I did that for a number of years. I didn't complete university, unfortunately, as many, as many people haven't, but yeah, life took another turn and then went out tree planting.
Here in Canada, but also in Scotland as well for a couple of Springs. And yeah, planting is kind of, interesting too. It's you only get in, you only get out what you put in just like cycling. So, yeah, it's pretty hard work and whatnot, but yeah, I did that for a number of summers and then hadn't touched the bike for a long, long time, but again, the bike came back into my life and another sort of random.
Sort of way. Yeah, after I was done tree planting, so yeah.
[00:07:07] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's funny. You mentioned tree planting. I had an employee of mine many years ago, who was a Canadian. Who was involved in tree planting and every summer she would ask for a leave of absence to go back to it. It was a
[00:07:19] Kelly: oh yeah.
[00:07:20] Craig Dalton: she loved it. She just thought it was just sort of this great experience.
And so it's funny to hear you mention that.
[00:07:25] Kelly: Well, you don't ride, you don't ride your bike too much when you're planting. That's also another thing, you know, I would always put a deposit on a bike before I'd head out to the Bush kind of thing in the spring and wouldn't get a chance to touch it till the fall and ride it for a little bit and then it would snow.
So, yeah. Did it for a number of years, about seven seasons. And then Yeah, got back into cycling with some of the mountain bike stage races that were happening trans Rockies and Lada and trans ALP and things like that. So, yeah. Then I hung up the bags in the shovel, so to speak with planting.
[00:07:55] Craig Dalton: Right, right on. Amazing. Yeah, it was funny as, as we were, as I was prepping for this conference this conversation I was thinking about and researching where Clinton was and wondering if in my trans Rockies mountain bike stage or ACE experience, I got close to Clinton and it didn't look like it did.
[00:08:13] Kelly: no, no. Yeah. You, you had been in well to the east of us who knows maybe you and I have crossed paths. Did it a couple of times? Yeah, 2005 and 2007 and yeah. Yeah, it was it was a great experience. So that just fired me up for, for cycling. Again, I'd always love cycling, always followed it while I was planting, but yeah, that really reignited my love for it.
It's it's still going these days. Trans rock still happening. They have a gravel event as well.
[00:08:40] Craig Dalton: Yeah, a hundred percent. In fact, I just will be prior to this when releasing, releasing an episode from trans Rocky's, gravel, Royal,
[00:08:48] Kelly: Hmm, awesome.
[00:08:49] Craig Dalton: a lot of those memories, you know,
[00:08:51] Kelly: Oh, for sure.
[00:08:52] Craig Dalton: experienced, they, you know, the daily recap videos, the camping experience, there's just a, a great way to spend a week.
[00:09:00] Kelly: Yep. Totally.
[00:09:00] Craig Dalton: So at what point did you discover gravel bikes, drop bar bikes.
[00:09:05] Kelly: Yeah, that's an interesting one. I mean, obviously we run our in 2d, gravel in here and we have guests coming, you know, now from all over Canada, Western Canada, I would say, and some Americans and Europeans and everyone has their sort of timeline, I guess when they've discovered I'll do in parentheses gravel cycling, but We don't get into any sort of, I would say pissing match type thing.
Just to use that, that phrase about who's been in it longer and all those sorts of things and how, how long ago we knew about it. But again, we grew up in the Prairie sort of area of Canada and there wasn't, you know, Sweet, you know, single track or anything like that out there. So you were riding farm roads and gravel roads on your mountain bike.
So, yeah, that's what we had to ride and you know, it it, it was awesome. You could just go and you could go forever as you know. So, yeah that was, you know, obviously back in the day, but I would say. For me the, you know, why I've, you know, set up here in our guest suite you know, in front of the bicycle that you see behind me, that's a bike I rode in Lero.
I've done it a couple of times. So, did it in 2012 and yeah, that, that event in Italy the original one had a real impact on me with gravel cycling was over there. I was a rep in the industry for a number of years. And yeah, I was over there and you know, just on some holidays and then thought, oh, you know, this, this Lero event looks cool.
Let's do that. And yeah, I just couldn't believe the, the passion and, and, you know, the dust flying on the gravel roads and, you know, the drop bar bikes and everything, you know, albeit vintage bikes. And I thought, wow, this is awesome. Like, look at this, look at the, you know, really it was about the passion.
Look at the passion people have for, for doing this and the landscapes and. You know, the serenity of it, just getting away from it, all getting off the paved surfaces. It's not mountain biking obviously, but it has some elements of you know, off-road riding clearly. Right. Which appealed to me. But then the speed of, of road cycling, which I, I, I went through my road phase too, I would say.
But yeah, I just didn't like being around cars, you know, just really liked being off the beaten path, so to speak. So yeah, I would say it was Laro that really. Just opened my eyes to, to these bikes, you know, really coming back to where they originated, right? Like they were ridden on gravel roads before all the, you know, roads were, were, were paved, you know, in Europe and north America, obviously.
So all these images we have in our guest suites of the geo Tolia, for instance, you know, The riders going over these gravel roads high in the mountains, you know, that's that really struck a chord with me. So I came back and told a friend of mine who owns a bike shop, a really successful bike shop in Squamish BC here, where we used to live for about 12 years that you know, Hey, This I didn't say gravel site playing for sure.
But I just said this, this, you know, Lero thing, this, this drop bar bikes on, on gravel roads is I, you know, it's gonna be something, this is, this is awesome. And Squamish is more well known for, for, you know, being maybe the best place in the world to ride mountain bike right now. And he kind of, he didn't laugh at me, but he is like, you're crazy, you know, that's, you know, but.
Yeah. And then here we are. So, yeah, it was Laro for sure. A hundred percent. That's the, the one in, in, in Tuscany first weekend of October is the best I think event I've ever I've ever participated in.
[00:12:23] Craig Dalton: Amazing. And tell me first off, I'm, I'm interested in how you first discovered Clinton, but for those of us who are geographically challenged for Canadians Canadian landscape, where, where is Clinton in the country and, and where is sort of closer by way points, people might be familiar with.
[00:12:40] Kelly: Yeah, I mean, I'll maybe with the geography where it's located the closest sort of major center would be a city called Camloops. So Camloops is you know, got a, a huge history with cycling, but Yeah right now there's a company called we one composite that we ride their, their wheels.
They produce carbon fiber wheels there. They're located there. Yeah, I mean, south sort of central British Columbia. Definitely not, not Northern BC, but we're about two hours. Say from Whistler. To give people an idea. So, yeah, you you're, you're definitely out of the populated areas of British Columbia.
It's really wide open terrain here at me and ride in every direction. So, yeah, that's where we're located. I guess the most famous spot would be, would be Whistler, you know, International, you know, mountain bike destination. So yeah, just a couple hours drive north from there, but yeah, totally different zone than than around a Whistler.
[00:13:36] Craig Dalton: How did you yeah. How did you find yourself there? And, and what did you discover on those first rides?
[00:13:42] Kelly: yeah, I mean, it was again random. I just maybe keep using that word. Just was a rep in the industry, like I said, and you know, would travel from living in Squamish and around British Columbia to see, see my accounts and yeah kept coming up to this region that, that we call home now in Clinton, it's called the caribou region.
Of BC. And yeah. See my, my accounts up here and do some riding, do some races and then have a good friend that lives up here just north of us. And he's a pilot in with firefighting. So, and a cyclist as well. And he was always, you know, like, Hey, I know you live in Squamish, but you know, Hey, you should get up to the caribou.
It's awesome. Up here. Know for cycling. And again, he didn't say gravel cycling, but he flies over all these roads that we now ride. So he has a real bug in my ear, just, you know, Hey, come on, you know, just spend some more time up here. Cause I'd always be up here and through here, but just, you know, spend more time, not just, you know, an afternoon or a day, you know, so kept doing that, kept doing that.
And then. I would point back to really 2019, the fall of 2019 was up here shooting some photos with a brand called seven mesh who's from Squamish they're they're they're yeah, an awesome brand making some of the best clothing out there and yeah, just they invited me to come up, shoot some photos and I think it was really meant to be for me to be here at that time.
Yeah, it all clicked. I mean, the weather was clicking or out, you know, shooting photos on these roads, which I'd ridden before. And I looked over to the photographer and I just said, you know, like, this is awesome. Like, this is unreal. And, and really just to, just to sort of round this out, I was heading to Italy a couple of days after the shoot to go do the out route.
Stelio in Bo. I've been there many times. And I basically said to, to the photographer, I just said, you know, why am I going to Italy? Like this is paradise for gravel cycling. Not, not, not, not road riding, but gravel cycling. This gives me the same vibes as I get. Flying all the way around the world, going to our friend's bike hotel in Bormio and like this is amazing.
And yeah, that night I went back to where we were staying and I looked at real estate and pulled up the houses for sale in Clinton because. I saw Clinton as a, you know, the center of it all he could ride in, you know, every direction, in my opinion. And yeah, called a realtor, found a house that looked like it would fit the bill, a big old house, commercially owned.
And yeah, he picked up the phone and he met me there the next day and put an offer that day on it. And yeah, close the deal while we're in Italy at our friends bike hotel telling 'em all about gravel. yeah.
[00:16:27] Craig Dalton: What an amazing, amazing origin story there. Did you always have the idea that you were gonna call it a gravel in and make it this hub for adventure?
[00:16:35] Kelly: A hundred percent. We had some people say early on, you know, Hey, you're hanging your hat pretty hard on gravel. Like, you know, do you know what you're doing? And I said, well, Yeah. What makes this area special is gravel. Like we love mountain biking too. We have mountain bikes, but for me, what and my wife, Erin as well, what made this area special was gravel cycling.
And we wanted to stay specific to that. Anyone can, can ride any bike. As we say, you can ride a mountain bike. You can ride a gravel bike here. Unicycle, you know, whatever, I don't care. It's, it's just, just ride a bike. But yeah, we hung our hat on gravel because yeah, we wanna do to focus right on, on gravel cycling and building a community here around cycling because it's more of an industry community it's origins which is fine.
I've worked in industry back to the tree planting, so it's all coming back, back to together, but yeah, gravel That that's our focus. That's what we really love. It's really. Come on with me just the last number of years, I just love the solitude of it, just getting away from it all. So, and there's no bike hotels around really north America.
I mean, I, I can't, there is no other gravel cycling hotel that I'm aware of. I mean, there should be a network around and we wanna do stake our claim to that and, you know, say, Hey, let's, let's get this going. Like, let's. Have facilities for, for cyclists, let's create culture here with cycling you know, and good community sort of support and have some fun while we're doing it.
So, yeah, we hung our hat a hundred percent on gravel calling it 2d gravel in. So
[00:18:05] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I think you're right in north America while I can point to a few kind of cycling specific hotels. It's nowhere near what you have in Europe and elsewhere in the world. And there's some subtleties. When you go into a cycling hotel or cycling accommodations, they just have the little things for you, right?
They've got a, a place where you can wash your bike. They've got pumps, they've got tools and the staff is always well versed in what are the local roots and local highlights. So I think it's a great concept. And I'm, I've been big on the podcast about talking about gravel travel. And a lot of times that gets couched in a conversation about a particular event.
So you might go to Colorado to go to S B T gravel or up to Canada for trans Rockies, gravel, Royal, but in some ways, traveling to a place like Clinton and, and you're in is even a better use of your time because unlike a race where you might be thinking, gosh, I don't know whether I'm gonna be like complete it, or I have aspirations of going really fast.
Obviously you're gonna be super focused and you're not gonna do a lot of riding. In the days leading up to the race. But if you go on a gravel cycling holiday, all you're gonna do is ride. You know, you're gonna go up there for four days and you're gonna pick four mega roots and just ride as much as you possibly can.
[00:19:23] Kelly: Yeah, that's true. We, we love racing and we will put on a race here next year. We do a char, we did a charity ride here called caribou gravel rush. So yeah, we love organized events and, and things like that. But yeah, first things first we wanna create a good community sort of. Spirit here around cycling.
Everyone's in favor of what we're doing. Everyone's really supportive, lots of high fives and, you know, thumbs up and whatnot from the ranchers and people like that. So, But yeah, you definitely can come to a place like ours or some of the other hotels around the world and yeah, you can spend your money in a little different way.
You can ride, you know, to a lake and go jump in the lake, chill out, have some beers. But yeah, we can also provide people with some pretty big rides that , you know, we don't try and blow smoke. Obviously we need to promote our business. But yeah, we've got some rides here that are truly epic. I mean, that's an overused term in my opinion.
Yeah, we, we have some epic rides here that definitely can punish you and spit you out the other side if, if you're looking for that, but there's also rides here that, like I said, you can just go on a nice. You know, fairly chill ride and, you know, go through some ranches and see some, some wildlife and things like that.
So, but yeah, racing's awesome too. Just just different, same but different, right.
[00:20:41] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I've had the benefit of looking at your website and looking at a map and getting a sense for where Clinton is. And you've spoken a little bit about. You know, the remoteness of the in, if someone was coming for two or three days, how would you describe the type of riding you would suggest? Let's just sort of make the assumption that the group is relatively fit and, and up for, you know, three, four hour, five hour rides, what would you be preparing them for expectation wise, if you were to say like, these are the three route I would have you go on during your three day.
[00:21:14] Kelly: yeah, there's definitely some classic roots. I mean, there's, you know, I. Pick my favorite roots and just say, Hey, you should really go here. You know, this is a must do. Just like if you were to go somewhere else, I mean, the trainers is, is incredibly varied. So what we like to do is yeah, suggest roots for people.
A lot of them have never been here. We are, we do have a lot of return guests, but for people, for instance, that have never been here. We love blowing them away because we know what's out there. And they don't right. They just maybe see photos or something like that or heard things, but we know what's out there.
So we love it. When we send people out on a route and say, Hey, you're gonna go here. You're gonna see this, this, this, and this, and we're really stoked to, to hear what, what you say when you when you come back and that's what makes it all worth it for us when people roll back in here and, you know, Hey, we're, we're you know, self-conscious about it.
Let's be honest. We want people to have a good time. And we're like, Hey, what did you think? And people like their eyes are just like wide open. Like that was the best ride I've ever done. Or that was amazing. Or, oh my God, I didn't expect that. So, yeah, we've got it all. Truly, we've got really more desolate sort of wide open desert-like kind of roads.
Out here. We've got roads going through the mountains lakes and things and yeah, lots of randomness it's really mixed here. So, what we do try to prepare people for is just to say, Hey, you know, what do you like? What kind of riding do you like? Do you like descending? Do you like megas deep climbs?
You like suffering? What do you like? And, and then we try to do the best we can to create custom roots for our guests. Yeah, we love doing that because again, we have the knowledge we live here day in, day out. We know all the ins and outs, all the little secret spots, we know the ranchers and so on.
And yeah, we just, we love that. So, Yeah, people can, can really tick off a lot of boxes you know, here, and they can also discover some boxes, so to speak that they didn't new existed. Like there's a ferry here where you can take a, you know, a cablecar ferry across the most important river, major river called the Frazier river here in BC and go to the other side of the river and, you know, Like that's part of your ride.
There's, there's not many places or really anywhere that I know of that you can do things like that. Just mid ride and it's free. And, and it's just yeah. What an experience that is. So,
[00:23:39] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that's quite an, that makes for quite an adventure, for sure. You know, one of the things, obviously across north America, you've got lots of places that are flatter with undulating Hills. I'm assuming in that region of Canada. The climbs that you're encountering are, are fairly substantial in nature.
[00:23:55] Kelly: Yeah, there's some for sure. I mean, this wouldn't be like, you're maybe going you know, to the Alps or the Domine or something like that in Italy, you know, but there's some really steep climbs here. There's a one climb in particular that, you know, it's marked in half kilometer. Or, you know, miles to, to people following in the us in, in, you know, half sort of, segments like that, because you're going so slow but such beautiful scenery.
I mean, you're just crawling along, you know, suffering away, looking at the scenery around you. So, yeah, and it can get hot here. You know, it's a really diverse sort of. You know, ecosystem or environment, I guess we have here, so really mixed bags. So, yeah, I mean, it's just there are some tough climbs around, there's lots of rolling terrain, but for people that like to climb that sort of you know, puff their feathers out like that, that they love to climb, then definitely we can provide that.
And there's many stratas segments here to, to go chase down. So for sure, there's some Hills here.
[00:24:53] Craig Dalton: What would sort of be the, the longest climb you could get in front of, in terms of feet or meters of,
[00:24:58] Kelly: Oh, yeah. I would say maybe about the, the, the toughest one around is to say about doesn't sound like much about a 10 K climb. So, but the grades are just really, really steep. It'll take most people, some people would walk it to be honest, we've got some Hills like that. So about 10 K and Yeah, just really steep in grades.
But lots of switch back so that, that goes and you know, Softens it a little bit, at least you can turn a corner or two and have a look and, you know, be tough to go and take photos and pull your iPhone out and take a photo on, on that one. But and there's lots more here, right? I mean, we don't profess to know it all.
I mean, we we love, enjoy enjoying to get out there to to explore and find new roots and new climbs and new places for our guests to ride. So, yeah, there's probably some more out there that. We haven't ridden yet, but yeah, we just keep pushing, but yeah, there's some big Hills for sure.
Climbers are welcome here.
[00:25:56] Craig Dalton: And let's transition now and let's talk about the, in itself. If you could just give us a little bit of an overview of like how many people you can accommodate, what, what the experience looks like, you know, are you, are you dining exclusively at the end or does Clinton have other restaurants to offer and other activities?
[00:26:14] Kelly: Yeah, like I said, it's a big old commercially zoned house. So yeah, we can accommodate really big groups. We've got two guest suites at the moment soon to be three. So our main guest suite that I'm in now is a five bed, two bath guest suites. So completely separate and private from the others.
We've had up depending if we have couples. So we've had up to 12 guests in here. And then another adjoining suite that's again, separate is a nice little one bed, one bath. So we've had, you know, up to four in there depending, you know, just there's a sofa bed in there as well. So we keep expanding and so that that's there.
And then we've just built a hundred square foot, little Bunky, as we say. Outback. So a little tiny house. Some people would sort of maybe refer to it as that. So which will, will accommodate another two people when it's complete. So, yeah, we've had really big groups, so yeah, I mean really depending on, on who it is and if it's couples or singles or whatever, you know, we're approaching, you know, really, you. 1516 guests quite comfortably just in this property. So, and then, yeah, we, we do have our eyes on expansion all all the time, but this house has a, has a really neat story behind it as well. I'm not sure if I mentioned this to you, but we got a message on Instagram, maybe about a year and a half ago.
I'd say from a guy just, you know, following us and, you know, said some nice things and. All that. And at the bottom of the message, he said I'm not sure if he knew, but I grew up in the house and I was like, wow, we grew up in the house. I was like, mm. We knew who we bought from. And it wasn't a gentleman.
It was a, it was an older lady. And so I was like, wow, I gotta look at this. Guy's his profile. So, go to his profile and I almost dropped the phone because. Having worked in the bike industry. I knew some of the, the people in the industry I'd never met this gentleman, but it turns out it turns out it'd be a guy named Peter valence used to be a brand manager at Rocky mountain bicycles.
And then now is current global vice president of product at Cannondale. So, I mean, it still gives us goose bumps and, and whatnot. That he grew up here. His family did a pottery business here, which we knew about the pottery business, but I never ever thought it would be the same, the same family.
So, Peter was just here earlier in August, which was a big, you know, milestone for us, what a cool experience to have him and his entire family and their kids here where they grew up and So, yeah, that's the story of the, in a lot of people call it the, in now we, we noticed that after, you know, three years in business is our third year in business.
So it's a bit of the, the history on the, on the property. Yeah.
[00:28:52] Craig Dalton: cool. And then as far as like, as far as, are you doing a bed and breakfast style where you're serving breakfast and dinner or what? What's the story
[00:28:59] Kelly: You know, with the, the name Tuti, I mean, obviously we love Italy. We've had a lot of great times over there and, you know, not just cycling, I mean, you know, food. So, we offer woodfired pizza. My wife Erin makes the dough homemade. We get vegetables and. Things that we need locally from, from farmer's markets and ranches and things like that.
And so we offer that if guests wanna book that with us, they, they can add that on to their stay. We have a, a coffee bar out back with a rocket espresso machine another Italian sort of touch there. If people want, you know, great coffee in the morning, we can do that. Each suite has its own kitchen.
So, you know, some people like to cook and we wanna, we want to. Facilitate that as well. But then that's kind of where we end things because we also want people to, to go and support some of the local businesses here that we have in Clinton. It's a small little village. It's 600 people ish. At the moment, there's a few little restaurants and, and things like that.
So, our attitude is that yeah, obviously come stay with us and we stay gravel specific and, you know, look after people in that regard and a few other little things, Woodard pizza and, and coffee. But we also want people to go to, you know, Check out some of the, the other places in town, there's a pub right across the street.
Yeah. We love when our guests go over there, have some beers and we don't have the attitude that, you know, Hey, these are our guests, you know, don't go to other businesses or whatever, because. That's just not you know, our attitude and our spirit behind you know, our business. So, and yeah, it's great.
People come and, you know, stay with us and then, yeah, they're free to do what works best for them. And we kind of like the ALA carte sort of, way of doing things. Hey, you might not need coffee or whatever, you know, or wood fired pizza. That's cool. But if you do, Hey, we can, we can work that out. So
[00:30:46] Craig Dalton: And then are you, are you offering rental bikes there or are people bringing their own
[00:30:50] Kelly: Yep. People bring their bikes. But yeah, we do have rental bikes yeah. To name, drop our, our bikes or land yachts bikes from Vancouver. They're a great supporter of our business. We've been with them from day one using their bikes. We've got some custom bikes for ourselves, but yeah, they make some great Rental bikes for us and for us to get rental bikes as a small business at this time when there's such a bike sort of crunch, so to speak.
Yeah, they pulled out all the stops to get us six bikes this year, really beautiful steel steel bikes, and yeah, it's great. We can You know, have our guests, you know, have an experience on their bikes if they've never tried one of their bikes, but we're getting internationals as well now.
So, some of those folks we had our first Italian fly over here and he was here for five days and yeah, he rented a bike cause he didn't wanna travel with one. So bike rental's big for us. And yeah, E E gravel is something else we really want to get into as well. Because I think it's It's such a great thing to get more people on bikes, you know, and great for storytelling too, with brands because yeah, they're just fantastic for sure.
[00:31:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's so nice. You know, on a, on a family holiday to be able to pair up maybe incompatible riders with one on an e-bike and one on a pedal bike. So that's certainly a good option. Speaking of international travels, if someone's coming to the, in internationally, where do they fly into and how long of a drive is it from that airport?
[00:32:12] Kelly: Yeah, I would say most people would fly into Vancouver. We've had a few people fly into Seattle and then cross the border and then come up that way. Just say from Vancouver. You know how traffic can be, but you know, four or five hours kind of thing, you know, a really, you know, beautiful drive with options.
There's, there's a couple of different ways to, to get up here. A lot of people would probably choose to go up through Whistler. And come this way. And we get some mountain bikers too, that are cyclist. Let's call 'em cyclists, not just mountain bikers, but people that are riding mountain bikes and they ride gravel too.
Right. So they come up through Whistler, you know, maybe do a ride and then continue on to Clinton. So I'd say Vancouver, but other than that cam loops would be just over an hour away. And it's a, it's a fairly good sized regional airport with really easy access.
[00:33:01] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that makes sense. I certainly see the value of stopping off at Whistler for a few runs on the way that would, that would be
[00:33:09] Kelly: bet. Yeah. I mean, yeah, we're we, we mountain bike too. So, I mean, of course we, we focus on gravel, but we're cyclist. And yeah, mountain biking's great. Gravel's great. It's all great. So yeah, I mean, a lot of our guests do other disciplines of, of cycling. But to us, I mean, our sales pitch on gravel to people that maybe haven't tried it yet is you know, this isn't just, I guess our opinion, this is our, you know, three years in business meeting, a lot of people, you know, guests coming to stay with us and, you know, chatting about what they think gravel is or whatever, over a few beers and the backyard having a campfire.
Really gravel. I've not seen another discipline in cycling some, you know, someone you could correct me if I'm wrong, that really could, it can, you know, pull in people from all different You know, disciplines of cycling, you know, the roadies, get it, the triathletes are, are, you know, maybe not wanting to go to Whistler to go ride the bike park, you know, for the most part, but Hey, gravel, they get it.
They love the speed, you know, suffering, whatever it is. We've had iron man, you know, triathletes, come here, this love suffering. These guys are crazy what they do. So, you know, and then mountain bikers, get it, you know, too because they love being off road. You know, most mountain bikers. Aren't. Riding on, on highways and things like that.
So, and then a lot of new people, it's just incredible. We'll see you know, new cyclists here buying their first bike, excuse me. And you know, we're just, you know, doing some research and, and whatnot and say, Hey, like, you know, you've cycled a lot before you're new to cycling. It's like, Nope, I just bought a gravel bike.
My friend told me that's what I should get because they're awesome. And it looks like a good time. And, you know, we get a lot of people from urban centers. So, yeah, gravel bike. I mean, yeah, you can use it for, of course gravel cycling but you know, commuting, urban assault, bike, packing, whatever. So they're very versatile.
So that's, that's really been a, mindblower seeing people for their first bike to go and, and buy a gravel bike. So truly to us back to that rant is gravel cycling. I truly believe is, is the center of cycling, you know, put that out there, but that's what we've, we've seen, you know, that's what we've seen with our guests.
[00:35:14] Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, I agree with all those points and it's just it's such an inviting part of the sport that gives you the versatility to go wherever you wanna take it. So I'm certainly sold. Obviously, everybody listening to this podcast is on the same page. Kelly totally appreciate giving me the overview of the in.
I think it's an exciting concept. As I said in the opening, like I do really love the idea of gravel travel and I think from everything I've seen from where you're located, I don't doubt it's gonna be some great riding up there. So I look forward to getting up there and I wish you well,
that's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Kelly and learning more about the riding in Clinton, Canada, and the two D gravel in big thanks to our sponsor logos components and their new omnium wheel set. Check them out at www.logoscomponents.com.
If you're interested in connecting with the podcast, I encourage you to join the ridership that's www.theridership.com. It's a free online cycling community where you can interact with myself and athletes from around the world. If you're interested in supporting the podcast, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride.
We're ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we take a virtual trip to the Canadian rockies with rider accounts from the TransRockies Gravel Royal. We hear from eventual winners, Rob Britton and Rach McBride among others to explore this 4 day gravel stage race.
Episode sponsor: Trek Travel -- Come join me in Girona on Nov 6th.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
TransRockies Gravel Royale[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the podcast, I'm bringing you coverage directly from the trans Rockies gravel Royale. You might've heard me mentioned trans Rockies, gravel rail a few times over the years. It's one of those unfortunate events with regards to COVID timing. That got scheduled right at the beginning of the pandemic and had to get postponed on a couple of occasions.
But they finally got it off the ground this year. And it is such a great event. Trans Rockies organization has been producing races for over 20 years. I actually participated in a mountain bike stage race a seven day race. That they put on, gosh, probably about 10 years ago. And it was really quite an amazing experience. There's something to be said for being out there in the wilderness.
traversing some amazing terrain. And then camping with everybody who just did the same thing as you that day, they do great highlight reel videos. Every night, they've got sort of a. Dining tent, and they prepare all the meals. It's an all exclusive experience. So when I heard they were doing a gravel version, I was super excited to go ultimately and do it, unfortunately that wasn't in the cards for me this year. But I did have my friend Marissa from Verde brand communications up there.
Doing some interviews with some of the athletes as they were crossing the line. We were fortunate to talk to many of the stage winners and both of the ultimate winners of the event. So you'll see, during this episode, we'll go through each stage to give you a little bit of a flavor. For what transpired during the race, I'll give you a bit of an overview and then we've got a couple of just general commentaries from participants at the end of the podcast.
So I hope you enjoy learning a little bit more about the trans Rockies. And with that i do need to stop and thank this week sponsor.
This week we're once again, sponsored by our friends over at Trek travel and the discover Girona gravel trip. That I personally am going to be participating in on November 6th through 10th this year. And I encourage you to join me.
You may recall. We did an entire episode on Jarana gravel last year. And learned a lot about this historic city. And what has become. A hub for professional cycling in Girona across the road and gravel spectrums. The city is surrounded by amazing gravel routes. And the Trek infrastructure in Girona is just top notch. It's a location of one of their service courses. So they've got a number of bikes and included in this trip.
Is a bicycle rental from track. So you don't even have to travel with your bikes. As we talked about in the intro, I love the idea of multi-day gravel experiences. So whether it was the trans Rockies, gravel Royale. Or even better. A trip like this, where you can design your own experience. If you want to ride your bike from dusk till Dawn, the team attract travel can create routes for you.
Or if you want to have more of a city experience and do shorter rides. And enjoy the cafes and the historic surroundings of the community of Girona. You can do that too. I am looking forward to bathing in it all, frankly, I've been dreaming about this trip for a few years, ever since I first found out about it from the group of Trek travel, and I want you to join me. So if you can.
The. Trip I'll be participating in and starts on November 6th. If you register for the trip by visiting Trek, travel.com and search for that. Girona gravel bike tour. If you mentioned the podcast or the ridership, they're going to throw in a free handlebar bag. For your trip there and something you can take home with you it will be a small Momento of the time we'll share together. So I hope you'll join me there again. Simply visit Trek, travel.com and search Jarana gravel bike tour. And you'll see that November six. Trip amongst the other dates that they have available this year. And remember to mention the gravel ride podcast during your booking process.
Without behind us, let's jump right into the overview of the trans Rockies gravel Royale. And hear from a number of the participants.
All right. Stage one, the trans Rockies gravel Royale, Tigger pass Panorama to the, to the community of Becca it's 50 miles and 6,900 feet of climbing. We're joined today by women's race winner, Rachel McBride. And men's race winner, corey wallace from stage one
[00:05:00] Rach McBride: This is Rach McBride, professional triathlete, and I guess gravel racer and mountain bike. Gracer this year. I am here at trans rocks, gravel, Royal, and just finished stage one. It was. A pretty awesome day. We started out with a nice neutral descent and Down into, from Panorama into, in Vermer and then started on the big climb up to about, I don't even know what, I don't know how high we went today.
It was a really great day for me. I felt pretty strong all day. I saw, you know, there was kind of a pack of folks who went off the front and I did not stay with them. And so I was kind of on my own for most of the day back and forth with a couple of folks.
And it was you know, this was probably one of the most technical. Gravel race days that I have ever done, we climbed and climbed and climbed on some gravel roads, but then it quickly went into double track that was not super rideable and there was a lot of walking and then it went into. Basically a trail that was a hiking trail and everyone was walking.
I just tried to use some of my tri triathlete skills to jog a little bit up those walking sections. And it was pretty fun to just feel like you were out in the middle of with your gravel bike. And then once you reach the top of the. Of the climb and I knew I just needed to push it to the top of this climb because the rest of the ride was gonna be downhill and pretty flat.
And so tactically, it was gonna pay off to spend a lot of matches on that first climb and Coming down the single track on the way down was very exciting. It was definitely quite technical didn't. I stayed on my bike for the most part, had to crash myself once when it got super, super steep and I couldn't stop myself and just need to work on some technical skills to actually.
Feel comfortable riding down that in the future. And then yeah, was just like on my own got passed on the downhill by some really speedy downhill mountain bike types, but caught up with them on the flats and yeah, ended up finishing strong. There was I think everyone today is complaining about the.
Final turn and the final climb because we're on a beautiful gravel road. And then turn onto basically what looks like. You're just riding into the forest and there's no trail at all and you just keep climbing up, but it was super fun. It was really exciting. And yeah, I don't know. I've never done you know, a four day stage race before, and especially with stages that are this long.
So I hope I haven't burned a lot of matches. Today. I know I still have three more days to race and hope I can just keep pushing it and I may be totally dying by day four. We'll get there when we come to it. And this is why I do this sport is to just challenge myself and see how far I can go with it.
[00:08:13] Cory Wallace: I'm Corey Wallace, the Kona Factory team, and we're here at day one in the trans Rockies, gravel Royal. Yeah, I finished up epic on Friday and then started the drive up here Saturday and got here last night, around eight o'clock woke up, threw some stuff in a bag and we went off bike racing.
I was pretty grateful for the one hour rollout from Panora down to in Vermer before the race started, gave me a chance to woke up and then. Yeah, the race is on. Yeah, typical trans rock up a pretty gnarly climb bit. A hike, a bike is Rob my an American myself kind of, battling it out and they would drop me towards the top of the climb.
And then I went pretty hard through the single track and caught 'em on the descent and attacked right away. And Rob came with me and we would work together to the finish. And I kind of knew the finish from 10 years going. We did trans Rockies here, so I did a little effort with about one K out and yeah, took the, took the win and now we're just hanging out and getting ready for day two.
[00:09:10] Craig Dalton: All right onto stage two, which is Becca to Knippa CTCA highlighted by Miller pass. It's a 51 mile stage with 4,900 feet of climbing. Once again, we're joined by rich McBride. Who successfully got first place in this stage for the women? And we're also joined by second place finisher in the men's category. Rob britain
[00:09:33] Rach McBride: All right. Stage two. We left Nica and came back to beautiful Nica. It has been amazing to be here in this beautiful place. My race was super fun. I just like was determined to make the battle Royal. This time around and yeah, just rode strong all day and finished with a bunch of guys, two guys who I made work with me and had a really, really fun time and made some new friends and that, and then immediately went and jumped in the pond to cool off Is the, I've just been like super impressed with NA NCA here and just the like camp atmosphere is really fun and really means that like, you get to meet new people and like, see everybody coming in and you know, Kind of get to know each other and chill, like the afternoons have been so awesome to just like, hang out and sit in the sun or sit in the pond go for a little walk.
I went for a little jog this afternoon and yeah, it was pretty amazing. Yeah. I love it. And. Yeah, food's great too. good. Good evening entertainment as well with the like evening of photos and videos. So you also like get to see like what other people doing on race day and on course, which is pretty cool.
Cool. How are you feeling for two more days? Two more days, man. I mean, they're gonna be longer. And I'm definitely feeling tired. And I know that like for me, the longer, the better I'm really excited about the upcoming about tomorrow. And we get to move to a new place. So that'll be cool though.
I think we got really spoiled here. totally. Yeah.
[00:11:22] Rob Britton: . Hi, my name's Rob Briton. I race professionally for east Overland slash felt bicycles. And right now we are on stage two of the trans Rockies gravel Royal. Currently I am in first, overall and finished second on yesterday's first stage and third on today's stage.
So it's going pretty well so far. A little bit different experience than my past life, where we would sleep in hotels and have toilets. And this is more of a roughen it experience. Yeah, camping. So yeah, just hanging out in the tent at night with about 300 folks. and yeah, early starts, which is sort of the, the jam with gravel.
I don't really tell you that in the gravel brochure, but yeah, most most stages start before 8:00 AM. So these ones start right around eight and they're relatively short for the races we've done this year around 80 K or. For any Americans listening about 50 miles. So that's give or take three hours and you're done before noon.
So the rest of the day is just spent relaxing, which where we are right now. Looking at a pretty incredible view of we've got the cutey mountains on one side and the Rocky mountains on the other side of the valley we've got a pretty incredible. Pond or it's pond little swing hole here from a Creek, which is quite refreshing considering it's about 26, 27 degrees, or I guess 35, 80 degrees.
So yeah, just taking it all in it's my first year doing this gravel gig. it's quite a bit more fun than my past life racing on the road, especially kind of the last couple years in Europe when things went from hard to much harder. So yeah, this is, this is nice. You have hamburgers for lunch and beef brisket for dinner and beer is kind of in between.
So yeah, it's it's a pretty good gig, but otherwise yeah, running my felt breed carbon right now with. GX D I two, we've got a classified rear wheel on there. So it gives me kind of the option of my standard 48 with an 1134 cassette or the virtual second ring is close to a 32. So pretty killer climbing gear Schwabe G one RS tires and 45 C, which is pretty sweet for traction.
And then I kinda made the last minute switch to the Fox taper cast 32 fork. So I've got just a little bit of little bit of cushion to the front end for those descend switch so far has paid off quite a bit. I don't mind carrying it up the climbs for the yeah, the mortal relaxed ASC descending.
And yeah, we got two stages left. I think it's about. Tomorrow's 110 K giver take. And then the final day is kind of there at queen stage. And that's about 130 K. So I think that's around 87 miles and yeah, finishing fornia and, and call it a week and then onto whatever my next thing is, which at this point I actually don't even know, but I know I'm busy for the next month, but Yeah, all and all it's been pretty awesome being out here in BC.
It's nice to race, relatively close to home. You don't get that opportunity. And certainly haven't had that for a number of years, so I'm stoked to be here.
[00:14:33] Craig Dalton: The stage three, this is where the writers are really starting to feel the first two days of effort. This day's stages from Nica to canal flats. I'll actually be moving camp today and it features little ALK pass. 67 miles, 4,900 feet of climbing. We're going to be joined again by Rachel McBride who managed to successfully.
When this stage as well. And then on the men's side we're joined by caleb swartz from missoula montana who came in third place on stage three
[00:15:07] Rach McBride: All right. Day three, trans Rockies gravel Royal. Today was a more of an epic day than we had experienced in the past couple of days, just because it was a little bit longer and started off. Pretty much right off the bat with the Q O M climb, which was pretty challenging and still involved some walking at the top, which I think everybody was not fond of.
And and then quite, I mean, for me, it was a technical descent. I was pretty, I was scared shitless going down the descent, cuz it was super fast yet. There were some technical bits. And and ended up getting up out onto the main road, the drag that was hours and hours long initially on my own.
And then thankfully got caught by two guys and we then eventually. Reeled in another two guys. And there were five of us working together for a long time. And that was one of the interesting things about this course today was that it really, your success kind of depended a little bit on who you ran into and what kind of a group you had and if you were working together or not, and I really got pushed by the.
Folks that I was riding with, which was awesome. And eventually we got rid of most of them except for one person. And then that guy rode me into the ground and I B I really baed at the end of the, at the start of the last climb, that was just like, you were so many hours in and then had to do this.
Climb that looked like forever, even though I think it was only a minute or so. But I definitely felt a lot more tired on day three and a little bit more cracked at the end. And yeah, we landed in canal flats and had an maing dinner. The food is so fantastic here. And what else am I talking about?
I was Just about gravel, gravel. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, for me this year racing, the lifetime grand Prix has meant that I have put, put triathlon on the back burner a bit though, still raced here and there. And what has kind of ended up happening? I mean, this is like my fifth weekend or fifth week in a row racing between gravel mountain bike and triathlon.
And I have. Kind of felt like I've been racing into shape. And I mean, the GRA the, the punchiness and the dynamics of gravel racing and the mountain bike racing like Leadville 100 and the Leadville stage race that I did has really reminded me of just how. Much you can push in these shorter races and how much stamina my body has.
And to be able to like in between all of these races, still show up and like win Boulder, 70.3 was kind of insane for me and really has meant that Yeah, that, you know, my gravel racing this year has really upped my triathlon game, which is really exciting. It's very cool to feel like still in the mix at the age of 44 in this career and being like racing in this totally new dynamic.
World of gravel racing. It's a new crowd. It's a new scene. It is new competition. It is different courses a different community and yeah, just a really awesome vibe and I'm loving it.
[00:18:34] Caleb Swartz: Alrighty. My name is Caleb Swartz. I'm from Madison, Wisconsin, and I live in Missoula, Montana. And I ride for giant envy, which is my own program that I put together. Cool. So tell me about your stage today. It was, it was really hard and then it was not so hard and then it was really hard again. Yeah, we hit the first major climb about, you know, less than 10 minutes in.
And I immediately attacked as soon as we got there and got away a little bit and started going, then we got into like a mudslide. It was like riding through wet concrete. So then we ended up doing some running then Corey, who had some issues yesterday came through with just vengeance and just absolutely started smashing up the climb.
That was quote, mostly rideable which was actually some running. Then we got into a pretty technical descent or not well, could be technical depending how fast you go. A lot of. What they call stitch up here in Canada, which we would call water bars in the states. And so I almost got dropped, but I knew if I got dropped there, I'd be in trouble for the next like 50 miles of flat draft essential riding.
So then I attacked into the downhill and got a couple minutes gap. And made him chase me and we all regrouped and then basically all stayed together until we dropped one guy Josiah. And then I got dropped within the last climb and they sprinted it out. So, yeah, cool. How are you enjoying doing a stage race and camp antics and hanging out with the guys and all of that?
It's really fun. I did one other stage race earlier this year. That was a similar style called trans or Sylvania epic. Similar trans. And that was a mountain bike stage race in Pennsylvania. Similar thing, like five days of racing there, camping, like similar, no, not quite this level of production, but greats too.
And it's super fun to be doing point to point. And yeah, I really enjoy the, I don't. I ride my bike to be outside and getting to camp and race and be in super gorgeous areas. Like this is just as everything I love. The sport and why I raised professionally. Cool. How is your bike setup? A lot of people have had flats or mechanicals.
How's your bike been doing this week? My bike setup is not quite ideal, but it's, it's going strong. No issues yet. Yeah. Knock on wood. Yeah, I. I didn't really change my gearing or anything. It's my cycle cross bike. And that's what I, I'm primarily a side cross mountain bike racer. And so my, my like gearing is I have a 42 chain ring and a 30, 10 36 cassette, which is far from ideal for like 25% chunky, like rock gardens.
But so far is so good. And I'm running 42 mill tires. Well, 42, 38, cause I destroyed a tire in my race last Sunday, too. So I'm running a, running a black and tan mullet set up here. It's doing the trick and yeah, it's holding together strong and taking care of it and trying to ride smooth and minimize, minimize mistakes while going fast.
Cool. What are you looking forward in last stage tomorrow? Looking forward to this big climb. I love to climb. And it'll be interesting to see how everyone else is feeling and how I'm feeling. See if I can get some time back on second place in GC. And yeah, try and, you know, anything can happen or, you know, be tough to get the overall here, but I'd love to get another stage win and really I'd love a good mountaintop finish.
[00:21:55] Craig Dalton: And now on the stage four, which is the queen stage and the final stage of this year's 2022. Therese Rocky, gravel Royale. They're going from canal flats to the town of Fernie going over. Hartley pass. It's an
84 mile ride. With 7,900 feet of climbing, boy, that's going to hurt. At this stage in the game.
I've I've written in Fernie and around that area during the trans Rockies. Mountain bike stage race. Absolutely stunning to rain, incredible single track and dual track. Coming into Fernie. We're joined by rich McBride again, who managed to win the stage as well as the overall title.
On the men's side, we're joined by Rob Britton who won the overall title for the men. So excited to have you hear from them. And then we'll conclude by hearing from a few other athletes. Who participated in the event
[00:22:50] Rob Britton: well we're here at the finish of stage four final stage of the trans Rockies gravel L in traditional fashion of my experience infer any it's raining and the temperature is dropping.
Step as the final stage. Finally got my stage win searching for that for a few days now. Yeah. First stage race in gravel, done dusted kind of a bunch of first. I haven't done a capping stage race before and never done gravel stage Jason before. So certainly continues to be more different than my past life, but fun, nonetheless.
I mean, The group from trans Rockies did a heck of a job, you know, taking care of us, great food every night, nice breakfast in the morning. Some of the most incredible scenery you can imagine the Kenn Rockies obviously never disappoint, but yeah it was. All said and done ended up first on the final stage.
And first overall, which I'm super happy about because this was an important race with three quarters of my sponsors between felt Easton and chiro all taking part as major supporters of this stage race. So. Yeah, I'm really happy to get a win at this race and kind of, I think my first real win is a gravel pro or whatever my title is now, but yeah, definitely be back in the future and hopefully one of these days I'll finish in the sunshine for any and life will be good.
[00:24:15] Rach McBride: Day four, trans Rockies, gravel, Royal. This one was a beast. If I thought that I dug deep yesterday I really went into the pain cave today. It started off I started off feeling pretty ragged and finally got a bit of a second wind or first wind, maybe about halfway.
Through and suffered up the final 13 kilometer climb to the finish. I had an awesome group though, to ride with a bunch of really strong guys who we all just pushed each other and we were. Like egging each other on and coaxing each other on to stay together. It was super supportive and that was a really, really cool experience.
And I don't think I would've pushed as hard had I not had such great riders and folks to be racing with my thoughts on this whole week are, I mean, Race is definitely like, unlike anything I've ever experienced in my gravel racing days, for sure. From the courses to the multi-day aspect, to the The tent, camping and the evening awards and support and awesome food and everything.
It's just been a really fantastic experience to, I mean, if you want to like feel in the gravel community, this is a pretty awesome way to experience it because you're all stuck together for four days. And so you make new friends and you meet people from all over. The world really, who are doing this race.
And it's a fun, little, like, You know, little town that you're in for, for a couple of days, for folks who are interested in doing this, maybe even for their first gravel race. I mean, first of all, I would say that if you are going to do this race for your first gravel race, any other race that you do will likely be seem a lot easier than anything else than anything that you would do this week.
The I would definitely recommend when you're training for it to do some multiple big days in a row, because, or just do some training when you are fatigued, because you know, really doing the bigger days in the days three and four takes a lot out of you and you definitely need some stamina. And you want to.
I think some of the biggest things is like you can't deplete yourself on every day, so you really need to be fueling and hydrating during your race prepping for the next days, as well as afterwards, eat a lot at dinner, eat a lot at breakfast. And what else would I say? . Yeah. Be prepared. Another tip I would give is be prepared to walk a lot with your bike because there are some technical aspects and some super steep climbs that everybody is walking.
And some technical aspects that if you're not a mountain biker, you probably will be Walking with your bike, which is totally fine. I definitely walked some of the more technical sections myself. And
maybe that's it. Yeah. What was your favorite moment of the week? Oh, my favorite moment of the week was definitely, you know, over because I was riding with a few guys for over the, the whole course of the race. You know, we got to know each other a little bit and there was a bit of a rivalry going on and it was just really fun to be like, I think the, the best moment for me was just.
Like being out there with like new friends and pushing each other I think just that community side of things and that like new friends sort of thing was pretty awesome.
[00:28:21] Jacob Paul: Hi, my name is Jacob Paul. I'm from west colon BC, and I competed in the 30 to 39 men's category of trans Rockies this week. The week went really well. Had a lot of fun out racing with everyone. I have not done a whole lot of racing, so a whole new experience riding in a group and yeah, working with other people, the course had a great mix of everything.
A lot of gravel roads, a lot of single track and some pretty cool views. And yeah, I would strongly recommend this race to anyone who's interested in mountain biking and gravel biking. What was your favorite moment from the week? Hm, my favorite moment from the week was on day three when we were rolling into canal flats.
And you could see all the jagged mountains above the clouds. Awesome. Sweet. Well, thank you super all.
[00:29:15] Zoe Roy: . My name's Zoe. Roy, do you want me to spell it? No, that's okay. And I'm from bend Oregon, originally, Ontario, Canada, but live in bend Oregon. Awesome. What did you do for the last four days? I rode my bike over a lot of up and down. And through the woods and around mountains and hung out with a lot, a lot of really fun people.
Cool. Yeah. So you're not a gravel biker, but you did a gravel event. Yeah. How was the gravel community and everyone that you met? Oh, man, your week, like, great. It was so fun. It, it was my first gravel event, gravel race ever. But I really didn't expect anything. Like for the community to be as great as they were.
Yeah. I assume they would be. cool. And you're queen of the mountain Royal attempts. How were those? Oh yeah. They were fun. They were really fun. I was on, I think I had a little bit easier gearing cuz I had mountain bike gears in the. On my bike. I was on a gravel bike with flat bars and mountain bikers.
So the steep uphills were to my advantage. Yeah. But they were they're, they were really fun. We thought we might as well. I thought I might as well try and see what happened. Totally. And it worked out the last two days. Awesome. What was your favorite moment of the week? Favorite moment of the week.
The downhill yesterday was really fun. Yeah. If I was picking a moment during the, during the stages. Yeah. Through the creeks, it was just really fun and fast and it kept going through fun Creek crossings. Yeah. Yeah. So that good. What about your favorite camp moment? Favorite camp moment? Staying in Nico is pretty fun, was really fun cuz everyone just stuck there.
Internet or wifi. Yeah. And so you're just kind of forced to hang out with each other. Yeah. So that's great. Have you been in this area? Much biking? I have a little bit around here and I did trans Rocky's the classic, the mountain bike one mm-hmm in 2019. So I have been, and I think the stage, the first stages were similar or the same.
Yeah. So I have done, I've been in this area and I also work at a lodge that we rode really close to a back country, ski and hiking lodge. So we were probably within 10 K of. On the same gravel roads we take to get to the lodge. Yeah. Barry, do you wanna make a cameo? This recording? Sure. Hello? Can introduce yourself.
[00:31:20] Barry Wicks: My name is Barry Wix. How was your week? Oh, it was excellent. Yeah, super fun. You know, another awesome stage race experience. Just spending four days out in the woods. Riding bikes doesn't get much better. Cool. What are you guys doing next? Where are you? This we're actually adding cam more to do a 24 hour race tomorrow, which is probably a bad idea.
but I'm sure this day of rest will be very helpful, feel super fresh tomorrow. Cool. What was your favorite moment from. I think probably my favorite moment was watching Zoe go up hill really fast. That was quite impressive. I was struggling to keep up. It was inspiring to watch her just zooming up the hill, passing everybody.
It was also pretty fun having the Spanish people here, the whole crew with the media team and we rode. Rael yesterday from like at least half, maybe three quarters of it. And then we were on Spanish TV afterwards. yeah, yeah. Highlight. We got be on TV potentially. We don't know actually, if we made the cut, but yeah, that's true.
We might get cut out. You never know, but we were interviewed. That might might been a highlight. Good. do you need to speak Spanish? No, zero Spanish. I'm sure the subtitles be excellent. Subtitles. Cool.
[00:32:32] Marisa Dobrot: Hi there. This is Marissa with trans rocks. You might have heard my voice throughout this podcast, just in the background asking some of the athletes questions. And before I sign off, Craig just wanted me to give you all a little recap of how the week went from my perspective and how the event was overall.
Obviously you heard from a lot of the athletes, how they were racing and. The camp was and everything like that. So just a little bit more background where the four stages of the race were, were just amazing, beautiful mountains and terrain. Really unlike anything we obviously have in the United States which is where I'm from from Colorado.
so it was just a great opportunity to get athletes out on these magnificent gravel roads. Even if some of the time the athletes might have complained a little bit, that it was a little more technical than they were probably used to in a gravel race. Having to even the pros, having to get off their bike and walk some portions.
Which I think just makes the event so unique and interesting. And you really get a perspective of back country gravel over the four days. So. As you know, the, the race started out in Panorama which is a really cute little ski town ski resort and looked like it had some great downhill mountain biking for the summer.
So that's where night one was. And they started right at the base of the ski hill and took off from there. And it was a neutral start. So everyone. Kind of got a chance to just chill for the morning. For that little first bit probably have some conversations with fellow writers before they really took off once they got down to town and on their way to Tager pass which that first day, and that first pass was sounded pretty challenging for a lot of the athletes.
And definitely from the videos that we got from the video team. On course it was technical and a lot of people took some spills or walked down some of the technical technical sections. But overall was still super gorgeous. And can't really be going on some of that terrain on two wheels.
And then ending that day out at ni PICA, which was a super beautiful place. The, the trans Rockies team had been setting up the tents and obviously getting everything set. We were in ni PICA for two days which was really cool to kind of spend a good amount of time there, like totally you cell service surrounded 360 by mountains.
Really gorgeous. And Niah as a whole is is what they consider an eco resort. So a lot of the buildings that had been made were from various recycled materials and wood that they had found and things like that. And the, the creator of Niah Lyle was talked to the, to the athletes a couple times and just his vision for the resort really plays into what trans Rockies is all about, which is super cool.
And definitely a place I wanna go back in the winter. Seems really beautiful for CrossCountry skiing or, or fat biking, but was in, was very enjoyable for the summer. And so that day too going out in Nico was actually a loop. So they started out from camp. Did a loop around around some mountains there did a pass called Miller pass and then looped back on some great mining, gravel roads back to camp.
So I think that was a great day for everyone to just kind of explore more. The parts of the course that I was able to get out on in the morning were just beautiful. Super gorgeous, like glacier rivers going through Really have no complaints on that one. And then later that afternoon was a little stormy.
It had poured down rain and everyone went hiding under like the dining tent or in their tents. We were in the media RV, which was nice. So everything got a little soaked, but I think it helped it cool it down. In the afternoon before we had dinner And I think what's super cool about having these stage races is often in one day races, you kind of are in your own zone and you get to the start line and you do your race.
And. Talk to people on the course and you have a great time and you have great interactions. And then, and then the race is over and you're with your family or you're onto your next thing. Versus stage race. It's you have all of this time to really know the community and the people that you're with and really have that super cool experience making friends, and we were really lucky to have people from all over the world, come out for the inaugural.
I had a group from Spain, obviously a lot of people from the us and obviously a lot of people from Canada on all over the the country, which was really awesome. So people got the chance to meet so many different kinds of people. We were grateful to also have some, some pros come out. So some people got to talk to some really fast bikers which is really awesome to have.
And each night just, if you're not familiar with kind of how trans Rockies runs, they do awards for the stage. And they have a ton of categories. They have age group and the pro category. You can do it in a team. So things like that. So awards, and then we also put together some fun, little slideshow of all of the shots that we get from the media team.
And then the video team puts together a pretty funny little recap video of the day which is great for the athletes to just see how the day was for everyone else and see some cool, some cool spots and things like that. And just a fun way to end the night. And then. Pretty much wraps it up and people go to bed.
They're thankfully not super early mornings. Start times at 8:00 AM, but we have breakfast open at six. So people start kind of rolling around, getting ready for the day each morning, pretty early. And so day two, starting at Nica. We went out of there and we were making our way down to canal flats.
That day was a less technical horse, but definitely a little bit longer. But I think people enjoyed the break of it not being quite as technical . Because the last day of the event is definitely a long, the longest day with the biggest climbing ending in fie. So the village of canal flat was awesome.
And it was just like a really tiny little town nestled in the mountains, close to a lake. We were just kind of right in, in the town, which was really cool. We were, the, the tents were set up on a baseball field and we had plumbing, which was, which was a change from Nica where we just had porta potties.
So I think that was a nice change for everyone going to that last day. And then on Thursday morning, took off from canal flats and head down to F. Unfortunately I was driving a truck, so I didn't get to see any of that course. Just the course footage that came back from the media team. And it looked gorgeous.
That's definitely a unique course in that route pretty much the only road there, the reason that we, we couldn't really go in to the courses because there was no other way, it was kind of in between two mountains. This one mining road that they Rodee on So it was super gorgeous. The footage that the media team came back with was unreal.
So gonna have to figure out how to get myself on a bike next time to cover social and do these interviews which will be exciting. And then ending in the town of fie which is another really awesome little mountain town. There's a ski hill, great hiking. Just full 360 views of just incredibly big mountains.
And super dramatic a little bit different than Colorado. And so cool. And the town was super inviting. Trans Rockies has had a number of events come through fie. They'll actually be starting out in fie again in about a week for their single track six mountain bike event. So their, their team will be working hard again for a six stage stage race for those mountain bikers.
And at the end, it was unfortunately a little rainy. So , people hung out for a little bit, but then they went and got some, some dry clothes and met back up again for the final banquet, which is how all trans Rock's events end. We had at the community center. infer. And we do final awards and the final video and just thank yous to the full crew and obviously all the athletes and support and the host communities and things like that.
And then we say farewell. So it goes by fast for sure. Those four days But an amazing experience for myself kind of being on the outside and not fully participating, but getting to see the athletes and just be around the trans Rockies community and this new gravel community that trans Rockies is putting together on this stage.
Race is really awesome. So we hope to see returning faces next year. And we also hope to, to see some new ones as well. Wanna enjoy four days of amazing gravel. That they might not necessarily do if they weren't gonna do an event like trans Rockies. So, grateful to be a part of it. And we hope you enjoyed this recap.
And I wanna thank Craig for putting it together. My first adventure into doing podcasts and recording. So hope you all enjoy and we'll hopefully see you a trans Rocky's event soon. Thanks so much.
[00:40:47] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. I hope you enjoyed hearing from those athletes from the trans Rockies gravel Royale certainly does look like an amazing event. And I can personally attest to how awesome the terrain is up there in that region of Canada. Huge. Thanks to our friends. Attract travel, please consider joining me this November 6th on the Girona gravel tour trip. Just visit Trek, travel.com and search for that. Jarana gravel bike tour. And mentioned your listener of the podcast. For that free handlebar bag I look forward to spending some time and spinning some miles with you over in Girona. If you're interested in connecting with me. I encourage you to join the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. It's a free global cycling community where you can connect with over 1500 athletes from around the world and discuss anything to do with gravel cycling. If you're able to support the podcast, please visit buy me a coffee.com. Slash the gravel ride. Or ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week Randall sits down with Enduro Bearings co-founder, Matt Harvey. Randall and Matt go deep on the origin story of Enduro Bearings (circe 1996), bearing science and myth, and how this often overlooked component enables the ride experience.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Enduro Bearings[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the show, I'm handing the microphone back to my co-host Randall Jacobs. Who's got Matt Harvey. Founder of Enduro bearings on the show. You might've heard us talk about Inderal bearings a few times in the, in the dirt episodes, as I was deciding and debating what bottom bracket to run on my new custom bike.
Well, I decided on the Enduro stainless steel bottom bracket. And I couldn't be happier with the performance thus far. I was happy that Randall volunteered to take a deep dive into bearing technology. With Matt, as I think he's got better perspective on the technical elements. And certainly there's no one better to talk about this product than Matt himself. Before we jump in i need to thank this week sponsor athletic greens
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Again, that's athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. To take ownership of your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance.
With that said, I'm going to hand the microphone over to Randall. For his interview with matt harvey from enduro bearings
[00:02:37] Randall Jacobs: So I cut you off last time we spoke because there are just too many things that I was interested in diving into.
And there's the obvious technical aspects of what goes into making a bearing? Of the myths about bearings that we might debunk and things like this. But before we dive in, just tell us a little bit about yourself.
[00:02:57] Matt Harvey: well, I've always been in bicycles ever since I can remember. So I started out as a BMX rat, you know, when I was like 13, 12 or 13, and I started working at a bike shop when I was 13. So I immediately into the mechanical, well, spraying, WD 40 on POJO drive, tra is an exactly super high end mechanical things, but that's how it started.
So, you know, and you know, through there, I worked in bike shops, my business partner. Now I met in a bike shop when I was 17. We worked in the same bike shop. I ended up working at Fisher mountain bikes. I got an engineering degree, ended up working at Fisher mountain bikes, wide industries Bianchi bicycles, starting out in warranty.
Became a product manager, went to Italy, did their mountain bike wine designed a bunch of road bikes and mountain bikes full suspension road bike that got written in Perry RBA. and that was kind of like when I was looking at bearings because everybody was using plane bearings or bushings at the time. And the Fisher RS one with Mert Lawwell work. That was his design. And one of the first full suspension bikes, I think. Well, not first, but you know what I mean? Like current more modern production type, full suspension bike, I should say. Cuz suspension, bikes go back.
You know, turn of the last century. So, so that's when I was starting to look at bearings and rolling elements and that's when they were getting popular. And that guy I worked with at a bike shop when I was 17, he was in the forklift business by then. And he was starting to make bearings for old forklifts.
And you know, we hadn't lost touch and we were talking and I started doing drawings for him cuz he needed CAD drawings for certain things. I was working at Bianchi. And then we, at one point we decided, Hey, this could become a business. So let's start making bearings for forklifts and bicycles. And that's what we still do.
30 years later.
[00:04:58] Randall Jacobs: Well, and I'm curious, we'll, we'll dive into the Enduro bearing story in a minute, but I wanna dive more into that background cuz there's a few things that I find interesting one is, you have what sounds like a technical understanding of the bike that comes from, getting your hands dirty at a young age. I share that experience. And in fact, working on bikes I think is a great way for any person to learn how mechanical systems work. But then also you worked in warranty, so you saw what was going wrong. How did your experience working in shops and working in warranty inform your perspective on product.
[00:05:30] Matt Harvey: yeah. They're all related, right? You can't separate it. Obviously at one point I realized I needed more school to do what I was thinking about doing, I wanted my boss's job. I wanted to do what he was doing, which was designing bikes, but I didn't have the background or experience. So I went back to school, but yeah, I mean, Your hands are in the bikes, you ride bikes.
So you get a certain aspect, which is super important, the practical aspect, but then you know, getting into engineering and so forth, you have to have, you know, the math, the, you know, the history, the you know, and then you get into business. You need business stuff too, but there there's a lot of corners.
You need to go explore to put the whole thing together. I, I think, and, and that's what I ended up, ended up doing. So at, at the beginning it was practical aspect, you know, seed of the pan stuff, cuz I'm just working on stuff. And that's the way, a lot of the way a lot of things happened in the late eighties, early nineties, that's kind of the period I was working on it.
But you mentioned warranty. Yeah. I learned a lot in warranty cuz I saw everything that got broken.
[00:06:43] Randall Jacobs: Yeah.
[00:06:44] Matt Harvey: at Bianchi bicycles and it was the eighties and. Ola was king, you know, shaman was coming with index shifting, but you know, things were being made in in Italy or, or Taiwan or, or various countries at the time, still a lot in the us.
And, and then there was people were trying to, you know, save money and then things break. And what happens with heat treating what happens with why did that thing break? Why was there too much heat treating? Well, I wanted to find out, well, that seems like a good thing. How can there be too much heat treating?
So, you know, you learn, I, you see the broken parts, you see a box of broken pedals and that's not good. Nobody likes to break a pedal, but you find out like why things get crispy and break and and all the, so I, I wanted to learn about especially metal steel, aluminum at the time it was Prebon fiber.
[00:07:40] Randall Jacobs: Mm
[00:07:40] Matt Harvey: But so yeah I, you go into, I went into back to school in metal shop too. And but I, I was lucky because I also had, I was going to Taiwan. I was still working for Bianchi. I was going to factories, seeing things you know, forged, spin, welded you know, all the different ways you make things. So I was, I was getting a practical eyes on learning experience in Taiwan where all the production was kind of going.
I was also going to Italy and, you know, Italy was still making a lot of stuff. Then Bianchi was making bikes at the main factory there. I mean, they're getting back to it again, but at the time it was sort of Asia was taking over on a lot of the production. So it was kind of split between, you know, Asia and Italy at the time.
[00:08:26] Randall Jacobs: So you were right in there at a number of big transitions in the industry. The advent of the mountain bike, which was very much a us and in particular bay area phenomenon . And in fact I've talked about different tariff codes in for mountain bikes there was a significant domestic manufacturing operation. And materials were that much more critical cuz you had this really high stress application that hadn't really been done before. Like those clunks were not were not holding up all that well.
And then the transition to index shifting that's another major transition in the industry. That's the reason why Shao is so dominant today. And also Asia manufacturing, a lot of which was people in the us and European bike industries who were going over and helping to, transfer that knowledge and set up that production in what is now, Taiwan in particular some of the, the best, highest end manufacturing for bikes anywhere.
It's no, it's no longer a cost thing. It's a quality thing.
[00:09:23] Matt Harvey: Yeah. And in the beginning they were, they had the ability to make really high end stuff, but the knowledge needed to come from the people who were practically riding bikes, because they weren't practically riding bikes. They knew how to make things, but they had to know how to make it now, you know, the Taiwanese it feeds back a lot of times they, they do new products that they develop their own new products that are really great.
So, but yeah, you're right. Those were the early days of figuring all that stuff out.
[00:09:53] Randall Jacobs: Well, and I'd, and I'd say I definitely see more domain knowledge on the product side in Taiwan than there was in the past, but still it, it does seem that the, the most successful Taiwanese manufacturers are those that have, European or American team that is in the market and kind of on top of the trends and the trends are still largely driven by those two markets.
[00:10:15] Matt Harvey: sure. But you know, in Taiwan now it's an entire, since I started there, it's an entirely new generation that has now grown up in the bike industry. And there a lot of 'em are riders now and stuff. And back then nobody was riding mountain bikes who worked at the factories or made stuff or design stuff.
But now you have a lot of people there that are enthusiast. And I mean, as big an enthusiast as anybody in the world for
[00:10:39] Randall Jacobs: Yeah. True.
[00:10:40] Matt Harvey: riding. And so it's, it's an entirely new generation that. I mean, it's great. They've embraced it and they know it and they develop things materials and design it's incredible.
And at the time, you know, historically you go back, so Italy was, you know, Italy and France were the huge innovators back when right. They came out well, derailer, it's a French word and Italians didn't embrace it immediately. They had other things, other ideas. But at the time when I went there, it was an interesting time because Italy was king, but not quite becoming, you know, they, they didn't catch the mountain bike wave.
They were looking at specialized and these innovators at the time Fisher, all, you know, Richie, all the people that were innovating and they couldn't keep up, they didn't quite cuz they're, they were a mature market and not looking at that. So I was the American brought in to be the eyes and.
Practicality of that part which I was, you know, it was a little frustrating cuz you couldn't quite keep up and then the name Bianchi and mountain bikes at the time no people are gonna buy a, a Fisher or a Richie or something or an Ibis, you know? So that was a uphill battle and that, and that's why European brands or track, you know, they bought mountain bike brands.
They bought, you know, Gary Fisher brand and to sell it because they were known as a road bike company. And that's what people were doing at the time. So it wasn't always necessarily not great ideas at these companies. It was marketing to, you know, you have to have it all.
[00:12:16] Randall Jacobs: it's interesting, like you think about camp. No. Which was a really great and, and major player, and they're still significant, but substantially diminished, vis Avi Shao and STR the, the two, you know, arguably we have a duopoly in our industry and it's those two and camp Nolo makes some good stuff, but they didn't come out with hydraulic disc brakes until much later. and, and even then I think they work with McGurk on that. I don't know if that's in house now. They're more recent offerings with the ECAR group, I think are, are innovative. And I'd like to see them contest from more spec because the industry does benefit from competition.
But yeah, it's interesting to hear your perspective on how the industry has evolved. What year did you enter? When were you working in those shops?
[00:12:59] Matt Harvey: So first bike shop was 1976. And then let's see, I worked in shops until about 81 and I ended up starting at Bianchi warranty in the 82, maybe through 80, 85. And then I went over to Fisher. I went back to school. I, I simultaneously worked at Fisher and was in school and, and then I started moonlighting at white industries because Doug white was, he was pretty, he was making titanium spindles for Fisher.
So that's how I made the connection there. And I would go over to his shop. They were pretty close by. There was a lot of people around then Dave GU DKG make, he still makes seat clamps. He was making motorcycle stuff. You know, there was salsa. Everybody was kind of in the same area and everything was happening up in Marin then.
So, you know, I talked to lot of people, Peter Johnson, all these people that were making stuff. And so I went back when I finished school. I it just coincided with Bianchi needing a product manager for a mountain bike specifically. So they, I got rehired at Bianchi as product manager, and then it was a lot of a lot of whirlwind you know, once a month to Taiwan. Once every two months to Italy, I was on the plane all the time, doing a lot of stuff and developed two mountain bikes there. And that was a transition of going from bushings to rolling elements bearings and seeing that, you know, the bearings weren't hacking it. I wanted bearings cuz they're faster, you know, than bushings bushings are slow in a suspension linkage.
And if you're going over a high you know, water bars or high frequency stuff,
[00:14:46] Randall Jacobs: Yeah.
[00:14:46] Matt Harvey: they're, they're just too slow. Bushings can't react. So rolling elements work better, but they were wearing out fast. So it was trying to figure out how to do better ones. And then that was kind of my transition into bearings.
My friend from the bike shop was he was down at his shop in Emoryville making LAR much larger bearings, like five, six inch diameter bearings for forklifts, but they were max type, which we use in suspension, bearings. And I go, oh, that's a cool idea. Forklifts use these full complement bearings full of balls.
And why don't, why don't we do that for mountain bikes, but just a make a micro version. And that was the beginning of trying to make bearings for suspension, bikes, and kind of the beginning of it.
[00:15:32] Randall Jacobs: so let let's talk about that. I remember a lot of it was cup and cone for bearings. I remember bushings in mountain bike linkages, and then cartridge bearings, when did those come to the four? Is that where you started or were you doing loose ball initially?
[00:15:46] Matt Harvey: No, it was cartridge bearings, but yeah, you're you're right too. Like cup and cone were often max type bearings, as you say, no retainer, you know? And, but
[00:15:56] Randall Jacobs: which is to say the balls are, are rubbing up against each other, spinning an opposite direction. So there's a high degree of friction between those two surfaces of the balls versus having a retainer with a lower friction coefficient separating them.
[00:16:09] Matt Harvey: that's true. But surprisingly the friction between the balls is actually extremely low. Believe it or not. I mean, theoretically, you would imagine that there is, but the balls are so smooth. And I've studied this a little bit. There there's very little friction from the balls rubbing against each other without a retainer.
It is a little bit better with a retainer, but it's almost immeasurable. It's really small coefficient of friction between
[00:16:35] Randall Jacobs: Oh, that's super interesting. Are there applications where you would not want a retainer then?
[00:16:40] Matt Harvey: Usually, bearings run smoother with a retainer. The thing about max bearings is you have to get the balls in there. So there's a a side hole, if you will, to feed the balls into their slots and, and it, it gets into the ball path and that creates more friction than the ball's rubbing against each other, especially in an axial, like if they get off center and they rub against that fill slot.
So that's why they're really good for pivot bearings. Not really recommended for hub bearings or, or bottom bracket bearings for that matter.
[00:17:19] Randall Jacobs: yeah. Cuz you have those, those non radial loads that are being applied to them.
[00:17:23] Matt Harvey: right now, the old
[00:17:25] Randall Jacobs: I just wanna state, we did, we did promise a properly nerdy podcast for this. So we're gonna get into the weeds. I'm loving this. I hope that our listeners will as well. There's a lot that goes into bearings that we kind of take for granted
[00:17:37] Matt Harvey: sorry, I can go into the weeds pretty quick. Just you
[00:17:40] Randall Jacobs: that's, that's the point? That's the point? This I, this is, this is as much for me as it is the audience. So let's go into the weeds. And so you have this, I was actually going to ask how you get the bearings in there in the first place. So you have a, a single location where there's a, a notch, and then you have this retainer that makes sure that the bearings never track into that notch.
[00:17:59] Matt Harvey: Well, yeah. So in a retainer bearing, you can assemble the bearing without a fill slot. So you put in all the balls on one side and it kind of, well, I'm not gonna demonstrate it here, but they, they all go in on they're all on one side of the lower race and you kind of snap it together in the, so there's no fill slot on a retainer.
There's only so many balls you can get in there because of that design and, and that was developed in Germany in the late 18 hundreds. And then max Barings, or, you know, those were the first ones actually in S hubs going back to 1860 1870s and their angular contact Aless hubs.
Yeah.
[00:18:39] Randall Jacobs: that's a, I think Bontrager had a line of wheels called OLIS. Is that the same,
[00:18:44] Matt Harvey: Yeah. I think they revived the name. But yeah, it's an old, it's a really old hub name and developed for bicycles. Like the first precision bearings are interchangeable. Part bearings were developed for early bicycles. Rolling elements that standardized rolling elements,
[00:19:02] Randall Jacobs: Were they even bicycles at that point? Or were they like velos or some of these
[00:19:07] Matt Harvey: speeds.
[00:19:07] Randall Jacobs: yeah, so,
[00:19:09] Matt Harvey: safety bicycle was until 1885. So, but you know, same bearings were used in those and, and bone shakers or, you know, the various things that you saw developed, you know, three wheels and four wheels and so forth back
[00:19:25] Randall Jacobs: and this term, this term Velo you know, velocipede and safety bicycle for those who don't know the, the history of the evolution of the bicycle. Can you talk a little bit about that?
[00:19:35] Matt Harvey: yeah. So I think philosophy is anything that rolls by human locomotion, whereas safety bicycle, you, penny farthing is the large wheel up front because it was pre chain gearing. And that's how you got your gearing was to use a really big wheel in the front or medium, you know, various size wheels.
The race bikes had a huge wheel. Extremely dangerous. And then they called it the safety bicycle with two wheels, the same size chain drive, because it was much safer than a bone shaker or penny far with the big wheel. Cuz the crashes on those were horrendous.
[00:20:13] Randall Jacobs: sure you're starting from a high point. And then if you hit anything, you're going, lawn dart but then still fixed gear. And then you had to have ratchet mechanisms or some sort of free hub or free wheel and all these things that we take for granted they had to be invented and evolved and materials had to be there and, and the production tolerances had to be there for all of this to exist.
[00:20:34] Matt Harvey: That's right. It, it took it, it was pretty quick how the the development of the bicycle, all the things that came became developed came in quick succession. It's amazing how early things were invented that. We see as quite advanced. In fact, I was just looking at something recently, cuz you know, there's a two speed rear hub that has become pretty popular in the industry classified and you know, the first two speed rear hub was actually like 1896.
That's how far back stuff
[00:21:03] Randall Jacobs: was, what was the company behind that?
[00:21:06] Matt Harvey: it was called, believe it or not. The name of it was they, it was so early. They just called it the hub. That was the name of the company. And I forget the guy who developed it, but he called it the hub and it was extremely popular at two speed rear hub. And then there was like five companies within two years making them back
[00:21:25] Randall Jacobs: Got it.
[00:21:26] Matt Harvey: We, we are getting into the weeds here but you know, it all comes together. It makes sense because people are always looking for, you know, right now it's a front derailer thing with full suspension bikes. It's hard to put a front derailer on the bike and you know, so the two speed hub here, we have it again because it solves a problem.
But it's interesting to know that it was developed a hundred years or over a hundred years ago too.
[00:21:52] Randall Jacobs: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also like the, the solution that you had in the bearing space, it had a context. It's another one of these enabling technologies that had to be put in there to have, you know, you look at something like the Delta suspension design that Dave weel came up with for, for evil and just the number of bearings in there.
And imagine having that with a bunch of bushings that have a high static friction and so on, it just doesn't work, never mind the high rolling efficiency of our wheels and bottom brackets and all these things. So let's go back to bearings. You alluded to how Enduro got started and you were doing forklift bearings
so let's continue on that Bain.
[00:22:31] Matt Harvey: all right. So we were making bearings for forklifts that you couldn't get anymore because forklifts last their electric vehicles, or, you know, you can put a new engine on 'em. So the, the car that you of the forklift keeps going, so, or the truck. So, yeah, we were making specifically the bearings that go up and down in the mast that hold the forks.
So those have to be. They carry extremely high loads and they don't spin very fast. They're max bearings. And that's
[00:23:01] Randall Jacobs: What, what defines a max bearing?
[00:23:04] Matt Harvey: maximum fill of balls. So not a retainer bearing. You can put, if you take the retainer out and just fill it full of balls on max maximum fill, you can put about 35% more balls into the bearing and then your, yeah.
Your load capacity increases. By that amount, 35%
[00:23:27] Randall Jacobs: Mm-hmm so you can either have a bigger bearing or you can have one of these max bearings to fit the same amount of load capacity into a smaller form factor.
[00:23:36] Matt Harvey: Exactly. And as long as the rolling element, isn't spinning really fast. Like, you know, it's not an electric motor going 10,000 RPM. It's, it's going maybe I don't know, 20 or 80 RPM, pretty, pretty slow. Even on a bicycle, you know, cranks and wheels. They're hundreds of RPM, not thousands. So, well in a suspension pivot, it's just swiveling back and forth.
Maybe 15 degrees. So max bearing makes sense, cuz it's not spinning. You're not looking at a lot of friction from the fill slot or whatever. So we started making we were making those forklift bearings and ironic white industries was actually making 'em for us up in Nevada, those early ones.
We made some at the shop. We were turning at the shop, but when we got into larger numbers, white industries was doing it. And. So I was working with them and then we ended up making some hub bearings which are retainer bearings, which for hubs, hubs need to have higher precision to spin smoothly because in a, in a back hub you have four or five bearings that you're stacking up and you need a higher level of precision.
That's why we do ABAC five bearings at Enduro for, for hubs specifically, because you need a higher level of tolerance. Now, ABAC ratings are significant in that they give you a level of the precision. However, all of the Abe parameters are not really applicable to bicycle application, cuz it's really a lot about noise ratings and spinning at 10 20,000 RPM, which bicycle bearings never do.
So we do. Abe grading, Abe bearings for the ID OD with tolerance to make the alignment. Correct. But we do very deep groove to take higher loads than most high spinning bearings.
[00:25:31] Randall Jacobs: Got it. That makes sense. So you have a bigger surface area where the bearings are contacting those races and thus you have less deformation of the balls, less deformation of those races as the, you know, as that as it's spinning. And that load is, you know, coming on and off of each ball.
[00:25:47] Matt Harvey: right. And so a lot of high Abbe rated bearings may not be good for bicycles because to reach the noise level testing you want it's easier to make an Abbe, a high Abbe rated bearing with shallower grooves. And less surface contact, but that's not good for a bicycle because you have pretty high axial loads and everybody who makes hubs and bicycle components in general, they're always trying to save weight.
So they try and use the lightest weight bearings possible. So you need that bearing to be as robust as possible to resist the the the loads of, of the you know, axial loads, radial loads that, that small bearing has to put up with
[00:26:35] Randall Jacobs: And just to clarify terms for those in the audience who don't have an engineering background, radio loads, being those in plane with the bearings. So in, in, in the same plane as the bearings, so if it's a wheel it's like a load that's coming, straight up perpendicular the ground through the center of the bearing essentially versus an axial load is, would be like a twisting load on that same bearing.
So if you have a lateral force on that wheel or something like that, which you can have, presumably you have somewhat significant axial loads in especially in like mountain bike linkages and rear wheels and things like that.
[00:27:09] Matt Harvey: oh yeah. Or even road wheels, like a rear hub. When you're going up a hill, like a really strong rider out of the saddle, going back and forth. There's significant axial loads and twisting between the cassette mechanism, the, where the Sprockets are and the hub shell. It's, you're literally trying to pull the thing apart because it's not a motor running it on a chain, like sitting stationary, you know, like a you know, a generator motor or something, you know, the human is just, doesn't put out constant power.
So that's why you see elliptical. Sprockets and stuff, but you you're basically putting on a, a as you're going up a steep hill, let's say you're, you're twisting everything apart. So there's high axial loads on the rear bearings, and even the front bearing, you know, when you're sprinting the front wheel bearing it's, it's moving side to side when people are throwing their bike and you have now dis brakes too, which puts on unequal loads, cuz it's one side of the hub onto the bearings.
So you're pulling the bearings over again with dis brakes and that's brought a whole new well for me, I like it cuz it's a challenge, but that's another new challenge of conundrum of of problems to address with front wheel loading cuz front wheels were just mostly along for the ride with rim breaks.
But with dis brakes, you gotta, you gotta look at it closer. They're asymmetric forces on the front wheel now too. Uneven
[00:28:37] Randall Jacobs: Yeah. And it's on the hub, it's also on the fork itself. And fork legs had to be redesigned a primary driver of the creation and adoption of through axles was also because the torque loads were so great. And in fact, if that quick release was not tightened fully, you could actually have a wheel eject itself.
So yeah, just massive forces in those areas that people don't really consider when they throw on a 1300 gram wheel set and say, okay, this is gonna support my entire weight and keep me safe at 30 miles an hour on a steep mountainous descent.
[00:29:09] Matt Harvey: exactly. And, and a lot of times the bearings are even by the designers, surprisingly, sometimes they're the last thing thought about, and they say, oh, we need a bearing to fit in this. You know, it's gotta fit under the disc and over the through axle and it become. Extremely thin. And then you gotta look at other ways to make a solution for that.
So it holds up and doesn't burn out. I mean, early in disc breaks that you'd see hubs that the disc would get so hot. You could burn out the, the the disc side bearing in one downhill run,
[00:29:43] Randall Jacobs: Oh, wow.
[00:29:44] Matt Harvey: and some
[00:29:45] Randall Jacobs: I didn't realize that.
[00:29:46] Matt Harvey: Oh yeah. And some riders were buying like full tubes of the, this side, front wheel bearings for certain hubs, because they would knock it out after every run and put a new bearing in.
It got so hot, it would like boil the grease out of it and just toast the thing. It would practically set the weeds on fire, you know, cuz , it got so hot. I mean the dis brakes have improved and cooling and some other things and people have gotten smarter about the hub bearings on that side. But like about eight years ago we were selling a lot of certain sizes of bearings cuz for downhill guys.
[00:30:20] Randall Jacobs: Well, and disc diameters have gotten much bigger. You have aluminum spiders with venting that can help to shed some of that transfer it to the air versus early disc breaks were I mean, a lot of it was what, 140 millimeters
[00:30:34] Matt Harvey: yeah, small ones.
[00:30:35] Randall Jacobs: lot of,
[00:30:36] Matt Harvey: when we start, there was no dis when we started with that RS one with Mert Lawwell we needed a disc break. There were none around. We used to fill disc break from back then. That was a all fiber disk. I don't know if you remember that one, but there weren't any discs that would that, you know, and they faded, you know, faded miserably.
That was really hard thing to slow that bike down.
[00:30:57] Randall Jacobs: yeah, again, I can't impress upon our audience enough of just how good we have it right now, in terms of how, you can have an extraordinarily lightweight breaking system that will stop you plus your bike, plus whatever gear you have reliably and consistently for long periods of time and everything just works.
And it's actually, I, I mean, I remember my first bikes, you know, I'm only, I'm only turning 40, my first bikes didn't just work. There was a lot of service. There was a lot of parts failures and so on, and now things just seemed to be engineered and manufactured to a much higher standard such that it's increasingly surprising when things don't just work. And bearings are a big part of that.
[00:31:39] Matt Harvey: And so, what if you don't mind, like the there's one development that I worked on A long from a long time ago, I had heard about this metal that air Airbus had developed and for their, for making bearings in the planes. And I read about it and I immediately wanted it.
And there's only a couple foundries that make this particular steel in the world, but I knew it was gonna be perfect for ceramic bearings. And but you know, it was frustrating because the amount of steel that I needed even though it was a lot of money for me who they, they would never be interested in.
I, I got my business partner, speaks Germany called the Foundry in Germany and they basically hung up on him, you know, or they didn't hang up on him, but, you know, I was like, yeah, thanks kids. See you later. And I was at a show and I met this guy who. To you know, I, people sign trying to sell me metal all the time.
Cuz we make bearings, but this guy, I heard the word nitrogen steel and I said, wait a minute, you can get nitrogen steel. And he's like, oh yeah, you know, I represent the company. So the long and shorts of the story is he's a mountain biker who worked for the Foundry in France. There's only two foundries.
So he got me in there and was able to get me some steel. And, and so we'd been making XD 15 bearings now for over 10 years, I think maybe 12 or something. But that material cuz ceramic bearings, they're when you think about ceramic bearings, they're kind of fragile, right? They they're really great because they do spin really well.
Cuz you have a super hard ball. It's seven times harder than steel. It won't flex or, or push out of the way deform and but it wears the races out. If there's no grease or. They can rust and all these things, and here's this material XD 15, it won't rust it won't corrode and you can run a ceramic ball in it with dirt, whatever you want and it won't wear out.
[00:33:33] Randall Jacobs: It'll just Ize it, whatever gets in there.
[00:33:35] Matt Harvey: it, yeah, it burnishes the races it'll like Polish and so you don't get Goling or pitting. So what usually happens with a bearing when it wears out, it'll just, you know, you get dirt or no grease in there and what happens. You get a pothole, essentially. If you're in the race and it's a little pit in the race, and then as the ball rolls over that the P like a car running over a pothole gets bigger and bigger until you feel that it's rough.
So that's what happens when a bearing wears out. Well, that doesn't happen with XD 15, nor does it corrode. So, me and this guy, you know, we're, we're, we're still buddies and he he still rides his mountain bikes and he gets me the steel. Still we're still friends, but you know, the bike industry is so small.
We're probably 20 minutes of, or not even 10 minutes of production out of this Foundry for all we buy in a. Because Airbus soaks that stuff up by the, you know, it's just aviation uses so much more material than, you know, any sports industry thing. So, I'm just lucky to be able to get it. But it's it's an interesting material to work with.
We have to get raw, we can't get tubing, you gotta drill it. There there's a lot of it's hard to make these bearings, but I'm kind of proud of it. I mean, it's my favorite thing that we make because it answers the question when somebody calls and says, I want something to put in my bike and then I never wanna work on it again, which is kind of my goal too.
Cause I never have time to work on my bike. And it's just like, I want to, you know, you can put these bearings in your bike and never think about 'em again. So that's why I like them.
[00:35:12] Randall Jacobs: well, and this is a great segue into a topic that I think a number of our more performance or competition oriented listeners will be curious about, which is the ceramic bearing landscape, right? There are a few options out there. Maybe they're included on a very premium wheel set. Maybe it's some bearing kit that you can press into your existing hubs, but the perception that these are better or even necessarily faster or more efficient is not really backed up. And there's a phenomenon where, you know, you end up and, and I made this mistake.
I. Ceramic bearings early on trying to get every little edge. And the science simply says that, well, it may give you a slight, maybe imperceptible benefit for a few hundred miles and then, the performance is going to a degree rather quickly because they're a significant part of that performance benefit has less to do with the bearing and more to do with say the thinner grease that's being used or the lighter seals that are being used.
And then you have contamination, you have the Goling and, and pitting that you just described and so on. So maybe help us to understand the ceramic bearing landscape generally. And what's true and not true about ceramic bearings. How do you make a good one? How do you make a bad one?
[00:36:21] Matt Harvey: right. Well, what you just said is, is all true. You know, friction and bearings has more to do usually with the seals and the grease at first grease dissipates. And, you know, after you've ridden it, a couple of rides, it dissipates and it's less of a factor, but right. Brand new out of the box, there's some grease not friction, but resistance
[00:36:43] Randall Jacobs: to the viscosity of the grease, the thicker, the grease, the more resistance it applies. It's simply just within the friction of the material within itself.
[00:36:52] Matt Harvey: Exactly. And, you know, first of all, the reason you don't see a lot of data about what actual test data about what that is, is because it's really small and hard to measure what that wattage difference is. So the drive train is your drive train is about seven Watts of suck, or if you will, or, you know, the and five of the Watts are the chain because it's basically a chain is 110 plane bearings rolling around on your Sprockets.
So that's, that's,
[00:37:24] Randall Jacobs: Plain bearings, meaning not having a ball bearing. It's just a metal on metal interface.
[00:37:29] Matt Harvey: Rolling element. So it's a, it's a metal, a steel ring that rolls over your chain rings and there chain is extremely efficient. It's great. That's why everybody we use 'em but so that leaves two Watts for all the bearings in your bike. So if you do the math, you know, there's at least 12 bearings.
[00:37:44] Randall Jacobs: So two in the front wheel, four or five in the rear wheel. Two in the bottom bracket and then
[00:37:51] Matt Harvey: couple in the pedals
[00:37:53] Randall Jacobs: Oh, in
[00:37:53] Matt Harvey: and the pedals
[00:37:55] Randall Jacobs: Yep. Yep. Can't forget that. Usually it's a cartridge ball bearing and then maybe a needle bearing
[00:38:00] Matt Harvey: needle bearing. Yeah,
[00:38:01] Randall Jacobs: has to fit in that really tight form factor.
[00:38:04] Matt Harvey: exactly. So.
[00:38:07] Randall Jacobs: for all of that.
[00:38:08] Matt Harvey: Yeah. So you're talking under a wat it's it's it's per, per bearing. So it's really hard to measure because not very many people have equipment that can measure under a wat, you know, and even a bad bearing is still under a wat, you know, we're talking 0.2 0.2, five Watts per bearing, something like that.
So, but so there are some efficiencies of ceramic what that is, you know, I'll let you leave it to your imagination, but it's not, it's not like, full Watts. Let's say it's you know, and my interest, so ceramic bearings in general are always best as you just pointed out right out of the box, and then they go downhill.
From, if you will, from there, they, they deteriorate and you have to keep up with servicing XD 15. The reason I really like it, it's, it's more of a longevity story than a wattage story. Well, it is a wad story because they actually get better over time. The balls burnish, the races and they get smoother, but what's nice about 'em is they don't wear out.
And if you don't wanna service 'em, you don't have to. So, you can never open 'em up and put grease on 'em. You can just keep riding 'em and they won't get loose or they won't get rough. They might get rough when you get some dirt in them, but the rough, the dirt will dissipate get ground up or come out and it they're fine again.
So that's what I like about 'em. They're if you're talking about wattage there's yeah, they're a little bit better, but it's. Almost immeasurable. So right now we're doing some wattage testing on bearings, but how we're able to do it and see the differences is we have to amplify the tests. So we're, overtraining the bearings so that we get out of one bearing.
We can get 10 Watts. Actually it's less than that's seven Watts of resistance, but we're over straining this bearing and we'll publish this next year. You'll see it. But in a way to amplify the results. And then we do comparison tests,
[00:40:20] Randall Jacobs: and there's some assumptions that need to be made as to whether the relationship between the, load applied and the change in wattage, is it linear? Is it exponential? That's interesting. And I appreciate how transparent you are about this, because it's, it's a question that we looked into when we were developing our wheel line, which use your bearings by the
[00:40:40] Matt Harvey: mm-hmm . Oh,
[00:40:41] Randall Jacobs: and I had, I had a great conversation. No, thank you. One, you make a great bearing and two you had product available when we needed it, which at that time was, was a big challenge. I had a long conversation with one of your either support people or engineers.
I suspect if it was a support person, they have an engineering background cuz they really knew their stuff and talked about the, the different ceramic options and the only one that. That really resonated with me as a potential offering in the future was this XD 15 because of the purported benefits you cite.
But listeners should not lose sight of the fact that this is a marginal gain at best in terms of performance. A lot of it is probably coming from the ability to use less restrictive seals and a lighter lubricant in there as opposed to bearings for themselves. But, the, the benefit is there, but if you are unless you are, you know, either riding to the ends of the earth for years on end and want something ultra durable, or you are a high level competitive athlete with a sponsorship and a team car and a mechanic who works on your stuff, ceramic bearings it's not the lowest lying fruit in terms of improving your performance.
But at the bleeding edge, if you're going to do it. You would want to do it with something that maintains its performance advantage over time. And that is not true of a lot of ceramic bearings out there. And in fact, quite a few of them are manufactured to a standard such that they're actually worse out of the box than even a traditional steel bearing.
[00:42:11] Matt Harvey: Yeah, it, it depends on, so there's a lot of different balls out there. There's only really there's very few factories in the world that make really good ceramic balls, San GOBA, or Panasonic or Toshiba in Japan. And then there's, you, you, there's a lot of balls you don't wanna put in there that are worse than steel balls.
So, you know, that's another reason for the price, because if they're really cheap, ceramic bearings, they're probably really cheap for a reason. Cause I know what the price of the balls good balls are, cuz we buy 'em all the time. But that's the first thing is good. Good ceramic balls. You do on sta if you use, so what we're talking about, the other steel, so there's XD 15 steel that we've been talking about, which is called a nitrogen stainless steel.
And the other steel that is used almost across the board is called 52, 100 chromium steel. So that's the, it's a that's the steel that everybody pretty much uses in ceramic bearings and it can rust. It's extremely hard. Get it up to like 60 Rockwell, which is really hard. That's why people, that's why factories use it for bearings it's industry standard.
But with a ceramic ball, it can wear it out unless you keep up with the maintenance. So that means when the grease is gone, you probably got about two weeks left before that bearing. If you keep riding, if you're running, riding a couple hundred miles a week, you probably. Couple weeks left and then it's gonna be rough.
So you gotta keep up with cleaning it and greasing it. And you know, if you clean 'em and grease, 'em ceramic bearings on a regular basis. They, they last a long time and they work. But that's the reality of ceramic bearings with that
[00:44:00] Randall Jacobs: Yeah. I look forward to getting some data sets from you because the XD fifteens are actually something that I'm quite interested in for a future offering for us. They're not cheap, but if you, if you actually want to have the benefits both upfront and over time, it is what it costs.
Otherwise unless you have a mechanic constantly taking care of your bearings, popping seals and repacking grease, and so on. You're better off with a high quality steel bearing.
[00:44:24] Matt Harvey: Yeah, I think so. But you know, I tell people the story. They still buy the regular ceramic bearings all the time. Cuz I, I just can't I come from engineering background, not marketing. So I just kind of tell it like it is, I'll get 'em anyway and they put 'em in and say, you know what, you're wrong.
They, they roll better. I can feel it, but you know, that's, I, I get it all the time and it's like, well, it's okay. You know? It's you know, there is a lot of in the mind, especially with bike racers, it is psychological thing, you know, like, if you, if you're on the best bike you think you have, then you probably are faster too.
[00:45:00] Randall Jacobs: yeah. There's that? I'll tell you too though. I was friends with the European pro who I was talking. Because I was just coming up and I was never at his level, but asking does it matter all that much? What you're riding and so on. He's like, you honestly, yeah.
I wanna win. I wanna have the best equipment, but there's a lot of parody between what's out there and if you pay me enough, I'll ride a shopping cart.
[00:45:20] Matt Harvey: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you're strong, you're strong you'll you are gonna win the race.
[00:45:26] Randall Jacobs: Yeah.
[00:45:27] Matt Harvey: no, it's, that's very true. I agree.
[00:45:30] Randall Jacobs: well, I think ceramic bearings, they have a lot of bling factor. So if you say that your product has ceramic bearings in there, it doesn't really matter. If the bearings are better than a non ceramic bearing, it just matters that you can say ceramic bearings.
And now you just marked your product. In the case of a wheel set, it's anywhere from several hundred to a thousand or more that you're able to mark that product up because it is perceived as having the best of the best, even if it's not necessarily the case.
[00:45:58] Matt Harvey: Yeah. And in, in the case of XD 15 so it, the ceramic ball is perfect for that material. Number one, when we started, there were no XD 15 balls available. So you would have to use chromium steel or four 40 C stainless balls, which is another bearing steel that's out there. But the problem with four 40 C or an unmatched steel ball in XD 15 is at micro weld.
And then you do have problems. So with X micro weld is the ball actually under pressure welds itself to the race in certain situations. So for XD 15, you have to run ceramic balls. And the benefits also are that they won't corrode like the XD 15 material. So. They're they're kind of made for each other in, in this instance.
[00:46:49] Randall Jacobs: Interesting. It reminds me of a phenomenon with the doors of the space station, where they were finding that the door could seal shut because you had raw aluminum surfaces that had no oxidization on them. And so that it basically would bond and, and weld in that vacuum.
[00:47:04] Matt Harvey: oh my God. And then right when alien shows up, you can't get you can't jettison out of the, your
[00:47:11] Randall Jacobs: Yeah. So, so thank you for this dive on ceramics. I find it really fascinating and it was no less. So when I was talking to one of your teammates, so let's talk about the bearings that most of us are riding, which is a steel bearing, typically a stainless steel bearing, what goes into a good bearing for all the different applications on the bicycle so this is everything from headsets to bottom brackets and radio bearings versus angular, contact bearings, and so on. What makes the kind of the best bearing for each one of those applications?
[00:47:42] Matt Harvey: so it's a really good question. Let's just go to the com most common bearings. The most common bearing in the bike industry is this number 6, 9 0 2. And so that's an industry standard of a bearing in just briefly 6, 9 0 2. The six refers to radio nine is the series. And then, oh two is the internal diameter.
That's if anybody's interested, that's how that works. So 6, 9 0 2 though. So it gives you some specificity about the bearing, because that gives you the ID, the OD and the width. However, what's inside the bearing can vary greatly. You can have different size balls, you can have different. So there's no standard on the 6, 9 0 2 as to what it looks like on the inside, but that's the important part, right?
So you can buy a 6, 9 0 2 that works in a printing machine. It's very common in big printers and it's going back and forth, or you can put a 6, 9 0 2 and a turbo charger, and now it's going 50,000 RPM. And now you can put it in a hub and it's going 200 RPM. And it has a lot of axial loads that we talked about earlier.
So you'd have a different 6, 9 0 2, even though it's a standard bearing in each of those applications. For instance, if you put a bunch of grease, like we do 85% grease fill in a bicycle 6, 9 0 2, because it's only going 200 RPM and you want it full of grease. If you put that in a turbo charger, bearing, going. 40,000 RPM, that grease is gonna fly out and set the car on fire,
[00:49:19] Randall Jacobs: I was gonna say, yeah, I was expecting a flammable situation.
[00:49:22] Matt Harvey: Yeah. So, for bicycle application, we or I started by designing the inside of the bearing for the bicycle application. So number one, it's got the biggest ball possible, cuz that's your biggest load bearing capabilities to start with that
[00:49:41] Randall Jacobs: okay.
[00:49:41] Matt Harvey: second you use the deepest grooves possible that you can design around cuz some of 'em are shallow grooves and you have loads side to side loads, axial loads, and you need to support the ball once the ball rolls past the groove and it's on the edge, you're either like doing some damage or it's not supporting how it can.
So deepest grooves, largest balls. And then we look at the seals and we do groove type seals. A lot of, so two RS, 6, 9 0 2, 2 RS, two RS litter means two rubber seals. That's but it doesn't tell you what kind of seal. So we do these seals called LL B and L L U. And those are, we actually machine a groove into the seal at that point.
And there's two lips that run inside that groove
[00:50:33] Randall Jacobs: Machine into the the races, right?
[00:50:36] Matt Harvey: yeah.
[00:50:36] Randall Jacobs: Where the seal is interfacing with the race?
[00:50:39] Matt Harvey: Exactly. And there's always an external groove to hold the seal, but on the ID, there's often just a flat surface that one lip, a two RS seal just rubs against, but it's not very, and sometimes they don't even make contact on cheaper bearings. You know, you can hold them up to the light and see the light shine
[00:50:57] Randall Jacobs: oh, wow.
[00:50:57] Matt Harvey: well, it's, it's not even making contact.
[00:51:01] Randall Jacobs: which means that all sorts of grime and dirt and dust and water is getting in there in a bike application.
[00:51:07] Matt Harvey: Right. And so, like our, so our dual lip LL B L O use one lip, keeps the grease in and then the other is kind of a sweeper seal that keeps the dust out from the outside. And then in between the seals, you get some, when you start turning it, the reason for the full grease fill is some grease comes out and that makes an extra grease seal, if you will, on the, on the idea of the bearing.
So, that,
[00:51:33] Randall Jacobs: inner inner diameter of the bearing.
[00:51:35] Matt Harvey: exactly helps keep the moisture from crawling in, or, you know,
[00:51:40] Randall Jacobs: The seal is static relative to the outer race, but the inner race is turning be presumably because it's a smaller surface area. So you have less friction
[00:51:48] Matt Harvey: Exactly. Oh,
[00:51:50] Randall Jacobs: Yeah.
[00:51:50] Matt Harvey: engineering mine there. Yeah. So less friction on the
[00:51:53] Randall Jacobs: physics, physics nerd.
[00:51:55] Matt Harvey: No, that's good. Yeah. And so yeah, and, and the grease so that's the dynamic lip on the inside and the grease. You got kind of a grease barrier there. So on Enduro bearings, you'll have some grease come out and that's a good thing cuz grease is another barrier that catches dust and holds it back from getting inside.
So, that's, that's the basics of how we design the bearing. Of course you have to start out with good balls good material, good steel. It's like making bread or you know, food. You, you gotta start out with good ingredients to have good end results.
[00:52:30] Randall Jacobs: And when you say good ingredients, you're talking high precision in the formulation, the right heat treatments, really tight tolerances, high hardness that is also consistent across the entire material. And there's all sorts of technologies that make that possible too. There's a lot that goes into a bearing, even if it looks the same as a cheap bearing.
[00:52:51] Matt Harvey: exactly. You gotta get the steel from a good Foundry. It's gotta be clean without pollutants in it. And we're lucky cuz we have the industrial side that we, we buy a lot of steel every year. And so we're able to buy from the bigger foundries that supply, the big boys, you know, the big bearing companies, cuz we're a little teeny bearing company, you know, in this, in the universe of bearing companies, but very niche, you know, area.
But we do enough that we can buy good steel because of both sides. But yeah, so you start out with really good, 52, 100 or four 40 C or well, XD 15, obviously you have to start out with really good steel and good steel balls and then heat treatment. So for XD 15, that stuff has to be heat treated on ceramic tables in a you have to pull a atmosphere you know, it it's of gas.
So to, to do it properly, it's, it's not just in
[00:53:50] Randall Jacobs: an atmosphere of gas. Do you mean like you're doing this in a vacuum?
[00:53:53] Matt Harvey: yeah. In an inner gas to to keep it stable.
[00:53:56] Randall Jacobs: have oxidization or something like this.
[00:53:59] Matt Harvey: we do the same with four 40 C and then we do tri cryogenic treatment as well. So you bring it down to almost absolute zero and that normalizes. The steel, so it lasts longer. So these are the things people don't really know about.
With four 40 C and XD 15 it's similar heat treatment. Not exactly the same, but it does go from those ceramic table induction heat treatment to cryogenic treatment. And other bearings can be heat treated in like a gas environment without that atmosphere and so forth. That's why they cost less.
But you know, there's different processes for different levels of, of bearings. They're not just all the going through the same process says.
[00:54:43] Randall Jacobs: yeah. And it's the sort of stuff where even if you have the technical expertise to be able to understand the nuances of this conversation that we've just had. I think the thing to really make clear is that again, two things that look very similar can have very, very different properties in terms of how they perform out the gate and how they perform over time and to make a quality product.
Well, when you buy a product, you're essentially trusting that company and that product manager and, and the decision makers on that product to, to really focus on those details. And it's not just the company, it's not just the product manager. It's also, the team at all of vendors.
[00:55:18] Matt Harvey: Yeah, there's a lot of things. You know, I obviously go deep here, one other, we do a lot of things that people just don't know about. Cuz you buy it and you see it. And it's like, well, what's the difference between this one and this other one. And we do for the For the suspension, bearings, the pivot bearings, we do a black oxide treatment.
And when we do it, it turns the bearing black and people like it, cuz it looks cool, but it's people like black things and it you know, it, there is an advantage to it because it actually does a second heat treatment to the metal besides making it corrosion resistant. But we gotta take those and we gotta grind it off where the ball rolls because you can't have the black oxide treatment where the ball rolls.
Well, there's similar products out there and they're black and they're max bearings, but it's almost like a paint that they do, or sometimes it's black oxide treatment, but that they don't take it off the inside of the, where the balls roll. And what happens is if you do black oxide treatment and you leave it on where the balls roll, that stuff rubs off mixes with the grease and makes a nice paste that wears the bearing out faster than if you just didn't do it at.
[00:56:29] Randall Jacobs: Yeah, and there's so much of that in our industry. I think that that's something across the board, but we are a highly technical industry. The bicycle is a highly technical product, and there's so much to know in order to do things right, that you can't really expect a rider to know all of this stuff.
And so they're like, oh, ceramic, great. Oh, this black coating. Well, it looks like the other one and it's cheaper. Okay, great. I have the, the latest and greatest but I've seen so many examples, so many examples across the industry, including on projects that I have been involved with and didn't have authority over where decisions are made purely for marketing purposes, purely to get you to think that it's a better thing and to spend more money on something that oftentimes at best it's neutral.
And oftentimes it actually makes the bike worse in ways that you will experience over its lifetime.
[00:57:21] Matt Harvey: Yeah. And it's, it's hard to get, you know, it's hard to get people interested in say bearings sometimes, cuz you don't see 'em on the bikes now they're all buried. Like, you know, new carbon bikes, you, oh, there's bearings inside that thing you, I mean there's not, you know, used to be, you could see a headset, you know?
[00:57:39] Randall Jacobs: We used to press them directly into the carbon frame. cuz that was a good idea. There's there's one other thing that I wanted to call out, which I thought was interesting when I was looking through your bearing catalog, which is using different seals on one side of the bearing versus the other and because the, the risk of contamination is always much greater on the exterior facing seal, but the one on the inside.
Well there's not much to contaminate there for example, facing the inside of the hub. So you can run a, a seal that keeps the grease in, but doesn't need to be as as tight for water ingress and dust and dust can be lower friction. So even like those little micro optimizations matter.
[00:58:17] Matt Harvey: Yeah. And so, you know, if you roll back like 10 or 15 years ago, everybody wanted bearings in their wheels to spin, like, you know, like a metal roller skate wheel, you know, where you spin it and it won't stop or you see those videos, people doing
[00:58:33] Randall Jacobs: The YouTube videos look at how efficient my bike is because when, when there's no rider on it and it's up on a stand, it just spins for a long time. And somehow that is a good proxy for how it performs in the wild
[00:58:44] Matt Harvey: Yeah. And so if you take the seals out and put sewing machine oil in there, yeah. You can get it. The spin, like CRA you know, old track bikes used to do that. They'd do that. And but it's on a track, you know, but if you're riding out in the rain and stuff so we used to do getting back to your question.
We used to do just LL B seals, both sides on the ABAC five bearings, which was real popular wheel bearing. And, you know, in certain environments especially like Vancouver, wet environments, you know, Vancouver, different places where there's a lot more rain. People say, Hey, you know, we're just the water's the grease is getting washed out too quick.
We're getting dirt ingression. So we, we always had L L U seals, but L L U if you use a factory, sorry, industry standard, LLL U seal, it's really tight. And
[00:59:32] Randall Jacobs: In L L B versus L L U L L U is the, the tighter,
[00:59:38] Matt Harvey: medium contact. Yeah.
[00:59:39] Randall Jacobs: okay. Yep.
[00:59:41] Matt Harvey: Or,
[00:59:41] Randall Jacobs: Versus the LLL B, which is
[00:59:44] Matt Harvey: light contact. Yeah. LL B light contact, but LL U in the industry is pretty tight contact. So we make it medium contact. So we had to, we reengineered L L U for bicycle industry, basically. So ours is, is medium contact. So it's an acceptable amount of seal friction. If you do it too much, people just don't like the way their wheels spin and it's really sealed.
Right. But it just, you know, you spin it and it goes once around and stops. Like if you had a really tight seal in there, so there's compromises
[01:00:19] Randall Jacobs: it's kinda like, you want a bike that lasts forever, but are you willing to add that half pound of weight across the entire bike to make it more durable? You know, that's a half pound that I'll add every day, but if you wanna be in the magazine listed at some headline weight, well some people are only looking at that number.
[01:00:37] Matt Harvey: Right. Right. And you know, when you, and, and that's a good point if I could just touch on this, like really super lightweight hubs, which people were going crazy, you know, again, 10 years ago with extremely lightweight hubs with really small bearings. And one of my customers did some tests on those hubs, like versus his hubs, cuz they were heavier and he used a thicker axle and so forth.
And in some of those hubs, when you're going up a hill, the bearings, the thin bearings, cuz they're so thin, they're only a millimeter. Thickness of the race. They
[01:01:15] Randall Jacobs: Oh, they're distorting. Yeah.
[01:01:17] Matt Harvey: they're, they're twisting so much that they're actually locking up and skidding. So you, if you're going up a hill, you essentially have a drag break that you're working against and sure.
They're light, you know, you just shaved some weight off your bike. But you're working against yourself because that's, that's like the worst case scenario. Now you got a drag break going uphill.
[01:01:40] Randall Jacobs: So I think at this point anyone who's made it this far into the conversation should have an appreciation of just how much goes into not just bearings, but the bike generally to make it function as well as it does. And, kind of a sense of the depth of innovation and all the layers of innovation that have to happen at every level, from the steel maker to how it's heat treated to new coatings to how it's assembled.
And so on that go into making a product like a 20 pound bike that can go over single track at high speeds, under a heavy rider and do so day in, day out for years on end. I hope also that folks get a sense of. What you compromise when you push up against the limits of that, because technology and material science and so on can take you so far in, in pushing the envelope in terms of performance and weight and strength and so on.
But there is a point at which you're compromising something. And so I want to acknowledge how cool it is to hear and detail the innovation that you and your team have done in order to enable the sorts of highly reliable, high performance bicycles that we have today. And then also the transparency on how that process works and the trade offs and so on.
And being able to unpack that with you today has been a lot of fun and hopefully has been informative to some of our listeners here. Is there anything else that you think listeners should know about bearings and, and how to think about them and what to look for?
[01:03:07] Matt Harvey: Yeah, I mean, obviously when you're talking about our product line, you XD fifteen's the best stuff, but you might not be able to afford it, but we try and engineer you know, what we learn at the very top end all the way down into the ABAC three, the blue seal bearings, which is our most popular, you know, it.
You'll pay for the blue seal bearings, you know, retail $10 for a bearing, but it it's still a really good bearing because it has LL B seals. It has designed with the larger balls, deeper groove. So we pass all that technology all the way through the wine, so that what we learn at the top, we put onto the, to the very entry level.
And so it's still a really good, well designed bearing with all the hallmark points of the high end stuff. So, and you know, that's what we're trying to do, trying to, that's what I spend my all my time doing is making the best. Thing at all the different levels. We're, we're kind of different. Cuz some companies only make bearings at the very high end, some companies making 'em at the low medium end.
And so we're unusual that we have this spectrum and the amount of bearings we have too is crazy. But anyway, we, with every single bearing and we have over 1200 for just the bicycle industry, my eye's been on every single one to make it different and better than or for the bicycle application it's made for.
[01:04:41] Randall Jacobs: Yeah. And that really shines, that really shines through in how in, in the, in just how much passion you have for this as well.
[01:04:47] Matt Harvey: it sounds a bit boring, but I actually, I, I like it. It's fun. You know, it's it's, it's a good challenge and I have fun doing, I love the bicycle industry obviously, but
[01:04:58] Randall Jacobs: Yeah,
[01:04:59] Matt Harvey: fun doing it.
[01:05:00] Randall Jacobs: no, it's that's that, that shines through very clearly and is something that I appreciate the opportunity to share with you today. Thank you very much for coming on.
[01:05:09] Matt Harvey: Thank you so much for having me. It's been fun. I love this is my favorite part talking about this stuff. so I appreciate it.
[01:05:16] Craig Dalton: So that's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Huge. Thanks to Randall Jacobs for taking over the reins this week. And diving into bearing technology with Matt Harvey. I hope you enjoyed that deep dive into the tech and learning a little bit more about the Enduro brand and Matt's long history in the sport.
Additional big. Thanks goes out to athletic greens. I hope you go check out athletic greens.com/the gravel ride to learn more about that product that I wholeheartedly endorse. If you're interested in connecting with me or Randall, I encourage you to join us at the ridership. That's www.theridership.com.
It's a free global cycling community where you can connect with athletes from all over the world. And talk about really anything you want. If you're able to support the show, please visit buy me a coffee.com or ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
In this episode, Craig has Randall back in the guest chair to explore wheel design and development along with the philosophy and design principles behind Lōgōs and its new Omnium wheel collection. From engagement systems and materials to profile design and assembly and everything in between, this episode will leave you with a broad understanding of the wheel landscape and equip you with the knowledge necessary to make an informed decision about your next set of wheels regardless of brand.
Episode sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (use promo code: thegravelride for a free heart rate monitor)
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Logos Components[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
Today on the podcast. I'm welcoming Randall Jacobs to the show for an interview. You may very well know him for his efforts in the, in the dirt episodes, as my technical sidekick, as well as an increasing number of standalone interview episodes that he's handling on behalf of the podcast. I very much appreciate his technical orientation and his passion about the gravel cycling community. But today I wanted to get him on the show to talk about his new efforts with his company logos components.
He's introducing three new wheels this month to the gravel cycling community. We wanted to do an episode obviously touching on the new company, but also as something that's standalone for anybody who's interested in upgrading their wheels or purchasing a wheel set for their gravel or mountain bike.
I think there's a lot of nuance in the hubs, spokes, and rims that you can learn from this show that you can take across any decision you're making with any of the. RI and wheel manufacturers out there in the world. So with that, before we jump in, I need to thank this week's sponsor hammerhead and the hammerhead car two bicycle computer.
The hammerhead car two is the most advanced GPS cycling computer available today with industry leading mapping navigation and routing capabilities that set it apart from other GPS options, free global maps with points of interest included like cafes and campsite means you can explore with confidence and on the go flexibility, I've talked about how I've been appreciating the hammerhead and how increasingly I've taken the time.
To customize each screen. My latest way of geeking out was with rival access componentry. You can actually track the number of shift. In any given ride, obviously not mission critical information, but I just thought it was kind of interesting because as you think about it, uh, you know, you do shift more or less depending on the ation of the terrain out there.
I very much appreciate. Hammerheads biweekly software updates. I always look forward to it. Sometimes it's things that are like no brainers. Like they've been improving their points of interest along the way. And other times it's deep tech that, you know, I perhaps don't have a need for today, but I very much appreciate the fact that they update it constantly because it's just something that gives me confidence that I've always got the most up to date.
Technology on my bicycle computer recently, I think I mentioned I've been doing some exploring in my hometown. I love and appreciate that return to home feature. I was out on a route, um, actually when I was traveling and I wasn't exactly sure how I was gonna get home and I was pretty beat and I just navigated to return to start.
And it gave me the most bike appropriate route home, which was very much appreciated as I was cracking in the heavy Tucson heat. For a limited time, our listeners can get a free heart rate monitor with the purchase of a hammerhead Cari, simply visit hammerhead.io right now, and use the promo code, the gravel ride at checkout to get yours today.
This is an exclusive limited time offer for a podcast listener. So don't forget to use the promo code, the gravel ride. Add that free heart rate monitor into your cart. And when you purchase the car two, you'll get that heart rate monitor for. Go to hammerhead.io, add both carts and the promo code, the gravel ride with that said, let's jump right into my conversation with Randall.
[00:03:56] Craig: Randall welcome to the show.
[00:03:58] Randall: Great to be back on Craig, been looking forward to this conversation.
[00:04:01] Craig: I feel like I owed you a more specific welcome because unlike our, in the dirt episodes, this one's a little different, we're gonna go deeper. And I think it's important. Many people who listen to in the dirt are where you're my sidekick. You're someone who's got, you know, a little bit more technical knowledge about the bike industry and bike components, et cetera than I do.
And we're just a good muse for each other on our journey in this sport. But in today's episode, we're gonna go a little deeper about you and your companies.
[00:04:30] Randall: Yeah, it's a bit of, a bit of a throwback. It reminds me of I think it was June 2018 when I first came on the pod, which is when you and I first got acquainted as well in this friendship. That's blossom from that. So, it'll be fun to have another, another such conversation.
[00:04:45] Craig: Yeah, it's super early days. And I remember, part of that journey was me ending up selecting a Thesis Bike in part, because I just found you to be very thoughtful as a product designer. And I would love for the listener today who may be coming at it, having not listened to that original episode, to just understand a little bit more about your background in the bike industry and your philosophy around creating bicycles and componentry.
[00:05:11] Randall: Sure. There's a deeper dive that we did in that aforementioned episode, but long on the short I've been riding, as many of us have been riding, since I was a kid really got serious into it. Around age 18, started racing was working in a bike shop here in the Boston area.
Then later on, I got to pack fodder pro status on the cross country circuit for a couple of years, which was a lot of fun dirt bagging out of the back of my Honda element around the country.
And from there did some supply chain work outside of the bike industry in China lived there for some years picked up Mandarin,
[00:05:44] Craig: Hang on Randall. So how. Did, how did you get into supply chain?
[00:05:49] Randall: So let's see. I was 21 and getting ready to finish college and decided to go and do a study abroad. I was at Zhongshan university in Guangzhou and met a man who became a good friend and a mentor who hired me to work for his trading and manufacturing company. It was a Chinese company Chinese own Chinese management.
So I was the only non-Chinese on the team. And I was charged with first business development. But later on, got deep into product development, I was brought into all the, the key meetings with our big vendors and learned the ropes of how it works at that very deep level. And at the same time was picking up a lot of the.
Not just the technical language and understanding of how things are made across a, a broad range of sectors, including, technologies that apply to bike. But then also the cultural elements of successfully architecting a supply chain. That was a pretty formative period for me.
[00:06:46] Craig: I bet. Yeah, it's so huge. And one of those things that it's easy, if you've never got into the manufacturing world to, to not think about, but really understanding the culture and particularly in your case, understanding the language and developing a fluency of communication in the native tongue. It's just so immensely helpful in greasing the manufacturing wheels, so to speak.
[00:07:06] Randall: Oh, absolutely. Frankly, none of what, the companies I've been involved with do, would be possible without, having learned the language and later did a graduate degree in us China relations. So learning, not just the culture from a firsthand perspective, but also a lot of the history, a lot of the philosophies reading some original texts, very slowly with the dictionary, but reading them nonetheless.
It all makes a big difference when you're trying to build a, a deep trust based relationship with a party who has a very different background.
[00:07:39] Craig: A hundred percent. Now, was the bike still part of your life during this period? Or had you shelved it, pursuing your professional vocation?
[00:07:46] Randall: So I was riding a bit, not a ton but I was good friends with the owner of the biggest bike shop in Juhi a couple hours outside of Guang Jo, where I had lived when I first went to China was teaching English for a period. He's still a good friend. We've actually done some bike packing together.
And it was, it was interesting. He was someone who, doesn't speak much English at all. So I've only ever spoken Mandarin with him. And this is saying in Chinese, it's like a duck talking to a chicken. And that was our relationship at first, but we are unified by this love of the bicycle.
And over, over time, I, I, you know, obviously learned to communicate and we had a lot of shared experiences, so,
[00:08:22] Craig: And then did you, did you find yourself drifting back with interest into the bicycle industry? Proper at some.
[00:08:29] Randall: That kind of came later. I got to a point in my career where I graduated from grad school, going through a lot of, of life change, life transition, and. Was just thinking to myself, well, what, what is that kind of nexus of things that I'm good at that I'm knowledgeable about?
That I care about that resonate with me in, in my lifestyle and that I can, I can get paid to do. And working in the bike industry made a lot of sense because I had the experiences as a racer. I had some relationships, obviously Mandarin was, very useful from a supply chain management standpoint.
And also I ended up doing some market development stuff when I was at specialized, but mostly supply chain. And so it really, it's kind of the, the same way that my decision to go to China you know, was made it was okay. Well, you know, here are a bunch of different factors that I can weigh in order to, to make a decision.
And ultimately, bike was like, okay, this makes sense I can do this and I can probably do it well, and I can, I can learn this. I can Excel at this. If I put my mind to it,
[00:09:32] Craig: So you mentioned that you ended up at specialized bicycles out in Morgan hill. Can you just talk about what your role was there and some of the things you've learned, obviously you had supply chain experience. You had the experience over in China, but transitioning to a bicycle specific supply chain.
What were some of the takeaways from that experience and, and maybe what were some of the projects of note that you worked.
[00:09:54] Randall: Sure. So as you make clear, I wasn't there very long around a year some places are a good fit. Some places are not for each of us. But specialize in a lot of ways is, is arguably one of, if the not most innovative big brand also a marketing powerhouse and marketing is a substantial part of it, but there was a lot of very smart people in the room.
And working for a company like specialized. We were a major account.
So even though I was not an executive in the company I was working with the leadership of the factories that we were buying from on the projects that I was helping to manage. So that was, again, another one of these serendipitous experiences that made it, such that when I started my own thing, those relationships were already established in terms of projects.
So the one that probably people know know most would be the diverge. And I was one of the team members on that. I shouldn't overstate my role. And it was an interesting project. I remember riding around on, prototypes of that bike. And just the concept of a gravel bike, making a ton of sense and being really excited about it.
It didn't realize the vision the way that I would liked it to have. I think the biggest compromise I saw was there was a different tariff code for frames that can fit bigger than a 35 millimeter tire. So it was like 7% more expensive. And so we constrained the tire size to a maximum 35 millimeter in order to stay under the tariff, cuz otherwise it's a mountain bike and there was some protectionist policies around mountain bikes at some point.
And then there are various other things that I did on my own bikes later on. I didn't have those constraints.
[00:11:27] Craig: Yeah, that's so interesting. I, I remember in our earlier conversation back in, in June of 2018, when you first came on to talk about thesis and you talked about your history there, and I remember walking away from that conversation, just finding it, very interesting, the business decisions that get thrown on top of a product designer's vision that end up creating constraints, whether it's the time of year it has to launch or the, the tariffs that it may incur because it has larger than a 35 millimeter wheel tire size.
It's super fascinating and interesting, and I can see why knowing you as well as I do that. You know, you don't want to be constrained by those criteria. You ultimately, your heart is in creating the best product.
[00:12:10] Randall: Yeah. And there, of course there are constraints in what I do too. Right. I, I'm not gonna make a, like, I didn't make a $10,000 bicycle. I made a bicycle that did everything that I think a bicycle needs in order to, not. Really be dreaming about the $10,000 bicycle at night.
Right. So, there's different constraints when you have to have a complete line and you have to have good, better, best, and you need to have a 3.2 to 3.5 X markup relatives cost a good sold in order for your business model to be viable because all these different things that when you are a small company with less overhead when you're mostly word of mouth and so on that, you can do things a little bit differently.
[00:12:49] Craig: Yep. Yeah. So I'm gonna fast forward a bunch here, but at, at you decided to create a brand called thesis bicycle. And when did that come into the world? Was it 2018?
[00:13:01] Randall: Early 2018. I flew over to Asia, did a whirlwind several week tour, three factories a day in mainland China in Taiwan to set up the supply chain, decide who we were gonna work with, build to build the materials, came back with a suitcase full of parts and built up a prototype.
And then was actually you'll probably recall I had that, that raw black frame that I had a decal cutter that I cut decals for. And then I had all the parts and then I was loaning this bike out and asking people, would you buy it? And enough people said yes. And I said, okay, well here's the website.
And enough people actually put their dollars down where it made sense to start a company around it.
[00:13:38] Craig: And people keep saying yes to the thesis bike. I mean, it's, it's one of them that's in my quiver, in my garage that I, I still enjoy to this day. I mean, it's super well executed. And I think my opinion of the bike has been well documented. One of the thing along things along the way, you know, you decided it was gonna be a direct consumer brand.
You sourced a bunch of components primarily to make sure that every rider could get the precise fit that they want. I know you're a big advocate of differing, the crank length size. For example, handlebars are an obvious one, but crank length is, I think is one that often gets overlooked and you get, you know, incredibly short riders still riding 1 72, 5 cranks.
In addition to those components, you also developed a thesis wheel line. And I wanted to, to sort of talk about that a little bit, because obviously as we go into what's next, you have a history making wheels. So when you made that thesis wheels thesis wheel set, what, what were you going for at the time?
And as you embark on this new brand, that will mention very shortly, we can talk about what your goals are for that.
[00:14:45] Randall: Sure. Well, actually my, my wheel building history goes back a little bit further. I built my first wheels when I was 18 for myself not knowing anything. So, literally ordering parts outta QBP and I had some XT hubs and a magic rim and researched each component. And I built a set of wheels that held up.
Later on it specialized, I was charged with revamping the access line, which I don't know if it's still this way, but at that time it was basically their non-real house brand for all their more entry to mid-level stuff. And was able to talk to the wheel engineers at that time and really learned a lot from them.
I read a pretty well known book called the bicycle wheel by jobs Brandt amongst others and kind of learned a lot of the physics of wheels at that time. The cost structure around them. And then with thesis, those wheels I just kind of incorporated all the best practices in terms of component selection and engineering and so on. And in fact, if you look at what we did for thesis, you see a lot of that DNA in logos logos takes it a step further, but it's, a lot of the same principles.
[00:15:49] Craig: Interesting. Yeah. So I think it's a great opportunity to introduce your new brand. Why don't you just give us a little bit of an overview of the brand and what it means to you?
[00:15:59] Randall: Sure. So the brand is logos L O G O S, which is a bit of a play there. Right? Bike industries notorious for just slapping some logos on things and throwing a bunch of marketing at things. But logos is the concept of logos it's a Greek philosophical concept implying a reason or, or discourse, especially a reason to discourse. And even deeper than that, the underlying principle of order or knowledge that underpins reality. The idea for logos actually came from Sam Jackson, our head of brand who's been with us
almost since the beginning. And it really deserves a lot of the credit for the brand identity and voice and a lot of the vision for the brand. I can't say enough how, how pleased I am with the work that he's done. But this idea of logos being, first principles based which very much aligns with thesis as well.
There was a strong point of view again, itself built on first principles. And it ties into other concepts that are very much aligned with how I see the world is ties to Daoism and Zen that this word logos is imbued with.
[00:17:01] Craig: That's exciting. And congratulations on the recent launch. I know you to be very meticulous and I know for the listener, you're passionate about sharing knowledge. So I think it's, it'll be great to just talk about what makes a great wheel. To begin with, because whether they're buying a logos wheel or some something else, the listener needs to know, how do they need to think about the wheels that are underneath?
[00:17:28] Randall: Sure. The reality is that wheels arguably more than any other component in the bike industry. There's a, a huge number of brands. There's a ton of marketing, a lot of a lot of storytelling that may or may not be based in, in reality or in science. And so, of course what we do reflects my pH.
Reflects our team's philosophy, but I think that a lot of these principles are fairly universal, so I'll try to keep it at a higher level. So, we look at it in terms of performance, strength, reliability, and serviceability. And we're calling the wheels we're launching with the Omni collection.
And omnium has this concept of a high degree of versatility, right. Excelling at a wide variety of disciplines. So there are three different wheels a 700, a six 50 and a two nine. We'll talk about the specifics in a moment. But we can go into components.
You wanna start with hubs.
[00:18:17] Craig: Yeah, I think that makes sense. I mean, and, and I don't want your, your comments to be lost on the listener. I think wheels, God, I feel. Ever since I started in the sport of cycling wheels have always been regarded as like something that if you invest a little bit more in, you get a lot more out of it. So it's, it's interesting to think a lot of us, when we buy bikes from a bike shop, you're just gonna get the wheels that come to it.
And it takes a while before you start to think about getting a replacement set of wheels or a second set of wheels. One of the interesting things I've always found about gravel cycling is a lot of us come into the sport thinking I'm gonna get two sets of wheels right off the bat. So I, I, I do think for, and I can speak for my personal experience.
Like I've thought more about wheels than I ever have historically, in any other sector of the sport, primarily because when I got my first proper gravel bike, I was all in on getting two different wheel size.
[00:19:12] Randall: Yeah, and in fact, one of our core thesis, if you will, when we started thesis, was that you could have one bike that does nearly everything. And two wheels recorded that. And we, we saw, I mean, we still see about a 50% adoption rate on two wheel set amongst our riders.
And we encourage people before they, start looking at an entirely new bike. Well, consider two wheel sets as a way, as long as you have the tire clearance of a way of getting more utility outta the same bike, instead of having a road bike and a cross bike and a gravel bike and, and all these other bikes that if, if thoughtfully designed and thoughtfully curated from a spec standpoint can actually, serve all of those purposes really well.
It's really an omnium bicycle.
[00:19:54] Craig: Yeah. So for starting at the hub, I mean, for many of the uninitiated, the hub is a bit of a black box, right? As long as it's working and the bike is rolling forward. The bike you're buying off the shelf. You're not thinking too much about it, but what, what should people be thinking about with respect to hub?
[00:20:13] Randall: Well, hubs are a major point of failure and there is a lot that goes into making a good hub and there are certain designs that are better than others in certain designs that have inherent trade offs. I mean, every design has inherent trade offs.
Some of those trade offs are well, we'll, we'll talk about like, if you want reliability, you want strength to weight. You want something that's serviceable. You want something that performs well, well, there are certain designs that, really aren't necessarily amenable to that. And then other designs that are but they have other constraints.
So, there are Paul based systems. These are systems that have spring loaded poles that press against an outer ring that has teeth in it to engage when they're turning. And this is a very common hub design you see them on the very entry level.
You also see some higher end versions of them that are out there and that, tend to hold up better, but they all inherently have the same issue of if you have three Pauls, one of them doesn't engage properly. Or, or maybe there's a little bit of wear some contamination. Well then all the load is going to, potentially just one of those poles.
And so instead of having three poles to spread that load over, now, you just have one and that's when they tend to, detonate, they tend to fall apart. And then additionally, a three Paul design doesn't have the same peak load strength, nevermind the, resiliency against MIS clocking or contamination of the next one, which I'll talk about, which is a ratchet system.
So the most famous ratchet is the star ratchet. This was patented by Hugi in the nineties and then popularized by DT Swiss. Folks here will have heard of the DT three 50, which we used on our thesis wheels. And then the more expensive DT, two 40, which achieves a lighter weight by using higher end materials.
But otherwise is, functionally identical. And the original design, which I would argue is, superior to, newer iterations has two ratchets that are independently sprung, such that when they are rotating, if one of them were to get jammed or misaligned, the other one can still adapt to fully interface with the one that's not perfectly aligned.
So you get full engagement and it's very unlikely where you have a situation where all the teeth are not engaged. So you with me so far,
[00:22:26] Craig: Yeah, I am. And I, and I'm having a little bit of a smile on my face, cuz I do remember the hige hub back in the, in the nineties. I may have actually had one and I remember it was the loudest hub of anybody I knew. Which I took a little bit of pride on, on my mountain bike, but it was, it was always regarded as something that was the design was, you can't say failure proof, but very, very reliable.
[00:22:52] Randall: Well, and two things about that. One newer iterations are not as loud unless you have the 54 tooth versions. And then secondly, there's a very good chance that that hub is still on the road. James Huang over at cycling tips called hubs with this design, the world's most reliable hubs and they have a reputation for that for very good reasons.
What we just discussed. They're very resilience against all the sorts of failure modes that you might see with other types of systems. Now, the patent for that expired a few years ago. And this was one of the reasons why we saw an opportunity to, start a company because on their higher end stuff. Companies like DT and others have migrated towards a single sprung mechanism. And there were some issues with that. They actually had a not a recall, but a a service bullet put out because, when you have only one side sprung, if that one sprung ratchet gets jammed or is not properly aligned with the fixed ratchet, with the fixed interface the teeth won't engage and you'll get wear, or, non-engagement.
[00:23:53] Craig: is the decision to go that route a, a cost savings.
[00:23:56] Randall: not cost savings. I think it's twofold. I think the primary driver honestly, is probably that you need to have something new and if your thing goes off patent, then, being able to point to something and say, this new thing is better is, useful. And there, there are some advantages to the what's called EXP system.
I think they were able to shave a little bit of weight. They were able to push the, main bearing outboards, slightly to distribute, forces a, little bit better on the axle. But at the expense of this, gold standard reliability and part of it is tolerances.
So you need to have much higher tolerances on a product like that , because you only have one ratchet that's moving. So if it ever gets jammed that fails versus with dual sprung, if one of them gets jammed as, we said, the other one can, slide to meet it. It's just something inherent about that design that, will always be true.
And there's a bunch of different iterations of it. And if it's executed, well, it can, hold up. It can perform well over time. But one of the things that we believe in is if it ain't broke, don't fix it. There wasn't a problem with the dual sprung mechanism. And in fact it has some advantages.
So that's, your single sprung mechanisms. And then the other one is spray clutches. So this is a hub like Onyx, you're familiar with them.
[00:25:09] Craig: I'm not familiar with.
[00:25:10] Randall: So without going into the details of how a spray clutch works the big advantage of a spray clutch is you get instant engagement. Now that instant engagement is something that a certain subset of like trials riders and some mountain bikers seem to swear by I think that for, at least from my perspective, the obsession with, instant engagement is a little bit overblown and there can be some downsides with kickback on certain suspension designs.
Plus they tend to be heavier a little bit more draggy, a lot more complicated. There's a lot more parts in a, hub like that. But if you need something for that application, that's not a bad way to accomplish it.
Now I've put the dual sprung star ratchet on this pedestal as is what I think is the best. Right. But these other ones have advantages, too. So instant engagement with the spray clutch. With a Paul based system. There's ways in which you can design that, where you can get effectively instant engagement as well. And so if instant engagement is really critical for you, well, with a star ratchet design, we use a 36 tooth star ratchet, which 36 tooth, 360 degrees of rotation divided by a 36 that's 10 degrees of engagement. We find that that's kind of the sweet spot, where you get, a high degree of strength and reliability and long term durability together.
Engagement. That's plenty quick.
But if you want instantaneous engagement, you're probably looking at Paul based or spray clutches, and then just accepting the compromises of, more complexity, less reliability, more weight, more drag.
[00:26:38] Craig: Yeah, it's always interesting from a business perspective, when you, when you layer in that patented technology component of it, that was on lock until, as you said, I think it was last year that that patent expired and allowed other people to build in that way. Cuz until that point, if you were building a wheel and you wanted to, you know, do something similar or not pay those licensing fees, you had to go through these efforts to kind of design something new that inherent with everything is gonna have compromises and, and positive things and negative things about it.
So it is interesting. It'll be interesting to see going forward if some of those companies that invested a lot in these other technologies. Actually just adopted a dual SPR floating star ratchet because it's off patent and they can do so.
[00:27:20] Randall: I mean, there are a few others that are out there. Execution matters, tolerances matter. The quality of the material, the quality of the machining, the quality of the heat treatment process. So the design of it is only one part that goes into making a great hub. One of the other things that I wanna call out that I really like about this dual SPR star ratchet is because it's been out there so long and because it's so established, I mean, these have been used in Roal wheels and bond tracker wheels , N be used spec DT hubs with this design.
There's tons of parts out there and they're serviceable without tools. So. some riders may already have parts that are compatible with our new hub set in their toolboxes because they already have, a set of DT three 50 S the, free hub mechanism, the end caps, the star ratchets and Springs.
All of these parts are interchangeable. So, this gets into some of our philosophy of around open standards and this is effectively an open standard and arguably the best open standard. And, I would argue further the best standard period for hubs, for the vast majority of riders.
[00:28:25] Craig: So we've gone nerd deep on the inside of this hub. And if you're interested, like, I think you, you have to either look at the hub on your bike or on the logos components website. They've got a, sort of a blown out diagram of the different components that, that are inside there. I do think it's interesting to, to have in your back pocket to understand, and maybe even think about what you're riding today, but there's other parts of the, the hub that we should probably talk about.
So outside of that mechanism is the, the hub shell. So what do you, how are you building these hub shells?
[00:28:56] Randall: Yeah. So, one of the big things with a hub shell is, well, one there's the material, and then there's two, how you process it. So, a lot of hubs use 60 61 which is a, pretty standard, still a high grade aluminum. But it's cheaper to buy cheaper to work with.
So if you look in the specs of some of your components, these are numbers that you'll see, and this is just relating to the, formulation of the alloy. We use in our hub shell a material called 60 82 T six. And this is stronger and lighter, but also more expensive to purchase and to process. And that T six refers to the heat treatment process. You start with ability of this material. You cold forge it. So these like giant forging machines, to forge this form. And then you heat treat that, and then you put it on a lathe to machine out, all the circular parts on the internals and external of the hub.
And then you use a multi-axis mill to mill out all the features and that's, the main differentiator, for example, between the, DT three 50 and the two 40. Is that material and the fact that because it's stronger, you can machine away more of it and still get the same strength.
And because we're making them, in-house now we're able to use the, higher end material, but still put it into a product that is, in this case, a grant,
[00:30:12] Craig: Got it. And then the final component of that, that hub is, is obviously the bearings and bearings get a lot of attention in the bike industry. Why don't you talk about your choices there and what, what should, what should riders be thinking about with respect to bearings?
[00:30:25] Randall: honestly, any good brand name stainless steel bearing with good seals and so on is, is going to work well. I'm actually gonna take a step back from answering this one, because I'm going to have someone on the pod to go deep nerd on bearings in the future. We did look at ceramic and found that there's not really any advantage to ceramic for, the vast majority of riders who don't have sponsorship and a team mechanic because you get a, trivial performance benefit and that performance benefit turns into a deficit pretty quickly, cuz they wear so quickly for reasons that I'll, hold off until that, in-depth bearing interview.
[00:31:00] Craig: That makes sense and funny, you know, on my, my bottom bracket from my recent build, I was sort of enamored by the notion of doing a ceramic bottom bracket. But in talking to the experts, I ended up with a stainless steel bearing bottom bracket as well,
[00:31:13] Randall: Yeah. I, I made the mistake in my racing days of spending a lot of money on ceramic bearings and not having reviewed the science. And so tend to be a lot more disciplined these days.
[00:31:23] Craig: better than my racing days, where people were spending money, replacing all of their steel bolts with titanium, bolts, and spending ungodly amounts of money to save a few grams here and there.
[00:31:32] Randall: Well, I guess you pay more attention when you're buying many thousands of bearings than when you're buying one bicycle's worth
[00:31:38] Craig: Yeah.
[00:31:39] Randall: Yeah.
[00:31:39] Craig: exactly well, it's it's coming out from the hub. We've got spokes and nipples to talk about and then really definitely wanna get into rims. Cause I think there's a lot of kind of takeaways that people need to revisit regarding rim technology that I want to get into.
[00:31:52] Randall: Sure. Let's start with spokes. So we use pillar wing 20 spokes, which is a, bladed actually more of a diamond wing shape spoke. And we use these not because they're arrow though. That is a benefit, but because the same process that generates that aerodynamic shape is a cold forging process effectively.
It's a cold rolling process that helps to orient the grain structure of the metal in the spoke to improve its elasticity and thus its fatigue life. That spoke also has some, complex strain relieving at both ends by the threads and by the head. And these are the areas where the, spoke tends to fail.
And with a lightweight spoke, they wanna wind up. So if you're using a lightweight round spoke, as you're building it, you're gonna essentially twist the spoke. But if you have ablated spoke, you have something to grab onto and a reference point to be able to see, okay, this spoke is oriented straight.
And any twisting in that spoke is, again, these are stresses that are going to result in increased fatigue and failure over the life of the spoke. So that's why we went with these ones and pillar, they make a great spoke out of the same, high end Swedish, sand Vic material.
3 0 2 plus is the particular wire that they start with, which is what a lot of the top end spoke start with. And it just makes for a spoke that's really lightweight really easy to build with, and that has outstanding durability,
[00:33:17] Craig: and you're lacing those to brass nipples. Am I correct?
[00:33:22] Randall: Exposed brass nipples. Yeah. We have essentially a zero tolerance policy towards aluminum nipples or hidden nipples. The reason being that well, first aluminum ones they tend to see split and fail. And for a wheel to perform at its best for a long period of time, there are some basic maintenance that needs to be done part of which is, checking the tension and truing it and retentioning as needed.
We'll talk in a moment about how you can reduce the maintenance that's required, but with an aluminum nipple well, two things, one you tend to get oxidization that results in the nipple seizing in the interface with that stainless steel spoke. So now you have an oxidization process, a chemical process where it's making it.
So it's sticking and yeah, you can put, spoke prep on there, so it doesn't stick. But eventually that oxidization is gonna take place. And then it's a much softer material than brass, so brass won't oxidize in the same way. And it's harder. So, why would you lose use aluminum then?
Well, it's lighter. Well, how much lighter? Well, with a 24 spoke wheel. So 48 spokes, total 48 nipples. It's like 36 grams. So for 36 grams, you're gonna take a wheel that could last a really long time and you're gonna make it so that there's a good chance, especially if you ride in rain or any sort of wet conditions that the moment you try to true this, wheel or, retention the wheel you're gonna have to rebuild it from scratch with new spokes gets real expensive, real quick.
[00:34:46] Craig: that makes sense. And I, I will make a point on exposed nipples. I'm definitely a big fan of that. The, the one, a couple wheels I've ever had that have broke. I've been fortunate not to break a lot of spokes in my life, but I did break one on a hidden nipple wheel. And it was the most frustrating experience in my life trying to fix that wheel.
[00:35:03] Randall: Yeah, well, and, that's a, more extreme, but still common scenario. But again, being able to just tension the wheel, right? If I have a hidden nipple, I need to remove my tires. I might be wasting the sealant that's in there, cuz everything is too going tubeless. Now I have to remove the, valve stem and the rim tape. Right. And then I need to go in and, access the, back of the nipple from, from.
And then when the wheel is all trued, well, then I gotta clean up the rim. So I have a nice clean surface and then I have to retape it. I gotta put the valve stems in. I need to put the tire back on and I need to put sealant in and then reinflate it. And so you're, it's harder to true there's no arrow benefit. This has been shown. The one tiny benefit is that you can have a slightly smaller spoke hole, but you can make up for that with just having a tiny bit more carbon reinforcement.
And the added weight is on the order of single grams.
[00:35:56] Craig: Yeah.
[00:35:56] Randall: And so I'll add those single grams every day.
[00:35:58] Craig: So now we're, now we're out to the rim. Let's talk about the rims. You, you mentioned op opening up that from a size perspective, you're doing 6 5700 C and a 20 Niner, but let's talk a little bit more specifically about the material you're using and what you're going for with these particular rims.
[00:36:16] Randall: Well, I wanna start with something off the bat, before going into materials, which is be hooks. So this is another one of those things together with nipples that we take a strong stance on. We believe that any rim that is designed and marketed to be used with a road tubeless tire should have a bead. There's a trend in the industry towards going hook list for these rims and there's still tires that are blowing off of rims. And, I don't believe that having compatibility charts. So like our rims are only compatible with these tires is a good solution.
[00:36:49] Craig: So to be spec, to be specific Randall, just so, just so the listener's clear. So you're saying on your 700 sea rim, which may take a higher pressure road size tire. So not talking about your 40 C gravel tires, but if someone's running a high pressure, 32 C tire, you think that Beed hooks are a safety require.
[00:37:11] Randall: Absolutely. And in fact, we're not talking that higher pressure either. It's interesting. Up until recently the pressure charts would go up linearly with weight and then they would taper off and have the same weight for a bunch of higher weights.
And it's because of concerns about blowoffs. If you have a system tires, rim, and rim tape that are all within tolerance, then a hopeless system can be safe, can secure the tire properly. The problem is. There are too many variables. There's the particular manufacturer.
There's the production batch. You can't check every tire. You do check every rim. So the, tolerances there tend to be a lot more stable, but then let's say you have a tire that is within spec and a rim that's within spec. And even the tape is in spec, but then you have to replace the tape and you replace it with a slightly thicker or thinner tape, or you don't apply it properly or something like that.
Now you have a blow off risk, right? So I think that relying on different manufacturers to stay within a very high tolerance for a part that has a very high consequence in the events that something goes wrong is just not a good approach. speeds have advantages. Up until recently they were a lot lighter and they were cheaper to manufacture because you had a lower scrap rate because the way that the hooks were formed you were machining or you were having an insert in there. So on fortunately we have what we're calling a high impact bead hook that adds a trivial amount of mass per rim. It's on the order of five grams and it's molded in. So you can have that high impact resistance.
You can have the tire retention, you can have the weight more or less on par and the cost is slightly higher because of how it's produced. But we think that it's absolutely worth it.
[00:38:55] Craig: Beyond these safety concerns? What am I experiencing differently when I'm installing a tire on a, a, a bead hook versus a hook list rim.
[00:39:04] Randall: If it's designed properly, nothing because when you're installing the tire you have that, trough in the middle of the rim and on today's wider rims, that trough is generally pretty big and plenty deep. So you just drop the bead into there and then it pops out and sits on the bead seat, retained by a bead lock, which we also do on our rims.
And then the hook is again, helping to prevent blow offs, which can be catastrophic.
[00:39:29] Craig: Okay. Gotcha. Cause I'm, I'm sure I've, I've set up tires on both bead hooks and hook list and haven't really noticed the difference
[00:39:36] Randall: yeah. Any difference that you would notice would be a consequence of something other than the hooks.
[00:39:40] Craig: Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. So good. An interesting data point for people to research, particularly, and specifically on 700 C rims and high pressure tires. So taking that. At that point aside, let's talk about the rims. These are carbon rims. You're making what's the talk about the carbon rims in general.
[00:40:02] Randall: sure. You have the carbon, you have the resin and then you have how it's processed, how it's formed. Right? So we're using Tory 700, 800 carbon, very common material throughout the bike industry. We're using high grade residents that again, very common throughout the industry on the higher end.
We have access to the same materials as all the other brands and vice versa. So the magic is not there per se. There is some cool things you can do at resins. That's a whole nother conversation. But the processing is really a big difference. So we have a really high precision molding process where the rim comes out of the mold free of any imperfections in the surface such that there's no coatings required.
So that's 20, 30 grams a rim easily of coatings just to deal with cosmetic imperfections that our rims come out without. And then you save it an additional little bit of weight as a result of this the precision of the process and the way in which it removes. As much excess resin as possible, cuz the resin is not what's giving the rims, their strength.
It is the carbon. And then the resin is bonding the layers of carbon together to give it that structure. So any excess resin , you can remove and maintain the same strength. Right? So any excess resin is not contributing to the structural integrity of the structure.
[00:41:19] Craig: Right,
[00:41:20] Randall: So that's on the material side other things I mentioned Beadlock asymmetry. So this is another thing that we do across our line and we'll always do across our line. The, rim is basically it's kind of biased to one side.
[00:41:31] Craig: Yep.
[00:41:32] Randall: and what this does is your hubs are not symmetrical, right? So up front, you have a disc on one side, no disc on the other. In the back, you have a disc on one side and you have a much bigger, much wider cassette and free hub body on the other side. So by going with an asymmetrical rim, it helps to balance out the spoke angles and thus the spoke tensions, which means that you have a wheel that has higher average tension and total tension with the same number of spoke. And you have a reduction in the change intention with each revolution or each impact. And these two things together make a stronger wheel. That's more durable with the same number of spokes and the, the impact is actually quite, quite substantial. So we do that across the board and think that we can't see any reason with the exception of a wheel that is designed purely for arrow, and even then we would still do an asymmetric rim.
[00:42:28] Craig: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So we've gone into a lot of detail as to the component tree and the quality of what you guys are putting together, but at a certain point, these things need to get assembled. And I know historically like that, that is a challenge from a process perspective. It's like, how do you build these wheels up from these quality components?
Because if they're not built well, you'll end up with a shit wheel.
[00:42:50] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. So there's exactly right. There's the curation in manufacturing the, of the components and how they're put together is no less important. You can have the best components in the world. If they're not assembled properly, it's not gonna hold up. You're not gonna get the performance outta the box, nevermind over time. So this is basic things like, prepping the spokes. So you have a, material that helps to lubricate the interface between the threads and the N. And this is, something that's basic needs to be done. In our case, we have essentially hand laced machine built for a first pass.
So a machine will go through and adjust and get the wheel round and true. And then we'll have a skilled person finished the wheel and this bring. It from round and true to where the tension around the wheel one is as high as it can be. And again, this results in a stronger wheel that also has less change in tension as it turns.
But then also the spokes are as close intention to each other as possible. And this part is actually hard to achieve. It requires a lot of skill and it takes more time and money. And then how do you validate that while you machine check it? So you check the tension in every single spoke and then put it through the true and the roundest check again before going out the door.
[00:44:02] Craig: Yeah, that makes sense. So I think we've, we've dug in pretty deep on wheel technology
[00:44:06] Randall: Yeah.
[00:44:07] Craig: a lot to think about I'm sure people are gonna be interested in, in these wheels. We've talked about, you know, all three, all three sizes are gonna have asymmetric rims. The 700 C is gonna have a, a high impact bead hook for the reasons you mentioned, the other two are gonna be hopeless.
The one thing we haven't talked about. It's just been the, the width. And I, I have found that in other conversations with other wheel manufacturers, that that's an interesting area to talk about and just kind of nail home, you know, why we're seeing some of the gravel wheels go wider in the width of the rim than, you know, historically was part of, you know, road and road plus bikes.
[00:44:49] Randall: Sure. I mean this is a trend across the board. And in fact, it's, it's been taken a little bit too far in some cases, there is a, Goldilock spot.
[00:44:56] Craig: I think is great. Like, I, I, I mean, I think that's one of the great things about gravel is like we've been and component manufacturers, like they've been pushing the extremes to figure out where the sweet spot is.
[00:45:07] Randall: To figure out what the sweet spot is, but then also to, meet what, what the market is telling them to make and not really sticking to first principles is like, oh, people have a perception that wider is better, so let's keep going wider. Right. Just like lighter is better. Let's keep shedding weight and then a year down the road let them worry about it.
But in terms of widths, the sweet spot I would argue for a 700 sea wheel is 23 to 25 millimeters. Right. And you see a lot of wheels coming out in that range. Ours are 24. And again, with these bead hooks, and you can run down to a 28 millimeter tire with a 24 internal width.
And it'll be secure and it'll be properly supported. And a 28 or a 30 will be aerodynamically. Well matched to that rim, which will have an external width of 32 in our case. Which by the way, we we'll talk about arrow in a second. And also being able to support the, the higher end of the range.
So in the case of narrower tires, you want it to be aerodynamically matched on the case of bigger tires. You just want it to be wide enough to support that tire at low pressures, without tire squirm, and to give the tire a good shape, as opposed to a light bulb shape, that you're engaging the side knobs of the tire, maybe a little bit early and so on.
And tire design has had to evolve together with rim with but as a system it's definitely an improvement in the sweet spot is really in this 23 to 25 millimeter internal range
[00:46:34] Craig: Yeah.
[00:46:34] Randall: for a 700 C rim.
[00:46:36] Craig: I think that light bulb shape of the tire is kind of interesting. It was an interesting visual for me to initially get introdu juice to and how the wider rims have kind of, made that shape less pronounced. And you do get more performance out of the tire. I've found.
[00:46:50] Randall: and this has enabled substantially or it's required with the lower pressures that tub bliss is allowing. So remember the original et RTO standards the European standards body for narrower rims came out at a time when everyone was running clinchers with tubes and you had to run higher pressures because otherwise you would pinch flat.
Well, now you have tubeless tires, so you can push the limits of pressure. But once you drop below a certain pressure, if you're not properly supported by a wide rim, that thing's just gonna score 'em around. So that's what kind of force this issue.
[00:47:25] Craig: Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. And I was, you know, when you mentioned your new efforts around logos components and you mentioned you were adding yet a third wheel size, I was actually a little bit surprised. So can you talk about adding the 29 ER, wheel into your lineup?
[00:47:42] Randall: Sure before I do, I wanna close out one thought on the 700 CS because it's relevant, which is aerodynamics. And this kind of applies across the board, but especially seven hundreds. There's the rule of a hundred, 5%. And this rule essentially states that your rim has to be a hundred, 5%, the width of the seated tire, not what's stamped on the side, but the tire as it's actually measured on the rim when it's seated in order for there to be any significant aerodynamic benefit, which is to say, let's say you have a 50, 60 millimeter deep rim.
And you're like, oh, it looks so air. It looks cool, but it's really narrow and you run a 28 mill tire and your rim is only 28 or 27 millimeter wide. Most of the air dynamic benefit you're losing because the airflow is becoming detached before it even gets to the rim. It's detaching as it goes around the tire.
And this is even more so for gravel, fortunately we're seeing less of this, but arrow gravel rims is just marketing. In fact, if anything, it's just giving you more turbulence in a cross. So the rule of one oh 5% that's says physics and everything else is marketing.
Unless you're adhering to that the two nine, so we built wheels with thesis specifically for our bikes. And when we did this program, we wanted to have a three wheel quiver that covers the, the full range of experiences.
And so the two nine wheel it's built to a trail standard, it's a 31 internal versus the 24 of the 700 C is designed to take tires anywhere from 2.1, 2.2 on the smaller end, all the way to 2.6. And again, it's gonna be wide enough to support that range of tires at a wide range of pressures.
It's light, but not super light. It's 1,565 grams which is on the heavier end of cross country in the intermediate lighter end of trail. But we wanted something that would just be bombproof it's light enough to race, but we'll hold up for all your training.
And when you're underbid and you hit something sketchy, it's gonna gonna hold up as well.
[00:49:43] Craig: Yeah. So they obviously there's some gravel bikes, like the cut through it that run a 29 or wheel, but just so I'm clear. So this is a, this is a proper, in addition to servicing that market, this is a proper mountain bike wheel.
[00:49:55] Randall: Oh, yeah. So when you think about the types of gravel bikes that are using a two nine wheel, they're generally more expedition type bikes, otherwise you'd be better off on our 700 sea podge. So the Uday 29 is very much a wheel that if you were going and doing a, an expedition this is a great wheel to bring, because even though it's on the lighter side compared to some wheels in that segment, you have the asymmetry, the weight is being saved through materials and precision engineering and manufacturer rather than compromising on structural integrity.
And one thing that's true about all these wheels by the way is each wheel set uses a single length of spoke, which we include a spare with it. So, if you ever did have an issue being able to change a spoke in the field is, about as simple as, it could be .
[00:50:40] Craig: Gotcha. Super interesting. Well, we've, we've gone deep on wheels. I, I, there's a few more things I wanted to cover, but I think we're running a bit long on time. Is there anything else in, in parting? You know, this is a, a big week probably when you listeners hearing this a week behind us, but you've got logos components off the ground.
We'll certainly put a link in the show notes. Is there anything else about the brand or the ethos that you wanted to share with the listener before we sign off for today?
[00:51:08] Randall: The long and the short is, you have to have a reason for existing. And in our case, we saw an opportunity to make something that fit our perspective on what the ideal wheel would be, and to pull it off at a price point that is affordable to a much bigger audience and to provide some, education at the same time.
So if you're curious about any of the concepts that, that we discussed here on the pod, I know we went pretty deep nerd here. Logos components.com hop in there. We've created some materials there to make it easy to get one's head around these things and, it applies to wheels more generally.
The last thing is, I really want to thank all the stakeholders who helped to make this happen. This is particularly Sam Jackson, our head of brand, who I mentioned before, as well as Angela Chang, our head of operations.
This is our vendors. This is various industry experts. Who've provided their 2 cents. This is the ridership community.
Many of whom I assume are listening who contributed their thoughts when I first posted the idea for this project some months ago and got a lot of positive feedback. And in fact, quite a few presales. So can't thank you enough.
And then Greg. The first conversation that we had was really the tipping point with thesis in terms of providing an opportunity for people to get to know us and to see our philosophy and how we approach things. And it's been immensely gratifying to be on this journey with you first as a guest and then now as someone who gets to do episodes, not just with you, but then explore ideas with guests that I bring on myself. So a lot of appreciation we would not be here if not for the support of those parties. And we feel excited about what the future holds.
[00:52:46] Craig: Well, cool. I mean, best luck to you and the team. It's always great to see. I I've always enjoyed your philosophy around the transparency of what you're doing and your openness to have discussions with people. I think you've whether it's the thesis brand and I'm sure the logo brand, you have an openness for discussion with people who are considering the, the products and whether or not they choose your particular product.
I think they'll understand your point of view and your commitment to providing and creating the product that you've arrived at in your mind. So kudos and congratulations. I look forward to continuing the journey with you. Obviously we'll have you back on the, for the listener, you'll be back on here for, into dared episodes in the future, and also doing deep technical dives around both bicycle componentry, but also the philosophies of community and, and general philosophy of what cycling brings to our collective lives.
So good to talk to you as always Randall. I wasn't surprised that we went a little bit longer today, but hopefully the listener can give us a little a little bit of room there for enjoying our conversations together.
[00:53:52] Randall: Yeah. And if anyone has any questions or comments please jump in the ridership in the logos channel or drop us an email.
[00:53:59] Craig: Cool. Thanks Randall.
[00:54:01] Randall: All right. Thanks Greg.
[00:54:03] Craig Dalton: That's gonna do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. I hope you learned a little bit more about Randall's background and are excited to check out logo's components. I know you can learn a lot just simply from visiting the website. As I mentioned, they've got. Breakdown diagram of the hub, which I found very interesting.
If you're curious about what a, a star ratchet looks like inside big thanks to our friends at hammerhead and the Caru two computer. Remember use the code, the gravel ride to get that free heart rate monitor with the purchase of your crew to computer.
If you're interested in connecting with me or Randall to ask questions about this podcast or otherwise best way to do it is simply join the ridership. It's a free global cycling community. It's at www.theridership.com. You can interact with the two of us, but also more importantly, thousands of other athletes around the world to answer your questions and share your joy and share roots from around the world.
If you're interested in supporting the podcast, you can visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride where ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated until next time here's defining some dirt under your wheels.
This week on the podcast, Randall sits down with Kathryn Taylor, co-host of the Girls Gone Gravel Podcast and Chief of Staff at Feisty Media. Looking at inclusion in the sport of gravel cycling and how Feisty Media is looking to build a brand centered around helping active, performance-minded women find the resources they need to do the things they love.
Episode Sponsor: Bike Index, a free, non-profit bicycle registry and stolen bike recovery platform.
Girls Gone Gravel Podcast
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Girls Gone Gravel[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the podcast, my co-host Randall Jacobs is gonna take the reins. Randall did an interview with Catherine Taylor of feisty media and a co-host of the girls gone gravel podcast,
Catherine. And the team at feisty media are helping active performance minded women find the resources they need to do the things they love.
Many of you may be familiar with Catherine's work with Christie Mon on the girls gone gravel podcast. Christie is also a former guest of this podcast, and you can refer to that episode.
We did about the big sugar gravel event. If you scroll back a little while in your feed, before we jump into the conversation I wanted to thank this week's sponsor bike index bike index is a nonprofit bicycle registry and stolen bike recovery platform. In fact, take a moment, hit pause, and go register your bike. It takes five to 10 minutes. The hardest part is locating your serial number, but once it's in the system, it's a free resource.
Bike index has no business talking to you. They're hoping to just sit there in the background as a utility, but God forbid your bike goes missing and gets stolen. Bike indexes. One of the only resources you're gonna find online to help coordinate the efforts of recovering your bicycle. They're a nonprofit.
Everything they do. Any donation you make is tax deductible. Registration is free, so you really don't have any excuse other than time to register your bikes. Go on, hit up bike index.org and get your bike registered with that said, let's jump on over to Randall's conversation with Katherine.
[00:02:05] Randall: Katherine, thank you for coming on the gravel ride podcast. It's great to have this conversation. It seems like we have a lot of alignment in terms of the types of community building projects that we're most interested in and obviously our shared love of this particular sport.
So, would just love to start with what's. What's your background with the sport? How did you end up doing a podcast called girls gone gravel .
[00:02:26] Kathryn: Well, it's funny. I'm as many of the guests that we've actually had in our podcast, I've learned there's a lot of burnt out triathletes that end up in gravel. And that was definitely me. So I was really involved in triathlon for about 10 years. I raced coached. I even worked at a triathlon store. That was one of the top triathlon online retailers in the company.
And I got really burned out from it because it's all about checking your power and your wants and. A lot of training all the time. And a friend of mine that was in the tri club was doing this race at the time called dirty cancer. And sh because she had heard this woman named Alison Terick on a podcast and she had never rid her bike more than 20 miles, but she signed up for the 200 mile event and was training through the company that I coached with.
So I wasn't her coach, but one of my coworkers was her coach. And so I just heard all about this journey to this crazy gravel. Race. And I was like, oh, this sounds kind of fun. I think I'm gonna get a gravel bike instead of a traveling bike. And so I got a gravel bike and I would go out, she would go be doing like five laps of this local 20 mile loop.
And I would go out and do one lap with her and just started to love it and love the adventure. And then started hosting some rides on the weekends for local community women. And Got into that. And then it's actually a funny story. So I was working at a bike shop at the time. And when I bought the bike, the bike shop owner was like, well, I don't think you're gonna like gravel because it's hard.
And that made me really mad yeah.
[00:04:00] Randall: oh
[00:04:01] Kathryn: yeah. And so I had way too much wine one night and I woke up at two in the morning and I was like, I'm gonna start an Instagram account. It was when Instagram was. Starting to grow. And I was like, girl's gonna gravel, that's it. So I got the handle at two in the morning and I just started sharing like community pictures and it grew.
And that ended up eventually turning into a podcast and now has become a whole brand where we have events. We have a little team, we, you know, go do cover, live events. We're done a few other things in the future, so yeah, that's, that's how it got started.
[00:04:34] Randall: And I'm curious, where were you living at the time and what timeframe are we talking here?
[00:04:38] Kathryn: So it was 2019. It wasn't that long ago. And I was living in Atlanta, Georgia. So, and, and there's not a ton of gravel around Atlanta. You really have to drive. So it was really in the Southeast the gravel scene. Was much behind kind of the Midwest Northwest, Northeast gravel. It was really just starting to come onto the scene.
And the, and people didn't know about things like, you know, Unbound or, or any of those things at the time. My friend Lauren was the first person that any of us ever knew that had gone and done, you know, at the time it was dirty Kansas. So, so yeah. That's, that's where I was living.
[00:05:15] Randall: One of the obvious questions that, that, you know, came up to me prior to us recording today was, you know, what was your inspiration? And I kind of feel like I got a little bit of a taste of it when you're talking about that bike shop person. I think that the industry has catered to a particular audience that mostly looks like me, frankly for a very long time. And there is a dire need for more accessible on ramps to other people who wanna participate. And it seems like you, you feel a niche And half the population. It's not really a niche I'd love to hear more about that inspiration and how you've gone about it.
[00:05:49] Kathryn: Yeah. So I had been a part of Atlanta tri club, which is the. Probably the third largest triathlon club in the country. And I was one of the coaches for Atlanta tri club. I also was on the regional board for USA triathlon. And we were doing a lot of initiatives in the women's space at the time. And so I, I started to see, there were a few things, if you could do, you could really increase women's participation in the sport.
And I had a, a good friend that we were doing. A lot of these things kind of side by side in that. And she, she actually passed away very unexpectedly in 2019 and.
[00:06:27] Randall: to hear that.
[00:06:29] Kathryn: Thank you. It was yeah, she, it was a, a brain aneurysm. So just out of the blue and I kind of looked back at her legacy and I was. I wanna continue this, but the triathlon space, isn't where I feel the passion anymore.
At the same, I was starting to get into gravel. And at the same time I had another friend that was an ultra endurance cyclist. Her name is Danny Gable, and she's done all these crazy ultra endurance adventures. And I started hearing her stories about cycling and how male dominated it was and started looking into it.
And I was like, oh, I think there are some things that we could do. That will really bring women to the forefront that are really simple things like telling women stories, giving women a place to connect with each other giving them a space and, and everything just happened to come together right around the time of the pandemic.
That's when Christ and I started the podcast and we started a private Facebook group. The, I was like, oh, a couple hundred people. And within, I don't know, two months, it was like 5,000 people. And we were doing, you know, all kinds of webinars and stuff. Over the summer, cuz everybody was stuck at home.
Laura King actually had connected with me and she said, Hey, we were gonna do this, this camp or this weekend with rooted, but we can't do it because of the pandemic. But do you wanna do it like just a virtual DIY gravel? Summer thing. And so we did like every Friday we would do a webinar where women could come on and learn for free.
And, and so it just, everything started to come together and the community really naturally formed. And it it's really cool because now I go to races and people will say, oh, I heard the podcast. Or I followed your stuff or I'm in the Facebook group. And that's the reason I decided to come do this event or, you know, This inspired me or so.
And so story inspired me. So, I think I started rambling, but that's kind of my, my very long answer to your question. It was really
[00:08:18] Randall: is entirely the point.
[00:08:20] Kathryn: Yeah, but, but I it's been driven by what the community wanted all along. You know, so.
[00:08:25] Randall: Well, and I was sharing before we started recording that I actually heard about you and your work from one of our listeners who, who came up to me at rooted Vermont, her name escapes me is actually two women. So if you're listening please drop me a note and remind me your name and just thank you for the introduction.
And I asked them, who should we be bringing onto the podcast to talk about community and to elevate their work. And you were the first person that they mentioned. So, there's clearly a deep resonance with what you do. So you have a background having worked in shops, you've been a pretty serious triathlete.
You had your own journey into the sport. I'm curious to unpack that a bit. What was it like when you were first getting into cycling or endurance athletics generally? How far back does that go? And what aspects of that experience do you think were different as a consequence of being a woman versus a man coming into it .
[00:09:16] Kathryn: Yeah. I actually got into triathlon when I moved to Atlanta. So it was like 2010, I think, 2009, 2010, somewhere right around there. And had lived a lot of places. I had moved there. I was living with my parents and I'd always wanted to do a triathlon. I was a swimmer growing up. I was a really bad runner, but I'd never, like, I'd only ridden my Walmart bike around town.
I'd never ridden like a real bike. And so I Googled triathlon. Atlanta and team and training was actually having a info session for their summer training program. So the options were like, sit at home with my parents and watch wheel of fortune, or go meet a bunch of strangers and maybe raise money to do an event.
So I ended up signing up for team and training and, and that experience really informed everything I did from then on out. The, the team in training chapter in, in Georgia is, is one of the strongest team in training chapters. At that time was one of the strongest team in training chapters in the country.
And they were just so great at bringing people in and teaching them everything from, you know, how do you ride a bike? How do you prepare for a race and, and creating a community around it? And I didn't know anything, like I showed up at my first ride with my mom's bike. That was Just a, like a towny bike and Umbro shorts and a t-shirt everybody was there, there, you know, try bikes and their kits and stuff, but people had just made me feel so welcome.
And so part of it, even though I felt like I don't belong here at that moment. And then took me through every piece of it from. Falling over in the parking lot, three times is the first time I tried to clip in and, you know, a woman stayed with me and rode with me that whole day to teaching me, you know, everything about the bike.
And then on the contrary, I'd be like, oh, I'm gonna go to this group ride, which would be primarily guys and primarily a race instead of a group ride, like the Tuesday night race, but they didn't communicate that. And so I remember one time I was up I. Dog sitting with my parents or something. And so I was at their house, which is in the north side of Atlanta.
And it's really hilly. It's kind of, you're starting to get up into the Appalachians. I went on this ride and I didn't have like a Q sheet. They didn't give them out. They didn't communicate. They didn't say hello at the ride. I was like, okay, well I can hang. I'm a travel now. And I got so lost. Didn't know where I was.
Didn't have anybody to call to get back. Finally, like somebody came by and pointed me the way back to town. And I thought if that were my experience, like the first time I showed up at a group ride, I would've never, I would've walked away from the bike. I. Forever. And and I've heard that experience from so many women of just having horrific experiences.
The first time they walk into a group ride or a bike shop. And so I just want women to feel confident and be excited about, you know, that, and, and so, because I had such a great experience with team and training and saw the difference, it just it informed the way I wanted to contribute to the community.
[00:12:23] Randall: That's great. And I have a confession. I was absolutely one of those men who treated every group ride like a race. I came into the sport, very hard charging and just wanted to compete and go hard and crush it and go into the pain cave and all the things that are associated with that very aggressive more ego driven aspects of the sport that make it so inaccessible. And, it's in recent years that I've come full circle and seen the opportunity to not just take what I've learned and to help bring someone in but also the huge benefit that I get personally from just slowing it down and taking the time to connect and facilitating.
So I'm curious, how do you define your community? You have your podcast listeners, you have your Facebook group. What is the extent of the community? How do people interact with you now? How many people are in involved ? What's the structure of it?
[00:13:12] Kathryn: Yeah. That's well, just real quick before we move on from like the group ride. Cause I do want like, it's okay. If you have a really hard, fast charging group ride, right. Like I think that is totally fine. And it's appropriate for some people. It's the communication and helping people understand and even saying, like being able to say.
this isn't for you. If somebody shows up that's not ready or like I'm willing to sacrifice my night for you. So like, I don't wanna get rid of the group rides that people love to go out and smash themselves on. I just wanna make sure there's spaces. What that, when we say we're welcome to new people, that we're actually welcome to do people
[00:13:47] Randall: Yeah. I, I think that that's a really valid point. And if you're going to have a ride that you're opening up to a broader audience, having something in place, whether it be, Points where somebody can break off, to cut the ride shorter or having different groups going at different paces and making sure you have a ride leader for each one of those groups I think goes a long way towards avoiding that sort of scenario that you were describing, where you have a bad experience.
And then it's like, well, the bike is not for me.
[00:14:13] Kathryn: Yeah. Yeah. So at our community, we, we have several different layers. So we have obviously the podcast we have a free Facebook community called women, gravel, cyclists, and that's women from all over the world. I think it's like between 14 and 15,000 women right now. And it's, it's still. I thought it would fall off after the pandemic, but it's still really active.
We have a, when people join, we ask them they're how long they've been riding gravel. And I would say at least a third of them are brand new to gravel cycling. So they're coming to look for advice on bikes, saddles, Shammy, how to train, what events to do, how to find friends. And then we do, we have a small team of about a hundred women Or just a little bit more connected within us.
And then this past year, we had our first gravel festival, our women's gravel festival, which is not a competitive event. It's literally just three days of hanging out, having parties riding and learning. And our first one we had about 220 women and we're getting ready next week to announce the 20, 22 dates.
2023 dates. What year are we in? So we'll be back in Bentonville next year for our next one. And we may be able to bump that number up a little bit.
[00:15:33] Randall: It's a great location, by the way, the bike infrastructure there is, is quite incredible. And the community there too is it's one of the, one of the country's great cycling communities at this point.
[00:15:43] Kathryn: yeah, we were lucky we snapped up Amy Ross. Do you know, have you ever met connected with Amy Ross?
[00:15:48] Randall: I don't believe so. Tell me more about her.
[00:15:50] Kathryn: She has been in the bike world for a long time, worked for different brands like Santa Cruz that she worked for. Wow. One of the big mountain bike things I can't remember, but her husband's NA Ross.
He was a professional mountain biker and they moved to Beville. She was the had a bike Beville. and so she had left bike Bentonville. I was going through, and that's the group that like, if you wanna do an event in Beville you go and you talk to them. So she was, we'd had her on as a podcast guest I'd driven through Bentonville was checking it out.
She was like, well, I'm leaving bike Bentonville. And I was like, do you want a job? and so we hired her as our event coordinator on the ground. Basically two weeks later. So she contracts for us as our event coordinator for that event, which makes a huge difference when somebody is in the community day in and day out to, to put together a really great community event.
[00:16:40] Randall: And in terms of where people gather online and find you online? Is it primarily the Facebook page, what's your software stack look like?
[00:16:47] Kathryn: Yeah. We have a website, girls go gravel. We put, I actually write a lot of the articles and then a woman Celine Jager. Everybody probably knows in the gravel space. Also she works with us at feisty media, so she writes some for us. And then I have another woman from CNN that I pull in a little bit here and there to write articles for me.
Her name is Claire and we write a lot of stuff based on what people ask for in the Facebook group. So we're taking. Somebody's asking a question and we're like, oh, we see tons of answers. And I'm like, well, that's an article. So we create a lot of content. So we get a lot of visitors to that site just because we're creating content that people are searching for.
From our Facebook page we have our Instagram page and then we have just private Facebook communities. We, we tried like things like slack or other communities and it's, it's just hard. It's hard to get people to go off of Facebook. I know everybody wants them to, but it's so hard.
[00:17:42] Randall: We had the same kind of discussion when we started the ridership, we built it in slack initially, or I should say we got it started in slack, the community built itself from there. And there were certain challenges that we saw with Facebook that we wanted to avoid.
But slack is great because it's a great communication tool and it is something that people are already using for work in a lot of cases. But then you can't do a lot of the things you'd wanna do like event coordination or dealing with club membership.
Then again, Facebook has its own issues. I'd actually love to unpack this a little bit because I've had this conversation with Russ over at path, less pedals and Monica Garrison over at black girls do bike.
I'm curious, what are the things that you. Like about the platform and that we're enabling. And what are the things that frustrate you that you would ideally avoid in migrating to something different?
[00:18:32] Kathryn: What I like about Facebook is people. Whether they say it, they people say they wanna get off Facebook, but they're still staying there. And a lot of people are lurkers, but they participate in groups. And Facebook has gone really in, on groups in the last few years, because they've seen that trend.
Right. So. they're promoting that. And I, I also worked for a tech company for a little while in Atlanta, and I learned it's really hard to get people to use something they're not already using from that that experience, you know, that's the biggest challenge. Yeah. And slack, it just felt like the conversation was really, could be really stagnant a lot of times.
Because if people. If they didn't use it for work, it was hard to get them to like, get excited about it. And if they used it for work, sometimes people were like, I'm already on slack all day long. I have PTSD from the dings so, We also one of our communities within Feist, the feisty ecosystem, tried to use my new networks and that also wasn't a good fit for the same reasons.
So, so that's why I've stayed on Facebook. I think I have somebody that helps manage the posts if it were just, and, and then I have another person on our team that actually helps manage like all the people coming into the community now and like, The community is really good actually at, at self-regulating so if somebody, if a spammer gets in or if somebody we have a no assholes rule, I don't know if I can cus on your podcast, but we have a no assholes
[00:19:53] Randall: Oh, go, go, go right ahead.
[00:19:55] Kathryn: And so, they're really good at reporting that and. You know, like we watch it and catch those things and delete them, or just kind of, don't let people get away with being jerks. And I've seen that on a lot of other, especially gravel, Facebook groups that I've been on. There's some real jerks in those groups and the way they can give feedback to people is just it's mean what I don't like is I when not everybody's on the platform and then you.
Facebook sometimes is like, I don't think you need to see that anymore. So you have to go to the group if you want something. So, and then the, the other thing I've seen, and I think this is a characteristic of women, we really like to give advice. And so I'll see somebody post something I'm like, oh, they're about to get overwhelmed with like, so much advice about, you know, like, like, so and so just ask like, I'm just, I'm new to riding and I wanna do this 25 mile event.
What should I do? And somebody's gonna like give them like a step by step nutrition plan. And I'm like, just go ride your bike. right. Make sure you have water and food when you go out. So people and they mean well, but I, I just see I'm like that they're gonna overwhelm this poor person with like so much.
About things. So, so that's why I try to take things and then put, put that into good content. That's a little bit more succinct on our website.
[00:21:18] Randall: What are the things that you either are doing off platform, so off of Facebook or that you wish you could do, but you just don't have a tool that works well with your current
[00:21:27] Kathryn: Sounds like you all are creating a tech product.
[00:21:29] Randall: Well, we've been working on the side with a, like constructing a mighty network and we have a concept for that.
So whenever I talk to community organizers, I wanna understand those issues cuz , our vision is to create something that's like a community of allied clubs that share a common infrastructure, and then that organization, it would be a nonprofit. And so, we're starting to do little things like coordinate group rides in the mighty network.
Chapter for the ridership and then post that within the slack group to, to get people to join. And it's not seamless , but it's a way of slowly experimenting with it. We have a couple of clubs that have brought their members into their club space in the ridership mighty network.
So we're not so much building a tech product as much as we see that there's an opportunity to build a better place for people to come and find out, what to ride, how to ride it and take care of it where to ride, who to ride with and what events are happen. And right now, there's not a one stop shop for that. So maybe you find the girls gone gravel podcast or the podcast that we do or some other resource. So you find some forum, but there's not like a clearing house or one place where you can go and just say, I live here, what's happening near me.
Who's near me that I can ride with. What are the recommended tires for my terrain? Things like this. It's very fragmented.
[00:22:48] Kathryn: Yeah. Yeah. I would agree on that. Like, one of the things that I know the community wants is they would like they would like to find more people to ride with and more local local things. You know, like regional, because we, especially cuz we're a worldwide group. So people are like you know, every day somebody will be like, I'm in Africa, I'm in here, anybody here that I can ride with.
So, those connections and that, you know, that would just become a full-time job in our Facebook community. If you started managing all of those little mini groups and, and like you all, like, we don't, the Facebook community's free. Like it's like, everybody's a volunteer. That's doing it. My job is with feisty media and girls go, gravel came under feisty media.
So I get quote unquote paid as a part of that. But I mean, I spent, you know, thousands of my own dollars and hours building everything for before that ever happened, or we ever made a dollar off of anything. So I wish we had that. And then also kind of the step back from that, one of the reasons I haven't been willing.
Try to create things around group rides, as I would really like some kind of course or training that you need to go through to be a certified like girls can gravel group ride or something like that, just because of the experiences that I've had. And it's not, I don't want like this massive training, but I want things like you should introduce yourself to people when they show up, it seems like duh, but I think people just get nervous a lot of times if they've not led things in the past or.
you know, make sure everybody knows the route, like little things like that. And I just haven't had the capacity to create that,
[00:24:27] Randall: Yeah. Well, and these aren't unique to women or to any particular demographic, one of the folks that we've had on the group is Monica Garrison over at black girls do bike.
She also started that as a Facebook group with people reaching out . And it's now, a hundred plus chapters and a hundred thousand women around the world and they're organizing events and doing all this stuff.
And the challenges that they have are no different than the challenges that we have. And what you're describing too, so there should be some basic toolkit for someone to be able to organize a ride and people need to be able to sign up to post a route, to have a legal waiver.
Right. That covers everybody. You know, you're not getting sued for trying to get people together. But then also having some protocols that are in place, like you're describing, introduce yourself, you're expected to arrive on this at this time. Here's the equipment that you should have. It's self-supported. And I think that these things can be largely standardized in a shared infrastructure. And if that were created, then you could leverage the expertise that this much bigger community of people who just wanna ride. You'll have some lawyers in there, you'll have some people who have a lot of technical expertise in there. And then this toolkits available to everyone, you don't have to be an expert in any domain to leverage it.
[00:25:35] Kathryn: Yeah, that sounds really smart. And, and, you know, back in my triathlon days, I definitely, there were definitely men that I saw that if they didn't come in looking like a triathlon body, they were treated differently often. So it, it is not just a women issue. Like you said, like it's, it's, it's human issue.
And every, I, I just go back to, everybody wants to have a place that they belong and they wanna feel. They're wanted places. And so if we can create those spaces for people, like at the end of the day, when I look at group rides, I'm like one ride a week. Me like riding at the very back of the pack at a super slow pace is not the end of the world for somebody to feel like they belonged.
[00:26:16] Randall: Yeah. Everyone has something to gain from having a, common space for diverse people to come together.
[00:26:22] Kathryn: Yeah, I was actually talking to Abby Robbins. The first non-binary athlete to finish Unbound. And so Abby just received a good bit of attention. And then there was I can't, I don't know which company was doing a, a video about them, but Abby was at Unbound camp and they were tell at the gravel festival.
Abby was telling me about an experience that they were on a ride at a gravel camp. Ended up just like talking to this dude for a long time. Like it was a great conversation. And then the guy was like, oh, well, we should ride some Unbound together. And Abby was like, well, you should know, like, there's gonna be a camera crew following me because of this thing.
And the guy was like, oh, what's the thing. Abby said, you know, I'm a non-binary athlete and the guy as well, you should know, like I'm a conservative Christian. And Abby was like, I would've never, and they had a great conversation and Abby was like, I would've never had this conversation. I'm like, I'm sure this, this, somebody that's like in this very conservative Christian camp would also have never like sought out a non-binary athlete to have a conversation with coming from a very conservative Christian background in my past.
So I'm like, that's the beauty of it. Right? You experienced these people that you would've never experienced in these points of view and these conversations that shape your life. And I, I just love that about our sport, you know,
[00:27:37] Randall: I find that gravel amongst all the different cycling disciplines does seem to be especially amenable to those sorts of really healthy and welcoming dynamics because there's no one thing that is gravel and there's no one type of bike that is a gravel bike. You can, much more so than in other disciplines , ride what you got or get started with what you got. If you ride it on mixed terrain, it's a gravel bike. And yes, you can have fancy equipment, but then also, there's lots of different ways to be a part of it.
And we see that in our listenership and within the ridership and even amongst customers that ride the bikes that my company makes. But it's also, you have people of all different abilities who are going for it.
It's very different than say roadie culture especially competitive roadie culture, or even mountain bike culture had a little bit more of that festivaly type atmosphere, but then also has its aggressive, hard edge to it too.
[00:28:29] Kathryn: Yeah. I never feel like I'm cool enough for mountain biking. I'm like I gotta up my game or something.
[00:28:36] Randall: So tell me a bit more about feisty media and how that collaboration started who's involved and the scope of its mission and what it's doing currently.
[00:28:47] Kathryn: Sure. So feisty media is a, a women focused media company. So it's, we actually all women on our team. Although we, we would hire men and we focus primarily in the endurance sports space and the whole conversation is about creating an empowering culture for women. And, and we go, we really hone in on the culture piece because there's so much within culture that has.
Has given women messages, whether it's about motherhood, whether it's about diet culture, whether it's about equality in sport, that, that if you can address the cultural piece, like a lot of the dominoes will fall. So as an example, one of the reasons that women often under fuel on the bike is because the message of diet culture that you need to look a certain way.
And so if you go back to like, actually. We should be fueled and we should be fed when we're riding. And like this message of diet culture is causing us to not do that. So, so we really kind of, we kind of addressed that, but we're, we're kind of fun and cheeky and yeah, so feisty was started by this woman.
Her name is Sarah Gross and she was a professional triathlete for 14 years. So back in the day when I was doing triathlon, I actually had a. Triathlon podcast with this friend of mine, Bethany who passed away. And Sarah was a guest on our podcast. And then when Bethany passed away, Sarah reached out to me and she said, I'm so sorry.
They wanted to do at one of their events, an award in Bethany's honor. And so, we just kind of got connected through that. She came to Atlanta for the marathon trials. Right before COVID shut the world down, but it was the largest women women's field in the marathon trials ever. So, I helped her do some live coverage for that.
And I was like, Hey, they came out you know, starting a podcast, everybody keeps asking for it, but I don't wanna edit a podcast on my, like, by myself again, so much work. Would you be interested in expanding beyond triathlon? And she said, yes. And so. And then she was also like, Hey, we're starting to really grow.
We could do some contract work. Would you be interested in some contract work? I was like, sure. And so it, it just, we started with the podcast. I was doing a little contract work within. I think six months, six or eight months, I was working full time with them managing some of our brands. We, we have feisty triathlon.
We have our women's performance brand. We have feisty menopause, which is what Celine Jager leads. So that was the brand that I was brought on to manage at first. And then the girls gone gravel brand. And is that all that we have? So within that we have about eight podcasts that fall under. Kind of those different topics.
And yeah, so then when we decided to launch a gravel festival, we just brought girls gun gravel fully under the feisty brand, which for me is so great because that was, we were talking about systems. That was a lot of what was stopping me is like, these are all things I can do. I can figure out the financials.
I can figure out. The contractors, but it's not stuff I wanted to do.
[00:31:48] Randall: Mm-hmm mm-hmm
[00:31:49] Kathryn: being able to say, we have a team that's gonna put this festival on. We have money that we can invest in the front end. So I'm not risking my own money for things. It just really opened up the door for us to be able to, to try and experiment with some more things.
So it's been a, it's been a great partnership and, you know, part of what we do is we highlight what's happening in the women's fields, but then we also create educational materials. For women for training or racing or those cultural pieces. And then we create communities. So that's the third piece of it.
[00:32:20] Randall: Well, I wanna take a moment to highlight. I'm just looking through some of the articles and it's like training and breastfeeding for active moms, or how to handle your period when you're on a gravel ride. These are things that are women's issues, but then also you can look at them as part of accessibility.
As well, and these are not resources that I see in any of the media that I'm granted, it's not targeted at me of course, but
[00:32:42] Kathryn: Yeah. Now you're gonna get the ads. Now that you've come on our site.
[00:32:45] Randall: Yeah. But in just looking at some of the content here, it's obvious why this needs to exist. It is obvious why this is such a core part of making this sport accessible.
And in fact, I would even add that it would be beneficial for some of, at least these headlines to exist in media sources, that men or people who don't necessarily need them are at least seeing so that they're aware that this is an issue for this particular group of people that you may be riding with
[00:33:11] Kathryn: well, because Celine yer, who does our hip play out pause, which is our menopause podcast. You know, she does a ton of gravel writing. Her husband puts on unpaved and she's like I'm out at gravel rides all the time or gravel events and all these guys come up to me that their wives are like hitting perimenopause or menopause.
And they're like, thank you so much for your podcast. I understand so much more about what my wife's going through. She's like, it's so weird having these conversations with guys while I'm racing a gravel of it.
[00:33:36] Randall: That actually brings up a great question, what would be the bits of wisdom or knowledge that you would wanna share? To our audience, either for women listening or for men listening to help them be more aware of issues that women face when they're entering the sport or participating in the sport.
[00:33:53] Kathryn: Yeah. I mean, I think like the more we can normalize conversations around periods and pregnancy and, you know, menopause, all those things even. especially with the guys we ride with. Right. Cuz that's sometimes what makes it awkward is we're like, Hey, I don't wanna say that. I need to stop on this ride because I have my period, but I really kind of need to stop along this ride.
You know, so, or pregnancy it's I feel like a lot of times it's expected that the, the mom is gonna just take this long break while the dad, you know, if they're both into cycling. You see with Laura and Ted king, I just put a post up on Instagram the other day, celebrating Laura, because this is her choice.
Like she, she wants to do this, but she wanted to come right back to writing. She wanted to come right back to directing the event. That's not what the choice that every person wants to make, but for so long, the choice was you're a bad bomb. If you wanna do these other things well, for the, the message for the dad was.
Yeah, good for you. You're making it all work, you know, celebrating them because they were able to, to hold all those things together. And so, so, so I think like that's a, a big thing is just kind of being okay with normalizing those conversations and like, they feel awkward at first, but like, I don't like go around asking women at the group.
Right. If they're on their period and they need to stop, like, don't get weird.
[00:35:14] Randall: But maybe if you're organizing a really big group ride, be mindful of the fact that you need a place for people to be able to access a bathroom, or an isolated patch of woods where they can get well off the road.
[00:35:25] Kathryn: Yeah. Or, or event directors, you know, we've had talk somebody, when we posted that period, article an event director reached out to me and he said I feel really dumb asking this question, but we wanna offer feminine supplies at the aid stops and I don't know what to buy. Can you just tell me what to buy?
And I was like, I love that you asked me this question,
[00:35:42] Randall: Hmm.
[00:35:42] Kathryn: right? Like we're, we're talking to Laura about coming back on the podcast because she's doing Leadville and is it next weekend is Leadville. And she's like, I have to stop and pump along the way. Like this is the first time I've ever done a race. I'm gonna have to stop and pump.
Does Leadville have any place to stop and pump? I don't know. but it'll be interesting to hear. you know, how that plays out for her. So, so yeah, I think like the more we can just say this is, this is normal. Just, just like a guy can just stop and pee on the side of the road, because it's easy. I've been on group rides with guys where it's like, everybody just stopped and is going all of a sudden I'm like, I, I don't know what just happened, but I think I'm gonna go too, since everybody else is
[00:36:21] Randall: I'm fortunate. I have an older and two younger sisters and my older and immediately younger sister both have three kids each. And so children and breastfeeding things like this. I've been kind of normalized in my world. But I see how culturally, it's still something that's very uncomfortable for a lot of people. And certainly I also had my adaptation too, even being surrounded by it in my family or with female friends who had kids and had to stop and pump, and just understanding that and not having it be a big deal. I think it's part of a broader cultural shift that's needed to support mothers, but also fathers in playing a more involved, more mindful role that acknowledges the biological realities, and doesn't push it into the shadows.
But actually celebrates it.
[00:37:06] Kathryn: Yeah, I agree. It's I love seeing, like, I, I love watching Ted and Laura because Ted's like, you know, he obviously was a high level pro he's. They both race in the pro category, but Ted's obviously has more visibility in that because of his background. But, you know, he is also saying, well, I'm not gonna do this event, so Laura can do this event or like, we'll switch.
[00:37:29] Randall: Yeah.
[00:37:30] Kathryn: ride times and just, and just saying, this is a part of our family, this is something that's important to her. You know, and, and just making that the norm. And so I think they're a really great family. That's kind of leading the way for what that can look like. Yeah.
[00:37:44] Randall: Yeah, there's there's a very central role that a mother plays early in a child's life in terms of attachment and so on. But at the same time the gender roles that our society generally has people play, has so much of the burden falling on the woman.
And I think it's a missed opportunity, frankly, for a lot of men to connect with their kids really early on.
[00:38:05] Kathryn: Yeah, and full transparency. I do not have kids. But you know, just having had many conversations with women, seeing, you know, in the sport of triathlon women, once they had kids, they were done. And now we're seeing like all these moms come back and race at the top levels after they've had. Had children and you're seeing that in the sport of running and gravel's such a new sport and especially the pointy under the spear is a really new sport as far as the pro racing.
But I think we're gonna start to see that more and more as well with women saying, I wanna have a kid and I also want to continue to race at this level. And, and we know women can for a long time race those long distances at a high level.
[00:38:47] Randall: One of the formative relationships I had in high school was with a then student teacher. She was somebody who was very supportive of me during the difficult periods of high school. And I reconnected with her a few years ago, and she was doing elite triathlons . She's in her mid, late forties, I believe has had two or three kids and just crushes it just as competing at a very high level.
And it's really impressive to see what is possible. And it also Dispels a lot of the assumptions about what life can be like for women after having kids.
[00:39:21] Kathryn: Yeah, well, Scotty Laga she won the outright Arkansas high country. She's twin boys that are, I can't remember how old they're eight or. And she was racing pro when she got pregnant and decided she wanted to continue racing. And you know, Ernie was racing as well and they just made that choice for their family.
Like she actually has the more potential in her career. So, you know, which isn't the choice for everybody. Right. But it's, it's just like saying it doesn't have to be the way that society's always said it should be that you're a, you're a bad person or you're a bad mom. If you want to do these.
[00:39:53] Randall: There's inevitably trade offs, but I think that there should be a lot more support from the father and the broader community so that a woman can continue to pursue being a complete version of herself even after kids
[00:40:06] Kathryn: Yeah, exactly.
[00:40:08] Randall: So what is the longer term vision for feisty media?
[00:40:11] Kathryn: We really wanna create something. That's a little bit like the south by Southwest for women in endurance sports or women in sports where there's a place where women can come and gather and learn and have experiences together and, and, you know, connect and, and just feel like, feel like all those pieces, the community, the education of what we're learning about women's physiology and how that impacts.
You know, our training and the way we approach life. And and yeah, just like the unique ex opportunity for brands all come together. It was really funny Randall. Like we, when we had our gravel festival, one of the brands there, so 220 women, one of the brands made more money at our festival than they did all three Belgium waffle rides last year because women were coming in an environment.
They just felt comfortable and they wanted to spend money and we heard people were like we wish you would've had more brands there because we went, we came to spend money at the festival. And so, so I, I just think there's so many opportunities for creating those, those educational and gathering spaces.
So, so that's where we're going. We're four years old, so. right now, we're really focused on bringing together the community and, and we really listen to what does the community want? And we try to create, create that from, for the community, instead of saying, this is what we, you know, it's the, the classic tech, right?
Know your audience and then build, solve the problem the audience needs solved.
[00:41:42] Randall: As I think. The initiatives that we're involved in, that reminder to validate the vision, getting out of one's own head and one's own biases and going out and actually listening.
And what is it that, that the people who are already with you, what is it that they need with the problems that they have? So we've covered a fair amount of ground in terms of how you got your start.
Both as a, as a cyclist and with girls gone gravel collaborations and so on. Is there any areas that we didn't cover that you wanna dive into before we split up today?
[00:42:10] Kathryn: I think those are the big ones, you know, I think just the more we're celebrating, we're creating space for all people and gravel and, and just saying when the whole community is there. We're all better. I think that's really powerful. The, the other big thing that we try to do is to, is to support the pointy end of the field.
And it's not because that's who our everyday person is. Right. But I think the more we can elevate the women's field in cycling and, and kind of create fans and create support around that. The more, it gives people opportunities to see somebody. I'll just give an example. My little niece, I was taking care of her.
She had COVID a few weeks ago. So aunt cat got called in to take care of her. And she was feeling much better. She wanted to go on a bike ride. So we were out riding bikes. And then I showed her a video of Kate Courtney when we got back. And she's like, Ugh, she's amazing. Do you think I could ever do that?
And that was she's six and I was. You can, but like, if I, if there weren't women like Kate Courtney, that I could show her videos of that are doing those amazing things at six years old, she wouldn't like, see that and dream, like I could do that. Right. And so, just, just being able to see those, those amazing women out there, I think is really important for the future cycling.
[00:43:24] Randall: Well, I think you definitely set an example as one of those women, who's doing the work to make it a lot more accessible in allowing little girls like your needs to dream. So thank you for coming on the podcast to share your story. And I look forward to continuing the conversation.
[00:43:38] Kathryn: Yeah, we'll have to connect at one of the events soon.
[00:43:41] Randall: Absolutely.
[00:43:42] Craig Dalton: That's gonna do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks to Randall and Catherine for that interesting interview. I love what they're doing over there at girls gone gravel, and I hope you go check out their podcast. We'll have links in the show notes for everything they mentioned during the show.
And another big, thanks to our friends over at bike index, a nonprofit that's out there helping people get their stolen bikes back. Simply head over to bike index.org and register your bike today. If you're interested in connecting with me or Randall, please visit us in the ridership.
That's www.theridership.com. That's a free global cycling community, connecting riders from around the world and sharing information about the sport we love. And if you have a. Please drop a rating or review. That's usually helpful in our discovery until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
This week we sit down with Nick Marzano to explore his experience during the 2022 Tour Divide. The 2022 Tour Divide began with over 200 riders following the 2,745-mile Great Divide Mountain Bike Route from north to south starting in Banff, Alberta, Canada and finishing at the US/Mexico border in Antelope Wells, New Mexico.
Episode Sponsor: Trek Travel - come join The Gravel Ride Podcast crew on the November 6th trip.
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Nick Marzano[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the show, we've got Nick Marzano from Philadelphia. Here to talk to us about the tour divide. Nick recently finished the tour divide routes during the grand depart from Banff, Canada, and made it all the way to the edge of the border of Mexico. If you don't know about the tour divide, it's roughly follows a route called the great divide mountain bike route, and it's recognized as one of the most important off pavement cycling routes in the United States of America. If not the world, the root criss crosses the continental divide from north to south, starting in Banff, Alberta, Canada, and finishing at the U S Mexico border in antelope Wells, New Mexico. I've been following the tour divide for many years. In fact, in some small part, I credit it with getting me excited.
About making the transition from mountain bike, riding to gravel riding. It's an amazing accomplishment. To have achieved this event. It's 2,745 miles, and God knows how much climbing along the way. When Nick picked his head up in the ridership forum and mentioned to the community that he was doing it, I was super stoked to not only follow along.
is.as he completed the route, but hear his stories along the way. It's amazing to get a firsthand account of what the tour divide experience looks like. . It varies every year, as you can imagine, with 2,745 miles. Across the United States. You've got all kinds of things to contend with.
This year, there were some late season snow up in Canada. Which wreaked havoc. On the race and ended a lot of people's tour divides efforts before they even began.
As you'll hear Nick persevered and had an amazing experience out there. It was a real pleasure talking to them. Before we jump into that conversation i need to thank this week sponsor trek travel
You may recall last year when we had Trek on talking about the Jarana gravel bike tour, I was super excited. What you don't know is I've been talking about going on this trip since that moment in time. I'm super excited to go to Jarana this year in November, and I'm inviting you to join me. I'm going on the November 6th trip.
From Trek travel just you're on a bike tour. You know, Jarana is a cycling gym. There's a reason why all the pros call it home with butter, smooth, tarmac, and perfect weather. But the road riding is just the beginning. And after that conversation with you, and I've looked at a number of routes out of Jarana and I'm super excited to get over there and experience the amazing gravel, the quiet mountain passes and the little villages of Spain. I feel like I've had this trip in my mind for.
The entirety of the pandemic, and we're finally pulling it off. Trek wanted me to invite you to join me on this trip. Any of our listeners are going to get a free handlebar bag and a free pair of socks when they joined the trip.
You simply head on over to Trek, travel.com and search for the Jerone gravel bike tour. It's a five day four night trip.
The team over a, truck's going to handle all the logistics from the hotel to the routes. They're going to have guides on hand. It's actually one of the Trek travel service course locations. So they're gonna have a lot of beautiful track. Demani SL disc brake bikes available for us. As well as the option to bring your own, I'm super excited to get over there myself.
We've got a small crew that's already signed up for this trip, but I want to invite you the listener. How amazing would it be for us to finally get together? And in Jarana of all places. I'm certainly looking forward to finally getting some dirt under my wheels in Europe, on a gravel bike.
Simply visit truck travel.com. Find that you're on a gravel bike tour and make sure during booking that you mentioned, you're a gravel ride podcast listener, or a member of the ridership to get that free handlebar bag. With that said let's dive right into my conversation with nick Nick welcome to the show.
[00:04:42] Nick Marzano: Hey, thanks for having me, Craig.
[00:04:44] Craig Dalton: You look surprisingly refreshed considering it's not too long ago, you just completed a 2,700 mile off-road bike ride.
[00:04:52] Nick Marzano: Yeah. I mean, I'm gonna rack that up to the, the food monster has been strong. The sleep monster has been strong. I've been, you know, you can indulge in both of those for, for about a solid week. I've been trying to get back to. The sleep has, has rectified itself, the, the nutrition and the food monster. I'm working on getting back to a, a normal diet.
But I, yeah, I'm feeling back to a hundred percent for
[00:05:15] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I gotta imagine. After an event like the tour divide, you're you just want to eat, eat, eat all day long.
[00:05:22] Nick Marzano: You look sort of longingly, like whenever you pass a gas station, like, should I stop and get. 10 Snickers. Should I stop and get some little debes? But, and I typically eat pretty healthy. So it, it is kind of like no holds barred when you're, , when you're only resupplies gas stations for a few days. But yeah, trying to get back to, to some greens in my diet, some fruit
[00:05:45] Craig Dalton: Nice. I've given a little bit of preamble in the intro about what the tour divide is, but it's such, it's something I've been following for, gosh, I feel like a decade and it's such an event that if the listener hasn't heard of it, you're going from Canada to Mexico. On gravel effectively, except it's pretty extreme gravel along the way.
[00:06:06] Nick Marzano: Yeah, that's, that's pretty much, it, it is mostly dirt. There's some paved sections and this year. I think more than prior years, there were more paved sections because of the initially we were all looking at the, at the black fire in, in New Mexico and, and a couple of other fires that cropped up that forced some some reroutes on pavement.
But we made up, we more than made up for that in difficulty with late season snow on the mountain paths in Canada, and then early season monsoons when we hit New Mexico. So it, the route looked a little different this year than it has in years past. Once you hit around New Mexico. But it was still very challenging and a lot of fun.
It was very beautiful.
[00:06:43] Craig Dalton: With a 2,700 mile plus route, we've got a lot of ground to cover, but as you know, I always like to start off by just learning a little bit more about your background. As a cyclist. And when you discovered gravel cycling and then let's get into, like, when did the tour divide creep into your mind as something you wanted to do?
[00:07:01] Nick Marzano: Yeah, it was kind of a rapid progression. So I was a, I'm a, I'm a COVID gravel bike baby around July, 2020. I had, I had wanted to get some kind of, you know, I didn't know the terminology for it until I started researching. I wanted to get something that would, that would allow me to get offroad. I had a hybrid single speed that I had used to try to keep up with people who were doing road rides every now and then if I was on vacation, I used it for commuting almost daily.
It was just like a red line, 20 Niner hybrid kicking around Philadelphia. It was great. Did you know, I would, I did like one alley cat race with it. At some point in Philly just used it for ridiculous purposes, but mostly, mostly commuting. And then around 2020, I wanted to transition into something with maybe a little, a little bit of gearing and got my first gravel bike really started listening to, you know, in the research came, wanted to, to find community and, and find some advice and came across the gravel ride podcast.
Pretty soon after that. And immediately started signing up for, you know, signed up for like a 60 mile race nearby here to see if, if racing was, was something that was into, I don't remember when the concept of bike packing got a hold of me, but it was pretty quick because by the fall of that of 2020.
I was, I, I, I definitely roped a couple of buddies into a 60 mile bike pack trip out to just like an overnight or out to French Creek, state park, which I know you're, I think you're familiar with, from your time out
[00:08:31] Craig Dalton: absolutely.
[00:08:33] Nick Marzano: Yeah. So it ramped up from there. The following year. I, we had a vacation my partner and I had a vacation planned for the finger lakes.
And I said, well, why don't I try to take the long route? I've been reading a lot about bike packing. Let me meet you up at the finger lakes. And I'm gonna take a four day trip and try to link together forest roads and some rail trails that will kind of take me from near Philly up to the New York finger lakes and had fun building that route.
Learned a lot, you know, about gear learned a lot about you know, how to plan resupply, how to plan, how long could I make it? I had, I had not done a, I don't believe a, a century ride at that point or had only done one century ride. So figuring out that I could link together, you know, a hundred mile days was kind of a revelation I had planned for six days.
I did it in three and change.
[00:09:28] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's kind of hard, like, you know, two things there, one, like it's unusual that you have all day to ride, right? So who knows how long they can ride when they have all day to ride. And two, when you're loaded down on the bike, it's a totally different factor, right? You don't know how long can I ride with a fully loaded bike?
[00:09:48] Nick Marzano: totally. Yeah. So , you know, and I, and I had sort of under I conservatively booked each of those days I had put out a sort of an itinerary for myself for six days and was really conservative and realized the other, the other concept with solo bike packing is you get to camp at the end of A long day.
And if you're not worn out, you really, you don't wanna get to camp at, at six o'clock seven o'clock, there's nothing to do. You know, I'm fine with solo time. But I think I got into one campsite around like four o'clock and was just sort of twiddling my thumbs for the rest of the night. So I knew, you know, I was capable of, of pushing a little bigger and I can go, I can go further, but I kind of went down, you know, from there.
Every couple of months, I would pick an event or design something where I would like add one new challenge to that. And so quickly from 2020, I kind of ramped up in that way. Let me, let me pick a new challenge to sort of add complexity to what I've been doing. Add racing into the mix, add cold weather, camping into the mix.
Add, you know, you add rain and, and riding in the elements pretty quickly when you're linking big days. Yeah. And that, you know, Where are we at two years later? I feel like I've got a, a pretty good amount of experience under my belt and at least, you know, 2,600 more miles from the, the tour of divide,
[00:11:05] Craig Dalton: And had you, had you had an a background with endurance athletics prior to coming to cycling?
[00:11:10] Nick Marzano: Your, you know, your normal running events around Philly, do the broad street run and the Philadelphia marathon a couple of times. But it, it kills my knees. And so I knew. While I still run for just bone health and, and a little cross training that was part of the reason, you know, I wanted to get a bike in 2020 cuz I was I'm.
I was pushing 40 at that point. I'm I'm now over 40 and, and wanted something that I could do much longer than I think I'll be able to do running event.
[00:11:37] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Do you recall when the tour divide first came into your, your head?
[00:11:43] Nick Marzano: Yeah. Yeah, so things ramped up after that finger lakes trip pretty quickly. I reached out to, I reached out to Nelson trees who, who runs the silk road, mountain race and the Atlas mountain race and asked him if I could get a last minute sign up for the Atlas mountain race that. Which is ridiculous and was probably not the right next challenge.
If I'm, you know, I've talked about adding sort of stepwise challenges that would've been probably a little out of my wheelhouse, but he accepted my application and I was set to go and it got, it got canceled at the last minute, which worked out perfectly. Because I ended up going to Virginia for something called the trans Virginia five 50.
Where I met this great community of bike Packers. It was a much more it's about the same length. It's a little shorter than Atlas mountain. The, the elevation really, and the, the difficulty is, you know, we'll see, I'm going to Atlas next February. We'll see if, if this checks out, but it it's a pretty difficult race.
And the elevation is. Not exactly comparable, but it's, it's pretty hefty. So it was a great challenge, nonetheless, and I, you know, more importantly, I met this great community, which gets to, you know, the answer to your question is around December the organizer of the trans Virginia, five 50 Dave Landis reached out to a bunch of us and said, Hey, I'm setting aside the time I'm doing tour divide.
Does anybody want to get a little training group together? Anybody who might wanna put this on their, on their calendar? And I think it was like a week after that I talked to my boss at work and said, I've been here 10 years. Can I link together PTO and, and take a month off. This is really important to me.
And, and he's great. You know, my company's great. They, they said we support you completely take the time. And, and then I was, I was in,
[00:13:31] Craig Dalton: That's amazing. Yeah, I think it's one of the things that as the listener does some research about tour divide and realizes like you really need to have a month long block of time available unless you're one of the elite elite athletes that might be able to do it in half a month. But that that in and of itself is a huge challenge.
Let alone just the logistics of planning, your equipment, your nutrition, your pacing, everything else that goes into it. So you, you sign up for the event you graciously get the time off from your employer. You're ready to go in your mind. What type of preparation did you need to do? Obviously you've been doing some of these bike packing races at that point.
You'd kind of presumably ironed out a lot of the equipment questions you might have had of what works for you. What type of bags, et cetera, but with a 2,700 mile race over the tour divide based out of Philly, what did you feel like you needed to do to prepare for that start?
[00:14:29] Nick Marzano: The one of the very first things I did was get Kurt re Schneider had a, had a sale on his, just like PDF six month training guide. And a lot of people use that for the tour of divide. If you're looking for a place to start, I totally recommend it. I didn't work directly with Kurt, although I got a chance to meet him briefly at, at a.
A training ride in, in April and thank him for, for putting that guide together. It was just great to have a framework. So that training framework started in January. It very quickly and. You know, I got a full swift set up because Philly winters are, are really rough and I couldn't get out early enough to not have ice on the road or, or tons of salt on the road.
So I, and I was also recovering. I was nursing an injury that I, we can gloss over for now, but a, an injury from a fall on a, on a November bike packing trip that I took with the, the Virginia crew. So, yeah, it was, it was trainer straight through February. I, I started researching gear the Virginia crew and actually another guy out of, out of Philly who, who had also done that trans Virginia race.
So I consider him part of that Virginia crew, but we were able to ride together once you know, once we got into late February, March. And that was it. I mean, I, I planned the schedule. I, I did. You know, picking up new equipment. I picked up a, a salsa cutthroat. My first gravel bike was a GT grade and it didn't really have the tire clearance for the sort of mud I knew we would get into or, or for the comfort that I knew I would need.
So, it wasn't cheap and there are a lot of barriers to entry that, you know, I, I feel very privileged to have been able to get a second bike that quickly and and get the time off work. But at that point, nothing was really gonna stop me. It was it, you know, that once we all got very dialed on that goal and,
[00:16:12] Craig Dalton: do feel like that cutthroat it's if, if you don't want to think about it, there's just so many people who have used that bike that it's kind of a no brainer to go down that road route. If you have the option of getting a new bike for it.
[00:16:24] Nick Marzano: totally,
[00:16:26] Craig Dalton: I don't wanna get too much into the specific training plan, but I'm just curious, like, were you encouraged to do a bunch of overnights, a bunch of big back to back days?
How were you fitting this into your normal work life?
[00:16:41] Nick Marzano: Yeah, a lot of it was waking up, you know, 5:00 AM jump on the trainer and it was typically one to two hour rides. Throughout the week, there would be a couple of two hour like high intensity efforts. But it was really just getting that time on the bike and, and doing the base level plan that, that Kurt provides.
Then yeah, he does build in, he starts to build in, you know, back to backs. I looked for events like the one in, in April that I mentioned where I met, you know, I got to meet Kurt himself there which was another Virginia part of the Virginia endurance series, like a 250 mile overnighter called rockstar gravel.
Which is great, but they, yeah. Other than that, you know, worked with my buddy, Tim, who was the, the gentleman in, in Philly, who I was training with and lined up some more overnights to French Creek and just did our best to find as much elevation and as much gravel as we could around here. That was, that was about it.
I mean, the, the timing lined up in life where I, I was able to put a lot of time in the saddle Re it was the, the, the dur during the week rides were really it was really just about jumping on the bike as soon as, as soon as I got up. And, and as long as I did that, it was pretty easy to fit to, to my schedule.
[00:17:55] Craig Dalton: When you were riding outdoors, were you always riding fully loaded?
[00:18:00] Nick Marzano: No there, that really came closer to the like a month before, maybe a month and a half before there were a bunch of fully loaded ride.
[00:18:08] Craig Dalton: Yeah, so to give the listener some perspective and it doesn't have to be precise, but when your bike is not loaded, how much did it weigh? And when you had your full tour divide kit on it, how much did it weigh?
[00:18:21] Nick Marzano: So I know it's it's about 21 pounds with nothing else on it. No water, just dry weight with everything on it. I'm estimating also dry weight. No, not counting water. Based on I use air table to kind of just roll up the extra gear that I'm I'm putting on there. I think it was somewhere in the 45 pound range.
Dry. Yeah.
[00:18:41] Craig Dalton: got it. And as you're thinking about the tour divide, and you're starting on the start line in Canada, what type of mentality did you have with respect to sleep? Obviously, like there's all different ways of going about this and, and it may have very well evolved and changed along the way, but I'm curious as you mapped out, like what your experience was gonna look like I imagine you had a number of days goal in mind.
How did that play out? And what was your thought process around. How much you were gonna sleep.
[00:19:12] Nick Marzano: Yeah, I knew early on. So I had, I, I wanted to experience one of the, the, the big things I hadn't done, I'd ridden through the night, I'd ridden into like midnight 1:00 AM on the trans Virginia, five 50, but I'd never gotten through the night to see if I was capable of that. What does that feel like? And I used that training ride that rockstar gravel two 50, you know, one of my goals was I may not be competitive in this sort of way, but I'm gonna ride through the night.
And I, I did it in, you know, a full push. In like a day and a half, which felt, you know, rough. But I it also didn't feel that bad. I knew, I knew that weapon was there if I wanted to use it. But the tort divide, you know, is a very different race than a 250 mile race. So I knew I wouldn't pull that out unless I was feeling awesome in the third week.
And my goal was somewhere between. December before I started training, it was 23 days is what I put in the, the initial sign up. And by the end of that training, I, I was getting a little cocky and had, had posted 19 days as my goal on track leaders. I never, the like the sleep, the sleep thing was always going to be somewhere in the four to six hour mark for the majority of the race.
[00:20:21] Craig Dalton: Okay.
[00:20:22] Nick Marzano: And I can talk, I'm glad to talk about sleep system. I think that's kind of a lesson learned on that if you want, but yeah, that was the expectation was I wasn't going to crush myself on sleep deprivation and then you know, blow up early on and, and not be, I mean, finishing the race was so much more important than finishing the race in 19.
[00:20:40] Craig Dalton: Yep. And so with that mindset around six hours of sleep a day or an evening were you riding that whole time other than resupply and things like that? Or is that sort of saying like, I'm gonna ride, I'm gonna stop and have a lunch. I'm gonna maybe take a nap. I'm gonna ride some more. How did, how did you kind of think about it?
[00:20:58] Nick Marzano: it. So the way that I thought about it, oh, well, see, like there were days where this, this thinking didn't play out, but the way I thought of it was I'm gonna ride when I'm not resupplying and when I'm not sleeping. And it was when I looked back at my my data, it, it was more in the like four to five hours a night sort of range.
Where that sort of, where that changed is I had a, we, I took a knee for a day as a lot of rider did just before getting into seal lake, there was a big peak Richmond peak that already had one to two feet of snow pack on it. And a, as some of your listeners may have read if they were keeping up with the tour divide, the first few days in Canada, they got hit with another major snowstorm.
A lot of riders were airlifted. I came into, into the other side of Richmond peak, a little town called con Montana, soaking wet, and most of my kit was wet. So I took a day because I didn't feel comfortable going up in a snowstorm. So that was a complete day off the bike. Fill out rest. And then there was another day, right around Pinedale, which is about halfway through the race famously where you dump your bear spray, where you're out of grizzly country.
Just before Pinedale, I had kind of, I hit a low point and I talked about that a little bit with that was right around the time I talked to Patrick at bikes or death and considered taking an entire other day off the bike and basically taking myself out of race mode entirely. I didn't, but I took some shorter days.
and then the closer I got to, you know, once I hit Colorado got into New Mexico, I really found my stride again and was hitting some like 1 50, 200 mile days, which was kind of my expectation going in that I was gonna try to pound like one 50 to 200 a day resupply real quick and then, and then head to bed.
So I deviated from that for sure. And it was, it, it was rejuvenating. And I, you know, if I, if I needed to take that time, I needed to take. but that, that was certainly not the plan going into it.
[00:22:52] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So impressive. Stepping back for a second. I mean, we think about registering for an event, you know, like an SBT, gravel, or an Unbound, and there's a lottery and you pay an entrance fee. Why don't you talk about what it's like to, to enter toward divide and what it actually means?
[00:23:10] Nick Marzano: Yeah. It's so, it's if you've never done a grand apart before The concept is, and, and this is how the trans Virginia five 50 is as well. The concept is that there is a course director and they're going to define the rules and they'll give you more or less information. David with the trans Virginia does an incredible job of outlining what a six day, nine day, 12 day touring pace looks like and what resupply looks like.
He's just, he, he, you know, reviews the course each year. He's extremely involved in that the tort divide Is similar in that it's a grand depart where they provide the course, they provide the track leaders link. Matt and Scott I think founded track leaders. And, and so they, they provide the, the tracking, but really, I think I read in the New York times article that Matt Lee calls himself, the chief disorganize or something like that as opposed to the course director they.
They're not there to monitor folks along the route. They're not there's, you know, there's obviously no resupply, it's self supported. And you don't really get any information until we got the course maybe a week before. So you sign up on a Google form you, which is your letter of intent basically.
And then it's radio silence until, until that GPX file drops. In this case a week before, because they had a lot of detouring to, to figure out with those fires.
[00:24:31] Craig Dalton: And is that, is that why you're given the GPS file? Obviously like the root in general is known from. What was it? The the, the mountain bike divide route is the general scope of the route. But that GPX file is, Hey, here's the current up to date thing on what passes are passable, where there's fires, where there's detours.
[00:24:51] Nick Marzano: Yeah. So there is the, and there's a lot of confusion on this, by the way, too. There were some riders who didn't have the, the GPX file that you need to from. It's it's posted on, on a very old forum on bike packing.net. It gets reposted into Facebook and linked. There's not, there's not necessarily an email that goes out to all of the folks who signed up on that Google forum.
So you really have to be engaged in the community on Facebook and the conversation to even find the file. But it's based on the great divide mountain bike. Which was established by the adventure cycling association, you know, decades ago as a touring route and adapted for racing, you know, in the, in the early odds, late nineties.
So even without the Rero for the fires there are a couple of changes that Matt Lee who's the primary course director that he's made over the years to add more challenge. There's. Infamous section early on called Coco claims, which you hit on day one, which is like a six mile section where you are just pushing your bike up boulders at what feels like a 45 degree angle for six miles five miles that is not anywhere on the ACA map.
And there are a couple of changes like that here and there. So it is it's distinct, but certainly inspired by and matches up with a large portion of the GD.
[00:26:15] Craig Dalton: Yeah, and I know there's a lot of information out there on the internet and people have published guides and whatnot. How researched were you in advance about how you were gonna structure your days and is it confusing on where you're gonna resupply? Are there a lot of challenges there? How much of it do you think you had a handle on versus not when you showed.
[00:26:36] Nick Marzano: Man. So there. There are so many more. I can't imagine racing this back when Matt, Matt Lee and, and others were, you know, if you, if you watch the old ride the divide documentary, which I think is on Amazon prime, I, I just, I bought the DVD cuz I, I want to have a hard copy. I can't imagine what that was like these days there are.
Some really good resources online. There's a good community of people who have of veterans who are sharing resupply. So you can start to piece things together. What was still overwhelming. I was knowing what it looks like when, when boots hit the ground. Every time I've tried to put together an itinerary, it falls apart on day one because I either feel stronger or I run into.
You know, I didn't know how long it would take to make it through some of these snowy sections. You can look at the snow pack layer and try to estimate that and set a target for where you want to get to. But when you put boots on the ground all of that can change. So my approach, which I, I would adapt a little bit if I did this again and, and maybe do a little bit more planning and research was to plan in the morning, set a target in the morning, using the tools that I had and, and.
Try to piece together where resupply was going to be day to day, rather than it just felt too overwhelming to try to map the map out. A plan early on that I had had a good feeling I would diverge from immediately.
[00:27:58] Craig Dalton: What were some of those tools at your disposal? Obviously you're looking at a map. What kind of apps were you using and were, were other writers sharing information back saying, oh, it took me eight hours to get up this pass.
[00:28:10] Nick Marzano: Yeah, that, I mean, that's where it gets tricky because you're, you really shouldn't be. But I think it, it happens for sure. And you can watch track one of the, the tools that is sort of available to everyone. So within the rules is you can look at track leaders and see. Oh, this person was moving at 15 miles an hour, and then they were moving at two miles an hour for about three hours over this pass.
So that probably means hike a bike.
[00:28:33] Craig Dalton: So are you looking at that in real time? So say you're approaching a pass. Obviously you're aware that it's a 3000 foot climb or whatever. Are you then taking a moment and saying, gosh, well, I should do a little research to see are people crawling up this thing or are people riding?
[00:28:46] Nick Marzano: yeah, in some cases for sure. Yeah. And that's kind of the, the benefit, one of the benefits of being. Mid pack or, you know, a little bit behind the, the leaders is if, if so Sahi is, is struggling at three miles an hour going across something, you know, it's pretty gnarly and, and probably hike a bike. And so you can zoom in on track leaders to their history and see those dots get closer together.
And that was one tool, the other tools. So the ACA does have a great map. An app that has the map with a lot of resupply information on it. And that was super useful. You just need to be really aware of where that actually lines up with the official race route and not some folks navigated with that app and were relegated because they, they missed some of the, the unique turnoffs that Matthew Lee is built in.
The other tools there's, there's a number of guides from a website called one of. Where they, they list resupply. He actually provided some updates to us like a week before, or a couple of days before, once he got the the updated course from from Matthew Lee. So those resources were great.
And then there, there were some things that writers share on the Facebook community ahead of time, where people have built out elevation profiles that are really useful. You can kind of get a sense Chris Ellison showed up. I think that was his name showed up at the, at, at the Y w C a in BAMF with these laminated elevation profile maps that also had the terrain type, which you, I couldn't find anywhere else.
So you could see when Jeep track was coming up, because that's always going to take you longer than you think it's always gonna be mud or snow. That was really helpful in kind of planning. How fast miles would go? Nothing, nothing really in one place. If this sounds like a hodgepodge, it really was like, let me take a look at the,
[00:30:30] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:30:30] Nick Marzano: The surface type.
Let me take a look at the elevation. Let me take a look at the, you know, whatever the Gaia snow layer looks like. and let me take a look at track leaders and then piecing all of that together. You get a sense for where you could potentially make it that day.
[00:30:43] Craig Dalton: It's unquestionable that you just need to continue to be adaptable along the way. And, and, and read the tea leaves, honestly, as to what's going on, you experience so many dramatic bits of weather in the north part of the country, along the way that you couldn't have expected going in,
[00:30:58] Nick Marzano: Yeah, it was intense.
[00:31:00] Craig Dalton: were you using then sort of a, an iPhone or a mobile phone plus a GPS computer on your bike?
[00:31:06] Nick Marzano: yeah, I was following the purple line on my ere, so just, I used like really simple ere 22 X. For most of the navigation and then I had it loaded on ride with GPS as well. If I just needed more detail or, or wanted to make sure I didn't miss turns that were coming up, I
[00:31:21] Craig Dalton: I've always read that the tour divide riders tend to favor that eTrex battery powered, old style GPS device versus the bike computer kind of style.
[00:31:31] Nick Marzano: Yeah. Some people seemed to get along with the bike computer. No problem. I didn't have. A dynamo hub that it lit my my headlamp really well, but I didn't really trust it to charge anything. It was a little older and had a lot of miles on it and just seemed to I didn't rely on it for, for too much battery management.
So I was glad to have the, even though it's it's wasteful, but I was glad to have a, you know, a bunch of spare double A's that I could just throw in the etre.
[00:31:57] Craig Dalton: Yeah. For those of you who don't know, dynamo hub actually generates. And stores electricity. Right. And can power something like your headlamp?
[00:32:06] Nick Marzano: Yeah, it generates it. I don't think too many of them store it, but it will you know, you can throw power to a headlamp and then, or a a transformer is probably the wrong word converter and use it to charge up a, a cash battery as well. A, a battery bank, power bank. As you go, so during the day you could be charging the bank and then you could flip a switch and have your light on as long as you're going fast enough for that light to be, to be powered.
[00:32:28] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I've heard sometimes going uphill. It doesn't actually generate enough to really shine the way.
[00:32:34] Nick Marzano: Yeah. I have a sine wave beacon, which I love because it has the, the converter right in it. So. On on another bike where I also have a, a dynamo in my gravel bike, it does charge my cash battery really well during the day. And then I can plug the cash battery into the, to the beacon and power it from that.
And it, it SAPs so little energy that I can charge my phone on it as well. So, but yeah, if you're going less than like five miles an hour or so, you're gonna have kind of a strobe light effect until you, until you build up a little.
[00:33:06] Craig Dalton: So let's jump over to that grand depart moment. Where is that? And what was the feeling like at that point? Sounds like you had a couple buddies that were there at the start line with you.
[00:33:17] Nick Marzano: Yeah, that was really beautiful. It was, it was really cool to be there with, I mean, first of all, bam is, you know, you bike packing is a, is a niche sport. And to be in a place where so many people who, you know, are ready to talk gear who have been investing as much time and energy into this Are are all lining up together and you're running into them at dinner was really exciting.
But then to have a group of five, five of us from the east coast who had trained together, been on rides together was really cool. We lined up at the w or Y WCA in BMF, which is the traditional starting point and it was really subdued. There was not. Presentation like Matt Lee doesn't show up.
There's not a course director sendoff. We had instructions to go off in waves of about 15, I think which is different than past years where it's just, it's a grand apart. Everybody heads out at the same time. And the reason for that was that Canada parks was a little, they, they were getting a little They were advising Matt Lee that something needed to happen because of the number of people who were showing up 170 people were, were signed up and, and they were a little nervous about 170 people departing.
So I think we're doing waves for the foreseeable future with tour divide. And it seemed to work really well. Nobody was there flagging us off. It was just sort of, you know, we would check and say, is it, is it time? Is it seven 20? All right. We're going everybody. And everybody. Left and, and that was it. It was the start and finish are.
So anti-climatic that it's, it's you know, it kind of underscores what bike packing is all about. We're all out there to ride our own race and have, you know, an experience that's inevitably gonna be really personal. And I love that about the sort of subdued start and finish of Tor divide, especially, but a lot of, a lot of races you'll finish in the middle of the night and nobody will, nobody will be around to to welcome you in.
And there's something special about that. As fun as, you know, finish lines of at parties at big gravel races can be a lot of fun too.
[00:35:14] Craig Dalton: Did you have an expectation of riding with some of the members of your crew? Or was it clear that you guys were gonna be on different paces?
[00:35:20] Nick Marzano: Yeah, this is where I don't, I don't know if not that I was in any sort of contention. I don't know if I'll relegate myself for this, cuz this rule is kind of unclear you can't draft for sure. And there was no drafting. But you know, we come from the east coast. We don't have Grizzlies out here and none of us were scared out of our, out of our you know, mountain bike shoes.
But we. We're gonna ride. I was gonna ride together with one or two of them through grizzly country and ended up riding with, with David Landis for a large portion of it. And riding together, didn't always look like riding side by side. We would end up at the same place. Often start from the same place.
He, he, for a couple of days was on a middle of the day nap schedule and I I'm not a napper, so he would. Roll off to the side of the road and then catch up with me a little bit later. But yeah, grizzly country, it was nice to have just that conversation prevents you from having to yell hay, bear all the time as you're going through those areas.
[00:36:16] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that makes sense. I gotta imagine it's. Yeah, it's next to impossible to imagine that over that distance, you're gonna feel the same. Throughout the day and nights and wanna ride at the same pace. Even there, like you said, you may end up in the same places.
[00:36:31] Nick Marzano: Yeah. Having like I had explicit conversations with Tim who we started. We, we did sort of our pre ride together and we were we're supposedly, we were like on the same pace we had 19 day, 20 day goals and he, he changed up his pace pretty soon wanted to ride sort of a different race, but we had had an explicit conversation early on.
We're each gonna ride our own race and if it works to ride together, great, if not, we'll yell hay, bear a lot, and we'll, we'll figure it out. David, who is just an incredibly strong rider. And I, I didn't think I was gonna be able to keep up with, I was able to keep up with him. And so that was really cool for me.
It was, it was, it worked out, but we also had an explicit conversation. At breakfast one morning, we were like, Hey, you know, if you need to take off or, or if you're worried about what it looks like for us to be riding next to each other it's probably more of a concern. If you're at the front, it might look like you're drafting on track leaders.
But more importantly for each of our own races, like, you know, I get it. If you need to take off, if you're feeling really good and you need to take off, or you're gonna, you're gonna do an overnight push an overnight. And I can't do that. You ride your race and it just worked out.
[00:37:37] Craig Dalton: Let's paint the picture of what, what happens at night when it's time to lay your head down?
[00:37:43] Nick Marzano: Yeah, well, so it, it involved more motels this year than I than I had planned for, for sure.
[00:37:50] Craig Dalton: I, I mean, I, I can't blame you and a couple long bike trips that I've done, like having a night in a hotel in the middle just meant all the difference in the world. It just felt so refreshed.
[00:38:00] Nick Marzano: Yeah, I knew it would be somewhere on like maybe 40% it's in bear country. If you don't find a pit toilet and there's, you know, some of the motels are pretty affordable. It's refreshing after a 200 mile day to just get four hours in a bed. And I think it did help with saddle sores were not, were not a huge issue.
They, you know, But yeah, I mean the, the night basically looked like rolling in at 11, 12, sometimes two or 3:00 AM to a motel or rolling out my B and. Quick. I mean, it's, it's resupply. It is prep your stuff, and I got better at this. As we went along, hit a resupply cram as many calories as you can try to cram some protein in there as well.
Try to drink as much as you can, so you don't go to bed dehydrated or wake up even more dehydrated. Figure out what your sleep situation is. If it's Bing down or if it's grabbing a motel, do that very quickly and then make a plan for tomorrow. And fall asleep as quickly as you can, so you can maximize that time.
So that is really the tiring part of, I like the riding certainly physically exhausts you and, and makes that part harder. But the time management of making sure, as soon as you're off the bike, you do those sort of things. Is that wears on you after three weeks? For sure. I can't imagine. I mean, it gives me such a greater appreciation for Sophie on and Actually a member of our Virginia sort of crew Abe Kaufman finished fourth overall first American, like these are folks who are doing that at a much higher level than I was even doing that for sure.
And, and it's still exhausting. Like just, you need to be on as soon as you get off the bike and make sure that you're maximizing that time. And then you wake up and throw your stuff on. Try not to Dole too much and, and get right back out.
[00:39:47] Craig Dalton: How concerned were you about your busy situation and in terms of warmth when you're in the Northern part of the country?
[00:39:54] Nick Marzano: Warmth, not at all. It was more about the wet. I would take a tent if I went again and oddly, you know, David had sort of the opposite reflection. He brought a tent and, and would've preferred prefer to bivy. But I think I would've been a little bit bolder camping out in some of the wetter areas.
If I had had something a little more substantial but my B would let water in if it was more than a little sprinkle and then my down sleeping bag would be wet and then I would be cold and, and wet. And that's not a good recipe.
[00:40:23] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Did you have days where you were concerned about where you were gonna lay your head that night?
[00:40:31] Nick Marzano: Not not completely. I mean, the nice, the nice thing about the root is that there are a lot of, there are a couple of, of, of tricky sections, but really if you, if you have a B, I didn't get into a bad spot where I was, I was really worried. And I had an emergency plan. I mean, I had a ground cloth wi with me that if, if I was really caught out in a storm, I could cover myself with that, get into some dry clothes, try to get under a tree.
Or at the very least find, find some sort of awning or overhang. So I never got into a, a tricky situation with that. I think I just think a tent would've been more comfortable.
[00:41:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah, it sounds like, I mean, there's so many unknowns yet, so much information out there that you just try to, I imagine you just try to fill your head with as much information as possible. So as we were talking about before each morning, you can say, okay, I'm in this location, kind of think I can get to here.
I kind of know there's a resupply there. I kind of know there's a place where I can get some shelter and then just keep plowing forward.
[00:41:35] Nick Marzano: Right. Yeah. And, and you'll make mistakes on that. I, I certainly did. We picked We both got into Del Norte, Colorado around the same time and David was like, I'm gonna get a motel. And I'm like, all right, well, I heard that there's free camping in the park. And I feel like I'm doing too many motels, so I'm gonna go camp in the park.
He's like, all right, let's go camp in the park. So he was, we were, we were gonna set up a camp there together. He's got a tent so he could have broken the tent out. But I was, I was like, look at, I'm gonna go sleep under this band shell up here. It was threatening to rain. So it was like that, that looks like, you know, we could have slept, I could have rolled out my B in the toilet nearby and probably been fine.
But the band shell looked like plush digs. So we went for it and around one 30 apparently this is like, well known to veterans and we are not the first to get literally hosed by, by this thought process. We the park sprinklers go off at, at one 30 in the morning. And completely. So we were protected from rain from above, but we were not protected from these fire hose, industrial sprinklers that went off at one 30 in the morning, soaking us with what felt like just heavy water
I mean, it was, I don't know if there was fertilizer in it or what it was, but it was not pleasant and we spent a lot of time drying out after that. So yeah, things didn't always, didn't always work out as planned, but they. Most of the time, if you have the right info going in and you've, you've prepared enough and you know, what your, what your limits are, which I think I do.
And also how, you know, how far I can push them. You can get yourself to a, you know, to a good spot to sleep almost every night.
[00:43:10] Craig Dalton: That's an amazing story. How concerning is water supply along the.
[00:43:15] Nick Marzano: There are a couple of sections where it's you should bring more than two liters. Most, most of the root I would be fine with two liters on my fork. Two, one liters on my fork. And then a filter along the way. And a lot of the mountain passes. You would just, it, it would be flush with water. Couple of sections towards.
Especially in New Mexico where resupply and running water are a little rough. The basin is famously the, the Wyoming, the great basin in Wyoming is a nice I forget how long the stretch is, but it's over a hundred miles where you're not gonna find resupply and there's no running water in a, a big geographic basin.
And. So I just had a, I had a bladder, a three liter bladder that I would fill maybe halfway and have a couple of extra liters for those sections.
[00:44:02] Craig Dalton: Is that a bladder that you're going into your frame bag, that, that massive bladder.
[00:44:06] Nick Marzano: Yep. I just threw, just threw it in my frame bag and then would take it out and use it to refill the, the liters on the fork.
[00:44:12] Craig Dalton: Were you generally avoiding carrying anything on your back?
[00:44:17] Nick Marzano: Yeah. Yeah. Some people do the hydration thing. I've just. I wasn't sure how my back would react over three weeks with a couple of extra pounds on it. So, I've avoided it, but I also haven't tried it before, so it's, you know, certainly a solution. I saw a lot of writers using
[00:44:33] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. I think it would be concerning just putting any extra weight on your back, given how much torture I'll put it, your back may take along the way.
[00:44:41] Nick Marzano: Yeah, for sure.
[00:44:43] Craig Dalton: What are some of the highlights along the way? I don't know what the best way to organize. This is such a long event, but maybe state by state, some of the things you enjoyed and loved about the.
[00:44:53] Nick Marzano: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Thinking about some of the highlights was a lot of fun earlier today where you, you told me you might might throw that one at me. And it was nice going, going back through those memories. I think the snow snowy passes were really challenging. But it was also beautiful. And there were two in particular red Meadows pass.
I hit midday where a couple of the passes early on. I had hit, I mean, I went over the pass just before the American border at, at 1:30 AM. And so that was kind of, that was kind of scary. I was sort of falling asleep on my bars as I was hiking through it. Didn't wanna fall asleep in, in the middle of a, a snowy mountain.
Red Meadows. My breaks had been cashed early that morning. I didn't have replacement breaks. I had to make it, you know, a hundred miles to white fish to get a, get to a bike shop. And so walking over a mountain pass was like, I, I no breaks, no problem. Right. I, nobody needs breaks when you're hiking your bike over.
Six miles of, of snow. And it was midday. It was warm. I was by myself at this point, David was, was behind or ahead I think, and I threw, I threw some like eighties music on and, and just some, some like dance music. And had a party just sort of dancing myself down, down the mountain to music probably expending like way too much energy, but sort of just shuffling my bike down and, and having a blast.
Then Kirsten ended up. So are you, are you familiar with Kirsten at, at brush mountain lodge? And so she is She is famous within the Tor of divide and, and her brush mountain lodge is like the place that you hit after the basin, where you can get, you know, she has a pizza oven, it sort of, pay as you wish.
You can stay there if, if you want. But it becomes sort of this VOR. She calls it the vortex where people it's just so nice to. To hang out and it, it it's sort of like the Bermuda triangle, like racers struggle to get out of it. And she had said a few months before the race started, Hey, you know, we're taking some time.
I'm not gonna be there this year. Really sorry. But my family needs to, we're gonna do some strategic planning and reset where we're at. So I'll have, you know, maybe vending machines there I'll have, I'll have water for you, but you're not gonna get the full treatment this year. And that was kind of a.
You know, a bummer for everyone understanding that she's gotta take time for herself, but is such a you know, she's such a piece of, of, of the tour divide lore, and, and she's a legend. So I showed up there and a bunch of racers were hanging out. It looked like they were eating pizza. I was like, what is happening here?
This looks, if I step back in time and Kirsten was there because. For whatever. There, there was a a rainbow family gathering nearby that sort of forced her hand, somebody needed to staff this, this lodge just outside of Steamboat. So it was great. I got to chat with her. It was a bit of a vortex.
I hung out for three hours there with a couple of other riders who I hadn't had a chance to catch up with. And then so that was, that was beautiful. The other, do you have time for, for two more highlights? How's
[00:47:49] Craig Dalton: more highlights. Let's do it.
[00:47:51] Nick Marzano: So the, before we hit the, we got, we got doused with those sprinklers in Del Norte.
I had had this is a lowlight highlight. I had had a great day trying to, to breeze into Del Norte after I think 153 miles was the full. And right around right around the one 40 mark it always seemed like the last 10 to 14 miles of the day would be the hardest and they would sneak up on you.
I hit Jeep track. That was Sandy. It was dark. And I didn't think I was gonna make the gas station resupply and was like outta food. I was outta water. I was done. There was nothing else open in Del Norte apart from this gas station. Pushed through all of that you know, slogged through that hit gravel was just burning at 17, 18 miles an hour down this, this gravel path to get into Del Norte in the last couple of miles, look at at Google maps and it's closed early.
It, you know, according to the resupply, it should be open an hour later. Google says it's closed. So I kind of, you know, the wind goes outta my sales. That was gonna make it with like half an hour spare. But I keep pushing and come to find it's the lights are still on. It was, the Google was wrong. It was still open.
So that was, that was beautiful. The, the last one I had my first major mechanical right out of, outside of lake abike, which is about 30 miles outside of Santa Fe and the route doesn't go through Santa Fe. Hub froze up and I just couldn't get my hub to grab. It was, it was grabbing every, you know, three or four pedal strokes, but I was just spinning out other than that.
And so I could either try to like limp 150 miles to the next to silver city, which was probably more than 150 at that point. Or I could go off route and take time that I I would just lose trying to get down to Santa Fe. And I, I picked getting down to Santa Fe hitch hiked, which is allowed once you're off route, you can, for a mechanical, you can, you can take motorized support.
Got picked up almost immediately by two incredibly kind, like one after the other hitch hitchhiker or drivers had great conversations with them. Got dropped off at the bike shop bike shop, fixed me up in two hours. I'm usually not this bold, but I went up, I had had, I'd been having good conversation with all of the guys down at mellow Velo bikes in Santa Fe and, and went up to the owner was like, Hey, I have to ask.
I, you know, I wouldn't be this forward usually, but any, any chance you could gimme a ride back an hour north of here to where I left off so I can get some more miles in today. And he looked at me and he was. I was already thinking about it. Let me, you know, he gave one of his employees his, his keys and got me back up there.
And the whole episode start to finish lost me five and a half hours, which is just mind blowing and these, these races. And I'll, I know I can, I can go on for a while, but the, these races can be Self supported. I don't think means self isolating and there can be kind of this mentality that we're all sort of Jeremiah Johnson's out there, but meeting people and having experiences like that along the route which I hope to pay forward in my life after that is just, that is one of the most meaningful parts of it.
And that was probably, you know, went from a mechanical. That was a huge bummer and, and kind of put me into problem solving mode. When I wanted to just be in ride mode. But it turned into one of the best days of the whole trip. Because you know, the, there were, there were five people out there between the, the, the hitchhiker folks and, and mellow Velo who were absolutely like, didn't hesitate to help someone out.
And that was, that was, that was really cool.
[00:51:34] Craig Dalton: Yeah, such a special memory. And it's funny, I I've heard a couple other people mention that just. Leaving the tour divide with that notion that paying it forward in life is important because as you've just described, you had this moment, which could have been really shitty. Like it's not life ending or life threatening, but you could have spent 24 hours trying to get your stuff sorted out.
And the fact that strangers helped you got you to a bike shop. The bike shop realized what you were doing realized, Hey, two hours out of their day out and back to get you back on. It's gonna mean the world to you and, and not much to them. And I'm sure they have the similar alternative side of that memory.
Like I just did someone a solid and it probably felt good to them as well.
[00:52:19] Nick Marzano: For sure.
[00:52:20] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So, I mean, we could go on and on it's it's the tour divide has always been fascinating to me for all the reasons you've described along the way. It just sounds like this epic life adventure. That is gonna unfold as it unfolds.
It's gonna be different every year. I know you guys experienced a lot of rough weather up in the early parts of the race in the north, getting outta Canada and to persevere through that and know that, Hey, you're gonna be on your bike for 21 days or whatever it amounted to, and you're gonna have good days and bad days.
But the important thing is to just keep forward.
[00:52:55] Nick Marzano: Yeah, that is, you know, JP to very repeats that a lot. If you, if you follow him on, on Instagram or Facebook, that's his, his motto. And I don't know if he coined this or it's or got it elsewhere, but yeah, riding forward, just whatever, however, you're feeling, jump on your bike. I think I, it wasn't so much life changing as, as affirming in a lot of ways.
And one of them is, is that, that there is, there is so much mutability in. The weather in your attitude in, and if you can make as a principle that you just jump on your bike and don't wait for the good times to happen, but know that they will be there, deal with, if the train is tough right now, it's tough right now.
It will be good. Later if it's good right now, don't set up an expectation that it will be good at mile at the, you know, the last 14 miles of the day, because oddly, those are always the hardest. It will be tough later. And if you can still jump on your bike and just ride forward regardless. And I didn't, you know, I wasn't perfect at that.
I, like I said, in Pinedale, I took a day where I had to really think whether I wanted to keep riding forward. , but I hope that what you get out of this, what I get out of it hopefully is that I can reflect on that. And in moments where I'm struggling to ride forward in life in, in certain ways that I can, you know, return back from this super selfish, selfish endeavor, right.
Where I'm spending a lot of money and time on myself and come back ready to like ride forward for others, pay it forward for others. And, and. You hope that all that time reflecting over three weeks on, on how you responded to those challenges can translate into something for for your return to society, to normal society.
[00:54:41] Craig Dalton: Nick, I can't think of a better sentiment to end on. Amazing. I appreciate so much you sharing the story with me. As I said, opening up in this conversation offline. I hope this serves as a little archive of your experience and I, I know you got a little bit of joy outta reflecting on what some of those high points were.
So thanks again. It means a lot that you shared their story with me.
[00:55:02] Nick Marzano: Yeah, thank you for the opportunity, Craig. It's been great, great meeting you and getting to talk to you.
[00:55:06] Craig Dalton: Cheers.
Yeah. So that's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast, chapeau to Nick for that amazing accomplishment on the tour divide. I have to say every time I talked to someone about that route, I get more and more excited about dreaming to do it someday and myself. Huge. Thanks to our friends attract travel. I really hope you can join me in Gerona in November on the November six.
Departure of the Jarana gravel bike tour. Simply visit Trek, travel.com. And search for a drone, a gravel bike tour. And remember to mention the podcast as you'll get a free handlebar bag. With your registration. If you're looking to connect with me or have any questions.
Feel free to join the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. Nick is actually an active member of the ridership. So I'm sure if you have any follow-up questions for him on the tour divide, he'd be happy to respond. And if you have any questions about this gravel bike tour that we're doing in November with track, feel free to hit me up directly.
I'm really looking forward to meeting some of you guys and girls out there this year has been far too long since we've gotten together. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week Randall sits down with Robert Duran from Encinitas, CA. Robert’s inspiring story fighting pancreatic cancer while never losing his community and cycling spirit is lesson to us all to continue pedaling forward in life.
Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (promo code: thegravelride)
Robert's Links:
https://pancan.org
https://robertduranduran.com
https://www.pancan.org/stories/not-just-a-patient-a-survivor/https://youtu.be/fS9Q1BT8Za0
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Robert Duran[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week, I'm handing the microphone off to my co-host Randall Jacobs for an interview with Robert Duran Robert's of four times stage four, metastatic pancreatic cancer survivor. And the cyclist. I think his story is going to be an inspiration to anyone listening. Robert's been through the ringer, but never lets it get him down.
He's out there every week, riding his bike, regardless of whether he's getting chemotherapy treatments. Or some experimental drug he's pioneering for the benefit of all those who suffer from pancreatic cancer.
As a cancer survivor myself, I really enjoyed hearing about Robert's journey. I certainly drew some parallels to my own experience many years ago.
I've included some links in the show notes for how you can learn more about Robert's journey. And a fundraising link for his pan can purple stride campaign. He was the number one individual fundraiser and his teams have garnered over $31,000 in donations for pancreatic cancer research.
I hope you'll take a moment after learning Robert's story and donates to his fundraising campaign. Before we jump into rental's conversation with robert i need to thank this week sponsor hammerhead and the hammerhead Karu to computer
The hammerhead crew too, is the most advanced GPS cycling computer available today with industry leading mapping navigation and route capabilities that set it apart from other GPS options. Free global maps with points of interest, include things like cafes and campsite means you can explore with confidence and flexibility on the go.
I've had a bit of a funky schedule the last few weeks and only had about an hour or so to ride when I've been heading out. And I've really wanted to do something new here in mill valley
I've been exploring some of the lesser known fire roads and how they connect to the various paved road neighborhoods in the hillsides, across from my house. And I've been using the crew two's mapping feature, which I've always appreciated having that color screen and the ability to kind of pinch and zoom and move around.
Has been instrumental in me unlocking a few new pathways through mill valley, which has been a lot of fun. I remember at one point in my first ride thinking about exploring and I was about to pull out my phone to use that big screen, to find the road in the trail and how they connected. And I remembered the hammerheads got that same kind of screen resolution as a mobile phone.
So I was able to kind of pinch in, find the trail where it was going to connect and navigate through this neighborhood. I've never been in, it was a lot of fun. And while it wasn't the purest of pure gravel rides, it was a real fun adventure for me when I only had a small amount of time.
As I've said before. Hammerheads mapping functionality is really where one of the areas where it shines big time for me, I remember in the original device, that was what blew me away. And now that they've reduced the footprint in the size of the device. It's spot on exactly what you need. You know, you can customize it as much as you want in terms of what's on the screen.
You can set up as many different swipeable screens as you like. It also has the buttons on the side. So if you've got a glove that doesn't have any capacitive touch to it, You can still navigate. Through your hammerhead.
I encourage you to give the hammer head to look. It was Nanda, bicycling magazines. Editor's choice award for GPS cycling computers the last two years, and continues to collect accolades from many more people beyond myself. For a limited time, our listeners can get a free heart rate monitor with the purchase of our hammer. Head to computer, simply visit hammerhead.io right now and use the code, the gravel ride at checkout to get yours today. This is an exclusive limited time offer only for my podcast listeners.
So don't forget to use that promo code, the gravel ride, and that's a free heart rate monitor with the purchase of the hammerhead crew to go to hammerhead.io, add both items to your cart, insert that promo code, the gravel ride. And the price of the heart rate monitor will disappear.
Big. Thanks to hammerhead for continuing to sponsor the show. And with that, let's hand the mic over to Randall and his conversation with Robert Duran.
[00:04:37] Randall R. Jacobs: Robert Duran, welcome to the podcast.
[00:04:40] Robert Duran: Thank you, Randall. How are you?
[00:04:41] Randall R. Jacobs: I'm doing well. I'm really glad to be finally having this conversation. You're somebody who I've had the pleasure of interacting with in a couple of different forums. So far, both as one of our riders and then as a member of the, the ridership community. And as I've gotten to know your story, I've just found it really compelling.
And I thought it'd be a, a great story to tell here on the pod. So thanks for coming on.
[00:05:02] Robert Duran: Thanks for asking me finally get a chance to tell my story that that I'd been asked to tell over and over again for the past eight years, but,
[00:05:09] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah.
[00:05:10] Robert Duran: glad I'm here.
[00:05:11] Randall R. Jacobs: yeah, I would imagine it gets it gets repetitive. You have kind of your, your canned responses or what have you, and, and, you know, today we'll just have a, have a conversation about, Who you are and how you got here. And maybe we can just start with just give us a little bit of background about yourself both in a general sense.
And in terms of your relationship with the bike.
[00:05:31] Robert Duran: Great. Let's, let's do this. I, I think I'll start top down. I think bottom line is let's see, I'm an old guy. Yeah, it's, it's really funny. I'll, I'll back into that later, but yeah. I I've, I, I live here in Encinitas and I've been here for about 16 years now, but I lived all over the world.
My dad was in the United States Navy. He joined the Navy to escape from the Philippines. Know the country had invaded. His country in his village and did horrible things when he was child. So he knew he needed to get out to live in a better place. So he made his way to the United States and he had my two sisters and myself, I'm the middle child.
And and so basically I, basically was Had a very interesting childhood, but through all that and that's another story by the way. I I lived here in two thou. I got here in 2004. From the bay area, I lived in the bay area and I was doing a lot of.com, a lot of high tech stuff, and it was great, but I left the bay area to move to the beach, to just have more of a quiet, relaxing lifestyle.
But I still hung onto technology. But it was a good trade off. Right. So I got married, had two kids. And then roughly, I would say 10 years later, I was diagnosed with my terminal disease and I've been living ever since, and it's been eight years now. So that's kind of like me as far as you know, the beginning so we can take it wherever you want to, because this could be a really, really long story.
[00:07:09] Randall R. Jacobs: Sure. Yeah. And so this your diagnosis, what year was that?
[00:07:14] Robert Duran: 2014 It was 2014. A matter of fact the thing that I love the most is is what helped the diagnosis. I was losing weight and I had indigestion and I had bouts with nausea once a week or so this was roughly late 2013. And whenever I would overindulge. Food, so to speak. I would feel a little bit of heartburn, little pain in my stomach, and I thought, well, maybe it was too much habanero I live in San Diego.
They, they make really good breakfast burritos, you know? And and and so I, I just did what the normal person would do. Just go to two the pharmacy and just get semantic acids and whatnot, and didn't work. Sometimes it would get better, but it would progress. So one, one day a week I would feel nauseous and then it would go two times a week and it would go three times a week.
And so eventually it got to the point where I had to go see my GP. And they kind of did just the normal testing, which is what they normally do based on protocol, which is a good thing. Right. I could talk about protocol being a good thing and a bad thing, but it's necessary. It it's what moves the millions of people through the health system on a daily basis.
Right. And it gets us to where we are today. But after a month and a half of that just didn't work and A lot of testing, a lot of antibiotics, a lot of things, just take this, come back see how you feel. And, and by then, what we didn't know was I had a tumor in my, in my pancreas that was just growing.
It was doubling. I mean, it was, it was growing pretty fast to the point where it was closing my part of my upper Gira. So there's the, after the stomach, there's the Geogen and there's the, there's a duo num where it takes that first turn. And then there's the second turn and that's where all the food gets absorbed.
So to speed all the nutrients right after it comes down from the stomach, and that was closed off because the tumor was just getting too big and eventually I kept losing weight and they couldn't find it, but I was pretty heavy at that time because I had kids and I gained weight. Yeah. Yeah. I gained a bit of weight, so I was happy to lose weight.
I really was. And so I was riding, I kept riding and there's a local crew that I ride with on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. And we went on a, on a 30 mile ride and I was riding, riding, riding. I did really well was drinking water on the bike and I got home and I tried to rehydrate, like we always do.
Right. And And I ate again and tried to get the calories back in me that evening. I ended up throwing up and that's pretty much my life for three weeks was laying on the bathroom floor on my side, withering in pain until my body would force the food and liquids that I consum. The entire day out, and then I would feel better, but then it would just repeat.
So if you can imagine going on a ride and never hydrating yourself and never giving and never filling yourself back up with the energy in the calories and the nutrients. That's what put me in the hospital. I had double kidney failure. I had li I had liver failure. Sorry. I had double kidney failure. Yep.
And then I had liver failure. I, my body was just done. And that's when they found that I had a tumor after a few tests, the doctor at the, at the emergency room came back and said, Robert, your insides are kinked like an inner tube, and that's why you can't eat. And that was the first time I realized what was going on.
He put it to me in terms. Bike terms, like we all know what a kinked inner tube is, and we know what it looks like when you frame, when you pump up that inner tube, it's just it's kinked. And so that's why, when I was eating, nothing was going down, nothing was being absorbed. And at that point a few more tests later, they confirmed that I had adenoma carcinoma of the pancreas and it was stage three.
And yeah, that was the start of my journey.
[00:11:37] Randall R. Jacobs: And stage three is to clarify for those who might not know, what does stage three mean and how many stages are there?
[00:11:44] Robert Duran: Well, stage one through four four being its metastasized whatever you had inside you has now metastasized traveled, so to speak to other parts of your body and it's no longer local. And when that happens, That means that cancer has spread. In my case it was stage three, which means that it did spread outside of the immediate local area where my tumor was living, which was in my pancreas, in the middle part of my pancreas, but it actually sucked up part of my upper GI tract because of the way the GI is positioned near the pancreas.
The pancreas is behind your stomach, so to speak. And so. The tumor was growing and it was blocking my upper GI tract. So nothing was going down and my pancreas was inflame, stretching it stretching it, I would say, not vertical, but horizontally kinking, my upper GI tract. So, and yep. No, because it had spread outside of the actual immediate area.
Involved other body parts. It was stage three. So, yeah, and the sooner you catch any cancer, right? The better chance you have to, you could survive. But once it's later, stage three, stage four, you know, the odds drop. I was, I was told that the chance for me to survive at the time when I was diagnosed in 2014 was. 6% five
[00:13:17] Randall R. Jacobs: a five year survival.
[00:13:19] Robert Duran: five year survival rate was 6% with the majority of those diagnosed with pancreatic cancer pass within three to six months because pancreatic cancer is discovered out of all cancers pretty much late because it disguises itself. And so, yeah, I had a lot of work in front of me, but that's how it happened.
[00:13:42] Randall R. Jacobs: What was, I mean, obviously that is a, a hugely traumatic thing to find out. And yet here you are. And one of the things that I have noted about you and, and that really made me wanna to, to bring you on was just your. The positive attitude you bring to life and your kindness towards others and your enthusiasm, and the fact that you are still going strong.
And in fact are probably a much stronger rider than many of our listeners despite the ongoing treatments that you have. So I'd love to hear a bit more about that. What was your, your, you know, emotional journey with this or spiritual journey with this?
[00:14:18] Robert Duran: You know, I I've struggled with trying to identify why I've been able to react the way I I did. And a lot of it is learned, right. Trials and tribulations. A lot of it was probably what. I was born with and how my dad, my mom, my parents brought me up. And so I, I think it's, it's a mental part that was ingrained in me since I was born.
And a lot of it was when my parents first came here, it was like, Robert, you are responsible for your life, your happiness, you create your world. Don't depend on anyone to give that to you, but love right. And will help. And so, I said, okay. And of course I didn't listen. Right. You know, you're a kid, your parents tell you all kinds of things.
Right? I can't remember how many times I didn't take the trash out. My dad would wake me up at, you know, seven o'clock in the morning. The trash comes at 7 0 5 on purpose.
[00:15:23] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah.
[00:15:24] Robert Duran: up outta bed. Did you take the trash out last night? And he knew I didn't so I'm outed in my PJs, chasing the trash truck with the trashcans.
Trying to dump it in. So those things were kind of ingrained in me. And so when I was first diagnosed, I, I didn't really question, oh, woe is me. Why did this happen to me? Right. It was like, okay, news, Robert this is bad. You're in serious problem. You're you're in serious trouble. But put that aside.
How do you engineer yourself to get out of this? And that's the switch that, that had to turn on in my mental space to allow me to be in the space, to fight this and to be where I'm at today and to live my life. And I think a lot of it was just conditioning to the things that happened to you. And I think that's true in everyday life.
I've learned that I've learned to be able to vocalize how to, how to live. Now, when all these little things come at you, because with my disease, the trivial things don't matter anymore. , you know, every time things happen to me that are things that I cannot control. You know, whether it's the old lady or man at the grocery store buying groceries. And then there's a line five, 10 deep, and they're price checking every other item, and then it's time for them to pay. And they say, I'm gonna pay using a check
[00:17:07] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah.
[00:17:08] Robert Duran: but I'm gonna split it. I'm gonna use two checks. I mean, who uses checks these days still? Right. But those are the things, right. And I'm like, you know, I love it cuz you know why?
Because every day that happens to me is every day that I'm alive, the day that I don't get that is the day I'm dead. And so those things automatically just go in and out the other and let that person have their day. I have no idea what they're experiencing. Right. They could be buying groceries for someone who just got COVID or who had COVID or has COVID.
I mean, you just don't know. So anyway, Long story show that's my mental space. And that's what I had to do to fight this. And and I think every day what do I say to my friends? I said, when I was diagnosed, I said, I made a deal. I said, you know what? I'll take the next five years. Cuz five years was the mortality rate they gave me.
I said, I'll take the next five years of my life at 150%. Then the next 50 years at 75%, because I don't want to be around with no regrets. You never know what tomorrow's gonna bring or, or, or take away. So, so do it.
[00:18:29] Randall R. Jacobs: When this seems to be a common theme amongst. People who have some sort of wake up sort of moments where it's my father was diagnosed with glioblastoma when I was 24 and he took a very similar attitude. And that's another one where it's caught very, you know, it's always caught very late.
He was stage four. He didn't have very much time. And he said, okay, well here, you know, like I don't have control over this circumstance other than, you know, I can go through treatments and so on. But I'm going to make the most of the time that I have, I'm going to let go of that need to try to, to fix this situation.
And I'm going to connect with my family and I'm gonna connect with my friends and I'm gonna spend this time getting my affairs in order. So that those that I love. Are are okay when I'm gone. And he had that, that clarity and that, that comfort when he was, you know, in his case, it was, there was no like Leo bus told me you don't.
You know, it's usually eight months or so, and the five year survival is next to di now you, as a, in, in part is, you know, probably a mix of attitude and genes and the particulars of your tumor and some good fortune of, of living in the age in which we do. You've managed to survive long enough to have access to some pretty bleeding edge treatments that have helped to not just prolong your health, but prolong your life, but also prolong your health.
I mean, I, I don't know what you go through every day, but just looking at you and hearing about how you ride and how you get out. I mean, it's, it's not obvious, it's not obvious that you have anything going. other than maybe the fact that like, you know, we both, we're both bald, but, but you know, I, you don't have eyebrows cuz of the, the, the, the treatment, otherwise you would never know. So I'm curious tell, tell me more about like what that journey has been like.
[00:20:16] Robert Duran: The So the journey, the journey has been interesting. And I've been, I've been lucky. I've been lucky to have friends in the medical industry friends and friends of friends who are in the position to actually speak as experts. You hear that nowadays, right? Who's an expert. And the experts I'm talking about that I've been so lucky to be just blessed to have in my life are, are ones that are actually pancreatic cancer surgeons nurse practitioners who are case managers for surgeons particularly in institutions that are, or were at one.
The comprehensive number one Institute for, for treating cancer in the United States. But I didn't go there. I was able to get advice and I wish this advice was just available out to everybody because there's just so much noise when you're on the internet, you know, you Google things and all you hear is things from experts, right?
And so one has to. Decipher that, but you don't know, you don't know. Right. So the, the one thing that I was told by a friend of mine was Robert. You want to go to the best surgeon? And my question was, well, how do I know who's the best surgeon? And he goes, well, That's the challenge, but I'll tell you who the best surgeon is.
because I'm gonna know, but, you know, if you stick with the major institutions the east coast, right on the west coast you will find them. And those are really easy to find, right. And again, but that's almost like self self-selecting, because if you are in the middle of the United States in areas, Just don't have access to healthcare.
Where do you go? Because there are different levels of medical I guess institutions that just aren't top notch. Right? It's almost like if I put this in bike terms, right there, there are some bicycle bike shops that right. Upset. Right,
[00:22:26] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Throw, throw a leg over it. Oh, that looks about right.
[00:22:29] Robert Duran: right, right. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
[00:22:31] Randall R. Jacobs: the medical, the medical treatment equivalent of that of like, okay, well, this is what we got. And so this is what we'll provide you. I, I definitely have seen. And, and my sisters work in, in medical here in the Boston area at the Brigham which Dana Farber is part of.
So Brigham and women's hospital is a big teaching hospital associated with Harvard. And then Dana Farber is the cancer Institute within there. And just the. The access, the, the, the, the access that, that I have in that anyone connected with someone working there has, and the privilege associated with that is, is significant.
It is a major advantage having those types of people on your team.
[00:23:07] Robert Duran: It? Yes, it is. And so, frankly, I was told if you're gonna have a surgeon, that's gonna cut you open. You don't want to have a surgeon that opens you up and says, oh, bleep. Okay. I think we can fix this. Let me go out for consult or I don't know, but then you're already exposed. Cut. Right? And then they close you back up.
They say, you're not a candidate, but then now you have to endure. The recovery things that happen during the surgery that are high risk procedures. And so those are the things that I see often and sometimes, sometimes the protocol of just diagnosing first level, second level standard of care. Those are basic.
Any doctor could really do that, but having the ability to change on a dime, whether this particular treatment is working for you or not have the confidence level to say, we're gonna switch to a second line of treatment and then being able to manage that because often more times than not, well, I'm not a doctor.
I'm not gonna say that often. The chemotherapy and the treatment itself to kill the cancer treat. You will kill you right before the cancer will. And in this first world country, it's kind of barbaric and archaic. That chemotherapy has been around for a number of decades and it has not changed. But I went through first line in second line chemotherapy.
I went through all kinds of treatment and I've been able to exercise throughout and recover. And show my doctor that I'm a fighter and that I'm the type of patient that if they were to maybe extend the extra chance of maybe give him that treatment, because we know you're that type of a fighter and your body recovers really well. I don't know if that plays played a part of, of, of, of whether I passed through the two boards or not, but I got my surgeries and having surgery. When you are, have gone when you are metastatic, not once, not twice, three times is very rare. And so I think it's a combination. And now that I have a chance to move into a new cutting edge surgery, because I've been around so long for a lack of a better word, I failed first line, second line FDA approved treatment methods for my cancer.
I was able to. Get this new treatment called car T, which we could talk about later. And I just wish more patients were able to get this treatment, but right now it's the early stages. And now I have to be a Guinea pig. I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm gonna be a, be a Guinea pig for science to not only help myself, but also at the same time, help other patients.
And not only pancrea, we had cancer patients, but patients that have solid tumor. This can possibly change the way that cancer is treated in the future and chemo will be long gone. So we'll see. I, I don't know. I may be here in a couple years. I may not, but I'm gonna ride
[00:26:27] Randall R. Jacobs: yeah,
[00:26:29] Robert Duran: and do what I do. And it's been eight years.
So.
[00:26:33] Randall R. Jacobs: change the things you can accept the things that you can't change and Have the wisdom to know the difference and find serenity in that practice.
[00:26:39] Robert Duran: That's true because a sprained ankle only hurts when you think about it.
[00:26:44] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, it's I mean, what I hear and, and, you know, I've, I've also, you know, I have fortunately not experienced this myself, but I've seen it in live, in loved one's journeys with, with such a, you know, such an ailment is you know, there's the, the. The inner work that has to be done to remain resilient and to be compliant with treatment and to not lose hope and to keep, I mean, to keep the, the mental state healthy, such that you don't have further decline in the physiological state due to, you know, depression and stress and anxiety and all the things that that do wear you down.
And then this other element of, you know, there's a political element, right? Making making yourself out to be a strong candidate for a doctor or a researcher who has a lot riding on whatever this this treatments that they're, they're developing you know, and this, in this big money involved in this too.
And so if they're going to take that risk and have you be one of the statistics that they're going to use to hopefully get this treatment furthered and approved, you know, they want to know that they get the best chance possible. And that means. You know, being compliant with treatment, coming with a good attitude, remaining, healthy, doing all the right things.
And so like that two-sided element is, is something that I, I definitely see very clearly in you. And it's not, it's like a mix of good fortune, but then also you had to create the circumstances where good fortune could, could come to you where you'd still be around for it.
[00:28:17] Robert Duran: Yeah, no, no. I mean, you, you said it perfectly Randall. I mean, I mean, I did go through standards of care first line, second line, and I rode my bike to chemo the first, well, actually the first time I got chemo, I had some bad reaction to it. I had anaphylactic like shock. Reaction. But after that, we can control it with certain drugs.
I rode my bike, I rode my bike to my labs, and then I rode my bike to chemo and I would ride my bike after chemo, like Thursdays. I have chemo. It's a three hour deal. And after I'm done with chemo, my mind is telling me I'm tired, I'm tired. Right. But I have to recognize that and say, well, yes, you are tired. Fair enough. But you know, what's gonna not make you tired. Right. Moving your legs, getting some activity, breathing, getting aerobic activity. And so I force myself to ride. Then I ride and I get back, I feel so much better. And then that's my life. And if I don't have my bike with me every time I tell myself I'm tired, I go, oh, let me go for a walk.
And when I first was diagnosed, can only make it maybe 50 feet, 50 yards or, or after my surgery, 50 yards, 10 yards in back. That was accomplishment sense of accomplishment. Right. And part of that is probably my cycling mentality or whatever it is ingrained in, in us that just, just wanna keep going.
Right. And, and I think, I think someone could be, what's the word I'm looking for? Someone's attitude could maybe put them in a better position to accept those challenges, or someone can learn that, or someone may not ever learn that. But I'm lucky in that sense. That was my attitude. Just do it right?
[00:30:27] Randall R. Jacobs: There's a, I mean, for, for me. And I've talked about this before you. The bicycle is a rolling meditation and as a, a practice a discipline in the truest sense. And you know, the number, I mean, certainly my experience with the bike has been one of you know, in periods of, of, you know, difficulty with mental health.
It's like, okay, I feel depressed today. I don't want to get out of bed. Right. Everything feels dark. I'm gonna get on my bike and it's going to be, I expect that it's going to be hard. And in fact, I expect that, you know, over the course of this, this ride, I might feel miserable the entire time, but I'm gonna go out because I know that this practice will, will give it has rewards.
If it is, if it is adhered to. Just like other practices around this. And so, I mean, adding the element of, of severe physiological distress, if I would imagine with chemo like nausea and things like this, or, you know, that, that that's a whole other element. But I, I, I love how, how the bicycle offers this, this kind of vehicle for working through things.
And like committing to the bike is not simply about, it's not about the bike. It's not about even exercise or, or, or, or fitness or things like that. It's literally like the simple act of getting in the saddle and turning the pedals over is in a way proving to one's self that, you know, one is still board and, and committed to moving forward.
[00:31:58] Robert Duran: that's. That is true. The nausea, the pain, everything goes away, even when I'm on the bike it, your, your mind. Just transforms. Right. And it's the act of doing it, like you said puts you in that happy space. And I can't stress that enough. Even the neuropathy neuropathy is a side effect of chemotherapy it's you and your nerves are just over excited.
Whether, because they're being affected because of the drugs or the nurse are dying, whatever, right. You just, if. The reason why I don't surf anymore is because if I get hit with my surfboard it normally it's. Okay. Right. But it feels like I'm getting hit with a sledge hammer, everything hurts. And whenever you drink cold water, warm water.
I, I mean, it, it feels like you're swallowing shards of glass, but even on the bike, the wind seems to just go through my skin and directly into my nerves. And your whole body feels. If you're in the dentist chair, the dentist hits a nerve and it just feels like that big shriek of pain that your body just, it goes through your body, your mind.
At least my mind, it just forgets, especially on a windy day, if it's, it doesn't matter. My
[00:33:12] Randall R. Jacobs: it's just noise.
[00:33:13] Robert Duran: to just ignore. I think there's that mental SP the mind is very powerful. It, it causes you to do things and not do things and endure things. As long as you channel that for a positive objective, whatever it is, I think it's, it's fine to do that to reason
[00:33:30] Randall R. Jacobs: yeah. Yeah, of course. I mean the extreme pain may be very, very hard to block out, but it makes, it reminds me of if you ever like put a, a cup of vinegar under your nose, that really strong vinegar smell, but after like 30 seconds, you can't smell it anymore. It's just background noise, your body recalibrates and.
You know, in, in with regards to, I mean, you're describing physiological pain you know, psychological psychospiritual pain as well. There is some degree of a building of a tolerance and being able to have this thing that is so front and center. So like in the middle of one's attention and just be like, okay, this is here.
I accept it. But have it kind of off to the side a little bit, and being able to focus on other things like the right. And, and I think that the bike, you know, the, the flowing through the environment, the, the, the sinking of one's breathing and one's cadence and one's heartbeat as one is, is, is going and, and traveling, it really is, is very centering and very grounding.
[00:34:27] Robert Duran: Oh, no yeah, I can relate to that Randall. I, I mean, I, the words you had mentioned about just even just being aware of your heartbeat and your breathing and just, just being in tune in that space and being in that zone is, is, is, is, is a good feeling, but it's also dangerous but I mean, I was just up in Colorado, hiking up Was it saw wash, they call it mountain range up in the Rocky mountain park.
About before Estes park. I, I think it was up there a few days last week I got as high as 12,500 feet. And and I live here at sea level and I thought I had acclimatized and I have. Chemotherapy induced anemia. I just have low red blood cells. If you look at my red blood cells, they're below the lowest they're below.
I mean, this I'm dead. Right. But I can still bike and I can still cycle, but I left, I left the thesis at home. Okay. It was painful, but I left it at home and I said, okay, I can't ride a bike. And I go, well, I can rent one. I go, no, no, it was too much of our deal. Let me just hike. And so I got to. 12,500 feet.
And you know, you feel your heart, you feel your lungs, you feel your, everything just beating outta your chest. And then it's like, this is so great. Cuz I'm I'm so in tune with my body. and having that the endorphines right. And the do just all that is just, this is even more intense, but I realized I needed to get back down because I am immunocompromised.
I have comorbidity. And so I had to scramble back down to 2000 feet to, to kind of, to bounce myself out. But yeah feeling one with your body and just, just knowing that it's there and there's a way you can control it to a certain extent. You know, it's probably part of the reason why some people do, you know, I don't know.
I don't know, but, but I think that's the space that I get myself into and it allows me to deal with the triggering mechanisms of every day life to realize that that, you know, those things really don't matter. What matters is, is, is your body your mind? Than others. Right. And you could be very hardcore and you could be very, very, very, very strong when it comes to just defense be very physical, but you can also be very caring and loving and you can also be very empathetic to others.
And to have all that in one package is, is, is, is, is what I strive. That's where my community service and just giving back to the community too. All those that have helped me just helps. I just, I love if there's any way that I can help others. I always. Thought that maybe I could show up at a beach here, you know, in Southern California with a bunch of these bikes that you can ride on the sand.
Maybe you have balloon tires. I don't know. And just invite survivors or cancer survivors or anybody who's dealing with something just to ride these bikes and just forget their trials and tribulations for just that one. 15 minute, 30 minute ride. Right. And if you could just trick your mind to be in that space cuz you remember what you felt like, then you don't really need those apparatus to get into that happy space.
But now I'm talking really crazy stuff here, but
[00:37:54] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, the the context switching, being able to view whatever it is that one is struggling with or ruminating on, or that seems overwhelming from a different, from a different perspective, like getting out of that, that, that doom filled head space and into like, oh, this is still here. Like this head space is still here.
Feeling of connection with my body is still here or feeling what connection or purpose or meaning is still is still available, but I have to actively choose it.
[00:38:26] Robert Duran: Yes. Yes. Yes. And. Yeah, I, I have this thing I might be by, I might digressing here a little bit, but
[00:38:40] Randall R. Jacobs: Digressions are very welcome.
[00:38:43] Robert Duran: I, I, I discovered this thing when I was first diagnosed and it's actually a really simple thing that I, that I did that I was, I as driving down the I five in Southern California. I had a doctor's appointment to go to see my oncologist and I just plotted myself in the right lane, cuz I had nowhere to go.
I mean, I had taken disability. I was no longer working. All that mattered was me just fighting my terminal disease. And I just stuck in the right lane. I wasn't in a hurry anymore. go figure. Right. And and people were getting into my. and people were trying to, yeah, they were trying to get into my lane from the freeway entrance on the right side.
And they were trying to get into notice how I say my lane from the left lane from the left side. And I, I constantly had to like break or let them in or switch lanes. And I said, you know what, Robert, you have nowhere to go, just let that person in. Right. And so I just did that. And when I had to go to the left lane, I put my left blinker on and, but someone else would speed up and not let me get in.
And it be, it became a game to me and it was like, oh wow, every time this happened, cuz this was almost like rush hour traffic. My brain was telling me, you know, that's a obvious, I know Dick move.
[00:40:17] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah.
[00:40:18] Robert Duran: right. And
[00:40:19] Randall R. Jacobs: there's aggression there. There's there's my uh, there's a violation of, of, of expectations of the rules of, of my boundaries or what have you.
[00:40:28] Robert Duran: yeah. And they're out to get me. Right. I need to protect myself, but I thought, well, Robert, you've got other things to worry about. You're dying. nowhere for you to go. I mean, you just gotta get to see your doctor. And, and so I said, okay, fine. And so from that day on, I kind of realized that I recognized those little trigger mechanisms.
I said, just let it go. And so I tell my friends, just drive the right lane, just ride it, just do it for one week. You'll learn a lot by others. And and then you will now know that triggering mechanism. And if you could just trade away to change the pathways and how you react and to that, and stay in that happy space.
I guarantee you anything that happens in the future after that one week experiment, you'll be able to deal with things with things a lot. You'll be more equipped to deal with things a lot better than you have been in the past. If you learn something from that experiment, something as simple as that, it's just amazing.
[00:41:37] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and the reality is like, you know, take that experiment and apply it to say somebody who is really like actively intentionally trying to cause harm. And maybe they're causing harm in a significant way, in an ongoing way. Right. You know, we've you know, the, these, these sorts of situations they occur in life.
Somebody is, is vengeful. Someone is spiteful. Well guess what? That person is dying too. all of us are dying. None of us are getting out of this alive. And, you know, I, I tend, it's really hard. It's particularly hard when you know, it's, it may, I think it's easier when it's something small and you just like, let it go.
But when it's something big, being able to recognize the humanity of other people, like what is it that leads somebody to behave in such a hurtful manner? Well, you know, hurt people, hurt people and, you know, do I have some of those impulses within me? Do I have the good fortune of being aware of those impulses and not having, being able to actively choose not to act them out, laying on the horn or trying to retaliate in some way.
You know, that saying that like, holding onto anger is like picking up a hot cold to throw, you know, at the, the, the the party you're angry at,
[00:42:49] Robert Duran: Yes.
[00:42:50] Randall R. Jacobs: you both get burned
[00:42:51] Robert Duran: Yes, yes.
[00:42:52] Randall R. Jacobs: and, and the grievance, the grievance cycle continues. And I think that, that I mean, oh, the, the humbling element of being confronted with, with an an illness, like what you are, what you've been you know, living with this whole time.
I would imagine it's immensely clarifying. It's not an experience that I have had but it, I, I had. I admire, I admire how you go about it immensely. And I think simply that example is something that is, can, you know, is helpful to others unto itself. And here we have a self-selected audience of people who have gravitated towards the bike for whatever reason.
And you know, this is called the gravel ride podcast, but honestly, I, I don't really care all that much about bicycles as much as I have a bicycle company I'm involved in the bicycle podcast. I, I have done projects in the space at the end of the day. Actually, all of this is really about you know, creating vehicles for people to live better.
And so, Yeah, I am glad that, that we got to have you on. And I would like to have a follow on you know, downstream after your treatment and actually before you know, let's take a little bit more time here. Tell, tell us a little bit more about what you have ahead of you.
[00:44:09] Robert Duran: All right. After the multiple surgeries that I've had to undergo after the multiple chemo treatments that I've had to undergo the multiple recoveries I am now. Getting this treatment and it started yesterday where they are going to now say, look, it, chemo has worked in the past, but it keeps coming back.
So it's basically failed as far as the cure is concerned. Cuz chemo is never really a cure. It's just kind of a treatment, right?
[00:44:51] Randall R. Jacobs: Suppression suppressing the, the multiplication of cells, but at the same time, doing that across all of your cells, it just so happens that your cancer cells are replicating more quickly. And so it kills more of them. Isn't that
[00:45:03] Robert Duran: Yes.
[00:45:03] Randall R. Jacobs: the high level of chemo.
[00:45:05] Robert Duran: Yes. And, and, and it's, it's good that one of my oncologists has said that I actually do have some T-cell memory. T-cells are the hunter immunity cells that kill all of the foreign objects in your body. Right. It's just one of the white blood cells. Right? You have others. And my T-cells has the ability to fight my cancer.
Everybody who has cancer, your body just basically reco does not recognize it is just a UN unchecked growth of cells that just keep growing and just affect other organs or crowd other good cells. So they can't do the good things to your body. And and so what's happening is. Like you said chemo was systemic.
It goes through your kidneys. It's goes through your, I mean, I made it it's bad. It, it, I mean, my fingernails are finally recovering, but they were all black. Like I had black,
[00:46:00] Randall R. Jacobs: Hmm.
[00:46:01] Robert Duran: Nail Polish
[00:46:01] Randall R. Jacobs: and, and you didn't have cancer in your fingernails, but the treatment goes there because
[00:46:06] Robert Duran: that treatment goes
[00:46:07] Randall R. Jacobs: nature of these types of boot force treatments.
[00:46:11] Robert Duran: chemo kills cells that are, that are, that are alive and it's, and, and, and, and it, it, and if you think about it, your, your hair, right, your digestive system has cells, your bone marrow, your bone marrow, and a lot of things come from your bone marrow, right.
And your fingernail, everything. And so everything slowly dies. And so we're gonna go and try for the first time ever treat. My cancer, chemos, so to speak, they are going to modify my white blood cells. They're gonna edit reengineer engineer, modify the DNA, whatever you wanna call it. My Tcell and they took my Tcells out a month ago.
My white BLIS cells and the scientists in the. What they did was they actually inserted a gene that would give my T-cells an artificial receptor. Right. Like imagine a lock in key. Right. That would actually attach to the spike. That is to my cancer cell in my body.
[00:47:21] Randall R. Jacobs: So they had to biopsy your, yeah, they'd take out those T-cells and biopsy the tumor and hopefully they have, it ha those, it will be effective in hitting that particular cell, but then also, hopefully there aren't any EV evolutions of that, that it would not be able to tackle that it wouldn't have the key for in a way.
[00:47:41] Robert Duran: Correct? Yes. So, I was able to, they were able to get to my liver to actually biopsy it. Right. And and so it just happened to match a targeted protein which is the antigen that the biopharmaceutical company based in China was studying. It's called CLA 18.2 is the actual protein they're looking for.
And so what they're doing. In a nutshells, like you said, they're going to train my immunity system to recognize the specific cancer that I have to amuse my immunity system to just kill it. And so that's the treatment that I'm going to undergo next week? Right now they are killing my immune system. So when they put my own car cells back into me, car being chimeric, antigen receptor these are the modified cells that my immune system won't kill.
They want just these car T cells to actually compete for the cancer cell and they wanna suppress everything. So they want these cells to actually target it. So that's, what's going to happen. And eventually, if this does work then who knows how long of of immunity or cancer free? I will be it's possible that I could be cancer free for one year, two years, five years, eight years, 10 years, but it won't be systemic like chemo.
I'll be able to ride. I won't have low blood cells. I'll get my eyebrows back. My fingernails will be fine. I won't have all the, the bad side effects and anybody who gets cancer in the future. Initially, if you can just call up the bot principal company and say, this is what I need, you get it shipped over.
Right. And then they inject you via IV. Right. And then you get maybe the flu symptoms for two, two or three days, and then you're. That's the future. We'll see if we get there,
[00:49:24] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and if, and if it does work long enough for the next wave of, of advancement in that domain, then all of a sudden, you know, you, you think about what's happened with HIV, HIV used to be a death sentence, right? It was a terminal illness. Now it's a chronic illness. And in fact, it's a very livable chronic illness that you can even get to a state where it's suppressed, where you're not likely to transmit it to another person.
[00:49:47] Robert Duran: We don't even need a cure as long as you can treat it chronically and have quality of life. Right. Then that's all really cancer patients really hope for and hope is all we got. And I hope that I can help.
[00:50:00] Randall R. Jacobs: Is, is this particular I'm curious, is this particular treatment, a derivative of CRISPR CA nine technology? Is that how they're doing the, the editing of the
[00:50:09] Robert Duran: I'm going to ask that question and I'll get back to you on a side channel, but I believe it's one of the techniques that they're using to insert the gene, edit it, and then they're also gonna grow it as a second component. So I know there's that portion of it, but this actually came from treating certain types of leukemia.
[00:50:25] Randall R. Jacobs: Hmm.
[00:50:26] Robert Duran: Yeah. So car T has been around and it's the first time they're jumping to a solid cancer. And this is actually a really great time. I'm actually lucky patient number 13 in the United States to get this and the bike, your thesis Randall
Has allowed me right to be in my happy space to fight what I've got to allow me to get, to be receptive to the therapies, to be that person.
And You know, hopefully there'll be more of me in the future.
[00:50:54] Randall R. Jacobs: I suspect that if someone had given you a shopping cart to ride that you would probably have made the best of it. But I, I appreciate the I appreciate the appreciation, but can't really take any credit for you know, for what you've been doing.
[00:51:05] Robert Duran: well, let me tell you, I was excited. What I got it. I, I wrote, I wrote every day I wrote things that you shouldn't be writing, you know, on a non suspension bike. Let, let me tell you
[00:51:16] Randall R. Jacobs: Which is, which is what it was designed for to, to, to get into trouble.
[00:51:21] Robert Duran: Oh, yeah. In trouble I did get into, and my doctor was like, Robert, you have look at, you know, you can't fight these infections as much as you can. You've been on chemo. What are you doing? I go, well, let me tell you what I got. And then, then I got, then I geeked out. Right. He's like, oh, well, okay. But no, thanks for the kind words.
I, I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to at least, you know, share my story. I hope I hope this was worthwhile and, you know, I hope
[00:51:49] Randall R. Jacobs: You, it was certainly worthwhile for me. So it helped one person. And I would imagine that the rest of our listeners will enjoy it as well before we hop off. So how do people get in touch with you? Follow you? What organizations you know, would you recommend people check out.
[00:52:06] Robert Duran: You know, the easiest way to get ahold of me is through my website. And it's website is really easy to remember. If you're old like me it's Robert Duran, duran.com.
[00:52:23] Randall R. Jacobs: So.
[00:52:23] Robert Duran: And you could, there's a contact form there. If you wanna get ahold of me, that's fine. I I'd be happy to share any of my stories with you or, or any tips when it comes to fighting cancer in general. But that's, that's how to get hold of me. And I know I'm also affiliated with a nonprofit, by the way.
It's it's called pan. Pancreatic cancer network every year we do. A fundraising 5k run and I think it generates anywhere between 20 to 30 million a year annually.
[00:52:57] Randall R. Jacobs: Where
[00:52:58] Robert Duran: It's every major city in the United States, but of course COVID had a damper the last two years. And so we did a lot of virtual walks in fundraising, which put a damper on the funds that we generate for cancer research, grants, patient services, things like that.
But. We had it first time last year after a two year hiatus. And we have it in San Diego at mission bay park. And I, I had a team and I generated $30,000 in, in a month. For cancer research and patient services for this nonprofit. So, anybody's diagnosed with pancrea cancer because you have a one in 67 chance, by the way, everybody male or female to get it in your lifetime.
Remember that or if you know, a loved one or a friend, right. Pancan.org. And that's really the only website you really need to go to just to grasp the gravity, you know, of the situation, and they will set you in the right path. And they're one of the big organizations that is one of the reasons why I'm still here and I've met so many people from that organization who are doing wonderful things to help the community.
And they've. They've been, they've allowed me to be able to come out of my shell and just tell my story. And I just try and follow the footsteps of those people who are, are trying to help the community in, in that particular segment of life. And I just follow the footsteps of giants. That's what I do.
[00:54:23] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and I'll mention that we'll get these links in the show notes too, and that you are a member of the ridership which is actually how I became aware of this aspect of your life. And so we'll be publishing the episode to the ridership and there'll be some discussion around there. So, you know, if you want to, you know, connect with Robert, then that can be a good place to do so as well.
And then before we sign off, I just wanna ask. Whether it be pancreatic cancer or some other major life challenge. What would be your advice to somebody listening today?
[00:54:53] Robert Duran: That's a good question. I, I, I think, Hm.
I, I think my, my, my key to my key to life me, right. What works for me, I think is, is there's, there's an absolute truth mechanism. That's there. Okay. And that's the absolute truth. And then there's the convenient truth. Try to recognize the absolute truth because when you recognize the absolute truth, then you have a way to deal with it. And these could be little things in life or big things where that's trauma, things like that instead of hiding it, right.
I have a terminal disease and I can do what some of others have done hide it. And it just makes things worse and some of these diseases could be manageable could be very simple and they can turn into things that are very drastic. If you do not get help. So seek out organizations that can help you with the trauma that you have.
And then one thing that's helped me. I've been to give back give back to others and help every time I help those I feel good about myself. Not because I can post it on the internet and say, Hey, look what I did. Right. And here, you know, look what I'm doing. I'm doing this. No, it's just the act of just being a human being kindness and just having empathy and, and, and being, being, being there for, for, for your fellow man.
And I think that goes a long way because, because it doesn't matter what I have. It's what I can give and I'll give until I die. And that's what makes me alive.
[00:56:54] Randall R. Jacobs: Robert. Thanks for coming on. This has been wonderful. And I look forward to following up with you, a few months down the road, hearing how things went.
[00:57:00] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel rod podcast. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Robert Duran. It was great to hear about his journey. We wish him the best of luck. He's a valued member of the community. And as you've heard an amazing and valued member of the Encinitas cycling community, , as well as the pancreatic cancer community.
As I mentioned before, I've got a bunch of links in the show notes to help you support Robert's journey and those others fighting this terrible, terrible cancer.
Robert's a valued member of the ridership community. So if you're interested in getting in touch with him, simply visit www.theridership.com. That's our free global cycling community. A great way to connect with gravel cyclists from around the world.
With all that said. Here's to finding some dirt under
your wheels
This week Randall and Craig work through the details of Craig’s custom Unicorn Cycles titanium frame and how he has decided to build it up.
Episode Sponsor: Bike Index
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Custom Build Parts of note:
Unicorn Cycles Ti Frame
Rock Shox Rudy Ultimate XPLR Fork
This week we sit down with bicycle industry veteran Brad DeVaney. Brad has been with Litespeed Titanium and most recently OBED Bicycles since the early 1990’s. Brad has an infectious passion for cycling that shines through in this conversation.
Episode Sponsor: Trek Travel - Join me in Girona Nov 6-10, 2022
Litespeed Website
OBED Website
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Litespeed/OBED[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the podcast. We welcome Brad Davine from Lightspeed and obit bicycles.
If you've been around bicycles for a while, you're probably familiar with the Lightspeed titanium brand. They've been building bikes out of Tennessee since the late 1980s. Brad joined the team as a young man in the early 1990s. And has been following his passion within the titanium frame building industry.
For many, many years since he's worked with the likes of Greg Lamond and the LA Sheriff's cycling team, he's worked on projects for NASA and done a ton of exciting things for the industry. You won't meet someone who's more friendly and passionate about the sport of cycling. So we were happy to hear when they turned their attention to gravel cycling.
A handful of years ago. In addition to the Lightspeed brand. The company also owns the obit brand. Obit is a direct consumer carbon brand that has been making inroads for the last few years. I've really been impressed by. Both the refinement of the design in the obit frame set its modern day gravel bike.
But equally impressed with the amount of customization that the team has been able to build into your process. You can customize the paint and decal logos on the obit models before they're delivered to your door directly. I encourage you to check both brands out and give a listen to this conversation. I think you'll get a lot out of Brad's experience and how he contextualizes.
The different performance between titanium frames and carbon frames. Before we dive in i need to thank a new sponsor this week our friends over at trek travel.
Those avid listeners may recall. I had you in Shepard from truck travel on the show. Back in episode 98 and September of 2021. To talk about the Jarana. On a gravel experience. Since that time I've been eyeing a trip with our friends at Trek travel. I was so excited. Jarana comes up so often.
In both road and gravel cycling as a place you have to discover. Certainly after that conversation with UN I was completely committed ultimately to getting over there. It took a while COVID got in the way, but I'm now settled in, on a trip on November 6th through 10th. This year in 2022, and I wanted to invite you to join me. I figured it'd be a great opportunity. I know it's not easy to get over to Europe. There's both the expense and the time you'll need to take.
But I couldn't be more thrilled to commit to this trip with Trek travel and to explore the fabulous trails around Gerona.
We'll be staying right in the heart of Gerona at the hotel. Nord. To experience everything the city has to offer.
The track team is going to design some gravel rides around the undulating and rolling Hills around your Rona to make sure that we experience everything we can. During that week in Spain. I know I'm going to train my butt off to try to be fit because I want to ride. Everything that's possible to ride in the area. I know this trip gives a lot of flexibility for riders to explore and ride as much, or as little as they want.
During the week. So there'll be options for everybody. I know it's going to be a killer experience and I'm hoping and optimistic that some of you will be able to join me.
I'll put a link in the show notes for the Jarana gravel bike tour, where you can simply visit Trek, travel.com and search Jarana gravel bike tour.
I'll be working with the Trek travel team to put together a little something special for any gravel ride podcasts guests that joined us on that trip. I very much, I'm looking forward to seeing some of you November six through November 10th in Spain. With all that said let's jump right into my conversation with brad davine from lightspeed and obit bicycles
[00:04:19] Craig Dalton: hey, Brad, welcome to the show.
[00:04:21] Brad DeVaney: Oh, it's great to be with you, Craig.
[00:04:23] Craig Dalton: I'm excited to continue our conversations. We've interacted a couple times over the years, but it's great to kind of have you on the podcast and just learn a little bit more about you.
[00:04:32] Brad DeVaney: Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah, there's a lot of history, right? I mean, the and, and the topic at hand, you know, the, the gravel category it's It's that it's that common meeting spot where you all seem to be finding these days with with old friends and.
[00:04:46] Craig Dalton: I feel like this is a double header episode, cuz we get to talk to you about both the light speed titanium brand and also the Obi carbon brand. And just get your unfiltered opinions on what bikes are good for what types of riders? I think that's gonna be a really valuable part of the conversation for the listener.
[00:05:03] Brad DeVaney: Oh, good. Good. Yeah, that's that? That's what fires me up the most, you know, we're we're, we're really open to multiple materials. And building what we love. So, yeah.
[00:05:15] Craig Dalton: Let's set the stage a little bit just by getting a little bit about your background, how, how you came to be passionate cyclist and ultimately get into the business side of the sport.
[00:05:25] Brad DeVaney: Yeah. Man, I, I don't enjoy talking about myself, but you know, just a, a, a kid that grew up racing bicycles BMX road, mountain. And was really fortunate to have sponsorship when I was super young and, and you know, bikes being provided and traveling and, and living you know, a kid's dream, life racing, bicycles, and you know, everything stayed super competitive through those years.
And, and
[00:05:52] Craig Dalton: part of the country did you grow up in Brad?
[00:05:54] Brad DeVaney: I grew up in the Southeast here in Tennessee, and you know, lot of not, not a lot of national events happened here in Tennessee. And so my, my base was Atlanta, Georgia, where you know, where Schwinn bicycle company was a, was a big deal back then. And they had a, a major distribution center there that, that our team was stocked out of.
And we would go up Chicago to headquarters. Very infrequently in the three years that that I raced with the team there. And, but there was the cool thing was I was the perfect demographic within the team. I was the perfect age that they were looking to develop new products. And so, the bikes that I was riding were typically the prototypes and where the rest of the team were all on production bikes.
I was getting some bikes rotated. From beneath me and, and that really lit a fire. I didn't, I didn't realize that fire would turn into a career.
[00:06:47] Craig Dalton: Did you find yourself at that age, having that ability to be very discerning about, oh, this frame feels this certain different way. Even if the changes were fairly.
[00:06:57] Brad DeVaney: yeah, it, it, it came to realize Sometime later, my dad was he's to this day he is, he's a Motorhead he's, he's always tuning something. It's not always race inspired, but he, he built some pretty crafty two wheeled and four wheeled race machines through the years. And growing up in a, you know, where in our garage, we.
Cutting welding modifying strip it down, machine it, modify it, you know, sort of mindset. He taught me how to take caged ball bearings and Polish them and, and use valve grinding compounds, and then clean 'em and what levels of grease. And so as an 11 year old kid, I went on the road with, with a manager and teammates.
And had the ability to release a wheel. And my choice of wheel at that point in time was Aniah seven B the, the seven X was the hot rim out and it was It wasn't a full double wall, but it, it had some channels within the extrusion that were, I felt were unnecessary. And the lighter seven B was just that it was lighter.
It was faster. It was more fragile of course, but I had Campon Yolo track hubs with Ari seven B rims you know, spec spokes and spec nipples. I was really, really particular as an 11 year old kid, but to use that particular rim. I had to be able to lace wheels. I, I didn't have that luxury even at home.
I didn't have that luxury. So when I egg shaped or, or, you know, flat spotted a rim, I could change them out. And it was, was pretty adept at it. So my, we would be at a motel, you know, somewhere in Florida or Texas or New York or wherever we were racing on any given weekend. And it wasn't uncommon on a Saturday night between, you know, Saturday and Sunday races.
that, you know, there would be a, a group of dads sitting around drinking beer, watching the 11 year old monkey lace of wheel, because that was kind of a funny thing. So, yeah. Sorry for the story, but
[00:09:03] Craig Dalton: No, I love
[00:09:04] Brad DeVaney: it out of me. Yeah. Yeah. So, yes. To answer your question. Yes.
[00:09:09] Craig Dalton: So that was back in your BMX days. And sounds like later, you kind of transitioned to road riding and, and mountain bike racing.
[00:09:15] Brad DeVaney: Yeah. Yeah. The road bike came around first. You know, I was, I was almost 16 working at a local motorcycle shop before I could drive and, you know, a good form of transportation was bikes. And you know, I ultimately wanted a really good road bike and, and Made that happen. And then through my high school years really loved, loved the road bike and was racing locally off to college with that.
And then during college, I was I was fortunate to have gotten some attention through the local shop and, and got some sponsorship and, and ended up on a Raleigh. Mountain bike. We were selling rallies. The local rep, you know, saw what I was doing. I was really trying to rep the brand because that's what we were selling.
And, and we sold GT Raleigh and, you know, a few others, but that was, that was the aggressive rep of the day. And, and he was he was good to try to find a way to reward me and for what I was trying to do in the shop. And, and that got me my first mountain bike and, you know, off, we went always, it, it was fun.
Great
[00:10:17] Craig Dalton: Yeah, back those early days of mountain biking were a lot of fun. And I remember there was always, the shop teams were such an important part of the movement back then, I feel like, and you would, you would get your, you know, the brand that you sold in the shop and they would agree to give everybody a pro deal or something on the frames.
And it was a really great time to be part of the sport.
[00:10:36] Brad DeVaney: yeah. You know, and coming from BMX, the Raleigh thing was kind of cool. Tomak was doing his magic and. He you know, I, I couldn't call him an old friend. He was somebody that I looked up to certainly you know, BMX and, and you know, I, I was fortunate to, you know, compete at a, at a good level. It was all age group based.
I was never old enough to to compete as a pro. And as he, you know, Kind of broached that he moved into mountain bikes and, and wow. What a, what a legend he game. But and that, that was sort of the pattern that I followed in my equipment choices and, and paid really, really close attention to what was happening on the world cup level of those days.
And that was a driver for.
[00:11:18] Craig Dalton: so after you hung up your, your sort of racing cleats, so to speak, was it immediately obvious that you wanted to go into the bike business?
[00:11:26] Brad DeVaney: No, I was, I was still racing. I was still racing, working retail going to school. And that's when you know, the guys at light speed were, were a local business in the area that I was in. So. I was building outside of work. I was building in my own little shop at home where I did overhauls and rebuilds and paint jobs, and a lot of things you know, side jobs I'd do pretty much anything that involved a bicycle.
But I, I was building show bikes for those guys and you know, when you're a resource and, and you turn things around as quickly as you can. You know, it turned into a job eventually to be honest. And they, they didn't really care what I was that I was studying engineering or, you know, they just needed extra help.
And, and so I worked in the shop a lot. I, you know, minored tube SETSS and a aligned bikes and, you know, a lot of things within our operation. But when it came time you know, I was always ready to to design as well. And. That fell in pretty naturally. So that's, and, and I was still competitive at that point in time road and offroad was was really my focus.
[00:12:35] Craig Dalton: And did you, presumably you started riding titanium bikes around that time.
[00:12:39] Brad DeVaney: Yeah, it was tough. I I'd actually broken. I'd actually broken my Sera. I had a, a Hammi down seven 11 team bike. It was one of Ron keels bike. He had, he had won the, we kind of got a little bit of history. I was racing for a team that through true temper sponsorship here in Tennessee, our team acquired or was able to acquire several of the motor or not motor seven 11 true temper CADA built team bikes.
They were labeled as Huffies And so Bob roll and Andy Hamson and RA Alola and you know, some of those guys at that day and age but Ron keel was the guy that was closest to my size, and I was able to get one of his bikes out of this batch, that true temper owned and, and got for us. So I'd been racing that bike for a couple of seasons working here at light speed part and full time.
And when I snapped that bike I was able to you know, jump onto a loaner bike for a few weeks and then finally worked it out so that I could have my own. So, and that was, it was out of necessity. You know, I, I came onto titanium out of necessity and, and that's when I really started going bananas on design elements because I, you know, I was looking for, I came from top level steel had been working with selling.
Doing, you know, Sera we had a fit cycle and used the fit kit and so forth at the retailer that I'd worked with. So I was pretty passionate about all that. And you know, when I'm, when I'm out of that environment into a manufacturing environment, I'm still working those tasks. And with that mindset out of my own home shop and Yeah, I wanna jumped onto titanium.
I wanted to tune things. I wanted to change it. I wanted to get more of a, not a Columbus SL or SLX tube set. I was looking further ahead to like Columbus max
[00:14:32] Craig Dalton: And I think, you know, to contextualize it a little bit for the listener, you know, this was the era where you really had, you had steel bikes and maybe some early aluminum bikes from someone like Cannondale at the time and titanium was that next level. Next generation material that I think at that point was very much a premium product in terms of how much it costs.
So it felt very exotic at the time.
[00:14:55] Brad DeVaney: It was, and, and, and the tube sets I knew could be advanced. That was, that was one of the things is that if you were looking at a, a light speed, a Merlin, a moots, you know, that was kind of the three big players at the time. Everything was pretty much straight gauge, round tube sets. And, you know, I, I wanted to see beyond that.
I was I was, you. Driving towards a cycling specific titanium tube set. It wasn't just titanium. And I think that became one of our ad slogans back in, you know, in those early nineties, it's not just titanium it's light speed titanium. And what made it light speed titanium was the, the obsession to create.
A cycling specific titanium tube set. And we did that by manipulating wall thicknesses, tapering, the tubes, shaping the tubes and all of that. Having engineering purpose, not just some visual marketing blind. So that's, that's really what we, and we continue to work by those same principles today.
[00:15:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's so interesting. Given the sort of production process of a carbon frame versus steel or titanium where you're really manipulating the tubes. And you're just, just a lot of hand work that goes into these products.
[00:16:08] Brad DeVaney: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:16:10] Craig Dalton: Well, we could go long and deep on titanium and the history of that period,
[00:16:14] Brad DeVaney: a deep hole brother. It's a deep hole. Let's back away. Let's let's let's come closer to the surface. You got listeners.
[00:16:21] Craig Dalton: we're gonna fast forward, but I think we've at least set the stage that you've had your hands on titanium for a few decades now as the light
[00:16:30] Brad DeVaney: More than 30 years.
[00:16:31] Craig Dalton: Yeah, which is amazing. And, and the brand is such a storied brand in America, producing in Tennessee when it came to gravel, starting to come to market, how quickly did light speed kind of move into that territory?
[00:16:45] Brad DeVaney: Yeah, we were pushing it. Um, ,, you know, one of our brands Quintan we've got a, a, a tremendous triathlon following and not just road cyclists, not just offroad, cyclists, but also triathletes we're converging into this space. And that that's once again, AC acknowledgement to the beauty of this, this platform.
But the, a real innovator within triathlon founder of the Quintana brand Dan infield, he, he drives a, a really good form for multi-sport athletes and, and he was begging me, please build me a custom gravel bike. And, and we already had a production gravel bike in the works and planned. , but we weren't wholly agreeing internally what that might become.
And you know, Dan and I saw pretty eye to eye on this. And so when, when I built his bike, he really he really chanted and blew horn and wrote articles. And, you know, he, he made it a real focal point of of his website
[00:17:49] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. A couple points to make, just to interrupt for a second. So when Brad talks about multiple brands, American bicycle group, the parent company owns Quintana, which is a triathlon brand. You mentioned light speed and O I D. And kind of manages all three brands along the way. So as you're taking inputs, it's just interesting, I think for the listener to understand that, and then follow up question on that custom bike and, and granted it's gonna timestamp it whatever year it was not this year.
What was the design spec? What, what did your friend, what was he saying? I need for this to be a good, fun gravel bike for me.
[00:18:26] Brad DeVaney: Yeah. You know, he was really he was really focused on his road, fit specs, and, and Dan has a school of thought that he teaches, he coaches it's the fist fit methodology. And he, he holds classes and I'm certified in it. And as well as thousands of other people that, that have been through his camps and.
I I, I have so much respect for that. But we disagree almost every time we get together, you know, he, it's, it's fun to debate with, with someone you love so much. And but yeah, the, the whole geometry and fit principles were different. And especially in the smaller size bikes, cuz we've got a longer fork and that creates some design constraints and so forth, but he really, you know, he had this road bike and these are the stack and reach numbers that he wanted on that gravel bike.
And I was like, no buddy, no, no, let's bring that. Let's let's change that let's tailor this let's change stem link let's you know, and, and, and what it really came down to was his Terrafirma was different than mine. You. His terrain is different than mine. And what we've learned over time is, you know, there's no wrong answer.
It it's all about where you live and where you ride on a, on a weekly of basis. And so he still has that bike. He still loves that bike. I've probably had three or four since then. but it's, it's, you know, that's my job is, is to develop and create and, and do new things. But and, and I really don't timestamp anything.
It's hard for me to look backwards because I'm, I'm trying to constantly wake up, having forgotten what I knew yesterday and look forward and remain creative and, and look for trends and, and develop them if, if possible. So.
[00:20:08] Craig Dalton: When, when you started to think about gravel cycling and how light speed might play in that market, what attributes of titanium were you thinking? This is great. This is the perfect application of this material. And what potentially, what other elements were you thinking? Gosh, maybe this is not the best material for
[00:20:24] Brad DeVaney: Well, I mean, you've gotta realize I, I came through the nineties with, with a lot of pro cyclists reaching out to me personally, asking for custom bikes that were gonna be rebranded. For their team use, you know, these were top level cyclists that were coming for specialty bikes, whether it be a climbing bike, a sprint bike, a time trial, bike, whatever the case may be.
I'm creating the, all these specialty bikes for over a decade. And as, as we roll into the two thousands carbon, you know, clearly became king of the elite road. And, and what had changed was the, the sponsorship levels and the number of bikes that any given rider was allocated at at their pro retirement pro tour level riders, they had so many more bikes at their disposal that.
You know, the old mindset of having that one great climbing bike or that one great time trial bike didn't exist anymore. They had multiples and mechanics were Uber busy because they weren't riding around with a couple of vans and, you know, a few team cars. They, they had semis pulling up stocked full of.
Bikes and equipment and, you know, sponsorship went up and cost of everything changed and all with those budgets, changing titanium got washed out of the top level just on pure economics. It wasn't performance, it was pure economics. And, and then you see those economic swing into the, the retail market and the profitability of carbon became so much higher.
Titanium was just, I won't say it ever became a stepchild. It still remained a nice elite product, but it was for a more mature cyclist. And it was for a cyclist that respected it from a decade prior with those business dynamics, changing our business went we, you know, we worked through that and fortunately we had grown through acquisition.
We had other brands we're still working with multiple materials. Triathlon road so forth, but for light speed specifically, I'm looking at my love and my passion for road and offroad cycling coming together. And there was no better material. There was absolutely no better material. I mean, a great titanium hard tail is still a great titanium, hard tail.
They bake, they make wonderful, single speaks. When you start looking at drop bar bikes and a utopian drop bar bike that you could just, you know, whacker rocks against it and it's, it doesn't care, titanium's it. And then the ride quality just plays in furthermore. So that I was, I couldn't have been more fired up to be working and obsessive in this in this category where I'm just retuning.
New ideas to different tire volumes. And, you know, the, the whole formula is just, just a melting pot for me. I I'm, I'm still going nuts, having fun with it. So,
[00:23:39] Craig Dalton: Yeah, your enthusiasm
[00:23:40] Brad DeVaney: and, and titanium, holy cow, it's, you know, I've got some athletes who, who um, you know, we talk to on a, on a weekly basis that. You know, they're begging for both, you know, Hey, can I do a, you know, can I ride a tie bike at this event or a carbon bike or that event?
And you know, we struggle with that trying to represent brands through specific athletes.
[00:24:03] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. As you and
[00:24:04] Brad DeVaney: me to make tougher carbon bikes and, and lighter titanium bikes. So, you know, you just, you're always balancing the virtues, right?
[00:24:11] Craig Dalton: Yeah, maybe that's a good segue. Introducing the carbon brand, which is Obi. And just kind of when that came about and what the thinking was.
[00:24:20] Brad DeVaney: Yeah. So, OED OED was started because we had, you know, for 20 years we've been working in the carbon channel and, and in a value stream where I had developed relationships with and, and one primary or a primary relationship with a family owned. Carbon frame maker. And I would go over and visit with them multiple times per year, depending on the number of new products and new projects we had going on.
But as, as Quintana was really cruising along product wise and, and quality standards were, were just going so well. And, and, you know, the, I. Kind of had, had worked all the product that we really needed to develop and, and what happens in my job because I'm a multitasker within our business. You know, I, instead of my development mind, I'm spending more time on process and quality systems and that sort of thing.
But with, with some free design space and, and on my calendar, I felt like I really encouraged. You know, the, all of our team members here that we should consider new products and consider a brand that was you know, just an adventure outdoor brand. And, and that was just dirt bikes, just fun, dirt bikes and offroad bikes.
And because it really hasn't been our, our nature as a whole group. I, you know, I have this passion and it doesn't mean everybody else has to, but at that point in time, we were growing and, and a lot of our staff were also dirt minded. And the, the economics of, you know, who can afford our bikes internally and externally became a, a, an awareness.
You know, we, we really became aware of, of.
[00:26:10] Craig Dalton: yeah.
[00:26:11] Brad DeVaney: How, how available are we with, with our passions and our products? And so it just made sense that, that we use our current suppliers and our current quality systems to deliver some products. And, and we, we started it with open model product. We didn't even design and invest in tooling.
I, I love that, that we started that way. and, and came with a, a value bike with, you know, cooperation I'm developing the, the, the or designing and, and the factory was was funding the tooling, and we allowed them to sell some of those models outside of our markets and so forth. And. we evolved and, and it took off quite quickly.
We were able to establish the, the brand itself was, was successful. And now we're, you know, we're producing our own clothes models that, you know, they're exclusive to us. And so yeah, it was, it's been a really, really good experience for us to re you know, re exercise the principles of how we develop products and, and who our customers are and focus on their needs.
So,
[00:27:20] Craig Dalton: Yeah, the timelines actually sounds pretty interesting because you know, back three, four years ago, I think it was less defined. What a, what the perfect gravel bike was gonna look like. And through a lot of trial and error from a lot of companies, I think we've arrived at these very, very versatile bikes that can handle pretty wide variety of.
Gravel cycling terrain.
[00:27:42] Brad DeVaney: Yep. Yeah. Yeah, it's fine because I, you know, I'm, I may be spending time in a wind tunnel, developing super arrow, cutting edge products. The next thing you know, I'm, I'm out on the dirt. Trying to find watage the most recent was finding the most efficient wheel set. For me, going to Kansas on the lowest fitness I've ever gone there. and, and understanding my efficiencies and what zones I need to be riding in. And it was such a good exercise, but I was doing so on a bike that I had had in the wind tunnel. And I knew exactly how many watch at what wind speeds and what y'all angles. And I'm, I'm literally thinking about this stuff on course and, you know, it's, it's, it's a strange place between my ears, but that's that's what
[00:28:28] Craig Dalton: This is hearkening back to the kid who was lacing wheels at 11 years old in a
[00:28:33] Brad DeVaney: brother, if you only knew I've got, I've got a wheel to rebuild right here beside me right now. It's
[00:28:38] Craig Dalton: So when we talk about the ground up design that you ultimately arrived at with the Obi, what are some of the specs, like what type of tire size, what were some of the takeaways that you kind of took away from that process?
[00:28:50] Brad DeVaney: you know, first thing is, you know, we want a racer design. We, we had a really univers. Super capable bike and, and we wanted the, the option to go fully integrated. So cable free, fully tucked cables or exposed cables. That that was one of the design requirements going in. And if you're gonna have a super clean, most modern presentation of a bike, it needs to have proven shapes.
And so, so I don't know if you can see in this, but you know, I'm showing you a down tube that shrouds a water bottle extremely well, but it, it it's super functional. This, you know, this isn't a razor arrow shape, but it's so functional at the speeds that we're riding in the winds of wherever. I won't just say Kansas, but and then when, when you get to tire size, you know, This thing's gonna house some of the fine tread fifties.
You start getting more Nobby you're, you're stepping down. I mean, if you're getting to a super Nobby tire that you think you're gonna be loading up with mud, it's gonna, it's gonna step down proportionately. So, so yeah, we're, we've got amazing tire cleaner. You see a, you know, a seat tube relief. so we're not wedging rocks and cracking carbon in a dumb spot.
You know, when I say dumb non-intelligent spot of the frame that doesn't really have function other than stiffness. And by reshaping this tube, I'm picking up stiffness. I'm blowing out a big box section down here that really amplifies some stiffness at the BB round seat, 2 31 6 drop or capable.
You see this modular brace. That actually is so that I don't have to embed rack mounts. If a guy wants to put rack or underside, it's tapped to drill for fender. So just option friendly, but super cutting edge, clean racey. I mean, even the seat stays have got a really, you know, arrow, triangular shape to it.
[00:30:48] Craig Dalton: Can I ask you, did you say the C post is 31 6?
[00:30:52] Brad DeVaney: yeah, 31 6.
[00:30:53] Craig Dalton: Interesting. Cause I, you know, I, I'm just curious to, to get your thoughts on why that size. Yeah.
[00:30:59] Brad DeVaney: Yeah. So, you know, we hear that and, and I listen to a lot of people saying, and, and we sell a lot of titanium seat posts. If you're buying a titanium seat, post a lot of people, oh, it's gotta be 27 2 so that you can get the, the soften more flexy feel. And 31 6 is, is a platform that. I'm not restricted with droppers.
I'm not restricted with stationary post. It can be zero offset, rear offset. I've just got more options available for my customer. And that was a big change. That was a big change in going into this bike. And, you know, we, we do build the component selections and options with our bicycles is amazing.
Any given model that you buy, you've probably. Eight different seat, post options. So it was important that every option on our shelf fit the bike and with
[00:31:48] Craig Dalton: I have to say
[00:31:48] Brad DeVaney: that's not possible.
[00:31:49] Craig Dalton: I was playing around on the Obi site today and I have to say one of the things that I was super excited to see was basically the custom color selector.
[00:31:57] Brad DeVaney: Yeah. The color blocking that we do is is a lot of fun, literally thousands of options.
[00:32:02] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So you can, I mean, for the listener, you can choose your, your base color of the frame. You can choose your decal color, you can choose the color of your fork and lots of beautiful options. I have to ask just cuz of the business geek inside me. How are you doing that? Operationally?
Are you building frames raw and then just leaving them, getting 'em painted.
[00:32:21] Brad DeVaney: So, yeah, all of my carbon we bring in raw. I, I, you know, it's not painted over. There's no fillers, nothing is hidden from me. So our quality standard is higher. On carbon than it's ever been because we do all of the prep work, the sanding, the prep, the base coats, the painting, the graphics application.
So it may as well be within defined options and let the customer choose it. It allows me a built order system. That's very complicated. It's not easy. I'm sure. There's MBAs that. Sit back and look at our business models. Oh yeah. Let's duplicate what these guys are doing. No, it's, it's not so easy even within you know, what appears to be canned options.
How we process and flow is, is really a learning process.
[00:33:10] Craig Dalton: It's very operationally challenging to run a customized operation. I've I've run one myself and, and I hear you. That's why I was so impressed. I love
[00:33:19] Brad DeVaney: single order is custom. Yeah. That's, that's what we have to be willing to provide.
[00:33:25] Craig Dalton: Are you doing that? That painting in Tennessee then? Okay.
[00:33:27] Brad DeVaney: Oh yeah, yeah. Every bit of it right here in the building. Yep.
[00:33:30] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. Impressive. Truly impressive of me that earnestly
[00:33:34] Brad DeVaney: Thank you. Yeah, we just completely revamped our, our painting operation. We're, we're actually gonna do a little bit of a a show and tell. And, and produce some content that's gonna be coming within the next month or so that shows some of how we do it.
So yeah. Be, be ready to see some of
[00:33:52] Craig Dalton: Awesome. So, I mean, we started offline talking about when you've got a customer coming through the door. Now you've got a world options. You've got carbon bikes, you've got titanium bikes. How are you helping the consumer navigate
[00:34:06] Brad DeVaney: It's fun. It's so much fun. Holy cow. And I'm always that contradictory guy with our sales team. They, they, it's a love, hate relationship. I'm sure for them, I, I love them, but they don't always love me. Being at I was talking about being at VWR and, and kind of standing in for some sales folks there so they could participate the hate.
Um, But it, it was wonderful to have folks coming up saying, what's the difference? and the difference number one is, are, are you bothered when rocks fly off the front wheel or your buddy's front wheel and hit the down to your bike or the top tube, or, you know, hearing those stones hit your bike is bothersome.
Tough and composites are, are what we build our bikes with. And that's, that's a big piece of it. These Aren. They're, they're close to what would've been super elite road bikes, not too many years ago, but we, you know, we've developed toughened composites to a point that they're very gravel worthy also that they can withstand some chainsaw and, you know, the, that the natural things that happen in gravel riding.
So durability does lean towards titanium. It's, it's not impervious. You can dent a titanium bike, whereas a carbon, you dent it. It's gonna need a repair. It's just, it's just fact of the matter ride quality is something that's very, tuneable in both materials. You know, it just takes a different skill set in how you develop to.
Diameters wall shapes, thicknesses, all of that. When you're, when you're obsessive about creating titanium, we go through that and provide multiple models. So we have a pure race bike. We have what I consider a high performance SUV, and then we've got something that's more of a touring model. But then we also have the full customization.
If you need custom geometry, if you need custom tube selection, no problem. We can provide that. That's, that's something that our consultation process we typically take. I say we engineering will take that order from sales and go into a consultation process with with that customer and develop the bike carbon, believe it or not, isn't always the stiffest that that's where I start to contradict.
The, you know, the theories of material and it's fun to have demo bikes setting, ready to ride, and a guy come back and say, wow, that carbon bike was softer than the other, or that carbon bike was softer than that titanium bike. Whereas that titanium bike is the softest of the mall. Um, And being able to tune car titanium above and below what is considered now, the carbon standard is a lot of fun for me, but having a really well tuned carbon bike and our offering is is so gratifying and That's what's really gone into this latest GVR model that, that I was just holding up and using as an example is it's is got vertical compliance, the bike.
When you stand, when you corner the bike rips, it just, it responds really, really well. And it's a, it's a platform that, that I look forward to how we continue to provide that and, and what may come years down the road from. And it is, it is absolutely inspired, different performance characteristics in titanium.
So I'm, I'm playing, you know, good versus evil or one versus the other. However you wanna look at whichever team you choose to join. That's I'm, I'm the guy that's that, you know, and, and playing those games and, and one advancing because of the other. And, and I think that's one of the real benefits of my job.
[00:37:46] Craig Dalton: Absolutely. If people are looking to purchase a light speed bike, is that directly through you or is there a dealer network? They would go through.
[00:37:53] Brad DeVaney: Both both. Yeah. That's, that's something that you know, we love our, our longstanding dealers and, and honor them in every way possible. We try to drive business through their doors. As the OED brand was created. You know, we've, we've been forced out of a lot of shops with light speed, just, just due to the business dynamics that the bigger players have created in shops today.
And that's unfortunate. So in, in creating the new brand, we, we made that consumer direct whereas light speed also is available consumer direct in, in areas that That's necessary or even desired because sometimes a light speed dealer in town. Isn't the service provider for someone that's interested in a light speed and you know, so we we try to make everyone happy there and, and work, work openly.
[00:38:39] Craig Dalton: Nice. And then you mentioned being out at BWR. North Carolina. And then also out in Emporia in Kansas for Unbound, are the teams traveling to other events this year? If gravel, cyclists are looking to find you and test some of these bike.
[00:38:53] Brad DeVaney: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Once again, I, I feel like one of the luckiest people on earth, I would've been in Kansas. Would've been at BWR Asheville. Next stop will likely be S B T be out Steamboat. And yeah, from that point on we're, we're a little bit flexible. Just based on a lot of.
Event obligations that, that our, our true event team has on their schedule, cuz we do support a lot of events within cycling and triathlon. And we have, we have a good team of folks that, that work on that
[00:39:22] Craig Dalton: Right on, well, I'll make sure that the listener has in the show notes, the websites and social handles to make sure they know how to get in touch
[00:39:28] Brad DeVaney: on a weekly basis. Yeah. Please do jump on the jump on the websites we keep. We keep live chat. And you know, if, if we're not in house those questions get answered first thing in the morning, and then it's always best to catch someone live. And, and I, I love the dynamic. I is listeners may not have heard in our conversation earlier.
Our business has, has completely changed in the past couple of years how we've chosen to To try to really link directly with consumers and, and provide direct answers. It's, it's, it's been a, a big growth for us and we want to hear every issue. We want to know every squeak, every rattle, every great story.
That's, that's something that we weren't doing. When we were wholly working through bike shops with light speed and. We're better engaged with our consumers today. And, and that really inspires our product development. And I, I try to keep those channels completely open as well, but, but we do like to communicate and answer every single question.
[00:40:32] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that's great to hear. I'm sure it garners a lot of support from the cycling community, just to be able to, you know, chat someone or pick up the phone and talk to someone. I feel like for me as a consumer, you know, just makes you feel that much more connected with the brand.
[00:40:45] Brad DeVaney: We hope so. That's, you know, as, as passionate cyclists that's, that's how we want to be treated. And so that's, that's what we aim to.
[00:40:53] Craig Dalton: Amazing. Well, I appreciate all the time, Brad, and I appreciate your sort of lifetime, your career of putting energy into making all these fun bikes for riders around the
[00:41:02] Brad DeVaney: Thank you, Craig. You're you're a giver brother. You are a true giver and much respect to you and, and what you provide right on.
[00:41:11] Craig Dalton: world. Cheers.
That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Huge. Thanks for Brad coming on the show. I appreciate everything he's done in the world of gravel cycling and cycling in general with Lightspeed and the new obit brand. Huge. Thanks to Trek, travel for joining us as a sponsor. I'm very excited to join the Jarana gravel bike tour November 6th through 10th this year. And you're all invited to come with me. Check out the link in the show notes and join me for a little Spanish gravel.
If you're interested in connecting with me or have any questions about that, you're on a trip. Come on over to the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. It's a free online cycling community. You can connect with writers all over the world and discuss roots, equipments, anything that's relevant to gravel cycling. It's been a really fun exercise seeing that community grow and seeing the conversations that happen in my absence.
If you're able to support the podcast, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. And until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week I’m releasing my conversation with David Toledo of Crow Bicycles. I first interviewed David early in the pandemic, but with the dramatic supply chain issues that were going on at the time, Crow decided to push the launch of their e-gravel bike back. They are now in-market with an extended line up of e-bikes so I’m excited to get our conversation out there.
Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (use promo code: THEGRAVELRIDE for free HRM with purchase)
Crow Bicycles Website
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Crow Bicycles[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the podcast, we've got David Toledo from Crow, bicycles from Madrid, Spain. I actually recorded this episode early on in the pandemic and was excited to learn more about the CRO brand. As it turned out as many of, you know, The disastrous supply chain affected many, many brands and it actually affected crow's planned launch schedule.
We put the episode on ice, but I'm happy to say Crow is ready to go. With bikes, ready to ship.
CHRO bicycles as you'll learn shortly is an E bicycle company. With a gravel model that is their flagship offering, but they also offer commuting bikes, a flat bar, gravel bikes, and a bunch of options. If you're looking to enter the e-bike market. I've always been fascinated by e-bikes. I first got an e-bike for a cargo bike and it was a no-brainer to schlep my son around.
But increasingly I've learned to appreciate the place that e-bikes have in the market. Whether it's for commuting or pleasure. I do think if you open your mind, E-bikes makes sense for a number of types of riders. I often think about some of the riders I see up on Mount Tam, which is a bit of a hefty climb.
As they're getting older, maybe they don't have the ability to get up the hill or maybe they're trying to ride with younger friends and I see multi-generational rides. Happening with fathers and sons and the father might be on the e-bike or a son might be on the e-bike. So it's been fascinating to see. So I'm excited to see where these will fit in. And I know crow's execution is very slick.
You'll hear David talk about the type of drive train they've implemented and the sort of Swiss army knife approach they've taken. With the bike with the type of motor and battery pack removable from the bike entirely. Making it a perfectly. Acceptable standard bike, maybe with a slight weight penalty.
But perfectly acceptable to ride. So I think it's an interesting option. Encourage you to enter this episode with an open. Heart about what e-bikes could be and learn a little from david and go check out the cro bicycles lineup.
Before we jump in. I want to thank this week. Sponsor, hammerhead and the crew to computer. Do you want to get more out of your rides this summer? Any old device can track distance, time and pace, but how about the ability to see upcoming Hills and points of interest along the route? The hammer had crew to helps you find your path forward and unlock your full potential on every ride.
I've talked about how I've been using the crew twos climb feature and how much I've enjoyed seeing upcoming climbs. I'm excited. I'm going somewhere new this next week for the 4th of July. And it's going to be interesting to see what those rides hold in front of me. I love seeing those data points.
I've been continually tweaking my display on the crew to, to put the things that I think are going to be most important to me. You can set up a couple of different profiles. So kind of ways in which the computer screens. Are set up, which I find is super cool, because I might think about things differently for one of my mountain bike rides or a road ride.
Versus my gravel rides. So it's great to have that flexibility. The crew too has been simple to use and data can be uploaded to all your favorite platforms like Strava and commute and more. One of the things I've also been thinking about as I've found myself a little bit out of shape. I don't have a power meter, although you could connect that to the crew too, but I do have a heart rate monitor. And what you guys might not know is that hammerhead actually has their own heart rate monitor while it works with any ad plus system, they also have their own technology.
That you can get. And for a limited time offer our listeners can get a free heart rate monitor strap with the purchase of our hammerhead kuru two. You just visit hammerhead.io right now and use the promo code. The gravel ride at checkout to get yours today. This is an exclusive limited time offer only for our podcast listeners.
So don't forget to use that promo code, the gravel ride, and that's a free heart rate monitor with the purchase of a career to just go to hammerhead.io. At both items to your cart and use the promo code, a gravel ride. Thanks so much to hammerhead for supporting the show this week. And with that, let's jump right into my interview with David.
, David, welcome to the
[00:05:04] David Toledo: show. Thank you, Craig. Thank you for your time and thank you for your interest in crop bicycles. Yeah. I'm excited
[00:05:10] Craig Dalton: to get into it because the e-bike category is obviously.
Hitting all elements of the sport from commuter to mountain to gravel. Mm-hmm, , it's gonna be interesting to dig into the technology and what you are working on, but before we go there, David, why don't you tell the listener a little bit about your background and the inspiration behind founding Crow, bicycles, to say
[00:05:35] David Toledo: that maybe in the us, you were early adopt in the digital trains and, and eCommerce, but in Spain specifically when I'm located.
Came a little bit later than that, but I, I started very early in the early, in the first, uh, stages of the digital world in, in Spain, early 2000 in 2001, I funded my first, my first company. And it was a consultancy to help on the digital transformation to the, to the small companies in Spain. But it was really hard time doing that because it, it was, I, I felt I was talking in Chinese to the people.
It was like, oh, they, they didn't understand what I'm trying to explain them and the opportunities of the digital world. And so that, but I started there on that time in 2001 with the, my first steps on the digital world. And then I, I, I run, uh, my own digital, uh, advertising agency, uh, for, uh, many years. And on parallel, I started a new business.
Was raped with cycling industry with a few, with a few colleagues. And we started in 2000, uh, six with cannon bicycles. Uh, cannon bicycles was really interesting because it was the, probably one of the first direct to consumer brands in the market. And in 2006, it was here in Spain. It was just a few small retailers or super big online stores, like, uh, chain re and cycles.
And that, that kind of stores or gems in USA, some people was buying to Jenson USA, even in Spain, but there was no real. Digital brands in the cycle industry. And Kenon was, I was coming to the market to change the things. And it was at the beginning, it was really tough because the people didn't trust you very much.
They didn't trust on your project, on the brand that they didn't know it. And it was hard. But the, when with, with a lot of work from always side, this, the brands start to have a lot of, yeah. Awareness in the market and, and the people started to trust on us and it was, yeah. Then everything came. It was like explosion and everything wanted to all industry wanted to copy somehow cannon bicycles on that after few years, and now everything has changed.
And, and I can say that the digital industry or the digital business are here for good. And it's something that, uh, even the, the big players. Figuring out how to interact with the digital world and to keep their, the traditional business models that trying to do some kind of blending between both words.
But it is very interesting. And, but my background definitely is digital. Absolutely digital.
[00:08:06] Craig Dalton: Interesting. So after all that time with canyon bicycles, did that spark an inspiration that you saw an opportunity in the market that led you to Crow bicycles?
[00:08:17] David Toledo: Yeah. I had clear since the very beginning that the digital business and especially the direct to consumer business, it's the, in my eyes at least is the way to go.
Because you have as a brand, you have direct and close contact with the customers. Sometimes the people say, Hey, yeah, but you don't have a physical place. I cannot reach you. I cannot see you face to face. But the thing is that is double side. The customers contact directly with the brands and the brands are interacting with the customers.
And this is something wonderful because the, the customer can express their feelings, their, uh, fears or, uh, their needs. And the brand has all this input from, from firsthand. And this is part of the magic of the direct to consumer model. And you can react really quickly to the problems and yeah, somehow all these things made me to, to, to, to shape.
In my head, if I, sometime I, I will have a, my own bike brand that was sold with my dream that definitely this, this will be the way to, to do it. But also there was a lot of things to improve because there was after 14 years working with cannon bicycles, I saw all the aspects of the brand, the good things.
And sometimes even not the so good things, because it was always how you see it in English, Chinese and shadows or something like this. It's, uh, it's like, Things that it was not so nice. And this is the kind of things I want to improve. I want to change a little bit, and also from, uh, my experience and my learnings during my Eli years, there is also new ways to do business.
And this is the part that I'm definitely going to disrupt in conversation with other brands. And even with Kenya bicycles in the coming months, we want to work in a project that is going to change the way the customers. Use the bike we could say. Yeah, but I cannot say too much about that because it's just an ongoing
[00:10:03] Craig Dalton: project.
Interesting. Great. And then to pull the company together, were you drawing on other teammates that you had worked with previously at canyon to design the bicycles, et cetera?
[00:10:15] David Toledo: Yeah, I mainly the design of the bicycle was my work for the last, yeah, probably eight to 10 months or something like this, or previously since 2008, late 2019 until mid 20, 20, or a little bit more.
I was working, just focus onto the cycling bicycles portfolio and design and components and trying to develop concept and a range that has Sims. And then I contacted my, one of my colleagues in. Ex or former C in Kenya USA. And he was working in another industry and I conducted him to. To tell, Hey, I'm gonna launch that this, this is something that sounds interesting to you.
And of course he was interested since the very beginning and, uh, we start working and he helped me to also to shave the bikes in terms of adapting them to the, uh, us market and to the us, uh, consumer needs. And, and together we did a lot of, uh, things. Yeah. But it was, it was really interesting to have like both sides, right?
The, the European point of view, uh, of the cycling and the American point of view, because. Even if, if it's, uh, gravel and even if it's cycling, uh, sometimes they're pretty different, uh, from market to market. Yeah,
[00:11:27] Craig Dalton: absolutely. There definitely seems to be globally different perceptions around e-bikes particularly in the offroad world that we see in Europe versus the us stepping back for the listener.
So Crow bicycles is introducing a range. E-bikes E gravel bikes to the world. David, why don't you get into just some of the basic idea behind the bike, the type of. Engine that I don't know, even know if engine is the right word in e-bike so you'll have to correct me but, but I'm super curious. I've been very, yeah.
[00:12:00] David Toledo: Motor yeah. Motor maybe is the right way to, to yeah. But motor or system or just, yeah, it's maybe motor is the right
[00:12:08] Craig Dalton: one. Thank you. Yeah. It's, it's been interesting for me. I probably started out originally seeing e-bikes offroad and being frustrated and maybe being a little bit of a naysay. I started to see them commuting into San Francisco.
And I started to have a realization from a commuting perspective. There were absolutely days that I didn't wanna ride the hour to an office downtown in San Francisco, but I certainly didn't wanna get into a car and having an E commuting bike made sense. Then I started to talk to more and more athletes who were riding them off road.
And I started to appreciate a lot of the nuances. In the e-bike market and how it creates accessibility for athletes who might not be able otherwise to get up the big Hills around here, but it also opened up new performance elements, new ways of riding, because you could discount certain things that may take up a lot of your time in any given bike ride.
So I've become very pro eBike actually. And I'm curious to talk about E gravel bike because I haven't quite. Made that fit into my mental model yet.
[00:13:19] David Toledo: yeah. The thing is that there's sometimes it's hard because there's so many kind of likes and this is interacting with customers. It's really, as I said, it is really interesting because you get a lot of feedback.
Sometimes this feedbacks are saying, Hey, this is a mope. Or this is buy a motorcycle instead of an e-bike. Why, why do you buy an e-bike? You can buy a motorcycle or something like this, and this is not real bicycle. And so many feedbacks like this. And the thing is that most of these feedbacks are coming from people that never before tested a, an e-bike.
Yes. And they don't have an experience with e-bike and, and I will definitely recommend them to test it because it's, it can change your whole perception of like concept of this thing. But the it's gonna start with saying. Somehow I have to give them a part of, of the, the ride because yeah, there's some e-bikes in the market that definitely, they are a concept that I'm not really, uh, friend of it's those super.
High speedy bikes, uh, super powerfully bikes that they're somehow, they're like a moment with pedals and I'm not really comfort with that kind of, of concept. Or I respect this is in the market. I am of course agree that this needs somehow to be like regulated because they can be even dangerous sometimes because they have a throttle and then you, you can use it as a.
Motorcycle, but there's another can of EBIS that this is, uh, more like, uh, a bicycle with some systems. And in this group, this, this is in some states in the us, this is called like the class one and they are limited up to 20 miles per hour. And at least in Europe, they have a limited a limitation on even on the power, the power, the motor cannot give you more than 250 Watts of power.
Okay. . Yeah. And this is, this is another concept, absolutely different to the super powerful, super heavy e-bike. And, but the, the truth is that one of the friends, I was one of the first I was missing in the market. When I started to, to develop Crow, bicycles was something in between the e-bikes that you can find in the market, even coming from the big players, right?
Like from specialize or Cannondale, their approach was more like. Powerful e-bikes but, uh, a bicycle, but with a powerful motor and somehow a little bit heavy, more heavy than I would like to have in a bicycle. So this is what I, I started to think. Hey, there's I think there's room in the market for a lighter bike, uh, uh, a e-bike that it's a blend between, sorry, between a, a standard bicycle and an e-bike something that you can enjoy pedaling that it needs to be easy to pedal.
And it needs to be light and it needs to be nimble. And so all these concepts needed to be developed in a bicycle. So I start to research and I found that there was no many options in the market for that kind of bicycles. And this is what I decided. Okay. I need to step into that and I need to develop a brand that it's focused on the experience.
Not only on the, yeah. I have a, a, a super cool bike, but it's, I have the feeling that some, somehow this is, uh, like artificial. I wanted to have a bicycle that when you're riding, you don't feel that this is any bike. You feel that it's somehow you're better trained than you really are or better fit than you really are, but you don't feel that you're not working out.
And this is found Fati. I met FASU with through canyon bicycles because they used them at, in Theban and commuting bikes. And, and I, I saw there was like, uh, a lot of potential with that system. And. Yeah, this is basically what I wanted to develop a e-bike concept or a bicycle, a bike brand focus on really light e-bikes where the experience is.
The most important thing is, uh, to have the feeling that you are not using, uh, Mo pit or something like this. That is a real bicycle. Yeah,
[00:17:13] Craig Dalton: I think there's a couple really interesting points there for the listener one. I think we've all seen almost beach cruiser style, electric assist bikes, and someone goes by you at 20 miles an hour.
And it doesn't even look like the same sport, right? It's just, they're not a cyclist. They're not getting any fitness or barely any fitness out of that. Maybe that's my personal bias. But when you get to the performance e-bike and these lower weighty bikes, clearly you're getting a workout. You're just getting it at different points.
I like the way in your. Indigogo campaign, how you're articulating some of the power assist where it's the, the level one is like a breeze at your back. Yeah. Whereas the, the level three is like a rocket ship. So I think it it's super interesting. The second thing I wanna point out, and it's difficult without looking at an image and I'll certainly have links to both your website and the campaign about the motor and battery mechanism and how mm-hmm fr from the uninitiated eye.
It really does disappear into the construction of the bicycle. You're not seeing a big battery where the water bottle might be, and you're not seeing a massively oversized mechanism around the crank shaft. Yeah. So it's a very interesting visual with the Crow bicycles and this FSA motor system that I, I think you've designed into the product.
[00:18:35] David Toledo: yeah, yeah. For zoo was really interesting because you can find some bicycles in the market that they, they have like, absolutely integrated the battery into the main cube, but it's something that you cannot easily remove from the, from the bicycle. So you you're gonna have always this battery and the motor eats.
Integrated in the bottom bracket. So you, you have a bicycle that it's an e-bike, it can be a not super powerful eBike and it can be pretty light e-bike. Yeah. But you have all these things in there inside, and you can remove them. And it's the aspect of some bicycles is, yeah, it's great. You can see that there's no even connections or URA was offering something that I really love.
It was that it's a clean. Design it's absolutely integrated into the main tube. And, but the thing is that in seconds you can remove the whole system, even the motor, that this is the most interesting thing. Even the motor and the battery in one pack and just put in place a hollow cover and you have a thunder.
and this is, this is like, uh, the best thing, because if you want, just to experience a standard bike without any assistance at all, and without the, and with you, the extra weight of the motor and the battery, you can do it in seconds.
[00:19:52] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's pretty fascinating. And I know I saw that you've basically, you have a, sort of a compartment that snaps back into where the battery and motor was, so that you can carry a jacket or what have you, in, in that location when you're not using the battery.
[00:20:06] David Toledo: Yeah, that's it. That's it? Uh, this is this, that was one of the interesting things for me. And this is one I always tried to say to the people, Hey, this is, this is not a mop it. And this is like absolutely different concept. To what maybe you're used to seeing a, in a e-bike, but this is a real bicycle and you can even use it as a real bicycle.
This is the magic of the system. This is, it's absolutely integrated in the, the whole, this angle bicycle. You cannot really notice that you have a motor and the battery there, but even if you want, you can, you don't need to carry with, with you, if you just want to go for a standard bike ride. And yeah.
[00:20:40] Craig Dalton: So the bicycles am I correct?
That they hover around sort of 30 pounds.
[00:20:46] David Toledo: yeah. Is that right? Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. 30.2 30.7. Something like that. Yeah. And
[00:20:53] Craig Dalton: is that, is that with the battery?
[00:20:56] David Toledo: Yeah, that's with the battery and
[00:20:57] Craig Dalton: the motor? Yeah. Okay. And then when you take the battery out, what do you bringing the bike down to at that point?
[00:21:03] David Toledo: Yeah. It's you can get, let me. Be sure about that figure because it's, I have all the figures in, in kilos. gotcha. So yeah. Wait a second. I'll let you know what was that? I think it was like seven pounds or something like this. I'm correct. Yeah. You remove 7.3 pounds, right? You're removing a lot of weight and the weight of the hollow tube.
It's uh, 0.9 pounds. so you're turning your 3.2 pounds bike into a, a 23.8 pounds or something like this. So it's, it's very light. It's a really decent weight for a, a standard bicycle. So it's, I know it's there there's of course lighter, like the more likeer options in the market, but this, but you cannot transform into a eBike.
And this is the, the great thing of this concept that you can have two bikes in.
[00:21:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah, no, I think that's really, it's a mind blowing thing as a consumer to think about how it fits into your life and how having those two bikes. Yeah. It's not your featherweight race bike, but without that battery in there at 23 odd pounds, that's not obnoxious either.
That's a bike that you can still ride and enjoy. Obviously there's a lot of different sectors of the e-bike market. E mountain bikes and commuter bikes have been huge. As we've said before, what made you feel like E gravel mm-hmm was the right category to enter and for the listener, what type of adventures and types of riding do you think that an E gravel bike opens
[00:22:33] David Toledo: up?
Let's start saying that probably for me, the, the E the, the, the gravel's like, uh, the most versatile bicycle ever is, is a perfecto rounder. You can go everywhere and do whatever you want with that. You can to commute, you can travel with it. And that that's, that was why I decided to start my, my, my background, my bike brand with, with a gravel bike, but Y E gravel bike it's because I saw there was a new world to discover with a, with an, a knee bike.
I, I, I really love to. I travel with my bike. I, every year I try to do at least one of two long urinates during, I don't know, 10, 10, 10 days or 12 days crossing part of the Spain. And I was always carrying my, my backpacks and, and all the, all the backs to, to carry all the stuff for 11 or 12 days. And, uh, some at some points I was Australian because even if you're feet, you definitely feel.
All the way your came with you it's as, at some points it's, it's too much and you don't enjoy very much with that. So I start to think, okay. The, even for that kind of customers, when you're traveling, when you need a bike, that goes all kind of the rains, an e-bike it's perfect too, because you can be riding without any assistance and at certain points where you need some.
You can count with that backup system that is going to help you. It's going to make your life a little bit more easy, and it doesn't mean that it's going to be any trick and you're not going to enjoy cycling, or you're not gonna do a workout. It's just going to help you when you want or when you need. I think it's
[00:24:09] Craig Dalton: really interesting with the e-bike again, cause I, I feel like a lot of people like the natural perception is it's not a fitness experience, but it just changes.
Where you're able to ride. They think about riders here out of San Francisco and anybody who's living in the city knows it might take you half an hour to get across the golden gate bridge and then into the Headlands. And in a big day, you might get to the top of Mount TA. But if you eliminate some of the efforts in the, the early part of that ride and maybe ride out to Fairfax and start from the backside of Mount TA, all of a sudden things that would've normally taken.
A six, seven hour ride long day, which is generally outside the, the world of possibility for a lot of people, all of a sudden you're able to explore the backside of Mount TA or, or even farther out with the ESY. Yeah. So it becomes really interesting in the same way. Just a gravel bike in general becomes interesting that the combination of roads and trails, you can bring things together that you otherwise wouldn't.
On other types of bikes mm-hmm so I think it's, it's just one of those very thoughtful things. As people are thinking about these bikes, you need to consider what, what it will open up for you to. .
Yeah.
[00:25:23] David Toledo: Yeah. This is one of the, one of the actual, this one of the main keys that you can, you can prepare your daily ride in like absolutely different way.
You can, if you need to cross a city or you need to, uh, reach a certain point and you, you need to do some, I don't know, row that even you need some speed or whatever the EBI is going to always help you there. And you can enjoy the rest of the ride without, but this is part of the key of, of our concept that you can enjoy.
Without any assistance, because even with other e-bikes you in the end, when you are not pedaling or when you're not having assistance from the motor, you are moving the motor. And this is somehow, this is hurting your experience because you have some kind of filling, like, like you have, uh, a not fine pedaling or you, you feel it like, uh, a little bit like a jam.
I don't know how to express it in it's. So easy to pedal light with, or as in a standard bike and in, but with the FSU system, it's very interesting because when you don't use the, the assistance, the motor is disconnected from the bottom bracket. So you feel that you're riding a standard bike, even with the
[00:26:27] Craig Dalton: mechanism still installed on the bike, you still don't feel like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:26:32] David Toledo: Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. That's a point. That's a point you have three, a systems modes. This is the breeze, as you described before, there is yeah. Having some wind on your back and the rocket, but in the middle you have, uh, a river and all of them, you can configure, uh, you can customize them with, with your laptop and, uh, a USB cable connected to the system.
You can transform your, your whole system into, uh, a different behavior when you want and you can explore and you can play with it. But the, the cool thing is. You have another mode that it's, uh, we call it like the non systems mode and, and the LEDs are, uh, right and wide. And in this mode, it's, the system has a clutch and the motor is connected from the bottom bracket.
So you are riding a standard bike and you're carrying, of course you're carrying some extra way because you, you have this 3.1, sorry, 7.3, uh, pounds of the motor and the battery. But it's not that much. It's not something that, and you are not really going to notice that weight very much because you're riding like one of the, uh, wonderful things of the global bikes is that they are not, you know, rolling this massive, super wide and heavy tires of a moon bike.
You're rolling with a, with a tire that really rolls. Perfect. And even with the battery on the motor there, it's great. But one of the keys of the system is that you, your motor is disconnected when you're not using the systems. So you have a standard bike.
[00:27:59] Craig Dalton: That's really interesting. And I know for the listener of a, a large, very large American brand, just introduced a mountain bike with this same exact engine in it.
So I think it's something we're gonna see more and more. And again, I probably misspoke. I shouldn't call it an engine. It's that mid drive motor that we're talking about. interesting. So where are you in the progression of beginning to start your production and deliver bikes?
[00:28:25] David Toledo: Yeah, that's interesting question.
Uh, a lot of people ask it, ask it as about the, the production and because everybody knows how it's industry right now and the industry struggling. This is struggling because there's, it's, there's a boom on the demand. Something that after 15 years in the cycle industry, I never saw something like this, but it's, it's great because this is in somehow it's, it's unparalleled with our vision.
We, we want more people riding on bikes. We want more people. Using versatile solutions for enjoying and for doing sports and also for commuting for transport. And so that's great because this means that more people is using bicycles. But yeah, the, the question is we are not going to use the stocks of the OE products.
This in industry, in the cycle industry, there is two, two ways to approach to the, to the components. You can buy them as a OE, or you can buy them as a. A store or something as a retailer, the big players are always, they need to use OE stocks because they're ordering massive amounts of products. They cannot order their products to any other stock that is not an OE.
And this needs go through the, directly to the production facility in whatever, in Japan or in the us, or in Asia. And that, that has a list of orders or pre-orders from all the big grant. And. Like right now because everybody's ordering and there's a mass waiting list. And, but our case is a little bit different because we are a small brand and we are not going to order a massive amount of, of parts.
Uh, so we are going to order them to the local European stocks to have access to, to products that are going to be a viable sooner than the OE production. So we are gonna have of course, a. Expensive product. We are gonna have less margin in our products, but instead we can, we can deliver the bicycles to our customers before.
[00:30:26] Craig Dalton: Yeah, no, we've talked about it on the podcast before. It's a very complicated moment in time for global supply chains and it's particularly affecting all the smaller brands that I speak with because the big guys are sucking up all that volume and the manufacturers just simply can't keep up with the demand.
[00:30:46] David Toledo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a with the COVID thing, there was like a lot of work that was a stop. And, but basically the production capacity is what it is. So even if you want to order more, the factories can produce more. So this is right.
[00:31:03] Craig Dalton: Yeah. You assume that it would sort itself,
[00:31:05] David Toledo: we would start shipping.
[00:31:07] Craig Dalton: Yeah, sorry. Yeah. Sorry, dude. I was saying, saying, yeah, you assumed that a year into the pandemic that it was gonna start working itself out, but there's no indication that supply is unlocking anytime soon. Can you repeat
[00:31:18] David Toledo: again? The, the question please? Because I, I was some cut
[00:31:21] Craig Dalton: in this. Yeah, no worries. No worries.
Yeah. You would've, you, I would've assumed a year into the pandemic that the supply chains would've been unlocked at this. But there certainly hasn't been any indication from people I've been speaking with that. That's the case. No, it's not the
[00:31:35] David Toledo: case. It's not the case. This is still struggling. The thing is that it, it has somehow it's like the perfect storm, right?
Because, um, with the co and in, in the whole world has been locked down in their homes for really, for months, at least in here in Europe, it was like pretty crazy because we were in our homes. We can't even not go out for anything, basically. Can go to the mall to buy some foods. And that was all. So the people was at their homes and they were really suffering.
And once the people started to go again, out to the streets, they, they appreciate more than ever before the, the freedom to go out the freedom to practice the sports. That was part of why all this boom is coming from because the people wanted to keep practicing sports and enjoying their life. And also in, in the big cities, the people.
Concern about using the, the public transports or the VA or the subway, whatever. So there's a lot of people that also they are buying bicycles to do commute. And so this is this together with the, with the, the whole stop that the production in, in Asia had the first, uh, quarter of the year. And even until the mid 20.
And plus all the demand that all the, all this action industry is putting right now onto the, onto the production in, in Asia and in Europe. That's what is making this perfect storm and seems that it's not going to change in the short time. Definitely. We think that probably until 20 22, 20 23, this is not going to be better.
Definitely. Yeah.
[00:33:08] Craig Dalton: As you and I were talking offline, I think there there's gonna be this new reality post COVID and I, I do hope and I'm optimistic. The sheer volume of people out on bikes is going to start to transform a lot of our communities and make cycling even safer and better. And products like this that have the versatility to deliver you maybe farther than you'd normally want to pedal on any given day, I think are really exciting changes in modality for transportation that we're in front.
[00:33:39] David Toledo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it. This, I, I saw somehow the whole COVID thing has forced to speed up some changes in the world. Right. We were spec talking before about the, the new way to work and where the people is, where the people is located, working. They are right now working in different places or from their home.
And now the, even the companies have discovered that, okay, maybe. Working from home is not that bad. And, and so the people it's changing their, um, mentality the way they understand the, the world. And this is somehow, this is because of the. And also the cycling industry. It's getting some profit from that because, uh, the bicycle is the perfect transport solution for a lot of people, but they didn't discover so far.
So right now the people is discovering. Yeah. Wow. The bicycle is not that bad. It's great. I even go faster or I can, I spend less time that with my car because. Before that I was in a traffic jam and now I don't need to look for a, I don't know, half hour when hour looking for a parking to, to park my car.
And now with a bicycle, I even, I go, even I reach my, my, my job happier because I'm, I'm practicing sports because before going to the office and. I arrived to my office with a, with a smile. And I, before that I was arriving really mad in a bad view, uh, in a bad news because I was tired of, uh, being for a long time in traffic jam.
And this, this is changing. This is absolutely changing.
[00:35:08] Craig Dalton: Yeah, absolutely. Some of the many reasons I'm excited about the project you're working on with Crow bicycles, for the listener, I'll put links to crow's website and their launch campaign. that you should check out. Yeah. And I very much look forward to trying one of these bicycles, myself and getting a perception on how it opens up.
Yeah. Gravel cycling in my community for. .
[00:35:29] David Toledo: Yeah, we're looking for that too. We have the truth is that we have right now, one bicycle on the us, it arrived last week and we're gonna have soon the motor and the battery system, because we needed to send it separately for, uh, different reasons. But yeah, it's gonna be ready for you soon.
So we are looking forward to, to, to handle the word you and, and see your, your reaction to that bike. I think you're gonna, you're gonna love it. I'm enjoying this bike probably more than any other bike before. I'm appreciate that. A lot of people is going to discover a new work with this, uh, new concept.
[00:36:02] Craig Dalton: Awesome. Thanks for all the time today, David. I appreciate the overview.
[00:36:06] David Toledo: Thank you very much for your time and congratulations for your work and this, this podcast.
[00:36:11] Craig Dalton: Big. Thanks again to David for joining the show and telling us more about Crow, bicycles, and their exciting lineup. I'll put a link in the show notes so you can find them online.
I'm keen to get your feedback. So if any of you are e-bike riders or have thoughts on the subject, feel free to shoot me a note or join me in the ridership forum. You can simply visit www.theridership.com. That's our free global cycling community. So jump right in and have a conversation.
It's a great way to connect with me and other gravel cyclists from around the world. If you're able to support the show, simply visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. And remember to go check out that hammerhead, kuru to offer, use the promo code, the gravel ride. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with Doug Roeder to discuss the 2022 UNBOUND 200. The draw of this event came at Doug from many directions and he has now set an audacious goal to join the 1000 mile club.
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Doug Roeder[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
[00:00:28] Craig Dalton: This week on the show, we've got Doug rotor. Doug. And I actually know each other, gosh, for a couple decades. Now we met through mutual friends and recently reconnected over the sport of gravel cycling a few years back. Doug reached out knowing that I did this podcast and mentioned that. He was heading out to Unbound.
I knew he was also heading back here in 2022. So I thought it'd be interesting to get them on the podcast and just talk through his journey with Unbound. Talk about this year's event. Talk about how he's managing to fit it all in as a professional with a family here in the bay area.
I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you do too. Before we jump in i need to thank this week sponsor our friend at athletic greens.
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Would that business behind us? Let's jump right in to my conversation with doug rotor Doug welcome to the show.
[00:03:24] Doug Roeder: Hey, Greg. Thanks a lot. Great to be here
[00:03:26] Craig Dalton: I appreciate you taking the time to join me after Unbound 200. I'm glad you got to the finish line. I can't wait to dig into your adventure out there.
[00:03:34] Doug Roeder: and adventure. It was and yeah, happy to talk. Great to see you. Great to be with you. Can't wait to get out with you sometime live on a bike. This will have to suffice for now, though.
[00:03:43] Craig Dalton: Indeed. So for the listener, Doug and I met each other, gosh, I don't wanna date us too much, but it's probably 20, 25 years ago.
[00:03:50] Doug Roeder: Long time ago. Yeah. Team and training up in the city,
[00:03:53] Craig Dalton: And through mutual
[00:03:54] Doug Roeder: And mutual friends.
[00:03:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. So to set the stage, Doug, are you, or are you not a professional athlete?
[00:04:01] Doug Roeder: No, absolutely not. No, not even anywhere close.
[00:04:04] Craig Dalton: So, so Doug's an endurance athlete, like most of us and, and not an unaccomplished one you've you've achieved multiple Ironmans. If I'm, if I'm remembering correctly and always been fit.
[00:04:16] Doug Roeder: Yeah. So well, yeah. I, I guess right around the time we met, I was very unfit. I had kinda worked 80 hour weeks all through my twenties and didn't. It finally got to a place in my career in my late twenties, where I had a little bit more predictability on my schedule. And so started joined team in training and did one and only one Ironman with team in training.
But in training for that had did a half Ironman and some other events and really kind of felt like, triathlon was a, a great way to kind of get out in the bay area and, and try different things. And so I would never say I was a triathlete. I'd do one or two a year wildflower in particular, the long course there.
But cycling kind of became part of my life at that point. I met my wife on a blind date, bike ride. I started spending time up in Santa Rosa for work every other month. And a gentleman up there took me on a lot of road rides, your pine flat east side, west side, Sweetwater Springs. Always told me that if I ever had a chance to ride king Ridge, I should.
So when Levi started his ride, I started doing that. And so it was kinda I'd pick one or two big things a year to do and train for those. And that was kinda my, my.
[00:05:11] Craig Dalton: That makes sense. And then at what point along the way, did you discover gravel cycling?
[00:05:16] Doug Roeder: So, yeah, I kind of just for a decade plus kind of kept doing the same couple of things over and over cycling with something I would do with work colleagues. I commuted from the city down to the peninsula once a week. Once I had little kids just to get along one long ride in a week. And then it was 2018, I think.
Was the last year that wildflower happened and I was kind of poking around for something new to do. And a buddy on the east coast who I'd ridden quite a bit with and remembered that I was from Kansas said, Hey, you wanna check out this thing? In Kansas, there's this big race, this big bike ride.
It's a gravel ride it's called it was called it's on dirty Kansas. I said that's Ryan that's. That's ridiculous. Why would I, I go to Kansas to ride a bike. Like I go there to go to a chief's game or go see family and friends. That's that's insane. And plus the roads in Kansas, like why would you do that?
Why would I ride dirt roads in Kansas and just promptly about it? Dismiss it outright. No joke. A week later, I'm talking to my father who lives, he's retired in central Kansas. He's got 30 cattle. He's kind of a hobby rancher. And he had been staying with a. At a little town outside, Amoria called Opie.
This was in may. And when he was there, he drove around the Flint Hills. He's telling me how beautiful the Flint Hills were in the spring. The Emerald green, after the ranchers burn off all the grass, it comes back this beautiful green and to someone from Kansas. I mean the Flint Hills, I I'm from Western Kansas central Kansas went to high school and Eastern Kansas.
So I'm kind of from all over Kansas, the Flint Hills are just something you drive past on your. Somewhere else. There's really no, there, there there's, it's too Rocky to farm. There's no major population centers. It's pretty, you see it from the highway, but there's really no reason to go there. So my father lived his entire life in Kansas had never spent any time in the Flint Hills.
And so he, he was there with this old friend toured around the Flint Hills and he's telling me about it and he's like, oh, and there's this big bike race. Have you heard of it? And I'm like, yeah, a buddy just told me about it. I can't believe thousands of people travel. To Emporia, Kansas, which again, to native Kansas, Emporia's kind of the middle of nowhere.
It's like for a bike race. And my father tells me that his friend, they they're looking to, they wanted to rent their house out to some racers, but they didn't wanna rent a stranger. So he said, if, if you ever wanna come to Kansas and do this bike race, you know, you got a place to stay, you can rent this house outside just outside of town.
So I'm like, yeah, no, that's why I'm not. That's ridiculous. Why would I do that? And then a few weeks later, this was like the third, the straw that broke the camels back. Right. We have a friend staying with us, a friend of my wife's it's an ER doc in Philly. And he had come out to do escape from Alcatraz, big multi-sport athlete CYC lacrosse racer, and he was staying with us at our house.
And were we my wife and I had signed, but do escape that. And we're talking to, to Dr. Lambert and he said, Hey, you're Doug, you're from Kansas. Have you heard of this big bike race in Kansas? My coach. And I really want to do it. And I'm like, you're the third person who's mentioned this thing to me in the last, like 10 days now.
I'm, I'm kind of intrigued. And he had a plot to, to kind of hack the lottery at the time. Yeah, they were promoting and I'll just keep talking, you cut me off, whatever, but I figure you can edit a lot of this. So he his, his idea was his coach was a woman and there was a, they were trying to get more women to ride. The race, then 200 for 200 was the promotion 200 women ride 200 miles. Remember that. And Dr. Lambert's coach Amelia woman really wanted to come and do the race as well. And at the time you could, I think you still can, you could register as a group. So it was an all or nothing kind of thing, or up to four people could register for the lottery together.
And he said, well, make Amelia our, our, you know, team captain quote unquote, and she'll get in. Then the rest of us will draft off of that. And I was like, you know, I have this high school buddy. That I've run a couple of ultras with in Kansas. He's just the kind of guy, cause they also gave preference to locals.
I was like, we'll sign him too. I'll give him call. And so the four of us signed up and we got in that way on the lottery. And I don't know if our, our hacks helped or not, but one way, you know, we got in. So now it's January of 2019. And I'm, I've been accepted to Unbound, wildflower had been canceled.
So, you know, now I've got a new thing to train for. And I had to go get a gravel bike and try and figure out what the heck gravel biking was all about. And I had taken an old road bike and put the fattest tires I could on it and kind of started exploring some, some non paved roads down here. And it seemed like a not insane thing to do.
So I went up to my local bike. And they're a specialized dealer. So I ended up with a diverge and set it up tubus and started training.
[00:09:41] Craig Dalton: Great. You know, that's amazing. It, it sounds like you were going to be haunted by Unbound until you did it with all
[00:09:48] Doug Roeder: That's kind of,
[00:09:49] Craig Dalton: you
[00:09:49] Doug Roeder: it was kind of, yeah, that was everybody was coming at me about it. And I then a, a great guy wanted to actually travel to the middle of Kansas. And I think this is a good point to state it's. It's hard to overstate. How preposterous, the notion of Unbound gravel sounds to like a native cans who, who wasn't a cyclist as a kid, but learned to cycle in the bay area.
I mean, the notion that thousands of people from all over the country, or even all over the world would travel to Emporia, Kansas to ride hundreds of miles of the crappies roads. You can imagine in the middle of tornado season. It's just it's ridiculous, but yeah, you're right. I was kind of being haunted by it and there, I was at a point where I needed, I kind of wanted to try something new and so I signed up.
[00:10:35] Craig Dalton: And you sign up directly for the
[00:10:36] Doug Roeder: Yeah. And there was some debate around that. My, my buddy in Kansas who had, who had never, you know, he'd done some writing. He'd never, I don't think he'd ever run ridden a century before. He's like, you sure we should do the 200, maybe we should do the hundred. And I mentioned that to our, our friends from Philly and they're like, no, if we're gonna travel all the way to Kansas, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna get our money's worth.
And I was like, yeah, no, it's kind of 200 or nothing fell. And I kind of felt the same way actually. So yeah, we went straight for the 200.
[00:11:01] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I feel like back in 2019 and, and earlier, like the 200, the, the 100 felt different when you were signing up for it. Not that I've done it, but these days I feel like it's got equal promotion. Certainly the two hundreds, the marquee part of the event, but also that they realized like a hundred is pretty good as well.
[00:11:18] Doug Roeder: Oh, and a lot of fast riders. So yeah, no, it's the a hundred has definitely become a thing and yeah, even the shorter distances are, are filling up with people now, too. So.
[00:11:28] Craig Dalton: And so 2019, that was pre pandemic. Right? So the race actually went off at that point.
[00:11:33] Doug Roeder: The race went off. It was hot and humid and we, it was the north course. It was the first year they had switched back to the north course, which I guess they'd done it a few times. And we had a nice, strong south wind out of the gates. So we flew 60 miles with a tail. made the turn and on that north course, most of the climbing is kind of in the middle section.
So right around the time of day when it gets hot you start putting in some, a lot of kinda steep climbs on rough roads. And our two C cross buddies took off at that point. And I was sticking with my high school buddy. And I think the, the, you know, growing up. Growing up cycling wise here in the bay area, climbing's comes pretty easy.
You get, you can't really ride 10 miles without climbing a thousand feet around here. So, I was having a decent time. The heat's a little tough to deal with. But my friend kind of got pummeled and we emerged from those Hills into the headwind. We got to council Grove and he was suffering from heat exhaustion at that point.
And so I ended up riding, riding it in myself, late in the race and finished after midnight. And that was that.
[00:12:34] Craig Dalton: to get to the finish line in your first one. I think that's pretty amazing. Did you. I know I want to talk about this year's version, but I feel like talking about your first experience is also equally valuable because going, going in there naive about what you were to experience, how did you prepare for it?
Obviously, you you'd done Ironman triathlons. You'd done these long distance events that might have taken you north of 10, 12 hours. How did you get, what was the mindset going into 200 miles? Had you ever ridden that far before? Okay.
[00:13:05] Doug Roeder: No, no. I think the longest ride I had done was, you know, what was Levi had his long course, which had a couple of different names the Panser whatever. And so that was kinda a hundred, 1,320, I think, with a lot of climbing. And I had done the version where you get off road onto some gravels. So I took my, my road bike on some gravel roads up in Sonoma county, which was a great way.
Break a carbon wheel, which I did. But anyway, that's a different story. So the mindset was just to get, and I'd trained for some long runs as well. So I'd done some 40 and 50 mile runs. And you know, when I was training for those, I never, you never go out and run 40 or 50 miles, but yet stack up big days, you know?
So you go run 21 day and maybe 25 the next. So I took the same kind of approach cycling wise. I would do. You know, you know, kind of do my normal early morning rides with my buddies and then maybe get out for 180 or 90 mile and then try the next day to go then ride 60 or 70 gravel miles over in the east bay on the east side of the Dunbarton bridge, where it gets good and windy out there on those salt pond levies felt like that was a pretty good Kansas simulator.
And so I would try and stack up a couple of big days and then, you know, every few weeks kind of build back up to. And the mindset was just survival. We just wanted to finish. We didn't really have a time goal. It was just get her done. And that's kinda, that's sort of how it went,
[00:14:27] Craig Dalton: That's what I always thought about with training here in the bay area, because we have so much climbing, I'm UN very, very unlikely to hit that mileage. Like even if it made sense to ride 200 miles, unless I was riding on the road, I'm not gonna hit that mileage, but I can certainly do a absolutely punishing day of climbing.
[00:14:45] Doug Roeder: Yeah, no. And that's, that is the challenge, cuz I mean, if you go, when I go ride 80 or 90 miles, you're gonna climb eight or 9,000 feet around here. Now you've got the benefit. You can look at some of the Strava's of some of the, the gals up in your neck of the woods who kind of tend to win that Unbound and see what kind of stuff they do.
They'll go do hundred 40 mile crazy stuff. So yeah, I, for me trying to find, you know, in Kansas, the wind is always a factor. Finding a place where you can ride for, I don't know, four or five, six hours where it's a steady effort is kind of hard in the bay area. And so I've found this, you know, again, east side of the Dunbarton bridge, the coyote Hills, regional park, there's a nature preserve.
So you can kind of get a 30 or 40 mile flat-ish gravel loop in over there. And I'll do a few of those. And like I said, it's generally windy in the afternoon, so it's, that's kind of become, I can't get anyone to do it with me. So I'm listening to your podcasts or music and the earbuds, but. So I do do a little bit of solo training for it, but yeah, that's kind a key training
[00:15:39] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's interesting. It's so often I talk and think about the type of gravel that's underneath our wheels. When we go to these different parts of the country, but climate and wind play equally at big factors. And. It feeling hard and different. Like I know when I ride in wind, which I don't tend to ride in a lot of like, that's demoralizing to me.
So imagining like pointing myself a 40 mile headwind section in Kansas might be a little difficult.
[00:16:07] Doug Roeder: Yeah, but it's great. You can go, you can practice it here in the bay area. There are places, but yeah. Getting your it's, you know, psychological training for that kind of torture is is a big part of it. And you know, the other aspect of getting ready for that first one was just preparing to be able to fix my bike.
I've got a great local bike shop here at Melo. They've taken great care of me over the years, but like what, what, what am I gonna do if I, you know, flat my tubus tire or. Bust my chain and a water crossing, which I ended up doing. So I had to stop. I had to pop out a, a link and fix my chain. You know, there's all kinds of stuff you gotta do.
If you, if your goal is to finish you gotta be ready. And fortunately, I've watched a few YouTube videos and had the right tools to take care of that, that first year. But it was, it was non trivial getting across the finish line. And especially, yeah, once my buddy was suffering from, you know, heat exhaustion, We were at the last checkpoint minutes before they were gonna shut it down.
And he packed up his bike and put it in the minivan. And I rode off into that by myself with lights and just kind of chased fireflies and other racers. And at that point in that race, the sun's going down, it cools off. It actually kind of became my favorite part of that race. It's just a different trippy thing on the north course.
You'd end up going across this lake whole lake. You ride across a dam, there's people, boats partying, and you've
fireflies, and it's just so surreal 70 into your day to be in that place that it does kind of, yeah, it's, it's quite an experience for sure.
[00:17:28] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I can only imagine. So of the four of you, it sounds like what just did three of
[00:17:33] Doug Roeder: Three finished. Yeah. The two cycle crossers. I think they, they finished around 10:00 PM. I, I rolled in after my late start and waiting for my buddy at kinda one 30 in the morning. But even then rolling down commercial street Emporia, I had a dozen kids chasing me down the shoot on both sides. I mean, it was just a bizarre trippy thing.
And my buddy was at the finish line smiling at that point, he had recovered. So it was quite it was a really fun thing to finish and a hard, a hard, hard thing to do for sure.
[00:18:01] Craig Dalton: huge accomplishment. Now, are you one of those people that can finish an event like that? And someone puts the sign up form in front of you and you're like, sign me up. I'm gonna do it the next year.
[00:18:11] Doug Roeder: Absolutely not. So the, yeah, you know, the wildflower lawn course is a great example. I did. I think I did that thing 16 times and every time I swore I would never do it again, I was like this, this was awful. I feel terrible. I'm not ever gonna do this again. But then a week later you're like, I think I could probably do it a little bit better next time.
Right. And so, and there was the fact that my buddy didn't finish and he had never DNF anything in his life. He's actually the one who talked me into doing my first ultra. And so he was furious, absolutely furious that he did not finish that race. And so he's like, no, we're signing up. We're gonna go do it.
I'm gonna finish. And I'm like, okay, I guess. And then the pandemic hits and it got canceled in, in 2020. But we signed back and he trained like a maniac all through the pandemic. I ended up spending a bunch of time in Kansas during the pandemic.
[00:18:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:18:56] Doug Roeder: So he, and I would go out for rides in the Flint Hills and I would rent bikes at sunflower bike shop in Lawrence, Kansas, and just, they had their divergence set up with tubes and I just was blowing the things up right.
And left. And so, decided I, I bought a Kansas bike found a salsa cutthroat, which is a monster truck of a bike with 29 inch mountain bike wheels and got that, put it in my buddy's garage. And so that's. So he, he, he used that to train on used that as sort of, and, and got himself a better bike as well.
But we were kind committed once and I think had he finished, we may never have done it again, but the fact that he didn't finish, we kinda signed get him the finish line in and had two years to train for it.
[00:19:38] Craig Dalton: and so were you successful getting 'em across the finish line?
[00:19:40] Doug Roeder: We did, we, we got it done. Went out at a nice, slow pace. We did not have the rest of the crew with us. One of 'em had a baby, so it was just the two of us that year. And his 80 year old dad who lives in Bakersfield came to be our support crew. So coverage, Flint, where to the same north course, we kind set up the day before, but we went out and again, south wind, hot, humid just punishing.
But we took our time. Got the nutrition ride, you know, any of these long events, they're, they're eating competitions as much as anything. But he had had two years to train and, and we got it done. We finished around 1230. So again, I guess they call it that the breakfast club. So we both, we crossed the finish line together just a wonderful day out on the bike.
And it was really gratifying to, to get him over the line. And that was when he was, he told me that we were going for the thousand mile cha
[00:20:30] Craig Dalton: And what is that?
[00:20:32] Doug Roeder: So, you know, if you ride the 200 race five times, they give you a CICE and it's part it's on the, you know, in the award ceremony on Sunday morning. And yeah, it's, it's something.
So he, he and I are never gonna, you know, win our age group. That's just not who we are. But we could, we're pretty good at not stop 'em. So that's the goal now, apparently. And so, yeah,
[00:20:56] Craig Dalton: Now you're slightly. You're slightly off sequence with your buddy. You may get there ahead of him. Are you gonna go for six? If that's the case?
[00:21:04] Doug Roeder: I don't know. We'll see. And, and then, and you know, crazy things happen. I may be injured. I may not make one. So you just dunno how these things are gonna go, but become a goal here now in ours to try and finish that thing. And yeah,
[00:21:16] Craig Dalton: Okay.
[00:21:16] Doug Roeder: we're even more off sync. Once we get to 20 to this year's event, I'll tell you about that, but it's become a thing, you know, I go back there.
I see family It's you know, as complicated as life gets later on with work and kids and everything to have a day or two a year, where all you gotta do is one simple thing. And it may a hard thing, but it's just one it's it's it's really enjoy. Wake up in old and try and bang out two miles and miles bike is it's refreshing psychologically.
And it kinda helps me focus my training.
[00:21:46] Craig Dalton: I
[00:21:47] Doug Roeder: Yeah, we're gonna stick with it until we can't here for the next few years.
[00:21:50] Craig Dalton: I love, I love how this all comes back to your connection to, to Kansas, and it's gotta make it even more special just to be there and be on that journey.
[00:21:59] Doug Roeder: It is. And it's yeah, I mean, on that Northern course, there are some of those roads that I swear. I, I hunted pheasants on with my grandfather when I was a kid. And it's just surreal that again, thousands of cyclists from all over the planet are riding down these roads, getting flaps, just dealing with terrible conditions. Know, you might have it's the beauty is stark. And it's, I'm not gonna say it's as stunning as the grand canyon, it's not, but there is a similar discrepancy between the pictures you see and what you experience there. Just the vastness of it just can't on film. And when you're out there with this, you know, huge crowd of people it's, it's pretty stunning and and it's hard and.
Yeah, my relatives, my aunts and uncles, I, I got buzzed by an aunt and her pilot boyfriend in school, bus, Piper, Cub in 20. So it's become a thing everyone forward to coming and doing it's lot for that reason. And then it's kinda crazy too. You've got all these great bay area athletes who come out there and, you know, Alison Terick from Penn, she's a household name in Emporia.
You know, the winner the first year we did, it was Amity Rockwell. It just was amazing to me, the. Bay area cyclists. Who've made their names in Nowheresville, Kansas. It's just kind of cracks me up. So
[00:23:11] Craig Dalton: It really is. You were talking about pacing in your 20, 21 effort. Do you find it hard? Not to get sort of wrapped up in the pace of everybody else? Were you and your, your buddy
[00:23:21] Doug Roeder: yeah, that's
[00:23:21] Craig Dalton: of just specifically disciplined and chastising each other? Don't chase that wheel. We gotta go slower.
[00:23:27] Doug Roeder: that's you know, even though. Our focus, especially after having the one DNF in 19 was to maintain a steady pace, not go out too fast. You get that tailwind, you get in a group. Drafting's wonderful. But then you get to that first rough road. And at that point, You know, we saw Quinn Simmons running along the side of the road.
You know, pros have blown up, you hit the rough flinty, gravel at speed and bad things start happening, but it's also great to be in a pack. We met two high school buddies who were half our age from Wisconsin, from some little town. They were doing their first race together. First bike race ever for the first bike event that I had signed up for the 200.
So we started riding with them and we're trading poles. Next thing, you know, you know, there's not a cloud in the sky, but you feel a spray on, you know, a moist spray on your back and I'm like, what's going on back there? Oh man, you got sealant spraying all over the place. It's like pin wheeling outta your wheel.
And so, yeah, it's easy to get caught up in the fun, especially early on. And man, we sprayed sealant all over two counties, but never went flat. But yeah, then we reeled it in the, the Hills eventually, or the heat will reel you in at some point or the headwind or ball three. But yeah, it is, it's difficult, especially early on when you're riding with a pack.
[00:24:39] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Since I haven't been out there myself, I'm finally getting a picture after having spoken to so many people about this event in particular, my conversation recently with Mark Allen and he was describing, you know, you're following some wheels and you'd see someone get antsy because they wanted to pass someone and they would think, oh, I can just kind of ride over this Rocky section really fast.
And sure enough, those Flint rocks, it's a recipe for a flat tire right
[00:25:03] Doug Roeder: Yeah, it's just right there. And then every water crossing. I mean, I, this year, every water crossing, there were at least half a dozen people in the next quarter mile fixing flats. And I learned that first year in 2019, I, I dinged my chain in the water crossing and ended up having to fix it that you gotta be real careful, especially in that murky water.
You can't see the bottom. You have no idea how deep it is. All, all kinds of sharks and yeah, you learn some things, but.
[00:25:26] Craig Dalton: what's your, what's the technique then? Are you just kind of easing off and not kind of trying to keep full speed through the water sections?
[00:25:32] Doug Roeder: Definitely. Yeah, you gotta slow down. Or if you see people, you see someone hit a line and they emerge safely. You take that line. If you're on your, at that point, depending where you're on the race, the Northern course didn't have that many water crossing this Southern course, especially with all the rain in the weeks, leading up to lot of water crossings.
And I think a lot of flats came out those water crossing. So it's,
[00:25:51] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:25:52] Doug Roeder: you just gotta be careful and they can be slick. And then there's just a whole wide variety of treachery out there.
[00:25:57] Craig Dalton: In 2022 had a new variety of treachery that the last few years hadn't really been known for, as I understand it.
[00:26:04] Doug Roeder: Indeed. And we were all excited. The Southern course, a little bit less vertical kind of had a reputation for kinda more rolling Hills rather than the sharp. I had been in Kansas for 10 days, like leaning up to the race and so knew that it had rained a lot knew that we were in for some wet conditions.
But the temperatures were pretty cool and kinda day before it, you kinda not rain at all, then some popped overnight. And and yeah, but the, the cooler temperatures were just wonderful. I mean, you rolled out in the morning and it was a lot of people were chilly right. Outta the gates. But yeah, not much wind either.
That was kind of a nice thing. And it was just kind of a nice, fun, easy role. And again, we were trying to, trying to get everybody over the line. So we we got to all the first neutral water stop. We were climbing the hill up to that at around mile 40. And I'm on the left side of a double track behind this woman.
And I hear a guy shouting over my shoulder on your. On your left? No, we're coming up the middle and I look over my shoulder and a dozen dudes just blazing up this hill right down the grass between the two tracks. And it was the lead group from the hundred mile race. We the course with them up to that 40 mile point, they, and we kept going south.
But as they blasted by the guy across from me said, Hey, that was Peter Shagan. And I'm like, what? This. time, green Jersey winner just blew by me in the middle of Kansas. How weird is that? And the day just got bizarre, more bizarre from that point on.
[00:27:28] Craig Dalton: So, let me ask you a question. So that going into this one in 2022, it's your third year. what are a couple things you learned in the first two that you took, whether it's changes in your gear, changes in what you had when you were coming to your pit station?
[00:27:42] Doug Roeder: Yeah, lots of real food pit stations be very disciplined about checking the chain. Luing the chain get more water than you think you need. Cause 40 miles might go by in a couple hours, or it might go by if you hit a stiff wind in some obstacles or a flat or something, it could take a lot longer.
And as chilly as it was early in the day, I mean, the sun did pop out later in the day they got real hot. So if you kind of planned your hydration based on. What you were doing early in the day that, that didn't work later in the day. So to always take more hydration than you need real food versus just, you know, all goose, we'd roll up some sandwiches or whatever different things.
And then we carry a lot of extra, you know, CO2 S and tube and, and things to fix punctures, which fortunately we didn't have to use this year, but. I think just being prepared for everything so that you don't end up in a situation where you have a mechanical, that requires you to all the way to you didn't have the right tool or you know, ran out whatever it would be very frustrating.
And so
[00:28:42] Craig Dalton: be a shame, particularly if tr trying to train up to 200 miles, you, you put in so much time and then to go do that and have something that you could have solved toward you would be terrible. So were, were you wearing a hydration pack?
[00:28:56] Doug Roeder: Yes. Yeah, definitely. I got, I take a two and a half hydration pack and then two bottles. The other big learning is you gotta keep the bottles covered or have 'em someplace safe because the water it's all cattle, ranch land. And especially when you're spraying a lot of water everywhere once they get muddy, you don't really wanna drink out of them.
So people will rubber put baggies over 'em things like that. Or some of 'em now have caps on 'em. So yeah, you learn a few things like that.
[00:29:22] Craig Dalton: Yeah, so interesting. Okay. So interestingly, you know, when I've been hearing accounts of the 2022 event, depending on your pace, people seem to have had very different experiences. So when, when you listen to the pros, they seem to have gotten through some of these. Hugely muddy sections either got through it before it rained.
So they just rode, rode the road. When you guys might have been hiking at early slopping through mud, or they had, you know, it just hit 'em at a different point in the race. When were you encountering mud and what was it like?
[00:29:56] Doug Roeder: Yeah, mile 1 25. . We, we rolled into that. And I was on, you know, the salsa cutthroat with the 29 inch wheels and 2.2 inch tires. And I'm like, ah, this thing's, this thing's a mountain bike. I can ride through this. No problem. And I made it, I don't know, maybe 50 yards and just was slipping and sliding.
Then it was time to hike and the smart folks, maybe some. Folks with cyclo cross backgrounds picked up their bikes. So they didn't keep accumulating mud fools like me pushed it along until the mud kind of clogged my wheel. Then I was stuck. Fortunately I had noticed in the shops in Emporia the previous day, everybody was handing out those paint sticks, the paint, stirring sticks.
I was like, huh, maybe they know something that, that I, that I should know. And I, so I grabbed a couple of those and they were incredibly useful for cleaning the mud off. And that's, you know, I kinda. Tried a couple different tactics but pushed through it as fast as I could and got to the end. And there was kinda a stream where you could rinse your bike off.
I hit it faster than my buddy did. And when he, he hit it a little after I did and it slowed him down a lot more. So I ended up waiting probably 20 minutes for him to get through it and it kind of crushed him carrying his bike through that. He came out the other side and was just an absolute wreck. So, and at that point, the sun came out. So we had just kinda, I'd had a nice break. He had suffered through carrying his bike through this stuff,
[00:31:12] Craig Dalton: Yeah. If you think about it, you know, he is got a, you know, call it a 20 pound bike. He probably had 10 pounds of mud on it and gear, you know, it's just backbreaking work, pushing a bike. They just weren't designed to be pushed.
[00:31:24] Doug Roeder: push or trying to carry it with a, you know, a bag strapped underneath it and a bunch of gear inside it. I mean, it was just a freaking mess and. Yeah, everybody was in that stream, washing their bikes off. It was a pretty miserable scene. And there were these two little kids that were, they were promising everybody.
That that was the last. Which it ended up not being, and I'm still those I'm those two little kids sour folks and trying every,
but was brutal was
[00:31:50] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:31:52] Doug Roeder: both through that.
[00:31:53] Craig Dalton: And I just think about that at mile 1 25, having to kind of reset and just having gone through that moment and say, I've got 75 frigging, more miles of gravel to go, not even thinking about there being mud because of the lying kids. You thought you were gonna be cruising back into Emporia. So you guys get back on your bike, you start hitting it is your buddy starting to recover a little.
[00:32:13] Doug Roeder: No, cuz there was a, there was some decent climbing right after that. And around mile one 30, there was kind of a long climb. Like I said, the sun was back out at the time we were doing it and his stomach just failed him at that point. He got sick on the side of the road, tried to remount, tried to keep going and couldn't do it.
He was done. So, he was upset. I was upset, sad for him. Really sad for him at that point I kinda looked at my watch. I was like, If I take off now, I know I'd kind of been resting a little bit waiting for him. I was like, I could, I could get in before midnight. I could, you know, and the party closes down and pour you at midnight.
So I'd never experienced the post party. So I was all motivated to make some, some lemonade outta the lemons and and took off at that point. Yeah, I,
[00:32:53] Craig Dalton: what a tough moment for you. Just, I mean, to know that he had, he had had that issue a couple years back. And to go on and go forward when he's sitting there on the side of the road, which obviously I'm sure any friend would want you to continue, but I'm sure you rolled out with a little bit of a heavy heart.
[00:33:09] Doug Roeder: Well, I just knew that I'd have to come back one more time. So yeah, I, you know, these things happened and he was upset. I was upset. I felt a little bit of a heavy heart, but mostly like, okay, this is just things happen out here. And he called the Jeep and they came to get him. I failed to mention, you know, his dad who's 81, 82 and had been our support crew.
The previous year. He had so much fun being our support crew that he had signed up for the five mile race and had bought a bike and was, and so I was, he was looking forward to just getting back to seeing how his dad, when he'd received some texts from his dad, A picture of him in the pouring rain and saying how much funny it had.
And so he was excited to get back and see his dad and meet me at the finish. So we were actually in pretty good spirits. Surprisingly, it's just, again, it's one of those things that happens and if you can't eat and stomach's, can't go on. So he's a pretty upbeat dude. And so I took off at that point and rode hard for 70 miles.
I finished around 11, 15 in the dark and party was still going on. So I got, got a couple free beers and some tacos and it was it was really fun. And we we had, I didn't mention this. We had given a few folks rides from Kansas city down to Emporia, and that was kind of a crazy experience too.
Two folks two cyclists from New York, apparently there's a New York city gravel scene. And one of the racers was a 25 year old with a, a bike packing background. She was coming to do the 200, the other racer was a 37 year old father with a road racing background. He was there to do the hundred.
Neither of 'em had been to Kansas before. Their flight had been delayed and they got in at like four in the morning. And so their friends had gone down to Emporia. They needed a ride. They got on the Facebook page and my friend had noticed them and we had room in the car. So just riding down to Emporia again with these two folks.
Had never been to Kansas before they're New York city, gravel writers and they're, they're coming here to, to challenge themselves. It was, it was pretty shocking for two like high school buddies from Kansas to see that. And so one of them came across the finish line while we were sitting there around midnight.
And again, it's the range of folks you encounter there. Folks like the last gentleman you had on Peter Sagan gravel writers from New York. It's just, it's, it's very strange to me. And and kind of fun.
[00:35:18] Craig Dalton: Have you noticed it blow up even further from the 2019 experience to now in terms of the scale of everything? Yeah,
[00:35:23] Doug Roeder: The scale the range of backgrounds it's it really has kept, kept going and it's, it's. Again, you know, we have some of the most amazing cycling on the planet here in the bay area. But I still get a big hoot outta going and riding crappy roads in Kansas with thousands of all over the world.
It's, it's a weird thing, but its.
[00:35:42] Craig Dalton: I think that, I mean, the team, we started it always. Had this idea of what the community experience was gonna be like for the event and always, and this is what I, I love about every event organizer that I talk to. It's a, it's a love letter to your local trails, right? You're you've got the opportunity to put on an event and you're gonna just wanna showcase everything that your home town has to offer.
And that's when we get the best events, like when they come from the.
[00:36:09] Doug Roeder: And it's inspired. I mean, there's a, there's a gravel ride in the Kansas or Missouri area, like every weekend now. So it's, there's a lot of folks, you know, and then there are people kind of replicating the model in other states and and I mean, the grasshoppers have been going on out here forever, but it, it it's really kind of created a template, I think for a lot of folks to create races in places where folks hadn't thought to do it before and a lot of fun.
[00:36:35] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think that's, I've talked to with a bunch of event organizers about sort of the economic impact of bringing these types of events to rural communities and the dynamics that come into play. You actually get supportive city councils and land
[00:36:47] Doug Roeder: Yes
[00:36:49] Craig Dalton: Whereas I, you know,
[00:36:50] Doug Roeder: I mean, I, yeah.
[00:36:51] Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah. You get the high school kids coming out.
Whereas out here in the bay area, you get nothing but resistance cuz no one wants anybody to come ride here.
[00:37:00] Doug Roeder: Yeah. And as big as Levi's rad got at one point, I mean, there were thousands and thousands of people. I think you, you might meet a few locals. Who'd be out cheering on their front lawn, but a lot of folks just resented all the cyclists, you know, hogging the roads that day. And whereas out in the middle of Emporia, I mean, everybody is incredibly happy to see you.
It's it's really kind of fun.
[00:37:19] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I imagine out in the smaller communities or even going by someone's house, out on the Prairie, like they're out there just enjoying the spectacle that comes by once a.
[00:37:28] Doug Roeder: I think, you know, in the, the, what's the name of the town where the second checkpoint was Madison, I think the entire town showed up downtown. You know, and that was, they were just having a big whole party and it's yeah. So the communities where they have the support stops really show up in force You got volunteer kids, you know, Manning the crew for hire.
And it's just a, yeah, there's a lot of enthusiasm for the racers and the race.
[00:37:52] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Well, thanks Doug, for sharing so much about this story, I love that you've been doing this. I love that gravel's kind of reconnected us socially and we'll definitely get out and do some riding together at some point in the near future.
[00:38:04] Doug Roeder: Congratulations on the podcast. It was it really warm my heart to find this. As I kind of discovered the whole gravel scene, I was oblivious to it. Like I said, until, you know, a few random people clued me into this race in Kansas and it's it's been really fun to reconnect and see, see what you've done with this podcast.
And I hope to get you out to Emporia. We gotta bed for you and Kansas. Anytime you're ready to come out.
[00:38:24] Craig Dalton: I love it. The draw continues to get heavier and heavier for me. So I think I'll get out there one of these days
[00:38:30] Doug Roeder: Sounds good, Craig. I'll be.
[00:38:32] Craig Dalton: upstairs. Right on.
That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Huge. Thanks to my friend, Doug, for joining us and huge kudos to Doug for. Getting across that finish line of which sounded like a tough deal this year. If you're interested in connecting with me, I encourage you to join the ridership. Simply visit www.theridership.com. That's a free global cycling community, lots of smart and passionate athletes in there to connect with from all over the world.
If you're able to support the show. Please visit, buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Or if you have a moment, ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. Another thank you to our sponsor athletic greens. They've been a long time sponsor of the show and a product that I really enjoy and use every day. So be sure to check it out@athleticgreens.com slash the gravel ride. That's going to do it until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with Mark Allen from Wichita, Kansas to learn of his experience in the UNBOUND 100 in 2022. Mark started cycling three years ago on an undersized Walmart bike. He was overweight and dealing with some health issues that convinced him he needed to make some changes. An UNBOUND poster on the wall of a friend changed everything and started him on a journey that led to completing this years 100 mile route.
Episode sponsor: Bike Index, non-profit bicycle registry and stolen bike recovery platform
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Mark Allen - UNBOUND 100[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show, we're talking to Mark Allen from Wichita, Kansas, and talking to mark about his journey from being a non cyclist three years ago, to finishing the Unbound 100 this year.
I very much enjoyed this conversation with mark and I hope you do too. I think it just goes to show all of us that regardless of the challenge. What's important is putting one foot in front of the other one pedal stroke in front of the other, and just keep moving forward. Before we jump in. I want to thank this week. Sponsor, bike index.
Bike index is a nonprofit bicycle registry and stolen bike recovery platform. The platform has helped recovered. Over $18 million in stolen bicycles. And you know what? The one thing they all have in common is they freely registered their bikes on bike index. So head on over to bike index.org, register your bike. All you need is the serial number, make, model, and color of your bicycle. You'll get it in the system and hopefully you never need to use their services.
If you do, they've built out of robust, stolen bike recovery platform. With tools that you can use to freely share your stolen bike on social media channels. As well as ways of actually advertising against your stolen bike. To your fellow cyclists in your area, it dramatically increases your chances of recovering a stolen bicycle. So please take a look@bikeindex.org.
With that said let's dive right into my conversation with Mark Allen. Hey, mark. Welcome to the show.
[00:02:01] Mark Allen: Thank you very much for having me.
[00:02:03] Craig Dalton: I'm excited to dig into your story as the listener knows. I always like to start just by getting a little bit about your background. So why don't you tell us where you're from, where you're living and originally how you found the bike, and then we'll get into how you got the courage to sign up for the Unbound 100 this year.
[00:02:20] Mark Allen: Yes. I grew up in Wichita, Kansas did not know hardly anything about gravel cycling at all, which is amazing when you know, Unbound is basically in the backyard of Wichita. So. About three years ago, I decided I needed to get my health in check and was probably about 60 pounds overweight struggled with some thyroid issues that created me to gain an immense amount of weight.
And I went to Walmart and bought a bike that just, I just decided to go ride a bike and
[00:02:57] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Did you just get tipped off that cycling was a good activity, easy on the joints and
[00:03:02] Mark Allen: I read yes, easy on the joints trying to not hurt my knees any further than they've been over 53 years of using them. So I jumped on this bike. That was way too small and I wrote it and I wrote it and I wrote it. And. Started losing weight. Started fixing my nutrition started fixing the proper medicines with my doctor.
I mean, you put the three together and it, I really started having great results, great health results, great mental results. I mean, it was just a, you know, all on. Little itty bitty mongoose bike that I bought in Walmart. I'm six, five and 280 pounds at that time. And I'm now six, five, and kind of bounced between two 30 and two 40.
But so I'm not literal at all.
[00:03:52] Craig Dalton: Was was the environment in Wichita conducive to cycling? Was it, were you seeing people out there on the roads that made you say like, oh, like I see people are really passionate about this sport.
[00:04:03] Mark Allen: Oh, say it all the time. It's amazing amount. You know, we don't have the greatest cycling infrastructure for the level of cycling that gets done in Wichita. Really surprised at that, but the amount of people that are. Riding bikes. I mean, everything from recreational bikes to folks on road and folks on gravel is amazing.
So the, it is very popular here. It's very popular here and and. It's again, it's just amazing to see the amount of people doing it and really the amount of people not doing it. And I've been really spreading the wor word on cycling, trying to get other folks you know, involved in it because I've, I had such great benefits from it.
I
[00:04:46] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, a couple things I wanna drill into there, but, but first off, you know, cycling, I think can be a, a cost prohibitive sport. It can be kind of confusing and intimidating. You just jumped right in and got, got yourself a bike and started riding. Were you riding just on the, the streets and trails of Wichita at that, at that first instance?
[00:05:06] Mark Allen: get up every morning, about 4:00 AM and I would ride through my neighborhood and then I would go outta my neighborhood. Down to an intersection across the street up all the way down to the next inter street intersection, cross the street and come back through the neighborhood. And I kept doing laps very early in the morning.
I was a little self-conscious. I was very didn't want any traffic. Didn't just, just needed to ride at my pace. And, and. Just build upon, build upon that. So, didn't venture far, just a lot of repetitive lap
[00:05:40] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, it's great that you sort of knew that about yourself and said that like you just need to get started and everything else that we'll talk about that came from that start started with you just being willing to get up early and ride around the block a few times.
[00:05:54] Mark Allen: is absolutely correct.
[00:05:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
The other thing I wanted to ask you about that you mentioned, obviously you started to see some health benefits. I think anybody movement is just so important for all of us and you, it was clear, you were gonna see some health benefits right away, but you also mentioned, you know, you felt mental benefits from riding a bike.
So I'd love to just kind of hear a little bit about your thoughts about that and the benefits you were getting for just getting out there and riding.
[00:06:20] Mark Allen: Solitude it it's, it's amazing. Just writing by myself and having time to just think I own my own business. I have 30 some employees. I have, I'm married, have seven children. I have five children that are out the house now. And two home. Very demanding. So, a lot of responsibility, a lot of working with a lot of people and just finding time for myself, just tiny, you know, sorting things out in my head and trying to find, you know, self care time to really meditate on things.
Think about things, talk to yourself you know, just even positive feedback from yourself. You know, if I set a goal for the day and I accomplish it, That feeling was phenomenal. I mean, it was it just, and it was, there were little goals, you know, there were little goals at first three laps, four laps, five laps, you know, and that self feedback loop of wow, I did it was, was immense.
So I get up in the morning. I do these rides. I set my daily goals. I meet my daily goals and my entire day. Starts out different. I'm not waking up with the, the weight of the world of my family or my work on my shoulders. I'm waking up and accomplishing a goal immediately. And it just sets the tone from the day, from there on out, just absolutely sets the tone.
[00:07:43] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I completely agree with you. I got out this morning for an hour before anybody was at the breakfast table, got home. And honestly, anything I achieved throughout the rest of the day is, is inconsequential because I've really, I've spent that time with myself. I got a little bit of exercise in and just enjoyed, you know, the environment that I'm able to ride.
[00:08:03] Mark Allen: Yes. And, and I want everybody to understand. It's just little things, right? It's little things, just getting out and doing little things to begin with. And, and, you know, my story has this. Incredible ending which is another beginning, which I'm sure we'll talk about soon, but it's just little things. I mean, it's a lap around your street.
It's that simple of a, a start, you know, the, the start's the hard part. But it, it isn't you know, it isn't hours at a time, which, you know, is just a little bit, so, you know, I tell everybody don't be afraid, just start, you know, pick something easy and go. Yeah. And, and it's amazing how the rest of the day just comes together.
[00:08:43] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So tell me about, so, you know, you're running laps in the neighborhood and you're building up your mileage. Was there a certain point where something clicked and you said, well, gosh, maybe I should set a target. Maybe I should try to ride. 15 miles or 20 miles. And it kind of got you a little bit outta that neighborhood routine and made you
[00:09:00] Mark Allen: I started reading about single track and I was like, wow, this is pretty cool. And watched some videos. And I went and bought a specialized doubled XL rock hopper. It's a huge bike, which fit me, which was great. So that's really the first bike that. Fit me to where, you know, I wasn't scrunched up. I wasn't hurting or anything like that.
And I left I Prairie, sunset trail is about five miles from my house. It's a trail that runs about 20 miles on the west side of Wichita. And I left I left the, the confines of my neighborhood and I rode that trail. It's flat. It has, it has no elevation on it at all. So it's just flat and you'll find everybody, people walking, walking their dogs, you know, riding gravel, cyclists.
I mean, everybody's on that trail. And so I was first able to overcome. People seeing me on a bike. I finally had a bike that fit me, so it didn't look terribly crazy. And I started riding that trail and you know, at first, the first time I did 10 miles on that trail, I was beside myself. I was just like, this is the greatest thing ever.
I did 10 miles and that's five out and five back to where I parked. So, you know, five out with a break and five back with a, you know, when I parked. And so I started doing. I did a little bit of the air cap Memorial trail, which is there too. And then I had a pretty good wreck on it as anybody that does single track.
You know, I had a really good wreck. I hit a tree with my left shoulder, went over the handle bars. I'm too old. I'm too big to be going over handle bars And I was like, okay, this is, this has kind of scared me. And At that time I had met Nathan Wadsworth, who is in charge of elite training. My son had been going to him doing some personal fitness with him, and Nathan is a phenomenal gravel cyclist.
So him and I had just been talking back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And he's the one that steered me that, and the tree steered me away from single track and towards gravel cycling.
[00:11:03] Craig Dalton: Okay. And were you able with, we, were you able to find gravel cycling roads out of Wichita that you could start to enjoy at that point?
[00:11:11] Mark Allen: Oh, all over. They're all over. There's a 45th street is I, I would say a mile from my house and I can do a 20 mile out and back on the same street with some decent elevation with a. Boat marina at the end of the first 20 miles. So if you need to use the restroom or get something to drink, you can refill and, and head back in the gravel roads around Wichita on the west side of town are great, not a ton of elevation training wise but they are they're, they're incredible.
And very rideable and they were really designed to help me, you know, learn how to ride a gravel bike.
[00:11:47] Craig Dalton: Okay. And did you end up swapping the, the specialized mountain bike for a drop bar bike? Or were you still on the specialized.
[00:11:54] Mark Allen: I rode that J until I could find one. My problem was, this was right pre COVID. And as COVID was hitting, every American went out and bought a bike. And and given my size there's only a few manufacturers that make a bike large enough for me anyways. So what Nathan did was steer to a, a specialized 64 carbon sport diverge.
And I spent months looking for that. So I was stuck on. Rock hopper, riding gravel roads, like a gravel cyclist looking months on, in for a gravel bike that the specific 64. And I found it over the internet in North Carolina. So it was and it was at a shop that couldn't ship it to me due to specialized franchise territory rules and all that.
But it was in a town that I have a friend, it was in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I called my friend and I said, Hey, they have this bike that I've been looking for for months. Could you pick it up for me and ship it to me? And, and my friend Chuck was like, absolutely. And I said, it's at all star at in quail corners, right outside of Raleigh.
And he. That's the bike shop I use. And I was like, holy Mac, we we've got my bike and it's in Chuck's neighborhood and I'm gonna have this bike here in three days. And I did, it was just, it was a miracle. I mean, it was, you know, just, it was cool. It
[00:13:17] Craig Dalton: That's amazing. Yeah. I'm glad you were able to get something relatively efficiently. Cause I've heard tons of stories about people trying to find a bike. And in your particular case, as you describe it, when you've only got a model or a couple models that are gonna work for you, you probably have an even li more limited opportunity to grab a hold of a gravel bike.
[00:13:36] Mark Allen: Yes. Yeah. There's just not for my size. There's not, and that's something I'm hoping in the future that the gravel industry will look at, cuz there's a lot of guys, my size that would do this. If there was, I think more availability you know, of, of, of bikes, of size.
[00:13:53] Craig Dalton: So you'd been riding maybe about a, a year. Did I get the timeline right? When you got that gravel bike
[00:13:58] Mark Allen: Yes. It was a, it was about a year,
[00:14:00] Craig Dalton: was when you first sort of stepped over the gravel bike and started riding with dropped handle bars. How did you, how did that feel? Was that a, a rough transition from a straight bar mountain bike, which is a little bit maybe easier to ride.
I'd argue
[00:14:15] Mark Allen: Scared me to death I had never, I mean, I had never written any written, anything. Like that. And so just the basics of trying to master a bike that is beyond your technical skill and also way beyond your physical skills. So the, the, the bike was way out ahead of my abilities and just having a thumb shifter.
I mean, literally I I'd never, I'm like, I didn't know what gear I was in , you know, just trying to Technically learn how to ride the bike. It took me, it took me quite a while. I mean, it took me, I don't know, several months to finally get into the flow, get into a fill. I went through three different fits.
Trying to just get very comfortable in it. So I'm, I'm writing it every day. I'm going, you know, weeks at a time I go get a fit and then I get another fit and I ride and get another fit. And finally it all starts coming together and it, it, it's not easy on gravel. It's, it's not easy at all, as we all know, but it was, it's funny trying to.
Me to shift before I go up. And then how am I managed to go down properly without crashing and, and just, it was an amazing. Transformation. It just was, everybody thinks you'd jump on the bike. And yeah, I just jumped on the bike from Walmart and rode. I just absolutely rode. I got on the rock hopper and I just rode.
And then all of a sudden, I'm now leaning forward and I've got gears to manage and I've got gravel to manage and all of this comes together where it takes a while before you can technically maneuver with, you know, any kind of efficiency.
[00:15:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Did you, did you see some immediate performance benefits on being on that bike versus the heavier mountain bike?
[00:16:02] Mark Allen: Oh, yeah. It the, the street that I would ride on EV every night had a lot of gravel cyclists on him. I could never stay up with them. I mean, I never, I couldn't even get near 'em. So, you know, we would all start out together and I'd be the one in one behind. So, yeah, it was it's, it's amazing. The difference in.
Performance that you get with it. And that bike has been phenomenal. It's it's, it's amazing. When, when you get your bike working good and you have confidence in your bike. It's just, you're unbeatable and you're unbeatable in the sense of the perception you have for yourself. You know, what, what you expect out of yourself, you're, you're meeting and surpassing your, your own expectation.
I'm not worried about beating this guy or beating this guy. I'm worried about my perception. You know, what should I expect out myself? And when that bike is together, it's just, it's amazing. It's amazing.
[00:16:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It sounds like in those months you were really feeling yourself and feeling just kind of great about the journey you've been on. Did you go back to Nathan and talk to him? And at what point did you see this sign on the wall that said Unbound and thought about doing that?
[00:17:09] Mark Allen: it is pretty funny. It actually happened before I got the gravel bike. I said, would you coach me? If I get a gravel bike, if I go get this gravel bike, will you coach me? He says, yes, he'll coach me. I said, great. And I said, well, I've been looking at this sign this map on your wall for, you know, a bunch of time.
Now, every time I'm in here with my son, I said, what is this? And he says, that's the Unbound 100. And I just laughed. I said, people ride a hundred miles around Emporia and I was like in the Hills and, and I love the Flint Hills and I know the Flint Hills, like the back of my hands. And I was like, why, why would you ride those Hills?
How do you get up? 'em you know? And, and And he was, you know, laughing at me and, and, and I said, okay, I'm gonna get the bike and you're gonna coach me. He says, yeah. And I just, matter of fact, Lee looked at him and I said, I'm going to finish that in three years. And I'm so happy. He didn't laugh at me.
I'm so happy. He just didn't start cracking up and go. You, you know, you're naive. You don't know what you're talking about. And I said, Nathan, you'll learn. You'll learn. You know, I'm I'm, if I say, I'm gonna do it, if I believe I'm gonna do it, then it's gonna happen. And so. It, it sounds a lot easier. I'm, I'm probably making it much more simpler than what I went through, but I made a promise to myself and I made a promise to him.
If he coaches me and I follow him and he helps me that I'm gonna finish finish that. And I did. And it was incredible. Incredible.
[00:18:31] Craig Dalton: Amazing. So when you had sign, did you sign up sort of for you raced obviously the 20, 22 event, how long before did you know you had gotten the slot?
[00:18:41] Mark Allen: Oh a couple months. It was a couple months before that. So, you know, I was, I was just worried. I'm like, why would they pick me out of, you know, Thousands and thousands of people that are doing this, I'm like, why would they pick me? What was the, you know, and, and when they did, I was, Ugh, I was ecstatic. I was like, I can keep my word in Nathan now , you know,
[00:19:00] Craig Dalton: Did you go through some special process because of the journey you're on. Was there like an application for, you know, someone who's doing something bold?
[00:19:08] Mark Allen: It was a long application. I mean the, the actual physical application and, and I was like, I answered all the questions and I was like, why would they pick me? I was like, I hope they're some, somewhere on the application. I could tell my story a little bit. And there was a box that says, tell us a cool cycling story.
And I was like, oh, I got one, you know, old, heavy guy that needs to get better grabs a bike and rides and fast forward, he's in the Unbound, you know? So.
[00:19:34] Craig Dalton: So, so you've got Nathan in your corner, obviously advising you as to what to expect when you got to the start line, what was your confidence level? Like when you arrived at the start line, is it something you knew you could do? Or is it something that you're like, I'm gonna try my best.
[00:19:49] Mark Allen: I knew if I could get to Madison in which Madison is the cutoff. If you don't get to Madison by one 30 they'll stop you on the, on the ride. And so I was very confident that if I got to Madison, I could finish. If I cannot have a mechanical, if I cannot have a flat tire. If, if the bike held together, I knew I could get 64 miles in that time.
And I did the 64 miles to Madison in five hours. It was the fastest I'd ever written. I, it was pure adrenaline. It was pure. It was just I man, I'm in the, I'm in this thing. Let's go now. And I was highly confident that I was I was gonna get there and I was what was looming over me was a little bit of the declines.
But also I'm every mile somebody had a flat tire every mile. It was just flat tire after flat tire after flat tire. And I was like, please, no, please. No, so.
[00:20:48] Craig Dalton: Going back to the start line. I mean, what did you feel like you're surrounded by a thousand people or what, whatever the number was starting, the Unbound 100. Were you intimidated? I'm assuming you hadn't done a lot of group riding to that scale? I.
[00:21:02] Mark Allen: Not to that scale. I had done a two years worth of rides, two years worth of rides. But nothing ever to that scale I was in awe. I was just awe struck. I just kept looking around at all these people. Feeling that I didn't believe belong there still that I was like, how in the heck am I in this thing?
I was just like, wow, this is awesome. And I was ready to go. It was about the best way to say it. I'm not, I, I was just, let's go. I'm I've worked three years for this. Let's go. But still didn't believe I belonged. There still didn't believe that I was in the middle of this. It was very surreal left the start line and couldn't quit smiling.
Through Emporia.
[00:21:43] Craig Dalton: Yeah. You know, I think for anybody who hasn't done an event, there is an electricity you feel at the start line. And that can go a long way. I mean, if you're leaning in and really enjoying that experience, like the miles just sort of fall behind you because you're, you're part of this thing. That's bigger than yourself.
[00:22:00] Mark Allen: Yeah. And that's absolutely, that's absolutely what it was. It was just. It, it's hard to put in words, the experience of starting it was wow. I mean, two to three minutes to get people out of the, across the finish or the start line. I , it was cool.
[00:22:20] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think that's always the funny thing you hear the, the cannon go off and then you look around and no one around you is moving for a few minutes.
[00:22:28] Mark Allen: Yeah. Yep.
[00:22:29] Craig Dalton: When, when you're rolling out in those, you know, say the first 25 miles, when I assume that that the pack is still pretty thick, was that challenging for you to kind of be around all those riders?
[00:22:39] Mark Allen: Yes, because it would. I usually end up in the middle of a race and at a start of a race of a, you know, the smaller races that I do. I mean, peop their separation happens very quickly. So you have the, the first 25% they get gone, they get outta everybody's way. And then you have me the 20 to 75% fall in that line, you know, we're we talk, , you know, we draft, we ride, we enjoy ourselves and we all have our goals for the day and we're trying to achieve our goals.
That's not a big pack. And a lot of the time I end up solo, I just end up solo on these races. So, being, I had to be much more aware of what was going on around me. I had to understand If the person in front of me is struggling a little bit it, it is just a lot more, lot more going on. Your head had to be in it more than I've ever experienced before.
So two there's tons of stuff going on.
[00:23:34] Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. And I think, you know, oftentimes you're, you're pushed into a line that maybe you wouldn't have selected if you were out there on your own. And I imagine that's where a lot of the flat tires happen because people just get forced into riding through a little bit more Rocky section.
They, then they would've selected. But when there's a dozen people around you, you can't just go swerving, picking the best.
[00:23:54] Mark Allen: Yeah there abso absolutely what happened. There was a lot of people that went through areas that they probably normally wouldn't gone through. One of the things that I noticed was yes, people were riding over Flint rock. That I was like, don't do that. I was like, do not ride over that Flint rock. And there were scenarios where they were stuck and, and at any point in time we were all stuck.
I was stuck on one climb. Where the person in front of me was slowed down to the point where I had to come outta my come outta my pedals to keep my balance because they just they're and I couldn't go right. And I couldn't go left. And I, if I kept going, I was gonna hit them. And, and so it puts you in positions that you've never.
Been in experience that you've ever been in before. And so you've gotta figure it out on the fly and, and that's probably the first 25 miles. My biggest handicap in that first 25 miles is I was like, now, what do I do? I, you know, usually I can just swing right. Swing left. I could stop. I could go. I could, I had so much more freedom in my other races.
This one you were sometimes just stuck. I mean, you were just stuck with what you were.
[00:24:58] Craig Dalton: Yep. Yeah. And I think having the patience, cuz oftentimes when you're impatient, you make a bad decision. Like, oh, I think I can float over those Flint rocks and that's never gonna end well for you.
[00:25:08] Mark Allen: Yeah. And a lot of people did. And I was like you know, Nathan kept telling me your native knowledge of writing all these roads or is gonna pay off. And after a while I was like, stop writing over that folks. I was telling people don't do that. Come here.
[00:25:20] Craig Dalton: Local knowledge. I love it. One of the other things, you know, in talking to a bunch of people who have participated in Unbound this year was, was the mud. And I've spoken more towards people who were doing the 200. And I know the professional athletes given their pace, experienced something different than the mid pack athletes did along the way.
Did the mud come into play in the hunter mile race for.
[00:25:43] Mark Allen: Oh, it did. There was, I think two miles of it was unbelievable mud. The bigger, the bigger. Issue was the thunderstorm previous to that. So I'm gonna answer your question about the mud, but I definitely wanna talk about the thunderstorm because that was unbelievable. Yet I had been in one other race on the Flint Hills gravel ride, where they had about two miles of mud and it was.
Probably the second race I'd ever been in. And of course I ride into it and my bike becomes stuck. I become stuck. I'm completely coated in mud. My bike's coated in mud and, and then it dawns on me and I was like, oh, that paint stick that that guy had in his Jersey. That's what this is for because I was like, why does this guy have a paint stick?
Why does he have a paint stick? And I'm like, now I know why. So, I was able to get out of the mud and. Worked my way through the mud. And, and it really hurt my time because I spent, I don't know how much time trying to get the mud off my bike with my fingers and tearing blue stem grass out of the Prairie to, and using that of sticks.
And so, not a lot of experience, but I knew better to then to ride into it. So when I got to the mud, I stopped and I watched what everybody was doing. I was just looking to see. Who was writing, who was not writing, where were they walking? And I was like, a lot of people were walking out of the road in the grass and that's to me a Nono because you now have mud and you now have grass and it just will continue to build up.
And I started watching where the water was running down the street or down the road in the minimum maintenance road. And if water is running downhill, it's running on the Flint rocks. And so you're not in the mud and. A great thing. Being as big as me is that I could pick a carbon fiber bike up with one hand, like it's nothing.
And I literally picked it up and I put it on my helmet. I literally straddled my bike on my helmet. I found where the water was running down the road where it's just Flint rock. And I walked it and I walked that two miles with the bike on with my bike on my helmet and my holding it in my right arm and using my left arm to keep my balance.
While a lot of people were walking in the mud and trying to ride the bike in the. Ruts. And, and so what I was very, I was tired. I mean, I was absolutely tired carrying a bike two miles, but when it was time to get out of that, I set my bike down and I looked up my cleats and I kind of clicked my cleats a couple times and jumped on my bike and was gone.
So, again, some of the native, native knowledge of what to do in mud helped but it was, it was It slowed me down. I mean, my first 64, my first 64 miles were five hours. My next 40 miles were four hours. So, the mud really put a damper on I wanted to finish in eight hours and I finished in nine and, and I would, the mud did definitely contributed to that.
[00:28:32] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's such a shame when you've got an ambitious goal to have forward progress halted in the way that that two miles of mud did for y'all. Yeah.
[00:28:40] Mark Allen: It did it did, but it's part, it is part of it. It's it's awesome. It's just part of it, you know,
[00:28:46] Craig Dalton: Yeah. You, yeah. 20, 22 is just gonna be another one of these kind of unique adventures that Unbound offers riders.
[00:28:54] Mark Allen: yes.
[00:28:55] Craig Dalton: So tell me about that thunderstorm.
[00:28:57] Mark Allen: I had been watching the weather all week and I was like, wow, I think we're gonna get outta this thing without, without rain. And as we were approaching Madison, as I knew I was gonna make it to Madison, I was just so happy. I was just like, man, I'm going, I now know I'm gonna finish this thing.
And then it started raining. I'd have to say five miles out of Madison, four or five miles out of Madison and really raining. And then it turned into a full on. Kansas thunderstorm where the rain comes from all directions. I'm not just not down. I'm saying from the east, the north, the west, the south it was coming from all directions and my glasses are fogging up.
The rain's dripping from my helmet into the back of my glasses. So it's rolling right into my eyes. The roads aren't bad going into Madison, they've been pretty dry and they're still not bad going into Madison, but by the time we hit Madison, it. Madison was soaked. The roads had a couple feet of water you know, where the, the goalies were going across road and it was pouring.
I mean, it was all my nutrition and my saddle bag was soaked. So like my my, my peanut butter my Uncrustables, I love reading Uncrustables when I ride and, and my. all that was just soaked. So I had water log nutrition. In my kit, I had, you know, the goose and the, the honey stingers and all that stuff in my kit, but everything was soaked.
I mean, just absolutely soaked. And I was hoping it would pass over pretty quickly and it did not pass over. I think for the next 20 miles outta ma outta Madison, it was raining in some function. I mean, you come outta Madison little bit of a ride. You get into the mud. The mud is even worse than what was probably planned because of the thunderstorm you get out of the mud.
And you're still just absolutely inundated by this thunderstorm. So my back 40 was affected by the mud. But I think it was more affected by the thunderstorm, just due to the fact of it was just never, you can't train for that. You just never write in anything like that. So it was a.
[00:30:58] Craig Dalton: It's just like 15% harder than you imagined all of a sudden. How did you, how was your, how was your spirit after Madison? I mean, you're, you're going slow. You're getting hammered by the rain. Are you still thinking like I got this or did, did, did doubt start to creep in.
[00:31:12] Mark Allen: I got outta Madison. Well, as I was coming into Madison, I, my left calf, the front of my left calf started tightening up. It felt like it was tightening up. And I was like, okay I'm getting poured on. I've made good time. I'm happy. But then all of a sudden I've got this stinger going on below my left knee and I'm like, okay, I'll get to Madison.
I'll stretch it. By the time I get to Madison, it is pouring so much. All I wanna do is switch my nutrition out, fill up my camel back and I wanna get on my bike and get out of this thing. And hopefully I can write out of this a little. Did I know I couldn't I stretched my calf for a little bit and, and so I I've got.
Stinger in the front of my left calf. I've never had this before I go into the mud. I walk two miles. The Stinger's there. I get on my bike. I'm riding, I'm still getting poured poured on. Excuse me, I'm still getting poured on. And now I've cut this sore muscle to the left of my tibia basically. And I'm like, okay, this is now an issue, you know?
So, Thunderstorm rain and a little bit of a stinger going on in my leg. And I'm rubbing and I'm rubbing, I'm pedaling with my right leg, you know, I'm rubbing it. Okay. And I just, all three things kind of came together and I'm like, I don't care how much this hurts. I'm finishing. I am finishing period.
And I knew I was off my eight hour mark. I knew I was off that. There was no way I was gonna make it up and I just powered through it and it hurt. I mean, It hurt. I still don't know what it was. I don't know why it was but it hurt. So those three things together kind of, is there doubts? Yeah, there was doubts.
There was like, why now? , you know why now? But I just made my mind up. I was like, I, this is, I've done this way too long. To deal with this. And, and I just powered my way through it, you know, and I there's a lot of people that said, Hey, hop on, hop on, you know, you know, come with us. And I was just like, Hey, I'm doing this at my pace.
I'm, I'm a little bit hurt right now. And I'm just gonna keep going. And so put those three, the weather together, and with a little bit of an injury, I was like I still determined, but yeah, it, it bothered me.
[00:33:28] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, I imagine. And so, as you, as you approach the finish line, when you're in those closing miles, what kind of thoughts were going through your head?
[00:33:36] Mark Allen: Oh, man. I think when I saw the Emporia water tower, it was just exhilaration, but I was at that point it's like 90 or 95 miles out. It was exhaustion. It was, it was. And. what was great, was all the people along the entire route, cheering you, and every time you came upon somebody cheering you, that gives you a little bit of that adrenaline.
And you come in Emporia and they trick you with one last climb up the backside of Emporia state that, you know, Highland road, I believe it is pretty, and it's a significant climb. It is it's a street, but it's a significant climb and you're like, oh, one more. And you come across the. you come across the campus and you come into the shoot and you're like, everybody's cheering.
It's just like, like you see on TV, you know, like you, you see on all the everybody's cheering and you're just like, wow. Wow. I made it. So it's it's amazing. It's I, I had. I just amazing it was, could not believe I did it crossed the finish line and stood
[00:34:39] Craig Dalton: Yeah, no, it's phenomenal. I mean, what a journey to get there, what a journey that race given the weather provided for you that made it a little extra tough. And it was like asking the question, mark, do you really have this in you?
[00:34:54] Mark Allen: Yeah. It's and I think that was a great thing back about it. Now I can look back and say I was in 2022. I was in the thunderstorm. I was in the mud. It's a, it was a unique setting a unique set of circumstances. I was able to overcome 'em, you know, typically when you ride in Kansas, you're always dealing with the win.
And so, you're mentally prepared for win when you ride in Kansas. Just never encountered in anything in three years of thunderstorm of that magnitude everybody was safe. There was never an issue of safety. It was. A heck of a rainstorm. I mean, it made the roads outside of the mud, even, you know, not great.
So, and I was eating soggy UN Uncrustables so it was, that was not great either. so, so.
[00:35:43] Craig Dalton: amazing. Well, this is great. I mean, I really enjoyed learning about your journey to the start line and even more excited to hear the journey to the finish line. Cause I, I do think it's a huge accomplishment and I'm always super stoked to meet people who set a big challenge for themselves and realize like, it really is just about continuing to turn the pedals.
And if you. Belief in yourself and you put a little time into your training and energy. Many of us are capable of much more than we think we are.
[00:36:11] Mark Allen: I, I completely agree. Where I was, was a successful entrepreneur, had an in, you know, incredible home life kind of looking at now what, you know, what what's next, you know, kids are moving out. Again, like I said, a little bit of medical issues trying to deal with those and, and it was cool finding my inner self, finding my true identity, finding you know, A lot about myself, even at 53 to be able to go, yeah, I still can do things.
I still, you know, I'm more than just a husband. I'm more than just an entrepreneur. I'm mark, you know, and trying to understand who mark is and what mark is capable of. And it was, that was really the big journey and you know, the bike was the, the instrument along the way. So it was, it, it was really cool.
[00:36:57] Craig Dalton: I love it. Will the bike continue to be part of your life?
[00:37:01] Mark Allen: Oh yes. It's It absolutely is I've, I've taken about two weeks off and my body needed it. My brain needed it. I'm getting ready to get back on it again. Nathan has talked me into doing the 78 mile gravel worlds. So in August so, I'm going to attempt that next. But how in the future competitive wise, we'll see, I'll continue to do some races.
The big thing is for me, is continuing getting on the bike, you know, you know, three, four times a week getting on the bike and riding because it's such a. It's great medicine, riding a bike is great medicine and that's really why I started. And I'm gonna con definitely continue with my medicine, which is riding a bike.
And then we'll see, it takes me from there, you know, bike across Kansas interests me, which is going on right now. That interests me gravel worlds interest me. So, we'll see. But what I do know, I am getting on the bike pretty much every day because it is medicine. It's true.
[00:38:01] Craig Dalton: I love it. And that's a great place to us for us, for us to end bikes, our medicine, mark. Thanks again for the time. Truly appreciate it. And congrats again on your journey.
[00:38:11] Mark Allen: Thank you very much.
[00:38:12] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks to Mark Allen for sharing his story and huge congratulations to them. I think everybody listening can understand that was quite a journey. And it's quite a feat for anyone finishing one of these hundred mile plus.
Gravel events. So kudos to mark. And thanks for the time. Thank you also to bike index for supporting the show. Remember go visit bike index.org to register your bike with this nonprofit, all their services are free. So there's no reason other than your time. To not jump on over there and register your bike. If you're able to support the show.
Please visit, buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Separately ratings and reviews are hugely helpful. So very much appreciate anybody takes a moment out of their day to share their thoughts on the show. That's going to do it until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
This week we have the pleasure of speaking with Anne Hed, CEO of HED Cycling. HED has been a pioneer in carbon wheels and aerodynamic carbon components for as long as I can remember. It was amazing to hear about how long HED has been thinking (and producing wheels) for the gravel market.
Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (promo code: TheGravelRide)
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Anne Hed[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the podcast. We welcome Anne head CEO of head cycling out of Minnesota. If you've been around the cycling industry for a while I'm sure you've seen head wheels. They've been around for many, many decades and have been pioneering the use of carbon to go fast for that entire time. Anne's late husband. Steve had an, an founded the company. Out of a bike shop in Minnesota and built wheels to support triathletes in the early days. But have evolved to support all high performing athletes, including gravel, cyclists. We'll get into a little bit about the history of the company. The wheels they produce for the gravel market. And the history of gravel in minnesota.
I was particularly amused by one story about Steve head and Gerard from open cycles and how the open cycle up, which has been a pioneering frame set and bicycle in our sport. Might not have come to existence. If it wasn't for a little event out in Minnesota. Before we jump into the conversation. I need to thank this week. Sponsor hammerhead. And the hammer had kuru to computer.
The hammerhead crew too, is the most advanced GPS cycling computer available today. With industry leading mapping navigation and routing capabilities that set it apart from other GPS options.
So you can explore with confidence and on the go flexibility. I've mentioned previously hammerheads biweekly software updates. They release new features that are unmatched by the competition. I was just reviewing the latest email from hammerhead about my software update about an auto lap by location feature. This is the kind of thing that I just find is super clever. So if you're doing laps around your local terrain, It'll automatically create a lap timer for you. So if you're like me, I've got a lunch loop that I continuously do.
And sometimes I'll do a couple laps on it. If I need to kind of keep my ride in a controlled area. This will automatically create a lap. There's hundreds of little items like that, that hammer had is always introducing into the equation. So I really feel like this computer and the software is alive.
I finally got around to doing some fine tuning of my main screen. Moved a few things around. As I've started to get a sense of got all these options. As to what I can put on the screen and I'm pinning down exactly what I want and putting them in the right location. So while I was happy before. I'm super happy now that I'm getting it dialed.
So if you're in the market for a new GPS computer, I encourage you to check out the hammerhead crew too. For a limited time, our listeners can get a free custom color kit and an exclusive premium water bottle with the purchase of the hammer, head to computer. Visit hammerhead.io right now. And use the promo code.
The gravel ride at checkout to get yours today. This is an exclusive limited time offer only for our podcast listeners. So don't forget to use that promo code, the gravel ride after adding a custom color kit and premium water bottle into your cart with the purchase of her career to. That's hammerhead.io. Would that business behind us let's jump right into my interview with Anne head And welcome to the shelf.
[00:03:41] Anne Hed: Oh, boy. I'm so happy to tell everybody this story of head and I'm getting ready to head off to Emporia next week. So it's like perfect timing for this podcast.
[00:03:52] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's so exciting. When I got introduced to you, obviously I'd been around been familiar with the head brand for my entire cycling career. And to hear some of the backstory that I know we'll get into in this podcast about. How early on you've been riding bikes off road. I think it's just exciting to have this conversation and make sure everybody in the gravel cycling communities, aware of the products that you have had in the market and the products that you're continuing to unveil in the model.
[00:04:18] Anne Hed: Yes. I'm excited to tell the story.
[00:04:21] Craig Dalton: So let's, let's start at sort of the beginning. Just, I know you've been around cycling your whole life and did a lot of events in the triathlon world. So why don't we get a little bit about your backstory, where you're from, because I think it all leads into the head brand and your journey with your late husband.
[00:04:37] Anne Hed: Yeah. So I am a resident of Minnesota born and raised here. And I grew up in Duluth where. It was incredibly challenging on a bike. So my first job was a lifeguard. So I came from a swimming background and I had to bike just to get to work. And then I kind of picked up running along the way. And when I was in my early twenties, I saw of course the Hawaiian Ironman.
And I thought, well, you know, I'm signed up for college, I've done some classes, but I, I have this dream to go do. So I qualified for Kona in a, in a triathlon, but AI had no money. And I had a, really a heavy bike and a friend said, there's this guy named Steve head. He owns a bike shop called grand performance.
I think you should go see if he'll help you. So I literally just walked into a shop and there he was. And I'll never forget it. Like shirtless, grease all over permed, magenta hair. This was in the eighties. Okay. And so, he handed me a hundred dollar check, which didn't bounce for the entry of the Hawaiian Ironman in 1983.
So, he also gave me a bike. So I, I headed over there and I, and I was racing and I, I was on a professional team to Mizuno. I, I wasn't winning a bunch of races, but while I was racing, Steve San Francisco Mosher set the hour record on disc wheels, double disc wheels and Steven's background besides owning a bike shop.
And having a history lit degree and not an engineering degree he had made skateboards and water skis kind of like in his garage. So he went into a garage with a friend and made a solid disc wheel
[00:06:33] Craig Dalton: and what was he making? What kind of a material was he using to make that we all in a garage?
[00:06:37] Anne Hed: It was basically fiberglass and foam and he got a friend to machine, some. Hubs or he tore apart a hub and he found an aluminum rim and he glued it together and, and it, it didn't fall apart. He gave it to me and I did some races on it
[00:06:57] Craig Dalton: Literally that first wheel.
[00:06:59] Anne Hed: It was actually the second, well, the first one went to another friend that helped him.
Right. So. So I started writing it and people were just stopping me at races and saying, you know, what is that? And can I have one? And so we made, we made a few more and all of a sudden we're like this, this could actually be a business. So, he, he was able to. Get some more raw materials, but it wasn't enough to do very many.
So I saw that there was a triathlon and the first prize was a car. So I went to Brattleboro Vermont in 1984 and lo and behold, I won a car. So I came back to Minnesota and. Went and imagined this is a 21 year old girl that knew nothing about business or anything, walking to banks, asking for some money.
And one baker said, what do you have? And I said, I have a car and I have a, I have a bike. Well here, if you give me the title of the car, I'll give you $14,000. That was, that was a lot of money was still is a lot of money. So. Got the money and I gave it to Steve and, you know, we were kind of dating.
So, so between, you know, his amazing creative brain and my earnings of that car, that's how head cycling started
[00:08:28] Craig Dalton: Amazing. And was it, did Steve always and yourself, did you have an orientation around building products around speed? I know you said he was inspired by seeing saying Moser's world record with full, full disc wheels. Was that the orientation, like let's make a fast aerodynamic wheel.
[00:08:49] Anne Hed: oh yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, Steven just. Italian products to and racing. And it was Francisco Mosher and, and he was just a fan of all types of cycling. But it think from the infancy, it's always been how to make an affordable product that is fast and aerodynamic that, that a lot of people can use.
And so that's really still the. The premises of why we make certain products is we want them and everybody to just enjoy cycling and have the experience of speed and, and have it still affordable.
[00:09:28] Craig Dalton: And when you started out with the disc wheel, did you then move to a spoke to.
[00:09:32] Anne Hed: Yeah. Cause of course, you know, you can't use a solid disc wheel on the front. So, he again sat together with a few folks and, and designed the toroidal air shaped front wheel that is still patented to this day. So we had an extension to the patent, but it's, it's, it's predominantly what you see.
All lot of the other wheel companies making it's a 60 millimeter carbon air, full shaped wheel. And like I said, we were pretty much first to the market on that. And we were able to figure out how to continue to make a product super fast. So that was in 1992.
[00:10:18] Craig Dalton: Okay.
[00:10:19] Anne Hed: I'm sorry, 1990. We had hoped to get more of the aerodynamic aspect ratios from our patent, but the three spoke wheel that DuPont had invented back then got some in and we eventually then did buy that wheel in that patent because we knew how fast it was
[00:10:39] Craig Dalton: And have you been continuing to manufacture the wheels in Minnesota throughout that whole.
[00:10:44] Anne Hed: Yeah. I mean, you know, once, once in 84, 85, when we started having more phone calls and people calling off from all over the world, and I don't, you know, depending on how some of the listeners there was fax machines that a lot of the orders had to come through. So we actually found a house in 1987 that allowed us to live there and work in a group.
Next to it. And the, the wheels just kept evolving and they were made in, in a garage, in, in white bear. Obviously we've moved since a few times since then, but it was, it was a pretty funny story. I mean, north wind would come through and we used to heat it with a wood-burning stove. And if the wind was too strong, we had to, we had to stop making wheels that day.
I mean, this is, this is in the eighties. So it's been a long time.
[00:11:34] Craig Dalton: Yeah, no. And it's, I mean, it's real business talk there it's, you know, when you're actually manufacturing things and I think this gets lost on a lot of people, just the sheer complexity of manufacturing, anything let alone something like a bicycle wheel that needs a tremendous amount of precision in order to deliver what it's supposed to deliver.
[00:11:53] Anne Hed: Yeah. So we S you know, we introduced that 60 millimeter We'll and then we continued throughout the years adding, you know, your, your 40 millimeter. If it was windy, then we added the 90 millimeter on the front and rear. So the product has evolved throughout the history of head, but you know, it has always been made here in Minnesota.
All the carbon products are made here in Minnesota and still are.
[00:12:21] Craig Dalton: And at a certain point you expanded to Aero handlebars. If I'm not mistaken and other products like that, that supported the triathlete market.
[00:12:29] Anne Hed: Yeah. I mean, we would work with professional cycling teams pretty much from all over the world. And obviously with my background in triathlons, I did continue to do a few iron mans. And then I decided that, you know, Steven, I should eventually get married and, you know, have children and, and but throughout the.
Evolution of head, you know, the, the arrow bars were introduced primarily because we saw a need for speed up there. You know, the Scott handlebars that Boone Lennon invented also in the eighties, you know, weren't, weren't carbon, you know, they were aluminum kind of . So we signed need to add aerodynamic handlebars to our product.
All.
[00:13:14] Craig Dalton: And it seems just again from the outside and a fan of the sport that your husband then became sort of the aerodynamics guru for a lot of professional cyclists at some point.
[00:13:27] Anne Hed: Yeah, it was, it was amazing because I still look back at those days and we, we were pretty much the pioneers of the, the testing in wind tunnels. So we went back to Texas AMN in the, in the nineties and then on to San Diego to LA they're low speed wind tunnel. We've been in pretty many, several wind tunnels throughout the U S but it is. What is amazing about that part with Steve is it was just the pure desire to help athletes go faster. You know, it was working with a lot of professional cycling. And just individual athletes. And he would come to races with me and Hey, who doesn't want their bike fixed at a racer, you know, some help with your bike.
Cause sometimes we'd show up at races and products would be broken because of, you know, flying from across the world. And Steven just always had a toolbox there and a measurement and he would work with, you know, all, all different athletes from all different sports of, of cycling.
[00:14:31] Craig Dalton: And so fast forward it a little bit to sort of, to the 2010 era living in Minnesota. All kinds of gravel roads have probably always been a part of your training life. And I think it's fascinating going back to those really early days of let's call it pre the modern gravel bike market, what you were experiencing.
Can you just talk about sort of that era and how as bikes evolved and, and events evolved, particularly in Minnesota, some of those events you started thinking about off-road cycling as part of where the, where the brand would ultimately.
[00:15:07] Anne Hed: So, where we live is, is in a wooded area that has, oh gosh, maybe 30 miles of gravel, just pretty much or trails out our back door, but Steven's parents actually. I lived on a farm in Canby, Minnesota. And so Steven talked about the dream he used to have of just riding the gravel roads back when he was a younger kid or just experiencing gravel in general.
And, you know, I. Would ride hours with Steve and he'd always be, well, let's say it this way. I was worried that he was going to tip or fall or run into something because I knew when he was dreaming or thinking about the next product or, or he was on his bike and he was thinking about, okay, what else. What else would I want to be riding?
So I think, you know, it was in his blood. I mean, you know, when you, when you're a farm, your families are farmers from, you know, Minnesota and, and you pretty much live on those roads. It just is part of your life. So. I had to go back into my archives. And we introduced in 2007, what we called the C2 gram, which is a 21 millimeter rim, which, which was quite unusual for back then.
And then in 2013, we, we went to 25 millimeters. So we, we were really pioneers in.
[00:16:35] Craig Dalton: Perfect.
[00:16:37] Anne Hed: alloy in wide wider rims. And that was inspired. You know, one of our, our employees that has been with me for over 26 years, Andy Tettemer, I had to, I had to ask him today and he, he did the first El Monzo in Minnesota in 2008, which is, which is astounding.
When I think about it, I mean, I, I can just only imagine, you know, back then, I think he said in 2007, there was 14 gravel writers in that ride. And look where it's come now,
[00:17:11] Craig Dalton: It's incredible. Yeah. It's, it's, it's interesting. When you look at whether it's the grass opera series here in Northern California, that's been going for 30 years or, or events like that that were predated any of the equipment that we kind of probably take for granted at this point.
[00:17:27] Anne Hed: Yeah. And, and Steven and, and Gerard did an El Monzo in 2013 and
[00:17:35] Craig Dalton: And that's a Gerard from open cycles.
[00:17:38] Anne Hed: yes, yes, that's, that's who it is. And so, I remember like it was yesterday, you know, fiddling around with their bikes, trying to get everything sorted, wondering what they were going to carry, you know, for water and, and.
And, and food. And, and I just remember like the night before Girard and Steve were just trying to figure out and piece together, their bikes and Steven had a local frame builder, peacock Grove, Eric Noren build him a gravel bike because he just couldn't find anything here or you know, around that he wanted to ride.
So that first ride that they did together was back in 2013.
[00:18:19] Craig Dalton: And where do you recall? Were there certain things in bicycles that he wasn't finding that he had to ask for that custom bike to be built around?
[00:18:27] Anne Hed: You know, it was just, you know, everything from being able to have the tire with that he needed, you know? And he, he wanted a certain weight. Well, we call it the triple crown. So it was the headset area where he wanted to be sitting up in a certain area. You know, it was just the geometry of the frame that was.
Not available. I mean, it was, everything was custom made for Steve on that bike. And then of course after Steve's passing Gerard decided to use some of that inspiration for the open and that first bike that Gerard may. It was like, I call it the chocolate brown color. And he, of course in memory of Steve did a limited edition of which he sent me one.
And obviously, I, I won't, I w I wasn't able to write it just because I'm five one. And so I gave it to my daughter and she'll be riding it in Emporia, Kansas next week.
[00:19:28] Craig Dalton: And it's amazing how the thought process around that bike and ultimately what they arrived at with the original open up is still state-of-the-art and progressive across anything you can find in the gravel market today.
[00:19:42] Anne Hed: It's it's a beautiful bike and all of the. The frames that, that Gerard has done have been, you know, pretty much state-of-the-art and, you know, besides that frame and the technology that it's brought, you know, it's also been able to experience just, you know, the six 50 B market also. So, our, our rims are also six 50 B also.
And you know, I can, I can go more. On, you know, what we've evolved since the alloy rims that, you know, Steven was so much a part of it in 2013 and 14 Steven passed away in late 2014. And since then we've brought our gravel wheels into carbon, but we weren't doing any carbon gravel wheels back in 2014.
[00:20:34] Craig Dalton: Was that a more of a sort of thought about what the market could bear at that point and the type of riders and that the sort of scale of the number of gravel riders who might be interested in a slightly wider rim at that.
[00:20:45] Anne Hed: Yeah, I mean, 2014, you know, we were also the first to market and patented the very first fat carbon rim. So we were really busy in 2013 and 14, a launching that product also. We had gotten a large order from specialized to produce those. And then what also transpired was surveillance came to us and had asked us to manufacture a frame.
So, we had never done that before. And this was something intriguing to Steve and myself, just because it was a very complicated one piece carbon frame. And Steven was working tirelessly to get it done and, and that, and was really happy that we were able to do the tooling for that frame into a prototype.
Frame. And the day that the engineers from Cervelo came to head, we made the very first prototype one-piece carbon fiber frame here in Minnesota. But unfortunately, as he was getting ready to go to dinner with her engineers and I was picking up my daughter he called me with just absolute joy and excitement because the frame actually worked like the prototype worked and he was, you know, super proud of what had happened, but that happened to be the last phone call I ever had was Steve.
He passed away. You know, he, he passed four days later after that he ended up having a heart virus and and he never had, he never woke up. So that inspired me to to make a carbon fiber frame for Savella. And so we were so busy moving the business. I had to pick up a move three weeks later into a new facility.
And it took about a year and a half to get into that. Market and, and make a frame. So to get to the answer of your question, we, we were so busy with this frame fat by Grimm's and we knew gravel was coming, but there's only so much I can do, you know, I was, I was, you know, Trying to aim, you know, keep, keep the company together and move forward after Steve's passing.
You know, I w I knew that we would move into a wide carbon gravel wheel too, but we didn't introduce that until 2018.
[00:23:15] Craig Dalton: okay. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, obviously quite a journey to be grieving and running a company and moving. Having a family and everything you went through at that time to come out the other side and continue the brand and continue, you know, obviously like your late husband had a bunch of projects in the works.
He was always thinking ahead in the market and to kind of realize that that triathlon frame was surveil. It was probably brought it full circle and felt good to realize that product.
[00:23:46] Anne Hed: Yeah. If he would have said, Hey, Annie, didn't look so good, you know, or, you know, they aren't really interested then I would have not made that frame, you know, but it really was the joy I heard in his voice. It was my last conversation with them and it was just kind of a gift. A gift he gave me. And I think it was a really, really good learning experience for our company because wheels are hard.
Frames are really hard. Like just the complexity of a frame being one piece also it was very challenging for us, but I think in the long run we learn different molding techniques that we maybe went to.
[00:24:24] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yep. And then, then at this point, does the company focus exclusively on wheels or are there still other components and frames in the mix?
[00:24:34] Anne Hed: Good question. I think when you realize what you're really good at, you do what you're really good at. So, you know, Had aspirations of, yeah, maybe we do another frame, but no, we are making wheels and I became women business certified own. Cause you know, I have still a little bit of a dream to make something out of carbon fiber that is out of the cycling industry someday.
Maybe something that flies, something that helps people. So being the really, the only woman. Owned carbon manufacturer here in the U S maybe the world. I don't know. Don't, don't say that for sure. But, you know, I have opportunities or, or possibilities that I can venture into different markets, you know, on the side, you know, the, but, but in the cycling industry at this current time, we just really love making wheels and we're, we're busy.
And as you know, the year, the last couple of years with COVID has been a bit of. A nice tailwind for us. So we're just pretty much right now working on carbon and alloy wheels. And. The carbon wheel that we introduced in 2018, it's a fabulous name. It was named after in Poria Kansas. And that's been a really I even trademark that one, I was thinking that day.
So, I think it's, it's a great name. I didn't think of the name, but one of my coworkers did, but it's, it's a beautiful name for our carbon wheel in
[00:26:04] Craig Dalton: Let's talk let's, let's talk about those wheels. So what, what is the headline up for gravel wheels? You've got both alloy and carbon versions. The gay mentioned 706 50 B models. Let's talk about some of the attributes of the wheel.
[00:26:19] Anne Hed: right? So the the Alloway. Or just wonderful because they're, you know, they're, they're just bomb proof in there. They're affordable, you know, so there's going to be certain folks that want kind of more of an entry-level or they don't, they're not interested in the carbon wheel. So we make alloy wheels.
The employer will, and I think retail is right around $750 and, you know, It's just a 25 internal 30 external. And, you know, it's, it's works with I-CAR and SRAM and Shimano, and it's, it's just an all around great wheel.
[00:27:01] Craig Dalton: are you lacing that to a hub of your own manufacturer?
[00:27:05] Anne Hed: So we don't make the hubs in house, but it's a hub that we have designed and it's a head hub and it's, it's very well-made. We have a four and a five pulse system. So depending if you get the performance lineup, you're going to get the four Paul hub. If you get the pro lineup, which is. Going to be a little bit different spoke also.
So there is a little bit different price points. You can get either one of those.
[00:27:31] Craig Dalton: Or the rims identical between those two lines
[00:27:34] Anne Hed: the rooms are identical yeah. In the alleyway version.
[00:27:37] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And was that 25 millimeter internal width? Was that what you were making back in 2008 or whenever you first introduced the gravel wheel, did it have that wide of a internal spacing?
[00:27:50] Anne Hed: Oh, gosh, no, no. I mean, no, that didn't, that didn't happen for a few years later, but you know, everything's keeps evolving and as you've seen with a lot of the other wheel manufacturers out there, they just keep getting wider and wider. I mean, the tires have gotten so much better over the last couple of years.
We're still really. You know, sitting on a fence with different tire brands out there, but you know, the, the carbon wheel that we make, the Emporio carbon. Is tubeless and it is a phenomenal wheel. You can get it also in the pro version or the performance version. The pro version has just a little bit higher modulates carbon, so you can get a little bit lighter with it.
And then the, the pro version again. Little bit different carbon, same attributes as the, the alloy wheel. If it's the pro it has the five Paul hub. If it's the performance, it's the four Paul hub, a little bit different spokes, but, both of them are just a really beautiful Wilson. I think what I'm so proud about is that, you know, over 30% of our workforce is female in manufacture.
[00:29:00] Craig Dalton: I imagine it's quite unusual actually.
[00:29:02] Anne Hed: Very, you know, so it's, it, it makes me feel really good about, you know, being able to provide a job and income and, you know, health insurance and benefits and, and, and I think that's what differentiates head from so many of the other. Companies out there that yeah. A were made in Minnesota, but we're, we don't paint either.
So everything that comes out of the mold is green and it's not going through a paint booth. So you see what you get.
[00:29:31] Craig Dalton: and were you able to, are you able to bring sort of semi-skilled employees in and train them up to be carbon fiber wheel building experts?
[00:29:42] Anne Hed: You know, we, we have lots of diversity here. So, we do have folks that have, you know, master's in composite engineering degrees mechanical engineer. We have we have folks that have degrees in, in history and, and it's, it's just so, so first, which I'm so proud of. When it comes to the skill of actually molding a wheel, you know, you're not going to be able to find somebody that has done that before.
So most of the people that do the, the lab, we teach them the skill and we, we, we spend a lot of time, you know, with different Teachings to make sure that they understand the, the layups. And you know, if you, if you look at a carbon fiber wheel, you know, ours is prepregs, so it comes frozen. We have automatic cutting machines to, to make sure that it's laid up properly and cut properly.
I mean, I'm thinking in my mind, all the steps that it goes just to make a wheel, but all of the aluminum molds that we make are made in house. So we just purchased a five axis CNC to make more, but that skillset would be also training that person, how to machine. So it's just, it's just so many different attributes to make just a wheel.
[00:31:10] Craig Dalton: Yep. And everything's gotta be perfect along the way. And a lot of attention to detail and a product like this as somebody who's running a manufacturing facility myself, it's, it's fascinating to kind of bring people into the family and instruct them well, Hey, here's the end goal. This is what we need to get to.
This is the quality level where. Our customers expect and we expect going out the door and then bringing them up to speed as to what are the steps along the way and how to be facilities all along the process to make sure that no error gets introduced into the process along the way.
[00:31:43] Anne Hed: Yeah. And COVID changed things a bit, to be honest with you. So, you know, the workforce has changed a little bit. We have been fortunate to find folks that were a, in the restaurant business or, you know, different schools and such, and they, they just, they just wanted us to build. So we were able to hire them and give them a skillset.
And they're really happy about that. I mean, what makes me happy is when an employee comes up and says, you know, when I get to buy a house now, you know, they're or thank you for providing health insurance, you know, it's, it's, it's. It is the wheel that I love making, but I get a lot of joy out of working alongside and helping people find a skill set and giving them a employment.
[00:32:32] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think that's huge. And so often on this podcast, we're talking to people who work for larger corporations and don't have that really intimate relationship with all the employees. And it goes, as you said, far beyond actually the output of the manufacturing process, it's really being part of one another's lives and seeing people be successful in acquiring new skills.
[00:32:52] Anne Hed: Yeah. I mean, next weekend I'll be able to see some of our athletes and what I'm finding even really enjoyable as we've got athletes like Rachel McBride, you know, a non there'll be a non-binary category there. And Rachel be racing in that. And I've got Joshlyn McAuley. Who's a mother of two who just won an iron man in Texas.
She'll be there several other athletes that, you know, we're supporting and, and that's what I get excited about. Going to events now that we be able to, you know, get back after the last few years and sitting in the booth and just supporting them because, you know, that's, that's where my roots were.
I was an athlete and I, I remember how difficult sometimes it was just getting to a race and making sure everything was okay with your bike and your wheels. And now we're going to be on the course. Rachel needs support in the 200 mile. So. You'll see a van out there and if anybody else needs any help, you know, we'll be able to help with some of our product, but it's, it's connecting with the people that do the events and not, not just the pros.
You know, I, I, I love seeing our wheels on, on all kinds of the folks out there. It just brings a lot of happiness to me.
[00:34:10] Craig Dalton: Yeah, absolutely. Is the company going to be at other events throughout the year? Is that part of the marketing plan for the year?
[00:34:16] Anne Hed: We are one of the title sponsors for big sugar also. And you know, we we're, we're diverse. We have triathlons that we're going to, I just got back from Saint George iron man and, and saw some of our triathletes, but we keep kind of adding things each month. So I, I'm not sure what other ones for sure we're going, but I know that we're, we are for sure.
Going to big sugar.
[00:34:38] Craig Dalton: Right on and as gravel athletes are considering ahead, we'll said what's the best way for them to kind of understand where to land in your product lineup. Are there some sort of easy ways to talk people through whether they should be riding a carbon wheel or an aluminum wheel?
[00:34:56] Anne Hed: Well, we have, we actually pick up the phone. So if somebody calls here and is kind of stuck a little bit, that's been one of my mantras too, is I really think it's important for people to be able to call and who's ever answered the phone here is very well diverse in the needs of what an athlete might need or weekend rider as such.
So, you know, it's really, it really kind of depends on. What their goals are, you know, and what their price ranges. But like I said, we have aluminum wheels that, you know, are, are under $800 in carbon wheels, you know? Well, over $2,000. So it's, it's really whatever you feel you want. I mean, you know, putting on.
A fancy pair of carbon wills, you know, is, is, is fun. You know, and it, and it is, it is lighter and it's going to maybe respond a little bit different, but you know, a lot, we saw a lot of, of alloy too. I mean, so it's really, it's really up to the athlete or the rider, but we can help them decide depending on what they need.
[00:35:57] Craig Dalton: Interesting. Well, that's great to know. I'll certainly put the website in my show notes, so people know how to find you and encourage everybody to call head and understand what had wheels you should get underneath you for your next gravel event.
[00:36:11] Anne Hed: Yeah, I'm, I'm really happy to say that, you know, our supply chain is probably good. Like, you know, it was, it was tough, maybe 6, 6, 7, 8 months ago. But you know, if you called today, most of our alloy gravel Emporio wheels are in. Within a quick, quick lead time to, to ship carbons, even some of those in stock.
So it's not like the, the crazy lead times that you're hearing from a lot of the bike manufacturers. We could get people up rolling on, on a head wheel pretty quickly.
[00:36:42] Craig Dalton: Amazing. Well, thank you. And so much for the time, I loved hearing more about the journey and what you guys are doing and appreciate all the support that you guys are putting into the sport of gravel cycling, not only through putting great products out there, but going and participating in some of these events and supporting our event, organizers that are doing hard work to keep us all rolling.
[00:37:02] Anne Hed: Yes. Well, thank you. And I hope to, to meet some of the people that hopefully will listen to the podcast. And if you have, if you see me and you do listen to it, just just let me know or drop me an email. And if you have any questions about our product line I actually do pick up the phone to and answer my emails.
[00:37:21] Craig Dalton: I love it. Thanks so much for the time and good luck out in Emporia.
[00:37:26] Anne Hed: I'm looking forward to it.
[00:37:28] Craig Dalton: Cheers.
[00:37:29] Anne Hed: Thanks.
[00:37:30] Craig Dalton: So that's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks to Ann Head for joining us and sharing the story about head cycling. Super excited about those wheels. She's been showing out there in Kansas. That I'm sure many of you have seen@headcycling.com. Also big, thanks to hammerhead and the hammerhead kuru to computer for sponsoring this week show. Remember you can use the promo code, the gravel ride to get a free premium water bottle and custom color kit with your purchase of the crew to computer.
If you're interested in giving us any feedback, I encourage you to join the ridership. Simply visit www.theridership.com. It's a free global cycling community and the best way to interact with a great community of gravel, cyclists. If you're able to support the show, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride.
Or if you have a moment, ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated in the podcast business. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with the author of Gravel Rides Scotland, Ed Shoote to learn about the history of gravel cycling in Scotland and why it should be on top of your list of gravel travel destinations.
Gravel Ride Scotland Book
Episode sponsor: Athletic Greens
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Gravel Rides Scotland[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the podcast. We welcome ed chute. He's the author of gravel ride Scotland.
Many of you frequent listeners of the podcast will know I'm a big fan of the idea of gravel travel. So when this book came across my desk, I was super excited to dig in. I hadn't thought much about riding in Scotland and after seeing some of the pictures and reading some of the descriptions of these rides, it's definitely on my list of places to go.
We dig in a little bit about the history of gravel roads in Scotland, how ed came to the sport of gravel cycling and what inspired him to write this great resource guide for all of us, I'll put a link to the book in the show notes. Everybody knows how to find it. And I hope you enjoy the conversation with ed. Before we jump in i need to thank this week sponsor our friends at athletic greens.
Athletic greens is literally a product that I take every day.
I discovered athletic greens many years ago, as I was recovering from my treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma. I was looking for something that had the vitamins, minerals and probiotics that I needed to kind of just give me baseline support. After I was through that difficult period of my life. I realized that this was sort of a baseline thing I needed for all my athletic endeavors as well.
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All the things. I went out on a wet ride with my friend, Jason. On Sunday of this week, we got caught out there on our gravel bikes and relate to a little bit of a punishing day. From a weather perspective. I was pretty drained and I actually, when that happens to me, I come back and I take a second.
Cup full of athletic greens, just figuring I'm going to just top it off. When my energy is depleted, it's something that I mixed with ice and shakeups. So it's pretty simple. It's something I travel with in little packets. It's pretty easy to get into a routine. And for me, I've just always felt comfortable that again, I'm covering my nutritional basis .
I encourage you to check it out, to see if it's something that might fit for you to make it easy. Athletic greens is going to give you a free one year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is that the athletic greens.com/the gravel ride.
Again, that's athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. To take ownership of your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Would that business from our friends out of the way, let's jump right into my interview with ed.
Hey ed, welcome to the show.
[00:03:28] Ed Shoote: Alright, thanks for having me on,
[00:03:30] Craig Dalton: Cheers. Where are you located today?
[00:03:31] Ed Shoote: So I'm just south of Edinburgh in Scotland. So a little town called peoples it's a.
[00:03:37] Craig Dalton: for the listener. This is all gonna come together. Why it's important that he's in Scotland and what we're going to be talking about today. As I mentioned in the intro. We always like to start off ed, just by getting a.
little bit about your background and maybe how you discovered cycling and when off-road cycling became a passion of yours.
[00:03:55] Ed Shoote: Yeah. So, for those you who know accents I've not got a Scottish accent. So actually I grew up in the Southeast of England in this. Which is pretty flat. So I didn't really get into kind of mountain biking. Off-road riding hugely until I was probably about 17 or 18. I just grew up riding road bikes and time trials and then realized that was quite good base, I guess, to do a mountain bike.
And so I started doing cross country racing in the late nineties, early two thousands, I guess. And then just got the puck for off-road riding. So, so as all good cyclists. University of college based on where the best biking was. And that's kind of what, w what took off for me, I guess my mountain biking kind of passion.
[00:04:32] Craig Dalton: where you staying in the UK for university.
[00:04:35] Ed Shoote: Yeah. So I just went to the north of England. It tackled York which is great. Yes. Great spot to stop actually visiting. Cause it's got loads of history, but it's also surrounded by Hills. Really nice mountain biking terrain as well. Yeah, the course was, is a small consideration, but yet it was just the perfect spot for the analyst to select in ready.
[00:04:52] Craig Dalton: And the UK obviously has got such a rich history of cycling across all disciplines, including mountain biking.
[00:04:59] Ed Shoote: yeah. Yeah. You kind of get pockets, I guess, of real passion for road riding and mountain bike and where I am now in Scotland is it's huge amounts of biking. We have a lot of injury world series. Now bike is based here and. Right. Is coming up through the youth ranks as well. So it's a real buzz here and I guess yeah, like Edinburgh just north has got a really good road scene.
So yeah, it's always a pocket of psych dinner, some chronic scenes wherever you are in the country, which is, yeah, it's great. It's great to see
[00:05:25] Craig Dalton: And at university, were you studying? Writing as a discipline.
[00:05:30] Ed Shoote: No, I studied mountain biking indirectly, actually. So. It's all fenced together. No, I was doing kind of a pied economics, which was focusing on environmental issues and mountain biking kind of fit it into that food forestry management. So it's again boring probably, but yeah, so I actually ended up doing a dissertation on mountain biking and the impact of mountain biking, which is, yeah, this is great.
It was great.
[00:05:52] Craig Dalton: Yeah, Amazing. And then from, I understand you spent some time abroad at some point after that.
[00:05:58] Ed Shoote: Yeah, so that, that was kind of the last time I lived in England thought. Yeah, pretty much. That's how I sit in England actually thinking about it. Yeah, so I left from university, went traveling and then I got to work in DC to Canada. So I went to Southeast Asia then worked in British Columbia and Canada in mountain biking in the summer.
One of the ski resorts south of bike park in the summer, which is really cool. So I've got a lot of writing out there. You actually loved it and stayed out there for a bit and then just got kind of a ski bug as well. So we ended up doing ski seasons in New Zealand and then in Europe as well.
So I got that. And then, yeah, the passion for cycling, I guess, came back again when I moved back to Scotland from France. And yeah, that's kind of where I really got stuck into cycling. Yeah.
[00:06:38] Craig Dalton: And at what point did gravel cycling, intersect with your passion for cycling?
[00:06:43] Ed Shoote: I'd always been into mountain biking. And I think what kind of took me that next kind of level of backwards towards kind of gravel riding for mountain biking was contouring and long distance riding. So I got into doing these massive trips. So I had this amazing job, which was eight months of the year, so four months off.
So I spent those four months basically doing big tours. So I cycled to estimate.
[00:07:02] Craig Dalton: No.
[00:07:03] Ed Shoote: It's a three consecutive years. I think it was in a row across Europe. And then in the second year I carried on writing and I was just trying to do that more and more on gravel probable right, routes and gravel tracks.
So I could get away from the roads really and get into some more remote places. And it just seemed a great way to explore it. And that was kind of at the same point that manufacturers were getting into this idea of gravel bikes as a thing, and an adventure bikes. And I worked with a UK bike manufacturer.
Support them developing one of these kind of gravel adventure bikes as they were at the time. And it just went hand in hand and as I got that bike, it then got me more and more doing these tours pretty much all on gravel roads, gravel tracks in central Asia. A lot of the time as well. I did have about four trips to central Asia.
I'm getting kind of stuck into gravel, riding Kurdistan and and places like that. So that's yeah, that's where I got the gravel. But from.
[00:07:50] Craig Dalton: Wow. What would that type of touring terrain were you, what type of setup where you creating on your bike? You said you worked with a manufacturer. What was your dream setup for the type of riding that you were doing at that point?
[00:08:01] Ed Shoote: well, just before I did that, I was in Canada and I saw the tour divide races and they would just don't use bike back bags and they send a saddle packs and BARR bags which now we see everywhere, but at the time were really caught my eye and I was like, wow that's a solution to kind of the tour.
And I'm doing. Ditching the pantyhose, which always break the racks come loose. They wobble, they bounce us. You know, I was looking for something else and I approached 'em to come up with after dura in the UK. I would just kind of design in these bags. One of the first ones was only over here to be doing it.
And yeah just seeing the solution to what I was doing. And it means you have to reduce your kid. Cause you've got a saddlebag framed bag and a ball bag. I'm trying to get into some pretty remote places. And as we know now, it can be done about at the time. Head-scratching how you could get your kit.
This is almost 10 years ago now Peggy that your get into the small bags and I was kind of looking at different tents and all the sounds that we now take for granted a bit to get it in there. And yeah, it just works so well. And I think that's why it's taken off so much in the kind of 10 years since really.
[00:08:58] Craig Dalton: Yeah, a hundred percent. We've had the team at Afra on the podcast before. And. the evolution of bags from when we were kids in terms of pen, years down to what is now on the bikes today is just incredible. The bikes can be so rideable and so much fun with that, with those bags on versus once you put a pannier on back in the day, the bike felt like a different type of beast, and maybe it was good for riding in a straight line, but if you wanted to go off road with it, it became a little bit less.
[00:09:28] Ed Shoote: Yeah. I remember the first tour, big tour we did was north to south of New Zealand, which is always good place to start touring as well as a really good country to do. And then I, that cell from Oakland and the bike was so back heavy with the panniers. I couldn't get the front wheel down. It was just wheeling almost down the street.
And I was just scratching my head, how I'm going to get this bike around New Zealand. So just that kind of everyone does, I guess when they do the first tour, they have way too much stuff and it was all packed house. Yeah. And that was quite a long time ago. So yeah, each trip you kind of evolved, I guess, in your learning and equipment and set up as well.
[00:09:59] Craig Dalton: Yeah, absolutely. And obviously like the equipment with the dyspraxia and the wider tires has really just made the overall experience so much better.
[00:10:09] Ed Shoote: yeah, for me, I'm pretty tall. So I'm six or four. So I, I know when there's a headwind as well. It's fair to say. So given the drop bars on the gravel bike, Huge difference for me to get that kind of tuck in. And then you kind of tucking in behind the bar bag and the Saddleback everything's in line and yeah, it's one of those central Asian trips.
We've had ridiculous headwinds and it feels like with pioneers of the first trips we did, it kind of felt like it was literally pushing it backwards. You weren't making progress. So having these drop bars, these bags and me kind of like getting in an arrow, tuck in, cut in the middle of nowhere, it was such a better way.
[00:10:42] Craig Dalton: right. Right. And when did you ultimately end up settling in Scotland?
[00:10:48] Ed Shoote: Yeah, so I did a quite few of these trips. Like I said, I was working, it was actually out France in the end. When the UK was part of the EU and we could work in France easily get into that. And then I moved back to Scotland to get a job in another job, actually. No, I think that to Scotland. Get a bit homesick, I guess I've been in the UK.
So we came back and set up where I am now in the tables in the south of Scotland, because it's like, it's really good here. Yeah just stuff that we needed to kind of change and to come back. And my wife was looking for a different job as well, to be honest. So, so we got here in the, yeah.
And then we've just kind of loved Scotland and the writing we can do here.
[00:11:23] Craig Dalton: And were you starting to see the rise of, in terms of the number of gravel, cyclists in Scotland?
[00:11:30] Ed Shoote: Yeah, I think so. I'm trying to think of when we moved back in about 20, 20, 15. And I could go out and I wouldn't see a soul on these riots and I ended up, I was quite sick coming back, so I trained for kind of 24 hour racing and stuff like that. So I was doing a lot of miles and I would rarely see anyone.
And it was a novelty to see type. And definitely over the next kind of five years, I've gone from feeling like I'm the only one doing this, to see entire tracks to meet you too, you know, meeting people now. And everyone's on gravel bikes pretty much on these as well. And yeah, it's just been great to see.
And the the opportunities I guess, has gotten as well. Like I had a year where I did a different link from my door pretty much every day, same trails, possibly, but in different variations with different variations of them. And I just kind of. Change, I guess in like variation, I don't like riding the same route.
And I think having that here is what's attracted me. And obviously that's attracting loads of writers as well to come and come at school. This is tracks that weren't really being used. I guess.
[00:12:27] Craig Dalton: Yeah. From looking at your book, grab a ride, Scotland. The terrain just looks amazing. There's a lot of great photography in there. What inspired you to write this book? And why is it important to you?
[00:12:43] Ed Shoote: I like to have some great story about it. I just don't say no to stuff generally when someone asks me to do it and I said yeah, why not? I'll write a book on gravel riding. I know a lot of good routes. So, so I went for an yeah, that's kind of where I am now, but it didn't take much because I've been doing so much writing.
It kind of came naturally as to where I thought it should be. And the plan behind it form quite quickly. I really wanted destinations within Scotland for gravel line. So there's one here where I am, because there's so much gravel writing and there's about six or seven in the book based around these kinds of hubs of where I think there's a really good cost as a gravel rights.
And that came together quite quickly. And I was really kind of passionate about this idea of centers of gravel writing centers of excellence. You could call it kind of a gravel riding and getting these routes around those. And yeah, I was really keen to covet that kind of mix between a guide traditional guide, but you put in your pocket and a coffee table kind of inspiration.
Based cause I already want to get someone with photography, which is something I've kind of done over the trips for the last 10 years or so kind of worked up top skills through all those kind of adventures. Yeah. It just, it really nicely together and yeah, it's just got more and more excited about it.
I guess as a side thing.
[00:13:44] Craig Dalton: So as you started to sort of divide up the country or those geographic areas that, that the chapters are in effectively, are those oriented around like where the terrain is or those areas of Scotland that everybody talks about?
[00:13:57] Ed Shoote: Yeah it's an interesting one because gravel riding doesn't necessarily fit with where the hot spots soar as a Mar in Scotland. So the west coast and the islands are really beautiful and stunning. Yeah. Partly the weather and the climate and the Rocky landscape there, you often find that the gravel tracks are really quite rough and hard work.
The tracks often go one way. So they go to a beach or they go to a farm or a hilltops econ linked together. So actually some of the natural destinations has gotten don't work for gravel to the south where I am now works really well because we've got an abundance of forests, more land or drove roads where the cattle used to be.
Driven into markets 200 years ago. It's just some really good historical roots as well. And that's kind of, yeah, I guess, reflected across Scotland. So, they're not your traditional kind of places to go. It's gone, but there's still amazing places. They've got castles. They've got locks, they've got mountains, but they're not the kind of hotspots that you might come over if you're doing like a must do tour of Scotland.
So I think there's, yeah, it's nice for people coming over to get, to see a little bit more and as cheesy going real Scotland, you know, a little bit away from. Get out your car and take a photo of this announcing that everyone does in Scotland. So, yeah,
[00:15:05] Craig Dalton: I mean, I think that was gravel, cyclists. That's something we all appreciate. Just even in our own backyard, just being able to see things that the majority of people aren't ever visiting, just because of the range in which we get with these bikes, if you've got a good sense of address. One of the things I, one of the things I liked about the book was there was a couple of pages on sort of the history of gravel in Scotland, not the sport of gravel cycling, but just gravel in general.
And as a, as an American, I just thought it was really interesting to read about how these roads. Arrived in Scotland and what they were for originally. Do you want to spend a couple of minutes just talking about briefly that the history, because I think it's a novel from a us perspective anyway.
[00:15:49] Ed Shoote: Yeah, I really enjoyed putting that in and I think yeah, I, yeah, it's inspired people because each Scrabble track has a story behind the hair and I guess they all do, but here in particular, they can be kind of categorized into these time periods. And we go back to the Roman theories when the Romans invaded the U S.
They built these classic Roman roads, which are all in straight lines and some of those kind of cross into Scotland. And that's where the history of gravel starts in this book. So we're talking about the surface, as you say, rich. So, so these were kind of gravel, early gravel, Roman gravel roads and the legacy of those still exist today.
So some of the routes will follow. Dear street is one of the famous Roman roads as straight up north. So that's kind of where we kind of start with the history of it. The next key kind of development, I guess, is what I touched on before is these drove roads, which is it's mind boggling really it's where they took the cattle from the Highlands or from the fells to the market.
But we're not talking say a 10, 10 mile trip. We're talking the length of the country, which I know in the U S is probably not massive, but they drove them down to London from Scotland, which is, I dunno, 5, 6, 700 miles. They were walking with cattle to sell them at the market and they'd walk. And they did that on these routes across the Highlands, essentially all the way.
And these became established trading routes. They got better surfaced and a lot of them still exists. A lot of them are tarmacked into two main routes road routes, but a lot of them existed these gravel roads. So, Grover tracks. So yeah, I think there's quite a few points out in the book. The next kind of stage is Scotland's history.
It's where. The English. I'm trying to choose my words carefully here as an English, but when the English basically came up and impose their rule, let's say to joint by the union to Scotland became part of the United Kingdom. And to do that, there was the kind of uprisings against it from the Scots and the English bill, quite a lot of military roads to kind of question this in the 17 hundreds.
And a lot of those were built a very good standard and starting bridges across rivers and. Widespread on the maps and they are generally the backbone, a lot of the big gravel routes that, that we now ride in Scotland. Again, a lot of them up on Altamont roads, but a lot of them still exist in pretty similar form to what they were like two, 300 years ago.
And you can kind of imagine these kinds of lesions of soldiers muscling through the myths and the folk from ruined Fort to ruin castle it's quite evocative. It's yeah, it's an interesting time in Scottish history, really. And gravel was at the heart of it. The next thing really is the big estates we have here.
So we call them a states that kind of landed Gentry in the upper class. What huge swaves of Scotland to go basically hunting and shooting as a, as recreation, and to do that. They defiling clearances. They basically pushed out all the Scots and the love of the locals who lived there. And a lot of them then immigrated up to north America and lost their homes and livelihood.
Chapter and Scottish history. And from that, a lot of tracks were lost because the houses in the villages went, but actually the new estates put in a lot of tracks. And we're seeing that again, more recently coming up to two kind of modern day, they're putting a lot of land rovers tracks with Jeep tracks to, to access the states for shooting still.
And that's controversial in some courses, but for gravel riding, it just opens up miles and miles of these. We have the right to access and Scotland, which is another key factor. So we have an open access code, which allows us to respond to the access pretty much any track we see so long as it's not conflicting, kind of with the land use or kind of industry that's operating on its own.
So that basically means we can go anywhere. So all these tracks exist and we can put them and ride them, which is really good. So yeah.
[00:19:13] Craig Dalton: I saw that. I saw that legal note in the book and found that fascinating again as a north American. And I remember also experiencing this in New Zealand. It's just, it makes so much sense if there's land and you're using it responsibly, you're welcome to enjoy it. And there's no impediments across the board.
[00:19:29] Ed Shoote: Yeah, it's one of the reasons I moved to Scotland because in England, you don't have that in England. We have it in Scotland. And yeah it's responsible access. So it's thinking about kind of your actions and. Taking note of what countryside is being useful, but yeah it's amazing. Yeah, I, couldn't not live somewhere where we can do that.
I think you just take it for granted.
[00:19:48] Craig Dalton: Yeah. When you think about inviting people to Scotland to ride, what type of equipment do you think is best? Does it, you know, in the U S I think it varies so dramatically. Like you can, you know, you can be in Florida, riding dirt roads and be on a glorified road bike versus, you know, here in Marin county, I want big tires and frankly, I'm a fan of suspension on gravel bikes.
[00:20:09] Ed Shoote: I think generally expect a little bit rougher than what I think you're used to over there. Cause I think our kind of dream gravel is probably more your standard gravel where it's smooth and Nazi bumpy. It's generally a bit more Rocky, a bit coarser. And in the book I grade it from one to five, one being kind of your smooth gravel grinding kind of race tracks that you've got to think of as there's loads of long races.
Whereas we could generally sit in the middle where we have a ton of Clayton, slightly coarser, gravel, which is rougher on the upper body. So putting in some kind of suspension, isn't a bad idea. It's not essential, but they're getting those tires up to at least. If I didn't have to in the book 42 millimeters as a minimum on a six 50 or 700 seat setup, but I generally run nearer 47 to 50 millimeter tire, to be honest.
Just to give that a bit more. And comfort. I don't have suspension on my bike, but unimodal people are kind of putting the stems and the forks on as well. Just to give them a little bit more give on some of the rougher stuff, but yeah, that's probably the key that
[00:21:06] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And on, on the roots, are you what type of climbing do you experience in Scotland?
[00:21:11] Ed Shoote: It's all relative. It's quite steep Hills can be quite, I'm quite sure. And they can go on as well. So it gets the highest kind of point is around 700 and the meters, I think of off the top of my head in the book. So that's probably about, it could be up to five or 600 meter climb. In Longo, it's pretty unusual to do that sized climate generally around 300 meters at time.
But actually it can be pretty relentless because you're going up and down throughout the rights of the, yeah, the usually over a thousand. Climbing her route for a kind of the average would say and some of them are too like couple of thousand as well. So yeah, quite a lot of climbing.
And I think the gear ratios are recommended as well as is had something below a one-to-one ratio. Just to give you a bit of help of the Hills as well, because they are quite steep in places.
[00:21:55] Craig Dalton: as you were designing routes, did you spend a year traveling through Scotland and riding every road you.
[00:22:02] Ed Shoote: yeah. When it was a COVID kind of project. So, as well, so we went into lockdown. I could kind of get out on my own often easier. So I was doing a lot of on my own and writing big routes, Lincoln, as many as I could together. And then you have a weekend where nothing works and you've tried all these new routes and they're just not quite up to scratch.
Or you have a weekend where you get three out of it and think, well, these three are brilliant individual routes. And I kind of combined a few of them into which I think is a beauty of the book as well, actually is you can combine them into bypass and routes quite easily. So the clusters of routes across.
It's pretty obvious. And it does give tips on how he's blinking together. And I actually researched quite a lot by linking them into my backpack and bike bags on, and that's spent I spent a long weekend riding them all together to kind of get a feel for them. And again, we Scott any can wild camp, you know, you're free to wild.
Come on that route wherever you find a nice spot as well, which
[00:22:48] Craig Dalton: We discovering sort of tidbits of GPX files and different things online to give you a hint that this area of Scotland might be right for your exploration.
[00:22:58] Ed Shoote: I've really tried not to. And I, it's funny because I get accused sometimes on online. I noticed when I read some of the kind of review comments and things oh, he's stolen my route and I'm really, I really didn't stay here. It's just a coincidence because I tried really hard to kind of look at the base maps from scratch and not look at routes.
So I did something different. Yeah. As a result of that. Yeah. It's obviously overlap with stuff that's already out there, but it's quite a lot of different twists and things as well, because I tried to do it from scratch, but I had a lot of time during lockdown as well. So I did a lot of Mac.
[00:23:31] Craig Dalton: Right. And you touched on this before. It wasn't that you wanted to methodically go through the entire country of Scotland and throw your bike on every mile or kilometer. You were really just focusing on what are the best areas to ride and what are going to be the best experiences for riders coming to Scotland.
[00:23:50] Ed Shoote: Yeah, I think I wouldn't call it the very best 28 routes in older Scotland because these people would be one in the far north, but that isn't. I just don't think that you'd get a guidebook when adopted all over the country. You never going to ride more, actually view, stay for a weekend, a long weekend, or even a week in some places you write all of those routes.
So you'll get somewhere else and you write all of those routes and you'll actually write all the routes in the book probably quite easily. And if you're dotting them all over, you won't. So, so yeah, it was a deliberate kind of focus not to explore every hidden corner of Scotland, but focus on where I thought the best stuff was going to be for people coming to.
[00:24:22] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And in your mind, you know, what is a great Scottish root? What are some come to the few of the check marks you would love to see if you were bringing someone on their only ride they're going to do in Scott?
[00:24:32] Ed Shoote: Good question. I the one that seems to be going down pretty well so far is something called that the calendar monster loop, which is a 128 kilometers, and it's got a bit of everything. It's got steep climbs. It's got really remote tracks that go past coffees. It's a kind of. Overnight shelters, roll cottages.
So taking some of that kind of heritage comes down to some of the big locks in the middle of the country. And then you get some great views on the bigger mountains and Mon as we call them, which are generally above a thousand meters in height. So yeah, it takes in a bit of everything and 128 kilometers is it's I think it's the longest day route in the book.
So yeah, it's a challenge. It's rough. It's long. It's. So, yeah, that's gone down, it has a bit of everything. So it's gone down really well. I think yeah I just really enjoyed some of the hidden gems where I didn't expect there to be such good writing and such history and things along the way.
So there's other routes where you've got castles. I never knew existed done. There may. There's a, there's an amazing atmospheric castle that I never knew was there and it's just in the malls and the track is perfect to it. So, so yeah, there's also hidden gems in there, but I think, yeah, having a little bit of everything in there is great.
[00:25:35] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. As a north American, I think coming over there, anytime you kind of come across a dilapidated castle or an overnight rock structure, or even those stone bridges, you mentioned in the history of the development of gravel, I think it was just, for me, it would be super novel to just be riding those pop past those types of bits of history.
[00:25:56] Ed Shoote: Yeah. Yeah. And now we take that for granted, I guess. Oh, there's a cost of just never there yet. 15 hundreds, monastery just opposite my house, where the monks used to live in like 500 years ago. And it's just like, oh yeah, it's just where the kids play. It's quite, it's got Cooley
[00:26:11] Craig Dalton: offline. We were talking about how Scotland is home to some dramatic weather. What's the best time of year. If you're recommending someone from the outside to come over to Scotland, what's the best time of year to do some Scottish.
[00:26:21] Ed Shoote: Wait. Kind of in it, to be honest, I think may into June is usually good weather. It's long days, long, long daylight hours you know, can be riding in the north till midnight, almost. Which is great. The midges haven't come out, which is a key consideration. So they're not mosquitoes. This is a smaller, it's just a nuisance really, rather than anything, but they do come out in force in the summer.
So this time of year is quieter for that. Yeah, the daylight, the warmth, the sunshine, I guess it's usually pretty reliable. The mid July time is I was gonna say monsoon season, but it's not quite it's just where to generally in July and August in Scotland. So, yeah. And you've got the majors.
You can get a little bit oppressive, like a little bit of plumbing. We don't get heat, I should say as well compared to what you guys get, but you know, it can be kind of close and niches and things. So it's not quite as nice as it's fresh in the spring time. This spring.
[00:27:07] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. And I realize this next question may be akin to choosing your favorite. But if you had to point to three or four routes in the book that you really believe are our must do's. If you're visiting Scotland, what would they be? And give us a little bit of the geography of where in the country, relatively though they would sit.
[00:27:28] Ed Shoote: so the Northeast, the Eric or the Ken national park is definitely a must visit for gravel writers because it's. Absolutely stunning. It's got a lot of native Caledonian pine forest. And in between it there's this court sand like white yellowy kind of tracks that glimmer in the sunshine as you go across.
And it's actually beautiful. And it goes past the Royal families, Highlander state at Balmoral, which is pristine and like the tracks on that state of pristine as well. And you can ride right on those tracks and you might bump into kind of the Royal land Rover as you go past sometimes. It's just beautiful.
And the work they've done to preserve the find forest service. There's lots of wildlife as well. So the kangaroo has got about three routes up there and I think they're all up to practice to be honest. It's definitely up there. I'm trying to think where else there's too many options.
It's
[00:28:12] Craig Dalton: Because you've got 28 routes. Was it in the book?
[00:28:15] Ed Shoote: yeah, I'm trying to think. I'm trying to pick another, I'm biased to where I am in the south. It's off the kind of normal track was people had north, but here we've got this kind of really quiet, empty, relatively isolated kind of feeling in the Hills down here, which is just south of Edinburgh.
And there's a couple of routes here, which take you through some kind of really nice that it's simply less steep and kind of more rolling, but equally beautiful and like quite a lot of, like I say, castles and heritage along the way as well. So just a few routes here. I would definitely cause it's quite easy to get to as well.
If you're flying into Edinburgh it's quite quick. It's 20 miles, 20 miles away. So it's not far at all. So
[00:28:52] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that sounds good to say, if you're coming to Scotland, chances are, you're going to want to visit Edinburgh if you hadn't already, because it's such an amazing city. So to be able to pop out and do a little riding there, and what would you take a train to get up to the sort of the north, if you had your bike?
[00:29:06] Ed Shoote: Yeah. W coming here to the south, our buses, that kind of scheduled buses, which. Run pretty ready to take bikes. So they have spike spaces within the bus. You're not going to on the back, you just roll them in the bus and then take your bikes down, which is really cool. But yeah, north to the Highlands.
Yeah. Trains are your best bet. You have a word of warning, usually at the Brooklyn, minivans just warn, but we're getting better and better. We're getting more dedicated bike characters come in and Scotland, which is really cool to see. So after 20 spaces, the character going to dedicate to just by.
So that's, yeah, it's getting easier and easier, but yeah, the trains are in a good way.
[00:29:38] Craig Dalton: Yeah, exciting. What's next for you? Do you have any more writing projects ahead of you or any frankly, any adventures on the bike that you're able to go off on and
[00:29:47] Ed Shoote: Well, I'm enjoying talking about bikes cause I've actually had quite a nasty injury in my shoulder. So I've been off the bike for two months now kind of a year, a fractured collarbone and AC joint dislocation. So yeah, it's it's got a, quite a lot of metalwork in there which is trying to heal.
I'm planning a lot of things and the book has gone down really well. I'm really pleased with how it's gone down. So the publishers are saying, what do you want to do next? So I'm thinking of different things to do around a different version probably of gravel rights as well. And yeah, probably later in the year of like packing trips somewhere, probably in Europe, probably to, towards this Lele somewhere six is kind of on the horizon.
So,
[00:30:22] Craig Dalton: Do you think your next gravel book would be about? I continue to be about the, you know, the UK or would you, I know you've been all over the world.
[00:30:30] Ed Shoote: well, the publisher's telling me that my central Asian travels are too niche, but I might self publish a book come out anyway. Cause I think it's quite cool that I just love that area of the world. So, so I think there's one there. In terms of what did Scotland, I think there's probably a longer section, longer routes would be cool to do so bypassing routes that aren't currently.
Official ones. I think that's what I've kind of got in mind to start working on them, starting to plot a few ideas around that as well. So I think from a book point of view, that's going to be next, but I'm keen to get on an adventure and I've missed, as I said, the best time of year in Scotland as well, seeing it's in talking about bikes and write about bikes, which is I'm keen to gallery.
[00:31:07] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for putting the effort into putting this book out there. As I mentioned offline, I'm a big fan of the idea of gravel travel and without guide books like this, that help just give you a starting point for what regions you should look at and give you a little bit of information.
It's just hard to get off the dime. So hopefully this is going to bring a lot more riders to Scotland to enjoy the beautiful country there.
[00:31:32] Ed Shoote: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks telling me you want it. It's great to talk to you about that Scotland and grow a lot in general. So, yeah. Thanks.
[00:31:37] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
So that's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel rod podcast. Big, thanks to ed chute for talking to us about gravel riding in Scotland. I'm super intrigued. But what he had to say.
Big, thanks to our friends at athletic greens for supporting the show. Remember, visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. To get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs. If you're interested in connecting with me, I encourage you to join the ridership. It's our free global cycling community. That's www.theridership.com. And if you're able to support the show financially, please visit buy me a coffee.
Dot com slash the gravel ride. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
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Last Best Ride[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the podcast. We welcome Jess, Sarah and Sam Boardman onto the show to talk about Montana's last best ride.
Many of you will probably recognize justice name as a gravel cyclist, often at the front end of the pack of these gravel races. She's also the founder of Jo J bar and currently as vice president of product and community development at both Joe, Jay and salt stick. She's also a member of the Pinarello Scuderia project.
And a long time envy athlete. Sam Boardman, not as well known on the gravel cycling scene, but certainly a crusher out there on the road. He's a member of the powerful Legion squad and riding very well. Having one stage three of the Joe Martin stage race.
Recently. The two partners have come together to create last best ride as a showcase for the love of their home in Whitefish, Montana. I hope you enjoy learning more about this event. It certainly sounds from all accounts that it's a great community event. And a spectacular ride. Before we jump in i need to thank this week sponsored the feed.
For those of you who aren't familiar with the feed, the feed is the largest online marketplace for your sports nutrition, offering brands, you know, and love from scratch labs to cliff bar, to Martine plus their athlete customized supplements called feed formulas
It's those feed formulas that I wanted to talk to you about and make sure you're familiar with feed formulas are personalized supplements for athletes developed in part with Dr. Kevin Sprouse from the EDF pro cycling team. Following the same protocols, the top athletes use. These are best in class, branded supplements, never generic. You get personalized recommendations based on your needs as an athlete.
They're all packaged in a convenient daily pouch. So no more messy bottles keeping organized on the counter. You just grab a single pouch and it's got your fully customized order. Right. In one place, you can go on the website@thefeed.com slash the gravel ride and save 50% off your first order today.
On that website for feed formula, you can walk through what are the individual supplements that you need. They've got a base formula, then they have multiple different add on packs based on your age, whether you're recovering, whether you're peaking for something. So it's a really great way to make sure you've got all the supplements you need and in an incredible easy way to consume them each day.
You're not going to forget anything in a bottle somewhere on the other shelf. Everything's in those. Personalized formula packages in their daily pouch. You can get 50% off your first order, simply visit the feed.com/the gravel ride. Would that business behind us let's jump right in to my interview with just sarah and sam boardman Hey, Jess, Sam, welcome to the show.
[00:03:18] Jess and Sam: Hey, Craig. Thanks for having us, Craig. It's good to be here.
[00:03:22] Craig Dalton: Where am I speaking to you at right now?
[00:03:25] Jess and Sam: We're in a beautiful and snowy, Whitefish, Montana.
[00:03:30] Craig Dalton: It's hard to believe. I literally just had a pool party for my son this past weekend in California. And you're still getting snow over there.
[00:03:37] Jess and Sam: Yeah, we little bit embarrassing, but Rose Grant is a professional mountain biker who also lives here. And we tried to do a ride on Friday and we had to get rescued and we know what we're doing. We failed the pool parties.
[00:03:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah, not this time of year anyway, was the listener knows. We always like to start off the show by learning a little bit more about your background and how you came to gravel cycling. And then I'm excited to talk to both of you about last best ride and the big gravel events you've got coming up this summer.
So just why don't we start off with you and just talk a little bit about your journey to cycling and how you found yourself riding off road.
[00:04:16] Jess and Sam: Yeah.
Well, I'm actually from Whitefish, Montana, which is something not a lot of people can say. And I growing up here. You have an affinity for the outdoors? No matter what I think most people who move here and raise families live here because they want to spend time outside. With that said cycling, wasn't a huge part of growing up here.
I pretty much found cycling in grad school. I. I went to the university of Montana for my undergrad, studied exercise physiology, and then moved to San Diego to pursue my master's in the same field. And it was when I was studying elite athletes in the lab and actually bringing cyclists into our exercise physiology lab.
That my curiosity was peaked and I ended up randomly doing a VO two max test on a lab bike and finding that I had the engine, I just needed a bike and all the things that go with it. So one of my professors was I'm on a mountain bike team and she helped me get started. And I started on that team and I raced Xterra off-road triathlon and mountain bikes for a long time.
And then I. Professional road racing career after that. And instead of officially retiring, I say that I evolved into gravel cycling because I think gravel is that area where you, you can be a pro without having to only be competitive, you can bring value to the sport in other ways.
[00:05:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah, absolutely. So unpacking that, I'll just a tiny bit first off for the uninitiated. Explain exactly where Whitefish is located in, in Montana.
[00:06:04] Jess and Sam: So it's up in the Northwestern corner. It's tucked by Flathead lake in glacier national park, which is a big draw to the area. We're about 30 minutes away from glacier. What like nine 90 minutes on the bike. If I'm drafting behind Sam.
[00:06:20] Craig Dalton: and then it's pretty close to the Canadian border. Is that right?
[00:06:24] Jess and Sam: Yeah. like an hour from the Canadian border.
[00:06:27] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Amazing. And when you were growing up, were you doing other endurance athletics, like running or skiing?
[00:06:33] Jess and Sam: Yeah. So we, you know, and we'll touch on this. When we talk about the mission for the last best ride I grew up in, you know, a pretty humble family, pretty low income. So access to. A lot of sports like cycling or skiing?
It was a little tricky for us. There's a ton of community support here. There's actually grants for kids to participate.
So I was able to do some Nordic skiing that way. We have an outdoor figure skating rink, and I did some figure skating with some of those grants. But it's funny because looking back, I was always drawn to endurance. I just didn't have an example of what endurance as a sport or as a career would be like something like professional cycling.
And you think that I would, and in Montana that, that I wouldn't have that, but it just really wasn't something that was part of our daily life. You know, my parents were focused on working and I grew up with a single mom, so. That was challenging, but she did her best to get us outside. We did a lot of hiking and exploring here.
But Yeah.
[00:07:41] Craig Dalton: Amazing. And then, so when you went to college and you discovered the bike for the first time, as you started to become involved in. That the team aspects of road racing, was it immediately apparent that you had an engine that was better suited for the longer, more endurance stuff versus sprint site?
Tough.
[00:07:58] Jess and Sam: Yes. It's funny how you, you learn that. I actually was a really strong climber and I think that I began goes back to. The VO two max and lung capacity, but definitely I like to suffer for a really long time, rather than compacting that all into five seconds. So those were the systems that I trained.
[00:08:22] Craig Dalton: yeah, that makes sense. And then Sam, how about you? Where, where did you grow up and what was your journey to the bike? Like.
[00:08:28] Jess and Sam: Well, I'll tell you that, but first I want to add something to justice story that she did not add, which I think is the funniest part, the random aspect of her introduction to cycling. Wasn't so random. It was. Part of the protocol for her research was taking the temperatures of the athletes, who she was studying.
And to do that back in the day when she was doing it, the only way to do that was through a rectal thermometer.
[00:08:56] Craig Dalton: I thought that's where we're going.
[00:08:57] Jess and Sam: So the people who were doing the studies, they were always super jilted because they would always come in according to way adjust all that. And they would say, well, have you done the test?
And eventually she just wanted to say like, but yes, I've done the past. And that's how she actually took the test and how she was discovered by her superior supervisors as a very gifted endurance athletes. So people should know it was not so much random. Low grade bullying and yeah,
[00:09:27] Craig Dalton: I love it.
[00:09:28] Jess and Sam: it's I don't know. I just, I liked that because it's, it's similar to this rumor and legend.
I heard about Alex House where as an endurance athlete, everyone who he talked to, who he told I'm a professional cyclist and he would tell them like ever in the tour de France and stuff like that, they'd be like, yeah. Cool, cool, cool. Have you run a marathon? He always was just saying, no, I've never run a marathon.
And then apparently, and this is what legend has at one day. You just woke up and was like, gosh, darn it. I just need to run a marathon so that when people ask me that from now on, I can say, yes, we did. And he like broke all his toes or something like that. And just bloody wind speed. But point is, it's an important detail.
[00:10:08] Craig Dalton: yeah. Now he's a reasonable athlete, according to the best people out there.
[00:10:12] Jess and Sam: yeah. With a rectal thermometer. No,
[00:10:17] Craig Dalton: Well, you never know.
[00:10:19] Jess and Sam: my my introduction to the bike was a lot less invasive, I guess you could say. It w it was brought on mostly as a way to fill the void that I had in my life when I left running. And I say left running as if it was like something that I chose to retire from it wasn't, it was just my life in high school.
And when I, when I discovered it freshman year, I, you know, fell in love with it. And it just was everything that I wanted to do. And when it came time to apply to college, I realized like the only schools that I wanted to go to having come from very small private school and wanting to broaden my horizons, as far as my educational experience goes, were large state schools with very, very competitive running programs where, I mean, they had these kinds of schools were pumping out national champions left and right.
And if I wanted to be part of, you know, the, a squad, the division one squad, I would either have. Scrap my way onto the team so that I could just race be races or I would have to run at the club level and doing either of those didn't really fit in my competitive zeal that I accrued during my high school life and running.
And I knew that it would also probably destroy the love that I had for the sport, because it would probably just Jade me to the point where I didn't want to do it anymore. So I decided to just try something new, find something. In the meantime, the summer between my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college, which having gone to UCLA who were on the quarter system and they notoriously start very late.
I had five months off between when I ended my senior year and when I started college and it wasn't because I took a semester off or anything, it's just, that's how the calendar works. So I had a lot of free time to figure out what I wanted to do. In the meantime, I was working as a janitor in my high school, and my parents had gotten me a fixed gear bike to commute, to work with.
And I just fell in love with scooting around in the city. And just finding the bike scene in Washington, DC, where I grew up and discovering the bike and that kind of communal aspect. And then finally come August. Of 2014. I decided I wanted to get a road bike because as is the natural progression for most people that I've talked to in cycling, you wanted to be able to go further and go faster and actually be able to change gears and not blow your knees out of their sockets.
So I use the money that I've gotten working as a janitor and bought my first road bike, went to California, found the club team and just became obsessed. Race the club scene for three years when I was in college, until I got onto a domestically amateur team and then started branching out into more competitive national events.
And then I signed my first pro contract in 29.
[00:13:14] Craig Dalton: Amazing and shout out to rock Creek park in DC for a little road riding.
[00:13:20] Jess and Sam: I grew up. Yeah.
Rock Creek park. It's I mean, it's funny. It's like I go back there very frequently and I basically rediscover or discover for the first time, in some cases, parts of the cycling scene, which is super exciting to me because having grown up there. You know, you think, oh, I know everything about it, but it's actually really cool to be able to go to your hometown and find something absolutely new to it in the sphere of what you love to do.
And that it's actually robbery park is one of my favorite places to ride it's right by my house.
[00:13:52] Craig Dalton: Yeah, quick aside. I, I went to school at American university in Washington, DC and discovered mountain biking and amazing. So I discovered a mountain biking in DC, which is very sort of counterintuitive, right? Like where would you find green space to mountain bike in DC? But as you probably know, there's all these sort of interconnected green spaces in Washington, DC, that once you sorta tipped off to them, you sort of do a little section.
They're all short of obviously. You're a little section, then you go around next to some apartment buildings you find another section to do, and you can do these neat hour long loops in the city.
[00:14:25] Jess and Sam: Oh,
my gosh. I mean, I. So much credit I have to give to my high school running coach to who instilled in me the kind of sense of adventure. And you could call it, I call it organic navigation, but most people know that as being bad at directions where it's basically kind of just, you know, where to go when the road looks a certain way, or you kind of just decide, you're going to feel out your route.
And he was the one who introduced me to just looping together. Different routes. So, I mean, like you're saying, we would start in Tenleytown, we'd go download the Archibald trail through Georgetown we'd loop through all these little random back trails that kind of nestled themselves in the woods through spring valley and all these areas where it's just, you know, he taught me how to just have fun exploring during your training
[00:15:16] Craig Dalton: Yeah, absolutely. And another shout out to the CNO canal, many miles on that canal
[00:15:21] Jess and Sam: many miles on the CNO canal.
[00:15:24] Craig Dalton: So great. So you you've, you're racing professionally on the road. How did you find yourself in Montana?
[00:15:30] Jess and Sam: So just being from here ever since we met, had always talked about wanting to go back. I mean, I think she can tell you that she never really clicked with big city living or at least like being in larger urban areas with. It never really bothered me. Having grew up in Washington, DC, moved to LA for college and then moved to San Diego.
It was funny where we were living in north county, San Diego Encinitas. That was pretty sleepy beach town in my mind. And just at the time it was living in Oceanside two towns up, which again, very small town in my mind, but there's still towns of 150, 200,000 people. And it's all part of one big conglomerate to call it, you know, its own town.
It's kind of ridiculous because similar to LA it's just, you know, San Diego county LA become just massive giant cities with little pockets of populations here and there. But eventually when it came time for us to leave where we were living in Encinitas, she decided she wanted to move back to wipe this.
And she said, if you want to be with me, I'm going to be up there. So ball's in your court. So the decision was pretty easy. So now I'm here. But Yeah.
honestly, I've, I think I've taken to it pretty amazingly. I mean, I love the writing that we have up here. I love the community that's up here and it's just a very welcoming place that.
Just champions, outdoor living in every form that you can imagine. And I think what was really important to me as someone whose life has revolved around road racing for the past seven years, it was I think, a big step for me to try and find a place that I could visualize myself living, where I could have fun where the road bike wasn't the apps.
Epicenter of my existence. And you know, this past winter, I learned how to ski for the first time and my knees are still intact. So that was sweet. And I learned that I loved it. And that really gave me a lot of, I mean, hope is a weird word to use, but it did where it's like, you know, there's this kind of panic that sets in sometimes when you think about, oh my gosh, what am I going to do when I leave competitive road cycling?
I mean, there's just so much to try out here. There's so much to do and so much stuff to have fun with that. You know, I'm really glad that I was brought up here because now having lived here for a couple months now, it's just, it's hard to imagine being back in a big city, it really is, which is very odd.
I always thought I wanted to stay in a big city.
[00:18:13] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's interesting. And for listeners who live in California, California, is this weird place, right? You can ride your bike all year round, very little interruption. In fact, it's hard to take a step back and think about having a quote unquote off season. Whereas most places elsewhere in the country, in the world, you have snow, you have real winter and you're forced to do other things.
And I remember growing up on the east coast for me, that was sort of a healthy. Sort of cycle of the year, right? Because you just sort of naturally transitioned to something else, whatever it was in the winter, rather than just riding your bike hard core all year round.
[00:18:50] Jess and Sam: oh yeah. I was pretty nervous even. Yeah. Being the one that pushed us to move here and what our long rides every weekend are so important to me. And to your point, I feel healthier. I feel it is so nice to just take a break from those things, because now I'm looking forward to riding more than usual, but it also is weird to not be so fit and may
[00:19:16] Craig Dalton: Yeah,
[00:19:16] Jess and Sam: I'm used to being so, so come may.
Not
[00:19:21] Craig Dalton: not quite there yet this year.
[00:19:23] Jess and Sam: quite there yet. It's also like your life has changed too. Yeah. And my life revolves more around work. I mean, so the thing that I discovered is. To justice credit. Like she's just, she's training differently now because she's working multiple jobs, basically with organizing the race and her own full-time job and balancing training competing.
But to her credit, if she wanted to be fit and trained, she could. And that's just the thing about being in an environment that's not California, which is perfect weather all the time. He kind of just ended up getting creative. Like you, you know, during the winter, Jess was doing a bunch of. Yoga yoga sculpt doing some like gym workouts at home.
She was doing endurance hit workouts at home. Yeah. You did a ski race. I mean, it's just, I honestly think that it, you know, for me and I re I reckon for justice as well. It actually was very refreshing to be in an environment where bike racing and bike riding. Wasn't the only way that you could get fit.
And it actually felt good. Going into the season, having not just written my bike and myself into oblivion, because it actually got me excited for the season, whereas an excited to ride my bike more like justice thing. Whereas I found in, you know, past years, sometimes you get to the end of your base training phase, which for most Californians, I mean their base training starts in October, November, and it goes all the way until January, February, where racing starts pretty early relative to.
Season or re rest of the country. And by the time you get to that first race of the season, you're just like, oh my God, I can't stand training anymore. I need to race. I need a race. Whereas this year, I mean, I took some time off and then learned how to ski. And that was like the first couple of weeks of off season activities was just learning how to do the activity and then doing those activities and actually staying fit in a relatively, you know, fun way that was new.
And then by the time I got. To the point where I was supposed to raise, I was actually really excited to just like be on my bike, not just race, but like be outside in the warm weather where my knees can be exposed to the elements.
[00:21:36] Craig Dalton: Being part of the Legion program. Did you find yourself, had you hit the fitness you needed to hit for some of the late the races they had you slated to.
[00:21:43] Jess and Sam: I think it was in, I would say probably not the fitness that I would have wanted, but again, it was. I don't think I was actually unfit for the races. I just don't think I was fit in the way that a lot of the people who I was racing and surfing and in the sense of like racing fitness, because a lot of the riders coming from warmer climates who are doing those early season races, that the program that Legion does in California, they've been racing since January.
And I literally just flown from a blizzard. And we'd seen a lot of snow during the winter. And I was mostly doing like base training work starting in December, going through February to one of my first race in Arizona was, and it's not that I felt, felt unfit to the point where I couldn't finish the races.
It's just like That top end wasn't there. But now, you know, having had a bunch of races under my belt and we're going into the next block, which is like the key block, the target block of the year from. I do feel a lot fitter and I don't feel the same level of burnt out as I would normally at this time of the year where I'm just like praying hands and knees for break after the blast block.
So I actually, I did feel less fit, but, you know, I felt like I was excited to raise again.
[00:23:03] Craig Dalton: That makes sense. And then just for you racing gravel this year, you're part of a program. Do you want to talk about that team you're involved in and what your goals are for the year?
[00:23:15] Jess and Sam: Yeah. So the scooter Rhea Pinarello program is sort of a multi-faceted program that emphasizes what I was mentioning earlier that there's unique skillsets and unique people. They deserve to have an opportunity in the cycling world. And so. The idea of our marketing director of Pinarello is Kim Rogers.
And she's just an incredibly hard worker. I have a lot of respect for what she's accomplished with the program in the first year, and then leading into this year. But we're a group of athletes that range from competitors to adventure, people, to community leaders. So my role is a community leader. And basically what that means is I'm none of my partners and of my sponsors expect me to be winning races are on the podium.
And that's something that I've communicated to everyone and they they've accepted, you know, I've had my time for that. Being a trained really hard and, and won races and had the injuries and then the whole deal. And now it's what I really want to focus on is helping more people get into the sport, making it a welcoming place where you know, all types of people are accepted and have opportunities and just being able to.
Represent amazing brands like Pinarello at large events is, is super important. And it's like, because I don't care about a result, I'm going out there to have fun. And the pressure isn't there, you open yourself up to creating those experiences with people. Like I'm constantly on my feet in the sun before I do an event and talking and hanging out and. My, the energy bar company that I founded, Joe Davis. Is now a part of a larger suite of sports, nutrition brands, and my company kind of mirrors. We go to the events that mere my schedule with Pinarello and support. So I'm also doing that on the side. And it's just, it's super fun to. To know that we're in a place now where the emphasis isn't always on results.
I mean, that's amazing. It's super cool. I still look up to the women who are crushing it right now. And I think that is great, but it's also really more relatable to a lot of people who have families and work and see like they do, they do have a place and you don't have to come to an event to. You can come to just ride your bike and meet people and you'll be accepted and you're not doing anything weird.
You're probably doing what 95% of the other people around you are doing. So Yeah.
it's, it's, it's a good, it's a good, a good team for me, for sure.
[00:26:12] Craig Dalton: Awesome. Let's take a two minute detour and hear about your company. What can you tell us about like the judge, a bar philosophy and the types of products that you make?
[00:26:21] Jess and Sam: Yeah. So this is also a concept that after grad school, I decided not to do a PhD, which was the track that I was on. Like from high school, I knew I wanted to do this path and I was really into research and I diverted to pursue cycling and I. I had met a nutritionist who I worked with and she was a private chef.
And so I started helping her kind of as her assistant at first. And then I ended up taking over her clientele when she moved away. So that's kind of the piece about nutrition and being in the food world, but is important to the story. So I had this background in exercise physiology. I S I started this private chef company.
I started catering events and I really focused on just fresh food healthy food that people who wanted to be active, wanting to eat. And I just took the guesswork out of it. So, at the time, this wasn't in 2008. 10 ish. There was really no good energy bars out there. We weren't in this food revolution where there's like all of this amazing all these amazing choices when you walk into whole foods or whatever.
And so I thought I wanted to create something that was delicious, but tastes in homemade. My favorite things to eat are. Cookies or baked goods or stopping by the bakery before I ride. I also wanted it to make sense from a macronutrient standpoint. And so I kind of flip the script on how bars were made.
They were always really carb-heavy before which we need, but I also wanted to add in more fat for. Those zones that are more endurance and I wanted it to be something that was digestible and you could eat, eat a lot of it. At the time I had a coach who had Lyme's disease and was on a gluten-free diet.
And so I thought, well, I'll try making it gluten-free little. Did I know that that segment was going to blow up in the future and become so. So I created this bar and it was just kind of a rinky-dink operation out of my kitchen at first. And I actually, some of my private chef clients helped me move into my first co-packer and I was in a small co-packer down in San Diego and just grew the brand grassroots style within the cycling and trapline community.
And a big, the big wind for Joe Jay was when we got into REI. And I think we were accepted at the end of 2018, and that really helped our, the brand breech our people in the outdoor space and in let's see. I think of October of 2019, I was approached by this company called elite active nutrition is the name now a L E T E, which means all athletes, not elite athletes.
And they reached out to me. They had started this platform by acquiring
electrolyte brand called salt stick. Really huge in the triathlon world. I'm hopefully helping it become huge in the travel world. So they reached out to me about acquiring Joe, Jay, and it was a great fit because it allowed me at this point, I was caught up in all of the logistics of running a business.
And also the logistics of being the hamster in the wheel of cashflow when you own a small business. And this allowed me to step away from that. And I'll admit, I don't love entrepreneurship from that standpoint. I just am wired in a way where I want to help other people and I want to do the right thing.
And I want a brand that does those things. And I really don't like the other part of it. This company enabled me to do that. They said, we're going to take all of that. We have a team in place already, and then you can create your role in the company and you will come on and you will do that role. And so it was a perfect fit.
They didn't want to take the bar and change it and, you know, cut the margins and do, do all the things that sometimes larger companies want to do. So I created my role of VP, of product and community developers. Enjoying this team, we've now also acquired bonk breaker and we'll be acquiring two other brands.
And yeah, so that's what I do. I work on product development. We're developing some new flavors right now. And then I also, like I mentioned, I get to be out in the community and we, I get to lead all of our brands and make sure that we. Have at our heart and soul, we are an accepting platform. We have a diverse group of athletes and ambassadors.
We're inclusive. We're thinking about doing the right things for the environment in sport and all of those, you know, amazing things that I like to focus on. So, sorry, that was not two minutes. That was like five.
[00:31:32] Craig Dalton: That's okay. Now I appreciate the entrepreneurial journey and that's a great outcome and amazing that the vision can now be propelled forward, you know, with the distribution that maybe you weren't going to be able to achieve this company can get it out there even further and allow you to focus on what you love.
[00:31:49] Jess and Sam: Exactly.
[00:31:50] Craig Dalton: fabulous and allow you more time to start things like gravel races in your hometown.
[00:31:55] Jess and Sam: Yes.
[00:31:56] Craig Dalton: So let's talk about that. I mean, I love talking to event organizers because I think it's such a, such an art behind creating an experience that is native to the community that you're in and showcases everything you want to showcase.
I feel like it's like a love letter to your commute. When you design a gravel course, and I love designing courses here in Moran. So I'd love to hear about the inspiration for last best ride. And then let's talk about the details. Let's get the listener stoke to put it on their calendar.
[00:32:25] Jess and Sam: Okay. Well, I think to back up a little bit, when we first started spending a lot of time here was in 2020 during the Panda. When we realized we weren't going to be doing any racing. And we kind of did the thing that everyone was doing. We scattered to a smaller place only. This is my home. And we also bought a piece of land at that time, which turned out to be total baller, move that we had no idea.
This is going to be like the best decision of our lives, but I think. We, so to Sam's point about being adventurous, he started exploring and making these gravel routes for us, these crazy off-road routes. And he didn't even have a gravel bike yet, but he was taking me places that I had never been after growing up here.
And remember the first gravel. Right. We did. You did it on your road bike, that old KTM bike and yeah. We ride this route consistently now. And we're like, how on earth did you write this on your road bike? Like we it's like when you don't know any better, when you first start exploring off road, like you might throw some wider tires on your road bike.
And you're like, oh yeah, like, so we were kind of exploring and realizing that this place is prime for a gravel event. I had also. My first event, the season before was our friend, Kevin Laura King run an event in Vermont called rooted Vermont, and the little town there from Richmond reminded me of Montana and attending that.
Having such an amazing time. And knowing that gravel was a place that I wanted to be, I thought that they're just nailing it. Like how that the community embraces this event. It's super low key. They make a whole weekend out of it. And I told Laura, I said, my wife is really needs an event like that. It's so incredibly beautiful here.
So. I think we started exploring more and then I can pretty sure I made you ride like an old steel, gravel bike of mine. Remember that? And it was like two sizes too small for you. And then he ordered a gravel bike and we just like, I don't know how we went from. Two rides to like the next day we were at the forest service office with our masks on like knocking on the door where it's like appointments only.
And we were like, hi, we would like to put on an event. They were like, why we're in the middle of a pandemic? Why would you, when you talking about, and we're like, no, it's definitely the, the pandemic won't be here next year. Like we're looking at next year. Little did we know that it was going to be an extended, extended pandemic, but luckily we picked August as our month because you're pretty much guaranteed.
My dad will tell anyone that comes here, that he's seen snow here every month of the year. But if you're going to pick one month, August is a pretty safe bet. So we picked August for our race and that's Yeah.
that's kind of how we started.
[00:35:30] Craig Dalton: and was the community embracing of it. Like I know a lot of rural communities when they hear about the prospect of a thousand athletes coming to town and booking hotel rooms and accommodations and food and all that stuff. They're super excited to get behind it. Were you experiencing that in Whitefish?
[00:35:48] Jess and Sam: Well, there's been a little bit of a shift here and Whitefish?
I believe this was the fastest growing town in the country during COVID. Which is why, when I mentioned us buying this little plot of land we didn't know that was going to happen. I had a, I had a theory. I was kind of actually obsessed about real estate at the time.
I had a theory that something was going to happen because I remember what happened during the last recession. And. So to your question, it's a little different here. It there's a lot of people that come here in the summer in glacier park has gotten so overrun that they now actually have a ticketed entry system.
So it was sort of a balance of knowing that we already have a lot of tourism and this isn't a town that needs that tourism boost to survive. So we wanted to make sure that this event was going to be a net positive for the community and that our community was going to feel supported. And that, again, that it's a positive.
And so that's one of the reasons why we wanted it to focus around our scholarship.
[00:36:56] Craig Dalton: And do you want to describe what that scholarship looks like?
[00:36:59] Jess and Sam: Yeah. So, as I had mentioned before, growing up here fairly low income I did not have a college fund growing up and I had a guidance counselor in high school. My sophomore year that came to our classroom talking about college. And when I found out that it costs money to go to college, I had a little meltdown.
My dad actually took me to her office and we spent three years together working on scholarship applications and I won. So many local scholarships along with Pell grant and federal aid, but I didn't have any
student loans for undergrad and she just had this profound impact on my life. Mostly just because she believed in me and she didn't hold my hand by any means, like she made me do the work, but I've always had this dream of creating a scholarship and.
Giving that back to the community and finding young women who deserve to be uplifted and supported financially. So we figured this rate. Was a good way to accomplish that goal. We both have our careers. We felt like it'd be a perfect way to invest back into the young people and the community. And I full heartedly believe that one of the best ways to get young people into cycling is to equip them with the ability to go out and.
Either learn a trade or get an education and become, you know, get themselves into a place where financially they can afford a bike and they can enjoy that and incorporate into their life. And they're empowered to do that. So it kind of like. What does the bike race have to deal with the scholarship, but it, as Sam put it, he wrote in the tech guy, like simply by attending this race, you are bettering the lives of young women in our area who are, you know, have financial need, but also have academic merit.
So.
[00:39:08] Craig Dalton: Yeah, what's interesting as well is I think just the sh. Participation levels in the community, people who aren't cyclists are going to notice that it's happening and they're going to see and hear that, oh, a scholarship comes out of that. So maybe it even helps some of these younger women become aware that scholarships are available and that a path towards a higher education as possible with these, you know, following the same path that you did.
[00:39:31] Jess and Sam: That's so interesting that you just brought that up because I learned fairly recently that one of our recipients from last year, her friend read about the scholarship and. Her friend did not have financial need, but she, she drugged this young woman down to the counselor's office and said, you have to apply for this.
And she didn't think that she even deserved or knew that she can have that opportunity. And then she ended up being our top recipient. So we were really good point. And that it's like something that I, I want these young women to know that like, you. You deserve a chance and like at least apply for it this year.
We have five recipients. So, and I'm about to go to the scholarship nights at the schools and the next couple of weeks, and actually give the awards out. But we also have seven land permits. So it's pretty, it's an arduous task with the land permits. And I know that. you know, the people who are at the head of these entities, it does mean something to them that, you know, it's not just a bike race.
It's for-profit
[00:40:44] Craig Dalton: let's talk about the courses. It sounds like you're going through a lot of different types of properties. So what's the gravel of riding like in Whitefish.
[00:40:51] Jess and Sam: Awesome. I would say it varies from. You know, depending on where you are in the valley, where we live, it can vary from champagne, gravel to straight up single track the way that we like to ride, but the courses themselves traverse through a, I would say pretty wide variety of surfaces. So. Both routes.
We'll take a route that heads east out of town. And you will go up through some logging roads that are owned by a local lumber and
logging company that who are wonderful. They're wonderfully supportive of the event. And that will then transition you into
forest lands, which is where most of I would argue what 90% of our race takes place on 80 to 90% of our race.
And once again, the forest service are wonderfully supportive of the event as well. And we appreciate everything that they've done to help us. They were actually the ones who were. One of the most ardent supporters in the beginning when we were trying to design routes that were cool and they were the ones encouraging us saying, this is exactly what we love public lands to be used for.
Is this kind of recreation that is based in exploration and, you know, cyclo eco-friendly tourism. So then we'll try the routes then traverse through forest lands that. Pretty much wind your way through a bunch of the mountain roads up north of town. So Northeast of town, they will then bring the riders back to a dividing point where there will be an aid station where the short route will then take some more of those forest service road.
Through some single track trails onto mountain property. So we have a local ski resort, big mountain ski resort that has also helped us immensely in providing sections of their property for our route. And that will basically direct riders up to a section of the mountain road where they can then explore some of the single track there and then head back down.
Into town, the long route diverts back to where close to where we started. And then they start heading up north along what is called lake shore drive, which is a beautiful picture of. Road exactly, as it says, which borders the east side of a Whitefish lake, and you make your way north along this road, and it will pretty much on align, transition to gravel, depending on the time of year, it can be either champagne, gravel.
It can be kind of rutted if it's rained or it can be straight up washboard. So you get, you don't know what you're going to get. Typically. It's fairly dry. And it seemed a lot of traffic because that is nearing the end of huckleberry picking season. So a lot of locals will go out that road to some of the secret huckleberries spots that I don't even know where they are.
Cause they're so secret. But so it can typically be a little washboard, but that we'll head north all the way to a road called Warner peak. There is some. Road name and technically most of the roads around here are called forest road or forest service road, big old number. And I should know this because I designed the route, but I get confused and all the digits, but it's commonly in locally known as water peak.
So you bank, you take a right and you start climbing it's about a six mile climb from the turnoff of what is upper Whitefish lake. To the top of Warner peak, and that basically deposits you onto this Ridge line that overlooks the entirety of the valley. it.
truly is on a clear day, a stunning picture SVU and that surface transitions from the kind of predictable, typical valley country champagne S gravel road to pretty Rocky technical climbing.
And the gradients aren't, hellaciously steep in that section, but they are steep enough where you're going to be going slow and you're going to be needing to have some technical savvy to be able to navigate around some of the bigger rocks and sections. And there are also some drainage pipes that are late.
The road to help ease snow melt washing away some of the roads. So if you can practice a little like bunny hopping or lifting your front wheel and back wheel whilst climbing it's summarized. It's one of the hardest climbs. I think you'll find in a gravel race, the hardest climb you'll find in a gravel race comes shortly thereafter.
You descend down the Ridge line that takes you to the backside of the be of big mountain ski resort. Now the course then takes riders to the top of big mountain, the absolute peak where the summit house is. And this is where the ski resort basically has all their chairs going to the very top to get to that.
You go up what we have called the. The mountain goats scramble this big horn sheep, big horn sheep scramble. And basically we discovered this ride on, or this way up on a ride that we did early in 2020 when we were kind of just moseying our way to the backside. And we found ourselves kind of running along the Ridge line of all of the ski slopes.
And we're kind of looking up and seeing all the ski runs and we finally made our way to a service. And we said, Ooh, let's turn up. That, how high can we go? And apparently you can go the highest you physically can, but to do so you have to go up. What is essentially a wall of roughly 35% average gradient for 300 meters, the longest 300 meters of your life.
[00:46:40] Craig Dalton: It is an actually rideable.
[00:46:42] Jess and Sam: So there are two people that we know who have written it on a bike. One of which is me. The other is one Caleb Swartz, who is a Marian university alum who wrote for the bear dev team. And recently completed. Really Stellar's a cyclocross campaign is a private two rider who lives in Missoula. He trains a lot with Howard rots and some of the local Missoula hitters.
He rode his XC bike at the race and he was the only person in the race to ride up the entire scramble without take unclipping, walking his bike.
[00:47:18] Craig Dalton: All right. There's a big challenge for you people out there.
[00:47:20] Jess and Sam: Yeah. So you get to the summit house, there's a feed station. Then you descend down another climb. It's called Taylor Creek, which takes you back to upper Whitefish lake road. And you go back the way you came out
back into town.
[00:47:35] Craig Dalton: right on. So tell me the distances of the short course in the long course.
[00:47:39] Jess and Sam: So the short course.
is 47 miles with about. 4,500 feet of climbing in the long course is 90 miles with that 8,200 feet of climbing. We might have to make a couple tweaks. We know we have to make a couple tweaks. So the short course this year, because of some logging that's happened, but it will be.
Similar within that range. So it's a good, it's a, it's a good distance. Like the pro the pro dudes last year, Ted and Howard, and a local guy named Andrew, Andrew, Frank, they, we could not believe this. They finished. And just under five hours, we, we were expecting like a five 15, but I would say on average the short course would take you.
Around three and a half to four and a half hours in the long course would be close to. I don't know, six, six to seven hours if you're relatively cruising, but it can be a huge range because it's just such a, a hard course. So the benefit of the
the three finishers we've mentioned in there super fast time, the road Taylor Creek, the descent that you take back down into town had just been
basically flattened by logging equipment.
So it wasn't really the gravel that Jess and I had previewed throughout the summer, but it actually was so packed down because of all, it was basically concrete is what it was. And I remember I previewed it actually with Ted on Thursday, before. And we were descending it. And we were looking at each other and saying like, people are going to rip this.
Cause I mean, you didn't even have to worry about dodging any kind of rocks or ruts or anything. It literally was just smooth pavement made out of mud that had been flat. And it rained also, which well, we, we say our race is predicated on the views because. I don't think that as Sam went through this course, like you cannot describe these views.
They are jaw dropping. When we ride here, we're riding in all the time and it never looks the same. It's just so amazing. But then it poured rain, which cleared out all of the wildfires. So that was the benefit and it was very foggy in the morning of the race and people still that it was like a, just like I said, a different kind of view, but that we, I was like calling the medical volunteers.
Like we need to put someone, we need like two people going on that descent, like to medical stations, because I was so afraid that someone was going to be doing like 60 miles an hour down this gravel descent and just fly off into space, but it turned out. We had, I think one of the most advanced medical plans, the forest service actually asked us if they could keep the template of it to use as an example.
And we treated a bee sting and that was it. So the other side, Yeah.
When you become an event director, you're pretty much just stressed out the whole time about someone getting hurt or something going wrong.
[00:50:49] Craig Dalton: a hundred percent. So it sounds like with a fairly rowdy course, you need some pretty capable tires. Is there a size that you recommend?
[00:50:57] Jess and Sam: I mean, I am of the camp of you should run as, as big as you can. It's a, it's a big debate for us on our course, because we know again, given the conditions of really the back sections of the course and the climb, like. I think the debate is now whether a hard tail mountain bike is the fastest bike for our course, but there, there are a lot of sections where having a pretty rigid snappy gravel.
Where you can just easily put out power very consistently would help, but tire wise, as wide as you can run. I mean, I think, and less than the 36, you will not be caught. You will not have a fun 30, 36 is the minimum that you can do to, I would say like complete the ride. You will not be comfortable. You won't necessarily be happy, but you'll be able to get through.
I ride the rose and cert courses around here on my crux, my specialized crux, which is a 2019 model that clears the 38. And I'm pretty comfortable on that bike. I don't ever feel really that I'm under biked. And I went, it's fairly dry and I'm not worried about getting mud in my stays. I will, I can clear a 42 on that bike.
And I would say if I could run that consistently without worry of, you know, starting to take pain off, I'd run a 42 easily. I would say that's probably most traveled bikes. We'll clear 42 minimum. But that's, that's the.
[00:52:34] Craig Dalton: Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I mean, I think that's one of the interesting thing about taking a survey of all the gravel events out there. It's interesting seeing what people recommend, and I'm always frankly, more attracted to the races that are saying, bring your big tires. You're not going to regret it because it means they're getting creative with course design and really pushing the limits and capabilities of both the athletes and the bikes.
So to onto some just not simple. What are the event dates and where can people find out more information about the event and are there still slots available this year?
[00:53:07] Jess and Sam: So our date is Sunday, August 21st, and we have a welcome happy hour and scholarship fundraising evening on Friday, August 19th, that packet pickup and some liberal community rides are Saturday, August 20. Our website is
the last best ride empty as in montana.com. We have been sold out for some time.
We do have a wait list. It's pretty big. So if you got on the wait list now, unfortunately, You're probably planning for 2023, which is actually good because I don't even know if you could find a hotel room or an Airbnb at this point and Whitefish. It's why we send out early communication. Like before Christmas, the year before letting people know, like here's our links to our favorite camping and hotels, and like, here's how to make your life easier to plan to come to this little area.
I just want to say as an aside, because we do talk up this course as being. Hard. It was also very important to us, but it is something that you could do if you're trying your first event. And our short course is manageable for anyone trying your first event. And we even have different start waves for the event for people who have different goals.
If you want to hang out and meet friends, if you wanna, you know, ride a little more steady or if you really want to. You know, go full gas. Just the introduce that like, you don't have to start in the front and like elbows. So I really want to emphasize that our long course, definitely fitness would be the biggest challenge if you're newer to gravel.
But it is inclusive.
[00:54:53] Craig Dalton: And then finally, what's the finish line experience? Like what have you designed there?
[00:54:59] Jess and Sam: Well, that was really, that was really important to us. And again, we wanted to focus on like our local vendors. And so we have above average race food. We have a local chef named Tim. Good. He has a catering truck. He owns a restaurant here and he has a catering truck called the cuisine machine. So last year you would find Mac and cheese.
You'd find corn bread, chicken Marsala pork chops with huckleberry barbecue sauce, watermelon salad. And then we had our local ice cream company out and we had huckleberry ice cream, which is specialty to Montana. We had one, they made one forest called gravel road. And then we had beer vendor, wine vendor, and a local kombucha vendor, and all participants receive two drink coupons so they could use it however they wanted.
Yeah. What else? Oh, and we offer bear spray. We never even touched, touched. The wildlife area, but yeah, we also sell bear spray and highly, highly recommend that you ride with it and know how to use it.
[00:56:05] Craig Dalton: Well, we'll let people do their own research. As they're thinking about 2023 for this, I love getting these types of events out on people's radar. We realize that they're not unlimited capacity, so you've gotta be able to plan ahead. And I, for one really loved traveling to new areas and experiencing gravel around the country.
It just reminds you of what a special place the United States can be and how much amazing outdoor activities is right there on our own country.
[00:56:30] Jess and Sam: We would love to have you up here. I mean, if You can come this year, we we'll we know the person
[00:56:36] Craig Dalton: one special slot. Nice.
[00:56:38] Jess and Sam: special slot for you, but if 2023 works better, we'd love to have you up here. And yeah.
[00:56:44] Craig Dalton: Thank you for that. And I appreciate both of your time. It's great to get to know you. And, and again, I hope everybody checks out last, last, best ride. I'll put link in the show notes and we'll make sure everybody knows how to find you guys.
[00:56:56] Jess and Sam: Thank you so much. Hope to see everyone.
[00:56:59] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks to Sam. And just for joining us. I love the sounds of what they've created out there in Montana, and certainly hope to visit it someday and myself.
I'll be sure to put appropriate links in the show notes. If you need any more information about last best ride. Huge. Thanks to our sponsor. The feed. Remember you can get 50% off the feed formula. Just visit the feed.com/the gravel ride. If you're interested in connecting with me, I encourage you to join the ridership.
Just visit www.theridership.com. It's a free global cycling community based in the slack channel. You can visit us and communicate with other gravel cyclists all around the world. If we're able to support the podcast, please visit buy me a coffee.com/ Solo ride. Additionally ratings and reviews are hugely helpful in my discoverability and my goal of connecting with as many gravel cyclists as possible. Until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
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This week we sit down with Greg Williams from the Lost and Found Gravel Festival and Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship to hear about this years festival and the work SBTS does in the Lost Sierra.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Lost and Found[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
Yeah. This week on the podcast, we have Greg Williams from the lost and found gravel festival and Sierra Buttes trail stewardship organization. Talking about the lost and found gravel event coming up this June in California. And all the great work that his nonprofit does to make the trails in the Los Sierra, an amazing place to visit. Before we jump in we need to thank this Week's sponsor the feed.
The feed is the largest online marketplace for sports nutrition. They've got all your favorite sports, nutrition brands in one place. If you've developed an affinity like I have for certain brands. You can hop on over to the feed and mix and match. So you get everything you need in one delivery.
If you're a frequent listener, you've probably heard me talk about the feed formula. The feed formula is a customizable nutritional supplement package. Available only from the feed.
Feed formulas were developed in conjunction with Dr. Kevin Sprouse. Of the EDF pro cycling team. And uses the same techniques he uses with top athletes. Ensuring they have all their nutritional needs covered. You can customize each packet from a base formula. And add on specific formulas for recovery, for aging, a bunch of different things.
If you're not already taking a supplement in your daily routine to support your gravel cycling career. I encourage you to take a look at these. They provide a convenient way in individually wrapped pouches to remember to take all the supplements you need to keep your body operating in tip top shape.
Podcast listeners can get 50% off their first order of feed formula by visiting the feed.com/the gravel ride. Remember that's 50% off your first order of the feed formula, simply visit. The feed. Dot com slash the gravel ride. Would that business behind us let's jump right into this week's episode with greg williams Hey, Greg, welcome to the show.
[00:02:26] Greg Williams: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited.
[00:02:28] Craig Dalton: I am T a man. , we're going to talk about the lost and found gravel grinder a little bit later in the broadcast. And it's a, it's an event that I've wanted to talk about for a couple of years now, actually probably four years, maybe because everybody who ever came back from it was like, this is an amazing event.
Let's table that for a minute, because I really want to just start with you and just get a little bit about your background and how you ended up in the region. And then let's talk about the nonprofit, because I think everything you do up there is so intertwined with the gravel event and why it's so special that I think it's important to start.
[00:03:02] Greg Williams: Yeah. A little bit of my background. My heritage is Milwaukee Indian up in the Northern Sierra and Nevada city region. And my, my tribe, was displaced almost overnight and my grand great grandfather went he ended up in Downieville actually during the gold rush and.
Met this family called the Shaughnessy's, who had, they were opening a supply shop. So shovels and food in town. And my grandfather started building trails and Downieville and running pack meals to the minds. And growing up, it was always, the story that my dad would tell me about Downieville and and it didn't really matter until I got into mountain biking as a teenager and started riding Downieville and I was like, okay, this is it, man.
This is my spot. This is, this is what I want to do. And as a teenager, I started guiding a mountain bikes, up in the region and then started running shuttles as well. I opened a bike shop in town 1991, and then started an event that was called the coyote classic in 1995. And now that's the Downieville classic.
Downieville has been, a part of my heritage, part of my. My personal economy, part of my survival story. And the town was really starting to transition. I would say, it was a mining town primarily when I got there a lot of dredging on the rivers. And then when that became illegal in California, a lot of the miners in the family started to leave.
And about that same time, a lot of the loggers were starting to leave as well. Recreation working with the chamber of commerce and the county kind of became this thing of Hey, will this work here in Downieville? And I think it has, Downieville is a, an international destination.
The motels and restaurants, all depend on mountain bike, recreation and tourism. So I think it's a great model of like how recreation can keep a town alive that was, could potentially, have burned out the economy was not doing well.
[00:04:59] Craig Dalton: It's so interesting. We often hear about how gravel cycling events have played that same role in rural communities. So it's interesting to hear you reference it back as to how mountain biking was playing that role back in the day for Downieville. Can you just for the listener who may be elsewhere outside of the state of California, can you position their minds as to where Downieville is located?
[00:05:23] Greg Williams: Yeah. So Downieville this region, we call it the Los Sierra, and it's basically north of Truckee and north Northwest of Reno. We're about two hours. Like in a car from Sacramento or like 45 minutes from Truckee an hour from Reno like an hour and a half to Chico. So this is zone up here.
We call it the Los Sierra. And it was really, there was a mail route back in the gold mining days. And the mailman would ski from Downieville up towards Quincy. And I think got lost a few times. And so it's a name we've stuck with. And part of it's loss of opportunities, loss of revenue.
Loss of pride. But we're bringing it back through trying to keep it up, keep it a positive, and that's part of lost and found was, come and find yourself up here.
[00:06:07] Craig Dalton: Yeah, amazing. So for the listener, who's obviously like my listener has a gravel orientation. The mountain biking in and around Downieville is absolutely exceptional. And as you mentioned, it's it's got a world renowned ship at this point. People from around the world have heard of Downieville and aspire to ride their bikes there.
What makes the trail system so special?
[00:06:28] Greg Williams: I think the fact that it Was built during the gold rush. There's a lot and there's a lot of trails, but these trails are like our super rowdy and steep, that's, the character of Downieville is like going fast through the rocks on a cliff. Being scared and then going for a swim and having a cold beer afterwards, so like for us as a trail stewardship, it's really important that we maintain the character of those trails.
They were built for mules to go from point a to point B. There was no sustainable running grade. There was no thought of people like enjoying themselves on these trials, or certainly wasn't, they weren't thinking mountain bikes would be on them, but They have the character that people love.
And so when we do all of our trail work, we're working really closely with the hydrologist to make sure that these trails are sustainable. They're not putting sediment into the creeks. Our region delivers a lot of clean drinking water to California, 65% between the Yuba and feather. Water's a big thing for us up here. And so as a rough and rowdy trails, so we're striking the balance in Downieville. You can't build those kinds of trails today. The forest service would just say out of spec, but the trails we build, today are just different. They're still as fun and enjoyable.
They just, they're just more sustainable.
[00:07:44] Craig Dalton: Was it that the fact that. Technically you already existed as mutual paths that you were able to get them effectively grandfathered in the format that they already existed in.
[00:07:54] Greg Williams: For sure. And these trails, like in.
the seventies, the forest service started to take them into their system. And at the time they were there, their solutions, these trails are open the motorcycles too. So you could ride motorcycles. You could ride e-bikes mountain bikes, hike, equestrian. So a trail for everyone.
Those are the best. Those are the trails we like up here. Cause we're not, densely populated. We don't have high use necessarily. A lot of these trails are directional and in a sense that, just how people use them. So it all works really well together. Yeah just
historic and some prehistoric from the native folks that were here.
[00:08:34] Craig Dalton: You mentioned the Sierra Buttes trail stewardship organization. Can you just talk about the origins of that and what the journey has been like over the time it's existed?
[00:08:45] Greg Williams: Yeah. Basically like we, we needed tools to put in people's hands. We were doing trail work days. And those started like with, a group of 10 and everybody had fun. And then the next time we'd have one, there'd be 20 people. And so we were getting these like work parties to where, there was like a hundred people showing up and this was before we had our nonprofit.
And so we were. We are struggling to put tools in people's hands. We're good at putting a beer in their hands, on a burger at a barbecue, but we were like, man, we need tools. And we formed our nonprofit status in 2003. And the first grants we wrote were really just to buy tools. And so we started tooling up and then We started hiring folks.
Henry O'Donnell who grew up in Downieville. He's our trail boss now. He's been working with us for 16 years and is built, probably a hundred miles of trail with his crews alone. As much as it was about taking care of the trails, it became about taking care of each other and the people and the communities.
We like to say we're in the business of revitalizing mountain communities and we use trails as the tool to do it. So we're surrounded by national forest up here. And there's, the jobs traditionally have come from logging and mining. So we see recreation as being sustainable and a chance like for us to be more resilient and retain working families and put kids to work and really educate people on the importance of this place so that
they can come up.
And join us as land stewards or what the next time there's a bill to vote on for land or water issues, maybe they'll vote. Yes. Because they care about a place.
[00:10:18] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. It's quite impressive. The scale of the organization at this point, imagining you starting it, it's quite straightforward to start a nonprofit, but it's quite difficult to generate a significant amount of donations or grants or funding. What did that path look like to obtain this type of scale, where you're able to meaningfully hire people in the community and do a huge amount of work in the last year?
[00:10:44] Greg Williams: Yeah.
I think one of the early keys and we didn't realize it at the time was just not being. Like, we could have easily said, Hey, we're Downieville mountain bike organization. Cause we were all mountain bikers. We rode dirt bikes, we all hiked. But because we really landed on trail stewardship and we're more inclusive.
I think that was a real gift that we gave ourselves early on. Cause in this whole region we work we work in wilderness areas. We maintain huge chunks of the Pacific crest trail associate. Pacific crest trail. We put outdoor classroom and trail on every school campus and Plumas and Sierra county for the kids to get a trail experience and outdoor classroom.
And then we build dirt bike trails, we build mountain bike trails. So if there's a trail in our region, like we want to be able to help. We want to be able to maintain it, build it and engage. Any type of recreate or we can become to come join in. So I think that's been a real key to our success.
And then also I think, for me, like just growing up a young entrepreneur, like always having to make my own money not, having a big like support system. Get to be like a survivor, and scrappy and your heads up. And, you're just like, okay, what's the next thing.
And we've just honestly had that approach with grants and projects, knowing what key projects to take and not take on too much. And and then in times, like with the pandemic and the big fires we've had up here is to really be able. Quickly react and a thoughtful way, like not just panic and not start down a road or a trail, that's like going to be the wrong one, and if it feels wrong in the beginning, we're like, Hey, what are we doing here? Do we have to do this like quick analysis? Like check-ins And so we've just, I think that's just like part of the nature of being up here. If you're raising your family up here and you've been here For generations, you just know like how it is, and it's, it takes everything sometimes.
[00:12:38] Craig Dalton: For the listener who wants to support the organization? Do you accept direct donations or is it all grant based? How do you fund it?
[00:12:45] Greg Williams: So we fund it. It's interesting. Cause like in 2019, I would say. Okay. Here's how we fund ourselves. We had lost and found we had the Downieville classic. We had grind Duro. We had a UBA expeditions, which is our guide outfitter business and shuttles like shuttling, almost 9,000 people up the hill.
That was like 30% actually Yuba was like 28% of our gross revenue and events were up around like 35%. And and then the pandemic hit and took away all of our events took away our shuttles for a whole year limited our operations as a guide service, and then also took away barbecues and volunteer big days.
So we got hit really hard. And during that time, We were like, man, what are we going to do? How do we bring up like donations, like to a higher level without events. And so in 21 when that year closed out, our donations were 38% of our gross. When they were at 3% in 2019, we still had no event.
Income. Grants are running a right around 40% of our gross. Basically, we have we have public funding, like through grants and programs. We have private funding, we have foundations and then we have Yuba and we're bringing lost and found back on. So really trying to strengthen all the different, legs of the organization.
So that. We're more, we can react more. We can be survivors. Like we want this to be A hundred year organization. And like those two years are just really just a little blip, but but at the same time, like when you're in the middle of it, it's like a big mountain in front of you, and so I think just, we've learned so much, we've learned like what we're made of, we know we know how to better support each other as staff and families. So there's really we're pretty confident in that we just need, honestly, we need an investment up here. We have some big projects.
We need people sign up for lost and found whether they're going to come and race, or they're going to come and ride and enjoy the aid stations, or they just want to come help volunteer, just like just help us. And that.
[00:14:53] Craig Dalton: percent. Yeah. I hope, I hope for any non-profit that's suffered with the elimination of in-person events over the last couple of years, that as you mentioned, just like stepping up their constituents, willingness to donate directly. And hopefully that can become habitualized. So you keep that 30 odd percent of direct donations.
Plus you've got event revenue and all the other in-person things you were talking about and you come out of this even stronger than when you began.
[00:15:23] Greg Williams: Yeah. That's certainly the goal and like this year we've we're looking at like peer-to-peer crowdfunding. It is one of the components to folks that are lining up or volunteering. But I think it's new, for people they're like, what do I do? How do I do it? Like my son has type one diabetes.
And so I do a ride that benefits. It's totally built in, right? Like you're like, oh Yeah.
of course this is what you do. This is how you do it. And so we want to get there with each one of our events and have the funding, help us with our operational costs, help us match up grants, no grant is free.
It always costs whether it's time or money or volunteers, there's always a cost. So that's like we want, and we want people to be aware, like not just come do the race and be like, Yeah.
that was awesome. But really. Have some ownership and some pride and help us like move this, these communities forward a little bit,
[00:16:15] Craig Dalton: yeah. Yeah. I think anybody, you put some rubber on the road or on the trail in the Los Sierra comes away knowing it's a really special area. I'm sure as we get more people up there, they're gonna have a similar love for it and loyalty to it. One of the things that I saw mentioned and saw a couple of friends in the gravel community talking about where was the connected community project.
Can you talk about what that's all about?
[00:16:40] Greg Williams: Yeah connected communities is really, it's a project that the trails master plan got funded through Sierra Nevada Conservancy, which is a state agency. And and I got invited to, to talk at this mountain venture summit. And I was like, okay, I can just talk about all this stuff like we're doing or the normal stuff, but let's do something cool.
And our board president Greg Carter, and I got together and we just had this huge regional map and we just started like laying out sticky notes about each of the towns. And how man, could we connect these with trails? And at the same time, like they're already connected with dirt roads, but how do we promote this?
How do we make it to where people can look at a map that's readable? Cause there is 10,000 miles of dirt roads in those regions. So trying to plan a trip is holy crap. I don't even know where to start. There's so many roads. So a big effort is we're going to map out all the high quality gravel, dirt road.
At linking the towns so people can start, doing bike packing. Part of our Yuba expeditions guide service will be what we're calling a mountain mule, which is basically hauling your gear from point to point which would be a combination of like overnight camping and then getting you into a town and do some accommodations and restaurants.
And then we're going to build 620 miles of single track to connect these towns. part of that's already in the works. Some of it exists already. Some of it's been planned out for a long time. And we're in construction, like connecting Quincy to Taylorsville the next town over. So we have this big project and.
It's rolling. It's not, we're not just waiting for the plan to be done. We're actually implementing parts of it. Some of it's an environmental review, so heritage botany, wildlife hydrology surveys are being done. We have two crews that are out ground-truthing all the mapping to ensure that those trails are in the optimum location.
But when it's done 15 mountain towns, including Reno and Truckee will be connected all throughout the Los Sierra region was single track. All the dirt roads will be mapped out in such a way that you can plan your adventures. And also know what kind of services each of the town has. And then another component of this is to look at the potential overnight hot locations.
But really we want to drive people riding with the main street of the downtown, with their credit card. To patronize these businesses because outside of Reno and Truckee, all these communities are severely disadvantaged economically. So everybody's struggling. And some of these businesses are just hanging on.
So this is an opportunity to drive an economy into the region. That's going to last for generations.
[00:19:14] Craig Dalton: Yeah, amazing. I love it. I love it so much adventuring to be had in the Los Sierra. No question about.
[00:19:22] Greg Williams: Absolutely. We have plenty of room for everybody.
[00:19:23] Craig Dalton: Let's move on and let's talk about the lost and found gravel festival. It's coming up here in June, and there's still some slots available. So I want to make sure that people walk away knowing what's the festival all about what's the vibe let's get into it. And I'll ask you some questions to just to figure it all out.
[00:19:39] Greg Williams: Yeah. This is an interesting one. And just in terms of how we got into this, and we'd been doing Downieville for a long time and Chris McGovern who's a frame builder. And who also grew up in Nevada city, went to the same high school as I did. I ran into him at Interbike in 2013, and he's dude, you need to do a gravel event.
And I'm like, What is that? And And I, and it was just like, man, this is what we used to do when we were kids like ride all these dirt roads, it's oh, that's a thing now. And Chris put this bug in my ear, we started talking more, doing some mapping, invited him and Cameron falconer.
Up and we just started like testing routes, like those guys are both super fit. I'm like, I'll drive the support vehicle and meet you guys, here's the map. And so we just started really laying out this course, it started just north of Portola and like Davis and and we got the permits pretty quickly working with the Plumas national forest.
And the first year we had around 290 racers and
[00:20:37] Craig Dalton: What year was that? Greg?
[00:20:38] Greg Williams: I was in 2014.
[00:20:40] Craig Dalton: Okay.
[00:20:41] Greg Williams: Yeah. And we had great folks like Paul components and WTB who were like, we're doing an aid station. That's going to be a party of its own, and so we had these perfect elements to pull this gravel event off.
And then, the second year we doubled the entries the next year, we doubled that again. And like in 2019 we had around 1700 people signed up, we were going to cap it at 2000. And I think just the recipe of like how we do these events, we make them super fun. The courses are great. The aid stations are suburb, just an overall great experience camping live music, all the stuff that we like.
And then at the same time, how do we introduce people to this whole new area, and bring them into zones that they wouldn't otherwise get out. So really showcases this region as we're calling it the gravel capital of the west. And
that's because it has 10,000 miles of dirt roads.
Like you can't find that anywhere in the U S and
and there's, great rivers, there's great lakes. There's a fire lookouts. You can visit some of them you can rent for overnight stays. So this is it. This is the gravel capital of the west.
[00:21:50] Craig Dalton: I love it. Put a stake in the ground there. What community is Los and fountain based out of.
[00:21:55] Greg Williams: It's it starts in the city of Portola, which is right on the headwaters of the middle fork of.
the feather river next to the Sierra valley, which is the largest Alpine valley in north America sits around 5,000 feet of elevation with a great big mountain right behind it called Beckworth peak.
And right from there, you can hit all these roads, just right off the main paved road. It's perfect.
[00:22:18] Craig Dalton: Are you offering multiple course distances?
[00:22:21] Greg Williams: Yeah, we have a 35 mile course that has two flagship aid stations on it. And then we have a 60 mile course. That has four aid stations on it. And then we have the hundred that has six aid stations on it. They overlap for the start. Everybody does the first 10 and a half miles, which is a climb up to 7,000 feet.
Those are essential in any event is to have a big climb that, that separates people,
[00:22:46] Craig Dalton: Yeah, for
[00:22:47] Greg Williams: And so those Are elements we learned throughout this. Cause we've had different courses over the years. Some of them were great. Some were like, oh man, don't do that again.
[00:22:55] Craig Dalton: Are they what's the starting elevation up there in Portola.
[00:22:58] Greg Williams: Yeah. It's I want to say the town is like 5,100.
[00:23:02] Craig Dalton: Okay. So starting at 5,100, going up to 7,000 with that first climb, I agree. I feel like back when the events were smaller, it was okay to start off on some single track or something like that. But in this day and age, when you've got a thousand people on a course, definitely great to break it up and to have people find their own, their own tribe in the event.
[00:23:21] Greg Williams: Yeah, and we have, we have a great relationship with city of Portola. Going into this year, we were hesitant of man, we don't want to, the last thing we want to do is have to cancel another event.
And COVID was still a thing. So we got a late start on this thing, like we're really looking at this as like a rebuild year.
We realized like, Hey, we're late to the table here. We also conflict with
the Kansas ride. So there's a couple of things like working against us, but at the same time This is going to be a hell of a party. Like we're throwing everything we have at this thing to make sure everybody has a great time and comes back, brings friends the next year.
And it, like I said, it was important to city of Portola. They approached us and they were like, Hey stewardship, like we need this event. We just went through two years. Our businesses are hurting. The city helps provide a lot of the camping and infrastructure in the town. So they were a real true partner.
And then the Plumas national forest has road crews out there right now, like dialing in all these roads. And what we're hoping is developed, like what we're calling a signature route to where every year the road crew has priorities to take care of on the lost and found routes. So it's every year it's just dial Primo.
[00:24:30] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's one of those events, I didn't realize actually it had been around as long as it has, but that makes sense because I feel like at least in the bay area and Marin county, like you talk about gravel riding and. Lost and found, always comes up and it always comes up with two thumbs up saying oh, you gotta do it.
It's great. Riding just a great overall community vibe in a sport that is maybe changing a bit to say the least in terms of the amount of resources and the amount of professional athletes coming into it. I think events that just maintain that community vibe are always going to be the ones that are in people's hearts and that they want to do.
[00:25:10] Greg Williams: Yeah. And we, we realized like we get top athletes that come here to put it to each other, but the majority of people are here to just go on a bike ride with their buddies, have the aid stations be able to camp out, have the music like that festival atmosphere.
That's where we're really trying to position ourselves as Hey, if you want it. There, there is alternatives if you're just purely eraser, but if you want to come and ride like one of the best courses in the world and have some top brands like cater to you throughout the course that their aid stations, like this is where you want to come.
And if you want to help support a community recover after, the wildfires and the pandemic and help an organization. With the, with a grand project, a legacy project, like this is the spot like everybody's welcome. And whether you're writing a check or picking up a shovel your help is welcome.
[00:26:01] Craig Dalton: Amazing. You talked about a little bit more about from a mountain bike perspective, the type of terrain that's up there for the gravel course, for those who are coming from outside the area. What type of equipment is important to have underneath you to be successful at lost and found
[00:26:17] Greg Williams: Yeah, big tires. I think that's the number one thing is the first year we had people like on road bikes because people didn't really know it. Like gravel racing was anyway. They're like, oh, it's this thing. But these you're in the Sierra Nevada up here and it's, there's spots where man, you're like, it's rough.
I think like one year, like Carl Decker rode a hard tail man. Fully rigid. So it's just kinda like a mix. And I think, the course that we have this year, I would say you're totally dialed on a gravel bike, but you're going to want like a 40 C tire maybe with a little thicker casing.
Just so you're not flattened.
[00:26:53] Craig Dalton: Yep. Are you staying primarily on fire roads through the mountains? There are you getting off into this single track?
[00:26:59] Greg Williams: We're at, this is a no single track right ride, but some of the roads have single track?
lines, right? Like you want to be, you want your head up, you want to be paying attention. There's ruts there's rocks. There's a smoother line, especially on a gravel bike. You don't want to give yourself a whiplash or, too much excitement.
But I would say you're paying attention the whole time. You're not, zoning out because the road is just smooth and you gotta pay attention, plus it's so beautiful out here. Like the wild flowers are gonna be coming out. The rivers are flowing the mountain stuff, snow on them.
People will be looking around, but they really need to pay attention.
[00:27:35] Craig Dalton: once you get a top that first climb, are you doing a commiserate elevation drop? Is it a big descent?
[00:27:41] Greg Williams: It's a sweet so the roads were using too are like some of the better system roads, like we've taken people in some pretty primitive back country roads, and there is a mix of this, but this particular road is one of the nicer maintain. Like around a set, like a price of 5% running grade.
So you're able to just like big ring paddle through like really big sweeper turns super enjoyable. And then you have another climb that's around 700 feet, another like descent of a thousand. And then a lot of rolling train. Cause you're connecting all these Alpine valleys as you go. And then for the final you come down like the smoothest road in Plumas county.
And and then into this tube that goes under the highway. That's a we negotiate this deal with the landowner there. It's a handshake deal, Hey, races are going to be coming through here, your insured. He's great. I'll have my lawn chair and a cooler of beer here to watch, and that's part of what makes the specialty, right? It's just all the community coming together and people working together and allowing stuff like that riders to come through private property, like ordinarily the guy would not allow that,
[00:28:45] Craig Dalton: Yeah, you mentioned you've got ample camping situations up there for athletes and families coming up. Are there also other accommodation possibilities?
[00:28:54] Greg Williams: Yeah.
There's resorts up here. There's motels. there's a ton of camping, honestly, there's forest service camping around like Davis and some of the valleys that the ride's going to be going through. And then city of Portola they have a city park. That's all grass that has like baseball, baseball, diamonds, a swimming pool, the showers are open.
And then there's camping all along the middle fork of the feather river, right in downtown. So the idea is get people to stay in town and then they can just ride their bike to the coffee shop or, head over to the pizza place. So that's part of the reason we moved the race down from starting at lake Davis was like, let's get people downtown.
Plus, when the lakes full the amount of land we have to work with, decreases quite a bit. It worked great the first year with 200 riders, but now that we're up around 1200 to 2000, we need more. And this park really allows people to spread out. And then we have a little amphitheater for the music and and then there's nothing like just starting in the middle of a downtown, and then finishing at the same place coming through town.
[00:29:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I had one final question on finishing. So I've been out there on a great adventure on my gravel bike all day. I crossed the finish line. What's the vibe. What's the scene. When I crossed the finish line at last.
[00:30:05] Greg Williams: Yeah. So you're going to get greeted by our local bike team, the Los Sierra composite team. They're gonna, they'll take your bike. They'll wash it. They'll put the, lock it up and the tennis courts. So like a fully secured bike zone. And you're going to walk over and grab a cold Sierra Nevada beer. And then we hire this, like top-notch catering company and mountain magic to do like a top quality meal for ya.
Then you're gonna pull up a chair in the park, enjoy a beer, enjoy some live music, eat some food, tell some stories, and then if you have it in you, like the music goes and you can dance all night.
[00:30:41] Craig Dalton: I love it, Greg. I think that's an amazing point to end on, and I hope everybody's as stoked about this event as I am. And as stoked about the work that you're doing in the Los Sierra, it really is a special part of California. And I hope everybody clicks on the links in the show notes and goes and checks out the Los and found gravel grinder festival as well as the work you're doing at Sierra.
[00:31:04] Greg Williams: Yeah, come on up and play with us.
[00:31:06] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. I hope you enjoyed that episode with Greg Williams, be sure to check out the lost and found gravel festival. It's definitely going to be an amazing event this year. I've heard only good things about it. So I encourage you to check it out.
And grab one of those last available slots. Huge, thanks to our sponsor, the feed. Make sure to go check out the feed formulas to get 15% off. Just visit the feed.com/the gravel ride. If you're interested in connecting with me, I encourage you to join the ridership@wwwdottheridership.com.
And if you have an opportunity, please leave a rating or review or visit me@buymeacoffee.com slash the growl ride to support the podcast. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with professional gravel racer, podcaster and adventurer, Payson McElveen. We learn about his path to the sport, his drive for adventure and his plans for the Life Time Grand Prix and the rest of the races on his calendar. Episode sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (promo code: THEGRAVELRIDE)
Payson McElveen Web / Instagram
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Payson McElveen[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the podcast. We welcome pacing. McKelvin pacing. As you may know, is a gravel racer, a mountain bike racer. A podcaster, a red bull athlete. And in all around adventurer. I've wanted to have pacing on the podcast for quite some time. I'm an avid listener of his podcast, but moreover, I'm a fan. And that probably comes through in this episode.
I'm a fan of pace. And as he's every bit as approachable in real life, as he comes across in social media, He not only races at the front end of the gravel races on the calendar. But even more importantly, I feel like he's out there in the community and he's always after some great adventures. You can see him crisscrossing the country of Iceland. You can see him setting FK teas.
You can see them getting brutalized on the Colorado trail and one of his first bike packing expeditions, he's just a hell of a lot of fun and a hell of a great guy. So I look forward to listening to this episode. Of the gravel ride podcast. Before we jump in, we need to thank this week. Sponsor the hammerhead crew to computer.
The hammerhead crew to is actually the computer that pacing uses. So you may hear them talk about it, both on his podcast and in social media. His experiences are quite similar to mine. The Karoo two is a revolutionary GPS device that offers the rider. A whole bunch of customizability that really translates to giving you the information you need. When you need it in the format that you need it.
I've mentioned before. A few of the things that I really love about the career too, are one, the climber feature. I've become addicted to the climber feature. It's quite amazing. Every time you approach a climb. The crew too, is going to display in graphical format in color coded format. The gradient.
The length to the top and the amount of elevation you need to gain. I find that really useful in terms of pacing and it's fascinating. I've always been fascinated by grade.
So seeing that great in front of me on the computer, I've started to really understand where my sweet spot is. I know that I'm quite good in the six to say 12% range, but north of 12%, I start to suffer. So it's quite interesting looking at that.
The second thing I wanted to highlight is hammerheads bi-weekly software updates with new feature releases. That are unmatched by the competition. So unlike other head units, your crew to continues to evolve and improve. With each ride being better than the last you can seamlessly import routes from Strava commute and more.
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Would that business out of the way, let's dive right into my interview with pace and McKellen.
Payson. Welcome to the show.
[00:04:11] Payson McElveen: Thank you happy to be here.
[00:04:13] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's good to finally get you on. I feel like I've been wanting to get you on since back in 2019 and the mid south gravel race.
[00:04:21] Payson McElveen: Yeah. Yeah, that was that wasn't my first foray into gravel, but one of the first
[00:04:28] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And I think it was one of those moments that it was, you know, there was very much a different style between you and Pete when racing in those adverse conditions, all the mud and whatnot, and how you
[00:04:38] Payson McElveen: Oh, 2020. Yeah.
[00:04:40] Craig Dalton: 20, 20. Yeah. So babying the bike and.
[00:04:44] Payson McElveen: yeah.
[00:04:45] Craig Dalton: being a little bit rougher on the bike and you know, both you guys smashed into pedals and I, it's funny, cause I'd heard you interviewed after the fact about that race and I'll refer to the listener back to some coverage there, but you were being, you were very conscious of what mud could have done to your bike.
And that was clear in the way you were taking care of it. And I had that thought while I was watching the coverage, like that's smart, dipping it in the water, clearing it out, just being conscious of what is going to do the driver.
[00:05:12] Payson McElveen: Yeah. Yeah, that was a boy. That was, I mean, gravel racing is always a dynamic thing and I feel like to varying degrees, just
emission of damage control even on dry days. But Yeah.
That was such a dynamic damn. Early on even. I mean, I thought my race was over 20 miles in when literally right as I think it was Pete might have been summer hill, actually Danny Summerhill was just absolutely on a mission early in that race too.
But someone putting in a attack around mile 20 kind of first narrow section, and literally at the same moment, I got a big stick jammed in my rear wheel and had to stop. Pull it out. And yeah.
because that selection was made and I ended up in like the third or fourth group that wasn't moving as quickly right off the bat.
I think I had like a minute and a half deficit to to the lead group of P call and, you know, all the usual suspects. And it was pretty convinced that the day was over at that point. But also over the years, I've learned. Gravel racing or not kind of, regardless of the style bike racing when you don't give up good things tend to happen, no matter how dire it seems.
And I was fortunate enough to ride back into the first chase group with my teammate at the time Dennis van Wenden, who spent many years on the world tour with Rabobank and Belkin and Israel startup nation, bunch of good teams. And. During that day, there wasn't a whole lot of drafting that was going on.
Cause the surface was so slow and there was so much mud and you were just kind of weaving around picking your line, but it was really pivotal to have him to kind of join forces with him there. Because he really quieted me down mentally and he was like, Hey man, if you want to try to get back into this race, you need to do it gradually.
Like don't panic, chase, you know, A minute gap. We could probably bring back and 25, 30 minutes, but if you do it over the course of an hour more you know, you can stay below threshold and that'll really pay dividends late. So long story short, I was really grateful to have his kind of Sage wisdom and sure enough, we got back into the group right before the aid station there at mile 50 ish.
And I was surprised we got back. Pete and Collin and everybody else was even more surprised to see us come out of the mud from behind. But yeah, that was a member of that was a memorable day and in a weird way, I think getting having that setback so early on almost kind of calibrated my mind for the survival contest that it was going to be all day so that when the shit really hit the fan there and the last 30 miles, I was kind of already mentally prepared to roll with the punches.
[00:07:52] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think there's some good points there. I'll, you know, it's always interesting to me talking to elite level athletes and, you know, with most of my listeners, presumably being like myself, mid-pack racers, the same rules apply, right. Should always breaks down for everybody. And you can have a really bad moment in one of these long gravel events and come back as long as you do the right things, right.
If you're. If you haven't eaten enough, you haven't drinking drank enough. You just got to get back on top of it and the day will come around and more likely than not the field in front of you is going to experience the same problems. Just a generic initially to yourself.
[00:08:28] Payson McElveen: For sure. And I know we're going to get into the grand Prix, but I think that's one of the things that makes the grand Prix so fascinating, especially when combined with the pretty unusual point structure, I think it's just going to be so topsy, turvy and tumultuous and. You know, obviously we saw two, two of the favorites, you know, most people's picks for the overall in Keegan and Mo already take the lead.
But I would be shocked if they maintain that lead, you know, all the way through the next five rounds, just because of the nature of gravel racing. Weirdly, I think the mountain bike events will be the least least selective in a way.
[00:09:06] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be interesting. Well, let's take a step back pace and I know, you know, I feel like I've gotten to know you through the course of your podcast, the adventure stash, but for our listeners, I want to just talk about how you got into the sport of cycling and we'll get to how you arrived at the gravel side of things.
[00:09:24] Payson McElveen: Yeah, sounds good.
[00:09:26] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So where'd you grow up? Where, when did you start riding? What was the first kind of race experience you had and how did you sort of develop the vision that you could be a professional athlete?
[00:09:37] Payson McElveen: Yeah. So I grew up in a very small town, about 20 minutes outside of Austin, Texas. The rural Texas hill country. I'm fortunate enough to grow up on a little I don't know, hippie farm hippie ranch with my parents. You know, we had chickens and dogs and 18 acres couldn't see any houses from our house, which is something I, you know, in hindsight really appreciate pretty cool environment to grow up in.
And I played pretty traditional sports growing up basketball ran track and field. Well, that sort of thing. But bike, riding and racing was always a little bit of the back of my mind because my dad did it some off and on while I was growing up. And then also Lance was winning all the tours during that time.
And actually live just 15 minutes away from us. So he was a little bit of a hometown hero and all that was always front of mind. Freshman year of high school. I want to say I kind of had this recurring knee injury from playing basketball and that nudged me towards cycling a bit more. And I just started riding more and getting more interested in mountain biking in general.
And there was this really cool mountain bike film, one of the early kind of. Shred it mountain bike. Documentary's called Rome that was playing in a bike shop and I just totally was transfixed one day. And that summer just kind of went all in. Building trails on the property and mountain biking and trying to learn more skills.
And through a little bit of, a little bit of coaxing from my dad, I decided to, to line up for a mountain bike race, a local Texas mountain bike race when I was 14. And got absolutely. But for whatever reason, just it hooked me and that fall after getting absolutely destroyed by all the local, Texas kiddos.
I just really dedicated myself to training and developing skills and came back that following spring as a 15 year old. And I don't think I lost a race in Texas that year and it sort of solidified. This idea of putting work in and getting a significant reward. And I'm not really sure why that never clicked with other sports.
I was, you know, I guess had had a little bit of talent for basketball, maybe definitely talent for track And field, but I never dedicated myself to them from a work ethic standpoint, but for whatever reason, I was really motivated to do that for cycling and. Yeah, it just became a fan of the sport student of the sport, followed it like crazy.
You got to know the pros, the U S pros and saw the Durango was really kind of the hotbed for domestic mountain bikers. And one thing led to the other. And now here I am still chasing the dream.
[00:12:25] Craig Dalton: And did you end up going to college in Durango? Is that what I recall?
[00:12:28] Payson McElveen: Huh. Yeah. So went to Fort Lewis college. That was also a big selling point. I ended up going to Europe with the national team as a 17 year old with USA cycling. And the one of the USA cycling coaches there for that trip was Matt Shriver, who happened to be one of the coaches at Fort Lewis college at the time also.
And he sort of, you know, did a little bit of recruiting work with those of us there that. camp and a few of us actually ended up going to Fort Lewis, but yeah, boy, Durango's incredible. I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to come here and then call it home for
[00:13:05] Craig Dalton: Yeah there, the riding and mentorship in that communities.
[00:13:10] Payson McElveen: It is. It is it's it's pretty incredible that the town is so small and so. Isolated in the scheme of things like it's pretty hard to get here. It's a long drive from anywhere and it's a kind of pain in the ass flight from everywhere. Also. We found that out on the way home from sea Otter when it took extra, but Yeah.
I'm a small town hard to get to.
And yet it's just this ridiculous hotbed of talent, you know, talent that's developed here, but then also talent that moves here. And one other thing I really appreciate is it isn't super like pro dominated. Like there's a very healthy grassroots contingent of cyclists here that. Frankly, do not care what's happening in pro bike racing whatsoever.
And that's actually quite refreshing. When you spend a lot of your time at big race weekends, and you're getting asked 25 times a day, what tire pressure you're running, it's really nice to come back to Durango and, you know, just go shred some single track with someone that's wearing jorts and grab a beer afterward.
[00:14:11] Craig Dalton: I bet. When you graduated from college and decided to go pro, was there a particular style of mountain bike racing that you were, you had in your head? This is what I want to pursue.
[00:14:22] Payson McElveen: Man, this is where it gets pretty complicated. This is where it's very hard to make the story short, but
I'll be as succinct as I can. So moving to Durango I had my. Sites, very firmly set on world cup XCO and the Olympics. I'd had some successes of junior and making the national team each year and doing some world cups and going to, you know, selection for Pan-Am games and all that sort of thing, podiums at junior nationals, all that sort of thing.
But what I wasn't familiar with yet obviously is most. Teenagers or not is the economics of professional cycling, especially on the dirt side, on the roadside, it's pretty pretty cut and dried. There's almost a league obviously, and there's a fairly well-worn pipeline to the highest ranks of the sport.
But in mountain biking, there's just really. Isn't that USA cycling tries, but it's there's such a high barrier of entry for a kid that doesn't live in Europe to go over to Europe, learn that style racing in a foreign land. And you know, it's very cost prohibitive. The writing style is completely different.
It's not a mainstream sport. So their talent pools inevitably are just so much more vast than ours because of. that there are more kids that are just interested in being high-level cyclists, where most of our, you know, kiddos are interested in being NBA players or NFL players. So it's, I mean, it's a well-known story that it's very hard to break through at that level.
And then there's the other component, which I don't think is talked about as much, which is just you start with the handicaps of inexperience. Obviously fitness, if you're a younger writer and then just start position. And I mean, it's, it is. So it's such a wild setup where you have to be so much stronger to break through and start earning results where your start position improves that just everything is stacked against you.
So I had a few what I'd call kind of flash in the pan results enough to not give up on it, but not enough to really. Make it feel like it was a foregone conclusion. So I felt very fortunate to be in college and getting exposed to other styles of cycling as collegiate cycling frequently, you know, allows for. But going into senior year, I was kind of looking down the barrel of having to make some tough decisions. Cause I was making. Money racing professionally, but it was like serious poverty line sort of situation. And you know, finishing seventh or eighth at pro XC nets as a 23 year old is cool.
But it's not going to give you an illustrious career. And so late late summer, early fall I just started kind of. Looking outside the bounds of this very narrow lane of focus that most folks my age were focused on, which was
XCO mountain biking and the Olympics. And the other thing kind of to notice that one thing that strikes me frequently is that in mountain biking there are just fewer jobs of value in a way, if that makes sense, like on the roadside, if your
[00:17:40] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:17:42] Payson McElveen: strongest on a world tour, You can still have a very fruitful position that is valued.
I mean, if there's 400, some people in the world tour Peloton, I don't know what the number is exactly, but if you're 350 strongest, you're still a very valued member. If you line up at a world cup and there's 200 guys on the start line and you finish even 80th, like what's the value of that? There's
[00:18:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:18:13] Payson McElveen: You're the backdrop for the folks that are at the top to anyway sort of digressing, but point being, I started looking around the sport and. I'd had some offers and opportunities to try racing on the road, but culturally, it just didn't quite jive for me. And then, you know, I started kind of looking at some of the folks that have, that had created their own paths, folks like Rebecca Rush Lil Wilcox hadn't really rose risen to prominence yet, but those sorts of people and I thought, you know what maybe I'll just go try.
Something a little bit more adventure oriented. Just for fun. Like I don't know that I'm going to have the opportunity to dedicate as much time to cycling in the future as I am now. So maybe I'll go on an adventure. And sort of around the same time weirdly, I got a message from this race promoter, Italian guy that was putting on a race in Mongolia called the Mongolia bike challenge.
And I still don't exactly know how that came about or why he reached out to me. But sure. You know, I'll come try, erase. And he said if I could get myself over there, he'd cover all of my expenses when I was there. And that said, you know, a flight to Mongolia, I think was like 25, 20 $600, something like that.
And I had maybe $3,500 to my name as a senior in college. And I was like, well, you know, I just have this sneaking suspicion that this style of racing might be more my cup of tea. Obviously the Xes. I'm falling out of love with that. So I drained my bank accounts flew over there, had an amazing experience.
That's a whole other story.
[00:19:50] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's such an amazing country. I had the good fortune of going there and I had previously raised a couple of the trans racist and trans Rockies up in Canada and had friends who had done the. The ones that were over in Europe. And I caught wind of that Mongolia one after visiting Mongolia on a hiking trip.
And I was like, that must have been at epic.
[00:20:07] Payson McElveen: It was super epic. And you know, it was, I think it was eight days, seven, eight days, the stages where there's one TT day, that was like an hour and 15, but most of the day. Five to four to five and a half hours. And there was some good races there. You know, Corey Wallace was there. He'd won, I think, Canadian marathon nasty year before.
And he'd won the Mongolia bike challenge the year before. There was also this Italian world cup guy there, who I'd never been able to be close to at world cup events. And then all of a sudden found myself going shoulder to shoulder with these guys and just feeling way more capable as an athlete and ended up winning that series outside magazine did a little interview and like photo epic on the wind.
And that's I found out later kind of what put me on red bull's radar, but that was the thing that really set the hook for me, where I thought, you know what? This was way more fun. I got to see an amazing part of the world. The media cared way more about. Like way more media interest than I'd ever received.
And I was just way better suited to it. I had no experience had barely been doing five-hour training. I'd never done a five hour training ride and yet was able to kind of rise to the occasion and do five-hour race days and back it up day after day. So after that point, I started kind of dedicating a little bit more time to to that style.
And then consequently one Pro marathon NATS the following year. And that's, that was those two things were kind of the inflection point, I would say. So around 27.
[00:21:34] Craig Dalton: and was that, had you joined the orange seal team?
[00:21:38] Payson McElveen: So I had been on the rebranded show air team for anyone that remembers the Scott Tedros show our teams. It was called ride biker that year. And it was sort of like a collection of private tiers. It seems like there are some equivalents these days, like, I think the shoot what's it called?
Eastern Overland. I want to say they run something similar to that. And then. As far as I can tell that new jukebox program seems to have a bit of a similar setup. So it was kind of set up that way. So I was able to start to pull together some of my own sponsors. And then once I started to get that media interest, the outside interview was kind of the biggest thing.
I was able to parlay that into better support or SEL came on board as one of my bigger sponsors, but I hadn't that the team didn't exist yet. And then when. NATS. That's kind of when orange seal and track are like, Hey, what if we like made a team?
Like rather than this being a private tier thing, what if we kind of took some ownership and let you just race?
And we set up more of a team. So that's how that worked.
[00:22:43] Craig Dalton: And you mentioned getting on red bull's radar. When did you end up becoming a red bull athlete?
[00:22:47] Payson McElveen: Let's see, I guess 2018, early 2018. Does that, is that right? 2018?
[00:22:56] Craig Dalton: The
[00:22:57] Payson McElveen: I can't remember. I think
[00:22:58] Craig Dalton: timeline sounds right. And did it change your perspective of yourself as an athlete, as you got exposed to the red bull family and other red bull athletes?
[00:23:09] Payson McElveen: Oh Yeah. Enormously. I mean, it changed everything and it's funny because when I say. Started communicating with them. At first, it was just like this childhood euphoria of, or my God. This is the most sought after prized sponsorship in adventure, sports outdoor sports. Like this is, I can't believe they're interested, but this is incredible.
And you start getting so fixated on the potential of it. for anyone that's familiar with their process they'll know that it's not fast. So basically they were doing background on me for a year. And then for two more years, we communicated. Dated almost you could say decided to figure out how much commitment, mutual commitment there wanted to be.
Obviously I was very interested in commitment, but, and then came the phase where it looked like it was going to happen. And all of a sudden you start feeling the pressure and you start questioning. Am I worthy? What is this, what does this mean? What's going to be asked of me, how do I need to rise to the occasion?
And I'd say even after I signed for a solid year, that was kind of my mindset. Like, oh man, need to not screw this up. I need to prove that I'm worthy. I need to do innovative things. But one thing that's interesting is that they red bull never. Puts any pressure on you and they really drive home the fact that they want to partner with you because of who you already are and who you can become the potential that they think they see.
And they really like to bring people on board before they've reached. They're their prime, their best. They want to help you be a part of that growth process. So once I was able to gradually shift my mindset and realize that this was more of an opportunity and less of an obligation, that's where I think mentally and emotionally, I was kinda able to free up free myself up a little bit race with more race with a sense of opportunity and joy.
And then also start to kind of tap into. Creative aspect that I've really started to lean into over the last few years that I've come to realize is like very necessary just for my happiness and sense of fulfillment. And I think that's really where there's most significant interest came from. And it was also just great timing.
You know, they wanted someone in this endurance, mass participation sort of arena. That's also why they brought a in, around a similar time. And so, yeah, like, like any success timing was a massive part of the opportunity as well.
[00:25:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I feel like in some way and correct me if I'm wrong, your relationship with red bull for a few years prior to the pandemic left you very well-suited to whether the pandemic and the lack of racing, meaning you had a wider view of yourself as an athlete and the things you could do.
[00:26:13] Payson McElveen: Yeah.
And you know, I over the years I've questioned kind of this all of these extracurriculars that, that I'm interested in. Whether it be the podcast or some of the films we do, or some of the, you know, crazy routes, I like to try to tackle
Question, you know, how much does that detract from more traditional racing cars like riding across Iceland three weeks before the Australis off-road isn't, you know, stellar prep, but But by the same token, you know, I've really tried to zoom out over the last handful of years and think about how will I look back on this time when I'm 45, 50, 55, whatever.
And really, it kind of goes back to Mongolia, you know, T deciding to take that red pill rather than blue pill spend most of the money. I had to go on a crazy adventure halfway around the world by myself as a 23 or. With no experience, you know, I'll never forget that experience the people I met over in Mongolia.
And ultimately I think going through life experiencing as much as the world, both interpersonally and just travel wise as you can is a good way to do it. And I've had many mentors over the years who have raised at the highest level, kind of. Persistently remind me that the, what they remember or the things between the actual races and to make sure that, you know, if you go to all-star Germany for the world cup, do everything you can to make sure you don't only see the inside of your hotel room and the three kilometer race course.
So that's kind of why. More and more ambitiously gravitated towards some of these more adventure oriented things. And ultimately from a professional standpoint, getting back to your point, it really does, you know, the way I look at it as sort of like a diversified portfolio, there are athletes that only hold one kind of stock, you know, maybe your stock is awesome.
Maybe you have a bunch of shares of apple, but you know what happens if for whatever reason, apple tanks. Similarly to the stock market. You know, you want to have a diversified portfolio when we're operating in this space that doesn't have a league. It doesn't have a bunch of structure. And there is a lot of room for creativity.
So, it's a personal need, but also it's worked out professionally as well.
[00:28:28] Craig Dalton: yeah, I think as a fan of the sport, when you're out there doing those adventures, and obviously you do a lot of filming around these adventures. We just feel closer to you as an athlete. So when you line up at some gravel race, like we're rooting for you because we've seen you struggle. Like any one of us might struggle on it.
Adventure.
[00:28:46] Payson McElveen: Yeah.
that's interesting. I mean, that's good to hear. It makes sense, you know, anytime, you know, I think about I'm, I mean, I'm a massive mainstream sports fan, so I'm always comparing. Our little cycling sport to these mainstream sports. And it's interesting to look at something like say basketball versus football, the NFL versus the NBA and in the NFL, there's massive athlete turnover because of injuries.
And also everyone's wearing loads of protective equipment, you know, helmets, pads, all that sort of thing. So you very rarely do you actually see the athletes. They're just these incredible people. Rip it around on the field, hitting each other. With basketball, you see all the writers, interesting hairstyles, writers, basketball players, interesting hairstyles, you know, the way they react to like a bad call, the way they're talking to each other on the bench.
Usually they're, they feel more comfortable, you know, giving more flamboyant post-game interviews. And so it feels like the. Collectively like the fan base for individual players in the NBA is so much more engaged than in the NFL. Like fans are with the exception of folks like maybe Tom Brady or like people that have been around forever.
Folks of the NFL are fans of the game, fans of teams. And on the NBA side of things frequently, they're fans of the individuals because they feel like they know the individuals. And so I think the same can kind of be said for cycling. And interestingly, I think that. This is a whole other conversation, but I think it's one of the reasons we're seeing such amazing professional opportunities for folks outside the world tour.
Now, obviously the most money bar, none is still in the world tour, but there's so much less freedom for personal expression for frankly, like having. Personality. I mean, look at guys like Laughlin that are like redefining the sport and all they had to do was get out of the world tour and do what they wanted to do.
And I think that's really interesting and I feel fortunate to be in a part of the sport where that's more celebrated for sure.
[00:30:48] Craig Dalton: Yeah, absolutely. So chronologically on the journey, we're back at 2018, you've won your second XC marathon title. Had you started to dabble in gravel in 2018.
[00:31:04] Payson McElveen: yeah, I think that was 2018. I did Unbound. Yeah, I guess that would have been 2018 and that was a hundred percent due to sponsors requesting it. I was not interested. And I had a whole mess of mechanicals and actually didn't finish. And I think that might be the. That might be the most recent race I haven't finished maybe besides, well, that's not true.
Mid south just happened, but yeah, I was, I didn't get it in 2018. I was like, man, this is carnage. People are flatting everywhere. Why are we out here for so long? This is so
[00:31:41] Craig Dalton: It does seem like a Rite of passage to get abused by your first unmanned professional experience.
[00:31:47] Payson McElveen: Do it for sure. And Amanda Naaman loves to make fun of me about this cause like I really not publicly, but I was fairly outspoken to some people about how I just didn't understand gravel after that experience.
And then I ended up going to mid south in 20, 19 two weeks before the white rim, fastest known time.
And I was planning to use it as like. Training effort for the white rim fastest load time. And I ended up winning that mid south race. And then I was like, oh, gravel is sweet. Everyone cares so much about this when Getting loads of interviews, like
A massive bump in social media followership, like, wait, maybe there is something to the Scrabble.
It Amanda's always like, Yeah. The only reason you fell in love with gravel is because you were fortunate enough to win a race early on, which, you know, might be kind of true, but long story short, it was not love at first sight with gravel, but
that's obviously since changed.
[00:32:40] Craig Dalton: And you were, are you still kind of in the sort of, I guess 20, 20 season where you still doing XC marathon style racing in conjunction with gravel 2020 is probably a bad example because that was the pandemic year. But in the, in that period, were you doing both still.
[00:32:56] Payson McElveen: Yup. Yup. Yeah. And you know, the funny thing is I still.
see myself primarily as a mountain biker and there are people who, you know, question, you know, how. I define myself as a racer at this point, but I don't even really feel the need to define what Sal racer you are, because I'm just interested in the biggest races in the country.
The, and really, you know, at this point, it's kind of becoming the biggest mass participation, non UCI events in the world. And it's I look at it as a spectrum. You know, if you kind of go down the list of. How do you define these races on one end of the spectrum? You've got something like, you know, BWR San Diego, which in my mind is just kind of like a funky sketchy road race.
I don't know that you're allowed to call it a gravel race. If everyone is on road bikes with 20 eights and thirties narrower tires, then the people use a rebate. But and then on the other end of the spectrum, you have something like. I don't know, an epic rides event or, you know, even like the Leadville 100 that really blurs the lines like is that you could for sure.
Raise the Leadville 100 on a drop bar, gobbled bike, because as Corey Wallace did last year and you've got everything in between. So, you know, you've got grind. Durose where some people are on mountain bikes. Some people are on gravel bikes, you've got the grasshoppers same. So I look at it as much more of a spectrum, and I think we're just in this incredible golden age of. Grassroot grassroots is such a misnomer, but just like mass participation, non spectator, primary races. And I'm just, I'm here for all of it. It's all.
[00:34:38] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, it's super exciting. And I think the event organizers have just a ton of freedom of how they want. Design the race courses. You know, if I think about the difference between the LA GRA Villa event at this past weekend, which was probably 75% single track, it was the, basically the 40 K MTB course, super single track, heavy required, a pretty hefty skillset.
I know a lot of quote, unquote gravel riders were scratching their heads. After that one, thinking they were definitely under. And then the other end of the spectrum, you have something like BWR, as you mentioned, or even SBT gravel. It doesn't require a lot of technical skillset to be competitive in those races.
So I find it fascinating. And I think that even goes down to where you ride and where you live. Like my gravel here in Marine county as the listener. Well, nose is quite a bit different than Midwest gravel. Not better, not worse, you know, just depends on what's your company.
[00:35:36] Payson McElveen: For sure. And I mean, here in Durango, our best road rides our gravel road rides, and we've been riding road bikes on them for ages. When I first moved here, you know, every, so we have a Tuesday night world's group ride, which for what it's worth is still the hardest group I've ever done anywhere in the country by a lot.
But Frequently, you know, every third week or so the route that we'll do is majority dirt and everyone's on road bikes. And up until a couple of years ago, everyone was on 26 or 20 eights. And you know, they're fairly smooth gravel roads, but pretty much if you ask anyone locally, our best road rides are half dirt roads.
So when this whole gravel movements start. I know I was one of many that was, we were kind of scratching our heads a little bit about, well, isn't this just bike riding, but I understand the industry has needed to kind of define and brand things, but Yeah, it's it's interesting.
[00:36:30] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's interesting as we were talking about your career in this sort of transition, a transition, but just as melding of your love of ECC and this new level of gravel low and behold in 2022 lifetime announces the grand Prix half mountain bike races, half gravel races. How excited were you around that announcement?
[00:36:50] Payson McElveen: who very excited. Yeah I'd had some conversations with lifetime in the year or so prior kind of generally talking about structure and what events might make the most sense and all that sort of thing. But It was a little bit ambiguous about whether it was going to happen and to what degree and what it would all look like.
So when the announcement?
came out I was sort of primed for it, but I was also surprised by quite a few things. And that certainly. You know, increase the excitement too. As I read through the proposed rules and the points structure and the events they decided on and all that sort of thing.
But yeah, I mean, it feels just like an enormous opportunity and I think it feels like an enormous opportunity. Personally because of the events, obviously, but I think it's an enormous opportunity for north American cycling as a whole, because there are so many aspects of the series that are completely different than any other series we've seen.
I mean, in the United States with the exception of, you know, the heyday of mountain biking in the eighties and nineties, we haven't seen. Cycling massively successful really as a spectator sport or as a televised sport. Because there's always been this goal of making it a spectator sport, but I don't think in the United States, that's really ever going to be a spectator sport.
The key in my mind is that it's a participation sport in this country, and that's what these huge grassroots mass participation events have really tapped into. And made them so successful. And so when you combine that with, you know, a year long points, chase, maybe all of a sudden that is the secret sauce for making it more spectator friendly, even if it's more of this kind of modern age of spectating, where it's very, online-based, there's lots of social media coverage.
There's, you know, maybe a live stream there's, you know, Really cool. Like drive to survive, TVC series type things coming out of it. I mean that actually drive to survive as a great example. Like look what drive to survive has done for F1 in the United States virtually no one cared about F1 until that series came out.
And now, you know, people are talking about peer gasoline and Daniel, Ricardo, like, you know,
[00:39:04] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:39:05] Payson McElveen: You know, Kevin Duran or Tom Brady. So, it's a very interesting time and I just feel fortunate to kind of be reaching my peak career years right now as it's happening.
[00:39:15] Craig Dalton: Yeah, to your point earlier, I think it just creates this great opportunity for storytelling throughout the season. And this idea of, you know, some courses are gonna be more favorable to mountain bike athletes. Others are going to be more favorable to traditional gravel athletes and just seeing how it all plays out and having the points across the season, as something as a fan that's in the back of your mind.
I just think it's going to be a lot of fun and great for this.
[00:39:41] Payson McElveen: Yeah.
I think so too. I really hope so. And the thing that I really hope, I think what can truly set it apart and almost guarantee its success is if they're able to. Lean into those personal storylines, kind of like we were talking about earlier, the things that I think really makes a fan base fall in love with following a league or a sport, which is the individual stories.
You know, like I hope there's all kinds of awesome coverage of Aaron Huck making this return to racing, following pregnancy, or you know, there's so many. Incredible individual storylines that can be told. And I hope that's really seen as an asset and taken advantage of.
[00:40:26] Craig Dalton: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I have a. You can look at like Amber and Nevin and her experience, just like sort of getting a little bit crushed, still getting in the points at , but having a really rough day out there, that's the kind of narrative like you're looking for somebody who's coming way outside of their comfort zone to race this entire series.
And unsurprisingly like a mountain bike style race was super challenging for. But it's going to be fascinating to see like how she bounces back for Unbound, which is this other radically different experience in my mind at 200 miles.
[00:41:00] Payson McElveen: For sure. Yeah. I think we're going to learn a lot over this first year and I hope we get a couple of years at it because I think there will be lots of adjusting along the way. Lots of cool ideas and yeah, I think there's just massive potential and I hope everyone's able to hang in there for a few years to figure out what that potential actually.
[00:41:22] Craig Dalton: Agreed. Unfortunately, you have to drop this race due to your injury at mid south, but I'm curious, like, as you looked at the arc and the style of racing that you were going to experience in the grand Prix, does that alter how you're training do you sort of do one thing for Otter? Morph dramatically into something else for a 200 mile Unbound, which is the next race on the calendar for the grand Prix series.
[00:41:45] Payson McElveen: Yeah. I mean, training Is definitely different. Just physiologically. I kind of gravitate towards those long slow burn events more easily anyway. So preparing for something like sea Otter, where, you know, the, I mean the average speed, I think Keegan said his average speed was like 17.8 miles an hour.
Schwamm against average speed. I did it two years and we averaged over 19 miles an hour, both times. Ironically these mountain bike events and Leadville, you know, despite all of its climbing and high elevation, that average speed is almost 17 miles an hour. So these mountain bike events are very much gravel style, mountain bike events.
It would be pretty funny. To see this field, you know, line up for something like the grand junction. Off-road where you're lucky to crack nine and a half mile per hour, average speed. And everyone's running one 20 bikes and two, four tires. But yeah. In terms of training those faster kind of leg speed high-end events are ones that I have to train a little bit.
I have to like tune up some speed a little bit more for, so for example, I'll attend the Tuesday night. Group right here in Durango almost every week in the month, leading up to that sort of event I'll get in some good motor pacing sessions still, you know, log some good five-hour rides just because that's what helps me be at my fittest, but not worry about a six and a half, seven hour ride with Unbound.
I will notch, you know, some good six plus hour rides. And a lot of it is also just about. Practicing, like practicing your fueling practicing with the equipment you want to use doing some heat acclimation and then just doing massive amounts of sub threshold work. So, you know, I'll do rides, you know, like a six hour ride and do three tempo, three, one hour tempo blocks in there Just like an insane amount of. KJS I'm just trying to get your body used to being efficient really. I mean, that's kind of what it comes down to and being efficient under duress. So being efficient when it's 90 degrees out and your stomach, maybe isn't feeling amazing and you're pinging off rocks and.
You know, trying to navigate a big budge. So there are some different things that I do overall training is pretty simple. You know, on the XC world cup, it training gets a lot more complicated, I think. But for these longer distance events training, actually, isn't terribly complicated at all.
[00:44:16] Craig Dalton: Is there any one in particular that you're super excited about?
[00:44:20] Payson McElveen: In the series
[00:44:22] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:44:24] Payson McElveen: probably Leadville. I've been consistently good at Leadville. I've never had a 100% clean run at it. But I've been third twice, fourth last year. That's one that I would love to win before I retire. You know, if there's one race I could pick. Before I get too old to be competitive. I think Leadville is probably it.
It's tricky though, because we've got these two guys that are just sensational, you know, generational talents and Keegan and Howard, both of them grew up at very high elevation. They're small guys. And they just go uphill like nobody's business and you know, they're hard to beat. They're definitely hard to be so. Every year, you know, I look towards Leadville. I would love to love for everything to come together for me there. But you know, all of these races are really competitive, but if I had to pick one, that's probably the one I'm most looking forward to.
[00:45:19] Craig Dalton: Got it. And is there any room in your calendar for a pace and adventure this year?
[00:45:25] Payson McElveen: Yeah.
Good question, boy. That's kind of the trade-off of the grand Prix, you know, it's really consuming said, I know that I always perform better off of big training blocks. So I've pulled back on race days pretty significantly. So I have some really big breaks in my schedule. I'm probably going to go do this four day GB Duro style stage race in Iceland.
That is the route that We bike tour last year around the west fjords it's 450 mile days. Give her. Which would be a fun adventure. But in terms of like, whoa here's a crazy idea. No, one's done yet type thing. I have a pretty significant list of those. We'll see where they fit in.
I'm going to do another trail town for sure. I really enjoyed that project of Ben last year and the storytelling aspect of that and the big gear giveaway we got to do and kind of the. The community that we developed online there that was really successful. So I'll do another one of those. There's also going to be another matchstick productions film coming up, which is really good for the sport.
You know, really high profile, high production value, feature, length film that typically, you know, features a lot of backflips in three sixties and in Virgin, Utah, and. endurance riding as much, but they've been really cool about working more of that in, so I'm looking forward to filming for that again this year, their next one.
Probably in terms of like a big crossing or, you know, massive MKT of some kind. I have a big scouting mission that I'll be doing in the fall, but it it'll be by far and away. The biggest one I've tried, not in terms of huh. Kind of distance too, but mostly just like it's extremely audacious and not the sort of thing where I can just go in blind.
So I'm going to go in and do a lot of scouting for that and probably knock that out. Summer of 23.
[00:47:18] Craig Dalton: Well, I mean, for the listener, Payson's always an exciting person to follow and your creativity. It's just fun watching how your mind works and the things you want to tackle. And it's just a lot of fun to watch what you're doing. I know we got to get you out on a training ride, but one final question.
I just wanted to talk about your change in sponsorship this year, in terms of the bike you're riding. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
[00:47:39] Payson McElveen: Yeah, I mean, I don't know. There's a lot of drip, a lot of directions we could go there, but that was What are the scarier professional periods I've had thus far? I obviously had to two really great options and went back and forth between the two for months. I was very fortunate to have the support of an agent that I've come to lean on very significantly over the last couple of years, not sure where I'd be without him, but Yeah.
I mean, that was a, that was another sort of like red pill, blue pill moment where the logical thing would be to stay with the brand that you've been with for seven years and is the big juggernaut and the proven, you know, you can be a reliable cog in a big machine type sort of situation. But I've always had.
Kind of entrepreneurial drive. That's really hard to ignore sometimes. And there was a whole lot of upside with joining allied and they're doing some really industry defining things that other brands don't have, the ability or confidence or ambition to do. You know, they're 100% made in the U S.
Component is really incredible. And that affords all sorts of things from a quality standpoint, a product development standpoint, and just social issue, standpoint and environmental aspects standpoint things that?
felt very good. Morally in a way. But ultimately I just want it to be on the bikes that I thought I could win on.
And Allied's bikes are just unbelievable. I mean, the quality and the care. Their process for product development and their willingness to kind of ignore industry trends in favor of just making the fastest, most badass bike possible was very intriguing and enticing. And I did go back and forth many times for awhile.
But once I finally made the decision, I just it felt like a massive relief, a huge amount of excitement. And Yeah.
in hindsight, I'd make that decision. 10 out of 10 times again,
[00:49:44] Craig Dalton: Right on presumably you've got both an allied echo and an allied. What's the other one with the enable in your quiver, are you using the echo as your road bike or using one of their pure road machines?
[00:49:56] Payson McElveen: so we were, we've been waiting on parts for the echo. I've had an echo frame for a good bit. Parts just showed up last week. So I'll be getting that echo built up. Probably over the weekend. I've test written one but I haven't put huge miles on an echo yet. It's a really, I mean, just a classic example of a brilliant idea from the incredible mind that is Sam Pikmin there, their head of product, but I'll definitely be racing the echo at things like Steamboat where, you know, aerodynamics and weight and more of a road style bike really would pay dividends.
The ABL is just awesome. I was absolutely mind boggled by how light it was. I mean, it's over a pound lighter than the gravel bike I was raised in the previous year, which frankly I didn't really expect. So that's been great. And then Yeah.
I'm also on an alpha, which is. They're road bike, just super Zippy snappy road bike, and has a really cool, almost a little bit old school aesthetic with the level top tube that has this really cool classic look.
[00:50:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah, for sure. I'll refer in the show notes. I'm the listener to my interview with Sam and I've had allied on a couple of different times, so great product, super I'm super jazzed when anybody's making anything in the USA. And as you said, it's just fun as an athlete. I'm sure to be able to go to the factory and see the layups and talk to them to the craftsmen that are working on the.
[00:51:17] Payson McElveen: Yeah, And just to have a lot of input, you know, just to be able to say, Hey, I'm interested in running my bike this way. Is that possible? And then go to the factory five days later and they've literally like machined the part already and run all the kinematics in the way. Let's pop it in, like what
[00:51:35] Craig Dalton: let's do it.
[00:51:36] Payson McElveen: that would have taken two years at a big bike brand.
That's insane.
[00:51:41] Craig Dalton: So true. So true. All right, dude. Well, I'm going to let you go. I appreciate all the time. It's been great to finally get you on the mic and talk about your career. I'm going to be looking forward to your comeback for the, for Unbound and throughout the rest of the series. We'll be rooting for you.
[00:51:55] Payson McElveen: awesome. Thanks Greg. It was great to finally get on and chat with you and Yeah, keep up the good work quality podcasts are hard work and few and far between. So, nice job. And yeah, keep up the good work.
[00:52:07] Craig Dalton: Thanks. I appreciate that.
[00:52:09] Payson McElveen: Cool man.
[00:52:10] Craig Dalton: Big, thanks to pay some for joining the podcast this week. I hope you enjoyed the conversation and huge thanks to hammerhead and the crew to computer for sponsoring this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Remember head on over to hammerhead.io. Use the promo code, the gravel ride for that free custom color kit.
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If you're able to financially support the show, please visit www dot. Buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Any contribution to the show is hugely appreciated. Until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
This week Randall Jacobs sits down with Fort Bragg, CA Sculptor and trail builder Nick Taylor to discuss the intersection of cycling and art.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Nick Taylor[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week, I'm going to kick it back over to my co-host Randall Jacobs for a little something different for ya. Randall's interviewing sculptor trail builder and Mendocino cycling stalwart, Nick Taylor in an exploration on how the bike became interwoven in one artist's life
Before I pass the mic over to Randall. I need to thank this. Week's sponsor the feed. The feed is the largest online marketplace for sports nutrition.
They've got all your favorite sports, nutrition brands in one place. If you've developed an affinity like I have for certain brands. You can hop on over to the feed and mix and match. So you get everything you need in one delivery.
I was just visiting the feed.com before recording this intro and I remembered in addition to all the nutritional brands that they carry, they also carry a wide variety of training gear. You might remember a couple episodes back when we were focusing on recovery.
We talked about foam rollers. We talked about Sarah guns. We talked about pneumatic leg compression tools. I think we talked about the power dot, actually all these things are available@thefeed.com. So in addition to getting your nutrition handled, You can work on your recovery. Like I've been doing.
And finally I wanted to mention again, the feed formulas. The feed formulas are the world's first daily supplement pouch for athletes created in conjunction with Dr. Kevin Sprouse from the ETF pro cycling team. They feature best in class, branded supplements, never generics. You get personalized recommendation based on your needs as an athlete, and they're all delivered in a convenient daily pouch.
We've got a limited time special offer of 50% off on your first order of the feed formula by simply going to the feed.com/the gravel ride. Remember that's the feed.com/the gravel ride
With that said, I'm going to hand it over to my co-host Randall Jacobs and his interview with Nick Taylor.
[00:02:26] Randall: Nick, I've been looking forward to this conversation for some time welcome to the podcast.
[00:02:31] Nick: Well, thank you. Thanks for having me on Randall.
[00:02:34] Randall: So before we dive in, let's give listeners a bit of background. Who are you, where are you from? What matters to you?
[00:02:40] Nick: My name's Nick Taylor. I'm up here in Fort Bragg, California. That's about 180 miles north of San Francisco along the coast, fairly remote area. I'm a sculptor and a big bike bicycle advocate, as well as running a trail crew building trails out here in the Mendocino coast.
[00:03:00] Randall: Yeah. And as somebody who has been to your workshop, I can say well, one, the area is quite beautiful and to the space in which you create some of the things that we'll be talking about and linking to in the notes. So it's a pretty special place. So tell us a bit about your, relationship to the bicycle.
How did it get started? How has it evolved over time?
[00:03:20] Nick: Well, you know, I think we all probably started riding Pikes when we were kids. And I certainly did that on a gravel road and in rural Ohio. So I had some experience as a kid and there was a big lapse and it wasn't until I was in my early twenties that I picked the bicycle back up and started to use it again.
And that was a. I had, I don't know what really, what the impetus was for getting back on a bike, but I wanted to do some exploring and I guess that just seemed like a good way to go about it. And I bought myself a an old Schwinn Latour for 80 bucks and a. I was staying with my grandmother at that point up in Ohio.
And I started doing some riding in the rides, you know, slowly became longer and longer. And I, I decided, well, you know what, I want to go do some tour. And so that led to a bit, a little, a little bit of touring on that the tour prior to graduate school, back in the early eighties.
[00:04:15] Randall: So tell us about some of the early tours. What was that like?
[00:04:18] Nick: Well, it was prepping to go to graduate school and really wanted to get out in between visiting one school and another, and I bought a gray ham pass. It was good for 30 days and pulled the map of the U S out and closed my eyes. And. Put my finger down on wherever it game.
And, and the first place was I got out in south Kadoka, South Dakota at a midnight at a gas station and you know, road the next day through, you know, from Kadoka through the Badlands and into a rapid city. And I didn't have a particularly good experience in rapid city. So I pulled the map out again, close my eyes and finger another place on the map.
Got out and Shelby Montana and had a great time from there. So, you know, a ride from Shelby across the Rocky mountains and through glacier national park, which was just extraordinary. And then down to Spokane Washington, at which point I had to create my bike up and had had to Davis, California to go look at the school there.
[00:05:23] Randall: Oh, wow. So that was essentially coming off after a month of kind of dirt bagging camping out, or what were your, what were your accommodations along the route?
[00:05:33] Nick: I mean, everything. Everything I needed was on the bike,
[00:05:37] Randall: so, you found a shower before you had your interview.
[00:05:40] Nick: Yup. Knock some of the stink off.
[00:05:43] Randall: So now you're in Davis and this is a program in what area?
[00:05:48] Nick: So it was a MFA program, for a master of fine arts graduate school. It was back in the early eighties and I don't know where it is now, but, it was a leading school for the arts. It rivaled Dal our graduate department.
And so it was, I got there and they had a very open format, which I much enjoyed everything I was looking at on the east coast was a very structured format. And I was done with that. I'd had five years of that at the university of Tennessee. And I was mostly just looking for studio. And that's what I got in Davis.
And I also got to be around people that were pretty well renowned, you know, which was a new experience for me. I mean, I had people like manual Neary and Robert artisan and Wayne Tebow and Roy deforest were all teaching there. So I got exposure to all these professional artists that I had experienced before.
[00:06:43] Randall: And was the writing community as developed then as it is now, right now, Davis is very much known as having great bike infrastructure. And UC Davis has a top cycling team and so on.
[00:06:54] Nick: It was definitely a big thing there. Vibe culture was big and Davis and. And that was a new thing too. I mean, most people, certainly all the students. And I think back then there were 16,000 students, they were getting around and bikes. And that was very cool. And there was a lot of road biking going on out there too, which I participated in, you know, I got myself a Miata. I forget what model it was. It was there a touring bike, which is a pretty nice bike though. When I was buying it, it was the first new bike I'd ever had. And the guys kept telling me it was too big. A frame is too big, a frame it's like, I, I didn't listen to them. Should have, but you know, I wrote it for a number, number of years Anthony.
Okay. But I realized in hindsight it was, it was too big.
From there. I moved to the east bay and lived in Oakland and point Richmond primarily. I mean, there were the little stints in San Francisco and Berkeley, but primary residents were in point Richmond and Oakland.
[00:07:52] Randall: what was it like back then versus what it's like at this time,
[00:07:56] Nick: Well, there weren't as many people and it was a little cheaper to live, you know, and as an artist, you're always trying to live on the cheap, right. So, I mean, your goal is to, to be in your studio as much as you can and work as you have to, to cover your bills. So it was cheaper, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't as a fluid as it is now. You know, riding, riding, you know, it was entirely different than it was. And in Davis, everything out in Davis is flat land. The only thing you really had to contend with there was the wind which could be quite daunting at times though. Anytime you had the wind at your back If the conditions were just right, you'd be in this little envelope, this little bubble with the windier bath, where there was absolutely no resistance.
And it was a remarkable thing to experience because the only thing you would hear is the pedaling, the chain moving through the cracks and across the cassette. And, and other than that, and there was no, no resistance. It just like you just flew across the landscape. And that was pretty extreme.
didn't get to experience that when you were in Oakland, I mean, you had the Hills contend with and climbing up to, to a skyline drive and running her, riding the Ridge along through there, and certainly more traffic.
[00:09:05] Randall: So, I recall you mentioning like over a decade in the bay area,
[00:09:10] Nick: 20 years. Yeah. Was in the, in the, in the bay area for 20 years, it was a good experience. We had, when I was in point Richmond, we had a wonderful studio out there that was a live works situation. It was a, it was an illegal live in, you know, it. We're it was, it was such a stunning location. I mean, you were a seven acre parcel, surrounded by park on the San Francisco bay.
That it was pretty extraordinary. It's just the kind of place you don't typically see in this day and age, you know, everything's been developed now,
[00:09:44] Randall: Yeah. Hi, high end condos and lofts,
[00:09:47] Nick: Yup. And so, you know, we, we lived there. It was one of my last places to stay. And the property was sold. The park system bought the property that we were living in and they wanted to incorporate it to the rest of the park. So we all got the boot and I didn't want it to be a renter anymore. I wanted to buy something. So threw a bit of searching.
We found this place up here in Fort Bragg and made the move, even though we didn't know anybody. Yeah.
[00:10:12] Randall: And that was just a parcel of land at the time, right?
[00:10:15] Nick: That's true. It's it was small parcel, just over two and a half acres, fully wooded, which is what I really wanted to avoid. I really wanted to buy something I could remodel and at least have utilities in, you know, water and power, but we had nothing. It was a fully wooded property lot. And so amy, my wife and I, we spent a year of weekends coming up to the property from the bay area and logging the property ourself cleared about 200 trees. And some of these are pretty good sized trees. And we did that with an old forklift that I bought in an old international harvester that I had with a big PTO winch on the front.
So we spent a year clearing clearing the land Then it's then it went idle for a little bit of the work. What idle for a little bit, as I was involved in a project down in the bay area that kept me, kept me tied up for a number of years.
[00:11:05] Randall: Well, and that that's not just any project. So maybe give listeners a little bit of a background on that, on what that project was and your involvement with it.
[00:11:13] Nick: This was this was a cloud gate. It's more commonly known as the bean. It's a big piece of sculpture in the city of Chicago. Which is now part of, part of their landscape icon to the city. It's a, it's a 60 foot long, roughly 35 foot high, 45 foot wide, perfectly smooth mirror finish sculpture that's in the shape of a bean or something like a beam.
And that's, it's a pretty remarkable thing. So. I was involved with that for four and a half years first working on that on equipment we had to build for fabricating it and then doing some of the prototyping and then a lot of the fabrication of it. And then eventually back in Chicago for almost a year to see its installation and finish.
[00:11:59] Randall: And for anyone who hasn't seen it, I strongly recommend that you use. Look it up. For me, it's just this really surreal thing, just plopped in this park in Chicago, reflecting the skyline. It almost looks like CGI because it's too perfect. Given the scale of the thing. And you and I have talked about the tolerances involved and so on and like, think about just the weight of it and how that dis wants to distort the structure and the material.
What was your role specifically? You were the crew lead or the project lead?
[00:12:27] Nick: Onsite, I would have been the supervisor overseeing all of its installation and it was working in Chicago with the local iron workers ironworker 63, local 63, which is great group of fellows. I very much enjoyed working with them. And you know, this, the bean was, was a prototype. It was like nobody had ever had ever built anything like that.
And it was a combination of old world in hands-on kind of technology and computer generated. Imagery, you know, it's just like, you couldn't do it without being able to work with the hands, but you couldn't have done it without a computer because of all the tolerances that were involved.
I mean, we had to have a computer set up a piece of equipment that would scan each piece and make sure it was. tolerance of what the computer model was and the tolerance for each piece is like a 32nd vintage.
So, you know, and then you have 168 of those to put together and, the tolerances are, are no less stringent.
[00:13:24] Randall: Well, and you have this thing that's mirror polished. So It doesn't just have to look good on its own. This mirror Polish is going to reveal any sort of imperfection in the surface whatsoever and distort the image.
[00:13:35] Nick: It absolutely does, and reflecting the skyline the city scape, you know, with all the structures that are running plumbing, horizontal that grid work shows up shows any sort of mistake in the reflection on the piece.
[00:13:50] Randall: I hope to make it out there in person at some point before, too long to, to check it out, but just seeing the imagery in some videos of it, it's it's quite an achievement, I mean, it's one thing to design such a thing and imagine such a thing, but, this So. much about the execution of that, that is really a wonder, so well done there. And that's not the only large scale sculpture you've been involved with. That is a, probably a pretty well-known there's, there's another one that was outside the mountain bike hall of fame for some time. You know, I talk about that and how that came about.
[00:14:20] Nick: Sure. So that's still there and that's, that's something that's sort of. You know, back in 2011, up here on the coast, we were trying to have a little put together a little fat tire festival to sort of open up the area to people from surrounding areas. Let them know that we have some trail riding up here.
There was some stuff happening in the way of mountain biking and. Someone asked me to build some signage for this, for, you know, to put out there to advertise this. And you know, I'm a sculptor, right. I don't do flat stuff. So I've sort of scratched my head for a few days and wandered around the property.
And, you know, I realized I had these two big tractor tires sitting here off of a John Deere tractor. And I thought, you know what? I'll just make a big bike. I mean, that, that works is advertising as well as anything. And at that point, I was riding, riding, riding Ibis mojo when their carbon full suspension bikes.
And I thought I just modeled well model the big one after that. So, you know, I, I I took a photo of the bike and put it on an opaque projector. Proper scale on the walls here and to lay out of the frame and transferred that to a piece of plywood and cut that out and started building to that frame.
And slowly went at it. So, and it was through working on this thing, you know, and I got to know many of the people over at Ibis and my wife, again, Amy, my wife, she contacted Scott nickel. And send him some photos, which I knew he was like, great. I got some bone heads out here in the woods that think they're making sort of an Ibis bike.
Right. And because a photo shows two big tractor tires will apply with cutout out the frame and it's like, okay, what are these knuckle heads up to? And but she continued to communicate with them and, you know, send them photos as updates and, and you know, as I. Nearing completion in this thing, he thought, okay, maybe this is actually going to turn out to be something kind of cool and tail end of me working on.
And it's called Ibis Maximus tail end of working on IVIS Maximus. Scott asked me one day, it's like, so Nick, what's your day job that, you know, you're able to do this. And at that point I just sent him a photo of the bean and he's like, oh, Okay, carry on. So anyhow, it was through making this big bike that I got to know Scott, and then then many of the other partners down there in Ibis, in Santa Cruz.
So all of which are a great bunch of people. So I've been very fortunate to get to know them.
[00:17:03] Randall: And how did it end up at the mountain bike hall of fame in fairfax, California.
[00:17:07] Nick: were trying to figure out where to put it. It must've been Scott cause IVIS eventually bought it, cause it was sitting up here, not really doing anything. It was sort of lawn art and I believe it was probably Scott that was looking to place it. And, of course he knows all the old guard down there and, and Fairfax and.
Joe breeze who runs the place is, you know, he, I believe he mentored Scott for a little while, early on, so they, they know one another. And so I think Scott set this up and, then segwayed over to Joe breeze.
[00:17:41] Randall: So, as somebody who runs a small bicycle brand, I can just say like what a cool, that must be to actually have one of your bikes, especially something very iconic. Like that's a very distinctive looking frame. If some bozo in the woods, up in Mendocino county ever wants to make a, make a giant version of one of our bikes.
I'd be happy to oblige, wink, wink, nudge, nudge,
[00:18:04] Nick: Okay. I'll keep that mind.
[00:18:06] Randall: So, all right, so now you're, you're in Mendocino. You've come back from doing the bean. You've cleared your lands. What'd you end up doing from there?
[00:18:14] Nick: So back from Chicago foundations in, from the house by then, I mean, it'd been in maybe a couple of years by that point, came back and, and started building our house and studio and earnest. And our house and studio are actually two old temper frame barns that we dismantled back in Ohio. There were a hundred plus years old.
They're all Morrison, tenon, wooden pegs, holding them together. Something we had. Going back in 2000 and dismantled in Ohio.
[00:18:43] Randall: And when you say we, you mean like you and your family? Yeah.
[00:18:46] Nick: yeah, Amy and my kids who were 12 and 14 at that point. And, and then Amy's parents and her brother came out for a week and I had a good friend of mine. That came out with his new girlfriend from Manhattan to kind a hand for a week.
And then I had a buddy that, that we paid to come out there for the three weeks that it actually took us to dismantle this. So that was a great project. I had a lot of fun and for my kids, it was the first time for them being back in the Midwest and it's sort of familiar stomping grounds to me, you know, I'm not from that particular.
We, where we dismantled the Barnes, but I am from Northeast Ohio and the lightening bugs were all off familiar. My kids got to see that sort of stuff and they got to play with fireworks for the first time.
[00:19:29] Randall: And again you know, the space up there is one of the more special spaces I've ever visited. You have me up there, I think three, four years ago. And. The home is beautiful and that's one of the bonds. Right. And then the back section of the workshop it makes me think of Craig Cathy's. South of Santa Cruz or in the Santa Cruz area it's another one of these places where you just have tools and projects everywhere and it has a certain degree of organization, but a sufficient amount of, of, of chaos.
And you can tell it's, it's like a place where a lot of experimentation happens. A lot of creativity happens. And just the number of specialized tools that you have many of which you've made, it's really, really cool to see. And you occasionally hold exhibits up there too, right?
[00:20:10] Nick: Open studio from time to time. And I'm hoping to do that again this year. If COVID actually is settling down, you're going to open the place back up again. So got lots of new work going on and it's good to invite people in, let them see the work that I'm working on, but also let them see the space that it's actually created in too, because I think that that puts a different spin on things and it gives people a little more insight to what's going on.
[00:20:34] Randall: Yeah. And in fact, there's a, you have a video on.
your website now, remind me the URL for your.
[00:20:40] Nick: So website is jnicktaylor.com. Instagram is a good place to see what's what's current and it's the same, same J Nick Taylor.
[00:20:49] Randall: Well, the website does have this really nice video that shows you and your studio working on some of your pieces. And then there's a number of your pieces. Put on a. Pan so that you can get a 3d view of it and you work in different various materials, metal, and wood.
You work on things that can fit. What are your smaller pieces and what are your bigger pieces and talk actually, lets you do that. Talk a bit about like the type of work that you do and the inspiration for it.
[00:21:17] Nick: So I'm working in metal or wood. I rarely combined the two materials. So my studio is kind of divided up in half. One, ended up doing metalwork on the other end. I'm doing woodwork in all the pieces. These days are pretty much inspired by nature. You know, my act or environment, they don't necessarily make reference to any one, given any one given thing.
But probably a lot of different elements of what one might experience if they were out in nature. So the work is pretty organic. The metal work I'm, I'm doing a lot of welding forging grinding to get the shapes. Their scale can range anywhere from about two feet in height to I'm working on something right now it's about seven feet.
So some, you know, some stuff's tabletop and size. So other pieces are certainly floor standing pieces. Larger, you know, largest wood pieces. I mean, what pieces. I'll tend to be a little larger. You know, they stand for, you know, maybe four feet up to about nine feet. They also are very organic, but some of them are carved from single pieces of wood.
And other pieces are a composite of pieces that are glued up and then carved back into. So all of them are very in a hands-on very labor intensive. I'm getting three to four pieces done a year, a larger piece, whether it be metal or wood can take me 10 months to a year alone to work on so that a lot of hand work.
And I've just, haven't figured out a way to expedite that. You know, I keep looking, keep trying to figure out ways to move faster, but it always seems to come back to hand work.
[00:22:56] Randall: Well, And just looking on some of the imagery, I've seen a few of these pieces in person, and there are pieces that are very clearly flowing with the contours of the wood that you're working with, but then there's also some vision that's imposed on it to some degree as well.
Some of your metalwork, there's pieces that for me, looked like, contorted musical instruments and every angle tells a different story and evokes a different set of feelings and images . It's very abstract. And very interesting. Looking at your work, it really draws one in to explore it from different angles.
[00:23:30] Nick: And that's really important. You know, when I was a kid and in school art school, one of the things that was hammered into me was, any given piece of sculpture should invite you to walk all the way around it and explore it. You shouldn't be able to stand on one side of it and know what's happening on the other side.
So it should shift and change and draw you in and draw you around the given piece.
[00:23:53] Randall: So let's bring the bike back into the conversation. How does the bike fit into your process or your day to day or week to week routine?
[00:24:04] Nick: So, these days unfortunate enough to be in the studio four days a week, full time on interrupted. But I can only be in the studio for those four days. And then I'm like maxed out, I can't put any more time in, I've got to put my head in a different space. And so I spent two days on the bike, out in the woods.
So here in Fort Bragg Mendocino area, we've got, we've got really nice trail system. And then we also have unlimited number of gravel roads. I mean, much of our mountain biking is in Jackson demonstration, state forest. If I'm not mistaken, they have a minimum of 300 miles of gravel road in there. Right. And then there are all these entities that bought up against Jackson's demonstration state forest. You have big river state park, you've got conservation fund. And then north of Jackson, you have lime timber now, lime timber and conservation fund land. You have to have permission to be on their property. But I think, conservation fund certainly gives that pretty readily and I've never heard of anybody having an issue on online timber and lime timber is 150,000 acres. Right? Jackson demonstrations state forest is, is just under 50,000 acres, big river state park is like 7,500 acres and conservation fund. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I think there are 30 to 40,000 acres. In all of these places have gravel roads running around on them.
Right. I'm sure you could chain this stuff all together and, and get up into use hall, which is about an hour north of here. And, and, you've got unlimited resource up there for variety and gravel roads as well.
[00:25:43] Randall: And you're involved in a lot of the trail building up there as well.
[00:25:46] Nick: That's my, the form of sculpting. Sculpting the landscape since I've been a little kid was a little kid and working out doors it's part of my core as part of what I really love doing. So I it's like I run a trail crew up here work in, and we're building, maintaining and building trails and Jackson demonstration, state forest.
And we're doing that in conjunction with Cal fire and Cal fire are the Stewart's the managers of the forest. So we've got a 10 year relationship that we've developed with them and And it's going strong. You know, we've currently got some projects going. Everything these days is being hand dug though.
Two years ago we had had a new experience with getting some trails machine belt and we got to two and a quarter mile trail machine built that we were able to lay out and, and. Through a sponsor, a one track mind, better known as OTM who funded it. We were able to build this new trail that connected a bunch of other stuff together and made for a better trail system.
[00:26:46] Randall: So, for listeners, you want to explore this area, want to learn more about it and get a toe in the water, what resources are available, what clubs are available to get a handle on what you're describing, which is this massive amount of space that you could very easily get lost in and not necessarily find the best trails
[00:27:05] Nick: So the trail work that I'm doing is, is under or with Mendocino coast, cyclists, where the local cycle group. I could be contacted through them or the club president, Dan sweet could be contacted and we can set you up, we can be found on Facebook under Mendocino coast, cyclists.
That's probably the easiest way. I'm sort of thinking this through. I'm thinking out loud. And we have group rides, so that have been closed during COVID, but I think they're beginning to open those back up and people can join these group rides and they typically are happening three times a week, Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. But we also, there's a list serve if you're a club member, this is probably the best way to get any sort of information is if you join the club you can get on a listserv and you can get all the chatter that's going on and you get notifications of rides.
You can ask questions if you're trying to find, find your way around for the first time.
[00:27:58] Randall: Very cool. so before we finish up, you've mentioned your wife, Amy and, you know, sounds like a pretty extraordinary woman to have supported, everything from buying a plot of land in the middle of nowhere, well, not the middle of nowhere in a very beautiful area, but, a good distance from the city to going out with you and the kids and, tearing down some barns and so on. Tell us about that dynamic.
[00:28:21] Nick: Well, Amy's a pretty extraordinary person and she's been game to go on a lot of adventures, and are adventures that we've developed together. She's a brilliant person. She's very capable. She tolerates me. She has her own business, a land use permit agent up here on the coast. She's the go-to person. If you wanted to develop anything in the coastal zone
[00:28:43] Randall: Clearly cares about the work that you do in doing things like, reaching out to people like Scott Nichols over at IBUs to get attention on your projects and so on.
[00:28:51] Nick: Yep.
[00:28:52] Randall: Well, is there anything else that you'd like to discuss while we're on the pod today?
[00:28:55] Nick: I think that pretty well, does it, I mean, please, please visit the website and Instagram and let me know what you think. And if you happen to be up this way and Mendocino Fort Bragg area, give a shout out. So we love showing people around and the riding up here is pretty extraordinary. And if you want to, you know, if you like being out in the woods, doing mountain biking, you can, you can go for all day rides and not see anybody up here at all.
You know, if you're riding during the week, which is pretty extraordinary to have the woods to yourself.
[00:29:25] Randall: Yeah, I can definitely relate to that. Well, we will be sure to get some links in the show notes for this episode, for anyone looking to connect with you or to learn more about the Mendocino trail network. Nick, it's been great catching up with you. It's been some time and as I mentioned, I had been looking forward to it for quite a while and really appreciate you joining us.
[00:29:45] Nick: Well, thank you very much for having me on Randall. And it says really nice and it's good to spend a little time with you as well. Don't see you often enough these days.
[00:29:54] Randall: we'll try to rectify that later on this year, make a trip up the coast.
[00:29:58] Nick: Alrighty you take care of man.
[00:30:00] Randall: Be well be well
[00:30:01] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Thank you for joining us. I hope you enjoyed that interview. Between Randall and Nick Taylor. Be sure to check out Nick's extraordinary work@jnicktaylor.com. Or on Instagram at Jane, Nick Taylor.
We'll have links for these as well as the IVIS Maximus and cloud gate in the show notes. If you're interested in connecting with myself or Randall, please visit us@theridership.com. That's www.theridership.com. Join our global cycling community. Everything's free. And I'm sure you'll get a lot out of the interactions with your fellow gravel athletes and also your hosts here at the gravel ride podcast. If you're interested in supporting the podcast, you can visit us@buymeacoffee.com slash the gravel ride.
Additionally ratings and reviews are hugely helpful. And with that until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
Recorded live at the Life Time Sea Otter Classic, we sit down with Michelle Duffy to discuss the 2022 Life Time Grand Prix. One race down, five to go in this season long series across XC MTB Races and Gravel Races. It will be exciting to see how it unfolds.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Michelle Duffy Lifetime[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the podcast. We're once again, live at the lifetime seawater classic. We're joined by Michelle Duffy. Who's the director of events, brand and content strategy at lifetime, and has been intimately involved in the lifetime grand Prix series. The grand Prix is a season long event series comprising of six lifetime events.
Equally spread between mountain and gravel events that allow professional gravel athletes to battle it out over the year in a unique point series. I think it's going to be a lot of fun to watch and i wanted to make sure that we got michelle on just to talk about the ins and outs of the series and what she's excited about
Before we jump in, we need to thank this week. Sponsor the feed.
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And it gives you kind of the supplements you need as an athlete. The feed formulas are personalized supplements for athletes developed in part with Dr. Kevin Sprouse from EDF pro cycling team. He's the team doctor over there and it's following the same protocols that top athletes use. What I love about it is if you go over to the feed.com/the gravel ride, you can customize the individual supplements in your pill pack every day. So if you're needing a little extra recovery, or if you're an aging athlete, you can customize these for your needs in any given month.
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So no more messy bottles on the counter. You can just grab a bag and go every morning. So I recommend you take a look at the feed. It's become my go-to source for all my hydration and gel needs. It's nice to have a single marketplace. That's really focused. On sports, nutrition. I often find myself in places where I'm just not really getting that focused offering.
So I'm super comfortable recommending the feed.com for all your nutritional needs.
Would that message behind us? Let's dive right into my interview with Michelle Duffy . At the lifetime seattle classic
Michelle welcome back to the show.
[00:03:07] Michelle Duffy: thank you, Craig. It's been a while. Yeah.
[00:03:08] Craig Dalton: It's great to see you here at the sea Otter classic
[00:03:11] Michelle Duffy: as well. And the flash is
[00:03:13] Craig Dalton: this the kickoff to the lifetime sort of, I know it's the kickoff to the lifetime grand Prix. Is that your first event
[00:03:18] Michelle Duffy: of the year? We've had a few road running events, but this is the first cycling event off-road event of
[00:03:23] Craig Dalton: the season.
And it's so exciting. Is this the biggest event in the calendar in terms of participation?
[00:03:29] Michelle Duffy: Definitely. Yes. You know, we have. Sorry. We have road running events that are 15,000 athletes, but in terms of scale, 74,000 attendees here, 500 exhibitors, there's nothing compares to that. What year of
[00:03:44] Craig Dalton: this yacht or classic is
[00:03:45] Michelle Duffy: this?
It started in 1991. So,
[00:03:48] Craig Dalton: so I, I remember doing some of the races here, back in the mid nineties, on my
[00:03:53] Michelle Duffy: mountain bike. Oh, I've heard some fascinating stories in those
[00:03:57] Craig Dalton: days. Now the festival, I mean, Just this fascinating intersection of all the disciplines of cycling. It's hard to describe. I mean, if you, you name it, if it's on a bike, it's probably has an event here.
[00:04:11] Michelle Duffy: Absolutely. I mean anything from e-bikes to gravel cross-country mountain bike, dual slalom, downhill and Duro. You name it. It's here. Kids races. We have a little bit of it all here. It's hard to tie it all together. Yeah.
[00:04:23] Craig Dalton: Super cool. Watching the kids on the pump track, and it's just such a good family atmosphere here.
[00:04:28] Michelle Duffy: And I think that was Frank Yohannan's goal. When he started the event really was how are we bringing families? And bike together. So often these bike races, it's hard to integrate your family into that experience, but here you can camp with your family. You can attend the festival, they can learn how to ride a mountain bike on the pump track, and you can participate in a race yourself.
So I think. That's really how this started and what's made it so successful. We have families that have been here since 1991, and now they're taking their kids here and we were going to take their kids here.
[00:05:02] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And the how many booths are here? The festival atmosphere. It's so unusual for consumers to get in front of so many manufacturers from the bike industry.
Yeah. And
[00:05:12] Michelle Duffy: vice versa for the, for the brands to have this many consumers here and there's over 500 brands.
[00:05:18] Craig Dalton: That's amazing. Yeah. It's probably took me two days to kind of visit everybody across the booth
[00:05:23] Michelle Duffy: after, and even still, like, you probably didn't get a chance to engage with them all. Yeah,
[00:05:28] Craig Dalton: that's absolutely right.
Interestingly, I talked to a couple of riders who were doing multiple events. They brought a couple bikes down, different disciplines, really making the most of their time here in
[00:05:38] Michelle Duffy: Monterrey. Athletes. I heard some names today in the gravel event that participated in cross-country yesterday. We even have some pretty legit riders that took place in the e-bike race.
So it's, it's always fun to talk to them and see what bikes they chose. Yeah. Uh, I participated
[00:05:54] Craig Dalton: in am I, if I'm going to say it correctly, log Villa. Yeah, I, I should apologize in advance if I'm in articulate. Cause my brain is still rattled.
[00:06:02] Michelle Duffy: I'm with you. It's been a long few days here, fun few days, but definitely zaps the brain.
[00:06:08] Craig Dalton: It was definitely a fun event. And I would say I would characterize it as a bit unusual for the gravel races I've done because it was very single-track heavy, which I appreciated as someone, you know, obviously the lifetime produces a lot of events in a lot of different stuff. Was that intentional to kind of make it a little bit of a different type of event than some of the other events
[00:06:27] Michelle Duffy: on the calendar.
Thai the event, the overall experience of seawater. And it's important to us that all of our events around the country feel unique and also important us that all of our events here at seawater have their differentiators. So definitely was intentional. I know not all gravel cyclists have the best bike handling myself included.
But it keeps it interesting.
[00:06:50] Craig Dalton: Yeah. A hundred percent. So for the listener, it's very single track heavy course. Stunning views across the corridor.
[00:06:56] Michelle Duffy: It's absolutely beautiful here. And after holding the event in October, in the fall, it was amazing to have everyone back together, but being back on the calendar at this time of year, when everything is green, the birds are chirping.
The sun shining. Yeah, it's
[00:07:10] Craig Dalton: stunning. Yeah. You get on these Ridge lines and despite how much my back was hurting, I was still appreciating it and enjoy it. Yeah.
[00:07:18] Michelle Duffy: Yeah. It's it's great.
[00:07:20] Craig Dalton: So I wanted to talk to you about the lifetime grand Prix. We haven't had anybody on the show talking about it yet. It's the inaugural race.
Can you just give us an overview of the series and then we'll get into some more detailed questions? Yeah,
[00:07:31] Michelle Duffy: absolutely. So the lifetime grand Prix comprise is of six of our events. Off-road events. Multidiscipline so, you know, cross country this weekend and we'll be doing. Out in Emporia next. We selected 60 athletes, so 30 men, 30 women who are competing for a quarter million dollar prize purse across the season.
And the breakdown is we'll take their best five of six scores so they can choose to attend only five and assume the risk of finishing the others or we'll drop their lowest score. The point system's pretty. Easy to understand. And it's a sliding scale, 30 points to first place, one point to 30th place, and we'll score it that way across the season.
[00:08:22] Craig Dalton: Gotcha. So many questions. W how, what was the decision-making process look like to decide, to have cross country mountain bike racing and gravel racing in the same series?
[00:08:32] Michelle Duffy: I think it's just totally unique. There's Def there's mountain bike series. There's road. Series. I don't know if we've, well, we're starting to see, you know, the UCI coming out with the gravel series and that's not lifetime events are unique in that.
They're all different. But we're seeing the same elite riders that are wanting to attend a mountain bike race, and a gravel event. And it's not for everyone. Some, some gravel riders are not interested in riding a mountain bike and they're going to come to our gravel events and they'll purchase participate.
Those are scored the same way and all of our athletes will be treated in the same fashion. But when we look at our portfolio, it's like, wow, we, how lucky are we that we have the sea Otter classic and Unbound gravel and the Leadville trail, 100 mountain bike, race, and crushing the Tuscher in Toronto again in big sugar, gravel.
And it goes on. And when we looked at our portfolio, we've been talking about this for a few years and I don't know if the timing was right. As we've seen more and more elites coming it's we've paused and been thinking like we're seeing mass participation grow. We're seeing these former world tour riders, former world champion mountain bike racers coming and participating in our events.
And they're participating in our events because they want to stand on the same start line as the mass participant. It's good for them and their brand to connect with the consumers. They're enjoying the experience of standing on the same start line as the everyday rider and walking through an expo.
These are things that they don't get to do in Europe. And, but what's missing is, you know, a few, a few decades ago, he lost a lot of faith in road cycling and that impacted fandom is the term that we're using internally of, of professional cycling in the U S. People don't care about those professional athletes, but in mass, we're not talking about cycling on ESPN on a regular basis.
And I don't know if we'll get there, but we hope to we hope that this series helps north America reconnect with elite cyclists and these athletes start to become household names. And this is. I don't know, league of sorts.
[00:10:45] Craig Dalton: I think it's a lot of fun. I mean, I think it pushes the rider's technical abilities.
I've always been sort of griping about the ratification of gravel. So I love that these athletes are just going to have to find a different skill set, develop a different skill, set, understand how to ride a different bike. It's fun. Yeah.
[00:11:04] Michelle Duffy: I mean, if you look at our.
The crusher and the Tuscher is a gravel race, but the top riders wanted on a mountain bike last year. Right. So there, I think ratification can happen a little bit, especially when there's more elite riders. So there's more group riding. But the, the technicality of a lot of our courses it varies and it does require a different skillset
[00:11:30] Craig Dalton: for the athletes who require.
Just a lot of thought about the season, right? Preparing for an event like seawater and the cross-country style, mountain bike race is quite different than Unbound at 200 miles.
[00:11:41] Michelle Duffy: Absolutely. And I think we saw a lot of our, you know, more traditional gravel cyclist road cyclist came here and they didn't come off the line the way a Keegan Swenson did.
He was a man with a plan. Like he was out there to win that event and get his 30 points. But we did see a lot of other athletes. Came out here and we didn't have all 30 men and all 30 women. So they scored a few points, even if it was a, it was just survival. Consistency is going to be key throughout the season.
And it was definitely fun to see some of our athletes that were really stretching themselves in a single track cross country event coming out. And they took the challenge on and I think that's really cool. It's they, they're not shying away from the challenge. Some falls out there yesterday, but that was part of it.
And if any of these athletes knew what they were getting into, and I think it's something that excites them, the energy was really high.
[00:12:33] Craig Dalton: Yeah. That's super cool. I didn't get a chance to see the coverage yet from yesterday. I know who the winner is. I'm not going to put you on the spot for race commentary, but how would you characterize, like how the race unfolded?
I know in a lot of mountain bike races, you got to get to that single track
[00:12:46] Michelle Duffy: first. Yeah. What's funny, is that both the men's and women's race unfolded almost identically within the top three. So coming off the line, they they're on this racetrack Laguna Seca, and they hop on. Pretty wide dirt fire road and climb a hill.
And it's just under a mile before they hit double track. So you could see I was in the lead out Mazda vehicle. You could see them fighting for position, especially the traditional mountain bikers. They wanted to get to the single track first, knowing that their bike handling skills were better. And they, they rode, it was pretty decided who was going to be.
In contention about 10 riders deep yesterday on both the men's and women's side. It worked its way down to three writers, deep on both sides with only maybe six miles to go. The women definitely had a bigger group of five there that it was anybody's day. And then Mo Wilson put it down, climbing a hill and it was a risky move for her, but she.
Came you just kind of watched everyone else come apart. And she was the strongest woman out there yesterday.
[00:13:58] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I talked to her a little bit yesterday and she said that last hill made her, made the race for her.
[00:14:02] Michelle Duffy: Yeah, it definitely did. And it was kind of amazing. We have flow bikes doing live coverage and they got it all on drone on the broadcast.
And you could just see the race coming apart and the men's men's wear the same. It was, I don't know if you've talked to Keegan. But as he hit that climb, he went and Russell, Vince or Wilde said the same thing. He just, he gave it his all, but he couldn't stay with Keegan on that,
[00:14:22] Craig Dalton: that, that climb has been part of this Jada classic for 30.
As I approached it, I remembered it from decades
[00:14:29] Michelle Duffy: ago. Well, w R M cross country mountain bike race was UCI sanctioned before this year and it, but it wasn't prior to that. And it used to be a longer loop cross-country style, mountain bike, race, and we wanted to get back to that. Let them let the riders see beautiful Salinas valley.
And I think that. They got to experience a little bit more of that and got those traditional climbs in those traditional views. And we only saw them, it was a two lap race. So we just saw them at the halfway
[00:15:00] Craig Dalton: point. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think it was a really fun course too. Yeah.
[00:15:04] Michelle Duffy: As the writers. Yeah. Loose and loose at times, but overall and fairly good.
[00:15:11] Craig Dalton: There's a lot of people hitting the whoops and saying, wow, that kind of stuff, which is great to see. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the selection process. Not necessarily like how it went down, but you seem to have selected a lot of diverse writers. I know we've got former Olympians on the women's side.
Like Andrew and Amber Neven who know, not known for mountain biking or gravel racing at all, but
[00:15:38] Michelle Duffy: coming right
[00:15:38] Craig Dalton: off the Olympics. Yeah. Yeah. Which clearly, like she's a phenomenal talent. And then as I know, you've got some track people on the men's side as well, some of the traditional mountain bikers, some gravel riders.
So what, what did that look like? And it must have been fun, hard, but.
[00:15:54] Michelle Duffy: It was hard but fun. That's a good way to describe it. We weren't sure what was going to happen in the inaugural year. Like, are we going to get enough writers to fill the field? Is it going to be fast amateur riders and just hitting the refresh button on the application and watching the names that float in.
We had over 200. Elite professional cyclists, that applied to be a part of the lifetime grand Prix that does make the selection process really challenging. And I mean, we're learning a lot, but this felt like the best way for us to do it this year with no year over a year learnings, yet to do an application, let's find out who is interested, who is telling us that they want to take on this challenge.
They want to. Our goal again, is to grow cycling. Who's going to be a great ambassador for that. And we looked at race resume and those that we thought would be really competitive, like who truly has a challenge, a chance to be in the top 10 throughout the season was really important. And then just who is going to inspire people to follow the sport.
But I think we have a lot of really amazing humans that do a lot of amazing things off the bike to.
[00:17:07] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think it's going to be really fun. It's so cool that you have flow bikes doing the live coverage. So regardless of where you are, get on flow bikes, you can watch the series unfold. And I think we're going to see some of those just human interest stories about, you know, who's skilled on the mountain bike who hate, you know, who's having counseling and I
[00:17:23] Michelle Duffy: hated mountain bikers had their day.
And, and that was amazing to see. I mean, some of the lesser talked about names within the lifetime grandpa. We're finishing in the top five. And I loved to see that. I don't think there was that many surprises in the top three. But, but there also, there was no one's been talking about Alex wild and he's been due to have his day and it came for him yesterday.
He wrote an amazing event. Like I loved seeing that. I loved seeing Evelyn dong, who finished in fifth on the women's side. She hasn't really been talked about as a favorite of the lifetime grand Prix. And she was up there with the women all day. Yep.
[00:17:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I think it's going to be interesting transitioning eight weeks from now to Unbound 200 mile race.
Definitely different skillset. But I imagine if you've got a top five here at. You've got a little extra motivation in you. Maybe like you didn't feel like you could be competitive at the 200 mile, but now you're saying, well, I've got a bunch of points in the bank and I got to go
[00:18:16] Michelle Duffy: for it. Exactly. And we think, I think there's consistency is really going to be important.
And as long as you score a bunch of points at the front, Showing up and Unbound is so interesting because the finisher rate is low. But I think now what's going to make that event interesting is there's more motivation to finish. So you might be having the heck of a day out there and normally pull the plug.
But getting to the finish line is super important for you because you can still finish in the top 20, because inevitably we're going to have some writers that are going to DNF, and we do have some writers that are opting out of it. Yeah.
[00:18:58] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's really interesting. I imagined as a professional athlete, just trying to figure out how to manage the diversity of races that you have to tackle.
And I don't know if we mentioned this on air, but you can drop one, one event through the season.
[00:19:10] Michelle Duffy: Some, some athletes are choosing to drop one event. Some actually were injured leading into sea Otter. And so that's their drop of this season. And. Then some are going to do all six and they get to drop their lowest performance.
You have Pete Stenton unfortunately broke his wrist yesterday and he rode, he finished it in 21st, yesterday. So he got some points and he's hoping that this is the event that he can drop. Definitely equipped to be a top contender throughout the season, but it was to his benefit that he attended the event yesterday and still got something.
Yeah. And
[00:19:45] Craig Dalton: the, the Leadville 100 is on the docket as well. Right. So another just sort of unique, you know, has its own skillset required. High, high elevation.
[00:19:57] Michelle Duffy: Yeah. One could argue. That Unbound gravel 200 is the most intimidating event because of the mileage. But then you look at an event like the Leadville trail, 100 mountain bike race, which is at high elevation and requires a ton of climbing.
Yep.
[00:20:11] Craig Dalton: Super intimidating for any athlete tackling that
[00:20:13] Michelle Duffy: one. Although it's interesting because crushing the Tuscher is the event prior to that. And there's a lot of climbing at that event and it is also at elevations. It's kind of a good prep leading in crushers, the only mountain top finish in gravel and there they spend most of their day climbing at that race.
[00:20:31] Craig Dalton: That's what I've heard. What's the, what's the time difference a gap between those two events and it's exactly a month. Okay. Yeah. And lentils after
[00:20:40] Michelle Duffy: crusher. Yeah. So the order seawater obviously is this weekend. First or second weekend in April and we have eight weeks until Unbound, gravel and Emporia. And then after that we have six weeks, so crusher four weeks, and then we get on this four week cadence.
[00:20:57] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's going to be interesting to see the climbers, how they fair and Leadville versus Unbound. Just fascinating to me the whole thing.
[00:21:06] Michelle Duffy: Yeah. I, I'm really excited to see some individuals that are just so. Talented within their discipline, have the opportunity to rise and have an amazing day like we saw yesterday, but then also excited for these athletes that are just going to be chipping away every week, landing themselves in the top 10.
And and who that will be like, who from yesterday are going to be consistently in the top 10 for the rest of the
[00:21:32] Craig Dalton: season. Yeah. And I think that the existence of this series and all the capital on the line. Is also providing a lot of motivation for athletes that didn't get selected this year to show themselves and say, Hey, you missed out on me.
Yeah. Look at me.
[00:21:44] Michelle Duffy: And, and I, I love that. I mean, it's, it was really hard to make the decision and especially knowing, you know, you have to put your business hat on because we are hearing from some athletes that this has changed their year. I mean, it's, we're occupying a lot of their schedule, but.
They've been able to sign sponsors that they hadn't prior. And we've gotten that feedback from multiple athletes, which was part of, part of the goal is to help them be able to do this as a full-time job, but as we're making the selection, you know, that those that you're not selecting are not getting that opportunity.
And we had do have a handful of athletes that are going to be showing up at a lot of these events and saying, Hey, actually I did deserve to be here. I'm finishing in the top 30. All of the events within the lifetime grand Prix. And that's amazing because this is not a one-year activation for us. This is a long-term long-term things.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think,
[00:22:40] Craig Dalton: I mean, you still have the opportunity to win any one of these races, regardless of whether you're selected for the lifetime
[00:22:45] Michelle Duffy: grand Prairie. Exactly. Yesterday, it just so happened that the top three were all also lifetime grand Prix athletes, but I don't foresee that happening at Unbound gravel.
I mean, you have someone like Ian Boswell, the raining. And Lauren D crescendo. They're not doing the lifetime grand Prix. But I expect to see them performing really well at Unbound gravel. Yeah. You've
[00:23:07] Craig Dalton: got people who focus on the Leadville 100 as their jam. That's the
[00:23:11] Michelle Duffy: one they want to win. But I think that's, that's, what's going to help keep it really honest because there's going to be varying goals at these big events.
So. We've started to see lots of front of pack riding in a pack and coming down to a sprint finish, which is also amazing because this gravel community is about building community and comradery. And, but now that we have both all this money on the line, do the lifetime grand Prix and other athletes that are not participating and maybe have their own incentives with their separate brands.
Seeing how the races unfold this year. I, I am predicting will be different because every point matters for the grand Prix athletes and those that aren't in the grand Prix. I have something to prove. And so I don't know. I don't know if we'll see as much. PAC riding sleep miles
[00:24:06] Craig Dalton: in the days, coming up to the event here, you signed up a pretty big sponsor.
[00:24:11] Michelle Duffy: Yes. We now have a presenting sponsor in Mazda. They we've been talking with them since late fall of last year and they just launched an off-road vehicle, the Mazda CX 50. And as they were doing their research, they, they view the cyclist as a target consumer for them. Okay. They also just, I mentioned earlier, amazing humans doing amazing things.
That's what we've been spending all of our time, talking to Mazda about that's something that they want to be a part of. They're not interested in the super salesy tactics. They're more interested in like content reconnecting and connecting with, with this consumer base. And they're really passionate about the outdoors.
And
[00:24:51] Craig Dalton: is it a sponsorship just for the
[00:24:53] Michelle Duffy: season? They are the presenting sponsor of big sugar gravel now. They're signing. It's a two or three-year deal. I shouldn't know that, but my brain's not firing, but they're on for multiple years with us. And then they've also become official sponsors of all of the events that are in the lifetime grant.
But yeah, that's
[00:25:09] Craig Dalton: super exciting. Yeah. It's just great to see money coming into the sport to support a series of this
[00:25:14] Michelle Duffy: nature. If you read any interviews from chemo, Seymour, our president of events early on, he actually called out auto is one of the industries. Departed from supporting cycling. After just, you know, a few decades ago of a lot of brands are moving themselves from this sport and Mazda has done some things locally in California in a smaller scale.
Just I think outside of that region, people weren't really aware that they've been slowly starting to get their feet wet in dirt and mountain biking. And to see an automobile company come back and believe in us and believe in this series. It says a lot for us as well. Like this is, we're doing it. Like this is going to be big.
We have a really big brand that believes in us, our events, our athletes, our participants, our community. Yeah. It's super
[00:26:06] Craig Dalton: validating and great to see. Thank you so much for all the time. I know it's been a
[00:26:10] Michelle Duffy: super long week. Thank you. I'm glad we could connect and chat and talk in person better than zoom.
[00:26:17] Craig Dalton: Yeah, absolutely. And I look forward to just watching the series on full. Again, a reminder to the listener. You can watch these events on flow bikes. You can follow them on social media. There's all kinds of great way to get access to what I think is going to be a great journey and a lot of fun stories throughout the year.
Particularly as we have two or three events behind us, we're going to see who's in the lead who needs to catch up. Does it change their race tactics to try to get a win when they're behind?
Yes,
[00:26:45] Michelle Duffy: so much fun. I'm excited to see how everything
[00:26:49] Craig Dalton: unfolds. I, for one hope that it comes down to big sugar. I
[00:26:53] Michelle Duffy: do too.
Let's keep it. Interesting. Amazing.
[00:26:57] Craig Dalton: All right. Get some rest. Good to
[00:26:58] Michelle Duffy: talk to you. Thank you. Thanks Greg.
[00:27:01] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. I hope you enjoyed learning more about the lifetime grand Prix series from Michelle. I know as a fan of the sport, I'm excited to just watch and see how it unfolds. Next up for racing is Unbound. And I think that's about seven weeks out.
At this point and you can go over to lifetime's grand Prix website to see the current standings of athletes and see what's coming up next in the calendar beyond Unbound big, thanks to our friends at the feed for sponsoring this week's episode of the gravel rod podcast. If you're interested in connecting with me, encourage you to join the ridership, just visit www.theridership.com.
That's our free global cycling community. You can connect with myself and hundreds of other athletes from around the world and just. Chat about your love of gravel cycling and all things bikes. If you're interested in supporting the podcast, ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated as well as any financial contributions via buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride.
Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
We spent the last weekend at Life Time’s Sea Otter Classic in Monterey, CA catching up with industry friends and athletes from around the world. We captured a dozen mini-interviews to give you a feel of the event.
Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (code TheGravelRide)
Episode includes:
Fox, Classified, WolfTooth/Otso, Blackheard, Finishline, Fat Chance, Vitus, Kav Helmets, Surley, Enduro Bearings, Redshift, Transrockies Gravel Royale and Corvus.
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This week Craig and Randall continue the discussion on the considerations for Craig’s custom gravel frame build. We dig into the history of Reach and Stack, the meaning of BB drop and how different materials afford different options and considerations for construction.
Episode sponsor: Therabody RecoveryAir JetBoots
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
In the Dirt #29[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to in the dirt from the gravel ride podcast. My name's Craig Dalton. I'm your host. And I'm going to be joined shortly by my cohost Randall Jacobs. In the, in the dirt episodes, Randall and I take an opportunity catch up on everything going on in gravel, cycling. Uh, Everything you need to know in between our long form interviews on the gravel ride podcast
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Would that business out of the way, let's jump into this week's episode
[00:03:46] Craig: Hey Randall, how you doing?
[00:03:49] Randall: Well, a little bit under the weather here in Boston, but hopefully we'll be recovered before I head out your way in a couple of days. Are you?
[00:03:57] Craig: to see you got to get over this cold.
[00:03:59] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually hoping to see a lot of or at least a few of our listeners as well. We got Seattle coming up.
[00:04:07] Craig: Yeah, that's a good place to start. Yeah, so we're, we're getting we're both of us are going to be at Seattle this year, which is exciting. I think we did sea Otter together two years ago. That's on,
[00:04:16] Randall: Two or three years ago. Yeah. Whenever you know, and that, that, that innocent pre COVID era
[00:04:23] Craig: That's
[00:04:23] Randall: when I was still living in the bay area.
[00:04:26] Craig: For the listener that may not be in the region or may not have heard of seawater. It's actually an event that's been going on in the Monterey bay peninsula area since 1991 mountain bike started out at because a mountain bike festival had added on road racing criteriums. They had a cyclocross race at one point observed trials.
Like you name it. If it's done on two wheels, they've been doing it at the sea Otter classic for you.
[00:04:53] Randall: it's also, become I believe the, the most important trade show in north America with the, you know, with the folding of the M oh, Interbike. Yeah. And in fact I've always felt that it was a much more enjoyable experience than Interbike because you have this kind of festival environment. So people are there.
You have general audience general riders who were there to participate in the events and to, you know, meet up with each other and to walk around and see the booze and so much more you know, rider friendly and so on. So I'm excited to get out there. it's been a long time.
[00:05:23] Craig: it's also really interesting to me to see the merging of all the different cycling cultures, because you've got a big downhill contingent and dual slalom contingent with their slam seats and 10 inch travel bikes and full face helmets. And then you've got like the Legion criterium squad rolling around doing the CRA you know, the circuit.
[00:05:44] Randall: Yeah. and I, I'm not sure. I would imagine the, the UCI cross-country race is still going on there. That was the only time I ever lied up at a, at a UCI level race, which was a cool experience. So you get to see some of the international level pros.
[00:05:58] Craig: Yep. Yeah. And it's it's right at the Laguna Saker Raceway. So it, some of the, I think a lot of the courses finish on the car racing, motorcycle racing track, which is kind of a cool.
[00:06:09] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:06:10] Craig: Yeah. And this year they've added this is the kickoff of the lifetime grand Prix, which is a six or eight race series with a $250,000 prize.
So I know a lot of professional athletes are sort of jazzed and keying in on this, and it's a, don't need to get into the series and I'll get someone from lifetime on to talk about it. If you haven't heard about it already. But what's interesting to me is they're doing mountain bike racing and gravel racing as part of the same series.
So it's really, I, in my mind, ideally pushing athletes to have capabilities in both domains.
[00:06:45] Randall: I mean, there does seem to be a very natural kind of merging of these two disciplines in that gravel bikes have gotten evermore capable. And cross-country bikes have actually gotten radically more capable to we've transitioned to down country. Cross country courses have gotten more technical. And so, you know, everything is kind of shifting a little bit.
I certainly love the, the Mo the underbite mountain bike experience on the gravel bike.
[00:07:07] Craig: they haven't made this rule, but I would kind of love it if they force the athletes to race one bike. So pick your poison, gravel bike on the CrossCountry courses, cross country bike on the gravel courses. You got to decide at the beginning of the season.
[00:07:22] Randall: I mean, honestly, I remember I've done seawater twice and I remember one year they had the long course and on the long course, it was only one section that I recall. Even really requiring suspension. And so if I had had a gravel bike at the time, I probably would have crushed it. Everyone was riding flat bar, you know, suspended mountain bikes.
And there was this one kind of breaking bump challengers section that I recall. And then the other year they had it such that it went through Laguna Saika like five or six times. They were trying to make it very spectator friendly. And in that case even more so, cause there's just, you know, you're spending so much time on the road that whatever time you lose on that, Slightly Chandra resection.
You're more than making up for.
[00:08:04] Craig: Yeah, that might've been my jam as well. Cause my Achilles heel was always climbing. I could never climb with the best of them. I'm a decent descender. So yeah, the gravel bike probably would have helped me stay closer to the front of those races.
[00:08:16] Randall: so, and you're going to be doing the, the NV sponsored gravel ride on Saturday, right?
[00:08:21] Craig: Yeah on Saturday. Yeah. So there's a couple for anybody in attendance. There's a few gravel like casual gravel rides, and there's also a gravel event on Sunday. So definitely bring your bike and enjoy some of that gravel.
[00:08:36] Randall: So let's talk about the event that we're getting together.
[00:08:39] Craig: Yeah. So we're excited. Yeah. We're going to get together the ridership community and the gravel ride podcast community and the thesis by community, along with our friends over at scratch. So scratch has got a booth and we'll get we'll. We're meeting up over there at 3:00 PM on Saturday, April 9th.
[00:08:57] Randall: We'll probably be hanging out there for awhile. So if you can't get there right at three definitely stop by later the day, but we'll have some, some beverages, some music we'll have some special guests, a few athletes. The famed rice cake maker Allen Lim he was on the podcast before,
[00:09:11] Craig: That's right. Dr. Alan Lamb, one of his threads of fame is rice cake cooker.
[00:09:16] Randall: I think he also has been involved in training some, some elite athletes and he might've started scratch as well, but definitely rice cake makers probably is his biggest claim to fame there. And then we'll have a raffle and an exciting product line. Which I'll just leave it at that. At this point.
Anyone who's in the ridership will probably know what I'm talking about here. Cause I've dropped a few hints there. But it'll be really excited to get the, do the first pre-launch reveal of this new line that we've been working on for some time.
[00:09:42] Craig: Yeah, I'm excited for you to talk about that publicly as someone who's sort of been in the background, just hearing whispers of what you're doing, and then starting to hear more specifics from you directly. It's super exciting. And like, I appreciate how much you put into the space and how. I thought you put into these products that you bring to the world.
[00:10:01] Randall: Thanks bud. Yeah. and I definitely feel grateful to have kind of the one, like the supportive a community. They provided an immense amount of very useful feedback in, in the development and validation process. And then also just really great team and business partners. And so on that we've been co-developing this with so more on this in future episodes.
We'll do a one-on-one episode where we nerd out about how things are developed. But Yeah. come visit us at three o'clock on Saturday at the scratch labs with
[00:10:29] Craig: Super excited to run into any listeners and ridership members out there really like it's I feel like it's been a long time coming for us to do a little get together and hopefully if trends continue, we can start doing some of the ridership group rides around the world.
[00:10:44] Randall: Exactly. Yeah I'll be starting some in the new England area and I'm looking forward to flying out again to the bay area, to do a big event with you. Maybe sometime.
[00:10:53] Craig: Yeah, that
[00:10:53] Randall: Right around Mount mountain, where we used to ride together so much.
[00:10:56] Craig: A hundred percent. So the last episode in the dirt, we were talking very specifically about a new custom bike project that I've been working on for the listener. Just to bring you up to speed. I got to fit in January and it's just started to highlight some of the things. Some of the challenges I've been having with my boss.
In riding the bike, and this is not something new I've I sort of experienced this early on in my cycling career. And at one point I had a custom Brent Steelman road bike made for me. He's a pretty storied Northern California builder, probably best known for his cyclocross work. But anyway, I had the custom bike experience, but it was, it was kind of.
At that time, the one thing that nagged me and I realize now that this is sort of not the right way to even be thinking about this particular problem, but every road bike I ever got in front of what's a 56, 56. So 56 CT of 56, top two. And the one thing that felt to me like it didn't fit well. Was that 56 top tube.
So I said, Do whatever you want. I just want a 55 centimeter talked to, and it did solve the problem to a degree, but it wasn't really the solution to the problem, but it did feel amazing to get on that bike for the first time.
[00:12:12] Randall: When you also kind of hearkening back to the days when, when we talked about, you know, seat tubes and top tubes as a primary you know, driver of, of frame fit, because they were always coming in at roughly the same angles versus nowadays they're coming in at all different sorts of angles with compact geos and so on.
So, but the gist of like your bike was too long, you're, you're a pretty leggy guy.
[00:12:34] Craig: So that's, that's really interesting. You say that. So was it not, not the fact that I'm a lucky guy and thanks for noticing that, but more about the sort of, are you saying the story of that geometry back in that era or where the tubes were coming in there just wasn't a lot of variability. So the concepts of stack and reach weren't necessarily in bike design for an Acular.
[00:12:56] Randall: Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So you'd generally the top tube would be, you know, relatively. And then, you know, at some point you started seeing more compact geos where that top tube is sloped and that had various various benefits in terms of stand over height and you know, potentially, you know, frame stiffness and so on.
But it also meant that, you know, your seat tube and your top tube were not really particularly good proxies for how the bike would fit. And so we need a new proxy and that's where stacking reach came into play.
[00:13:22] Craig: Okay. Yeah. And I mean, you can imagine like, obviously like with mountain bikes, having super slipping top tubes and all kinds of things like that, but stacking reach, like you had to come up with some sort of measurement that people could hang their hat on.
[00:13:35] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So with the bike that, where we've designed for you now, I mean, you have, remind me you're just 5, 9, 5, 10.
[00:13:44] Craig: Yeah. Just five, nine and a half.
[00:13:46] Randall: Five nine and a half, and I'm five 11 and you and I run the same satellite and I run a pretty high and forward satellite too. And so you were on the medium our, our medium, I ride our, our large OB one.
And one of the things that you, that, you know, I always noticed with you is you always had your, your stem. As high as possible and flipped upward and so on. And so this new build is going to really address, you know, first and foremost is stack issues. You've won a higher bar for some time.
[00:14:13] Craig: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that, that was the most sort of visceral. The thing I had after this fit. And it's something that was very, it was known to me and my body. Like I've, I've lost flexibility. I never had a ton of flexibility. And the fitter said, well, you've, you know, the position of your saddle height versus your bar height is that of a pro tour road cyclist.
And I had this like, The eight millimeter drop or something, and he's like, we really want to get you more around four. So it was, it was interesting. And I encourage people to go back to episode 28, if you're interested. And I don't purport to believe that you care about my personal fit, but I'm trying to eat this out with Randall and both these two episodes, just to give the listener something to think about as they go forward in their cycling career, because there's, there's tons of things you can do around your existing bike to modify them.
I came to some limitations because I'd already configured my thesis. I'd already cut the steer to buy the fork. I couldn't bring the bars up any further unless I had an obnoxious, jacked up stem. So I came to the conclusion. Hey, given this opportunity, why don't we, why don't I look at fabricating a bike specific to my needs?
So we had episode 28, which is the last in the dirt episode, and we talked a little bit about bike geo calculator, and it was pretty easy. Like it's a great tool. And I saw lines where the new frame would be an and I looked at that, that stack height and the higher head tube, and I was like, great, this is going to fit.
But then as we worked with the building, And got into CAD. There was all these things that have just taken a lot of time to muddle through. And part of it is fabricating with metal versus carbon. Part of it is like things that, all things aren't equal. You really have to think about what, what is your north star in the fit and work around that versus what is any particular tube length or dimension?
[00:16:12] Randall: And then you have parts availability, right? So you want to achieve something, but the, you can't find a part that allows you to achieve it, even though it exists, it doesn't exist in the timeframe that you need it.
[00:16:22] Craig: Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. So I mean, a couple of the areas we've been keying in on, I mentioned, I think in the last episode, like I had this desire to be able to accommodate as big attire as possible. But then when, when you talk about the practicality of welding, the rear end, all of a sudden, a bunch of things come into play because you can have a really long stay to accommodate that.
But I didn't really want a really long stay. I've been pretty darn comfortable on my last two bikes with a 420 20 millimeter seat stay. And like the idea of going out to 4 45 or something like that, just didn't sit well with me.
[00:17:01] Randall: Yeah.
For 20 chains day and yeah, and it just makes it so that the, the front end doesn't want to come up as much. It, you know, it slows the handling. It's a longer wheel base. But you know, it's appropriate to go. It can be appropriate to go longer for more of a dirt focus machine versus a, a, a one bike that is also being asked to be a spirited road bike.
That's kind of the direction that we went with this thing.
[00:17:23] Craig: Yeah, I think that's a great point. Like there comes a decision point in any gravel cyclist's life when you're purchasing a new book. To just think about like, where do you fall on that spectrum? And when I look at the writing, when I look at what I was conceiving of with my thesis, it's like, I want something that's Zippy on the road and super capable off-road, but can kind of slot that ground between.
But the reality is, you know, my writing is 95% off road.
[00:17:52] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you already have a thesis that you're you've. So this isn't adding to your stable.
[00:17:59] Craig: Exactly the thesis isn't going anywhere. So while this bike may, the new bike may rarely get road tires on it. The thesis will have both road. And I still think that thesis is an amazing, like race, bike, and it's been so good for me. It's so capable. I'm excited to have, I mean, it's just an absolute luxury to be able to have two bikes and like in the garage,
[00:18:19] Randall: Yeah.
but the, the added capability of this new machine is, is definitely going to be you know, meaningful like that extra tire clearance. So maybe we start there. So this tire clearance for like full tire clearance. So at least six millimeters all around for 60, 50 by two points. Front and rear, and you could probably squeeze something a little bit bigger upfront.
We were fortunate in that we were able to find a fork that had the offset that we wanted specifically. We reached out to dry broom and over it open cycle and he had some U-turn forks kicking around. So that's a 50 mil offset and
also a 3 95 axle, the crown. So just throwing numbers out there.
What does this mean, Zack? So the CR offset is. Basically the distance from the axle from the, the line that goes through the steer tube. So it's going to be offset, you know, the axle is offset forward from that, and more offset is going to make the steering more responsive, but it's also going to increase your, your front center, the bottom bracket to the front axle to reduce risk of total.
And that was, that was a concern, given that your you're wanting a shorter bike, that's fitting bigger 700 seat tires.
[00:19:32] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. And it also, so that does wheelbase come into play with those dimensions as well? The overall wheel base.
[00:19:38] Randall: Absolutely. Yeah.
So, you know, the, the well, so with the offset, so we had the increased offset which. With the same head angle, as you increase offset, it's going to decrease trail and you know, the, the less trail you have, the snappier, the handling is that in turn allowed us to slack it out the head angle a little bit without radically slowing down the handling.
So we went from a 72 degree head angle on your thesis, which is more of a, like an endurance road in a more kind of racy. Gravel front-end to a 71.2, which is still actually on the sportier side especially for this new class of gravel bikes that have seemingly gone towards, you know, even slacker even longer.
And overall we got the, the front center up, you know, 18 millimeters. And so those. Taller 700 C tires that you might run are not going to be an, an issue for you in terms of tow overlap. You're also going with 2.5 millimeter shorter cranks, which helps as well. And that, that opened up another opportunity with the bottom bracket height.
[00:20:42] Craig: Yeah. So before we get into BB height, you know, it was interesting. Really digging into the forks situation. Again, a lot of times you're bike. Well, all the time your bike comes with a fork and you don't really think about all these things, but once we were looking at, Hey, what fork partner can we bring into the mix?
All of a sudden, a lot of variables came into play in terms of like the rake of the bike or the rank of the fork, like all of these different things. We started having to consider. And what was the effect on tau overlap? What was the effect on like what ties size tire are they designed on accommodating?
So is it really like, I don't know, a sink of like a week to figure out a, what do we want? And B who actually manufacturers a fork that has those correct dementia.
[00:21:29] Randall: And that we can get in a reasonable timeframe.
[00:21:31] Craig: yeah. And then to, to further that, you know, everybody knows I'm suspension curious, I've got one bike in the garage right now with the front suspension fork on it, from my friends at RockShox.
And I do imagine playing around with that, on this bike, but as we've spoken about previously, probably in an, in the dirt episode, and certainly when I dug into it with our friends at rock shock and Schramm, you know, if you put one of these suspension forks on the bike, it's going to bring the entire bike up because that 30 to 40 millimeters of travel has got to come from somewhere.
So we had to think through, okay, if we have a 3 95 axle, the crown length of the rigid. What happens when that's four 20.
[00:22:14] Randall: Yeah. Or 4 25 in the case of the RockShox fork. And then they have two different offsets. And what we came to is, well, You know, that 30 millimeter of difference means that your front end is going to come up. Right. And so to get the same exact position, you'd have to, you know, shift your saddle forward and you would have to, you know, adjust your stem height and so on.
Or you could just make it so that you know, your, your position. In with the rigid fork is a little bit more aggressive. And then you're just, you know, allowing that, that slightly more you know, lean back position, slightly more upright position when you have the fork and in terms of the handling characteristics and so on, they actually change the position.
Characteristics change in a way that is appropriate for a bike, with the added capability of a short travel suspension fork. And so it's, it's kind of, you know, not really a problem. And we ha we don't have a, an adjustable suspension, sorry. We don't have an adjustable geometry with that rigid fork, which is something I'm a big fan of, but we're getting adjustable geo with the swapping of the forks in your case.
And we designed accordingly.
[00:23:20] Craig: Yeah, it's super interesting. And going back to my conversation with Chris Mandel from SRE. He said the same thing. Like it was, it was really early on. They had literally just launched that FOC that fork. And I was able to spend some time on it before the launch. And he said, you know, I put this on a bike that wasn't specifically geo corrected, but I felt like it was okay.
He's like I've spent months and months and months on this thing. And it just modified the geometry in a way that made sense for the new way that I was going to be riding the bike with a suspension for.
[00:23:52] Randall: Yeah. And you know, you, it is useful if you're considering adding a suspension fork to your existing bike, to say, throw it, throw it in a tool like bike geo calc. So take your current geometry for your bike and put it into that, that tool and then set the settings so that the frame rotates when you change the axle, the crown and it'll tell you how the other parameters change and that can also inf not only inform you in terms of how.
How the geo would change, but then also how the handling might change, which would help you decide, say what fork offset you want, because you know, RockShox offers two different offsets on those forks.
[00:24:27] Craig: Yep. Yeah. And I'll have plenty of room on the steer tube, as well as the ability to flip my stem, to make adjustments accommodating that, to get the position. Right. And again, just make, make that, that Delta between 3 95 and 4 25. Feel the slider than it actually is.
[00:24:48] Randall: Well, and it's, it's small enough where I do think that it's quite likely that you can get a slightly more aggressive, but still upright position with a rigid fork and then a slightly less aggressive, more upright position with the suspension fork that, you know, feels good in both of those different applications and feels appropriate for those.
So I don't suspect that you're going it's. I don't think it's highly likely that you're going to need to move around much. And this actually gets into a conversation I'm looking forward to having with Lee McCormick at some point when we bring them on the podcast, which is, you know, talking about how, you know, we've talked about stack and reach and how these are really important measurements for determining fit.
But it in turn in as a rider, like the big thing that matters is like the distance from your crank spindle to where your hand. And then you have an, you know, an anchor, so that high pot news between, you know, the, the stack figure to the grips and the reach figure to the grips, the high pot news is actually the, the, the pure number.
And then the angle associated with that that high pot news. But that, that the length of that hypotony is actually shouldn't change from bike to bike. So whether it's a road bike or a mountain biker, so on, it should be consistent. And then it's the angle of that that. From bike to bike. And so if you think about, you know, the front end coming up well, that, that, that distance is staying the same.
It's just the angle. That's increasing a little bit.
[00:26:08] Craig: Right. Yep. Yeah. A hundred percent. You know, I love, I love most of my bikes are set up identically, so that basically, if I have my eyes closed, I know exactly where to fall and hit the bar. And it's so great that my like mountain bike and rode by can feel like that same position.
[00:26:25] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. And even better, if you can get, say the same crank lengths on the bikes, the same, you know, pedal positioning, you know, stance in the, like on the bikes.
[00:26:35] Craig: Yeah. I'm sure I'm a little bit a field from that, but this is the most bike geekery by the way that I've ever gone through. And it's, I mean, part of it's been driving me mad cause I really want to consummate this Ram and say the design's done. And I do think like if, if we're not at the finish line today, we're in the, we're in the final sprint, we've seen the and where we're coming to the finish line.
Thank God. But a couple of other things I wanted to just quiz you on before we get to that point. So there was also the question about BB drop and it was another one that was like BB drop. I've never thought about that. Just allowed the frame of the production frame, builder to think about that. But now that we have to consider it and we could do whatever we wanted, let's talk about the movement on that.
And what's the rationale and just, what's the takeaway for the listener at Ron BB drop.
[00:27:28] Randall: Yeah. So Bebe, you can think of BB drop as you have the, the vertical distance between the height of the axles and the height of the bottom bracket. The center of the bottom bracket spindle. So the bottom bracket spindle is going to be below the two axles, right? And the greater the more below the two axles it is you know, ceteris paribus, the more stable the bike is going to be the more sitting into the bike.
You're going to be.
[00:27:54] Craig: to sort of visualize that if I'm, if I'm sort of the listener and I'm thinking about my bike, I've got my two axles on my wheels. And I'm thinking about how far below that axle line, the bottom bracket sits.
[00:28:06] Randall: Exactly. Exactly. And So, with like old schools, cyclocross geometries, the bottom, the BB drop tended to be pretty high, you know, 65 versus a, you know, your thesis will be one to 73. And your OB one only accommodates up to a 700 by 40 tire, but it's really optimized around 700 by 30 and 60 50 by 47, which is like a 700 by 28.
And so, you know, it's, there's, it's you get more stability, but there's greater risk of pedal strikes as you drop the baby. Now with your new bike, you know, we started with your, your thesis as like a starting point. Cause he really liked that geometry and we saw, well, you're going to be optimizing this bike for running with bigger and thus taller tires, a bigger radius from the center of the, the axle to the outside of the tire.
And so you can you can drop the BB further and get that added stability without increasing risk of pedal strikes. And in fact we also went with a 2.5 millimeters shorter crank. And so you're actually going to have more clearance above the ground with those bigger tires, even though we dropped the BB down to improve stability.
So you know, that that was kind of a very natural thing. And you see this trend in general on this newer slate of gravel bikes that are being optimized for higher volume 700 tires versus the more one bike type bikes like the thesis or the the Sabelo Sparrow. That are designed to be used effectively with road, you know, seven up to 700 by 30, which is, you know, a smaller radius
[00:29:37] Craig: So, does it feel like you're sort of sitting more in the bike when you have more BB drop?
[00:29:42] Randall: exactly. Versus on top of it.
[00:29:44] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. And I, you were saying about cyclocross bikes having a 65 millimeter drop, presumably that's because they're doing a lot of things that require clearance, bunny hopping barriers and things like that.
[00:29:57] Randall: Yeah.
Concerns about, you know, pedal strikes, essentially as they're going over different obstacles though, even those bikes with the advent of gravel, you've seen those bottom brackets come down because there's no reason. I mean, I would argue there's no reason to have a dedicated cyclocross bike, unless you're, I mean, even if you're an elite cyclocross athlete, you can still ride on take this specialized crux as an example, that bike fits six 50 by 40.
Right. So it's not constrained to the 700 by what, 33, that the UCI maxes out cyclocross tires for. So even that bike is, is, is really a gravel bike that, that people are, are using in that discipline. So it doesn't need a dedicated bike anymore. So those are the days of high bottom brackets is have thankfully gone away
[00:30:45] Craig: Yeah, I think that makes sense. Yep. Certainly no reason for the average athlete to own a dedicated cyclocross bike. If you've got a gravel bike in the closet,
[00:30:53] Randall: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
[00:30:55] Craig: the other thing we had to consider was just cable routing as well. And again, this is like, Maybe on a carbon bike, you make a couple ports and you know how to seal them pretty easily.
And if you use them, you use them. If you don't, you don't. But when you're talking about a metal bike, all of a sudden you you've got okay, either I'm going to externally route everything, which I don't like the look of, and that seems old school, or I'm going to actually have to drill and sort of weld holes into various parts of the frame.
And that was again, Another consideration. Well, what, what am I going to do? Am I going to commit to wireless? Which is like a very viable option these days? Or am I going to get, you know, have four different ports drilled into this frame? And I opted to go the wireless route.
[00:31:44] Randall: Yeah. And I think that that was a smart way to go. The, you know, especially if you're already going the, you already kind of, unless you're going to do external cabling, internal cabling on say like a steel or titanium bike. Is going to be such that, like, you're going to have some sharp angles going through the frame, especially, you know, where that down tube is meeting the bottom bracket shell, you know, you don't have these big, these big tubes and these big open spaces, like you can mold into a carbon frame.
And so there's going to be sharp angles. There's going to be sharp surfaces that need to be machined. It's just harder to do. It's really hard to do good, clean mechanical routing internally through a metal frame, unless it's say something like a specialized, smart weld aluminum frame where they're hydro-forming those, those tubes to get a more carbon shape.
[00:32:35] Craig: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And when you consider adding in, which was a necessity for me, a dropper post yet another whole, yet more routing. So yeah, I'm committing to going full wireless, including the dropper. On this bike. So I'll, I'll just have the rear brake cable routed through the frame and that's it.
[00:32:54] Randall: Yeah.
I think too, that's going to, I mean, given that this is your adventure bike it's just that much less to deal with as well when you're taking the bike apart to throw in your case to bring on a plane. So I think that wireless can make sense. Just bring an extra battery.
[00:33:09] Craig: Yeah, a hundred percent. My my contact at SRAM, I went riding with him on Tam gosh, probably four or five months ago at this point. And his battery ran out, but he keeps a spare in his seat bag.
[00:33:23] Randall: Yeah. And if you're going with a one by set up too, like you have those two coin cells, which are very lightweight and the leavers. So if one of them dies, he still got the other one. You could swap it over.
[00:33:32] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. The cool thing about their RockShox C posts is that you can steal the battery pack from there and use it in your derailer if you need to, because they're all, they're all changeable not to, not to have
[00:33:44] Randall: they have to make, well, then you have to make the difficult decision of like, do I care about gearing or the dropper post more? I guess it depends on the terrain. There are some cases where I would, I would sacrifice the derail, your battery to keep the dropper post going.
[00:33:57] Craig: Yeah.
who knows if I was at the top of Tam, you know, if I was riding up, switch the battery to have gears on the way up and then switch it to the dropper on the way to.
[00:34:06] Randall: Yeah.
[00:34:09] Craig: I love it. You just made me think about, I literally just packed my thesis in my post carry bag for an air flight tomorrow. And there's always a little bit of Jenga with the cables to kind of move everything around and get it in their bag. So well-designed and fortunately with my these medium thesis, I can just slam the seat.
I don't even have to take the seed out and get it all in that bag. Hopefully continue to allude all airline fee.
[00:34:36] Randall: Excellent. I'm
[00:34:38] Craig: you for walking me. Yeah, no, I think we've covered a good deal about the frame between this episode and the last episode. And again, I hope this conversation gives you a little bit of inside baseball about how frames are designed. If. Looking to get accustomed frame done. It's important to have a builder who's willing to work with you.
And in my case, just being someone who's just not in the weeds on all these minute dimensions and angles, just someone who's patient and will walk you through what needs to be done. I'm lucky to have both the builder and Randall to help me out.
[00:35:13] Randall: Yeah, it's it definitely you know, the value of working with a good bow builder in, in significant part comes on the front end and really trying to dial exactly what you want and, And you know, having that output down the other end. So.
[00:35:28] Craig: as I, as I think about your journey with thesis and the idea of designing, was it five frame sizes?
[00:35:35] Randall: Well, so in our case, we went with we went with an open, we went with an open mold frame and then made modifications from there. So we use the existing tooling. So we were fortunate to be able to find a frame with, you know, the vast majority of the features we wanted and the exact geometry we wanted.
And then we added the features and reinforcements from there. So with the next gen frame beginning development of this is this is a ways out that'll be a full ground up exercise.
[00:36:03] Craig: Yeah.
it's just, I imagine it's so challenging to sort of figure out the sizes. Obviously you're matching what the market trends are in terms of how the bikes are performing and what they're intended for, but just like the basics around stack and reach to try to find those sweet spots, to make sure with the limited amount of customability customizability, I E you know, you're stem lab.
The your stack above the head tube making that fit as many people as possible. It's just seems to be a challenge.
[00:36:35] Randall: Yeah,
And it's, it's even more so with a material like carbon where you're, you know, essentially you're, you're creating these molds that are quite expensive. And then that's set in stone. If you want to evolve your metal, a tube to tube constructed frames, geometry over time. You know that that's it.
You just change the jig and you change the mitering specifications and you're good to go. Carbon it's a whole new tool, so you better get it right out the gate.
[00:37:01] Craig: so true. Well, thanks for all the time, my friend, this coming weekend, hopefully I know I'll be seeing you and hopefully we'll be seeing a bunch of listeners over there at at
[00:37:11] Randall: sea Otter three o'clock on Saturday at
the scratch labs booth.
[00:37:15] Craig: Yeah, we'll see you there.
[00:37:17] Randall: All right. Hope to see some folks there.
[00:37:19] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of in the dirt, from the gravel ride podcast. Thank you for spending a little bit of your week with us. If you're going to be at CR definitely come find us at the scratch labs booth at 3:00 PM on Saturday. Huge. Thanks to thera body for sponsoring this episode, please visit thera body.com/the gravel ride for that special offer around the recovery air.Jet boots.
If you have any feedback for Randall or myself, feel free to visit us at the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. And if you're interested in supporting the podcast, please head over to buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
This week we sit down with Board Certified Orthopedic Specialist, Kurt Roeser from Ability Physical Therapy in Colorado to discuss recovery strategies for gravel cyclists. We dig into the things we can be doing at home to recovery faster along with the various products that have recently been developed to aid recovery.
Episode Sponsor: The Feed
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Kurt Roeser - Recovery[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
So as we start out this week, let me ask you a question when you're done with a ride. What's next? Do you just hang up the cleats, put the bike away and go onto the next thing,
Or do you take a moment for self care?
If you're like me, it's often onto the next thing with Naria thought for what? I just put my body through.
This week's guest is Kurt. Roser. A board certified orthopedic specialist and physical therapist at ability physical therapy
. Kurt is an experienced distance runner and cyclist. And brings a wealth of experience to the field of recovery.
Before we jump into this week, shall I need to say a big thank you to this week, sponsor the feed. The feed is the largest online marketplace for your sports nutrition,
Offering the brands, you know, and love from scratch lab to cliff. Plus their athlete customized supplements called feed formulas.
I can say, what I appreciate about the feed is that they've got all the brands that I've come to count on as a gravel cyclist. I can't tell you how many times I go to the grocery store and try to pick up something, but it never does the trick. I'm just not getting the diversity of brands that are cycling specific and that's where the feed comes in. I can get whatever I want whenever I want.
I talked a little bit about the feed formulas last week, but I want to drill into it a little bit more. As I've been consuming them on a daily basis.
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With that said let's dive right into this week show.
[00:02:42] Craig: Hey, Kurt, welcome to the show.
[00:02:45] Kurt: Hey, Craig, how's it going? Thanks for having me,
[00:02:47] Craig: Yeah, it's going great. I'm excited to dig into this conversation about recovery. I feel like half these podcasts are guided by my own personal interests. So I just hope the the listener likes to join me on this journey.
[00:02:59] Kurt: for sure. Yeah. So it is all about learning, learning for yourself and helping some, some other folks at the same time.
[00:03:05] Craig: Yeah, exactly. I'm appreciate you giving me the time to pick your brain. Let's start off with a little bit about just your background and how you got into your profession. And then we'll, we'll dig into some questions.
[00:03:15] Kurt: Yeah, definitely. So I kind of grew up being a, being a distance runner. I ran college it in track at the university of Florida. And then like a lot of runners, I got injured a lot. So, I w me to want to be a PT. And then when I was in PT school, I got into cycling a lot and some triathlons.
And so, yeah, kind of developed a, just broader enjoyment for endurance sports in general. Yeah, so now I, I am a physical therapist working in an outpatient setting and work a lot with runners and other endurance folks whether it's cyclists or, or skiers all, all sorts of fun stuff, just kind of helping people get back out there.
And then, yeah, I still like to run like competitively. So, my marathon vest is a two 17, so I got to run in the. USAA marathon trials a couple of years ago. So hoping to get a couple more good marathons and in me, and then just a transition to more, just fun, fun diverse stuff more biking and, and all that good stuff.
So,
[00:04:13] Craig: Nice. I imagine being in Colorado, you've got no shortage of patients bringing their bodies in damaged from the great outdoors and their endurance athletic pursuits.
[00:04:24] Kurt: Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. Overuse injuries. And then I mean, cycling tons of yeah. Impact injuries, falling, you know, shoulder stuff. Yeah. There's a, there's lots of good ways to hurt yourself doing fun things here. So, it is yeah, good for good for me. But I think I like to think I do more good than I take away from society, so, but
[00:04:44] Craig: I imagine if you're getting people back out on the trails and the, and the the slopes, you're doing a service to the citizens of Colorado.
[00:04:51] Kurt: Yeah. And it's, it's, it is really fun for me to like help people that are motivated to get back to doing you know, whatever their activity is or sport it is. And if, yeah, people really love doing something they're super motivated to do their, do their PT whether it's coming in for manual therapy or do their exercises or strengthening or, or whatever it is.
Yeah, so it's a, it's a fun place to practice for me, for sure.
[00:05:14] Craig: I wanted to open up a conversation about recovery from bike rides. I mean, we all, every listener of this podcast, and as I mentioned earlier, a lot of listeners are doing big gravel events, a hundred mile gravel events, or the training for those types of events. And every single one of us has come home, had a little food and then had our legs start to get really solid and heavy.
And I just thought it'd be. To talk to someone, a professional and understand what's actually going on. And then later in the conversation, let's talk about what we can be doing about it.
[00:05:46] Kurt: Totally. Yeah, That's something that like, Everybody is going to encounter encounter soreness. And yeah, it's such a, it's kind of like a hot topic, like recovery. I feel like the past, you know, five to 10 years is getting a lot more spotlight and we see what the pros are doing in various sports. And I think we all are.
You know, here are the best ways to optimize their own training and lifestyle and stuff. So, yeah, it's a, it's a really kind of hot topic now, but basically like the physiologic, like kind of like process of, of soreness is a very normal response to kind of a newer type of exercise that you're doing.
Or maybe not a new type of exercise, but an increasing training load. So, we see this in the early parts of summer where people haven't. Biking a lot, or haven't been doing whatever their sport is in particular, but then you start doing a lot more of it. And even though we think we're being pretty like gradual with it where you usually are, our mind is biting off more than our body can choose.
So to speak. So soreness is just a result of doing something that you're not used to, and then your body's adapting to it. And in that, in that process, you're going to feel some, feel some soreness. And one of the interesting things that I always remember from exercise physiology, class, the professor saying like the only way to prevent muscle soreness is previous exposure to the same stimulus.
So you can't ever prevent yourself from, from getting sore, but you can just kind of like expect to get sore when you do something hard for the first time or, you know, bike longer than you have in awhile. And then know that like, if you do that same thing again, you're not going to be as sore from it.
Kind of like an up and down process.
[00:07:24] Craig: that makes sense. You know, if I think about my, any given week, you know, I can go out and do an hour long training ride and, and. 1200 feet of climbing and don't feel sore at all from that kind of effort. But when I get out on the weekends and I add, you know, five, six times that amount of climbing, those are the days in which I come home, but I know from experience over time, if I'm training for an event, if I've gradually built, I can then go out and ride, you know, 4,000 foot of climbing ride and not be sore and save that soreness for the 8,000 feet climbing.
[00:07:58] Kurt: totally. Yeah. And I also want it to differentiate between like, muscle soreness and then like tendon or joint soreness. Cause that's a really common thing that people ask about is, and. And how to differentiate that from like an
So like, I think delayed onset muscle soreness who are all like pretty familiar with like, you do something hard and then you're sore from it for a couple of days.
So that processes partly. Kind of like mechanical at the cellular level. So, you're actually getting some microtrauma to the cells that are causing your muscle fibers to contract upon one another, basically these sliding filaments. So you actually like creating some micro tears in those, those fibers, which sounds bad, but it's it's. Body knows to adapt to that stimulus. So if we didn't have that, we wouldn't have that positive adaptation that we're looking for so that we get faster, it can bike like longer or, or whatnot.
[00:08:53] Craig: Now the terror is getting repaired by the body as you rest.
[00:08:58] Kurt: absolutely. So, so when we perceive soreness and when we feel soreness, Definitely linked to some sort of like inflammatory process, which there, we used to always think inflammation is bad. We got to get rid of it, but it's actually like the way that our body signals to bring in like, you know, new protein and all these like building blocks to repair that tissue.
So, soreness is actually like a sign that our body is adapting to that and it just is uncomfortable in a transient manner for us, but it's how our body. You know, working through that cascade of that inflammatory process and ultimately getting stronger from it. So that's kind of like the more mechanical aspect of it.
And then there's also like a, kind of more of a chemical side of it. So like we've all heard the term like lactic acid or more correctly just lactate and hydrogen ions. Like when you're doing really high intensity exercise, your muscles get more acidic. And so that can not can create some of that soreness feeling afterwards, just from those metabolites being.
in, in ourselves, in places that they aren't normally there. So, so that's kind of the two big components of, of muscle soreness and, and some of the things that we can like know about and, work through mentally, but also there's some tools that we can use and and things that we can do to kind of try to limit that and speed it up a little bit.
[00:10:15] Craig:
Did, did the muscle groups react differently when you're doing short, intense intervals versus longer endurance type?
[00:10:24] Kurt: Yeah, so definitely. So, the shorter height, higher intensity efforts are going to be the things that really get the you know, lactate and hydrogen ions, like, to high levels in your muscles and probably in fairly specific places. So, if you're really pushing, pushing the power, you're going to feel it in those.
Muscles that year quads, maybe your calves, if you're, if you're going uphill. So you're going to feel that in pretty isolated ways versus like a one. Kind of like easier day where you're just out kind of cruising around, but maybe you're out for a long period of time. Then I think people are going to be more likely to get soreness in more of like your postural muscles.
So your shoulders, your neck, your back, your arms, like things that are like supporting your, your posture. And, I've heard on the, on the show, you've talked numerous times about like bike fitting. And so that's where. Being comfortable and being set up nice on your bike is really important to make sure that you're just kind of like optimally using those, those postural muscles and not overstressing certain areas and just kind of setting yourself up to be comfortable and enjoy your
Injury arrive, which is probably the most important thing.
But then I think where people get the most sore is. Kind of kind of those race situations or group rides where you're going for a long time and at a higher intensity than you're used to. And I think that's what a lot of us kind of do. We're kind of in that maybe weekend warrior sort of a, a situation where we're doing maybe an hour during the week, and then maybe double that Triple that on the weekend and
more Verdun.
So th that's when you're going to get just globally sore and a lot of your, your cycling muscles and that's going to be from that kind of acidosis and mechanical breakdown. And then just as you fatigue out your, your slower Twitch fibers, you're gonna start to rely on the fast Twitch fibers that aren't used to working as much, and they're gonna fit.
Faster and get more sore because they're just not used to working, but again, part of like a broader, good adaptation process I think so kind of that good soreness.
[00:12:23] Craig: Yeah, well, first off, guilty as charged. I'm often one of those people who goes out and tries to do things I have no business doing. I think that's a bit of the gravel cycling mentality, right? Is this like, you're going to have a lot of challenges in front of you and these long events, and you're going to push through it.
When, when a rider is taking themselves beyond, let's just call it their, their fitness or what they've been able to train to for a particular event. What kind of damage is being done at that point to the body. And does the body just sort of naturally give you the feedback? I mean, we've all sort of shut down on a climb or cramped in a long event and the body's screaming at you.
Hey, you can't do this. You need to take a break. Can you just talk about like what what's going on in the body at that point and how should we be reacting? Obviously, we, we have strong mental desire to complete the events, but that may exceed what our bodies are capable of at that point.
[00:13:18] Kurt: Yeah.
So that's, that's really hard hard spot as a, as an athlete to be in, I think. And, and I think it's really important to know that like when you're feeling that like, subjective. Discomfort or like, you know, muscle work or just overall fatigue setting in like that's our, our brain is trying to tell us that we're doing something that we are, is like kind of outside of what our brain perceives we can do.
But. Very, it's almost impossible to exercise
yourself to death or to actually do any damage to any, to your tissue. So that's one thing that we should be very confident that we're not going to damage our, our muscles by cycling for, even for a long period of time at a very high intensity. In other sports, like, you know, like CrossFit or an ultra running, like you hear people getting robbed in my analysis, which is where you're doing so much damage to your muscles, that it that those muscle proteins get back into your.
Bloodstream, and then eventually to your kidneys, and you're basically creating like kidney failure, which is a medical emergency, and that does happen. And I've seen it in CrossFitters and ultra marathoners, but kind of more from that centric type of loading reaction. So in, in cycling, you're, you're, I've never heard of that happening in cycling.
So, Yeah. so we can be pretty confident that we're not going to really truly like damage anything per se. But it should be. One of those things, like a pick, choose your battles, you know, or like live to fight another day. So, and I think that's, it means different things to different people, but if, if it's worth it to, to really push it during this particular race, like just know that you're going to be really sore for for a few days.
And it's gonna like, kinda mess with your next week of training, but ultimately you're going to be fine from it and you're going to adapt to it. So.
[00:15:04] Craig: Yeah. I think if I think back to my iron man days, I can remember just basically not being able to walk down the stairs after doing an iron man, having to hold on the railing because I just, I couldn't support my body weight going down.
[00:15:17] Kurt: Oh yeah, totally. Yeah, so it's but I guess maybe better answer your question. Like, like there's no point in like that we should ever be worried. Push ourselves too hard under most circumstances, obviously like within like reason. But like at the end of the day, like we just got to remember like we're out there to have fun and and keep the bigger picture in, in in mind too.
And like, you could have the perfectly designed training program and ramp up very gradually and you're still going to do stuff that's going to make you sore. So yeah, it's kind of a unavoidable.
[00:15:49] Craig: How should riders think about it? So let's say you go for a massive ride on Saturday and you still want to ride on Sunday. And you're obviously you're waking up sore a little damaged from the day before. Any concerns going out the next day or does the body just tend to give you the information you need and regulate your abilities based on that soreness?
[00:16:10] Kurt: Yeah, so. It's definitely gonna be good for you to go out and still get a ride in the next day. Like a nice like recovery ride. So obviously like back-to-back hard days are going to be challenging and you're just going to accumulate more fatigue essentially. But but yeah, it's definitely like good for you to get out and get some easy, easy spinning in and probably even help you recover faster.
So, there's yeah, there's a reason that like, And during sports, like we're able to do it on like most days. And it's because. In between those harder efforts, like it's really good for you to like, just have a, have an easy recovery day. So, so Yeah.
that's definitely, definitely good. And another really interesting thing is like, even if you, your quads are wrecked and you've like, we did like, some imaging and we saw that, like you had all these.
Tears in your microfibers. Like you're not going to make that any worse by by pedaling through it the following day, you're just going to have less power output. So you're, you're not going to be able to like, you know, work as hard as you, as you
would if you didn't have it, but you're not going to do anything bad by any means.
So, definitely good to get moving.
[00:17:13] Craig: Yeah, that makes sense. I often feel like, you know, if I do a really massive day, I, I sort of, I call it the athletic hangover or the next day I've and I think it's probably part dehydration, but the body's sore. I ended up with a headache. You know, it's just, just overdid it.
[00:17:28] Kurt: Yeah, totally. And that's Yeah, that's like a bigger thing that like I realize With people more and more recently, it's like, you know, I always think about like the physical side of things, like orthopedically, like, you know, muscle muscles and joints and tendons and all that stuff. But like our body's pretty good at telling us, so like how it's doing.
So if we can like learn to suck to listen to the more like subtle signs that our body's telling us, like, can we get better over the years of, of listening to that? Like in it help you maybe adjust. Your workouts that you had planned for that weekend and still go out and, and ride, but just like, like, oh man, I'm just not feeling very good today.
I'm feeling a little off. So I'm just going to take it easy or I'm going to still do my, the intervals that I had planned, but just like dial it back a little bit. So yeah, just like successful athletes and people that have better longevity in, in, in the sport. Or people that are good kind of that like listening to those more subtle signs is what I've found with working with, with people at like pretty elite levels.
so
[00:18:27] Craig: we're at we're, we're certainly in the heyday of the ability to, to have to have data points to back that up as well. You know, whether it's a device measuring your HRV or just basic heart rate tracking, I think you can really know a lot about yourself and unlike the athletes, maybe of the, of the nineties who might push through it now, I think most coaches are saying, you know, it's better to back off and understand that you've just pushed it too far and live to fight another day, rather than pushing through the training.
If your body's saying, Hey, this is a hard note today.
[00:19:00] Kurt: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Just keep the consistency, like over time approach and, and know that like what you're doing like this week, you'll be better for like, you know, three months down the, down the road, like everything is just like compounds on itself. So just like keeping, keeping that consistency and that long-term approach, you know, weeks and months and years.
And. And eventually you'll be able to do, do more than you thought you'd be able to do. So.
[00:19:25] Craig: Yeah, you were, you were mentioning sort of there's muscle store, Innes and fatigue, and then there's a fine line between that next stage of actual injury. Are there things that we should be looking out for to know, like, Hey, we've maybe crossed the line and we need to pay a little bit more attention to what's going on.
[00:19:42] Kurt: So I think anything. Well, like pain-wise like in, in muscles or tendons or joint, like, you know, anything that's transitioning towards like a sharp pain or like a nervy sort of sensation where it's numbness or tingling or anything that just like is getting worse as you're going from a pain perspective.
Yeah. Like it's you want to like, not push through too much of that. So we like four out of 10 on a, just a pain, visual, analog scale is a good kind of cutoff. Like, so if you're, if you're doing something and it's like, you're like a four out of 10 or it's pain, that's like not really tolerable or getting worse than it's usually like a good idea to like, you know, shut it down.
Or Go easier and kind of make your way, make your way home. and then, you know, there are like more like medical emergencies. Like rhabdomyolysis that I mentioned like that people are, you're going to notice, like, basically, like you will be completely, like, you'll be unable to go on. And like, people like collapse and it's like an ambulance call.
So obviously like using common sense about that or like anything like with your heart just Yeah,
[00:20:50] Craig: Yeah,
[00:20:51] Kurt: pay attention to your vital, your vitals. If your apple watch tells you you're having a heart attack, then you should probably call an ambulance.
[00:20:59] Craig: yeah, exactly. Don't use your pigheaded endurance athlete mentality to power through absolutely everything. Just some of the hard stuff.
[00:21:06] Kurt: Yeah, exactly.
[00:21:07] Craig: Transitioning a little bit. Now we've talked a little bit about, you know, what's happening post ride, if we're sore and, and what to look out for in terms of injury, are there things we should be doing before we get on the bike that would help our muscles that day and, and after the ride.
[00:21:24] Kurt: Yeah.
So, I think this is kind of like big picture stuff. Like the, the things that we can consistently do over over time to help in a preventative way are kind of like just nailing down the basics that I think we all probably like know about, but like, you know, diet and sleep and overall life stress.
Yeah, like making sure that your nutrition before, before rides and during rides and after rides is, is, is good and adequate. And then making sure that your, your bike set up is good. Your bike fit is good. So in terms of specifically like pre pre ride like. just making sure that you've got enough fuel and hydration.
And like my kind of preference for a warmup is just do the activity pretty easily for the first, you know, 10, 15, 20 minutes. So, I'm somebody that like, I, I like to just, you know, get out and start going pretty, pretty easily and let my body warm up that way. Sometimes people will prefer more of like a dynamic warmup.
So maybe you spend five minutes doing some, some stretches for parts that, you know, are tight hamstrings or
quads or hip flexors or, or back. So a little bit of dynamic stretching is probably a really good idea, but but yeah,
[00:22:36] Craig: Yeah, I spoke to some about that dynamic stretching idea. Just the idea of doing a few, few motions to get your body kind of understanding what's going to come when you throw a leg over the bike.
[00:22:47] Kurt: Totally. And then also like even some like spinal extension, so bending your, your back backwards, just gently, like, all these things. Should you be like gentle around? Not trying to force it, but just like, we're going to spend a prolonged amount of time, like in a very similar position for our spine.
So just doing some of That like, even like the opposite motion of you know, getting some, some back extension or some thoracic rotation in there. So, yeah, any sort of, of movement and kind of being intentionally vague there because one of the issues that I think we have with with warmups or recovery is like, there's so much information out there and there's so much stuff that you could do.
so the best thing to do is, is do something that is. Easy for you to do consistently and that you'll actually do. And that you kind of, to some extent, enjoy doing or get some satisfaction out of doing. So I think there's a lot of room for individual variability in a, in a warmup. But the big thing is you nail the basics and kind of just be consistent with that.
[00:23:42] Craig: That makes sense. The bigger area I wanted to talk to about is really the post ride recovery and the things we can do. I mean, I often get off the bike and, you know, obligated to do something immediately with the family or my son. I need to jump on it and I don't pay any attention other than maybe having a drink and recovery drink after I get off the bike.
But in an ideal world, what are we doing? That's going to help promote the healing of those micro, micro tears in your muscles. And anything you can do to feel better. Maybe talk about it from, Hey, if you only have a tiny amount of time to, Hey, if you really want to go do everything you can, these are what you can do.
[00:24:20] Kurt: Yeah. Yeah, Totally. Yeah. And so that's the that's the hard thing is like, we, we want to spend as much time doing the thing that we want to do. So, we want to get that extra mile and on the bike or do that extra of blue on the, on the bike. And then we come home and like, yeah, I have to go straight into the shower and go to work or like yeah,
take care of the kiddos or, or whatever gets your day
going.
[00:24:42] Craig: I always, I always tell my wife, like the greatest gift I have is when I have a two hour ride, but a three hour one. It just feels like such a luxury because it's usually I have a two hour window and I'm going to do an hour and 59 minute ride.
[00:24:56] Kurt: Yep. That's so that's so true. And I think we're all guilty of that. It's like, like I know that I could get back 10 minutes early and I could do some, some stretches or I could do those strength exercises. My PT told me to do, or I could make myself a better breakfast and not, you know, eat in the car on the way to work or whatever.
But yeah, at the end of the day, like we want to do What we want to do. so I think. I think if it is like, just building in like five minutes, honestly, like, if you can consistently do that, like, maybe not even after all of your rides, but after like a hard effort or your long ride on the weekend.
Just say like, I'm gonna, like when I get off the bike, I'm going to. Five minutes for myself. Just kind of like relaxing, you know, get your post ride nutrition, go and get, get, start to get rehydrated. I think that stuff should definitely be a priority, especially as we're getting back towards the summer months here pretty soon, hopefully.
But and then yeah, for me, like that ritual should include like some sort of like soft tissue, self mobilization, or maybe just dynamic stretching something
[00:25:57] Craig: mean? What, what is that self, what you just said? I didn't understand what that meant.
[00:26:01] Kurt: Oh, sorry. So, yeah. So yeah, soft tissue mobilization is kind of a fancier word for essentially like massage. So, soft tissue is, you know, muscle or tendon or a fascia any of the, the softer structures in our body. So, that's like, a really big really big thing in the kind of recovery world is like, we know that.
Elite athletes. They're going to get off the bike. They're going to have an hour long massage. And there is something to that because everyone still does it if they have the time and the money and the luxury to do that. but there's not a ton of like, like great like scientific evidence as to why, like massage or soft tissue work, like how it actually like physically.
Helps us, like there's a lot of like theories at the tissue level. And, then at the person level as to why that like helps us recover. But so, so most of us, like, you know, we're not going to have the time to do that especially every day. So if you can just spend five minutes, like while you're at your car, before you drive back home or before you even like come in the house, you know, just have have foam roller or RA or something like that.
Where you're going to hang the bike up and just like do it in your routine. And so basically saw self soft tissue mobilization to get back to that is using something like a foam roller or the RA or, or the stick or some, some other tool to, massage your muscles yourself. So I think we're all familiar with that.
[00:27:27] Craig: And, and how D how deeply do you need to go into, like, would the stack or a foam roller, like sometimes, you know, when you're laying on the foam roller, you can put all your weight on or only partial weight. I think the masochist in us often like thinks like, oh, you gotta push it in really hard in order for it to have an effect.
What is that right balance? It's just a matter of getting that motion across the muscle or does it need to have some, some power into it?
[00:27:52] Kurt: Yeah.
So that's like, I think you could ask that question to a room of, of PTs or other kind of similar field and you might get you know, 10 different answers, but basically the, the benefits of, of that are the only reliable thing that we know that massage is doing is creating a central nervous system.
Relaxation response. And indogenous dopamine release, which basically means like, you know, dope means are our endorphins, our feel good. Endorphin. So we're creating some sort of relaxation response globally from our brain down to our muscles. So, we can like see that like with certain types of MRIs and, and brain MRIs.
So. And then the other kind of theories are like, we're, we're moving around water. We're kind of flushing out our muscles where maybe loosening up the different fascial layers between muscle and skin and getting those to glide better. There's like the trigger point release theory. So a trigger point is a tight muscle not, or, or abandoned the tissue into your pushing on that and in restricting blood flow.
And then you're getting it. Release that way. So my interpretation of all that is like, we know that we're getting our brain to relax our muscles. And then on top of that, there's probably some of those local tissue level responses that are also at play too. So. Long, long story to that question is like, it can be kind of up to you.
Like what you want. It doesn't have to be extremely painful. And it, in my opinion, I don't think it should be super painful, but like it, you know, it's okay if it's like uncomfortable, for sure. Especially when you find those tight spots in, in the muscles that you've been, been working pretty hard. so I think it should be like pretty firm, but it doesn't have to be killing you.
And if you're really sore, then it could be really gentle. So it could be kind of whatever you feel like you need.
[00:29:42] Craig: So I'm curious, and I'm certainly not asking you to pick either or, but the first thing you mentioned was a self massage or foam rolling. As if you only had five minutes. A lot of times I've thought about like, oh, I get off the bike and I want to stretch, like stretching might be my go-to. Would you, would you say the foam rolling self massage first.
And then if you have more time later and stretching after that,
[00:30:05] Kurt: Yeah.
I honestly I'd say some variability in there is probably good. Depending, it's going to be person to person dependent. So, like there's a lot of days where I feel like I just want to grab the, the RA and just like, you know, roll on my, my quads and my calves and my hamstring. And that's kinda all I need and I don't feel like I need to really do any, any stretching.
But then Yeah. there's other days where like, know the, the opposite might be true. So, I think it's good to like, just get in a routine of spending that time, doing something. And honestly, like if we designed a, a science experiment where we like had group a, do one and group B do the other it probably would come out like fairly similar in a long-term kind of like study It makes a lot better sense to me and my brain to like actually kind of get in there and like use use some force to like, get things like moving around at the, at that local level.
And that's gonna also get like that nice, like central nervous system, like pain modulation, just like get everything to settle down. so I think that the massage kind of stuff is, seems to be more More beneficial in my mind, but it one of those things, again, like if we only have a couple of minutes, like just pick something and do it and don't get bogged on this, the specifics.
[00:31:14] Craig: Just, yeah, just make sure you're maximizing those minutes, whatever you're doing
[00:31:18] Kurt: and
that's why
[00:31:18] Craig: a little bit more,
[00:31:19] Kurt: I like something that's portable. So like, if you're you know, if you're driving to a parking lot or a Trailhead before you start your ride, then
Something that you can take with you. Like
You're keeping it in your car or. And you're in your bag with your snacks for post ride or whatever, like just, yeah.
Pull out the, the real recovery RA and like that you can do it, like sitting at the back of your, your, your car before you even like, get, get in the. Getting the car and drive away. Like, that's what I try to do because I know like once I get home, I'm not going to do it. But
you see, I mean, in Boulder we see people with that foam rollers that they're Trailhead and all sorts of things the massage guns, like there's all sorts of things that are out there.
And I think finding the thing that works for you is it's totally fine.
[00:32:04] Craig: Yeah, it certainly seems like the recovery industry over the last five or six years has exploded. And we've we referenced the roll recovery, our eight a couple of times already, but we haven't really talked about what that is. So we set the stage by saying, Hey, foam, rolling. Great thing. You can do.
Pretty simple. One tool. The RA is something that is similar in terms of its efficacy. It's just approaching it in a little different, little different way.
[00:32:32] Kurt: Yeah. Yeah, totally. In the, oh, you have the adjustable version too. I
[00:32:36] Craig: Yeah. So what what I, what, it's hard to describe to the listener, right? But it's basically, you know, it's, it's got what, what is like almost four rollerblade wheels and a spring loaded that you can adjust and you can bring it to the outside of your leg and it'll roll up and down, making it maybe easier to use while you're sitting versus a foam roller, which may require you to be laying on the ground.
[00:33:00] Kurt: Yeah.
Yeah.
Sitting or standing. And honestly, I, when they first came out with this product, I. Being a PT, like I, I convinced people to exercise all the time and I thought like, oh, well, I mean, people are, if you were going to choose to spend something that's more expensive than a regular, you know, $20 foam roller, I think most people are just had picked up the foam roller and I've been really surprised.
Like I, you know, having had one of these in the clinic and just like having people try it, like people love it because it's simple, it's easy. And I think even. Getting down on the ground is a barrier for some people. And, and you also just can't you can't get as much pressure, like in certain places where you need it, you know, your calf or like the lateral part of your quad, like new your it band.
So, yeah, I think, I think it is a pretty useful tool to have something that can be handheld and that you can
kind of like adjust the pressure by either like turning the dial to make it harder or pressing a little bit harder. With your hand on that one, one spot and just kinda like run through places that are that are feeling like you worked on.
And then when you kind of find a spot that's sore, kind of just seek and destroy, you know, and you're just like find that tight spot and, and press on and gets released. So, so
[00:34:09] Craig: Yeah, I do find it. I do find it a little bit easier than the foam roller, to be honest, again, just being lazy and maybe sitting around watching TV, I can take the the RA and just run it across my legs and feel like I'm, I'm doing some of the work.
[00:34:22] Kurt: Yeah. And the, the kind of the rubber grippiness is good. Like, I think a lot of times what people like from manual therapy that like I do is like, we're kind of putting a little bit of stretch on that fascia and we're, we're getting things in, things are Elise in that way. So I think there's something to be said for like the kind of the grippiness to, of the different, not inserts that they have, that you can kind of swap in and out.
So, Yeah, that's,
that's one of my go tos, I think
[00:34:46] Craig: the other, the other big thing that's exploded, I think has been the percussion massage tools that are out there and a number of different brands offer that type of product. Is that, is that kind of doing a similar thing just in a more targeted way? Or how do you think about those devices?
[00:35:03] Kurt: Yeah, I think those are any of those are pretty cool as well. Yeah. Everybody's everybody's asking me about those these days, and those are great for those harder to get areas where like, the, the glute meat or TFL, like a lot of times people have tightness there. so it's going to be like a little bit more pinpoint and essentially a similar effect in that it is going to create this again, like top-down.
Relaxation of, of the, of the muscle that we're trying to work on. But it just doing it by like hammering at it really, really quickly. And it's something like for me, I like it in certain areas. And then and then I just like the more pressure in other areas. So if you can have both, then it's like one of those things you can, you can have both, but again, like something that's easy to use and and portable, which is nice.
[00:35:52] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like over the years, I've just sort of subsequently Rico acquired more and more of these devices
[00:35:58] Kurt: Oh, yeah,
[00:35:59] Craig: I haven't, I just don't do it enough. That's the main problem. But again, some of these are really helping me improve the amount of time I spend on my, on my muscles, which they're appreciating
[00:36:09] Kurt: Yeah. Totally.
[00:36:11] Craig: the other one I wanted to just, just tease out with you and understand a little bit better.
You know, when we see the pro tour riders on the road, In their, in their team buses after the races, I often see them in these air recovery boots. And I'm curious, like just what's going on with those.
[00:36:28] Kurt: Yeah. So, I'll be honest. I've only used those a couple of times. Like when they were pretty new, when I was like in college who had some of those in the training room and basically it's compression and I believe it's greeted and compression. So it's kind of the idea Is mechanically pushing pushing fluid back, like approximately towards your Towards your torso.
So helping you kind of queer lymphatic fluid or like are kind of low pressure venous system. So that's the idea is it's kind of like helping to flush you're flushing your muscles out. So for me, me personally, the, the juice isn't worth the squeeze with, with those I being a PTM bias to encourage people to do some sort of movement.
And, and those are kind of the opposite of that. It's saying like, oh, well, why don't you do. Sit here and then this will help you help your muscles. And in reality, I think if you probably just went for a walk or chased your kids around the playground for that same 20 minutes, I think that might be that might be the same benefit there.
[00:37:26] Craig: Is it, am I understanding you correctly that it's attempting to do something different than the foam rolling or massage gun would do?
[00:37:32] Kurt: I think so, because those are going to be just more global. It's just pressure on your whole, whole leg. So it's in at the same time. So on both at the same time, they're just pushing, pushing fluid up to your lymphatic system to be kind of like flushed in and cleared out. I haven't seen any data or anything on, on, on the ethicacy of that, but like, a lot of people still use them, especially in pro situations.
And I feel like everyone I know in Boulder has has one and and people love them. So I think there must be something, something to it. But but yeah, the idea is it's it's pushing fluid away from your, extremities, which in theory should be, should be helpful. So I think that
could be a helpful to,
[00:38:12] Craig: does your body process? So if it's pushing it away from your extremities, into your, your kind of core, does the body process it through the core more efficiently and get it out of the body?
[00:38:22] Kurt: yeah, exactly. So basically like any time. Like our lymphatic system and our venous system is a low pressure system, will our arteries are high pressure. So, if that's why gravity has an effect on DEMA and swelling. And so if somebody, you know, was is, has surgery or screens, if you sprain your ankle, that's an extreme case of there's a lot of.
Swelling in that limb. And so, you know, if you elevate your leg above your heart, while you're laying on the couch, then gravity is going to help that kind of like trickle down sort of torch your organs, where that's going to be like filtered and then put that fluid gets put back into your bloodstream eventually.
So it's the idea is it's basically like, compressing and bringing that fluid to be recycled faster. Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:39:11] Craig: Yeah, it's super interesting. Super interesting. Cool. Well, I appreciate you giving us like this overview and I like the fact that we've left, left the listener with this idea of like, you know, there's a hierarchy of things you can be doing to support yourself post ride. And the very basics are carve out just a few minutes of your time.
Work on a little foam rolling or self massage as at a bare minimum. And then beyond that layer in these other modalities of repair, if you have time, but the important thing is just build this into your routine.
[00:39:45] Kurt: Totally. Yeah, And then and just have it be something that you can do consistently and then also just make sure that you're, you're covering the basics with yeah. Your nutrition and sleep and life stress. And we should all be doing some strength training, like twice a week, even if it's not our thing I'm doing.
Some just general strength training for the legs and arms can be whatever you want, or it can be very specific to biking is also really important for our bodies and longevity in the sport and moving in different ways. So I definitely think that's an important part of recovery, even though it's kind of on the, on the front side, you know, it's not gonna help you after you're sore, but it'll help you from getting sore by doing things if you're, if you're stronger going into that.
[00:40:26] Craig Dalton: That's great perspective, Kurt. Thanks. And thanks for joining us.
[00:40:31] Kurt: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me fun to talk with you.
[00:40:33] Craig Dalton: Cheers. That's going to do it for this week's broadcast big. Thanks to the feed for sponsoring the show. And remember, simply visit the feed.com/the gravel ride to get 50% off your first order of the feed formula.
And a big thank you to Kurt for joining us. I hope you learned a lot about recovery. I know, I sure did. There's definitely things that I need to integrate into my routine. If you're interested in connecting with me, I encourage you to join the ridership. Simply go to www.theridership.com and join our free online community.
If you're able to support the podcast, simply visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Gravel Locos[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
[00:00:26] Craig Dalton: Have you ever thought about organizing a gravel event? I certainly have this week's guest Fabion. Serralta took that passion and idea to create an event. And created gravel Locos.
The original event in Heico Texas is joined this year by a new event in Pueblo, Colorado. I sat down with Fabi and to learn about his inspiration for gravel Locos, the charitable component of what he does and the general theme of all gravel Locos events.
Before we jump into the conversation. I need to thank this week. Sponsor hammerhead.
The hammerhead kuru to you as raised the bar for cycling computers. You can get advanced GPS, navigation, and intuitive software right on your handlebars. In a way you never thought possible. I spent this past weekend down in Tucson, Arizona.
After speaking with John from the mountain lemon, gravel grinder, a few years back, I've been itching to get out on the course. So I simply downloaded the GPS file from their website, uploaded it to my kuru to and felt super confident going out there in the back country. I've got a ton of stories about some of the snafoos. I had mechanically speaking while I was out there, but from a navigational perspective, it was spot on what I really appreciate about the crew too. And I've talked about the responsive touchscreen display before. Is that in the navigation? Once you've loaded a route in there, you get a little icon, no matter what screen you're on. saying when the next turn is coming up.
It's those little touches and details that I think really setting the hammerhead crew to a part beyond that, I really got to dive into the climber feature, which is something unique and special about hammerhead. The climber feature allows you to visualize and prepare for upcoming gradient changes in real time.
So, what does that mean? Basically it translates to a nice graph. On the climber screen on your crew to computer that shows you in color-coded fashion. The length to the top of the climb, both in miles, as well as elevation, and then gradient by gradient profile looks that map exactly to what you're experiencing when you're out on an adventure loop that you've never been on before. It was super useful to see, okay, this is going to be a punchy.
Mile mile and a half climb. Versus at the end i discovered as it turned a corner that i was in front of a six mile climb but fortunately the gradient was pretty chill.
This all translates to knowledge is power. And with the hammerhead crew too, you can get all the information available out of your GPX files. You can customize it to the nth degree. I still have a ways to go and customizing mine, but you can see the power of organizing your data right there on your computer screen.
For a limited time, our listeners can get a free custom color kit and exclusive premium water bottle with the purchase of a hammerhead crew to visit hammerhead.io right now and use the promo code, the gravel ride. At checkout to get yours today, that's a free custom color kit.
And a premium water bottle with the purchase of a career to. Go to hammerhead.io at all three items to your cart and use the promo code. The gravel ride.
With that said let's jump right into my interview with Fabienne from gravel Locos.
[00:03:40] CraigDalton.: Fabian , welcome to the show.
[00:03:41] FabianSerralta: Hey, Craig. Thank you.
[00:03:43] CraigDalton.: It's good to talk to you again.
[00:03:44] FabianSerralta: Same here. Thank you.
[00:03:46] CraigDalton.: I'm excited to learn all the things about gravel locus and, but would love to learn a little bit about your background first, just kinda what drew you into the sport originally, and then what led you to take on the huge challenge of creating an event?
[00:04:01] FabianSerralta: Well, I, I would definitely say I was probably what led me to the sport was purely accidental. I I purchased a, a ranch in Oklahoma in 2012, and I remember the first time driving out there to see this ranch with the R I was following a realtor and wearing this perfectly smooth country road. And I was just thinking, this is great.
I'm gonna have my road bike out here. And and as soon as we get to the one road leads to the ranch, it was this. Awful road with rocks and gravel and dirt. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. I'm not gonna be able to ride my road, bike out here. And then we're on this road. And this lady is just like flying on this road and just dusting, dirt everywhere.
And then we're just flying on their road and, and it was like a 15 mile drive from on this. Awful gravel dirt road to the driveway of this ranch that I had just purchased and or I was about to purchase. And then the driveway from this road to the ranch was another mile and a half. And when we get to the ranch property in the house, I said to her.
This is terrible. I'm not gonna be able to ride my bike when I'm out here. She's like, well, what do you mean? I said, I'll get a flat tire by the time I get to, to the to the main road. And she's like, well, you can just drive your bike in your car and, and go out there and just park out there. I'm like, where am I gonna park?
That's like somebody else's property out there. So this is 2012. And I, so I buy this property and probably from 20 12, 20 13 until about 2015. I didn't get to ride my road bike every time that I went out there.
[00:05:41] CraigDalton.: yeah. I was gonna say there wasn't a lot of options
[00:05:43] FabianSerralta: Yeah.
[00:05:44] CraigDalton.: of gravel bikes at that point in time.
[00:05:45] FabianSerralta: Yeah. But then in 2015, I'm visiting my son in Denver. He was gonna school at the university of Denver and I just happened to go to a, a bike store.
It was a, I believe it was a specialized bike store and I walk in there and there's. White and red bike Witham, and it looked like a road bike and it had these Nobby tires on it and zip wheels. And I'm like, what in the world is this thing? And the sales guy comes up to me and I'm like, what is this thing?
You know? And he's looking at me like, he's like, where are you from? I'm like, well, I'm from Cuba. And he's probably thinking this guy just fell off of open a Palm or something. Cause likes a, and I'm like, what's a, you, I had idea what a. He's like, you don't know what a cross bike is. I was like, I don't know, but I want that bike.
He's like, well, you gonna Doy lacrosse. I'm like, no, I bought this ranch and it has these horrible roads that are rocks. And he's like, oh, so you want a gravel bike? I'm like a gravel bike. I said, no, I want that bike. And I need you to ship it to Texas. And the guy is just like, looking me, like I'm nuts. But it was like, It looked like a road bike and it had, you know, what looked like to be mountain bike tires.
And I'm like, this is it. So I purchased a bike and it happened to be on my size, a 54 centimeter. They ship it to to Texas to my local bike shop and gets over there. They had 700 by 33 C tires. I start writing it in Oklahoma and I thought was the greatest thing ever. And I was running 90 PSI on the tires, which I thought at the time was perfect.
As you know, on my tubular road tires, I was running 120 PSI. And so I thought this thing was just as smooth as can be on these gravel roads. And I signed up for my first gravel event, October 1st, 2016. And I thought, Hey, you know, it was 15 miles, no big deal. I showed up at the time, I think I had 95 P assigned a rear and 90 in the front.
And I thought it was gonna be very much like a road rally where you have, you know, rest stops every so many miles. And so I think I had two water bottles and, or maybe a one snack or whatever, and man, it was a nightmare.
[00:07:55] CraigDalton.: Was was that in Oklahoma, the event that you signed
[00:07:58] FabianSerralta: it was Texas. It was a really hilly area monster, Texas. And you know, I paid my registration fee, which I think it was, I don't know, 85, $90. And I was expecting it to be just like many of the road rallies I had done. And. You know, grass stops with bananas and oranges and cookies and pickle, juices, and Gatorade.
And there was nothing. all they had was a water table. with warm water, no food. And by the end of the 50 miles, I thought I was gonna die. And with that tire pressure on those 33 sea tires. I was so beat up. I swear, I'll never do this again. I remember getting to the finish and calling some buddies. I'm like, I am never doing this again.
This is horrible. Why would anybody ever do this? You know,
[00:08:43] CraigDalton.: Yeah. It's, it's funny. What a difference the evolution of the equipment has made in the enjoyment of the sport. I'm with you. I, I got my first gravel bike a little bit later than the, I think back in 2016, but it was a. 2014 model year bike, 32 C tires. Fortunately it, it did have tubeless on it, but it still, like, I just felt like it wasn't that much better than Ayro bike.
I had five or six years earlier, which I had pretty much quit riding because I would either flat or get the crap beat outta me every time I rode it.
[00:09:15] FabianSerralta: Yeah, this, this, I mean, it was, it was ay, it was a cycle cross bike. It was specialized crux. I mean, it had great, I mean, it had zip three or threes. I was running tubes. Which was, you know, a big difference from running tubers on my other bikes road bikes. And they had ceramic red, I couldn't complain it was a great bike, but I was just running to run tire pressure, the wrong tire size.
And I really didn't have any, any knowledge of, of gravel, but, you know, I did see other people running big, your tires and all that. And it, it was just this learning curve. But that first experience was horrible. And I really, I swear I never did this again. And it took a while and then I, I started learning from others like, Hey, yeah, you can't be out there running tire pressure like that.
And you can't, you, you gotta run bigger tires than that. And you gotta run, you know, tube, you know, tubeless. And and you know, I, it probably took me a few, a couple of months before I even wrote again. But as I, I started getting more and more advice from others that were doing it. But it was so early on.
But it was that experience that really led me to wanna have eventually at one day have a gravel event. That was a lot like a road rally, but that it was also, you know, it, it had the, it was at the time it was, you know, the dirty cancer event, the DK 200. So I wanted to have a, a DK 200 event with the pro component, but yet.
Beginner friendly. So have all the support that you would need for beginners like myself or, or people just really interested in gravel. So having all the bunch of rest stops and having portable bathrooms at rest stops for the women and having sag vehicles all over the place, but yet having a ton of pros.
So having, you know, an event that was a DK 200 packed with pros, but yet packed with. All the support and all the things that you are accustomed to experiencing and having at a, you know, family road, rally type event.
[00:11:15] CraigDalton.: Interesting. So it sounds like, I mean, if we fast forward a few years from that original event, it sounds like you competed in a handful of events every year to try to, you know, obviously continue your enjoyment of the sport. The, the equipment had continued to evolve and, and you'd had a number of experiences at other events where you're like, I like part of what this event has done, but part of what that event has done.
And you thought, well, like what if I did this on my own?
[00:11:41] FabianSerralta: Yeah, look so it, the events continue. I con I would go to every gravel event that I could go to, but it just, it was, you know, you pay your 75, 85, a hundred something dollars, but. You're lucky you got a water table and it was, everything was always self support, self support, self supported, and you're paying all this money, but you're not really getting a whole lot in return.
And to me, it really excluded a lot of beginners. It excluded people that didn't have a lot of bike skills or, or bike mechanic knowledge because, you know, I always say what, what makes riding gravel so great is that you're out in the middle of nowhere. , but what that's also, what makes it kind of dangerous and also kind of keeps a lot of people out of it because you know, you're out in the middle of nowhere.
You don't have cell reception, you don't have convenience stores. Oftentimes you don't have many houses or you don't see a vehicle or cars don't even go come by half the time. So yeah, you're out there in the middle of nowhere, but then you don't help of neighbors and you don't have convenience stores and you don't have others to reach out to in case of an emergency or a mechanical.
And I feel that that deters a lot of people from venturing and, and experiencing gravel. And as a result, you know, a lot of people miss out on experiencing gravel. So how do you bring in all those people? And for me, Is the way to do that is by bringing in all the support, the sag vehicles, aid stations, every so many miles.
So for example, in gravel Locos, you have, you know, six aid stations you have 20 something sag vehicles for the women. We have portable bathrooms at all the aid stations where there is in HaCo or in Pueblo, Colorado . And that's how we take out that, that fear of, you know, Being out there in the middle of nowhere.
So, but yet we still have, you know, 20 something, 30 pros out there participating just like you, we did, you know, at events like dirty cans, 200 or, you know, what was land run, you know? And I referred to them by those names because that's what I was modeling.
Then.
[00:13:42] CraigDalton.: I'm glad we unearthed that because I think it's important to kind of think about people's orientations as event organizers in terms of how they're gonna set up the overall experience. You know, it's one thing when you've got a, a top level pro who's decided they want to get into the event business.
And oftentimes they do design events that are driven from the front. They're really a professional experience that does trickle down to the rest of us. But it's
you know, it's pretty refreshing to hear you talk about. Wanting the last person in the event to have the best time possible as well as, as the first.
So stepping back for a second, you, you live in Arlington, Texas, you've got property in Oklahoma. You'd experience the gravel community for a number of years. You decided, Hey, there's something missing. I'd love to highlight my perspective of a gravel event. How did you decide on, on, on Texas for the original event and what was that process like?
[00:14:36] FabianSerralta: Well, I, you said it in, cause that's where I predominantly ride, you know, so I've a lot gravel. I've done gravel in California. I've done gravel in Vermont, in, in Montana. I've done gravel in Scotland. I, you know, I've, I've done gravel in other parts and, but Texas, where, where I mostly write gravel and I've done gravel all over Texas and HaCo.
I remember writing and close to close to HaCo. And one of the folks that I was riding with says, man, if you like this area, You've gotta check out. Heico so I said Heico where's that? So I found it went out there and,
[00:15:13] CraigDalton.: And where, where is it relative to, to the Dallas area
[00:15:17] FabianSerralta: for me, it's about an hour and 20 minute drive
[00:15:20] CraigDalton.: and is that to, to the east or which direction
[00:15:23] FabianSerralta: I'm the guy that gets lost with Garmen.
So so I'm gonna take a chance here. Say I think it's so out.
[00:15:30] CraigDalton.: Okay.
[00:15:31] FabianSerralta: So, yeah, I'm horrible. I'm like directionally challenged. So I get asked this all the time. Like the other day I was in Pueblo for meetings and I was meeting with the the the PBR, the folks for the professional bull riding association, which one of our sponsors in there were asking me.
So which direction I, I have no idea. Here's the route, you figure it out. And really, I do get lost even with Garman. I'm that guy that I'm following route. And I always end up with more mileage. So I, up going out to HaCo. And I follow this route and it had so much more climbing, even though I am not built like a climber.
I love as these challenging routes. I really love taking on routes to have as much climbing as possible. And it, even though it takes me all stinking day and HaCo has that, you know, for Texas as one of these guess that you get so much climbing and I absolutely fell in love with it. And Heico has it's heart packed.
And it has a lot of beautiful canopy areas, you know, tree canopy, tree areas. It has lots of water crossings. It has. I mean, it's just a really diverse terrain. And even if it were to rain, it's so hard packed. It's it's got a lot of smooth areas. There's really nothing rough or nasty about it. It, and. Even, even if it rains it's, it's not an area that, that you get much mu much more than a couple inches of mud.
So it's not like, like Mid-South where you have, you know, six inches, 12 inches of mud in your foot, you know, is, you know, foot into the mud. For example, last year in may it did run, it did rain. And so yeah, people got my, but you're talking, you know, an inch of mud, two inches of mud. Maybe two and a half.
So it's not a situation that you're just bogged down and you, you have to walk, you, you can ride through it. So it it's really a, an area that you can ride it all year long rain or shine. And it was just perfect. And. I said, this is it. We're gonna do it here. So, you know, we had last year, we had three routes this year.
We have four routes. Last year we had a 30 mile or a 60 and 150 something. And after our survey of the event, it was a very positive survey folks, which is absolutely thrilled with the event. But what kept coming up was have a 100 mile. I said, all right. So for 2022, we have a hundred mile as well.
And it just filled up immediately. So folks really wanted a hundred. Not everybody wants to do 150 something miles, but they want it more than a 60 mile. So the hundred mile, you know, I never even thought of it, you know? So you learn, I've learned a lot, you know, I thought,
[00:18:03] CraigDalton.: feel, I feel like I'm in that category where 150 mile, maybe I can muster that up once a year, if I'm lucky, but a hundred keeps me honest. I need to train for that pretty well. But I, I believe in my heart, like I can always uncork a hundred miles if I'm like relatively fit.
[00:18:20] FabianSerralta: Yeah. And you know, and the hundred mile it is, it's a legit route. I mean, it's, it's over 5,000 feet of climbing and it's really a beautiful route and it, and it really incorporates all the hard climbs that are in the 150 something mile. And
[00:18:33] CraigDalton.: what I, one of the things I always wanna unpack with event organizers, because I think it is a challenge depending on where you are, is okay. So you you've decided on HaCo as a, as a great riding location. But there are also logistics and permits and all kinds of things. You need to go through granted in a rural community.
Maybe those are less than a more populous community, but you still need to do that. So what was that process? What was that process like for you?
[00:18:59] FabianSerralta: Really easy, you know, what, what I have learned with I, you know, this is for me as a hobby and HaCo has, you know, it's really been incredibly easy. They they've really take care of all that for me. And I went in there with, you know, the understanding that, look, I'm doing this to help the volunteer fire departments.
If you're willing to help me, I'm willing to do it.
[00:19:17] CraigDalton.: And was that perspective, something that was already in your head. Hey, I wanna have a charitable component to the event I put on.
[00:19:24] FabianSerralta: Yes. Yes. And, and if you're willing to work with me and, and take care of these things, I'm willing to do it. If you're not willing to work with me, I'm outta here. I just, you know, it's, it's one of those things that I, I don't have the time to mess with all that stuff. So if the town is willing, then I'm willing, I, if they want to put me through all these hoops and things and, and, and, and barricades and all these.
All this red tape, I'm just, I'm outta here because I just don't have time for it. You know, I've got four kids and two other businesses to run. And so I was really upfront and they were really honest about it. And they just, they facilitated everything that I needed. They, they provide all the things that I needed.
They provide law enforcement, they provide crowd control and barricades and they provide everything. The same thing with Pueblo, you know, they're.
[00:20:09] CraigDalton.: you know, hike in the original gravel locus event. Sorry to interrupt you there for it. It took off through the gravel cycling community as a event option incredibly quickly. And there was a couple things that. Kind of at least caught my eye right off the bat, which were one was correct me if I'm wrong here.
But it seemed like the registration was entirely a donation based model, which was unheard of. And two for a first year event, you had all these top pros saying I'm gonna be there.
[00:20:40] FabianSerralta: Yes.
[00:20:40] CraigDalton.: How did both of those things happen?
[00:20:43] FabianSerralta: well, you know, it was, it was out of really, so the event was initially gonna take place in 2020 in November and I canceled it cuz of COVID, you know, so I had the Greenlight from, from HaCo, but I canceled it because of COVID. My basically, you know, I have absolutely zero connections in the bike industry.
And what I tried to do was try and get the bike industry board. And the only way that I could do that was reaching out to them via Instagram and Facebook. And that really didn't really work. I couldn't get anybody to, you know, return any messages or anything, despite the amount of money that I spent on bikes.
You know, I have the the record of my local bike shop for spending the most money on bicycles every year. just absurd. despite all that I couldn't get a response from anybody. So I said, you know what? I'm not gonna let that discourage me. I'm gonna have this event with, or without the bike industry.
And so I said, I'll, I'll fund it. I'll do it myself, cuz I I'm gonna have this event. And this event is gonna have the component of the pros and the component of the beginners. And there is not there. Isn't gonna be a cutoff. So if folks are gonna train for the geo one fifty, a hundred fifty something miles with over 8,000 feet of elevation gain.
I'm not gonna yank 'em off the course. They're gonna be out there as long as they want to be. And if they want to give up, they're gonna give up, but it's not gonna be, I'm not gonna take it away from anybody. I'm not gonna be that person. That's gonna say, Hey, you know what? You didn't make the cut off by 10 minutes or an hour or two hours.
And you're off the course. Because I'm always that person, who's the last one. And you know, when I was at Ted's event in Vermont last year, I didn't make the cutoff. And when they came up to me and they, Hey, look, you, you didn't make the cutoff. I said, , we're gonna have a fricking fight. . And they said call Ted.
And they did. They called Ted and it's like, leave him alone. He's fine. I I'll take care of, I'll wait for him. And Ted did. And he understands, he, he waited out there for me and I didn't make the cutoff by over an hour. And he was out there in the rain, in the cold waiting for me, everybody was gone. The whole thing was shut down.
And he followed me for like the last 15 miles, cuz it was pouring rain. It was cold, but you know, he, he let me finish the, the event and to me, that's what being inclusive and, and finishing and, and you know what it's about. So to, Hey said, I'm gonna have this event regardless. So in 20 for 2021, how I was able to.
Do what I did is with, like you mentioned earlier, this, this donation thing I said, you know what? Let's just, I've gotta get the attention of, of folks. Cause I don't have the support of the bike industry and I don't have name recognition and I certainly don't have, you know, experience. I've never done this before.
So how do we capture attention? We're gonna do this for free. It's gonna be a free event. And, and first thing I said, all right, this event is gonna have 1200 free registrations. And what you're gonna do is it's up to you to make a donation, a direct donation to the volunteer fire department. Most folks are used to paying a hundred, something to hundred dollars or more for an event like of this caliber.
Remember you have all these age stations you have. So you're getting 20 something pros. Top level pros from around the world. You're getting over five age stations, fully S stocked, 20 something, sag vehicles, portable bathrooms at all. Age stations. You're getting a draw string swag bag. Really nice. You're getting with zipper.
You're getting T really nice. T-shirts you're getting purest water bottles from specialized. You're get all this swag, all this stuff for free. So, whether you give the fire station a dollar or $0, you're gonna get everything for free. So it was an honor system. And really, I think that showed people that it, Hey, this is an event that has Lawrence 10, Dan Ted king, Peter TNA, Allison Terick Jess, Sarah.
You know, Colin, Strickland, you know, all these names that I, that are all of 'em are gonna be at at Unbound, all of 'em are, are all these huge events and there's no cutoff. There's all of this support that you don't get at these big events, you know, as far as aid stations and it is entirely up to me to decide how much I'm willing to pay with what I think it's worth well out of those 1200 free registrations.
Less than 400 people donated anything. So that was a bit of a shock, but we still had the event
[00:25:11] CraigDalton.: Yeah. And, and just to unpack that a little bit, you know, quite disappointing, obviously, that just like sort of the percentage of people that actually donated and to, to put a finer point on it, like, as you describe all the things that one would get for participating, you're talking about a hundred dollars worth of.
Effort per rider to give them nutrition, to provide them porta potties, to give them swag, all those things. So it's a, it's a big proposition that I think often gets lost and and you put it in the proper context in that without someone supporting you without a, you know, a nutrition sponsor coming in and dumping.
Tens of thousands of dollars worth of product on your tables. Like that's coming outta your pocket as the race organizer. And there's no way around that. So pretty incredible effort to get it off the ground. And sorry to hear that the donations were not as great as you wanted them to be, but with those donations, something great.
Did material realize for the fire department.
[00:26:12] FabianSerralta: Yeah. And.
That that side didn't happen the way that it had. I had hope, but it, we don't really even think about it because we, at the end of the day, there were so many articles written about the event that I never expected in a million years. I honestly, I never thought that GCN would write about it. That basically magazine would write about it.
That cycling news, the Velo news, all these publications wrote about it. You know, it was listed as a, as a basically magazine listed as a. Top 20 bucket list event. You, it was mentioned like 17 times in VLO news. GCN mentioned it cycling news had articles about it. These are all things that I never even consider would happen.
[00:26:55] CraigDalton.: Yeah. it was absolutely incredible to reach the brand and the event got in that first year.
[00:27:00] FabianSerralta: We smoking great deal on the, the fire. We were still able to buy it with the money that we raised. We, you know, we still had great registration numbers we had. And then for 2022, you know, we have over 1500 people registered and we raised enough to build a bigger fire station. So
[00:27:20] CraigDalton.: That's
[00:27:20] FabianSerralta: while maybe, you know, less than 400 people register out of 1200, it doesn't matter to me because cuz we still accomplished everything that we set out to do.
We still got more numbers than I ever thought were gonna happen. And as a result, we, we have interest from other cities that are contacting me that wanna have events. So, you know, I, I was several cities reached out to me. Hey, can, can you do the same at our city? And it is, you know, I've had to turn down cities cuz it's just too much.
You know, I've had two, two other Texas cities that I asked me to host events at their cities. And I unfortunately I've had to say no because I just don't have the time
[00:27:59] CraigDalton.: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:28:00] FabianSerralta: Pueblo. Against my better judgment. I was like, sure. It's you know, the, the Pueblo story. I really, really I, I couldn't say no, it's just, they they've, they've been wanting to do an event there and they even they were bidding to try and get an event and they, they lost the bidding most cities that want to do something like this.
They're paying promoters to do the events there. That's one of my rules. I will not charge a city to host any event, cuz it goes completely against what I'm trying to do. So what I'm trying to do is bring money to the city and build and bring equipment and funding to the volunteer fire departments.
So why would I be charging them money to host events
[00:28:39] CraigDalton.: Yeah, it's super, it's super interesting. When you look at the economics of events, just events in general, how much they cost, but the economic impact to these rural communities, which in your case is very specific to raising money for these volunteer fire departments. But even beyond that, the, you know, the amount of meals purchased the amount of hotel nights, cetera.
Like it's it, it has a significant impact. and, I'm super interested to get into your second event in Pueblo and
learn how that happened. But one more question, just outta my own curiosity, how did you end up getting those 20 to 30 pros to come to a first year event?
[00:29:15] FabianSerralta: I will see the credit to that goes to Ted king because I reached out to several pros. First was him. Via Instagram. Again, I don't have any connections or I don't really know anybody. And he was the only person that responded. And I wrote him this long thing through Instagram, direct messaging through Instagram.
And I explained to him, look, this is what I'm trying to do. I'm I'm gonna have this event and it's gonna be free to everybody and gonna be up to them to donate. And this is all that they're gonna get, and this is all I'm gonna give them. And this is what I'm trying to buy a fire truck for the fire department.
And I'm trying to get this many pros and he, he rides back. He's like, are you nuts? and he finally calls me. He's like, are you nuts? He's like, I'm so intrigued by this. And.
[00:30:04] CraigDalton.: The idea, the idea was so crazy. He had to call and talk to the guy behind
[00:30:08] FabianSerralta: That's exactly what he said. He's like, this is absolutely insane in this, but I'm so like intrigued by this and he's like, are you really gonna do this? And I said, oh yeah, I'm really gonna do this. And he's like, you know, this is how stuff gets done. You know, when, when people just take a chain and, and, and do something completely outside of the box.
And, and he said, can I have two weeks to think about this? And I said, absolutely just take your time. And and he's, and he did two weeks later, he calls me back and I'm like huge fan of Ted. And, and I remember watching him in the tour de France and all that, and sure enough, two weeks later he calls me back.
He's like, all right, I'm in. And. Do you have a website? No. He's like, you need a website and then he's like, what are you gonna do for registration? I don't know. I mean, he just went down this list. He's like, you gotta have registration, you gotta have this. And, and then and then he says to me and your social media post suck
[00:31:11] CraigDalton.: suck
[00:31:12] FabianSerralta: and he is, starts helping me, you know, he starts Giving me so much guidance and stuff like that.
And he is like, and how are you gonna get ahold of all these other riders? Cause I give 'em a list. Like I want to get ahold of, of all these other riders. And he is like, I don't know. He says that, you know, let me help you. So he started really vouching for me and, and contacting them. And. And then he gave me a lot of advice.
He says, you know, don't, don't do a don't, don't give money, don't do a purse, don't do this and don't do that. And, and you're gonna find that the folks that believe in what you're trying to do are gonna jump on board. And, and that's how it happened. He just, the folks that came forward are, are folks that care about what I was trying to do.
And really wanted to be a part of something totally different. That was more about giving back. To communities and, and, and not so much about, you know, a big corporate event, it was more of a Grasso type thing. They, they were just interested and a lot of 'em have their own events that are grassroots focused, you know, Ted and Jess, Sarah, Sam Boardman, Laura King, and Ted, you know, all of them Lawrence Tanem has his own events in the Netherlands.
Peter has his own event. So all of there's a connection amongst all of us. That have to do with our own little small events that are, they're not corporate they're just small community type events.
[00:32:32] CraigDalton.: Yeah. Yeah. Amazing, amazing
[00:32:34] FabianSerralta: then what would I do in return? You know, I help with the hotels and things like that and meals and stuff like, you know, that's how, what we do, you know, they, they ride for a living that's, that's, that's how they make a living.
So you certainly, you have to help out in some way, you know, and you know, when with HCO helps me out with the hotel cost, so I provide them with a room and, and stuff like that.
[00:32:54] CraigDalton.: Gotcha.
Interesting. So now let's shift gears to Pueblo. I know you had mentioned you had a number of rural communities. See what you had done and reach out to you, but what was it about going to Pueblo in a state that you don't and you don't have property at this point? What was it about the Pueblo opportunity that said, Hey, this is the right next step for the gravel locus event team.
[00:33:16] FabianSerralta: Well, I, I found out that they helped, they they've been wanting to have a gravel rent and I found out that. They had been bidding on, on, on having an event hosted there and, and they lost somebody else got the bid and that kind of bugged me. It bugged me, it bugs me that these small towns that are hurting and economically, and they're trying to bring business and they're trying to bring funds to their towns that they're, that there.
Trying to get events by paying promoters and paying corporations money or offering to pay money. So that events are being hosted there. And to me, that it just doesn't make sense because if you're doing it for, for, as a business, you're making money. If, if you're hosting an event somewhere, you're gonna make money from registration, you're gonna make money from cells of, of, of, you know, shirts and, and you're making money from.
Vendors and, and the bike industry's paying you per and, and, and all this stuff that I, I have, I don't have access to cause I don't have any, you know, I don't have the bike industry behind me and you know, or any of that, but you know, the, the lifetime events and the big corporate events have all of that, you know, you know, all those, you know, shaman and spa and all those companies that are, there are not there for free, you know, let's just be honest, you know, I was born at night, but not last night.
So, And then to have these small towns that are struggling financially and have high unemployment paying significant amount of money for, for them to host the event there, to me that that just seemed wrong. And as a result, they, they were outted by another town and they didn't get the event. And I learned about this and I said, all right, we'll do the event there.
So I met with the city I met with the mayor. And one of the questions were, well, how much are you gonna charge us to do the event here? I said zero. And I said, if I ever ask you for money to do an event here, kick me in your ass, please. I said, that's not. That goes completely against what I'm trying to do.
I said, the reason I'm I'm doing these events is to bring funds to cities that are struggling financially, but also to bring funds to the volunteer fire department, because. Guess who we call when we fall and wipe out and bust our asses out, riding gravel, volunteer, fire departments, guess who's out there.
That's, who's out there. You know, when we're out there riding gravel that, and all of us know this it's volunteer fire departments. We're out in the middle of nowhere and it's a volunteer fire department. It out there charge and really taking care of hundreds of, of miles. That they're covering and that's who we rely on.
So if we're gonna support a, a department as a gravel community, I mean, I would think that I, you know, logically we're gonna support the volunteer fire departments in those areas that we ride. So it's not that I'm Mr. Nice or anything like that. It's just logical that we're gonna support the very same people that come to help us.
And it's the volunteer fire departments in those areas that we ride. So. And I think they, they appreciate that, you know, so to charge them, it doesn't make sense. I don't think it's fair, but they do help. You know, they provide, like we said earlier, they help me with the permitting and they help me with law enforcement and they help me with barricades and things like that.
So they, they do help. It's not like they're doing nothing. So it's, it becomes a, a community, a true community involved event. And we, we get that. We throw that word around all the time, community, this community, that, but when you really dig into it, poor community is paying a few hundred thousand dollars.
And it's really no longer a community. Now we're talking about a service and a fees and stuff like that. But in, in our case, you know, HaCo provides all this help and volume and stuff like that. The same with Pueblo. That's.
[00:37:03] CraigDalton.: think that's, you know, it's, it's in, I think it's refreshing to take that expansive view of community cuz oftentimes the gravel community, those words are thrown around a lot. Generally implying your fellow athletes, the fellow people out there riding with you. But it, it really is in these rural communities.
It's the people of the community that are coming out, coming out, whether they're, you know, Manning the registration booth or Manning an aid station, or, you know, opening their doors and giving you a glass of water. If you're stuck out there somewhere like that, that really is the breadth of the community that gravel does touch in these town.
[00:37:38] FabianSerralta: Oh, I mean, you better believe it. If they don't help me, I'm not doing it. mean, there's no way I, I would do it. It it's just, you know, I wouldn't do it. And they understand that and, and, and I'm really open about that. It's like, I'm not charging anything, but you gotta help me. You know, when I met with the fire department, it's like, you all gotta help me.
There's, you know, I don't have, this is, you know, and I, and I say this, you know, like, My social media, it's one Cuban and an iPhone. You know, I don't have a, a, a, a crew or anything like that. It's, you know what you see on social media? It's Fabian, you know, one Cuban and an iPhone. I don't have employees.
I don't have anything. It's just myself. So I, I will take all the help that I can get. And you don't need an entire staff to, to do anything like this, but you do need, you know, help and, and volunteers and, and Pueblo understands that. And HaCo understands that, you know, I'm looking at another state right now and we're looking at a third event and they understand the same thing that, Hey, we need, we want to have event grab a locus type event.
We don't have, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars to. Give a promoter to bring the event here, but we do have willing bodies and people that are willing to, you know, help and, and volunteer. And, and that's the model. And, but we also like having 20 something pros and we like having the, that racing component.
But yet we also want to have an environment that the Fabians that are gonna come in last know that they can train for this. And it's not gonna be taken away. They're not gonna be turned around and yanked off the course because to me, that's, I can't imagine training for something for a year. And, you know, not being a Ted king or, or, or a Allison Terick or Jess, Sarah, I'm not those folks.
You know, I can't imagine training and having my family behind me and all of that support and, and the struggles of having to work other jobs and then being yanked off the course until, Hey, you know, you can't finish you because you didn't make it by 30 minutes or an hour or two hours. I cannot imagine what that feels like.
And to me that just, that that's not inclusive, that that's just telling somebody you're not good enough and turn around. I, I, to me, there's no explanation that you can give me that tells me that's rational, reasonable, not even safety. What do you mean safety? There's, there's nothing. If it's a issue then guess what?
You know, the amount of money that these events make, then you plant a fricking sag vehicle behind those folks to follow them till the end. What does that cost? I mean, lemme know I'll pay for it. What's the big deal. You know, and that's what we do at gravel locus. Last year, we had a vehicle sag vehicle to follow five folks, cuz it was dark.
They didn't have lights. I said, well you freaking follow them. Follow 'em all the way to the end. You're gonna be their light because. Again, why would we yank somebody off the course? Now, if they want to quit, it's on them. If they want to throw in the towel, it's on them. But, and, and then the other thing that we have with our pros and, and, and they're more, and you, we don't even have to ask em and it's like, Hey, you know, make yourself available to the, to the folks, to the regular folks.
And I do, there are so many selfies out there with Ted and, and kids and, and Pete. Lawrence. It's just super cool and funny as hell. Allie Terick and Jess, you know, all these young girls and, and folks that got to meet them personally. And they were out there available to all these folks, which, you know, it's, those are memories and things that you just, you know, all their fans get to meet them.
[00:41:16] CraigDalton.: A hundred percent. So I guess we, you know, I feel like we've unpacked pretty completely what the gravel Locos, eco ethos is and what the experience is gonna be like on the Pueblo side. What is that terrain like? I've driven through Pueblo, but I've never, I've never put rubber on the its and trails there.
What, what do you expect the courses to be like in Pueblo?
[00:41:36] FabianSerralta: Oh, my gosh, it's silky smooth, but you know, it's, it's, it's so beautiful. I got to ride 23, 24 miles the other day. So we, we, we rode from the fire station. We did a loop and it was about 24 miles and about 1400 feet of elevation gain. The the main route we call it the, the GL one 50, that's just our, our, our, the, the big route is always gonna be called the gravel locals one 50, but it's really 169 miles.
So you get, you get a little extra, but it's, you know, right with GPS says it's over 13,000 miles, but as we know, it's always under, it's always more than.
[00:42:14] CraigDalton.: feet of climbing.
[00:42:15] FabianSerralta: So I would expect just about 14,000 feet of elevation gain and, you know, it's it's for me coming from Texas, it was a little, a little harder cuz there there's that whole, you know, the altitude, but it is just so smooth and so nice.
It's you know, it's hard packed also. It's it's smoother. The gravel there is it. It's just hard to explain. It's just, it's beautiful.
[00:42:40] CraigDalton.: So do you imagine this being the type of event that larger groups can stay together and benefit from drafting off one another and things like that? Just given the type of terrain you're on.
[00:42:48] FabianSerralta: Yeah. Yeah. It's just, I mean, it, it's hard to explain. I mean, there it's, I was, I was telling them over there, it's like, it's hard and it's definitely challenging, but you're looking at mountains and you're looking at, at all this beautiful terrain, it's really, you know, I was, I was exhausted. Again, I'm not, I'm not anybody who's in the kind of shape and certainly I've, I've gained.
I, I was telling them the other day, I was like, you know, there was the COVID 19 pounds. I, I managed to, you know, I went from riding a ton of mileage every year. And when I started gravel Locos, I've gained 50 pounds in, in two years of not riding and running two businesses and gravel Loco. So. I've gotta find a way to get these 50 pounds off.
So yeah, going downhill was great over there, but going up was tough, but just a scenery is just so, so interesting.
[00:43:37] CraigDalton.: and are the courses punctuated by like a significant climbs? Like in terms of like, oh, you're gonna be climbing for an hour at a time. Like
[00:43:44] FabianSerralta: know, gradual they're gradual climbs. There was nothing that like in HCO, you get these punchy climbs over. There's more gradual. So. You know, you can get away with with less big gears in HighCo. I tend to run bigger gears over there. You know, I didn't get in any of my big gears, you know, I, I run a 10 52 in a rear Ram and I, I wasn't using it over there because they're, they're more of the gradual climb.
You kind of get into a rhythm and they're kind of, I prefer that to be honest, that you just kind of get into this groove and you get into this rhythm. Whereas high code has these. You know, we have some, some climbs that are 22% 23, and they're pretty punchy. And we have these three climbs that are back to back that we call the three bees.
You can decide whatever you want to call those bees, but bitches they're rough. And then and man, those kick up into the 22, you 23, 20 4%. and it's, you know, they're kind of loose rocks and you just kind of gotta lean forward and you gotta get that big granny gear and just work your way up.
Whereas in Pueblo, you don't have, I didn't experience anything like that. And, and most of what's out there is these long gradual climbs that you kind of get into a rhythm. So I prefer the, the type of climbing that they have out there in Pueblo, but they're both very, very different, very different type of riding.
[00:45:05] CraigDalton.: And would you change your, your tire width from HaCo to Pueblo? Would you do
[00:45:10] FabianSerralta: I think that you can. I think that at, at both, you can get away with smaller diameter tires. So I've done HaCo with 35 centimeter tires. I've done HaCo with 47. I think that in Pueblo again, we rode Pueblo last week where it had been snowing. and it was muddy, but even then, you know, I wrote it with 45 centimeters and there was folks out there running it, riding it with 30 eights and they still did just fine, but the, the Pueblo gravel is much smoother than the HaCo.
And I, I can see some folks getting away with when it's dry, especially over getting away with, you know, 30 fives,
[00:45:50] CraigDalton.: Yeah.
[00:45:50] FabianSerralta: somes. I.
[00:45:52] CraigDalton.: It's funny. It's so it's so counterintuitive to me to, and S B T gravels the same way I remember getting like my arm twisted to run 30 eights, and I was like, there's, there's no way, like I'm going to Colorado. And at home, I'm all about the 40 sevens here in Marin county, cuz it's so Rocky and but sure enough, like I definit could have ridden that as they call it champagne, gravel in Colorado on 38 with absolutely no issue.
So it, it, it's quite fascinating to me and. One of the things I.
[00:46:20] FabianSerralta: racers recently that are 40 threes. I haven't put 'em on yet, but they're kind of, you know, they're not slicks, but they're not Nobbies and I can't wait to try something like that. They're 40 threes. And normally in HighCo I run 40 fives or 40 sevens, but I'm looking forward to running those 43 as a whole new tire I've never used for, but I can certainly see a.
And in Pueblo getting away with 38, even, even a slick or a semi slick.
[00:46:45] CraigDalton.: Yeah. so, so interesting. It's obviously, it's like, it's a never ending debate and discussion about which tires to use. And I remember reading, you know, where the, when we're recording, it's the weekend of Mid-South and you know, there's a lot of people. Twisting their arms and, and twist getting all twisted inside about what tires are gonna run tomorrow or today.
Excuse me. On race day at Mid-South. So always fun and appreciate the insight there. So for people looking to find out more information about the events, where can they find information about gravel locus? Why don't you tell us the, the website and the dates of the events this year?
[00:47:19] FabianSerralta: So HaCo is May 14th. And Pueblo is October the first you can sign up on our website, which is www dot gravel, locos.bike. Just make sure you click the link for one or the other, or if you wanna do both I've left. He still opened. But we've got a or 1500. I haven't decided where I want to shut it down because HaCo is open to having more Pueblo is still open as well.
but just all the information is on there. There's four routes for each. So there's the gravel locals, 30, the 60, the hundred. And the one 50 information about the routes is on both of them. The cause for each of the events is always gonna be a volunteer fire department. Pretty much everything you need to know about it is on the website.
You'll find all the different pros that are gonna be there. We've got more pros to add to the website every day you get, you know, we get new pros that wanna come on board. As far as our sponsors there, aren't not many of them, but the, the ones that are on there, you'll find out that these are folks that are very, have been very loyal since the beginning.
And if somebody wants to be a sponsor, they're more welcome. Welcome to send us a message or email us, but. We're pretty much self supported and really it's just a community thing. And, and it's really, this whole entire thing has been made possible by, by the towns and, and little businesses within the towns.
Very small involvement from the bike industry. It's been a, a community thing to be on. Oh, just kind of how it worked out.
[00:48:42] CraigDalton.: Amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for putting so much of your heart out.
there and, and making a making events that you wanted to see happen in the world. And I think it's such a sort of beneficial place for the gravel cycling community to have event organizers with that orientation and From this conversation in our earlier conversations.
I know how much of yourself, both personally and financially you put on the line to create this event series. So again, for, from, for me, thank you for doing that and exciting to hear that Pueblo is going off this year and exciting to hear that yet another community has come to you and talking about like, how do we have grow Ava three.
[00:49:19] FabianSerralta: Yes, we we'll release that soon. I'll let you know. .
[00:49:23] CraigDalton.: Awesome. Thanks for your time, Fabian.
[00:49:25] FabianSerralta: you. Thank you. So.
[00:49:27] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Huge. Thanks to Fabion, not only for joining us on the show, but for everything he's doing around the gravel Locos series, I think he's got his heart in the right place and I've no doubt. These are some of the best gravel events out there to attend.
Big. Thanks. Also to our friends at hammerhead for sponsoring the show member, you can get a free custom color kit and premium water bottle with the purchase of the new hammerhead kuru two computer, simply go to hammerhead.io and use the promo code. The gravel ride. If you are interested in supporting the show, ratings and reviews are hugely helpful as is sharing the show with other gravel cyclists.
If you're able to support the show financially, simply visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
This week we sit down with rising gravel racing star, Brennan Wertz from the Pinarello Scuderia team. Brennan has been tearing up the Northern California gravel scene in early 2022 with wins at the Grasshopper and Shasta Gravel Hugger.
Episode sponsor: The Feed
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Brennan Wertz - Pinarello[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
Let me start this week with a question. Did you come to gravel, cycling from another sport? This week's guest certainly did.
Brendan worked, spent his high school and collegiate years at the front end of another pack. The USA rowing pack. Brendan road for the national team, as well as Stanford university. But injury led him back to cycling a sport. He discovered in his youth here in the town of mill valley, California. We're going to dive into his background and what's led this pro to be at the front end of the field in 2022.
Before we jump into this week, shall I wanted to extend a big, thank you. And welcome to the feed. A new sponsor here on the gravel ride podcast.
I've been enjoying getting to know the team over in colorado from the feed and have been really impressed by their commitment to bring together not only products but education around this idea of human performance.
Today. I wanted to talk to you in particular about one category of product, their feed formula. As you know, on the podcast, I've been kind of investigating through my own lens. The idea of nutrition and performance and what I need as I've aged as an athlete.
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[00:02:27] Craig Dalton: The feed is running a special offer on the feed formula. Right now, you can get your first order at 50% off. By simply visiting the feed.com/the gravel ride. Again that's the feed.com/the gravel ride for special 50% off your first order of feed formula.
With that business behind us, let's jump right in to this week's interview.
brennan, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much
[00:02:53] Brennan Wertz: for having me. It's good to be
[00:02:54] Craig Dalton: here. It's a rare instance that I've got someone in my home in mill valley. So I'm stoked to have this conversation face to face.
[00:03:00] Brennan Wertz: Yeah, me too. No, it's a, it's a real pleasure.
[00:03:02] Craig Dalton: We always jump into the conversation by learning a little bit about your background. So growing up in mill valley, when did you discover the bike and where did it go to from the.
[00:03:12] Brennan Wertz: Uh, really early on, it was a vehicle that I use to get to. And from school, just down the road here, I went to tan valley elementary school.
And I would ride with my parents when I was first getting started and, you know, kindergarten or the early days ride to and from school. And then later on in elementary school, it just became more of a fun toy, something that I could go out and explore with and go with my friends out in the Headlands.
You know, rip around Mount Tam on our mountain bikes. So, uh, pretty quickly I got into mountain biking, more descent oriented, I would say I would go and do Downieville with some friends every once in a while, and even went and did some of the downhill. Shuttle access riding at north star one.
[00:03:49] Craig Dalton: Nice. Did they have the Tam high school mountain bike program at that
[00:03:52] Brennan Wertz: point? They did. Once I got into high school, it was when I was I kind of got swept into rowing and that required my full-time focus.
[00:03:59] Craig Dalton: How did that happen? I'm super curious to dig into your rowing career, because I think as I mentioned to you before I've met so many rowers that came into cycling and with this huge engine.
So I'm just curious to dig in a little bit that, so your freshmen in high school, it sounds like you started. How did that come to pass? I think of rowing as like a European or east coast sport. So out here in the west coast, how did you get drawn into. Yeah.
[00:04:22] Brennan Wertz: I think a lot of people have that traditional view of the sport being very much like east coast, Ivy league or in, you know, England and in central Europe.
But the west coast has produced a lot of really high quality rowing talent. There are a lot of top schools on the west coast here. I went to Stanford. That was a good brewing program. And then there was university of Washington and Cal Berkeley both had very, very good programs. And I think a lot of it just has to do with the climate.
You know, it's the same with riding a bike around here. We can train all year round with rowing. We didn't have to deal with frozen water. So, I think that gives the west coast a big leg up on, on its competition and on the, you know, the, the school. Uh, east but more specifically how I got into it. I, my parents were both rowers in college.
My dad grew up here in Morin as well. Uh, and he wrote for what was Redwood high school back in the day when he was there. And it's now the Marine rowing association. So I rode there and in high school they introduced me to the sport. They definitely. Pressure me to get into rowing. But they just introduced it to me.
And they were actually kind of hesitant for me to get into rowing because it's not the best spectator sport travel, these odd places for this weird, you know, oblong body of water to go and do these races that, I mean, it's kind of like watching a road race. You're standing on the side of the road or on the side of the lake and boom, the race goes by and in an instant it's over.
So, but they were encouraging and I went and, and tried out my freshman year and quickly found some success and found that the mountain bike riding that I had been doing in the years prior had help set myself up for some success there with a lot of leg strength and leg power and just generally good cardio.
And so that was kind of a smooth transition. Like I said earlier, the, the mountain biking I was doing was much more descent oriented. And so I had to kind of put that to the side because I knew the two didn't really compliment each other. I was going out on the weekends and riding my mountain bike and you're trying to do more jumps and just rip down single track.
And that wasn't really providing me the cardio benefit that I needed for training for rowing. And it was more of just a risky, fun hobby. So. But that to the side and hung the bike up in the garage for a number of years, what is it
[00:06:28] Craig Dalton: like when, when you get into the sport of rowing what are the workouts look like and how long are the events that you would typically train for?
[00:06:37] Brennan Wertz: The events vary by season? So in the fall, the races are five kilometers long, which is roughly 18 to 20 minute effort. And then in the spring, And that's usually kind of like a time trial where you're racing against the clock and you start on roughly 30 minutes staggers or sorry, 30 seconds staggers in the spring.
You're racing six boats across head to head and it's a 2000 meter, two K race. And that's about five and a half minutes. And so it's. Really a VO two effort. It's really intense. It's just that horrible combination of an extended sprint, basically where you're sprinting out of the gate. And then you settle into your rhythm for a few minutes and then you're sprinting again at the end.
And you're just red line the whole time. So to prepare for that, you spend the winter and fall kind of building your base similar to how you would for cycling, where you're just doing longer, steady state rows. And you're you know, just getting the heart rate in that kind of mid tier zone. And then later in the winter, you start building the intensity in and working that VO two engine a little bit more.
And then as you get into the spring, then it's just sort of fine tuning. But I would say that there's also a really, you know, it's a huge, it's a really important team swore like the team element is huge in the, in the sport of rowing. Not only is the training really important, but also the comradery, but then the technique like matching with your teammates and really being on the same page as you go through the motion of the rowing stroke, you have to be really in synchronized motion for it to click and for it to
[00:08:02] Craig Dalton: work.
Yeah. I've heard that technicality of rowing is just really important. Like you've got to have good technique. You can have all the power on the. And if you don't have synchronicity with your teammates, it's a complete disaster. Yeah, exactly. So going into, you know, what would an endurance rowing workout look like?
Is that like sort of, you know, we think about you probably go out for six hour rides routinely when you were training for rowing, would endurance be an hour long, workout,
[00:08:26] Brennan Wertz: more maybe 90 minutes, two hours. So often what we do, uh, when I was at Stanford, what we would do is we'd go out on the bay in the morning when the water was calm and we'd do maybe two hours on the water we'd mix in some interval.
The nature of the bay is that we had this kind of channel that we would run as a shipping channel in the port of Redwood city, similar to in high school, we wrote in the, of an air Creek. And so you have this. Two kilometer stretch of water. And so you can't ever really get a super long effort in because you're turning the boat.
And so you have to stop and turn the 60 foot boat around in the body of water. And so it takes a minute or two to spend the boat. So you can't really get that super long, extended, steady state effort in unless the water is extremely calm. But I did spend one summer in Hanover, New Hampshire training with the national team there, and that.
An amazing place to train in the summer because we're on the Connecticut river and you could go as far as you want it. So we would just take off and head north for an hour and then spin once and then come all the way back down. And so then it was really, it was really eye opening for me to see the physical benefit you get from that kind of like real long endurance.
So to come back around, I guess I would say that the morning sessions were usually on the water. And then in the afternoon we would do a land session that was either. Some, not usually a ton of weightlifting, but some combination of like indoor bike and rowing machine and just kind of cardio and cardio and or fitness testing.
[00:09:49] Craig Dalton: Cool. Thanks for allowing me to drill into that. Cause as I said, you know, knowing rowers always come out strong now it makes sense. There's a lot of work that goes into it. So you were competing at a pretty high level with USA rowing at the end of your career. What led to you kind of leading the sport of rowing and coming back to the sport of cycling.
[00:10:06] Brennan Wertz: Yeah, most recently I was on the U 23 national team in 2018 and we spent the summer, uh, first the selection camp for the national team was held in Seattle. So we were training in Seattle. Uh, once I made the cut for the national team, then we spent that summer, uh, traveling around Europe racing. We went to Raisa elite world cup.
Uh, we were the U 23 national team, but we were racing up at the elite level at the world cup in Switzerland. We raised that, and that was when I started to have some really challenging rib pain and back pain. So ribbon back injuries are quite common in rowing and effectively. What it is is your ribs are separating and kind of stress fracturing through the rowing motion.
Just that repeated motion over and over again. And it was on my front and back, and it just caused a ton of pain. And, uh, it was really difficult for me to sleep or laugh or cough or sneeze, any of those, those things cause a lot of discomfort. And so from there, I, we had a training camp after we were in Switzerland at the world company, Italy for 10 days, we went on the training camp and I couldn't row it all that entire time.
And so that was meant to be our final tune-up before we had to Poland for world. And I was basically sidelined that entire time and riding this indoor spin bike and the eight man boat was going out with seven guys and there was just like, I could see them out on the water rowing and there's just this one empty spot.
That was where I was supposed to be sitting. Or they would have an assistant coach fill in who hadn't been rowing in two years. So yeah, it was kind of a grim situation and I had to just patch it together and I had a lot of KT tape and, you know, daily, or, you know, I was meeting with. The team, physical therapist, multiple times a day to get massages and get taped up and everything.
And so really just hanging on by a thread through the end and went to worlds. We had a great team, the program that we were, uh, Uh, part of that year was a very, very high level, a lot of really talented athletes there. And we ended up coming away with the win at worlds and we set a world best time. So on paper, everything was awesome.
But I had even had food poisoning during the event too. So I just kept getting all these, you know, these blows along the way that Just kind of felt like maybe I should take just, you know, take some time on my body, recover from this and heal. And, uh, so I took some time off from the sport and I came back home and was in really good shape, but I wanted to, and I wanted to keep that going.
I wanted to remain fit and exercise, but I needed a break from my body from rowing. And so I grabbed my dad's road bike and just started cruising around Moran a little bit. And. Really quickly, you just found the group rides and found the culture and the scene here in Marin, and really loved going out on those rides.
And when did a couple of rides and had just come back from winning a world championship, I thought I was, you know, in this amazing fitness and everything had been going, going. Training was good. And then I go on my first couple of group rides and I just get obliterated. I get dropped I'm way out the back.
I remember having to almost get off my bike overall. I Alpine down, I'd never really been, been out there and done that loop and had no idea where it was or how much further I had to go. And, uh, it was really humbling and I loved it. I was like, wow, this is just such a cool experience. I get to go out and explore these new places and not to say that rowing training isn't inherently fun.
I dunno, maybe it isn't where the act of riding the bike is just, it's inherently so much fun and it just brings so much joy and you're out seeing these beautiful places. And for me, that really quickly. Pulled me into the sport. So that was, was that 2018? That was, yeah, that was like fall of 2018.
[00:13:28] Craig Dalton: And at some point you must've had to come to the conclusion that your body or your mind, or you just didn't want to do rowing anymore. Was it, was it the body that kind of was telling you, you can't go back to the sport?
[00:13:40] Brennan Wertz: Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was the body for sure. But then I also had an insert. I'll have this other voice in my hair.
Like, Hey, look like this alternative is also awesome. Like it's not like you're just walking away from something. Cause I think if I had just left the sport wrong and then had done nothing, it would have been really hard, but I had this other option that was amazing. And I was really enjoying. And at that point in time, the bike wasn't something new to me.
I knew I knew the bike. I had come to appreciate it. I spent, you know, early in, earlier in college I spent a summer living in Germany doing an internship and I brought a mountain bike with me and I took the summer completely off from rowing and. That was the first summer where I rode the bike consistently and actually thought I was training on my bike and I'd go out and I'd just ride.
It was a cross country bike. And I would rip through this, uh, German mountain range in central Germany, near Frankfurt and tons of single track and beautiful gravel roads. Uh, I wasn't racing at all. I wasn't really looking at any numbers. I had Strava on my iPhone. But I wouldn't really, I wasn't geeking out on numbers or data or time or anything.
I would just go out and ride and really enjoyed it. And I had the opportunity to load my bike up a couple of times and go on these bike packing adventures that summer. And so that I knew at that time, I was not in a position where I could just walk away from rowing. Cause I, uh, I was on a scholarship at Stanford.
I knew that I, you know, I wanted to go and sort of see that through. And that was my main sport at the time. But I did always have in the back of my mind, like, Hey, that's summer in Germany, you know, that bike packing trip through the black forest. Like that was pretty amazing. So, kind of the inverse of a lot of people have a lot of people come into to cycling and gravel racing.
You know, it's very common to see people come from the world tour from pro road, racing into gravel and into this adventure side of cycling. But for me, it was actually that's really what got me into cycling and just riding a bike at all in the first place was, was that adventure cycling. Sleeping in my hammock, in the woods and packing all my belongings onto my bike and then riding on to the next town.
And so anyway, that was always in the back of my mind. And then when I, when I had the time sort of the forced time from that injury, then it just became this, you know, it became much more realistic for me to focus more on, on the bike. I
[00:15:42] Craig Dalton: ended up joining the local powerhouse team Mike's bikes eventually, and did a fair, fairly heavy season on the road to pre pandemic.
Is that kind of the way it played out?
[00:15:53] Brennan Wertz: Yeah, I spent that whole summer or that whole, the whole spring seasoned racing as much as I could. I was just totally in love with it. I wanted to get as much experience as possible and then. I made it from CalFire Volvo to cat too. And it was just really enjoying the road scene and decided I wanted to try to go and race in Belgium, uh, just because that seemed like really cool cultural scene.
They love cycling there. There's tons of racing opportunity and I just wanted to go there and see if I could make it and see if I could kind of make the cut and figure it out. Unfortunately, got hit by a car the first week I was in Europe for that summer. Uh, and so I was sidelined for that summer and I didn't get to race at all.
That was in 2019. But then when I returned in the. The fall of 2019, I had sort of had a year of like, all right, this is, I really, I'm still loving this. I still really want to focus on the bike. And that was when I got bumped up from the Mike's bikes development team to the elite team and decided I would continue to focus on road cycling, kind of going into what became the pandemic year.
[00:16:48] Craig Dalton: And I believe they gave you a little bit of leeway to try some gravel racing,
[00:16:53] Brennan Wertz: right? Yeah. Yeah. So they, they were, you know, Creative team. It's a creative bunch of guys and they all like riding gravel too. And they, you know, they saw the potential there with a lot of these events. And so they supported me to go to a couple of different gravel events and I went and did BWR with them.
And so, you know, now last year in 2021, I had this awesome opportunity to go attend a few of these big gravel events, both with Mike's bikes. And then also with above category where I had started working. And then that's really. What got my feet wet in the gravel scene in the gravel racing scene, I guess I'd had a gravel bike for a couple of years, or, yeah, I guess a year, two years at that point.
So living in Murren, there's an, there's an awesome amount of gravel riding. It's kind of everywhere. It's really easy to access. So I'd been riding a lot of gravel, but I'd never really done an erasing. And so then I had that opportunity to go do attend some of these races and then just totally fell in love with it.
[00:17:43] Craig Dalton: And as you looked into this season and I presume at some point you had to make a decision, do I want to stay on the road? You know, continue with the Mike's bike squad or look for another deal. Obviously, domestic road racing has its own challenges economically. What was your mindset in terms of choosing the gravel route?
And how'd you come to that decision?
[00:18:02] Brennan Wertz: Yeah, I think last year I had a really amazing learning experience and that the month of June, I spread myself way too thin. I started the month off with Unbound and that was my first big high-profile gravel race. And we built. A very, very specific custom mosaic gravel bike for that event with above category.
And I really enjoyed going through the process of designing this bike specifically for this one event and, and specking it out with all these amazing components. And that was when I really began to see the power of building these relationships with sponsors and working with partners that you really value as an athlete, and that the brands really value as an athlete.
And that there's this really awesome mutual. Respect for one another and understanding that like, Hey, we're going to do something really cool together with this project. And so we put together this amazing bike. I had the opportunity to go out and race. I had a blast building the bike. I had a blast at the event.
I ended up getting a 10th there and that results sort of opened up some doors to go to a few other events throughout the summer
[00:19:00] Craig Dalton: under the MC spikes flag at
[00:19:01] Brennan Wertz: that point still for the most part under the Mike spikes flag, that specific event at Unbound I did as a marketing project with the both category.
And then later on in the summer, I did Steamboat again with above category, but for the most part, yeah, all my other races, it was with my bikes. Gotcha. You had to come back to that month of June. I did Unbound. And then right after Unbound, I went to pro road nationals and race status about 10 days after finishing Unbound, I was on the start line at pro road nationals in the time trial.
And that was an event that I've been preparing pretty specifically for. So I had this sort of weird split in my training where I was doing these epic long endurance rides, going up into Sonoma, Napa riding in the heat to train specifically for the Unbound effort. But I was also during the week doing intervals on my TT by.
Knowing that a week after Unbound I'd be racing the pro nationals time trial. And that was a big, I wanted that to be a big focus of mine, the time trial, but just the way that the calendar worked, it, it just, it was too short of a window for me to recover fully from Unbound and then prepare for the time trial.
So I can remember what I got. I think I got like 15th or 16th and I was, I was pleased with it, but I knew like I could have done so much better. My power target was 50 Watts under my power target and, uh, at pro nationals. The following weekend, I went and raised elite nationals because Mike's bikes is an elite and amateur elite team.
And so we got to race up at the pro road nationals, but then we went to the elite amateur nationals, which is kind of like our national championship at our level. And by that point I felt like I had recovered a little bit more. I made a few minor fit adjustments to my time trial bike felt like I was flying on the TT bike.
Uh, ended up getting second in the TT and nationals by I think, two seconds. So a bit frustrating, but I felt like I, you know, I hit my power target, everything kind of clicked and it all, it all worked. But. I still felt like I left that event. Like, I don't know. I just spent these two weeks doing these, these national championships on the road and the racing superintendents, and it's super fun.
And it's really awesome to push yourself like that and be in that environment around all these, you know, like a pro road nationals, you're racing next to people. You've watched on TV for a number of years and you're like, oh, I'm right here next to them now. So it's a super cool experience, but you know, I finished those races and it just seemed like it was kind of looking around.
They're just everyone just after the race kind of went, did their own thing. They went their own separate ways and no one was really talking to each other. It wasn't, it just didn't seem like all that much fun. I was like, what's going on here? Like,
[00:21:20] Craig Dalton: that's your Unbound experience where there's a joy at the finish
[00:21:24] Brennan Wertz: line and everybody's celebrating each other and it's this huge party and there's, you know, a barbecue or whatever.
And it just, it's, it's a little bit more of a, of an experience. And so then I'd kind of had those two, those two national championship experience. And then to finish June off, I think it was early July. I went down to San Diego for Belgium wall fluoride. And that was, that was kind of the moment when I was like, I think there's something like this, something really attractive here with gravel.
And I went and did that race and it felt just as professional as pro road nationals, like we had, there was a caravan, there were cars were taking feeds from the, the follow car. We're getting bottles like everyone's you know, riding very professional. But then afterwards, it's this huge party and everyone's having a good time and you're, you're chatting with sponsors and there's this big expo and there's tons and tons of people.
And I just thought like, oh, this is, I think this is much more my speed. And this is really what I'm, what I'm into. I
[00:22:20] Craig Dalton: remember watching some of that coverage and seeing a couple of Mike's bikes jerseys. One, that's just fun to see the local team down there, uh, doing it. And two, I was sort of scratching my head.
I was like, well, who are these guys? So, you know, it's great full circle to, to kind of have you on the podcast now and talk about that journey. Yeah,
[00:22:36] Brennan Wertz: no, that was an amazing moment. And then, and then that really was the turning point. I think for me, where I realized, like, I think there's something here that I need to focus more on and pay more attention to.
And at that point then I started looking at. To all the other gravel races throughout the rest of the season, like what can I get entries to? What can I attend? And from there, I got to go to Steamboat and did the rest of the Belgian waffle ride series. And, uh, ended up coming second in the overall for the Belgium Wolf ride series.
And just really love the, the, the way that that season unfolded and having the opportunity to go to all those races. It was really, uh, really a privilege. Yeah, that's awesome.
[00:23:09] Craig Dalton: So it sounds like, like 20, 22 this year defining your own schedule. Can you talk. One that the team and organization that's supporting you this year, and then two, let's talk about, you know, your first month of racing this year and all the big events you've hit and the successes you've been having, it's been great to watch.
[00:23:27] Brennan Wertz: Yeah. So I signed with Pinarello to be a part of their scooter Rhea Pinarello team. It's an amazing team. Uh, a couple of different, uh, kind of a couple different focuses. Like there I'm part of the, it's like the competitive side of it. And so me and my teammate, Brayden Lang, we're going to be taking on all the biggest gravel races around the world.
I have a packed calendar with races, both in the U S as well as internationally. And then some of the, uh, the other teammates that we have they're there. Community leaders they're really active in their communities. They're inspiring people to get on their bikes. And what I really love about the team is that it's a super supportive atmosphere, similar to what I had back in my rowing days, because there's this whole like gravel, private tier scene.
I think it can be a little bit lonely from time to time. Like you're, you don't have a team network around you. You don't have that kind of base that I've become really accustomed to and really love. And so. Having that network of teammates around me that are supporting me and motivating me and inspiring me with all the stuff that I'm doing and then, you know, vice versa, they're inspiring and motivating their community.
Uh, I think that it's just a really cool combination, so I'm really happy to be a part of.
[00:24:33] Craig Dalton: Are they handling some logistics? Like if you go to Unbound, are they kind of getting a team house together
[00:24:38] Brennan Wertz: and that kind of stuff? Yeah. Yeah. There's some of that as well. Which is nice. I mean, in the race itself, like we won't be doing any like teen tactics or anything like that.
Like it's not that type of team, but it's, it's this really cool collective of individuals that are all. Coming into the sport of gravel for various reasons and are looking to achieve different things in the store and looking to but like at the core of it, the team motto is to motivate and inspire.
And so it's just trying to get more people on bikes and more people to come in and see the joy that we're all experiencing while out on our bikes and want to be a part of it.
[00:25:08] Craig Dalton: Just something I'm curious about in that team, is everybody riding the same equipment or do you. Other sub sponsors, uh, personally to the
[00:25:16] Brennan Wertz: table.
Yes. So everybody's riding a Pinarello frame. And then from there, we kind of, it's up to us. Figuring out how we want to spec it out and, and you know, what relationships we might have to, to kind of fill out the rest of the bike. So for me, for my bikes for my growl bikes specifically, it's the Pinarello Greville or Graebel and I'm working with envy and ceramic speed, and this is all kind of done through above category as well.
So that's another one of my main sponsors local shop here. In Marin county and they're taking care of all the builds, making sure that the bikes are always super dialed and I'll take my bikes there to Robert, the mechanic for service. But yeah, envy wheels, ceramic speed for all the bearings. Uh, I've got Garmin for all the, the data and the analytics and everything, uh, Ceram road components for everything, uh, Rene her's tires.
So yeah, it's really. Special build. And it's been really fun to be a part of the process of putting together all those various sponsorships and, and building this incredible bike that I get to now spend the season racing
[00:26:13] Craig Dalton: in the show notes for a picture of your bike, as it is a beauty. Top end across the board.
It's real. It's just a beautiful machine to look at for sure.
[00:26:22] Brennan Wertz: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Very feeling, very fortunate to have the opportunity to ride such an incredible machine.
[00:26:27] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So you've, you've come out in 2022, just smashing, not only like super busy and hitting a lot of races, but having amazing success thus far.
Remember, as we were trying to schedule this, it's kind of like I'm racing every weekend. I have like a kind of two day window between traveling to the next thing. So you've done some grasshopper. Want to grass opera this year already. And just this past weekend you won the Shasta gravel hugger.
[00:26:53] Brennan Wertz: Yeah.
Yeah. It's been really, really fun to get out and hit these early season races hard. And you know, I've, I've been very blessed with incredible weather all winter, and it's been sad from an environmental standpoint that we haven't got the rain that we really need. In terms of training and preparing for the race season, it has been, it has been really, you know, the weather has been incredible for that.
So I've been riding a ton and just really excited to come, come into a big season ahead. I think this next weekend, I'm going out to Oklahoma for mid south, and then I'll take a little. Mid-season break. So we'll take a few days off and just rest and reset and talk to my coach. Kind of look, look at the plan, assess where we are, and then begin to build up to some of the bigger races later in the season.
Like the Belgium waffle rides and, and Unbound.
[00:27:37] Craig Dalton: Well, yeah, you know, it's interesting having talked to you and learned a little bit more specifically about your background specifically, that focus on time trials that you had kind of as a, as a road race. Watching some of the imagery come across social media.
I think both of the events where I've seen you, it's just like Brennan on a time trial, you know, unafraid to just kind of take off and hit it on your own. You want it? Can you talk just a little bit about your mentality in this races and if it's helpful. To kind of talk about the Shasta race specifically, like how it broke down, because I know ultimately you ended up out there with Adam road there.
So yeah, just, just curious, like what your mentality is and where you think your strengths are and how you try to break these races up.
[00:28:20] Brennan Wertz: Yeah. I think what's been really fun for me in these early races is that if you look at all the courses that I have raised, they've been very, very different. So. Uh, I did a little low gap hopper, which was, it started out with a 20 minute climb and it was an eight or 9% and you've got Pete stepped into there.
And so for me, when I look at these early season races, I look at trying to find just this really cool mix of diverse courses so that I can try different things out. And, you know, the effort at each one of these races was so different. And so for me, I know that. Uh, race like the Shasta gravel hugger.
That's kinda my, that type of course is sort of more of my bread and butter. It's rolling the elements of that. So like not a ton of climbing. I mean, I can climb when I need to, but it's not my favorite thing to do. You know, living here in Marine county, we've got tons and tons of climbing. You can't really go anywhere without climbing, but I do really love these fast rolling courses, uh, where you can just paddle all day long.
So Shasta was very much that, and same with Huff master hopper the week before. And for Shasta specifically, I know, you know, Adam wrote bears was there. I think that was his first race of the season. And I had a ton of really good battles with him last year. And a lot of respect for him. He's, you know, he's definitely at the top of his game.
And, uh, he showed up to the start line of it had been snowing the night before and he shows up with no legwarmers, no shoe covers. Some are gloves, short finger gloves, and, you know, I'm bundled up, I'm wearing tights and shoe covers and thermal based layers and hat. And you know, all this warm gear and he's from Canada.
He's been riding his fat bike all winter. So I get it like he's, he's been riding in the snow, so it's nothing new for him. I don't have that opportunity. I don't get to ride in the snow all that often, but I kind of, I saw that. I know. Okay. He's probably, he's trying to, he's trying to hit it hard early if he's coming here, dressed like that.
And so I was keeping my eye on him and I was actually way in the back of the pack, having a quick chat with Pete stetting about his recent trip to Columbia, and we were just catching up and then the corner of my eyes, see Adam just take off from the front and like Pete and I kind of rolled her eyes, but like really already, you know, this is early in the race.
I, I knew exactly when he, when he attacked, like I had to be right there, otherwise he would get away and that could be the end of it right there. So I had to blast up the gutter kind of along the side of this dirt road. And I think we're 20 minutes into the race or something. And, uh, at that point I was able to catch up to him.
We had a few people on our wheel for just a brief moment, but then it very quickly became just the two of us. And it was clear that he was, he was there to work and he was there to ride hard. We settled into a rhythm and he's also at a time trial list. That's sort of his background on the road. And basically it was just like, all right, how long you want to rotate for two minutes?
All right, let's go. And then just 400 wallets for two minutes and then switch and then do it again. And again and again. And then two hours later, we're still doing it. And it took about two or three hours for us to get any sort of time gap. And then we got a time gap about three minutes, and then, then it started to get a little bit more spicy.
There was some attacking and some cat and mouse But I've been doing a lot of training recently where I'd go out and do these five to seven hour rides, really working specifically on the last hour or two and doing all my intervals and the really hard stuff in that last hour, so that, you know, when it comes to that point in the race, that that's what I'm prepared for.
And it's very, very different from any of the rowing training I've been doing. You know, you have this basically five-hour warmup to get yourself nice and softened up. Dehydrated and sweaty and everything. And, and then you, you really hit the intervals at the end of the end of the session. So I felt like I had been doing a lot of that in training.
So I knew that going into that last hour, I would be in a, in a pretty good place and I was feeling good. So, I knew that the course was changing direction. We were coming out of a long headwind section into more of a crosswind cross tailwind section. And so I attacked him over the crest of a. Got into the descent and I'm a little bit bigger than him.
And so I was kinda able to just really put the hammer down on this descent. That was a pretty fast, but a peddling descent. And then once it flattened out, then it was just kind of Tom trial mode and basically put the head down for 40, 45 minutes and ride as hard as I could back to 10.
[00:32:16] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Amazing.
Congrats on that victory. Thank you. You must feel good. Now going into, I feel like mid south is going to be the big test because obviously. The Northern California seam is the scene is all was cracking this time a year. And for me, I encourage anybody who's interested in seeing who's going to be at the front end of the field to look at those grasshopper results.
Because the last few years running the side from the pandemic, you could always see who was coming out and with really good form, going to mid south. Obviously you're going to get athletes from different parts of the country. You know, sort of unofficially one of the bigger openers of the season, how you feeling about that course.
There may. It's certainly going to be cold. So you had a little bit of Shasta. It could potentially be more. Are you changing your setup on the bike? You changing how you're thinking about that race? Yeah,
[00:33:02] Brennan Wertz: I would say the only thing I'm flirting, the only equipment I'd probably change is going to be my tires.
Everything else is going to be the same. And to be honest with you, I haven't even decided what tires I'm going to run. It's kind of one of those things I'm going out there with one setup. I'll probably have my, uh, Renee has 38 C Barlow pass licks on and cross my fingers that it's dry. But yeah, it does look like there's snow on the forecast for Friday.
So the day before the race. So we'll see what happens there. I will bring definitely a spare set of novels just in case it does get really nasty and muddy, but I'm crossing my fingers for a fast, dry race. I think that would, that would suit me a little bit better. But with that being said, a crazy mud Fest, it's one of those things where it could be an epic experience.
You never know what's going to happen. And I would also embrace that wholeheartedly.
[00:33:45] Craig Dalton: I really enjoyed watching. Pace and battle Pete stat know that one year. And it was interesting as someone with a mountain bike background, I saw how Pete was treating his bike versus how paisan was treating his bike.
And it just seemed to me that at some point Pete's bike is going to fall apart because he was just not babying it, it wasn't cleaning it in the same way pace and was, and so it was interesting to see, kind of play out in that, in that respect. I do. I mean, I tend to hope for the, all the racers sake that it turns out to be a dry year and hopefully.
The snow cold, snow hard pack. And I'll be a fast, fast a day. Cause I think that'll be an interesting race to, yeah,
[00:34:23] Brennan Wertz: I'm really excited. I was messaging a little bit earlier today with both pacing and Ted king and we've been talking about, you know, setups and everything and it's going to be a good one.
I think, I think a lot of the top contenders are going to be there. It'll be our first big showdown of this, this season. Hi, I couldn't be more excited to be kind of lining up against the top of the whole world's gravel seen at the, yeah. Yeah.
[00:34:44] Craig Dalton: It feels like, I mean, obviously last year we had a bunch of races go off, but it didn't feel like with what had happened in 2020 with the pandemic, it didn't feel like it was full throttle and everybody didn't have the same choices and opportunities.
And I feel like 20, 22 is a clean slate. Like everybody's getting to where they want to get to the races are going off and it's just going to be. To see all these talented athletes just kind of attacking this. Yeah.
[00:35:08] Brennan Wertz: And I think it'll be interesting too, to see like what people have been up to in the off season.
Like my off season was very brief. You know, all, I took a month completely off the bike, but then pretty quickly got into riding quite a bit. And then, you know, like I said, we had amazing weather, so I was training a lot. I did the coast ride all the way down to San Diego with Ted king and a bunch of others.
And So, yeah, I'm just really curious to see like how everyone's recovered from last season. Cause that season did go pretty long and I think people got really excited and hit it super hard for a long period of time going way late into end of October. And so I'm just super excited to see like where, where everyone's at and get this kind of first, first barometer first opportunity to gauge everyone's form.
And, and then, you know, we'll take it from there.
[00:35:47] Craig Dalton: Yeah. You mentioned you've, we've got obviously a lot of gravel athletes coming from the world tour who have had long careers and I've come to group. You're kind of at the beginning of your career coming in and charging, how are you intimidated when you get on the line against some of these names that you've, you know, you've seen in the pro tour?
[00:36:04] Brennan Wertz: I think I was a little bit last year. But at the same time, like I didn't grow up watching cycling, like I didn't, you know, we'd watch the tour de France every once in a while. And that was cool to see. To be honest, like, I didn't really know who these people were anyway. Like, you know, as I've come into the sport of cycling, I've done my, I feel like I've done my due diligence to watch as much road racing as I can.
And I love watching road racing. I love watching the classics, especially. But yeah, I think, I think that's only really become something that I've come to appreciate in the last year or two is. The having the opportunity to align up against these guys that have come from this incredible background in the sport and someone like Lawrence 10 damn.
Who's been at the top of the road cycling scene for so many years. And now to get to line up with him at the start line and Unbound or at any of these gravel races is a huge honor. So yeah, I think, yeah, it's it's, it was, I was nervous last year. And now I think I view it really more as an honor, and I'm just excited to get to line up against all these fierce competitor.
I have a, have a solid battle.
[00:37:03] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It sounds like you're willing to put it on the line for the win no matter who's
[00:37:07] Brennan Wertz: there. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you know, it's, it's also part of the, I think part of the sport, you have to be really focused on, on your equipment, on your own, your own race. Like you can't just go out there and ride as hard as you can for the first hour or two, knowing that you're going to explode and pay the price for that an hour 8, 9, 10, whatever.
So you have to. Self-aware you have to know where your fitness is, what you're capable of at that moment in time, and then also manage your bike and your equipment and know that you're not digging yourself into a hole you can't get out of,
[00:37:37] Craig Dalton: particularly in these ultra distance races like Unbound, you know, it's a different story, right.
You know, I've heard from other pros that, you know, the first 30 miles is super intense and there's a lot of jockeying and then it'll shake out a little bit. It'll settle in and then kind of realizes like, you know, we're going to be on the bike for, I don't know, 10 hours. It's a, there's certain amount of miles.
We just need to cover a little more tranquil and just get through it and then we'll attack each other later.
[00:38:01] Brennan Wertz: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was very much what it was even this past weekend with Adam, you know, there was three hours or two to three hours where we were just working super well together. It was basically a team time trial.
We're just rotating knowing that Pete Stetson and a few others are behind chasing and the harder we're riding together. Now just putting us further and further ahead of them. That'll pay off in the long run. So yeah, it's a, it's a really fun way to race a race. You
[00:38:23] Craig Dalton: mentioned sort of some of the high points for the rest of your year.
And correct me if I'm wrong, you're doing an Unbound and the BWR series.
[00:38:29] Brennan Wertz: Yeah. So I decided not to apply for the lifetime grand Prix this year. I'd already kind of set up my calendar. A few of those races didn't quite suit me. And I'm really excited about Steamboat two and coming from C-level I think going up and wanting to prioritize Steamboat is one of my big races for the year, but then doing Leadville the day before, just sort of felt like I'm was probably shooting myself in the foot.
So I'm super excited to watch that whole lifetime grand Prix shake out and see, you know, fall out from season, start to end. Yeah. Couldn't be more excited to follow it. But for me, for my calendar, I'll be focusing more on Unbound Steamboat big sugar at the end of the year. And then throughout all that, I'll have the BWR series going as well.
So I'll try to do, uh, as well as I can in the overall. They're nice.
[00:39:14] Craig Dalton: Well, it sounds like you got an exciting season ahead of you.
[00:39:17] Brennan Wertz: Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't be more
[00:39:18] Craig Dalton: thrilled. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, thank you. So we're coming by and talking about it. It's great to get connected with you. You know, I'll be rooting from, from the hometown.
[00:39:26] Brennan Wertz: Definitely. Thank you so much. Really? It's been a pleasure.
Cheers.
[00:39:29] Craig Dalton: So that's going to do it for this week's broadcast big. Thanks to Brennan for joining the show and huge thank you to the feed for joining us. Remember to get that 50% off the feed formula. Simply visit the feed.com/the gravel ride.
If you're interested in connecting with me or other gravel, cyclists, I encourage you to join the ridership@wwwdottheridership.com. It's our free global cycling community for gravel and adventure. Cyclists. If you're able to support the podcast as a couple easy ways, you can do that. You can visit, buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride for financial contributions.
But I'd also just encourage you to share this episode with a friend or one of the earlier episodes. Sharing is a great way to spread the word that along with ratings and reviews are hugely helpful to everything we're doing here at the gravel ride. Until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
This week we sit down with BMC’s Joan Hanscom to look at the URS LT suspension gravel bike. With 20mm of HiRide powered front suspension paired with a Micro Travel Technology (MTT) Rear stay, the URS LT is up for any adventure.
Episode sponsor: Athletic Greens
BMC URS LT
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Joan - BMC[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton
This week on the podcast. We've got John Hanscom from BMC here to talk about the BMC ERs, L T you might remember re mentoring this bike. Back in the, in the dirt episode, a couple of months back when it first came out and a quick interview we did down at If you recall, the ERs has been in market for a few years, but the LT version actually has a front suspension on it. So as you can imagine, I was eager to talk about it.
Before we jump into the show. I need to thank this week sponsor. AIG one by athletic greens.
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With that business out of the way, let's dive right into my interview with John from BMC. Joan, welcome to the show.
[00:02:52] Joan Hanscom : Hi, thanks for having me.
[00:02:54] Craig Dalton: I'm excited to have this conversation with you. I've been eager to talk to someone about this BMC or is LT for awhile. It's a bike I've known about prior to the LT model, but something I've always been excited about. So why don't we start off with just a little bit of your background and how you found your way to BMC, and then let's talk about the BMC.
[00:03:14] Joan Hanscom : Yeah, right on. And it's not a terrible thing to talk about breaks on a Friday afternoon, right? So the most fun topic we can have going into a weekend. Oh. So. My background. I started racing a long time ago and I really, really loved I started as a multi-sport athlete and was a terrible runner.
And so find myself racing bikes and loving racing bikes and At the same time I was experiencing some, I don't know, career stress we'll call it. I was working for AOL and they merged for AOL time Warner. And it went from being like the super awesome place to work. And be too sort of stressful and political.
And I asked myself, what do I love? I love bike racing. So I reached out to some guys in Philly, Dave, Shawna, and Jerry castle, and said, gosh, you should hire me to work for you. And. Dave and Jerry we're producing the biggest road events in the country at the time, the Philly week, San Francisco, grand Prix.
And I just threw a hail Mary and said, you should hire me. And they lo and behold they did. And so I've been working in bike racing ever since. So that was probably 2002, a long time ago. So I've been, been around bike racing for a good long time. And I would describe myself as an enthusiast, a bike racer who has more.
Passion, then talent will go with that. But, but yeah, so I've been kicking around in the bike industry for a long time. Ran my own business for a while. The U S grand Prix of cyclocross, which some of your listeners may be familiar with. So I had a really good run with U GP and that culminated.
The Louisville world championships in 2013. And after that I said, I needed a little break from bike racing. I went to work for a German brand called Avis who makes great bike blocks and helmets. And then I started missing bike racing and I went to work for USA cycling and I was there for three years and then an opportunity came to become the executive director at the velodrome and T town.
So I went there to do some work on the east coast. I was missing my family at the time. And. Feeling like I should be closer to home. And then. Suddenly this opportunity to move to Santa Cruz and work for BMC came along and I've always wanted to live by the ocean. And I actually was a long time BMC rider myself.
So I had to jump at the opportunity to come to work for BMC. And I do not regret one moment of moving to Santa Cruz. At all, especially looking at my friends back in Houston, they're moaning and groaning over the terrible weather. So that's the short, quick and dirty of how I came to be in bike racing.
And at BMC.
[00:05:50] Craig Dalton: Amazing. Thanks for that. And thank you. Thank you for putting so much time into putting events on in your career. I think it's you know, it's something that people don't get enough credit for, but it's so critically important to the sport. So to have such a long journey and for you to name drop some of those great events that I was a fan of or attended over the course of the last couple of decades, it's amazing.
So kudos to you for that.
[00:06:12] Joan Hanscom : Oh, well, I thank you that I think my event directing career much like my bike racing career is, is based in sheer stubbornness or for sheer force of will. We'll call it because both are somewhat thankless. My, my racing career and event production. So thank you for that. Yes.
[00:06:30] Craig Dalton: That makes sense. And, yeah, kudos to California. I mean, I sh I, I rode in shorts and a Jersey today. This comment is going to make lots of people angry as they listen to this in their colder weather, climate homes in this February.
[00:06:43] Joan Hanscom : Yes. And since I spent last February, you know, buried under 30 inches of snow at this time of year, I'm nanny, nanny, new, new, I'm very happy to be here. It's terrific. Well, I'm sorry if my friends are jealous.
[00:06:58] Craig Dalton: Let's talk about the BMC brand. I'm sure some listeners are familiar with it, but it's got a long history and I'd love to learn a little bit more about it.
[00:07:08] Joan Hanscom : So first of all, the thing that people ask me about BMC, the most, which I think is amazing and charming is everybody asks what BMC stands for. And then I tell them and they're just like, oh, duh. So BMC actually stands for bicycle manufacturing company. How can you not love that? Right? Like, oh, everybody thinks BMC is acronym for something else.
And it's really so beautifully simple bicycle bicycle manufacturing company. And people are like, oh DMC was founded in in 1994. In 2000 Andy Reese, who was the chairman of the phone act group and phone AXA hearing aid group. Andy Reese took over the company along with his, his Phonak's cycling team and thus the high performance high precision thing that we know came really into being.
And it really changed the trajectory when Andy Reese came on board with the company And in 2002, they launched really what is a bike that's still running today? Which is, I mean, it's been innovated on and changed obviously. But the team machine launched in 2002 and people are still racing and winning big bike races on the team machine.
Right. Again, it's been innovative and it's been iterative. But still that's a, that's a bike. That's got quite a legacy at this point.
[00:08:26] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I certainly remember lusting after the team machine. So that's just a great looking bike and the company, you know, as you said with that tour de France racing pedigree, it was definitely positioned as this is a brand that is sparing no expense to make the fastest machines out there.
[00:08:42] Joan Hanscom : And that really is the brand ethos. You'll hear us talk a lot about creating speed and they really hang their hat on precision Swiss engineering innovation, and all of it really, really drives towards this notion of creating speed and, and producing speed and finding speed. And I want a cool identity, right?
I mean, and everything they do is about that. And. What, and one of the cool pivot points for BMC is that in 2010, they launched what they call their impact lab. So I was just over in Switzerland in Gretchen at the headquarters. They have the offices across the streets of Ella Jerome, where they can obviously take advantage of doing a lot of testing and and speed work.
But also they have this impact lab, which is another building down the street. And that's really where the magic happens in terms of the engineering, because what the impact lab does without giving away all the secrets. enables innovation to happen at a, at a pace that nobody else really is matching.
Right? So they're able to have an idea and really get into prototypes immediately. And that that impact lab is, is really something that distinguishes BMC and where all of this really cutting edge technology is born. And so it's a really cool thing that they launched, but it really does enable that pace of innovation to be always high.
[00:10:05] Craig Dalton: Are the frames manufactured in Switzerland. Okay. And do you do, do you know when they introduced the mountain bike lineup for the first time?
[00:10:14] Joan Hanscom : 2007, they launched the four stroke, which is another, I mean, obviously a hugely innovative bike. That's still won the Olympics in Tokyo, you know? So, so yeah, that's, that was a 2007 and again, it's iterative, right? It's just, it's, it's a bike line that keeps evolving. And personally, I thought it was the coolest thing ever when they got Pauline for provoke to be.
BMC athlete and now Pauline's racing a four stroke and I think that's super bad ass.
[00:10:43] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I feel like it must have been 2008 or 2009 that I got a BMC team machine 29 or heart. And what, what impressed me at the time as I had come off another hard tail. And at that time, I think BMC was one of the first companies to do a drop stay and they were touting with a 27 2 seat post. We've built some compliance into the rear end of this.
And it really did feel like a technological leap forward when I got on that bike. And it really crystallized for me that this understanding that you can build that type of compliance into a, essentially a rigid frame and get these performance benefits that I know we'll get to and talk about with the, with the ERs model.
[00:11:29] Joan Hanscom : Yep. And, and that's true. And, and, you know, they've, they've been really with the Forester Oak. I mean, their dropper post is incredibly innovative. I mean, they were, they were, you know, Doing geometry adaptations for, for the 29 inch wheel, the 29, or like before anybody else as well. Like they, they really always are pushing this innovation for speed.
So, which I think, you know, you'll continue to see as our gravel as our gravel line evolves and, and, you know, emerges as well. So yeah.
[00:11:59] Craig Dalton: Am I correct that the ER's the original was the first Scrabble bike that they introduced or was there another one prior to that?
[00:12:07] Joan Hanscom : that's correct. So the ORs was there first. It was 2019 when they launched the ERs and that was their first gravel bike. They though we have a bike that's sort of, light gravel, maybe call it the road, machine X. But the ERs was the first really, truly like disruptive gravel bike that, that BMC came out with.
[00:12:25] Craig Dalton: And let's talk about some of the design philosophy behind the original ERs, and then we'll get into the LT later because obviously they share the same frame design. So let's talk about the base frame of the errors, and then we'll get into the LT a little bit later.
[00:12:39] Joan Hanscom : Yeah. So, so I think. It's carbon obviously. And, and I think BMC really looks at you know, precision engineering. They, they look at geometry really purpose-built for the specific thing. Right? So, so the ERs is, was designed from the beginning. To, to eventually have a suspension fork. Right?
So they, they, they were, even though they didn't launch with a suspension fork, they, they conceived of this. So the original ERs was launched with a suspension corrected fork and the ability to upgrade it to a Fox 32 step cast AIX suspension, or, or a RockShox Rudy. So even in the first iteration, you were able to go to a suspension if you wanted to it's dropper, post compatible Even, even in the first iteration that didn't have that built in or, or, you know, SPECT they were thinking along those lines,
[00:13:34] Craig Dalton: that was super interesting. I remember interviewing Chris Mondell from SRAM rock. And he rides that bike. And I was quizzing him about how it changed the geometry of it, because he acknowledged, like, if you're putting this on as a aftermarket product, it is definitely going to slack an out your bike.
But offline, when I was talking to me, he's like, it just didn't have that effect on the ERs. And he did discover after the fact that they had built in this suspension adjusted geometry already.
[00:14:04] Joan Hanscom : Yeah, yeah. From the beginning, they knew where they were going to go with that, which is super cool. And again, that just sort of speaks to the, the mindset or the, the, you know, the innovative thinking that goes into the design of all of these bikes. And, and so, yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's a. It's backed with a saran Eagle in the back's Ram red in the front.
Which some people, you know, there's, I guess that's a hotly debated topic, right. About one buy versus to buy. And is it a real race bike if it's a one by and but you know, it's, it's specked with 40 millimeter tires up to 45 millimeter clearance. It's six 50 be compatible. All of this stuff was.
You know, conceived of in the first iteration it's got a 70 degree slack head angle which, which creates a really long front end and wheel base. And that builds in like a lot of stability in the ride. And I can speak to that myself. I think I told you this when we were first chatting, I, I had, I first rode the ERs at unpaid.
PA this, this past October, and it was horrible conditions. It was just like a horrible, horrible, horrible conditions. It was cold and raining and just people look like mud people. And I had a big, stupid grin on my face the whole day from this bike because you know, there's a lot of descending it unpaved and.
It was just so stable in those conditions. Those are going to just really awful muddy, slick, downhill, Rocky, and I was just having fun. And so that stability, I just think, you know, really makes it a delight to ride and that, that rear suspension, the MTT technology and the stays it's 10 it's 10 millimeters of travel.
But what it does is it just sucks all the fatigue out of your ride. It just, it makes it so. You don't feel fatigued.
[00:15:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah. When we talk about that rear end technology. So I'm on my mountain bike. It was a completely rigid stage, just dropped and kind of compliance built in. But in this particular bike, there's actually, is it a little elastomer?
[00:16:06] Joan Hanscom : Yeah. It's it's we refer to it as, as, as micro travel technology, right? It's it's 10 millimeters of travel and it just has this incredible. I don't know. It makes it, you get less tired. I, I don't know how to describe it. It just, it takes. It, it, it, it allows for this really great power transfer and, but adds to control.
And for me, it was just like the fatigue, eraser. And, and it's amazing that the, that this micro travel technology it's so minimalist, but it makes such a big difference without, you know, you feeling like you're bouncing along on a suspension. So it, it feels good even on, on paved,
[00:16:48] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think, you know, it's so it's so interesting. The resistance that the market tends to have towards suspension. And I know it's going to go away over time because the performance or benefits are there and you have to in the listener, the frequent listeners, going to know I'm a broken record on this.
You have to sort of add the suspension. In your bicycle through your tires, through your body, potentially through some compliance in the frame, maybe a suspension fork, maybe it's suspension, stem, maybe suspension in your C posts, but all these things are going to combine to just helping you become less fatigued or have more control in super Rocky environment.
So I think it's super interesting, and I know some writers personally, on the original owners frame. Mimic the same thing, as you're saying, it's just, it's just a bike that feels good. Being out on it all day.
[00:17:35] Joan Hanscom : Yeah. So funny enough, and I know I'm probably jumping the gun because you, you, you had sort of teamed up for me. Hey, what are people saying about the ride? And I, and I actually about specifically about the LT and. And I was talking to one of our ambassadors a writer named Chris Meacham. Who's on the east coast and we talked about the, this is front suspension and we can talk about that later.
But we, we started talking about the stays in the, in the, in the back and he, he he and I share the same coach. So, so his coach. He rocked up to this hundred plus mile road ride fast, you know, fast roady road ride last Saturday on yours. And his, his coach was like, you're an idiot. And, and, and Chris has a bad back.
And so he had the suspension locked out on the front, but he, you know, he still was on, on the ears with the, with the rear suspension and. he said he was tired because obviously he's riding on. I think he said 40 twos. So trying to keep up with people on road bikes. Okay. Tired. He said, but he never got the sore back that he normally gets on his road bike.
And he said, when he finished, he just felt great.
[00:18:44] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:18:45] Joan Hanscom : And I thought, well, that's a Testament, right? If you're riding this out on the road for a hundred plus miles and you finish feeling awesome, it's a Testament to saying that there's something to this, this micro travel technology and fatigue. So, so yeah, I
[00:19:00] Craig Dalton: I think it's one of those things that I just hope that more people get to try these types of solutions before they malign them. Right. Because you need to be able to just put a leg over it and see, Hey, well, it's not really T you know, maybe it's taking away a fraction from. On-road performance, but what is it adding and where do I care to have that additional performance?
[00:19:20] Joan Hanscom : And when you're talking about gravel, where. What do they start at 70 miles and go up to 350. I mean, you know, it's, when you're talking about that, that type of distance fatigue matters, you know, that that's a, that's a real performance gain when you, when you don't have discomfort or when you're not feeling massively fatigue, because you're not your, body's not taking the abuse that maybe it would, if you were.
Having that, that benefit of the, of the technology then? Yeah, it definitely, it's one of those things where distance is a multiplier of fatigue. Right. So,
[00:19:56] Craig Dalton: yep. A hundred percent. You talked about BMC and it's very performance oriented background and history. When it entered the world of gravel with the earth. W, where was it intending that bike to slot into the, to the spectrum of bikes?
[00:20:11] Joan Hanscom : So I think that's such an interesting question. And I honestly don't know if they were geniuses or or not. The name of the bikers really means unrestricted. And I don't know if they were seeing into the future of the direction that gravel racing was going to take, you know, because it, it has gotten more extreme since, you know, the first, oh, we're going to go out and ride some gravel roads with our friends.
I think the terrain has gotten to be more. More challenging. People are looking for it to be a little bit more epic. I hate that word, but you know, so I think what gravel racing has become, or is evolving into, is there some that's just beautiful, you know, No magic carpet ride, gravel roads, and then there's others that are Rocky chunky, single tracky.
And so I don't know if they had that evolution in mind when they design the years or not, but but it's certainly a bike that I think has evolved or nicely to align with the direction that some gravel racing is taking. But I think going back to the unrestricted thing, You know, unrestricted says a lot about what this bike is intended to be.
It's got, it's got mouths, so you can load it up with your bike packing gear. It's got you can, you can run a dynamo hub, so you could really take it as an adventure bike or you could not, and just race it and find that You know, w th this technology that we've been discussing actually enhances your race a lot.
Now, there are some people that will argue that in no shape or form can a one by drive training, be a race bike. I, I personally would answer. It depends on the race. You know, and I think there are races where. That one buys probably pretty great, you know, you know, not all, not all gravel races are flat, you know, essentially dusty road races and for some of the climate year things, you know, the right terrain.
I think that people are pretty stoked to have that, that 52 option in the back.
[00:22:06] Craig Dalton: totally. Especially on the Western half of the United States.
[00:22:10] Joan Hanscom : Yeah. So, so I don't think you can dismiss it. It's not a race bike because it's got a one by, but I think it was really designed to be all of the above. It was supposed to be an adventure bike that could take you where you want to go.
And it's a bike that you can definitely race if you want to. I know, I know. I thought I was racing it when I was out on it. So.
[00:22:29] Craig Dalton: I know you mentioned this before, but what is this tire size capacity of the bike?
[00:22:33] Joan Hanscom : It comes back with forties and it can go up to 45. And then it's six 50 be compliant. So you could, you could add six 50 bees if you wanted to.
[00:22:42] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Great. Great. So let's shift gears and let's talk about the ERs LT at this point, which was introduced, what is the very end of 21? Am I getting those
[00:22:52] Joan Hanscom : Yeah, no, wait, I don't even know what
[00:22:54] Craig Dalton: Actually a little bit earlier. You're right. Because I, I met at, I met one of your colleagues at and got a little bit of a preview of it.
So that was back in October. So it must've been earlier than the.
[00:23:03] Joan Hanscom : Yeah. I honestly like the time is so weird now. Like, wait, what? I don't even know what you're wearing right now. The first time we showed it publicly in the U S was at that seawater event in 21 though. Right? It was 21 right now. Now I sound like a crazy person. But yeah, that's so it's very, it's very new to the market.
In a lot of places just getting into shops now. So not a ton of people. I'm, I'm certain I've had the opportunity to ride at yet. And, you know, everybody knows the bike world is a little bizarre right now in terms of supply chain, but that the bikes are out there now and being delivered, which is super cool.
And like I said, we have an ambassador who's out on it now. So, so yeah, they're, they're starting to be out in the wild now.
[00:23:45] Craig Dalton: So the big thing we need to point out for the listener is that the ER's LT, unlike its cousin, the ERs, the ears LT comes with a front suspension fork.
[00:23:55] Joan Hanscom : That is really the only difference. Correct? It's the same. Everything else is the same. With the exception of the front suspension.
[00:24:02] Craig Dalton: Yeah. As podcasting as a medium, we don't have the opportunity to hold one up in front of us. Maybe on this video we could have, but the suspension actually occurs within the head tube. So unlike a rock soccer, Fox shock that you may have been familiar with from mountain biking, with telescoping legs, you're actually getting the travel within the head tube.
[00:24:23] Joan Hanscom : Yes. Yeah, I think it's pretty cool. Right? It's like all up inside. You can't see it really. And, and yeah, it's, it's integrated into the design,
[00:24:33] Craig Dalton: And that's based on a partnership with a company called high ride.
[00:24:37] Joan Hanscom : correct? Yup.
[00:24:39] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So not, not a new idea in the world of bikes, obviously Cannondale has their head shock. And prior to that, my old mountain bike memory recalled the action tech being another brand that had a, a fork that was pursuing this strategy.
But I have to say, as, as an implementation, it's, it's super elegant. Like you can look at that bike and not necessarily see that it has any suspension in it,
[00:25:03] Joan Hanscom : Right.
[00:25:03] Craig Dalton: is pretty tricky.
[00:25:05] Joan Hanscom : Yeah, you can. I mean, you can definitely see below the head tube and I'm making gestures now with my hands. Like people can see me, you can definitely see where there is, you know, at the top of the fork, it, it would look like there's a suspension. But it doesn't look like you said, traditional what you would see on a, on a front suspension, on a mountain bike.
And it's, I think it's just super, like you said, elegant.
[00:25:27] Craig Dalton: And how much suspension is the system offering riders?
[00:25:32] Joan Hanscom : 20 millimeter. So, so it's, it's really pretty minimalist. And it's, it is manual, right? So you, with the, with the, it's a turnkey damper on, on top of the stem, right? So you just turn it to turn it on, you turn it back to turn it off. And yeah, you, you can control it.
[00:25:51] Craig Dalton: are the writers that are on the product now, and maybe you have this from testing back at the BMC facility. Are they tending to use the lockout or have they found. It doesn't actually make it. It's not a negative thing that there's a little bit of motion in the front when I'm climbing, for example.
[00:26:07] Joan Hanscom : So I actually talked with, again, the aforementioned Chris Meacham about this, because he's really been putting it through its paces. And he, he told me that he absolutely uses it. He said, you know, seven, depending on, along the ride, like 7, 8, 9 times during a ride, he's changing that suspension. So I think we've all done gravel rides where you're on pace.
And when he's on pavement, he, he locks it out. And then, you know, when the, when he's doing a downhill or it's particularly like chunky, he definitely opens it up and he finds himself actually, you know, adjusting it with a lot of regularity, which I think is pretty cool.
[00:26:47] Craig Dalton: Yeah, no, I mean, it's great that it's there as an option. I'm curious if you, if you had heard from him, whether, if he was on an off-road climb with a lot of rocks, whether he would leave it open or it's something he would close up.
[00:26:58] Joan Hanscom : He said he closes it when he stands up to climb or stands up to ride out of the saddle. But but he leaves it open otherwise, depending on the terrain. Yeah.
[00:27:07] Craig Dalton: Interesting. And I think you mentioned this, but just for the listener, it's got a dial on top of essentially on top of the steer tuber on top of your stem that you're reaching over and just clicking over to a locked out position.
[00:27:19] Joan Hanscom : Yep. Correct.
[00:27:21] Craig Dalton: How are you able to adjust the product for different weights, body weights?
[00:27:25] Joan Hanscom : You know, you've, you've just stump the chump. I don't know. Nobody's ever asked me that before.
[00:27:30] Craig Dalton: I think I saw and I'll try to maybe refer. In the show notes and that you might be able to swap out the Springs with inside that, that H ride high ride suspension.
[00:27:41] Joan Hanscom : Well, I can say that high ride does have additional suspension offerings that, that you would need to take to a dealer to make those changes so you can change out. I think, I think. What it comes standard with would be quote unquote, mid stiffness. And if you wanted to change that high ride provides an option for you to do that, that you would take your bike to the dealer and have them make that change.
[00:28:07] Craig Dalton: Okay. Gotcha. And is that, is the, is the front end of that bike different to accommodate? Is there any additional sort of size that the high ride suspension needs in the head tube? Or can you swap things out? I don't even know.
[00:28:22] Joan Hanscom : I, I mean, swap things out,
[00:28:24] Craig Dalton: Like swap a fork. Is Schwab a different fork in,
To that?
The high ride system?
[00:28:29] Joan Hanscom : honestly that I don't know either. I don't know. I think you can change out the fork, but I'm not sure I would, I would
[00:28:36] Craig Dalton: be fair. I did, to be fair to the listener. I did promise John, I wasn't going to drill her on a highly technical details because as, as the listener knows, I'm not super tactical myself, but these are just things that are popping into my mind as
[00:28:47] Joan Hanscom : No, it's, it's, it's a great question. And I can absolutely. I seem to recall that you could change it out, but I don't want to swear a hundred percent. But I will definitely check for you. And, and let you know, after the fact, because yeah, don't no one's ever asked me that one either, but I haven't really had a chance to talk about it.
Cause like I said, it's just shown up.
[00:29:05] Craig Dalton: Yeah. There's not, not enough of these bikes out there in the world yet.
[00:29:08] Joan Hanscom : No, and I haven't even gotten to ride it yet. So I'm like, I love my, my ears are one, but I haven't gotten dry BLT yet. So, that's how rare they are so far.
[00:29:18] Craig Dalton: How are you planning on getting the word out in 2020?
[00:29:20] Joan Hanscom : Well, first, first up, we're going to be at sea Otter, which is cool. So you can come check it out at sea Otter, and then we're actually doing some very rad things.
We're going to be at all the lifetime grand Prix events with the bikes so people can check them out there. We won't be able to demo them, but we'll be showing them off so people can come turn the knob and see what the suspension is like. We're going to be at, at a bunch of other events too. One of the ones I'm particularly excited about.
Coming as a surprise to absolutely. No one is we're going to be at the girls, gone gravel, gone graveling weekend in Bentonville. So we'll have it there to show off as well. So we'll be at a bunch of gravel events throughout the season showing it off. So people can actually touch it and, and see what it's all about and, and, you know, just get a general sense of, of how it works.
Cause think. You said it pretty well. You can't see it on a podcast. So some of this may sound a little weird, but if you're at any of these events that we're at, we encourage you to come over and say, hi, check it out.
[00:30:15] Craig Dalton: And then are your European colleagues doing events over in Europe this year as well with the bike?
[00:30:21] Joan Hanscom : yeah, they share our they, they share our, I think everybody everybody's pretty stoked on this bike and because we're BMC, we're innovating always. And you never know, there could be, there could be innovation in this space coming again in this, in the future. So stay tuned.
[00:30:36] Craig Dalton: What did you get from your, your, your Swiss colleagues about the rise of gravel in Europe? What's the scene looking like over there? If you, if you had any of those conversations.
[00:30:46] Joan Hanscom : We have some, I think that, you know, they really look at the U S as the, as the. Epicenter of it right now. But, but it's definitely growing in popularity, particularly, I believe in Gerona and the Alma Rawlins and Gerona, and certainly in Italy. And it's, it is starting to capture the imagination, obviously with the UCI focus now on, on gravel.
It's starting to capture the interest of the higher level pros and a lot of ways similar to what we're seeing here. So they see it as any, I think an emerging race space, which of course, BMC being a high performance brand is very attractive. So my Swiss colleagues are starting to see that. This is a viable racing space for BMC to play.
And so I think they find it quite intriguing. I think what's really nice for, for, for me to hear from BMC as well is, and why it's partially, why I'm excited to work for the brand. They see a lot of potential with the women's market for this bike. And I think that's massive. Like I love hearing that, that the brand I work for is. Profoundly interested in the female market. That's exciting. So, so yeah, so I think that's, that's, that's where they're at, but they, they get it that something cool is happening here.
[00:32:07] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I feel like the European scene got set back a year through COVID. Whereas there was a couple of series and a couple of big events that were set to launch in 2020. And obviously they didn't get off the ground, but I think I imagining that this, this summer in Europe, we're going to see a lot of events start to kind of just take that Marquis place of like, what's the big one that someone wants to travel to.
And.
[00:32:28] Joan Hanscom : Right. And I think too, I mean, you're just starting to see in conventional road races, more gravel, right. I mean, that's certainly controversial for you know, should, should there be graveling tours? Ooh. And, you know, you can have, you can have , but can you have gravel? And so that's controversial and. You know, we have strata Biyanki now, which is left in a short tenure or 10 plus year history to, to be a classic.
And certainly that's got to a fair bit of gravel in it. And we just had a race in Spain, a road race in Spain that had graveled sectors and sort of like the pre strata Biyanki strata be hockey. And so, you know, I think it's starting to have more adoption there as well, and people are starting to see the potential in it there.
So. Ooh, belong in a tour. We don't know yet. Stay tuned.
[00:33:15] Craig Dalton: well, this is awesome. I appreciate you coming on and giving an overview of the brand. I mean, it's, I think it's great. High performance brands are looking at gravel and really putting resources towards thinking about what's the best type of equipment that they can create. And the space, I think, has room for a lot of different perspectives.
So I appreciate BMC bringing something new and innovative to the table.
[00:33:38] Joan Hanscom : Yeah, I think it's super cool. And I think they're not going to stop. So I think as the sport evolves as the discipline evolves, they'll keep evolving as well. So we'll see.
[00:33:50] Craig Dalton: Well, we look forward to seeing you down at this year,
[00:33:54] Joan Hanscom : Yeah. Right on.
[00:33:55] Craig Dalton: I hope you have a great weekend down there in
[00:33:57] Joan Hanscom : Thanks. Thanks. I'm going to get out of my ears on Sunday and I can't wait.
[00:34:01] Craig Dalton: Yes.
[00:34:03] Joan Hanscom : good, good
[00:34:03] Craig Dalton: for the time.
[00:34:04] Joan Hanscom : scene. Yeah. Cool. Thank you. Have a great weekend.
[00:34:07] Craig Dalton: So that's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Huge. Thanks to John from BMC for joining us. I hope you enjoyed that conversation. I know for me, the idea of suspension in gravel bikes has been something that's provoked a lot of thoughts and interest.
I very much appreciate the innovation in the space. And I encourage you to take a look at that bike and others in the category.
As always, if you have any feedback for me or the podcasts in general, I encourage you to join us over at the ridership. Simply visit www.theridership.com.
It is by far the best place to connect with me, but much more importantly, other gravel athletes from around the world. Just talking about bikes. If you're interested in supporting the podcast directly.
Please visit, buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Or leave us a rating or review or better yet share it with a friend. Any of these things helped me immensely. And I truly appreciate it. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with Unicorn Cycles founder, Jason Turner to talk about Asian made custom titanium gravel bikes.
This episode is sponsored by Hammerhead and the new Karoo 2 GPS computer.
Hammerhead Website: use code THEGRAVELRIDE
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Jason Turner - Unicorn[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast we have jason turner from unicorn cycles coming to us to talk about custom titanium gravel bikes . Before we get into today's show, I need to welcome a new sponsor to the gravel ride podcast. Hammerhead, you may be familiar with the Hammerhead Karoo computer. What you may not be aware of is that the Karoo two is now available. It was named bicycling magazines, editors choice in GPS computers for the past two years running and continues to collect accolades throughout the sport.
Funny story a few years back when I did the Oregon timber trail with a couple of friends, we each had a different make of GPS cycling computer. And it actually took the three of them. To try to find our way through this trail system. Each one had its own attributes. And the one thing that stood out about the hammerhead kuru, the original one.
Was the mapping capabilities. The screen and the design of the mapping functionality is much more akin to what you'd be familiar with on your iPhone or Android phone. It's beautiful mapping, and to be able to pinch and zoom and blow up that map. It was a key component of our navigation on the Oregon timber trail.
On that original Karoo device, I found it to be a bit big and heavy, so it never became a daily driver for me. So when the crew two was announced, I was super stoked that they've been able to reduce the size well, actually improving the capability of the device. What I really love about the latest one I've been testing.
Is that you can swipe through the screens very easily and customize them to the nth degree. For me, as you guys know in Marin county, everything's about vertical feet and climbing mileage is less consequential to how a ride feels or it's going to look after the fact than the amount of climbing I've been doing.
So by setting up the crew to, to have a climbing feature to it, I can see exactly where I am from an elevation perspective, which gives me an idea as to where I am on. On the mountain.
So I basically have one screen that's dedicated specifically to elevation and climbing. And that's one of the ways in which I can navigate around the mountain. And then I swipe over and I've got another detailed screen that has the mapping capability of it.
I'll get into a much more about the Karoo 2's features in the coming weeks as Hammerhead is agreed to come on as a sponsor for a number of episodes. For a limited time, our listeners can get a free custom color kit and an exclusive premium water bottle with the purchase of a Hammerhead Karoo to computer.
Visit hammerhead.io right now. And use the promo code, the gravel ride at checkout to get yours today. That's a free custom color kit and a premium water bottle with the purchase of a crew to simply go to www.Hammerhead.io at all three items to your cart and use the promo code, the gravel ride. This is an exclusive limited time offer only for the gravel ride podcast listeners.
So be sure to head over and don't forget that promo code, the gravel ride. With that said let's jump right into this week show Hey
Jason, welcome to the show.
[00:03:12] Jason Turner: Thanks Craig. Thanks for having me on the Gravel ride podcast. This is
[00:03:16] Craig Dalton: I'm excited to learn more about unit unicorn cycles. We always like to start off by setting the stage, get a little bit of understanding about. Your background as a cyclist. And obviously that goes hand in hand with the development of the brand and the company unicorn cycles.
So why don't you tell us about that journey? How did you find riding bikes? What kind of bikes do you like to ride and then we'll get into unicorn.
[00:03:40] Jason Turner: Okay. Yeah. I think for most people, the seed for cycling starts as a child. Growing up as a kid in the city, I lived on 19th street and I wasn't allowed to leave the block.
You could just a little square inner city. And so, but that didn't stop me, me and a friend on many occasions. I remember we'd ride our BMX bikes up to a hundred 19th street. And we thought that was like really far that took us hours with stoplights and everything else. And so just that idea of like freedom as a kid on the bike and going far later on as an adult, I mapped out.
That distance in, in the old neighborhood where we read ride and realized it was just six and a half miles each way. So it wasn't very far, but flash forward to it to an adult. I was living in Austin, Texas. I was running, swimming, really active. Everyone in Austin was doing a triathlon. And so I decided to just try it.
So I bought my first real road bike. It was a steel Biyanki. It's about a thousand dollars in immediately after getting the bike. I was, I was just hooked. I had a bike before, but training for triathlons. So literally three weeks after getting this first road bike, I did my first century.
Probably not very advisable, bonked hard. So I like to educate myself anytime I get into anything. So I was reading books on cycling and one that stuck with me. I still have today is the long distance cycling by Edmund Burke. I think it is. And so in the book he covered stuff like Ram, but one of the ones I remember reading about was the furnace Creek five week epic ride, death valley, Mojave desert 29 palms.
And so, Point I've been only riding a road bike a couple months. And I publicly, when my friends and family said, Hey, next year, next time they do the five way on a do it. So needless to say I didn't, I didn't think the Biyanki was up to the task and the 5 0 8. So I was looking at getting a different bike and.
Long distance cycling book. There was mention of soft ride and tightened flex. Some of your writers may recognize a tightened flex they're a San Diego. And so, boom, bike being bike, whatever you want to call it, similar to the Trek. Why foil? Anyway, it seemed like the best bike for long distance cycling.
So I contacted the owner, Tom at Titan flex. Hey, I'll redo your website, to get a deal on a Titan flex. So he took me up on the offer. I redid the website and got a Titan flex. So a little over a year after purchasing my first road bike, I'm there at the start of the 5 0 8 with your crew that you have to have with the Titan flex with a bike.
I rented in Southern California, just as a backup bike. Just wanted to see how far I could go. And. It literally crashed at 300 miles. I thought I broken some bones, but I'm like, no. And I keep going. I pushed myself, wrote another a hundred miles. So for a total of 400 miles, but at this point I wasn't going to finish.
There's a 48 hour cutoff. And so I called the race organizer, cell phone reception in this remote area at, I don't know what time it was. Eight, two o'clock in the morning called the race organizer dropped out. And so then a couple hours later, Directly from the end of the race where we stopped, it was still about two or three hours to the ER.
And that was basically my next stop. Didn't break anything. But over the next few years, I did similar events to the five wait I'm in Texas. There's something called the Texas time trials. They have 12. 24 48 hour events. It's a 26 mile loop. So psychologically it's a little bit different doing a loop.
And you don't have to have a crude, which is kinda nice. You don't have to carry things with you. But I bought another bike and it was a you or at least a frame. It was a titanium Lightspeed. I built it up and at that point I fell in love with titanium. So, due to change.
[00:07:19] Craig Dalton: Is there anything in your background that suggested that you'd be well-suited to these ultra endurance type events?
[00:07:25] Jason Turner: Maybe my mentality of just like push myself, going hard, going long. I was real gun-ho as a kid for the military, but I didn't, I ended up not joining. I always had strong legs playing football and stuff like that. So I dunno, maybe it was the strong legs in that don't quit dedicated mentality.
And also the idea of just going farther, going, 500 miles nonstop. Kind of set well with me, the, the farther distance. So yeah, nothing specifically in my background. I was just hooked. Yeah, it's
[00:07:55] Craig Dalton: interesting. I imagine like, being relatively new at that time to cycling as you started just a few years prior, Any issues around like fit or bike performance probably became very apparent to you.
So, whereas others of us, it might've taken years to start to understand, like, what does a steel bike feel like versus a titanium bike versus a carbon bike. All of a sudden you've got all these miles underneath you imagine you're developing a fine kind of tuned mentality to frame materials and design.
[00:08:26] Jason Turner: I think there was in the back of my mind, like always wanting to try out different things, different setups again, reading about what other people were doing and recommending for those things. That's I think that's why with the steel Biyanki, but I think I was young enough at that time that, I could beat up my body and it would take it.
But there was a point where I had to stop writing due to just changes in life. So in 2010, I moved from Austin to Denver. I wrote a bike a surly long haul trucker. It had a two wheel trailer behind it. I literally, that's how I moved from Austin to Denver. As I rode this bike. And when I got to Denver, I sought out another cycling club the Rocky mountain cycling club, and they're focused on longer rides and purveys kind of similar to one of their factions or one of the outfits in Rocky Mount side include club.
It is similar to the triple crown series in California. So you do these long 200 mile rides in short timeframes, 20,000 feet worth of climbing, and you can get a triple crown. So I, I do consider myself, I call myself an ultra cyclist, twenty four, forty eight hour events, 750 mile, or even a thousand miles.
That's the longest one I've done. Self-supported races, 200 mile gravel rides with strict time cutoffs 1200 K purveys. But the point of me mentioning kind of not bravado or bragging about like all these long rides is that I think because the nature of the rides in the long distance, I was constantly trying new.
And setups new components every year since starting unicorn, I would build a new bike for myself just so I could try out. Try something new different scene. If there was, so many advantages and it's not always about speed, especially when at that distance, it's about comfort. It's about bike packing.
There's so many of the things, just staying on the bike. Even if you're not fast, if you're on the bike and moving, that's better than maybe sleeping for four hours in some cases, Yeah.
[00:10:17] Craig Dalton: It's, it's definitely an interesting perspective to bring to the business. So you started to mention it and we should get into it now.
So you've got a business called unicorn cycles and it sounds like it was the result of this journey. You took on finding the right bike for you and the right material. So let's talk about, I mean, obviously aspiring to have a custom bike for you that fits your needs is not unusual for cycling. But going ahead and starting a company around it is unusual.
So why don't you talk about that step and what led to you believing that unicorn cycles was your future professionally
[00:10:55] Jason Turner: speaking? So at this point, living in Denver, I, I had a titanium bike that I bought from online, from another company that does something similar to unicorn. And I was looking to buy another one from them a few years later.
I basically thought maybe I'll do something similar to tighten flex. So I contacted the owner of this other company, which I'd rather not name and said, Hey, can we work out some sort of deal discount, help with marketing website. So, something along the way, and they didn't seem that interested in anything I had to offer.
So at this point I started thinking that. I know they were on their website. I'm transparent in that they don't build the bikes it's from overseas, but I thought to myself, you know what, I can do that better. And so, and I think a lot of ideas, not just in cycling, but any industry start with someone thinking.
I see what you're doing, I can do it better. And so, I still wanted a bike for myself, accustomed titanium frame. And so, I contacted different companies outside the U S not just in Asia and settled on one builder, one shop to build a frame for myself. It was what I consider the first unicorn.
This was in 2016. And then I started design bikes and, and, and go through that same builder and process for some of my friends. I tried one time I would try this particular shop and then this shop just to see, with the idea that. I didn't know where this was going with unicorn. I didn't have this ambition to start this big company or anything like that.
Or make lots of money. I just liked bikes. I liked the design aspect of it. I have a, a background, a little bit in our architecture, design drafting sort of thing. So it kind of fit well with that aspect of it. But I finally kind of picked two companies that I contracted with. Unicorn. And it was clear to me at the time that there was a gap.
Certainly writers could go direct to some of these companies overseas and have a bike built for them. Unicorn kind of fill the gap where it wasn't boutique American made very expensive custom frame, but it wasn't. I think there's a lot of apprehension of writers going directly to Asian companies and having a bike built and them thousands of dollars talking to someone who.
Isn't a native speaker that has different, isn't a different time zone. They're not cyclists. They're just kind of taking an order. They'll make changes to the design if you want. But so I felt where I could differentiate unicorn and myself is, would that consultative sort of sell? And maybe it's not scalable.
Long-term we'll see. How many of these custom frames we can do in a week or a month? Scalability is definitely a concern, but then again, I'm not necessarily looking to be a multimillion dollar company. I just, I like writing. I like helping out other writers. And so it just seemed like a win-win.
[00:13:41] Craig Dalton: So obviously listeners to the show are familiar with a lot of the titanium frame builders in the United States, whether it's a moots or Lightspeed or a Dean or a mosaic.
You've sort of talked about how titanium was the material you felt was the best performing for the style of writing that you were looking to do? What is it about titanium that you think makes it a great material for these long gravel?
[00:14:08] Jason Turner: Sure sure. Not just gravel events but I'll just say for a custom frame in particular.
So thinking about, the reason behind titanium for a custom frame. So I'm hard on my personal bikes. I'm a heavier writer. All the miles I put in on the, the rides and races Means, there's a lot of scratch. There's a lot of Nicks there. It's exposed a lot of wear and tear. My personality, I'm a little bit OCD.
I like my bike clean and looking new. And so I think a lot of listeners understand titanium is easy to keep clean, remove scratches. Scotch-Brite even if it's a polished frame, it's, it's easy to keep a polished titanium frame looking good. In titanium lends itself to custom frames. There are a few handful of carbon fiber builders out there making custom fiber frames, but it's expensive and there's not very many of them.
I don't think. I haven't looked, but I haven't really seen too many aluminum custom frames. Steel is, is definitely, has been around and is a good option for custom frames, but then it has that added step of needing to be protected, painted Sarah coded or something similar. In my experience, steel frames, they tend to use smaller diameter tubes, which you know, to keep the weight down, but then that contributes sometimes to lateral flex and speed wobbles.
So. To me having gotten to expose to tight titanium early. I'm definitely a, more of a function over form guy. I do like the look of titanium, but it just seems to function well. And especially for a custom frame and with in particular with gravel, that they're just the beatings that it takes up, whether it's leaning against a tree falling over crashing sometimes getting mixed from rocks and stuff.
Titanium is great material. Just for the longevity of it.
[00:15:48] Craig Dalton: Let's talk about vetting, the manufacturing partners you've chosen overseas. Obviously there's very few of us who would order a titanium frame, even from a U S builder and have the opportunity to meet the gentleman or woman who's welding that.
But. So it's not in many respects. It's, it's not that different, but why don't you talk about what that process was like finding these vendors and how do you feel the quality stacks up to the rest of them global marketplace?
[00:16:17] Jason Turner: Sure, sure. W I think backing up a little bit, I gravitated towards Asian production just to keep prices low when that was helped differentiate unicorn, but also pass that savings on to clients.
I did. I think early on titanium was wasn't expensive material. It was thought of some mysterious material, but titanium prices have come down a lot since the nineties and two thousands. And so again, I gravitated to Asian manufacturers and I think I don't have the statistics, but I think Asia probably makes more bikes than any other region quality.
I think for any company is always a concern, especially if you're going to outsource it through a third-party. So just the fact that they're in another country Maintaining quality as a challenge, even for four, if I contracted with us company, not, not to mention another company. So just because it's a us company doesn't guarantee quality or consistency just because it's fabricated, even if it is fabricated in house, there could be challenges with that.
Titanium, unlike maybe carbon fiber lends itself to you. It's hard to hide flaws in titanium with carbon fiber in the layup process. You can't necessarily see inside of it. Sure. You could cut some samples apart, depending on the mold, but titanium itself. There's a chart for welding titanium and depending on the color of the Titanic.
Where it's welded. Certain colors are acceptable just because titanium is very sensitive to the heat at the higher temperatures. And if it gets past a certain temperature or a certain amount of oxygen exposed to it, you can literally see that There's not, and because it's not painted. So when I received the frames whether it's a sock frame or custom frame, it's inspected inside it.
Now I can stick a little scope inside. So, I can see the welds on there that thickness if it's a stack of dime, a stack of quarters,
[00:18:07] Craig Dalton: great. So every frame, as you mentioned, comes through your facility in Colorado, and you're able to do a careful analysis of it before going out to the end customer, which is great.
So you can see the quality of the frames. What does that process look like? I know you mentioned that you do a stock frame, but it sounds like a lot of your framework is custom. What does that process look like? And working with customers.
[00:18:29] Jason Turner: Clients come to me through various means most of the time it's an online forum, but it could be through a bike show.
Here in Denver, somehow. To me referral. We'll talk on the phone. If they're local, I might meet them in person. We might do a zoom session. In fact, most of the clients for unicorn aren't in Colorado, but so we'll exchange ideas. And at some point, they're going to say think yes or no. And if they're wanting to move forward with unicorn, we asked for a $200 design deposit, which is applied to the cost of the frame.
We set up a shared online document to keep track of the various frame specifications and components. You can imagine building a custom frame. Even if we don't supply the components, we want to know how it's going to be built out with what forks and what cranks and what sort of wheels and all that.
So this online document is, is a great source. Once through these exchanges, once we understand exactly what we're designing we first focus on the frame geometry. So we'll create a basic CAD drawing with main focus of nailing down the geometry. Once we get that done. We'll do a deep, detailed CAD drawing, which then shows two diameter tube thickness, tube shapes.
The cable routing, the dropouts bottom bracket. You name it all the spacing. And again, we'll make as many changes going back and forth. To the design or even the geometry as necessary. Once the client is satisfied with yes, that's what they want. Half the cost of the frame is due at that point, minus the deposit.
If they're ordering any components, we asked for the full price and the components and. Production time is varied pre COVID. It was probably six to eight weeks. Now it's probably eight to 12 weeks. Once the frame is complete, I'll send pictures to the client. There's frame will be shipped to Colorado where it's inspected, verifying the geometry.
Like I said, inspecting the welds inside the frame. We might apply decals. We might brush up some of the finishing off our frame frame set frame set, and maybe some components complete builds. In some cases we're not doing complete builds right now as the component shortages, but it looks a little different from everyone.
Different people are coming from different backgrounds, different knowledge levels. So we might get to a completed CAD drawing that's approved in a week in some cases. So. Clients may want to take a longer period of time and it might be a month or two. Before the CAD drawing is approved.
[00:20:55] Craig Dalton: You mentioned sort of tube diameter being one of the variables you can play around with.
Can you walk me through what that conversation looks like? So say I'm coming to you for a gravel frame and you know that I'm, five, nine and 170 odd pounds. How's that conversation go.
[00:21:12] Jason Turner: The conversation would be, it wouldn't be much of a conversation at first. You may not want to be that involved.
You may not have that much knowledge in a, and so, so for the tube selection, you might just leave it to our best judgment, but you may want to be involved in it. You may have specific needs. So, a lot of it is based on previous builds and kind of ride quality feedback we receive, I think. In generally over an engineer.
So he make it stronger, sturdier, thicker. Of course at the expense of weight the necessary, but better to be kind of safe. But. So the conversation itself, it just depends on the client. But yeah, we can control almost all the aspects of it. I mean, because they are titanium tubes and the tubes may be hydro farms and have special shapes.
There's not a whole lot there, there's a few number of strings that you can pull. On it. Yeah. ,
[00:22:05] Craig Dalton: does the factory have sort of the same number of tubing options as you would find elsewhere in the world?
[00:22:10] Jason Turner: For the most part? Yes. And that's why I think we have two shops that we work with. One shop is a little bit more adventurous and has hydro-forming capabilities and so they can do some things that the other shop can't.
It also depends on production levels. Why we might choose one shop over the other. And also to keep it a little bit competitive. So, yeah, some shops do have different supplies and different capabilities, especially around hydro-forming.
[00:22:37] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I'm the unicorn cycles website. I've seen a gallery of some very interesting bikes that have come through there from the very traditional to, pretty unique tubing shapes, et cetera, designed around.
Very specific criteria. I think one maybe triathlon bike for a smaller woman comes to mind in terms of the very interesting Benz in the tubes.
[00:22:59] Jason Turner: Yeah, I think she was four foot six. She had a custom Mooney frame that was 10 or 15 years old steel, very heavy. But stand over height was a big deal. That was challenging.
Just cause the fork and tires. I think we use six 50 C we just did another one recently, a 36 or the guy wasn't really tall. He was six foot, but he wanted a 36 or we hadn't done one before made a custom fork for that. He works at a bike shop, I think in Houston. Just received the frame recently.
Hasn't built it up yet, so we'll see what he does with that. But that was challenging because here it's a big 36 or frame, but it's a six foot guy. If you have seven foot, that would have probably been easier. Yeah, fat bikes ultra cycling boom bike for myself. So, well, I mean, as long as we think it's safe the design that the client's proposing.
Well, we'll give it a try. And like I said, if if necessary we'll, we'll overbuild it,
[00:23:53] Craig Dalton: what kind of guidance? What's the sort of basic spec of a gravel bike these days for you guys? Like if someone comes to you and says, I want one that's in the sweet spot of the market. What size tire diameter are you designing around?
What are some of the basics that kind of would come into play?
[00:24:09] Jason Turner: Well, okay. So for tire size, I would say like R w we'll have a new stock frame out in March, we're building around 50 millimeter tires. That'll be both 50 millimeter for 700 C as well as six 50 B. So I think that's the upper end. I mean, People may want something larger.
We get a lot of requests for a salsa cutthroat type bike. They like the cutthroat, but they want it titanium or they want more water bottle or braise on water bottle mounts for storing extra gear. They want to slack her head tube. So, I think the sweet spot for gravel, tire size is a large part of tire size is the writer's own weight.
If 40 millimeters is good for me, but I'm a certain way. And 45 or 46 millimeters might be better for someone else. It also depends on the train. So there's, that's what I like about customer. It's not a one size fits all, but I am seeing probably 40, 44 millimeter tire size as what I'm seeing a lot of, a lot of slacker head tubes, 70 millimeters with a trail of like 68, 70, 75, 80 millimeter trail combination of the fork and the head tube.
A lot of mounts under the down tube on the top two on the chain stay a lot of bike packing, lot of, kind of do it all all around all road. Not just all roads, but they may want to use it for bike packing. They may want a. And the seat stay for a future belt drive. They're not going to use one now, but Hey, can you put a split in the seat, stay for a belt drive?
Sure. Let's do that frame couplers do that. So, it varies and a custom frame isn't necessarily for someone who's four, six, or someone who has a short torso and in long legs. It may be for that rider who no. It has very specific requirements. They want slack, a taller head tube on it. Cause they're too hunched over.
They're getting older, they want something more upright. They want the extra mounts, so where they want a certain type of bottom bracket, they want a a frame that could accommodate either a suspension for core static forks. So it's just making those little tweaks that they can't find in an off the shelf bike somewhere else.
Yeah. That
[00:26:17] Craig Dalton: makes a lot of sense. The comments about fit, resonate with me a lot as I just got a bike fit myself, and I'm finding, there's just sort of little things that it's been pretty tricky to find on a stock frame, particularly around a desired head to blunt. Then it's not that I couldn't achieve a similar result.
With sort of stacking spacers, but it's not an elegant look. It's not something that, someone has been around cycling my whole life. It's not a look that I aspire to. So the idea of designing a bike that has a little bit more head to then maybe a stock frame to accommodate my lack of flexibility and age dare I say is attractive to me.
And that makes a lot of sense. I also think, titanium as a. Frame material is. Aspirational for a lot of people in their cycling life, right. We all want to have some titanium underneath us at some point in our lives because of the, the, the lore behind it and the door ability and the flexibility, which I think does make it a really great material for gravel cycling, because.
The durability, but also compliance built in. And the terrain in which gravel cyclists are pursuing these days, I think tends to be rougher and rougher. You may, we may all get these bikes thinking like, oh, I'm just going to turn down that fire road. But that fire road then becomes a single track.
And all of a sudden you're kind of pushing the capabilities of these drop bar bikes.
[00:27:45] Jason Turner: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I was thinking of something that you mentioned, but now it alludes me about a custom bike and the custom fit.
[00:27:53] Craig Dalton: I apologize. Yeah. It takes a while. I think for me, it's taken awhile and it's been a journey ever since I got my first gravel.
Like, I discovered what I didn't want. I discovered the limitations of that particular first bike and I have leaned into things going forward. And for me, it's sort of been progressively larger on tire size. And I, I do think to your point, that 700 by 50. Seems to be the sweet spot. Like, I'm not sure I necessarily were ride that big all the time, but I would like to have that in the bikes capabilities.
So should I go bike packing or what have you, I can throw on some big, wide, high volume tires to add to that. And then if I'm racing or maybe my daily driver, I might be down to a 43 or 45. But that's, that's the beauty, right? We can have this flexibility with these bikes.
[00:28:43] Jason Turner: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:28:44] Craig Dalton: Have you sort of come to the ideal customer in your mind?
Like who, who is the customer that you feel like when they come knocking on your door? Unicorn provides like the perfect solution for.
[00:28:57] Jason Turner: I don't know if there's a perfect customer per se. I mean, obviously the one that's the easiest that already knows what they want. I've had clients bring drawings to me that they've just scratched in the, in the geometry.
Like a kind of a typical customer. They already have a bike. If not more than one bike, they'd been riding for several years like yourself, they know what they don't want. Surprisingly. I don't have to do a lot in terms of bike fit. Usually they have a bike that fits them fairly well already that they've been riding for a while, but they just want to make some tweaks on it.
Like you said, the head too. One of the things that I try to do in designing a frame isn't is to make it adjustable for the future. So if, when they do get older, That it'll grow with them. Maybe they, maybe they start to ride more and they get more flexibility. So I would never want to sell a custom bike where the head tube is slammed.
I always want at least 20 millimeters of space below the stem, just so they could lower it. Cause you're not going to be able to just take that away. So allowing some adjustability in the saddle, looking at pictures of their current bike to see where the saddle is. So I could see that their current frame.
Has a 74 millimeter or 74 degree C2 bangle, but I see that they're pushed all the way back on the rails of the saddle. So maybe we make the unicorn 73 and a half degrees, and that will give them more adjustability, also keeping into account the, the seatpost setback, but going back to who's the best or ideal customer Yeah, a customer who has a bike who's been around, who wants to, who likes titanium?
Like you said, either it's that elusive that they've always wanted a titanium bike. Of course a customer that's that's patient because the, the design process, the fabrication process takes time. So if they're looking for that instant gratification Probably isn't for them. That's why we've started carrying a few stock frames out there.
But yeah, we get all kind of righties budgets, ambitions, just from a commuting bike with maybe opinion, gearbox. They want low maintenance, they want a belt drive or they want something very aggressive. They've won state, gravel races, one gentlemen locally. Racer costs Iowa. He's won that and placed in that a couple times.
Built him a gravel bike with a Lew fork on it. So it really varies. And I think that's the flexibility of unicorn being unique is that it is what you make it. I mean, every writer out there is different. How they're writing, what they're writing, their ambitions is different. And so the bike should be as unique as them.
I like to think.
[00:31:37] Craig Dalton: I think Jason, that's a fine place to end the podcast. That statement. I think it sums up unicorn in a nutshell, it's finding a bike that's right for you, the perfect bike for you. Yeah. Jason, thanks so much for the time today. I really enjoyed the conversation and I'll point people to your website so they can get to know you a little bit more and find out how to get in contact
[00:31:57] Jason Turner: with you.
Thank you, Craig. And thank you to the gravel ride podcast. Really love what you're doing and appreciate this time. Cheers.
[00:32:06] Craig Dalton: So that's going to do it for this week's episode of the gravel ride podcast. Big thanks to Jason Turner from unicorn cycles for coming on board and telling us all about how you can get accustomed titanium, gravel, bike of your dreams.
And also a big shout out to this week. Sponsor hammerhead,
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After getting a bike fit, Craig is now considering the possibility of a custom frame. Randall helps Craig walk through the various considerations and shares some tools for comparing bikes.
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On this week’s episode Randall speaks with Monica Garrison, Founder, Executive Director, and Chief Storyteller of Black Girls Do Bike. BGDB’s mission is to introduce women and girls to the joys of cycling, with an emphasis on those of color who are often less-represented in the cycling community. With 30K+ members spread over 100+ chapters, BGDB is rolling proof of the bicycle’s potential as a vehicle for connection and an example we hope to learn from and collaborate with as we evolve our own efforts toward building community.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Monica Garrison - Final[00:00:00] Randall R. Jacobs: Welcome to the Gravel Ride podcast. I'm today's host Randall Jacobs. And with me is Monica Garrison
monica is the founder executive director and chief storyteller of black girls do bike and organization she founded in 2013 and has grown to a hundred plus chapters worldwide black girls do bike.org is where you can find more about her organism. She's also a skilled professional photographer and videographer whose work you can find on her personal website, Monica godfrey.com, Godfrey being her maiden name.
And with that, I'd like to bring my friend Monica Garrison to join us here. So Monica, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:35] Monica Garrison: Hello. Hello. Happy to be here. Thanks for having.
[00:00:39] Randall R. Jacobs: Absolutely. It's been a while in the making. So let's dive right in. What were your motivations for starting black girls do bike.
[00:00:46] Monica Garrison: Black grocery bike came from a place of longing for community. I was, um, discovering my joy of, or my love of cycling in the summer spring of 2013. And after a few months of writing and, you know, discovering my city in a new way and spending time with my kids, um, at the end of all that I realized that I didn't see many women who look like me on, on bikes in my town.
And so. You know, these women are either out there and I, I can't find them or that they don't exist and they need to know about how great cycling is because I have found cycling to be very, um, healing in a lot of ways, you know, mentally healing, obviously physically healing. Um, and so when I went to the internet to find these women, I, I didn't really find, um, good representation of women, of color on bikes.
And so. That was, that was the birth. The Genesis of black girls do bike.
It was, it was like, well, let's create this space and invite women into it and see what happens. And, um, and the rest is history.
[00:01:52] Randall R. Jacobs: And your base.
[00:01:54] Monica Garrison: I'm in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
[00:01:56] Randall R. Jacobs: And it sounds like this was a very personal for you, but so before we dive into the organization, I want to talk, I want to hear more about your personal journey with the bike.
[00:02:04] Monica Garrison: I mean, I, I think like most people I wrote as a child, I spent my summers on my bike with my brother around my Pittsburgh neighborhood Lincoln. Lymington where I grew up. And and so it was a big part of my childhood. And then I think like most, most women may. We just stopped riding and at some point, and and then when you get to a point where.
The burdens of life kind of catch up with you and you're looking for ways to ease those, those burdens. You look hopefully to exercise or to some other outlet. And, um, for me having all those good memories of riding my bike and feeling stress-free, um, I turned to, I turned to cycling. But it was, it was cool because I started to connect with like Pittsburgh, which was our local bike that, that organization here.
And I discovered, you know, this great community of, of bike advocates and people of all sizes and genders and, um, who just wanted to ride their bike carefree and, and do it safely. And so that opened up a lot of possibilities, um, as to what riding even meant for me here. And.
[00:03:09] Randall R. Jacobs: What was your, what was your first bike? And how'd you come about it.
[00:03:12] Monica Garrison: Um, the very first bike like
[00:03:15] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, well going, going back to your, your most recent journey back onto two wheels.
[00:03:20] Monica Garrison: Yeah. So I, I did, um, I think what everyone in my generation does, I just. Like crazy online to figure out what kind of bike I need it. And I decided that there was, it was Bita was the name of it, maybe by specialized and it just seemed perfect. And then in the styling was right up my alley. So I'm just like a hybrid commuter type bike.
Um, but it was the perfect tool to get me back on my bike because it was so versatile. I could ride on any type of terrain and it was very comforting. Um, despite the small seat, I was apprehensive that it would actually be comfortable, but it, it really was. And, um, yeah, so that bite got me through that first year.
And because I was so obsessed with cycling by the end of that first year, um, I added another bike to my stable by the second, you know, the following summer, more of a road bike, um, drop bars to, you know, help me with the speed and even more, it was even more comfortable. So there you go.
[00:04:20] Randall R. Jacobs: So that Vita if it was a 2013 or 2014, um, I would have had a hand in it cause I was at specialized and that was one of the bikes under, um, I wasn't the product manager, but I would have been doing the bill of materials and um, the supply chain stuff for that bike. Yeah. So, so I know that bike reasonably well.
Yeah.
[00:04:38] Monica Garrison: Yeah. Yeah. No, it was great. It was a great bike and I, when I finally sold it, I sold it to someone like it was, it was a good cause I knew they needed that bike at that time. But I really didn't want to let it go because it is really, it was really a great bike.
[00:04:53] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, it's,
[00:04:54] Monica Garrison: still recommend to people today.
They're like, what should I start on? I'm like, well, I started on the visa and I loved it. Um, and then, you know, there are other bikes that are comparable across all the brands, but, um, yeah, that bike, that bike stole my heart.
[00:05:08] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and that sort of machine, you know, they, you, you can, you know, they go up into the, a couple of thousands, but you can get an entry-level one at around 500 bucks or so. And it's a fine machine for getting off the ground. And that's, I think that that accessibility is a real critical, um, area of our sport that, that.
No, it needs to be addressed. We have a lot of people in our community that are riding, you know, fancy superbikes, but you have to get a start somewhere.
[00:05:32] Monica Garrison: Yeah, for sure. and I had done, like I had done the cheaper bikes and I knew all the things, you know, in terms of comfort and durability that. And so I said, I'm going to invest in myself. Right. I'm going to do this. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it. Right. So I, um, so I was like, yeah, $500 is worth the investment.
If it gives me a machine.
that does what I needed to do and it ended up being a great investment for sure.
[00:05:59] Randall R. Jacobs: And what were some of the earliest rides you went on? What was that experience like?
[00:06:03] Monica Garrison: Um, there's a great trail in Pittsburgh called the Eliza furnace trail. And, um,
[00:06:09] Randall R. Jacobs: I've been on that
[00:06:10] Monica Garrison: it runs along. Yeah. Yeah. It's um, it runs along our Parkway and then it's, you know, circled, it goes in lots of directions. It's, it's actually pretty cool. It runs past our county jail. Um, it and it runs to the south side of town, which has great great culture over there.
So yeah, the olanzapine trail.
is pretty cool. It's actually still my favorite trail. Um, and then. When I, when I would ride with the kids, we were always looking for like, you know, kid friendly. So I spent a lot of times, a lot of time on the trails because I wanted my kids to come along with me. And, um, obviously I didn't want to take them onto the roads.
So I got really familiar with that. And then I grew up in east Liberty, that part of town. Um, and there are a lot of things to bike Pittsburgh. There are a lot of bike lanes there now, which are. Pretty conducive to getting around town without having to interact too much with traffic. So, um, so that's probably my favorite part of the town to ride in.
[00:07:07] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, I've been visiting Pittsburgh for like 15 years or so. And the amount of investments in the downtown and broader infrastructure and so on with bike being part of that has been it's been quite transformative in that area. So very cool to hear that you've been taking advantage.
[00:07:21] Monica Garrison: pretty sure.
[00:07:23] Randall R. Jacobs: And how old were your kids at the time?
And th this is we're talking like early 2010.
[00:07:27] Monica Garrison: Yeah, right. So my youngest, I taught him the ride at four. So he was probably four, my daughter's three years older. So she was seven. So four year old and a seven year old. And we're like killing it around Pittsburgh, on our bikes. Yeah.
[00:07:41] Randall R. Jacobs: That's great. Yeah. Um, I have a niece and a couple of nephews that I live with in a few nephews next door. So kind of same thing for 6, 7, 8. And it's just really wonderful to have that experience. It kind of slows you down a little bit, I would imagine.
[00:07:58] Monica Garrison: Yeah. Yeah. It's a different type of ride. But it's but it's invaluable in so many other ways, so it's cool.
[00:08:06] Randall R. Jacobs: So tell me about some of your first big group rides with other adults.
[00:08:09] Monica Garrison: Um, I think my first, I don't do a lot of group rides even to this day, to be honest with you. Um, cycling is in a lot of ways, a solo sport for me which is kind of ironic because I created this organization encouraging people to ride together and to appreciate the power of that. But yeah, in all honesty, I don't, I don't do a lot of group breads.
I will say my, my favorite thing to do here in Pittsburgh, that feels like a groove ride, but it, so, so isn't um, is our open streets, um, series that we have throughout the summer. So they, they shut down miles and miles of streets here. And, you know, you can just be on the, on the open roads with other cyclists and rollerbladers and, um, All kinds of other people on transportation and the it shops are open, you know, everything's open.
And, um, that, that sense of community is, is great. And it gets people on bikes who wouldn't normally be, and it gets them in, in an environment that they wouldn't normally be. So then they start to see. What's possible. And that's why I like that event so much, because once you experience it, you're like, oh, why can't we have this more often?
You know, what's holding us back. And so I think it gets people's wheels turning into the possibilities of what, you know, open streets could really be.
[00:09:32] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, I think the us is generally behind say a lot of European countries with regards to like cycling as a modality for transportation and recreation and so on, but you kind of hit a tipping point around, um, like 5%. Utilization of bikes versus other modes where the infrastructure comes into play and drivers are getting used to cyclists on the road, and you have a critical mass of people who are pushing for more open streets, more bike pads and things like that.
Um, my guess is that Pittsburgh has hit that tipping point. Is there significant more like additional investment happening or
[00:10:08] Monica Garrison: yeah.
for sure. For sure. We we've had, um, for the last two last two terms, we've had the political power behind change, which has been helpful. Um, and so when folks are at the top are agreeable, you seem to get a lot more done.
[00:10:27] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah, for sure. Well, so then let's dive into, um, you know, how, how far, how many years into your ride? Did you decide? Okay. Um, I don't see enough people who look like me and I want to motivate them. I'm going to start an organization. How did that come about?
[00:10:43] Monica Garrison: Yeah, it really wasn't immediate. Like, um, I realized that we were missing from the tapestry of my city pretty quickly. And, um, within, within months of me taking that first ride, I, I set up the Facebook page for black girls, Dubai. And, um, and then within a couple of months I said, this might be a thing, so I should probably get the domain.
So the website came soon after and, um, I think I have to go back and look because the first chapter did not start in Pittsburgh. It actually started in Florida, a lady contacted me and said, I want to create this in my town. Would you be on board? And we worked through the process of creating the first chapter, but, um, Yeah, it was, it was almost the thought came to me immediately.
And then it just took some time to figure out if it existed. Cause I don't want to duplicate someone else's work. Um, and there was, there was a group in the sea of black women on bikes, um, and they had had done a great job. It seemed to like galvanizing women of color in DC around cycling. And I thought, you know, that could, that could be, that could be worldwide, not just in DC.
And So um, I started down the path of seeking women all over the country who shared this love of cycling.
[00:12:06] Randall R. Jacobs: So started in Florida. And then what were the, what were the next chapters and how did that, was it, was it also organic people reaching out to you or was it more proactive or a mix of the two.
[00:12:18] Monica Garrison: Um, it it's always been people reaching out to me. I think we created a page that was dedicated to showcasing what chapters we had and also giving folks steps they needed to follow to, to reach out if they felt they met the criteria to lead a group of black girls or like, um, women. So uh, so it was always we're, we're looking for. And I didn't really solicit at all. Other beyond that. And the first few chapters were major cities, as you can imagine, like Los Angeles has been, um, almost one of our founding chapters, Atlanta. We were in Texas pretty quickly. So our Houston chapter, I think was the first one in Texas, but we've since expanded to almost all the big cities. Um, yeah, just, it was like a domino effect. Once people realize that they could duplicate what we had done in their towns, they were very excited. And so we were just like, here, here are the tools you need, and we'll give you the platform to let people know that you exist and let's see what happens.
[00:13:24] Randall R. Jacobs: So then from there, you've got this, you know, rapidly kind of self accumulating snowball of interest and people reaching out, wanting to start their own chapters. How did it evolve from there? And, um, what sorts of opportunities emerged as, as that started to grow and become a more visible.
[00:13:41] Monica Garrison: Yeah, I think I remember so the first time I showed up at the national bike summit in DC. Which was, I believe the second year into this process. So folks had started to hear about us. Um, and I was like VIP at the bike summit. Like everyone knew who I was, folks were coming up to me and they were like, let's connect.
We need to, you know, we need to help you grow this. And so out of that excitement, Because that's a meeting of the, you know, the greatest advocate minds of the, of the bike, um, community. And so out of that, you know, we're just kind of spread. And then I think within another year or two, um, I was part of the keynote panel speaking at the bike summit.
Um, so that was, that was just crazy. And, and then beyond that, obviously, because of the numbers of women who are, who we consider members. Um, we started to get noticed, you know, through our Instagram page. So some of the bike brands started to reach out to us, which was never, never even something I anticipated would happen.
But, um, but I think it was just hard to ignore us because we were growing so fast and, and hopefully the content was was so compelling that they just couldn't couldn't ignore us. And, um, And so it just kind of, like you said, it was, it was, it was a snowball at that point and it kept gaining momentum even to this day.
Like, you know, I did a project with Ford, um, just a few months ago and that's like, that's probably the biggest of the big and. It was a whirlwind. I don't even know how it happened. They were just like, be here at this time and do this thing and we'll make, we'll make some magic and they did. So, so when you talk about opportunities, like, you know, I couldn't have imagined that I would be in a spot talking to the, you know, the folks at Ford. that.
was pretty cool.
[00:15:36] Randall R. Jacobs: When I thought that, that, that, um, that ad was pretty interesting too. Not just because it showcased you and black girls do bike, but then also it's like, um, black women in outdoors generally. And I think it was the, the, the, um, their new pickup truck. Am I right?
[00:15:51] Monica Garrison: Yeah. The Bronco.
[00:15:53] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Okay. So, um, yeah, I thought that that was really well done.
And I, when I saw you posted up on your pages so then we, so here we're at, um, so now you're at a hundred or so chapters, including some international, where are you? International chapters?
[00:16:09] Monica Garrison: The biggest one is London. We have a UK London, UK chapter as of the end of 2021. They came on the scene. Um, And then we have we have a chapter in the Caribbean, but they've actually been with us for probably five years. Um, and then I like to brag, I realized Alaska is part of the U S but we have an Anchorage Alaska chapter, which still blows my mind.
So, but that shows, you know, the depth and breadth of the organization, you know, London and Tega and anchors, Alaska.
[00:16:37] Randall R. Jacobs: And so then, so you have all these chapters, mostly around the U S but, but you've started getting interest from people wanting to start another international cities. I'm curious, like, what are some of the archetypes of people? What types of things. Come into your organization in terms of their relationship to the bike and backgrounds and things like this.
And how did, how did they find you?
[00:16:57] Monica Garrison: Yeah, so it varies. I I'd say we have everyone from like, you know, the 20 something in college who, you know, is riding her bike to get around campus. And she discovers us to the. 50 plus a woman who, you know, has a career, kids are out of the house and she's got lots of free time. And, um, and she's either discovering cycling, or she's been a casual rider and she wants to take it more seriously to, you?
know, um, deal with her health, mental health, physical health, all those things, um, and everything.
And everyone in between, to be honest with you, um, I mean, we even have riders who don't know how to ride and some of our sheroes are literally holding their hands. And teaching them how to ride so that they can then join the group to ride. So it really, it really is a spectrum.
[00:17:50] Randall R. Jacobs: And this, this term Shiro that you just use, um, this is the toy, a term that you coined. I hadn't heard it before.
[00:17:55] Monica Garrison: Yeah. I, I think I coined it, but I hear it a lot now. So then part of me is like, maybe it was always there And, I just, you know, pick that up somewhere. But, um, but it was to play a play on the word hero and and, and I didn't really like the way heroin sounded. So I was like, let's make it cheer. Let's make it chiro. Um, yeah. And it stuck. So
[00:18:18] Randall R. Jacobs: and is this a formal, is this a formal role within the broader community?
[00:18:23] Monica Garrison: yeah. So, so all the women across the, the org that volunteer to lead, those are our sheroes. Um, and some, some groups only have one leader and then there can be Koshi Euro. So sometimes there's a group of four or more, um, who handle all the responsibilities. And then we have ride leaders, which is probably the only other title in the organization.
Those are people who, you know, don't want to necessarily have the responsibility that she wrote, but they want to support in that, you know, that's the best way that they can support.
[00:18:51] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and this flow is very natural. My next question, which is talk to me about the structure of the organization and both in terms of how it's run, um, and like the organizational structure, but then also in terms of its.
[00:19:04] Monica Garrison: Yeah. So I am in a lot of ways, a one woman show. I mean these eight years I've. I've handled the logistics of running the shop. Cause we have a really vibrant shop full of gear. All of our social media posts, those, um, messages myself. And then as you can imagine, all the backend things that come with promoting the organization. You know, learning new skills so that we can enter into other interesting ways of talking about cycling and women in cycling. Um, so yeah, so I'm, I guess I'm the only employee of black girls do bike. Um, our, she rose our volunteer. And, um, you know, there are certain perks that they take advantage of because they hold that she wrote a role.
So anytime I commit to something with a company or an organization, I'm looking for ways to, you know, send some perks there way for the, for the hard work that they do. Um,
we are as a, we're a nonprofit organization. And, um, so. Us to seek donations from private and public entities. And that that's fairly new for us.
We've, we've actually not operated as a nonprofit until just the last 12 months or so. So we're, we're growing into that role, what that means. And, um, we're fiscally sponsored by a company called players philanthropy fund. That's a mouthful. Um, but they're great. So they handle all of our, um, all of our backend legal.
And accounting thing. So that's, that's, that's the makeup of York.
[00:20:40] Randall R. Jacobs: Got it. And, um, in terms of like funding, so what sorts of organizations tend to like, how does, how are you currently funded? Is it a mix of organization and. Dues, primarily membership. How does, how does that work out?
[00:20:53] Monica Garrison: So ironically, our we've always. So I'm proud of the fact that we don't take membership dues. We just want you to show up and ride. So we are funded primarily through our shop, which I mentioned. Um, I put a lot of, even from the beginning, I've put a lot of energy into. Um, making our, our gear and our swag unique and stand out?
and be appealing because I want these women to, you know, even if they feel like they don't fit into the cycling community, I want them to show up and look great so that they feel great.
Right. So if they show up to a ride, I want them to feel like they fit. Um, and sometimes cycling kid is, is the way to fit in. Right? So we, so we do those, we do t-shirts and all those other things. Um, we have some great partners. We partner right now with track and USA cycling and REI has been a strong, strong partner for.
[00:21:49] Randall R. Jacobs: Hmm.
[00:21:50] Monica Garrison: Probably more than five years now. They've been, they've been with us almost since the beginning and supporting them in multiple ways. So they're probably our longest partner. So those partnerships, you know, usually come with some sort, some sort of monetary support. And then, as I said, we're transitioned to a nonprofit.
So just in the last year and a half, I spent a lot of energy, um, attempting to secure grants and that's that's all new to me, but, but we've had a really good year and I'd say our success rate is pretty high. So, um, yeah. So, so the shop sponsorships And grants are three, um, funnels of income.
[00:22:29] Randall R. Jacobs: And then for our listeners, if there's anyone who's interested in supporting what you do, what's the best way to get a hold.
[00:22:35] Monica Garrison: Oh sure. Um, just probably our website, black girls do bike.org. Um, and there's a, there's a donate button there, but there's also, if you go to our if you go through the page, you'll see lots of examples of, you know, what, what we, what we've accomplished really in the last eight years. And, um, and what we expect to accomplish going forward.
[00:22:57] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. And I can say just as an outside observer, who's only had the opportunity to get to know you over the past couple of months as we've been chatting. Um, it's, it's very. What have you been able to pull off? And as you know, we've talked about the ridership, which is an online community that we're building and, you know, looking at it from afar, what you do and the degree of in-person community that you've been able to facilitate.
Um, it's yeah, it's very admirable, very admirable. Um, so now I'm curious.
[00:23:27] Monica Garrison: a lot of, a lot of other people.
[00:23:29] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and, and it's only recently that you have taken a salary, is that right? Like you were, you were funding this out of your own pocket or out of your own time until fairly recently.
[00:23:40] Monica Garrison: I mean, what I've, what I've always said is we were, we were a for-profit company with philanthropic intentions. So the goal was always just to, just to invest, reinvest, to grow growth was, was always the purpose. Um, and so if there was some leftover, certainly I would pay myself, but only until recently.
Yeah. So that we're structured as a non-profit and I'm the executive director now. So I'm able to, you know, formally, um, be paid for the time that I put in.
[00:24:08] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. And there's a lot that you do that. I mean, you're a professional photographer and videographer, so you're doing pretty much all of your content, right? In addition to seeking grants and collaborations and coordinating with a hundred different chapters around the world and trying to grow, that's a, that's a full-time job for anybody.
[00:24:27] Monica Garrison: for sure.
[00:24:28] Randall R. Jacobs: Um, so then let's talk about, I'm curious to hear more about the various collaborations that your organizations and. Um, whether it be with companies or with other writing communities. So tell me more about that.
[00:24:41] Monica Garrison: Yeah, I think, um, each collaboration is slightly different. Um, I know REI there focuses on the outdoors and, um, so they're always looking for a ways and it's not just us, they've partnered with, I think there are nine other organizations right now that.
they're re re really focusing in on, um, who all encourage you know, marginalized communities to get outdoors and, and to feel safe in the.
Um, and that's something that's, you know, kind of near and dear to me because I also beyond cycling, I love to hike and, um, I love the outdoors and camping and those things. Um, but so their partnership has always been what, what do you need to be successful? And it's funny because their, their support has more because when it started, it was, you know, will these funds help you?
Yes. And then it became, what do you need to do? And what can we give you to help you accomplish it? So it was more focused on us as founders and, um, and what we actually want it long-term so that, so they've committed to three three-year commitments of support. Um, and they've helped them in a plethora of other ways, um, that I, I can't even really measure, um, USA cycling.
That was unique because they want it too. They're focused on racing and in diversifying racing. So they said, well, you have this audience, but how can we help, help you pull out women who. You know, in your ranks who are competitive, who want to race, but are hindered in some way. So they're not racing for various reasons.
What are, what are those obstacles and how can we help you help them? Um, so that was unique. And we, we got a grant this year from Rafa, which along the lines of the racing, um, that that's been. Incredible because I always had in the back of my mind, this thought of when we got to the point where we were big enough and we were touching enough women's lives, um, could we help some, some athletes become, you know, competitive racers who either were struggling in the space or who even hadn't considered it because they knew they didn't have all the resources they needed.
So with the combination of USA cycling and the, the funding that we got from. we've committed to creating at the very least, um, some, some athlete ambassadors who will represent black girls do bike and, and go, you know, go out and race in the name of black girls do bike, which on some scale, hopefully will help diversify cycling the racing, the racing team.
Um, Partners. What other, even you asked about partners with our, who? Our other partners. Oh, we've been partnered just a little thing. Well, not really little thing. Little, little Bellas is a mountain biking group. When they focus strictly on getting girls on mountain bikes and, comfortable in that space, I've been a big fan of theirs for a long time.
And they reached out and, said, you know, I know you have young girls in your ranks or maybe the daughters and granddaughters of the women who are riding with you camp. Are there some synergies. Where, you know, we can help you with those girls and we can, you know, get our girls, mothers and grandmothers riding with you.
And, and when girls age out of little Bellas, can they transition in the black girls bike? Because we welcome all women riders, not just, you know, women of color. So that was kind of beautiful. And, um, we're still working on it, but. And a lot of ways our organizations are similar, but they're also different in a lot of ways.
Um, so that that's been a challenge, but but our hearts are in the right place. And I think we are moving in a direction where we can, you know, merge or at least have these two communities communicating and sharing skills and, you know, getting better because of the connection. So just a few examples.
[00:28:29] Randall R. Jacobs: well, and to be fully transparent with our audience, I've already shared this with you. But part of my motivation in bringing you on was to also start kind of exploring, like, what are the ways in which our respective communities can, you know, integrate and be supportive of each other and connect.
Um, and so thinking about well, first. I'm actually very interested to hear more about kind of your premier athletes within your ranks. Cause there are some things that we might be able to do there, but then also I'd like to understand, I'd like to explore a little bit more, like how, how do your members, how many members do you have and how do they engage with you and with each other currently?
[00:29:10] Monica Garrison: Yeah. So, the best kind I have is just adding up all of the women who are in our individual groups. So we have, like I said, a hundred, I think we're up to 102 chapters now. Um, so at last count we had 30,000 women in those groups. So because we don't charge membership dues, that's what I use as our membership number, because any of those women could, you know, show up or ride with us on any given day.
Um, so yeah, so that's the breadth of our membership. And I'd say, I'd say, I mean, on average, if you ask our, she rose, they probably have between. 10 to 40 women show up for a given ride, right. Depending on the skill required for the ride. So, um, just to give you an idea of how many people we have actively riding on a weekly basis or a monthly basis.
[00:29:59] Randall R. Jacobs: And you're communicating with your membership primarily over email or what are the different means that you use to coordinate your.
[00:30:06] Monica Garrison: Yeah. So I wish I used email more. I, um, I gave up the, the, the thought of a newsletter a long time ago, but, um, I,
[00:30:16] Randall R. Jacobs: It's a lot of work.
[00:30:18] Monica Garrison: is a lot of work.
It is, I, I did it for about a year and then I was like, there's gotta be a better way. Um, so our primary channel of communication is facing. And that's, it's been faithful from the beginning.
Um, I think probably this was true eight years ago, more than it is today, but Facebook was the premier number one way to like create a community, keep them informed, you know, organize and, um, disseminate information. Like there was nothing better than Facebook. I do feel that's probably changing or will change in the next five to 10 years, but,
[00:30:53] Randall R. Jacobs: we, if we have anything to do with it. Yep.
[00:30:54] Monica Garrison: Um, so, so yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a web of of chapters all connected through Facebook. They each have their own pages. I am on all of those pages, so I can kind of monitor like the pulse of what's going on and what things are important and what topics are coming up. Um, And then some of our chapters, probably the more tech savvy ones have created Instagram pages.
So they've ventured out a little bit and they're using. To do some of the same things they do on Facebook, but also just to have a presence on Instagram so that they can be found. So those are the main channels.
[00:31:30] Randall R. Jacobs: And there's a, I'm curious, do you have some sort of, um, basic like guide to, um, how to manage the local chapters? Are there meetings that you're having with, um, all the different chapter leaders how does that get coordinate?
[00:31:45] Monica Garrison: Yeah. So I have a couple of things we have. Um, I created a I guess the best way to describe it as a slideshow that I, all of our sheroes, when like, an onboarding slideshow that they all have to watch. Um, it tells all the raw happy things about black girls do bike and you know, what links are important and what perks they now qualify for and all those things.
And then in order to keep everyone on the same page, I have a Facebook page dedicated, just Frishy. So we're all, all 180 plus of us are on one page. And that way I can drop a message and they all get it at the same time. And, and I use that also for feedback, like, you know, I'm thinking of dropping this new cycling kit.
What do you think of the colors or whatever? I, um, I use that forum for a lot of things are, you know, we're considering. In the future, you know, what kind of perks would you want as part of a membership? Like all those questions I bounce off of them, um, in that in that arena and beyond that, um, that's, I guess that's, I guess that's the best way we organize.
Um, we do have starting this year, actually. I probably should have started a long time ago, but since I was so bombarded with zoom meetings during the pandemic. I was trying not to have a black girl, Dubai zoom, by popular demand this year we, we started having probably quarterly though end up being quarterly meetings with this year.
It was just to keep them, you know, abreast of what's going on. And, um, and also to get some feedback, you know, what things are, are top of mind for them. And so that that's, we've had one so far. And we, I expect have to continue that as long into the future.
[00:33:29] Randall R. Jacobs: So I'm curious to dive in more. You know, obviously a topic near and dear to my heart, as we're considering how to evolve the ridership. Um, both from a dynamic standpoint and the community standpoint, but then also from a technical standpoint. Um, so you've described Facebook as kind of core to how you, um, you know, manage your organization.
What are the challenges that you see with Facebook? And one of the things that you would either that you're planning on doing or would like to do, but that your current stack doesn't, you know, tech stack doesn't allow you to do.
[00:34:01] Monica Garrison: Yeah.
Um, I think the biggest challenge with Facebook is that everyone's not on Facebook. I mean, there are a large, large part of the population probably. Under 30, um, who have just opted out of Facebook altogether, or they only keep it so they can keep in touch with their parents and cousins. And, um, but they don't use it as their main source of entertainment information.
So I, I think going forward, we're going to be missing out on those ladies because we don't really have a solution. To reaching them, um, at this point. And I, and I refuse to get on Tik TOK and dance to get, to get those lanes. So I don't have a solution yet. Another challenge is like so we have some chapters that have 2,500 women in them.
Right. And then our Atlanta chapters, 2,600 ladies right now. And there are limitations on that Facebook has Facebook has implemented that you can only invite so many people to events that you post or that you create with them. Facebook. Um, I think one of those years told me 400 was the limit. Well, You know, if you have 2,600 people, you're barely, barely scratching the surface.
If you can only invite 400 to your next big event. So there are some limitations and I see why they might do that. But for a group, our sides, that's, you know, that's not good for us.
[00:35:24] Randall R. Jacobs: well, and you get into 400 peeper people. You need liability waivers, you need the ability to, um, You know, have other managerial structures, you need the ability to take, um, you know, payments, if there's going to be a fee for the events to, to actually fund the event. Cause 400 people were talking like, you know, porta-potties and police details and things like this in order to pull off that sort of thing.
This is not a, um, a, an ad hoc group ride anymore at that time.
[00:35:51] Monica Garrison: you're right. Yeah.
So there's so much more involved. And I think what what's going to happen is is that Facebook. It's becoming less relevant already. We kind of can see the handwriting on the wall and, um, our potential audience is going to be left behind if we don't somehow evolve and find a way to, um, bring them in and in the tool, Facebook is a tool like even, um, advertising. So if I have a cell in the black rooms of like shop and I, and I want to reach, you know, my audience. I will tell you the price of advertising has skyrocket on Facebook. Like I used to be able to spend 50 bucks and I could hit everybody in a week, um, when we had 15,000 people. But now that you know, it's, Penny's, um, The same money I spent five years ago.
It was pennies. Now the inflation rate is, is crazy. So I I've been, I've been making do, but, um, I don't, you know, there's no long-term strategy to, I don't think they're gonna bring their prices down. So
I need another way.
[00:36:55] Randall R. Jacobs: Yeah. Yeah. That's one of the things that we noticed when we got to a certain scale on Instagram and it wasn't a huge scale. You know, we had a few instances where we had. You know, a thousand likes for a post or something. And then all of a sudden I'm getting messages from Instagram's advertising sales team.
And you know, we just said, no, we're not interested at this time. And all of a sudden our posts are getting, you know, dozens of likes. And that's when I looked at as like first off, I never liked Instagram much anyways. Um, I think that there's some good that happens there, but there's a, it can be a little bit, um, look at me, look at me.
Um, and the dynamics there, aren't always healthy, but then also like, The, you know, people like yourself, people like us are bringing people to this platform. The platform is, um, getting access to their data. And then now they, and that they're monetizing that data in various. The platform is, and then now they want to be paid to access the audience that we brought to them.
Um, and you know, it, the tools don't necessarily serve the needs of, of communities like ours. So we've been thinking a lot about, um, how to. Have online tools that facilitate, you know, offline community and connection and exchange and, and experiences, right. Event planning and things like this, that don't at the same time, have this kind of exploitative or extracted.
Components, which seems to be very much the direction that the major platforms have taken. And that's where you see, like you've been in the ridership a little bit. I'm curious what you've you know, what you've observed. And then also, I just want to encourage our audience. If you have any questions for Monica, um, you can tag her in there and you know, she can she can, you can engage with her there, or if you have ideas or ways that you want to support what she does.
But I'm kind of curious, like what, what, what you'd like to see different, um, with a next generation of tools and maybe what you've observed with us and what we get right or wrong.
[00:38:50] Monica Garrison: Um, I think you guys are onto something. Um, at least when I talked to you, you realize our pain points, um, you know, you recognize our pain points maybe because we're. You know, grow this community the same way in, in similar ways. But I think, I think the biggest failing of our current system is, um, while we do grow by word of mouth I think there has to be a better way to, to organize a community online in the, the, the tools we're using now are, are good enough, but they're, they're not going to be good enough because things are changing every day and, um, Organizing the community is important and that there are many layers to that.
There's finding new members, there's keeping current members satisfied. There's, you know, um, you know, bringing people together around ideas of the future of the organization. Like there, there, there are a lot of levels to it. Um, so I would say that, that I think you're on the right track. Um, and I think you realize where the failings are in the current system and. Hopefully that, you know, there are solutions on the other side.
[00:40:03] Randall R. Jacobs: I can say, um, and we'll be talking about this more publicly in the upcoming months as these tools come online, but we do have a technology partner, um, for the ridership. Who's also happens to be one of the investors in, in thesis. Um, and you know, I've been, I've been in those meetings and the hope is that we'll have at least the, um, like an, like an alpha pilot sort of product that we can migrate the ridership to in the, in the upcoming months or by the summer.
And this will include not just the slack line functionality that we have currently, but also the ability to organize events, including waivers and, um, you know, entrance fees and even conversations around the. You know, marketplace component, things like this. So just a matter of like how quickly the development can happen, but, um, I think there's a, another conversation for you and I to have both, um, offline in the upcoming weeks.
And then maybe back here on the podcast in a few months, if we find opportunities for us to collaborate.
[00:41:00] Monica Garrison: Yeah, for sure. I'm um, I'm excited about the possibilities. I know. I mean, even just being in the slack community that you have created has been beneficial, I've made some connections. I've, I've gotten some ideas, um, that have sparked, you know, other ideas. So, um, I found that valuable for sure.
[00:41:18] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and I just want to extend a very warm welcome, um, to the rest of your community that would find our community valuable, um, to come and join us. Um, it's the ridership.com. And if you'd like to reach out to me personally, you can, you can find a way to contact us through that website. And if you have ideas as to how we can do things differently, um, we definitely want to.
Yeah, we've appealed early on to an audience that is much more in the kind of more hardcore enthusiast realm. I mean, it's the types of people who listen to a podcast dedicated to gravel riding. Right. So, you know, already there's, there's kind of a self-selected element to that. Yeah. Um, but, but really the, the broader motivation here is to create a place where, um, you know, really a fellowship of writers helping.
And so the extent to which, um, you know, there's, there's opportunities for connection there, that's certainly something to explore. So anything else that you'd like to to talk about while we're while we're here together today?
[00:42:18] Monica Garrison: Um, no, I think we hit all the major, major topics.
[00:42:24] Randall R. Jacobs: All right. Well then Monica, Garrison, thank you very much for joining me. And, I really look forward to keeping the conversation going.
[00:42:32] Monica Garrison: For sure. Yeah, this has been great. All of our conversations have been great, so I'm glad we were able to connect and it seems like we're going to be talking more in the future. So I look forward to it.
[00:42:42] Randall: And that's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. If you'd like to engage further on this topic I encourage you to join The Ridership. If you're interested in supporting the podcast, you can visit www.buymeacoffee.com/thegravelride. And finally here's the finding some dirt onto your wheels.
Dylan Johnson YouTube
Join The Ridership
Automated transcription, please excuse the typos:
Dylan Johnson[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast, we've got professional, gravel and MTB racer. Dylan Johnson.
Describing Dylan is simply a racer would be overly limiting. As Dylan is also a certified coach. And a YouTube personality.
I've been watching a bunch of Dylan's videos on YouTube lately, where he covers. Coaching his personal journey as an athlete and give some detailed overviews of his participation in some of the biggest gravel and MTB races around. What I thought is interesting about his coverage of these events specifically is that I found there's a lot of takeaways from them, for me as a mid-pack rider.
Not only does he describe what it's like to stay on the wheels of some of the top racers? In the united states he takes an honest look at his own capabilities as we all should as we're participating and talks about when he's burning more candles than he should to stay in a particular group and what the net effects of that tend to be at the end of these events i thought it was super interesting and i've really enjoyed his colorful personality on youtube so i encourage you to give it a view.
Dylan has been accepted to race in the lifetime grand Prix series, which covers both gravel and MTB races. So I'm super curious how an athlete like the Olin is going to fare over the course of the year. And I do think that series is going to be interesting because it's going to test a lot of athletes capabilities across.
A pretty diverse set of courses. With that intro out of the way let's jump right into my conversation with dylan Dylan, welcome to the show.
[00:01:47] Dylan Johnson: Yeah, thanks for having me.
[00:01:49] Craig Dalton: I'm super stuck to have this conversation. I've been enjoying your work on YouTube of late, and I'm interested very much to hear about your background. So why don't we use that as a starting point? Let's talk about how you got into cycling and what led you to gravel racing ultimately.
[00:02:05] Dylan Johnson: Yeah.
I think. Cycling seriously. I think my dad got me a mountain bike when I was probably 12 years old and started racing shortly after that. And I think by the time I was 15, I was, I was probably training pretty seriously. And I started in the mountain bike side for most of my. Career, if you want to call it that I've been an endurance mountain bike racer.
And just recently, probably within the last two or three years
made the transition not fully into gravel racing. I still, I still do mountain bike racing, but I would say I'm much more of a gravel racer now.
[00:02:41] Craig Dalton: And what part of the country did you grow up in?
[00:02:42] Dylan Johnson: I grew up in the Washington DC area and it's it's a pretty busy area, but I, I went to. School at Bravard college in?
Western, North Carolina. And that's where I currently live. And I like it a lot better just because there's a lot less people. The writing is a lot better, both on the road side and on the gravel side and the mountain bike side, it's just, it's just all around.
[00:03:05] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's interesting. I went to school in Washington, DC as well, and started as a mountain biker there. And I will say it is remarkable within that DC, Maryland, and Virginia area. How much decent mountain biking is there?
[00:03:18] Dylan Johnson: Yeah, it's, it's pretty good considering that it's such a densely populated area. I mean, there, there was a, there?
was a kind of rich cycling scene, I guess, just because there's so many people that lived there, there, there just happened to be a lot of cyclists we're in, we're in DC. Did you live?
[00:03:34] Craig Dalton: I w I went to American university, so I lived in Northwest
[00:03:38] Dylan Johnson: Gotcha.
[00:03:39] Craig Dalton: and then for a while I was working for a DC based company and stayed with a friend in Chevy, chase, Maryland.
[00:03:46] Dylan Johnson: So when you ride, what? Like Patapsco regularly?
[00:03:51] Craig Dalton: Yeah. exactly. And then, you know, big trips for mountain biking would be out to say front Royal or something like that.
[00:03:58] Dylan Johnson: Patapsco was a little far from me. I was in, I was on the Virginia side. So I would regularly ride Wakefield down head go to front Royal on the weekend. Yeah.
[00:04:07] Craig Dalton: So when you went down to university in North Carolina, had you already begun your mountain bike racing career at that point?
[00:04:14] Dylan Johnson: Yeah, I was, I, I went primarily just because Bravard college has a really good cycling team. They'd won multiple non-bank national championships as a team at that point. So. And it's honestly the main reason I went there. And I was part of the cycling team, race, mountain bikes for them, collegiate cycling or collegiate mountain biking is all short cross country races.
There wasn't an endurance stuff, but there, there was a brief period of time where I was kind of trying to be a cross country, you know, traditional cross country, mountain bike racer. And I, I think that my strengths and my interests kind of lied more with endurance races. And by the time I was, I was a senior in college.
I pretty much fully transitioned to be a endurance mountain bike racer. So I focused heavily on the NUE series. And for people that don't know what that is, it's a national series for a hundred mile mountain bike racing. And that was my main focus for probably four or five years.
[00:05:16] Craig Dalton: That's interesting. Were you studying exercise physiology? I know it. And we'll get into the fact that you're a coach now, but I'm curious, like what led to that understanding of your own physiology that, Hey, the short track stuff, wasn't going to do it for you. And even as a young man, you should transition to longer form racing.
[00:05:32] Dylan Johnson: Yeah, I was I got my degree in exercise science and it was, you know, sometimes people ask me when they're watching, after they've watched a bunch of my videos, like how. How'd you learn how to do all this research? I, part of it was, was through my degree. We learned how to research certain topics.
But yeah, I, I don't know if, I don't know if I learned that my physiology didn't match shorter distance. Because of what I was learning in college, it was more so just trial and error. Like I, I just found that the longer the race was the better I did relative to my peers. And I think that still holds true to this day.
You know, there, there, there are people that completely smashed me in a short track race. And then if we go do a hundred mile mountain bike race, it's the complete opposite. It wasn't necessarily an understanding of physiology, but more so trial and error, I would say
[00:06:32] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Gotcha. So with this endurance mountain bike racing, what year? Just to give the listener a little bit of a timestamp, what year did you start to see gravel starts to take off and start thinking about it to some degree, whether you pursued it or.
[00:06:47] Dylan Johnson: so 2018 was the year that I did my first gravel race. And I know that gravel was already. Coming up at that point. The first gravel race that I did was the CRO 10 buck 50, which is 150 mile gravel race on the coast of North Carolina, very flat. And then the second gravel race I ever did was at the time called dirty Kanza and now was Unbound as everyone knows.
So yeah, that was my second gravel race ever, but I had a, I had a ton of experience doing endurance. Mountain bike racing. And I, you know, gravel racing is very similar. It's just a little bit less technical and a little bit more tactics. So it's not like I didn't have experience with that kind of race
[00:07:29] Craig Dalton: When you went to Unbound back in 2018, obviously if you were focusing on a hundred mile mountain bike race, How was that leap up to 200 miles. And do you, in retrospect, feel like you weren't prepared for it?
[00:07:43] Dylan Johnson: yeah. I was not prepared for it. I don't think. I, well, I don't want to, I was about to say, I don't think anyone is prepared for their first time, but then again, Ian Boswell literally won the thing his first time doing it this past year. So I don't know about that, but a lot of, a lot of even, even at the pro level, I've seen a lot of racers do it their first time and they had absolutely no idea what they were getting themselves into.
And I a hundred percent fall in that boat as well. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I think the biggest thing is. Longer in duration than what I was used to a hundred mile mountain bike races for me usually take anywhere from the six hour range to the eight hour range, depending on how demanding the courses and Unbound is I've never gotten in the I've done it twice.
And I think this year was in the 11 hour range and I forget what it was in 2018. It's quite a few more hours out there than, than a hundred mile mountain biking. And I think the other thing too, is that it's, it's so exposed all day. There's no shade. You really got to contend with heat. There's, there's, you know, either two or three aid stations on the course, depending on what they decide to do.
So you've got to carry a lot of stuff with you. It's a lot of planning. Yeah, it's a lot of stuff I wasn't prepared for. I made a whole video about that experience. And I don't know, it was, it was quite an experience that first time.
[00:09:13] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. Like you said, I think regardless of how much research you do, it's going to be a surprise, which your body starts to do after 10, 12 hours, because it's impossible to get everything, right. Yeah. Particularly I
[00:09:26] Dylan Johnson: done the race?
[00:09:27] Craig Dalton: I haven't done, I haven't done a Unbound to.
[00:09:31] Dylan Johnson: Yeah.
[00:09:31] Craig Dalton: But I think I've done, you know, I've done these ultra endurance style races and you just, you just don't know where you're going to stack up until that day.
And even you can't compare one day to the other, right? Your nutrition, the temperature out there, your hydration, other riders, whether you're chasing wheels or not, these all come into play at some point during those days.
[00:09:52] Dylan Johnson: definitely. Definitely. Yeah.
And The, the other thing I'll add in with Unbound, particularly, it's a problem with a lot of gravel races, but particularly Unbound is, is mechanicals. It seems like in flat tires,
It seemed like half the pros that were out there this year. Probably half the field in general, not just pros dealt with some sort of flat tire issue.
[00:10:11] Craig Dalton: Yeah, a hundred percent. I feel like we've talked about it on the podcast on a number of occasions. Like you've gotta be prepared for that both mentally, physically, and technically. So if you get a flat, just get off your bike and change it and keep going, because you may be depressed that you've lost the group you were in, but chances are, some of those are gonna guys are gonna in.
Girls are going to have those same issues and you may find your same self back in that group. As long as you're mentally prepared to continue fighting throughout this.
[00:10:38] Dylan Johnson: Yeah, Lawrence 10 damn got second place. I mean, he was in the sprint finish for the wind, got a early flat tire. Had to plug it. I believe Collins Strickland had a flat, had to plug it got fifth place, construct Strickland. When he won, got a flat tire late in the race had to plug it. Any, those were not, those were not the only two riders in the top 10 that got flats. So it's. It is not a race where a flat tire is a race ending mechanical by any means.
[00:11:06] Craig Dalton: So that's 2018. You do your first Unbound kind of first season doing a couple of gravel races. Did you feel the draw at that point, or were you still kind of sticking to the endurance MTV scene for the primary focus of your efforts during the year?
[00:11:21] Dylan Johnson: Yeah,
I mean, I, I really enjoyed gravel racing when I tried it and it was. Probably a slow transition. I would say I started doing more and more in gravel races and less and less mountain bike races. 2020 was supposed to be the first year that I was going to be all in on gravel. And of course you know, there was hardly any racing in 2020 there was a little.
[00:11:44] Craig Dalton: happened as it did.
[00:11:46] Dylan Johnson: Right. There was a little bit, there was a little bit of racing in the fall, but, but I would say for the most part, that was a non season.
[00:11:53] Craig Dalton: That's when you first came on my radar, because I was sort of on the sidelines as a fan of the sport and podcaster looking at 2020 as this potentially breakout year where there's been enough noise about gravel the last few years that anybody with any cycling shops off-road is going to start racing gravel.
And we saw a lot of women come into the field and a lot of men. And I remember seeing your performance, I think, at the sugarcane. W w what became the sugar can one 50 and thinking to myself, oh, there's another name to watch who I haven't been aware of before.
[00:12:28] Dylan Johnson: Yeah. Yeah. That sugar cane race. I, that was I, that was so early in 2020 that I don't even think I knew what COVID was at that point. It was, it was in January. So, but it was, it was a good thing that I got that race in before everything shut down. Cause, cause that one obviously went well and, and I think, you know, I had already planned to kind of transition to gravel, but that.
You know, it, it made me think, all right, well, this is something that I'm good at. I should, I should pursue.
[00:13:03] Craig Dalton: I'm curious, just from a sponsor perspective, as you're sort of managing yourself as a professional athlete and bringing together sponsors to support your efforts. Was that a difficult transition from people you were working with? Did you wholesale have to get new sponsors who were willing to support you in gravel or was it a more natural?
Yes. And kind of conversation with them.
[00:13:25] Dylan Johnson: It was, it was natural. The bike sponsor that I was, that I had was nine or bikes. I was working with them.
for five years. They make both mountain bikes and gravel bikes. They want to sell both mountain bikes and gravel bikes. The fact that I was raising gravel, I mean, they were, they were supportive of that.
The other sponsors that I have, I mean, it's not, you know, I can't even think of another sponsor that necessarily made only mountain bikes specifically. The equipment. And now I, now I to find a new version of that. So for the most part, I kept all my sponsors and they, they were happy about it because it seemed like gravel was getting more attention in.
[00:14:05] Craig Dalton: Let's talk a little bit about your 20, 21 season then, cause you've certainly put in effort in terms of a number of big races and series. Do you want to just kind of give me some highlights throughout the year? I know you had some great success at BWR and he revisited your, your Unbound experience.
We'll talk about a few of those events.
[00:14:25] Dylan Johnson: Yeah, I think the first big one was gravel Locos, which was the first, this was the 20, 20 or 2021 was the first year that they held it. But they they managed to get a lot of big names there. Warren's 10 dam Pete stet, not Collins, Strickland, Ted king. They were all there. That was my first big gravel race of 2021.
And I ended up getting fourth place in that, which I was very happy with. It was a brutal race, 150 miles. And it, the last two hours of the race were pouring rain. So I was very pleased with that Unbound. I felt like I came in very well prepared physically. Although I think. The tricky thing was Unbound is that heat acclimation is so important for that race.
And it's early enough in the year that for most people where most people live in the country, they haven't fully heat acclimated at that point. Like it's the first weekend of June. It's not like they've been riding their bike all summer in the heat. And I felt like I could have done a little bit better with heat acclimation, but it just, it really just, wasn't hot enough here in Bravard North Carolina.
For the month leading into that race, I did feel like the heat got to me, but by far, my biggest issue that I had with that race was the same issue that so many people had, which was a ton of flat tires. And I never had, I never had to put a tube in, but I, I went through a lot of plugs. I went through a lot of CO2.
I even had to at the second aid station, I, I could have grabbed my spare wheel and I totally should have, but 10 minutes after, after leaving that aid station, the tire went completely flat immediately, and I didn't have plugs or CO2 is left. So I just turned around, went back to the aid station, got the spare wheel and was on my way. I w I was still happy with that performance. I got 12th place there, despite all the issues, but you know, like I said, that's a race. You part of the race is dealing with issues, whether it's flat tires or dehydration or bonking everyone's going to have issues. And then the BWR series went really well, too.
I ended up finishing third place overall in the VWR series, which shows really how.
[00:16:38] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that's a huge accomplishment. When you think back across these races that you've participated in on the gravel side, have you started to hone in on the types of courses that suits your technical skills and physiology better than others?
[00:16:54] Dylan Johnson: Yeah, I usually the longer the race, the better it can get a little extreme with races, like Unbound. That's a V that's a very, very long race. And I think a lot of people, even if they. Physiology has set up for longer races are gonna struggle. So yeah, usually, usually the longer the race, the better, and I'm, I'm very happy that gravel embraced long distance gravel could have easily turned into, you know, 30 mile short races.
And that, that could have been what most people see as a gravel race, but it seems like every single big gravel races is a hundred, 150 200 which is. I'm, I'm a kind of a middle weight writer. I bounced between 150 and 155 pounds. So I'm not a pure climber and I'm not, not a massive guy. What I do find is that if a course has a ton of super steep climbing, then the outright climbers like Pete Stettner or, or someone like that
they're just going to walk away with.
At least from me, they're going to walk away from me on a, on a super steep climb. So I actually, I actually don't mind a fairly flat to rolling course because I, I find that I can at least stay with the front group for a longer period of time and maybe make some, some of the right moves at the end. I think my chances are better.
[00:18:19] Craig Dalton: Do you find that any of these courses are having technical enough sections that make your mountain bike background and asset?
[00:18:28] Dylan Johnson: Yeah. the BWR races have really embraced that most of the BWR races have some sort of single track. The BWR Utah race has a very long section of fair, relatively technical single track. I say relatively because we're talking about gravel racing here. If you're on a mountain bike, I don't think it'd be a huge deal, but when you're 110 miles into a gravel race and you've got 30 minutes of fairly bumpy, single track, that's, that's pretty significant.
I think, I think that played into my strengths a lot. And, and the other BWR races have similar features like that. Some, some gravel races are just straight up gravel for the whole thing, you know, like Unbound and there was no single track. So you really get a mix. I think if there are, if there are technical spots that suits me, if there aren't technical spots, I don't really, I don't really sweat it.
It just means that things are going to be a little bit more tactical, probably.
[00:19:21] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that I don't think we've mentioned it yet on air is that you've got a YouTube channel, which both covers your profession as a coach, as well as doing some race analysis from the races you've done. And for the listener, I'd very much recommend finding Dylan's YouTube channel and I'll put it in the show notes because he does a great job of showing behind the scenes.
And it's not so much as, you know, as a listener, like I don't geek out as to who's winning the race necessarily, but I do think Dylan does an excellent job of telling stories that can translate to everybody in the race. And specifically, as I mentioned to you offline Dylan, I really like that you have a strong understanding of.
How the course is going to play out how, what abilities you have and where to burn matches. And I forgot which one I was watching recently, where, you know, you had laid out the course profile and you had the, the undulating Hills throughout the race mapped out very specifically. And you're able to articulate where you thought you could be successful and where you thought you were going to have channel.
So I thought it'd be great and people will go watch these videos after the fact. But maybe if you could just talk through a little bit, how you think about when you look at a course profile and then you're out there in, let's say it's the top 30 of people that are out there until that breaks down further.
How are you thinking about tackling Hills or technical sections where you're going to have to exert more than the average amount of effort?
[00:20:51] Dylan Johnson: Yeah, I mean, so usually the w the way. That gravel races play out. Is that the front group? I mean, every once in a while, somebody would try a long distance breakaway and it's successful. That's what happened at VWR, California. I really was semi-successful I guess the only, the only person that caught the.
The people that went for it was pizza And he ended up winning, but, but usually what ends up happening at long distance gravel races is that the front group just gets smaller and smaller and smaller as the race progresses until it's a very elite group of riders and they either have to attack each other in the last couple of miles, or it might come down to a spring finish or a final climb or something like that.
So, I mean, if you're, if you're strong enough to make that selection, the last. You know, the last quarter of the race is very important. It's the most important part of the race. So you got to look at what, what the last, you know, what the last quarter of the race has. I mean, sometimes there's a big climb.
Sometimes there's a single track section. I made a video about DWR, Utah, not from this year, but from from the previous year 2020. And it has both, it's got a massive climb and then it's got a single track section that, that definitely played into the race tactics there. And then you kind of have to, you kind of have to get a feel for what your competition's strengths are as well.
Like, you know, I know that if I'm, if I'm riding with Pete stead and I he's, he's a great climber. I know that if I don't know Keegan Swinson's in the group, he's an amazing. Technical writer and an amazing climber. If it's, if it's Ian Boswell, same thing, amazing climber, just all around strong. The thing about Ian Boswell and I did talk about this in my BWR North Carolina video is probably one of his weaknesses is his technical ability.
And we both, I would say me, Russell Fenster Wald and Carrie Warner were trying to. Exploit that at that race. So anytime there was a technical gravel dissent, we were really trying to pin it in order to put some distance between us and an Ian. Unfortunately we didn't, you know, we didn't succeed in doing that.
He managed to catch us back every single time. But that's, that's kinda the thought process when you're, when you're in one of these races. And then of course there's the whole component of, of when do I go hard? You know, when do I save my matches when you. You know, when, when can I pin it? I think a lot of times, you know, if, if you're trying to put the group under pressure, it's gotta be in a section where they are not getting a significant amount of drafts.
So either, either fairly steep climber or some sort of technical section, because otherwise you're just kind of giving them a free.
[00:23:39] Craig Dalton: And when you're at the crux of these races, are you willing to put yourself in a position? blow up entirely, but you know that this is your move. Like this is the moment. If you're going to win this race, this is the moment you have to go.
[00:23:54] Dylan Johnson: Yeah.
[00:23:56] Craig Dalton: And, and let me, let me explain. I, I asked that because, you know, as a, as a mid-pack racer, like I'm mostly concerned about getting across the finish line. And I know there's not a tremendous amount of value in me blowing myself up to stay on a wheel because I've got to be concerned with this overall task of me crossing the finish line.
But as a professional athlete, I do imagine the calculation is slightly different.
[00:24:21] Dylan Johnson: Yeah. So generally generally what happens is, well, I was, I was talking about how the front group gets smaller and smaller throughout the race, but also what, what will generally happen is that the pace at the beginning of the race will be much harder than the pace throughout the rest of the race. I mean, I don't know.
It's just the nature of racing. So. You know, maybe, maybe some mid Packers don't know that it's, we actually don't keep that pace up for the entire race. We, we do slow down halfway through once, you know, once a significant amount of people have dropped off. If you, you, you kind of have to make these internal calculations, like is staying with.
You know, if you're with a group and you see that your heart rate is at, you know, you're at your threshold heart rate, but it's a seven hour race. So clearly that's not sustainable. Is it worth it to stay with this group and hope that they're going to slow down? Or maybe you need to make the calculation that this is too hard to pace and I need I need to go back to the next group on the road, or I need to draw.
And it's kind of, you know, it's kind of something that you learn with experience. Most people when they're doing their first race are going to go too hard at the beginning. In fact, even experienced racers, do that. I would say it's the number one racing mistake in endurance racing in general, let's take gravel racing out of it.
Just endurance racing period. Go into hard at the beginning is, is probably the number one mistake. Yeah, you're making all these, all these calculations in your head looking at your heart rate, looking at your power thinking, Okay.
You know, is, is this sustainable? Is it not sustainable? Is that, you know, are people around me getting tired?
Is the group gonna slow down? Are they not going to slow down? And sometimes you get it right? And sometimes you.
[00:26:06] Craig Dalton: That makes sense. Before we get into your 2022 plans, I just want to do a quick detour towards your equipment. Can you talk about the bike you're running the tire size. You prefer aerobars, no arrow bars. Let's get a couple of details on the table.
[00:26:20] Dylan Johnson: Yeah, well, I don't know when this episode's going to air, but as of right now, I cannot talk about the bike that I'm going to be riding running in 2022. Hopefully I'll, I'll be able to let people know soon. But the, the bike that I was running last year was the Niner RLT nine RDO. I run as far as tires go, I run, I usually run wider than whatever the race promoter recommends or whatever.
Probably the average racer there is on.
[00:26:50] Craig Dalton: And why do you do that?
[00:26:52] Dylan Johnson: Well, I mean, they, so. We're coming to more and more of an understanding that that wider tires are not necessarily slower. And in fact, on rough terrain, they're usually, they're usually faster. Of course it depends on how rough the terrain is. But for example, at, at Unbound, I was running 45 millimeter tires.
I think most people are running 40 twos or fours. That's pretty standard for me to be a size up from whatever everybody else is running. I like I did.
[00:27:22] Craig Dalton: like I, I feel like I need to yell amen or something. Cause I'm all with you on this Dylan.
[00:27:28] Dylan Johnson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. At the at the BWR California race I never done that race until, until this past. And everybody's talking about how they're running thirties or 30 twos. Like, it seems like, you know, everybody's running their road bike. And I was like, all I had was my gravel bike and I was like 30 twos.
You know, that, that is so narrow. I'm going to go with 36 is I didn't even know the course, but I was like, I'll go 36 is I next year. I'll probably run for. I, that is not to me, to me that there was, there was straight up single-track in that race. Like the single track sections of that course, the fastest bike would have been a hardtail mountain bike and people are on their road bikes. Granted there's a ton of road in that race, but I don't know. I think a 30 mil tire on a road bike is not, I just get the feeling it's not the fastest. And there were a bunch of parts on that course where even a 36. I I felt sketchy on. So yeah, I'm, I'm always, I'm always going with the bigger tire for the most part.
[00:28:36] Craig Dalton: That's interesting because certainly BWR San Diego is the one event that people will, will raise their hand and say, oh, you got to go. Road bike style tires, pretty darn narrow,
[00:28:46] Dylan Johnson: I don't know. I don't know if you've ever written that course. Have you.
[00:28:50] Craig Dalton: I haven't, but I've seen enough details and I've got a crew down in San Diego that has told me about it.
So yeah, I'm with you, you know, it's, it's curious, like at the point he ended the race though, like that you didn't necessarily feel under equipped on the road sections per se, riding 36 mill tires.
[00:29:07] Dylan Johnson: well, most of the time rode sections in a gravel race. I can see that people are worried if they see, you know, that it's going to be 60% road and 40% gravel, it's like that's more road than gravel. You know, I need a, I need to prepare for that, but usually it's, it's the, the gravel sections are the deciding factor, at least at the pointy end of the race.
So, you know, if, if it was a time trial, like you're just, you know, solo for the whole thing, maybe you'd choose, choose a bike. That's more optimal. For what's what you're going to be spending more time on. But a lot of times you got to choose the bike set up. That's going to be optimal for the critical points of the race.
[00:29:49] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And I think that often translates to the mid pack is you also have to worry about your own personal comfort across these events. So having a little bit of extra cushion, I think over a long day in the saddle is super warranted.
[00:30:03] Dylan Johnson: Yeah. definitely. There's you know, Renee, hers has done some interesting work the tire company. I mean, granted, they're trying to sell tires, so, and I, I'm not sponsored by Renee hers, but I just find the work that they've done. Super interesting. I think they, they make the claim and they've got, they've got data to back this up that all the way from a it's either a 25 millimeter or 28 millimeter road tire all the way up to a 50 millimeter.
Road tires, no slower in terms of rolling resistance. I mean, it's probably more aerodynamic drag to have a 50 millimeter tire, but they're claiming that the rolling resistance between the two is not different. So I, I almost, I own, you know, is that true? Is that not true? I don't know. I've done a little bit of tire testing myself
and it it's very hard to do.
Did to do tire testing. What I do is I'll find a section of gravel and I'll write it at the exact same power and then I'll switch wheels and right at the same power and try to see if, see if there's any differences, but, but usually the testing protocol isn't, you know, isn't tight enough that the, the margins are, you know, you're kind of trying to find a needle in a haystack cause it's small margins, but.
When claims like that are being thrown around. I'm like, why not go bigger? You know, why not go bigger?
[00:31:25] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I'll re I'll refer the listener back to my episode with from Renee. And w he, he talks a little bit about that study and I'm with you. It's been fascinating. And I guess I've always been on the big tire side of things, so maybe it's preaching to the choir, but I'm a believer. And from a confidence perspective for me, it's like night and day when I go down to like 38 C tire and I ride what I normally ride a hundred percent.
I miss my, my 43 or 45.
[00:31:55] Dylan Johnson: Yeah. What are you, what are you normally on?
[00:31:57] Craig Dalton: I'm normally on six 50 V by 47,
[00:32:00] Dylan Johnson: Okay.
[00:32:01] Craig Dalton: because I live in a particularly kind of mountain biking part of the country and Marin county. So my daily rides are definitely more on that side of things than any kind of rolling gravel.
[00:32:12] Dylan Johnson: Yeah. And what, what tire specifically do you use?
[00:32:16] Craig Dalton: I use that. Panorai ser gravel king.
[00:32:18] Dylan Johnson: Okay. Yeah. that, that looks like a good one. I've not, I've not tried that one, but I'm. I may a subscriber to bicycle rolling resistance.com. I love that site. I looked so much at that site and it's, it's not intuitive. People think that they can just look at a tire.
and assume they know how fast it is just by how much tread it.
Some of the slowest tires are, are dead slick.
[00:32:44] Craig Dalton: So fascinating. I'm not familiar with that site, so I'll have to check it out.
[00:32:48] Dylan Johnson: Yeah.
[00:32:49] Craig Dalton: So going into your 2022 season, now, you're going to be on a new bike. You've got a new program. What do you have in store on your calendar this year?
[00:32:57] Dylan Johnson: Well, I, I haven't been selected for the lifetime grand Prix. So that that's going to be, that's going to be my big goal. I love the fact that it's it's, it's got gravel races and mountain bike races. I mean, I come from mountain bike racing, so I think that's going to suit me you know, looking at the list of writers.
There's so many fast writers on the list. It's a little bit intimidating, but I'll, I'll do the best that I can. I think I'll probably also try to go for the BWR series again. They're going to do a quadruple crown this year instead of a triple crown. So
[00:33:29] Craig Dalton: And does that work on the calendar that you could, could do both of those series?
[00:33:33] Dylan Johnson: it does, it does. Yeah.
[00:33:34] Craig Dalton: Amazing. It's going to make you a busy man.
[00:33:37] Dylan Johnson: Yeah, it will be a busy season. So there's those, those two series already. And then, you know, and then there's other racing here and there I'll probably be back to gravel Locos. I'll be doing the local
Southeast gravel series here. I'll I'll do some, some mountain bike racing here and there as well.
So it will be a busy.
[00:33:57] Craig Dalton: Great. When you looked at that lifetime grand Prairie as an opportunity with your mountain bike background, it must've made you smile. That it wasn't a pure gravel series.
[00:34:07] Dylan Johnson: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think that when you look at that series, all the races on that calendar they, they all look different. I mean, there's, there's a 40 mile mountain bike race, and there's a 200 mile gravel race. I think that's the point. I think the point is that. So winter of that series needs to be a well-rounded athlete or well-rounded off-road cyclists for that matter.
And I, I think it'll be very interesting. I do think that there's going to be a lot of luck involved because at least two of the races on that, on that series flat tires are, are a real possibility. And, and Some of those races, bonking is a real possibility. There's dealing with altitude at Leadville.
I mean, there's all, there's all sorts of factors. So, you know, hopefully, hopefully the strongest rider wins, but I also think that the person that the, you know, that wins the series is going to need a lot of luck.
[00:35:03] Craig Dalton: As you sort of do the calculations in your head as to how the points add up and that's your. Are you thinking about one race over another and thinking about, you know, this is where I'm going to try to peak maybe more so because it suits my capabilities and some other one, obviously you need to do to get the points, but you're not necessarily going to focus because you just don't believe that your athletic profile matches the possibility of success in that race.
[00:35:28] Dylan Johnson: Yeah. Yeah. I talked about this in, in a recent video that I did about. 2022 training plan. This series is obviously my main goal, but it's six races over six months. And you know, any, any coach will tell you that trying to peak six times over the course of six months is, is you know, it's not going to happen.
So I I'm gonna try and go for three peaks this year. And I picked, I picked the three longest races by duration. On the schedule. So that's, that's Unbound, Leadville and then the last one, big sugar and, and like I said, you know, longer races generally suit me better. So that's why I picked those three.
And they're also spaced pretty evenly. There's there's a two month gap between each one which gives me enough time to do a little, a little rest period before I build up again. So, you know, and the, and the other thing too, is I have experienced doing Unbound. I don't have experience doing the other races, although I'm very experienced in a hundred mile mountain bike racing, which I hope will help me in Leadville.
And then, and then the other races on the calendar, I'm going to do them, obviously I'll do all six. And I'll just, I'll just do as well as I can, but I won't necessarily be peaking peaking for those.
[00:36:44] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I think this is going to be super interesting in retrospect, at the end of the year. And maybe we can have a conversation, hopefully I'll be at about a big sugar and just talk about how it went and across all the athletes in the field. I think people are going to have different strategies about what they can be successful, how and when they can be successful.
So, you know, kudos to Lightspeed lifetime. Bringing together the capital to insent people enough to go after this race series. Cause I do think as a fan of the sport, it's going to be an exciting year in 2022.
[00:37:18] Dylan Johnson: Yeah, I think it would be very exciting. Very exciting.
[00:37:22] Craig Dalton: Dylan, thank you so much for sharing your story on the podcast this week, as I said, I'll, I'll refer people to your YouTube channel and I encourage everybody to follow Dylan. He's a colorful rider. He's super insightful and an up and comer and someone we should be having eyes on in 2022.
[00:37:37] Dylan Johnson: Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me on.
[00:37:40] Craig Dalton: So that's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Huge. Thanks to Dylan. For coming onboard the show. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. And I do encourage you to visit him over on YouTube. I think you'll get a kick out of it. If you're interested in providing any feedback, please hit me up over at the ridership. That's www dot the ridership.
Dot com it's a free global cycling community. We've created to connect with other gravel, cyclists, and adventure athletes out there. Uh, encourage you to join the conversations, always vibrant, and there's a wealth of knowledge over there. So feel free to tap into that. If you're able to contribute to the podcast directly, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride.
I very much appreciate everybody. Who's stepped up to underwrite portions of this show.
Until next time. Here's the finding some dirt onto your wheels
In this part two of our conversation with bike industry pioneer Craig Calfee, he and Randall do a deep dive into the merits of suspension on gravel and road bikes before jumping into e-bike conversions, variable head angles, regenerative braking, an E-motorcycle project Craig is involved with in Africa, ideas for the ultimate mass-produced frame, and the challenges and opportunities of localized assembly and production. Calfee Designs Website
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Automated transcription, please excuse the typos:
Craig Calfee Part 2[00:00:00] Randal R. Jacobs: Welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Randall Jacobs. And today I, once again have my friend Craig Calfee, this is part two of our conversation. We'll be having a part three at some point where we get into wood and bamboo bikes, but today we're going to be focusing on mostly on carbon fiber.
And so with that first topic where we left off in the last conversation, Craig was, we were getting into suspension, particularly suspension on road bikes, but that would also apply to gravel bikes too.
[00:00:28] Craig Calfee: Yeah, that's a great topic. It's one really close to my heart because we kind of stumbled on it through the bamboo bikes actually. And it was about the vibration damping of. We had a triathlete who had a really nice carbon fiber race bike that he used for Ironman distance triathlon. He's also a data junkie.
So he had all the, all the, you know, biofeedback stuff, the heart rate monitor, the lactose levels, all kinds of crazy stuff that he measures on his training rides. So he also ordered a bamboo training bike just for fun. Really. He's a wealthy guy who can afford multiple expensive bikes. And we built at exactly the same geometry as his race bike, and the only difference ended up really being the race wheels that he didn't use all the time.
Anyway. So he was doing his training runs and found that he was actually faster on the bamboo bike, which was about two pounds heavier than his race bike. So. I asked him, well, let me guess you're feeling fresher towards the end of the, the bike segment and your time advantages in the latter half of that segment, he said, you're right.
And why is that? And I said, well, the only clue I have is that the bamboo definitely absorbs vibration better. So you're subjecting your body to less fatiguing vibration. And he said, that's exactly how it feels and has run after the bike is, is generally faster as well. And that backs up what Dave Scott reported when he rode our bike in the Ironman, when it came out of retirement at the age of 40 and came in second to, um, to Greg Welch at the iron man everyone thought Dave was going to be top 20 maybe, but he ended up second place.
And he credited that performance to feeling super comfortable on his Tetra custom tri bike that we built for him, which is notoriously smooth riding because of their skinny seat stays. Anyway. Um, so the vibration damping also has been studied by insurance companies for truck drivers and airline pilots.
So they do these tests to figure out how fatigued people are based on how much vibration they're subject to, and they've shown you know, hands down that it's, that vibration causes fatigue. And there's some scientific details on that that I could get into, but it's, um, probably better to move on here.
So we found that, um, aside from the, the fatigue we've found that it had better traction and that allowed for more efficient client. So for a racing cycling. Yes. Fatigue is important, but actually having better traction for getting a better time on climbing is really where the rubber meets the road, literally.
Yeah,
but for me that the biggest one was layers less know you're going to crash out of the tour de France less often. So being able to corner faster and do faster descents without crashing is as important, if not more important than having more efficiency climbing so that, you know, those three factors less fatigue, better traction, and more stable at high speed are to me the most important they're all three of them make for a faster bike.
And we.
[00:04:10] Randal R. Jacobs: Oh, go ahead. Um, well I was going to say like on the flats and on the dissents, it's pretty obvious. And I've actually been thinking a lot about this. You know, our listeners will know that I'm a big proponent of high volume tubeless tires on wide rims, right. Run at lower pressures for bigger contact patch.
And I'm coming around to this idea that while that is good, that's that suspension that pneumatic suspension also results in varying tracks.
[00:04:38] Craig Calfee: Yeah.
[00:04:39] Randal R. Jacobs: yeah.
[00:04:40] Craig Calfee: So we, we actually measured that, um, most people are like, well, you're going to lose something on the climb. You know, you're going to activate the suspension and lose a percentage of your input, activating suspension. And we thought, okay, you know, there is some of that, but it seems like that's minimal compared to the advantage in climbing.
So we understand about the pneumatic suspension and part of it was to go back to the advantage of less rolling resistance. With a smaller tire, higher pressure you know, tires. And so we did an experiment where with a couple of interns from Germany that were really into the data collection side, and we set up a manta with an electric motor on it an e-bike effectively.
So we could do a climb and measure the power required to get from the bottom to the top. And we found that w w we did 20 runs. So 10, 10 runs without the suspension and 10 with the suspension, meaning we would put an aluminum slug in where a spring used to be. And that would be the, the locked out version.
And all of the runs with the suspension were about 2% of fat, you know, further up the test run than the ones that were locked out, which was kind of surprising. We w the consistency of it was amazing actually. So we found that, you know, he got up the hill with the same amount of energy further up the hill.
So that was, um, you know, a graphic representation of how much more efficient it was. And then we wanted to subtract the loss of the, the losses from pedal induced suspension activation. And so we put up, put a a power meter on the crank sexually. That was the, um, the, the what's the really well known power crank meter the name escapes me, but anyway, we put a hub mounted power meter and a crank mounted power meter on the same bike.
And we were able to measure the difference between the two and it ended up being about 1%. So we did have a situation where it was more efficient climbing, about 2%. Minus 1% loss of a pedal induced suspension activation. And so net gain of 1%, and that was noticeable by, by riders. They could feel that 1% but that actually matters more in a race where, you know, you actually win by significant amount expending the same amount of energy.
So that, that was really the, the revelation that caused me to predict that at some point every bike in the tour de France will have suspension with at least 12 millimeters of travel.
[00:07:27] Randal R. Jacobs: I've been just to repeat, like, I've been a big proponent of non suspended bikes. I actually, we Craig and I just you know, kind of tongue in cheek offered our, our bikes of the year, gravel bikes of the year. And the one that I nominated was an old one, the the open up, because it is not going with some of these new fangled you know, attempts to suspension and so on.
And I still I still see a place for that, but. As I'm thinking about like a hypothesis as to why you're getting those improvements in efficiency, even on a climb. The thing that comes to mind is a unsprung mass in the amount of VR. You know, you take those the front and the rear axle, and you look at their path through space.
And when you have an active suspension when you have a suspension that is built into say the seat stays or the fork, or what have you, as opposed to the, you know, using the tire, you're going to probably get less vertical deflection as the bike is traveling over the road. And even a smooth road is going to have, you know, meaningful amounts of bumps that are going to result in you know, energy losses as the, not just the bike, the unsprung mass of the bike, but the unsprung mass of the body of the rider on the bike as those are moving up and down is that what you suspect as well?
Or do you have any data on, like, what is the actual.
[00:08:45] Craig Calfee: Yeah, that is the mechanism that's been studied a fair amount, um, and regular suspension in detail was motorcycle. um, the, the so it's already been proven that suspension is faster because you're not raising and lowering the mass of the bike and rider over these minute bumps, which if you add up all of the miniature bumps that you're getting up and over on a race it's like an additional, you know, 20 feet of, of elevation that you have to climb relative to another bike that has that, that the suspension only has a fraction of the weight going up and over the bump, but your body and the rest of the, of the bike is not needing to be lifted up and over.
So that's that's physics 1 0 1 and. Whether you do that with new Maddix or with a steel spring it doesn't matter as much, except that you can gain back the rolling resistance losses that you're getting from the history of rubber, as it has to bend and flex up and over that bump steel Springs are way more efficient than rubber as a spring.
[00:09:59] Randal R. Jacobs: The rotational inertia as Well, Those, all those little Micheal micro accelerations that you have with a higher volume tire that is inherently higher mass to a, is that a significant factor as
[00:10:12] Craig Calfee: I haven't measured that myself, but, um, I mean, it seems to me that would be an issue. Everyone talks about you know, the rotating weight. So, you know, why are people spending so much money on carbon fiber rims? You know, be nice to have, you know, for sprinting and accelerating. It certainly feels that.
[00:10:31] Randal R. Jacobs: Hmm, when it occurs to me too. So last time we spoke about, you know, one bikes or at least I use this term to describe the bike that you had come out with. The, I think he called it the adventure, which I described as, you know, the first, the first true one bike. Cause it was an endurance road type geometry, but with clearance for big six 50 B tires is very much my philosophy.
There's been this trend in the industry towards gravel bikes, having higher volume, 700 C, um, and people feeling or believing that it's faster. And that makes sense. From the perspective, that was a part of the marketing of 29 or wheels where the attack angle would be less. And so that vertical deflection is happening over a longer distance and a longer amount of time. Um, but you know, with, with an active suspension, you no longer have to, you, you can get that benefit of reducing the vertical deflection and the losses associated with little bumps in the road. Um, without having to go with that bigger tire, which means you can still maintain an endurance road geometry, or even a proper road bike geometry on a bike, that'll pay take big six 50 BS.
So that keeps us back in one bite territory, which I like as well.
[00:11:37] Craig Calfee: Yep. Absolutely. That's that's a really good argument for slightly smaller wheels.
[00:11:44] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah. Would you, so you're doing this with a spring any damping in that system?
[00:11:50] Craig Calfee: Well, the carbon fiber stays are kind of self damping. We do too. We basically have a hybrid spring. The carbon chain stays and the steel spring up at the seat up above the brake brake brake bridge. Um, that's so we're getting both and the carbon stays, tend to absorb a lot of the, the resonance of the steel.
do have, um, a rubber bottom out a plug, but that's about as much damping as we get. And by the way, we found that elastomers make a pretty bad spring for, for bicycles. And I know that's been been proven years and years ago on the earliest mountain bike suspensions, but a lot of the bike companies are coming up with these rode bikes that have rubber bits in them that try to simulate some level of suspension.
But if you ever ride one of those and you hit a pretty rough bump, the rubber stiffens up, and it actually becomes useless on the, where counts the most, the, you know, the more the heavier hits it's it's we measured that. And it was definitely not as good as the steel.
[00:13:02] Randal R. Jacobs: And this is true even of like more advanced, a less Americ materials that have come out since the battle days of, you know, 40 millimeter mountain bike forks with.
[00:13:11] Craig Calfee: Yeah, there hasn't been a ton of improvement on that. There's been different viscosities used, but, um, the problem is the molecules can't get out of their own way. Fast enough, you know, that's, that's what it boils down to.
[00:13:26] Randal R. Jacobs: Well, and then there's the issue of temperature sensitivity to which I believe that there's been some improvement made in that, you know, better than I would.
[00:13:33] Craig Calfee: That's probably the one area of improvement. Yup.
[00:13:36] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah. So just for the audience in cold temperatures, these materials tend to become firmer in hot temperatures. They tend to be more compliance. And so you don't have consistency across temperature ranges, even though your body is, is not changing the terrain isn't changing. So that's another problem with the last tumors as a suspension of. Um, and then there's the issue of certain companies who will remain nameless having technologies where they started off by putting in an elastomer somewhere in, in the the chain, the suspension chain of the frame itself. And then ultimately, because it was all marketing anyways, they just bolted things on and actually compromise the frame in doing so. Yeah. Um, they, they rhymed with a certain minty candy called certs that anyways, we'll, we'll continue on there, but a lot of, a lot of that sort of marketing fortunately I don't know what your opinion is on that one. Do you see more or less of that sort of a marketing who he, these days.
[00:14:32] Craig Calfee: Well, that's been going on since day one. I mean, that's, that's, you know, that's part of the business and, you know, it's as much about fashion as it is about technology. So the marketing guys are needing to sell what's popular. You know, suspension starts getting talked about as a possibly good thing, then they're going to, you know, try every trick in the book to, to hype it up by doing actual measurements.
And studies is really fun because you can actually see serious gains in in the efficiency of the bike and for races like the tour de France, where three weeks of racing, you know, 1% means you win. You know, it's interesting. I don't brag too much about building bikes for Greg , Greg Lamond, but you know, at one point he was looking at our gussets and thinking, you know, you should really trim those gussets down just a little bit smaller because they're less aerodynamic.
And this is the biggest it's at the bottom bracket, which were set kind of sideways to the wind. And I've felt like arguing with him a little bit about, you know, this really not much, it's just, you know, this tiniest little bit, but here's a guy who won the tour by eight seconds. How do you argue with that guy?
Oh no. So 1% is huge in that route.
[00:15:57] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah, Yeah. Yeah.
Um, Hmm. And so you're, you did, um, 12 millimeters of suspension in the rear of the manta. And how did you come up with that number? Is that what you consider the optimum for road and what would you do for gravel?
[00:16:13] Craig Calfee: I think it's actually quite good for both. He couldn't go even more for gravel depending on just how rough the terrain is, but your legs end up doing more suspension, work on much rougher terrain than that. On a really efficient, if you want your, to have much less peddling losses. I think that's where the there's a transition at some point you have to minimize the travel to minimize the peddling law.
So we found that 12 millimeters with, and there's three spring rates that we like to play with depending on the weight of the rider. So the, the stiffest one with a heavier rider it basically maxes out at 12 millimeters under the most extreme scenarios. Um, the, the, the problem really is matching this front suspension to rear suspension.
And there's currently no decent front suspension road forks, or even a road stem that that is available. We did a bunch of testing with, with Ben jock, Maine, where he was trying to, he loved the suspension. He loved the concept. He felt like it was faster, but at the end he was like, you know, I really need the front to match the.
So he can just forget about the bike as he's putting in an all out effort. So he's the front wheel behaves differently if it's not suspended, then the rear wheel, and as you're racing hard you have to constantly consider that the front has less ability to track than the rear. In other words, it's, you really need the front as much as you need the rear, particularly for the high-speed descending and, and trying to crash less often.
That's that's more on the front wheel than the rear. So, we re we tried a couple of experiments with suspension forks. It became really difficult to, to build one. No, it's just a really hard challenge to build a lightweight carbon for that also has 12 millimeters of travel. We just haven't been able to do it.
[00:18:17] Randal R. Jacobs: What's a much more complex structural challenge. You have much higher stresses. The consequences of failure are that much higher. You probably not need a lot more complexity in the design, a lot more mass being added versus, you know, adding something to a mano seat's day.
[00:18:32] Craig Calfee: That's right. It's much more difficult. And yeah, the, I, I broke my first bone in my body testing that for just a, the little finger on my, on my, on my right hand. But, you know, I, I was trying to break it and I usually fall, you know, I do, I do my own stunts and I, I used to be able to fall really well, but that one, right.
I had, when I fell, I had to, I put my hand out just by mistake, but I literally broke the fork on a speed bump. I stiff arm to speed bump, and I was able to crack the fork and have it fail. And it was it, it kind of set us back, um, because of the. Lack of popularity right now with suspension on forks for road bikes.
It's just too difficult in the current market, but there are some suspension stems out there now that are really interesting. And we've been messing around with that. And that's pretty good. That's really close to ideal, but, um, I don't think it's gonna going to be adopted a hundred percent unless someone does some tests with a stem and the rear and shows that it's absolutely the best thing since sliced bread.
So we need more, more testing and more pro level riders who, who can vouch for.
[00:19:47] Randal R. Jacobs: Hmm. When I got something that I've been working on that I'm okay. Sharing in a public forum. So I I've talked about mullet setups and going with a higher volume fronts than the rear because you have less mass over the front tire when climbing or on a flat. And so the rolling resistance impact is generally lower than if you had that same volume tire in the back.
And so that could be one way to give a little bit more compliance at a suspension step. As
[00:20:13] Craig Calfee: W does sure. Just the UCI allow, um, different wheel sizes and gravel racing. Is, is there any, I don't know enough about it, but I know in red rain they insist upon the same size wheels,
[00:20:27] Randal R. Jacobs: I don't know. I've never heard this come up. I don't know that there are there UCI gravel races at this point.
[00:20:34] Craig Calfee: you know?
[00:20:35] Randal R. Jacobs: so out of the loop, when it comes to elite racing, I couldn't care less. I care much more about, you know, people were just out to have a good time.
[00:20:42] Craig Calfee: Yeah. So for our purposes on the, you know, sticking with the road bike suspension thing, um, yeah, you can't do that because of UCI rules. So
[00:20:52] Randal R. Jacobs: interesting. I thought that, um, I thought that for a time, like the specialized had their TT bikes running a narrower tire up front and a wider one in the rear aerodynamics.
[00:21:04] Craig Calfee: sizes, for sure, but not, not wool diameters,
[00:21:07] Randal R. Jacobs: Oh, I see. Yeah, I'm talking same rim, same rim. size, actually the same exact rims, but say in a, um, in a more cross-country oriented gravel setup, running a, you know, a 2.25 in the front in a 2.0, you know, semi slicker file trade in the rear, and then having the rear with that 10 or 12 mil of suspension that you described in upfront combining that higher volume, lower pressure tire with a suspension stem.
The one that we talk about a lot is the one from Redshift. I don't know if you have others that you recommend as well. And then I have a, a concept for a handlebar that I'm going to run by you at some point that would have some adjustable suspension component built into that as well.
[00:21:47] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. I think that could work. I mean, that would be worth trying and doing some tests on. Um, and we do like the suspension stems. We, we put a steel spring and one of the redshifts stems a couple of years ago and it, it actually was a significant improvement because it took out the, the elastomer junk they have in there.
And it really helped on the heavier hits. But the Redshift stem is compared to a stiff stem is great, but the Cirrus stem with the body float Cirrus cycles stem with steel Springs is really my favorite. It's a little clunky looking, but it's not as aesthetically pleasing to look at, but, um, it performs really.
[00:22:35] Randal R. Jacobs: And that's a linkage stem, right? A more complex linkage stem versus a single pivot. Like the red shift.
[00:22:40] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. And it keeps your, your handlebars at the same orientation where the Redshift causes the bars to tilt down when it, when it activates.
[00:22:50] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah, you have to, you have to account for that in the bar rotation in the most outright position.
[00:22:55] Craig Calfee: it'd be nice to avoid that. So, back to the fork, you know, that the fork is really the place to do it. And the Lao forks are really kind of like their concept, but if they could do a road version, that would be really great.
[00:23:10] Randal R. Jacobs: The challenge I see with love, I see kind of two primary challenges. One is damping, right? Cause it kind of is what it is. And I could imagine a design where you actually put elastomers between those leaps that, in that fork. And so when, you know, when it is compressing, it's actually compressing that elastomer and that, you know, it's not, it's not really adjusted.
Well, I guess you could swap different, you know, different numbers of elastomers or different durometers of elastomers in there to adjust that. But then the other thing. To my understanding is the bigger issue is like we'll flop like lateral flop because you don't have a telescoping section like you do, um, say on a traditional mountain bike suspension forks.
So the tire at a hard angle in a corner can actually deflect to one side or the other materially in a way that can be unsettling. I don't know how much experience you have with those forks. I, I haven't written them myself to any significant extent.
[00:24:05] Craig Calfee: Yeah, they're not, they're not perfect for road bikes. Certainly. They're they're okay. They, and they do need damping on their higher travel forks, but the, the fork that I built, um, I noticed that the vibrate, the. Um, damping, wasn't really an important issue. Such a little small amount of travel. It, it didn't oscillate at all.
It just, you know, gave, it, gave it to you right when you needed it and didn't oscillate or BA or Bob at all. So for me, that short amount of travel doesn't really require damping. Um, it might be a nice thing to tune as you, as this whole idea evolves, but, um, initially I don't think it's something that should prevent it from happening.
[00:24:52] Randal R. Jacobs: Well, at some point I have a, a, an idea for a real time adjustable suspension built into the layup of the frame that run by you. And we can see if that's an experiment. We might run at some point, but I'm pretty sold on this concept. My big concerns would be weight and complexity, which in turn adds costs.
But from a, you know, what does the future look like? We have the technology, it seems like an it's an engineering problem, not a, a an issue of proving the physics at this point, from what you've described.
[00:25:20] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. It's a marketing problem too, though. So it's, I think the way I wanted to approach it was to get a pro racer on it who could see that it was definitely faster. And then they go back to the team and say, look, we need suspension because we'll win. And the team generally pushes for that. And if a large bike sponsor wants to win, then they'll develop the suspension.
So until that happens, it's going to be an uphill battle for, for us smaller guys.
[00:25:56] Randal R. Jacobs: Well, let's have a sidebar conversation after this about whether that can be made economic in the, in the near term. All right. So everybody you've heard it. I am now sold on the idea of, bikes as well. So more on this topic as we go, but Bravo Craig, it's taken, it's taken a while to get me convinced, but I'm definitely in your camp now.
All right. So next step other fun things to talk about that you've been involved in. So in 2019 you started doing a retrofit, like, e-bike system retrofits. So you want to talk about that program.
[00:26:27] Craig Calfee: Yeah, that's been really fun to see all the bikes coming through that that have been hanging on people's in people's garages, a great high-quality bike often from, you know, 10 to even 20 years ago. Like a good titanium bike that just, you know, never corroded. And they moved on to a nicer carbon bike or something and, but these beautiful bikes are still, you know, there and people want to ride them.
So it's a perfect opportunity to electrify some of them to try out you know, what, what an electric assist will do for you. For those of us you know, a little bit older, um, it's nice to ride with you young punks and keep up, you know, and you know, still have fun as a group. I mean, we still have the bike handling skills, but maybe we can't get up the hill as fast as you, but we can certainly, you know, hold our line, coming down the hill and being able to do it without being utterly exhausted is, is really helpful in a lot of.
[00:27:29] Randal R. Jacobs: And what are the e-bike systems that you're using? Are these kind of.
off the shelf or is it a you're you're buying separate components and integrating them in some special ways or any software involved at the level that you're implementing?
[00:27:41] Craig Calfee: Yeah, we're, we're doing a grin kit. It's basically a hub motor, fairly small hub motors, unless you're on tandems. We use a bigger one and we try to really simplify the user interface. So it's, it just feels more like a bike than an e-bike. So we have a little circuit board that we programmed for the lights that are just little led lights that go into your handlebar tape or on your, on your bars.
And it just shows how much batteries left and how much of an assist level you have. So it's really super simple. We basically over oversimplified it to make it. As much like a bike ride as, and not an e-bike, so it's more bike than e-bike.
[00:28:29] Randal R. Jacobs: And you're doing, um, not just Calfee bikes, but any bike that somebody would want to retrofit
[00:28:34] Craig Calfee: Yeah, yeah.
[00:28:35] Randal R. Jacobs: way for you to make that work.
[00:28:36] Craig Calfee: That's right. So we were able to do pretty much anything at this point. And it's been really fun seeing these older bikes come through and, and having them get written again now, and they end up, some of them may end up becoming their favorite bike and they sell the newer bike and, and they're back on their older, older, trustworthy bike that they've spent so much time on and, you know, keep keeping bikes from getting sold and used for cheap and keeping them out of the landfill.
[00:29:06] Randal R. Jacobs: It'd be interesting to see if we see more e-bikes in the ridership. We see quite a few folks. Who've posted pictures of the know 20, 30 year old Bridgestone 26 inch mountain bikes that have been converted to gravel bikes for winter duty here in the Northeast. So definitely seeing new life and bikes that were good in their time and still have a lot of life in them.
[00:29:26] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. That's that's, I love to see that, you know, so many great bikes that are kind of old and forgotten and get a lot of dust on them. And then they get brought out. I mean, it's similar to our carbon repair business, you know, just, no, you don't have to throw it away. Let's let's repair that. And some of our carbon repair customers are sending their repaired bikes to be converted to e-bikes.
Cause it's not the latest greatest, and it's, it had been crashed and we repaired it and, and it's sort of the second bike, you know, they've already bought a nice new. But they kept the old bike. And now, now it's got an electric hub motor on it. So it's, it's great.
[00:30:07] Randal R. Jacobs: That makes a ton of sense. Do you ever, um, do you ever integrate the batteries into one of those broken carbon frames, like to get into the down two or is it usually an external Mount.
[00:30:16] Craig Calfee: It's, it's external Mount. I mean, it's, it doesn't really help to try to integrate it. Um, you know, you pretty much have to design the bike from, from the beginning to be an e-bike, if you want to do that. And that's what all the new e-bikes are or most of them, but we use a carbon fiber bag that Velcros to the top to basically it looks nice.
It's, it's very useful bag that you can carry as little or as many batteries as you want. We use the little a hundred watt hour LIGO batteries, so you can choose to bring a smaller amount of battery or bring all of them and you can travel on an airplane with them as well. So it's become a default for the touring by.
Particularly the coupler bikes, you know, SNS, couplers, bikes, or traveling, you know, bring the AR kit with the Lego batteries and you can have an eBike in, in Europe or south America, wherever you're going. You can bring your eBikes stuff with you.
[00:31:11] Randal R. Jacobs: On in turn, if you're running a smaller power pack, you're probably running a lower output motor keeping the whole system lighter and more efficient. And you know, it's, it's not, it's not a moped it's you plus a, which is a philosophy that I think, um, makes a tremendous amount of sense for enthusiast oriented bikes, where you want to maintain the handling characteristics and so on.
And you want to maintain the range without ending up with a, a 40, 50 pound behemoth.
[00:31:36] Craig Calfee: That's right. That's a big, that's a big deal for a lot of our customers.
[00:31:40] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah. So then that brings us up to last year and you came out with your assesful hard tail. When you tell us about this.
[00:31:46] Craig Calfee: Yeah. The circles also have really exciting project because we're able to. Um, address the questions that are popping up, you know, over the past couple of years around head tube angle, and what's the best head tube angle for a given type of ride. And the other issue that it solves is, um, all these different categories of bike, you know, Enduro by cross-country bike, even a gravel bike, it's sort of, you know, all these niches of utilities, which imply that you need six bikes to, to have, you know, the right bike for all conditions.
You know, where, you know, I'm kind of more minimalist. I like to have the N minus one concept where this is a bike that, that does pretty much everything kind of like your one bike concept. So it, it has an adjustable head tube angle using flip plates, and we're able to adjust the head angle enough so that you can swap out different fork travels.
So we're able to go up to with like a one 60 travel for. On this hard tail and you can also do a one 20 travel or 100 millimeter travel by changing the head tube angle. We have an eccentric bottom bracket, so you can raise and lower your bottom bracket all with an Allen wrench on the trail if you want.
So it's, it's really fun to climb a good, good solid climb with a head angle. That's a bit steeper mix of very efficient pedaling feels great. And then at the top of the climb, you whip out your Allen wrench, flipped the head, the flip plates around, and now do the descent with a two degree slacker head angle.
That's a really big difference and it's super fun, you know, to do that right on.
[00:33:37] Randal R. Jacobs: Well, I think for, I mean, I maybe simply because I haven't tried it yet for gravel bikes, I think. The future is also this, you know, adjustable geometry, again, keeping the ones, the one by concept of having a bike that has the snappy you know, performance road, geometry on one end of the spectrum. But then, you know, you get a more upright position.
That's a little bit more slacked out, but slower steering for your, you know, borderline cross-country setup when you're running a, you know, as I was saying, like a two to five or even a two, four upfront and like a 2.0 or a two to five in the back. So I do, I do think adjustable suspension is something that we're seeing in the gravel space, quite a bit with bikes, like the the allied.
Was it the allied able, no, the allied echo. I'm curious, what is the percentage change in head tube and axle and the amount of axle the crown change? Because obviously those are changing in tandem depending on the forks. So maybe we keep the fork constant, you know, you have a one 40 millimeter fork on that bike on a size, medium, or a size large.
How much does the head tube angle changing without changing the axle? The crown.
[00:34:41] Craig Calfee: Well, as much as you want, I mean, you can bring our flip plates go from plus zero, zero plus four and zero to minus four. So it's an eight degree range.
[00:34:53] Randal R. Jacobs: Oh, wow. Okay.
[00:34:54] Craig Calfee: Which is ridiculous, you know, but when you change the fork travel, when you do change that actual crown things change radically. So you're compensating for the tilting of the bike forward as you go to a shorter travel for.
So you wouldn't normally change your head angle by eight degrees. Two is plenty, you know,
[00:35:14] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah.
[00:35:14] Craig Calfee: you have the option, you know, with that, to, to do it as much as you want.
[00:35:19] Randal R. Jacobs: And the, I remember that Fox had their talus fork at one point where you could change the travel on the flight. Is there anything that's well implemented out there right now? Or is it all throwing a new spacer in
[00:35:30] Craig Calfee: I need that. Yeah. I haven't, I haven't looked into that. I, I haven't seen changing of actual travel on the fly, but you know, all I'm really seeing is lockout mechanisms.
[00:35:41] Randal R. Jacobs: So then let's get into some, some fun side topics. So, I've been to your workshop a few times at this point. Um, and I've described it as what a 10 year old bike nerd would, would create if they had like all the resources to, to do whatever they want in terms of fun projects and so on. And some of the things that I recall seeing in your workshop, one was a a, um, somewhat stripped down zero electric motorcycle.
I remember an electric little race cart of some sort. So when you share some of the, the weird wild and wonderful projects that you've had going on in that workshop of yours, maybe describe the workshop itself.
[00:36:18] Craig Calfee: Yeah, we have a pretty big shop that, um, that we basically pay under market rates for that, which is why we can afford to have a bigger shop it's on a school campus. And part of the deal is we're supposed to provide a on the job training or job experience to some of the students at the school. So, which is easy to do.
And they don't, you know, send us a ton of kids. We have to chase after it's usually one or maybe two at a time, and we keep them busy with all kinds of stuff, but the projects, um, we're allowed to basically spread out and have projects going that can go at their own pace. And some of the projects go at a very fast pace, especially when there's real money involved and some take longer to develop.
So for example, the zero motorcycle stuff has been, has been very diverse in that we're dealing with SWAT changing the batteries out for a zero, had us do a battery upgrade project for a fleet of motorcycles. So we did that for them. We did another. Project where we changed the change the motor out of the whole model year of bikes went on 2012.
They had to upgrade their motors. So we came up with a Mo a different way to Mount a new motor in the old bike. And now we're involved with an aerodynamic body kit for the bikes. This is kind of a speculative project where we're making carbon fiber bodywork designed for the zero motorcycles. And it should give you better, um, range.
The, on the freeway in particular, the another project we're really excited about is a, um, a regenerative brake lever. So that's where you have variable region and a brake lever on the left side. Cause you don't need a clutch on these bikes. And by using that, you can increase your range by about 10%, which is again, a pretty significant number on the freeway because at 60, 70, 80 miles an hour, you, you really slow.
You, you really get a lot of drag and every time you touch the brakes, you're effectively wasting energy. So if you can hit the region lever as your regular brake lever, um, it will save a lot of that energy. So that's that doesn't exist. I'm really shocked that it still doesn't exist as a stock offering because it's not that difficult to do.
So we're, we're going to be offering that as an aftermarket item for the zeros. And I think we can set it up on other electric motorcycle brands as well, but for now we're focused on the, the largest one.
[00:39:08] Randal R. Jacobs: I've looked at electric motorcycles and I've always been surprised at, um, how poor the rain, the peak range tends to be given how much heavier they are than a standard bike. And it's, you know, aerodynamics at speed, the aerodynamics of a motorcycle with a rider on it. There's so many variables, there's so much vortices shedding happening off of the rider.
And like that fairing kit makes a ton of sense for extending range. And then it's a region is a, another level of complexity versus a car because your weight distribution is one.
opposite what you would want. So it's your rear with it. You have power going, and if you're going to use the motor to go send it into region mode, well, when you're braking, it's shifting weight onto the front wheel. So that's a challenge. And then there's control issues that you don't have with a, with a four wheeled vehicle that you do have with a motorcycle that has any sort of input that isn't completely controlled by the rider. So like being able to feather that Regene brake makes a ton of sense.
[00:40:04] Craig Calfee: it's super helpful. I mean, it's it's night and day difference. The stock offering is a fairly low region level that's on or off. When, when you're released the throttle, you can set your settings can be, can be set up to have heavy region or light region. And it's just the heavy region just feels real jerky and you don't really use it as you're just decelerating in normal traffic.
It's just, you know, it's eco mode basically where variable region lever, it gives you. You know, region all the time and exactly the amount you want for two, and then you use it all the time and you only use the real break for emergency braking where you do need that front wheel to get loaded up and slowing you down right now where the region it's more for deceleration than real breaking.
[00:41:00] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah, I've thought about that on e-bikes as well, where, you know, having the rear brake, essentially the first portion of its travel, go add some regenerative elements and then go into actually engaging the disc brake rotors.
[00:41:16] Craig Calfee: Yeah
[00:41:16] Randal R. Jacobs: so then we get,
[00:41:17] Craig Calfee: good.
[00:41:17] Randal R. Jacobs: How about this race car that you had in there? Is that allowed to be spoken about.
[00:41:20] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Well, the, the race car was, was a special project of a friend of mine. And we did some carbon repair work on it, and I think there was some battery swapping going on. Um, so we have, we have friends in the, in, in the racing electric race car circuit that loves the fact that we can fix a broken carbon.
So, you know, they, they tend to get wild out there in the racetrack. And so, and we're not far from Laguna Seca, so they, they come by here and we do some work on their cars.
[00:41:55] Randal R. Jacobs: really a, it's really a special space that you have down there and you get the air, you get that local airport right behind you. It's a very kind of quiet, tranquil sort of area generally now. Not far from the coast.
[00:42:07] Craig Calfee: Yeah, we're right on the coast. And the airstrip is a fun place to do tests. Um, yeah. And other companies that come combine to do tests on our airstrip Polaris has a new electric, um, off-road quad vehicle that they're doing in partnership with zero motorcycles. And they came down and did their range test on our airstrip.
So that was, that was fun to see the first one. So we kind of got a sneak preview of that product.
[00:42:36] Randal R. Jacobs: I'll come pay you a visit next time. I'm in California. It's been a, it's been a while. It's been a few years. All right. So then let's see a few last things to finish up with. So, um, you mentioned last, we spoke about in an electric motorcycle project that you've been working on in Africa.
[00:42:53] Craig Calfee: Yeah. That's really fun. It's, it's basically a an ambitious plan to replace all of the nasty polluting, low displacement gas burning motorbikes that are, that represent about three quarters of the number of motorcycles sold in the world. You know, all the motorbikes you see in the streets, in the U S you know, most of them, the higher, the bigger bikes.
There that represents a very small portion of the market. So these are the 1 25 CC bikes that are used for pretty much everything in developing countries, they're taxi bikes, their cargo bikes, they move more stuff than almost anything else in, in most of the world. So they're not very well-regulated for their pollution.
And they're expensive to maintain. And gas prices in developing countries are subject to unstable conditions and in both supply and demand and, and corrupt practices that cause prices to fluctuate so that you can have your business model of being a motorcycle taxi. But your cost of doing business varies too much, and it makes it really hard to make a living.
So we found now that an electric motorcycle where you have a battery swap a business model, Which means you don't have to buy the battery. You just rent the battery that reduces the cost of ownership significantly. And then you can have these battery swap stations that are solar powered. So very low costs, not reliant on an unstable grid and provide steady power for critical transport infrastructure.
That is also not only economically feasible, but allows for the same entrepreneurs to still make money more steadily with with a cleaner energy. So it's it. Every time you turn around on this thing, you're saving money to no maintenance. Um, you know, these, these bikes they're constantly breaking down.
They're spending money on spare parts. Sometimes the bike sits for months while they wait for spare parts. Just the, that whole infrastructure is a disaster, but, um, the electric side is much easier to manage. And if the batteries are managed centrally by a company, so they're managing the charging and discharging of the batteries more strictly would they're maintaining the batteries properly.
And we're in into the modular battery concept, similar to the LIGO batteries. In fact, our prototype was built with LIGO bricks, where if any, one of those went bad, we could just open the battery up and swap out one of the bricks. And the brick is 10, 10 cells. So usually electric motorcycles have these monolithic giant batteries.
And if one cell goes bad in that pack, then that's a, that's a thousand dollar. You know, replacement part and that's just too expensive. So I'll all my battery engineer, friends are big fans of modular batteries where you can go in and replace either one cell or one, one pack of a cell. So that's, that's really, um, you know, exciting and cutting edge technology right now.
[00:46:16] Randal R. Jacobs: It's a lot of, um, a lot of like multi-variate optimization looking at, say like a remote village that may not have good infrastructure for transporting gas, but then also has abundant sunlight and maybe the grid infrastructure, as you said, isn't stable, or maybe it hasn't even reached in a lot of places, but put up some solar panels you could literally like, you know, have a 20 foot container built out as a little repair and.
Surging station with wings at fold up and just drop it in there. And all of a sudden you have a hub for generating power and maintaining an entire fleet. You can even have financing for people who want to get a motorcycle can have access to these batteries, because everything is so much more predictable because you've controlled so many of the cost variables and so on.
So this is, this is quite interesting.
[00:47:00] Craig Calfee: it's huge. I mean, back to the financing side. So getting funding for projects like this is difficult because it involves investors throwing money down on to expensive stuff, you know, inventory or assets that get distributed into a, into a region that is notoriously unstable in terms of security of assets, things get stolen, things get, you know, broken and not tracked well.
So we put trackers on these batteries. So the tracker follows the battery, not the bike, and it just, we're just tracking these thousand dollar battery packs and the investors feel very confident about. And if somebody ends up with a battery and doesn't either doesn't return it or tries to charge it up on their own and they don't re you know, we can track where the location of that battery is and go get it if necessary.
So that discourages people from trying to cheat the system, cause they don't want to deal with the police which are much more severe than they are here. It's not like they'll just come in and you know, these are like repo squads and they will, it's the wild west, you know, you just don't want to deal with that.
So people don't, they just, they cooperate, they pay their bill, they return the battery, they get a fresh one and every everything's good and it's cheap enough that there isn't that much incentive to try to gain the system. So back to the investors, they love that. And therefore a lot of money becomes available to, to throw at this incredibly huge market.
there's all of these development projects. People say, oh, well, why don't you just, you know, donate that stuff or, you know, get a nonprofit started up psych. Well, actually we've been trying that for hundreds of years and it generally doesn't work. So you really need economically sustainable businesses to, to get supported and continue running profitably so that they can, can, you know, just run without the need for donors to constantly give them free.
[00:49:14] Randal R. Jacobs: It's something that, that actually resonates a lot with. Kind of how my thinking has evolved on such matters. Like you can have a population of people that may, at some point in history have been victimized, but continuing to treat them like victims versus giving them the tools of empowerment and being like, okay, we're going to create a viable economic model.
And ideally as the organization kind of kick-starting things you're not, it's not an exploitative model. It's not an extractive model. It's a, like, we're going to make this thing. So it funds itself, um, versus a, a more charity oriented model that, um, does not have the inherent self-sustaining dynamics that something that's built from an economic perspective may have, you know, from, from the get-go. Yeah. This is great, Craig. So I'm going to pick your brain. Now we're coming to the end of our conversation for some free.
Advice on a project that a friend of a friend of a friend may possibly be working on wink, wink, nudge, nudge if you were to make The ultimate mass production, carbon fiber frame how would you construct it?
So we've talked about already how bikes went, you know, you, you created the what was your ultra light? Two, two pound frame.
[00:50:29] Craig Calfee: The dragon.
[00:50:30] Randal R. Jacobs: The dragon fly and that bike was made very tough. And you talked about how your, your repair business really, um, you know, got legs when these, these, you know, monocot wide, a big tube thin wall framed, started coming to market.
So if you wanted to build the ultimate high-performing, but really bomb-proof frame and make it you know, perform at a very high level keeping weights in check and so on. How would you construct it and what would you expect some of the specs to look like.
[00:50:59] Craig Calfee: Well, are you, if you're just choosing a manufacturing method, um, you know, bladder molding is as suitable. If you don't need to change the geometry much. So, you know, if you have the investment, you are going mass production. Sure. Bladder molding is current favorite and. It works great. You just have to design the layup properly so that you have enough robustness for the bike to handle a minor spill that doesn't cause you to have to stop riding and wait for a replacement bike if you're racing.
Um, so you know, it, it comes down to just smart, um, orientation of the fiber. And then there's lots of little details around the metal parts and choosing how the dropouts integrate with the frame. Making sure the way the dropout attaches, if it's a metal dropout, which I prefer metal dropouts to to carbon dropouts.
So how that interface goes, it's really critical. Um, you know, head tubes and bottom brackets and seat seat binder areas are also really important. And for robustness, I tend to go with metal interfaces there. A lot of people are molding them in. We've we've done a lot of repairs on, on cracked head tube areas, cracked seed, binder areas.
So all that stuff, you know, the way we build them with metal parts, instead of trying to mold them everything out of carbon. Um, as, as my recommendation, the some of the shortcuts that are taken to reduce costs on manufacturing, aren't really shortcuts. Unless you're, you have a very profitable crash replacement program where, when something breaks and is actually more of a warranty issue, but you can't prove it.
You ended up getting offered a crash replacement deal. So when things break you you just offer the crash replacement, you still make profit on those. And therefore you can, you can get away with building bikes that, that don't really hold up and just keep people happy with, by offering this year's latest model year crash replacement bike.
[00:53:18] Randal R. Jacobs: Get half off this already overpriced thing.
[00:53:20] Craig Calfee: Yeah. And, and it's, and you feel okay about it? Cause it's like, oh, it's brand new. It's it's I'm getting a deal on it. You know, it's like, well, not really because that bike you bought two years ago should last at least five years, you know?
[00:53:37] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah. Yeah. And ideally, um, stays in circulation for a very long time. Not just because of the quality of its construction, but because of the foresight of its design and its, you know, forward compatibility with, you know, future standards and things like this.
[00:53:51] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I'm not I like bladder molding for mass production. I think it's fine. The labor contents and issue though. So, you know, the, you've got to think about where you're having them made and how motivated the workers are. Um, and the cost of that price pressures with, with some of the artificial barriers import duties and stuff make that supply chain thing really complicated.
So. Um, bladder molding in the United States is incredibly difficult and expensive. Um,
[00:54:23] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah,
[00:54:23] Craig Calfee: so maybe you have to consider that part of the equation. And if you, if labor is an issue, then you might look at some other more automated ways or lower labor content, ways of building bikes. The way we put bikes could be cheaper than bladder molding.
If we had some robotics, you know, robotic trimming going on, you know, with prefab tubes and just molding the loves that just reduces the amount of surface area needed to be laid up. And there's some really interesting techniques for making lugs that would be almost purely automated. So if you're looking at a high volume, but needs to have very low labor content there's other alternate techniques that might be worth.
[00:55:11] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah. And you're starting to see that greater automation. We discussed previously with rims in particular and rims are getting to a place where the, the, um, the autumn, the, the automated ones, the ones that have made it through an automated process are having you know, better quality, lower weight, higher strength, floor Boyd, um, characteristics relative to the hand-laid one, which has been the standard for a long time.
And which in the early days of automation, um, we're still superior. You know, you were compromising in order to get these kind of low resolution woven rims of like say five or 10 years ago.
[00:55:47] Craig Calfee: yeah. Yeah. That's it's happening. I mean, developing robotic stuff in automated processes for composites is difficult because it hasn't been done very much. It's been done at the very highest levels of aerospace. For consumer product, I, I struggled to think of a single consumer product. That's that's at that level, there is one, um, I think it's a part of a lawnmower that it turned out that carbon fiber ended up being the best material.
And it was a thermoplastic injection semi injection molded carbon fiber part for a lawnmower that was featured at one of the composite shows I went to, and it was like, they were touting it as the first consumer product that uses advanced techniques. And it hadn't volume that it justified the tooling and expensive development.
But, you know, I, I don't know if they did it at a loss or what, but it was a very impressive part. Um, but it, you needed, you know, a million of them to justify the development. So
[00:56:52] Randal R. Jacobs: Yeah. And with,
[00:56:53] Craig Calfee: are planning to be pretty good.
[00:56:55] Randal R. Jacobs: um, with, with bicycles, there's so much variety. Every company wants to have its own spin on it. And even if, you know, the vast majority of bikes are almost identical in a lot of ways it's still, it has to be differentiated in some way in order to spin some sort of marketing story. So getting to those volumes and then you have five or six sizes, or maybe even seven or eight, depending on how granular you go.
Yeah. It's coming, but, but probably five or 10 years out, would you guess?
[00:57:22] Craig Calfee: Well, yeah, it, it's hard to say. Um, I, I also look at, um, you know, the handmade side where and the bike shop owners are going to be pissed off at me for saying this, but, um, the whole model of buying a bike through a bike shop is, is difficult. I mean, the, the world is trending towards this direct sale model and bike shops are becoming more of a service center rather than.
Bike sales outlet. I think, you know, the fitting studio and the servicing of the bikes is, is really where the bike shops are going to at least the high end ones and selling expensive bikes could be done through direct interactions with people who make these bikes by hand guys like myself, of course, and all the metal frame builders and people who were the labor content is kind of high, but it's specialized in terms of it's it's not industrial type of labor.
It's very much high skill labor. And if you, if you cut out the middleman, so to speak, that allows the fabricator to get paid, what they should be getting paid in terms of the labor. So that's pretty much the only way you're going to get you know, made in USA locally made products at reasonable prices.
You have to basically let the builder collect the retail margin.
[00:58:48] Randal R. Jacobs: Well, this is actually something that I've, um, had some fun diving into, again, with Russ over it, pathless pedals going into, like, what did, what did China's industrialization model look like to get them to a place where they have such deep supply chains and it actually Taiwan in particular, in the bike industry and you know, how would you slowly recreate that?
You're not gonna, you know, this, I don't know that there's anyone making hydraulic disc brakes in the U S there's nobody making integrated Grifters with hydraulic disc brakes. There's a lot of things that just aren't, you know, you can't get made here. Um, and so you need to be able to take, like the one thing that can be made here in a reasonably economically viable way like a frame, and then, you know, bring in containers of parts from other places.
And then slowly pick off those parts. Maybe do wheel assembly here. Maybe you do, you know, you do the final assembly here, bring more of that value and local. And over time, a cottage industry built around at least that's my hypothesis hypothesis as to how we relocate flies. A lot of bike industry production and assembly processes.
[00:59:49] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. I think there's, there's lots of room for that. I liked that last point about the bike assembly. That's where a huge amount of savings is had in the mass produced bikes. I've been to these factories with these assembly lines. I mean, it's just, it's literally Henry Henry Ford, you know, the bike girls down a moving platform and people do the same job hour after hour bolting on the left brake lever and the next person bolts on the right brake lever.
And, you know, it's, it's a very boring job actually. So the, and here by the good bike shops effectively reassemble these bikes to their, their standards. Well, why can't that happen from the game? And save some money in the process.
[01:00:37] Randal R. Jacobs: So we actually early on with thesis we actually did, um, distributed assembly. So we had what we called our LBP or local bicycle professional program in any professional mechanic or fitter or shop. And usually it was, you know, small service oriented shops that worked with us could sign up and we would, um, if they sold a bike, they got a commission.
It was less than the market, but they weren't, they were already not selling bikes. Right. So they get a commission for the sale. Um, and then they would get a paid by us to do the final assembly. The challenge we had was consistency. Yeah, everyone has their own way of doing things. Sometimes the cables wouldn't be routed in, in the way we wanted, or they wouldn't have a particular tool for a particular process.
So being able to control is something that's centralized assembly allows for to a much greater degree. But then on the other extreme, when you're describing the assembly line process also results in an inferior product. So what we went to was, um, a team of carefully trained mechanics who have a very detailed standard operating procedure for assembling our bikes in any tiny little change has to be approved.
And that's how we're able to get, um, you know, the quality of assembly that we get on our bikes and it costs more than that assembly line, but actually not that much. Cost us like 50, 60 bucks a bike. Um, but then you're shipping something that's much bigger and your ship and you're paying duty on a greater value.
And so having, you know, having that sort of semi centralized process where you have little hubs of assembly of assemblers who are doing kind of the same handful of bikes, and they are able to do it at a very high degree and not on an assembly line process.
but like one mechanic, one bikes, there's that intimacy with the machine, making sure it's all dialed.
Um, that is what I believe will be the future, at least on the on the high end and is the direction we're going in.
[01:02:27] Craig Calfee: Yeah, I would push for that pretty hard. I mean, that's, that's how we do it at our shop. And you know, we ended up shipping, complete bikes out rather than bikes and parts kits to assemblers. But, um, you know, it's, I think that's the, that is the future. The customer ends up being really satisfied with it.
We have, um, two, two full-time mechanics that have relationships with our customers. They are buddies, you know, and if they have an issue with their bike, they send them a note or a, you know, it's almost like fans, they're not just Cathy fans. They're, they're Ryan and Patrick fans. And, you know, they, they love Ivan's wheels, Ireland's a great wheel builder.
So they just continue to promote the brand on personal relationships, not just a brand loyalty. So I think that part of it is really cool.
[01:03:22] Randal R. Jacobs: It's something I've noticed in meeting your riders in various places. There's a deep affinity, not just for the bike, but for the people behind it. So I appreciate you bringing that to the podcast here today. And I look forward to having a follow on conversation where we go deep nerd on bamboo and wood and alternative bicycle materials and how those may or are being made economically viable going forward.
So, Craig Calfee thank you for your time and we'll talk to you again in a few months.
[01:03:50] Craig Calfee: Okay. Thanks, Randy.
[01:03:52] Randall: And that's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. If you'd like to engage further on this topic or connect directly with our friend, Craig Calfee. I encourage you to join The Ridership. If you're interested in supporting the podcast, you can visit www.buymeacoffee.com/thegravelride. And finally to use craig dalton's words here's the finding some dirt onto your wheels.
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Automated transcription, please excuse the typos:
Isabel King[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast, we've got one of gravel's most colorful athletes, literally and figuratively. In a few moments, I'm going to be joined by Isabel king. , Santa Monica, California professional gravel athlete, who got her start in a very interesting way.
The conversation actually builds nicely on our conversation from last week with Chris Schroeder and the interesting way in which athletes are creating opportunities for themselves to race professionally in this new world of gravel. I personally became aware of Isabel through our shared relationship with Panner racer tires and I became a big fan of observing what she was doing via Instagram. As he's all has got a kind word to share and is always rocking some powerful kit out there on the trails, in and around Los Angeles. She had a breakout year in the dirt in 2021 and is really looking forward to smashing some things in 2022. With all that said let's jump right into my interview with Izzy.
Isabel, welcome to the show.
[00:01:09] Isabel King: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me., .
[00:01:11] Craig Dalton: I'm excited to dig in with you a little bit, as we always start out on the gravel ride podcast, let's just find out a little bit about how you got into cycling in the first place.
[00:01:20] Isabel King: Ooh, always a good question to start with. Cycling was definitely not not my plan since a child. I kind of joked that I fell into this haphazardly five years ago. I could not have predicted I would be where I am today. Uh, so I grew up as a. Uh, as a soccer player, uh, I played soccer through college.
So I was a D one soccer player at Columbia and I graduated as a psychology major and jumped into the world of finance. So I worked on the trading floor at UBS for four years in New York city. Before deciding that I wanted to get a more formal, uh, finance education. So I applied to business schools ended up getting into UCLA Anderson.
And moved to Los Angeles and kind of in that process and the summer before starting business school I quit my job in, in December and started school in August. And so I had a few months and I signed up for a triathlon clipped into a road bike for the first time. And that kind of spiraled me down into this endurance world which has been fun.
So I am now chasing a dream that I didn't know I had, uh, about two years ago.
[00:02:23] Craig Dalton: Amazing. It's so funny how that like break as a adults going back to business school, whether it's, you know, for your MBA or graduate school, it just create does create a pocket of exploration for a lot of people. I find.
[00:02:35] Isabel King: Yeah, it was great. I don't think, I mean, I stayed active. I ran marathons after, because it's kind of hard. You finished soccer and it's hard. You play for a few, a few, uh, you know, maybe a few months in those co-ed leagues in New York city where you're just waiting for your ACL to get torn by someone that used to be fast.
Uh, so I switched to running because it was easier. You just need to choose in yourself. And then when I had the time to kind of. To have a bike. And I moved back to San Francisco and kind of discovered all of those roads in the, in the, you know, the places I would hike and go as a child, I can now ride my bike.
And that was kind of, that was kind of it for me. I knew I'd found something that I was going to do kind of forever, which is fun.
[00:03:18] Craig Dalton: That's awesome. So you were back in the bay area before you went down to Los Angeles.
[00:03:22] Isabel King: I grew up in San Francisco, so I grew up right outside of the Presidio. And then, uh, was now I'm ended up, I stayed in Los Angeles. Again, you grow up with the Southern California versus Northern California bias. But then you spend a little bit of time in LA and you're like, Ooh, this is pretty nice down here.
[00:03:39] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. As the listener knows, I spend a lot of time down in Topanga because my wife's family grew up down there and I used to be really down on LA. I thought as the cliche goes, LA sucks for riding. And then you actually explore those canyons around Malibu and Topanga. And you're just like, this is world-class.
[00:03:55] Isabel King: Like I'm incredibly thankful that UCLA is, is kind of west side. And I fell into that and I met some people riding and they were able to show me where to go. And, you know, from friends that knew me before riding or people that have grown up in LA they're like, where are you? I'm like, honestly, I'm not very far from your house.
You just wouldn't really go there. If you don't ride a bike or a motorcycle or have a, you know, a super fancy car and to go rip up these canyons, which just fine.
[00:04:21] Craig Dalton: Yeah. That's exactly it. So you, you discovered triathlon, you brought it down to school with you, and then it sounds like you sort of discovered you were fast.
[00:04:29] Isabel King: It's a good way to put it. I, uh, did my first triathlon. About a week before school started was the Donner triathlon up in Tahoe and I won and I was like, wow, I like being fast at things. That was great. And I ended up doing, I did the Boulder half iron man the day before school started. So I showed up to business school with the Sharpie number on my calf and the iron man bracelet, like still on.
So I was kind of immediately labeled as this like triathlon girl, which was very interesting because I was super new at it, but. I continued to train through school. Had a coach and balance a 20 hour training week with full-time school and full-time networking, which is, uh, going to the bar with your friends.
And then, uh, in my, I think it was my fourth half iron man. I won the Maryland half Ironman, which qualifies you to compete as a professional. So then I was kind of posed with an interesting juxtaposition of do I, you know, Continue my MBA I'd finish one year of school. Do I finish that or do I kind of jump into this new world that I'd discovered?
For me, you know, any career that has to do with your body can be taken away at any moment. So I wanted to make sure that I finished my MBA before kind of jumping into any pro athletic world. And so finished my MBA in the end of 2019. And the plan was to compete as a pro triathlete, uh, unfortunately, or fortunately the pandemic kind of had different plans for that. So I had to kind of take a step back And say, okay, I'm going to be a pro athlete in, in a time with no racing. What does that mean? And what do I actually want out of this? And that is kind of how I stumbled into, uh, the off-road and, and bikes. Only gravel world of racing.
[00:06:09] Craig Dalton: And when you were thinking about approach triathlete career, obviously you've got to finance that and you would be on your way up at that point. Had you kind of cobbled together enough resources to cover your expenses, et cetera, and go for it.
[00:06:23] Isabel King: So it's an interesting, I think I had saved from working in finance in New York. I had saved kind of enough. I was like, I'll give myself a year and you know, that's then if it's not working out enough, I haven't managed to get sustainable sponsorship. Then I'll have to go back to working, uh, a regular person job.
But it was interesting in the pandemic or I guess for me approaching it, like you go to business school and you learn, uh, originally I was there to learn. I wanted to transition to FinTech, but then also got to live a bit into the brand building classes and marketing and things like that.
And so, in the world I am now. You can, you can actually use that to build a brand. So now I kind of treat myself as a business entity and who is Isabelle king. And what are the, what are the brands that I want to work with and partner with to kind of make this a sustainable career going forward.
[00:07:14] Craig Dalton: So you got out of business school in 2019 and tending to kind of hit some more of that. More of the professional triathletes seen nothing's happening, you can't race. do you do?
[00:07:24] Isabel King: Uh, so I. Came clean with myself that I was a terrible swimmer. I was only good at triathlon because when I came out of the water, nine, 10 minutes back, I could catch people when I was on the bike. So I kind of said, okay, maybe if I actually just focus on only cycling I could be pretty good at this and see where that takes me.
So originally the goal in 2020 was to, was to try and sign with the, uh, pro road racing team. I use Strava kind of as my competitive outlet. So in 2020 I got over a thousand QoS, which people have heard me talk about this before, but it was fun. I just went out. I had a little quarantine bevel. I'm lucky.
LA is such an incredible place for cycling that there's always someone faster than you. And so my little group of Guy friends was always ready to try and help me pay and go for these big climbs in Malibu. So I got a little bit of attention with that and talk to a few road teams. And, and the biggest feedback I got was like, we need you to do some sort of racing.
And I was like, well, there is no racing. I'm a cat five, according to USA cycling. That's still true today. But I was actually able to get some traction just saying, okay, if I take a step back. And look at this new private tier model that people are doing in the gravel world. Maybe I can combine the strength that I have on the road with the little bit of mountain bike and technical ability that I have, and, and, uh, maybe go at it on my own and race the races I want to race and build the brand that I want to build and wear bright orange and see how that works out.
[00:08:51] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that's probably something we should drill into this idea of your brand. And I think I became aware of you through the Panorai racer program
[00:08:59] Isabel King: Yeah.
[00:09:00] Craig Dalton: and we got connected there and I was like, how is it that I've never seen this woman before? Because I totally appreciate your social media.
[00:09:09] Isabel King: Oh,
[00:09:09] Craig Dalton: just fun and colorful.
It makes me want to get out and ride, but that's sort of your hallmark now. Like I always feel like you're wearing a different rad, colorful Jersey to express yourself. Do you want to get into that a little bit? And how you think about that as part of your, your branding?
[00:09:23] Isabel King: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like coming as someone that's relatively new in the cycling world. One thing that I definitely noticed was once, once your fast, you kind of are this like untouchable fast being that wears all black and looks really good. And doesn't really say hi to people necessarily. And that shows up to the group bride and keeps her sunglasses on the whole time and things like that.
And I. I think that's something that I want to change in cycling and that you can be a little bit unconventional. You can kind of wear the, the crazy colors. And my favorite color happened to be orange, even before I started riding bikes, which is turned into a, kind of a fun version of the brand, but also just the ability.
Like I think I approach this so much as it's such a unique opportunity in my life where I get to go and ride my bike. Twenty-five to 30 hours a week. And if I can share that excitement and hopefully inspire others to get on their bike, maybe when they don't feel like it, or, you know, when they're having a bad day.
I think that's really important. I think with social media, a lot of people only share. The good stuff and put out this presence of, you know, my life is flawless. And so I think it's important to share both sides of those. You know, the smiles are always real, but then also like the other side of it too I think is really important.
And then also In the female cycling world. I think there are the pro female women that ride in the Peloton that are so fast and they post what the team wants them to post. And they don't really, you know, outside of that brand, they don't really do much because they're focusing on racing and that's great.
And then the other side kind of the polar end of the spectrum is the women that You have a lot of followers, but are also very well endowed and don't normally ride their bike, their helmets usually off and are posed very nicely on the bike and that's fine. But I think there's somewhere in the middle ground where you can be a female cyclist and you can be really fast, but you can also be engaging on social media.
And I think that little middle ground is kind of where I've found success within this.
[00:11:20] Craig Dalton: Nice. Yeah. I can imagine that's sort of a, it's just a delicate balance there. Right? Cause people love to hate on you and not you specifically, but one in social media. Yeah. So it's tough. It's tough being sort of a public figure regardless of what you're doing.
[00:11:34] Isabel King: I was thinking it's fine, honestly. Like I think it's super flattering. If you get made fun of, and like a cycling meme account, you're like, oh, I don't know. Again, like the moment that you take yourself too seriously, you have to take a step back and be like, we're riding around in stretchy clothing on like ridiculously expensive, tiny bikes. Like this is silly. Like if you take yourself that seriously, like please take a step back and, and, Uh, you know, have a
[00:12:01] Craig Dalton: I think, I think even more so when we're riding in the dirt too, to add that element of just being a kid getting dirty. So you're smashing up smashing, going uphill, killing a queen of the mountains around the Los Angeles area. Who gave you the first gravel bike to go try Sullivan Ridge or whatever your first ride was.
[00:12:20] Isabel King: Yeah. It took me a while. Actually. I was floundering kind of made mid end of 2020 being like a, got really fast and I haven't gotten any traction. I feel like what I'm doing is cool. And I, you know, I did a few challenges where I raised a lot of money. I raised, uh, over $20,000 for the UCLA health health care fund by riding my bike for three days in a row.
And then I partnered. With Reggie Miller and Castelli, we did, uh, say their names Jersey, which ended up the proceeds, went to equal justice initiative. And though we raised over $70,000. So I felt like I was trying to do more with the bike, but still was kind of spinning my wheels and not getting traction.
So I. Resorted back to the business school side of the things I made it a PowerPoint deck and said, this is who I am. This is what I would want to do if you gave me a bike. And I reached out on LinkedIn, uh, to the president of canyon and said hi, this is me. Uh, more, it was also just kind of like he's had a really interesting career just in the bike industry.
And so I was curious if there was any chance that he answered the email. Maybe just to see if he had any advice for me. And if you ever have the opportunity to meet Blair Karch, he's a wonderful human being. He answered pretty immediately and said, here's my cell phone. Give me a call. We talked on Friday afternoon for an hour and it wasn't even to get, you know, a canyon partnership.
It was.
just, he gave me a book recommendation and he connected me with a few, you know, You know, a few team directors in the pro world, and then also a few other people that he had worked with in the past. And so I think for me that willingness to kind of take a chance on a stranger. Was kind of What led me to follow up with Ghanian and partner partner with them, uh, for the 2020 season.
Which was funny originally my contract for last year was go, go chase Strava QMS, and do it on our bikes and, and, you know, have fun with that. And then I started showing up to these races and they were like, oh, this worked out nicely. So it's fun. So I'm incredibly, incredibly thankful for Blair, for answering.
You know, random LinkedIn message from from a total stranger and giving me a chance.
[00:14:28] Craig Dalton: What was it about the gravel cycling that has made you sort of want to pursue that more and start entering some of the big events?
[00:14:35] Isabel King: Yeah. I think I'd seen it from a distance for me. Like I said, kind of beginning of 2020, when I switched from the triathlon world, the next goal was pro cyclist. Because I didn't have the USA cycling category upgrades, or, and couldn't really do that in a pandemic. I had also gotten into mountain biking.
Which I loved kind of, as you mentioned before, like the get yo getting dirty and kind of back to being a child again, like that was so much more my world than the arrow is everything by the racing, you know, the rocket ship of a bike and get the disc and things like that. But mountain bikes are so technical.
And at the top of the level, if I want to be the best in the sport, I'm never going to be able to catch up to a Kate Courtney or someone like that. Even if physically I could, the technical skills that she's built over years and years and years are just so much greater than anything that I have. And so kind of serendipitously this gravel world has also exploded and it combines, you know, What the road racing world, kind of what I was looking for in it, in that, in the longer kind of, you know, mass start environment of it.
And then it adds to the fun, drink a beer with your friends after people have mustaches and, and, you know, you all have dirt, you know, at the end. And I think, I think that's fun.
[00:15:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Where do you, when now, when it comes to the technical parts of gravel riding, how do you feel like you fare on the spectrum of athletes that you compete against?
[00:16:01] Isabel King: I think probably my proudest realization last year, BWR, whichever what he says, I guess the video was, it's not a gravel race, but everyone says, you know, It's a lie to roadies race and things like that. But the podium was for mountain bike women and myself, and I was kind of like, Ooh, that's good.
That means at least of all the people that don't have, don't have a mountain bike background. I was the fastest of them, which I was pretty proud of. So it's definitely coming along. I think it's amazing how much. Progress you can make. And what these bikes can do. You just have to let them the moment that you're scared of the moment that you crash is my, uh, but I'm kind of lucky.
My mom always makes fun of me in a good way that she was, uh, always says that I'm incredibly fearless, whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, uh, jumping off stuff that I probably shouldn't. So I think that, uh, probably in a good way has translated to the bike.
[00:17:00] Craig Dalton: Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, at the, you have to have a little fearlessness in you, particularly on the dissents and single-track stuff. If you're going to make progress, as you think about yourself as a, as a pro gravel racing. Do you have courses now that you're like, oh, that's for me, I want a massive climbing day or what?
What's your sweet spot.
[00:17:18] Isabel King: I think it's an interesting. Beginning of 2020 last year I had raised zero races and I was looking at this men super excited. Like I, in my little bubble of corny bubble, I'd gotten pretty fast. And I remember pacing and, Uh,
Colin Strickland had come out for their little training camp in Malibu. And I asked Collin, I was like, how do I win on down?
And he was like, you don't live here. And I was so offended. I was like, what do you mean? This is the best place to live. Like, look at this trail. Like these Hills. And the problem is like, for me, you climb up a mountain for an hour. You have to somehow get down. So you get that 10 to 15 minute break. Whereas an Unbound of the 13 hours that I was out there, I was probably not peddling for five minutes.
Like it's crazy. And so it's an interesting those, some of those longer like rolling Hills races I'm not built like a climber. So I actually, maybe if I lived somewhere else would be really good at that. Just the like constant non peddling. Cause I'm, I'm pretty good at the rollers generally, but the like death by a million paper cuts is harder for me because the place that I train you climb up a gigantic mountain and that's great.
You, you peddle hard for an hour, but then you still inevitably have to. Uh, recover by descending. So I think a race like BWR, honestly, it's kind of, you know, it's in San Diego, so it's close. It was similar. It's the one that I did best at last year. That one, I think I had the most fun at, because it was that mix of big climbs with flats, with, you know, road and then gravel and things like that.
So I, I think that race, if I look at all the ones in the calendar is probably the best, best suited for.
[00:18:53] Craig Dalton: Nice. Yeah, that's interesting. I felt the same way. We both wrote down the coast this weekend, this past weekend, you wrote a lot farther than I did, but my buddy was asking me as we were riding, like, what's going to be your, your issue today knowing that I didn't have a lot of fitness, it was like, it's literally just keeping the pedals going this entire time, because like you here in Marine county, we go up for an hour and a half and then we go down in 20 minutes and we'd go up for another hour and a half.
And that's just the way the ride.
[00:19:19] Isabel King: Yeah. my, uh, I just started working with a coach and he was like, you didn't, do you understand that you co you coasted for 500 hours last year? And I was like, yeah, that's not bad. I was like, you know, one and a half a day. It's not that bad, but like, it was pretty wild to like, hear that. Never be like, wow, that was like 500 more hours that I could have been in theory, training or pedaling that you just aren't, which is interesting.
[00:19:46] Craig Dalton: It's super interesting. And I hadn't, I hadn't really thought about it in the context of Unbound and it makes a ton of sense hearing you describe it that way and hearing what Colin Strickland said to you,
[00:19:55] Isabel King: don't live here.
[00:19:59] Craig Dalton: but there's other benefits of living here,
[00:20:01] Isabel King: Yeah. Why are you here, then? No, it's very funny.
[00:20:05] Craig Dalton: So you came out of the gate in 2021 and you had some meaningful successes. I mean, I think you were top 10 at Unbound, 200.
[00:20:13] Isabel King: so I finished eighth. So that was my first gravel race. And looking back, it's pretty funny, everyone, you kind of walk around the expo and your eyes are really wide and you're like, this is my first one. And everyone's kind of like, Yeah,
it's going to be really hard. There's going to be moments where you want to quit.
And I think, I, I don't know.
if I'm incredibly thankful or incredibly angry at people for not being realistic with me because that race is insane. And there isn't really a good way to describe it, except for that, like the, this is so dorky, but my only way of describing it is in the fourth book of Harry Potter, when they go into the maze at the very end, it's like this challenging maze and you're faced with all these obstacles.
And when you. Are like about to die, you shoot up a red flare and that says like, I'm out, come save me. And the beginning of Unbound, I felt like everybody like was in that maze and needed to have a red flare because like people were like flying off the side of the road. There was flatting and sealing everywhere.
There was like a guy like hit this ditch and flew over his handlebars and like broke his collarbone so badly. Like the sound that his body. He, when he, like, when he hit the ground, I was like, I'm gonna, I'm like so nauseous, but also, excuse me. I have to like get around you and continue. Otherwise I'm going to lose this wheel that I'm on.
And so it's like this crazy. Like carnage of people. And then in, in, in contrast to that, you say it's a 13 hour race and there's 4,000 people. And I spent the last three hours of the race alone, just like looking forward for three miles and looking behind me for three miles and literally saying out loud, no.
one is coming to save you.
Like just pedal. And it's so like, it's just pretty, it's a pretty insane race to, to start your career and be like, this is what I've chosen to do, but it went okay. I finished eighth, like it's pretty wild to say, like the race took me 13 hours and I was the eighth fastest. So then you put that in the context of your every day human and, and, uh, that that day gets, uh, quite a bit longer.
[00:22:19] Craig Dalton: Had you had experience sort of starting elbow to elbow with that many people?
[00:22:24] Isabel King: Not as much like in, I think like in triathlon kind of, but you go in the water and you're immediately kicked in the face and kind of like, this is not great, but bikes, not as much. And then like running races. Yeah.
So, you know, kind of like how it works. But it was, yeah. Uh, it was definitely. An eyeopening experience.
And then from there I did crush it and the Tasha was completely different. That was straight up a mountain straight down and straight back up. That one was like definitely more suited for myself. I finished sixth in that race. And then BWR I can do my, uh, got fourth in that, and then. Showed up and decided to do the led boat challenge.
So the Leadville Steamboat back to back and I finished seventh in that double challenge, which was pretty fun. So overall, in terms of, you know, if I could have asked at the beginning of last year, like what I would expect of that season, like I would have been really happy with what actually happened.
[00:23:19] Craig Dalton: amazing. Well, you should be, you should be definitely proud of that
[00:23:21] Isabel King: Thank you.
[00:23:23] Craig Dalton: So looking forward to this year in 2022, what do you have on the roadmap? And is it all, is it all a gravel events or do you look at your cycling, like you as a cyclist, as someone who does projects, FK teas, various different things that can benefit your sponsors.
[00:23:39] Isabel King: Uh, Yeah.
hopefully both. It's an interesting, as you talk to companies about potential partnerships. So the next year it's interesting, or it was interesting to me, how little people necessarily care about results. They, I think companies are leaning much more towards the storytelling side of things and the, you know, really, you know, relating to people that would use their brand and things like that.
And being fast will always be valuable. But in the end of the day, there's only one person that's going to be on that top step. And so it's interesting to see kind of what people value. So definitely talking to brands and seeing kind of, if they're interested in the storytelling aspect of it and how I can help amplify that So going into, yeah, definitely digging into some, some things outside of racing.
What I learned last year, I kind of said yes to all the races and then they were all in that three month period. And I was like, oh my gosh, I haven't been home. And, you know, Two months and I'm just going from race to race. And so definitely kind of, I bought a 12 month calendar that's on my wall and I'm actually, you know, placing staff and being like, this is a block or I'm going to need to like be home or be, you know, somewhere in one piece to, to recuperate because you can't just race and be fast for nine months.
Yeah.
but definitely I think the, the storytelling and the fun stuff, like I think the coast right. Is a good example. Like those just like day after day fund, like adventures where you're pushing yourself with your friends and you're not quite sure how your body's going to react. Like, I think those kinds of things are, uh, are almost, almost more fun than the racing, but nothing will ever beat the feeling of that morning landing up on the starting line where you're like, no one here has any idea what's going to happen.
I think that's one of the coolest things.
[00:25:22] Craig Dalton: Now are you in the lifetime grand Prix?
[00:25:25] Isabel King: Oh Yeah.
We made it, they left the, uh, the lead in the riff rash. So
[00:25:31] Craig Dalton: So that's pretty huge. So that's mountain biking and gravel racing
[00:25:35] Isabel King: So bring out the, bring out the big tire. So that is, yeah. There's your answer? Not only gravel. So I'll have at least three mountain bikes, some going back to Leadville, they called and, uh, to tell us that or to tell me that they were that I'd been accepted and they were like that.
We figured your only way you were ever going to come back to Leadville was if we let you.
in. And I was like, you're not wrong. That race was really hard.
[00:25:57] Craig Dalton: definitely is.
[00:25:58] Isabel King: But I'm super excited. I think that the ability to line up with the caliber of athletes that they've chosen is, is super unique. And then also kind of to see you, I think everyone will have their own agenda. Some people will try and win a specific race. Some people will try and be fast kind of the whole time.
And I think the fun of it that everything is.
scored the same. You can win Unbound or you can win. You know, the Seattle mountain bike thing and they're, they're the same amount of points. So I think it's cool in that everyone kind of comes from different backgrounds and some people are going to be way better at the mountain bikes and some are going to be better at those super long gravel and some are going to be better at the short track and things like that.
So Yeah, it's a fun thing to be a part of. And I'm super thankful that they chose me.
[00:26:37] Craig Dalton: Yeah, for sure. I think there's a lot of really talented women. And as you said, from a lot of different backgrounds, it just going to be exciting to see both how they perform in the disciplines that maybe aren't, you know, if they're a mountain biker, how they do on the gravel and vice versa. And then you've got some other athletes just sort of coming out of left field, obviously like renowned cyclists, like, Amber NIBIN, who's coming from like the Olympics and time trialing, like who
[00:27:01] Isabel King: Like Ashton Lambie, you're like this guy can go really fast for four minutes on a track.
[00:27:06] Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. So how it's all going to play out and does that, you know, having one that imitation to that series is that helping crystallize your season? Obviously it probably excludes certain things.
[00:27:18] Isabel King: Yeah, it definitely does. It's kind of an interesting, like, You have seven months of, or I guess six months of racing where you in theory are trying to be pretty fast. And so you have to kind of figure out where in there are you going to take a little bit of a break? What ones are you trying to peak for?
And then outside of that, like I said, the BWR series is another one that I loved, like. But in both of those, can you also fit in, you know, I've thrown on the idea of going to do like the oat route Alps? I think that's like all my bucket list. And so if I'm still an amateur racer, maybe I can go do that on the road.
So I think that, that, and like, am I going to regret trying to squeeze that in right after Steamboat and Leadville? Like probably, but you know, if I'm, if I'm only young once. Like, I dunno, there's a, there's a very limited time that I get to do this and ride my bike and kind of at the top level. And so for me, I'm trying to, you know, use every moment and get every, you know, every opportunity that I can out of this
[00:28:19] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it seems like the 20, 22 season is the season where you're going to have a lot of opportunity. And you're going to see how far you can put yourself in which your body does directly.
[00:28:29] Isabel King: lots of sleep.
[00:28:33] Craig Dalton: Is there anything else on this sort of the 20, 22 calendar that you want to shout out?
[00:28:38] Isabel King: Oh, I have a few little ideas. I'm nervous about saying them out?
loud because if they don't happen, then you said that, and that was so cool. But there's a kind of lowest to highest challenge that I was looking at. There's an FKG that goes from. The lowest point in death valley to the top of the Whitney portal.
So you go from below sea level to 14,000 feet. So I think it's 120 byte, 20 mile bike ride with like 12, 11,000 feet. And then you have to like Mountaineer climb, seven miles up to the top of Whitney. So the women's FKA is 22, I think. And the men's is. The men's might be like 15. So I think I probably, I don't know, I haven't done enough research, but I kind of wanted to go after the men's one go for the overall.
I think that would be pretty cool. But again,
[00:29:27] Craig Dalton: one to look at.
[00:29:28] Isabel King: yeah, it
[00:29:29] Craig Dalton: done it where they cyclists
[00:29:30] Isabel King: Yeah. So the guy that owns the guy that has it now, I watched his video and. You know, he's kind of, I don't want to make fun of him, but it's like a little bit ill fitting on the time trial bike. And then he does like a switch to a road bike for the climbing part.
And then I don't actually know how fast he did the, the, uh, like mountaineering part, but it would be interesting to kind of bring back the, bring back the triathlon and the, and the running and the time trial part and do kind of the flats on a TT bike and then switch to the climbing road bike. And then you know, Could literally climb yourself up a mountain.
So that's the thing that's kind of the most the most intriguing. And then also, I don't know if you've seen any of the impossible routes with vegan cyclists and Jeremiah Bishop. I was supposed to do the one in Telluride with them last year. But life kind of happened. So I wasn't able to do that.
So we've been throwing around some ideas. They kind of want me to do one on my own. Which I was like, oh wow. Why I have,
to be the first one to do it alone. But uh, I think if I kind of, uh, it definitely on the, on the radar to try and do a route that is deemed, uh, impossible.
[00:30:34] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Amazing. And then just circling back to your sponsorships situation, who are you riding with this year? And yeah, what's going to be underneath you.
[00:30:43] Isabel King: Yeah. So I'm sticking with canyon which I'm super excited about. I loved riding for them last year. The bikes are incredible and then I'm excited to kind of build off that relationship this year. As I said before, last year I was kind of. There Strava racer that happened to show up to races and now kind of have their full support going after the lifetime events.
And then also, as I mentioned, like the, the impossible routes and the potential to go do the overview and things like that which is cool, Uh,
going to be with pan racer as well. So I don't know if you're sticking with them, but again, knock on wood. I had incredible success with flatting and things like that.
Those stars. The best that I've written. So I'm going to say, stay with Panorai serve for this next year as well. And then I'm switching wheels. I'll be riding with envy and Chris king. I figured I needed orange hubs in some way. And if we share a last name, I probably. That partnership would work well.
So convinced MV to let me design my own, Uh,
my own decals, which I'm sure I'll make them noxious really orange enough as I can. And then cask, uh, and CU will be helmets and sunglasses. I'm not, if you followed on Instagram at all, I'm rarely wearing my sunglasses when I take videos, but mostly. 'cause I usually wear sunglasses when I'm going really fast and then I'm not taking my phone out.
But their lenses. Some of the clearest that I've ever written. So actually tend to forget that they're on my face, which I always think is a good sign. And then with their helmets I've personally, uh,
crashed, tested three of them and knock on wood, not had any concussion issues. So, again, with the kind of partnering with brands that you actually believe in, besides that they have a bright orange helmet, I also just really, really liked the product and.
And, uh, when people are asking me what helmet, I will always say that one, just because I personally know that having hit my head on a rock and on cement it look, it works pretty well, which is
[00:32:40] Craig Dalton: Amazing. Yeah, that's so great that you're able to bring together that family of sponsors. It sounds like a good, good situation on that. On the canyon bikes. What are you going to be riding? Like what would be your Unbound bike, for example?
[00:32:51] Isabel King: So I think I'm going to stay with the, with the grail. So it's the one with the two for one handlebar deal. It doesn't, so I, I wrote the Grizzle a little bit. It rides a little bit differently. I'm comfortable on the grill. The one thing people had really big chunky tires for unbanned it, the grill only fits forties.
I was okay on, on, uh, 38 last year with the Panorama. The big chunky ones, the SKS which were good. So Unbound I'll ride that for Leadville ride the Lux. So I went full suspension last year. A little bit heavier on the uphill, but as we mentioned, like, the technical part is where I'm less comfortable.
So I'd rather have a little bit extra cushion, especially because I don't know, like everyone always tells you that Leadville is this like road, race, mountain bike, race. And like, we run down the first technical section of the entire time. I was like road bike, like road, bike road, race, my ass. Like this is very tactical.
And I know that for like the real ECC guys. It's not that technical, but I was very happy to have. The full suspension. So I'll stick with the Lux for that as well. But I,
[00:33:52] Craig Dalton: have that ability to not get your body beat up as much. I think it's critical on those long events.
[00:33:58] Isabel King: absolutely. And then I also partnered with Fox. So I get the, uh, that was kind of an obvious one. They were like, would you like orange, orange forks? And I was like, I would like those forks. Thank you. Those look very nice.
[00:34:14] Craig Dalton: That's awesome. Cool. Well, this was super fun. I can't wait to see what 2022 has for you. I'm going to be following along and I encourage the listener to follow along as well. I'll post in the show notes where to find you on Instagram primarily. And we'll be rooting for you.
[00:34:28] Isabel King: Thank you. Thank you so much, Craig. Thanks for having me.
[00:34:30] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's episode of the gravel ride podcast. Huge. Thanks to Isabel king for joining us this week. I really enjoyed that conversation and a very much enjoyed watching her grow as a gravel athlete over the last 18 months or so. I encourage you to follow her on the social medias and wish her all the best this year as I do, it's going to be an exciting year in the women's field, just as it was in 2021.
I think it's one of the more exciting categories of racing.
As always, if you're interested in connecting with me, I encourage you to join the ridership. Simply visit www.theridership.com and join the free global cycling community we've created. It's a great opportunity to meet and talk with writers from around the world. And if you have any specific feedback or want to contact me directly, you can simply just direct message me within that platform.
If you're interested in supporting the podcast. Please visit, buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. I truly appreciate everybody. Who's elected to become a member and help underwrite some of the financial requirements of the show. It truly means the most to me. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
This week we sit down with Dimond Factory Racing’s Chris Schroeder. We learn about Chris’ transition from professional triathlon to that of a gravel racer. We also look at his decision to start a racing team versus continuing as a privateer.
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Automated transcription, please excuse the typos:
Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast, we've got Colorado based professional gravel racer, Chris Schroeder. Chris is not only a racer, but he's also the manager of the diamond factory racing team.
His path to gravel racing was from that of, uh, as a professional triathlete. Interestingly, I learned that the private tier model, as it's known. It's something that's quite prevalent.
In the triathlon world. But Chris didn't really want to take that model forward. He really wanted to build. Uh, professional gravel racing team. So i thought it'd be interesting to get his perspective to hear about his experience in the gravel world thus far and more importantly hear about what his plans are for 2022 with his teammate.
Before we jump in, I need to thank this. Week's sponsor athletic greens. Athletic greens is literally a product I use every single day. I've been an athletic greens user for many years prior to actually starting the podcast. I really didn't have the time nor inclination to take a bunch of pills and vitamins.
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Would that business out of the way. Let's jump right in to my interview with Chris.
[00:03:15] Craig Dalton: Chris welcome to the show.
[00:03:17] Chris Schroeder: Great to be here
[00:03:18] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I'm excited when you reached out to me, I think this is going to be a really interesting discussion. The starting point for all my conversations is always to get a little bit of your background as a cyclist, how you came into the sport and how ultimately you started riding.
[00:03:31] Chris Schroeder: So it's hard to say how I came into cycling. I came into cycling and triathlon at the same time. About 15 years old, my family relocated from Telluride, Colorado to New York city. And at the time New York city is has a giant cycling presence. Contrarians are a very big thing there.
They do a lot of races in central park and the surrounding area. So as a way for me to find something to do when I was there, I started running of those, the local cycling club. It wasn't a race club. It was. A website or a form, or you just go on there and they say, right, we have a group ride every couple of mornings and you know, it was fun.
I had a old road bike and then the same exact time I was getting into that, I also equally wanting to get into triathlon. So that was a great like way for me to start training and start preparing. And as that grew, I did a couple of bike races and at the same time training for triathlons eventually just kept going into triathlon and kept doing more of the.
And at the same time, I was always a very big fan of cycling. I would always watch the races. I would always follow the riders and that was like a restaurant, but I was a fan of cycling. So I just kept coming up and triathlon. Eventually I went to college at university of Colorado here in Boulder, and Boulder is a great community for pro triathletes and cyclists of all kinds.
It's just a Mecca for it. And I ended up eventually becoming a professional in, I believe 20. 15 though, like end of 2015, I went on and raised five years, professional triathlete, you know, I got a lot out of it. I traveled the world. I raised on like six different continents. I met amazing people like throughout the whole way, but at the end of the five years, I just, I wasn't content with where my career was and I wasn't really, I think it plateaued.
I just wasn't moving. I wasn't getting the results. I needed to continue doing the sport. And I just stagnated and going into 2020, I had this mindset and I had signed up for, to just a way out. I was like, know, I'm going to finish this sport by dating my first full iron man.
So I went to go, the plan was all right, I'm going to go do Ironman, New Zealand. And a couple months before that there was a race in Oklahoma called the Oklahoma gravel Gower at the time. And I kinda knew that I got this sport gravel. I really liked it because it reminded me a lot of the monuments in cycling, like cargo bay, the dynamic just of the just bad-ass like let's get out here and get dirty and strongest man wins kind of mentality.
So I knew going into that race. Not really know anything. I was like, didn't have a gravel bag and laid that on my road bike with the biggest tires I could fit. And I ended up having a great race. So early on, I got a new move of Ted king. We went on for a while. Like I eventually got dropped. I got picked up by two guys behind and then ended up beating both of them in the sprint to finish second.
So all of a sudden I had this hot iron. What I use then to go on to use, to create this transition to gravel.
[00:06:48] Craig Dalton: Interesting. Yeah, for me, it's not super surprising that you had a great cycling experience in New York. It might've been. 10 years ago before I knew a bunch of people from New York and realized like how great the scene is there for a road racing. It's maybe a little surprising that you got into triathlons out of New York, but obviously there's a lot of great road running there and triathlon.
There's a few good races in that neck of the woods.
[00:07:14] Chris Schroeder: Yeah, we'll come back to that. When we started talking about diamond and stuff like that. But when I, because I had that result in Oklahoma, when I went on to do Ironman New Zealand, you know, the race went, it was a good way to end the closing. On my drunker and made me feel very contented, very like, all right.
I did everything I could and I got what I got out of it. And then I'm probably the only person in the world who this positive came from. COVID where the world's shut down. As soon as like, before I even left New Zealand, the world's start shutting down. It's a miraculous, I even got able to leave the country, the roads shut down.
All these triathlon races got canceled. All of a sudden the sport that I don't want to do isn't happening anymore. But I have all these sponsors that need me to do something. So when I was able to do with all my current sponsors to say, Hey, I can't race a triathlon because there was no triathlons.
I can go do another gravel race where I already had this giant buzz, this giant pop and a good result or this year. So with that, I was able to just start doing gravel races with all my sponsors, still supporting me. They were just supporting me as they were and things just went well. And then.
Mid 2020, we just started really committing to, we're just going to start a team. We're not going to have minimums or anything like that. We're just going to work at the end of the January 1st. We're announcing this team and it can be big, small, whatever, wherever we land, we're going to go with. You know, we were very fortunate in having Jared come on, board, our videographer, and he really is the only reason this team was able to exist in 2021.
I did Belgium wall fried Cedar city September, 2020. He came out made. What I think still to this day is his best piece of work, which was a video covering my experience. There really just raw showing that experience. I was able to then all these sponsors I was talking to at the time that were like, eh, we don't really know.
I was able to send them this video. And it was like talking to a different person. All of a sudden the conversation went my way and we were able to close a couple of deals with at the time Kenda tires and vision components, both of which were huge. I, we desperately needed both of those contracts. Eventually a hybrid clothing and Lin helmets came on board to help us out.
And then we had. We had the support. We had the writers, we had a product, which was our video production and assets, and that kind of launched us into 2021.
[00:09:48] Craig Dalton: That's a super interesting story about how athletes need to package themselves up in order to be successful in this. I want to go back a little bit to that transition period. And as a quick side note, I also retired as a triathlete from Ironman, New Zealand, not professional, not fast, but it was my last iron man.
And I agree. It's something, if you get into the sport of triathlon, regardless of the level, having that iron man experience is just it. I think it is very similar to these epic gravel events. We're just getting across the finish line can be such a magic. Thing in your history that everybody should try to do it.
[00:10:24] Chris Schroeder: Yeah, absolutely. I I it's just like in the moment I was just miserable. Like I was. A lot of stuff, like just in my life and where I was my career, but I, because I finished it.
I can just, I don't have to look back cause I'm just I'm so much more content than I would be. Had I not done that?
[00:10:41] Craig Dalton: Yeah, a hundred percent. I'm also curious, you know, it sounds like the 72.2 distance was a strong suit of yours. Then you moved up to the Ironman distance. When you started going to these long gravel events, what kind of parallels did you see from the endurance and mental strength required to complete an Ironman or a long distance triathlon to what you were seeing at the gravel of.
[00:11:04] Chris Schroeder: Well, it's hard. I don't think 70.3 is Ironman. You can draw a lot of parallel parallels, the 70.3 distance. Not as much because those races are dynamic. You are racing. An Ironman is a lot more similar in the sense you. Not raising, you're all just trying to finish. And one of you happens to finish before the others.
Definitely the mental attitude that you have in an Ironman of when you're just trying to finish it. I've nothing else to do today. If always I keep putting one foot in front of the other, I will eventually cross the line. That's like the unfortunate gravel mentality for a lot of these 10 plus hour events or.
Even the comment, I feel like 125 miles is the common distance for gravel. You're still looking at a seven hour day for the fast guys. Like it's a lot of time out there versus the 71 is really four hours. Most professionals go way under that now. So it's hard to say, like, I think honestly my biggest asset transitioning to gravel was just the amount of time has been being a fan of cycling and why.
Professional races and just admiring the tactics.
[00:12:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think one of the things that has come up on a number of occasions and in my own personal experience with triathlon was just. Stuff's going to go wrong and you just gotta move forward and get on with it. And the events are long enough that you can have a really bad nutrition or hydration moment and come back around.
If you just fuel the system in the right.
[00:12:28] Chris Schroeder: absolutely. I think in gravel, The gravel, you can get a little more catastrophic with your failures. You're talking about just breaking everything is breakable on a gravel race tire wheel by Canterbury's yourself. Like it's all up in the air. In a triathlon you can bonk or you can get a flat like those.
Those are really the two bad scenarios and the gravel is just, you just don't know what's going to go wrong. There's so many options.
[00:12:50] Craig Dalton: Yeah, a hundred
[00:12:51] Chris Schroeder: Like for Unbound with, you have to basically be able to rebuild your entire bike is rather than.
[00:12:57] Craig Dalton: Speaking of Unbound. So 2020, you sort of get your gravel legs underneath you. You have the good fortune of having sponsors that are willing to pivot with you because gravel was going off more than the triathlon world was you fell in love with it 2021, you register from Unbound. And there's a great video of your experience there.
So why don't you talk to us about your experience? What was your. Expectations and goals going in and how did it play?
[00:13:22] Chris Schroeder: Unmanned was definitely a little emotional. Like it's a, like, it's a lot that goes into it. It's really very parallel to the Ironman world championships in terms of prestige And just the hype around it. I definitely went into it a little ignorant of just like what's about to happen. I made some just blatant mistakes, but ultimately I just wasn't trained properly for it. And completely just melted in the, it's hard to describe for people that haven't done Unbound it's 200 miles. I think the winter did like 10 hours and 30 minutes this year. So you, would expect this, the race to play out in something in a way that would, you know, relate to someone trying to pace themselves for about long race.
In the beginning, like three hours of Unbound are just you're on the pace
[00:14:20] Craig Dalton: Did you enter that race thinking I'm going to stick with the lead group? You know, this is going to be my tactic in those first three.
[00:14:27] Chris Schroeder: yeah, I just didn't do a couple blatant things. I didn't preview enough of the course. I preview maybe the first like 20 miles and then like mile like 25, we entered this just ridiculous Doubletrack section. Bodies everywhere. And it's like, as a easy tactical error, I was 58 wheels back when we entered that section.
And this is probably my biggest advice for anyone racing gravel is it's not ever the effort of being in the front group. That's going to get you. It's the effort of having to chase back onto the front group. That's going to kill you and having to do that twice. Cause there was two Doubletrack sections and both of those sections I wasn't prepared.
I was out of. And then leaving them. I had to chase back on. And then those efforts are the ones that really take it out of you where you're doing 10, 15 minutes, just like everything you've got to try and chase back on. That's the effort you can't recover from. And that's also the same effort that you're burning.
Very precious fuel. You're brewing your body's heating up, like, you know, the internal temperature and all that's just going up and to ever recover from that. Like you almost have to completely just start going easy to even recover from it. So that's like the thing that kind of like led to the, my, a larger downfall in that race was just those big efforts from just not being prepared with the course that resulted in just like catastrophic kind of blow up that I had.
It's hard to say like 200 miles is a lot. It's a lot to train for, to being competitive. And I think that perhaps for 2022, I might actually pivot and race the a hundred mile and Unbound with the thought process of just being like at, in the 200, you know, what's realistic from results standpoint.
You know, everything goes well, like my best day, where am I finishing? You know, perhaps on my best day, I'm finishing ninth in the laundry. That's a huge result. I think on an average day I could win the hundred. So from an athlete perspective and a business perspective, I'd have to think, all right, where's the optimal value right now?
I'm seeing it in the a hundred, you know, the a hundred got a lot of press still. The winner was on a lot of the magazines are not, he's like the news articles that we came out about it. I think that I might be taking a step back from doing the 200 Unbound this year to refocus and prioritize the a hundred and really go after a result there.
[00:17:04] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it is interesting, you know, a hundred is a lot more racing distance than a 200, as you said. I think the top men and women, like they know how to handle that a high-octane three hour, first, three hour of Unbound, and then go back to a more comfortable level and then race, you know, another six hours later.
But at least
[00:17:23] Chris Schroeder: Absolutely. I think that 200 miles, the thing is this, I think eventually Unbound will suffer from this is that it's not dynamic watching 200 miles race. Ironman has the same problem. It's not interesting watching any of our race because not enough is happening to keep you entertained. Unbound is the same thing.
The last five hours of it, or even more boring than the first five we're watching the more boring Bard, because everyone's just dying at that point. And they're just dying in a direction towards the finish line. A hundred mile raising is completely different, you know, it's completely dynamic the whole entire time.
You're because it's shorter. People are able to stay together longer and makes for more interesting race. And that's where I think the. I get the gravel has this mindset of like longer is more gravel or something along those lines, but there is a line where you need to just like adding miles for the sake of adding miles is just not like, what's it doing?
I had this conversation with Jim Miller at BWR at Cedar city where this year they, it used to end where you do. Like a mile, like 105, you'd go from do like five miles of single track. And then you get on a bike path and it was like three months to finish line and they added like 17 miles of like, you face the thing on track and then just do 17 miles of like nothing gravel and an around like construction sites.
Like you're on the road going through like neighborhoods, like you're on the road going through an industrial park. And I was just like, why did you add that? Like, it did nothing for the race. You have this beautiful. You know, you're struggling. You Google, these climbs, you get to the single track, just getting there is such an accomplishment.
You've finished this very hard tangled, downhill, single track, and then you're on a bike path to the finish line. And that was like, when you think of a race and you're no, one's saying you have to have a certain distance, so you should just try and have the best race course you can. And by adding those extra miles, you didn't really do.
You did the opposite. You made us all finish with the last hour of stuff that we saw. An airplane hanger and a construction site and utility soft. Like I just think that some of these race directors need to not have the mindset of longer is better.
[00:19:42] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting to get your perspective as someone more towards the front end of the race, because I've got the mid pack perspective. And, but I tend to agree with you. Like, for me beyond a hundred miles just is not something I really can ever get fit enough for being, you know, a professional and a family man.
Like that's just not happening in my world. So I'm not. Super pro those things and I can in talking to you definitely get it that you're not going to get a very dynamic race with 20 people battling it out. If it's 200 miles, because half of those people are going to drop out from mechanicals. Others are going to drop out through nutrition, and you're going to end up with this battle of attrition that maybe leaves it as we've seen in the last couple of years, two or three people duking out a little bit.
Towards the end of the 200. And then maybe if you're lucky it's a sprint finish.
[00:20:38] Chris Schroeder: Yeah, I'm the same way. Like I just visit logically like that a hundred mile to like a fast, 125 mile course. That's my sweet spot. And I think that, I don't know if I would say, like, it was a hard lesson to learn that I'm not in this current state of 200 mile racer. I'm a lot better at that a hundred, 1 25 kind of range.
Yeah, accepting, like, look, I'm at a couple of these events, like take gravel worlds, for example, like it's just not, it's not great for me. I can do, you know, really well on a faster, less climbing, 125 mile course, but longer than that, I'm just not ready. Like I just don't have the years and miles of this intensity in the legs.
Like, even though it triathlon. Obviously still very bike heavy. I don't have the intensity that these races are run out for that long a time.
[00:21:29] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of that, What, when you transitioned you talked about this a little bit, but how would you care to characterize your gravel skillset? Are you feeling technically strong or is that still like, you're a horsepower guy from your triathlon days?
[00:21:46] Chris Schroeder: it's a hard one. It's definitely something I'm I work really hard to improve. Is my technical skills, not just like Unbound and it's a good example of well early stages. And I would say like the first 30 miles on a mountain, you are in a giant group and you need to be 10. We still don't have to move within that group in a very comfortable way.
You need to be really comfortable, bumping elbows and shoulders. And I did a lot to help myself with that. I raised a lot of like criteriums on the local scene. I did a cyclocross this season, all with that in mind. Not only do I want to get better at it. I want to be known as someone who is very proficient at my handling and my positioning, because I think that's one of the biggest gaps in gravel where you can take advantage of is a technical skill, especially for descending.
It's very hard. It's not like the road at all. Cause there's so many things going on in any given turn. So just getting better at that skill is something I really wanted to invest in, in the off season. And hopefully that kind of. Pays for itself, this coming season.
[00:22:49] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that goes into another one of my sort of desires for the sport. I love when event organizers do throw in technical elements of the course. Cause I do think the best gravel racers that I want to see that I admire. They've got that full bag of tricks, right? They can go well when it's a basic gravel road or pavement, but they also can thrive in the technical elements of the sport.
And you definitely see, and it sounds like you're very attuned to. The types of events that are going to suit you well, so maybe you're not going to a super single tracky event today, as you're continuing to build that skillset.
[00:23:23] Chris Schroeder: And you're also not going to see me doing like I'm 63 and like 170 pounds. Like I'm not going uphills quick. Like you're not gonna see me a Toshar. I did that race this year and I was like, this is awful. This isn't for the big boys. So like knowing also like, what race am I realistically going to be competitive to that person?
What race do I just not like, don't just, don't go do that. Like just don't do that race. You can just skip it. Like there's nothing wrong with skipping a race. So I think it's just a lesson where you have to just sit and go, let's take an honest look at things. This is what I'm good at. This is what I'm horrible at it.
So we shouldn't go to races that have a big emphasis on stuff that I'm bad at. I. I definitely agree with you where I think that in gravel, every race should have like one call it feature of just ridiculousness. Like each racing I'll throw in a single track section, throw in some river crossings, you know, something like that.
Just to I think it's always fun just to have that one kind of obstacle that race will then become known for.
[00:24:20] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's like a preeminent criteria. It just spices things up. And in this scenario you'd know about it. Right. You know, there's the technical, single track coming up and that it may create a, a. that might be someone's opportunity to take advantage of their particular skillset, knowing full well that, you know, they're less proficient in another discipline.
I remember hearing pace and McKelvin talking about the rule of three and racing against the in Boswell. And he's like, you know, Ian's got me in so many different ways, but I did know when, as someone with a mountain bike background, when I hit that single track, it was going to be a huge advantage for me.
And I could likely take that to the finish line. And that proved to be.
[00:25:01] Chris Schroeder: Yeah, I think that, I think I've even listened to that. Pacing and Ian, where it does, it makes us it up, which keeps gravel interesting. It means that mountain biker has an advantage on the road cyclist. And you know, the flip side of that, of the road psychos has the advantage on the mountain biker and all these different sections.
And it just it goes on like BWR, Kansas had like a cyclocross specific section, which favored a bunch of guys from that background. So it just it helps keep grappled fresh. Giving people from all these different disciplines, their chance to shine.
[00:25:36] Craig Dalton: A while back, you mentioned your cycling team and the formation of it, the diamond factory racing team. I thought it was interesting as you and I were talking offline. Obviously the director. Professional attitude towards gravel racing is I'm going to become a private tier and I'm going to cobble together my own personal sponsors.
And I'm going to overtly take that positioning. You've taken a different approach and you're looking to build a team. And I'm just curious to hear in your own words about that process and why team versus private two year. And what's the vision for the.
[00:26:08] Chris Schroeder: That's a hard one to say, like triathlon. It's funny. We talk about private here so much in gravel. All triathlon is private here. That's all you do. So I private tiered for years, five years of private area. I loved it. But the thing when you're a privateer is you have nothing to point at and say like this won't all be gone tomorrow.
If you're a privateer, you can wake up the next day. Every single sponsor you have could be gone. It, you know, it sucks to say like, and that's just the business I wanted to. And then when you're done racing, it's all gone completely. It's not coming back. You're if you're not racing, providing them what they want before.
Your job's done. So part of the team was I really enjoy the business process of the sport, and I wanted to build something where I can actually transition from being a racer to just being the manager. So the goal was always this long-term vision of, I want to build a program. That's my career. I want my career to be building this team and I want it to be pursued that way.
When I talk to people now, I say like the honest truth is I'm in the gravel business. I'm not in the gravel hobby. I'm not in the gravel fitness, I'm in the gravel business and everything I do has somewhat of a business perspective on it. Cause that's just the mindset I have to have for me to ever get this program where I want it to be.
And I have, you know, call it a five-year vision board for this team. It's hard to map out because we just don't know what is going to look like every year. It's changing a little bit different regulations that UCI has coming in politics. Drama, it all kind of changes in affects the way that the outcome is going to be.
But I know like deep down that I want this program five years from now to be the absolute forefront of this. On the professional scene. I want people entering the sport young age or any aspiration to always be looking to us as that pinnacle of this is what it means to be like a true professional at the same way.
Any of us is in cycling or was I guess now it's shuffled a little bit at the.
top, but having that team where everyone wants to be on this team means that you've made.
[00:28:32] Craig Dalton: So what's step one in that journey. What does 22 look like?
[00:28:35] Chris Schroeder: Well, step one was the hardest one. Step one was Brittany and I and Jared coming together and saying, we're just going to start a team. And this was a back in when we first started the program going into 2021, I'm saying we, we decided the biggest thing that we had to put away in our minds was were we had this mindset of rolling to start this team.
If we did. Filling the blank. We had to take that away and just say, we're starting a team, no matter what, and we're just going to go with it. So changing that is what led us to step one. And then in 2021, our big gamble, you could say it was, we ended up investing 80, 90% of our budget into content creation.
We just said to Jared, and we want the absolute, highest quality possible consistent. I don't care about views. I'm here about likes. We just need consistent high quality content. And that's the investment we're going to make, because we think that's where the value is that we can show it's tangible.
We can always point at it and say, here's a product. A sponsor comes, you know, we can show them. This is our asset. A lot of people don't understand when you're talking to sponsors, you need to have definable assets for them to understand for them to latch onto and create value. And that's where the party has been cycling and triathlon where the modern scope of what that is very different than it was five years ago, 10 years ago, simply going to a sponsor saying I raised 20 times a year and I post on Instagram every other week. Do you not really creating value? You're just there. You're just pack fire at that point.
[00:30:21] Craig Dalton: Do you have a vision for the type of content that you're aspiring to produce? Is it giving people a closer look at what racing some of these big races is like? Or are you thinking otherwise.
[00:30:34] Chris Schroeder: Well, our biggest asset is our series. It's called the equal rod. It's on my YouTube channel and the team's YouTube channel. And that's where we're diverting all of our budget and supporting to creating this series. And we just want it to be a YouTube series. And it's hard to say, like what it shows.
We just say that it shows an honest look because you go to these races and everything will go different than you think it will. So we just tell Jared whatever happens, just film it. And it sucks when you're dying on the side of Unbound and you have to DNF and there's a camera in your face and you have to narrate your own misery.
It's awful, but that's what we decided to go with it. And it just katelyn Andrew. And you know, there's the flip side of it. I don't know. I had a great race. I'm so happy to talk about it. So we never know what an episode's going to be. We just know it's going to be honest. It's going to be misery.
It's going to be glory and everything in
[00:31:30] Craig Dalton: gotcha. I'll point people to the YouTube link for that failure in 2021, because I do think it is interesting and it's so real it's truth, right?
[00:31:39] Chris Schroeder: Yeah. And that's just the thing is that you have on one of these professionals that will have a bad race and they'll bury it, you know, they'll, they won't post anything about it. Then we'll talk about it. They'll post 10 other things about blah, blah, blah, motivation. And you're like, wait, I saw this build and all of a sudden there's just a gap.
And now you're back on this train. Like what happened? Like I want to know, like, I'm following you for a reason. And that's the story. Like I'm not following you. Cause I think you're going to win. I felt like, cause I just want to see your story and your perspective. So we really want to be true to the audience and give them what really happened.
[00:32:13] Craig Dalton: that makes sense. So the title sponsor, the team is a company called diamond by. And I wasn't familiar with them. And after doing a little research, I see that they were big in the triathlon world, but they do have a pretty impressive looking gravel bike. Do you want to talk a little bit about the company where it's based and the bike you'll be riding this year?
[00:32:35] Chris Schroeder: It's quite the story of how diamond and I came together when I was back living in New York city as a kid at the time before I'd even done my first draft. Ironman hosted iron man, New York city, which was a gimmick. The entire triathlon took place in New Jersey. And then the finish line was in New York city and it was a joke, but I was a kid I volunteered the entire day.
I was up at like 3:00 AM. I was just buzzing. I saw all this stuff. It was fantastic. I, you know, it was at the finish line start like, Hey, people that are swim bags and then everywhere I could go, I was, and then at the end of the day, I ended up at the finish line. And if anyone's ever done an Ironman or triathlon, you know that when you cross the finish line, give them more or less just collapse, emotionally, physically, however, they feel like it.
So they have volunteers literally there to catch you and you stand in line and they're just young people come in and whoever's first in line catches them one. I was there and you know, this is just 15 year old kid. This pro called TJ Alex and came over in the line. I caught him. I think he finished fifth on the day.
One of the coolest experiences of my life. You know, I'm a kid, I just touched a fro. And to me it was just the coolest thing in the world. You know, follow TJ, enjoyed that eventually, you know, a couple of years later I became a pro and then a couple years after that, I went and did a Ironman 70.3 in Argentina.
It was in Berlo Chang. One of the prettiest towns I've ever been to. And these races, you know, what they do is they'll put you up and they'll just assign you a hotel room. And I happened to be assigned or hotel room with TJ. So we shared a room in Argentina and we just became friends through that story.
And we ended up doing quite a few races together. We raced all over the country. I think TJ, we raised in Argentina, we raised in Peru, we first in the United States and then towards the end, he eventually retired from racing. I went on raised a couple more years, and then eventually I have stepped down from triathlon to gravel and we'd always come in contact.
We've always been friends and it was a great relationship. And then he watched what we did in 2021. And then I went to see Otter and I went there pretty much from a business perspective of like, all my sponsors are here. I can sit down and crank out two months worth of emails in two days.
Also just a great event, iconic. I highly recommended only considering going, doing that race says any race you want, they have it. And I went there and I saw DJ and it was great. You know, we bumped into there. He showed me the gravel by, we talked, you know, all was good. And we went our separate ways. And then a couple weeks later I kinda got a text from him saying, Hey, I got a idea for you.
Let's chat. And six weeks of hardcore negotiating later, we ended with. A multi-year title, sponsorship deal with diamond, and it's become really the linchpin of this team now because of the ability where it guarantees our ability to grow, no matter what happens, we can grow going to 20, 23 now. And that's what this team needs.
I need to always have a perspective of what's the next step. If I'm not looking to grow we're stagnating. So closing this deal and being able to have this. Guaranteed to athletes coming on, going to 23, 3, nothing else matters. Everything else can go with that.
[00:36:02] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that's pretty unheard of level of security. I imagine for a lot of gravel rates. To put a little bit more color around the brand they're located in Iowa. Is that correct?
[00:36:15] Chris Schroeder: Yeah. So this is an American brand, the factories in the morning. I, the bikes are made in Des Moines, Iowa. They're handmade. It's super bespoke, experiencing, if you go on their website, the first thing you're gonna to see is that just like actual diamonds, no, two diamond bikes look the same, every single diamond bike, you get a custom paint job.
However you want it funky, traditional everything in between. You work directly with the owner, TJ when you're buying and ordering. And it's just a great experience. I think it's also just unique, you know? You're going to stand out with a diamond. Yeah. They've they launched their gravel and their road bike, their ground bike.
The carbide is very new. They launched it mid 2020, and it was a it's interesting. I, when I first saw it, the diamond for the triathletes who are aware of the brand, they made make the fastest triathlon bike on the market. It's non-traditional, it's a beam bike. Pretty much the pioneer for that whole industry of the beam bikes.
And when they came to gravel with anything that you said, all right, how can we be the forefront of this? And that's what went into the carbine and just the way that it's laid out the geometry, it's all race focused. Like this bike is a thoroughbred, it's there to win races. And I'm just the thing on top of it pedaling.
So That's an interesting perspective. This is probably my first time where it's a lot to say this. I think that we're going to have the fastest bike in gravel. I think the way that our diamonds are built with visioning the mountains, it's weird to say, but I think we are going to have the fastest bike in the sport.
[00:38:02] Craig Dalton: That's confidence inspiring. I'm sure. To look down and feel that way. Yeah. It's an interesting bike and I'll make sure to link to it in the notes as well, and fascinating to learn that there's another. Us carbon manufacturing brand out there. Cause there, you know, there's probably only a handful of them in existence in the United States.
[00:38:22] Chris Schroeder: Yeah.
it's a dynamic that you mainly hear about, like, you always hear like these legendary oh, Italian brands. Five bikes and they cost a million dollars. And I think that was the normal introduction than people think when they think small bear brands, but this one being American, it's just, it's very different.
It's very American brand. TJ is American. He tries to be more flamboyant than he is, but he's just a hardcore American and he's a blue collar, hardworking dude. I it's weird. Like he's my boss now, but we've been, we were friends for so many years that it's hard to have. Transitional of like thinking of him as a boss.
When I just think of him as like this guy I've traveled the world with, and then he's told me stories about everyone I can think of and you know, we'd sit down and he tells me about his kids and stuff like that. It's just, this guy, when I proposed my fiance and we had a business call and it was like right after I had.
We talked, it was like an hour long heritage. We talked five minutes a visit and he, it was like 55 minutes of just mind shattering advice for marriage and life. Like it was these perspectives that just gave me this feeling of someone who really cares about me. He basically talked me into wanting to have a wedding when I really just didn't care.
Like he just completely changed my perspective on it. And to have that relationship is really special.
[00:39:44] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it sounds like it's going to be an amazing thing to have in your corner this year. And the fact that you guys are building something together confirmed over the next two years, they're just going to be great. It's going to be super interesting to see where it goes. Speaking of this year, what's your, what are your goals this year?
Are there big events that you're really thinking about?
[00:40:05] Chris Schroeder: It's a little bit up in the air. I just got confirmed for led boat. Like yesterday where I got my Leadville charge on the credit card. Cause that's how they tell you. So that's gonna be a major goal on down. We'll be a major goal in terms of like peak performances, fitness, every race I go to, I'm trying to, when I'm not going to races anymore, that I don't think we're gonna win.
I'm gonna win some. Mid-South Unbound SBT, and then a fake sugar and Belgium welfare. I Kansas are all like my main events, but I'm also going to hit a lot of like local grassroots events. I'm starting off my season at gravel, Miami, which is a new event in Miami. And I'm really excited to do that one.
It's a flat course, which I'm really excited about a hundred miles. I'm just excited for that race. They're putting us, it's sponsored by Miami brewing company and they rented like three rap video level mansions to house the pros in.
[00:41:09] Craig Dalton: Only in
[00:41:09] Chris Schroeder: And yeah, it was only in Miami.
and it's, you know, it's the treatment that I always dreamed I would get it every race.
So I'm going to be a little sad when I come back from it and I realized. Van life and all these events. And I'm really excited for that one. We do, we'll do a couple of other the robot do rendezvous is a hundred mile race in Scottsbluff, just some smaller ones. Like there's something in gravel that is special, that everyone jokes about dying.
They call it the spirit of gravel. If you go to these small races, you'll experience that it's special. It's unique and it's weird, but it's still out there, but it's only in these small races. So for me, you know, if I go to Unbound, it feels the same as when I was a professional Ironman. Everyone is, you know, a little tense, a little uptight they're there, everyone's on their peak form.
No one really wants to talk and hug and all that. But then you go to these smaller grass root events and it's the opposite of all that. It's, everyone's relaxed. Everyone's just there for the community and the experience and beer. It's great. So I really want to make sure I continue to have those in my schedule to keep me grounded into what I love about the sport.
[00:42:23] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. I think those are there. It's a key thing that's going on in gravel that how races are changing and evolving and no one wants to lose that intimacy and camaraderie, but inevitably like as these races get bigger and more important to people's professional careers. It's undoubted bull that the tenor is going to change at the start line.
So yeah, long live the community event.
[00:42:48] Chris Schroeder: Yeah.
exactly. That's just how it is. And we're actually trying one thing I do. From a business perspective as I try to pull from other sports and it's something, this is unique. And I think that's hopefully going to be a good success that we're going to be trying this year is that at certain races, we're actually going to have a diamond booth in the expo where we're going to have, you know, this year will be a little different cause there's just myself and Brittany and Jared we're in, you know, we're going to be there to try and interact as much as possible.
We're going to have team bikes. We're even going to have some demo bikes come by. You can chat with us. And we want to grow that very similar to like motorcross or NASCAR, where people get the experience to come into the pits and they get to look at the garage and see the driver and the mechanics, all working.
We wanted to bring that as a way for people to interact more of us on a personal level. And especially in a approachable way, you know, we've all been that fan boy at the expo that sees someone we want to talk to, but you know, they're walking around and they're doing their thing and we don't want to interrupt them.
So we thought, how can we. Creative approachable environment that is friendly for the fans. And it's a great way for us to really talk to our fans of our sponsors and say, Hey, you know, this is our bike and you want to here's the demo one, go take it around the block,
[00:44:05] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:44:05] Chris Schroeder: Touch it.
[00:44:06] Craig Dalton: I think that'll shine through if you set that intention, which is great. And I think based on this conversation, fans of the sport will have a great way to follow you and your team throughout the year on the video series, and hopefully be able to connect with you at some of these events.
So I, Chris, I appreciate all the time today. That's a great conversation. I wish you best of luck and really do look forward to seeing your name up there at the front end of these events.
[00:44:31] Chris Schroeder: Yeah, fingers crossed that it eventually gets to that. And for anyone watching, like you're going to see me at an event or two this year, come up, give me a hug. I want to interact with you guys as much as you perhaps wanna interact with me. So just don't be a stranger.
[00:44:46] Craig Dalton: Right on. Thanks Chris.
So that's going to do it for this week's podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Chris and I encourage you to follow the diamond factory racing team on social media. I know they've got big plans to show you behind the scenes about what it's like being a professional, gravel racer. In 2022.
If you're interested in joining the conversation, I encourage you to visit the ridership. www.theridership.com. It's our free online community.
Within the community, you'll find gravel, cyclists of all kinds, whether they be backpackers. Racers commuters, you name it. They're all in there. Everybody in the community shares a common goal and it's just to elevate one another. So, whether you're looking to answer some of those hard questions about what tire to buy or what equipment, what bike to buy, or just need some moral support, the community is there for you.
I'm always impressed with the level of interaction and comradery that I see happening that I've got nothing to do with. It is also a great place to get in touch with me. So, if you have any feedback for the show, please just hit me up directly in the ridership. I found inspiration for many, a new episode from the questions that I've received.
Through the ridership. So remember that's just www.theridership.com to get started. If you're interested in supporting the podcast. You can visit me at buy me a coffee. Dot com slash the gravel ride. I appreciate any and all support you can provide to my efforts. And hopefully the journey that I've been on as a gravel cyclist has been useful to all of you.
Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Craig Calfee Randall
[00:00:00]
[00:00:04] Randall: Welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Randall Jacobs and our guest today is Craig Calfee. Craig is the founder of Calfee Design, the innovator behind the first full carbon frames to race in the tour de France, the originator of numerous technologies adopted throughout the cycling industry, and on a personal note has been a generous and consistent supporter of my own entrepreneurial journey. I am grateful to have him as a friend, and I've been looking forward to this conversation for some time. So with that, Craig, Calfee welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:32] Craig Calfee: Oh, thank you. Nice to be here.
[00:00:34] Randall: So, let's start with, what's your background, give your own story in your own words.
[00:00:40] Craig Calfee: Well, I've always written bikes. I mean, as a kid, that's how I got around. And that's, as you become an older child, you, uh, find your independence with moving about the world. And a bicycle of course, is the most efficient way to do that. And later on, I was a bike messenger in New York when I went to college and that kind of got me into bike design as much for the, uh, desire to make a bike that can withstand a lot of abuse. And later on, I used a bike for commuting to work at a job, building carbon fiber racing boats. And during that time I crashed my bike and needed a new frame. So I thought I'd make a frame at a carbon fiber, uh, tubing that I had been making at my.
[00:01:29] Randall: my job
[00:01:30] Craig Calfee: So this is back in 1987, by the way. So there wasn't a, there were no YouTube videos on how to make your own carbon bike. So I pretty much had to invent a way to build the bike out of this tubing. And at the time there were aluminum lugged bikes, and I just, I knew already aluminum and carbon fiber don't get along very well. So you have to really do a lot of things to, to accommodate that. And the existing bikes at the time were, uh, I would say experimental in the fact that they were just trying to glue aluminum to carbon and it really wasn't working.
[00:02:05] So I came up with my own way and built my first bike and it turned out really well. And a lot of friends and, and bike racers who checked out the bikes that I I really should keep going with it. So I felt like I discovered carbon fiber as a, as the perfect bicycle material before anyone else. Uh, and actually, uh, right at that time, Kestrel came out with their first bike, uh, the K 1000 or something. Um, anyway that was uh, that was in 87, 88. And, uh, I felt like I should really, you know give it a go. So I moved out to California and started a bike company.
[00:02:48] Randall: So just to be clear, you were actually making the tubes, you weren't buying tubes. So you're making the tubes out of the raw carbon or some pre-printed carbon. then you came up with your own way of, uh, joining those tubes.
[00:03:01] Craig Calfee: Yeah. I worked on a braiding machine, so it was actually a a hundred year old, uh, shoelace braider, uh, from back in Massachusetts. There's a lot of old textile machinery braiding is, uh, you know, your braided socks and, you know, nylon rope is braided. So this is a 72 carrier braider, which means 72 spools of carbon fiber.
[00:03:25] Are winding in and out braiding this tube and you just run it back and forth through this braider a few times. And now you have a thick enough wall to, uh, I developed a and tape wrapping method at that job and came up with a pretty decent way to make a bicycle tube. So that was kind of the beginning of that.
[00:03:47] Uh, and since then I've explored all kinds of methods for making tubing, mainly through subcontractors who specialize in things like filament winding and roll wrapping. And, uh, pultrusion, you know, all kinds of ways to make tubing. And that does relate to kind of an inspiration for me, where I realized that, uh, carbon fiber, you know, high performance composites are relatively young and new in the world of technology where metals are, you know, the metals have been around since the bronze age.
[00:04:21] I mean, literally 5,000 years of development happened with metals, carbon fiber, uh, high-performance composites have only really been around since world war two. So that's a huge gap in development that hasn't happened with composites. So that to me felt like, oh, there's some job security for a guy who likes to invent things. So that was my, a kind of full force to get me to really focus on composite materials.
[00:04:51] Randall: Were you that insightful in terms of the historical context at the time, or is that kind of a retro or retrospective reflection?
[00:04:58] Craig Calfee: I think, I don't know. I think I may have read about that. Um, I a friend who had a library card at MIT and I pretty much lived there for a few weeks every, uh, master's thesis and PhD thesis on bicycles that they had in their library. And I think somewhere in there was a, uh, a topic on composites and comparing the technology of composites.
[00:05:23] So. I probably that from some reading I did, or maybe I did invent that out of thin air. I don't remember, uh, nonetheless, uh, the fact of it is, you know, not, not a whole lot of mental energy has been put into coming up with ways of processing fiber and resin compared to metal. So to me that just opens up a wide world of, of innovation.
[00:05:49] Randall: Um, and so the first frame was that, um, you're creating essentially uniform tubes and then mitering them, joining them, wrapping them as you do with your current bamboo frames or what was happening there.
[00:06:02] Craig Calfee: Uh, it's more like the, uh, our, our carbon fiber frames were laminating carbon fabric in metal dyes, and those are not mitered tubes fitting into the dyes. And that's, that's a process. I got my first patent on. And it, uh, so in the process of compressing the carbon fabric against the tubes, you're you end up with these gussets in what is traditionally the parting line of a mold and rather than trim them off completely.
[00:06:31] I, I use them as reinforcing ribs.
[00:06:35] Randall: Yep. Okay. So that explains the, the, that distinctive element that continues with your, um, some of your, uh, to tube, uh, currently
[00:06:48] Craig Calfee: them
[00:06:49] the hand wrapping technique from that you currently see on the bamboo bikes came from developing a tandem frame, or basically a frame whose production numbers don't justify the tooling costs. Um, so that's hand wrapped. That's just literally lashed to. Yeah. And a point of note, there is I was a boy scout growing up and, uh, there's this merit badge called pioneering merit badge.
[00:07:16] And I really enjoyed pioneering merit badge because it involved lashing row, uh, poles together with rope and the pro you had to do with this one project. And I did a tower and it was this enormous structure that went just straight up like a flagpole, but it was it involved a bunch of tetrahedrons, uh, stacked on top of each other and lashed together.
[00:07:41] you know, culminating in a pole that went up. I don't remember how tall it was, but it was, it was really impressive. And everybody, you know, thought, wow, this is incredible of poles and some rope. And here we have this massive tower. So anyway, I was into things together since a young age.
[00:08:00] And so I immediately came up with the, uh, the last tube concept. Which is where the, now the bamboo bikes are. course there's a specific pattern to the wrapping, but, um, the concept is basically using fiber to lash stuff together,
[00:08:16] Randall: When it immediately brings to mind, what's possible with current generation of additive production techniques. Uh, whereas before you could make small components and then lash them together to create structures that otherwise aren't manufacturable.
[00:08:31] Now you'd be able to say, print it out though. Those, you know, those printed out materials don't have the performance characteristics of a, you know, a uni directional carbon of the sword that you're working with currently.
[00:08:42] Craig Calfee: right?
[00:08:43] Randall: Um, so we've gone deep nerd here. We're going to, I'm going to pull us out and say, okay, uh, lots of time for this.
[00:08:49] This is going to be a double episode. Uh, so next up, let's talk about those frames, uh, saw their big debut.
[00:08:59] Craig Calfee: Yeah. So, um, we started making custom geometry for a. In 1989 and selling them and so big and tall, and that the idea of custom geometry frames was, uh, you know, pretty esoteric. And the pro racers were, we're using a lot of custom frames. So Greg Lamond, uh, was in search of a carbon fiber, uh, custom frame builder in, uh, 1990.
[00:09:31] And, uh, no one really was doing it. We were literally the only company making custom carbon frame bikes. So he, uh, found out about us, uh, effectively discovered us, shall we say? And, uh, it didn't take long for him to order up 18 of them for his, his, uh, team Z, uh, teammates. He was sponsoring his own team with a Lamont brand.
[00:09:56] So we didn't have to sponsor him. He basically paid for the frame. Put his name on them. And, and, uh, now we're now we're on the defending champions, a tour de France team. So that was a huge break obviously. And it was really a pleasure working with Greg and getting to know the demands of the pro Peloton, uh, you know, that really launched us.
[00:10:21] So that was, uh, quite a splash. And, you know, it always is a great answer to the question. Oh, so who rides your bike kind of thing. you know, you have the, the full-on best one in the world at the time. So, so that was a fun thing.
[00:10:39] Randall: And the name of the company at the time was,
[00:10:41] Craig Calfee: Uh, carbon frames.
[00:10:42] Randall: yeah. So anyone wanting
[00:10:45] dig up the historical record,
[00:10:47] Craig Calfee: is this too generic? You know, the other to what you're talking about, the adventure bikes. Yeah, we had to stop. I mean, carbon frames is a terrible name because everyone started talking about all carbon fiber frames as carbon frames. So we thought that was cool, you know, like Kleenex, you know, uh, and then we came up with the adventure bike, you know, with very early, uh, adventure bike.
[00:11:11] And it was just, we called it the adventure bike. And now there's a classification called adventure bikes that, you know, so, um, I think we, we, we went too generic on how we named our models.
[00:11:26] Randall: I've drawn from the rich tradition, a tradition of Greek, you know, uh, philosophy for naming my own companies in the like,
[00:11:35] Craig Calfee: Yeah.
[00:11:36] Randall: uh, um, and then next up, uh, so you've worked with Greg Lamond on those frames. Carbon frames is up and running and you're, you're producing custom geo frames and you're starting to get at some scale at this point and some notoriety.
[00:11:52] next up you were working on your bamboo bikes. When we talk about that
[00:11:57] Craig Calfee: Yeah, that was say, I'm kind of at the, at the time, it was just a way to get publicity. So at the Interbike trade show, you'd have a few creative people making some wacky bikes out of beer cans or, or other just weird things just to get attention, just, just to send the media over to your booth, to take a picture of some wacky thing that you're doing.
[00:12:20] yeah, we got to do something like that to get, get some attention. And the, uh, so I was looking around for some PVC pipe. Maybe I was going to do a PVC pipe bike, and I wasn't really sure, but I knew that we could just wrap any tube. Make a bike out of literally anything. So, um, my dog was playing with some bamboo behind the shop.
[00:12:42] Uh, she was a stick dog, so she loved to clamp onto a stick and you could swing her around by the, by the sticks. She's a pit bull and lab mix. Anyway, we ran out of sticks. Uh, cause we only had one little tree in the back, but we did have some bamboos. So she came up with a piece of bamboo and I was her around by it, expecting it to break off in her mouth because I just wasn't aware of how strong bamboo was, but it turned out it was really quite strong.
[00:13:12] And I said, oh, let's make a bike out of this stuff. And sure enough, uh, the bike was, uh, quite a attention getter. It got the quarter page and bicycling magazine so that, you know mission accomplished on that front. And, but the bike itself rode really well.
[00:13:29] Randall: well
[00:13:30] Craig Calfee: Um, when I wrote my first carbon bike, uh, the very first ride on my very first carbon bike, I was struck by how smooth it was.
[00:13:38] It had this vibration damping that was, you know, just super noticeable and, and that really kind of lit a fire under my butt thinking, wow, this is really cool. When I built my first bamboo bike, I had that same feeling again, how smooth It was It was amazing for its vibration damping. So, uh, I knew I was onto something at that point.
[00:14:02] Uh, that first bike was a little too flexy, but, uh, the second bike I built was significantly stiffer and was an actual, real rideable bike. So, uh, from that point, uh, we just started building a few here and there and it was still a novelty item until about, uh, 1999, 2000. When a few people who had been riding them, or like, I want another one, I I want to know mountain bike this time.
[00:14:29] So as it was just starting to get known and, uh, we started selling them through dealers. And I mean there's a lot of stories I can tell on how that evolved and how people started actually believing that a bamboo bike could actually exist in the world. So it took a while though.
[00:14:49] Randall: I think there's a whole thread that we could tug on maybe in a subsequent episode where we focus just on the bamboo bike revolution.
[00:14:57] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. That's um, there's a lot of, lot of stuff going on there. I'm actually writing my second book on history of the bamboo bike, because there's so many interesting angles to it, particularly in the.
[00:15:10] Randall: in Africa
[00:15:12] I'm struck by the juxtaposition of this bleeding edge. Uh, you know, high-tech material that you pioneered and then this going back to one of the most basic building materials, uh, that we have building bikes out of that. And in fact, um, on the one hand, there's this, this extreme, know, difference in terms of the technology ization of each material.
[00:15:34] But on the other hand, there's a parallel the sense that like carbon, in tubes is best, uh, you know, generally, uh, when it's you need to write. Yeah, with maybe some cross fibers in order to prevent, prevent it from separating. And bamboo also has that characteristic of having, you know, you need directional fibers that are bonded together by some, uh, you know, some other material in, in the, in the bamboo
[00:15:58] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah, it's very, there's a lot of similarities. I mean, bamboo is amazing just because it grows out of the ground and tubular for. And it grows a new, huge variety of diameters and wealth thicknesses. So if you're looking for tubing, I mean, you don't have to go much further. It's amazing that it literally grows out of the ground that way.
[00:16:20] Randall: paint
[00:16:21] a picture for folks to, um, most of our listeners I'm guessing are in north America or, you know, other, uh, English-speaking parts of the world. I lived in China and as you've been, you see huge scaffolding, multi-story, you know, big buildings and the scaffolding isn't made out of metal.
[00:16:37] It's made out of bamboo lashed together with zip ties and pieces of wire. So it really speaks to the, the structural, uh, strength of the material and reliability of the material. and you know, should instill confidence when descending down a mountain.
[00:16:54] Craig Calfee: Oh yeah. No, it's, I, I remember seeing bamboo and scaffolding many, many years. And I thought, well, of course, and the other reason they use it in scaffolding is when a typhoon hits and it, it kind of messes up the scaffolding of a construction site. Um, it's, they're back to work on the bamboo construction sites, much faster than the metal scaffolding sites, they have to deal with bent and distorted metal scaffolding, um, to replace those and fix that takes a lot longer where bamboo, they just bend it back and lash it back together.
[00:17:32] It's it's so much easier.
[00:17:35] Randall: there's one more thing on this theme that I want to, uh, pull out before we move on, which is talk to me about the, the sustainability components of it. Um, starting with how it was done initially.
[00:17:47] And then now with say like, uh, biodegradable resins or, or other materials I can, this frame can be current.
[00:17:55] Craig Calfee: Uh, the short answer is yes, the frame can be composted. And the other cool thing is if you take care of it, it it'll never compost, meaning you can prevent it from being composted naturally. if you really want to, you know, uh, dispose of the frame, um, it will biodegrade much faster than any other material that bicycle frames are made of.
[00:18:22] So yeah, the, the renewable aspect, the low energy content of it, it's, it's utterly the best you can imagine. And we're kind of waiting for the world to finally get serious about global warming and start to have some economic incentives for buying products that are in fact, uh, good for the environment. Uh, we haven't seen that yet, but we're kind of holding out and hoping that happens.
[00:18:49] And then we'll see probably some significant growth in the bamboo adoption in the bicycling world.
[00:18:57] Randall: I want to plant a seed that, that, uh, to germinate in my head, which is this idea of bamboos being the ideal material for kind of more mainstream, uh, utility bicycles and recreational bicycles. really it's a matter of the unit economics in economies of scale and consistency of material, which you could make uniform by having, uh, having controlled grow conditions and things like that.
[00:19:23] Um, but it could be a very localized industry to anywhere where bamboo grows. this could be produced, which reduces transportation costs reduces, you know, issues of inventory carrying and all these things. Um, so let's, let's park that I want to ask you more about those, about the economics of bamboo in a side conversation to see if there's, you know, explore there.
[00:19:45] Craig Calfee: well, there is. I mean, that's, that's what we did in Africa. Same concept is as why, why would bamboo work in Africa better than the imported bikes from China? So that was, that was the whole thing around that.
[00:19:59] Randall: Ah, I love it. All right. So though, there will be a bamboo episode folks. Uh, we're going to, going to continue cause there's a lot of ground to cover here. so next steps you've done done the first carbon frame and the tour de France, uh, carbon frames is up and running. You've started getting into bamboo, what was next,
[00:20:18] Craig Calfee: Um, then lots of smaller developments, which become really important to us from a business perspective, uh, fiber tandem, we built the first one of those. And then we went to a lateral list, tandem design, and it's pretty optimized at this point. So we're, I would say we are the leader in the tandem world in terms of the highest performance, tandem bikes, uh, and then re repairing of carbon frames.
[00:20:47] That was a big one, uh, which we were kind of pushed into by customers. And other folks who heard that we could repair the Cathy frames and they would set a call up. And literally we had a, an in one inquiry per week, if not more, more often about like a colonoscopy that this guy wanted to repair and he heard we could do it on ours.
[00:21:10] And we're like, well, by a Calfee don't, you know, I'm sorry, but we can't repair somebody else's frame. You'll have to buy one of ours. And then you'll know that you crash it, we can repair it for, he was trying to make that a, a a advantage for our brand, but we couldn't really, you know, do that. So, uh, we said, well, if we can't beat them, we'll repair them.
[00:21:32] And we repaired a first and then some specialized, I think, after that. So we, we accepted repair jobs and pretty soon it became about a third of our, our business. And it's, uh, of course now lots of other people repair frames, but, uh, we started doing that in 2001 or something and, and we've been doing it ever since.
[00:21:58] And it's, that part has been really interesting to see, because we get to literally see the inside of everyone else's frames and look at the weak points. You know, they often show up on, on people's frames and get asked to fix them or even redesign them at that point. So that's been really interesting to, to me as a technician,
[00:22:21] Randall: and want to come back to this in a second, but before we lose it, what is a lateralis tandem design?
[00:22:27] Craig Calfee: uh, that, so traditional tandems had a, a tube that went the head tube, usually straight back down towards the dropouts or or bottom bottom bracket. And it's, it's a way to stiffen up a frame. That's inherently not very stiffened torsion. But, uh, with composites, you can orient the fiber, uh, in torsion to make a tube significantly stiffer and torsion than say a metal tube of similar weight.
[00:22:57] So we were able to go a little bit bigger diameter and more fiber in the helical angled orientation and make a tandem, uh, stiff enough and torsion and get rid of that tube. And for a carbon fiber frame, that it was really important because number of times you have to join the tube, the more expensive it is or the more labor content there is. So we were able to reduce our labor content, make the frame lighter and make it stiffer all at, in one design change. So that was a big, a big revelation. And now I most of them have copied that design. So it's, uh, it's, that's another time where we, we did something that, that, uh, now became the standard.
[00:23:43] Randall: Yeah. One of many from what I've observed in a written the history. Uh, so around this time, or shortly after you started the repair business, you started doing some pretty, pretty wild frames in terms of pushing the limits of what was possible when we talk about that.
[00:24:01] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah, we did. We've done a lot of different types of frames, uh, mostly for show, but, um, like the north American handmade bike show is a great venue for just doing something way out of left field. Um, we did, uh, a bamboo bike made all out of small diameter, bamboo. Um, it's I only made one because it was a total pain in the ass to make.
[00:24:26] Uh, and it was also kind of inspired by the, a request from a guy who was not only a fan of bamboo, but he was a fan of molten style bikes. Those are the trust style frames with small wheels. So we built one of those and. With the only small diameter bamboo, and we built another one that was, uh, a real art piece.
[00:24:49] So just having fun with that from a, you know, completely artistic direction is a lot of fun for me because that's my formal training. I went to art school and learned about different materials and, and art and composition. Uh, and I was into the structure of materials and how they, they relate to each other.
[00:25:12] And my art was more of a forum file form follows function, kind of inspiration. And, uh, so some bikes that I've made were, are not terribly practical, but just explore the, the limits of structure. So another bike I made, uh, we call it the spider web bike, which was literally a, a bike made of just carbon fiber strands.
[00:25:36] No tubes. And it, it was kind of wild looking and a collector ended up buying it, which is really cool. But you look at this thing and you just couldn't imagine that it, it, you could actually ride it, but, uh, it actually does ride fairly well. It's a bit fragile if you crash it, it would be kind of dangerous, but you know, stuff like that.
[00:25:55] I like to do that occasionally.
[00:25:59] Randall: I think of, uh, like biomorphic design or like hyper optimized design that maybe doesn't have the resiliency, but very strict parameters will perform higher than anything else that you could, you could create.
[00:26:12] Craig Calfee: absolutely. Yeah. Those are really fun. I'm really inspired by natural forms and, uh, you know, the, the, some of the new computer aided techniques we're designing are, uh, rattled in those lines. so, yeah, I follow that pretty closely.
[00:26:28] Randall: a little sidebar. Um, I don't know if you've, uh, no of, uh, Nick Taylor, the guy who created the, Ibis Maximus in front of the mountain bike hall of fame.
[00:26:40] Craig Calfee: Um, no, I don't think so.
[00:26:43] Randall: I'll introduce you to his work at some point, but he's another one of these people who, very avid cyclist is not in the bike industry, but is. There's a lot of trail building and alike and isn't is a sculptor really focused on, the form of, uh, you know, biological shapes and materials and, and things of this sort.
[00:27:02] Uh, I think that there's a lot, uh, I'm actually curious more into your, your non bike artistic work for a moment. Uh, and, and how that got infused into your work with the bike.
[00:27:18] Craig Calfee: yeah, so I haven't done a lot of, you know, just pure, fine art sculpture in a long time. But when I was doing that, it was. a lot of things that would fool the eye or, um, some material and, and push it to its limit. So I was doing stuff that was, um, uh, you know, trying to create a, almost like a physical illusion, not just an optical illusion, but a, but a physical illusion or like, how could you possibly do that kind of thing?
[00:27:54] And that was a theme of my sculpture shortly after Pratt. So for example, just take one example of a sculpture that I got a lot of credit for in classes at Pratt, it was a, a big block of Oak. It was a cutoff from a woodworking shop. It's about a foot in, let's say a foot cube of Oak. And I would, um, so I, I, uh, raised the grain on it with a wire brush and then I blocked printed on Oak tag page.
[00:28:26] Um, some black ink on rolled onto the Oak block and made a river, basically a print off of each face of the, of the block. And then I carefully taped that paper together to simulate a paper block of the Oak chunk that I I had. now I had a super light paper version of the Oak block. And then I hung them on a balance beam, which I forged at a steel, but the hanging point was way close to the piece.
[00:28:57] And if you looked at it from three feet away, just, your brain would, just hurting because you couldn't figure out how is this even possible? And because it really looked amazing, super hyper real. Anyway, it just looked amazing and it was fun to get the effect of how the hell did that. Did he do that?
[00:29:18] What's what's the trick here. There's something going on. That's not real. Or it's. Uh it's not physically possible. And I kind of got that feeling with the carbon fiber bike. When we, when we built the first bike, everyone would pick it up and go, oh, that's just too light. It's not even a bike. It's a plastic bike it's going to break instantly.
[00:29:39] So that was sort of a relation from, from those days to the, to the bike.
[00:29:44] Randall: You ever come across Douglas Hofstadter's book, Godel, Escher Bach.
[00:29:49] Craig Calfee: No, but I'd be interested to read it.
[00:29:51] Randall: Definite short Lister. Um, uh, you've come across MC Escher, of Yeah. And are there any parallels or any inspiration there?
[00:30:01] Craig Calfee: Um, not very direct, I'd say. Um,
[00:30:08] Who
[00:30:08] Randall: your, who your inspirations or what, what would you say your creative energy is most similar to?
[00:30:14] Craig Calfee: I'd probably, I'd say say Buckminster fuller.
[00:30:17] Randall: Mm,
[00:30:17] Craig Calfee: Yeah. I mean, I studied his work in depth, you know, not only the geodesic dome stuff, but also his vehicles, the dime on vehicle the, yeah. So there's, there's a bunch of stuff that he was involved with that I'd say, I'm parallel with as far as my interest goes,
[00:30:37] Randall: what books should I read?
[00:30:39] Craig Calfee: all of them.
[00:30:42] Randall: Where do I start? If I have limited
[00:30:44] time
[00:30:45] Craig Calfee: Yeah. It's a tough one. He's actually really difficult to read too. His writing is not that great. I pretty much look at his, uh, his design work more than His writing
[00:30:56] Randall: Okay. So who's book whose book about Buckminster fuller. Should I read?
[00:31:01] Craig Calfee: good question. I'll, I'll catch up with you on that later because there's few of them that they're worth. It's worth a look.
[00:31:07] Randall: awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Um, let's talk about 2001. you're a dragon fly.
[00:31:15] Craig Calfee: Yeah, the dragon fly was an interesting project. It was so Greg Lamanda had asked me, like, I want an even lighter bike. He was constantly pushing on the technology. And I said, well, there are some really expensive fibers that are starting to become available, but, um, you know, this would be a $10,000 bike frame and, you know, it's only going to be a half a pound lighter.
[00:31:40] And he said, well, I don't care. I just, you know, I w I need it for racing. I mean, um, you know, when, when I'm climbing Alpe d'Huez with Miguel Indurain and if he's got a lighter bike than I do, then I'm just going to give up, you know, in terms of the effort. So he needs to have that technical advantage, or at least be on the same plane.
[00:32:02] So the reason why he'd spend, you know, $5,000 for a half a pound, a weight savings was pretty, pretty real. So, but it took until about 2000, 2001 after he had long retired to, um, really make that happen. So the fibers I was talking about are really high modulus fiber that was very fragile, too brittle, really for any use.
[00:32:29] So we came up with a way to integrate it with, um, boron fiber. Uh, it actually was a material we found, uh, special specialty composites out of, uh, out of Rhode Island. Uh, they, uh, do this co-mingled boron and carbon fiber, uh, hybrid material, which was, um, they were looking for a use cases for it and the bicycle was one of them.
[00:32:58] So, uh, we built a prototype with their material and it turned out. To be not only really light and really strong, the, the boron made it really tough. So carbon fiber has, uh, the highest stiffness to weight ratio, intention of any material you can use. boron is the highest stiffness to weight ratio in compression as a, as a fibrous material that you can integrate into a composite. So when you mix them, you now have a combination of materials, that are unbeatable.
[00:33:35] Randall: Like a concrete and rebar almost, or, quite.
[00:33:40] Craig Calfee: I'd say that's a good, um, for composites in general, but now we're talking about the extreme edge of, of performance, where, um, looking at the, most high performance material certain conditions, versus tension. These, these are conditions that are existing in a bicycle tube all the time.
[00:34:07] So one side of the tube is compressing while the other side is intention as you twist the bike, uh, and then it reverses on the, on the pedal stroke. So it has to do both now. Carbon fiber is quite good at that, but compression it suffers. And that's why you can't go very thin wall and make it, um, withstand any kind of impact because it's, it's got a weakness in it's, um, compressive. So, uh, it's, uh, it doesn't take a break very well either. So boron on, the other hand does take a break very well, and it's incredibly high compressive strength to weight ratio and compressive stiffness to weight ratio. are two different things by the way. So when you combine those into a tube, it's pretty amazing.
[00:34:57] Uh, they're just really quite expensive. So we came up with the dragon fly, um, in 2001 and it was at the time the lightest production bike yet it also had the toughness of a normal frame. And that's that's right around when the Scott came out, which was a super thin wall, large diameter, uh, carbon frame that was really fragile.
[00:35:23] Um, so that was sort of a similar weight, but not nearly as tough as, uh, the dragon fly.
[00:35:34] Randall: For well, to go a little bit deeper on this. So what is the nature like? What is the nature of the boron? Is it a, like, is it a molecule? Is it a filament? So you have, you have carbon filaments is the boron, um, you know, is that, are you putting it into the resin? How is it? Co-mingled.
[00:35:51] Craig Calfee: It's a, it's a filament, basically a super thin wire.
[00:35:56] Randall: You're essentially co-mingling it in when you're creating the tubes and then using the same resin to bond the entire structure together.
[00:36:04] Craig Calfee: That's right.
[00:36:05] Randall: Got it. And this, so then this is, uh, if you were to add then say like to the resin separately, it would be a compounding effect. Um, I don't know if you have, uh, mean, I assume you've done some stuff with graphene.
[00:36:19] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Graphing graphing is a really great material. It does improve the toughness of composites. Uh, it's again, also very expensive to use, uh, in a whole two. Usually it's used in smaller components, uh, not so much on the whole frame, uh, and it, and it's, um, it's best, uh, uses in preventing the of cracking.
[00:36:46] So it stops the micro cracking that starts with a failure mode. And that that's a great, thing. But if your laminate is too thin to begin with that, all the graphing in the world, isn't going to help you. So for really minor wax it'll help, but for anything substantial, it's going to break anyway.
[00:37:08] So you have to start out with a thick enough laminate get the toughness that you're looking for. Uh, graphene is really great for highly stressed areas, which might start cracking from, uh, fatigue or just the design flaw of a stress concentration. So it's got a number of purposes. Uh, it's great for, uh, like pinch clamp areas, you know, places where the mechanical, uh, stress is so high on a, on a very localized area.
[00:37:37] Um, so yeah, graphene is wonderful. We didn't get into it too much because, um, it's just, it would just, wasn't practical for our applications and how we make the frames, but, uh, some companies have started using graphene and it's, it's pretty interesting stuff.
[00:37:52] Randall: We did some experimentation with it early on in our looking at it for the future. my understanding is. You know, I haven't gone too deep into like the intermolecular physics, but it's essentially like you have a piece of paper and if you start tearing the paper that tear will propagate very easily.
[00:38:09] then the graphene is almost like little tiny pieces of tape. Randomly distributed, evenly distributed across the material that makes it so that that fracture can no longer propagate in that direction. And it has to change direction where it bumps into another graphene molecule and the graphing, essentially when we tested it was doubling the bond strength of the resin.
[00:38:30] So in terms of pulling apart different layers of laminate, then, um, increasing the toughness of say, uh, a rim made with the exact same laminate in the exact same resin with, 1% graphene per mass of resin increasing the toughness of that rim structure by 20%.
[00:38:50] Which is pretty
[00:38:50] Craig Calfee: That's correct.
[00:38:51] Randall: The challenges that is that it lowers the temperature, uh, the, the glass suffocation points resin. so, you know, a rim is like, you know, there are, if you're gonna put it on the back of your car, you know, that's not a normal use case when you're riding, but, you know, it's, it's something that just makes it less resilient to those towards sorts of, you know, people put on the back of the car too close to the exhaust and they melt the rim.
[00:39:17] So we're having to experiment with some high temperature residents that have other issues.
[00:39:22] Craig Calfee: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's rims are a great place for graphing, just cause they're in a a place where you'll have some impacts, but yeah. Temperature management is an issue. Um, yeah, that's the high temperature residents are, are another area that, that, uh, we're experimenting in, uh, wrapping electric motor, uh, rotors with, with a high temperature resonant carbon wrap.
[00:39:46] that's a whole nother area, but I'm familiar with that stuff.
[00:39:49] Randall: Which we'll get into in a second, park park, that one. Cause that's a fun theme. yeah. And I'm just thinking about a rim structure. It seems like boron on the inside graphing on the outside, um, deal with high compressive forces between the spokes and then the high impact forces on the external, will
[00:40:07] Craig Calfee: the material we use is called high bore. You can look that up. H Y B O R and there they're actually coming back with new marketing efforts there. They, I think the company got sold and then, um, the new buyers are, are re revisiting how to, to spread the use of it. So might be real interested in supporting a rim project.
[00:40:30] Randall: mm. Uh, to be continued offline. Um, all right. So then we've got your carbon fiber repair surface. We talked about the dragon fly. Um, it's a great segue into engineering and design philosophy. let's talk about that
[00:40:47] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Um, well it's, to me, it's all about form follows function and, uh, when something works so well, functionally, it's gonna look good. That's uh, that's why trees look great just by themselves, uh, that that's, you know, coming back to the natural world, you know, that's why we have a Nautilus shell for, uh, for our logo.
[00:41:12] It's the form follows function. Aspect of that just makes it look beautiful. For some reason, you look at something from nature, you don't really know why is it beautiful? Well, the reason is the way it's structured, the way it's evolved over millions of years. Has resulted in the optimum structure. So for me, as a, as a human being artificially trying to recreate stuff, that's been evolved in nature.
[00:41:39] Um, I look closely at how nature does it first and then I'll apply it to whatever I'm dealing with at the moment. And so that's how I, that's how I design stuff.
[00:41:50] Randall: there's a, the Nautilus shell example, like, you know, the golden ratio and the way that, really complex systems tend to evolve towards very simple, fundamental, primitives of all design
[00:42:04] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. There's some basic stuff that, that seemed to apply everywhere.
[00:42:10] Randall: So with your carbon fiber repair service, so you started to see some of the problems with that were emerging with these, um, large tube thin wall designs that were being used to achieve a high strength or sorry, a high stiffness to weight, but then compromising in other areas.
[00:42:28] So let's talk about that.
[00:42:30] Craig Calfee: Yeah, it's um, you know, designing a carbon fiber bike is actually really quite difficult. There's so much going on. There's so many, uh, things you have to deal with high stress areas that you can't really get around. there's a lot of constraints to designing a good bicycle frame. Um, and then you're dealing with the tradition of, of how people clamp things on bikes, you know, stem, clamps, and seed post clamps, and, uh, you know, th that type of mentality.
[00:43:04] It's still with us with the carbon, which is carbon doesn't do well with. So a lot of companies struggle with that and they'll come up with something on paper or in their CAD model. And their finite element analysis sort of works, but, and then they go into the real world and they have to deal with real situations that they couldn't predict in the, the computer.
[00:43:29] And they get a problem with, uh, you know, a minor handlebar whacking, the top tube situation, which shouldn't really cause your bike to become dangerous. But in fact, that's what happens. So you've got, um, you know, uh, weak points or vulnerabilities in these really light frame. And if you're not expected to know what the vulnerability is as an end-user and you don't know that if you wack part of the bike and in a minor way that you normally wouldn't expect to cause the frame to become a weak, then the whole design is a question. So you have to consider all these things when you decide to bike. And a lot of companies have just depended on the computer and they are finite element analysis too, to come up with shapes and designs that, uh, are inherently weak. And, um, people get pretty disappointed when they're, when the minor is to of incidents causes a crack in the frame.
[00:44:37] And if they keep riding the bike, the crack gets bigger. And then one day, you know, I mean, most people decide to have it fixed before it gets to be a catastrophic but, uh, you know, it gets expensive and, uh, You know, it's, sad. Actually, another motivation for getting into the repair business was to save the reputation of carbon fiber as a frame material.
[00:45:03] You know, these types of things don't happen to thin wall titanium frames. You know, a thin wall titanium frame will actually withstand a whole lot more abuse than a thin wall carbon frame. So it's just hard to make diameter thin wall titanium frames that are stiff enough and not without problems of welding, you know, the heat affected zones.
[00:45:26] So carbon fiber is, is a better material because it's so much easier to join and to, to mold. But if you, you have to design it properly to, to withstand normal abuse. And if you're not going to do that, then there should at least be a repair service available to keep those bikes from going to the landfill.
[00:45:45] So frequent. And so that's what we do we, we offer that and we even train people how to carbon repair service. So that's, um, that's something we've done in order to keep bikes from just getting thrown away.
[00:46:01] Randall: uh, I think I've shared with you, I'm in the midst of, uh, doing, uh, uh, a pretty radical ground up design, which is way off in the future. So I'll be picking your brain on that, but it immediately makes me think of the inherent. Compromises of current frame design and manufacturing techniques, including on our frame.
[00:46:20] And in our case, the way we've addressed that is through not going with lower modulates carbon, you know, S T 700, maybe some T 800 in the frame, then overbuilding it order to have resiliency against impacts. But then also these sorts of, um, micro voids in other imperfections that are in inherent process of any, uh, manufacturing, uh, system that involves handling of materials in a complex, you know, eight, uh, sorry, 250 a piece, you know, layup like there's, this there's even that like human elements that you have to design a whole bunch of fudge factor into to make sure that when mistakes are made, not if, but when mistakes are made, that there's so much, uh, overbuilding that they don't end up in a catastrophic failure.
[00:47:10] Craig Calfee: that's right. Yeah. Yeah. You have to have some safety margin.
[00:47:15] Randall: And the Manderal spinning process that you were describing essentially eliminates a lot of that in you're starting to see, I mean, with rims, that's the direction that rims are going in, everything is going to be automated, is going to be knit like a sock and frames are a much more complex shape. Um, but you're starting to see, uh, actually probably know a lot more about the, the automation of frame design than I do.
[00:47:35] Um, what do you see? Like as the, as the end point, at least with regards to the, um, like filament based carbon fiber material and frames, like where could it go with technology?
[00:47:50] Craig Calfee: the, the, um, robotics are getting super advanced now and there's this technique called, um, uh, they just call it fiber placements or automated fiber placement, which is a fancy word for a robot arm, winding fiber, you know, on a mandrel or shape, uh, and then compressing that and, uh, know, molding that.
[00:48:14] So it's, it's where your, a robot will orient a single filament of carbon fiber. Uh, continuously all around the, uh, the shape that you're trying to make. They do that in aerospace now for a really expensive rockets and satellite parts, but the technology is getting more accessible and, uh, so robotic trimmers are another one.
[00:48:42] So we're, in fact, we're getting ready to build our own robotic arm tremor for a resin transfer, molded parts. That's where the edge of the part that you mold gets trimmed very carefully with a router. And, but imagine instead of just a router trimming an edge, you've got a robot arm with a spool of fiber on it, wrapping the fiber individually around the whole structure of the frame.
[00:49:10] Uh, no, no people involved just, you know, someone to turn the machine on and then turn it off again. So that's kind of coming that that is a future. Uh, it hasn't arrived yet, certainly, maybe for simpler parts, but a frame is a very complex shape. So it'll take a while before they can get to that point.
[00:49:30] Randall: It having to, yeah. Being able to Uh, spin a frame in one piece is, seems to be the ultimate end game.
[00:49:43] Craig Calfee: Yeah. I think we need to, I think the, the, uh, genetically modified spiders would be a better way to
[00:49:50] go
[00:49:50] Randall: Yeah, they might, they might help us the design process.
[00:49:56] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. Just give them some good incentives and they'll, they'll make you set a really incredibly strong, you know, spider wound.
[00:50:05] Randall: Well, it does. It speaks to the, the, the biggest challenge I see with that, which is you have to go around shape. so if you're going through a frame, like it's essentially the triangle. And so you need some way to like hand off the, the S the filament carrier from one side to the other constantly.
[00:50:27] you'd just be able to spin it. You know, it would be pretty straightforward. So maybe the frame comes in a couple of different sections that get bonded, but then those don't form a ring. And so you can, you know, you can move them around instead of the machine order
[00:50:41] Craig Calfee: Well, there's these things called grippers. So the robot grip sit and then another arm grip know let's go and the other arm picks it up. And then there's like in weaving, there's this thing called the flying shuttle, which invented. That's where the shuttle that, the war
[00:50:59] Randall: Your ancestors were involved with flying shuttle.
[00:51:02] Craig Calfee: Yeah.
[00:51:02] Randall: That's one of the, uh, all right. That's, that's a whole other conversation.
[00:51:07] Craig Calfee: Yeah, a really interesting, I mean, it's the Draper corporation. If you want to look it up,
[00:51:13] um
[00:51:13] Randall: I
[00:51:13] Craig Calfee: know
[00:51:14] they were the manufacturing made the looms back in the industrial revolution in the Northeast
[00:51:21] Randall: I'm sitting currently in Waltham, which was one of the first mill cities, um, not from Lowell.
[00:51:28] Craig Calfee: Yeah. So all those mills were where our customers and they would buy the Draper looms. Um, and they were automated looms with a flying shuttle was a big deal Uh back then. And so they, they made a lot of, of those looms and, and that's basically what sent me to college with a trust fund. So
[00:51:49] Randall: You're a trust fund, baby.
[00:51:51] Craig Calfee: Yep.
[00:51:51] Yep
[00:51:53] From vendors.
[00:51:55] Uh
[00:51:56] but that's yeah, that's the world I, I came out of. And, so the, the idea of taking a spool of material and handing it off as you wrap around something is really not that difficult.
[00:52:08] Randall: Okay. So then you can do it in a way that is resilient to probably 10,000 handoffs over the course of weaving a frame and you can expect that it's not going to fail once.
[00:52:19] Craig Calfee: That's right Yeah
[00:52:20] It
[00:52:20] Randall: All then that, that's
[00:52:22] Craig Calfee: the hard part, the hard part is dealing with the resin and the, and the, uh, forming and the getting a nice surface finish. That was where the harder.
[00:52:31] Randall: Yeah. And, uh, uh, I'm thinking about, uh, space X's attempts to create a giant, uh, carbon fiber, uh, fuel tank. And they actually had to do the, um, the heating the resin at the point of, uh, depositing of the filaments.
[00:52:52] And
[00:52:52] you know, that's a really challenging process because you can't build an autoclave big enough to contain a fuel tank for a giant rocket bicycles don't have that issue, but
[00:53:01] Craig Calfee: right. Yeah. The filament winding technique, which is how all those tanks are made is, is pretty amazing in the large scale of those, those big rockets is phenomenal. I mean, a couple of places in Utah that make those, and it's just seeing such a large things spinning and, uh, wrapping around it rapidly is quite inspiring.
[00:53:26] Randall: Yeah. It's very, very cool stuff. And that's, again, a whole another thread about the, uh, the Utah based, uh, composites industry that got its start in aerospace, you know, advanced aerospace applications, which NV and others came out of. They used to be edge which you worked with. NBU designed their tubes early on.
[00:53:43] Right.
[00:53:44] Craig Calfee: W well, yeah, the poles history behind envy and quality composites back in late eighties, literally, uh, when I first came out to, uh, actually I was still, think I ordered them in Massachusetts and took delivery in California, but it was a quality composites and out of Utah, uh, Nancy Polish was the owner of that.
[00:54:06] Also an MIT graduate who, um, who started a roll wrapping carbon fiber in tubular forum. And I'm pretty sure we were the first roll wrapped carbon tubes, uh, for bicycles that she made. And, um Uh, evolved to, uh, edge composites. So they, so quality composites became McClain quality composites, and then McLean, the guys who broke away from that went to start envy or edge, I guess, which became envy.
[00:54:40] So yeah, those same guys brought that technology and we've been the customer ever since. And now there's yet another spinoff. The guys who were making the tubes at envy spun off and started their own company, uh, in a cooperative venture with envy. So let them go basically. And, uh, we're working with those guys.
[00:55:01] So it's just following the, the top level of expertise.
[00:55:06] Randall: very interesting stuff. Um, so, so where else do we go in terms of the, I mean, this is about as deep a composite deep nerdery, as we can get in, into composites and so on. And, uh, given that we're already here, we might as just, you know, dig ourselves deeper.
[00:55:25] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Um, sir, just on the roll wrapping, the thing that, um, I remember one of the cool innovations that Nancy came up with was the double D section, um, tube where she would roll wrap two D shaped tubes, stick them together and do an outer wrap on the outside. So it was a efficient way to do a ribbed tube or a single ribs through the middle. She pretty much invented.
[00:55:53] Uh, we started doing something with that, um, change days, uh, to get more stiffness out of a change day. But, um, I just, some reason that image flashed in my mind about some of the innovative stuff that been going on that people don't really see it's. And that's what I'm saying before where the, uh, technology of composites has, um it's got a long way to go and it's, there's all kinds of stuff going on that are, are, is brand new.
[00:56:23] Uh, most people people don't see it cause it's all process oriented more than product oriented. But for guys like me, it's really fast.
[00:56:34] Randall: Yeah, it reminds me of, um, a technology owned by a Taiwanese carbon frame manufacturing, pretty large-scale tier one that I'd spoken to where they're doing, uh, that bracing inside of the forks. don't think they're doing anything especially advanced in terms of how it's manufactured.
[00:56:54] I think they just have a, uh, the, the inner, um, you know, whether it's a bag or it's a, you know, EPS insert. And then they're just bridging, uh, between the two walls of the, uh, of the tube of the, the fork leg, uh, with another piece of carbon that gives it more lateral structure zero, uh, impact on the, um, for AFT compliance, which is a really technique.
[00:57:21] Craig Calfee: that sounds like Steve Lee at
[00:57:24] Randall: Uh, this was YMA.
[00:57:27] Craig Calfee: Oh, okay.
[00:57:28] Randall: Yeah, the gigantic folks. I haven't, I don't know if I've interacted with them yet, but, um, but yeah, well,
[00:57:35] Craig Calfee: Yeah, some amazing innovation coming out of Taiwan. They're there. They're so deep into it. It's, it's a fun place to go and, and see what they're up to.
[00:57:47] Randall: this actually brings me back to, um, I, I did had a conversation with over with Russ at path, less pedaled, and was asking like, you know, tell me about the quality of stuff made, made over in Asia. And I was like, well, you know, it's generally best to work with their production engineers because they're so close to the actual manufacturing techniques and they're the ones innovating on those techniques.
[00:58:10] And in fact, um, you know, even specialized up until recently did not do carbon fiber in. outsource that, you know, they, they do some of the work in house, but then the actual design for manufacture and all that is being done by the factories and rightfully so the factories know it better, being close to the ground though, dealing with someone with yourself, you're someone who could go into a factory and be like, okay, let's, let's innovate on this.
[00:58:35] Craig Calfee: Yeah.
[00:58:36] Yeah.
[00:58:37] Randall: so then 2011, um, first production, gravel bike.
[00:58:45] Craig Calfee: Uh, yeah. Yeah. We came up with the, uh, adventure bike, we call it, um, it was also the first one that did the, uh, six 50 B uh, tire size that can be used with a 700 by 42 or So mixing, know, going bigger tire on a slightly smaller rim on the same bike as you'd run a 700 C and, uh, 35 or 40 millimeter tire. Um, yeah, so the adventure bike has been. Uh, a real fun area for us as far as, uh, just developing a, do everything. Be everything, bike
[00:59:24] Randall: it's. And the geometry of that was kind of an endurance road geometry, right
[00:59:28] Craig Calfee: that's
[00:59:29] right. It's a road bike effectively, but with a few, a few, uh, tweaks for riding off road.
[00:59:36] Randall: So then this, this word, gravel bike is kind of muddled.
[00:59:39] Um, I never liked it, frankly. Uh, it's a marketing term. I remember it specialized when we were doing the, the diverse, um, you know, it was still kind of honing in on what these bikes were. Uh, but you could argue that like, you know, you know, everyone's road bike was a gravel bike. When you just put the biggest tires that would fit and write it on dirt.
[00:59:57] But this concept of a one bike, it seems to be what you've planted. But you can have a single bike that will be your road, bike, perform handle, give you that, that experience when you put road wheels on, but then you can put these big six fifties on there and have a, you know, an off-road crit machine that is highly competent in, in rough terrain.
[01:00:16] And so, so yeah, that, and that's very much my design philosophy as you know, as well, you know, fewer bikes that do more things.
[01:00:24] Craig Calfee: Yeah. We have this. Kind of a marketing phrase for, you know, how the end plus one concept where, you know, how many bikes do you even need? Well, one more than what you've got. Well, we do the N minus one concept with our mountain bike, which can also be a gravel by ache or a bike, but it's, uh, it allows you to change the head tube angle and, and use different, uh, fork travel suspension forks on, on the same frame.
[01:00:55] Uh, and of course, swapping wheels out is, is always a thing. So yeah, the end minus one concept where we just need less stuff, you know,
[01:01:04] Randall: So I reinvented that when I started thesis, he used to say like, and, minus three, it replaces road, bike, your gravel bike, your road, bike, your cross bike, your, um, light duty cross country bike, uh, your adventure bike actually as well, you know, load these things up. yeah, very much a philosophy that, uh, I think it's so good that the, its efforts to come up with new, subcategories, for example, by having gravel bikes now run oversize 700 wheels and extending the geo and going with these really slack head angles in order to accommodate that wheel size.
[01:01:40] I actually think that the form, the form that things want to evolve towards is actually what you created in the first place, which is the one bike that does all the things and does them well. And depending on the wheels you put on them, um, we'll do we'll, we'll transform. Uh, and you know, we've, we've talked a little bit about geo changing, um, You know, and things like this, which you have a bike that, that does that.
[01:02:03] And why don't we talk a bit about that in the technology behind it?
[01:02:08] Craig Calfee: The SFL, you mean we use the geometry of the head tube and the bottom bracket to, uh, to accommodate what you're using it for? Yeah, the concept there is to, if you're on a long ride to be able to change the geometry of your bike mid ride. So with an Allen wrench, you, uh, basically swap these flip plates out on your head to varia.
[01:02:32] And so you climb, you can climb with one geometry with another. And to me, that's, that's really fun because the climbing, you, if you're climbing up a a long steep climb on a bike that you're going to descend back down on, uh, you really don't want the same geometry it's, you're compromising and one or the other, either climate.
[01:02:55] Or it descends great. It's rarely both, or really can't possibly be both. Cause they're just doing two different things. So if you can swap out these flip plates and change the head tube angle, which is really all you need at that point, um, you have a bike that climbs great and descends. Great. So for me, that was the goal of, uh, just making a better mountain bike. Um, you know, the fact that it can be converted into other bikes for different disciplines is a whole nother angle. Uh, and you can even do that perhaps you wouldn't do it the trail, but let's say you show up, say you're on a trip, an adventure, uh, maybe out to Utah, for example, where you're riding slick rock, but you're also going to go up, you know, into the mountains.
[01:03:45] Um, you'll have you, you might want to have. Different fork travels or different for, uh, options. So you can bring a couple of different forks and swap out a fork, change your flip plates and have a bike. That's awesome for slick rock. And then another one that's awesome for, for the bike parks. So, you know, to me it would, but it's only one bike and you know, you don't need, you know, three bikes. So that, that just, uh, that's the design result of a bike where you can change the head tube angle on,
[01:04:21] Randall: and the, in really how much head tube angle adjustment is there on there.
[01:04:25] Craig Calfee: uh, it's a or minus four degrees
[01:04:28] Randall: that's, that's substantial.
[01:04:30] Craig Calfee: that's a lot.
[01:04:31] Randall: Yeah.
[01:04:31] I mean, that's transformative really. I work in increments of, you know, half a degree.
[01:04:36] Craig Calfee: Yeah. These are half degree increments, um, right now, uh, one degree, but we can easily do half degree increments. find that one degree is, is really. Um, especially when you have the option of, of tweaking the same bike. So reason we focus on these half degree increments on a production bike is to dial in the best compromise between two, two ways that it's going to be used when you don't need to compromise, you can go a full degree in the other direction and not worry about fact that it's not going to perform as well, know, in super steep terrain because that flipped chip is not, uh, the right one for the super steep scenario.
[01:05:22] Just change it out or flip it over a T when you approach the really steep stuff. So yeah.
[01:05:29] Randall: applicable for mountain bikes, particularly because the, I mean, the slack, the long slack that, that have emerged in recent years make a ton of sense for mountain biking, especially descending, but when you're ascending, it ends up being so slack that you get wheel flop, you get the front end, lifting the bike naturally wants to tilt back.
[01:05:49] You don't have that on a gravel bike currently. And if you don't, if you're not adding a huge suspension fork, you're never going to be descending terrain that is so technical that you need those slacked out angles. So it sounds like something that's very much could be applied to gravel bikes, but that, you know, for the mountain bike application is actually pretty game-changing.
[01:06:06] Craig Calfee: Yeah, well on gravel bikes or adventure bikes, um, uh, it's actually helpful if you're, if you're, let's say you're a roadie and you're starting to go off road. And so you're driving these gravel trails and then you're starting to get into more interesting off-road excursions with that same bike, but your experience on steep terrain is limited because you're, you know, you're a roadie, you've your, all your muscle memory and all your bike handling memory comes from the road and a little bit of dirt road stuff.
[01:06:39] Now you're kind of getting into serious off-road stuff and you want to try. a Uh, shortcut dissent, uh, you know, down something kind of crazy. Uh, let's say, uh, you're not very good at it in the beginning and you take your time and you, you don't have a bike that can go that fast down, such a trail, then you change it out.
[01:07:00] As you get better at it, as you increase your skill level and your confidence level, might want to go a little faster. So you a bike that can go a little faster safely and go for that slack head angle, which is designed to get higher speed. So it's great for evolving skills and evolving terrain as you start exploring more radical stuff.
[01:07:27] So that's the other reason to do it.
[01:07:29] Randall: Yeah, that makes, that makes a lot of sense. And in fact, any, you know, what I'm working on going forward very much as a, uh, one of the core, you know, is, uh, being able to tailor the geometry, um, as close to on the fly as possible. Uh, you know, if you want it to be on the fly, you're going to add a huge amount of added structure and complexity and weight, but having it be when you swap the wheels, there's very little to do, you know, this sort of thing.
[01:07:57] Craig Calfee: Yeah. So yeah, the whole idea is to, is to be able to go and have really fun adventures after all I wrote the book on adventures, see, here's, uh, this is a, this is the commercial part of our, our, uh,
[01:08:10] plug
[01:08:12] is, uh, this book I wrote about a trip. I took back in the, in the mid early eighties. Uh it's it's a kind of a.
[01:08:20] Randall: of a
[01:08:21] Craig Calfee: It has nothing to do with bikes, except that there is a section in there where I made a canteen out of bamboo in the Congo, but it's a pretty crazy trip. And, uh, and I just called it adventures. It's on amp. anyone wants to buy it.
[01:08:37] Randall: I will get a coffee.
[01:08:39] Craig Calfee: Yeah.
[01:08:42] Randall: Um, very, very cool. Um, we skipped over one, which is the manta, which is another interesting innovation
[01:08:51] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Suspension on a road bike. I mean, that's a, I keep saying that's going to be the future and it hasn't happened yet, but I, I still believe that road bikes will be the main type of bike being written in the highest levels of racing.
[01:09:08] interesting
[01:09:08] Randall: So you think suspension versus say. Um, wide tubeless, aerodynamic, the optimized rims with a 30 mil tire run at lower pressures. You think the suspension has a sufficient benefit relative to that, to offset say the structural complexity or weight?
[01:09:25] Craig Calfee: Yes. So, uh, the big tire thing, trend towards bigger tires is really a trend towards suspension. It's pneumatic suspension rather than mechanical suspension.
[01:09:39] Randall: Well, as our regular listeners know, this is a topic that's very much near and dear to my heart. I talk often about the benefits of pneumatic suspension, so this will be an interesting place for us to stop and really dive in when we follow up in part two of this conversation which Craig and I will be recording on the Thursday after this episode is published. So if you'd like to participate in the conversation, please tag us in the ridership, direct your questions and comments our way, and we will try to incorporate them into part two. And of course, if you haven't already come join us in the ridership, we'd love to have you and there's a lot of innovation that will be happening there in terms of how we use new digital tools in order to facilitate the community that we want for offline connection exchange and experience.
[01:10:21] So with that until next time. It's Craig would say here's to getting some dirt under your wheels.
This week Randall sits down with bicycle industry pioneer, Craig Calfee. Craig has been an industry leader for decades with his work on the Calfee brand and many other collaborations throughout the industry. You cannot find someone more knowledgable about carbon (or bamboo) as a material.
Calfee Designs Website
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Craig Calfee Randall
[00:00:00]
[00:00:04] Randall: Welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Randall Jacobs and our guest today is Craig Calfee. Craig is the founder of Calfee Design, the innovator behind the first full carbon frames to race in the tour de France, the originator of numerous technologies adopted throughout the cycling industry, and on a personal note has been a generous and consistent supporter of my own entrepreneurial journey. I am grateful to have him as a friend, and I've been looking forward to this conversation for some time. So with that, Craig, Calfee welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:32] Craig Calfee: Oh, thank you. Nice to be here.
[00:00:34] Randall: So, let's start with, what's your background, give your own story in your own words.
[00:00:40] Craig Calfee: Well, I've always written bikes. I mean, as a kid, that's how I got around. And that's, as you become an older child, you, uh, find your independence with moving about the world. And a bicycle of course, is the most efficient way to do that. And later on, I was a bike messenger in New York when I went to college and that kind of got me into bike design as much for the, uh, desire to make a bike that can withstand a lot of abuse. And later on, I used a bike for commuting to work at a job, building carbon fiber racing boats. And during that time I crashed my bike and needed a new frame. So I thought I'd make a frame at a carbon fiber, uh, tubing that I had been making at my.
[00:01:29] Randall: my job
[00:01:30] Craig Calfee: So this is back in 1987, by the way. So there wasn't a, there were no YouTube videos on how to make your own carbon bike. So I pretty much had to invent a way to build the bike out of this tubing. And at the time there were aluminum lugged bikes, and I just, I knew already aluminum and carbon fiber don't get along very well. So you have to really do a lot of things to, to accommodate that. And the existing bikes at the time were, uh, I would say experimental in the fact that they were just trying to glue aluminum to carbon and it really wasn't working.
[00:02:05] So I came up with my own way and built my first bike and it turned out really well. And a lot of friends and, and bike racers who checked out the bikes that I I really should keep going with it. So I felt like I discovered carbon fiber as a, as the perfect bicycle material before anyone else. Uh, and actually, uh, right at that time, Kestrel came out with their first bike, uh, the K 1000 or something. Um, anyway that was uh, that was in 87, 88. And, uh, I felt like I should really, you know give it a go. So I moved out to California and started a bike company.
[00:02:48] Randall: So just to be clear, you were actually making the tubes, you weren't buying tubes. So you're making the tubes out of the raw carbon or some pre-printed carbon. then you came up with your own way of, uh, joining those tubes.
[00:03:01] Craig Calfee: Yeah. I worked on a braiding machine, so it was actually a a hundred year old, uh, shoelace braider, uh, from back in Massachusetts. There's a lot of old textile machinery braiding is, uh, you know, your braided socks and, you know, nylon rope is braided. So this is a 72 carrier braider, which means 72 spools of carbon fiber.
[00:03:25] Are winding in and out braiding this tube and you just run it back and forth through this braider a few times. And now you have a thick enough wall to, uh, I developed a and tape wrapping method at that job and came up with a pretty decent way to make a bicycle tube. So that was kind of the beginning of that.
[00:03:47] Uh, and since then I've explored all kinds of methods for making tubing, mainly through subcontractors who specialize in things like filament winding and roll wrapping. And, uh, pultrusion, you know, all kinds of ways to make tubing. And that does relate to kind of an inspiration for me, where I realized that, uh, carbon fiber, you know, high performance composites are relatively young and new in the world of technology where metals are, you know, the metals have been around since the bronze age.
[00:04:21] I mean, literally 5,000 years of development happened with metals, carbon fiber, uh, high-performance composites have only really been around since world war two. So that's a huge gap in development that hasn't happened with composites. So that to me felt like, oh, there's some job security for a guy who likes to invent things. So that was my, a kind of full force to get me to really focus on composite materials.
[00:04:51] Randall: Were you that insightful in terms of the historical context at the time, or is that kind of a retro or retrospective reflection?
[00:04:58] Craig Calfee: I think, I don't know. I think I may have read about that. Um, I a friend who had a library card at MIT and I pretty much lived there for a few weeks every, uh, master's thesis and PhD thesis on bicycles that they had in their library. And I think somewhere in there was a, uh, a topic on composites and comparing the technology of composites.
[00:05:23] So. I probably that from some reading I did, or maybe I did invent that out of thin air. I don't remember, uh, nonetheless, uh, the fact of it is, you know, not, not a whole lot of mental energy has been put into coming up with ways of processing fiber and resin compared to metal. So to me that just opens up a wide world of, of innovation.
[00:05:49] Randall: Um, and so the first frame was that, um, you're creating essentially uniform tubes and then mitering them, joining them, wrapping them as you do with your current bamboo frames or what was happening there.
[00:06:02] Craig Calfee: Uh, it's more like the, uh, our, our carbon fiber frames were laminating carbon fabric in metal dyes, and those are not mitered tubes fitting into the dyes. And that's, that's a process. I got my first patent on. And it, uh, so in the process of compressing the carbon fabric against the tubes, you're you end up with these gussets in what is traditionally the parting line of a mold and rather than trim them off completely.
[00:06:31] I, I use them as reinforcing ribs.
[00:06:35] Randall: Yep. Okay. So that explains the, the, that distinctive element that continues with your, um, some of your, uh, to tube, uh, currently
[00:06:48] Craig Calfee: them
[00:06:49] the hand wrapping technique from that you currently see on the bamboo bikes came from developing a tandem frame, or basically a frame whose production numbers don't justify the tooling costs. Um, so that's hand wrapped. That's just literally lashed to. Yeah. And a point of note, there is I was a boy scout growing up and, uh, there's this merit badge called pioneering merit badge.
[00:07:16] And I really enjoyed pioneering merit badge because it involved lashing row, uh, poles together with rope and the pro you had to do with this one project. And I did a tower and it was this enormous structure that went just straight up like a flagpole, but it was it involved a bunch of tetrahedrons, uh, stacked on top of each other and lashed together.
[00:07:41] you know, culminating in a pole that went up. I don't remember how tall it was, but it was, it was really impressive. And everybody, you know, thought, wow, this is incredible of poles and some rope. And here we have this massive tower. So anyway, I was into things together since a young age.
[00:08:00] And so I immediately came up with the, uh, the last tube concept. Which is where the, now the bamboo bikes are. course there's a specific pattern to the wrapping, but, um, the concept is basically using fiber to lash stuff together,
[00:08:16] Randall: When it immediately brings to mind, what's possible with current generation of additive production techniques. Uh, whereas before you could make small components and then lash them together to create structures that otherwise aren't manufacturable.
[00:08:31] Now you'd be able to say, print it out though. Those, you know, those printed out materials don't have the performance characteristics of a, you know, a uni directional carbon of the sword that you're working with currently.
[00:08:42] Craig Calfee: right?
[00:08:43] Randall: Um, so we've gone deep nerd here. We're going to, I'm going to pull us out and say, okay, uh, lots of time for this.
[00:08:49] This is going to be a double episode. Uh, so next up, let's talk about those frames, uh, saw their big debut.
[00:08:59] Craig Calfee: Yeah. So, um, we started making custom geometry for a. In 1989 and selling them and so big and tall, and that the idea of custom geometry frames was, uh, you know, pretty esoteric. And the pro racers were, we're using a lot of custom frames. So Greg Lamond, uh, was in search of a carbon fiber, uh, custom frame builder in, uh, 1990.
[00:09:31] And, uh, no one really was doing it. We were literally the only company making custom carbon frame bikes. So he, uh, found out about us, uh, effectively discovered us, shall we say? And, uh, it didn't take long for him to order up 18 of them for his, his, uh, team Z, uh, teammates. He was sponsoring his own team with a Lamont brand.
[00:09:56] So we didn't have to sponsor him. He basically paid for the frame. Put his name on them. And, and, uh, now we're now we're on the defending champions, a tour de France team. So that was a huge break obviously. And it was really a pleasure working with Greg and getting to know the demands of the pro Peloton, uh, you know, that really launched us.
[00:10:21] So that was, uh, quite a splash. And, you know, it always is a great answer to the question. Oh, so who rides your bike kind of thing. you know, you have the, the full-on best one in the world at the time. So, so that was a fun thing.
[00:10:39] Randall: And the name of the company at the time was,
[00:10:41] Craig Calfee: Uh, carbon frames.
[00:10:42] Randall: yeah. So anyone wanting
[00:10:45] dig up the historical record,
[00:10:47] Craig Calfee: is this too generic? You know, the other to what you're talking about, the adventure bikes. Yeah, we had to stop. I mean, carbon frames is a terrible name because everyone started talking about all carbon fiber frames as carbon frames. So we thought that was cool, you know, like Kleenex, you know, uh, and then we came up with the adventure bike, you know, with very early, uh, adventure bike.
[00:11:11] And it was just, we called it the adventure bike. And now there's a classification called adventure bikes that, you know, so, um, I think we, we, we went too generic on how we named our models.
[00:11:26] Randall: I've drawn from the rich tradition, a tradition of Greek, you know, uh, philosophy for naming my own companies in the like,
[00:11:35] Craig Calfee: Yeah.
[00:11:36] Randall: uh, um, and then next up, uh, so you've worked with Greg Lamond on those frames. Carbon frames is up and running and you're, you're producing custom geo frames and you're starting to get at some scale at this point and some notoriety.
[00:11:52] next up you were working on your bamboo bikes. When we talk about that
[00:11:57] Craig Calfee: Yeah, that was say, I'm kind of at the, at the time, it was just a way to get publicity. So at the Interbike trade show, you'd have a few creative people making some wacky bikes out of beer cans or, or other just weird things just to get attention, just, just to send the media over to your booth, to take a picture of some wacky thing that you're doing.
[00:12:20] yeah, we got to do something like that to get, get some attention. And the, uh, so I was looking around for some PVC pipe. Maybe I was going to do a PVC pipe bike, and I wasn't really sure, but I knew that we could just wrap any tube. Make a bike out of literally anything. So, um, my dog was playing with some bamboo behind the shop.
[00:12:42] Uh, she was a stick dog, so she loved to clamp onto a stick and you could swing her around by the, by the sticks. She's a pit bull and lab mix. Anyway, we ran out of sticks. Uh, cause we only had one little tree in the back, but we did have some bamboos. So she came up with a piece of bamboo and I was her around by it, expecting it to break off in her mouth because I just wasn't aware of how strong bamboo was, but it turned out it was really quite strong.
[00:13:12] And I said, oh, let's make a bike out of this stuff. And sure enough, uh, the bike was, uh, quite a attention getter. It got the quarter page and bicycling magazine so that, you know mission accomplished on that front. And, but the bike itself rode really well.
[00:13:29] Randall: well
[00:13:30] Craig Calfee: Um, when I wrote my first carbon bike, uh, the very first ride on my very first carbon bike, I was struck by how smooth it was.
[00:13:38] It had this vibration damping that was, you know, just super noticeable and, and that really kind of lit a fire under my butt thinking, wow, this is really cool. When I built my first bamboo bike, I had that same feeling again, how smooth It was It was amazing for its vibration damping. So, uh, I knew I was onto something at that point.
[00:14:02] Uh, that first bike was a little too flexy, but, uh, the second bike I built was significantly stiffer and was an actual, real rideable bike. So, uh, from that point, uh, we just started building a few here and there and it was still a novelty item until about, uh, 1999, 2000. When a few people who had been riding them, or like, I want another one, I I want to know mountain bike this time.
[00:14:29] So as it was just starting to get known and, uh, we started selling them through dealers. And I mean there's a lot of stories I can tell on how that evolved and how people started actually believing that a bamboo bike could actually exist in the world. So it took a while though.
[00:14:49] Randall: I think there's a whole thread that we could tug on maybe in a subsequent episode where we focus just on the bamboo bike revolution.
[00:14:57] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. That's um, there's a lot of, lot of stuff going on there. I'm actually writing my second book on history of the bamboo bike, because there's so many interesting angles to it, particularly in the.
[00:15:10] Randall: in Africa
[00:15:12] I'm struck by the juxtaposition of this bleeding edge. Uh, you know, high-tech material that you pioneered and then this going back to one of the most basic building materials, uh, that we have building bikes out of that. And in fact, um, on the one hand, there's this, this extreme, know, difference in terms of the technology ization of each material.
[00:15:34] But on the other hand, there's a parallel the sense that like carbon, in tubes is best, uh, you know, generally, uh, when it's you need to write. Yeah, with maybe some cross fibers in order to prevent, prevent it from separating. And bamboo also has that characteristic of having, you know, you need directional fibers that are bonded together by some, uh, you know, some other material in, in the, in the bamboo
[00:15:58] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah, it's very, there's a lot of similarities. I mean, bamboo is amazing just because it grows out of the ground and tubular for. And it grows a new, huge variety of diameters and wealth thicknesses. So if you're looking for tubing, I mean, you don't have to go much further. It's amazing that it literally grows out of the ground that way.
[00:16:20] Randall: paint
[00:16:21] a picture for folks to, um, most of our listeners I'm guessing are in north America or, you know, other, uh, English-speaking parts of the world. I lived in China and as you've been, you see huge scaffolding, multi-story, you know, big buildings and the scaffolding isn't made out of metal.
[00:16:37] It's made out of bamboo lashed together with zip ties and pieces of wire. So it really speaks to the, the structural, uh, strength of the material and reliability of the material. and you know, should instill confidence when descending down a mountain.
[00:16:54] Craig Calfee: Oh yeah. No, it's, I, I remember seeing bamboo and scaffolding many, many years. And I thought, well, of course, and the other reason they use it in scaffolding is when a typhoon hits and it, it kind of messes up the scaffolding of a construction site. Um, it's, they're back to work on the bamboo construction sites, much faster than the metal scaffolding sites, they have to deal with bent and distorted metal scaffolding, um, to replace those and fix that takes a lot longer where bamboo, they just bend it back and lash it back together.
[00:17:32] It's it's so much easier.
[00:17:35] Randall: there's one more thing on this theme that I want to, uh, pull out before we move on, which is talk to me about the, the sustainability components of it. Um, starting with how it was done initially.
[00:17:47] And then now with say like, uh, biodegradable resins or, or other materials I can, this frame can be current.
[00:17:55] Craig Calfee: Uh, the short answer is yes, the frame can be composted. And the other cool thing is if you take care of it, it it'll never compost, meaning you can prevent it from being composted naturally. if you really want to, you know, uh, dispose of the frame, um, it will biodegrade much faster than any other material that bicycle frames are made of.
[00:18:22] So yeah, the, the renewable aspect, the low energy content of it, it's, it's utterly the best you can imagine. And we're kind of waiting for the world to finally get serious about global warming and start to have some economic incentives for buying products that are in fact, uh, good for the environment. Uh, we haven't seen that yet, but we're kind of holding out and hoping that happens.
[00:18:49] And then we'll see probably some significant growth in the bamboo adoption in the bicycling world.
[00:18:57] Randall: I want to plant a seed that, that, uh, to germinate in my head, which is this idea of bamboos being the ideal material for kind of more mainstream, uh, utility bicycles and recreational bicycles. really it's a matter of the unit economics in economies of scale and consistency of material, which you could make uniform by having, uh, having controlled grow conditions and things like that.
[00:19:23] Um, but it could be a very localized industry to anywhere where bamboo grows. this could be produced, which reduces transportation costs reduces, you know, issues of inventory carrying and all these things. Um, so let's, let's park that I want to ask you more about those, about the economics of bamboo in a side conversation to see if there's, you know, explore there.
[00:19:45] Craig Calfee: well, there is. I mean, that's, that's what we did in Africa. Same concept is as why, why would bamboo work in Africa better than the imported bikes from China? So that was, that was the whole thing around that.
[00:19:59] Randall: Ah, I love it. All right. So though, there will be a bamboo episode folks. Uh, we're going to, going to continue cause there's a lot of ground to cover here. so next steps you've done done the first carbon frame and the tour de France, uh, carbon frames is up and running. You've started getting into bamboo, what was next,
[00:20:18] Craig Calfee: Um, then lots of smaller developments, which become really important to us from a business perspective, uh, fiber tandem, we built the first one of those. And then we went to a lateral list, tandem design, and it's pretty optimized at this point. So we're, I would say we are the leader in the tandem world in terms of the highest performance, tandem bikes, uh, and then re repairing of carbon frames.
[00:20:47] That was a big one, uh, which we were kind of pushed into by customers. And other folks who heard that we could repair the Cathy frames and they would set a call up. And literally we had a, an in one inquiry per week, if not more, more often about like a colonoscopy that this guy wanted to repair and he heard we could do it on ours.
[00:21:10] And we're like, well, by a Calfee don't, you know, I'm sorry, but we can't repair somebody else's frame. You'll have to buy one of ours. And then you'll know that you crash it, we can repair it for, he was trying to make that a, a a advantage for our brand, but we couldn't really, you know, do that. So, uh, we said, well, if we can't beat them, we'll repair them.
[00:21:32] And we repaired a first and then some specialized, I think, after that. So we, we accepted repair jobs and pretty soon it became about a third of our, our business. And it's, uh, of course now lots of other people repair frames, but, uh, we started doing that in 2001 or something and, and we've been doing it ever since.
[00:21:58] And it's, that part has been really interesting to see, because we get to literally see the inside of everyone else's frames and look at the weak points. You know, they often show up on, on people's frames and get asked to fix them or even redesign them at that point. So that's been really interesting to, to me as a technician,
[00:22:21] Randall: and want to come back to this in a second, but before we lose it, what is a lateralis tandem design?
[00:22:27] Craig Calfee: uh, that, so traditional tandems had a, a tube that went the head tube, usually straight back down towards the dropouts or or bottom bottom bracket. And it's, it's a way to stiffen up a frame. That's inherently not very stiffened torsion. But, uh, with composites, you can orient the fiber, uh, in torsion to make a tube significantly stiffer and torsion than say a metal tube of similar weight.
[00:22:57] So we were able to go a little bit bigger diameter and more fiber in the helical angled orientation and make a tandem, uh, stiff enough and torsion and get rid of that tube. And for a carbon fiber frame, that it was really important because number of times you have to join the tube, the more expensive it is or the more labor content there is. So we were able to reduce our labor content, make the frame lighter and make it stiffer all at, in one design change. So that was a big, a big revelation. And now I most of them have copied that design. So it's, uh, it's, that's another time where we, we did something that, that, uh, now became the standard.
[00:23:43] Randall: Yeah. One of many from what I've observed in a written the history. Uh, so around this time, or shortly after you started the repair business, you started doing some pretty, pretty wild frames in terms of pushing the limits of what was possible when we talk about that.
[00:24:01] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah, we did. We've done a lot of different types of frames, uh, mostly for show, but, um, like the north American handmade bike show is a great venue for just doing something way out of left field. Um, we did, uh, a bamboo bike made all out of small diameter, bamboo. Um, it's I only made one because it was a total pain in the ass to make.
[00:24:26] Uh, and it was also kind of inspired by the, a request from a guy who was not only a fan of bamboo, but he was a fan of molten style bikes. Those are the trust style frames with small wheels. So we built one of those and. With the only small diameter bamboo, and we built another one that was, uh, a real art piece.
[00:24:49] So just having fun with that from a, you know, completely artistic direction is a lot of fun for me because that's my formal training. I went to art school and learned about different materials and, and art and composition. Uh, and I was into the structure of materials and how they, they relate to each other.
[00:25:12] And my art was more of a forum file form follows function, kind of inspiration. And, uh, so some bikes that I've made were, are not terribly practical, but just explore the, the limits of structure. So another bike I made, uh, we call it the spider web bike, which was literally a, a bike made of just carbon fiber strands.
[00:25:36] No tubes. And it, it was kind of wild looking and a collector ended up buying it, which is really cool. But you look at this thing and you just couldn't imagine that it, it, you could actually ride it, but, uh, it actually does ride fairly well. It's a bit fragile if you crash it, it would be kind of dangerous, but you know, stuff like that.
[00:25:55] I like to do that occasionally.
[00:25:59] Randall: I think of, uh, like biomorphic design or like hyper optimized design that maybe doesn't have the resiliency, but very strict parameters will perform higher than anything else that you could, you could create.
[00:26:12] Craig Calfee: absolutely. Yeah. Those are really fun. I'm really inspired by natural forms and, uh, you know, the, the, some of the new computer aided techniques we're designing are, uh, rattled in those lines. so, yeah, I follow that pretty closely.
[00:26:28] Randall: a little sidebar. Um, I don't know if you've, uh, no of, uh, Nick Taylor, the guy who created the, Ibis Maximus in front of the mountain bike hall of fame.
[00:26:40] Craig Calfee: Um, no, I don't think so.
[00:26:43] Randall: I'll introduce you to his work at some point, but he's another one of these people who, very avid cyclist is not in the bike industry, but is. There's a lot of trail building and alike and isn't is a sculptor really focused on, the form of, uh, you know, biological shapes and materials and, and things of this sort.
[00:27:02] Uh, I think that there's a lot, uh, I'm actually curious more into your, your non bike artistic work for a moment. Uh, and, and how that got infused into your work with the bike.
[00:27:18] Craig Calfee: yeah, so I haven't done a lot of, you know, just pure, fine art sculpture in a long time. But when I was doing that, it was. a lot of things that would fool the eye or, um, some material and, and push it to its limit. So I was doing stuff that was, um, uh, you know, trying to create a, almost like a physical illusion, not just an optical illusion, but a, but a physical illusion or like, how could you possibly do that kind of thing?
[00:27:54] And that was a theme of my sculpture shortly after Pratt. So for example, just take one example of a sculpture that I got a lot of credit for in classes at Pratt, it was a, a big block of Oak. It was a cutoff from a woodworking shop. It's about a foot in, let's say a foot cube of Oak. And I would, um, so I, I, uh, raised the grain on it with a wire brush and then I blocked printed on Oak tag page.
[00:28:26] Um, some black ink on rolled onto the Oak block and made a river, basically a print off of each face of the, of the block. And then I carefully taped that paper together to simulate a paper block of the Oak chunk that I I had. now I had a super light paper version of the Oak block. And then I hung them on a balance beam, which I forged at a steel, but the hanging point was way close to the piece.
[00:28:57] And if you looked at it from three feet away, just, your brain would, just hurting because you couldn't figure out how is this even possible? And because it really looked amazing, super hyper real. Anyway, it just looked amazing and it was fun to get the effect of how the hell did that. Did he do that?
[00:29:18] What's what's the trick here. There's something going on. That's not real. Or it's. Uh it's not physically possible. And I kind of got that feeling with the carbon fiber bike. When we, when we built the first bike, everyone would pick it up and go, oh, that's just too light. It's not even a bike. It's a plastic bike it's going to break instantly.
[00:29:39] So that was sort of a relation from, from those days to the, to the bike.
[00:29:44] Randall: You ever come across Douglas Hofstadter's book, Godel, Escher Bach.
[00:29:49] Craig Calfee: No, but I'd be interested to read it.
[00:29:51] Randall: Definite short Lister. Um, uh, you've come across MC Escher, of Yeah. And are there any parallels or any inspiration there?
[00:30:01] Craig Calfee: Um, not very direct, I'd say. Um,
[00:30:08] Who
[00:30:08] Randall: your, who your inspirations or what, what would you say your creative energy is most similar to?
[00:30:14] Craig Calfee: I'd probably, I'd say say Buckminster fuller.
[00:30:17] Randall: Mm,
[00:30:17] Craig Calfee: Yeah. I mean, I studied his work in depth, you know, not only the geodesic dome stuff, but also his vehicles, the dime on vehicle the, yeah. So there's, there's a bunch of stuff that he was involved with that I'd say, I'm parallel with as far as my interest goes,
[00:30:37] Randall: what books should I read?
[00:30:39] Craig Calfee: all of them.
[00:30:42] Randall: Where do I start? If I have limited
[00:30:44] time
[00:30:45] Craig Calfee: Yeah. It's a tough one. He's actually really difficult to read too. His writing is not that great. I pretty much look at his, uh, his design work more than His writing
[00:30:56] Randall: Okay. So who's book whose book about Buckminster fuller. Should I read?
[00:31:01] Craig Calfee: good question. I'll, I'll catch up with you on that later because there's few of them that they're worth. It's worth a look.
[00:31:07] Randall: awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Um, let's talk about 2001. you're a dragon fly.
[00:31:15] Craig Calfee: Yeah, the dragon fly was an interesting project. It was so Greg Lamanda had asked me, like, I want an even lighter bike. He was constantly pushing on the technology. And I said, well, there are some really expensive fibers that are starting to become available, but, um, you know, this would be a $10,000 bike frame and, you know, it's only going to be a half a pound lighter.
[00:31:40] And he said, well, I don't care. I just, you know, I w I need it for racing. I mean, um, you know, when, when I'm climbing Alpe d'Huez with Miguel Indurain and if he's got a lighter bike than I do, then I'm just going to give up, you know, in terms of the effort. So he needs to have that technical advantage, or at least be on the same plane.
[00:32:02] So the reason why he'd spend, you know, $5,000 for a half a pound, a weight savings was pretty, pretty real. So, but it took until about 2000, 2001 after he had long retired to, um, really make that happen. So the fibers I was talking about are really high modulus fiber that was very fragile, too brittle, really for any use.
[00:32:29] So we came up with a way to integrate it with, um, boron fiber. Uh, it actually was a material we found, uh, special specialty composites out of, uh, out of Rhode Island. Uh, they, uh, do this co-mingled boron and carbon fiber, uh, hybrid material, which was, um, they were looking for a use cases for it and the bicycle was one of them.
[00:32:58] So, uh, we built a prototype with their material and it turned out. To be not only really light and really strong, the, the boron made it really tough. So carbon fiber has, uh, the highest stiffness to weight ratio, intention of any material you can use. boron is the highest stiffness to weight ratio in compression as a, as a fibrous material that you can integrate into a composite. So when you mix them, you now have a combination of materials, that are unbeatable.
[00:33:35] Randall: Like a concrete and rebar almost, or, quite.
[00:33:40] Craig Calfee: I'd say that's a good, um, for composites in general, but now we're talking about the extreme edge of, of performance, where, um, looking at the, most high performance material certain conditions, versus tension. These, these are conditions that are existing in a bicycle tube all the time.
[00:34:07] So one side of the tube is compressing while the other side is intention as you twist the bike, uh, and then it reverses on the, on the pedal stroke. So it has to do both now. Carbon fiber is quite good at that, but compression it suffers. And that's why you can't go very thin wall and make it, um, withstand any kind of impact because it's, it's got a weakness in it's, um, compressive. So, uh, it's, uh, it doesn't take a break very well either. So boron on, the other hand does take a break very well, and it's incredibly high compressive strength to weight ratio and compressive stiffness to weight ratio. are two different things by the way. So when you combine those into a tube, it's pretty amazing.
[00:34:57] Uh, they're just really quite expensive. So we came up with the dragon fly, um, in 2001 and it was at the time the lightest production bike yet it also had the toughness of a normal frame. And that's that's right around when the Scott came out, which was a super thin wall, large diameter, uh, carbon frame that was really fragile.
[00:35:23] Um, so that was sort of a similar weight, but not nearly as tough as, uh, the dragon fly.
[00:35:34] Randall: For well, to go a little bit deeper on this. So what is the nature like? What is the nature of the boron? Is it a, like, is it a molecule? Is it a filament? So you have, you have carbon filaments is the boron, um, you know, is that, are you putting it into the resin? How is it? Co-mingled.
[00:35:51] Craig Calfee: It's a, it's a filament, basically a super thin wire.
[00:35:56] Randall: You're essentially co-mingling it in when you're creating the tubes and then using the same resin to bond the entire structure together.
[00:36:04] Craig Calfee: That's right.
[00:36:05] Randall: Got it. And this, so then this is, uh, if you were to add then say like to the resin separately, it would be a compounding effect. Um, I don't know if you have, uh, mean, I assume you've done some stuff with graphene.
[00:36:19] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Graphing graphing is a really great material. It does improve the toughness of composites. Uh, it's again, also very expensive to use, uh, in a whole two. Usually it's used in smaller components, uh, not so much on the whole frame, uh, and it, and it's, um, it's best, uh, uses in preventing the of cracking.
[00:36:46] So it stops the micro cracking that starts with a failure mode. And that that's a great, thing. But if your laminate is too thin to begin with that, all the graphing in the world, isn't going to help you. So for really minor wax it'll help, but for anything substantial, it's going to break anyway.
[00:37:08] So you have to start out with a thick enough laminate get the toughness that you're looking for. Uh, graphene is really great for highly stressed areas, which might start cracking from, uh, fatigue or just the design flaw of a stress concentration. So it's got a number of purposes. Uh, it's great for, uh, like pinch clamp areas, you know, places where the mechanical, uh, stress is so high on a, on a very localized area.
[00:37:37] Um, so yeah, graphene is wonderful. We didn't get into it too much because, um, it's just, it would just, wasn't practical for our applications and how we make the frames, but, uh, some companies have started using graphene and it's, it's pretty interesting stuff.
[00:37:52] Randall: We did some experimentation with it early on in our looking at it for the future. my understanding is. You know, I haven't gone too deep into like the intermolecular physics, but it's essentially like you have a piece of paper and if you start tearing the paper that tear will propagate very easily.
[00:38:09] then the graphene is almost like little tiny pieces of tape. Randomly distributed, evenly distributed across the material that makes it so that that fracture can no longer propagate in that direction. And it has to change direction where it bumps into another graphene molecule and the graphing, essentially when we tested it was doubling the bond strength of the resin.
[00:38:30] So in terms of pulling apart different layers of laminate, then, um, increasing the toughness of say, uh, a rim made with the exact same laminate in the exact same resin with, 1% graphene per mass of resin increasing the toughness of that rim structure by 20%.
[00:38:50] Which is pretty
[00:38:50] Craig Calfee: That's correct.
[00:38:51] Randall: The challenges that is that it lowers the temperature, uh, the, the glass suffocation points resin. so, you know, a rim is like, you know, there are, if you're gonna put it on the back of your car, you know, that's not a normal use case when you're riding, but, you know, it's, it's something that just makes it less resilient to those towards sorts of, you know, people put on the back of the car too close to the exhaust and they melt the rim.
[00:39:17] So we're having to experiment with some high temperature residents that have other issues.
[00:39:22] Craig Calfee: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's rims are a great place for graphing, just cause they're in a a place where you'll have some impacts, but yeah. Temperature management is an issue. Um, yeah, that's the high temperature residents are, are another area that, that, uh, we're experimenting in, uh, wrapping electric motor, uh, rotors with, with a high temperature resonant carbon wrap.
[00:39:46] that's a whole nother area, but I'm familiar with that stuff.
[00:39:49] Randall: Which we'll get into in a second, park park, that one. Cause that's a fun theme. yeah. And I'm just thinking about a rim structure. It seems like boron on the inside graphing on the outside, um, deal with high compressive forces between the spokes and then the high impact forces on the external, will
[00:40:07] Craig Calfee: the material we use is called high bore. You can look that up. H Y B O R and there they're actually coming back with new marketing efforts there. They, I think the company got sold and then, um, the new buyers are, are re revisiting how to, to spread the use of it. So might be real interested in supporting a rim project.
[00:40:30] Randall: mm. Uh, to be continued offline. Um, all right. So then we've got your carbon fiber repair surface. We talked about the dragon fly. Um, it's a great segue into engineering and design philosophy. let's talk about that
[00:40:47] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Um, well it's, to me, it's all about form follows function and, uh, when something works so well, functionally, it's gonna look good. That's uh, that's why trees look great just by themselves, uh, that that's, you know, coming back to the natural world, you know, that's why we have a Nautilus shell for, uh, for our logo.
[00:41:12] It's the form follows function. Aspect of that just makes it look beautiful. For some reason, you look at something from nature, you don't really know why is it beautiful? Well, the reason is the way it's structured, the way it's evolved over millions of years. Has resulted in the optimum structure. So for me, as a, as a human being artificially trying to recreate stuff, that's been evolved in nature.
[00:41:39] Um, I look closely at how nature does it first and then I'll apply it to whatever I'm dealing with at the moment. And so that's how I, that's how I design stuff.
[00:41:50] Randall: there's a, the Nautilus shell example, like, you know, the golden ratio and the way that, really complex systems tend to evolve towards very simple, fundamental, primitives of all design
[00:42:04] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. There's some basic stuff that, that seemed to apply everywhere.
[00:42:10] Randall: So with your carbon fiber repair service, so you started to see some of the problems with that were emerging with these, um, large tube thin wall designs that were being used to achieve a high strength or sorry, a high stiffness to weight, but then compromising in other areas.
[00:42:28] So let's talk about that.
[00:42:30] Craig Calfee: Yeah, it's um, you know, designing a carbon fiber bike is actually really quite difficult. There's so much going on. There's so many, uh, things you have to deal with high stress areas that you can't really get around. there's a lot of constraints to designing a good bicycle frame. Um, and then you're dealing with the tradition of, of how people clamp things on bikes, you know, stem, clamps, and seed post clamps, and, uh, you know, th that type of mentality.
[00:43:04] It's still with us with the carbon, which is carbon doesn't do well with. So a lot of companies struggle with that and they'll come up with something on paper or in their CAD model. And their finite element analysis sort of works, but, and then they go into the real world and they have to deal with real situations that they couldn't predict in the, the computer.
[00:43:29] And they get a problem with, uh, you know, a minor handlebar whacking, the top tube situation, which shouldn't really cause your bike to become dangerous. But in fact, that's what happens. So you've got, um, you know, uh, weak points or vulnerabilities in these really light frame. And if you're not expected to know what the vulnerability is as an end-user and you don't know that if you wack part of the bike and in a minor way that you normally wouldn't expect to cause the frame to become a weak, then the whole design is a question. So you have to consider all these things when you decide to bike. And a lot of companies have just depended on the computer and they are finite element analysis too, to come up with shapes and designs that, uh, are inherently weak. And, um, people get pretty disappointed when they're, when the minor is to of incidents causes a crack in the frame.
[00:44:37] And if they keep riding the bike, the crack gets bigger. And then one day, you know, I mean, most people decide to have it fixed before it gets to be a catastrophic but, uh, you know, it gets expensive and, uh, You know, it's, sad. Actually, another motivation for getting into the repair business was to save the reputation of carbon fiber as a frame material.
[00:45:03] You know, these types of things don't happen to thin wall titanium frames. You know, a thin wall titanium frame will actually withstand a whole lot more abuse than a thin wall carbon frame. So it's just hard to make diameter thin wall titanium frames that are stiff enough and not without problems of welding, you know, the heat affected zones.
[00:45:26] So carbon fiber is, is a better material because it's so much easier to join and to, to mold. But if you, you have to design it properly to, to withstand normal abuse. And if you're not going to do that, then there should at least be a repair service available to keep those bikes from going to the landfill.
[00:45:45] So frequent. And so that's what we do we, we offer that and we even train people how to carbon repair service. So that's, um, that's something we've done in order to keep bikes from just getting thrown away.
[00:46:01] Randall: uh, I think I've shared with you, I'm in the midst of, uh, doing, uh, uh, a pretty radical ground up design, which is way off in the future. So I'll be picking your brain on that, but it immediately makes me think of the inherent. Compromises of current frame design and manufacturing techniques, including on our frame.
[00:46:20] And in our case, the way we've addressed that is through not going with lower modulates carbon, you know, S T 700, maybe some T 800 in the frame, then overbuilding it order to have resiliency against impacts. But then also these sorts of, um, micro voids in other imperfections that are in inherent process of any, uh, manufacturing, uh, system that involves handling of materials in a complex, you know, eight, uh, sorry, 250 a piece, you know, layup like there's, this there's even that like human elements that you have to design a whole bunch of fudge factor into to make sure that when mistakes are made, not if, but when mistakes are made, that there's so much, uh, overbuilding that they don't end up in a catastrophic failure.
[00:47:10] Craig Calfee: that's right. Yeah. Yeah. You have to have some safety margin.
[00:47:15] Randall: And the Manderal spinning process that you were describing essentially eliminates a lot of that in you're starting to see, I mean, with rims, that's the direction that rims are going in, everything is going to be automated, is going to be knit like a sock and frames are a much more complex shape. Um, but you're starting to see, uh, actually probably know a lot more about the, the automation of frame design than I do.
[00:47:35] Um, what do you see? Like as the, as the end point, at least with regards to the, um, like filament based carbon fiber material and frames, like where could it go with technology?
[00:47:50] Craig Calfee: the, the, um, robotics are getting super advanced now and there's this technique called, um, uh, they just call it fiber placements or automated fiber placement, which is a fancy word for a robot arm, winding fiber, you know, on a mandrel or shape, uh, and then compressing that and, uh, know, molding that.
[00:48:14] So it's, it's where your, a robot will orient a single filament of carbon fiber. Uh, continuously all around the, uh, the shape that you're trying to make. They do that in aerospace now for a really expensive rockets and satellite parts, but the technology is getting more accessible and, uh, so robotic trimmers are another one.
[00:48:42] So we're, in fact, we're getting ready to build our own robotic arm tremor for a resin transfer, molded parts. That's where the edge of the part that you mold gets trimmed very carefully with a router. And, but imagine instead of just a router trimming an edge, you've got a robot arm with a spool of fiber on it, wrapping the fiber individually around the whole structure of the frame.
[00:49:10] Uh, no, no people involved just, you know, someone to turn the machine on and then turn it off again. So that's kind of coming that that is a future. Uh, it hasn't arrived yet, certainly, maybe for simpler parts, but a frame is a very complex shape. So it'll take a while before they can get to that point.
[00:49:30] Randall: It having to, yeah. Being able to Uh, spin a frame in one piece is, seems to be the ultimate end game.
[00:49:43] Craig Calfee: Yeah. I think we need to, I think the, the, uh, genetically modified spiders would be a better way to
[00:49:50] go
[00:49:50] Randall: Yeah, they might, they might help us the design process.
[00:49:56] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. Just give them some good incentives and they'll, they'll make you set a really incredibly strong, you know, spider wound.
[00:50:05] Randall: Well, it does. It speaks to the, the, the biggest challenge I see with that, which is you have to go around shape. so if you're going through a frame, like it's essentially the triangle. And so you need some way to like hand off the, the S the filament carrier from one side to the other constantly.
[00:50:27] you'd just be able to spin it. You know, it would be pretty straightforward. So maybe the frame comes in a couple of different sections that get bonded, but then those don't form a ring. And so you can, you know, you can move them around instead of the machine order
[00:50:41] Craig Calfee: Well, there's these things called grippers. So the robot grip sit and then another arm grip know let's go and the other arm picks it up. And then there's like in weaving, there's this thing called the flying shuttle, which invented. That's where the shuttle that, the war
[00:50:59] Randall: Your ancestors were involved with flying shuttle.
[00:51:02] Craig Calfee: Yeah.
[00:51:02] Randall: That's one of the, uh, all right. That's, that's a whole other conversation.
[00:51:07] Craig Calfee: Yeah, a really interesting, I mean, it's the Draper corporation. If you want to look it up,
[00:51:13] um
[00:51:13] Randall: I
[00:51:13] Craig Calfee: know
[00:51:14] they were the manufacturing made the looms back in the industrial revolution in the Northeast
[00:51:21] Randall: I'm sitting currently in Waltham, which was one of the first mill cities, um, not from Lowell.
[00:51:28] Craig Calfee: Yeah. So all those mills were where our customers and they would buy the Draper looms. Um, and they were automated looms with a flying shuttle was a big deal Uh back then. And so they, they made a lot of, of those looms and, and that's basically what sent me to college with a trust fund. So
[00:51:49] Randall: You're a trust fund, baby.
[00:51:51] Craig Calfee: Yep.
[00:51:51] Yep
[00:51:53] From vendors.
[00:51:55] Uh
[00:51:56] but that's yeah, that's the world I, I came out of. And, so the, the idea of taking a spool of material and handing it off as you wrap around something is really not that difficult.
[00:52:08] Randall: Okay. So then you can do it in a way that is resilient to probably 10,000 handoffs over the course of weaving a frame and you can expect that it's not going to fail once.
[00:52:19] Craig Calfee: That's right Yeah
[00:52:20] It
[00:52:20] Randall: All then that, that's
[00:52:22] Craig Calfee: the hard part, the hard part is dealing with the resin and the, and the, uh, forming and the getting a nice surface finish. That was where the harder.
[00:52:31] Randall: Yeah. And, uh, uh, I'm thinking about, uh, space X's attempts to create a giant, uh, carbon fiber, uh, fuel tank. And they actually had to do the, um, the heating the resin at the point of, uh, depositing of the filaments.
[00:52:52] And
[00:52:52] you know, that's a really challenging process because you can't build an autoclave big enough to contain a fuel tank for a giant rocket bicycles don't have that issue, but
[00:53:01] Craig Calfee: right. Yeah. The filament winding technique, which is how all those tanks are made is, is pretty amazing in the large scale of those, those big rockets is phenomenal. I mean, a couple of places in Utah that make those, and it's just seeing such a large things spinning and, uh, wrapping around it rapidly is quite inspiring.
[00:53:26] Randall: Yeah. It's very, very cool stuff. And that's, again, a whole another thread about the, uh, the Utah based, uh, composites industry that got its start in aerospace, you know, advanced aerospace applications, which NV and others came out of. They used to be edge which you worked with. NBU designed their tubes early on.
[00:53:43] Right.
[00:53:44] Craig Calfee: W well, yeah, the poles history behind envy and quality composites back in late eighties, literally, uh, when I first came out to, uh, actually I was still, think I ordered them in Massachusetts and took delivery in California, but it was a quality composites and out of Utah, uh, Nancy Polish was the owner of that.
[00:54:06] Also an MIT graduate who, um, who started a roll wrapping carbon fiber in tubular forum. And I'm pretty sure we were the first roll wrapped carbon tubes, uh, for bicycles that she made. And, um Uh, evolved to, uh, edge composites. So they, so quality composites became McClain quality composites, and then McLean, the guys who broke away from that went to start envy or edge, I guess, which became envy.
[00:54:40] So yeah, those same guys brought that technology and we've been the customer ever since. And now there's yet another spinoff. The guys who were making the tubes at envy spun off and started their own company, uh, in a cooperative venture with envy. So let them go basically. And, uh, we're working with those guys.
[00:55:01] So it's just following the, the top level of expertise.
[00:55:06] Randall: very interesting stuff. Um, so, so where else do we go in terms of the, I mean, this is about as deep a composite deep nerdery, as we can get in, into composites and so on. And, uh, given that we're already here, we might as just, you know, dig ourselves deeper.
[00:55:25] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Um, sir, just on the roll wrapping, the thing that, um, I remember one of the cool innovations that Nancy came up with was the double D section, um, tube where she would roll wrap two D shaped tubes, stick them together and do an outer wrap on the outside. So it was a efficient way to do a ribbed tube or a single ribs through the middle. She pretty much invented.
[00:55:53] Uh, we started doing something with that, um, change days, uh, to get more stiffness out of a change day. But, um, I just, some reason that image flashed in my mind about some of the innovative stuff that been going on that people don't really see it's. And that's what I'm saying before where the, uh, technology of composites has, um it's got a long way to go and it's, there's all kinds of stuff going on that are, are, is brand new.
[00:56:23] Uh, most people people don't see it cause it's all process oriented more than product oriented. But for guys like me, it's really fast.
[00:56:34] Randall: Yeah, it reminds me of, um, a technology owned by a Taiwanese carbon frame manufacturing, pretty large-scale tier one that I'd spoken to where they're doing, uh, that bracing inside of the forks. don't think they're doing anything especially advanced in terms of how it's manufactured.
[00:56:54] I think they just have a, uh, the, the inner, um, you know, whether it's a bag or it's a, you know, EPS insert. And then they're just bridging, uh, between the two walls of the, uh, of the tube of the, the fork leg, uh, with another piece of carbon that gives it more lateral structure zero, uh, impact on the, um, for AFT compliance, which is a really technique.
[00:57:21] Craig Calfee: that sounds like Steve Lee at
[00:57:24] Randall: Uh, this was YMA.
[00:57:27] Craig Calfee: Oh, okay.
[00:57:28] Randall: Yeah, the gigantic folks. I haven't, I don't know if I've interacted with them yet, but, um, but yeah, well,
[00:57:35] Craig Calfee: Yeah, some amazing innovation coming out of Taiwan. They're there. They're so deep into it. It's, it's a fun place to go and, and see what they're up to.
[00:57:47] Randall: this actually brings me back to, um, I, I did had a conversation with over with Russ at path, less pedaled, and was asking like, you know, tell me about the quality of stuff made, made over in Asia. And I was like, well, you know, it's generally best to work with their production engineers because they're so close to the actual manufacturing techniques and they're the ones innovating on those techniques.
[00:58:10] And in fact, um, you know, even specialized up until recently did not do carbon fiber in. outsource that, you know, they, they do some of the work in house, but then the actual design for manufacture and all that is being done by the factories and rightfully so the factories know it better, being close to the ground though, dealing with someone with yourself, you're someone who could go into a factory and be like, okay, let's, let's innovate on this.
[00:58:35] Craig Calfee: Yeah.
[00:58:36] Yeah.
[00:58:37] Randall: so then 2011, um, first production, gravel bike.
[00:58:45] Craig Calfee: Uh, yeah. Yeah. We came up with the, uh, adventure bike, we call it, um, it was also the first one that did the, uh, six 50 B uh, tire size that can be used with a 700 by 42 or So mixing, know, going bigger tire on a slightly smaller rim on the same bike as you'd run a 700 C and, uh, 35 or 40 millimeter tire. Um, yeah, so the adventure bike has been. Uh, a real fun area for us as far as, uh, just developing a, do everything. Be everything, bike
[00:59:24] Randall: it's. And the geometry of that was kind of an endurance road geometry, right
[00:59:28] Craig Calfee: that's
[00:59:29] right. It's a road bike effectively, but with a few, a few, uh, tweaks for riding off road.
[00:59:36] Randall: So then this, this word, gravel bike is kind of muddled.
[00:59:39] Um, I never liked it, frankly. Uh, it's a marketing term. I remember it specialized when we were doing the, the diverse, um, you know, it was still kind of honing in on what these bikes were. Uh, but you could argue that like, you know, you know, everyone's road bike was a gravel bike. When you just put the biggest tires that would fit and write it on dirt.
[00:59:57] But this concept of a one bike, it seems to be what you've planted. But you can have a single bike that will be your road, bike, perform handle, give you that, that experience when you put road wheels on, but then you can put these big six fifties on there and have a, you know, an off-road crit machine that is highly competent in, in rough terrain.
[01:00:16] And so, so yeah, that, and that's very much my design philosophy as you know, as well, you know, fewer bikes that do more things.
[01:00:24] Craig Calfee: Yeah. We have this. Kind of a marketing phrase for, you know, how the end plus one concept where, you know, how many bikes do you even need? Well, one more than what you've got. Well, we do the N minus one concept with our mountain bike, which can also be a gravel by ache or a bike, but it's, uh, it allows you to change the head tube angle and, and use different, uh, fork travel suspension forks on, on the same frame.
[01:00:55] Uh, and of course, swapping wheels out is, is always a thing. So yeah, the end minus one concept where we just need less stuff, you know,
[01:01:04] Randall: So I reinvented that when I started thesis, he used to say like, and, minus three, it replaces road, bike, your gravel bike, your road, bike, your cross bike, your, um, light duty cross country bike, uh, your adventure bike actually as well, you know, load these things up. yeah, very much a philosophy that, uh, I think it's so good that the, its efforts to come up with new, subcategories, for example, by having gravel bikes now run oversize 700 wheels and extending the geo and going with these really slack head angles in order to accommodate that wheel size.
[01:01:40] I actually think that the form, the form that things want to evolve towards is actually what you created in the first place, which is the one bike that does all the things and does them well. And depending on the wheels you put on them, um, we'll do we'll, we'll transform. Uh, and you know, we've, we've talked a little bit about geo changing, um, You know, and things like this, which you have a bike that, that does that.
[01:02:03] And why don't we talk a bit about that in the technology behind it?
[01:02:08] Craig Calfee: The SFL, you mean we use the geometry of the head tube and the bottom bracket to, uh, to accommodate what you're using it for? Yeah, the concept there is to, if you're on a long ride to be able to change the geometry of your bike mid ride. So with an Allen wrench, you, uh, basically swap these flip plates out on your head to varia.
[01:02:32] And so you climb, you can climb with one geometry with another. And to me, that's, that's really fun because the climbing, you, if you're climbing up a a long steep climb on a bike that you're going to descend back down on, uh, you really don't want the same geometry it's, you're compromising and one or the other, either climate.
[01:02:55] Or it descends great. It's rarely both, or really can't possibly be both. Cause they're just doing two different things. So if you can swap out these flip plates and change the head tube angle, which is really all you need at that point, um, you have a bike that climbs great and descends. Great. So for me, that was the goal of, uh, just making a better mountain bike. Um, you know, the fact that it can be converted into other bikes for different disciplines is a whole nother angle. Uh, and you can even do that perhaps you wouldn't do it the trail, but let's say you show up, say you're on a trip, an adventure, uh, maybe out to Utah, for example, where you're riding slick rock, but you're also going to go up, you know, into the mountains.
[01:03:45] Um, you'll have you, you might want to have. Different fork travels or different for, uh, options. So you can bring a couple of different forks and swap out a fork, change your flip plates and have a bike. That's awesome for slick rock. And then another one that's awesome for, for the bike parks. So, you know, to me it would, but it's only one bike and you know, you don't need, you know, three bikes. So that, that just, uh, that's the design result of a bike where you can change the head tube angle on,
[01:04:21] Randall: and the, in really how much head tube angle adjustment is there on there.
[01:04:25] Craig Calfee: uh, it's a or minus four degrees
[01:04:28] Randall: that's, that's substantial.
[01:04:30] Craig Calfee: that's a lot.
[01:04:31] Randall: Yeah.
[01:04:31] I mean, that's transformative really. I work in increments of, you know, half a degree.
[01:04:36] Craig Calfee: Yeah. These are half degree increments, um, right now, uh, one degree, but we can easily do half degree increments. find that one degree is, is really. Um, especially when you have the option of, of tweaking the same bike. So reason we focus on these half degree increments on a production bike is to dial in the best compromise between two, two ways that it's going to be used when you don't need to compromise, you can go a full degree in the other direction and not worry about fact that it's not going to perform as well, know, in super steep terrain because that flipped chip is not, uh, the right one for the super steep scenario.
[01:05:22] Just change it out or flip it over a T when you approach the really steep stuff. So yeah.
[01:05:29] Randall: applicable for mountain bikes, particularly because the, I mean, the slack, the long slack that, that have emerged in recent years make a ton of sense for mountain biking, especially descending, but when you're ascending, it ends up being so slack that you get wheel flop, you get the front end, lifting the bike naturally wants to tilt back.
[01:05:49] You don't have that on a gravel bike currently. And if you don't, if you're not adding a huge suspension fork, you're never going to be descending terrain that is so technical that you need those slacked out angles. So it sounds like something that's very much could be applied to gravel bikes, but that, you know, for the mountain bike application is actually pretty game-changing.
[01:06:06] Craig Calfee: Yeah, well on gravel bikes or adventure bikes, um, uh, it's actually helpful if you're, if you're, let's say you're a roadie and you're starting to go off road. And so you're driving these gravel trails and then you're starting to get into more interesting off-road excursions with that same bike, but your experience on steep terrain is limited because you're, you know, you're a roadie, you've your, all your muscle memory and all your bike handling memory comes from the road and a little bit of dirt road stuff.
[01:06:39] Now you're kind of getting into serious off-road stuff and you want to try. a Uh, shortcut dissent, uh, you know, down something kind of crazy. Uh, let's say, uh, you're not very good at it in the beginning and you take your time and you, you don't have a bike that can go that fast down, such a trail, then you change it out.
[01:07:00] As you get better at it, as you increase your skill level and your confidence level, might want to go a little faster. So you a bike that can go a little faster safely and go for that slack head angle, which is designed to get higher speed. So it's great for evolving skills and evolving terrain as you start exploring more radical stuff.
[01:07:27] So that's the other reason to do it.
[01:07:29] Randall: Yeah, that makes, that makes a lot of sense. And in fact, any, you know, what I'm working on going forward very much as a, uh, one of the core, you know, is, uh, being able to tailor the geometry, um, as close to on the fly as possible. Uh, you know, if you want it to be on the fly, you're going to add a huge amount of added structure and complexity and weight, but having it be when you swap the wheels, there's very little to do, you know, this sort of thing.
[01:07:57] Craig Calfee: Yeah. So yeah, the whole idea is to, is to be able to go and have really fun adventures after all I wrote the book on adventures, see, here's, uh, this is a, this is the commercial part of our, our, uh,
[01:08:10] plug
[01:08:12] is, uh, this book I wrote about a trip. I took back in the, in the mid early eighties. Uh it's it's a kind of a.
[01:08:20] Randall: of a
[01:08:21] Craig Calfee: It has nothing to do with bikes, except that there is a section in there where I made a canteen out of bamboo in the Congo, but it's a pretty crazy trip. And, uh, and I just called it adventures. It's on amp. anyone wants to buy it.
[01:08:37] Randall: I will get a coffee.
[01:08:39] Craig Calfee: Yeah.
[01:08:42] Randall: Um, very, very cool. Um, we skipped over one, which is the manta, which is another interesting innovation
[01:08:51] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Suspension on a road bike. I mean, that's a, I keep saying that's going to be the future and it hasn't happened yet, but I, I still believe that road bikes will be the main type of bike being written in the highest levels of racing.
[01:09:08] interesting
[01:09:08] Randall: So you think suspension versus say. Um, wide tubeless, aerodynamic, the optimized rims with a 30 mil tire run at lower pressures. You think the suspension has a sufficient benefit relative to that, to offset say the structural complexity or weight?
[01:09:25] Craig Calfee: Yes. So, uh, the big tire thing, trend towards bigger tires is really a trend towards suspension. It's pneumatic suspension rather than mechanical suspension.
[01:09:39] Randall: Well, as our regular listeners know, this is a topic that's very much near and dear to my heart. I talk often about the benefits of pneumatic suspension, so this will be an interesting place for us to stop and really dive in when we follow up in part two of this conversation which Craig and I will be recording on the Thursday after this episode is published. So if you'd like to participate in the conversation, please tag us in the ridership, direct your questions and comments our way, and we will try to incorporate them into part two. And of course, if you haven't already come join us in the ridership, we'd love to have you and there's a lot of innovation that will be happening there in terms of how we use new digital tools in order to facilitate the community that we want for offline connection exchange and experience.
[01:10:21] So with that until next time. It's Craig would say here's to getting some dirt under your wheels.
This week Randall sits down with bicycle industry pioneer, Craig Calfee. Craig has been an industry leader for decades with his work on the Calfee brand and many other collaborations throughout the industry. You cannot find someone more knowledgable about carbon (or bamboo) as a material.
Calfee Designs Website
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Craig Calfee Randall
[00:00:00]
[00:00:04] Randall: Welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Randall Jacobs and our guest today is Craig Calfee. Craig is the founder of Calfee Design, the innovator behind the first full carbon frames to race in the tour de France, the originator of numerous technologies adopted throughout the cycling industry, and on a personal note has been a generous and consistent supporter of my own entrepreneurial journey. I am grateful to have him as a friend, and I've been looking forward to this conversation for some time. So with that, Craig, Calfee welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:32] Craig Calfee: Oh, thank you. Nice to be here.
[00:00:34] Randall: So, let's start with, what's your background, give your own story in your own words.
[00:00:40] Craig Calfee: Well, I've always written bikes. I mean, as a kid, that's how I got around. And that's, as you become an older child, you, uh, find your independence with moving about the world. And a bicycle of course, is the most efficient way to do that. And later on, I was a bike messenger in New York when I went to college and that kind of got me into bike design as much for the, uh, desire to make a bike that can withstand a lot of abuse. And later on, I used a bike for commuting to work at a job, building carbon fiber racing boats. And during that time I crashed my bike and needed a new frame. So I thought I'd make a frame at a carbon fiber, uh, tubing that I had been making at my.
[00:01:29] Randall: my job
[00:01:30] Craig Calfee: So this is back in 1987, by the way. So there wasn't a, there were no YouTube videos on how to make your own carbon bike. So I pretty much had to invent a way to build the bike out of this tubing. And at the time there were aluminum lugged bikes, and I just, I knew already aluminum and carbon fiber don't get along very well. So you have to really do a lot of things to, to accommodate that. And the existing bikes at the time were, uh, I would say experimental in the fact that they were just trying to glue aluminum to carbon and it really wasn't working.
[00:02:05] So I came up with my own way and built my first bike and it turned out really well. And a lot of friends and, and bike racers who checked out the bikes that I I really should keep going with it. So I felt like I discovered carbon fiber as a, as the perfect bicycle material before anyone else. Uh, and actually, uh, right at that time, Kestrel came out with their first bike, uh, the K 1000 or something. Um, anyway that was uh, that was in 87, 88. And, uh, I felt like I should really, you know give it a go. So I moved out to California and started a bike company.
[00:02:48] Randall: So just to be clear, you were actually making the tubes, you weren't buying tubes. So you're making the tubes out of the raw carbon or some pre-printed carbon. then you came up with your own way of, uh, joining those tubes.
[00:03:01] Craig Calfee: Yeah. I worked on a braiding machine, so it was actually a a hundred year old, uh, shoelace braider, uh, from back in Massachusetts. There's a lot of old textile machinery braiding is, uh, you know, your braided socks and, you know, nylon rope is braided. So this is a 72 carrier braider, which means 72 spools of carbon fiber.
[00:03:25] Are winding in and out braiding this tube and you just run it back and forth through this braider a few times. And now you have a thick enough wall to, uh, I developed a and tape wrapping method at that job and came up with a pretty decent way to make a bicycle tube. So that was kind of the beginning of that.
[00:03:47] Uh, and since then I've explored all kinds of methods for making tubing, mainly through subcontractors who specialize in things like filament winding and roll wrapping. And, uh, pultrusion, you know, all kinds of ways to make tubing. And that does relate to kind of an inspiration for me, where I realized that, uh, carbon fiber, you know, high performance composites are relatively young and new in the world of technology where metals are, you know, the metals have been around since the bronze age.
[00:04:21] I mean, literally 5,000 years of development happened with metals, carbon fiber, uh, high-performance composites have only really been around since world war two. So that's a huge gap in development that hasn't happened with composites. So that to me felt like, oh, there's some job security for a guy who likes to invent things. So that was my, a kind of full force to get me to really focus on composite materials.
[00:04:51] Randall: Were you that insightful in terms of the historical context at the time, or is that kind of a retro or retrospective reflection?
[00:04:58] Craig Calfee: I think, I don't know. I think I may have read about that. Um, I a friend who had a library card at MIT and I pretty much lived there for a few weeks every, uh, master's thesis and PhD thesis on bicycles that they had in their library. And I think somewhere in there was a, uh, a topic on composites and comparing the technology of composites.
[00:05:23] So. I probably that from some reading I did, or maybe I did invent that out of thin air. I don't remember, uh, nonetheless, uh, the fact of it is, you know, not, not a whole lot of mental energy has been put into coming up with ways of processing fiber and resin compared to metal. So to me that just opens up a wide world of, of innovation.
[00:05:49] Randall: Um, and so the first frame was that, um, you're creating essentially uniform tubes and then mitering them, joining them, wrapping them as you do with your current bamboo frames or what was happening there.
[00:06:02] Craig Calfee: Uh, it's more like the, uh, our, our carbon fiber frames were laminating carbon fabric in metal dyes, and those are not mitered tubes fitting into the dyes. And that's, that's a process. I got my first patent on. And it, uh, so in the process of compressing the carbon fabric against the tubes, you're you end up with these gussets in what is traditionally the parting line of a mold and rather than trim them off completely.
[00:06:31] I, I use them as reinforcing ribs.
[00:06:35] Randall: Yep. Okay. So that explains the, the, that distinctive element that continues with your, um, some of your, uh, to tube, uh, currently
[00:06:48] Craig Calfee: them
[00:06:49] the hand wrapping technique from that you currently see on the bamboo bikes came from developing a tandem frame, or basically a frame whose production numbers don't justify the tooling costs. Um, so that's hand wrapped. That's just literally lashed to. Yeah. And a point of note, there is I was a boy scout growing up and, uh, there's this merit badge called pioneering merit badge.
[00:07:16] And I really enjoyed pioneering merit badge because it involved lashing row, uh, poles together with rope and the pro you had to do with this one project. And I did a tower and it was this enormous structure that went just straight up like a flagpole, but it was it involved a bunch of tetrahedrons, uh, stacked on top of each other and lashed together.
[00:07:41] you know, culminating in a pole that went up. I don't remember how tall it was, but it was, it was really impressive. And everybody, you know, thought, wow, this is incredible of poles and some rope. And here we have this massive tower. So anyway, I was into things together since a young age.
[00:08:00] And so I immediately came up with the, uh, the last tube concept. Which is where the, now the bamboo bikes are. course there's a specific pattern to the wrapping, but, um, the concept is basically using fiber to lash stuff together,
[00:08:16] Randall: When it immediately brings to mind, what's possible with current generation of additive production techniques. Uh, whereas before you could make small components and then lash them together to create structures that otherwise aren't manufacturable.
[00:08:31] Now you'd be able to say, print it out though. Those, you know, those printed out materials don't have the performance characteristics of a, you know, a uni directional carbon of the sword that you're working with currently.
[00:08:42] Craig Calfee: right?
[00:08:43] Randall: Um, so we've gone deep nerd here. We're going to, I'm going to pull us out and say, okay, uh, lots of time for this.
[00:08:49] This is going to be a double episode. Uh, so next up, let's talk about those frames, uh, saw their big debut.
[00:08:59] Craig Calfee: Yeah. So, um, we started making custom geometry for a. In 1989 and selling them and so big and tall, and that the idea of custom geometry frames was, uh, you know, pretty esoteric. And the pro racers were, we're using a lot of custom frames. So Greg Lamond, uh, was in search of a carbon fiber, uh, custom frame builder in, uh, 1990.
[00:09:31] And, uh, no one really was doing it. We were literally the only company making custom carbon frame bikes. So he, uh, found out about us, uh, effectively discovered us, shall we say? And, uh, it didn't take long for him to order up 18 of them for his, his, uh, team Z, uh, teammates. He was sponsoring his own team with a Lamont brand.
[00:09:56] So we didn't have to sponsor him. He basically paid for the frame. Put his name on them. And, and, uh, now we're now we're on the defending champions, a tour de France team. So that was a huge break obviously. And it was really a pleasure working with Greg and getting to know the demands of the pro Peloton, uh, you know, that really launched us.
[00:10:21] So that was, uh, quite a splash. And, you know, it always is a great answer to the question. Oh, so who rides your bike kind of thing. you know, you have the, the full-on best one in the world at the time. So, so that was a fun thing.
[00:10:39] Randall: And the name of the company at the time was,
[00:10:41] Craig Calfee: Uh, carbon frames.
[00:10:42] Randall: yeah. So anyone wanting
[00:10:45] dig up the historical record,
[00:10:47] Craig Calfee: is this too generic? You know, the other to what you're talking about, the adventure bikes. Yeah, we had to stop. I mean, carbon frames is a terrible name because everyone started talking about all carbon fiber frames as carbon frames. So we thought that was cool, you know, like Kleenex, you know, uh, and then we came up with the adventure bike, you know, with very early, uh, adventure bike.
[00:11:11] And it was just, we called it the adventure bike. And now there's a classification called adventure bikes that, you know, so, um, I think we, we, we went too generic on how we named our models.
[00:11:26] Randall: I've drawn from the rich tradition, a tradition of Greek, you know, uh, philosophy for naming my own companies in the like,
[00:11:35] Craig Calfee: Yeah.
[00:11:36] Randall: uh, um, and then next up, uh, so you've worked with Greg Lamond on those frames. Carbon frames is up and running and you're, you're producing custom geo frames and you're starting to get at some scale at this point and some notoriety.
[00:11:52] next up you were working on your bamboo bikes. When we talk about that
[00:11:57] Craig Calfee: Yeah, that was say, I'm kind of at the, at the time, it was just a way to get publicity. So at the Interbike trade show, you'd have a few creative people making some wacky bikes out of beer cans or, or other just weird things just to get attention, just, just to send the media over to your booth, to take a picture of some wacky thing that you're doing.
[00:12:20] yeah, we got to do something like that to get, get some attention. And the, uh, so I was looking around for some PVC pipe. Maybe I was going to do a PVC pipe bike, and I wasn't really sure, but I knew that we could just wrap any tube. Make a bike out of literally anything. So, um, my dog was playing with some bamboo behind the shop.
[00:12:42] Uh, she was a stick dog, so she loved to clamp onto a stick and you could swing her around by the, by the sticks. She's a pit bull and lab mix. Anyway, we ran out of sticks. Uh, cause we only had one little tree in the back, but we did have some bamboos. So she came up with a piece of bamboo and I was her around by it, expecting it to break off in her mouth because I just wasn't aware of how strong bamboo was, but it turned out it was really quite strong.
[00:13:12] And I said, oh, let's make a bike out of this stuff. And sure enough, uh, the bike was, uh, quite a attention getter. It got the quarter page and bicycling magazine so that, you know mission accomplished on that front. And, but the bike itself rode really well.
[00:13:29] Randall: well
[00:13:30] Craig Calfee: Um, when I wrote my first carbon bike, uh, the very first ride on my very first carbon bike, I was struck by how smooth it was.
[00:13:38] It had this vibration damping that was, you know, just super noticeable and, and that really kind of lit a fire under my butt thinking, wow, this is really cool. When I built my first bamboo bike, I had that same feeling again, how smooth It was It was amazing for its vibration damping. So, uh, I knew I was onto something at that point.
[00:14:02] Uh, that first bike was a little too flexy, but, uh, the second bike I built was significantly stiffer and was an actual, real rideable bike. So, uh, from that point, uh, we just started building a few here and there and it was still a novelty item until about, uh, 1999, 2000. When a few people who had been riding them, or like, I want another one, I I want to know mountain bike this time.
[00:14:29] So as it was just starting to get known and, uh, we started selling them through dealers. And I mean there's a lot of stories I can tell on how that evolved and how people started actually believing that a bamboo bike could actually exist in the world. So it took a while though.
[00:14:49] Randall: I think there's a whole thread that we could tug on maybe in a subsequent episode where we focus just on the bamboo bike revolution.
[00:14:57] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. That's um, there's a lot of, lot of stuff going on there. I'm actually writing my second book on history of the bamboo bike, because there's so many interesting angles to it, particularly in the.
[00:15:10] Randall: in Africa
[00:15:12] I'm struck by the juxtaposition of this bleeding edge. Uh, you know, high-tech material that you pioneered and then this going back to one of the most basic building materials, uh, that we have building bikes out of that. And in fact, um, on the one hand, there's this, this extreme, know, difference in terms of the technology ization of each material.
[00:15:34] But on the other hand, there's a parallel the sense that like carbon, in tubes is best, uh, you know, generally, uh, when it's you need to write. Yeah, with maybe some cross fibers in order to prevent, prevent it from separating. And bamboo also has that characteristic of having, you know, you need directional fibers that are bonded together by some, uh, you know, some other material in, in the, in the bamboo
[00:15:58] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah, it's very, there's a lot of similarities. I mean, bamboo is amazing just because it grows out of the ground and tubular for. And it grows a new, huge variety of diameters and wealth thicknesses. So if you're looking for tubing, I mean, you don't have to go much further. It's amazing that it literally grows out of the ground that way.
[00:16:20] Randall: paint
[00:16:21] a picture for folks to, um, most of our listeners I'm guessing are in north America or, you know, other, uh, English-speaking parts of the world. I lived in China and as you've been, you see huge scaffolding, multi-story, you know, big buildings and the scaffolding isn't made out of metal.
[00:16:37] It's made out of bamboo lashed together with zip ties and pieces of wire. So it really speaks to the, the structural, uh, strength of the material and reliability of the material. and you know, should instill confidence when descending down a mountain.
[00:16:54] Craig Calfee: Oh yeah. No, it's, I, I remember seeing bamboo and scaffolding many, many years. And I thought, well, of course, and the other reason they use it in scaffolding is when a typhoon hits and it, it kind of messes up the scaffolding of a construction site. Um, it's, they're back to work on the bamboo construction sites, much faster than the metal scaffolding sites, they have to deal with bent and distorted metal scaffolding, um, to replace those and fix that takes a lot longer where bamboo, they just bend it back and lash it back together.
[00:17:32] It's it's so much easier.
[00:17:35] Randall: there's one more thing on this theme that I want to, uh, pull out before we move on, which is talk to me about the, the sustainability components of it. Um, starting with how it was done initially.
[00:17:47] And then now with say like, uh, biodegradable resins or, or other materials I can, this frame can be current.
[00:17:55] Craig Calfee: Uh, the short answer is yes, the frame can be composted. And the other cool thing is if you take care of it, it it'll never compost, meaning you can prevent it from being composted naturally. if you really want to, you know, uh, dispose of the frame, um, it will biodegrade much faster than any other material that bicycle frames are made of.
[00:18:22] So yeah, the, the renewable aspect, the low energy content of it, it's, it's utterly the best you can imagine. And we're kind of waiting for the world to finally get serious about global warming and start to have some economic incentives for buying products that are in fact, uh, good for the environment. Uh, we haven't seen that yet, but we're kind of holding out and hoping that happens.
[00:18:49] And then we'll see probably some significant growth in the bamboo adoption in the bicycling world.
[00:18:57] Randall: I want to plant a seed that, that, uh, to germinate in my head, which is this idea of bamboos being the ideal material for kind of more mainstream, uh, utility bicycles and recreational bicycles. really it's a matter of the unit economics in economies of scale and consistency of material, which you could make uniform by having, uh, having controlled grow conditions and things like that.
[00:19:23] Um, but it could be a very localized industry to anywhere where bamboo grows. this could be produced, which reduces transportation costs reduces, you know, issues of inventory carrying and all these things. Um, so let's, let's park that I want to ask you more about those, about the economics of bamboo in a side conversation to see if there's, you know, explore there.
[00:19:45] Craig Calfee: well, there is. I mean, that's, that's what we did in Africa. Same concept is as why, why would bamboo work in Africa better than the imported bikes from China? So that was, that was the whole thing around that.
[00:19:59] Randall: Ah, I love it. All right. So though, there will be a bamboo episode folks. Uh, we're going to, going to continue cause there's a lot of ground to cover here. so next steps you've done done the first carbon frame and the tour de France, uh, carbon frames is up and running. You've started getting into bamboo, what was next,
[00:20:18] Craig Calfee: Um, then lots of smaller developments, which become really important to us from a business perspective, uh, fiber tandem, we built the first one of those. And then we went to a lateral list, tandem design, and it's pretty optimized at this point. So we're, I would say we are the leader in the tandem world in terms of the highest performance, tandem bikes, uh, and then re repairing of carbon frames.
[00:20:47] That was a big one, uh, which we were kind of pushed into by customers. And other folks who heard that we could repair the Cathy frames and they would set a call up. And literally we had a, an in one inquiry per week, if not more, more often about like a colonoscopy that this guy wanted to repair and he heard we could do it on ours.
[00:21:10] And we're like, well, by a Calfee don't, you know, I'm sorry, but we can't repair somebody else's frame. You'll have to buy one of ours. And then you'll know that you crash it, we can repair it for, he was trying to make that a, a a advantage for our brand, but we couldn't really, you know, do that. So, uh, we said, well, if we can't beat them, we'll repair them.
[00:21:32] And we repaired a first and then some specialized, I think, after that. So we, we accepted repair jobs and pretty soon it became about a third of our, our business. And it's, uh, of course now lots of other people repair frames, but, uh, we started doing that in 2001 or something and, and we've been doing it ever since.
[00:21:58] And it's, that part has been really interesting to see, because we get to literally see the inside of everyone else's frames and look at the weak points. You know, they often show up on, on people's frames and get asked to fix them or even redesign them at that point. So that's been really interesting to, to me as a technician,
[00:22:21] Randall: and want to come back to this in a second, but before we lose it, what is a lateralis tandem design?
[00:22:27] Craig Calfee: uh, that, so traditional tandems had a, a tube that went the head tube, usually straight back down towards the dropouts or or bottom bottom bracket. And it's, it's a way to stiffen up a frame. That's inherently not very stiffened torsion. But, uh, with composites, you can orient the fiber, uh, in torsion to make a tube significantly stiffer and torsion than say a metal tube of similar weight.
[00:22:57] So we were able to go a little bit bigger diameter and more fiber in the helical angled orientation and make a tandem, uh, stiff enough and torsion and get rid of that tube. And for a carbon fiber frame, that it was really important because number of times you have to join the tube, the more expensive it is or the more labor content there is. So we were able to reduce our labor content, make the frame lighter and make it stiffer all at, in one design change. So that was a big, a big revelation. And now I most of them have copied that design. So it's, uh, it's, that's another time where we, we did something that, that, uh, now became the standard.
[00:23:43] Randall: Yeah. One of many from what I've observed in a written the history. Uh, so around this time, or shortly after you started the repair business, you started doing some pretty, pretty wild frames in terms of pushing the limits of what was possible when we talk about that.
[00:24:01] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah, we did. We've done a lot of different types of frames, uh, mostly for show, but, um, like the north American handmade bike show is a great venue for just doing something way out of left field. Um, we did, uh, a bamboo bike made all out of small diameter, bamboo. Um, it's I only made one because it was a total pain in the ass to make.
[00:24:26] Uh, and it was also kind of inspired by the, a request from a guy who was not only a fan of bamboo, but he was a fan of molten style bikes. Those are the trust style frames with small wheels. So we built one of those and. With the only small diameter bamboo, and we built another one that was, uh, a real art piece.
[00:24:49] So just having fun with that from a, you know, completely artistic direction is a lot of fun for me because that's my formal training. I went to art school and learned about different materials and, and art and composition. Uh, and I was into the structure of materials and how they, they relate to each other.
[00:25:12] And my art was more of a forum file form follows function, kind of inspiration. And, uh, so some bikes that I've made were, are not terribly practical, but just explore the, the limits of structure. So another bike I made, uh, we call it the spider web bike, which was literally a, a bike made of just carbon fiber strands.
[00:25:36] No tubes. And it, it was kind of wild looking and a collector ended up buying it, which is really cool. But you look at this thing and you just couldn't imagine that it, it, you could actually ride it, but, uh, it actually does ride fairly well. It's a bit fragile if you crash it, it would be kind of dangerous, but you know, stuff like that.
[00:25:55] I like to do that occasionally.
[00:25:59] Randall: I think of, uh, like biomorphic design or like hyper optimized design that maybe doesn't have the resiliency, but very strict parameters will perform higher than anything else that you could, you could create.
[00:26:12] Craig Calfee: absolutely. Yeah. Those are really fun. I'm really inspired by natural forms and, uh, you know, the, the, some of the new computer aided techniques we're designing are, uh, rattled in those lines. so, yeah, I follow that pretty closely.
[00:26:28] Randall: a little sidebar. Um, I don't know if you've, uh, no of, uh, Nick Taylor, the guy who created the, Ibis Maximus in front of the mountain bike hall of fame.
[00:26:40] Craig Calfee: Um, no, I don't think so.
[00:26:43] Randall: I'll introduce you to his work at some point, but he's another one of these people who, very avid cyclist is not in the bike industry, but is. There's a lot of trail building and alike and isn't is a sculptor really focused on, the form of, uh, you know, biological shapes and materials and, and things of this sort.
[00:27:02] Uh, I think that there's a lot, uh, I'm actually curious more into your, your non bike artistic work for a moment. Uh, and, and how that got infused into your work with the bike.
[00:27:18] Craig Calfee: yeah, so I haven't done a lot of, you know, just pure, fine art sculpture in a long time. But when I was doing that, it was. a lot of things that would fool the eye or, um, some material and, and push it to its limit. So I was doing stuff that was, um, uh, you know, trying to create a, almost like a physical illusion, not just an optical illusion, but a, but a physical illusion or like, how could you possibly do that kind of thing?
[00:27:54] And that was a theme of my sculpture shortly after Pratt. So for example, just take one example of a sculpture that I got a lot of credit for in classes at Pratt, it was a, a big block of Oak. It was a cutoff from a woodworking shop. It's about a foot in, let's say a foot cube of Oak. And I would, um, so I, I, uh, raised the grain on it with a wire brush and then I blocked printed on Oak tag page.
[00:28:26] Um, some black ink on rolled onto the Oak block and made a river, basically a print off of each face of the, of the block. And then I carefully taped that paper together to simulate a paper block of the Oak chunk that I I had. now I had a super light paper version of the Oak block. And then I hung them on a balance beam, which I forged at a steel, but the hanging point was way close to the piece.
[00:28:57] And if you looked at it from three feet away, just, your brain would, just hurting because you couldn't figure out how is this even possible? And because it really looked amazing, super hyper real. Anyway, it just looked amazing and it was fun to get the effect of how the hell did that. Did he do that?
[00:29:18] What's what's the trick here. There's something going on. That's not real. Or it's. Uh it's not physically possible. And I kind of got that feeling with the carbon fiber bike. When we, when we built the first bike, everyone would pick it up and go, oh, that's just too light. It's not even a bike. It's a plastic bike it's going to break instantly.
[00:29:39] So that was sort of a relation from, from those days to the, to the bike.
[00:29:44] Randall: You ever come across Douglas Hofstadter's book, Godel, Escher Bach.
[00:29:49] Craig Calfee: No, but I'd be interested to read it.
[00:29:51] Randall: Definite short Lister. Um, uh, you've come across MC Escher, of Yeah. And are there any parallels or any inspiration there?
[00:30:01] Craig Calfee: Um, not very direct, I'd say. Um,
[00:30:08] Who
[00:30:08] Randall: your, who your inspirations or what, what would you say your creative energy is most similar to?
[00:30:14] Craig Calfee: I'd probably, I'd say say Buckminster fuller.
[00:30:17] Randall: Mm,
[00:30:17] Craig Calfee: Yeah. I mean, I studied his work in depth, you know, not only the geodesic dome stuff, but also his vehicles, the dime on vehicle the, yeah. So there's, there's a bunch of stuff that he was involved with that I'd say, I'm parallel with as far as my interest goes,
[00:30:37] Randall: what books should I read?
[00:30:39] Craig Calfee: all of them.
[00:30:42] Randall: Where do I start? If I have limited
[00:30:44] time
[00:30:45] Craig Calfee: Yeah. It's a tough one. He's actually really difficult to read too. His writing is not that great. I pretty much look at his, uh, his design work more than His writing
[00:30:56] Randall: Okay. So who's book whose book about Buckminster fuller. Should I read?
[00:31:01] Craig Calfee: good question. I'll, I'll catch up with you on that later because there's few of them that they're worth. It's worth a look.
[00:31:07] Randall: awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Um, let's talk about 2001. you're a dragon fly.
[00:31:15] Craig Calfee: Yeah, the dragon fly was an interesting project. It was so Greg Lamanda had asked me, like, I want an even lighter bike. He was constantly pushing on the technology. And I said, well, there are some really expensive fibers that are starting to become available, but, um, you know, this would be a $10,000 bike frame and, you know, it's only going to be a half a pound lighter.
[00:31:40] And he said, well, I don't care. I just, you know, I w I need it for racing. I mean, um, you know, when, when I'm climbing Alpe d'Huez with Miguel Indurain and if he's got a lighter bike than I do, then I'm just going to give up, you know, in terms of the effort. So he needs to have that technical advantage, or at least be on the same plane.
[00:32:02] So the reason why he'd spend, you know, $5,000 for a half a pound, a weight savings was pretty, pretty real. So, but it took until about 2000, 2001 after he had long retired to, um, really make that happen. So the fibers I was talking about are really high modulus fiber that was very fragile, too brittle, really for any use.
[00:32:29] So we came up with a way to integrate it with, um, boron fiber. Uh, it actually was a material we found, uh, special specialty composites out of, uh, out of Rhode Island. Uh, they, uh, do this co-mingled boron and carbon fiber, uh, hybrid material, which was, um, they were looking for a use cases for it and the bicycle was one of them.
[00:32:58] So, uh, we built a prototype with their material and it turned out. To be not only really light and really strong, the, the boron made it really tough. So carbon fiber has, uh, the highest stiffness to weight ratio, intention of any material you can use. boron is the highest stiffness to weight ratio in compression as a, as a fibrous material that you can integrate into a composite. So when you mix them, you now have a combination of materials, that are unbeatable.
[00:33:35] Randall: Like a concrete and rebar almost, or, quite.
[00:33:40] Craig Calfee: I'd say that's a good, um, for composites in general, but now we're talking about the extreme edge of, of performance, where, um, looking at the, most high performance material certain conditions, versus tension. These, these are conditions that are existing in a bicycle tube all the time.
[00:34:07] So one side of the tube is compressing while the other side is intention as you twist the bike, uh, and then it reverses on the, on the pedal stroke. So it has to do both now. Carbon fiber is quite good at that, but compression it suffers. And that's why you can't go very thin wall and make it, um, withstand any kind of impact because it's, it's got a weakness in it's, um, compressive. So, uh, it's, uh, it doesn't take a break very well either. So boron on, the other hand does take a break very well, and it's incredibly high compressive strength to weight ratio and compressive stiffness to weight ratio. are two different things by the way. So when you combine those into a tube, it's pretty amazing.
[00:34:57] Uh, they're just really quite expensive. So we came up with the dragon fly, um, in 2001 and it was at the time the lightest production bike yet it also had the toughness of a normal frame. And that's that's right around when the Scott came out, which was a super thin wall, large diameter, uh, carbon frame that was really fragile.
[00:35:23] Um, so that was sort of a similar weight, but not nearly as tough as, uh, the dragon fly.
[00:35:34] Randall: For well, to go a little bit deeper on this. So what is the nature like? What is the nature of the boron? Is it a, like, is it a molecule? Is it a filament? So you have, you have carbon filaments is the boron, um, you know, is that, are you putting it into the resin? How is it? Co-mingled.
[00:35:51] Craig Calfee: It's a, it's a filament, basically a super thin wire.
[00:35:56] Randall: You're essentially co-mingling it in when you're creating the tubes and then using the same resin to bond the entire structure together.
[00:36:04] Craig Calfee: That's right.
[00:36:05] Randall: Got it. And this, so then this is, uh, if you were to add then say like to the resin separately, it would be a compounding effect. Um, I don't know if you have, uh, mean, I assume you've done some stuff with graphene.
[00:36:19] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Graphing graphing is a really great material. It does improve the toughness of composites. Uh, it's again, also very expensive to use, uh, in a whole two. Usually it's used in smaller components, uh, not so much on the whole frame, uh, and it, and it's, um, it's best, uh, uses in preventing the of cracking.
[00:36:46] So it stops the micro cracking that starts with a failure mode. And that that's a great, thing. But if your laminate is too thin to begin with that, all the graphing in the world, isn't going to help you. So for really minor wax it'll help, but for anything substantial, it's going to break anyway.
[00:37:08] So you have to start out with a thick enough laminate get the toughness that you're looking for. Uh, graphene is really great for highly stressed areas, which might start cracking from, uh, fatigue or just the design flaw of a stress concentration. So it's got a number of purposes. Uh, it's great for, uh, like pinch clamp areas, you know, places where the mechanical, uh, stress is so high on a, on a very localized area.
[00:37:37] Um, so yeah, graphene is wonderful. We didn't get into it too much because, um, it's just, it would just, wasn't practical for our applications and how we make the frames, but, uh, some companies have started using graphene and it's, it's pretty interesting stuff.
[00:37:52] Randall: We did some experimentation with it early on in our looking at it for the future. my understanding is. You know, I haven't gone too deep into like the intermolecular physics, but it's essentially like you have a piece of paper and if you start tearing the paper that tear will propagate very easily.
[00:38:09] then the graphene is almost like little tiny pieces of tape. Randomly distributed, evenly distributed across the material that makes it so that that fracture can no longer propagate in that direction. And it has to change direction where it bumps into another graphene molecule and the graphing, essentially when we tested it was doubling the bond strength of the resin.
[00:38:30] So in terms of pulling apart different layers of laminate, then, um, increasing the toughness of say, uh, a rim made with the exact same laminate in the exact same resin with, 1% graphene per mass of resin increasing the toughness of that rim structure by 20%.
[00:38:50] Which is pretty
[00:38:50] Craig Calfee: That's correct.
[00:38:51] Randall: The challenges that is that it lowers the temperature, uh, the, the glass suffocation points resin. so, you know, a rim is like, you know, there are, if you're gonna put it on the back of your car, you know, that's not a normal use case when you're riding, but, you know, it's, it's something that just makes it less resilient to those towards sorts of, you know, people put on the back of the car too close to the exhaust and they melt the rim.
[00:39:17] So we're having to experiment with some high temperature residents that have other issues.
[00:39:22] Craig Calfee: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's rims are a great place for graphing, just cause they're in a a place where you'll have some impacts, but yeah. Temperature management is an issue. Um, yeah, that's the high temperature residents are, are another area that, that, uh, we're experimenting in, uh, wrapping electric motor, uh, rotors with, with a high temperature resonant carbon wrap.
[00:39:46] that's a whole nother area, but I'm familiar with that stuff.
[00:39:49] Randall: Which we'll get into in a second, park park, that one. Cause that's a fun theme. yeah. And I'm just thinking about a rim structure. It seems like boron on the inside graphing on the outside, um, deal with high compressive forces between the spokes and then the high impact forces on the external, will
[00:40:07] Craig Calfee: the material we use is called high bore. You can look that up. H Y B O R and there they're actually coming back with new marketing efforts there. They, I think the company got sold and then, um, the new buyers are, are re revisiting how to, to spread the use of it. So might be real interested in supporting a rim project.
[00:40:30] Randall: mm. Uh, to be continued offline. Um, all right. So then we've got your carbon fiber repair surface. We talked about the dragon fly. Um, it's a great segue into engineering and design philosophy. let's talk about that
[00:40:47] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Um, well it's, to me, it's all about form follows function and, uh, when something works so well, functionally, it's gonna look good. That's uh, that's why trees look great just by themselves, uh, that that's, you know, coming back to the natural world, you know, that's why we have a Nautilus shell for, uh, for our logo.
[00:41:12] It's the form follows function. Aspect of that just makes it look beautiful. For some reason, you look at something from nature, you don't really know why is it beautiful? Well, the reason is the way it's structured, the way it's evolved over millions of years. Has resulted in the optimum structure. So for me, as a, as a human being artificially trying to recreate stuff, that's been evolved in nature.
[00:41:39] Um, I look closely at how nature does it first and then I'll apply it to whatever I'm dealing with at the moment. And so that's how I, that's how I design stuff.
[00:41:50] Randall: there's a, the Nautilus shell example, like, you know, the golden ratio and the way that, really complex systems tend to evolve towards very simple, fundamental, primitives of all design
[00:42:04] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. There's some basic stuff that, that seemed to apply everywhere.
[00:42:10] Randall: So with your carbon fiber repair service, so you started to see some of the problems with that were emerging with these, um, large tube thin wall designs that were being used to achieve a high strength or sorry, a high stiffness to weight, but then compromising in other areas.
[00:42:28] So let's talk about that.
[00:42:30] Craig Calfee: Yeah, it's um, you know, designing a carbon fiber bike is actually really quite difficult. There's so much going on. There's so many, uh, things you have to deal with high stress areas that you can't really get around. there's a lot of constraints to designing a good bicycle frame. Um, and then you're dealing with the tradition of, of how people clamp things on bikes, you know, stem, clamps, and seed post clamps, and, uh, you know, th that type of mentality.
[00:43:04] It's still with us with the carbon, which is carbon doesn't do well with. So a lot of companies struggle with that and they'll come up with something on paper or in their CAD model. And their finite element analysis sort of works, but, and then they go into the real world and they have to deal with real situations that they couldn't predict in the, the computer.
[00:43:29] And they get a problem with, uh, you know, a minor handlebar whacking, the top tube situation, which shouldn't really cause your bike to become dangerous. But in fact, that's what happens. So you've got, um, you know, uh, weak points or vulnerabilities in these really light frame. And if you're not expected to know what the vulnerability is as an end-user and you don't know that if you wack part of the bike and in a minor way that you normally wouldn't expect to cause the frame to become a weak, then the whole design is a question. So you have to consider all these things when you decide to bike. And a lot of companies have just depended on the computer and they are finite element analysis too, to come up with shapes and designs that, uh, are inherently weak. And, um, people get pretty disappointed when they're, when the minor is to of incidents causes a crack in the frame.
[00:44:37] And if they keep riding the bike, the crack gets bigger. And then one day, you know, I mean, most people decide to have it fixed before it gets to be a catastrophic but, uh, you know, it gets expensive and, uh, You know, it's, sad. Actually, another motivation for getting into the repair business was to save the reputation of carbon fiber as a frame material.
[00:45:03] You know, these types of things don't happen to thin wall titanium frames. You know, a thin wall titanium frame will actually withstand a whole lot more abuse than a thin wall carbon frame. So it's just hard to make diameter thin wall titanium frames that are stiff enough and not without problems of welding, you know, the heat affected zones.
[00:45:26] So carbon fiber is, is a better material because it's so much easier to join and to, to mold. But if you, you have to design it properly to, to withstand normal abuse. And if you're not going to do that, then there should at least be a repair service available to keep those bikes from going to the landfill.
[00:45:45] So frequent. And so that's what we do we, we offer that and we even train people how to carbon repair service. So that's, um, that's something we've done in order to keep bikes from just getting thrown away.
[00:46:01] Randall: uh, I think I've shared with you, I'm in the midst of, uh, doing, uh, uh, a pretty radical ground up design, which is way off in the future. So I'll be picking your brain on that, but it immediately makes me think of the inherent. Compromises of current frame design and manufacturing techniques, including on our frame.
[00:46:20] And in our case, the way we've addressed that is through not going with lower modulates carbon, you know, S T 700, maybe some T 800 in the frame, then overbuilding it order to have resiliency against impacts. But then also these sorts of, um, micro voids in other imperfections that are in inherent process of any, uh, manufacturing, uh, system that involves handling of materials in a complex, you know, eight, uh, sorry, 250 a piece, you know, layup like there's, this there's even that like human elements that you have to design a whole bunch of fudge factor into to make sure that when mistakes are made, not if, but when mistakes are made, that there's so much, uh, overbuilding that they don't end up in a catastrophic failure.
[00:47:10] Craig Calfee: that's right. Yeah. Yeah. You have to have some safety margin.
[00:47:15] Randall: And the Manderal spinning process that you were describing essentially eliminates a lot of that in you're starting to see, I mean, with rims, that's the direction that rims are going in, everything is going to be automated, is going to be knit like a sock and frames are a much more complex shape. Um, but you're starting to see, uh, actually probably know a lot more about the, the automation of frame design than I do.
[00:47:35] Um, what do you see? Like as the, as the end point, at least with regards to the, um, like filament based carbon fiber material and frames, like where could it go with technology?
[00:47:50] Craig Calfee: the, the, um, robotics are getting super advanced now and there's this technique called, um, uh, they just call it fiber placements or automated fiber placement, which is a fancy word for a robot arm, winding fiber, you know, on a mandrel or shape, uh, and then compressing that and, uh, know, molding that.
[00:48:14] So it's, it's where your, a robot will orient a single filament of carbon fiber. Uh, continuously all around the, uh, the shape that you're trying to make. They do that in aerospace now for a really expensive rockets and satellite parts, but the technology is getting more accessible and, uh, so robotic trimmers are another one.
[00:48:42] So we're, in fact, we're getting ready to build our own robotic arm tremor for a resin transfer, molded parts. That's where the edge of the part that you mold gets trimmed very carefully with a router. And, but imagine instead of just a router trimming an edge, you've got a robot arm with a spool of fiber on it, wrapping the fiber individually around the whole structure of the frame.
[00:49:10] Uh, no, no people involved just, you know, someone to turn the machine on and then turn it off again. So that's kind of coming that that is a future. Uh, it hasn't arrived yet, certainly, maybe for simpler parts, but a frame is a very complex shape. So it'll take a while before they can get to that point.
[00:49:30] Randall: It having to, yeah. Being able to Uh, spin a frame in one piece is, seems to be the ultimate end game.
[00:49:43] Craig Calfee: Yeah. I think we need to, I think the, the, uh, genetically modified spiders would be a better way to
[00:49:50] go
[00:49:50] Randall: Yeah, they might, they might help us the design process.
[00:49:56] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. Just give them some good incentives and they'll, they'll make you set a really incredibly strong, you know, spider wound.
[00:50:05] Randall: Well, it does. It speaks to the, the, the biggest challenge I see with that, which is you have to go around shape. so if you're going through a frame, like it's essentially the triangle. And so you need some way to like hand off the, the S the filament carrier from one side to the other constantly.
[00:50:27] you'd just be able to spin it. You know, it would be pretty straightforward. So maybe the frame comes in a couple of different sections that get bonded, but then those don't form a ring. And so you can, you know, you can move them around instead of the machine order
[00:50:41] Craig Calfee: Well, there's these things called grippers. So the robot grip sit and then another arm grip know let's go and the other arm picks it up. And then there's like in weaving, there's this thing called the flying shuttle, which invented. That's where the shuttle that, the war
[00:50:59] Randall: Your ancestors were involved with flying shuttle.
[00:51:02] Craig Calfee: Yeah.
[00:51:02] Randall: That's one of the, uh, all right. That's, that's a whole other conversation.
[00:51:07] Craig Calfee: Yeah, a really interesting, I mean, it's the Draper corporation. If you want to look it up,
[00:51:13] um
[00:51:13] Randall: I
[00:51:13] Craig Calfee: know
[00:51:14] they were the manufacturing made the looms back in the industrial revolution in the Northeast
[00:51:21] Randall: I'm sitting currently in Waltham, which was one of the first mill cities, um, not from Lowell.
[00:51:28] Craig Calfee: Yeah. So all those mills were where our customers and they would buy the Draper looms. Um, and they were automated looms with a flying shuttle was a big deal Uh back then. And so they, they made a lot of, of those looms and, and that's basically what sent me to college with a trust fund. So
[00:51:49] Randall: You're a trust fund, baby.
[00:51:51] Craig Calfee: Yep.
[00:51:51] Yep
[00:51:53] From vendors.
[00:51:55] Uh
[00:51:56] but that's yeah, that's the world I, I came out of. And, so the, the idea of taking a spool of material and handing it off as you wrap around something is really not that difficult.
[00:52:08] Randall: Okay. So then you can do it in a way that is resilient to probably 10,000 handoffs over the course of weaving a frame and you can expect that it's not going to fail once.
[00:52:19] Craig Calfee: That's right Yeah
[00:52:20] It
[00:52:20] Randall: All then that, that's
[00:52:22] Craig Calfee: the hard part, the hard part is dealing with the resin and the, and the, uh, forming and the getting a nice surface finish. That was where the harder.
[00:52:31] Randall: Yeah. And, uh, uh, I'm thinking about, uh, space X's attempts to create a giant, uh, carbon fiber, uh, fuel tank. And they actually had to do the, um, the heating the resin at the point of, uh, depositing of the filaments.
[00:52:52] And
[00:52:52] you know, that's a really challenging process because you can't build an autoclave big enough to contain a fuel tank for a giant rocket bicycles don't have that issue, but
[00:53:01] Craig Calfee: right. Yeah. The filament winding technique, which is how all those tanks are made is, is pretty amazing in the large scale of those, those big rockets is phenomenal. I mean, a couple of places in Utah that make those, and it's just seeing such a large things spinning and, uh, wrapping around it rapidly is quite inspiring.
[00:53:26] Randall: Yeah. It's very, very cool stuff. And that's, again, a whole another thread about the, uh, the Utah based, uh, composites industry that got its start in aerospace, you know, advanced aerospace applications, which NV and others came out of. They used to be edge which you worked with. NBU designed their tubes early on.
[00:53:43] Right.
[00:53:44] Craig Calfee: W well, yeah, the poles history behind envy and quality composites back in late eighties, literally, uh, when I first came out to, uh, actually I was still, think I ordered them in Massachusetts and took delivery in California, but it was a quality composites and out of Utah, uh, Nancy Polish was the owner of that.
[00:54:06] Also an MIT graduate who, um, who started a roll wrapping carbon fiber in tubular forum. And I'm pretty sure we were the first roll wrapped carbon tubes, uh, for bicycles that she made. And, um Uh, evolved to, uh, edge composites. So they, so quality composites became McClain quality composites, and then McLean, the guys who broke away from that went to start envy or edge, I guess, which became envy.
[00:54:40] So yeah, those same guys brought that technology and we've been the customer ever since. And now there's yet another spinoff. The guys who were making the tubes at envy spun off and started their own company, uh, in a cooperative venture with envy. So let them go basically. And, uh, we're working with those guys.
[00:55:01] So it's just following the, the top level of expertise.
[00:55:06] Randall: very interesting stuff. Um, so, so where else do we go in terms of the, I mean, this is about as deep a composite deep nerdery, as we can get in, into composites and so on. And, uh, given that we're already here, we might as just, you know, dig ourselves deeper.
[00:55:25] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Um, sir, just on the roll wrapping, the thing that, um, I remember one of the cool innovations that Nancy came up with was the double D section, um, tube where she would roll wrap two D shaped tubes, stick them together and do an outer wrap on the outside. So it was a efficient way to do a ribbed tube or a single ribs through the middle. She pretty much invented.
[00:55:53] Uh, we started doing something with that, um, change days, uh, to get more stiffness out of a change day. But, um, I just, some reason that image flashed in my mind about some of the innovative stuff that been going on that people don't really see it's. And that's what I'm saying before where the, uh, technology of composites has, um it's got a long way to go and it's, there's all kinds of stuff going on that are, are, is brand new.
[00:56:23] Uh, most people people don't see it cause it's all process oriented more than product oriented. But for guys like me, it's really fast.
[00:56:34] Randall: Yeah, it reminds me of, um, a technology owned by a Taiwanese carbon frame manufacturing, pretty large-scale tier one that I'd spoken to where they're doing, uh, that bracing inside of the forks. don't think they're doing anything especially advanced in terms of how it's manufactured.
[00:56:54] I think they just have a, uh, the, the inner, um, you know, whether it's a bag or it's a, you know, EPS insert. And then they're just bridging, uh, between the two walls of the, uh, of the tube of the, the fork leg, uh, with another piece of carbon that gives it more lateral structure zero, uh, impact on the, um, for AFT compliance, which is a really technique.
[00:57:21] Craig Calfee: that sounds like Steve Lee at
[00:57:24] Randall: Uh, this was YMA.
[00:57:27] Craig Calfee: Oh, okay.
[00:57:28] Randall: Yeah, the gigantic folks. I haven't, I don't know if I've interacted with them yet, but, um, but yeah, well,
[00:57:35] Craig Calfee: Yeah, some amazing innovation coming out of Taiwan. They're there. They're so deep into it. It's, it's a fun place to go and, and see what they're up to.
[00:57:47] Randall: this actually brings me back to, um, I, I did had a conversation with over with Russ at path, less pedaled, and was asking like, you know, tell me about the quality of stuff made, made over in Asia. And I was like, well, you know, it's generally best to work with their production engineers because they're so close to the actual manufacturing techniques and they're the ones innovating on those techniques.
[00:58:10] And in fact, um, you know, even specialized up until recently did not do carbon fiber in. outsource that, you know, they, they do some of the work in house, but then the actual design for manufacture and all that is being done by the factories and rightfully so the factories know it better, being close to the ground though, dealing with someone with yourself, you're someone who could go into a factory and be like, okay, let's, let's innovate on this.
[00:58:35] Craig Calfee: Yeah.
[00:58:36] Yeah.
[00:58:37] Randall: so then 2011, um, first production, gravel bike.
[00:58:45] Craig Calfee: Uh, yeah. Yeah. We came up with the, uh, adventure bike, we call it, um, it was also the first one that did the, uh, six 50 B uh, tire size that can be used with a 700 by 42 or So mixing, know, going bigger tire on a slightly smaller rim on the same bike as you'd run a 700 C and, uh, 35 or 40 millimeter tire. Um, yeah, so the adventure bike has been. Uh, a real fun area for us as far as, uh, just developing a, do everything. Be everything, bike
[00:59:24] Randall: it's. And the geometry of that was kind of an endurance road geometry, right
[00:59:28] Craig Calfee: that's
[00:59:29] right. It's a road bike effectively, but with a few, a few, uh, tweaks for riding off road.
[00:59:36] Randall: So then this, this word, gravel bike is kind of muddled.
[00:59:39] Um, I never liked it, frankly. Uh, it's a marketing term. I remember it specialized when we were doing the, the diverse, um, you know, it was still kind of honing in on what these bikes were. Uh, but you could argue that like, you know, you know, everyone's road bike was a gravel bike. When you just put the biggest tires that would fit and write it on dirt.
[00:59:57] But this concept of a one bike, it seems to be what you've planted. But you can have a single bike that will be your road, bike, perform handle, give you that, that experience when you put road wheels on, but then you can put these big six fifties on there and have a, you know, an off-road crit machine that is highly competent in, in rough terrain.
[01:00:16] And so, so yeah, that, and that's very much my design philosophy as you know, as well, you know, fewer bikes that do more things.
[01:00:24] Craig Calfee: Yeah. We have this. Kind of a marketing phrase for, you know, how the end plus one concept where, you know, how many bikes do you even need? Well, one more than what you've got. Well, we do the N minus one concept with our mountain bike, which can also be a gravel by ache or a bike, but it's, uh, it allows you to change the head tube angle and, and use different, uh, fork travel suspension forks on, on the same frame.
[01:00:55] Uh, and of course, swapping wheels out is, is always a thing. So yeah, the end minus one concept where we just need less stuff, you know,
[01:01:04] Randall: So I reinvented that when I started thesis, he used to say like, and, minus three, it replaces road, bike, your gravel bike, your road, bike, your cross bike, your, um, light duty cross country bike, uh, your adventure bike actually as well, you know, load these things up. yeah, very much a philosophy that, uh, I think it's so good that the, its efforts to come up with new, subcategories, for example, by having gravel bikes now run oversize 700 wheels and extending the geo and going with these really slack head angles in order to accommodate that wheel size.
[01:01:40] I actually think that the form, the form that things want to evolve towards is actually what you created in the first place, which is the one bike that does all the things and does them well. And depending on the wheels you put on them, um, we'll do we'll, we'll transform. Uh, and you know, we've, we've talked a little bit about geo changing, um, You know, and things like this, which you have a bike that, that does that.
[01:02:03] And why don't we talk a bit about that in the technology behind it?
[01:02:08] Craig Calfee: The SFL, you mean we use the geometry of the head tube and the bottom bracket to, uh, to accommodate what you're using it for? Yeah, the concept there is to, if you're on a long ride to be able to change the geometry of your bike mid ride. So with an Allen wrench, you, uh, basically swap these flip plates out on your head to varia.
[01:02:32] And so you climb, you can climb with one geometry with another. And to me, that's, that's really fun because the climbing, you, if you're climbing up a a long steep climb on a bike that you're going to descend back down on, uh, you really don't want the same geometry it's, you're compromising and one or the other, either climate.
[01:02:55] Or it descends great. It's rarely both, or really can't possibly be both. Cause they're just doing two different things. So if you can swap out these flip plates and change the head tube angle, which is really all you need at that point, um, you have a bike that climbs great and descends. Great. So for me, that was the goal of, uh, just making a better mountain bike. Um, you know, the fact that it can be converted into other bikes for different disciplines is a whole nother angle. Uh, and you can even do that perhaps you wouldn't do it the trail, but let's say you show up, say you're on a trip, an adventure, uh, maybe out to Utah, for example, where you're riding slick rock, but you're also going to go up, you know, into the mountains.
[01:03:45] Um, you'll have you, you might want to have. Different fork travels or different for, uh, options. So you can bring a couple of different forks and swap out a fork, change your flip plates and have a bike. That's awesome for slick rock. And then another one that's awesome for, for the bike parks. So, you know, to me it would, but it's only one bike and you know, you don't need, you know, three bikes. So that, that just, uh, that's the design result of a bike where you can change the head tube angle on,
[01:04:21] Randall: and the, in really how much head tube angle adjustment is there on there.
[01:04:25] Craig Calfee: uh, it's a or minus four degrees
[01:04:28] Randall: that's, that's substantial.
[01:04:30] Craig Calfee: that's a lot.
[01:04:31] Randall: Yeah.
[01:04:31] I mean, that's transformative really. I work in increments of, you know, half a degree.
[01:04:36] Craig Calfee: Yeah. These are half degree increments, um, right now, uh, one degree, but we can easily do half degree increments. find that one degree is, is really. Um, especially when you have the option of, of tweaking the same bike. So reason we focus on these half degree increments on a production bike is to dial in the best compromise between two, two ways that it's going to be used when you don't need to compromise, you can go a full degree in the other direction and not worry about fact that it's not going to perform as well, know, in super steep terrain because that flipped chip is not, uh, the right one for the super steep scenario.
[01:05:22] Just change it out or flip it over a T when you approach the really steep stuff. So yeah.
[01:05:29] Randall: applicable for mountain bikes, particularly because the, I mean, the slack, the long slack that, that have emerged in recent years make a ton of sense for mountain biking, especially descending, but when you're ascending, it ends up being so slack that you get wheel flop, you get the front end, lifting the bike naturally wants to tilt back.
[01:05:49] You don't have that on a gravel bike currently. And if you don't, if you're not adding a huge suspension fork, you're never going to be descending terrain that is so technical that you need those slacked out angles. So it sounds like something that's very much could be applied to gravel bikes, but that, you know, for the mountain bike application is actually pretty game-changing.
[01:06:06] Craig Calfee: Yeah, well on gravel bikes or adventure bikes, um, uh, it's actually helpful if you're, if you're, let's say you're a roadie and you're starting to go off road. And so you're driving these gravel trails and then you're starting to get into more interesting off-road excursions with that same bike, but your experience on steep terrain is limited because you're, you know, you're a roadie, you've your, all your muscle memory and all your bike handling memory comes from the road and a little bit of dirt road stuff.
[01:06:39] Now you're kind of getting into serious off-road stuff and you want to try. a Uh, shortcut dissent, uh, you know, down something kind of crazy. Uh, let's say, uh, you're not very good at it in the beginning and you take your time and you, you don't have a bike that can go that fast down, such a trail, then you change it out.
[01:07:00] As you get better at it, as you increase your skill level and your confidence level, might want to go a little faster. So you a bike that can go a little faster safely and go for that slack head angle, which is designed to get higher speed. So it's great for evolving skills and evolving terrain as you start exploring more radical stuff.
[01:07:27] So that's the other reason to do it.
[01:07:29] Randall: Yeah, that makes, that makes a lot of sense. And in fact, any, you know, what I'm working on going forward very much as a, uh, one of the core, you know, is, uh, being able to tailor the geometry, um, as close to on the fly as possible. Uh, you know, if you want it to be on the fly, you're going to add a huge amount of added structure and complexity and weight, but having it be when you swap the wheels, there's very little to do, you know, this sort of thing.
[01:07:57] Craig Calfee: Yeah. So yeah, the whole idea is to, is to be able to go and have really fun adventures after all I wrote the book on adventures, see, here's, uh, this is a, this is the commercial part of our, our, uh,
[01:08:10] plug
[01:08:12] is, uh, this book I wrote about a trip. I took back in the, in the mid early eighties. Uh it's it's a kind of a.
[01:08:20] Randall: of a
[01:08:21] Craig Calfee: It has nothing to do with bikes, except that there is a section in there where I made a canteen out of bamboo in the Congo, but it's a pretty crazy trip. And, uh, and I just called it adventures. It's on amp. anyone wants to buy it.
[01:08:37] Randall: I will get a coffee.
[01:08:39] Craig Calfee: Yeah.
[01:08:42] Randall: Um, very, very cool. Um, we skipped over one, which is the manta, which is another interesting innovation
[01:08:51] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Suspension on a road bike. I mean, that's a, I keep saying that's going to be the future and it hasn't happened yet, but I, I still believe that road bikes will be the main type of bike being written in the highest levels of racing.
[01:09:08] interesting
[01:09:08] Randall: So you think suspension versus say. Um, wide tubeless, aerodynamic, the optimized rims with a 30 mil tire run at lower pressures. You think the suspension has a sufficient benefit relative to that, to offset say the structural complexity or weight?
[01:09:25] Craig Calfee: Yes. So, uh, the big tire thing, trend towards bigger tires is really a trend towards suspension. It's pneumatic suspension rather than mechanical suspension.
[01:09:39] Randall: Well, as our regular listeners know, this is a topic that's very much near and dear to my heart. I talk often about the benefits of pneumatic suspension, so this will be an interesting place for us to stop and really dive in when we follow up in part two of this conversation which Craig and I will be recording on the Thursday after this episode is published. So if you'd like to participate in the conversation, please tag us in the ridership, direct your questions and comments our way, and we will try to incorporate them into part two. And of course, if you haven't already come join us in the ridership, we'd love to have you and there's a lot of innovation that will be happening there in terms of how we use new digital tools in order to facilitate the community that we want for offline connection exchange and experience.
[01:10:21] So with that until next time. It's Craig would say here's to getting some dirt under your wheels.
This week Randall sits down with bicycle industry pioneer, Craig Calfee. Craig has been an industry leader for decades with his work on the Calfee brand and many other collaborations throughout the industry. You cannot find someone more knowledgable about carbon (or bamboo) as a material.
Calfee Designs Website
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Craig Calfee Randall
[00:00:00]
[00:00:04] Randall: Welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Randall Jacobs and our guest today is Craig Calfee. Craig is the founder of Calfee Design, the innovator behind the first full carbon frames to race in the tour de France, the originator of numerous technologies adopted throughout the cycling industry, and on a personal note has been a generous and consistent supporter of my own entrepreneurial journey. I am grateful to have him as a friend, and I've been looking forward to this conversation for some time. So with that, Craig, Calfee welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:32] Craig Calfee: Oh, thank you. Nice to be here.
[00:00:34] Randall: So, let's start with, what's your background, give your own story in your own words.
[00:00:40] Craig Calfee: Well, I've always written bikes. I mean, as a kid, that's how I got around. And that's, as you become an older child, you, uh, find your independence with moving about the world. And a bicycle of course, is the most efficient way to do that. And later on, I was a bike messenger in New York when I went to college and that kind of got me into bike design as much for the, uh, desire to make a bike that can withstand a lot of abuse. And later on, I used a bike for commuting to work at a job, building carbon fiber racing boats. And during that time I crashed my bike and needed a new frame. So I thought I'd make a frame at a carbon fiber, uh, tubing that I had been making at my.
[00:01:29] Randall: my job
[00:01:30] Craig Calfee: So this is back in 1987, by the way. So there wasn't a, there were no YouTube videos on how to make your own carbon bike. So I pretty much had to invent a way to build the bike out of this tubing. And at the time there were aluminum lugged bikes, and I just, I knew already aluminum and carbon fiber don't get along very well. So you have to really do a lot of things to, to accommodate that. And the existing bikes at the time were, uh, I would say experimental in the fact that they were just trying to glue aluminum to carbon and it really wasn't working.
[00:02:05] So I came up with my own way and built my first bike and it turned out really well. And a lot of friends and, and bike racers who checked out the bikes that I I really should keep going with it. So I felt like I discovered carbon fiber as a, as the perfect bicycle material before anyone else. Uh, and actually, uh, right at that time, Kestrel came out with their first bike, uh, the K 1000 or something. Um, anyway that was uh, that was in 87, 88. And, uh, I felt like I should really, you know give it a go. So I moved out to California and started a bike company.
[00:02:48] Randall: So just to be clear, you were actually making the tubes, you weren't buying tubes. So you're making the tubes out of the raw carbon or some pre-printed carbon. then you came up with your own way of, uh, joining those tubes.
[00:03:01] Craig Calfee: Yeah. I worked on a braiding machine, so it was actually a a hundred year old, uh, shoelace braider, uh, from back in Massachusetts. There's a lot of old textile machinery braiding is, uh, you know, your braided socks and, you know, nylon rope is braided. So this is a 72 carrier braider, which means 72 spools of carbon fiber.
[00:03:25] Are winding in and out braiding this tube and you just run it back and forth through this braider a few times. And now you have a thick enough wall to, uh, I developed a and tape wrapping method at that job and came up with a pretty decent way to make a bicycle tube. So that was kind of the beginning of that.
[00:03:47] Uh, and since then I've explored all kinds of methods for making tubing, mainly through subcontractors who specialize in things like filament winding and roll wrapping. And, uh, pultrusion, you know, all kinds of ways to make tubing. And that does relate to kind of an inspiration for me, where I realized that, uh, carbon fiber, you know, high performance composites are relatively young and new in the world of technology where metals are, you know, the metals have been around since the bronze age.
[00:04:21] I mean, literally 5,000 years of development happened with metals, carbon fiber, uh, high-performance composites have only really been around since world war two. So that's a huge gap in development that hasn't happened with composites. So that to me felt like, oh, there's some job security for a guy who likes to invent things. So that was my, a kind of full force to get me to really focus on composite materials.
[00:04:51] Randall: Were you that insightful in terms of the historical context at the time, or is that kind of a retro or retrospective reflection?
[00:04:58] Craig Calfee: I think, I don't know. I think I may have read about that. Um, I a friend who had a library card at MIT and I pretty much lived there for a few weeks every, uh, master's thesis and PhD thesis on bicycles that they had in their library. And I think somewhere in there was a, uh, a topic on composites and comparing the technology of composites.
[00:05:23] So. I probably that from some reading I did, or maybe I did invent that out of thin air. I don't remember, uh, nonetheless, uh, the fact of it is, you know, not, not a whole lot of mental energy has been put into coming up with ways of processing fiber and resin compared to metal. So to me that just opens up a wide world of, of innovation.
[00:05:49] Randall: Um, and so the first frame was that, um, you're creating essentially uniform tubes and then mitering them, joining them, wrapping them as you do with your current bamboo frames or what was happening there.
[00:06:02] Craig Calfee: Uh, it's more like the, uh, our, our carbon fiber frames were laminating carbon fabric in metal dyes, and those are not mitered tubes fitting into the dyes. And that's, that's a process. I got my first patent on. And it, uh, so in the process of compressing the carbon fabric against the tubes, you're you end up with these gussets in what is traditionally the parting line of a mold and rather than trim them off completely.
[00:06:31] I, I use them as reinforcing ribs.
[00:06:35] Randall: Yep. Okay. So that explains the, the, that distinctive element that continues with your, um, some of your, uh, to tube, uh, currently
[00:06:48] Craig Calfee: them
[00:06:49] the hand wrapping technique from that you currently see on the bamboo bikes came from developing a tandem frame, or basically a frame whose production numbers don't justify the tooling costs. Um, so that's hand wrapped. That's just literally lashed to. Yeah. And a point of note, there is I was a boy scout growing up and, uh, there's this merit badge called pioneering merit badge.
[00:07:16] And I really enjoyed pioneering merit badge because it involved lashing row, uh, poles together with rope and the pro you had to do with this one project. And I did a tower and it was this enormous structure that went just straight up like a flagpole, but it was it involved a bunch of tetrahedrons, uh, stacked on top of each other and lashed together.
[00:07:41] you know, culminating in a pole that went up. I don't remember how tall it was, but it was, it was really impressive. And everybody, you know, thought, wow, this is incredible of poles and some rope. And here we have this massive tower. So anyway, I was into things together since a young age.
[00:08:00] And so I immediately came up with the, uh, the last tube concept. Which is where the, now the bamboo bikes are. course there's a specific pattern to the wrapping, but, um, the concept is basically using fiber to lash stuff together,
[00:08:16] Randall: When it immediately brings to mind, what's possible with current generation of additive production techniques. Uh, whereas before you could make small components and then lash them together to create structures that otherwise aren't manufacturable.
[00:08:31] Now you'd be able to say, print it out though. Those, you know, those printed out materials don't have the performance characteristics of a, you know, a uni directional carbon of the sword that you're working with currently.
[00:08:42] Craig Calfee: right?
[00:08:43] Randall: Um, so we've gone deep nerd here. We're going to, I'm going to pull us out and say, okay, uh, lots of time for this.
[00:08:49] This is going to be a double episode. Uh, so next up, let's talk about those frames, uh, saw their big debut.
[00:08:59] Craig Calfee: Yeah. So, um, we started making custom geometry for a. In 1989 and selling them and so big and tall, and that the idea of custom geometry frames was, uh, you know, pretty esoteric. And the pro racers were, we're using a lot of custom frames. So Greg Lamond, uh, was in search of a carbon fiber, uh, custom frame builder in, uh, 1990.
[00:09:31] And, uh, no one really was doing it. We were literally the only company making custom carbon frame bikes. So he, uh, found out about us, uh, effectively discovered us, shall we say? And, uh, it didn't take long for him to order up 18 of them for his, his, uh, team Z, uh, teammates. He was sponsoring his own team with a Lamont brand.
[00:09:56] So we didn't have to sponsor him. He basically paid for the frame. Put his name on them. And, and, uh, now we're now we're on the defending champions, a tour de France team. So that was a huge break obviously. And it was really a pleasure working with Greg and getting to know the demands of the pro Peloton, uh, you know, that really launched us.
[00:10:21] So that was, uh, quite a splash. And, you know, it always is a great answer to the question. Oh, so who rides your bike kind of thing. you know, you have the, the full-on best one in the world at the time. So, so that was a fun thing.
[00:10:39] Randall: And the name of the company at the time was,
[00:10:41] Craig Calfee: Uh, carbon frames.
[00:10:42] Randall: yeah. So anyone wanting
[00:10:45] dig up the historical record,
[00:10:47] Craig Calfee: is this too generic? You know, the other to what you're talking about, the adventure bikes. Yeah, we had to stop. I mean, carbon frames is a terrible name because everyone started talking about all carbon fiber frames as carbon frames. So we thought that was cool, you know, like Kleenex, you know, uh, and then we came up with the adventure bike, you know, with very early, uh, adventure bike.
[00:11:11] And it was just, we called it the adventure bike. And now there's a classification called adventure bikes that, you know, so, um, I think we, we, we went too generic on how we named our models.
[00:11:26] Randall: I've drawn from the rich tradition, a tradition of Greek, you know, uh, philosophy for naming my own companies in the like,
[00:11:35] Craig Calfee: Yeah.
[00:11:36] Randall: uh, um, and then next up, uh, so you've worked with Greg Lamond on those frames. Carbon frames is up and running and you're, you're producing custom geo frames and you're starting to get at some scale at this point and some notoriety.
[00:11:52] next up you were working on your bamboo bikes. When we talk about that
[00:11:57] Craig Calfee: Yeah, that was say, I'm kind of at the, at the time, it was just a way to get publicity. So at the Interbike trade show, you'd have a few creative people making some wacky bikes out of beer cans or, or other just weird things just to get attention, just, just to send the media over to your booth, to take a picture of some wacky thing that you're doing.
[00:12:20] yeah, we got to do something like that to get, get some attention. And the, uh, so I was looking around for some PVC pipe. Maybe I was going to do a PVC pipe bike, and I wasn't really sure, but I knew that we could just wrap any tube. Make a bike out of literally anything. So, um, my dog was playing with some bamboo behind the shop.
[00:12:42] Uh, she was a stick dog, so she loved to clamp onto a stick and you could swing her around by the, by the sticks. She's a pit bull and lab mix. Anyway, we ran out of sticks. Uh, cause we only had one little tree in the back, but we did have some bamboos. So she came up with a piece of bamboo and I was her around by it, expecting it to break off in her mouth because I just wasn't aware of how strong bamboo was, but it turned out it was really quite strong.
[00:13:12] And I said, oh, let's make a bike out of this stuff. And sure enough, uh, the bike was, uh, quite a attention getter. It got the quarter page and bicycling magazine so that, you know mission accomplished on that front. And, but the bike itself rode really well.
[00:13:29] Randall: well
[00:13:30] Craig Calfee: Um, when I wrote my first carbon bike, uh, the very first ride on my very first carbon bike, I was struck by how smooth it was.
[00:13:38] It had this vibration damping that was, you know, just super noticeable and, and that really kind of lit a fire under my butt thinking, wow, this is really cool. When I built my first bamboo bike, I had that same feeling again, how smooth It was It was amazing for its vibration damping. So, uh, I knew I was onto something at that point.
[00:14:02] Uh, that first bike was a little too flexy, but, uh, the second bike I built was significantly stiffer and was an actual, real rideable bike. So, uh, from that point, uh, we just started building a few here and there and it was still a novelty item until about, uh, 1999, 2000. When a few people who had been riding them, or like, I want another one, I I want to know mountain bike this time.
[00:14:29] So as it was just starting to get known and, uh, we started selling them through dealers. And I mean there's a lot of stories I can tell on how that evolved and how people started actually believing that a bamboo bike could actually exist in the world. So it took a while though.
[00:14:49] Randall: I think there's a whole thread that we could tug on maybe in a subsequent episode where we focus just on the bamboo bike revolution.
[00:14:57] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. That's um, there's a lot of, lot of stuff going on there. I'm actually writing my second book on history of the bamboo bike, because there's so many interesting angles to it, particularly in the.
[00:15:10] Randall: in Africa
[00:15:12] I'm struck by the juxtaposition of this bleeding edge. Uh, you know, high-tech material that you pioneered and then this going back to one of the most basic building materials, uh, that we have building bikes out of that. And in fact, um, on the one hand, there's this, this extreme, know, difference in terms of the technology ization of each material.
[00:15:34] But on the other hand, there's a parallel the sense that like carbon, in tubes is best, uh, you know, generally, uh, when it's you need to write. Yeah, with maybe some cross fibers in order to prevent, prevent it from separating. And bamboo also has that characteristic of having, you know, you need directional fibers that are bonded together by some, uh, you know, some other material in, in the, in the bamboo
[00:15:58] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah, it's very, there's a lot of similarities. I mean, bamboo is amazing just because it grows out of the ground and tubular for. And it grows a new, huge variety of diameters and wealth thicknesses. So if you're looking for tubing, I mean, you don't have to go much further. It's amazing that it literally grows out of the ground that way.
[00:16:20] Randall: paint
[00:16:21] a picture for folks to, um, most of our listeners I'm guessing are in north America or, you know, other, uh, English-speaking parts of the world. I lived in China and as you've been, you see huge scaffolding, multi-story, you know, big buildings and the scaffolding isn't made out of metal.
[00:16:37] It's made out of bamboo lashed together with zip ties and pieces of wire. So it really speaks to the, the structural, uh, strength of the material and reliability of the material. and you know, should instill confidence when descending down a mountain.
[00:16:54] Craig Calfee: Oh yeah. No, it's, I, I remember seeing bamboo and scaffolding many, many years. And I thought, well, of course, and the other reason they use it in scaffolding is when a typhoon hits and it, it kind of messes up the scaffolding of a construction site. Um, it's, they're back to work on the bamboo construction sites, much faster than the metal scaffolding sites, they have to deal with bent and distorted metal scaffolding, um, to replace those and fix that takes a lot longer where bamboo, they just bend it back and lash it back together.
[00:17:32] It's it's so much easier.
[00:17:35] Randall: there's one more thing on this theme that I want to, uh, pull out before we move on, which is talk to me about the, the sustainability components of it. Um, starting with how it was done initially.
[00:17:47] And then now with say like, uh, biodegradable resins or, or other materials I can, this frame can be current.
[00:17:55] Craig Calfee: Uh, the short answer is yes, the frame can be composted. And the other cool thing is if you take care of it, it it'll never compost, meaning you can prevent it from being composted naturally. if you really want to, you know, uh, dispose of the frame, um, it will biodegrade much faster than any other material that bicycle frames are made of.
[00:18:22] So yeah, the, the renewable aspect, the low energy content of it, it's, it's utterly the best you can imagine. And we're kind of waiting for the world to finally get serious about global warming and start to have some economic incentives for buying products that are in fact, uh, good for the environment. Uh, we haven't seen that yet, but we're kind of holding out and hoping that happens.
[00:18:49] And then we'll see probably some significant growth in the bamboo adoption in the bicycling world.
[00:18:57] Randall: I want to plant a seed that, that, uh, to germinate in my head, which is this idea of bamboos being the ideal material for kind of more mainstream, uh, utility bicycles and recreational bicycles. really it's a matter of the unit economics in economies of scale and consistency of material, which you could make uniform by having, uh, having controlled grow conditions and things like that.
[00:19:23] Um, but it could be a very localized industry to anywhere where bamboo grows. this could be produced, which reduces transportation costs reduces, you know, issues of inventory carrying and all these things. Um, so let's, let's park that I want to ask you more about those, about the economics of bamboo in a side conversation to see if there's, you know, explore there.
[00:19:45] Craig Calfee: well, there is. I mean, that's, that's what we did in Africa. Same concept is as why, why would bamboo work in Africa better than the imported bikes from China? So that was, that was the whole thing around that.
[00:19:59] Randall: Ah, I love it. All right. So though, there will be a bamboo episode folks. Uh, we're going to, going to continue cause there's a lot of ground to cover here. so next steps you've done done the first carbon frame and the tour de France, uh, carbon frames is up and running. You've started getting into bamboo, what was next,
[00:20:18] Craig Calfee: Um, then lots of smaller developments, which become really important to us from a business perspective, uh, fiber tandem, we built the first one of those. And then we went to a lateral list, tandem design, and it's pretty optimized at this point. So we're, I would say we are the leader in the tandem world in terms of the highest performance, tandem bikes, uh, and then re repairing of carbon frames.
[00:20:47] That was a big one, uh, which we were kind of pushed into by customers. And other folks who heard that we could repair the Cathy frames and they would set a call up. And literally we had a, an in one inquiry per week, if not more, more often about like a colonoscopy that this guy wanted to repair and he heard we could do it on ours.
[00:21:10] And we're like, well, by a Calfee don't, you know, I'm sorry, but we can't repair somebody else's frame. You'll have to buy one of ours. And then you'll know that you crash it, we can repair it for, he was trying to make that a, a a advantage for our brand, but we couldn't really, you know, do that. So, uh, we said, well, if we can't beat them, we'll repair them.
[00:21:32] And we repaired a first and then some specialized, I think, after that. So we, we accepted repair jobs and pretty soon it became about a third of our, our business. And it's, uh, of course now lots of other people repair frames, but, uh, we started doing that in 2001 or something and, and we've been doing it ever since.
[00:21:58] And it's, that part has been really interesting to see, because we get to literally see the inside of everyone else's frames and look at the weak points. You know, they often show up on, on people's frames and get asked to fix them or even redesign them at that point. So that's been really interesting to, to me as a technician,
[00:22:21] Randall: and want to come back to this in a second, but before we lose it, what is a lateralis tandem design?
[00:22:27] Craig Calfee: uh, that, so traditional tandems had a, a tube that went the head tube, usually straight back down towards the dropouts or or bottom bottom bracket. And it's, it's a way to stiffen up a frame. That's inherently not very stiffened torsion. But, uh, with composites, you can orient the fiber, uh, in torsion to make a tube significantly stiffer and torsion than say a metal tube of similar weight.
[00:22:57] So we were able to go a little bit bigger diameter and more fiber in the helical angled orientation and make a tandem, uh, stiff enough and torsion and get rid of that tube. And for a carbon fiber frame, that it was really important because number of times you have to join the tube, the more expensive it is or the more labor content there is. So we were able to reduce our labor content, make the frame lighter and make it stiffer all at, in one design change. So that was a big, a big revelation. And now I most of them have copied that design. So it's, uh, it's, that's another time where we, we did something that, that, uh, now became the standard.
[00:23:43] Randall: Yeah. One of many from what I've observed in a written the history. Uh, so around this time, or shortly after you started the repair business, you started doing some pretty, pretty wild frames in terms of pushing the limits of what was possible when we talk about that.
[00:24:01] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah, we did. We've done a lot of different types of frames, uh, mostly for show, but, um, like the north American handmade bike show is a great venue for just doing something way out of left field. Um, we did, uh, a bamboo bike made all out of small diameter, bamboo. Um, it's I only made one because it was a total pain in the ass to make.
[00:24:26] Uh, and it was also kind of inspired by the, a request from a guy who was not only a fan of bamboo, but he was a fan of molten style bikes. Those are the trust style frames with small wheels. So we built one of those and. With the only small diameter bamboo, and we built another one that was, uh, a real art piece.
[00:24:49] So just having fun with that from a, you know, completely artistic direction is a lot of fun for me because that's my formal training. I went to art school and learned about different materials and, and art and composition. Uh, and I was into the structure of materials and how they, they relate to each other.
[00:25:12] And my art was more of a forum file form follows function, kind of inspiration. And, uh, so some bikes that I've made were, are not terribly practical, but just explore the, the limits of structure. So another bike I made, uh, we call it the spider web bike, which was literally a, a bike made of just carbon fiber strands.
[00:25:36] No tubes. And it, it was kind of wild looking and a collector ended up buying it, which is really cool. But you look at this thing and you just couldn't imagine that it, it, you could actually ride it, but, uh, it actually does ride fairly well. It's a bit fragile if you crash it, it would be kind of dangerous, but you know, stuff like that.
[00:25:55] I like to do that occasionally.
[00:25:59] Randall: I think of, uh, like biomorphic design or like hyper optimized design that maybe doesn't have the resiliency, but very strict parameters will perform higher than anything else that you could, you could create.
[00:26:12] Craig Calfee: absolutely. Yeah. Those are really fun. I'm really inspired by natural forms and, uh, you know, the, the, some of the new computer aided techniques we're designing are, uh, rattled in those lines. so, yeah, I follow that pretty closely.
[00:26:28] Randall: a little sidebar. Um, I don't know if you've, uh, no of, uh, Nick Taylor, the guy who created the, Ibis Maximus in front of the mountain bike hall of fame.
[00:26:40] Craig Calfee: Um, no, I don't think so.
[00:26:43] Randall: I'll introduce you to his work at some point, but he's another one of these people who, very avid cyclist is not in the bike industry, but is. There's a lot of trail building and alike and isn't is a sculptor really focused on, the form of, uh, you know, biological shapes and materials and, and things of this sort.
[00:27:02] Uh, I think that there's a lot, uh, I'm actually curious more into your, your non bike artistic work for a moment. Uh, and, and how that got infused into your work with the bike.
[00:27:18] Craig Calfee: yeah, so I haven't done a lot of, you know, just pure, fine art sculpture in a long time. But when I was doing that, it was. a lot of things that would fool the eye or, um, some material and, and push it to its limit. So I was doing stuff that was, um, uh, you know, trying to create a, almost like a physical illusion, not just an optical illusion, but a, but a physical illusion or like, how could you possibly do that kind of thing?
[00:27:54] And that was a theme of my sculpture shortly after Pratt. So for example, just take one example of a sculpture that I got a lot of credit for in classes at Pratt, it was a, a big block of Oak. It was a cutoff from a woodworking shop. It's about a foot in, let's say a foot cube of Oak. And I would, um, so I, I, uh, raised the grain on it with a wire brush and then I blocked printed on Oak tag page.
[00:28:26] Um, some black ink on rolled onto the Oak block and made a river, basically a print off of each face of the, of the block. And then I carefully taped that paper together to simulate a paper block of the Oak chunk that I I had. now I had a super light paper version of the Oak block. And then I hung them on a balance beam, which I forged at a steel, but the hanging point was way close to the piece.
[00:28:57] And if you looked at it from three feet away, just, your brain would, just hurting because you couldn't figure out how is this even possible? And because it really looked amazing, super hyper real. Anyway, it just looked amazing and it was fun to get the effect of how the hell did that. Did he do that?
[00:29:18] What's what's the trick here. There's something going on. That's not real. Or it's. Uh it's not physically possible. And I kind of got that feeling with the carbon fiber bike. When we, when we built the first bike, everyone would pick it up and go, oh, that's just too light. It's not even a bike. It's a plastic bike it's going to break instantly.
[00:29:39] So that was sort of a relation from, from those days to the, to the bike.
[00:29:44] Randall: You ever come across Douglas Hofstadter's book, Godel, Escher Bach.
[00:29:49] Craig Calfee: No, but I'd be interested to read it.
[00:29:51] Randall: Definite short Lister. Um, uh, you've come across MC Escher, of Yeah. And are there any parallels or any inspiration there?
[00:30:01] Craig Calfee: Um, not very direct, I'd say. Um,
[00:30:08] Who
[00:30:08] Randall: your, who your inspirations or what, what would you say your creative energy is most similar to?
[00:30:14] Craig Calfee: I'd probably, I'd say say Buckminster fuller.
[00:30:17] Randall: Mm,
[00:30:17] Craig Calfee: Yeah. I mean, I studied his work in depth, you know, not only the geodesic dome stuff, but also his vehicles, the dime on vehicle the, yeah. So there's, there's a bunch of stuff that he was involved with that I'd say, I'm parallel with as far as my interest goes,
[00:30:37] Randall: what books should I read?
[00:30:39] Craig Calfee: all of them.
[00:30:42] Randall: Where do I start? If I have limited
[00:30:44] time
[00:30:45] Craig Calfee: Yeah. It's a tough one. He's actually really difficult to read too. His writing is not that great. I pretty much look at his, uh, his design work more than His writing
[00:30:56] Randall: Okay. So who's book whose book about Buckminster fuller. Should I read?
[00:31:01] Craig Calfee: good question. I'll, I'll catch up with you on that later because there's few of them that they're worth. It's worth a look.
[00:31:07] Randall: awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Um, let's talk about 2001. you're a dragon fly.
[00:31:15] Craig Calfee: Yeah, the dragon fly was an interesting project. It was so Greg Lamanda had asked me, like, I want an even lighter bike. He was constantly pushing on the technology. And I said, well, there are some really expensive fibers that are starting to become available, but, um, you know, this would be a $10,000 bike frame and, you know, it's only going to be a half a pound lighter.
[00:31:40] And he said, well, I don't care. I just, you know, I w I need it for racing. I mean, um, you know, when, when I'm climbing Alpe d'Huez with Miguel Indurain and if he's got a lighter bike than I do, then I'm just going to give up, you know, in terms of the effort. So he needs to have that technical advantage, or at least be on the same plane.
[00:32:02] So the reason why he'd spend, you know, $5,000 for a half a pound, a weight savings was pretty, pretty real. So, but it took until about 2000, 2001 after he had long retired to, um, really make that happen. So the fibers I was talking about are really high modulus fiber that was very fragile, too brittle, really for any use.
[00:32:29] So we came up with a way to integrate it with, um, boron fiber. Uh, it actually was a material we found, uh, special specialty composites out of, uh, out of Rhode Island. Uh, they, uh, do this co-mingled boron and carbon fiber, uh, hybrid material, which was, um, they were looking for a use cases for it and the bicycle was one of them.
[00:32:58] So, uh, we built a prototype with their material and it turned out. To be not only really light and really strong, the, the boron made it really tough. So carbon fiber has, uh, the highest stiffness to weight ratio, intention of any material you can use. boron is the highest stiffness to weight ratio in compression as a, as a fibrous material that you can integrate into a composite. So when you mix them, you now have a combination of materials, that are unbeatable.
[00:33:35] Randall: Like a concrete and rebar almost, or, quite.
[00:33:40] Craig Calfee: I'd say that's a good, um, for composites in general, but now we're talking about the extreme edge of, of performance, where, um, looking at the, most high performance material certain conditions, versus tension. These, these are conditions that are existing in a bicycle tube all the time.
[00:34:07] So one side of the tube is compressing while the other side is intention as you twist the bike, uh, and then it reverses on the, on the pedal stroke. So it has to do both now. Carbon fiber is quite good at that, but compression it suffers. And that's why you can't go very thin wall and make it, um, withstand any kind of impact because it's, it's got a weakness in it's, um, compressive. So, uh, it's, uh, it doesn't take a break very well either. So boron on, the other hand does take a break very well, and it's incredibly high compressive strength to weight ratio and compressive stiffness to weight ratio. are two different things by the way. So when you combine those into a tube, it's pretty amazing.
[00:34:57] Uh, they're just really quite expensive. So we came up with the dragon fly, um, in 2001 and it was at the time the lightest production bike yet it also had the toughness of a normal frame. And that's that's right around when the Scott came out, which was a super thin wall, large diameter, uh, carbon frame that was really fragile.
[00:35:23] Um, so that was sort of a similar weight, but not nearly as tough as, uh, the dragon fly.
[00:35:34] Randall: For well, to go a little bit deeper on this. So what is the nature like? What is the nature of the boron? Is it a, like, is it a molecule? Is it a filament? So you have, you have carbon filaments is the boron, um, you know, is that, are you putting it into the resin? How is it? Co-mingled.
[00:35:51] Craig Calfee: It's a, it's a filament, basically a super thin wire.
[00:35:56] Randall: You're essentially co-mingling it in when you're creating the tubes and then using the same resin to bond the entire structure together.
[00:36:04] Craig Calfee: That's right.
[00:36:05] Randall: Got it. And this, so then this is, uh, if you were to add then say like to the resin separately, it would be a compounding effect. Um, I don't know if you have, uh, mean, I assume you've done some stuff with graphene.
[00:36:19] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Graphing graphing is a really great material. It does improve the toughness of composites. Uh, it's again, also very expensive to use, uh, in a whole two. Usually it's used in smaller components, uh, not so much on the whole frame, uh, and it, and it's, um, it's best, uh, uses in preventing the of cracking.
[00:36:46] So it stops the micro cracking that starts with a failure mode. And that that's a great, thing. But if your laminate is too thin to begin with that, all the graphing in the world, isn't going to help you. So for really minor wax it'll help, but for anything substantial, it's going to break anyway.
[00:37:08] So you have to start out with a thick enough laminate get the toughness that you're looking for. Uh, graphene is really great for highly stressed areas, which might start cracking from, uh, fatigue or just the design flaw of a stress concentration. So it's got a number of purposes. Uh, it's great for, uh, like pinch clamp areas, you know, places where the mechanical, uh, stress is so high on a, on a very localized area.
[00:37:37] Um, so yeah, graphene is wonderful. We didn't get into it too much because, um, it's just, it would just, wasn't practical for our applications and how we make the frames, but, uh, some companies have started using graphene and it's, it's pretty interesting stuff.
[00:37:52] Randall: We did some experimentation with it early on in our looking at it for the future. my understanding is. You know, I haven't gone too deep into like the intermolecular physics, but it's essentially like you have a piece of paper and if you start tearing the paper that tear will propagate very easily.
[00:38:09] then the graphene is almost like little tiny pieces of tape. Randomly distributed, evenly distributed across the material that makes it so that that fracture can no longer propagate in that direction. And it has to change direction where it bumps into another graphene molecule and the graphing, essentially when we tested it was doubling the bond strength of the resin.
[00:38:30] So in terms of pulling apart different layers of laminate, then, um, increasing the toughness of say, uh, a rim made with the exact same laminate in the exact same resin with, 1% graphene per mass of resin increasing the toughness of that rim structure by 20%.
[00:38:50] Which is pretty
[00:38:50] Craig Calfee: That's correct.
[00:38:51] Randall: The challenges that is that it lowers the temperature, uh, the, the glass suffocation points resin. so, you know, a rim is like, you know, there are, if you're gonna put it on the back of your car, you know, that's not a normal use case when you're riding, but, you know, it's, it's something that just makes it less resilient to those towards sorts of, you know, people put on the back of the car too close to the exhaust and they melt the rim.
[00:39:17] So we're having to experiment with some high temperature residents that have other issues.
[00:39:22] Craig Calfee: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's rims are a great place for graphing, just cause they're in a a place where you'll have some impacts, but yeah. Temperature management is an issue. Um, yeah, that's the high temperature residents are, are another area that, that, uh, we're experimenting in, uh, wrapping electric motor, uh, rotors with, with a high temperature resonant carbon wrap.
[00:39:46] that's a whole nother area, but I'm familiar with that stuff.
[00:39:49] Randall: Which we'll get into in a second, park park, that one. Cause that's a fun theme. yeah. And I'm just thinking about a rim structure. It seems like boron on the inside graphing on the outside, um, deal with high compressive forces between the spokes and then the high impact forces on the external, will
[00:40:07] Craig Calfee: the material we use is called high bore. You can look that up. H Y B O R and there they're actually coming back with new marketing efforts there. They, I think the company got sold and then, um, the new buyers are, are re revisiting how to, to spread the use of it. So might be real interested in supporting a rim project.
[00:40:30] Randall: mm. Uh, to be continued offline. Um, all right. So then we've got your carbon fiber repair surface. We talked about the dragon fly. Um, it's a great segue into engineering and design philosophy. let's talk about that
[00:40:47] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Um, well it's, to me, it's all about form follows function and, uh, when something works so well, functionally, it's gonna look good. That's uh, that's why trees look great just by themselves, uh, that that's, you know, coming back to the natural world, you know, that's why we have a Nautilus shell for, uh, for our logo.
[00:41:12] It's the form follows function. Aspect of that just makes it look beautiful. For some reason, you look at something from nature, you don't really know why is it beautiful? Well, the reason is the way it's structured, the way it's evolved over millions of years. Has resulted in the optimum structure. So for me, as a, as a human being artificially trying to recreate stuff, that's been evolved in nature.
[00:41:39] Um, I look closely at how nature does it first and then I'll apply it to whatever I'm dealing with at the moment. And so that's how I, that's how I design stuff.
[00:41:50] Randall: there's a, the Nautilus shell example, like, you know, the golden ratio and the way that, really complex systems tend to evolve towards very simple, fundamental, primitives of all design
[00:42:04] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. There's some basic stuff that, that seemed to apply everywhere.
[00:42:10] Randall: So with your carbon fiber repair service, so you started to see some of the problems with that were emerging with these, um, large tube thin wall designs that were being used to achieve a high strength or sorry, a high stiffness to weight, but then compromising in other areas.
[00:42:28] So let's talk about that.
[00:42:30] Craig Calfee: Yeah, it's um, you know, designing a carbon fiber bike is actually really quite difficult. There's so much going on. There's so many, uh, things you have to deal with high stress areas that you can't really get around. there's a lot of constraints to designing a good bicycle frame. Um, and then you're dealing with the tradition of, of how people clamp things on bikes, you know, stem, clamps, and seed post clamps, and, uh, you know, th that type of mentality.
[00:43:04] It's still with us with the carbon, which is carbon doesn't do well with. So a lot of companies struggle with that and they'll come up with something on paper or in their CAD model. And their finite element analysis sort of works, but, and then they go into the real world and they have to deal with real situations that they couldn't predict in the, the computer.
[00:43:29] And they get a problem with, uh, you know, a minor handlebar whacking, the top tube situation, which shouldn't really cause your bike to become dangerous. But in fact, that's what happens. So you've got, um, you know, uh, weak points or vulnerabilities in these really light frame. And if you're not expected to know what the vulnerability is as an end-user and you don't know that if you wack part of the bike and in a minor way that you normally wouldn't expect to cause the frame to become a weak, then the whole design is a question. So you have to consider all these things when you decide to bike. And a lot of companies have just depended on the computer and they are finite element analysis too, to come up with shapes and designs that, uh, are inherently weak. And, um, people get pretty disappointed when they're, when the minor is to of incidents causes a crack in the frame.
[00:44:37] And if they keep riding the bike, the crack gets bigger. And then one day, you know, I mean, most people decide to have it fixed before it gets to be a catastrophic but, uh, you know, it gets expensive and, uh, You know, it's, sad. Actually, another motivation for getting into the repair business was to save the reputation of carbon fiber as a frame material.
[00:45:03] You know, these types of things don't happen to thin wall titanium frames. You know, a thin wall titanium frame will actually withstand a whole lot more abuse than a thin wall carbon frame. So it's just hard to make diameter thin wall titanium frames that are stiff enough and not without problems of welding, you know, the heat affected zones.
[00:45:26] So carbon fiber is, is a better material because it's so much easier to join and to, to mold. But if you, you have to design it properly to, to withstand normal abuse. And if you're not going to do that, then there should at least be a repair service available to keep those bikes from going to the landfill.
[00:45:45] So frequent. And so that's what we do we, we offer that and we even train people how to carbon repair service. So that's, um, that's something we've done in order to keep bikes from just getting thrown away.
[00:46:01] Randall: uh, I think I've shared with you, I'm in the midst of, uh, doing, uh, uh, a pretty radical ground up design, which is way off in the future. So I'll be picking your brain on that, but it immediately makes me think of the inherent. Compromises of current frame design and manufacturing techniques, including on our frame.
[00:46:20] And in our case, the way we've addressed that is through not going with lower modulates carbon, you know, S T 700, maybe some T 800 in the frame, then overbuilding it order to have resiliency against impacts. But then also these sorts of, um, micro voids in other imperfections that are in inherent process of any, uh, manufacturing, uh, system that involves handling of materials in a complex, you know, eight, uh, sorry, 250 a piece, you know, layup like there's, this there's even that like human elements that you have to design a whole bunch of fudge factor into to make sure that when mistakes are made, not if, but when mistakes are made, that there's so much, uh, overbuilding that they don't end up in a catastrophic failure.
[00:47:10] Craig Calfee: that's right. Yeah. Yeah. You have to have some safety margin.
[00:47:15] Randall: And the Manderal spinning process that you were describing essentially eliminates a lot of that in you're starting to see, I mean, with rims, that's the direction that rims are going in, everything is going to be automated, is going to be knit like a sock and frames are a much more complex shape. Um, but you're starting to see, uh, actually probably know a lot more about the, the automation of frame design than I do.
[00:47:35] Um, what do you see? Like as the, as the end point, at least with regards to the, um, like filament based carbon fiber material and frames, like where could it go with technology?
[00:47:50] Craig Calfee: the, the, um, robotics are getting super advanced now and there's this technique called, um, uh, they just call it fiber placements or automated fiber placement, which is a fancy word for a robot arm, winding fiber, you know, on a mandrel or shape, uh, and then compressing that and, uh, know, molding that.
[00:48:14] So it's, it's where your, a robot will orient a single filament of carbon fiber. Uh, continuously all around the, uh, the shape that you're trying to make. They do that in aerospace now for a really expensive rockets and satellite parts, but the technology is getting more accessible and, uh, so robotic trimmers are another one.
[00:48:42] So we're, in fact, we're getting ready to build our own robotic arm tremor for a resin transfer, molded parts. That's where the edge of the part that you mold gets trimmed very carefully with a router. And, but imagine instead of just a router trimming an edge, you've got a robot arm with a spool of fiber on it, wrapping the fiber individually around the whole structure of the frame.
[00:49:10] Uh, no, no people involved just, you know, someone to turn the machine on and then turn it off again. So that's kind of coming that that is a future. Uh, it hasn't arrived yet, certainly, maybe for simpler parts, but a frame is a very complex shape. So it'll take a while before they can get to that point.
[00:49:30] Randall: It having to, yeah. Being able to Uh, spin a frame in one piece is, seems to be the ultimate end game.
[00:49:43] Craig Calfee: Yeah. I think we need to, I think the, the, uh, genetically modified spiders would be a better way to
[00:49:50] go
[00:49:50] Randall: Yeah, they might, they might help us the design process.
[00:49:56] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Yeah. Just give them some good incentives and they'll, they'll make you set a really incredibly strong, you know, spider wound.
[00:50:05] Randall: Well, it does. It speaks to the, the, the biggest challenge I see with that, which is you have to go around shape. so if you're going through a frame, like it's essentially the triangle. And so you need some way to like hand off the, the S the filament carrier from one side to the other constantly.
[00:50:27] you'd just be able to spin it. You know, it would be pretty straightforward. So maybe the frame comes in a couple of different sections that get bonded, but then those don't form a ring. And so you can, you know, you can move them around instead of the machine order
[00:50:41] Craig Calfee: Well, there's these things called grippers. So the robot grip sit and then another arm grip know let's go and the other arm picks it up. And then there's like in weaving, there's this thing called the flying shuttle, which invented. That's where the shuttle that, the war
[00:50:59] Randall: Your ancestors were involved with flying shuttle.
[00:51:02] Craig Calfee: Yeah.
[00:51:02] Randall: That's one of the, uh, all right. That's, that's a whole other conversation.
[00:51:07] Craig Calfee: Yeah, a really interesting, I mean, it's the Draper corporation. If you want to look it up,
[00:51:13] um
[00:51:13] Randall: I
[00:51:13] Craig Calfee: know
[00:51:14] they were the manufacturing made the looms back in the industrial revolution in the Northeast
[00:51:21] Randall: I'm sitting currently in Waltham, which was one of the first mill cities, um, not from Lowell.
[00:51:28] Craig Calfee: Yeah. So all those mills were where our customers and they would buy the Draper looms. Um, and they were automated looms with a flying shuttle was a big deal Uh back then. And so they, they made a lot of, of those looms and, and that's basically what sent me to college with a trust fund. So
[00:51:49] Randall: You're a trust fund, baby.
[00:51:51] Craig Calfee: Yep.
[00:51:51] Yep
[00:51:53] From vendors.
[00:51:55] Uh
[00:51:56] but that's yeah, that's the world I, I came out of. And, so the, the idea of taking a spool of material and handing it off as you wrap around something is really not that difficult.
[00:52:08] Randall: Okay. So then you can do it in a way that is resilient to probably 10,000 handoffs over the course of weaving a frame and you can expect that it's not going to fail once.
[00:52:19] Craig Calfee: That's right Yeah
[00:52:20] It
[00:52:20] Randall: All then that, that's
[00:52:22] Craig Calfee: the hard part, the hard part is dealing with the resin and the, and the, uh, forming and the getting a nice surface finish. That was where the harder.
[00:52:31] Randall: Yeah. And, uh, uh, I'm thinking about, uh, space X's attempts to create a giant, uh, carbon fiber, uh, fuel tank. And they actually had to do the, um, the heating the resin at the point of, uh, depositing of the filaments.
[00:52:52] And
[00:52:52] you know, that's a really challenging process because you can't build an autoclave big enough to contain a fuel tank for a giant rocket bicycles don't have that issue, but
[00:53:01] Craig Calfee: right. Yeah. The filament winding technique, which is how all those tanks are made is, is pretty amazing in the large scale of those, those big rockets is phenomenal. I mean, a couple of places in Utah that make those, and it's just seeing such a large things spinning and, uh, wrapping around it rapidly is quite inspiring.
[00:53:26] Randall: Yeah. It's very, very cool stuff. And that's, again, a whole another thread about the, uh, the Utah based, uh, composites industry that got its start in aerospace, you know, advanced aerospace applications, which NV and others came out of. They used to be edge which you worked with. NBU designed their tubes early on.
[00:53:43] Right.
[00:53:44] Craig Calfee: W well, yeah, the poles history behind envy and quality composites back in late eighties, literally, uh, when I first came out to, uh, actually I was still, think I ordered them in Massachusetts and took delivery in California, but it was a quality composites and out of Utah, uh, Nancy Polish was the owner of that.
[00:54:06] Also an MIT graduate who, um, who started a roll wrapping carbon fiber in tubular forum. And I'm pretty sure we were the first roll wrapped carbon tubes, uh, for bicycles that she made. And, um Uh, evolved to, uh, edge composites. So they, so quality composites became McClain quality composites, and then McLean, the guys who broke away from that went to start envy or edge, I guess, which became envy.
[00:54:40] So yeah, those same guys brought that technology and we've been the customer ever since. And now there's yet another spinoff. The guys who were making the tubes at envy spun off and started their own company, uh, in a cooperative venture with envy. So let them go basically. And, uh, we're working with those guys.
[00:55:01] So it's just following the, the top level of expertise.
[00:55:06] Randall: very interesting stuff. Um, so, so where else do we go in terms of the, I mean, this is about as deep a composite deep nerdery, as we can get in, into composites and so on. And, uh, given that we're already here, we might as just, you know, dig ourselves deeper.
[00:55:25] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Um, sir, just on the roll wrapping, the thing that, um, I remember one of the cool innovations that Nancy came up with was the double D section, um, tube where she would roll wrap two D shaped tubes, stick them together and do an outer wrap on the outside. So it was a efficient way to do a ribbed tube or a single ribs through the middle. She pretty much invented.
[00:55:53] Uh, we started doing something with that, um, change days, uh, to get more stiffness out of a change day. But, um, I just, some reason that image flashed in my mind about some of the innovative stuff that been going on that people don't really see it's. And that's what I'm saying before where the, uh, technology of composites has, um it's got a long way to go and it's, there's all kinds of stuff going on that are, are, is brand new.
[00:56:23] Uh, most people people don't see it cause it's all process oriented more than product oriented. But for guys like me, it's really fast.
[00:56:34] Randall: Yeah, it reminds me of, um, a technology owned by a Taiwanese carbon frame manufacturing, pretty large-scale tier one that I'd spoken to where they're doing, uh, that bracing inside of the forks. don't think they're doing anything especially advanced in terms of how it's manufactured.
[00:56:54] I think they just have a, uh, the, the inner, um, you know, whether it's a bag or it's a, you know, EPS insert. And then they're just bridging, uh, between the two walls of the, uh, of the tube of the, the fork leg, uh, with another piece of carbon that gives it more lateral structure zero, uh, impact on the, um, for AFT compliance, which is a really technique.
[00:57:21] Craig Calfee: that sounds like Steve Lee at
[00:57:24] Randall: Uh, this was YMA.
[00:57:27] Craig Calfee: Oh, okay.
[00:57:28] Randall: Yeah, the gigantic folks. I haven't, I don't know if I've interacted with them yet, but, um, but yeah, well,
[00:57:35] Craig Calfee: Yeah, some amazing innovation coming out of Taiwan. They're there. They're so deep into it. It's, it's a fun place to go and, and see what they're up to.
[00:57:47] Randall: this actually brings me back to, um, I, I did had a conversation with over with Russ at path, less pedaled, and was asking like, you know, tell me about the quality of stuff made, made over in Asia. And I was like, well, you know, it's generally best to work with their production engineers because they're so close to the actual manufacturing techniques and they're the ones innovating on those techniques.
[00:58:10] And in fact, um, you know, even specialized up until recently did not do carbon fiber in. outsource that, you know, they, they do some of the work in house, but then the actual design for manufacture and all that is being done by the factories and rightfully so the factories know it better, being close to the ground though, dealing with someone with yourself, you're someone who could go into a factory and be like, okay, let's, let's innovate on this.
[00:58:35] Craig Calfee: Yeah.
[00:58:36] Yeah.
[00:58:37] Randall: so then 2011, um, first production, gravel bike.
[00:58:45] Craig Calfee: Uh, yeah. Yeah. We came up with the, uh, adventure bike, we call it, um, it was also the first one that did the, uh, six 50 B uh, tire size that can be used with a 700 by 42 or So mixing, know, going bigger tire on a slightly smaller rim on the same bike as you'd run a 700 C and, uh, 35 or 40 millimeter tire. Um, yeah, so the adventure bike has been. Uh, a real fun area for us as far as, uh, just developing a, do everything. Be everything, bike
[00:59:24] Randall: it's. And the geometry of that was kind of an endurance road geometry, right
[00:59:28] Craig Calfee: that's
[00:59:29] right. It's a road bike effectively, but with a few, a few, uh, tweaks for riding off road.
[00:59:36] Randall: So then this, this word, gravel bike is kind of muddled.
[00:59:39] Um, I never liked it, frankly. Uh, it's a marketing term. I remember it specialized when we were doing the, the diverse, um, you know, it was still kind of honing in on what these bikes were. Uh, but you could argue that like, you know, you know, everyone's road bike was a gravel bike. When you just put the biggest tires that would fit and write it on dirt.
[00:59:57] But this concept of a one bike, it seems to be what you've planted. But you can have a single bike that will be your road, bike, perform handle, give you that, that experience when you put road wheels on, but then you can put these big six fifties on there and have a, you know, an off-road crit machine that is highly competent in, in rough terrain.
[01:00:16] And so, so yeah, that, and that's very much my design philosophy as you know, as well, you know, fewer bikes that do more things.
[01:00:24] Craig Calfee: Yeah. We have this. Kind of a marketing phrase for, you know, how the end plus one concept where, you know, how many bikes do you even need? Well, one more than what you've got. Well, we do the N minus one concept with our mountain bike, which can also be a gravel by ache or a bike, but it's, uh, it allows you to change the head tube angle and, and use different, uh, fork travel suspension forks on, on the same frame.
[01:00:55] Uh, and of course, swapping wheels out is, is always a thing. So yeah, the end minus one concept where we just need less stuff, you know,
[01:01:04] Randall: So I reinvented that when I started thesis, he used to say like, and, minus three, it replaces road, bike, your gravel bike, your road, bike, your cross bike, your, um, light duty cross country bike, uh, your adventure bike actually as well, you know, load these things up. yeah, very much a philosophy that, uh, I think it's so good that the, its efforts to come up with new, subcategories, for example, by having gravel bikes now run oversize 700 wheels and extending the geo and going with these really slack head angles in order to accommodate that wheel size.
[01:01:40] I actually think that the form, the form that things want to evolve towards is actually what you created in the first place, which is the one bike that does all the things and does them well. And depending on the wheels you put on them, um, we'll do we'll, we'll transform. Uh, and you know, we've, we've talked a little bit about geo changing, um, You know, and things like this, which you have a bike that, that does that.
[01:02:03] And why don't we talk a bit about that in the technology behind it?
[01:02:08] Craig Calfee: The SFL, you mean we use the geometry of the head tube and the bottom bracket to, uh, to accommodate what you're using it for? Yeah, the concept there is to, if you're on a long ride to be able to change the geometry of your bike mid ride. So with an Allen wrench, you, uh, basically swap these flip plates out on your head to varia.
[01:02:32] And so you climb, you can climb with one geometry with another. And to me, that's, that's really fun because the climbing, you, if you're climbing up a a long steep climb on a bike that you're going to descend back down on, uh, you really don't want the same geometry it's, you're compromising and one or the other, either climate.
[01:02:55] Or it descends great. It's rarely both, or really can't possibly be both. Cause they're just doing two different things. So if you can swap out these flip plates and change the head tube angle, which is really all you need at that point, um, you have a bike that climbs great and descends. Great. So for me, that was the goal of, uh, just making a better mountain bike. Um, you know, the fact that it can be converted into other bikes for different disciplines is a whole nother angle. Uh, and you can even do that perhaps you wouldn't do it the trail, but let's say you show up, say you're on a trip, an adventure, uh, maybe out to Utah, for example, where you're riding slick rock, but you're also going to go up, you know, into the mountains.
[01:03:45] Um, you'll have you, you might want to have. Different fork travels or different for, uh, options. So you can bring a couple of different forks and swap out a fork, change your flip plates and have a bike. That's awesome for slick rock. And then another one that's awesome for, for the bike parks. So, you know, to me it would, but it's only one bike and you know, you don't need, you know, three bikes. So that, that just, uh, that's the design result of a bike where you can change the head tube angle on,
[01:04:21] Randall: and the, in really how much head tube angle adjustment is there on there.
[01:04:25] Craig Calfee: uh, it's a or minus four degrees
[01:04:28] Randall: that's, that's substantial.
[01:04:30] Craig Calfee: that's a lot.
[01:04:31] Randall: Yeah.
[01:04:31] I mean, that's transformative really. I work in increments of, you know, half a degree.
[01:04:36] Craig Calfee: Yeah. These are half degree increments, um, right now, uh, one degree, but we can easily do half degree increments. find that one degree is, is really. Um, especially when you have the option of, of tweaking the same bike. So reason we focus on these half degree increments on a production bike is to dial in the best compromise between two, two ways that it's going to be used when you don't need to compromise, you can go a full degree in the other direction and not worry about fact that it's not going to perform as well, know, in super steep terrain because that flipped chip is not, uh, the right one for the super steep scenario.
[01:05:22] Just change it out or flip it over a T when you approach the really steep stuff. So yeah.
[01:05:29] Randall: applicable for mountain bikes, particularly because the, I mean, the slack, the long slack that, that have emerged in recent years make a ton of sense for mountain biking, especially descending, but when you're ascending, it ends up being so slack that you get wheel flop, you get the front end, lifting the bike naturally wants to tilt back.
[01:05:49] You don't have that on a gravel bike currently. And if you don't, if you're not adding a huge suspension fork, you're never going to be descending terrain that is so technical that you need those slacked out angles. So it sounds like something that's very much could be applied to gravel bikes, but that, you know, for the mountain bike application is actually pretty game-changing.
[01:06:06] Craig Calfee: Yeah, well on gravel bikes or adventure bikes, um, uh, it's actually helpful if you're, if you're, let's say you're a roadie and you're starting to go off road. And so you're driving these gravel trails and then you're starting to get into more interesting off-road excursions with that same bike, but your experience on steep terrain is limited because you're, you know, you're a roadie, you've your, all your muscle memory and all your bike handling memory comes from the road and a little bit of dirt road stuff.
[01:06:39] Now you're kind of getting into serious off-road stuff and you want to try. a Uh, shortcut dissent, uh, you know, down something kind of crazy. Uh, let's say, uh, you're not very good at it in the beginning and you take your time and you, you don't have a bike that can go that fast down, such a trail, then you change it out.
[01:07:00] As you get better at it, as you increase your skill level and your confidence level, might want to go a little faster. So you a bike that can go a little faster safely and go for that slack head angle, which is designed to get higher speed. So it's great for evolving skills and evolving terrain as you start exploring more radical stuff.
[01:07:27] So that's the other reason to do it.
[01:07:29] Randall: Yeah, that makes, that makes a lot of sense. And in fact, any, you know, what I'm working on going forward very much as a, uh, one of the core, you know, is, uh, being able to tailor the geometry, um, as close to on the fly as possible. Uh, you know, if you want it to be on the fly, you're going to add a huge amount of added structure and complexity and weight, but having it be when you swap the wheels, there's very little to do, you know, this sort of thing.
[01:07:57] Craig Calfee: Yeah. So yeah, the whole idea is to, is to be able to go and have really fun adventures after all I wrote the book on adventures, see, here's, uh, this is a, this is the commercial part of our, our, uh,
[01:08:10] plug
[01:08:12] is, uh, this book I wrote about a trip. I took back in the, in the mid early eighties. Uh it's it's a kind of a.
[01:08:20] Randall: of a
[01:08:21] Craig Calfee: It has nothing to do with bikes, except that there is a section in there where I made a canteen out of bamboo in the Congo, but it's a pretty crazy trip. And, uh, and I just called it adventures. It's on amp. anyone wants to buy it.
[01:08:37] Randall: I will get a coffee.
[01:08:39] Craig Calfee: Yeah.
[01:08:42] Randall: Um, very, very cool. Um, we skipped over one, which is the manta, which is another interesting innovation
[01:08:51] Craig Calfee: Yeah. Suspension on a road bike. I mean, that's a, I keep saying that's going to be the future and it hasn't happened yet, but I, I still believe that road bikes will be the main type of bike being written in the highest levels of racing.
[01:09:08] interesting
[01:09:08] Randall: So you think suspension versus say. Um, wide tubeless, aerodynamic, the optimized rims with a 30 mil tire run at lower pressures. You think the suspension has a sufficient benefit relative to that, to offset say the structural complexity or weight?
[01:09:25] Craig Calfee: Yes. So, uh, the big tire thing, trend towards bigger tires is really a trend towards suspension. It's pneumatic suspension rather than mechanical suspension.
[01:09:39] Randall: Well, as our regular listeners know, this is a topic that's very much near and dear to my heart. I talk often about the benefits of pneumatic suspension, so this will be an interesting place for us to stop and really dive in when we follow up in part two of this conversation which Craig and I will be recording on the Thursday after this episode is published. So if you'd like to participate in the conversation, please tag us in the ridership, direct your questions and comments our way, and we will try to incorporate them into part two. And of course, if you haven't already come join us in the ridership, we'd love to have you and there's a lot of innovation that will be happening there in terms of how we use new digital tools in order to facilitate the community that we want for offline connection exchange and experience.
[01:10:21] So with that until next time. It's Craig would say here's to getting some dirt under your wheels.
Co-hosts, Randall and Craig put a bow tie on 2021 with a look back at a few of their favorite bikes and gravel riding experiences.
Episode Sponsor: Competitive Cyclist (Promo Code: TheGravelRide)
Join The Ridership
Episode transcription, please excuse the typos:
In the Dirt 27
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to in the dirt from the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. I'm going to be joined shortly by my cohost Randall Jacobs. This is going to be our final in the dirt episode for the year. And we take a look back. At 2021 and a look forward to 2022. Before we jump in, I needed to thank this week. Sponsor a competitive cyclist.
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[00:01:12] I know, after my conversation with my personal gearhead, Maggie, I came away with a few ideas on how to fill my personal Christmas basket. Those hard to think of items that I knew I couldn't get family or friends to purchase for me, but I needed in the garage. As I mentioned before, I got a full setup of SRAM replacement, brake pads that I couldn't find elsewhere.
[00:01:35] I found them at competitive cyclist. And now I'm ready for all those dissents here in mill valley. Competitive cyclist has a hundred percent. Return guarantee. So anything you can get, if it doesn't look like what you needed, feel free to send it back to them. And they'll take care of you. I know I appreciate that. As I've often ended up purchasing the wrong item for my bike, something that didn't fit or was too hard to figure out how to install.
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[00:02:31] The sponsors of this broadcast are very much appreciated. So be sure to go check them out. Would that business out of the way let's dive right in to my episode of in the dirt with randall jacobs Hey Randall, how you doing?
[00:02:43] Randall Jacobs: I am well, Craig happy holidays
[00:02:46] Craig Dalton: Yeah, same to you. It's good to see you. It's hard to believe. This is our last episode of the
[00:02:51] Randall Jacobs: last episode of the year, indeed. So we have a lot of fun topics for today. How would you like to dive in?
[00:02:57] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think first off, I'd just like to put out a little public apology. I feel like we've had some audio issues on the podcast recently. Both on the editing side and more recently just voice levels. So I just want to shout out one, I acknowledge that those things have happened. and two, just to note of appreciation to the listeners who reached out with a lot of kindness to just say, Hey, Do you need any help?
[00:03:24] Do you have any, can I offer any suggestions? Cause it's, it's well received and noted. And in fact, we're trying a different platform today, which comes super well-regarded. I know it's used by NPR and a bunch of other broadcast podcasts. Um, so hopefully the audio turns out great. And it's definitely a goal of mine in 2022 to just make sure that the audio levels don't distract from the conversation.
[00:03:47] Obviously to the listener. I never do any fancy editing. I don't do a lot of stuff around that, given our, my personal capabilities, but we do want the conversation to be enjoyable, to listen to. And just for you to be able to get to know the guests or hear the conversation without anything getting in the way
[00:04:06] Randall Jacobs: Yeah, and I certainly want to own my part in being a little bit overzealous with the editing capabilities of the last software platform we were using. We were using, there's a certain perfectionist tendency that I've been working through in public as a consequence of being a, you know, a part of this podcast.
[00:04:24] Uh, so the other feedback that we received and the ridership was super helpful and. I will be, well, this platform doesn't allow so much, but then also just recognizing that it doesn't have to be perfect to be really good.
[00:04:36] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think, I think, you know, part of the feedback and I had gotten this early on and it was intentional on my part to just people speak the way they speak. Right. And it's not up to me or us to edit out too much of the conversation, obviously. dog barking or fire alarm. I want to address that. But if someone says like, or as are needs of a couple of minutes or repeats a word, I don't want to feel overly compelled to edit that out because at the end of the day, the gravel ride podcast is just talking about connecting with humans and talking about the subject to gravel cycling.
[00:05:10] So I think there's just some good notes for, us to take for 2020.
[00:05:15] Randall Jacobs: Yeah, well, you know, um, like, uh, I guess that's okay. Sounds good to me.
[00:05:22] Craig Dalton: um, maybe.
[00:05:25] Randall Jacobs: Yeah,
[00:05:27] Craig Dalton: But otherwise, you
[00:05:27] Randall Jacobs: keep that in there.
[00:05:28] Craig Dalton: it's been a fun year. I mean, I'm, I'm personally proud that we've published episodes every single week of the year. It was a lot of effort to get to that point. I think certainly a lot of listeners have acknowledged that And I, I would be remiss in not thanking those who have become members of buy me a coffee.com or supported the podcast in any other ways, because it, it has taken a lot of effort to achieve this goal.
[00:05:54] A couple of years back, I was just doing two episodes a month. So this seems like a pretty big momentous year that we should celebrate
[00:06:02] Randall Jacobs: yeah. And just looking every so often, I'll go and buy me a coffee and read the comments. Uh, just when I need to pick me up and just the, the, you know, the appreciation there really makes the effort worth it. So thank you for that as well.
[00:06:13] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I mean, obviously like this isn't a money-making venture, so it's really the kind of kudos and kindness that, uh, you know, really propelled me forward.
[00:06:22] Randall Jacobs: You're not the Joe Rogan of the gravel cycling world.
[00:06:26] Craig Dalton: Yeah. You know, I don't think Spotify is going to be coming, knocking on the door to purchase the gravel ride, but, uh, I'm proud of the community we have and what we do every week.
[00:06:34] Randall Jacobs: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:06:36] Craig Dalton: Yeah. A couple of ones I just wanted, you know, we've had so many great episodes this year and fun ones for me. Like this has always been a journey of discovery and just these conversations I'm following my personal interests and, And hope.
[00:06:50] That aligns with what the listeners are looking for. But a couple of my favorites I really did enjoy having Patrick carry on doing gravel bike skills, 1 0 1, I think that was a super useful episode. And he did a great job. Just sort of breaking down some fundamentals that newer riders may not be aware of or need to work on.
[00:07:10] So that was a lot of fun. And then a couple product ones really enjoyed John Freeman from Rafa talking about shooting. Just getting into kind of the ins and outs of the construction of the shoe was an area that as, as you know, a hardware guy hadn't really explored that much. So it was pretty fascinating.
[00:07:26] And then have to give a shout out to my buddy Whitman for cab helmets, just doing 3d printed helmets, I think is really interesting. And I do think is one of those trends that it's going to continue to be present in cycling gear, going for.
[00:07:42] Randall Jacobs: And I particularly like the, kind of the more foundational episodes that we've done. Uh, another example, being the conversation I also had with Patrick on bike fit 1 0 1. Uh, it's great to be able to point people to a resource that was very carefully structured. But, uh, it's also digestible, uh, to help people understand an important topic that affects how we ride.
[00:08:05] Craig Dalton: Yeah, a hundred percent. I wanna, I wanna, um, kind of partition those off because I do think over the course of the last three years, there's been a handful of just critical episodes that I think if you're only going to listen to five episodes of the gravel ride podcast, you should be hitting bike fit 1 0 1.
[00:08:22] You should revisit our gravel bike 1 0 1 episodes. If you're thinking about purchasing a bike, the gravel bike skills episode, and there'll be a few more that I'll kind of package in there and I'll find a way in 20, 22 to point people to that to say, Hey, if you're looking to have a starting point, grab these episodes first and then.
[00:08:40] get into the flow and go through the, you know, over a hundred episodes in the backcountry.
[00:08:46] Randall Jacobs: Yeah. And you know, that brings us into kind of the next phase and being part of this experience, which is community. Um, another episode I want to call out is the one I recently did with Ryan. Uh, Russ Roca over at pathless pedals. Uh, his content is very much about, uh, you know, the non-competitive aspects of cycling and makes the sport much more accessible.
[00:09:09] Uh, and that's a value that you and I hold very dear and is a big value of the ridership. And, uh, you know, was the primary motivation for getting the ridership off the ground, you know, uh, uh, community of riders helping.
[00:09:22] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that's been a theme that we've brought up in the end of dirt episodes And constantly encouraging and reminding people to join the ridership. it's something that, you know, we've depended a little bit of energy, but not as much as we would want, would have wanted to in 2021.
[00:09:38] I think some of our desires were hamstrung by the ongoing pan down. The idea of getting people together and using the ridership to facilitate, you know, regional ride events and things like that. But the kernel is there and the interactions of, you know, continue to be positive and improve.
[00:09:56] Randall Jacobs: Yeah. And it's at a point where. It has a certain degree of validation that allows us to access resources that might not be, uh, accessible early on in terms of partnerships with technology partners or adding new functionality and things like this. And these are conversations that we have been deeply involved in behind the scenes and hope to start seeing, uh, implementation in 2022.
[00:10:19] It'll be a significant focus for me, uh, now that, uh, you know, I'm in a very good shape, uh, with, with my primary business.
[00:10:27] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think community is such an interesting topic and it's so, you know, I've always, in retrospect, always looked back at communities I've joined and discovered how much more value you get when you put in. And I think that's sort of the core of the ridership, right? The expectation it's not. Uh, Randall and correct conversation by any means.
[00:10:47] In fact, there's weeks at a time that I'm just lurking and watching conversations happen. And, you know, I just encourage people to get in there. And whether it's the ridership or other communities in your life, it's just important to put yourself out there. Because you get so much more in return when you find out that, I mean, maybe it's selfish and you get a question answered that you need answered.
[00:11:09] But if you can answer a question for someone else or point them in the right direction, I don't know about you, but I just get such extreme satisfaction out of that. That are really just fills me up.
[00:11:19] Randall Jacobs: Yeah, it think if we're doing this right. Um, increasingly people don't know who we are when they sign up and it's, it's, it's its own thing and the ownership and the governance is decentralized and so on, and that's kind of the vision going forward, but we can learn about that a little bit later.
[00:11:36] Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think you sign up and you bring your friends in and it becomes, it becomes something that you can use to connect with your local riders, your friends that you ride with every week. But then, you know, the goal has always been to just have this, this forum where people can communicate.
[00:11:52] Any question they have. So obviously bike related questions, tire related questions. These can all happen at a super high level, but these regional questions and those group rides you're arranging every month will happen at an interpersonal.
[00:12:05] Randall Jacobs: Yeah, who do I ride with? Also, another thing that's been really heartening to see is, uh, we have a channel in there that's just for, you know, buy, sell, gift, seek whatever. Um, and yeah, people just putting stuff up saying, I have these things that I'm not using. If anyone wants them come pick them up or pay for shipping.
[00:12:22] And that like really just speaks to the ethos. Um, and, and is, is, is something that, um, I wouldn't say I'm proud of. It's something I feel grateful to be a part of and that's happening.
[00:12:33] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:12:33] a hundred percent, a hundred percent. And it's only gonna get better as it grows. I think this community has self-selected towards kindness and generosity, which is really, really great to see and something that I know it's important for both of us, that, that those values continue to get fostered going forward.
[00:12:51] Randall Jacobs: Hmm. Yes, yes. Yes.
[00:12:53] So bikes of the.
[00:12:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I mean, seeing that we're at the end of the year, I just thought it, it would be cool to kind of, um, talk about bikes that caught our eye, just the bike each to kind of set the stage for maybe what we hope to see the.
[00:13:09] industry doing next year.
[00:13:11] Randall Jacobs: Yeah, and I know we have very different perspectives on this, so why don't you go ahead with yours for.
[00:13:16] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I mean, I still have my vision for what the perfect bike is and I don't think anything out there necessarily matches that just yet. I think there are a lot of trends. By companies are capitalizing on and they may grab one trend, I think is on point, but not another. So I'm still holding my breath for.
[00:13:34] that.
[00:13:35] Perfect Nash. Next gen model that'll come out. But one that I did want to highlight is the BMC ERs, L T um, I think it's unrestricted, something or other I'm kind of forgetting what the acronym was, but it was a
[00:13:51] Randall Jacobs: something that looks about right.
[00:13:52] Craig Dalton: yeah, exactly. I had the S right. So it's, uh, the BMC ERs has been around for actually a couple of years and, and, uh, Tom boss over at, uh, Marine county bike coalition has one, and he's always raved about it as did, um, a contact of mine over at SRAM and RockShox, and it's a bike that has built in some suppleness into the rear.
[00:14:17] I have experience with BMCs on the mountain bike side, as I was riding a 29 or hard tail for quite some time, and all is found that did a really great job of matching suppleness with performance. So it was quite interesting when this year they came out with the LT model, the LT is actually adding a micro suspension fork on the front end.
[00:14:41] It's from a company called high ride over in Europe. It's only 20 millimeters of track. But I think they've matched that delicately with the amount of travel on the rear end. The suspension is right in the steer column, so it's not telescoping. So my imagination suggests that it's a fairly rigid front end, and I know they do have a lockout on it as well, but more and more, and it could be a sign of my age.
[00:15:05] I'm just appreciating. Anything or any bike that can add a little suppleness to the ride. As You know, from riding out here in Marin, I'm riding the rough stuff all the time. So as we've talked about on previous episodes, there's sort of a bunch of different ways, including your body that creates suspension parts.
[00:15:27] You can add the frame and it's just been interesting to me to look at the. This manifestation of those ideas in the BMC ERs LT. Uh, and I think it would be a really great bike to ride around. One thing I don't like about it, which we rant about on the show all the time is it's got a proprietary seat, post shape.
[00:15:47] They did have the force forethought of this DC D shaped seed posts to add a, a shim mechanism. So you can easily go to a standard 27 2, but if you're a bike manufacturer out there and listening to me, just give me around 27 to that's fine. I need to put a dropper post in it. I don't need a fancy arrow shape and my seat posts.
[00:16:09] Thank you very much.
[00:16:11] Randall Jacobs: Yeah. And the arrow shape doesn't really do anything though. D just, um, the D shaped seat post is not about arrow. It's generally about compliance. So you get a little bit more flex in the, after the post, but if you're running a 27 2 posts, that is, you know, with a decent carbon layup, that's designed for some compliance, you can achieve the same thing.
[00:16:30] Uh, so it's kind of separate fluid. Um, but at least they had the forethought yeah. To, to do the, the adapter. Uh, so I don't have a huge problem with that being, being a, an avid, uh, advocate for round posts.
[00:16:43] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I remember talking to you, gosh, you know, a year And a half, two years ago, just about your experience working for a bigger manufacturer. And there's so many constraints along the way that, um, get, get hoisted into the conversation. It's it's often not necessarily about is this the thing that ultimate thing that I can make. Is this thing hitting the right product life cycle, the component availability, blah, blah, blah, that that often kind of shaped the design.
[00:17:12] Randall Jacobs: Yeah. And there's also, can we tell a story around this? And I've seen a number of examples. Um, one is a candy called certs. That was, there was a technology that I think rhymed with that, that ultimately was just a bolt on Alaska. Um, literally was compromising the structure of the bike and adding weight in order to give a cosmetic thing that told an untrue story about compliance.
[00:17:38] Uh, so, you know, you see these things less and less, uh, fortunately, but there's still some of them D shape posts. I definitely include in there.
[00:17:46] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. How about you? I know you struggle. Whenever I ask you to tell me about your favorite bikes out on the market, other than thesis, obviously, you know, what do you think, what was short of your bike of the year?
[00:18:00] Randall Jacobs: Honestly, so my bike of the year. So, so my philosophy is I want a one bike. I don't want suspension. Um, that is compromising the road experience. Uh, I want a bicycle that can do all the things really well. And the bike, you know, I looked at the allied echo and I thought that there were some really cool things happening there.
[00:18:20] It's got flipped chips, front and rear. You can get a true performance road geo with a 73 head angle on the larger sizes. Um, but the first off, I don't think it's necessary to have a flip chip in the rear go with four 20 mils. Jane stays that'll work fine for an endurance road G. And if I was to do a flip chip, but just do it in the fork and have it be one that uses two different rotor sizes.
[00:18:43] So you get more braking and off-road in the more upright position and I'm a smaller one 60 rotor for on-road with a more aggressive position. Um, my bike of the year is actually a bike that's been around for a long time and is still in my opinion, um, though it's expensive, uh, the category leader and that's, that's the open up, uh,
[00:19:03] Craig Dalton: And would you, would you call out the up or the, uh, or the, um, the one with the dual drops stay stays.
[00:19:10] Randall Jacobs: Um, not the upper, because I think the upper is a great bike for people who want a dedicated dirt only. And who are okay with a, you know, a less spirited on-road experience, but the, the head angle is pretty slack. You don't have enough weight over the front axle with that amount of, you know, with the head angle.
[00:19:27] That's that slack, um, it's not built around the, the road wheel size. Really? You, you run 700 by 35.
[00:19:34] Uh,
[00:19:35] the open
[00:19:35] Craig Dalton: that's actually the wide, sorry, sorry to throw you off. That was The wide, that
[00:19:39] Randall Jacobs: Oh, correct? Correct. Yeah. the
[00:19:40] wide, right? Yeah.
[00:19:41] Craig Dalton: lighter weight
[00:19:42] Randall Jacobs: the lighter weight one. Yeah. Yeah. Lighter paints, maybe nominally lighter layup.
[00:19:48] Um, I, yeah, I like that bike because of the geometry.
[00:19:51] It's a proper endurance road, geometry generous tire clearance. I think it's 2.1 at least. Uh, I think the tire volume on wide rims run tubeless is the best way to do suspension if you want. Um, I have a design for like a, a handlebar with a little bit of suspension built into it. I like suspension stems, if you want even more.
[00:20:11] And then you don't compromise the on-road experience and add all that weights and slop. Uh, so yeah, an external cable. That's easier to set up, easier to service, easier to adjust. If you need to ship your bike or pack it up for a flight, uh, it's going to be much less of a hassle. I find internal routing the way that it's done by most companies to be.
[00:20:35] A very expensive weight, adding complexity, adding experience, ruining technology to make it look, um, look a certain way. And to be able to tell a story about saving half a watt or a watt of power, I find it quite silly, uh, the way it's done. So, yeah, that's my, that's my bike of the year, uh, is the open up. I do a few things differently and I will do a few things differently in a, in a future generation, but that's a great starting point.
[00:21:01] It really. Uh, drug room and did it right initially.
[00:21:05] Craig Dalton: Yeah. it's so funny. I mean, that was my, my second gravel bike. The one that I decided I was going to sell my road. It was going to go all in on gravel, sold the original Niner that I had, that just kind of wasn't fitting, fitting the bill for me and people ask me why I sold that. Like, you know, I loved it. I think it's great.
[00:21:25] I think it ticks all those boxes that you, that you've described. You know, I, I didn't, and I've told this, I probably said this publicly and I've certainly said it privately. I didn't find, I found going to the thesis was very similar to writing.
[00:21:39] Randall Jacobs: exactly.
[00:21:40] Craig Dalton: You're not paying me to say this, but it's my personal opinion.
[00:21:44] Randall Jacobs: Yep.
[00:21:44] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:21:45] I mean, it sort of slightly different intention on the bike from a design perspective, not maybe as lightweight as the, the open was or is, but very comparable in kind of performance. And, and for me, what was critically important was the fit. I am concerned about some of the trends around geometry and two blunts that.
[00:22:05] Becoming popularized in the gravel bike market right now. And I'm concerned. And I had the same concern when this happened on mountain bikes. That it's actually not favoring me like where we are today from a certainly too blunt that I'm talking about the trend towards going longer, top tube slacker, head tube, short stem, and longer top tubes just never, never worked for me.
[00:22:29] I've sort of in. You know, on my thesis, on the open, I would tend to ride a little bit shorter stem.
[00:22:34] than maybe was customary. Um, given my height, just cause of my torso and now not to get into this trend too much. Cause I'm sure we'll cover it in 2022, but I'm a little bit concerned about getting my fit right on some of these newer.
[00:22:48] Randall Jacobs: Mm. Yeah. And where is this significant? There, there are benefits on the mountain side and really no downside, assuming you can fit to the bike properly because a mountain bike is generally. You know, the range of applications that you use a given mountain bike for is generally narrower than say, you know what I'm describing as a one bike where you'd have, you know, performance road experience all the way to a borderline cross country mountain bike experience, to a bike packing experience.
[00:23:13] Um, I find that the, you know, the argument for going with a longer top tube, shorter stem is so you can fit bigger 700 C type. Um, I find it kind of silly because you could go higher volume six 50 B. You could still fit big enough, 700 C for certain applications and not compromise the on-road experience with a front end that doesn't have enough weight kids to leave it over, over the front axle for control and cornering and descending and so on.
[00:23:40] I think it has as much to do with trying to differentiate. Gravel bikes enough from road bikes to justify people owning both. Uh, I think it has as much to do with that as it does to do with any sort of ostensible benefits, um, to a very, you know, increasingly narrow set of applications that such a bike is useful for.
[00:24:01] Craig Dalton: yeah. I mean, you would think for me being like an entirely off-road rider for.
[00:24:04] the most. This new trend would be helpful. And I am curious, try kind of these bikes. I've, I've got a couple in the garage of the haven't been a good fit. Um, I am looking to get one with a better fit just to sort of see if it, if it fits the bill for me, but I think you're right.
[00:24:19] I think it is creating a greater amount of separation between the road and the gravel bikes. And to me, I don't necessarily strive for that since I don't have a road bike in the garage. Right.
[00:24:31] Randall Jacobs: Difference without distinction. It's I see it as all down. Um, that, that that's obviously I have, I have a horse in this, in this race, but, uh, that's, that's my perspective in anything I do in the future will not use that geometry philosophy.
[00:24:44] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Okay. Well, that's interesting to hear Rondo, you got an a on that, on that front. I was gifted for my wife, a bike fit this this year, and it was something that I obviously put on my Christmas list. Um, I'm increasingly concerned and, you know, should I go down the route of getting a custom bike or should I have a demo bike be offered to me in 2022?
[00:25:06] I just sort of want to understand my personal parameters a little bit more and with a little bit more confidence. I know. And I appreciate you being a friend and ally on my journey. Trying to explore fit and understanding of frame geometries. Um, I'm much better equipped today at the end of 2021 than I was earlier in the year.
[00:25:26] And I do think going through this fit exercise is just going to be another step forward in my understanding of, of my personal body and how it's changing over time with the.
[00:25:36] Randall Jacobs: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, um, I refer you to the bike fit episode and, uh, you know, my phone number.
[00:25:43] Craig Dalton: yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. So I've got it. I'll go through it locally and you know, I've listened to that episode again, just to get some more thoughts in my mind. And, uh, yeah, I know you're always there when I need to riff on bike stuff.
[00:25:56] Randall Jacobs: So when we got coming up next,
[00:25:58] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I mean, I think it'd be cool to just highlight maybe your favorite ride of the year.
[00:26:03] Randall Jacobs: Sure. Uh, so this is a ride that my, my dear friend Marcus Gosling invited me on. It was a group of us, I think, uh, uh, three men, two women, uh, rode from top of skyline in the Santa Cruz mountains above San Mateo, south of San Francisco. Um, where I was actually living with Marcus for a few months during the pandemic, amongst the redwoods, uh, up on the Ridge there, it was a great place to be.
[00:26:29] When it wasn't, you know, when, when everyone was staying in and we went through, let's see, we went down to the coast and to Aptos, and then up through 19 marks, uh, along summit coming back north, uh, was near Mount Nominum. And so on 130 kilometers, a lot of climbing, some fun stops along the way, really wonderful conversation, uh, with people that, uh, Uh, a couple of people I hadn't met before, and then one woman I had met, but not really, uh, connected with in that sort of way.
[00:27:02] And when you have that many miles, you can really get into it. And, uh, that's one of my favorite things about the ride experience. The train was fantastic too, and very varied. Uh, but it's, it was the people that really made that. So that was my ride of the year.
[00:27:14] It was called, it was called the business meeting by the way.
[00:27:17] Cause, cause I think it was a weekday, I think I took the day off. So, uh, yeah, when you work in the industry that that can, that can qualify.
[00:27:24] Craig Dalton: A hundred percent. Yeah,
[00:27:25] I might have to coerce you into sharing that link with me, or maybe even putting it in our ride with GPS club for the ridership. Cause that sounds like a neat loop.
[00:27:34] Randall Jacobs: sure. Yeah. Happy to.
[00:27:35] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I have to say like, um, I guess it's a factor of me being limited for time, but I typically don't ever get in my car to drive and there's so much interesting stuff that I've seen in the ridership, um, in that neck of the woods and out in Pacifica that I really.
[00:27:51] Get down there because it doesn't, you know, they don't have to get on an airplane to go do something interesting.
[00:27:57] Randall Jacobs: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So how about yourself? What was your ride of the year?
[00:28:00] Craig Dalton: Well, speaking of airplanes, it was the one solitary time I got on an airplane with my bike this year?
[00:28:07] Do you remember in the June July timeframe when it felt like we were getting a hold of the pandemic, we were on top of things, boosters or, you know, shots were getting rolled out vaccination shots and it felt like things might be getting back to that.
[00:28:21] Randall Jacobs: um, it felt like things were normal for a period. I always expected it to just be a low so, but yes, I do remember that time.
[00:28:29] Craig Dalton: so I was leaning into that moment in time and our friends at envy composites out in Utah, we're putting. Uh, together an event called the , which was a ride combined with their builders, Roundup, which they bring, I forget how many, like 20 different frame builders out to Ogden, Utah, and kind of display their bicycles throughout Envy's facility.
[00:28:54] So it was, I, it was too much to her exist, um, going on.
[00:28:59] Randall Jacobs: um, with NABS not happening this year.
[00:29:01] Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. Which was so fun when we went to NABS a few years ago, just to, I mean, to stand next to someone with their creation, their hard work is just something special. Like if you, as a listener, if you ever get a chance to go to a bike show, do it, like, it's just, I mean, for the eye candy alone, it's worth walking the Isles
[00:29:20] Randall Jacobs: well I'm for reference north American hand-built bicycle show is what NABS is. And a lot of what you see from the big brands, a lot of ideas and concepts, uh, emerge from small builders, doing cool things in basements and garages, uh, which is one of the great aspects of those shows.
[00:29:38] Craig Dalton: yeah, exactly. When you get a, a fabricator with a torch and some tubes, they can, they can just try different things. And it's really, what does help propel the industry for?
[00:29:48] Randall Jacobs: Very much, so very
[00:29:49] Craig Dalton: so.
[00:29:49] I saw some great bikes out there. It's, you know, as far as the builder Roundup goes and I've published a bunch of episodes and, and, uh, and a summary episode that kind of has some quick hits from a number of the people I talked to, but that ride, since we're talking about favorite rides of the year, Every year, I tend to sign up for an event that probably pushes my personal fitness capabilities.
[00:30:10] And I love to do that just to kind of keep me honest and keep me getting out there and finding the time to ride the bikes. And I definitely wasn't feeling prepared for a 92 mile ride and 8 8300 feet of climb. At some elevation above sea level already out there in Ogden, Utah. But I set out on the course, pretty small event, maybe 200 people, um, got to the first aid station and there was talk amongst some of the builders of flipping it around right there.
[00:30:38] But when I got there, I learned that I was just going to be a straight out and back if I did that and I just couldn't resist it. If you haven't written in Utah, it's beautiful in the Wasatch mountains out there. Uh, so I kept going and like every great gravel event that I've ever participated in. You end up linking up with riders, um, out there on the course that you just share the pace with.
[00:31:02] And I met a guy from contender cycles out in Utah, which was actually where I bought my open from originally. So that was cool. We chatted for many, many miles. Yeah. Very late in the day, I managed to connect with Dave from gravel stoke. And I can't remember whether he caught him. He caught me or I caught him, but we ended up together and we'd separate on the climbs.
[00:31:23] And we both look at each other miserably tired at times, but we, we crusted the final climb and hit the aid station together And um, rode maybe the last. 20 miles or so together, we were staying in the same hotel room. So it was like, it was just like a great experience to have, to, you know, to connect with a friend and be able to ride.
[00:31:45] And it just happened serendipitously because I don't think, you know, when you're signing up for a 90 mile ride or a hundred mile ride, it's foolish to think that you're going to ride with your friend the entire time. Like you just need to take care of your own needs. And that, for me, it's all about. I've got a ride, the climbs, my own pace.
[00:32:03] I want to descend at my own pace. So it's really got to happen naturally. And when it does to me, man, it's just magic.
[00:32:10] Randall Jacobs: Yeah. And Dave, uh, for anyone in Soquel, uh, gravel. Puts on some of the best rides I've been a part of as well, a really great routes, really good people. Um, you know, a lot of, a lot of social interaction and so on and just a really great ethos. Uh, so if you're in the SoCal area, check out the gravel stoke and by the way, this is, um, you know, gravel.
[00:32:30] Those, a lot of those folks are in the ridership too. So if you want to connect with Dave or others, that's a great place to do it.
[00:32:35] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So hopefully more of this for 2022, speaking of which, what are you, what are your hopes for 2022? I mean, I don't think we need to go into a laundry list, but what are a couple of things that are, you know,
[00:32:49] Randall Jacobs: So with regards to what we do here. Uh, so I moved to new England and living outside of Boston with, uh, with family. And I want to build out this region. I, we hosted a couple of group rides, uh, before the, the season changed to ski season. Uh, and as. The spring approaches. I want to build out this region and I want to facilitate more in-person connection and an experience like this, what the ridership is about and have that be, um, you know, something that, uh, extends to other regions as well, where there's a critical mass where people can actually meet people in person and have real in the flesh experiences and maybe.
[00:33:28] Craig Dalton: I'm really excited for you to do that. I know when I spent my sort of formative years as a mountain biker in the mid Atlantic, I always looked to new England and it was a place that I would go up and race every once in a while when I can make a trip. And it. At that time, there were so many great new England bike builders.
[00:33:47] And I know like Boston has just an incredible cycling community and history behind it. And that whole region up through Vermont, like I'm super excited to hopefully get out there at some point this year and ride.
[00:34:00] Randall Jacobs: You can have come, come by. You can have my apartment.
[00:34:04] Craig Dalton: I can, I can see a couch behind you where I could be sleeping. Right.
[00:34:07] Randall Jacobs: Now I'll set you up properly and I'll, I'll stay. I'll stay in a different part of the place.
[00:34:14] Craig Dalton: Nice. Speaking of travel. I mean, for me, like I've been longing to ride my bike internationally. I've been fortunate that I've, I've raised my mountain bike overseas. I've also done some road touring over in France on a couple occasions and a little bit in Italy, but I really got my eye on riding gravel and specifically out in general.
[00:34:35] I've been talking about a trip in March, uh, that I'm going to certainly extend to the ridership community to join me on. So if I can work out the details on that in January and obviously pandemic willing, um, I'd love to pull that off because there's just something about putting your bike on international territory that, that makes any riding fields.
[00:34:57] Randall Jacobs: yeah, Jarana keeps coming up in my conversations with these bay area folks who are of a certain means and, um, certain level of obsession with writing. Uh, you know, I have friends who've, uh, we're looking to move there and things like that. Uh, so definitely on the agenda for me as well, keeping in the loop.
[00:35:15] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:35:15] I feel like if it's a, if you're a cyclist, it's just one of those destinations in your life that you need to get to, to find out why the pros are living there. And I did do an episode with our friends at Trek, travel about their trip to Jarana, which is the one I'm kind of eyeing. And you, you, you hear about all the great road riding there, but then to talk to the team over there.
[00:35:36] How much dirt there is available and how special it can be. I'm just super stoked and excited to explore that possibility.
[00:35:44] Randall Jacobs: Very cool. Very
[00:35:45] cool. Yeah. And it's I want to do, I think that speaks to a theme generally of more, more group rides with the community in, in a general sense, wherever
[00:35:54] Craig Dalton: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like you, I mean, in 2021, early in the year, I like, I definitely had high hopes. Getting our bay area, ridership community together more and getting some routine and having it, frankly not involve me as much. Like I'm happy to facilitate rides, but I also want others to feel compelled, to raise their hand and say, Hey, just, you know, meet me in Fairfax, California.
[00:36:16] And we're going to do this route or meet me in mill valley, whatever it is.
[00:36:20] Randall Jacobs: Wait, which brings us to our shared goals for the year.
[00:36:24] Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. Like as we talked about earlier, I think we've got a lot of big goals for the ride.
[00:36:31] Randall Jacobs: Yeah, I think, uh, building a critical mass in the region so that you can have those in-person interactions, um, you know, talking about having other people, being able to facilitate group rides and so on. Well, there's, we, we need certain features. We need, uh, we need to update our technology stack, potentially migrate away from slack to something more powerful.
[00:36:51] Uh, we have a technology partner that we're talking about. Some tools that if realized, could be very helpful in coordinating rides and having, you know, being able to verify vaccination status or have a waiver or, you know, other things that are essential to, uh, making this a good tool, not just for impromptu.
[00:37:10] Group rides amongst people, but also like your shop ride and things like this. They need certain tools for these, these events as well. Uh, amongst other features.
[00:37:18] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:37:18] Yeah. exactly. I mean, it's, it's tough to even consider leaving the platform around on today just because. Everybody's comfortable there, but I do think the only reason we would leave is to add more features And add more things that I think can be beneficial to the rider community. Cause it's going to be a bit of a pain in the ass.
[00:37:38] Let's call it like it is. If we ask people to move and there's going to be a little bit of effort and undoubtedly, we're going to lose a few people, but I am optimistic that if, and when we make that decision, that the types of things we're able to offer. Are going to be so next level, whether it's, you know, group conversations or tea times we can have with people or different sort of more high tech features that you were just discussing.
[00:38:02] I think that can be a meaningful step forward and really something that we can lean into.
[00:38:07] Randall Jacobs: Yeah. And marketplace features having a wallet that facilitates exchange between people, um, and having a different way of establishing trust on the. Like being able to look not at, not just somebody's, you know, score on eBay, how many stars they have, but look like how does this person contribute to the community?
[00:38:27] Um, how have I seen them engage? Uh, and having that be part of what provides safety and say like, you know, buying a bike and having it shipped across the country,
[00:38:37] you
[00:38:37] know, this sort of thing.
[00:38:38] Craig Dalton: I think there's a lot of interesting things there. And then on the podcast, you know, I think, you know, I just want to continue the journey I'm on. I would, I would stop if I didn't feel like as a, as an individual, I was not learning every time I have these conversations. And, um, I'm looking forward to talking with more event organizers, because I think as hopefully 20, 22 kicks up and we can have more and more events again, I can highlight them because I think events are a way of highlighting regions.
[00:39:07] And their events happened in a moment in time, but the, the legacy of the course creation carries on and people can go out there and commune and ride together on those type of things. So I think there's a lot there. Obviously we're going to continue to see new products come to market, and I also want to continue talking to interesting athletes alone.
[00:39:29] Randall Jacobs: Yeah.
[00:39:30] And for me, I think my, you know, my next few episodes, uh, I'm quite excited about, I won't say share who they are yet. Uh, but one is a woman who started a community that I admire. Uh, both her story and her ethos and what she's doing and the scale that she's achieved with it. Uh, and then another, who's one of the key innovators in our industry, like in the early days of carbon fiber and has, has, uh, uh, created a lot of things that have seen diffuse use throughout the year.
[00:39:57] And then diving more into kind of the psycho-spiritual aspects of cycling, um, with, with guests who can speak to that more deeply, I've done, uh, you know, you and I have had a couple of conversations that have delved into that a bit. And I did one episode with, uh, Ted klong, a sports psychologist early on.
[00:40:14] So exploring those seems a lot more, uh, things that I'm quite excited about in 2022.
[00:40:20] Craig Dalton: Yeah, well, it's going to be an exciting year. It's a lot of work doing what we do. We wouldn't do it. If we didn't get great feedback and support from the listener community. So as always keep that feedback coming, keep out there, riding and. I appreciate the time as always Randall and look forward to doing more of these in the dirt episodes and 2022.
[00:40:39] Randall Jacobs: appreciate you much, my friend, and to everyone listening. Thank you for being a part of this with us.
[00:40:44] Craig Dalton: Jaris.
[00:40:46] So that's going to do it. My friends for this week's edition of in the dirt from the gravel ride podcast. It's our final edition of the year, 2021. I very much appreciate you joining us each week for this journey. As we explore gravel cycling and how it fits into our lives. Big, thanks to competitive cyclist.
[00:41:06] For supporting the podcast. I remember competitive cyclists.com/the gravel ride and promo code. The gravel ride. We'll get you 15% off your order. If you're looking for information about our global cycling community called the ridership, simply visit www.theridership.com. And if you're interested in able to support the podcast financially, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. I love seeing the comments and your support for the podcast over the years.
[00:41:39] Is greatly appreciated. Until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
This week we sit down face to face with Moriah Wilson to learn her backstory and what set the stage for her breakout racing year in 2021.
Episode sponsor: Competitive Cyclist, use code 'TheGravelRide' for 15% off
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Episode Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Moriah Wilson
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton this week on the podcast. We have Moriah Wilson. A local mill valley, California resident, at least as of the time of recording who had a breakout year in 2021 on the gravel scene. I first started seeing Moriah's results in the grasshopper series. And if anybody knows the grasshopper series, if you're doing well there, you're likely going to do well anywhere.
[00:00:30] This proved to be true for Moriah with great success out at Unbound at VWR and many other places on the calendar. Culminating with a win at the end of the season at big sugar, gravel.
[00:00:42] This conversation happened to be recorded in my backyard. So please enjoy the ambience that nature can provide. Before we jump in i need to thank this week sponsor competitive cyclist.
[00:00:54] From derailleurs to bar tape nutrition, to racks trainers, to tires, helmets, to bibs the cycling kind and beyond. If you spent hours of online researching your dream bike. Some people love this stuff almost as much as the experts that competitive cyclists.com. I've mentioned the competitive cyclist gear heads before.
[00:01:14] They're equal parts, customer service and cycling fanatics. They're former pro athletes, Olympians and seasoned athletes with years of experience. All available by phone, email, or chat for product recommendations and hard won advice.
[00:01:28] If you're like me and constantly confused about brake pads, whether I should get steel, organic steel centered or aluminum, and want to figure out the differences once. And for all. The gear heads are there for you. If you have questions about gravel, bike frames, gravel tires, et cetera. I found the gearheads incredibly knowledgeable in this domain.
[00:01:51] I mentioned early on that had a conversation with a gearhead named Maggie, and I kind of walked her through what type of bike I was wanting to buy if I was going to buy a new bike and she really nailed it. Competitive cyclist as a wide range of gravel frames and bikes available that can suit any type of writing need.
[00:02:09] I very much appreciated the hustle of the competitive cyclist team and my last order as I was down to the metal on my brake pads. So it was great to get some replacements in there.
[00:02:19] Fortunately, they've got a 100% return guarantee. So if I screwed up the order, like I have been known to do in the past with brake pads. I know they've got my back.
[00:02:28] Go on over to competitive cyclists.com/the gravel ride and enter promo code thug, gravel ride to get 15% off your first order. Plus free shipping on orders, $50 or more. Some exclusions apply. Go right now and get that 15% off and free shipping@competitivecyclists.com slash the gravel ride. And remember that promo code is the gravel ride.
[00:02:54] Would that business out of the way, let's jump right into my interview with Moriah Wilson.
[00:02:59] Moriah. Welcome to the show.
[00:03:01] Moriah Wilson: Thanks for having me and Craig,
[00:03:02] Craig Dalton: welcome to the backyard.
[00:03:04] Moriah Wilson: Yeah. Great to be here. Great to be in person with you. As I was
[00:03:06] saying, this is rare instance for me. I think it's about a dozen people. I've got the opportunity to interview face-to-face so it's awesome to have you as a local guest.
[00:03:15] Well, when you're in the bed, You make
[00:03:17] Craig Dalton: sense? Yeah. Actually I was super stoked to start seeing your name and seeing mill valley after it. Yeah. Earlier in the year. So that was great. But I'd always like to start off the show by just learning a little bit about your background and how you found your way to gravel cycling, because I know it's a fairly recent affair
[00:03:33] Moriah Wilson: for you.
[00:03:34] Yeah, it is definitely the competitive side of. Of cycling is pretty new to me, but I have roots in it, going back to when I was pretty young. So I guess like a quick background, I grew up in Vermont to pretty active, like outdoorsy family, grow up doing a lot of skiing. My dad was an Alpine ski racer and album.
[00:03:56] Ski racing coach when I was younger. So I got into racing competitively doing that for a while and ended up racing in college. And. Mountain biking with my parents. And then my friends in the summers in middle school, there's not a lot to do in the town. I grew up in Vermont. It was kinda like just a hobby.
[00:04:17] And then I used it to train for skiing as well as I got older. And yeah, so it was pretty like casual, I think for a while. And then when I graduated from college, I moved out to the bay and. Bought a gravel bright bike and well was a cross bike, but I used it as a gravel bike and got connected to some women who were trying to raise cross and invited me to go to some cross races with them.
[00:04:43] So I said, why not sure? Like I like to compete. I miss kind of ski racing. And so I did that ended up racing like a full season of cross in 2019. Went across national. Did a couple of gravel races as well. And then COVID happened that early winter, obviously, and nothing, no more racing for a while, but I just kept getting more and more into riding.
[00:05:08] Didn't like, yeah, it didn't really step back. Just traveled a lot and rode as much as I could. And then. Earlier this year, I'm signed up for all the races that I could not really knowing what I would get into and having no expectations really at all. And like the results side of things, but just like really excited.
[00:05:31] Do some more racing because I had so much fun in 2019 and yeah, I ended up having a pretty great season, nice.
[00:05:38] Craig Dalton: So when you, when collegiate ski racing ended, did you figure that's the end of what you wanted to do in ski racing? And yeah, like
[00:05:46] Moriah Wilson: ski racing is really hard. It I don't know there are other sports like running or something where you maybe have avenues after college, but it's a little bit like.
[00:05:55] Like biking, but you really need like a solid program and a lot, it requires a lot of resources, right? Like you need, you definitely need a coach. You pretty much need a team to keep doing it. And like after college, unless you're at a certain level where you're going to world cups or on an Olympic trajectory, like there's not a lot of.
[00:06:18] Reason to keep doing it, so yeah, I think most athletes at the end of their college career, pretty much like rapid.
[00:06:27] Craig Dalton: The cyclocross scene, must've been a fun, attractive way to start cycling. It's just so irreverent and so often, particularly in the bay area, just easy to get to the events you sucked in by the community element of it.
[00:06:39] Moriah Wilson: Yeah, definitely. Like the vibes at cross races are always so fun. Oh, I cross national. So it's amazing. Just like the energy, the heckling, like it's such a fun spectator sport that I think you end up like. Yeah, with kind of just a good vibes all around. And I really liked that and it did remind me a lot of skiing.
[00:07:01] Cause I think there's a lot of that in skiing as well. And so I think that was attractive to me. Did
[00:07:06] Craig Dalton: you immediately recognize that you had a great engine for the sport?
[00:07:10] Moriah Wilson: Yeah. I've I've known that I had a good engine. Like I've. Been more naturally I don't know, fueled for endurance sports, even from a young age, probably should have been a Nordic skier instead of an Alpine skier.
[00:07:27] People tried to convince me to convert, but I was like, no. Downhills more fun, too much fun. And, but yeah, I ha I grew up, or one of my ski coaches growing up was really into biking and he always said oh, you could go to the Olympics for mountain biking once you finished skiing. And I always had that in the back of my mind oh, maybe someday, like I could become a good cyclist of some sort and.
[00:07:53] I didn't really know what that meant or what that would look like, but I definitely had an idea that mountain bike racing of some sort would be interesting to try out after college. And I did actually do a bit of cross country racing in high school and college just dabbled in a little bit like one or two races a year in Vermont.
[00:08:14] And really liked it. So thought maybe I would give it a try. That's why I tried the cross thing
[00:08:21] Craig Dalton: where you living in Marin when you started on
[00:08:23] Moriah Wilson: the cross bike? No, I was living in the city at the time. Okay. Yeah.
[00:08:27] Craig Dalton: Well, you doing longer rides, I know it's obviously cyclocross racing is the shorter course racing, but since the, you have the capable bike, a lot of people ride across the bridge and go, oh
[00:08:35] Moriah Wilson: yeah, no, I was definitely riding in the headlines a lot.
[00:08:38] Like I wasn't riding. Doing as long of rides as I'm doing now, because I was still getting into it. But I was building up to at that point, just riding my bike every day, which hadn't been something I'd been doing before that it was like a ride my bike. Do you know, maybe once or twice a week and then two to three times a week.
[00:08:54] And so I was just building up at that time. But yeah, the Headlands were definitely where. Learned to grab a ride, I
[00:09:01] Craig Dalton: guess. Yeah. It seems like with the cyclocross race season being in the winter, you've got this bike, you've got these great Hills out in Marin. It's natural that you're going to continue to ride.
[00:09:11] Is it some of your cyclocross friends that sort of talked about gravel racing or obviously you were going to be aware of it? What was the first race that you signed up for?
[00:09:20] Moriah Wilson: The first race that I did, I think was old growth. In 2019. Yeah. In August or September, maybe. So I guess it was actually before I did.
[00:09:35] I can't quite remember. And then I did grind Duro as well, that year in 2019. So
[00:09:40] Craig Dalton: it's a two quite different races. Old growth classic. I find it to be, it was a great adventurous race. Like you just felt like you were way out there so far. It had some really stern climbs and
[00:09:51] Moriah Wilson: The, I will never forget the end of that course.
[00:09:53] Like how Steve, this is so steep.
[00:09:57] Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. That's a great one. And then Grindr obviously is one that tests. Your full bag of tricks. It's got very mountain biking type stuff. We on a mountain bike. I was
[00:10:06] Moriah Wilson: on my cross bike for that. And yeah, but had a blast. Like I, since I like have a background in mountain biking, it was, I felt pretty comfortable on it.
[00:10:16] And I think at that, by that time I had, ridden that bike in the Headlands enough that yeah, at first I remember riding in the Headlands in. Skinny gravel tires and being like, what is this about? I need my mountain bike for this, and now it's like nothing. But yeah, the Headlands, they do have their, technical sections at times.
[00:10:37] Yeah. That's why
[00:10:38] Craig Dalton: it's great. On drop our bikes, it can make any of this stuff exciting if you go fast enough, for sure. Yeah.
[00:10:44] Moriah Wilson: Yeah.
[00:10:45] Craig Dalton: So then. Presumably, you went into a full cross season and then did that drop you at, through the beginning of the pandemic in 2020?
[00:10:52] Moriah Wilson: And then I did two grasshopper races.
[00:10:55] I did a low gap and Sweetwater and that was like January and February of 20, 20, 20 before everything shut down. Everything
[00:11:04] Craig Dalton: shut down. Yeah. Yeah. And then it goes quiet and you were doing some other things. Had you had in your mind that 20, 21, assuming that events were going to open back up, that you are going to really go for it and register for a bunch of events?
[00:11:16] Moriah Wilson: Yeah. I was like, I'm going to register for as much as I can. And I signed up for Unbound and Everything that I could. And really just wanted to use the years, like a learning experience. I think like it's rare to go into those events, as a beginner or first timer and see a lot of success.
[00:11:33] And yeah, I know that like maybe I have the fitness. No, all the details. I don't definitely still don't have all the details dial. There's a lot. I made a lot of mistakes this year that costs me some races. And so I had a lot of good learning experiences and that really was just my goal this year.
[00:11:49] And to have had, some of the results that I. I did have was just like a cherry on the top. Yes. Had you
[00:11:58] Craig Dalton: forged some of the relationships you must have now with some of the other female athletes that live around this area to get a gauge for oh, I can ride with Amedee or,
[00:12:07] Moriah Wilson: yeah, I think like between the races that I did in 2020, before COVID and then like some of the, or like earlier races this year, like the local one.
[00:12:21] I guess I did one or two hoppers and a couple others. I knew that I probably had what it took from a fitness standpoint to compete with the top female athletes, just because, there are so many really strong female riders in the bay. It's pretty crazy. So it was nice to have.
[00:12:43] Like confidence, I think, going to Unbound and going to, some of the other races that draw a wider range of athletes. So yeah,
[00:12:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah. That must have been interesting. So going into 2021 signing up for all these races where you just planning on self-finance. The races, or did you have industry contacts that you could leverage at that point?
[00:13:06] Moriah Wilson: No. Everything was pretty much, self-financed the only thing that like I had one sponsor this past year that was Sporkful as a kid sponsor. And they were able to help me out from a financial standpoint. But other than that, it was like, I'm trying to think. I really didn't. Any other help. It was all just, yeah.
[00:13:27] Yeah.
[00:13:27] Craig Dalton: It's funny. For me, it's being a fan of the sport. 2020 was this interesting black box where there was all particularly on the women's side of the racing scene. There's all these great women coming up and showing like a little glimmer, maybe. Like a couple of races before the pandemic, or did some major personal effort, like an F Katie or a Strava hill climbing all these different things that you're like, gosh, there's a lot of talent out here and then racing starts opening up, but you're not traveling super far.
[00:13:57] So it's like the Northern California women you were seeing who is fast in the grasshoppers. Are the things that are going on in the Midwest. And then eventually it all started to come together when you have like a BWR or something like that. So it's been super fascinating as a fan to watch all these great women come out of nowhere and, see your name on top of the leaderboard.
[00:14:16] It's been a lot of fun to watch.
[00:14:18] Moriah Wilson: Yeah, it was really fun to get to know the group of women that's out there. I think this is such a diverse. Field coming from lots of different backgrounds and everyone's super strong. And I think on any given day, given whatever conditions, certain amount of luck, like anything could happen and it's really dynamic racing going on right now.
[00:14:40] It's really fun to be a part of. I've really enjoyed it. And you've
[00:14:43] Craig Dalton: been tackling things that have very different profiles, obviously BWR San Diego, long long road section that really pay it, play a big part in it. Unbound having that super long distance of 200 miles, all these different races.
[00:15:00] Draw on different skillsets and you seem to be doing pretty well across the board. Is there an area or a type of course, that you feel more confident in than others?
[00:15:09] Moriah Wilson: Yeah, definitely. I think courses that have a lot of climbing definitely suit me. I'm not really. Flats are hard for me. I'm not the best group rider like drafting holding onto wheels is not something that I've quite figured out yet.
[00:15:23] I'm working on it really hard. I hope to get a lot better this year. Yeah, so stuff that's got a lot of climbing and doesn't require like a lot of team tactics. Definitely suit me at the moment. And then anything that's also. Has some sort of technical component to it, maybe a little bit of single track.
[00:15:41] I think that played to my advantage at BWR, even though there were, there was so much road in it. And I'm trying to think of what else it was like that this year.
[00:15:52] Craig Dalton: Okay, where you went down to big
[00:15:53] Moriah Wilson: sugar, right? Yeah. Big sugar had a little bit of that. Yeah.
[00:15:57] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And the least the chunky roads require a little bit of confidence coming downhill.
[00:16:01] Totally. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's one of the reasons I enjoy interviewing so many event organizers is that there's such an art to creating these events and With a mountain bike background. I'm always pro the single track sections. The more technical
[00:16:15] Moriah Wilson: sections. I love that stuff. Yeah. So
[00:16:18] Craig Dalton: fun.
[00:16:18] And I think, you know what it's going to be, what keeps the sport interesting because you can't road racing dynamics. Aren't going to play in that type of environment. So I always love when it advantages given to the more off-road type athletes.
[00:16:32] Moriah Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. It's really cool. To see how different courses can favor certain writers.
[00:16:39] And it'll be interesting how, like what to see what happens with the lifetime like grand Prix and how, because that's such a diverse series now you've got Leadville and then unbounded, sea Otter, and like all those are so different. It's cool that there, there will be a way to. Figure out who's the best like diverse writers.
[00:17:01] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I think it's really neat that there's an even tighter integration between the mountain epic mountain bike kind of rides and gravel racing these days. Yeah, because I do think that's, that's where the fun and the sport is.
[00:17:13] Moriah Wilson: Definitely. Yeah.
[00:17:14] Craig Dalton: Have you heard any word from lifetime as to like their selection process or I'm assuming you're throwing your hat in the ring for that?
[00:17:21] Moriah Wilson: Oh yeah, for sure. I don't know what the selection process involves. I have no idea. So yeah, we'll see. I forget when they did, they're like announcing who everyone is. I think it's in the next couple. Maybe I can't remember. But yeah. I'm excited. I hope. Yeah.
[00:17:43] Craig Dalton: So what, what does 2022 look like for you?
[00:17:46] What do you what are some of the races you really want to do well at either? Because they were just a hell of a lot of fun or you think that prestige is going to be good for your career?
[00:17:55] Moriah Wilson: Yeah. I think the whole lifetime series Leadville, for sure. I think finishing second was so incredible this year, but I really want to win to be honest.
[00:18:10] Like I, I want to win that one.
[00:18:13] Yeah. I think it suits me really well. I had a lot of fun on that course and
[00:18:19] Craig Dalton: being up at elevation,
[00:18:20] Moriah Wilson: I felt amazing. Like I actually felt really good at elevation. I did acclimate for a couple of weeks leading up to it. But I, my theory and I there's no nothing scientific about this.
[00:18:32] I have no idea if this is the case, but because I've spent so much time at altitude as a ski racer, I lived everywhere. In November, December, I would move out to Frisco, which is super close to Leadville. It's like 9,000, 8,009,000 feet. And spend a month there training, going to Vail and copper.
[00:18:53] And yeah, so I've lived and trained at altitude in a much different way than like an endurance athlete, would train. But I still think that. From such a young age. Like I started going to Frisco as, I don't know, 12 year old. So I think I've have a lot of years of spending time at altitude.
[00:19:13] And I think my body is, has somehow adapted to it is my theory.
[00:19:19] Craig Dalton: What do you think the mix between mountain biking and gravel racing, it's going to look like when your calendar pans out,
[00:19:24] Moriah Wilson: That's hard to say. I think it's, I think it's going to end up being still quite gravel focused. Maybe like 70% gravel, 30% mountain.
[00:19:36] If I had to put a percentage on it right now. But yeah, I definitely hope to do a bit more mountain it's just so fun and yeah.
[00:19:44] Craig Dalton: So on the gravel side, what are the events you're stoked to go back to? And why? On the
[00:19:49] Moriah Wilson: gravel side? I am excited for Unbound because I want some redemption there. Yeah. I got, I had, I flooded three times and yeah.
[00:20:03] Had to tube every time and it was just a disaster. Like still finished the race. Like it was good to. I think it was good to have faced that adversity and have to like, adjust my goals and expectations halfway through such a big event like that. It was good practice. But.
[00:20:22] Yeah. I remember finishing that race and being like, I just want to do it again. I want to do it again right now. And not be a little bit more prepared. Like we probably shouldn't have run the tires that I ran. And there were some other details that, I think after this season I will. Be more prepared for going into all the races.
[00:20:42] Craig Dalton: And I think going, having the determination to fix those flats and still ending up in the top 10 shows you that it's just important to keep moving forward and moving forward, it's just fixing the flat, getting back on the bike. Cause you never know what's going to befell your other competitors.
[00:20:56] Moriah Wilson: Yes, totally. And I think there's a lot to be said for. Running into sort of those obstacles. It's always easy to keep going or, it's still not easy, but it's easy to keep going when you're having a good day and you don't run into any challenges, but when you run into challenges and adversity and it maybe puts an end to the result that you hoped to accomplish on that day.
[00:21:19] It makes it a lot harder to keep going. I definitely. Oh, I had some dark moments there where I really wanted to quit and I was super proud of myself for just keeping, going and finishing that race
[00:21:31] Craig Dalton: at huge. And no one can ever take that away from you. So anytime you're facing adversity in the future, you're going to look back and say I know I can do it.
[00:21:39] I'm going to have those sucky moments, but yeah, I'm going to get through it.
[00:21:42] Moriah Wilson: Exactly. Yeah, I think. You learn a lot more from the challenges that you face than you do from any of the smooth sailing moments, so yeah that's one that I'm excited for. I'm excited. I'm think I'm going to do rule three.
[00:21:56] I'm really excited for that one. I love Bentonville. I had a great time there this fall. Big sugar, I think will always hold a special place in my heart. That was a really fun race. And yeah, I think the the diversity of that course is going to
[00:22:09] Craig Dalton: be really interesting. That one looked like a lot of fun.
[00:22:12] And you can always tell, I think by some of the writers who have been drawn to it, the type of experience that it's going to benefit pace. Winning over there and talking about how he just understood the skill set of the people around him and even talking to Ian Boswell about it. And he just, the, I know I'm going to fall apart when I hit the single track.
[00:22:30] So I'm just going to do everything I can within the place. I know that I can Excel.
[00:22:34] Moriah Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. It definitely everyone's going to have a different strategy, which is pretty cool. So yeah, I'm excited for that one. I'm trying to think what else? Oh, I think I'm going to do Vermont Overland. I skipped that one this year.
[00:22:47] It just didn't really work with my schedule. But I'm really excited to do that. I'm from Vermont and I've heard amazing things. I love those roads around that area. It's like near where I went to college. Yeah, that'll be a fun one. You must
[00:22:59] Craig Dalton: still have friends back in that scene in Vermont.
[00:23:01] Moriah Wilson: Oh yeah. Yeah. It's always fun. I did rooted Vermont this past year and then that was probably one of my favorite races just from a memory standpoint. The community was so great. It was the first time my parents like had watched me, got to watch me race. And ran into a lot of old friends, a lot of old friendships skiing and from biking and just growing up and stuff.
[00:23:23] And I think the same thing will be the case for Vermont Overland. So yeah, I really
[00:23:28] Craig Dalton: want to get over to rooted. I, my first mountain bike race ever was at Mount snow. Oh, Vermont, because I grew up on the east coast. I've got like great memories. Similarly. Like it was like an event that my parents came to and it's just so beautiful in that area.
[00:23:41] Moriah Wilson: Rooted was so fun. Like I loved that course. It was really fast. Yeah. Really fast. Some really fun class four sections. It rained, which like I had just, it was like BWR two weeks earlier or something. And BWR was the hardest race I've ever done. It was so hot. Yeah, I definitely suffered from the heat on that race and then going to Vermont and having it rain and be like really nice temperature.
[00:24:16] It was amazing. I enjoyed that too.
[00:24:19] Craig Dalton: One thing, the longer you stay here in the bay area, the worse you're going to get it riding in hot weather.
[00:24:23] Moriah Wilson: Yeah. I need to get better at I feel pretty good about how my body. At elevation, but the heat is something I need to figure out because I don't think I'm very good at it.
[00:24:33] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. So same, like I'm just destroyed from living in the fog belt. Yeah.
[00:24:39] Moriah Wilson: Yeah. We'll have to see I'm to, I don't know. I don't know how to, I there's definitely ways you can, adapt your body to it. Need to do some research. Or just avoid those places.
[00:24:49] Craig Dalton: Let's shift gears a little bit. Why don't you talk about the type of equipment you're riding?
[00:24:54] Moriah Wilson: Like which specific by,
[00:24:56] Craig Dalton: yeah. What bike or bike are you riding and what kind of, what tire with do you like to ride?
[00:25:01] Moriah Wilson: Yeah. So I just got a new specialized crux that. One that just came out in October. Before that I'd been racing on a diverge, an older diverge, actually it's like a couple of years old.
[00:25:16] And I've only raced let's see, big sugar. It was my first time racing, my new crux. And I could not love that bike more. It is an app. Weapon. I don't know how to describe it better. It's so light and so nimble. But still I feel very comfortable on it and feel like it handles very well and it's very capable.
[00:25:40] And I don't know. I always, I like, I prefer to be a little bit under biked. Like I, whenever I only have a hardtail mountain bike and I, but I. Bride that on, trails that most people would ride a pretty big, full suspension bike on. I like pushing the limits of what a bike is capable of doing.
[00:25:58] So yeah. And then for tires I have been running Pathfinder 40 twos on my crux. That's what I ran a big sugar. That's what I've had since I got it. And I've been loving those.
[00:26:13] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that seems like a good size. I definitely had been in the 47 camp for a long time, but moved back down to 43.
[00:26:20] He was like you, when you have solid off. Capabilities then you can handle a little bit narrower attire. Yeah. Although for a lot of people, particularly in Marin county, I recommend going as wide as they can. Cause a lot of times people that just aren't comfortable going downhill and you look at their bike and it's totally optimized around going up the hill.
[00:26:39] Yeah.
[00:26:39] Moriah Wilson: All my diverge, I was mostly on 38 and I didn't ride it a ton around here, but And I didn't really like to ride it around here. Now. I think that I'm on 42 is I think it makes it so much better. And especially without having, the future shock on the Crocs and having it be just a pretty rigid, stiff bike having 48 versus, or 40 twos versus 30 eights.
[00:27:06] It's nice. Yeah,
[00:27:07] Craig Dalton: it helps a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. And for the listener, you may recall, I spoke to Ben Edwards from specialized at about that bike. So you can get a little bit more details if you go back in your feed and listen to that conversation with Ben. Yeah. So have you had any, you've had such a great what I'll call a breakout season this year in 2021, have you been able to navigate the private tier sponsorship model and get a little bit more support going through.
[00:27:32] Moriah Wilson: Yes I have. And it's still still figuring out the final details. And I definitely took my time sorting it all out. I debated maybe joining a team. There are definitely a number of teams that reached out to me and I thought maybe, that could possibly be the way to go, but I've been talking to a lot of people and reflecting on what I want to get out of this.
[00:27:55] Really being able to set my own schedule and be in control of where I go and what my sponsors are and all that. The private tier like avenue seemed like the way to go. So that's definitely where I'm headed. And. Yeah, I'll be supported by specialized for next season and wahoo as well as a sponsor and the feed.
[00:28:21] If you're familiar with a feed for nutrition and scratch as well. And then working on a couple others styling in, but I won't say, cause they're not finalized yet, but those are the ones that are pretty much. And yeah, I'm excited. It's definitely, taken some time to sort all that stuff out.
[00:28:39] But I think no I'm pretty excited to be working with those brands and it'll be great to have their support. Yeah.
[00:28:46] Craig Dalton: A hundred percent. I guess that's the challenge with the private tier model. You just have to be stay on top of those discussions and meet the right people. Yeah. Cobbled together the right program.
[00:28:56] That's going to make it all work versus a team. Maybe handing you a, a single document that says, here you go.
[00:29:03] Moriah Wilson: Yeah. There's some thing, certainly that's simple as an athlete, if that's not something you want to deal with, that makes a lot of sense. And, but I don't know. I think this is I want to be able to manage the.
[00:29:16] Relationships more personally. And
[00:29:20] Craig Dalton: yeah. And are you gonna keep your day job at specialized
[00:29:25] Moriah Wilson: exam for this season? We'll see what who knows what's going to happen in the future? I have no idea. But yeah, I'm really fortunate. Be part of a great team who has given me a lot of support and flexibility in terms of, when I actually work, I definitely take time out of my day to train and work odd hours at times, work on the weekend, work at night.
[00:29:46] I'm lucky to have that flexibility and that support and Yeah, we'll see how it goes. I think it'll be manageable this year. I'm definitely going to be traveling a lot. But I'm also fortunate that my job is I can do it remote very easily. I'll be going to the office. But otherwise like doing it on the road is really not too big of a
[00:30:08] Craig Dalton: deal.
[00:30:09] That's great. It's great to have that supportive. Employer that just understands, like they can give you the flexibility. And the nice thing is a lot of times as a cyclist, you want nothing more than to be sitting up on a couch with a computer on your lap.
[00:30:21] Moriah Wilson: Totally. Like when I get home from a long ride, I'm like, I like, I don't want to go, like sometimes yeah.
[00:30:30] Sitting at my desk or sitting on the couch, responding to emails is like the perfect thing that I need to do. Like it's great. Yeah. You need that rest and that recovery and it does balance each other out.
[00:30:44] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's been a lot of fun. As the listener knows I work at a nonprofit called bike index is one of the things I do at my time.
[00:30:50] And one of our communications director was on the Olympic track program. And it was hilarious, like getting emails from her immediately after seeing her like race ATrack world cup or, be at the Olympics. It's funny. But she said the same thing. It's. What else am I going to do? I'm just, I'm a legit legitimately needing to just sit around and not do anything.
[00:31:10] So might as well exercise my brain and get some
[00:31:13] Moriah Wilson: work done. Yeah. Yeah, totally.
[00:31:16] Craig Dalton: Well, it seems like the bay area has been agreeing with you. And as we were saying offline, there's just so many great female athletes and male athletes around the area. Have you found that it's just a great place to train and make
[00:31:29] Moriah Wilson: connections?
[00:31:30] It's the best place to train? I've definitely. Yeah. Now that I could feasibly go fully remote. Technically I'm not a remote employee right now. So I need to be based out of the bay, but, I've thought about moving out of the area and I just, I don't want to leave.
[00:31:47] It's too good for where, like for the riding and where, what I want to be doing with writing right now. I just am always in awe of. The riding around here when they leave and come back getting on these roads and the trails and it always takes my breath away and I feel very motivated, I think when I'm here.
[00:32:07] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's so interesting. Living in the city, just riding across the golden gate bridge and San Francisco is such a vibrant city and then to come into Marin and be able to. Do a 50 mile loop and essentially be off-road the entire time is just such a luxury.
[00:32:19] Moriah Wilson: Yeah. It's you take it for granted?
[00:32:22] Sometimes I think I'm like, growing up in Vermont, it's similar to, but you don't have the year round aspect of it. It can go for a gravel, endless gravel rides from my house in Vermont without ever touching pavement, but You can only do that, from may to October and then it's no, either us the time.
[00:32:44] So being able to ride here year round is it's pretty special. Yeah.
[00:32:49] Craig Dalton: And I think you mentioned this with respect to BWR San Diego. It's like we don't have those long peddling miles necessarily. Everything is so up and down here that it, I don't know, it feels different on your body. So I'm with you when I get into a race.
[00:33:03] We're an event with a lot of just rolling mile after mile these long distance things. I'm just not used to peddling that much consistently.
[00:33:11] Moriah Wilson: Yeah. I'm definitely going to try to get up further north this
[00:33:15] Craig Dalton: cat on
[00:33:17] Moriah Wilson: this this winter get up to Napa Sonoma and kinda, I think the riding up there's a little bit. More aligned with,
[00:33:25] Craig Dalton: I think it's describing. Yeah. I think that's going to be more similar to maybe some of the mid-west miles you may get in your racing calendar.
[00:33:32] Moriah Wilson: Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
[00:33:34] Yeah. Definitely. It can be hard to find flat miles. It doesn't really exist. I know that's
[00:33:40] Craig Dalton: why my trouble, like I just, there's no easy days. And it's so blessed that like within 10 minutes of here, I can be on some trail going up hill that I just, I want to be, off-road so much more than I want to be on a road that it's always ends up being uphill.
[00:33:54] Yeah, definitely. I feel that. Yeah. Well, this was a lot of fun. I appreciate you coming over and giving us a little bit of an overview. It sounds like the cat is demanding that this interview is over. So maybe we have to listen to my feline Lord up there.
[00:34:09] Moriah Wilson: Well, thank you for having me. I'm really glad I was able to come and chat with you in person.
[00:34:13] Yeah. Best of luck next year. Thank you so
[00:34:15] Craig Dalton: much.
[00:34:16] So that's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big thanks to Moriah for coming by the backyard and for representing mill valley. So well out there on the national gravel calendar.
[00:34:28] Another thank you to competitive cyclists.com. Go over to competitive cyclists.com/the gravel ride and enter promo code thug, gravel ride. To get 15% off your first full priced order. Plus free shipping. On orders of $50 or more.
[00:34:43] I wanted to remind everybody who's listening to come on over to the ridership and join our free global forum for gravel cyclists. You can visit www.theridership.com. And join the conversation. We'd love to hear from you. If you've got any feedback about the podcast, you can direct message me there directly in a channel dedicated to the podcast, but much more importantly, you can talk to gravel, cyclists from all over the world to get beta on your local rides and to learn where to ride.
[00:35:13] If you're traveling.
[00:35:15] If you're looking to support the podcast directly, you can visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Any, and all of your contributions are appreciated. And if you have a moment, ratings and reviews are hugely important for this podcast. I read everything that's written about the podcast and absolutely appreciate your feedback.
[00:35:35] Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels.
This week we sit down with Carly Fratianne, musician and gravel racer. Carly turned a period of professional unrest due to Covid into a passion for gravel cycling. We look at how her miles and miles of riding led to artistic inspiration and to completing UNBOUND 200.
Episode Sponsor: Competitive Cyclist use code 'TheGravelRide'
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Automated episode transcription (please excuse the typos):
Carly Fratianne
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel rod podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. For those long time, listeners, you may have noticed a little different intro music today.
[00:00:19] That's because on today's show, we're interviewing Carly
[00:00:23] That intro music was courtesy ever band. W Y D she also just recently released a music under the artists name, Louis.
[00:00:32] So why is Carly on the podcast today? Pretty valid question. If you ask me,
[00:00:39] As you can imagine the pandemic has not been kind to musicians and people who earn their living, playing out in live stadiums, et cetera. Carly is one of those musicians who turn that kind of available time into something different. She became a gravel racer and actually completed. Unbound in 2021. I thought it was an interesting conversation. As you know, I love the fact that gravel is such a inviting community.
[00:01:08] And to hear Carly's story and her journey to gravel cycling, I just think is really interesting. And I thought it was a unique opportunity. At the end of the year to expose us all to a little new music. So i hope you enjoy this rather unique episode of the gravel ride podcast.
[00:01:26] Before we jump into this week show, I need to thank this week. Sponsor competitive cyclist. Competitive cyclist is the online specialty retailer of gravel and mountain bikes components apparel and accessories Be trained, cycling standout brands like pock castelli pearl izumi in five 10 it's unrivaled in-house bike assembly operation they bring the personalized attention of a local bike shop along with the selection and convenience only possible while shopping online.
[00:01:55] As I've mentioned before, the real difference that competitive cyclists are the gearheads they're equal parts, customer service, cycling fanatics gear heads are former pro athletes, Olympians and seasoned athletes. With years of experience, all available by phone, email, or chat for product recommendations and hard won advice. I had a great experience with my personal gear head maggie but as i mentioned on the last episode is on the competitive cyclist.com site and i think i spent 45 minutes just cruising around looking at all the great gravel goodies over there.
[00:02:32] I ended up way, overfilling my cart and had to edit it back down for my budget. But I got a few important, nice to haves and some critical maintenance items that I haven't been able to find in stock. Anywhere else says stoked to actually have brake pads. It turns out they're a very important component of breaking.
[00:02:52] Anyway, I encourage you to go check out competitive cyclists.com/the gravel ride. And two promo code, the gravel ride, and you'll get 15% off your first full price order. Plus free shipping on orders of $50 or more. Some exclusions apply. I mentioned the other day that I placed the order in the morning and saw it actually got a shipping notification that afternoon. So there's still time to get those holiday orders in.
[00:03:18] Go right now and get 15% off. Plus free shipping@competitivecyclists.com slash the gravel ride. And remember that promo code is the gravel ride. Would that business out of the way, let's jump right into my interview with Carly.
[00:03:34] Carly welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation because it's going to be twofold. I get to talk to you about being an artist and a gravel cyclist, which is a unique position on the pod.
[00:03:48] Carly Fratianne: It's a pretty interesting D person dish world too.
[00:03:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah, absolutely. Let's start by talking about, just a little bit about your background, both as an athlete and a musician, and then maybe we can talk about how the pandemic kind of brought them two together, for sure.
[00:04:05] Carly Fratianne: As an athlete.
[00:04:06] I'd say I was fair to Midland in as a cross country runner in middle school and high school, but that was about the extent of my organized activities. There were some like childhood soccer, but nothing to clinical. And then I was always skateboarding and riding my bike around after school, in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio which was where I got my first taste of freedom.
[00:04:34] And that's definitely. Carried with me for the remaining years of trying to just pursue that musically and I guess athletically, but I like to think of it more as adventuring.
[00:04:49] Craig Dalton: That's so funny how, like that. Baseline of endurance athletics, like running track or cross-country in high school or swimming.
[00:04:58] So many people I talked to they do that and then they might not do anything for many years. And then they pick up the bike and all of a sudden they're like, oh wow, I already have this fundamental engine that makes me halfway decent as a beginner in this.
[00:05:10] Carly Fratianne: Yeah, totally. It definitely makes it like more immediately fun, I think, too, which like, you don't have to do so much the legwork, no pun intended, but to get yourself into a position where you can really like go out and do some serious efforts and then once you build on that, Kinda just like how cool are your routes?
[00:05:32] Just like how much of this can you do before you get bored?
[00:05:36] Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. So it sounds like you laid the groundwork for adventure and at least an appreciation for the outdoors, but presumably given your vocation now, you were also pretty actively pursuing.
[00:05:49] Carly Fratianne: Definitely. Yeah, that was, I think that was probably my first real love.
[00:05:53] I've been doing that since I was a kid as well. And that is what's driven me to explore, in a less. Less on the bike, but just in general, I think like the pursuit of, a new inspiration and new muse and just a different, like geographical place has always inspired and informed the art.
[00:06:17] And I think thusly, like having cycling as like a. Like another means of propulsion is they're just so intrinsically woven
[00:06:26] Craig Dalton: together. And in the years prior to the pandemic, was that one, your kind of effort towards music and your kind of commitment and the number of hours was really spiking up.
[00:06:37] Carly Fratianne: Yeah, for sure. I, so I was in w Y D and Southern were to time. Projects for me. And then I also, had I worked at a job as a screen printer and in Columbus, or I was, waiting tables. And we were gigging out, but I between the two bands, it was at least two or three weekends out of the month.
[00:07:00] And just traveling as much as we could and Recording all the time. And that was a pretty serious time commitment there. And. It was no longer such a heavy presence from, due to the COVID lockdowns and stuff. It was, there was just like a lot of empty space there.
[00:07:20] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It must've been it's so shocking to have all those live venues, which in addition to playing, I'm sure you were an active participant in listening and going out to live events and knowing others in the industry, including my cousin, like just that dramatic.
[00:07:35] Removal of that entire part of your life. I can only imagine how jarring it must've been.
[00:07:42] Carly Fratianne: It was crazy. If I'm honest, I don't even like really remember a lot of that time period. I would just like, so just like devastated and it's almost like I'm only now realizing like what like at serious, like depressive time that was personally.
[00:08:01] But yeah, like the venues, in Columbus, they're all owned by people that we know, like they're like close friends and it's a very like tight knit scene there. Being worried about him, maybe they're not going to come back online or who's going to be able to make it through this.
[00:08:15] Are we ever going to be able to do this again? It was a lot of big questions and really just nothing to do, but wait, see how it pans out.
[00:08:25] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And I remember certainly personally in the early days you were thinking, oh, weightings going to look like two weeks or a month.
[00:08:32] Carly Fratianne: Yeah. I remember getting so we had shows lined up, obviously like before the thing I was actually in Texas when the initial lockdown happened and I came back up to Columbus and we still had.
[00:08:46] Between the two bands, at least a half a dozen shows that were scheduled to happen and within the next like month or two and yeah. A domino effect where everybody was trying to figure out if like what we needed to do to postpone things or like how to, work with the logistics.
[00:09:02] And it would, he'd get emails from promoters. Yeah, I think. We'll schedule it again for next month or something, or we're going to postpone our tour date here for a month or two. And we'll see about whatever September, I don't even remember what the actual dates were, but then it was just like, everything just went to a screeching hole and it was like, okay, we're looking at 2024.
[00:09:26] Okay this is happening now.
[00:09:29] Craig Dalton: Devastating. So when you're, as you're going through that moment, obviously, they've, they're like this big sense of loss and transition. Was the bike something you immediately, you sought out for solace or did you have to go through a process and then discover the bike again?
[00:09:44] Carly Fratianne: You know what I is, it's actually funny. So I had just kinda started getting into doing some like more long distance stuff. In the, probably the year before, like the year leading up to it, I was riding, but it was mostly road riding. Cause I just didn't really know that gravel existed yet. I knew it existed, but I didn't know that there was like a community in Columbus or, in the world.
[00:10:10] That was accessible to me. And I met some people in Columbus. One of them, I started work at a bike shop in Columbus called Velo science. And the owner, Jeff Clark. He was one of my first gravel buddies. And he introduced me to a bunch of people and there's actually the Ohio gravel grinders is a little community that yeah.
[00:10:33] Craig Dalton: Yeah, for the frequent for frequent listeners. I've had Ray George on the podcast before and love, love all the effort that Ray and everybody involved in that community has put into Ohio and putting, just putting such great information out there for wannabe. Yeah, gravel, cyclists. It's
[00:10:49] Carly Fratianne: yeah, it's awesome.
[00:10:50] That was how I started getting into it. I would just go, on ride with GPS and see what they had on their page. And there's always something that looked like fun and there's like you said, they're so like, informed and like the routes themselves are all uploaded with like awesome like notes and there's a huge dog here or bring a shit ton of water because there is none.
[00:11:13] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I feel like there's one ride that there's a signature animal, like a donkey or something that you come
[00:11:18] Carly Fratianne: yeah. Donkey March Yeti. I, yeah, I was just seeing some friends when I visited him the other day, the thing is hilarious. I only, I knew he existed. But I never seen him. And I was on a ride one day.
[00:11:32] I was training for Unbound with my friend, Melissa, and we were riding down this road out it's out in Homer is the little town. Okay. And we were just going down and I saw just like a F we okay to rewind for a split. Second, we had been chased by more dogs on this ride then like you would believe was humanly possible.
[00:11:54] It was like five or six of them. And we were just, we were like pissed and stressed out. It was like, it was traumatic in a funny way that, you know, we as cyclists to understand. But. So we're coming down the road and she's a little bit in front of me. And I just see this flash of brown movement come from behind this like really thin tree line.
[00:12:17] And I didn't see that there was like a wire fence or anything. I was just like, oh my God, Mel look out like screaming at her. Move cause she didn't see it. And I stopped the bike cause I realized it's not a dog and I didn't even know what it was. And this donkey just reached his head over the fence and uttered the loudest most hilarious, two minutes of sound. I have ever heard in my life. I wish I had recorded it. It was so funny and I just stood there and Mel just stood there and we were just like, what is this creature? Then obviously figured out that it was the infamous donkey machete. We felt really bad that we didn't have any extra food for him.
[00:12:55] So
[00:12:56] Craig Dalton: I feel like that's a Ohio badge of honor to visit that donkey.
[00:13:01] Carly Fratianne: Gotta do it. Yeah, you got, it's really funny. Such a thing now that when we met him the first time, the. Came out with a huge carrot and was just like, oh yeah, I figured you guys didn't have any food for him. So I got to give him this.
[00:13:17] Otherwise he'll just stand there and do that all day. He's just so used to the cyclists coming through she's we don't even really feed him anymore. Each just gets enough food.
[00:13:27] Craig Dalton: That's so funny. I'm sure Ray, who I'm sure you interact with would love to hear. Like the work that he and the community have done felt inviting, felt informative.
[00:13:38] We talk about that so much on this podcast. Just the idea of the importance of locals, building community around gravel cycling, because it is intimidating, like even here and wherever you are, when you go out into the wilderness, like it's a little bit confusing, can be a little bit scary. It can be a lot intimidate.
[00:13:56] When you're first getting into it. So having someone who's out there just putting information out there, and it sounds like their ride with GPS files are filled with, notes of where to get water and where the donkey is and all kinds of good stuff. It's such a powerful effort that locals can do wherever they are to put good vibes out there in the gravel.
[00:14:15] Oh, my
[00:14:16] Carly Fratianne: God. Absolutely. And to, yeah to tap on your point about him being like intimidating in the wilderness and stuff. Like I was pretty, I'm a pretty small bodied female in. I think that I'm like, I was not brought up socialized to just go off into the wilderness like that and throw caution to the wind.
[00:14:37] But, and I don't think that a lot of young girls are, or, young people in general these days and to. I have even just a little bit of guidance too, just to show you what you're capable of and help you get your foot in the door has built like an immense amount of confidence for me.
[00:14:55] And I'm sure for plenty of other people and just knowing that you can go out there and like most of the people you meet are actually going to be pretty nice. And like you don't have to be afraid of coyotes usually. And there's just like a lot of. I don't want to say irrational fear, but like a lot of unchecked fear that kind of, if you can just get over it a little bit, you can get over it a lot, a bit.
[00:15:21] And having the guidance of a community is like pretty crucial to getting over
[00:15:25] Craig Dalton: that first step. Absolutely. Yeah. I think once you get that right bike, that right. Gravel bike that's capable, even if your notion is that I'm going to start on the right. Then you start seeing little dirt paths and maybe you take a quarter mile on the dirt and you start to realize, yeah, not only am I capable of doing this, not only is my bike capable of doing it, but I'd like to do it more and it's better than the time I'm spending on the road and safer, et cetera.
[00:15:50] Yeah.
[00:15:50] Carly Fratianne: It's safer. More interesting stuff. I always joke with my friends that I have to meet a new cow every day. It's like a hilarious little mantra of mine just to continue to explore, even if, you're landlocked in an area, just keep looking for more different stuff.
[00:16:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So in those early days of the pandemic, as you started to discover gravel riding a little bit more, it sounds like you're available time to explore also expanded because you weren't able to gig the way you were and maybe your other employment wasn't as as fruitful.
[00:16:25] Carly Fratianne: Yeah. Yeah. It was a lot of long days. I did I did my first century ride. I don't even remember when that was. It was probably right about when I got back from Texas, I had been working at rogue fitness as a like assembly line worker. I was just like building squat racks for like the CrossFit scene.
[00:16:51] I was, that was very hard work. And I like took a day. And I wrote a century ride with one of my friends Alex, who was the basis in Southern. And I had never done a ride that long before. And I was just like, oh my God, I can just go and spend the whole freaking day on the bike if I want to this is amazing.
[00:17:10] And so I just started going out or like long days, at least a couple of times a week. I loved it. I just love I would listen to music sometimes, but I really just loved the solitude. And I hardly even rode with anyone. Like when I was first getting into it, I'm into like the longer rides.
[00:17:29] And then I guess it was when I started riding with with Jeff that I got really super hooked on the gravel and just that sort of became the primary focus is just to find new roads and just get off of the, get off of the beaten path. So to speak,
[00:17:47] Craig Dalton: not that there were likely any events, but were you doing any events at that time or was it all solo riding or with friends?
[00:17:54] Carly Fratianne: It was all similar writing and occasionally with friends they canceled all their races. I think I was signed up to do my first advantage. It wasn't a race it's called the tossers just stands for a tour this side of river valley. And it's it's 200 miles, but it's like in two days, so you get taken out and back a hundred miles.
[00:18:17] And that was canceled. I was like training for that. When I was. Coming back from Texas. So that was going to be my first event and they canceled that. And then everything else just tumbled off
[00:18:31] Craig Dalton: during this period of time where you're getting all those miles in. What was going on with your kind of musical career?
[00:18:37] Was it, were you working on stuff at the time? Does writing help you come up with lyrics or ideas?
[00:18:44] Carly Fratianne: Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of songs were written on a bike this past year. It's an amazing place to process. You get out there and you just have, the wheels spinning and you just start thinking about stuff.
[00:18:57] And I tend to think really rhythmically when I'm writing lyrics. Okay. And something about being on the bike is just it's a really like good like rhythmic activity. So it I don't know why, but it just stimulates your brain a little bit. And so I was, yeah, I guess to, to answer your question, I was writing and recording like a little bit In had a little demo studio set up in the house that I was living at the time with my partner in the band, w I D a, we were trying to track stuff, but it was slow going, I wrote a lot that year, but I didn't really, I wasn't really, for any specific.
[00:19:42] Purpose, like I haven't even really recorded a lot of that music and it was just a really like strange black hole of time, wherein it didn't really feel important to be making art that was like for a purpose. I guess that's just like the nature of like human crazies, but Yeah, it was mostly just for expression.
[00:20:07] And I guess that like break period was informative to I think on I don't want to say better physical level, but there was something in my like, spirit that just deeply needed to just turn everything off for a while.
[00:20:24] Craig Dalton: Interesting. I want to come back to the gravel cycling side of things, but before we do the culmination and then this year in 2021, you've actually launched a solo project.
[00:20:35] Is that correct?
[00:20:37] Carly Fratianne: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:20:39] Craig Dalton: Oh, yeah. Is that just personal curiosity? Is are there complexities, obviously you're continuing to work with WIDS as a band or their complexities and kind of managing those interpersonal relationships or was it pretty clear oh, this personal thing is, feels so different than it's a different expression of my art.
[00:20:57] Carly Fratianne: It's you know what? It's a little bit easier than I thought it was going to be. Actually, I was worried about that too, but. Keeping communication open is always key. But I think also like it, this material that I was working on for when I started working on the Louis project was definitely very different or at least if it felt that way to me.
[00:21:22] And I think I, if you asked anyone that was involved in the project, they would either project, they would probably agree. So I don't think there was a ton of I don't know there wasn't really much friction, but it is you bring up a good point that there were some conversations that had to be had. So yeah,
[00:21:38] Craig Dalton: that for the listener, you won't know this, but in the intro, I've played a little bit of the w Y D track that was shared with me.
[00:21:46] And I'll just drop in right now, your need for now track under the artist's name of Louie and let the listener take a look at it. And. Awesome.
[00:21:58] Yeah.
[00:24:33] Cool. So that was great. I, it's funny. I was playing it last night for my seven year old son and he yelled in from the other room.
[00:24:39] He's I really
[00:24:40] Like. that song.
[00:24:41] He's very he's very musical, so it's super cute. And he periodically yells things like that to me. So for the seven year old crowd, I guess you nailed it. That
[00:24:51] Carly Fratianne: is awesome. And got started from young.
[00:24:55] Craig Dalton: Exactly. Exactly. I'm sure it's going to be a cool journey and hopefully, you'll be able to get back to both gigging as a solo artist and back with the band.
[00:25:03] Cause it sounds like that's where you really come alive on stage.
[00:25:07] Carly Fratianne: For sure. Yeah. I, it's been a lot of solo, small shows this year, so far which has actually been really nice. I do miss being up there and being loud. W I D is had the opportunity to play a handful of like bigger, full capacity shows.
[00:25:24] And Madison is strange drug. I tell you what it'd be ended up there. It's the kind of energy that I feel really privileged to have gotten to experience even just in the years that I've been doing it. But yeah, there is a good intimacy with the solo thing. That's been enough to hold me over,
[00:25:44] Craig Dalton: yeah. Yeah. I I think a drug is probably an apt comparison because I imagine that it just feels electric to be on stage and in front of people and to feel the energy and the enthusiasm. Yeah.
[00:25:57] Carly Fratianne: Yeah. It's it's absolutely on paralleled. When you're, especially in a hometown show and you're in a room full of people that are like really stoked on what you're doing.
[00:26:08] You can just feel the energy. It's like a force of nature and it just comes right back at you. And it's it takes days for you to be able to shake it off even really
[00:26:19] Craig Dalton: yeah. Now for the most awkward segue in podcasting history, talking about community and feeling that energy, I did want to come back to you did Unbound, which is crazy to think about, obviously you've been active your whole life and it's not like you're a new athlete, but to go from, Hey, I like this gravel riding thing to knocking out on.
[00:26:41] It's quite a journey. So why don't you talk about like maybe how you got exposed to Unbound and what made you think it was a good idea to go for
[00:26:48] Carly Fratianne: it? Oh my God. Okay. This is I truly couldn't have recreated this. If I had to re-engineer my life it was just very happenstance. I knew of Unbound.
[00:27:01] Just cause I had watched, YouTube videos of, cause I, once you get into it, you're like, oh my God this is crazy. Like these people do this stuff. This is just nuts. So I had watched a couple of videos about it and I was just like, man, like that is some wild shit. I don't even know how you can do that.
[00:27:18] And. I was, I had just joined there's a cycling team called lady NAR shredders in Columbus. And obviously they were no amendments. We were just organizing smaller group rides or, going out and a couple of people at a time to just hang out and get to know each other. And I.
[00:27:37] Meegan Gerkey who is, I don't know if she's still the, one of the administrators, but she was she was doing the recruiting and she sorta took me under her wing and helped show me a bunch of stuff, just about like how to do bike riding in a real, like more scientific way.
[00:27:55] And then Melissa wick who had also just joined that year. And we were, the three of us were like the ones that were into the gravel the most. So we got together and did a gravel ride. It was cold. I feel like it was probably, I want to say December, maybe November, December of that, of the year before.
[00:28:15] We had just all met and we're just riding or riding along, talking about stuff. And Meagan heads, she was set to do it in 2021 or 2020. Oh yeah, 2020. And then when it got deferred, she was going to do it the next year because they announced that they were going to have it. And Melissa had also signed up and they were talking about it and I was like, oh my God.
[00:28:41] You guys just do that. You guys are going to do that race. Like you gotta be kidding me. And then they're both just you should do it too. And I was just like, okay whatever. So it was funny. The lottery opened like that. It was like that week. I think it was like a couple of. Later. And I like set an alarm on my phone and everything.
[00:29:05] I like typed out my little submission and I sent it in and didn't really think I was just like, alright that's in there. And all known like a couple of months, I just keep riding my bike and whatever. And then I went down to Texas in, I think February late February. And it was just doing a bunch of training down here.
[00:29:27] Cause it's nice out and it's boom, not snowing. I was able to keep getting some like longer endurance rides in without getting frostbite. And I got, I was like headed out to go camp in hill country and I got an email on my phone and it just said you're in. And I looked at it and I was like, oh shit.
[00:29:48] Okay. All right. So immediately I called Melissa and me. I'm just like, okay, you guys we gotta get serious. Like we gotta go do this thing. And they're just like, oh yeah, whatever. So I went I spent another month in Texas and then I went back to Columbus and the three of us just started training like crazy.
[00:30:07] And. Yeah, we were doing some really absurd rides, just trying to get as much gravel and as much distance as possible. And I think the training for that race was like some of the most fun I've ever had in my life. Just like the amount of like insane experiences that were had on bikes between the three of us is just I didn't, I wouldn't have thought it was possible to like, have that much fun and be doing a freaking bike ride.
[00:30:39] Yeah. Then we did the race and we all finished and we were just like okay. That was crazy. And that what we do,
[00:30:46] Craig Dalton: how would, how did that feel lining up at the starting line with such an energy and large field at Unbound? It must've been crazy compared to what you'd been experiencing previously.
[00:30:58] Carly Fratianne: Oh yeah. So my, I did my first race. It was a 50 mile race in Ohio, and then I did the gravel Locos race in Texas. So those were the only two organize events I'd ever done. And they were both like, super-duper small. Like the one in Ohio is I think I was the only person in my age, like in my wave for that And then the Heico race was like super small.
[00:31:23] It was the first year they'd done it. Awesome. And then gravel Locos is awesome. But that too is just I don't even, they were like a hundred people or something there, and this was like nuts. Like you see like videos, people post of like the start lines at these events, but like you, when you have that, when you're in the middle of it, and this is just Unreal.
[00:31:45] And to just to think if you've never done the event before, you're literally just sitting there, like you have no idea what to expect. All the training in the world could go out of the window in a second. Like it's just such an intense place.
[00:31:59] Craig Dalton: The interesting thing is like you think about gravel riding.
[00:32:01] And for many of us, it's like a small group or solo affair. And when you're riding on a 12 foot wide gravel road, You've got a lot of room to pick lines, right? Your, you can go wherever you want. And then all of a sudden you join one of these events with a thousand people in it or more, you don't get to pick your lines.
[00:32:18] Like you're 12 abreast on a 12 foot road, and you'd never know what's going to come up. I imagine in those first few miles, at least, right? Oh my God.
[00:32:27] Carly Fratianne: Yeah, there were, oh God, there were so many sketchy areas in the first 50 miles of that. I saw quite a few wrecks or near wrecks. And it, you're just like on top of each other and nothing employer is like just such an interesting mix of.
[00:32:51] Perfectly graded, flat roads. And then just like the gnarliest, like it's just like a washed out Creek, but like no same motorist would drive a car on it, but it's like the same problem. And you're just like, how can this be? And when you're proud on top of each other, like you said, there's, you can't see any lines, let alone a good one.
[00:33:11] So you're just. Holding the bars and like praying, you're just like bunny hopping from rock to rock. Just like hoping you don't get a
[00:33:20] Craig Dalton: flat. Yeah. Yeah. You imagine the PR pros and fast people at the front of the race trying to get out ahead of it. But when I'm doing these events and imagine like you there's no getting out ahead of anybody, like there's always going to be someone ahead of you and behind you.
[00:33:33] Carly Fratianne: Oh, yeah, you're definitely just in the pack until the pack explodes and it can start, they can take a while to get get spaced out. It's it is it's super wild too. Cause you know, you ride the first half of that race and you're just like sardines and then, by mile one, 20 or. What you're like riding past people that are taking a nap, it's just such a different experience in the second half.
[00:34:00] Craig Dalton: Did you spend a lot of time thinking about that second half and how to make sure you were fueled up and fit enough for it? Cause I imagine, the first half of the. Obviously like many of us can get to a hundred mile fitness, but beyond a hundred miles, it's both a different story from a fitness perspective, but also from a nutrition and hydration perspective, any corner you've cut is going to be a problem.
[00:34:22] Carly Fratianne: Oh my God. Absolutely. That was, that was one thing that I really actually did have to train for. Specifically was like being able to like, take enough nutrition on the bike. Because you it's true, like you, your body it stops being able to like process things after awhile when you're working that hard.
[00:34:41] And the heat is a huge factor that I think doesn't always get taking it in deep and as it shifts really quickly, and once you have started to dehydrate, you can. Really eat any more than what had guessed, which basically renders you in a state of almost bonking for like until you figure it out.
[00:35:07] And I don't even, I had a couple of like really like weird, bad nutrition choices. But I think I was able to kind of phone it in a little bit as far as like being able to keep the food down. So the the actual training from a fitness standpoint was basically just a get as much gravel as you can.
[00:35:31] And because. By the end of a hundred miles or whatever, you're like your whole body starts to just a it's it's like your legs are tired. Sure. But like also, like you're carrying your water on your back and you're just like riding up and down rocks. And everything is just like shaking around, like constantly.
[00:35:51] And I had to just prepare for that by I guess just like doing rides with like fully loaded, even when I didn't need that water on my back. I would take the camera back with me. And then nutrition, I. I experimented with a lot of stuff, because I knew that I was going to need something that was not going to be like invasive to the gut.
[00:36:12] And what Mel and I landed on was we made some of those recipes out of that scratch labs the portables book. Oh my God. It was amazing. Yeah. We just basically made like a bunch of different kinds of rice cakes and just wrap them in foil which it worked really well. And it was like super cheap.
[00:36:31] I will say if I had to do that again, I would have probably brought more gels actually, because I was trying to stay off of them because they typically upset my stomach as probably most people tell you as well. I think between the dehydration, it was just like, it's got to be super hard to process solid food towards the end.
[00:36:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I think to your point earlier, it's you need to have variety. Like when you're training rides, it's pretty easy to at least for me, like I can eat the exact same nutritional plans. For a five-hour ride every single week, like no issue whatsoever. But when you're talking about, anything beyond six hours and 12 hours, like you, you're just going to want to have different things.
[00:37:15] And some of the things we talked about this before on the podcast, just this idea that, you're going to have horrible moments in these events sometimes. And that could be a mechanical moment. That could be like a gut moment or even a mental moment. And the important thing everybody's going to go through that from the professional riders to the last place person on the event, you just have to know that it will pass.
[00:37:38] And the only thing you need to be concerned about is continually moving for.
[00:37:43] Carly Fratianne: Yeah exactly. And like the, yeah, I think the one 20 mile mark is like really where it starts to like, get real. That's when you just see people like, coming apart on the side of the road and you're just thinking wow, okay, what do I have to do to make sure that doesn't happen to me?
[00:37:58] And as long as you're able to like, eat and drink, you'll probably be fine, but there's definitely a moment where. You just don't want anything like you just can't like, you just can't. And think of a single thing on earth. That sounds good. And your w your drink mix just makes you want to puke. Like I bought a huge bag of the strawberry lemonade scratch because it was my favorite flavor.
[00:38:24] I was like, okay, this is great. I will have to buy a new bag of this for forever. I'm telling you by the end of this. I was like, man, I need to just get rid of this whole bag. Like I'll never be able to drink this shit again. It is. So just like sickly, reminiscent of a horrible feeling in my
[00:38:40] Craig Dalton: body PTSD by hydration,
[00:38:45] Carly Fratianne: literally.
[00:38:45] Yeah. It was such a even still I still have the bag every once in a while. I'll throw some in my bottles. I share every time I'm just like, oh, okay. It's still just reminds me of that.
[00:38:57] Craig Dalton: Okay. So as hopefully we look forward to a future where your, know, your musical endeavors can become a bigger time in your life and we can get back to going to live music venues.
[00:39:08] Are you going to continue gravel cycling? Do you have ambitions for 2022 to continue doing.
[00:39:14] Carly Fratianne: Yeah, I'm I'm not sure which I know I will probably, I will try and do Unbound again. I would like to beat the sun. That's a small goal, but as far as events go I'm less compelled to events this year.
[00:39:28] And I will probably be spending a bulk of my time doing some bike packing. Right now, I'm in Texas, which is one of my favorite places to ride. There are lots of race routes and stuff that you can find that are, pre there maybe an hour out of town, but they're pretty accessible and it's all like ranch road.
[00:39:46] So you can get, I you can go a day without seeing the. Really and it's, it's beautiful and it's temperate. So I'm going to spend some time down here and then I'm going to head out to Arizona and a little bit to do some bike packing on some of the the trails out there. I would, I will probably make an attempt at the monument.
[00:40:09] I don't know that I'll do it all in one go. But if the weather holds out over the next couple of weeks, I'll probably see which one looks the most enticing and go for it.
[00:40:21] Craig Dalton: Awesome. That sounds amazing. We're happy to have you. I'm happy to have had this discussion. I love, I just love, it's just a great story.
[00:40:28] The inclusiveness of gravel and how everybody's welcome. And whether it's doing events or bike packing, or riding with friends, like we want all comers to the sport.
[00:40:38] Carly Fratianne: Yeah. It's a, it's an awesome sport. It's like probably the most inclusive sport I can think of as far as any, fitness level can find something, any person of any age can find something you can just like.
[00:40:57] Kind of make it into whatever you want. And I think that's the beauty of it is that, there, there are a few, there are a few barriers to entry. The only one really is do you have a bike? And is your spirit adventurous?
[00:41:11] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Awesome. I think that's a good place to end. Thanks Carly so much for the time.
[00:41:16] Carly Fratianne: Thanks so much for having me, Greg.
[00:41:18] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. I hope you enjoyed this show. Happy to have your feedback. Obviously I'm not a master editor. So weaving some of that music in was a bit of a challenge for me, but it was a great conversation. I really enjoyed getting to know Carly and her journey into this gravel cycling community that we all love so much.
[00:41:42] Big, thanks to competitive cyclists for sponsoring this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Remember it's promo code the gravel ride@competitivecyclists.com for 15% off. If you're looking to connect with me, I encourage you to come and join us in the ridership forum. It's www.theridership.com.
[00:42:05] And if you're able to support the podcast financially, simply visit buy me a coffee. Dot com slash the gravel ride. Continuing with the theme of this show, I'm going to drop in one of Carly's other songs, a full track for you to listen. It's the same one that we opened up with, but I'll let it play into its conclusion.
[00:42:26] As a peaceful way for you ending this podcast. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
[00:42:34]
This week Randall sits down with Russ Roca to explore the origins of Path Less Pedaled’s thriving YouTube channel, the #partypace ethos, and the future of cycling community.
Episode Sponsor: Athletic Greens
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Episode Transcript (please excuse the typos):
GRP: Randall with Russ Roca of Path Less Pedaled
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. Well, at least for about the next 90 seconds before I hand it off to my co-host Randall Jacobs. This week, we've got a unique episode. Randall was able to catch up with ross Rocha from path less pedaled on his live stream we got an opportunity to interview russ and all the great stuff he's doing to build a community over at path, less pedaled. many of you may be familiar with his work but if not this will be a great introduction to another content source that i personally appreciate a lot and i know randall does too.
[00:00:44] I hope you enjoy this conversation about cycling community and the future of community.
[00:00:50] Before we jump into the interview. I need to thank this week's partner sponsor athletic greens and AIG one. This is a product that I literally use every day. I started using athletic greens post my cancer treatment because I was quite concerned about the overall nutrients that were getting into my body and felt like I was going down the slippery slope of having to take.
[00:01:18] Many, many different pills to get what I needed. I discovered athletic greens, I believe through another podcast. With athletic greens, you're absorbing 75 high quality. Vitamins minerals, whole food source, superfoods, probiotics, and APTA gins to help start your day. Right. It's a special blend of ingredients to support gut health.
[00:01:41] Your nervous system, your immune system, your energy recovery focus and aging. Simply all the things. So it became a pretty obvious choice in, gosh, I can't even remember how long ago I started at this point. It's probably at least five years and I'm a daily user. I basically start my day with. Getting my athletic greens, AIG one shaker out, putting some ice in, putting the required amount of powder, mixing it up and just drinking it down.
[00:02:13] I just feel like it puts me ahead of the game every single day.
[00:02:17] So suffice it to say I'm a big fan and super appreciative. Of the long-term sponsorship that age. One has provided to the podcast.
[00:02:28] Right now it's a time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition, especially heading into the flu and cold season.
[00:02:37] It's just one scoop and a cup of water every day. That's it? No need for a million pills and supplements to look out for your health. To make it easy. Athletic greens is going to give you a free one year supply of immune supporting vitamin D.
[00:02:50] And five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is is it athletic greens.com/the gravel ride again? That's athletic greens.com/the gravel ride to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance.
[00:03:07] Would that business behind us,
[00:03:08] Let's jump right into this live stream between Russ and Randall.
[00:03:12] Russ: Welcome everybody to another live stream today. We've got a really interesting one. It's a. Livestream. I'm going to have our guest Randall Jacobs. He's been on the channel before, and he's actually going to be recording his podcast on this live stream. I thought I would double up the content and you can see how the sausage is made.
[00:03:32] So welcome to the show. Randall Jacobs.
[00:03:35] Randall: Hey, we're finally getting to do this together. It'll be a lot of fun.
[00:03:40] Russ: Yeah. So Randall is the founder of a thesis spikes. He's the co-host of the gravel ride podcast, which will record recording today as well as the co-founder of the Ridership community.
[00:03:52] I think people know what a podcast is. What thesis bikes is. Can you talk about the ridership first and then. Do the podcast part. Sure.
[00:03:59] Randall: The ridership emerged as a slack community that we started for thesis writers. And then on the other side the Facebook group that Craig had started for the podcast.
[00:04:09] So Craig Dalton is the founder of the gravel ride podcast. The primary host, he has graciously invited me to be his sidekick and occasional content creating partner. We're at about 1500 or so people really lively and Helpful sorts of communication. So it's a community of riders helping riders. And the dynamics that we see in there is something that, we're quite proud of.
[00:04:31] Russ: Yeah. Community is like a huge thing, especially now when a lot of us feel so disconnected with the COVID. And you said it's a Facebook group in a slack channel, is that right? So it started
[00:04:40] Randall: as those two things, and then we merged them into a single slack group called the ridership.
[00:04:45] Okay. Yeah.
[00:04:47] Russ: Yeah. If you guys are interested in checking out the ridership, I will put links in the description below after the live stream.
[00:04:54] Randall: Yeah. The ridership.com is a link where you can go to get an invite if you'd like.
[00:04:58] Russ: Yeah. Cool. We've got 40 people in the chat. Thanks for joining us. Didn't expect so many, frankly.
[00:05:04] Mid-morning on a Monday again, this was a totally last minute. Randall asked me to be on the podcast. I thought it'd be fun to do, to show you guys how the sausage is made. So if anyone has any quick questions for Randall, leave those in the comments. Otherwise we'll hand over the reins to Randall and he will steer the ship for the rest of the show.
[00:05:24] Randall: First off, I want to thank everyone who joined us at the last moment.
[00:05:26] It's quite an honor that people are so interested in participating in this conversation that they show up, especially on such short notice. So thank you for that. I'm really quite interested to hear where are you from? What's your background? How did bikes come to play such a significant role in your life?
[00:05:42] Russ: Quick background. I feel like my journey into bicycling is a little bit different than what's typically represented in bike media.
[00:05:49] I didn't discover the sports side of the cycling for a very long time. My basic origin story is I was very unhealthy smoking, two packs of cigarettes a day, eating hotdogs, and I knew that I needed a life change. And then my truck died and that CA super lazy at the time, this is post-college just graduated from UCLA.
[00:06:09] So I started walking, taking the bus, taking transit, then discovered skating, and then finally the bicycle, because it was way more efficient than the pair of inline skates while carrying gear. So from very early on I think my Genesis in cycling was very transportation and utility focused. And a couple of years later discovered bike touring, which is like commuting with all the things.
[00:06:34] And that's when pathless pedal the website started. This was back in oh nine and. Yeah, we did our travels traveled for about three years, mostly on the road. It spent some winters in Portland. And after that, after we stopped actively traveling pivoted towards the bicycle tourism. So working with tourism with destination marketing organizations to, to promote cycling.
[00:06:58] And it was also around that time that I started experimenting more with YouTube. I saw it as a really viable medium to communicate, messages and information that just, a blog post couldn't do. So that's 15 years in a nutshell.
[00:07:11] Randall: And I'm curious to tease out a little bit more about those early days.
[00:07:14] Was there some intentionality around getting healthier or was it strictly I needed a means to get around after my truck died and it became something.
[00:07:23] Russ: It was primarily a means to get around. I do remember having one moment where, I have a very obsessive personality, so when I get into something, I really get into something.
[00:07:34] So I borrowed the neighbor's bike. And I think now I'm biking up and down the beach path in long beach all day. And at the end of the day I was like Hocking up like half a jar of phlegm. And that's when there's oh, this could be healthy too. But it was primarily because it was fun. I always try to, follow my folly, do things, while they're fun.
[00:07:53] Randall: You and I have that element of a pattern of obsessiveness on a certain thing. Definitely have that in common. Resonate with you. They're very much And so you grew up around LA.
[00:08:03] Russ: Yeah. Yeah. So I was born in the Philippines. We immigrated here when I was really young.
[00:08:08] So for the most part I grew up in Southern California, like Glendale Burbank went to high school at UCLA. And after that lived in long beach for a span of time traveled lived in Portland for a span of time. And now we're here in Missoula, Montana.
[00:08:24] Randall: Do you speak Tagalog?
[00:08:28] Russ: I understand it fluently, but I can't speak it fluently anymore.
[00:08:31] Randall: Cool. So bikes now are how you make your living and, you mentioned a little bit about the Genesis of PLP share a bit more about the inspiration? What were your hopes for it at the time and how did it come to be?
[00:08:43] Russ: Back when we got into the bike touring, there was very few resources, there was a text-based website, like a crazy guy on the bike. There's bike forums.net, things like bike, packing.com didn't exist. The rather this didn't exist. I think he may have existed as probably not probably but there's very few resources.
[00:08:59] So it's not like the Instagram rich landscape of a bike touring today. So what few resources we did see inspired us to go out? At the time I was a working photographer in long beach, I was doing new magazine shoots food and portrait. And I had this very romantic notion of, w we'll just travel the world on bike.
[00:09:19] And I will book for the shoots wherever we land and we will travel endlessly that way. That was a grand vision. Didn't quite turn out as plan Probably a big part is, people aren't necessarily going to be willing to hire hobo, looking people on bikes, thousands of dollars for a photo shoot turns out.
[00:09:36] But that was a big dream initially. That didn't work out. So we had to find different ways to make a living and keep the dream happening. But those were the, that was the early dream.
[00:09:45] Randall: So there's a theme that I hear there, which is common amongst a lot of entrepreneurial slash creative types which is, looking to solve a problem that they themselves had.
[00:09:53] So you're not doing this full time. So this is your job. Is your primary income.
[00:09:58] Russ: That's a job.
[00:10:01] Randall: And how long has that been?
[00:10:02] Russ: I had been a full-time YouTuber sounds like, so teeny bopper, right? Content, creator, content entrepreneur. I would consider a, since we landed in Missoula and a lot of it was, my hand was forced.
[00:10:14] Like we moved to Missoula cause we were, super broken Portland. Laura got a job at adventure cycling and that was finally a stable income for awhile. So we moved here and I thought, all our expertise and all the work that we'd done with travel Oregon would translate to the Montana state tourism and the local GMO's and I could get production work that way did not turn out, did not turn out like that.
[00:10:36] So I buckled down and I was like, okay, we have I have to make this YouTube thing work because Missoula, Montana, they don't spend the funds like they do, like in Portland or Oregon for kind of production. It's a very small cities, small funds, a small talent pool. And they tend to only hire people that they know and as complete outsiders.
[00:10:57] Was not getting any work. So that's when I really buckled down and it was pretty lean, we relied heavily on Laura's income, adventurous cycling for me to follow this dream. And it wasn't until maybe two or three years later that it could support me. And now it's supporting both of us.
[00:11:13] Randall: So she was bringing in those big bicycle industry journalist dollars, right before the thing. And if you don't mind sharing, how did the economics work? What percentage of it is YouTube? What percentage of it is your Patriot?
[00:11:26] Russ: Yeah, I can tell you very little it's from YouTube ad sense, but as a creator, that's where that's probably the lowest hanging fruit because, after I think 10,000 or a thousand subscribers, you can monetize all that stuff. But that is not the, that's not the dream that chase there because it pays very little like to this day.
[00:11:44] I think the channel is at 120 something subscribers.
[00:11:48] Randall: 120,000?
[00:11:49] Russ: Yeah. 120,000 subscribers. If you work at, in and out 40 hours a week, you were making more than I do an ad sense just to put that perspective. So there was a really make or break moment a couple years ago where I was putting out four, sometimes five videos a week just trying to, generate AdSense.
[00:12:08] And I was on the verge of giving up. Couple of friends say, Hey, you should try Patrion and you should try Patrion. And I was like, oh, I don't, I'm already making five videos. I don't have time to, to manage another community. But then I was like, okay, we have to do it because it's not working financially.
[00:12:22] And people show that, first it was a lot of people that we knew and then it became lots of people that we didn't know, which is pretty cool. And so that starts to give us like, on top of Laura's income, another kind of pool of cash that we could count on every month So that slowly grew.
[00:12:39] And then ultimately we started selling stickers which doesn't sound like a whole lot, but a lot of people bought stickers. We've sold thousands of stickers. And I like to say I'm really just a sticker salesman with a YouTube. 'cause it's true.
[00:12:54] Randall: It's one of those things where, people value what you do and align with it enough to want to advocate for it in the world and just find any means any excuse to support you.
[00:13:03] So that's pretty cool that you've been able to, make that work.
[00:13:07] Russ: Yeah. And that's what we discovered about stickers. Like no one needs stickers, it's not like a life or death necessity, but it was a means for people that wanted to support the channel to create some kind of transaction, so we started stickers.
[00:13:18] We've done other Merck. We have some shirts recent, most recently stem caps is sold pretty well are selling pretty well. So it's just a cool way for people that, you know, like the content on the channel to help support the channel.
[00:13:31] Randall: And so we've talked about YouTube. We've talked about your Patrion. You also have a discord.
[00:13:36] Russ: Yeah. The discord. A big need that I saw was people wanted to find other cyclists that had the same kind of party pace mindset, but I've discovered a couple of years ago, is that what really brings people together isn't a common interest. It's the common belief and value system around that interest, right? We all ride bikes, triathlete is going to have different values than the fixed gear rider and in a really hardcore endurance gravel athlete. So it wasn't enough to say, Hey, we're about bikes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:14:05] It's part of the pace. These are values and people wanted to find other people with those values and who ride like that. So instead of being the point of contact for everyone, I wanted people to really talk with each other. So I looked at different things like slack and ultimately try that discord, I think, because it was free or more free and Patrion and discord have a good synergy where.
[00:14:30] Yeah. Some of the Patriot and perks are different roles in discord. So that seemed like a natural fit. And at first, people got really excited. We had a couple 100 people sign on and you know how it is like with slack or disc or people, are active at first and drop off.
[00:14:46] But now I feel like there's a really cool core group of people. And what I love seeing in the discord and it happened, it started to happen more this year is other people within the discord would find people within their area and they'd ride together. They do things together. And that was so satisfying to see that I didn't have to be the only channel that we had created this space where people could discover, other like-minded cyclists.
[00:15:10] Randall: Yeah. What we're calling social media, I think would be better re-imagined as online tools for facilitating generative, offline connection and experience and. And that's not the current social media paradigm. It seems like you've created a space and I feel that we've created a space, really co-created spaces together with other values aligned people, where you can find that you can find, a place to get advice.
[00:15:36] You can find a place to to connect, to get a sense of belonging, to plant adventures and so on. And that's something that's a really great opportunity in the cycling space specifically, because there are a lot of people who gravitate for cycling in part for those reasons, whether it's wellness, whether it's utility or oftentimes it's "I moved to a new place, I want to make some friends".
[00:15:57] There's something very deep about that need, that cycling seems to satisfy for a lot of people, certainly myself.
[00:16:03] Russ: Yeah. This court's been really interesting for that, the discord constantly impresses me because there is such a high level of bike nerdery but also respect amongst the people in our discord.
[00:16:15] And I hope that's because the channel sets a certain tone or I set a certain tone, it's really, it's far less toxic than other bike spaces I've seen on the internet, like people, they'll they're pretty good at self policing, which is cold.
[00:16:30] Randall: Yeah. The early members of any given community the founders.
[00:16:34] Yes. And then the early members really set the tone for how the thing evolves, because it's just a set of norms and hopefully you have a certain value system that's very clear and people who don't align with that, they're not attracted to the community in the first place.
[00:16:46] Not that they're not welcome, but this is not a space for acting out. This is a place for connecting.
[00:16:51] Russ: Yeah. And there, there are people in our discord that are like way smarter nerdier than I am. Like, I'm constantly impressed at the level of knowledge that they share.
[00:16:59] But it is one of those things where at first I promoted the discord a lot, but I'm hesitant to now.
[00:17:05] Randall: Okay.
[00:17:06] Russ: It's because I've loved how the people in there have jelled. And for me, it's not about the qual, the quantity of members, but the quality of interaction.
[00:17:14] So I'd almost artificially keep it small until things really gel before, saying, Hey everybody, we have loans doing it now, Hey, everybody, we have a discord.
[00:17:25] Randall: We've been thinking much the same. Up until now, the community has grown very slowly and organically and largely through our invites or through us, and not just talking about it on the podcast and people will show up and be like, Hey, you heard the pod decide to finally join here.
[00:17:39] And I fully agree with you. Quality over quantity. At the same time, I suspect that there are orders of magnitude more people who could benefit .From and contribute to these communities. And there is, there are certain types of Activities, for example, like coordinating group rides you need a critical mass of people in a given area.
[00:17:56] And so those offline connections are really enabled by having, a bigger community. And so I think this is a conversation I would love to have with you maybe now is not the space, but figuring out how scale can be created in a way that doesn't undermine the ethos that made the community so healthy in the first place.
[00:18:16] Russ: For me, I see like a diff like a series of funnels. So YouTube is probably our largest funnel. It'll take, all people interested in cycling, boil it down to people that are interested in this idea of party pace. And for those that want to dig down a further, there's a Patrion and then the discord, but no, it's not intentional, but in that way to see it like, okay, YouTube is a big net and the more you get invested in the channel and dig what it's about, then you'll go the extra step and slowly discover that this scored on your own.
[00:18:47] Randall: well, I'm curious what do you see as the limitations of the current technology stack that you're using right now? And is there anything that you're looking at in terms of other tools to adopt or even migrate to going forward? What's on the horizon?
[00:19:00] Russ: I think the biggest limitation is that's, it's not one thing, it's several things. It's YouTube it's Patrion, it's, the website it's discord. I don't sign into one thing and control everything. They don't all necessarily integrate smoothly. And it is like multiple steps for people to have the full experience. And I don't know that there is an existing plan. Or app with a big enough base that does all things.
[00:19:24] So at the moment, and I'm at the whim of using all these kinds of widgets and piecemealing together a community.
[00:19:31] Randall: And then a platform like YouTube they take a pretty big cut.
[00:19:36] Russ: Yeah. And what's interesting is like Patrion is going to start doing their own video, which I think is interesting because typically a YouTube creators that have Patriot they'll usually do an early release.
[00:19:48] So they'll set a YouTube video and private Patrion viewers can do it first. Then they turn it on to the rest of the world. You're still using YouTube. Yeah. But if you can just have that content live on Patrion, I think that would, that'd be interesting. Interesting move. I don't know if I have the bandwidth to do patriarch specific content, but it is something that I'm keeping tabs.
[00:20:07] Randall: It's one of the great challenges. You could consider YouTube is a web 2.0 company. They have a platform and they gather the viewers and the content creators and ultimately the advertisers, the viewers being the product, and you get to a certain critical mass and, YouTube is first and foremost, arguably a search engine.
[00:20:27] And if that's where people are going to find content and get content recommended to them, it's hard not to be there. But I think ultimately, the paradigm that I hope for, and that I see slowly emerging is one where content creators own their content, and own the rights over that content, and have access to means of distribution that are not so extractive, maybe, a couple of percent versus a 50% and we could de-monetize you and D platform you at any
[00:20:54] time.
[00:20:55] Russ: Yeah. Yeah. That's definitely the dream. That's why, in kind of the creative entrepreneurs space, there's still emphasis on email newsletter. That sounds like so web 1.0, but it's one of the few. Yeah. Pieces of content and like constant communication that you can actually control.
[00:21:12] That's not at the whim of an algorithm or in someone else's hands.
[00:21:17] Randall: And it's one of the original open protocols of the internet. Any client can communicate with any other client versus, on Facebook, it's a walled garden. And if you try to do something that they don't like on Facebook, or if you do something that is really successful they'll kick you off, or they'll, deprioritize you in the algorithm, or they'll just create a copy of it and go from there.
[00:21:36] Russ: Yeah. At one like one switch that is turned on in my head recently is you. I used to be that my goal was, I want to be a YouTuber when I hit a hundred thousand subscribers and get this thing. And she's very nice. But after having achieved that, that is no longer the goal it's to turn whatever, virtual community we have into IRL, into.
[00:21:58] And try to translate that into real human interaction. YouTube is a facet of that journey, but it's not, it's no longer the, the end goal.
[00:22:05] Randall: Yeah. I'm a hundred percent with you there. And in fact, it's, it was one of the major motivations for me reaching out for this conversation, because I see the good work that you do and the quality of connection that you facilitate within, within your community.
[00:22:18] So Bravo to you on that. How many people in your discordant.
[00:22:22] Russ: I don't know. I feel like it's over 1500.
[00:22:25] Randall: Okay, so similar scale.
[00:22:27] Russ: Yeah. The most active group is definitely smaller. But it's a decent number and I feel like a lot of people that sign on to Patriot and do do you claim the discord like benefit and, you can see them light up, which is cool.
[00:22:39] Randall: Very cool. Have you have you done any events have you coordinated events, have you gotten to meet any of the
[00:22:46] community members?
[00:22:46] Russ: That was our plan before COVID
[00:22:48] Randall: Same. I was going to do a tour.
[00:22:51] Russ: Yeah. It's funny, like the year that COVID happened, we had just started doing that. We coordinated a series of art shows at bike shops. So I paint watercolors and we'd have an art show with a local bike shop. We did transit cycles in Arizona golden saddle in LA golden pliers and in Portland. Cause I wanted to give a focus to the event rather than people just drinking beer.
[00:23:11] So there's a fun way for people, fans of the channel and people that want to do bikey things without just drinking beer, a could attend. And then the last one we did was was in at transit in Arizona. Then that's when, COVID blew up and we're like, ah, you gotta pull the plug on this tour.
[00:23:25] Randall: Do are people able to buy your art or prints of your art because I've seen some of your watercolors and they're really cool. I was going to ask you at one point, can I get attention?
[00:23:33] Russ: Yeah, we've got a big cartel shop, again, very disjointed. We're going to migrate to probably Shopify so it can live on the actual website next year. People can buy originals, which are expensive, but then they go so buy smaller postcards and prints. The prints are pretty, it's like a G clay print on the watercolor paper, and it's about as close as you can get to an original without spending that much. And it's really high quality, so yeah.
[00:23:56] Yeah. People can buy th there, there are options for people to purchase prints.
[00:24:01] Randall: Yeah. It falls into that category of feeling like a part of something and, getting the psychic income of supporting the contents that you want to see in the world.
[00:24:09] Russ: Yeah. I know your podcast listeners can't see it, but behind that veiled curtain there that's, there are picking station where we've got a bunch of shelving with a stem caps and stickers and prints, and Lauren,
[00:24:21] Randall: you're doing your own fulfillment.
[00:24:23] Russ: Yeah. Lord, I outsource it to Laura.
[00:24:25] Randall: Speaking of Laura, how's Laura doing?
[00:24:27] Russ: She's doing well. If you guys aren't familiar she got diagnosed with breast cancer. A little bit over a year ago, and I really threw a wrench in our plans. And so we had to navigate that, but she's on the other side of, all the major surgeries, she's just taking a maintenance drug for the rest of the year, but she's doing well enough that she starting to ride the bike again.
[00:24:49] Like I think she's going to do another trainer session today and hopefully get into some shape so we can do some actual writing in California.
[00:24:56] Randall: Excellent. That's really great to hear. And I see even your email addresses is Russ and Laura. So share a little bit about what was her role in the Genesis and development of the channel and what does that dynamic like building something like this for the partner?
[00:25:12] Russ: Yeah. So we've been together for about 19 years. When we first met, neither of us were into bikes. I just, yeah, I know. I discovered by commuting and at the time she, we lived in long beach and she worked in at seal beach.
[00:25:27] So the commute was like three miles and then I got her into bike commuting, and then we both fell in love with bike touring. And it was then that we decided " Hey, maybe we could make a blog out of this". So it was definitely a joint venture. I've been very fortunate in so far as I've been able to get.
[00:25:47] I want to say, get Laurie into the same interest, but we come to things at the same time or we appreciate the same things. So we both love bikes and she's definitely an integral role to PLP. She does all the bookkeeping being the shipping fulfillment the contracts she handles all the logistical stuff that a lot of people don't see, but are crucial to making a living.
[00:26:10] Randall: Yeah. It's one thing to be the face of something. My case same deal, with thesis. So little of what it takes to create the product and get it delivered is done by me. But I contribute my small part and I convey a message. I do product development and so on, I have team members who are managing the orders.
[00:26:31] There are factories, there are people working hard to actually produce the things. There are logistical companies that are getting the things to the right places and assembling them and que seeing them and handling all of that. And so acknowledgement of that. I think it's
[00:26:44] Russ: yeah, we had that pretty early division of labor.
[00:26:47] Like we knew, like what are our strengths where I'm definitely more of a creative, pie in the sky kind of person. And she's very grounded. Typically I'll bounce idea off of her and she's that's dumb and you have no time to do, or, I'll know if something has legs, if she thinks that it's feasible.
[00:27:05] But we definitely fulfill, I think that the two kind of the two personalities that's needed in the business,
[00:27:12] Randall: yup. Yeah, that that, that has been my experience as well. So really great to hear about how the two of you worked together and 19 years is a long time.
[00:27:21] Russ: Yeah. It's a long time.
[00:27:23] Randall: So good on the two of you. So, what are you nerding out about these days?
[00:27:27] Russ: I think a lot about, where the holes are in cycling and particular in cycling meets. And I still think the non-competitive side, the cycling is grossly underrepresented and there's probably a lot more people that are into that style of riding. Then there's, the sharp pointy end of the of racing. I feel like that's overrepresented because, the people that get hired at those media agencies or at those brands tend to be X racers. So it creates this echo chamber. And so I really still think of myself as trying to break the echo chamber, insert a different voice and speak for, that the large group of people, that there are bike enthusiasts, but don't ever see themselves necessarily depending on the number.
[00:28:10] And I think, I was trying to come up with a good analogy. I was describing it to a friend recently. And I think there were like two types of people, right? There's people that they view life as a puzzle to be solved or like a competition to be one. And there's others that do life, as a fine deal at a restaurant that's going to end and your goal is to not eat the fastest, but to save her every bit. And I'm definitely on that latter part. And I feel like a lot of cycling media views it primarily as a sport. So just trying to broaden that message and reach people they feel left out. We've got a channel trailer and I think the title is misfits welcome and trying to find,
[00:28:48] Randall: I love your analogy. And I resonate with both parts of it. I definitely started off cycling ultra competitive. Like I am your classic skinny shaped, like a white guy in Lycra who was out trying to rip people's legs off. And, I wrote as a kid and I'd go on adventures and so on. But when I stopped doing competitive team sports, I was believed in not a linebacker and a fullback in high school about 30 pounds ago, and got into racing. In part, because I wanted the sense of belonging and being on a team, but also in part I was because I was good at it. And I was like, oh, here's the thing where I can prove myself. And in fact, I really got into it because it's oh, I want to do, I want to get to a really high level in something. And here's the thing that I have the, the greatest ability to get that in. So I was definitely fitting into the first category first and now I am very much in the other category. Writing for fun writing primarily for connection, with nature, with other people and community and ultimately with myself, the rolling meditation
[00:29:50] Russ: Yeah. And my stance is like I'm not anti racing or the competitive side by any means. I just think that's overrepresented. I'm just trying to give an alternative voice by saying, party paces as a thing doesn't necessarily mean, racing is not a thing, it's not like pizza where there's only one slice to be shared.
[00:30:06] Randall: Let's talk practically here to. It is, I believe the bigger opportunity. The ethos of it. I also very much align with at this stage in my life. I think it's this great vehicle for connection, but then also for everyone who's racing or everyone who's following the racing, there's 10 people who could benefit from the health and wellness and community and belonging and everything that comes with this activity that we so love.
[00:30:30] Russ: If you think about, if you took all the people in the world that could potentially ride bikes, these are grandmothers, grandfathers, small children, and, you filtered it down to, the small percentage that would race competitively. I think the number of these non-competitive cyclists would vastly outnumber the people that could do that and elite level, or even a quasi competitive level.
[00:30:49] And yeah, that competitive and takes lion share of bicycling imagination. Like a big eye-opener is during COVID right. Huge bike, boom. Very little racing. Yeah. We've been told this, I don't want to say it's a lie, but this is truism that cycling needs racing to sell bikes. And it absolutely doesn't,
[00:31:12] Randall: there's a reason why we don't sponsor anyone other than we'll offer things sometimes to like community leaders or people who are doing good stuff to build community.
[00:31:21] Russ: Yeah. think it's such an old model, like a, this is sponsored athlete thinking that it'll drunk bikes.
[00:31:27] To some extent that works, but also there's other more kind of creative ways, more effective ways, it's 20, 21. It's it's not like 1950, we don't need like a celebrity endorsement from someone with these boxes that sell something.
[00:31:40] Randall: I remember riding with a pretty accomplished European pro early in my very short career, and I asked him about sponsorship and equipment and so on. And he's listen, you pay me enough. I'll ride a shopping cart. That is the truth of it. The bikes are coming out of essentially the same facilities, right? They're all using the same components, largely their parts hangers for swam and Shimano, all these Aero claims about this and that it's a lot of very careful selection and representation of the data. This is much more arrow on the graph, but it's only showing this section of a graph, that's this tall, things like this. But yeah I'm a hundred percent aligned with you on that one.
[00:32:16] Russ: And I also think the, I think the consumer is a lot more savvy, I feel like, it's not when we were fed advertising in the fifties and you took everything at face value, people read reviews, they do their own research. More people are being content creators, so they understand the ins and outs of messaging.
[00:32:33] And yet it seems as if, bike advertising still the same, it's not very sophisticated.
[00:32:39] Randall: It's well, it's advertising. It's let me tell you how to think. As opposed to let me present some information and let you figure out what resonates with you.
[00:32:48] Russ: Yeah. It's like looking at how different industries use YouTube. For example, I think it's pretty, pretty telling like a lot of brands still use YouTube as a showcase for their brand video. Whereas if you look at the camera industry, they send out stuff to everyday people, they give their impressions. They probably do product release videos, but they understand that's not like the main driver to sales. People talking about the product and real world situations and normal people, they're not given, cameras to Annie Liebowitz or James Nachtwey and then
[00:33:22] Randall: well, people that others can relate to. In fact, I tend to trust the reviews from smaller channels, much more than I trust the ones from channels that have advertisers, depend on making the manufacturers happy in order to generate their income. This is a profound conflict of interest that even if it's subconscious has to be influencing that content versus somebody who just spontaneously this thing was so good I had to talk about it" or this thing is crap. Or, and I just had to talk about it or I just wanted to create content. Cause I thought it would be valuable to other people in the world, which is very much the dynamic going back to community that we see in the ridership. And it sounds like you're seeing in your in your discord.
[00:34:06] Russ: Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to go back to what you said earlier about, trust reviews. That's definitely something I take super seriously on the channel. At this point I reviewed about 80 bikes was not paid to review any of them, and the bikes I kept I ended up buying, and that's the promise. I tell the viewer I tell our Patrion community because in my freelancing days I did stuff for bicycle times when they were still around the momentum, adventure cycling. And, it was always aware of the advertorial aspect of things. And I didn't want to participate.
[00:34:37] So it wasn't, we started the YouTube channel. Like we get no sponsored money from the bike industry. We don't get paid by salsa by, whoever zeros dollars I'd rather have the viewer support the channel and that's why we pushed the Patrion so much. Yeah. Most recently I've been buying more products like small goods. To some extent we PR we participate in that, we get review stuff, but then I still give my honest feedback on it, but more and more, I want to transition to a hundred percent like buying everything just because I feel like it lends more credibility.
[00:35:06] It's very difficult to do because as a channel, we don't make enough money to do that a hundred percent. But where I can, I will, buy the product like everybody else and give our review when the. The channels that really inspire me is actually in the copy industry, this guy, James Hoffman, who has a massive following, I think, million subscribers, he'll compare these, thousand dollar espresso machines, but, he has a large enough Patriot.
[00:35:30] We can buy them all, review them and then give it away on this Patrion. And that is what I aspire to is to not be supported by the bike industry, by everything, and then give it away on the Patriot.
[00:35:42] Randall: It makes me think of like a a much more organic form of what consumer reports used to do. And that was the go-to trusted source for reviews before, the internet era I admire the hell out of that.
[00:35:54] Russ: Yeah. And it's a long road. When I started taking the YouTube channels. Seriously, I did the maths, as okay. There's a handful of bike brands would probably potentially be interested in and supporting our content. Truthfully, they're going to give that money to the Rabis or bike packing.com first. In my head, I was like, how can we turn this weakness into a strength?
[00:36:12] So I really leaned into it. I was like, okay, fine. We'll just take no money from the bike industry and really rely on the Patrion supporters and the sticker sales. It's a longer road because you don't get those big influxes of cash or a right upfront, but, we can slowly grow the supporter base.
[00:36:29] I can't grow more brands that would be willing to support this. I can hopefully, keep making more content to attract more viewers to support this. So that's the tactic we've chosen.
[00:36:38] Randall: And by the way, the route of this was recently acquired by the pros closet. They do great content. And we've certainly benefited from their kindness and taking our press releases and publishing and so on. That it is hard. What you're doing is hard. Yeah. And with Craig, right? We have a quick set of buy me a coffee and, that brings in a few hundred dollars a month.
[00:36:57] This is not a money maker. All that money goes to Craig by the way, and just, offsets basic costs associated with not just the software and so on, but you have to think about the amount of time that goes into scheduling and doing the interviews and then the post-production work and promotion and social media and all this other stuff.
[00:37:16] And there is a degree to which the current web 2.0 paradigm makes it harder than necessary, given the level of our technology, to support the content you want to see in the world. And one of the things that I'm seeing emergency is very hopeful is the advent of micropayments and things like this.
[00:37:34] And so hopefully those are things that we are looking to adopt in the next, even six months to a year that hopefully will unlock more opportunities for people to support the content they want to see in the world in a way that is aligned with what they have, you don't have to sign up for five bucks a month.
[00:37:51] You don't have to pay a membership fee. It's everything here is for free. If you value it, contribute to it. And here's some really easy ways to do so that don't have some, company taking 10% or 50 plus percent in the case of YouTube.
[00:38:03] Russ: Yeah, that was definitely an aha moment where you know, shifting the focus from being a hundred percent viewer supported, as opposed to chasing that traditional model of getting advertising from a bike brand or being a sponsored athlete or something It's hard, but I think it's worthwhile and it's ultimately proving the most sustainable.
[00:38:24] Randall: Yeah. Part of my motivation here was " this is one way that I can support the content that I want to see in the world". So to the extent that we can collaborate to support what you do please let us know.
[00:38:33] So we've been chatting for about 40, 45 minutes here. Anything else that you think it would be fun to, to jump into before we open it up to questions from people who are listening in, on the live stream?
[00:38:45] Russ: I think we hit the big ones that the huge untapped well of the non-competitive cycling market.
[00:38:52] We have I have an alternate channel called the old cycling with where it's a goofy video live stream with a bunch of other bikey tube creators. And I saw recently that, ultra romance adopted cycling for his Northeast. Events. So now it's a thing.
[00:39:06] All cycling. There you go.
[00:39:08] Randall: I haven't seen this. Please send me a representative link to a video
[00:39:12] Russ: he just wanted to hear for bikey trooper. Just complain about being a bike. Easy,
[00:39:16] Randall: very inside baseball.
[00:39:17] Russ: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's it. We can open it up to a live stream questions if you want. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. So if you guys are in the live stream still, there's 111 of you. I'm breaking the fourth wall. Is it the fourth wall or the third wall? Of the walls of the podcast.
[00:39:35] If you have questions for either immediate or Randall
[00:39:38] Randall: back in your own ideas and perspective on how we can do
[00:39:43] Russ: yeah. So putting on your your bike industry hat, what do you think most brands think of YouTube? Do they think it's like a, it's not as serious as like pink bike or whatever, or it could, I feel like as a creator, like most brands are still like, huh? What's YouTube.
[00:39:59] Randall: I have no idea. We take a very different approach. So I don't know how it was viewed. I do know, some of the things I see from big brands, it tends to be your classic promotional video, or here's some athlete we paid some money and sent a camera crew out and did some adventure thing that you can then live vicariously through or whatever.
[00:40:17] Russ: Can I make a confession that I'm totally bored of that style?
[00:40:19] Randall: I suspect that you are not alone at all.
[00:40:23] Russ: It reminds me of around 2012 when people were making artisinal everything and they had all these artisanal brand videos and it just jumped the shark.
[00:40:30] And I feel the adventure bike video genres is getting to that point.
[00:40:35] Randall: I'll say that early on in thesis, there was definitely a pressure to engage in that. And, it never felt authentic. It never felt quite right. At some point I was like, you know what, screw this.
[00:40:45] We don't need to do this. We have an existing base of writers. If we just take care of them, they'll tell their friends. And if we just do good in the world and show up at credible and helpful and make content that is a valuable to people and help people to get their needs met,,, this is where the ridership and so on comes in, then will be taken care of as well.
[00:41:05] That's been our approach.
[00:41:07] Russ: Yeah. I've hit that point to where initially my goal was to grow the channel as big as possible, but after a certain point, it's, if I could, if I can serve the people that are raised, subscribe better. Yeah. That's actually all the viewers we would ever need.
[00:41:23] If all 125,000 joined Patrion, it would be amazing. Like you said, focusing on the audience that you do have giving them the content or products that they want and making them happy rather than some elusive unattainable goal of. Number down the line. It
[00:41:39] Randall: depends on what your goals are. Like, if your goals are to go big and get rich and whatever, then do some big crowdfunding pump and dump, whatever scheme, collect a bunch of money and then bail or whatever. But if your goal is to do good in the world, then it requires a slower, more intentional approach. And maybe it doesn't become as monetized, but ultimately the psychic income is worth a lot more.
[00:42:01] Russ: Yeah. I saw an interesting study that came out about YouTube creators and the largest niche of creators where they're actually doing this full time is in the education space. So educating about the topic.
[00:42:16] And that makes sense, right? Because people go to YouTube to learn things, to discover new things. And, I think to last as a creator, you really do have to have a service mindset. What is that people want to know about what problem can I solve? There's very few creators that can just do their weird shit and be successful.
[00:42:34] The PD PI's of the world, being solely personality based and not serving some kind of educational.
[00:42:41] Randall: And I don't end the the attention seeking drive that often drives some of that content. I'm okay to have a smaller community of people that are more ethos aligned.
[00:42:52] Yeah. Let's dive into some of the comments that we're seeing in here. Cause there's a bunch of good ones.
[00:42:56] Russ: Anything jumping off, jumping out to you.
[00:42:58] Randall: So I'm just taking it from the top. T Shen, oh, this is very kind. The ridership is a great example of what online community can be helpful, focused friendlies, zero snark, unless you guys edited out, we don't edit it out.
[00:43:09] I've, there've been two instances where I have moderated and it's always been starting a dialogue with the person and about Hey, this comes off in this way. And what do you think about taking it down and so on? And those people have gone on to be really great contributors to the community.
[00:43:24] The type of people that it attracts have those values. So thank you for being a part of it.
[00:43:29] Russ: Yeah. Our discord is similar. I think I've only in the history of discord had to ban two people and they were actively, it was clear that they were not going to contribute in a positive way, but for the most part everyone's and treats everyone pretty well.
[00:43:48] Randall: Here's another one. I love the path, less pedaled approach, such a breath of fresh air in the midst of all the leg shave and GNC cycling performance, weight weenies.
[00:43:56] Russ: Yes. Yeah.
[00:43:59] Randall: I used to be one of those people be kind we're just dealing with our insecurity.
[00:44:03] Russ: Yeah. I've been noodling through a video and I think the title is going to be something like why fast as a matter, or why fast as ever rated. Because this is my take on that. I'll give you guys a sneak peek on the video is typically let's say we take the status quo lens of a bike.
[00:44:18] It's always going to be viewed through a racing perspective, right? So that attributes of a bike that are going to be praised or lightweight aerodynamics. Chris shifting, but that assumes if you're racing. And I'd say that's the wrong perspective instead of asking, what's the fastest we should be asking "what's the most efficient for the task". So if you've got, a mom with two kids, is an arrow, lightweight bike, and to be the most efficient for tasks, know it, that's going to be a cargo bike, or if you have a racer and you give them a cargo bike is the most efficient for the task. No, but, stepping back and asking, okay, what is the task that we're talking about?
[00:44:53] There's one lens to view bicycling. And not the only lens
[00:44:58] Randall: I tend to distill things down to first principles in the sense of what is the deeper goal? Is it to be fast or is it to be able to keep up with the people you want to ride with? Or is it like some, need to be recognized as fast, some need for esteem or whatever, in which case there are other ways to get that met and, a bicycle is a vehicle.
[00:45:18] So it's ultimately, I think about the experience, right? And it really focusing on the experience, which means, a bike that can do a lot of things. And it's very versatile, like that holds up and doesn't hold you back. And things of this sort
[00:45:31] Russ: yeah, question. Herbalists how big is a European part of the PLP community? Looking at her analytics and where we ship product. It's a big, the big part. We ship a lot of stickers to UK stem caps and stuff to Germany Finland although that part of Europe like Australia and New Zealand was a big purchaser of stickers until recently because a us postal service.
[00:45:57] Delivering there. And to, for us to send something to New Zealand or Australia has to go by ups and it's 30 bucks, regardless if it's a stem cap or a sticker. Cause that really sucked. How about on the ridership? Do you guys have a big European contingent?
[00:46:11] Randall: Predominantly north America. I haven't looked at the metrics on that, to be honest, I have been followed that super closely, but we do have a few people interspersed around the world and even a few who've taken it upon themselves to try to. Local riders so that they can have a critical mass in their area, but definitely early days.
[00:46:29] And definitely quite us focused with some, density in the bay area. The front range I've been focusing on new England for obvious reasons of late and things like this. So yeah.
[00:46:40] Russ: Yeah. And they other discord, someone shared with me a story that they were originally from New York, moved to Berlin and was able to find someone else on the discord in Berlin.
[00:46:50] And now they're, they become fast.
[00:46:51] Randall: Oh, that's great. Isn't that the dream isn't it, the dream oh, you're traveling, just sign up for that channel. Make some friends go have an experience. I have an idea that talking to our technology partner on about like a friend BNB where you'd be able to earn a stay credit.
[00:47:07] That is a token where you know, Hey, I'm going to be in Montana. And you'd be able to like publish, I have a room available and then I would apply and you'd be able to accept or deny. And if you accept, I have a one deficit and you have a one credit, and then I can share my space to somebody who's coming into town and have that really facilitate community.
[00:47:26] Obviously this is maybe more of a post COVID idea. But it does speak to the possibilities once you have a certain critical mass. So that's a really great anecdote that you got there.
[00:47:37] Russ: Yeah. I've been thinking about looking at the, what rock, the RCC, the Rapha cycling club offers and trying to see if what we could do virtually to our membership, adopt some of those things.
[00:47:51] I don't know what all the offer, because I'm not part of any of them, but I've been looking at other membership models in the cycling space and okay. If you stripped away all the competitiveness, where could we plug in?
[00:48:02] Randall: Let's have a let's continue the conversation offline. Cause I think there's a very rich thread there. And in fact, I know that there are some people in the ridership also who work in the space, it might have something to contribute. I see a comment from Richard shomer Dean. There's a duplicating question I pose in the ridership, but what thoughts do you have on organizing group rides with respect to liability and lawsuits?
[00:48:23] Russ: I'll let you take that one first.
[00:48:25] Randall: So yeah, we live in a litigious culture and it is very expensive to defend oneself but very cheap to Sue and it's an unfortunate paradigm. You definitely want to, Be mindful of who you have joining is a big thing in the values there. Waivers can be really helpful.
[00:48:43] Again, I've mentioned some advising that I'm doing for a technology partner, looking at how to have a digital platform where you would have say an idea. And on this identity, you could have everything from, an attestation that you're vaccinated to, a waiver that you signed to attend a particular event, and then having the events coordination, whether it be, Hey Russ, let's meet up for a group ride all the way to a 2000 person, gravel events being able to be coordinated on the same platform with the waivers and payments and everything else handled in one place.
[00:49:20] Right now a lot of bad is disjointed or really expensive in the same way that say, Patriot on takes, takes a substantial cut or YouTube takes us substantial cut. It's definitely a concern and the deeper your pockets, the bigger the concern it is, or the deeper your pockets are perceived to be the bigger of a problem it is.
[00:49:38] There are solutions. And it takes a critical mass of people in the types of communities where those are being incubated in order for these to come to fruition.
[00:49:46] Russ: Yeah. Yeah. That's definitely a sticky topic. Lauren, I have toyed around with the idea of having either an event, an overnight event at the base camp and looping gravel rides or something or this winter meeting up with folks and doing rides to our favorite places.
[00:50:03] Definitely the potential litigious nature has turned us off as well as the cupboards. So we're still navigating those waters.
[00:50:10] Randall: You mentioned that you're going to be in Soquel coming down. So Craig Dalton, founder of the gravel ride podcast also spends a good amount of time.
[00:50:18] And so Cal, maybe we could make something happen at some point. I don't know if there's demand out there, let us know. And we'll coordinate.
[00:50:26] Russ: Yeah. Yeah. Right now we're trying to figure it out all, it's going to be a big content trip basically as well as vacation.
[00:50:33] So definitely looking for opportunities to, to make some interesting videos.
[00:50:37] Randall: I don't know if you're familiar with the gravel stone. Yeah. So Dave malware it's San Diego, it's a great group of people. I've been down there and done a group rides with a hundred plus people, which is pretty astonishing and become a good friend over the years.
[00:50:54] Another one of these people who, he doesn't make money off of it. He's spending money on it, but it's, he just values community values, the the connection and the creative outlet that the space provides.
[00:51:05] Russ: Yeah. Let's see. There's still 115 of you sticking round, which is pretty awesome for a Monday.
[00:51:13] You didn't think we'd get this many people did,
[00:51:15] Randall: And I'm recognizing, we have quite a few people from the ridership. And I just posted that several hours ago.
[00:51:20] Russ: Yeah, I find that, promoting a live stream ahead of time, doesn't make too much of a difference unless it's in a super well-known personality.
[00:51:30] Otherwise like people are going to be on the live stream when it's convenient. So I tend not to sweat The live stream promotion too much. YouTube does help out in that, a few minute intervals before it lets all the subscribers know that it's going to happen. So that's best thing it could do.
[00:51:46] Randall: So Rick urban has thrown in a bunch of comical questions, including Russ. Why do you hate beer and Randall? Have you ever successfully gripped a leg off?
[00:51:56] Russ: So I do hate beer. I just like whiskey more. It's like beer concentrates and less puffy. Like when I drink beer now I just get bloated feeling. So I'd rather have whiskey. I'll let you take the ripple. I GFE question.
[00:52:11] Randall: I don't like beer either. No.
[00:52:14] Russ: So it's almost like a sacrilege in the bike industry.
[00:52:17] Randall: Oh yeah. Alcohol generally. Isn't my chemical. I'll have a glass of wine here and there. And I have not actually ripped legs off. They figure of speech. I should be more careful with my vocabulary. But what else do we have here? I'd Krispy says I'd like to see a PLP and gravel ride podcast, bike packing, or bike fishing adventure video.
[00:52:37] Let's do it. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I'll come eat someplace warm.
[00:52:43] Yeah. If you come to the west coast or the Rocky mountain west, we can coordinate yeah, definitely looking forward to more outside videos. This winter has been such a hard year. So Jen Harrington ass do you know percentage of women on the channel?
[00:52:58] That's a good question. I can tell a little bit by. Analytics at least on the YouTube channel, it's probably less than 5%. I know it's less than 5%. I think when you have a male presenter on the channel, it's just how things are gonna shake out.
[00:53:14] I think our Patrion is it's not parody, but there, there are a lot of women that support on Patrion and very few that participate in on the discord. How about for you guys?
[00:53:25] Russ: I don't know about the pod. Craig manages all the analytics there. But the ridership, if I had to guess, it's probably on the order of maybe 10% or so, which is still quite low.
[00:53:34] Maybe for some of the same reasons you said. I've actually had some conversations, including with Monica Garrison over at black girls do bike. I don't know if you've seen the work that she's done, but really just bringing people together, creating events and contents that make cycling more accessible to a community that, you just don't see very well-represented and, it begs the question why and one of the things that I've been quite curious about is, w what is what role can I play in making cycling more accessible?
[00:54:03] And there are some easy things to do, which is one, engaging, but then too, figuring out what the needs are. At the same time, it is good to see that there are those communities being created that serve people who, maybe don't find things like PLP or the ridership, or maybe aren't quite clear if it's for them or not.
[00:54:21] I will say this we want you with us, right? And we want your feedback. We want your ideas. And ultimately my personal goal is for the ridership to become something much bigger, which I don't control. So maybe it has a board it has a decentralized governance structure.
[00:54:39] So we're looking at DAOs decentralized autonomous organizations built on blockchains and things like that. It's a potential structure going forward to allow people to help decide the direction. And I think that sense of first representation, but then ultimately a sense of ownership in co-creation hopefully will help to merge these communities so that they can join together.
[00:55:01] Yeah. Yeah. Do you think reviewing so many bike products, discourages people from riding without specialized, but to some extent yes. In a sense of if I don't have these bags, I can't go by packing. Yeah. I do think that, when people watch reviews I don't intend for people to buy them.
[00:55:21] They're just usually things I'm really interested in, but they're, for some people. Feeling of oh, I need that thing or else I can't do this thing. Maybe I should try to communicate better that you should, bike or go bike packing with what you have. And don't worry about. All the small stuff.
[00:55:37] Randall: Yeah. People were backpacking before there was bike packing gear, just like people war gravel riding before there were grappled bikes.
[00:55:44] Russ: Yeah. Yeah. I do find there's this one camera YouTube, very watch. And he had this interesting video talking about the dark side of tech YouTube.
[00:55:54] And the purpose of the video was he was feeling overwhelmed because he's getting sent to all this stuff. And, he himself is like a mindless by nature, but he has to play with all this stuff and, seemingly promoted and he feels bad when people feel bad that they don't have the same stuff.
[00:56:10] And that really resonated with me from the bike perspective, because there's a few things I truly, really and they're fairly attainable. Like I love friction shifting. I love flat pedals, but I do. All the latest gadgets, just because I have a interest in them, but not necessarily because I want people to buy them.
[00:56:28] Like I never, I try not to frame my reviews as you must absolutely buy this thing. It's just this way I think about it. It's kinda cool. You might like it. There's very few things where I said, this is. You should buy this. So I was thinking of doing something, a video like that because there's boxes of lots of things which is how overwhelming
[00:56:44] Randall: I often in conversations will tell people, actually, you don't need this.
[00:56:48] We offer a carbon rail saddle option. It saves 55 grams for 49 bucks. And unless you have too much money and you're trying to squeeze every gram out. You don't need this. This is not going to affect in any way, your experience. Maybe that, that one's a little bit more obvious, but same applies to a lot of gear, hyper, specialized, non versatile gear that we're told, you have to have in order to engage in this experience.
[00:57:11] Russ: Yeah. I've started saying no to lots of things. And there's some things that I just don't review anymore because it's, I don't feel like it can add anything meaningful to the conversation, or I just don't use it. Actually don't like I've said no to so many bike packing bags. It's I don't like, I don't like the little, the poop bag or the sausage roll.
[00:57:29] It's just not my style. I'm not going to talk about them anymore. You can buy them if you want, but I wouldn't personally use them. I think there's, they're all about the same. And yeah, so don't more bike packing bags on the channel. I'm not reviewing carbon wheels anymore just because I can't add anything meaningful to it.
[00:57:48] I can say that they're light and they feel fast, but I don't have the scientific background to do any testing or something. So unless someone wants a purely anecdotal experiential review, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna review products where I can't add to the knowledge base.
[00:58:03] Randall: So you saying I shouldn't send you any new fancy creping wheels.
[00:58:07] Russ: You could, I won't review it
[00:58:08] Randall: a man of integrity,
[00:58:10] Russ: But it's there's like I'm not an engineer. I could read the press copy and make it sound convincing, but unless the wheel to shatters as I'm writing there's nothing meaningful I could add to the conversation.
[00:58:23] Randall: I actually believe that is generally the case. And wheels are a prime example of a tremendous amount of marketing bullshit. There are differences, there are fundamental differences, but those aren't what's being marketed, like the basics of good wheel design. Maybe I'll do an episode on this at some point, but they are what they are.
[00:58:40] Russ: Yeah. Like I I've been given the opportunity to review like, $3,000 wheels, $2,000. It was like, it just can't do it. I'm not gonna, I'm not willing to read your press release.
[00:58:49] Randall: Sorry. I see a comment here from Jeffrey Fritz. He says I am a cancer survivor and was recently thinking about Laura, glad to hear she was winning the battle.
[00:58:56] Thank you for your share Jeffrey and yeah, I resonate with that fully. Yeah,
[00:59:01] Russ: You hear, cancer battle and it is an extended campaign is a war of attrition in between your body and the disease. It's if there's no like quick in and out, and there's always, there's a lot of collateral damage in the process.
[00:59:17] Randall: Yeah.
[00:59:17] Could you share your discord link?
[00:59:19] Russ: Yes, I will put that in the description after the live stream, I think I have to create a new invite or something. I think I made one video about the discord channel, like months ago and they haven't promoted it on the YouTube channel since. But yeah, I'll put the, I'll put the invite in the description below.
[00:59:35] Randall: Jordan Kwan says Jacob Jacobs, that's me the ridership merge. We want to do a Jersey. It's in the works. We just have not had the bandwidth to focus on it, but expect one for, next riding season. So save your ridership Jersey. We'll get that done. And we'll probably put it out to the community to, provide input on the design and so on.
[00:59:57] Russ: Yeah, we've been looking at other products that we could sell beyond just, stickers and and stem caps. Ideally I'd like to help design the bag. It would be fun to do a collaboration on a bike. I do have the idea for a hard, good, which solves a very specific problem, but I don't know if it's sexy enough for people to invest in it.
[01:00:19] But we're constantly thinking of ideas of, what's a bike product that we could present that we'd feel good about. That's hopefully a new and But it's tricky
[01:00:28] Randall: if you ever need guidance on the manufacturing side of things. It's a thing that I've done we've talked about.
[01:00:34] Russ: Yeah. Cause we're the weird place where we have a audience, but not that many products to sell as opposed to having a product and having no audiences. It's like this inverse weird inverse problem.
[01:00:45] Randall: So I looking through here, a lot of comments here and a lot of just not calling most of them out because most of them are just kind words.
[01:00:56] And I just want to say really appreciated. Yeah. What else do we have here?
[01:01:01] Russ: We've got 106 people. I'm not seeing any question really jumped out, so maybe we should start taking it home. And then we can talk offline a little bit more if you want.
[01:01:13] Randall: So that's good. And I'm curious and I've encourage folks to provide this feedback, if you're a member of the ridership or if you're a member of PLPs discord do you see a place ,for a more interactive forum where we would create a video conference.
[01:01:28] And maybe it's not for outside consumption, but it's more, just a way for us to communicate. And it's not about, two people having a conversation and others typing in questions, but really I would view myself more in that circumstance as a facilitator, facilitating connection and exchange between people.
[01:01:43] It folks think that's a good idea. It's been something that Craig and I have talked about in the past.
[01:01:48] Russ: Yeah. It's something Laura and I have talked about too. It'd be fun to do an all bike summit or you have a, grand Peterson from Urbandale there maybe Yamaha and Anton for pitch, just like interesting personalities and have it be like a interactive video conference.
[01:02:02] But it's not going to happen this winter. I can guarantee that.
[01:02:06] Randall: Let's say intention set.
[01:02:08] Russ: Yeah. Cool. I think I'm going to take us home. Any last things you want people to know about the ridership or anything?
[01:02:14] Randall: Yeah, the podcast is the gravel ride podcast. I think that probably the most valuable content for a lot of people, especially newbies would be some of our, bike fit 1 0 1 and, five skills that every gravel riders should know and things like this.
[01:02:26] We really try to cater to a beginner audience as well as, going deep nerd into the esoterics of competitive cycling with events, organizers, and athletes and things like that. Definitely more Craig's domain on that regard to. The ridership.com. Is where you can go to get a link to sign up.
[01:02:44] We also bought a Robert UBS account for the community. And by joining you get access to that free Robert GBS account that we acquired. And we do have good things that are happening there. Russ is in there too, not super active, but he does chime in when when people tag him .
[01:02:58] And yeah, that's how you find us. And then we do, with thesis and other commercial projects that I'm involved in, we have some interesting things in the pipe, but I'll be ready to talk about those probably, Q1 of 20, 22.
[01:03:09] Russ: Yeah. Cool. I'm going to take us home a Randall.
[01:03:12] Thanks for being an awesome guest. Once again, definitely check out the ridership, these spikes and subscribe. The ground rights podcasts.
[01:03:20] Craig Dalton: Thanks everybody for listening this week. I hope you enjoyed that discussion between Randall and Ross. It was quite enjoyable watching live stream. So I hope that translated over the audio only format of this podcast.
[01:03:34] After all that discussion about community. I hope by now, if you're not already in the ridership that you'll head on over to
[01:03:41] www.theridership.com and join the conversation. If you're interested in able to support the podcast. There's a couple easy ways you can do it.
[01:03:52] The first would be ratings and reviews. They're hugely important to any podcast out there. And I can speak on behalf of this podcast or that. That I read everything that's written about the show, and I really enjoy your feedback. So that's a simple way you can help me out. During this holiday season.
[01:04:09] If you have the financial wherewithal. We also accept contributions via buy me a coffee.com simply visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Until next time he used to finding some dirt onto your wheels
This week we sit down with Bryce Wood from Colorado's Alchemy Bicycles to discuss the companies' titanium and carbon gravel bikes.
Presenting Sponsor: Competitive Cyclist. Code THEGRAVELRIDE for 15% off
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Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos):
Alchemy Bicycles
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton:
[00:00:05] Hello and welcome to the gravel rod podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast, we have Bryce wood from alchemy bikes in Colorado. You may recognize Bryce's voice from my Sea Otter Roundup episode, where I got to know the brand a little bit, but I was certainly curious to dig deeper. So I was happy to have him on for a full show.
[00:00:27] Before we jump in, I need to thank this week. Sponsor competitive cyclist.
[00:00:32] Competitive Cyclist and the online specialty retailer of road, gravel and mountain bikes, components, apparel, and accessories, featuring cycling standout brands like pock Castelli, Pearl Izumi, and five 10, an unrivaled in-house bike assembly operation. They bring the personalized attention of the local bike shop along with the selection and convenience only available while shopping online.
[00:00:57] The real difference that competitive cyclists are the gearheads. Equal parts, customer service and cycling fanatics gear heads are former pro athletes, Olympians and seasoned cyclists. With years of experience. All available by phone, email, or chat for product recommendations and hard won advice.
[00:01:15] You may recall from the last couple of episodes that I had a really great experience with my own personal gear head, Maggie, as she walked me through the various gravel bikes they have available for sale on competitive cyclist.com. Today. I have to say, I wasted a lot of time perusing items on competitive cyclist. I'd been given a gift certificate and I wanted to pick up something for myself. So I found myself going through the clothing, the gloves, the components, all kinds of stuff. I think I filled my cart with $500 worth of stuff before I backed it off and got down to my gift certificate amount.
[00:01:52] I'm somewhat proud of myself. I ended up with a nice mix of practical things, as well as some things I've been lusting after for a while, I got some replacement disc brake pads, and also a digital tire gauge. I talked about that a little bit before on the pod, how I thought it would be curious to be able to really see precise.
[00:02:11] Measurement as to what PSI I'm running between the different wheel sets, just to make sure that I'm getting out there and understanding what various tire pressures are going to do. I've got some tests coming up in the future that I'd really want to know what range I'm in. As I test some new tires and new some new products.
[00:02:29] The team over a competitive cyclist has generously offered 15% off for all podcast listeners. So go to competitive cyclists.com/the gravel ride and enter promo code the gravel ride. Get that 15% off your first full price purchase. Plus free shipping on orders of $50 or more,
[00:02:48] Some exclusions apply. Go right now and get 15% off. Plus free shipping@competitivecyclists.com slash the gravel ride entering promo code the gravel ride.
[00:03:00] I mentioned that was on the site this morning, picking out some things for myself. I actually got a shipping notification today already. So they're doing same day shipping in some instances. So you can be confident@competitivecyclists.com. They've got your back for holiday gift purchases, things you need to get in a timely fashion. Go over to competitive cyclists.com/the gravel ride
[00:03:23] With that business behind us, let's jump right into my interview with Bryce, from alchemy bikes. Bryce. Welcome to the show.
[00:03:29] Bryce Wood: Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
[00:03:32] Craig Dalton: Yeah, definitely. Ever since our brief conversation at , I've been super excited to get you on board and just learn a little bit more about the alchemy brand. You're done some super interesting stuff in gravel.
[00:03:44] So why don't we just start by a little bit of the backstory of alchemy.
[00:03:49] Bryce Wood: Yeah. So alchemy was founded in 2008 in Austin, Texas by Ryan who still owns the company still comes into the office every day. And there he met our designer and engineer. Matt met shoes that they aligned on.
[00:04:05] You know what they wanted to do in the bike industry. And Matt was a crit racing and as a six foot four, 230 pounds guy, he was having a hard time finding frames that were rigid enough for him and could support him during that kind of a race. So he was really interested in building his own frame.
[00:04:27] And so that's how alchemy got its start. Moved to Denver, Colorado, where we currently are about two years after the fact. So we've been here in Denver for a little over a decade. And this is where we. Design and produce manufacturer and also bring customers in to have that experiences is all right here in Denver.
[00:04:49] So we're really fortunate to have the Colorado people supporting us
[00:04:54] Craig Dalton: super interesting. So of those first bikes that were made, were they manufacturing out of steel or titanium or carbon at that?
[00:05:01] Bryce Wood: So Matt was actually doing he was experimenting with a wet carbon play app. And those were the first carbon bikes that he produced, not really under an alchemy badge.
[00:05:10] We started building out a metal and a carbon fiber is a more expensive and In depth product to work with, you need a lot of specialized tooling. And it's relatively expensive. So carbon fiber didn't come until a few years into Alchemy's existence.
[00:05:29] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that's super interesting.
[00:05:30] Yeah. I feel like the number of people. Manufacturing with carbon in the us is pretty small. So I was super excited when I learned that you were doing that in Colorado. So can you walk through the sort of carbon fiber construction process that you're using on the frames?
[00:05:48] Bryce Wood: We do everything here starting with a CAD rendering. So we designed the frame, make sure that it looks good to us on a computer screen. After that we're gonna 3d print out a model so that we can hold in our hands and make sure that we've got the design cues that we're looking for. Everything is where it needs to be.
[00:06:07] From there we do a pre preg carbon construction. So we get sheets of unidirectional carbon on our large rolls. And we use the CNC plotter to cut those sheets into shapes that we can lay up. So we use, different orientations of the fibers for different components. We build all the.
[00:06:28] The frames in a tube to construction so that we can change the carbon layup of a change day or a bottom bracket shell, which needs to be really rigid. And that layup is going to be very different from the seat stays are the top two or the down or the C2 where we need compliance. So building in that tube to tube construction, really not only allows us to offer a custom geometry really easily, but also allows us.
[00:06:55] Tune and dial in the ride, feel of that bike to a degree that we don't see from a lot of manufacturers,
[00:07:03] Craig Dalton: are you alternating some of the sort of tube dimensions or the layups on a size by size basis?
[00:07:10] Bryce Wood: So how we have it Plotted out for like our Atlas line on the Ronin line is we make these tubes extra long and then we can MITRE them down and MITRE them in different angles to create a unique geometries for the new rogue.
[00:07:29] It's a little bit of a different venture for us. We're doing an advanced monocoque construction where there's. Tube the tube, but there are less components. So like the down tube and head chamber are one piece that allows us to have less junctions, which means less weights and more strength.
[00:07:48] But it means that we do need different sized molds for every different sized frame.
[00:07:54] Craig Dalton: Gotcha. On that tube to tube construction, how has, how are the tubes bonded together?
[00:08:00] Bryce Wood: Yeah, the tubes are bonded through an overwrapping process. So basically we put a very fine layer of a proxy that holds the tubes together.
[00:08:09] Once they've been mitered and put into a jig to hold the geometry in place, and then we take Dozens of sheets of carbon. And we wrapped them in different orientations to join those tubes together. After they'd been wrapped, they go into a vacuum bag and then into a large oven and they're cured in that oven so that those overwrap pieces become part of the frame itself.
[00:08:37] Interesting.
[00:08:37] Craig Dalton: And then once that process is done, is there like sanding and finish work that happens on carbon.
[00:08:44] Bryce Wood: Yeah, there is. So we use we, we machine our own molds and house and we use a silicone and latex bladder. So we get really good compression out of our tubes and they come out of the molds extremely smooth, the overwrap process that vacuum bag tends to add a little bit of texture on those wrapped surfaces.
[00:09:05] And we do need to sand those to be.
[00:09:08] Craig Dalton: Got it. Got it. Thanks for that. I, I think about carbon fiber as more of that model. Production process and less. You know what you've described, which is really interesting. It for me it share it. I start thinking about the visuals of, it's steel or titanium frame building process, where you're putting it in a jig and you're bonding and you're welding them all together.
[00:09:27] So it's interesting and clear to me and hopefully the listener. You can really make a lot of adjustments pretty easily in the process by having those tube forms that are a little bit longer and just chop them down and MITRE them to the appropriate size for what the customer's looking for.
[00:09:44] Bryce Wood: Yeah. It's definitely unique. And. And you don't see that in, in any mass produced frames, it's all going to be a monocot construction, which is easy to produce. And you can to a certain degree still tune those tubes to do what you want them to. You add different layers here. And there but you lose the ability to do that custom geometry, which is something that our customers, I think really value and something that is one of the pillars that we built alchemy on.
[00:10:12] And we'll do that forever.
[00:10:14] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's certainly rather unique that you can get a carbon fiber frame custom fitted to your own personal specifications.
[00:10:23] Bryce Wood: Yeah, there's really only a few companies in the country doing that. So we're really happy to be helping to lead that charge.
[00:10:31] Craig Dalton: Let's talk a little bit more about Alchemy's journey. You mentioned that the co-founders started out by building road bikes or criteria bikes to fit their needs, and eventually started to offer them under the alchemy brand. At what point did it start to expand to the mountain bike and gravel road?
[00:10:47] Bryce Wood: As soon as we noticed that there was a market for gravel we dove into that head first. So we, we offered pretty early on a true gravel bike, not just a cyclocross frame that we build as a gravel bike, but a true gravel frame. That took on all the cues in design and performance that people were looking for out of that discipline.
[00:11:11] Mountain bikes came because. A lot of us rode mountain bikes and we really wanted to be able to have something under us that for our company name and that's actually really taken off and become probably the biggest department at alchemy is our Arcos mountain bike.
[00:11:29] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:11:30] Interesting. I imagine. One sitting there in Colorado understood pretty hard, pretty darn hard to not want to build a mountain bike being in that location. And to imagine, as far as the mountain bike landscape goes again, being able to offer these custom capabilities for the bike is pretty unique in this space.
[00:11:49] Bryce Wood: We've found that there's not a lot of demand for custom mountain frames. The bike itself and the discipline itself is so dynamic. It's not like a road or gravel where you find yourself in a stagnant position for long amounts of time. You're always pivoting and and moving on the bike and.
[00:12:12] That combined with your suspension means that there's not a huge demand for it. We still offer custom geometry on our hard tail mountain bikes, because that's a little bit more similar to the road in gravel side of things. But we are not currently offering custom geometry on the full suspension, carbon Pikes.
[00:12:30] Craig Dalton: Understood. So on the gravel bike, you mentioned, you saw the trend beginning and you started to design a bike specific for gravel. Can you talk about some of those design considerations in the original bike and was that original bike? The Ronan,
[00:12:45] Bryce Wood: The original bike was actually the eighth on a map bike.
[00:12:48] We wanted it to not be as, as. As a cyclocross bike or a road bike but we wanted to stay away from something that was too slack. We wanted it to be really comfortable and capable and just have that extra clearance that you need on a gravel bike. As this sport has evolved.
[00:13:09] We've. Notice that the original eighth on is not looking like what gravel bikes are looking like today that they're getting longer. They're getting slacker there. The demand for Mount mounting points and racks and fenders has really increased. And it looked a lot like a cyclocross bike that I would think of today, but for the time it was a little bit different than that.
[00:13:31] The new rogue is really moving into that contemporary design where we've got really slack had tubes and bikes really meant it's purpose built for adventure.
[00:13:42] Craig Dalton: Gotcha. So let's talk about your, you've got two models currently, and one of them has two materials. So you've got the Ronin in both carbon, fiber and titanium.
[00:13:53] Why don't we start there and talk about the intention of that bike, the type of writer it's looking to serve, and maybe spend a moment or two in terms of if a writer sort of keys in on the Ronin as being the bike for them, how do you talk to them about titanium versus carbon?
[00:14:10] Bryce Wood: Yeah. So the Ronin was the next iteration of that original life on and had just expanded and dialed in what a gravel cyclist is looking for.
[00:14:21] We kept it True to that same design element of the Aidan, where we wanted relatively steep geometry that makes the bike feel really lively and responsive. But we wanted that, that clearance and the capability that comes from a grapple machine. That bike's been in our stable.
[00:14:44] A couple of years now two and a half years. And it's still relevant. I think for those people who are interested in gravel, but also want to be able to ride on the road from time to time. And also those people who. Our maybe racing gravel. So that's the bike that I would recommend if somebody is looking to do Unbound gravel and be competitive.
[00:15:05] I push them towards the Ronin instead of the rogue. If you want that quiver killing bike, that bike that you can maybe have two wheel sets for, and it's going to be really capable off-road, but still be able to keep up with your group ride with your friends on the road. That bike is going to be.
[00:15:20] It's going to serve you really well. The distinction between carbon and titanium, just like on the road it's gonna, it's gonna be really dependent on your goals and your riding style and what you want that bike to do well. So if you live here in the foothills and you're riding up mountains all day long That carbon fiber, the responsiveness and that the rigidity, and it is really going to serve you.
[00:15:46] And in that purpose if comfort is your main concern or you spend a lot of time doing endurance riding the forgiveness and the compliance and the titanium frame is really going to benefit you and make you a lot more comfortable. It, the weight gain between carbon and titanium.
[00:16:04] Titanium being a little bit heavier is really not a huge consideration for most people. It's about 200 grams in our frame, depending on frame size. So it really comes down to do I want this bike to be fast and responsive or would I rather it be comfortable and easier to live with on those longer rides?
[00:16:26] Craig Dalton: Are both the titanium and carbon fiber versions offering the same accommodation for tire size.
[00:16:33] Bryce Wood: They do. Yeah. So we called form our titanium tubing and house, and that's how we achieve the rear tire clearance. We do an S bend seat, stay and chain stay to allow the exact same clearance. So you can fit a 45 seat tire and both C carbon and titanium.
[00:16:51] Craig Dalton: And then on the six 50 tires, I think I noted that you can go up to two, want 2.1.
[00:16:57] Bryce Wood: That's correct.
[00:16:58] Craig Dalton: Yes, sir. And with the two Ronin models, correct me if I'm wrong, but these are models that if a customer is working with you, you do offer a custom geometry and modifications.
[00:17:10] Bryce Wood: Yeah. So every bit of that from the build spec to the frame, geometry, to the finish options for all.
[00:17:17] Craig Dalton: Cool. And now let's talk about the rogue. Say you began your journey with model one, then you moved over to the Ronan and then this year you've introduced the rogue. Tell me about the philosophy behind it and where you see this sitting next to the Ronin lineup.
[00:17:34] Bryce Wood: Yeah. It's that next progression and gravel, right?
[00:17:37] Everybody this sport has really Taken over a large part of the industry. And it's really growing exponentially year over year. And the people as they keep riding, they find out. What they need out of a gravel bike. And so this is that answer to the last decade of people riding gravel and expressing their needs.
[00:18:03] We'll still be keeping the Ronin in the lineup, but the road is just a great compliment to it. If you're that cyclist to is expressly riding off road, you want to get out of traffic and off the road. The road is going to be your bike. If you want to do light bike packing and you want to get lost the rogues, the bike for you.
[00:18:25] So it's not going to be as steep or as racy feeling as the Ronin is. It's going to be that bike that can take you anywhere and keep you comfortable and have all the Accessories and accompaniments that you want when you're on a long distance ride away from civilization.
[00:18:45] Craig Dalton: Gotcha.
[00:18:45] So when talking about how you've made it a little bit, slacker, wider tires, tire clearance, any other bits of the geometry that have changed for this style of.
[00:18:56] Bryce Wood: Yeah. Definitely. So we've dropped the seat stays and we have carved out the lower section of the seat tube. And both of these design elements are going to give that rear end a lot more compliance.
[00:19:09] So we've actually got a couple millimeters of travel built into that rear end just through. The carbon construction of the frame that paired with those larger tires is really going to help to keep you a lot more comfortable. Also with the rogue, we've added more mounting points so that you can add racks and pioneers and make that.
[00:19:33] A little bit more capable and other design features the SRAM universal derail your hanger, or D H we added that because we've, it's been around on the mountain bike side of things for awhile. And I think for a bike that you're really taking off road and adventuring and exploring with that makes sense to have that product on the bike, because it really protects your drive train when you're in.
[00:19:58] Those situations where you might have tight clearance of rocks around your things get really muddy. You've got that re rail feature to keep your chain where it needs to be. And if you do happen to go down, it's also going to protect your derailer so that you don't find yourself in a bad place when you're far away from
[00:20:16] Craig Dalton: This might be a little bit difficult question to answer, but could you describe what that Ude H looks like and how it differs from a traditional derailleur hanger?
[00:20:26] Bryce Wood: Yeah the UDA H is It bolts on to the rear dropouts. You've got a bolt that enters the driver's side and bolt onto the actual hanger. That's on the non drive side of that. Right dropout. It has a feature on the inside that helps to re rail your chain. So if you're on a really bumpy surface or your drill is not properly adjusted and it's, and you shifts into that first position instead of your chain going in between the cog and the dropout and jamming up the drill, you're hanging.
[00:21:03] Spit it back up onto that, that first cog. So you're not going to have that situation anymore where you miss shift or the chain gets rattled off into your frame. Another great feature of it is that it actually rotates because of how it's Because of how it's attached to the frame. It rotates backwards in the event of a crash.
[00:21:22] So instead of it breaking your derail yer as a knuckle or at the melting point, it's just going to rotate and get your derail your out of the way. So hangers have been doing this for us for years, but only in a lateral capacity. So if you crash on your side, Your hanger is built to, to break right?
[00:21:42] To protect your earlier. This kind of takes that a step further in an oblique impact. Or if you just catch it earlier on a rock or something, it's just going to rotate that back and give you a better chance of your drill. You're surviving that situation.
[00:21:57] Craig Dalton: Got it. And when you're removing the rear axle to take the wheel off, is it still attached to the frame or is it, does it come off with that removal of an axle?
[00:22:06] Bryce Wood: Nope. It's the exact same once that drill your hangers now said everything works the exact same as your traditional through actual system.
[00:22:13] Craig Dalton: Got it. Thanks. I appreciate that. So would the rogue, if I'm someone who fits the bill, but still does a little bit of road riding with this bike, what do you slap a road wheel set on this?
[00:22:25] What am I feeling that's different than the Ronan?
[00:22:28] Bryce Wood: Yeah, it's still a road configuration, right? You still got dropped handlebars. You still, you're still going to be in relatively the same position. But this bike is going to put you in a little bit more upright position. It's a little bit shorter.
[00:22:42] And you're gonna, you're gonna notice that the bike is not quite as responsive when you're sprinting or climbing up the hill as a Ronan or a road bike would be. So while it's still going to be perfectly happily written on the road, it really is built to Excel off.
[00:23:00] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that makes sense. I think something you said a few minutes ago was really interesting to me just talking about, the decade that we've been riding gravel and how this bike is the culmination of that.
[00:23:11] And I have to say, when I met you at sea Otter and I looked and understood the specs of this bike, I really do feel like it's on point with the moment and the journey that certainly speaking for myself that I've been on as a rider and where I want to see the speck of these bikes.
[00:23:26] Bryce Wood: Yeah. It just takes everything that, that one step further.
[00:23:30] It's like gravel without limitations, right? Where a Ronan's going to serve you. In 90% of the situations that you find yourself in. But it's lacking a little something. If you're a true gravel, officiant auto, and that's where you spend most of your time writing, you're going to want the option to run a larger tire.
[00:23:47] You're going to want mounts on your forks and your rear end. You're going to want that, that slacker more comfortable, more stable geometry on those rough roads. So it's really built for.
[00:23:59] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's interesting. I certainly have been public about my journey. And I think when I originally started gravel riding, I sold my road bike and said this is going to be my road bike and my gravel bike.
[00:24:10] And I made certain compromises to accommodate for this notion in my head that I would still ride on the road a lot. And over the years, absolutely. I've just discovered that. Nine times out of 10, I really want to be off-road immediately as quickly as possible and stay off the roads. And my choice of equipment has gradually moved towards that acknowledgement of, Hey, if 90% of my riding is exclusively off-road and being where I live, it's fairly technical.
[00:24:37] I do need to optimize around that. And as you said, certainly I've got to drop our bikes. I want to put a road wheel set on it. It's fine. I'm not going to win any criteriums on it, but I wasn't going to do that.
[00:24:49] Bryce Wood: Exactly. Yeah. If you're riding nine times out of 10 on the gravel, that one time out of 10, that bike still gonna, still going to be fun to ride on the road.
[00:24:56] But you're going to have all the capability that you really need those nine times out of 10. So yeah that's really how we do this. Yeah, I think it
[00:25:06] would
[00:25:06] Craig Dalton: be interesting if people coming from the road side of the market are willing and able mentally to make that leap all the way over to the rogue right off the bat.
[00:25:14] Or if they still like me needed an interim step on a bike that quote unquote felt like it was going to be more of a road.
[00:25:21] Bryce Wood: Yeah. It's been really interesting working with all of our customers and seeing that transition on their own journeys. And we've got a true road bike. We've got an all road bike, we've got the racy gravel bike, and now we've got the rogue and we're seeing people that are.
[00:25:40] Are a little hesitant and they're going to just step up to that all road bike and get the 38 C tire clearance and go off road, 20 or 30% of the time. And I think that it's a good thing to have, all those steps in between because there all those bikes are gonna really be tailored for each individual riders needs.
[00:25:58] If you're on the road all the time, Craig, who's got a bike for that. If you want to get off the road a little bit. Cool. We've got something that, that suits that need as well. I don't think we're seeing a lot of people make that transition, that full transition from roads to rogue right now unless, they, in that situation where they can own multiple bikes in which case that's the best case scenario is to have that true road and to have a true.
[00:26:24] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. It's a good segue. I would love to just hear from you about the customer journey. So what does it like alchemy bikes sells direct to consumer from the website. Why don't you talk through what that experience looks like, how you tend to work with customers and what type of timeline it takes to get one of these bikes underneath them?
[00:26:46] Bryce Wood: Yeah. While we do offer all of the bikes available for immediate purchase on the website. We find that not a lot of people go that route. Most people when they're spending that much money on something like this, they want to talk to somebody first. So we, most of the bikes that we sell, we've got that conversation with that customer before they actually makes a purchase.
[00:27:08] I'm the main point of contact at alchemy for all of our road and gravel customers who are looking to purchase a bike. And if they've got questions about specking it out or they need a fitting first I'm the person that they're going to talk to about it. So the customer journey really starts with that first phone call.
[00:27:24] Hi, my name is blank. This is what I'm looking for. And then we can talk a little bit more about their individual needs and we can land on. That platform first. Okay. You need a rogue. And then where are you going to be riding? What's your riding style. That's going to bring us to determining what kind of gearing or drive, train that you need.
[00:27:47] And then the hardest part of the whole process is what color do I want the bike to be? Everyone gets hung up there. So after, after we've determined all that with the customer. We send them a copy of their geometry. We send them a rendering of their paint and we send them a build sheet, detailing all the components that we're going to build their bike with and we get approval from them.
[00:28:09] And then we take a deposit and the production team gets to work and we start ordering components. Typically we like to try to keep the customer updated as their frame moves through the production. So I'll send them a picture of their frame after it's been over wrapped before it has paint on it so that they can be a part of that bike coming to life.
[00:28:28] The question. A timeline and delivery is a tricky one in this day and age and largely it's dependent on their component choices. So we can turn around a custom geometry custom painted frame. And about eight weeks we have stock sizing that's paint, ready that we can paint and turn around in about two or three weeks.
[00:28:51] And the main holdup right now is going to be components. Every small builder as well as the big guys are also feeling that squeeze right now. There's some components that we've got decent availability of, and we can turn that bike around in 10 or 11 weeks on. And there's some stuff that is in such high demand in such short supply that it's gonna, it's going to be a couple months before.
[00:29:14] Before we can deliver that bike. The great thing is that we can make concessions and we can work with that customer and say, Hey, this product is going to be out of stock. We can get you the bike quicker. If would entertain moving to one of these other options. So we can work with you every step of the way to get you that bike when you need it at the price you need it.
[00:29:33] And. I'm really hold your hand through it. That
[00:29:37] Craig Dalton: makes a lot of sense. I certainly love getting those check-in points with manufacturers on what the supply chains looking like, because it has been grim and reported as grim on multiple episodes of this podcast. So I think everybody at this point is accustomed not happy about, but accustomed to the idea that they may have to be flexible or.
[00:29:58] Bryce Wood: Yes. We're very fortunate to have excellent customers and most of them are completely understanding and, they'd like their bike next week, but they know it's going to take a little bit longer than that. And they're very nice to us. And and we're very appreciative of.
[00:30:14] Craig Dalton: 100%. You mentioned the paint jobs and the option to get custom paint. I think you have about a half dozen stock colors and then unlimited options on the custom paint. Are you doing that painting in house or is that a partner? They're in the Denver area?
[00:30:30] Bryce Wood: Yeah, we have our own pain studio here in the facility.
[00:30:33] So we're doing all of the wet paint and all of the cerakote here in house.
[00:30:38] Craig Dalton: The rogue that we looked at sea Otter had that cerakote paint technology. And it, can you describe what that is and how it differs from a wet paint?
[00:30:48] Bryce Wood: Yeah. Sarah code's been around for a little while. It started to make its way into the bicycle industry in the last year or two.
[00:30:56] It is a polymer ceramic coding And the actual, the colors are suspended in five that that polymer so that makes it extremely Finn and a lot more tough than it's a wet paint counterparts. So it's about a six, the thickness of a wet paint. And. Easily twice as strong, so we can still expect to see where out of it.
[00:31:27] Just because that's it's not impervious to it, but it's toughness related to its thickness is quite remarkable compared to wet paint. We can't do as many unique things. We can't do a lot of pearlescent colors. We can't do color shifting But we can still do a lot of different design details and Sarah code.
[00:31:48] So it's a really a perfect coding for the road that we're expecting to see a lot of off-road usage. And we don't want your down to, to get chips in it from Erin rocks, flying up from your front tire and leaning it against a tree. All of that stuff is gonna hold up a whole lot better with.
[00:32:10] Is
[00:32:10] Craig Dalton: the cerakote applied in a different way than a wet paint.
[00:32:13] Bryce Wood: It's applied in the same way and that it is sprayed through an air gun. But it needs to be baked and that's really where it achieves that toughness. So we have to bake it for a couple hours after the coatings applied.
[00:32:26] Okay.
[00:32:27] Craig Dalton: Cool. Thank you for letting me explore some of my sort of deep personal questions on this. I love what you've been doing with the brand and super excited to expose listeners to what alchemy is all about.
[00:32:39] Bryce Wood: Thanks. We're really excited about the direction that cycling is going and people wanting to get off road, and we really want to be a part of that, and we appreciate you bringing in Some visibility, not only to our brand, but to, to gravel cycling in general.
[00:32:55] Craig Dalton: Fantastic. Thanks for your time.
[00:32:58] Bryce Wood: Thanks a lot, Craig. Nice to talk to you.
[00:33:00] Craig Dalton: Big, thanks to Bryce for joining us this week.
[00:33:03] I really like what they've done with the alchemy rogue bicycle. I think they're spot on in the spec and the versatility of that bike. And it looks like it's going to be a. A hell of a lot of fun to ride. I also want to give a shout out to our friends at competitive cyclist. Remember visit competitive cyclist.com/the gravel ride and enter promo code.
[00:33:22] Gravel ride
[00:33:23] To get 15% off your first full price purchase.
[00:33:26] If you're interested in connecting with me and other gravel cyclists around the world, I encourage you to check out the ridership. The ridership is a free global gravel and adventure cycling community.
[00:33:37] I think of it as an online forum where you can ask any question you want connect with other riders, create group rides, and generally share our love and passion for the sport of gravel cycling. Simply visit www.theridership.com for more information.
[00:33:54] Finally, just a quick shout out to those of you who have become members or supporters@buymeacoffee.com slash the gravel ride. It means a ton every time a new contribution comes in and just helps pay for the overhead of the show and a portion of the time that I dedicate every week to bringing you the best gravel cycling content.
[00:34:15] Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we are joined by Dr. Matt Smith, Founder EverAthlete. Matt walks us through the importance of strength training for gravel cyclists.
Presented by: Competitive Cyclist
Join The Ridership
Episode Transcription (please excuse the typos):
EverAthlete - Dr. Matt
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel rod podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the show, we've got Dr. Matt Smith from ever athlete coming to talk to us. About the importance. Once of strength training for cyclists.
[00:00:14] Before we jump in, we need to thank this week. Sponsor competitor. cyclist.
[00:00:18] Competitive cyclist is the specialty online retailer of road, gravel and mountain bikes, components, apparel, and accessories.
[00:00:26] Featuring some of your favorite brands like pock, Castelli, Pearl Izumi on the gravel bike side. They feature frames from evil Niner. Ibis. Really creating a big selection of gravel bikes for your perusal
[00:00:41] But the real difference that competitive cyclists are the gearheads equal parts customer service cycling fanatic gear heads are former pro athletes, Olympians and seasoned cyclists. With years of experience. All available by phone, email, or chat for personal. Product recommendations and hard won advice.
[00:01:00] Last week you heard me talk about my personal experience. With Maggie. I brought her through an exercise to help me find the. Perfect gravel bike for 2022 and perfect for me not. Perfect for what they had in inventory, or really put her to the fire and asked her a lot of tough questions. About designing a bike that was going to fit the type of writing that I do as an individual. So it's not like I was building, a bike for someone.
[00:01:25] In a different part of the country or a different part of the world. She really listened to me. And as I tried to point her to bikes that I thought were flat. Flashy or good-looking. She reminded me that those bikes were all good, but based on what she told me about the riding I was looking to do. She would recommend that I
[00:01:42] key in on a couple specific bikes. And to be honest, she was spot on all the bikes that she recommended. I think it was the IBUs haka. To a lesser degree and the pivot we're spot on for the types of. Bikes that i would want to ride here in marin county.
[00:01:58] One of the things that might be a concern for any product you're buying online would be returns. Competitive. Cyclists has a. A hundred percent guaranteed returns. So you can shop in confidence, whether it's a component or bike, anything you need competitive. Cyclists, this has your back. So go to competitive cyclists.com.
[00:02:16] Slash the gravel ride. And enter promo code the gravel ride to get 15% off your first full price order. And free shipping on orders of over $50. Some. Some exclusions apply to go right now and get 15% off. Plus free shipping. shipping@competitivecyclists.com slash the gravel ride. And remember that.
[00:02:37] Promo code is the gravel ride. We very much appreciate their sponsorship and appreciate that they're sending a discount your way.
[00:02:45] Would that business out of the way, let's jump right into my interview with Matt from ever athlete.
[00:02:51] Matt. Welcome to the show.
[00:02:53] Dr. Matt Smith: Thanks so much for having me.
[00:02:55] Craig Dalton: I'm super excited to learn a little bit about, more about your background and about other ever athlete. As I'm about seven weeks into my first program and I'm eager to talk about my experiences, but also look forward to some of the other ride strong programs. So why don't we start off by just setting the stage for the listener a little bit about yourself and then about the.
[00:03:17] Dr. Matt Smith: Yeah. So ever athlete is now an online platform. That's dedicated to helping athletes to perform outdoors on trails in the water on bikes. W our goal is essentially to create longevity to that journey and help people improve their performance. I started out I'm a sports chiropractor and a strength coach and started ever athlete as a sports injury care clinic, actually back in 2015.
[00:03:46] And since then, through the pandemic and a few other things we have transitioned into doing some in-person one-on-one work, we work with a lot of different athletes and. Different people, but, we've transitioned a lot of our efforts to the online atmosphere.
[00:04:03] And I've taken a lot of the lessons that we've learned from working with high level athletes and also amateur athletes and have started creating training programs, recovery tools, and injury rehab programs online. To rewind a little bit, to give you a little bit more background about, how we started, again, we started as an injury care clinics, primarily focused on athletes and quickly.
[00:04:27] Transitioned into strength training as well. We work with a variety of people, but our goal is really to meet any athlete, wherever they are on the healthcare spectrum or the health and performance spectrum, whether they're dealing with an injury or looking to make it to the Olympics.
[00:04:44] That's been the premise of ever athlete since we began. And that's just been amplified in the last few years. So that's a little bit about us.
[00:04:52] Craig Dalton: That's interesting. When you started, obviously what you went through chiropractic college, did you act as a traditional sports focused chiropractic professional originally, and then see that these were all different pieces of the same puzzle you were trying to solve for your clients?
[00:05:08] Dr. Matt Smith: Yeah. So before I ever went to, I went to a school called Palmer west for grads. And before I went to Palmer and throughout my time going to Palmer I was working as a strength coach. And so I've worked in strength conditioning for about 15 years. And so when I graduated, I went to work at a pretty cool sports therapy clinic out in Austin, Texas where we were not traditional chiropractic.
[00:05:34] So it was. A lot of people think about chiropractic as, if you're going into a chiropractic clinic you're coming in to get adjusted and it's a mill, I've never practiced in that way. I've always been more focused on soft tissue therapy corrective exercise, rehab work in a lot of other modalities.
[00:05:53] And so from the beginning of ever athlete, we've always. W we've always worked in a non-traditional sense with people, going through soft tissue work, teaching exercises and then leveraging for the more functional training and exercise now as a preventative and wellness model. And so it's always been a little non-traditional, it's always been athlete focused.
[00:06:17] Especially from the beginning phases, but initially it was a little bit more like I think of our company as a company that just solves problems for athletes. And initially we were very focused on solving solving the problems that athletes would have when they're dealing with injuries.
[00:06:33] And now we're diving far more into the performance space and also preventing injuries.
[00:06:40] Craig Dalton: That's super interesting and resonates with me personally. I know the relationships I've had with the chiropractic community, the ones that have been the strongest have always been the ones that looked at my problem or my challenge holistically and never, just simply as a chiropractor, because honestly, as a athlete, I could care less about whether you call it chiropractic work, what you're doing on me, or it's stretching or strengthening or advice.
[00:07:07] I just want to have that session. Get through whatever hurdle I'm going through and learn tools and techniques to prevent me from, arriving at whatever acute injury probably led me through the door in the first
[00:07:20] Dr. Matt Smith: place a hundred percent. And I think, to, to your point, I've never cared if anyone called via chiropractor, I've never really, I don't know if I fully identify as any one.
[00:07:32] I don't fully identify as a chiropractor. It's certainly a part of what I do and has taught me a lot, but it's like a piece of it. And for me, the chiropractic profession, there are a ton of really great practitioners who do a phenomenal job and focus on educating people and creating self-reliance in patient groups.
[00:07:52] And that was really the big thing for me, especially early on when. Transitioning out of this role of having people rely on me constantly. And, especially with our online stuff, creating more affordable avenues for people to get good high performance, health care and performance training has been a huge form of wellness.
[00:08:15] Whereas a lot of times, if you're thinking about wellness from a chiropractic sense, it's, going to see your chiropractor once a week for, your entire life. And for me, just from a professional mindset, I've never wanted a hundred percent resonated with, having that be my life's work, I've always, really wanted to educate people more and provide.
[00:08:36] More self-reliance through practical resources and that's really what we've evolved into has been fast-tracked due to the pandemic, but but it's been a really interesting, this project, this online platform has been this like second evolution I've ever athlete that have been very stoked.
[00:08:54] Yeah,
[00:08:54] Craig Dalton: a hundred percent. It's never one single thing. And I think if for the listener, if you've got a relationship with a chiropractor that just feels like they just have to keep coming back in and they're not advising you on how to change your life or how to avoid the situation you're in. And it just becomes this weekly crutch that becomes one expensive and two, in my opinion, just not in your best in.
[00:09:16] Dr. Matt Smith: A hundred percent, and a lot of those models are based off of what insurance companies will pay out for, in terms of getting reimbursed as a professional. And I've always worked outside of those lines, from the beginning, we've never been a part of the insurance game.
[00:09:32] And so it's been, for me, that's forced me to provide value in a way that is. Far different than trying to fit into that type of model. And that's pushed me forward into saying how do we provide maximum value and self-reliance, and, empowerment for people not on a one-on-one basis.
[00:09:53] And yeah, it's been, it's not to downplay Cairo. There's a ton of really great chiropractors out there. There's phenomenal. Hands-on practitioners. And a lot of times, people go through injuries or situations where they need some guidance. But I think the bottom line for me in terms of, what I pride myself on is teaching it's helping people become more resilient on their own.
[00:10:17] And that's really been our focus with every athlete from the.
[00:10:21] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think I became aware of ever athlete probably first through Kate Courtney on Instagram, going through her exercise routine. And I'm pretty sure it predated any of the kind of ride strong and run strong and try strong programs that you've put out there.
[00:10:38] So I know when I started to see those things arrive in this online platform that you guys had been working on throughout the pandemic, I guess it really spoke to me in a different way. To see these programs being very specific to me as a cyclist was just one of those pushes that helped me get off the dime and start.
[00:10:58] Can you talk about why strength training is important for cyclists and why it might be important for us to back off a little bit in our riding routine, particularly in the off season, quote unquote and what we should look forward to throughout a strength training? Yeah.
[00:11:15] Dr. Matt Smith: I think, the conversation about how strength training can fit in for cyclists can go in a lot of different directions.
[00:11:23] I think the, one thing to constantly come back to is the fact that sitting for long hours, Is not like it's pretty new for the human body. This is in terms of our evolution and what we're really designed for. That's not exactly in line, even though it's very fun. It's not exactly attuned to what is most healthy for us movement wise.
[00:11:48] And so it's not to say that riding a bike is bad. It's just to say that there's an expense. And one of the ways that you can combat that expanse. And ensure that you can do it for longer and potentially with more effectiveness, more power is to implement some strength training. And the identification that, Hey, riding a bike, being in a flection posture pedaling for long hours, the posture that you have to be in while you're on a bike is not super beneficial for the overall.
[00:12:22] Human body. And again, one of the ways that we can bring the body back into balance, bring it back to a healthier state is to implement some strength training techniques. And one of the biggest misconceptions when people start thinking about, Hey, I'm an endurance athlete. I, I don't want to train like a powerlifter and I don't want to train like a bodybuilder.
[00:12:44] You know that's, those are barriers that, you certainly don't need to start becoming a powerlifter. If you're going to implement some basic strength principles as a part of your training plan. And you can have a tremendous effect. By just implementing some basic movements, getting some good hip extension, thinking about turning your glutes on and driving your hips all the way forward.
[00:13:05] We sit in hip flection constantly on the bike, and that can be pretty detrimental for the low back long-term and the hips long-term. And strength training is a really great way to start. Counteracting some of the repetitive stress that you'll find on the bike and it doesn't take that much, it doesn't take a huge commitment.
[00:13:22] It's the simple things that you implement over time that can have a pretty tremendous impact on your overall health, but also your performance on the bike. Yeah,
[00:13:32] Craig Dalton: that makes sense. I think most listeners have probably had one of those days where they've just spent so long on the bike.
[00:13:38] By the time they got up, it was difficult to stand fully around. Yes. And that's a very acute sign that, that's the way your body feels on every ride, probably to some small degree. And I know for one I need to work at a standing desk because I just don't want to add any more sitting position in my life for the amount of time I'm actually riding.
[00:14:01] Dr. Matt Smith: Yeah. I think that's a super smart move and, . Your comment about, seeing some Kate Courtney's exercises and some of the stuff that she'll put up on, on Instagram, and I've worked with Kate for years now. And I think even with the stuff that she puts out, it's super cool to see what an elite world-class athlete can do.
[00:14:24] But I think when it comes to, the audience, who's listening to this podcast and also just like the endurance community over. There's a lot of really high level endurance athletes that are novice strength athletes. They just don't have, they haven't developed the same skill set that they have aerobically when they're in the gym.
[00:14:44] And, the bang for your buck that you can get out of like really simple things that don't look cool on Instagram. Bodyweight rose and simple deadlifts or even bridges. I think that, the more exposure that we can give to like how simple it can be for people to implement, very effective tools in their training program.
[00:15:03] That's a critical thing because a lot of people think, when they see Kate's stuff or they'll see some of the things that Ali. It's making a little bit more flamboyant than it needs to be. And so a lot of the programs that we put out get to the bare bones of, simple patterns that bring the body back into balance and build a more resilient system overall.
[00:15:24] Craig Dalton: Yeah. For the listener, I can attest that in the beginner program, I have not. Balanced on a balance board and brought a dumbbell around my head, like Kate has done in our recent Instagram post. She was just
[00:15:36] Dr. Matt Smith: doing that 15 minutes ago in the other room.
[00:15:39] Craig Dalton: That it's awesome. And funny because I do have a balanced board, so I like dream of getting there, but time will allow that
[00:15:46] Dr. Matt Smith: to happen.
[00:15:47] Yeah. And that's a great, I think that's a pretty good segue in terms of. How you parse out your time? Like how can you, everything costs when it comes to training, right? Like it costs time. It costs energy and how to be most effective for a lot of people doing some like simple stuff, not getting too overwhelmed with balance board stuff or anything like that.
[00:16:10] Stuff is very effective and can be very fun. But starting with the foundational principles of just good healthy positions and movement can be. Equally, if not more beneficial and as much more accessible. So
[00:16:23] Craig Dalton: for sure. And I know when I reached out to your team originally, and I came in the front door as any other customer would, and it just said, here's the deal.
[00:16:31] I, I'm a lifelong cyclist and may have done some strength training. Many years ago, but essentially I'm a beginner in this, where should I start? And the recommendation was this eight week beginner strength program, which I'm seven weeks into at this point of the recording. And it's been good.
[00:16:48] We started at a very basic level, half an hour long workouts, maybe at this point, they're about 45 minutes long, but they add up and you're not asking. You've never asked me to do any massive weightlifting or anything like that. It's just been about getting these basic motions down and introducing these concepts to my body, which it's been paced out in a great way.
[00:17:13] For me. I've never felt overly sore from an exercise or anything like that. It felt very appropriate and I feel a lot more confident reaching the end of this program about what's next than I did when I first start.
[00:17:25] Dr. Matt Smith: Yeah. And that's the whole premise. It's one of the most challenging things. And I really commend you for being such an inexperienced athlete and also saying, Hey, this is a new skill set or one that I haven't visited for a long time.
[00:17:42] Let me start with victories. Let's build up some victories in the bank and give myself some things that are fairly simple to do. And I'm just going to continue to hammer them out and take bite. A bite sized approach to the whole thing is really the premise behind the beginners program. It's that the program is designed to be very simple and progress over time.
[00:18:06] And. And what that allows you to do is to reintegrate some of the software programs in your body and your brain that it takes to squat well, or to activate your glutes or to hold a side bridge position or whatever else. The things that you lose from not doing. And especially if you've been riding a lot for many years and have not done any strength work, that's where you get the most bang for your buck.
[00:18:34] It's like integrating these simple patterns in bite ways, and then you can make it more complex and add volume and add more load over time. But that's really the premise behind the beginners programs like to be ultimately accessing. And then lead in to some of the other ride strong programs that we have that give a little bit more specific to positions that you'll find on the bike and get you a little bit more, we'll we add in little, different tempos to exercises, more load increase the stability demands and, we add difficulty in a variety of ways, but starting out with foundational movement where you're just learning good patterns.
[00:19:12] And practicing those things so that you can load them more effectively later without getting injured is really what our goal was when developing that, that
[00:19:21] Craig Dalton: program. Yeah. That's certainly been one of my focuses is to really look at the instruction and make sure my body to the best of my ability. Is it a hearing to the correct shape and.
[00:19:33] 'cause I know, like anytime we're adding dumbbells in that if I have poor form, if I'm curling my back, if I'm not getting the squat in the right position, that's not going to serve me well, as real weight starts to be added into the equation. Yep.
[00:19:48] Dr. Matt Smith: And one of the biggest misconceptions, I think that's out there right now is like, there's this like global agreement that strength training is good for endurance health.
[00:20:01] But poor staff, poorly executed strain training could be the absolute worst thing for an endurance athlete. And, you get a lot more out of performing a good unloaded squat or lunge or hinge without heavy loads. If you just do the pattern well, you get just as much, if not more out of that than using really heavy load.
[00:20:26] And having poor form or potentially hitting, faltering in your movement pattern in a way that could injure you. And coming back to Hey, what's the point of all this, the point of all this is to reintegrate healthy patterns for the body and bring it back to balance and then start to add some load to build strength and power is really where we come from.
[00:20:47] Craig Dalton: So as a cyclist, one of the things I noted in this beginner strength program, which I think of your programs, that this is obviously more generic to just get me started, but there is a fair amount of upper body work that goes on. And as a weak upper body cyclist, that was, that's probably one of the bigger transitions.
[00:21:06] Can you talk about why we're working kind of the upper body and arms as well as the legs and these moves.
[00:21:11] Dr. Matt Smith: Yeah, in that specific program. So in the beginner strength program, the goal of the program is really just to develop not only strength, but just overall athletics. And a robust system. And so in that program specifically, it's really teaching you different patterns with the upper body so that you get a little bit more balanced.
[00:21:32] And I think when it comes to, our ride strong programs and some of the upper body work that we do more specific to the bike, that stuff is critical. For a couple of different reasons, it's critical in the same way that like building up foot strength is very important for running. In the sense that that's your, it's like one of your primary contact points on the bike.
[00:21:53] And if you don't control well with your provider, if you don't have strength, endurance, grip, strength and solid control of your upper body, especially in gravel riding with the. Amount of time that you're on the bike, you can start running into not only acute situations where you crash or, you just lose control of your bike.
[00:22:14] But also longterm, you can just start running into poor posture on the bike, which leads to all kinds of issues, not only in the upper body, but also sometimes in the lower back in the neck. And building up a certain degree not again, not we're not doing like bicep curls and heavy bench press with our programs.
[00:22:33] It's more like integrating pushups, grip strength from hanging. Pull-ups all these different things that can be very beneficial just in terms of like control, just in terms of like confidence and control on the bike and maintaining healthy posture with your.
[00:22:50] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that resonates with me. It might be a good time to take a moment and just talk about the type of equipment that is necessary to follow these programs.
[00:22:59] Dr. Matt Smith: Yeah. So we have a variety of programs up on the site, including no equipment programs. So we have we have a body weight strength program that's eight weeks long, and if you're looking for kind of a generic program to follow that will build up, lower body, upper body core strength.
[00:23:17] That's a great one. If you've got nothing available, we also have kettlebell programs that just require one kettlebell that are also generic, very similar to the beginner strength program. But build up overall athleticism when it comes to our ride strong program. There's a pretty good amount of equipment that you need.
[00:23:35] But any, Jim will have these things and then if you wanna, if you want to get pretty robust at home, you can a few of the things that we have in our programs, I'm actually looking up our equipment list right now, but we have everything. Many bands. So there's a little bands that you see people wrap around their legs and do like sidesteps or squats with long bands with handles are one piece of equipment that we use quite often that can wrap around a door handle, or a pole or a pull up bar.
[00:24:06] We use barbells in our new restaurant. So we're currently putting out a 20 week ride strong program. It's like a slow release right now. But we do have a strength cycle in there with barbells. So barbells bumper plates, all that we use dumbbells, we use benches for box jumps and then for a few other exercises.
[00:24:30] And I'm trying to think here,
[00:24:32] Craig Dalton: what else do we use? Yeah, I've I was lucky in that I already owned a TRX that was gathering dust and TRX that's right. Yeah. And the TRX was useful in that there were some modifications. So if you didn't have a pull-up bar, which I don't currently have a plan on getting you could do a TRX derivative of that.
[00:24:52] And I, the, just FYI for the listener those stretch bands, I think for $29, I got a set of the long ones and the short ones that pretty much cover all my needs. And then I ended up just recently finding a deal on a barbell set. So ended up getting barbells thinking, I'm going to want it for this next stage, but you can take these things in incrementally and that's what I've been doing.
[00:25:15] Just acquiring them when I have the finances to do.
[00:25:18] Dr. Matt Smith: Yeah. And just to be clear. So last year we put out six months of rod strong program. Actually more than six months, we put out a full off season of red, strong programming that required no barbell. So it was all dumbbell work, all bands, a suspension trainer, and we have all of our.
[00:25:39] The one thing that I didn't mention so far was a Swiss ball. We do Swiss balls, particularly in the registrar program. Good. Because I
[00:25:46] Craig Dalton: Got one of those and didn't see it in the beginner strength program. So I was hoping I would see it in the future.
[00:25:51] Dr. Matt Smith: Yeah, you will see it. If you follow the 20, which I do recommend falling that the 20 week ride strong program that we have coming out.
[00:25:58] Now, if you follow that, you'll see that in core routine. Like we like to play around particularly in like kneeling positions on the ball, using it for hamstring curls and a lot of different drills. Yeah,
[00:26:12] Craig Dalton: right on. That's actually a good segue into my question. So I've, I've, I'm fortunate that I got the bug early and I'm finishing my eight weeks sort of the beginning of December.
[00:26:22] What would you recommend? I move on to it. It sounds like it's that 20 week program. And if so, could describe the journey that you've created?
[00:26:31] Dr. Matt Smith: Yeah. And so to be clear, like what I recommend to you now, And really like the conversation should revolve around a goal. So everything that we every th the premise behind everything that we're putting out is to help people set goals and create a path from a to B and so create, do you have any races coming up in the.
[00:26:54] Craig Dalton: I'm sure I will. And here's my challenge in my coachability is it's difficult for me as a family guy to plan out my race calendar. And it's often driven by balancing my desire with family obligations and, ability to travel. But so I typically end up at. Two to four gravel events, big gravel events a year, and then a smattering of local ones that I can drive to.
[00:27:19] Typically they're not going to start until, March or April, I would say.
[00:27:25] Dr. Matt Smith: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's pretty common. So if you're finishing up this beginner's program, I was looking at a calendar here and you're in the first week of December, you've got a bow. 12 to 16 weeks until you're actually racing.
[00:27:43] And, you can jump into our 20 week program. I'll send you a note about this offline, but. I do recommend like our 20 week program that we're currently putting out is based on a lot of the work that we've done with pro riders and essentially have taken those concepts and made them more available to amateur and lower level competitive writers.
[00:28:05] And. We start out with a six week stability phase. That's broken up into three parts. So three, two week phases, and then we go into an eight week strength cycle. That's broken up into two different four week strength blocks. And then we finished with a six week power and power endurance cycle.
[00:28:27] And so the way that we've created the program, Is to allow for flexibility. So say you have 20 weeks from an event or versus having 12 weeks from an event, we can clip things out and give you a custom program to have you peaking for your event. Just based on the programs that we currently have out, and we have a few other programs outside of the 20 week program that we're currently releasing.
[00:28:54] We have a five week strength and power blend. We have a six week strength and power blend and we have a 12 week progressive strength program. So there's a lot of different things that we can pull from. To basically figure out what's right for you. And this is a lot of what we're doing with people right now.
[00:29:08] It's we're doing calls with people pretty often. And we include this in our membership where you can set up, you can shoot us an email and say, Hey, here's what I have going on here. My goals, do you have any suggestions for my path? And this is a lot of what we're doing day to day is trying to answer these questions for people.
[00:29:24] So for you, I would recommend, jumping right in, hop right into. Our stability phase one, for this new ride strong program it'll pick up in a similar way with where you left off from the beginner strengths. And, it's in the front half of this thing it's pretty low volume.
[00:29:43] It's the same concept of working on patterns. Some of the patterns in the stability phase are a little bit more specific to the bikes. You'll get that feeling a little bit more. And then the volume starts to pick up as we start getting into the later phases of the stability program and then furthermore, into the strength phase.
[00:30:01] Craig Dalton: For those who are unaccustomed to strength training in their winter of their cycling season is the conflict that if you're if I'm in a power lifting phase of this program, come March and I want to go out and race. I'm just going to be too fatigued and played out to pre.
[00:30:18] Dr. Matt Smith: Yeah. So the way that our program works is it peaks in volume during the strength phase, because usually during that phase, like we're really timing it with a like a seasonal schedule for say, cross country, mountain biking.
[00:30:34] There's a time when the writing volume is low enough to where we have an opportunity to build up in the gym and we can do a little bit more volume and can boost that there becomes a secondary time in the spring, or like the early, like late winter. We'll say where that's not the case.
[00:30:53] The writing volume kicks up at. We're in full preparation mode for race season to start. And that's when the gym starts to take a back seat a little bit more and our volume needs to go down. And that's really what we do in our power, endurance phase. And we do recommend being conscious of volume.
[00:31:10] Particularly if you are doing, if you're a cyclist who's competitive and you're doing a lot of time on the bike, many hours per week. Then you need to be careful with, overwhelming your system through just too much strength work. That's a huge piece of all this. And pretty much all of the, this 20 week program that we're putting out currently is very careful about volume.
[00:31:33] In reference to Hey, what should I do leading up to a race. If I'm not following the direct timeline that we've written out, you can parse different things. I would take out part of the strength cycle and Mo I would like skip strength B, which is the second four weeks, and then move into the power.
[00:31:49] And during. Psych part of things leading up to your race.
[00:31:52] Craig Dalton: Gotcha. And one of the fears maybe from the listener and certainly in my mind is, okay. I commit to this program. And I think in these, in the strength phase, a it might even be three workouts a week, trying to figure out how to squeeze that in with riding and riding for pleasure.
[00:32:10] I think for a lot of my listeners writing as an outlet, that is, is not. Necessarily about the competitive nature of it. It's like what we crave every week to get out there and get in the wilderness. Can you just talk about, R D would you advocate lifting and riding in the same day? Is there a certain number of rides per week that you think about that athletes would typically have in their program?
[00:32:35] In addition to these, the strength training routine?
[00:32:39] Dr. Matt Smith: It really depends. This is a pretty subjective. Topic, because different writers who are doing, there'll be writers who are doing high volume on the bike, but really this is like the first time that they've done any strength training.
[00:32:55] Versus there are writers who are not doing as much volume on the bike who are very familiar with strength training and have that cash in the bank. And so their response to strength volumes can be. And the way that I typically like the way that we've structured this whole program is to be two days of strength.
[00:33:13] And then you have, and these days are like 30 to 45 minutes in the starting phases. And then they kick up to about 45 minutes. And then we have a third session each week, which is a 20 minute core routine. And you can repeat that throughout the week whenever you'd like, so you can do it once a week.
[00:33:30] You can do it twice a week. And so you can stack things to whatever makes sense for you. And part of the reason that we did that is we want to have a fairly flexible plan for people because it is, there's just such a variety of. Have, not only people's schedules, but also how they respond to training what their life off the bike looks like.
[00:33:50] Nothing is going to be perfect. And so in terms of, what would be ideal, usually we'll stack strength days on very light low intensity riding day. Is historically what I've done and, I've had other writers that try and do strength and an intense ride on the same day.
[00:34:11] But if you're just a recreational rider, who's doing it for the enjoyment which, everyone should be doing it for the enjoyment, but I would recommend maximize your enjoyment on the bike. Don't let any part of your training program steal that from you. Consider your strength work as like you're contributing to the longevity of you enjoying your time on the bike and don't have your strength work, be so intense that it starts pulling away from that.
[00:34:39] So think of it as a long-term plan, we don't hit home runs with this program is all singles and doubles. And you really if you're starting strength work as a masters cyclist this year, consider it like a 20 year. And don't try and change everything in your first year of doing that. Dip your toes in the water.
[00:34:57] Just add maybe one to two days of strength, per week. And just see, I would say two days is probably the. The like optimal range, particularly for someone who's riding quite a bit add that in and do it in a way that doesn't completely disrupt your writing schedule. Particularly if you're like very comfortable with, a fairly strict writing schedule and you know exactly how you're going to respond to that.
[00:35:21] Just add a little dose of strength. Don't try and go ham on the. Yeah, that
[00:35:27] Craig Dalton: makes a ton of sense. It's been interesting for me personally, as this eight week period, it just happens to be a period where for whatever reason, I just haven't had a lot of opportunity to ride. So it's been, I don't feel like I've got that.
[00:35:41] Balance yet. So as I enter this next phase and feel a little bit more compelled to get in quote, unquote, riding shape, I want to get out there more. So I'll have to circle back with the listener and inform them how I'm doing on finding that balance between the strength training and the riding I love to do for pleasure.
[00:35:58] Dr. Matt Smith: Yeah. And I think that you're certainly not alone in that it's a. It can be fairly tricky, especially if you haven't done strength work for a long time, or you've never done it. It's this new habit that you it's no one can address it the same way. No one can implement it the same way.
[00:36:20] And so figuring out. What works best for you and playing around with, scheduling and, allowing yourself a little bit of flexibility on the front end to see how you respond to strength, work and see how you feel on big rads after that, taking the time to really observe and see what works for you.
[00:36:38] Not necessarily everyone else is a critical piece to making sure that, strength and recovery work stays a part of your game plan for a long.
[00:36:47] Craig Dalton: Yeah, right on. That makes a ton of sense. And I think for the listener, check out the ever athlete website, I'll link to it in the show notes.
[00:36:54] There's, as Matt's described, there's a lot of programs there that the subscription is quite affordable. From what I've seen out there, I was really pleased and I didn't get hit by some massive dollar number. So kudos to you and hope you get the volume you need. Cause I know the production values high and the effort you guys have put into designing these programs is quite substantial.
[00:37:14] Dr. Matt Smith: Yeah, no, we. Our whole goal with it is to make the lessons that we've learned with different athletes and also working from an injury care perspective. Making those lessons accessible to people is that's the. That is the thing. That's the legacy that I would want to leave behind, for my career.
[00:37:37] And so in terms of the dollar, the pricing of our platform will not go up from what it is. It'll probably go down at some point, but. Our goal is to make stuff accessible, particularly for people that we love hanging out with, which includes gravel cyclist, mountain bikers, road, cyclists, like we love supporting people's active lifestyle.
[00:37:56] And in terms of covering our costs and all that, like w we're doing great and more than anything, it's been a really interesting project. And, we're excited to keep. Yeah.
[00:38:08] Craig Dalton: Thanks so much for all the time and insight matter, really enjoyed the conversation, hopefully for the listener, it wasn't too much of a Greg's journey to strength training.
[00:38:16] I feel like I got a lot out of it, but hopefully it's translated to everybody listening and you can find your own journey.
[00:38:23] Dr. Matt Smith: Oh yeah. Hey, thanks so much for having me on Craig. This is spot cheers
[00:38:27] Craig Dalton: Huge. Thanks for Matt for joining us this week, I learned a ton on my personal journey to strength training. I actually just knocked out another exercise before recording this outro. So I'm finishing week eight and feeling good about my journey and continuing on through the winter and hopefully hitting 20, 22 much stronger as a person and as a gravel cyclist.
[00:38:50] Another huge, thanks to competitive cyclist or appreciate their support of the podcast. Remember, visit competitive cyclists.com/the gravel ride and enter the promo code, the gravel ride for 15% off your order.
[00:39:05] Finally, if you've got any feedback for the show or would like to connect with other gravel cyclists around the world. I invite you to join the ridership. Simply visit www.theridership.com to join our free community and communicate with thousands of other cyclists around the world. Until next time.
[00:39:25] Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
[00:39:29]
This week we sit down with Phil Cavell, co-founder of Cycle Fit Studio in London and author of The Midlife Cyclist. The Midlife Cyclist take a comprehensive look at our bodies and mind with an eye towards successful cycling in mid-age and beyond.
Episode sponsor: Competitive Cyclist - Code 'TheGravelRide'
Phil's CycleFit Studio and The Midlife Cyclist
Episode Transcript (automated, please excuse the typos):
Phil Cavell - The Midlife Cyclist
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast, we're joined by Phil Cavell.
[00:00:10] Phil is the co-founder of pioneering European fit and cycling analysis studio cycle fit. And the author of a book called the midlife cyclist.
[00:00:21] Before we jump into this week show, I need to welcome a new sponsor to the gravel ride podcast. Competitive cyclist.
[00:00:28] Whether you're looking to buy a new bike, that's ready to go. Need expert advice, or want to customize your current build competitive cyclist.com is your one-stop online bike shop.
[00:00:38] Now, obviously there are lots of places to shop online, but the real difference at competitive cyclists are the gearheads. They're equal parts, customer service, cycling fanatics. Gear heads, our former pro athletes, Olympians and seasoned cyclists with years of experience, all available via phone, email, and chat for product recommendations and hard won advice.
[00:00:59] Last week. I wanted to experience it again for myself. So I called up competitive cyclist and I got a gear head named Maggie.
[00:01:07] Out of curiosity, I gave Maggie a brief rundown of the type of bike I was looking to buy the type of riding I want to do. And she was able to quickly narrow down the products from a competitive cyclist and find a few bikes that absolutely fit the bill. A couple of the models that are available, that fit my style of riding.
[00:01:27] We're the Haka. The pivot vault and one other bike. I also mentioned that I was super excited about the way the Ridley Canzo fast looked for example, but Maggie was quick to point out that based on what I had told her. That I wanted a bike that was going to be great for where I lived in Marin county.
[00:01:47] A little bit of racing and a little bit of bike packing. She reminded me that that particular bike. It might not do well. If I wanted to do kind of adventurous bike packing, that it was probably better off for me to choose. A bike with a little less aggressive geometry than that particular Ridley. And she actually introduced a bike to me, a model from Ridley that I'd never heard of before.
[00:02:09] So it was really great to just chat with her. And, you know, I know part of the journey of this entire podcast for me has been learning about different bike brands and so many questions that I had when I got into the sport. And it was just great to know that you can call a gear head and kind of riff on what you're looking for.
[00:02:29] And they can break down the different models they're available and get you onto that right. Bike with confidence.
[00:02:36] So, whether you're looking for gravel bikes, gravel parts, or any of your cycling needs. Go to competitive cyclists.com/the gravel ride. And enter promo code the gravel ride. To get 15% off your full price purchase. Plus free shipping on orders of $50 or more. Go right now and get 15% off. Plus free shipping.
[00:02:58] At competitive cyclists.com/the gravel ride. Entering promo code the gravel ride. . With that said let's dive right into my interview with phil
[00:03:08] Phil, welcome to the show.
[00:03:10] Phil Cavell: Thank you, Craig. It's great to
[00:03:11] Craig Dalton: be there. I'm excited to have this
[00:03:13] Phil Cavell: yeah. I suspect that you are.
[00:03:14] Craig Dalton: Let's talk just to set the stage for the listener.
[00:03:16] Let's just talk a little bit about your background as a cyclist, and then also I think your day job, not being a writer, what you do as a day job at cycle fit studio.
[00:03:27] Phil Cavell: Yeah. Sure. I used to race everything. Come from a time and a place where you didn't really just raise one format.
[00:03:33] We used to race cyclocross, rode mountain bike, time trials, team time and trials and getting back over 30 years now, but it just the team and club I was with us, just, it was a group of people and we just wrote everything. And living in London, you could raise a criterium on Tuesday. At crystal palace, the famous crystal palace.
[00:03:51] And then you could do a time trial on Wednesday and then you could do, or mounted bike race on a Wednesday or Thursday was a big criterium day at the glorious east way circuit. And then you do a mounted by race or a road race on the weekend. So that was in the seat. That's just the diet I grew up on.
[00:04:08] You just raised everything all the time. And until by the end of the season, all of a sudden you couldn't move or speak any muscle in your body. And so that was normal to me until I got injured and until my co-director and a psychopath found pat and I found her got injured and then we couldn't do anything.
[00:04:24] And that's what made us interested in the subject. And so yeah, the cycle fit, we that it was born in the late nineties. And it's all really came on, tap in the early two thousands. So it's been going just over 20 years.
[00:04:37] Craig Dalton: I want to dig into cycle fit a little bit, but before we jump in. I know your injury was quite serious and actually took you off the bike for a really extended period of time.
[00:04:48] I think that's really interesting just to hear it in your words, and the fact that you were able to come back to the bike is, you know, maybe news and some enthusiastic news to some of the lists.
[00:04:58] Phil Cavell: Yeah, it wasn't that injury actually, the original injury that made me interested in bike fitting was 25, 30 years ago.
[00:05:04] The injury, this injury was 2011, hit a pothole and spammy me over the bars and very innocuous, really commuting crash, spammy me over the bars and a ambulance picked me up and took me to hospital and Yeah. And then I had a S a, quite a bad spine fracture there, but their feeling was, it was probably an old one that I'd reactivated or, and so it just got worst over it got worse and worse over the next few weeks.
[00:05:31] And I could feel it degrading. And it was I'd missed that period in British medicine when you're treated as an emergency. And so I was almost always trying to get back into the system, but it got worse and worse until I had to have spine fusion surgery that failed quite badly and got an infection and made things worse.
[00:05:51] And yeah, I really, it was. Six seven years of just trying to find where ground, you know, that the kind of base level was like a kickoff. Again, every time I thought things couldn't get worse, they did, which is bizarre because I was working in an, in, you know, working at my day job was helping people who were injured and I was the one I'd run up through, but I couldn't think of myself and a knock and my co-director jewels.
[00:06:14] And you know, he felt awful because, you know, there was no fix. And obviously like most professionals, you know, I opt for the least, you know, you want ops for the least, least invasive corrective therapy. You know, I already had one round of surgery and that didn't go great. So you're a bit gun shy for the next round.
[00:06:31] So you're trying to manage everything with physio and physical, you know, physical therapy. And of course being in my business, I know a lot of them very good ones and bless them. They were all trying to. But it's one of those situations where no one could help. I couldn't help. Nobody could help.
[00:06:44] And it just, so I couldn't really ride at all between 2011 and 2000 and late 17, early 18, I had spine revision surgery in 2017 and it was successful.
[00:06:57] Craig Dalton: Glad to hear that. Yeah. Yeah. What a journey. And I can only imagine how bad it was, you know, having to service athletes at cycle. If it's studio, meanwhile, not being able to, you know, enjoy the sport.
[00:07:10] That's been a big part of your entire life.
[00:07:12] . I remember you'd mentioned that you and your partner both had differing injuries that led you to starting this cycle fit studio.
[00:07:20] Can you just talk about that process and what philosophy you brought to fit?
[00:07:25] Phil Cavell: Yeah, I mean, we both had injuries. So we were sidelined from racing and it just made us it, we came from a traditional racing background, you know, which was, you know, you didn't really think too much about your position and didn't think too much about anything at all, or even doing other things other than just racing.
[00:07:43] We just raised and rode all the time. And then we got, when we got injured, it made us reevaluate everything. And then we worked with Paul swift, a lot, one of your, you know, and we went to Ben serratus classes. Ben was great. We really, you know, those early, but Ben shorter classes were amazing. And then it just got it, gave us an appetite for the subject.
[00:08:04] So we just constantly learned and trained and sought people out who could help us learn. People about podiatrists because podiatry for us was where a lot of the gold was buried. We thought, and, you know, I think we were right about that. You know, we just trained and learn from everybody, whether it was a hip surgeon or a podiatrist or a physio, we just kept going.
[00:08:24] And so developed our philosophy from there. And the philosophy hasn't really changed. It's just changed, you know, to help us deliver the philosophy. And I guess that philosophy for that, sorry.
[00:08:35] Craig Dalton: Yeah, no, I was just going to say, I mean, it seems yeah, I'd love to hear you summarize the philosophy and obviously like the cycle fit studio grew and you started working with a lot of professional teams and individual athletes of really big note.
[00:08:51] Phil Cavell: Yeah. Yeah, I guess the philosophy is that cycling is prescriptive. It's a very prescriptive sport. I think your ranges of movement and that can either be good because it's prescribing good movement for you or it's good. It can be bad. It's prescribing your body to do bad things that are out of alignment with what you can tolerate.
[00:09:11] And so for us, it really is about anatomy. It's understanding each individual on quite a deep level and what their body wants to do and how their body wants to move. And then try and express that on the bicycle. I guess that's our philosophy encapsulated that, you know, when cyclists come in and say, you know, geez, I'm really uncomfortable in pain.
[00:09:29] The bike's hurting me is don't beat yourself up. It's a very prescriptive environment. And right now the prescriptions are wrong. You're being prescribed the wrong. And we need to know, I found out what the right prescription is, and for that, we need to really understand how your body wants to move from function.
[00:09:45] And then possibly part of that is even saying, okay, there's things you can do yourself to make things better here. You know, no, one's a finished project, actually. Everyone's working progress, everybody, especially mid-life athletes things are changing quickly. So you've got to stay on top of it.
[00:09:58] So I guess that in essence is our philosophy.
[00:10:00] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I was curious. I mean, I think it's a good time that we move on to the book that you've written the midlife cyclist, but were you seeing some of the things as you had older athletes come into cycle fit studio was, and as you were aging yourself, were you starting to see things very starkly about how the aging athlete was fitting onto a bike that led just another thread of why you wanted to write this.
[00:10:24] Phil Cavell: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we were seeing clients come in trying to do extraordinary things and often not coming from a cycling background. And so we were, you know, it made us very curious really about, you know, you try not to see everybody through the same prism, you know, we're all X races, all races, that cycle of it.
[00:10:42] So it's very tempting to see things through that prism and, you know, The inspiration behind the book was what don't, let's not see people through that prison. Let's see. Pick Trump usually see people through their individual prison. My teachers did right. Looking at it. Thank you very much, Donna. So yeah, the hiding behind that was to really explore that subject.
[00:10:59] You know, someone doesn't come from a side, combat run, they come from a rugby background or a soccer background or and you know, what's the best evidence and advice for them to progress as quickly as they can in the sport safely. And that ultimately is. To try and hold people's hands so they can get the most out of themselves and the most out of their bikes and the booklet.
[00:11:18] The book really is a philosophy discussion about that subject to think.
[00:11:22] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think that's probably meets a lot of gravel riders where they're at, because your statement around meeting athletes who were trying to do extra ordinary things that maybe hadn't been riding their whole life to do that.
[00:11:34] Is commonplace in gravel. I mean the tent pole events around the world can be a hundred plus miles, maybe even 200 miles in the case of Unbound out in Kansas, these events that people read about and think, oh, I'm just going to go out and do that because gravel is so inviting, but the idea of coming off of even just a solid fitness background and riding 200 miles off road, quite a tall order.
[00:11:58] Phil Cavell: Yeah, that's right. And. It's beholden and everybody who wants to do that kind of event to really understand what they're demanding of their body, what systems are they going to be stressing? Which systems should they be fueling through? It's not just, it's just not enough to get yourself fit or to keep pushing up your FTP because of the net.
[00:12:18] You're a high FTP isn't necessarily going to get you through a trans continental ride or some of the great big events. It's just not, you know, you need to be working. In an oxidative efficient state. And that requires specific training. And a lot of us amateurs, certainly midlife athletes who have come into the sport late or trying to catch up all the time.
[00:12:38] They're trying to cram the homework is it won't work. You know, you know, you've got to you. I think I say in the book, you've, you know, you've got to put some foundations down before you can move into the penthouse, you know? And if you don't do that, you know, you know, you are not going to perform at your best.
[00:12:52] And so you've got almost slow down to go fast. Even me, you know, I come from a racing background race for decades. If I was going to go and do one of these events and I absolutely want to go and do the trans continent or something like that just absolutely speaks to me. I would completely change the way I ride.
[00:13:07] You know, I absolutely would, you know, I'm by nature, I'm a crit rider, you know, All fast, short distance, 45 minutes or an hour, and I'm gone. If I was going to do the trans continental, I would totally change the way I ride. Totally. You know, you've got to start fueling different. Yeah. You know, it's
[00:13:24] Craig Dalton: interesting.
[00:13:25] No. It's interesting to hear your perspective on this stuff, obviously. That's why I invited you on the podcast. You know, to that vein, you know, it wasn't, I spent a little bit of time in my life, as a, as an amateur road racer. And then I did a bike tour and I realized as I strapped those bags on my road bike, the day was going to be different.
[00:13:45] I wasn't going to be sprinting. Out of the blocks. It was going to be a long day with a lot of weight on the bike. And it really was instrumental in shifting my mentality around what would eventually in my life become a passion around these Endurant long endurance events. And it is to your point, you just have to think about it entirely differently than an hour long criteria.
[00:14:09] Phil Cavell: That's right. And I remember Joel signed me up for the first Everett tap to tour and, you know, I didn't even know what it was, frankly. And Jules is juices. My co-director is a vet. He's a very intelligent, very disciplined rider and trainer always a much better trainer than I was. I was his lead out man.
[00:14:27] And I, and he was, you know, he was a very good sprinter and he signed me up for this event and I'm like, oh, okay. So we'll do it. So we went out to the tap to tour. I had no idea what it was, no idea what it was. And I got. And we started, I still didn't really know what it was. I didn't even know where it went.
[00:14:40] I honestly didn't know where it went or what climbs it went over. It seems madness now, but it's a long time ago. Anyway, it started and I thought, great race. You know, let's go get into, get my race head on and off we go. I was in the front group to start with the first hour and 10 minutes. I was literally in the front group.
[00:14:55] There's a group of us and I'm going through an orphan. It's an hour and 10 minutes hits and that's my normal distance. And I'm gone. I'm done. I'm not going to blow my. That's it lights went out after burners off, shut down at which point Jules came out next to me on this climb and said, oh, you worn out old Labrador.
[00:15:12] Look at you in touch. I'm sorry, chores. I'd completely blown my biscuit. And I had that five hours left. Yeah, very expensive education. Crazy.
[00:15:21] Craig Dalton: For sure. You don't have to say, you know, I mentioned that, I felt like this book hit me at the exact right time. You know, I've been suffering the last few years with some lower back issues and felt you know, this was the year I was really gonna change my mentality about writing and, you know, I had been one of those.
[00:15:39] Ride five days a week. That's what riding is all about kind of athletes. And I knew I needed to make some changes when I was reading through maybe the first third of this book and maybe it was chapter three in particular. I was starting to think, oh my God, You know, I'm probably fortunate that it's only my back that's hurting because it could be my knees.
[00:15:58] It could be my it band. It could be my hip. And I started to get in this doom and gloom mentality. So I was super happy when it started to come around in chapter four. You know, the midlife cyclist, it is possible to still go fast and achieve these major milestone events in your life, but the mentality needs to shift.
[00:16:20] So it'd be interesting to just talk about some of the elements of the mentality that needs to shift and how we can think about, you know, writing to.
[00:16:29] Phil Cavell: Yeah. And I'm sorry, some people have reacted to the book and said, look, you know, I find the book a little bit, you know, I find it a bit, chapter three, you know, is tough.
[00:16:38] And some of it I think is you know, you just a bad news bear. You just, you know, it's relentlessly bad news. And I don't, I just don't intend it like that. I just think the book to me is going into this with your eyes open, there's no point in being Peter pan about this understand the constraint, understand the challenges.
[00:16:53] And once you understand the challenges and the constraints have Austria. You know, and then you can do the best you can do, to go into this, you know, there's no point I didn't want to write a book. It was just a training manual, ignoring the fact that, you know, any other century you'd be dead, you know, 51, 50, 2 years old.
[00:17:10] How old are you? I'm nearly 60. So 51 51 in any other century, Craig, you wouldn't be alive, you know, unless you were kind of royalty, it's just as simple as that. You know, it's, you know, we need to, we need that kind of leveling moments. Okay. It's 300,000 generations of bypass. Every one of them would be dead by now, but not only am I alive, but I want to train and act like an Olympic athlete.
[00:17:33] Okay. All of that's great. I love it. Understand the challenges, you know, and this is people my age and your age, trying to push their bodies hard is a very recent event in human history. So I think it's beholden all of us to understand. And then understand what's happening to our bodies as we do this and challenge our bodies in these ways.
[00:17:54] Not because I think not because I think we shouldn't be doing it, not because I'm trying to be depressing, but because I think the goal is buried in understanding.
[00:18:04] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And I think by the end of the book that comes absolutely shining through, and that chapter three is a distant memory and I was more on.
[00:18:14] Gosh, I just need to do the things that I need to do correctly. I need to think about my cycling career differently at this point. And there was a bunch of things in the book. That were put out there in a way that sort of makes you think about it. One that I'll highlight that is, I think for a lot of gravel athletes, maybe it's top of mind these days, just because of some of the athletes, we follow just the idea of recovery and you've got products like whoop out there talking about HRV, and there's obviously a number of other ways you can get that, that that stat out of your body.
[00:18:45] But if you could talk a little bit about recovery and maybe. Alongside that over-training syndrome. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on that.
[00:18:54] Phil Cavell: Yeah, it's a good point. Oh, cyclists seem to be born with a great work ethic and it's, you know, and if, you know, and it's you know, we're made mad by miles.
[00:19:03] We just, you know, we're mile hungry. And if in doubt, put more miles on your belt, you know, I come from that background, you know, the old generation I come from was like, you know, it's all miles, it's all miles under the saddle, you know? And there's, that's partly true. When you get to our age, my age, I'm older than you.
[00:19:18] It's also too to say that you need to respect your body more and you need to rest more. You need to recover more. Remember that you get fit, not when you're training, but when you're recovering, you know, what you do is you have a, you introduce a stress to your body, a training dose to your body. And that stimulates something on a cellular level, and then you need to super compensate and your body then gets stronger to adapt to this.
[00:19:42] You put your body under. So you're actually getting, you're actually gaining fitness, not when you're training, but in the super compensation stage. Now everyone knows that, but cyclists, we seem to, it's no, we never, we don't allow our body to go into the super compensation stage and rest. And we get to my age and degree your age, you just need to have, be more conscious of not just the amount of rest, but the quality of rest sleep is absolutely.
[00:20:07] Go dust to you know, to our generation really, because that's when all the good work gets done. And if you're in any doubt tool bag as to whether you should train, I wouldn't necessarily use heart rate, which is our old gold standard. You'd take your pulse if you know, and you'd say, okay, I'm at 45.
[00:20:23] I'm good to go. Or 50 good to go. You know, a lot of a lot of endurance athletes have bradycardia, which is slow heart rate. So a better way to look at it is HRV heart rate variation, which is the beat to beat changed. And that gives you an, a better metric to work with as to whether you're fully rested and should train, or in fact, you're still tired and you've got inflammation in your body possibly or you're fighting something and you probably are best served to rest.
[00:20:45] Not best served to rest in health, but all certainly that is true, but best health best to rest for performance. Because training, when you're tired really has no benefit, it just doesn't have any benefit. Certainly our. You know, you want to be fizzing with energy when you train, you want to be go out there and think, oh, I could just, can't wait to do this.
[00:21:03] That's the mindset you need. I believe post 50 to train properly.
[00:21:07] Craig Dalton: It's super interesting. And I think, you know, recovery has been something I've been focused on a lot more this year and just my understanding of it, you know, the HRV number, it's just this quantifiable metric that you can look at some days to be honest I feel like I have.
[00:21:21] The mentality to go out and thrash myself when I have a low HRV number. And I, you know, it takes a bit of discipline to dial myself back and knock, go after it or take the day off. But I think it's just layering on something very simple and a very important reminder, particularly for older athletes about the importance of recovery.
[00:21:41] Phil Cavell: Yeah. And I think. It's a sign of a mature athlete. If they go out and Jules was talking to me the day he went out for a ride and turn back, you know, he went out for a ride and said, you know, I just didn't feel right. Turned back you know, got 20 K in and went, you know what, this isn't going anywhere and turned back and went home and got cold the next day.
[00:21:57] You know, how did he stayed out for his three to four hours? He was planned and got cold and wet and really worked hard. You know, his age, she's two years younger than me. That would have been more, you know, more damaging as it was. He could shrug it off. So it's mature and sensible go out and say, do you know what?
[00:22:13] I'm not as sharp as I should be here. Now if you're a 25 crack on shore, Stop for a few beers. It doesn't matter. You know, you can do all that stuff, but post 45, 50, 60, yeah. You can't, you know, you can't because that stuff in beds, in, you know, that's a layer of inflammation in there that you don't need.
[00:22:29] Craig Dalton: And we've just recently had a coach on talking about just the need to control the things you can control when you're out there in these gravel events. And I think it's even more highly. For an older athlete, just to make sure you don't do something still in not hydrating or not getting the right nutrition in your body, not getting a good right rust, because as you said, we could all do that in our twenties and thirties, but in our forties and fifties and sixties, it's just going to have dire repercussions.
[00:22:56] Phil Cavell: Yeah. And I remember being a mounted by race. I think it was in Scotland years and years ago, probably 30 years ago, 25 years ago. And then the tent next. You know, or the camp, little campsite next door, they were having a party. They were drinking, they were solutely completely blasted. And then they weren't in our race.
[00:23:14] But, and then I remember coming back to the tent later, after we'd finished our race and the kid who in the morning was vomiting over his tent. Cause he was drunk in the morning. Still won his race. Shouldn't be, I remember talking to the you one new. You know, I was probably 30 at the time and he was already 18.
[00:23:32] Yeah. Yeah. Why don't you? And that his preparation was getting completely drunk, staying up all night and then vomiting over his tent. Now try that at 50, just to try that Jordan mean that isn't going to work. And that doesn't mean that was a good strategy. It just means he got away with it 18. I'm not sure that I'm not sure how that anecdote helps anybody anyway.
[00:23:53] Yeah. If
[00:23:54] Craig Dalton: anybody does take that challenge on at 50, please send us a note. After the fact
[00:23:58] Phil Cavell: you post a video like,
[00:24:00] Craig Dalton: So chapter five, you go into bikes, bike, fit, and biomechanics. And I'm curious, I know you mentioned offline that you're, you're passionate gravel cyclists at this point. You know, how have you seen bike?
[00:24:12] Change relative to the equipment that's coming out for gravel bikes these days and the aging athlete. Yeah,
[00:24:21] Phil Cavell: it's a good question. I just think it's a marvelous time. I think a lot of older athletes, my agent are embracing gravel because it means they get a bite. That you know, they don't have to have, you know, there are some in the air and you know, hands round by their knees, they can get a sense of a bite that can do lots of different jobs.
[00:24:38] It can be a robot, it can be you know, and so they, they're taking more sensible approach to their cycling. They. Once they've tried having a bit more rubber on the road or on the trail. They don't go back to riding a 23 and, you know, a 25, they, the minimum becomes a 28 or 32. So I think they're taking a much more pragmatic and I would say.
[00:24:57] Reassuring route through their cycling career. And it makes me much happier. I always, you know, when when a client walks out with a bike with a 32 Rhode Tyro, 28 or something. Yeah, it's good modem, you know, cause it's, you've got more grip there. You've got more comfort. You've got more control. You've got more safety margin.
[00:25:12] So I just think it's been a really, I think the whole gravel movement has been a altogether, very positive. I have to say for my clients for bike design. And of course it's all been liberated by disc brakes. Isn't it? I mean, seven was doing this a long time ago, one way or another, but I mean, you know, as were other manufacturers, but this has all been bought a life by the advent of disc brakes, isn't it?
[00:25:32] You know, and allowing the frame designer morph.
[00:25:35] Craig Dalton: Yeah, a hundred percent. When you look at some of your professional athletes on the road that you work with, are you seeing like some of these elements of a little bit more comfort or are we still looking at these, you know, flat backs and high seats and long stems for the road athletes?
[00:25:51] Or are there actual like performance benefits that can be gained by pulling that back a little bit and making them a bit more relaxed?
[00:25:57] Phil Cavell: Yeah, I don't, I'd like to say I did see a bit of the latter and I think some, you know, some of the pros, the younger ones, you know, they look at it, look at Tom peacock. I mean, he comes from a cyclocross background, mountain bike background, you know, it's not, it's never too early, you know, he, you know, he has that background.
[00:26:14] You know, I'm not saying that his rope position is an aggressive. There's a good chance that, you know, he's going to have some, you know, he's crammed some smarts about him when he sets up his road bike. We, you know, I don't see necessarily that they are setting their Roebucks road bikes up any different, but they all do ride gravel.
[00:26:30] They all got gravel bikes. You know, one hopes that at some point they're going to take some, you know, some kind of recalibration by osmosis between the two, two formats. Certainly my amateur. You know, th they're now becoming category sensitive, you know, they, you know, they're no longer, they're no longer seeing these pigeonholes.
[00:26:49] They just, you know, there's getting bikes at work for a number of different environments. And I think that's brilliant and I love that. Yeah.
[00:26:56] Craig Dalton: The other thing that's been talked about this book was and I heard you speaking on another podcast and referencing that you didn't think people were going to hang their hats on it as much as they have, but just this notion that amateur athletes are riding much closer to their threshold than professional athletes are on a weekly and monthly basis.
[00:27:13] Phil Cavell: Yeah. That, yes, that w the podcast, I was that too. So John Lewis is the
[00:27:19] Craig Dalton: baseline podcast,
[00:27:20] Phil Cavell: I think. Yeah. Yeah, it's been picked up on a lot that, I mean, the thing is data doesn't lie, you know, th the fact is that amygdala amateur athletes tend to spend more of their time as a proportion, closer to the red line and professionals per year.
[00:27:34] So we're 50 years of all 50 years of age, you know, in any other century we'd be dead, but there we are literally thrashing our bodies to destruction. Not literally, but metaphorically compared to professional writers. So they're writing at 60 something percent and we're writing 80% of our potential.
[00:27:51] You know, one has to think, what is that sense of, or, and the book really is trying to answer that. It is that sensible, rational, sustainable and you know, and it, what it means is that professional cyclists are more ordered and structured in the way that they ride and train more cognizant of what they should be doing.
[00:28:08] We tend to ride in this kind of mid sort of mid watch the whole time, you know, where are hard, bits are not hard enough. And our easy bits are too easy to just ride in this. What John Baker calls whirlwind of doom, you know, we're just and I can recognize it in myself, you know, decades gone past, I can recognize that, you know, where I'm riding in that kind of just in that uncomfortable zone all the time.
[00:28:30] Craig Dalton: It
[00:28:30] Resonated with me for sure. Only because as I mentioned offline, you know, I live in a little bit of a hilly place and I prefer to ride almost exclusively off-road so I, I do find myself grinding like a diesel engine up these Hills, never particularly having a super easy day and but never really doing anything that would resemble an interval either.
[00:28:52] Phil Cavell: Yeah. And that's right. I've worked with so many professional athletes and amateurs. And when they're forced to take things easy, you know, injury or illness, they always come back stronger, but they come back renewed and rejuvenated. It's yes, because your body's been desperate for this for so long. And yeah, and I think that's absolutely right.
[00:29:12] Whereas now I actually literally make myself ride really easy. Oh my God, this is lovely. I can feel my body's rejuvinating as I write. And then if I want to have a little pot and go a bit hard, I do. I definitely never ride hard unless I want to ever it, you know, I, I use that rule for myself unless I'm fizzing with energy and really want to ride hard.
[00:29:31] I don't. Yeah. And the rest of the time, I just knock it back. A couple of gears. I know that I'm building mitochondria, I'm working my oxidative system. It's all good for me. The other
[00:29:41] Craig Dalton: thing that I picked up was just this notion of. Getting your head around dropping a cycling workout, picking up a strength training workout, or stand up paddle board session in your week.
[00:29:52] And again, with this holistic idea that it's actually going to make you a faster cyclist.
[00:29:59] Phil Cavell: Yeah. And I think that's right. You've got to take one step back, take two steps forward as a midlife athlete because. Yeah. So I think we'll do nothing for bone density or bone minerality. It'll do nothing for sarcopenia or muscle loss.
[00:30:12] It'll do nothing really for flexibility. There's so much of the, you know, you'll do nothing for balance. Really. There's so much of your potential. That's not being challenged by cycling and not being developed. So you're not building, you're not building resilience in your Shasti. Do you want to build resilience in your Shasti?
[00:30:27] You've got to put the bike aside for a second. And do other things and that will make you faster. It's it's a tool. It's a tool. I was going to mix my metaphors. It's a big pill to swallow that one.
[00:30:37] Craig Dalton: Totally it very much is. And I struggled with that a little bit myself, but I realized it to be a hundred percent true.
[00:30:44] Like I need to do these different things in order to be successful. And it's been an exploration. I've got a future podcast, guests just talking about why we need to do that. And I think it's critically important.
[00:30:56] Phil Cavell: Yeah. And I don't athlete in the, in photography today. Very good athlete, you know, was he 47, 48 hours, incredibly strong, very powerful, doing big events.
[00:31:05] You're doing that event where they ride tour stages, you know, back to back tours stages before the tour or whatever. And, you know, I did a single X partial, single leg squat with him and he couldn't do a partial, single leg squat. It's you know what, you know, that's a pretty simple thing to do a partial single as to what you know, Yeah, I see that a lot.
[00:31:23] It's nice. Not a new, that's not, it's not atypical, you know, see a lot, you know, where you got super fit people and they can't do simple things, you know?
[00:31:31] Craig Dalton: Yeah. No, I think that's so true. And I remember maybe in my forties, patting myself on the back that I'd selected a sport that you can ride, you know, you can ride a bike your entire life, but I didn't realize at the time that yes, you can, but you're going to need to do other things to support that goal.
[00:31:47] Phil Cavell: Yeah, that's right. And we've all heard stories where you've got a friend or a colleague and they're, you know, midlife, cyclists, and they have an accident which is quite innocuous. And the damage is more, you know, more than you, one would expect. And you know, they didn't have a DEXA scan or, you know, looks, which looks, you know, the sort of bone minerality and it's low they're, what's called osteopenic or osteoporotic.
[00:32:08] And it's because all they've done is cycle all their lives and not done anything off the bite whatsoever. And now they've got a bone density issue. You know, you know, if we're going to build resilience in the chassis, one of the things we need to look at is bone minerality, bone D.
[00:32:21] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it makes a ton of sense.
[00:32:23] The book is great. I really enjoyed it. As I said, hit me at the right time. I hope for those listeners, like if your late thirties, early forties get on this book earlier, rather than later, because at 50, I've got some catching up to do. I'm committed to the cause. Cause I want to see everybody out there on the gravel events in 2022.
[00:32:42] So Phil, thank you so much for the time. Thank you for writing this book and putting such good work out there in the.
[00:32:48] Phil Cavell: You're so welcome, Craig, it's been a pleasure to talk to you. Have a great weekend.
[00:32:52] Craig Dalton: Cheers.
[00:32:53] Big thanks to Phil for joining the show this week. I hope you all go out there and take a look at the midlife cyclist book, whether you're a midlife cyclist, yourself approaching midlife or otherwise. I think there's a lot of value in understanding.
[00:33:07] What our bodies are going to go through as mid-life cyclists. I know this is something that I wish I was more attuned to as a younger lad. I think I would be in a lot better shape today.
[00:33:19] And another big, thanks to competitive cyclists for joining us as a sponsor this week and the coming weeks. Be sure to visit competitive cyclists.com/the gravel ride and enter promo code to the gravel ride. To get 15% off your full price purchase and free shipping on orders over $50. Some exclusions apply as they always do.
[00:33:40] Thanks for spending a little bit of your week with me this week. Until next time here's defining some dirt onto your wheels
This week we sit down with Brian McCulloch to discuss how to mentally prepare for big days on the gravel bike. Brian is a coach at Big Wheel Coaching, former BWR Champion and current Masters Category Marathon MTB National Champion. Beyond that, Brian is stoked guy we know!
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Brian McCulloch
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the Gravel Ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton this week on the show. We've got Brian McCulloch. Brian's a coach, a father, a husband 2018 BWR champion and current marathon mountain bike nationals champion in the masters 35 to 39 category for the purposes of this conversation. I wanted to have Brian on the show because I've wanted to do a show about getting stoked for game day.
[00:00:31] Your training's behind you, but how do you approach the actual day of a big gravel event? I couldn't think of anybody better to talk to than Brian. I got to interact with Brian out at the envy, grow DEO in Utah this year. And I've not met someone with so much enthusiasm and knowledge and passion for the sport of cycling than Brian.
[00:00:52] Hopefully you'll walk away with this episode with some great tips on what kind of mentality you need to be successful in endurance, gravel race. Before we get started this week. I need to thank this week. Sponsor athletic greens, the health and wellness company that makes comprehensive daily nutrition.
[00:01:11] Really, really simple. I don't know about you, but I find this time of year to be a bit challenging on my body. It's a stressor. It changes my routine and I find that kind of bringing together an effective nutritional strategy is a bit of a challenge. In fact, I've got Halloween candy laying around. We've got Thanksgiving coming up and the other holidays coming, I'm getting less sleep.
[00:01:35] Uh, got more work stress for the end of the year. And I'm simply not eating the right foods. I find myself deficient in key nutritional areas. And the important thing is I've recognized this. So for the past four or five years, I've been taking athletic. Now known as AIG one by athletic greens. It's a category leading superfood product that brings comprehensive, convenient daily nutrition to everybody keeping up with the research and knowing what to do and taking a bunch of pills and capsules is hard on the stomach and hard to keep up with to help keep each of us at our best.
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[00:02:50] So that's a little bit about our sponsor athletic greens. As you know, as a long time listener, I've been a big fan of athletic greens for many years. I encourage you to check it out and see if it's for you. It's lifestyle friendly, whether you eat keto, paleo, vegan dairy-free gluten-free and contains less than one gram of sugar, no GMOs, nasty chemicals or anything.
[00:03:12] All while tasting good. My S my personal process is simply putting athletic greens over copious amount of ice each morning, shaking it up and drinking it down. First thing I've heard other people blend it into smoothies. So there's lots of different ways to take athletic greens. If you're interested in checking it out.
[00:03:30] Please visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. Athletic greens is going to give you a year supply of free vitamin D and five free travel packs for your first time purchase for gravel ride podcast listeners, simply visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride to support both the podcast and your nutritional health.
[00:03:54] With that important business behind us. Let's dive right in to this week's interview. Brian. Welcome to the show.
[00:04:01] Brian McCulloch: Oh, thank you, Craig. I'm really excited to be here. So a man.
[00:04:05] Craig Dalton: Yeah, let's do this. I was thinking for a while that I really wanted to do a show. That got people pumped for the moment they get to the start line. We've talked a lot on other episodes about nutrition and the idea of coaching, but there's something to be said for just getting the right mindset, getting everything into your rear view mirror, and being ready to do a big event, whether you're going for the win or just trying to finish and have fun.
[00:04:31] It's important to have the right mental mindset. And I couldn't think of someone better to come on and talk about that than.
[00:04:38] Brian McCulloch: Oh thank you, Craig. Thank you. I'm really excited about it. It's such a, I think it's such an overlooked topic. When we talk about obviously as a cycling coach, but also as an athlete, it's so easy to just look at all of the preparation and we look at all the time, money and effort, the blood, sweat, and tears that we put in to preparation, but then we often forget or neglect that race.
[00:05:00] Is everything. And it's not, it doesn't have to be a race. If you're not at the front of these gravel races, that doesn't mean it's anything different. It's your tour de France. And this is what my wife and I, we have a coaching business, big role coaching, and we always look at it like, Hey, what is your tour de France?
[00:05:14] Yeah, it can be the one ARIDE at BWR, Kansas, or it can be gravel worlds. It can be anything in between. Okay. So you don't have to be riding a long race or be at the front of it for you to actually spend some time plan out your pacing. Think about your nutrition, go over the course, look at all those things and know we're going to get into so much of that.
[00:05:32] But having your best race day performance is not always about what's the motor you brought to the start line. It's what about the check? What about the mindset, all of these other things. So I'm really excited to have this conversation.
[00:05:44] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Also true. And I always like to set the stage for the listener and just learn a little bit about your journey. Obviously like the notion of riding a gravel bike is something relatively new in the world of cycling, but how what's your journey as a cyclist? How did you come to be where you are to.
[00:06:02] Brian McCulloch: Oh, that's a great question. I I should tell everyone that I used to race motorcycles or motocross and Supercross professionally. And so that was I didn't know it at the time, but that was going to be like going to the dirt on gravel. And even now mountain biking, a little bit more is going to be like, to me, it feels like coming home.
[00:06:17] But yeah, when I was basically, when I went. 12 years old, I got a dirt bike and was like, oh my God, I want to be professional. And then I just poured myself into that. And long story short was my father was a big influencer there. And he was like, Hey man, as long as you get good grades, we'll take care of it.
[00:06:33] Like you're good to go. And anyway, somewhere along the way, I ended up stepping away from that and thinking I had this boy in my life where I. I didn't have any athletics in my life. It was about a year that I got out of motorcycle racing and I thought I'm washed up. Like I was never, I never achieved my goals, really et cetera, et cetera.
[00:06:51] And then someone reminded me that we used to.
[00:06:54] train on road bikes and mountain bikes for For motorcycle and racing. And so I was like, oh, okay, cool. I'll check that out. And I went on a group ride with some friends and in the area that I'm from or where I live now in the Redlands area here in Southern California, there was this really robust community of cyclists.
[00:07:13] And they went on this, they still do. They go on this Saturday group rides called rain cross. They've been doing it for 30 years on the same route. You know what I mean? So there's like all this heritage and I just became. Totally enthralled and met some really good people. All of them were, 35 to 40 when I was 25 and I was totally hooked.
[00:07:29] So got into the. Started racing almost Right.
[00:07:32] away. And then it was like, wow. It's like riding a bicycle is great because it's work in equals results out. So I just poured myself into it. Like I did when I was trying to be a professional motorcycle racer ended up getting my category one road up. Got a call from Paul Abrahams who was starting this team that would later develop into elevate Webby, Plex pro cycling.
[00:07:53] And I was the first person that signed for him. So I did 11 years racing pro on the road which I'm really humbled to. That's one of the longest careers in American cycling, which is pretty cool. There's definitely some people like Mike Friedman and Brad Huff and other people who've had really long careers as well. Those are good company. If anyone knows those guys there, they're pretty legendary and I'm by no means on their S their level. But anyway, in 2018 actually in 2017 funny story, how I came to gravel was I did we were supposed to go to the tour of the Heela that year and that coincided with 20 $17 and waffle ride.
[00:08:27] And I didn't make selection for that team. And at the time Paul Abraham's, my team director was like, Hey, bro, don't take it personal. We just have more we don't have a GC guy this year, so we don't need a domestic cause I was a domestique on the team and that's a really hard race it's for climbing.
[00:08:45] And I'm not a very good climate. So my team manager was like, don't take it personal dude. Like we're not going to take you to Hilo because we don't have a GC guy we're just going for stage wins. So we don't really need you right now. Like we're going to take our time. And I was like, I was so bummed, Craig.
[00:09:01] I was so bummed because like that's one of those events. If you're a road guy and you say, oh Yeah. I've done this many tours, ILA. Everyone's dude, you're gnarly. And so I didn't get to go. And I be honest, I had a chip on my shoulder cause I was like, oh, I'll show you, I'll show you. And I'd be willing to bet your listeners have a bit of that in them too.
[00:09:17] You know what I mean? They're like, oh, somebody said you can't climb that hill. We'll Washoe you. And so I literally, that was. Like reached out to the guys from Belgian waffle ride who run it and they were like, please come. And I ended up going down there. I ended up crashing and breaking my hand.
[00:09:31] But I finished the race and I ended up winning the KLM Jersey that year and that Belgian waffle ride. And I just, I like fell in love with it, man, because it was old school, dirt bike, grit, like dirt bike riding. You have to you're the dude that finishes like no one No one in my once you're out on course, it's just you, right?
[00:09:49] There's no mechanic. There's no none of this stuff. And so you have to have the grit and the determination to finish. And so when I crashed and broke my hand, I was like, I'm an 80 miles. What am I going to do? Call my wife. She doesn't care. She's you got out there, you get back. And so I'm not I'm a proud man. So I'm like, I'll finish. And I finished and kept passing people. And I think I got like top 10. Anyway. But. That brought me that made me fall in love with BWR and being able to have breakfast with everybody, go do this incredibly crazy ride and then get into go after and share all the experiences afterwards.
[00:10:22] So anyway, I came back in 2018 and I told the team I'm not going to heal it. I'm going to BWR. And anyway, I went to VWR in 2018 in San Diego, and I ended up winning at beating Ted king in a sprint. And that's a pretty cool story how that all came together. But then that got me. And we don't have that much gravel in dedicated gravel in California.
[00:10:41] It's not like the Midwest and back east, which just has such crazy robust swath of events that are so cruel. So when we go to do it, we have to travel a bit. But it's such a big part of my program right now. And I'm so thankful for it. It's such a great group of people. So I hope that's a long story, but that's kinda how I got into gravel.
[00:10:58] And I'm like, I want to be in it all the time.
[00:11:00] Craig Dalton: Yeah. As you were telling that story and talking about, your accomplishment of achieving an 11 year professional cycling career, I was thinking to myself Brian, you haven't exactly hung up your cleats just yet. Have you.
[00:11:11] Brian McCulloch: No, not at all. And somewhere along there your. The gravel ride podcast listeners. I'm sure you all know of Neil Shirley. Neil Shirley is absolutely legendary. Like I joked him cause a good buddy of mine, but I, we call them the, grab the prophet, right? Like he, he, so you gotta think of set the stage a little bit of history because history is important to me.
[00:11:30] Basically what happened was at the time. He, and I went on a bike ride one day and he was like, Hey, I got some news. I'm going to quit racing pro. And I was like, oh my God that's super exciting, but I'm like, how are you feeling? Anyway he was like, Yeah. I'm going to work for road bike action magazine.
[00:11:44] So he goes to road bike action magazine. As this event, as gravel is becoming a thing. Like at that time there were no gravel bikes. They were like rode bikes or it was just weird kind of time, right? Especially on the west coast, east coast had some more than what Midwest has more Frank and bike things going.
[00:12:01] Long story short is he goes there to road bike action. And he just is like on the nose cone of this rocket and starts riding up. He goes to Belgium waffle ride. I think he's one of three times. I can't remember. But anyway, he's a dear friend of mine. He was at my wedding. And so he was like, Hey dumb I should back up.
[00:12:17] He was my coach for 10 years as well. So all the time when I was racing road, he was my coach and he was like, dude, you have to come to a gravel ride. And so he had this, his own event called pedal Palooza one year and I went there on this rickety, old something or other with. Ghetto tubeless with duct tape for in strip and not even tubeless tires that I somehow got to seat and I got obliterated, but had a blast.
[00:12:40] But anyway, so the point is like this whole thing is so new. And so to come to it and have all of this Just incredible history behind it and then be able to then see like people that have this great history or like foundation of it, like Neal and then have their support and like to be now here now where it looks like.
[00:13:00] You could do a gravel ride every weekend. And they're just like some of the most epic adventures you can have on a bicycle is pretty incredible, man. So it was a, oh, I, the reason I brought this up was because he told me I should at some point be a coach. And I thought he was crazy. And here we are now I've worked for my wife.
[00:13:15] Who's our head coach. And we're coaching. Like we have a very successful coaching business. I'm very thankful for the athletes that we get to support along the way. So it's yeah, it's our world, man. We're just, we're pretty detailed.
[00:13:25] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I love hearing about that journey and excited to get into sort of some of the things we opened up with around. How do you approach what I call game day when you show up on that start line and, with gravel, as you've just been describing in your journey, like so many of these events have such a different profile and a lot of times.
[00:13:44] These athletes, myself included. It may be the first time we're visiting an area and we're doing a 100 mile event. Let's talk through, if in that scenario where you're going somewhere, you haven't been before, what are the things you can do from a research perspective, set aside the specific training advice for a second, but what would some of the research and prep you can do if you're going to do an Unbound for the first time or an SBT?
[00:14:09] Brian McCulloch: Oh, that's a great question, buddy. I think that research and preparation, excuse me. I think research and preparation. So key to what we do. And it's just, it's the absolute game changer because once you're on game day, once you're on the starting line, there's nothing else, but just grit, determination, and good nutrition and hydration.
[00:14:29] That's going to get you through the day, right? Like you got what you got, but leading up to. Th our destiny is in our hands. Okay. And save for the specific training and looking all that. But I think YouTube is a wonderful resource. And so is Strava. And I know a lot of your listeners, a lot of our listeners, they are always like, Hey, there, they're researching and delving into this trouble.
[00:14:47] So if you're going to do something like SBT, you can look at. The people that are doing well, what that course looks like, where are the Hills? Where are the aid stations? Where are you going to stop all these other things that are really important? Because here's, I'll give you an example, Craig. If you were to go to an event that said had 7,000 feet of climbing, and it was a hundred miles, that sounds like a pretty hard ride. But what if that 7,000 feet is in the first half of the bike race, right? So think about something like crusher. Like you have an hour and a half Kline. That's it like you just go uphill and you don't stop. Like you just keep going up.
[00:15:24] That's a very different look, especially if you're from the Midwest and you're training for something like that. That's a very different way to get 7,000 feet. Then if you were to say, go to Unbound right at, on mound it's death by 1,019. Right or pinpricks. But what you don't realize is each of those little things has a 14% kick at the top.
[00:15:43] So you're like, oh it's not that big of a deal. It's only a three-minute climb. When you go try and sprint 300 times up a 200 mile, oh, I'm only going to do the hundred and Unbound doesn't matter. You're going to go up a hundred little, three minute climbs triangle sprint for a hundred times for three minutes.
[00:15:59] It's very turns out it's very difficult. So I think it's really important to recognize. What I call the critical factors are the critical elements the critical moments of an event. Okay. So what are those critical moments like? Oh, okay. I've got an hour and a half climb. There you go. Or, Hey, I have a hundred of these really challenging areas or, oh, Hey, there's this single track section say you're going to go to BWR Cedar city, right?
[00:16:23] That final format. Single-track called the tollway is Uber brutal and you have to build a bike around that final four miles, much more than you have to build a bike for the first 120. You see what I'm saying? Totally different because those rocks are super sharp. They're super brutal. So you could be lulled into the idea that, Hey, wait a second.
[00:16:45] My race performance is best done on a semi road bike with some facts. And then you get to that section and then you're walking four miles. You want to not have fun on the day walk four miles. That's no fun. So that's what I would say is. It really helpful is do your research, look at Strava, look at YouTube watch videos of things.
[00:17:05] And that's why I did before Belgium waffle ride, I did a race series. We called it slang the sector. So if any of your athletes or listeners want to check it out, we did a sleigh the sector series on basically some of the most difficult and challenging. Pieces of Belgian waffle ride San Diego. And my hope was that people would watch it and go, Hey, that's action.
[00:17:24] I got it. That's action. Okay. Wait, that's a little outside of my wheelhouse, so they know. Okay. At mile 67, this thing's a little outside, my wheelhouse, slow down, get through it and then press on after that. So I think a lot of that stuff, it can be super, super helpful. We have a lot of great resources that we just didn't have 10 years ago.
[00:17:41] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:17:41] that was a great series. I think at the basic level, when you sign up for an event, you start, you'd look at the course profile and start to understand, is this similar to what I ride at home? Can I simulate some of these efforts? Can I find an hour and a half climb, like crusher in the title?
[00:17:56] Certainly many people can't but understanding how you can simulate it to the best of your possibilities in your home territory is critical. And then as you said, that next level of, Hey, if there is course beta out there, it's amazing to just get eyeballs on it, to say oh crap, I've never written through rocks like that.
[00:18:14] I really need to at least be mentally prepared for it. If I can't physically prepare for it in my local.
[00:18:21] Brian McCulloch: Oh, absolutely. And even with a trainer now you can do so much. Okay. And by the way, I'm not a massive fan of doing all your workouts on trainers. Like I, I think being outside in the real world is absolutely the thing to do. That's why we love. But I, again, we have folks that just, they have busy lives. If you listening have busy lives and you're on the train, especially going into winter.
[00:18:44] And you're going to be on the trainer four or five days a week. There's guys that I coach in the Midwest right now that they're getting ready to be like, oh Yeah.
[00:18:51] I'm not going to go outside for two months straight. If that's your jam, Use your trainer and simulate this stuff. You can go up the outdoors with, you can do any of these things, right?
[00:19:00] You can use Ruby. You don't have to be a slave to swift. You can use Ruby, you can do a lot of these other things that can help you achieve that. Like old school was, I met a woman when I was very early in my bike riding career who literally trained for an iron man. 100% inside. She had just had a child.
[00:19:18] She did all for running on a trip. She did all of her swimming at the local pool. And it was an open water swim that she did. And she did all of her riding on her trainer. She literally did not go outside, get a full distance iron man all off of it. And this was 10. It's probably 15 years ago.
[00:19:32] No, it's gotta be longer than that. It's probably almost 20 years ago now. Gosh, I'm old, but. That was back then. We didn't have smart trainers. She was just staring at the wall for five-hour trainer guys. Like folks, it can be done if you are determined and you have fire in your belly and you are really committed to being prepared for this event, there's a lot of tools you have to get through it.
[00:19:49] And and believe that. You are mentally stronger than you think you are physically stronger than you think you are capable of so much. And that's something I love as a coach is helping tease that out of people because you put them in the environment and they have to rise to the occasion, right? So I'm not saying don't set yourself up for success and, or show up unprepared.
[00:20:10] That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is let's set goals that really challenge you and stretch you so that you can achieve. These great things, because once you're there, you've got nothing it's sink or swim. And if you're like me and I know you listeners are like me, because I'm an athlete and a coach, you're like, I didn't come this far to sink.
[00:20:27] Like I got no other option than to swim and you can do it. So to some degree, we work really well in that environment too, where it's I sink or swim. I have no option. Because I'm not going to sink. I'm not going to quit, but I'm going to keep moving.
[00:20:39] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think it's so critical in these ultra endurance kind of style gravel events that you have that grit and determination that you mentioned earlier, because the truth is for anybody who hasn't done a big event or a massive long ride, something will go wrong. Period. It's highly unlikely. And if you track the first men and women or last everybody's on a journey, and it's the people who understand that.
[00:21:04] Flat tires are going to happen. Mechanical is going to happen. Hell you, you can have big hiccups in your hydration and nutrition plan as well, but it's your ability to push through those adapt recover, make adjustments. That's going to be a telltale sign of success.
[00:21:20] Brian McCulloch: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Something that I think is really a good. Metaphor here. So if you think of like special forces, right? There's obviously been a lot in the news over the last number of years about Navy seals and other, Rangers, Delta force, these kinds of, they train them to be extremely self-sufficient.
[00:21:38] And I think that is something that's so powerful for us as athletes to think we are much more like them than we are say like a V like a Marine infantry unit or something like that. And so they are, thanks for everyone who's listening. Who served? You guys are wonderful. Guys and gals, of course.
[00:21:54] But when I look at this. Who we are as athletes, we have to be generalists. It's not like you're on the NFL defensive line and you don't care about catching a past. Cause all you're trying to do is stop the refrigerator in front of you from coming through you, right? That's what you do.
[00:22:09] If you're on the offensive line, it's a very specific task and requires a very specific training. For that, if you're going to go do SBT, if you're going to go to a BWR, you have to be able to do it all. You there's no time out if on the client, right? There's no time out on the downhill. You have to be able to ride that bike and the technical stuff.
[00:22:29] If you get a flat tire, you have to change it. Especially if you're going to do something, self-supported say Unbound, right? There's no support. So if you don't know how to use that Dyna plug that you. Uh, problem. You have to be able to do all these things. So again, one thing that I would say is so important for your listeners and for everyone listening to just get a grip on is everyone has good moments and everyone has bad moments and here's the thing, neither of them will last.
[00:22:55] So when you're a ride in the high and you're like, man, I feel really. I don't, it's not going to last you're going to go through a bad moment. But then also correspondingly, you would be like, oh, Hey, I feel really awful. And my quad is cramping or my feet are numb, whatever that will end to it might end at the finish line, by the way, it might it might be bad all the way to the finish line, but it will end up promise you.
[00:23:16] And so that just should bring you some sort of just comfort and recognize that like you're in control of this. And one thing that I would say. For our listeners and everyone who's just okay. Some of how do you eat an elephant? You look at SBT or you look at, all these massive events.
[00:23:32] How do you accomplish that? It's so massive range. Just say one bite at a time. That's how you eat an elephant. And so one thing I would say is let's keep it simple and recognize some of this just boils down to the first rule of endurance events, whether you're a runner, whether you're psychos, whether you're mountain biker, graveled person, whatever, it doesn't matter.
[00:23:50] You don't have to move fast, but you do have to keep moving. So sometimes slowing down is better because what we're trying to do is get through the end of the race. So if you're in a bad moment, the default should not be, Hey, I just plow through and just hope it ends. Cause you could make it worse.
[00:24:07] You really could make it worse, but you certainly should like, just keep moving. If you. You just have to keep moving. That's so important for our athletes is just recognizing that movement even slow is still forward. Progress. Baby steps still make it.
[00:24:22] Craig Dalton: Absolutely. So we talked about prepping and understanding the course that you're going into, obviously making sure that your gear is performing well, you're not coming on old tires or something that's going to unnecessarily cause you trouble. You've got to have your repair kit built out.
[00:24:38] If you get a flat, where your Dyna plug is, you can pop it in there. Hopefully you can recover quickly. And to the last point of our conversation, just be mentally aware that these things are gonna happen. So don't stress. Like it's going to happen to 20% of the people in the event. So just move through it, keep a positive attitude and always keep moving through.
[00:24:58] When you're looking, I did want to touch on planning from a nutrition and hydration perspective, just at a general level. When you look at a course, maybe like crushing the Tasha or something that has a very pronounced climbing feature, that's going to be a huge chunk of time. How are you thinking about nutrition and hydration and making sure you're staying on top of.
[00:25:20] Brian McCulloch: love to look at the course profile. And this is just some of my stuff that I share with our athletes is I don't like people to stop at the bottom of the. Okay. Old school back before there were gravel events, we had all these, centuries and grand fondos before they read the grand fondos they were 200 mile rides or whatever.
[00:25:39] And notorious, like it would always be that there would be at the bottom of the climb would be like, Hey, we have chocolate covered bacon and everyone would be like brilliant pulling over. And then they be trying to start the climb basically fully loaded and with a gut bomb. Okay. I think obviously when we're talking about, say crusher and Tuscher, you're going to have to stop at some point, if at all, possible, try to make your stops plan your stops so that you're stopping at the top of climbs.
[00:26:06] Okay. I think that's the best thing to do stopping at the bottom. Client of climbs kills your momentum. Okay. I like to build a plan. Based on building and maintaining momentum. Okay. Because gravel riding as a whole and even bicycle riding as a whole is essentially boils down to building momentum, maintaining momentum, and then when you lose it, repeat, okay.
[00:26:29] So there's features all along the way, whether they're Hills, whether they're rocks, whether it's single track that loses your momentum. And so part of that mental. Fortitude is being like, oh, okay. I got into the single track and I went really slow. Cause I don't really feel that comfortable and it drops on my bike.
[00:26:46] So I just went really slow. I come out of it. Now I've got a road section I'm going to build momentum again, go through. So again, if we're going to talk about. As much as you can try and start at the top, if we're going to, or excuse me, stop at the top. Or just don't stop at the bottom. It's probably the best thing to take from our conversation.
[00:27:04] And the other thing that I would say is based on the amount of climbing, you might have to re adjust or rethink what your nutrition strategy is. Why do I say that? Okay. So back in 2017, I did the tour of Utah for the first time. And. Once I got into breakaway on stage one and I was in the breakaway for about four and a half hours.
[00:27:23] But, so we're going super hard for four and a half hours. And it started with a 90 minute climb, straight up, straight out of the gate. Okay. And the breakaway went about 45 minutes into it. So I still have 45 minutes climbing, at threshold you can't eat solid. Okay. So I'm not telling you that as a coach and saying, Hey, I read this data where you can't eat solid foods.
[00:27:42] I'm telling you that. Cause like I've had my heart in my throat for an hour and a half, and then you're like, okay. Like the only thing I can do is have liquid options. Okay. And there's lots of great companies that are coming out with liquid option or semi-solid right. Whether that's a gel or something like that.
[00:27:58] So I don't have an ax to grind and with any particular nutrition company, cause there's lots of great ones out there, but what I would say. If you're going to be on a long climb, if you're going to be on sustained climbing please consider getting your nutrition from liquid sources, because that allows you to work harder on the climb.
[00:28:16] If you then have some solid food, say at the bottom, even if it's solid food, you packed and you're, Hey, Brian, I kept moving, but then you ate 250 300 calories in solid food because you brought an Uncrustable or you made a an energy bar or something. That is going to take away from your ability to ascend the mountain at a rapid pace.
[00:28:35] Okay. And I'm not saying you've got to go bananas on the climb, but you don't want to do anything that pro that makes it worse. So as much as you can, if you look at the clients and their sustained climbs, you're probably going to want to opt for that period only of your bike. You're going to have to think I'm want more liquid sources of energy.
[00:28:53] Okay. So then we come to oh, there's a downhill. That might be the time when you supplement with solids. So it's not as easy as the old school. Craig, when you got into it, it's Hey, every hour drink a water bottle, Hey, every hour eat 250 calories. So it's people would set timers on their garments or their walkthroughs.
[00:29:09] And an hour, I just, crammed back a cliff bar. That's not how we do it anymore. Or, we're very specific with our nutrition. And not just the kind of nutrition, but it's the style of nutrition. Okay. So it's I have liquid sources for this portion of the race I have, and those could be gels, or those could be semi sellers, like a product that I really is infinite tripwire we used to be sponsored by them years ago on the road race team.
[00:29:31] And I just buy retail. Like I just buy from my local shop. Cause it works good. But anyway try some stuff like that allows you to. Maintain a high output without upsetting your stomach.
[00:29:40] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I think when you look at those course profiles, not only is it climbing and descending, but oftentimes it's technical terrain where you can't pull your hand off the bar. So having an understanding of, when you're unlikely to be able to hydrate are unlikely to be able. And making sure you're not dropping behind the eight ball during those periods, I think is one of those things that you need to learn as a gravel athlete.
[00:30:02] And, in some cases it may, you might have to do the unthinkable and wear a hydration pack on your back. I know aesthetically, some people don't like that, but it's very practical in certain situations. And I will tell you that, if you're in rough terrain and you've got that tube available to you, you do have the opportunity to be hydrated.
[00:30:18] Versus if you're trying to grab that.
[00:30:21] Brian McCulloch: Spot on buddy. Spot on. I'm going to tell you a real an anecdotal story here. I there's a gentleman that I've coached for about four years and he does Leadville every year. Okay. So same genre of what we're doing, right? Uber. Kind of event. And even though Leadville is not known as the most technical course, it's still very challenging, very bumpy.
[00:30:39] So it makes it very difficult to get into your pockets this year. I, he and I went back and forth, cause again, aesthetically you're like, I don't want to pack and I am much more I don't care. I just want pre. I'll put it, I'll put a bento box on the front of my bike. I'll wear cargo shorts.
[00:30:53] I don't really care. You know what I mean? I'll put the bag on the front. What matters is ease of use. Okay. Because again, I look at the bicycle and I hope your athletes or your listeners will look at that.
[00:31:04] Start to look at their bicycle, like a tool that's meant to serve us. I don't adapt my body to a bicycle, the bicycle adapts to me.
[00:31:11] Okay. I make all of this to help me. The pilot. I am. You listening, you are the pilot, you're the race car driver. You're the fighter plane. You know what I mean? You're the fighter pilot. Okay. That should be an extension of you. It's not that you just ride this thing, you know what I'm saying? And so when we talk about that stuff, I generally don't like to put weight on my back.
[00:31:33] Okay. But in this case, we talked about it with my athlete and he was. Dude, it just makes sense. I just have to do it. I just have to move beyond it. And it made an incredible difference on what he's doing because gravel like mountain, it's very difficult to reach into your pockets again. So you've got to think essentially on the timeline of ground. Many people were already on drop bar. They were roadies that didn't want to get mountain bikes. And so now we started venturing we're roadie centric, and now we start getting more and more capable road bikes to now basically they're like drop our mountain bikes. And so you have this roadie aspect of the code.
[00:32:10] That's Hey, I want nothing in my pockets. I want my bike to look super sleek, all that's cool. But the reality is when you're doing a hundred mile ride or you're doing 140 mile ride, or even a 60 mile ride, you may not be able to take your hands off of the bars. Okay. So minimizing movements is really important. So one thing we talked about with my athlete was like, Hey, how much can you drink during this eight hour shift? And it was like if I have to take my, if I have to use bottles, it's very difficult. And you start self rationing, those things. So you're immediately dehydrating already.
[00:32:45] You're behind the eight ball. So once we put the hydration pack on, yes, there was a penalty for weight. You know what I mean? Was it frustrating? Yeah. Did it hold a little bit of heat on him? Yeah.
[00:32:54] But he's doing Lego. Like it's not that big of a deal. But the trade-off was here. He is I want to say it's like 15.
[00:33:01] 51 or 52, like he's very early fifties. Okay. And his best, he did Leadville for the first time, I think 10 years ago. Okay. So totally different athlete. If you're 40 and you're doing Leadville and you're 50 doing level and this man came from Ironman. So he was very fit when he was 40. We obliterated his time, his very best time from 10 years earlier when he's 50 with a past.
[00:33:24] And so when your listeners are like, man, I'm not going to wear a pack. It's just going to slow me down. I want to share with you 10 years older, this man went 45 plus minutes faster.
[00:33:36] Craig Dalton: Amazing.
[00:33:37] Brian McCulloch: minutes. And again, it was because we nailed the hydration. We nailed the nutrition, we nailed the preparation, we nailed the patient.
[00:33:44] It was all of those things. And I couldn't be more proud of him and I couldn't be more proud to be a part of his journey, but he did that. I, that was the best part. Like we. Dude and he wasn't executed and it was rock solid. So when your athletes or your listeners are doing this please.
[00:33:58] Like when you do the preparation and it all comes together, it's just like the recipe and like making your mom's favorite meatloaf for apple pie or whatever. Hey, Thanksgiving's around the corner. You just like pumpkin pie or Turkey. Who's got the best stuff. It's a recipe and everything has to come in together and you got to find your recipe and it's super cool.
[00:34:15] When you can add someone that helps you. Add to your recipe. Whether that's a coach or a friend or a mentor, whatever. I'm biased towards coaching but there's lots of great ways to get knowledge transfer can be from YouTube, but something that helps you have that successful event and just helps you look at things differently because the critical elements of a bike ride are not always just, oh there's a climb.
[00:34:37] Maybe the critical element is actually when you eat maybe the critical element. Hey, I'm going to let this whole group ride away from me for one hour, because I'm going to set a heart rate ceiling at 145, and then I'm going to, unroll the carpet, so to speak and just get faster and negatively split this, right?
[00:34:54] There's so much of that.
[00:34:56] Craig Dalton: It's funny. I love that. You mentioned that sort of aesthetic road bias that maybe permeated a lot of the gravel scene in the early days. And it's so true. I think, lot of the earliest athletes were coming over and they had a suspicion. Visual of what a drop our bike would look like.
[00:35:11] And now with the influence of these long events and mountain bike technology, I think it's proven that being more open to things like hydration packs or bento boxes, you don't have to be there all the time. They're not necessarily there on every ride, but making sure that bike serves you in these alter endurance events is critical.
[00:35:31] Brian McCulloch: Oh, absolutely. Again, it's a tool and it's meant to be adapted to. Okay. And that's just so important. And again I think that in all things like whether it's a bike fit, whether it's shoes, whether it's anything, like people would just go, oh, I just got the gloves from the local bike shop.
[00:35:47] And I'm like why did you do that? Let's get the ones that fit you. You're like, oh, they're baggy. And they, it, and you're like, no, like this should be like, we start thinking about one thing. I want to make sure I bring up. Race day is your day to have your best. Like you talked about, I think you nail it so good.
[00:36:04] Craig, when you talk about game day, if we think about the culture of football or we think about the culture of hockey, or we think about the culture at any of these other things, even running like cross-country running, right? They wear their best shoes on race day. They have. Best stuff like everything is prying for race day.
[00:36:23] And so I want your listeners are athletes. I want them to be like race day. I want a little pep in your step. I want a little extra recovery in you. I want oh man, I get my favorite water bottles. I know that sounds silly. But you can get water bottles that like, they don't put out the flow that you want.
[00:36:39] Make it easy on yourself. All of these tools, you have access to incredible tools to help you be successful. Don't be like, Yeah.
[00:36:46] I wear my old socks that have a whole. Like, where are your best thoughts? And guess what, if you wear them out, go buy another one. I don't care. Like, where are your best sham?
[00:36:54] You know what I mean? This is not the day to be like, oh Yeah.
[00:36:56] I got that old to Shani butter. I'm not going to, I'm going to use it. Dude, crack open the new tube of Shandy butter and go, go for it. Make sure you have all the tools that are there to support you. And that they're the best tools it is.
[00:37:08] Game day, treat it like such and get after.
[00:37:12] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I've always felt doing those little things and making sure you feel great. Look great bikes. Ready to go. That it gives you like, for me, it seems like it gives me like 20% more capacity to suffer that day. If I've really put my game face.
[00:37:28] Brian McCulloch: Oh, Yeah, Oh yeah. And it should be the culmination of all of your preparation. It should be the culmination of the hard work you've done. This is where I think of it. Like how much time, money, and effort people invest in going to a big event. I'll give an example. Just last week I went to a mountain bike marathon, national championships, and it was in Maryland and I've never raced in Maryland before.
[00:37:53] And I'm really actually fairly new to mountain biking to be candid. I have one season of it. But. What happened was we flew out there early. We pre-rolled three or four days on the course and it made such a big difference. And then when I got into the race, I had some adversity, the guy dropped me, the leader dropped me. And it was in that moment that I was like, Hey, I've invested so much. I don't even care. I'm all in. If I blow up, who cares? And I went for it and guess what it worked out and I won. And it was great because I had invested all of this stuff.
[00:38:26] I had everything going in that direction and then I. Uber committed and the right moment, when you have that critical moment, you have to dig deep and find something special. And so when you've invested in that, and I hope your athletes and your listeners, when they're listening, don't be afraid to pay that full price, to pay the full measure of what you do and be like, yeah, I've invested all this.
[00:38:47] I've done all this. I've done this, I've done that. And it gets a little bit hard leaning into it, man, when you get in the pain cave, pull up a folding chair and hang. Get after it. You know what I mean? Who cares? Like you've come this far, you've made all of these sacrifices. You've dragged your family for California or New Mexico or Washington DC all the way out to Kansas.
[00:39:07] It's important, Kansas. Dude, get after it. Don't just be like, okay, I'm going to sit back and absorb it. And whatever, lean in, you can do it.
[00:39:15] Craig Dalton: Et cetera. One of my old coaches used to talk about putting things in the bank and whenever I would complain about a tough workout or whatever, he would just remind me, Hey, that's in the bank. And when it comes to game day, when you suffer in which you will suffer, think about this workout, think about how deep you dug and know you're capable of going there and even more on, on race.
[00:39:38] Brian McCulloch: Absolutely. I always think of it like this. You. When I look out at the pier, like if you're out on the beach and you look out, oh, there's this beautiful pier, it's the boardwalk, it's at Santa Cruz or whatever, that was a big thing. When I was growing up in Northern California, it was like, oh, let's increase beach boardwalk.
[00:39:55] That was still cool. But you look at the pillars that hold that up. And they have to withstand the abuse of the. And they stand rigid and they stand firm and they're just the waves beat on him, feed on them and feed on them and guess what they have to be replaced. Like that thing has to be replaced every number of years.
[00:40:12] I'm sure. I don't know what the number is, but they have to get replaced. Because the C's so powerful. The forces of nature are just incredible. If you're the seek help, what if you're the seek help? What is the. The sea kelp waves with the influx and with they out, it goes with it, and that's a very, like if your listeners are into books I, if you look at very Eastern philosophy, Chinese philosophy and you look at the towel to Chine, or you can look at the sun, SU the art of war, you can look at any of those things. And it's very much that kind of thing.
[00:40:42] And I think for athletes in gravel, you have to be able to do same thing. Like suffering is going to wash over you and you can either fight it and be like, oh, when you can be rigid and death grip and all this stuff, or you can be like the seek help and you can just be like, okay. And then my pain came for a little bit, this stinks, and I don't really want to be here, but I'm going to be here for 90 minutes on this crazy climb up crusher in the Tasha, but I want to finish.
[00:41:08] Got to do it, so I think w going between both, because there's a time to be rigid and be like, yes, I'm getting after it. And there's a time to be like I'm going to embrace the suck. Like it just is what it is. We just got to chop some wood here and just get out.
[00:41:20] Craig Dalton: Exactly. Exactly. This was a full of great information. One of the things I wanted to conclude with was you had made mention to me in our discussion back and forth just about celebrating properly. And I think your mentality as a coach, I just wanted you to speak to that a little bit.
[00:41:40] Brian McCulloch: Celebrating us so important. I'm working on something for our athletes right now, where we're going to do a, basically a coach led performance review and a and so it's performance review is going to be like, Hey, how did the year go? What went well, what didn't go well, and one of the things, if you look at we're going to bridge into goal setting for 22, and one thing, if you look at kind of goal setting 1 0 1 and all the books on that is you have to celebrate, and we live in this world that we're always like next. And you never come back to it and go, Hey I didn't celebrate. And so one thing you need to do is think about you need to treat yourself like a valued employee. Not like you're a tyrant, right? So you treat yourself like, Hey, I did really good.
[00:42:21] Craig, you have wonder you're a wonderful, successful businessman, right? And so like when you have valued employees that go above and beyond. You don't just be like, cool, here's your next project? You go, great job. That's fantastic. You know what? It's Friday go home at noon. We'll see you on Monday.
[00:42:38] And we'll plan from here. That's how you treat valued employees, right? You're like, Hey, that was really great. That's how you treat your kids, right? You're like great job. I'm so proud of you. We're going to pizza tonight, right? Like good effort. And we don't do that to ourselves. We don't do that to ourselves.
[00:42:55] We hold ourselves hostage sometimes and we're like, yeah, I could have done better. You know what I mean? Oh Yeah.
[00:42:59] I got eight at Belgium authorized Cedar city and got the hard man award. But you know what, I wasn't in the top three, so I'm not happy. Okay. Loser. That's not a cool way to talk to yourself.
[00:43:08] And that happened to me and my wife like slaps me and she's what are you doing? Try to have more fun. And I'm trying to talk talk, tell her your listeners and our athletes. I'm telling you that because I have not celebrated a lot of things. I always moved on to the next thing, because I was always something bigger and better.
[00:43:23] What I'm trying to tell you is that I want you to stay in the sport a long time and you're, I want you to seek mastery and to do that, we have to do the full range of emotions, right? Like you have to have those stressful moments. You have to overcome those stressful moments and then you have to celebrate all the things you did along your journey.
[00:43:38] Okay. And I'm not saying you give yourself a pat on the back. Finishing a forty-five minute trainer workout. You know what I mean? But I am saying when you sign up in October or November for Belgium waffle ride, Kansas, it's 10 months away. You've got to celebrate when you get to the end. And whether your celebration is having a beer with your buddies or giving your eating half of a of a carrot cake, it doesn't matter. That's not what. With what it is for each athlete, but I think celebrating is so important. And what I would also say to tell your athletes, and we talk about celebrate. Make this a family affair. Most of us are, have kids. Most of us have spouses. Most of us have busy lives and there's more people.
[00:44:24] So don't make this about what you accomplished, make it about what we accomplished. As a coach, I'm a part of your performance team. Okay. So I want. I didn't pedal the bike for you, but I'm really excited to play the role that I get to play. And I know joy is to my wife. She's really oh my gosh, like you just won a national championship.
[00:44:40] That's amazing. But so make it a part of, we, we did this together. When I tell you the, when you're setting goals, tell your friends, right? Tell your buddy Craig Hey, because of this podcast, I decided to sign up for this. And then not only did you sign this, sign up for it, you come back and you're like, I never thought I would do a sub nine Leadville.
[00:45:01] Oh my God, I got a big belt buckle. Or whatever your thing is, like I never thought I would do a sub nine hour builds, waffle ride, whatever
[00:45:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. I think
[00:45:10] Brian McCulloch: Celebrate that and tell people about it because that accountability is what makes us great. And I'm telling you, you are capable of more than you think So hold yourself accountable, put it out in the world, go after it work hard. And if you fall a little short, that doesn't mean you don't celebrate, still celebrate what you did accomplish and then move on and it's.
[00:45:30] Bree adjust, recalibrate reengage, set your sights higher and go for it.
[00:45:34] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think those are great words to end by Brian. Thank you for such an enthusiastic conversation. I hope for the list. Everybody's stoked and keep this conversation near ear, particularly those words about being able to do more than you think you can. Cause you, you all are capable of more than you think you are.
[00:45:50] Brian, thanks so much again for the time.
[00:45:53] Brian McCulloch: Oh, thank You so much, Craig. Thank you for the opportunity. And if anyone ever wants to check us out on big real coaching, please do. It's just my wife and I, and we have a lovely coach. She if there's ever anything we can do to help you, we would love to, but also please. Just get out there, get after it, have a great time.
[00:46:09] And let you know, come see us at the races. We're always at the races. We love seeing you. We want to hear about your celebrations and Craig, I want to hear about some of yours. So I'm going to put it on you. I want to hear about what your goals are. And then I want to hear about the process, your preparation, how the race day stuff goes, and then we can have another one of these conversations soon.
[00:46:25] Craig Dalton: You got it, Brian. Thanks.
[00:46:27] Brian McCulloch: Rock and roll brother.
[00:46:27] Craig Dalton: So that's going to do it for this week's podcast. Big thank you to Brian for joining us. I hope you got a lot out of our discussion and another big thanks to athletic greens for sponsoring this episode. If you're interested in joining our free global gravel cycling community, please visit the ridership.com.
[00:46:50] And if you're interested in supporting the podcast around. Please support me@buymeacoffee.com slash the gravel ride. And finally, if you have a moment rating re ratings and reviews are hugely important in the podcast business. I appreciate all your words and I read everything that comes through in terms of the reviews.
[00:47:11] And I have to say,
[00:47:14] and finally, if you have a moment, ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. They're very important in the podcast business. And I read everything you write. So I appreciate the effort and those kind reviews until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels.
This week we sit down with Brian McCulloch to discuss how to mentally prepare for big days on the gravel bike. Brian is a coach at Big Wheel Coaching, former BWR Champion and current Masters Category Marathon MTB National Champion. Beyond that, Brian is stoked guy we know!
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Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos):
Brian McCulloch
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the Gravel Ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton this week on the show. We've got Brian McCulloch. Brian's a coach, a father, a husband 2018 BWR champion and current marathon mountain bike nationals champion in the masters 35 to 39 category for the purposes of this conversation. I wanted to have Brian on the show because I've wanted to do a show about getting stoked for game day.
[00:00:31] Your training's behind you, but how do you approach the actual day of a big gravel event? I couldn't think of anybody better to talk to than Brian. I got to interact with Brian out at the envy, grow DEO in Utah this year. And I've not met someone with so much enthusiasm and knowledge and passion for the sport of cycling than Brian.
[00:00:52] Hopefully you'll walk away with this episode with some great tips on what kind of mentality you need to be successful in endurance, gravel race. Before we get started this week. I need to thank this week. Sponsor athletic greens, the health and wellness company that makes comprehensive daily nutrition.
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[00:03:54] With that important business behind us. Let's dive right in to this week's interview. Brian. Welcome to the show.
[00:04:01] Brian McCulloch: Oh, thank you, Craig. I'm really excited to be here. So a man.
[00:04:05] Craig Dalton: Yeah, let's do this. I was thinking for a while that I really wanted to do a show. That got people pumped for the moment they get to the start line. We've talked a lot on other episodes about nutrition and the idea of coaching, but there's something to be said for just getting the right mindset, getting everything into your rear view mirror, and being ready to do a big event, whether you're going for the win or just trying to finish and have fun.
[00:04:31] It's important to have the right mental mindset. And I couldn't think of someone better to come on and talk about that than.
[00:04:38] Brian McCulloch: Oh thank you, Craig. Thank you. I'm really excited about it. It's such a, I think it's such an overlooked topic. When we talk about obviously as a cycling coach, but also as an athlete, it's so easy to just look at all of the preparation and we look at all the time, money and effort, the blood, sweat, and tears that we put in to preparation, but then we often forget or neglect that race.
[00:05:00] Is everything. And it's not, it doesn't have to be a race. If you're not at the front of these gravel races, that doesn't mean it's anything different. It's your tour de France. And this is what my wife and I, we have a coaching business, big role coaching, and we always look at it like, Hey, what is your tour de France?
[00:05:14] Yeah, it can be the one ARIDE at BWR, Kansas, or it can be gravel worlds. It can be anything in between. Okay. So you don't have to be riding a long race or be at the front of it for you to actually spend some time plan out your pacing. Think about your nutrition, go over the course, look at all those things and know we're going to get into so much of that.
[00:05:32] But having your best race day performance is not always about what's the motor you brought to the start line. It's what about the check? What about the mindset, all of these other things. So I'm really excited to have this conversation.
[00:05:44] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Also true. And I always like to set the stage for the listener and just learn a little bit about your journey. Obviously like the notion of riding a gravel bike is something relatively new in the world of cycling, but how what's your journey as a cyclist? How did you come to be where you are to.
[00:06:02] Brian McCulloch: Oh, that's a great question. I I should tell everyone that I used to race motorcycles or motocross and Supercross professionally. And so that was I didn't know it at the time, but that was going to be like going to the dirt on gravel. And even now mountain biking, a little bit more is going to be like, to me, it feels like coming home.
[00:06:17] But yeah, when I was basically, when I went. 12 years old, I got a dirt bike and was like, oh my God, I want to be professional. And then I just poured myself into that. And long story short was my father was a big influencer there. And he was like, Hey man, as long as you get good grades, we'll take care of it.
[00:06:33] Like you're good to go. And anyway, somewhere along the way, I ended up stepping away from that and thinking I had this boy in my life where I. I didn't have any athletics in my life. It was about a year that I got out of motorcycle racing and I thought I'm washed up. Like I was never, I never achieved my goals, really et cetera, et cetera.
[00:06:51] And then someone reminded me that we used to.
[00:06:54] train on road bikes and mountain bikes for For motorcycle and racing. And so I was like, oh, okay, cool. I'll check that out. And I went on a group ride with some friends and in the area that I'm from or where I live now in the Redlands area here in Southern California, there was this really robust community of cyclists.
[00:07:13] And they went on this, they still do. They go on this Saturday group rides called rain cross. They've been doing it for 30 years on the same route. You know what I mean? So there's like all this heritage and I just became. Totally enthralled and met some really good people. All of them were, 35 to 40 when I was 25 and I was totally hooked.
[00:07:29] So got into the. Started racing almost Right.
[00:07:32] away. And then it was like, wow. It's like riding a bicycle is great because it's work in equals results out. So I just poured myself into it. Like I did when I was trying to be a professional motorcycle racer ended up getting my category one road up. Got a call from Paul Abrahams who was starting this team that would later develop into elevate Webby, Plex pro cycling.
[00:07:53] And I was the first person that signed for him. So I did 11 years racing pro on the road which I'm really humbled to. That's one of the longest careers in American cycling, which is pretty cool. There's definitely some people like Mike Friedman and Brad Huff and other people who've had really long careers as well. Those are good company. If anyone knows those guys there, they're pretty legendary and I'm by no means on their S their level. But anyway, in 2018 actually in 2017 funny story, how I came to gravel was I did we were supposed to go to the tour of the Heela that year and that coincided with 20 $17 and waffle ride.
[00:08:27] And I didn't make selection for that team. And at the time Paul Abraham's, my team director was like, Hey, bro, don't take it personal. We just have more we don't have a GC guy this year, so we don't need a domestic cause I was a domestique on the team and that's a really hard race it's for climbing.
[00:08:45] And I'm not a very good climate. So my team manager was like, don't take it personal dude. Like we're not going to take you to Hilo because we don't have a GC guy we're just going for stage wins. So we don't really need you right now. Like we're going to take our time. And I was like, I was so bummed, Craig.
[00:09:01] I was so bummed because like that's one of those events. If you're a road guy and you say, oh Yeah. I've done this many tours, ILA. Everyone's dude, you're gnarly. And so I didn't get to go. And I be honest, I had a chip on my shoulder cause I was like, oh, I'll show you, I'll show you. And I'd be willing to bet your listeners have a bit of that in them too.
[00:09:17] You know what I mean? They're like, oh, somebody said you can't climb that hill. We'll Washoe you. And so I literally, that was. Like reached out to the guys from Belgian waffle ride who run it and they were like, please come. And I ended up going down there. I ended up crashing and breaking my hand.
[00:09:31] But I finished the race and I ended up winning the KLM Jersey that year and that Belgian waffle ride. And I just, I like fell in love with it, man, because it was old school, dirt bike, grit, like dirt bike riding. You have to you're the dude that finishes like no one No one in my once you're out on course, it's just you, right?
[00:09:49] There's no mechanic. There's no none of this stuff. And so you have to have the grit and the determination to finish. And so when I crashed and broke my hand, I was like, I'm an 80 miles. What am I going to do? Call my wife. She doesn't care. She's you got out there, you get back. And so I'm not I'm a proud man. So I'm like, I'll finish. And I finished and kept passing people. And I think I got like top 10. Anyway. But. That brought me that made me fall in love with BWR and being able to have breakfast with everybody, go do this incredibly crazy ride and then get into go after and share all the experiences afterwards.
[00:10:22] So anyway, I came back in 2018 and I told the team I'm not going to heal it. I'm going to BWR. And anyway, I went to VWR in 2018 in San Diego, and I ended up winning at beating Ted king in a sprint. And that's a pretty cool story how that all came together. But then that got me. And we don't have that much gravel in dedicated gravel in California.
[00:10:41] It's not like the Midwest and back east, which just has such crazy robust swath of events that are so cruel. So when we go to do it, we have to travel a bit. But it's such a big part of my program right now. And I'm so thankful for it. It's such a great group of people. So I hope that's a long story, but that's kinda how I got into gravel.
[00:10:58] And I'm like, I want to be in it all the time.
[00:11:00] Craig Dalton: Yeah. As you were telling that story and talking about, your accomplishment of achieving an 11 year professional cycling career, I was thinking to myself Brian, you haven't exactly hung up your cleats just yet. Have you.
[00:11:11] Brian McCulloch: No, not at all. And somewhere along there your. The gravel ride podcast listeners. I'm sure you all know of Neil Shirley. Neil Shirley is absolutely legendary. Like I joked him cause a good buddy of mine, but I, we call them the, grab the prophet, right? Like he, he, so you gotta think of set the stage a little bit of history because history is important to me.
[00:11:30] Basically what happened was at the time. He, and I went on a bike ride one day and he was like, Hey, I got some news. I'm going to quit racing pro. And I was like, oh my God that's super exciting, but I'm like, how are you feeling? Anyway he was like, Yeah. I'm going to work for road bike action magazine.
[00:11:44] So he goes to road bike action magazine. As this event, as gravel is becoming a thing. Like at that time there were no gravel bikes. They were like rode bikes or it was just weird kind of time, right? Especially on the west coast, east coast had some more than what Midwest has more Frank and bike things going.
[00:12:01] Long story short is he goes there to road bike action. And he just is like on the nose cone of this rocket and starts riding up. He goes to Belgium waffle ride. I think he's one of three times. I can't remember. But anyway, he's a dear friend of mine. He was at my wedding. And so he was like, Hey dumb I should back up.
[00:12:17] He was my coach for 10 years as well. So all the time when I was racing road, he was my coach and he was like, dude, you have to come to a gravel ride. And so he had this, his own event called pedal Palooza one year and I went there on this rickety, old something or other with. Ghetto tubeless with duct tape for in strip and not even tubeless tires that I somehow got to seat and I got obliterated, but had a blast.
[00:12:40] But anyway, so the point is like this whole thing is so new. And so to come to it and have all of this Just incredible history behind it and then be able to then see like people that have this great history or like foundation of it, like Neal and then have their support and like to be now here now where it looks like.
[00:13:00] You could do a gravel ride every weekend. And they're just like some of the most epic adventures you can have on a bicycle is pretty incredible, man. So it was a, oh, I, the reason I brought this up was because he told me I should at some point be a coach. And I thought he was crazy. And here we are now I've worked for my wife.
[00:13:15] Who's our head coach. And we're coaching. Like we have a very successful coaching business. I'm very thankful for the athletes that we get to support along the way. So it's yeah, it's our world, man. We're just, we're pretty detailed.
[00:13:25] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I love hearing about that journey and excited to get into sort of some of the things we opened up with around. How do you approach what I call game day when you show up on that start line and, with gravel, as you've just been describing in your journey, like so many of these events have such a different profile and a lot of times.
[00:13:44] These athletes, myself included. It may be the first time we're visiting an area and we're doing a 100 mile event. Let's talk through, if in that scenario where you're going somewhere, you haven't been before, what are the things you can do from a research perspective, set aside the specific training advice for a second, but what would some of the research and prep you can do if you're going to do an Unbound for the first time or an SBT?
[00:14:09] Brian McCulloch: Oh, that's a great question, buddy. I think that research and preparation, excuse me. I think research and preparation. So key to what we do. And it's just, it's the absolute game changer because once you're on game day, once you're on the starting line, there's nothing else, but just grit, determination, and good nutrition and hydration.
[00:14:29] That's going to get you through the day, right? Like you got what you got, but leading up to. Th our destiny is in our hands. Okay. And save for the specific training and looking all that. But I think YouTube is a wonderful resource. And so is Strava. And I know a lot of your listeners, a lot of our listeners, they are always like, Hey, there, they're researching and delving into this trouble.
[00:14:47] So if you're going to do something like SBT, you can look at. The people that are doing well, what that course looks like, where are the Hills? Where are the aid stations? Where are you going to stop all these other things that are really important? Because here's, I'll give you an example, Craig. If you were to go to an event that said had 7,000 feet of climbing, and it was a hundred miles, that sounds like a pretty hard ride. But what if that 7,000 feet is in the first half of the bike race, right? So think about something like crusher. Like you have an hour and a half Kline. That's it like you just go uphill and you don't stop. Like you just keep going up.
[00:15:24] That's a very different look, especially if you're from the Midwest and you're training for something like that. That's a very different way to get 7,000 feet. Then if you were to say, go to Unbound right at, on mound it's death by 1,019. Right or pinpricks. But what you don't realize is each of those little things has a 14% kick at the top.
[00:15:43] So you're like, oh it's not that big of a deal. It's only a three-minute climb. When you go try and sprint 300 times up a 200 mile, oh, I'm only going to do the hundred and Unbound doesn't matter. You're going to go up a hundred little, three minute climbs triangle sprint for a hundred times for three minutes.
[00:15:59] It's very turns out it's very difficult. So I think it's really important to recognize. What I call the critical factors are the critical elements the critical moments of an event. Okay. So what are those critical moments like? Oh, okay. I've got an hour and a half climb. There you go. Or, Hey, I have a hundred of these really challenging areas or, oh, Hey, there's this single track section say you're going to go to BWR Cedar city, right?
[00:16:23] That final format. Single-track called the tollway is Uber brutal and you have to build a bike around that final four miles, much more than you have to build a bike for the first 120. You see what I'm saying? Totally different because those rocks are super sharp. They're super brutal. So you could be lulled into the idea that, Hey, wait a second.
[00:16:45] My race performance is best done on a semi road bike with some facts. And then you get to that section and then you're walking four miles. You want to not have fun on the day walk four miles. That's no fun. So that's what I would say is. It really helpful is do your research, look at Strava, look at YouTube watch videos of things.
[00:17:05] And that's why I did before Belgium waffle ride, I did a race series. We called it slang the sector. So if any of your athletes or listeners want to check it out, we did a sleigh the sector series on basically some of the most difficult and challenging. Pieces of Belgian waffle ride San Diego. And my hope was that people would watch it and go, Hey, that's action.
[00:17:24] I got it. That's action. Okay. Wait, that's a little outside of my wheelhouse, so they know. Okay. At mile 67, this thing's a little outside, my wheelhouse, slow down, get through it and then press on after that. So I think a lot of that stuff, it can be super, super helpful. We have a lot of great resources that we just didn't have 10 years ago.
[00:17:41] Craig Dalton: Yeah.
[00:17:41] that was a great series. I think at the basic level, when you sign up for an event, you start, you'd look at the course profile and start to understand, is this similar to what I ride at home? Can I simulate some of these efforts? Can I find an hour and a half climb, like crusher in the title?
[00:17:56] Certainly many people can't but understanding how you can simulate it to the best of your possibilities in your home territory is critical. And then as you said, that next level of, Hey, if there is course beta out there, it's amazing to just get eyeballs on it, to say oh crap, I've never written through rocks like that.
[00:18:14] I really need to at least be mentally prepared for it. If I can't physically prepare for it in my local.
[00:18:21] Brian McCulloch: Oh, absolutely. And even with a trainer now you can do so much. Okay. And by the way, I'm not a massive fan of doing all your workouts on trainers. Like I, I think being outside in the real world is absolutely the thing to do. That's why we love. But I, again, we have folks that just, they have busy lives. If you listening have busy lives and you're on the train, especially going into winter.
[00:18:44] And you're going to be on the trainer four or five days a week. There's guys that I coach in the Midwest right now that they're getting ready to be like, oh Yeah.
[00:18:51] I'm not going to go outside for two months straight. If that's your jam, Use your trainer and simulate this stuff. You can go up the outdoors with, you can do any of these things, right?
[00:19:00] You can use Ruby. You don't have to be a slave to swift. You can use Ruby, you can do a lot of these other things that can help you achieve that. Like old school was, I met a woman when I was very early in my bike riding career who literally trained for an iron man. 100% inside. She had just had a child.
[00:19:18] She did all for running on a trip. She did all of her swimming at the local pool. And it was an open water swim that she did. And she did all of her riding on her trainer. She literally did not go outside, get a full distance iron man all off of it. And this was 10. It's probably 15 years ago.
[00:19:32] No, it's gotta be longer than that. It's probably almost 20 years ago now. Gosh, I'm old, but. That was back then. We didn't have smart trainers. She was just staring at the wall for five-hour trainer guys. Like folks, it can be done if you are determined and you have fire in your belly and you are really committed to being prepared for this event, there's a lot of tools you have to get through it.
[00:19:49] And and believe that. You are mentally stronger than you think you are physically stronger than you think you are capable of so much. And that's something I love as a coach is helping tease that out of people because you put them in the environment and they have to rise to the occasion, right? So I'm not saying don't set yourself up for success and, or show up unprepared.
[00:20:10] That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is let's set goals that really challenge you and stretch you so that you can achieve. These great things, because once you're there, you've got nothing it's sink or swim. And if you're like me and I know you listeners are like me, because I'm an athlete and a coach, you're like, I didn't come this far to sink.
[00:20:27] Like I got no other option than to swim and you can do it. So to some degree, we work really well in that environment too, where it's I sink or swim. I have no option. Because I'm not going to sink. I'm not going to quit, but I'm going to keep moving.
[00:20:39] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think it's so critical in these ultra endurance kind of style gravel events that you have that grit and determination that you mentioned earlier, because the truth is for anybody who hasn't done a big event or a massive long ride, something will go wrong. Period. It's highly unlikely. And if you track the first men and women or last everybody's on a journey, and it's the people who understand that.
[00:21:04] Flat tires are going to happen. Mechanical is going to happen. Hell you, you can have big hiccups in your hydration and nutrition plan as well, but it's your ability to push through those adapt recover, make adjustments. That's going to be a telltale sign of success.
[00:21:20] Brian McCulloch: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Something that I think is really a good. Metaphor here. So if you think of like special forces, right? There's obviously been a lot in the news over the last number of years about Navy seals and other, Rangers, Delta force, these kinds of, they train them to be extremely self-sufficient.
[00:21:38] And I think that is something that's so powerful for us as athletes to think we are much more like them than we are say like a V like a Marine infantry unit or something like that. And so they are, thanks for everyone who's listening. Who served? You guys are wonderful. Guys and gals, of course.
[00:21:54] But when I look at this. Who we are as athletes, we have to be generalists. It's not like you're on the NFL defensive line and you don't care about catching a past. Cause all you're trying to do is stop the refrigerator in front of you from coming through you, right? That's what you do.
[00:22:09] If you're on the offensive line, it's a very specific task and requires a very specific training. For that, if you're going to go do SBT, if you're going to go to a BWR, you have to be able to do it all. You there's no time out if on the client, right? There's no time out on the downhill. You have to be able to ride that bike and the technical stuff.
[00:22:29] If you get a flat tire, you have to change it. Especially if you're going to do something, self-supported say Unbound, right? There's no support. So if you don't know how to use that Dyna plug that you. Uh, problem. You have to be able to do all these things. So again, one thing that I would say is so important for your listeners and for everyone listening to just get a grip on is everyone has good moments and everyone has bad moments and here's the thing, neither of them will last.
[00:22:55] So when you're a ride in the high and you're like, man, I feel really. I don't, it's not going to last you're going to go through a bad moment. But then also correspondingly, you would be like, oh, Hey, I feel really awful. And my quad is cramping or my feet are numb, whatever that will end to it might end at the finish line, by the way, it might it might be bad all the way to the finish line, but it will end up promise you.
[00:23:16] And so that just should bring you some sort of just comfort and recognize that like you're in control of this. And one thing that I would say. For our listeners and everyone who's just okay. Some of how do you eat an elephant? You look at SBT or you look at, all these massive events.
[00:23:32] How do you accomplish that? It's so massive range. Just say one bite at a time. That's how you eat an elephant. And so one thing I would say is let's keep it simple and recognize some of this just boils down to the first rule of endurance events, whether you're a runner, whether you're psychos, whether you're mountain biker, graveled person, whatever, it doesn't matter.
[00:23:50] You don't have to move fast, but you do have to keep moving. So sometimes slowing down is better because what we're trying to do is get through the end of the race. So if you're in a bad moment, the default should not be, Hey, I just plow through and just hope it ends. Cause you could make it worse.
[00:24:07] You really could make it worse, but you certainly should like, just keep moving. If you. You just have to keep moving. That's so important for our athletes is just recognizing that movement even slow is still forward. Progress. Baby steps still make it.
[00:24:22] Craig Dalton: Absolutely. So we talked about prepping and understanding the course that you're going into, obviously making sure that your gear is performing well, you're not coming on old tires or something that's going to unnecessarily cause you trouble. You've got to have your repair kit built out.
[00:24:38] If you get a flat, where your Dyna plug is, you can pop it in there. Hopefully you can recover quickly. And to the last point of our conversation, just be mentally aware that these things are gonna happen. So don't stress. Like it's going to happen to 20% of the people in the event. So just move through it, keep a positive attitude and always keep moving through.
[00:24:58] When you're looking, I did want to touch on planning from a nutrition and hydration perspective, just at a general level. When you look at a course, maybe like crushing the Tasha or something that has a very pronounced climbing feature, that's going to be a huge chunk of time. How are you thinking about nutrition and hydration and making sure you're staying on top of.
[00:25:20] Brian McCulloch: love to look at the course profile. And this is just some of my stuff that I share with our athletes is I don't like people to stop at the bottom of the. Okay. Old school back before there were gravel events, we had all these, centuries and grand fondos before they read the grand fondos they were 200 mile rides or whatever.
[00:25:39] And notorious, like it would always be that there would be at the bottom of the climb would be like, Hey, we have chocolate covered bacon and everyone would be like brilliant pulling over. And then they be trying to start the climb basically fully loaded and with a gut bomb. Okay. I think obviously when we're talking about, say crusher and Tuscher, you're going to have to stop at some point, if at all, possible, try to make your stops plan your stops so that you're stopping at the top of climbs.
[00:26:06] Okay. I think that's the best thing to do stopping at the bottom. Client of climbs kills your momentum. Okay. I like to build a plan. Based on building and maintaining momentum. Okay. Because gravel riding as a whole and even bicycle riding as a whole is essentially boils down to building momentum, maintaining momentum, and then when you lose it, repeat, okay.
[00:26:29] So there's features all along the way, whether they're Hills, whether they're rocks, whether it's single track that loses your momentum. And so part of that mental. Fortitude is being like, oh, okay. I got into the single track and I went really slow. Cause I don't really feel that comfortable and it drops on my bike.
[00:26:46] So I just went really slow. I come out of it. Now I've got a road section I'm going to build momentum again, go through. So again, if we're going to talk about. As much as you can try and start at the top, if we're going to, or excuse me, stop at the top. Or just don't stop at the bottom. It's probably the best thing to take from our conversation.
[00:27:04] And the other thing that I would say is based on the amount of climbing, you might have to re adjust or rethink what your nutrition strategy is. Why do I say that? Okay. So back in 2017, I did the tour of Utah for the first time. And. Once I got into breakaway on stage one and I was in the breakaway for about four and a half hours.
[00:27:23] But, so we're going super hard for four and a half hours. And it started with a 90 minute climb, straight up, straight out of the gate. Okay. And the breakaway went about 45 minutes into it. So I still have 45 minutes climbing, at threshold you can't eat solid. Okay. So I'm not telling you that as a coach and saying, Hey, I read this data where you can't eat solid foods.
[00:27:42] I'm telling you that. Cause like I've had my heart in my throat for an hour and a half, and then you're like, okay. Like the only thing I can do is have liquid options. Okay. And there's lots of great companies that are coming out with liquid option or semi-solid right. Whether that's a gel or something like that.
[00:27:58] So I don't have an ax to grind and with any particular nutrition company, cause there's lots of great ones out there, but what I would say. If you're going to be on a long climb, if you're going to be on sustained climbing please consider getting your nutrition from liquid sources, because that allows you to work harder on the climb.
[00:28:16] If you then have some solid food, say at the bottom, even if it's solid food, you packed and you're, Hey, Brian, I kept moving, but then you ate 250 300 calories in solid food because you brought an Uncrustable or you made a an energy bar or something. That is going to take away from your ability to ascend the mountain at a rapid pace.
[00:28:35] Okay. And I'm not saying you've got to go bananas on the climb, but you don't want to do anything that pro that makes it worse. So as much as you can, if you look at the clients and their sustained climbs, you're probably going to want to opt for that period only of your bike. You're going to have to think I'm want more liquid sources of energy.
[00:28:53] Okay. So then we come to oh, there's a downhill. That might be the time when you supplement with solids. So it's not as easy as the old school. Craig, when you got into it, it's Hey, every hour drink a water bottle, Hey, every hour eat 250 calories. So it's people would set timers on their garments or their walkthroughs.
[00:29:09] And an hour, I just, crammed back a cliff bar. That's not how we do it anymore. Or, we're very specific with our nutrition. And not just the kind of nutrition, but it's the style of nutrition. Okay. So it's I have liquid sources for this portion of the race I have, and those could be gels, or those could be semi sellers, like a product that I really is infinite tripwire we used to be sponsored by them years ago on the road race team.
[00:29:31] And I just buy retail. Like I just buy from my local shop. Cause it works good. But anyway try some stuff like that allows you to. Maintain a high output without upsetting your stomach.
[00:29:40] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I think when you look at those course profiles, not only is it climbing and descending, but oftentimes it's technical terrain where you can't pull your hand off the bar. So having an understanding of, when you're unlikely to be able to hydrate are unlikely to be able. And making sure you're not dropping behind the eight ball during those periods, I think is one of those things that you need to learn as a gravel athlete.
[00:30:02] And, in some cases it may, you might have to do the unthinkable and wear a hydration pack on your back. I know aesthetically, some people don't like that, but it's very practical in certain situations. And I will tell you that, if you're in rough terrain and you've got that tube available to you, you do have the opportunity to be hydrated.
[00:30:18] Versus if you're trying to grab that.
[00:30:21] Brian McCulloch: Spot on buddy. Spot on. I'm going to tell you a real an anecdotal story here. I there's a gentleman that I've coached for about four years and he does Leadville every year. Okay. So same genre of what we're doing, right? Uber. Kind of event. And even though Leadville is not known as the most technical course, it's still very challenging, very bumpy.
[00:30:39] So it makes it very difficult to get into your pockets this year. I, he and I went back and forth, cause again, aesthetically you're like, I don't want to pack and I am much more I don't care. I just want pre. I'll put it, I'll put a bento box on the front of my bike. I'll wear cargo shorts.
[00:30:53] I don't really care. You know what I mean? I'll put the bag on the front. What matters is ease of use. Okay. Because again, I look at the bicycle and I hope your athletes or your listeners will look at that.
[00:31:04] Start to look at their bicycle, like a tool that's meant to serve us. I don't adapt my body to a bicycle, the bicycle adapts to me.
[00:31:11] Okay. I make all of this to help me. The pilot. I am. You listening, you are the pilot, you're the race car driver. You're the fighter plane. You know what I mean? You're the fighter pilot. Okay. That should be an extension of you. It's not that you just ride this thing, you know what I'm saying? And so when we talk about that stuff, I generally don't like to put weight on my back.
[00:31:33] Okay. But in this case, we talked about it with my athlete and he was. Dude, it just makes sense. I just have to do it. I just have to move beyond it. And it made an incredible difference on what he's doing because gravel like mountain, it's very difficult to reach into your pockets again. So you've got to think essentially on the timeline of ground. Many people were already on drop bar. They were roadies that didn't want to get mountain bikes. And so now we started venturing we're roadie centric, and now we start getting more and more capable road bikes to now basically they're like drop our mountain bikes. And so you have this roadie aspect of the code.
[00:32:10] That's Hey, I want nothing in my pockets. I want my bike to look super sleek, all that's cool. But the reality is when you're doing a hundred mile ride or you're doing 140 mile ride, or even a 60 mile ride, you may not be able to take your hands off of the bars. Okay. So minimizing movements is really important. So one thing we talked about with my athlete was like, Hey, how much can you drink during this eight hour shift? And it was like if I have to take my, if I have to use bottles, it's very difficult. And you start self rationing, those things. So you're immediately dehydrating already.
[00:32:45] You're behind the eight ball. So once we put the hydration pack on, yes, there was a penalty for weight. You know what I mean? Was it frustrating? Yeah. Did it hold a little bit of heat on him? Yeah.
[00:32:54] But he's doing Lego. Like it's not that big of a deal. But the trade-off was here. He is I want to say it's like 15.
[00:33:01] 51 or 52, like he's very early fifties. Okay. And his best, he did Leadville for the first time, I think 10 years ago. Okay. So totally different athlete. If you're 40 and you're doing Leadville and you're 50 doing level and this man came from Ironman. So he was very fit when he was 40. We obliterated his time, his very best time from 10 years earlier when he's 50 with a past.
[00:33:24] And so when your listeners are like, man, I'm not going to wear a pack. It's just going to slow me down. I want to share with you 10 years older, this man went 45 plus minutes faster.
[00:33:36] Craig Dalton: Amazing.
[00:33:37] Brian McCulloch: minutes. And again, it was because we nailed the hydration. We nailed the nutrition, we nailed the preparation, we nailed the patient.
[00:33:44] It was all of those things. And I couldn't be more proud of him and I couldn't be more proud to be a part of his journey, but he did that. I, that was the best part. Like we. Dude and he wasn't executed and it was rock solid. So when your athletes or your listeners are doing this please.
[00:33:58] Like when you do the preparation and it all comes together, it's just like the recipe and like making your mom's favorite meatloaf for apple pie or whatever. Hey, Thanksgiving's around the corner. You just like pumpkin pie or Turkey. Who's got the best stuff. It's a recipe and everything has to come in together and you got to find your recipe and it's super cool.
[00:34:15] When you can add someone that helps you. Add to your recipe. Whether that's a coach or a friend or a mentor, whatever. I'm biased towards coaching but there's lots of great ways to get knowledge transfer can be from YouTube, but something that helps you have that successful event and just helps you look at things differently because the critical elements of a bike ride are not always just, oh there's a climb.
[00:34:37] Maybe the critical element is actually when you eat maybe the critical element. Hey, I'm going to let this whole group ride away from me for one hour, because I'm going to set a heart rate ceiling at 145, and then I'm going to, unroll the carpet, so to speak and just get faster and negatively split this, right?
[00:34:54] There's so much of that.
[00:34:56] Craig Dalton: It's funny. I love that. You mentioned that sort of aesthetic road bias that maybe permeated a lot of the gravel scene in the early days. And it's so true. I think, lot of the earliest athletes were coming over and they had a suspicion. Visual of what a drop our bike would look like.
[00:35:11] And now with the influence of these long events and mountain bike technology, I think it's proven that being more open to things like hydration packs or bento boxes, you don't have to be there all the time. They're not necessarily there on every ride, but making sure that bike serves you in these alter endurance events is critical.
[00:35:31] Brian McCulloch: Oh, absolutely. Again, it's a tool and it's meant to be adapted to. Okay. And that's just so important. And again I think that in all things like whether it's a bike fit, whether it's shoes, whether it's anything, like people would just go, oh, I just got the gloves from the local bike shop.
[00:35:47] And I'm like why did you do that? Let's get the ones that fit you. You're like, oh, they're baggy. And they, it, and you're like, no, like this should be like, we start thinking about one thing. I want to make sure I bring up. Race day is your day to have your best. Like you talked about, I think you nail it so good.
[00:36:04] Craig, when you talk about game day, if we think about the culture of football or we think about the culture of hockey, or we think about the culture at any of these other things, even running like cross-country running, right? They wear their best shoes on race day. They have. Best stuff like everything is prying for race day.
[00:36:23] And so I want your listeners are athletes. I want them to be like race day. I want a little pep in your step. I want a little extra recovery in you. I want oh man, I get my favorite water bottles. I know that sounds silly. But you can get water bottles that like, they don't put out the flow that you want.
[00:36:39] Make it easy on yourself. All of these tools, you have access to incredible tools to help you be successful. Don't be like, Yeah.
[00:36:46] I wear my old socks that have a whole. Like, where are your best thoughts? And guess what, if you wear them out, go buy another one. I don't care. Like, where are your best sham?
[00:36:54] You know what I mean? This is not the day to be like, oh Yeah.
[00:36:56] I got that old to Shani butter. I'm not going to, I'm going to use it. Dude, crack open the new tube of Shandy butter and go, go for it. Make sure you have all the tools that are there to support you. And that they're the best tools it is.
[00:37:08] Game day, treat it like such and get after.
[00:37:12] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I've always felt doing those little things and making sure you feel great. Look great bikes. Ready to go. That it gives you like, for me, it seems like it gives me like 20% more capacity to suffer that day. If I've really put my game face.
[00:37:28] Brian McCulloch: Oh, Yeah, Oh yeah. And it should be the culmination of all of your preparation. It should be the culmination of the hard work you've done. This is where I think of it. Like how much time, money, and effort people invest in going to a big event. I'll give an example. Just last week I went to a mountain bike marathon, national championships, and it was in Maryland and I've never raced in Maryland before.
[00:37:53] And I'm really actually fairly new to mountain biking to be candid. I have one season of it. But. What happened was we flew out there early. We pre-rolled three or four days on the course and it made such a big difference. And then when I got into the race, I had some adversity, the guy dropped me, the leader dropped me. And it was in that moment that I was like, Hey, I've invested so much. I don't even care. I'm all in. If I blow up, who cares? And I went for it and guess what it worked out and I won. And it was great because I had invested all of this stuff.
[00:38:26] I had everything going in that direction and then I. Uber committed and the right moment, when you have that critical moment, you have to dig deep and find something special. And so when you've invested in that, and I hope your athletes and your listeners, when they're listening, don't be afraid to pay that full price, to pay the full measure of what you do and be like, yeah, I've invested all this.
[00:38:47] I've done all this. I've done this, I've done that. And it gets a little bit hard leaning into it, man, when you get in the pain cave, pull up a folding chair and hang. Get after it. You know what I mean? Who cares? Like you've come this far, you've made all of these sacrifices. You've dragged your family for California or New Mexico or Washington DC all the way out to Kansas.
[00:39:07] It's important, Kansas. Dude, get after it. Don't just be like, okay, I'm going to sit back and absorb it. And whatever, lean in, you can do it.
[00:39:15] Craig Dalton: Et cetera. One of my old coaches used to talk about putting things in the bank and whenever I would complain about a tough workout or whatever, he would just remind me, Hey, that's in the bank. And when it comes to game day, when you suffer in which you will suffer, think about this workout, think about how deep you dug and know you're capable of going there and even more on, on race.
[00:39:38] Brian McCulloch: Absolutely. I always think of it like this. You. When I look out at the pier, like if you're out on the beach and you look out, oh, there's this beautiful pier, it's the boardwalk, it's at Santa Cruz or whatever, that was a big thing. When I was growing up in Northern California, it was like, oh, let's increase beach boardwalk.
[00:39:55] That was still cool. But you look at the pillars that hold that up. And they have to withstand the abuse of the. And they stand rigid and they stand firm and they're just the waves beat on him, feed on them and feed on them and guess what they have to be replaced. Like that thing has to be replaced every number of years.
[00:40:12] I'm sure. I don't know what the number is, but they have to get replaced. Because the C's so powerful. The forces of nature are just incredible. If you're the seek help, what if you're the seek help? What is the. The sea kelp waves with the influx and with they out, it goes with it, and that's a very, like if your listeners are into books I, if you look at very Eastern philosophy, Chinese philosophy and you look at the towel to Chine, or you can look at the sun, SU the art of war, you can look at any of those things. And it's very much that kind of thing.
[00:40:42] And I think for athletes in gravel, you have to be able to do same thing. Like suffering is going to wash over you and you can either fight it and be like, oh, when you can be rigid and death grip and all this stuff, or you can be like the seek help and you can just be like, okay. And then my pain came for a little bit, this stinks, and I don't really want to be here, but I'm going to be here for 90 minutes on this crazy climb up crusher in the Tasha, but I want to finish.
[00:41:08] Got to do it, so I think w going between both, because there's a time to be rigid and be like, yes, I'm getting after it. And there's a time to be like I'm going to embrace the suck. Like it just is what it is. We just got to chop some wood here and just get out.
[00:41:20] Craig Dalton: Exactly. Exactly. This was a full of great information. One of the things I wanted to conclude with was you had made mention to me in our discussion back and forth just about celebrating properly. And I think your mentality as a coach, I just wanted you to speak to that a little bit.
[00:41:40] Brian McCulloch: Celebrating us so important. I'm working on something for our athletes right now, where we're going to do a, basically a coach led performance review and a and so it's performance review is going to be like, Hey, how did the year go? What went well, what didn't go well, and one of the things, if you look at we're going to bridge into goal setting for 22, and one thing, if you look at kind of goal setting 1 0 1 and all the books on that is you have to celebrate, and we live in this world that we're always like next. And you never come back to it and go, Hey I didn't celebrate. And so one thing you need to do is think about you need to treat yourself like a valued employee. Not like you're a tyrant, right? So you treat yourself like, Hey, I did really good.
[00:42:21] Craig, you have wonder you're a wonderful, successful businessman, right? And so like when you have valued employees that go above and beyond. You don't just be like, cool, here's your next project? You go, great job. That's fantastic. You know what? It's Friday go home at noon. We'll see you on Monday.
[00:42:38] And we'll plan from here. That's how you treat valued employees, right? You're like, Hey, that was really great. That's how you treat your kids, right? You're like great job. I'm so proud of you. We're going to pizza tonight, right? Like good effort. And we don't do that to ourselves. We don't do that to ourselves.
[00:42:55] We hold ourselves hostage sometimes and we're like, yeah, I could have done better. You know what I mean? Oh Yeah.
[00:42:59] I got eight at Belgium authorized Cedar city and got the hard man award. But you know what, I wasn't in the top three, so I'm not happy. Okay. Loser. That's not a cool way to talk to yourself.
[00:43:08] And that happened to me and my wife like slaps me and she's what are you doing? Try to have more fun. And I'm trying to talk talk, tell her your listeners and our athletes. I'm telling you that because I have not celebrated a lot of things. I always moved on to the next thing, because I was always something bigger and better.
[00:43:23] What I'm trying to tell you is that I want you to stay in the sport a long time and you're, I want you to seek mastery and to do that, we have to do the full range of emotions, right? Like you have to have those stressful moments. You have to overcome those stressful moments and then you have to celebrate all the things you did along your journey.
[00:43:38] Okay. And I'm not saying you give yourself a pat on the back. Finishing a forty-five minute trainer workout. You know what I mean? But I am saying when you sign up in October or November for Belgium waffle ride, Kansas, it's 10 months away. You've got to celebrate when you get to the end. And whether your celebration is having a beer with your buddies or giving your eating half of a of a carrot cake, it doesn't matter. That's not what. With what it is for each athlete, but I think celebrating is so important. And what I would also say to tell your athletes, and we talk about celebrate. Make this a family affair. Most of us are, have kids. Most of us have spouses. Most of us have busy lives and there's more people.
[00:44:24] So don't make this about what you accomplished, make it about what we accomplished. As a coach, I'm a part of your performance team. Okay. So I want. I didn't pedal the bike for you, but I'm really excited to play the role that I get to play. And I know joy is to my wife. She's really oh my gosh, like you just won a national championship.
[00:44:40] That's amazing. But so make it a part of, we, we did this together. When I tell you the, when you're setting goals, tell your friends, right? Tell your buddy Craig Hey, because of this podcast, I decided to sign up for this. And then not only did you sign this, sign up for it, you come back and you're like, I never thought I would do a sub nine Leadville.
[00:45:01] Oh my God, I got a big belt buckle. Or whatever your thing is, like I never thought I would do a sub nine hour builds, waffle ride, whatever
[00:45:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. I think
[00:45:10] Brian McCulloch: Celebrate that and tell people about it because that accountability is what makes us great. And I'm telling you, you are capable of more than you think So hold yourself accountable, put it out in the world, go after it work hard. And if you fall a little short, that doesn't mean you don't celebrate, still celebrate what you did accomplish and then move on and it's.
[00:45:30] Bree adjust, recalibrate reengage, set your sights higher and go for it.
[00:45:34] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think those are great words to end by Brian. Thank you for such an enthusiastic conversation. I hope for the list. Everybody's stoked and keep this conversation near ear, particularly those words about being able to do more than you think you can. Cause you, you all are capable of more than you think you are.
[00:45:50] Brian, thanks so much again for the time.
[00:45:53] Brian McCulloch: Oh, thank You so much, Craig. Thank you for the opportunity. And if anyone ever wants to check us out on big real coaching, please do. It's just my wife and I, and we have a lovely coach. She if there's ever anything we can do to help you, we would love to, but also please. Just get out there, get after it, have a great time.
[00:46:09] And let you know, come see us at the races. We're always at the races. We love seeing you. We want to hear about your celebrations and Craig, I want to hear about some of yours. So I'm going to put it on you. I want to hear about what your goals are. And then I want to hear about the process, your preparation, how the race day stuff goes, and then we can have another one of these conversations soon.
[00:46:25] Craig Dalton: You got it, Brian. Thanks.
[00:46:27] Brian McCulloch: Rock and roll brother.
[00:46:27] Craig Dalton: So that's going to do it for this week's podcast. Big thank you to Brian for joining us. I hope you got a lot out of our discussion and another big thanks to athletic greens for sponsoring this episode. If you're interested in joining our free global gravel cycling community, please visit the ridership.com.
[00:46:50] And if you're interested in supporting the podcast around. Please support me@buymeacoffee.com slash the gravel ride. And finally, if you have a moment rating re ratings and reviews are hugely important in the podcast business. I appreciate all your words and I read everything that comes through in terms of the reviews.
[00:47:11] And I have to say,
[00:47:14] and finally, if you have a moment, ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. They're very important in the podcast business. And I read everything you write. So I appreciate the effort and those kind reviews until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels.
In this week's In the Dirt, Randall and Craig take a look at gravel handlebar trends, new bags from Post Carry Co, Craig's new strength training with EverAthlete, a new Bay Area bikepacking route and tease an ongoing discussion of social media and cycling in The Ridership.
Bay Area Triple Bypass Route
Post Carry Bags
Whisky Spano Bar
Join The Ridership
Automated transcription, please excuse the typos and errors:
Untitled
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. I'll be joined shortly by my co-host randall jacobs for another episode of in the dirt .
[00:00:12] This episode is brought to you by our friends at thesis bike. Yes. That indeed is Randall's company thesis. Randall donates his time to the gravel ride podcast in the dirt series, out of an abundance of passion for the sport. But he also runs a company called thesis, as you know, is the maker of the OB one bicycle.
[00:00:33] That is actually the bicycle that I ride. If you follow me on social media, you may see my custom painted pink. Thesis, OB one. I affectionately refer to as Mr. Pinky. Anyway, I wanted to give you an update. Thesis has some bikes back in stock.
[00:00:50] As I mentioned a few weeks ago, they've got some of those SRAM rival access grupos in stock. So they've got bikes ready to go, but more importantly, they've just, re-introduced their bring a friend referral program. That'll get you $500 off an OB one. When you purchase a bike with a friend. Or if you have a friend that has a thesis.
[00:01:13] You can hit them up for a $500 discount. So coordinate with the team over a thesis. If you have any questions, you can email them@helloatthesis.bike.
[00:01:23] Or check them out online@thesis.bike, they offer free one-on-one consultations, which is a great way to see if a thesis. It will be. One is the right bike for you.
[00:01:33] With that said, let me grab Randall and let's jump into in the dirt.
[00:01:37] Craig: Hey Randall, how you doing today?
[00:01:39] Randall: I'm doing well, Craig, how are you? My friend.
[00:01:42] Craig: I'm good. I literally just got done recording the pre-roll.
[00:01:47] Talking about.
[00:01:47] thesis, your company's new refer a friend program, which I thought was cool.
[00:01:52] Let I let the listeners know about that, and I appreciate your efforts as a cohost of in the dirt, but separately, when you wear your thesis bike company, hat. I do appreciate the time to time financial support you provide the podcast. Because it really is the type of thing that keeps the balls rolling around here.
[00:02:10] Randall: For sure. Yeah. In our bring your friend program is actually something we did before and had to pull when supply chains went sideways. And now that we have bikes in stock, we'd much rather reward the community rather than. You know, paying Bookface or some ad network to, to reach people. So it's nice to be able to reward those who help spread the word. And then obviously, you know, with what you do, it's been very aligned from the beginning. So thanks for the opportunity to work with you.
[00:02:35] Craig: Yeah.
[00:02:35] absolutely appreciate it. Yeah. It's so ridiculous that there was like 15 months or more in there where bike companies just didn't bother advertising or promoting themselves because it was so ridiculously hard product into consumer's hands.
[00:02:50] Randall: Yeah, there's really no point in trying to sell something you don't have. And don't don't know when you'll have it again. That seems to be. That seems to be a phenomenon that's going to continue well into the future for awhile. From what
[00:03:03] Craig: Yeah. I mean, not to bring sort of macroeconomic trends in here, but I was just, just listening to someone talk about how in Apple's earnings call. There is some suggestion that. Supply chains are improving. They have not improved entirely, but that they are. Improving and that in the grand scheme of things, this will be a temporary blip, but temporary could mean two years.
[00:03:26] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. In their case, they're dealing with chips too, which I'm getting a new chip Foundry online is a multi-year $10 billion project. So fortunately we don't have that in the bike industry. We're pretty, pretty low on the technology front, even with our. Wireless shifting, which, how did that take so long to come come about?
[00:03:46] Craig: How are you doing otherwise? Is the weather starting to change on the east coast for you?
[00:03:49] Randall: We've had some beautiful days past several days. We had a nor'easter coming through. So I did steal away for a trail run between, between rains in the should have some good weather on the weekend and otherwise loving being with family here in Boston, it's a very different lifestyle than the one I was living in the bay area.
[00:04:06] And it's a very much aligned with where I'm at. Yeah.
[00:04:09] Craig: We get, we got absolutely hammered out here by that rainstorm in Moran. I think we had the highest rain count in Anywhere in California.
[00:04:17] that weekend. I think we got on Tam and there's 12 inches of rain. So it was, it was literally coming out of every pore of The mountain. There were new streams and waterfalls being, being created.
[00:04:29] I mean, God knows we needed the water.
[00:04:31] and is so nice. I wrote up the mountain for Dawn patrol on a Wednesday and Just to see a little water.
[00:04:36] in places where it has been devoid. Void because of the drought was, was nice.
[00:04:42] Randall: When I did see your, your conversation or the conversation you chimed in on in, on, on the ridership about you know, opening up a new you know, gullies and things like this in the trails. So hopefully they're relatively intact.
[00:04:55] Craig: Yeah, that was fun. I mean, that's one of those things that you and I have always like thought and hoped would happen in the ridership. Just this idea that a writer could pop a message into the forum and say, Hey, we just got this huge rainstorm. How, how are the trails looking? Is it rideable or is it too.
[00:05:11] As it a sloppy mess.
[00:05:13] Randall: Yeah, it's pretty neat.
[00:05:14] Craig: The
[00:05:14] Randall: been training quite a bit lately, right?
[00:05:16] Craig: Yeah.
[00:05:16] You know, I was going to say The other good.
[00:05:17] thing about the rain and not being, Wanting to ride my bike outside.
[00:05:22] lately, as I have.
[00:05:23] committed to a strength training program.
[00:05:25] It's one of those things as I've nagged about my back on the podcast. Many months ago.
[00:05:31] That I've actually implemented a little bit of a plan And I've been.
[00:05:35] working via a company called ever athlete. And I became aware of them.
[00:05:41] As one of the founder is Kate Courtney's strength and conditioning coach, Kate Courtney being a former world champion mountain Biker.
[00:05:49] who comes from This area.
[00:05:51] And what, what appealed to me most about. The ever athlete program was that they have a run specific program, a cycling specific program, and then basic conditioning.
[00:06:03] after chatting with them,
[00:06:04] a little bit online. And I had a phone call with them just as a general consumer. You know, it was advised that I start with beginner strength training.
[00:06:12] And Totally.
[00:06:14] spot on if I started anything beyond beginner. I would have been absolutely destroyed. And frankly, like some of the exercises. Do you have me sore in places that are not used to being sore?
[00:06:26] Randall: So if somebody were to ask you, do you even lift bro? The answer would be not quite yet. I'm doing the beginner stuff first.
[00:06:34] Craig: Yeah.
[00:06:35] Exactly. Like I don't have tank tops yet and a special weightlifting gear and gloves that I'm using, But I have.
[00:06:42] I'm on weak. I'm proud of myself.
[00:06:43] I just completed week four of an eight week, week block.
[00:06:47] Just getting my body's too. Basic strength training. I'm using a TRX, some elastic bands.
[00:06:54] And just a few basic weights. That's not a exorbitant setup, I'm just doing it. And, you know, eight by eight area of My garage.
[00:07:02] every other day.
[00:07:04] Randall: That's great. Yeah, I've. I've gotten on a reasonably regular routine with a pair of 50 pound power blocks, adjustable dumbbells, which I'm a big fan of I've tried a few different types of adjustable dumbbells and these are the best have had. And just like doing a basic routine with not a crazy amount of weight and then adding some chin ups and AB work and so on squats and stuff like that, with that together with running and stretching, and I'll probably be adding yoga.
[00:07:30] As the winter progresses and I can't get outside so much.
[00:07:33] Craig: Yeah, you'll have to put a note in the show notes for me on that one. I'd be interested. Cause I know in ever athletes list of things that I may need. That type of wait setup is, will come into play at some point.
[00:07:45] Randall: Got it. Yeah. They don't, they don't pay us, but I can definitely endorse the power block sport. And it's totally sufficient for me, even at 50 pounds, because anything that I do with more than 50 pounds, I probably shouldn't be doing anyways. I don't need it.
[00:07:57] Craig: Yeah, I mean, good God Right now.
[00:07:58] Randall, I'm basically doing almost exclusively body weight exercises.
[00:08:03] 50 pounds seems a long way away from where my current strength training is at.
[00:08:08] Randall: Oh, you can get a whole lot of resistance with just body weight too. So there's no need to buy too much expensive gear, but yeah, these are a good one.
[00:08:15] Craig: Yeah.
[00:08:16] totally. I mean, I think I'll walk away from this, knowing that just even, even strictly a body weight program would be hugely beneficial.
[00:08:23] Randall: Yeah, I think so. I'm curious to hear how your back is feeling in a couple of months.
[00:08:28] Craig: Yeah, for sure.
[00:08:28] So I've got an a, as I said, I've got another month on basic, and then I think I'll just carry over into their cycling, their first cycling Specific program.
[00:08:36] And I've been chatting with them.
[00:08:37] and I think I'll have them on the pod so we can get just a deeper dive into.
[00:08:42] Not just Their program.
[00:08:43] but just strength training specifically, and the, and the value for cyclists to take a break and do something different.
[00:08:51] Randall: I remember hearing a quote somewhere that the biggest problem with cyclists in their training program is that they only ride their bikes.
[00:08:59] Craig: A hundred percent.
[00:09:00] It's funny. You mentioned that because another guest I've got coming up is a pretty world renowned. Bike fitter, but he from the UK, but he wrote a book called the midlife cyclist.
[00:09:10] And I'm going to dig into it with him, but yeah, one of the key takeaways is as an average, enthusiastic and passionate, enthusiastic cyclist.
[00:09:19] we're probably riding more and closer to our, not more by volume, but closer to our threshold than professional cyclists do because We go out there.
[00:09:28] and we hammer, you know, we're just feeling like we're out there for a good time.
[00:09:31] And the best thing you could do is probably. Lose a workout or two on the bike and change it into some strength training or something. That's you know, testing different parts of your body.
[00:09:41] Randall: Yeah, I look forward to that episode. That'll be a good one.
[00:09:44] Craig: Yeah.
[00:09:45] I'm super excited about it. I mean, I've just been thinking about it. In light of my own winter and what I want to achieve and how I want to set myself up for success next year. And success for me just means into being healthy and strong enough to tackle. You know, a big event or two here or there and not have it totally destroyed me.
[00:10:03] Randall: Yeah. And I think that for some of us do I, I ended up talking to a lot of athletes who are. You know, or later in years, and just being able to know that you can, you have some control over your ability to ride well into old age and maintained flexibility and bone density and injury prevention and all these other things is you know, it's, it's it's a good resource for folks to have to, to know how to, how to approach that.
[00:10:28] Craig: Yeah, totally. I've.
[00:10:28] got another great episode that I'm recording actually immediately after this with Brian McCulloch. Ah,
[00:10:33] Former pro road racer, former BWR winner, and most recently just won. I think it was The masters category.
[00:10:40] of mountain bike nationals.
[00:10:41] So Awesome guys.
[00:10:42] super enthusiastic. And one of the things he was telling me in his coaching practice.
[00:10:47] was that, you know, he coaches plenty of athletes whose goal is I want to complete the event and then be totally Pepe for the beer garden afterwards.
[00:10:57] And he's
[00:10:57] I'm Totally down with it. No one wants to just barely crawl across the finish line And then have to go to their car.
[00:11:04] to take a nap, especially in these gravel events. We want to finish, we want to commune with our fellow participants and, you know, I think that's a. Admirable goal for anyone to not only cross the finish line, but be able to. Party Hardy as the kids say.
[00:11:20] Randall: Yeah. It's you know, you have the combination of having endured something with, with other people and then getting to connect like the, the vehicle for connection elements shines out of that, that statement there, which is certainly why I ride.
[00:11:33] Craig: Yeah, totally. And speaking of events I know I did a recap episode of Water, but I thought we chat about that a little bit since it's something you've participated in, in years past.
[00:11:42] Randall: number of times. Yeah, this is actually the first year, the first time in years that I didn't go. It, I just reading the reporting. It seems like the. You know, the new stuff was relatively sparse. There's a couple of things that you and I want to, to jump into in future episodes with the new BMC.
[00:11:58] Headshot, they're not calling it a headshot, but it's, it looks like a head shock and surrounds new flight, attendants, suspension, and so on. So that'll be fun to dive into, but I'm curious, what else did you see that was compelling?
[00:12:09] Craig: Yeah. You know, I mean, it's first off for those of you who don't know, it's quite the festival. I mean, you've got everything from downhill and Duro, gravel cross-country road racing.
[00:12:20] While I find it.
[00:12:21] a bit overwhelming, the sheer number of cyclists and people that are there. At Laguna Seca. It is fun to see someone in spandex and a pro road kit. Riding through the pits next to you, a downhill kid with his full face helmet, shoved back on his head with a neck brace.
[00:12:39] Randall: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:12:41] Craig: You know, from a, from a product perspective and manufacturer perspective. The number of booths was down. I mean, it still was quite a Hardy show, but I would say. You know, with the absence of the international.
[00:12:54] Manufacturers.
[00:12:55] coming is probably like 40%, less sheer booths. So it made it more manageable. Whereas now the last time they held it in person.
[00:13:03] I felt like covering it in one day was just too much. Like I really needed about a day and a half or a day and three quarters to get around.
[00:13:12] and make sure I poked my head in every booth That was out there.
[00:13:15] this year was a little bit more manageable. I think in three quarters of a day, I had cruised around and seen everything I wanted to see.
[00:13:22] Randall: Cool. Cool. And you only spent the one day. Yeah.
[00:13:25] Craig: Yeah.
[00:13:25] I just did a day trip which I think. Made me like it a little bit more. I mean, I think the last time we were down there, It was just such a cluster AF to, you know, get in and out of there with your car and you were parked so far away. So I found that this fit where I was at this this year.
[00:13:42] Randall: Yeah we had a booth last time too. So we had all of that setting up and tearing down and so on. But yeah, hopefully by next year, it's it would make sense for me to get out there again, cause I've always enjoyed that. It's actually the only, the only time I've ever lined up at a race with like international.
[00:14:00] Racers.
[00:14:01] You know, just cause they you know, even if you were a low, a low level, regional domestic pro, you could line up in the, the UCI cross-country race. So you're not necessarily racing the same race, but burry stander was there and Christoph saucer was there and it was just like my moment of oh wow.
[00:14:16] You know, getting to. Line up. 15 rows behind them.
[00:14:20] Craig: You're like, I'm going to stay on their wheel and 50 meters. And you're like, I'm not going to stay on their wheel.
[00:14:24] Randall: Oh, they, they started 20 seconds before I did. By the time everyone's actually rolling. So there's, there's no staying on any wheels regardless.
[00:14:32] Craig: That's all. It's the funniest thing. When I'm at these big events, when they, they shoot off the starting gun and you're far enough back that nothing happens. There's no movement.
[00:14:41] Randall: Yeah, the slinky effect.
[00:14:43] Craig: Yeah.
[00:14:44] But there have been, you know, there's been some cool stuff dropping lately that I think we should talk about. You
[00:14:49] know, I think. We should jump in a little bit into the handlebars that have been coming out because I know. In talking to you. You had a particular design in mind that you.
[00:15:01] thought was what you would design. If you.
[00:15:04] were going to design a Handlebar.
[00:15:05] from the ground up, and then lo and behold, someone came out with one that was pretty darn close to what you described.
[00:15:11] Randall: Yeah. So I've called out this Aero Jaya. I think it's called my three T a number of times. And this was the closest thing to what I would design that I had seen. But whiskey just came out with a bar called the Spano. Or Spanno however they want to accentuate that a and pretty much everything about this is the way that I would design a bar.
[00:15:30] There's a few things I would do subtly differently and I can definitely share that. But You know, it's 12 degrees at the hoods and 20 degrees to the drops and it's a compound flare. And so you don't have to have the same flare. At the hoods and in the drops, because a lot of the leavers these days have some flare built in anyways. I would probably go with a little bit less flare with the hoods to give it a little more roadie position, maybe eight degrees, but still.
[00:15:53] For, you know, this is well done. It's a flat top design there. It looks like they've had some engineered flex. Built into, you know, what I would call like the wings of the bar so that you get some vertical flex. From the bar, which could help to, you know, negate the need for something as substantial as like a suspension stem.
[00:16:12] I think that these compliance structures are our real opportunity to add. Compliance to the bike without necessarily having to add mechanical linkages and things like this.
[00:16:22] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I think that that, that compliance is something that people would really benefit from. And if, if, if the manufacturers can do it in subtle ways, I think it all adds up.
[00:16:33] Randall: Challenges that different riders are going to have different needs in terms of let's just say you want to deliver the same experience to everybody. Then, you know, with a given handlebar under a bigger rider, you are going to need it to be stiffer in order for them to have the same experiences as a lighter weight rider. Who's just not exerting the same force.
[00:16:50] So that would be one thing where, you know, that's hard to do without having two versions of the bar or some sort of tuneable flex mechanism, which is something I've played around with, but adds complexity.
[00:16:59] I do like how the, the drop is really shallow. It's a hundred mil. The reaches is pretty short, 68. I would have the drop scale with the size of the bar would be one minor thing, because presumably on average, the, you know, the width of the bar is scaling with the size of the rider. But even that there's a huge amount of variation on that bell curve.
[00:17:19] Overall, like. It's this, this is from what I've seen and what you can do with the leavers that are on the market. Because there's only two companies that make them and they control Libra design. This, this is the most interesting one to me. Hopefully we can get our hands on one at some point and provide a proper review, but it looks really, really compelling. I'm glad to see this direction towards compound flares.
[00:17:41] Craig: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:17:41] I thought that I was going to key in, on that. Those words you used compound flares, because I do think that's interesting because you know, one of the things that. The F the former roadie in me, I do not like when the, when the shifter lovers are angled into too far. And it doesn't feel, it doesn't feel great. And it seems if there's a.
[00:18:00] If there's a design way too. Still get the flare you need at the bottoms while not overly adjusting where the hoods are, you know, that's a win.
[00:18:11] Randall: Yeah. And, and, you know, in our bars, we went with a. Non-compounded 10 degree flare because it is, you know, the best, the most glared you can get without it. Really effecting the ergonomics at the hoods, especially with say ceramides mechanical road leavers that have a kind of a square edge. So if you rotate them too far out, you get a kind of a pressure point in the middle of the hand.
[00:18:31] But yeah, it's a pretty neat handlebar. So
[00:18:35] Craig: Yeah. And with everything. You know, I think you've gotta be tooling costs are obviously like the big concern and changing it. Dramatically. Size wise each time. And so you, haven't got to think about. How many sets of tools are you willing to buy to bring this product to market? Handlebar replacement. I don't know what kind of volume any of these companies do with their handlebars, but it's, it's a little bit of a balance there. I would think from a manufacturing perspective.
[00:19:03] Randall: Yeah to, to dive a little bit into this without going too deep nerd. So if you're a big manufacturer, like a specialized or a track or something, you can amortize those tooling costs over a large number of bicycles that are specking that this handlebar at the OEM level, if you're doing an aftermarket bar,
[00:19:19] It's a lot harder. And the tooling cost is quite material on an item like this, where it's low volume and you have so many different sizes. Usually it would be three tools. You'd have. You know, or at least the three component tool. So you have. You know, the two drops and then you have the center section and maybe the center section is a single mold.
[00:19:38] With different inserts or even like you make one long one and then you chop it to the width that you want. And then you essentially bond on the drops. Which is where some extra weight comes in. So if you see bars like 250 grams or so if you want to drop 50 grams without compromising the structural integrity, that has to be a one-piece bar, which means.
[00:19:57] An independent, large mold. That's that's moderately complex for every single size. And if you're only doing a few hundred units a year, which is a good volume for an aftermarket handlebar, that's hard to justify economically.
[00:20:10] Craig: Yeah.
[00:20:10] that makes a ton of sense. I'm actually curious, and maybe listeners can either hit us up on social media or in the ridership, ideally about how often.
[00:20:18] People replace their bars. And is it the type of thing that When you're building.
[00:20:22] the bike, you get that bar and you never think about it otherwise. Which I suspect, I know I've certainly been there in my bike ownership life. But I do think there's a decent amount of innovation in gravel bars for people to consider and just keep an eye out there for what are the performance benefits? How do these different bars feel?
[00:20:43] When you put them on your existing bike.
[00:20:45] Randall: I do think that one of the major constraints here is simply cost and that actually has less to do with the unit cost and more to do with having to amortize the tooling costs over. So few units. But I, you know, handlebars like a carbon bar on the one hand, it's somewhat disposable. If you design it, if you don't design it right. Where if you crash, like you really want to replace it. But on the other hand, the, the opportunities for compound shapes and for compliance being built in.
[00:21:12] Negates may negate the need for more expensive and complicated solutions elsewhere on the bike to achieve the same goals. You know, I'd like to see if I could do a handlebar at scale, You know, the, the actual cost on something like this is for a tiny fraction of the actual sale price of, you know, 250 to 400 bucks on some of these bars.
[00:21:31] Craig: Yeah.
[00:21:31] That's the thing. I mean, once you've got, once you've got your bike frame. And you're not going to replace that. You really need to look at your attachment points as the, you know, how are you going to tune the bike?
[00:21:41] Randall: Yeah, the touch points. Exactly.
[00:21:44] Craig: On the other end of the spectrum.
[00:21:46] curve had a bar called the Walmart. Out for a while. And curve is probably best known for their massively wide bars. I mean like 50 plus centimeter bars.
[00:21:58] Very different riding style. They've actually gone the other way and introduced a narrower version of that. And I just think it's interesting to see them coming in. I mean, I can imagine that she super, super wide bar is a big part of the markets. I suppose it's not surprising. To see them go narrower.
[00:22:15] Randall: They're also going with aluminum. You know, your tooling cost is. It's basically a jig. So it's not, you can do smaller volume and, and carve out that little niche for oneself, but yeah, they went with a 40 and a 43 with, it looks like here, but the. My concern would be the flare is so great at the hoods.
[00:22:34] That you'd really want to be mindful of the shape of the hoods that you're using to make sure that it's not going to put a pressure point in your hand.
[00:22:42] Craig: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:22:42] I think it's a bar for a very specific customer. Follow up question for you on a aluminum versus carbon in the handlebar from a field perspective, what are the what's. How should people think about the difference in feel between those two materials?
[00:22:57] Randall: It really depends on how it's engineered. It really depends heavily on how it's engineered. And I was. You know, the particulars of the material, how it's shaped, how it's drawn is it, is it. You know, buddied and so on, which is an actual budding process. And with carbon kind of same thing, like.
[00:23:13] What is, what is the shape? What type of carbon is being used? What is the layup? You can make a structure that is incredibly stiff or very compliant you could add. I think loaf their bar, they're using some You know, some fancily branded. Fiberglass material in order to create you know, some, some even, even greater, even greater flex in the part of the handlebar, just beyond the clamp with the stem.
[00:23:38] GT did this with their original grade and may still to this day on the seat stays, they actually have a fiberglass wrapped in carbon fiber. So fiberglass is what's used in like a fishing pole. So think about the extremes of flex that you can get with that before it breaks.
[00:23:52] So there's it really just, it just depends, but in terms of the opportunities to tune flex and so on. Vastly greater with carbon, for sure, for sure. But this trade-offs with that.
[00:24:03] Craig: Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. Hey, the other thing I wanted to mention in terms of new product drops recently was our friend mark at post Kericho. I dropped a couple of new bags.
[00:24:14] Randall: Yeah, let's take a look at these. So he's got a new handlebar bag. Which these, these things are hard to. Talk too much about with action without actually experiencing one, but
[00:24:27] Craig: Yeah.
[00:24:28] I think the interest, the interesting thing about all Mark's stuff is he's a very thoughtful designer and one of my pet peeves around the handlebar bags, and it's got nothing to do with. Like general use of the bag. Is that with the zipper being up top?
[00:24:43] With my bike, computer Mount, and oftentimes a light it's really hard to get at them because it's being pushed down and Mark's designed the zipper to be in the middle of the front of this bag.
[00:24:57] I saw some comments about Alex, stuff's going to drop out. But I think at the end of the day, you're going to know that it's there and that's where it's located. So I think from a practical perspective, it's still going to work, but it would solve my personal problem with trying to get in there without unstrapping the bag from the handlebar.
[00:25:14] Randall: Yeah. And this bag is also quite compact, this new bag in the mini handlebar bag that he came out with. And so I could imagine. Strapping it to the bar and the little strap on the back around the stem, as opposed to, you know, having to strap it in a way that may push cables or the bag itself into the head tube, which is a very common problem with these handlebar bags.
[00:25:35] And you know, leads me to actually on my bike packing bag to have add straps in order to have it connect both to the bar and then to like right behind the hoods. So you don't get that rotational flop and it
[00:25:49] keeps it off the head tube. But that's a
[00:25:51] Craig: And are they get minimum? At minimum for anyone writing. Riding. You know, a lot, lots of types of bags, just consider putting some protective film over your frame in case there's rubbing.
[00:26:00] Randall: For sure. For sure. Yeah, we, yeah. Good recommendation.
[00:26:05] Craig: The other interesting one he came up with was this bomber top tube bag, which is a very long and, and Kind of not, not a big stack height bag that can go along the top tube or underneath the top tube. It's the, maybe three quarters of the length of the top two, but it looks like.
[00:26:21] We're just, it's interesting. I don't think for me, it's like a daily rider type thing, but I do love the multiple different positions of it. And I could see for a bigger trip or a bigger day out this being like one of those bags that I just add on for specific purposes.
[00:26:36] Randall: Yeah, And presumably it's a bit lighter than his existing frame bag, which I own, I'm not sure if you own as well. I'm a huge fan of that bag for, for bigger days on the bike where I need to bring stuff.
[00:26:47] Craig: Yeah.
[00:26:47] no. I imagine like running that quarter frame bag and then adding this one on top, you know, if you were doing some epic back country ride and wanted to maybe bring a full pump or what have you I think this is a neat option to add on and augment that kind of storage.
[00:27:02] Randall: One comment I did see in one of the articles was this idea of, you know, maybe it would be a mountable on the bottom of the down tube. Which I actually think is a a space where, you know, a design, a bag that was designed specifically for that space could both lower center of mass. And Potentially provide some protection for that part of the bike from rocks kicking up and so on, which is a significant concern, especially when you get into more Tundra terrain on one of these gravel bikes.
[00:27:31] Craig: Yeah. I think some more of the hardcore bike packing pack bag manufacturers have solutions for that area, whether they're building off the bottle cage, that's often down there and a lot of these gravel bikes. We're otherwise attaching agree. It's a, it's an interesting place. There's so many different nooks and crannies.
[00:27:50] To jam stuff on these bikes with all these new modern bags. It's a, you're not, there's no dearth of options for you, depending on how you want to set up your rig.
[00:27:58] Randall: Yeah. And the last thing we'll call out here is the the seat bag, which is a pretty standard, but really elegantly designed seat bag. And I just got to, you know, give a shout out for him on just the aesthetics of these bags. Then also the cost structure, like the seat bags, 30 bucks. You know, the, the bomber bag.
[00:28:13] I'm seeing 35 bucks. So really getting like this high quality construction and design at a very accessible price point. So Bravo mark, keep up the good work. Good to see you. Continuing to put product out.
[00:28:25] Craig: Yeah, kudos. Speaking of other things that people, we know, people from the ridership we're putting out there in the world. Some cool stuff on bike, packing.com.
[00:28:34] Randall: Yeah. So our friends Emily Chung and Seth Hur from over at bike index. So you've worked with, did he do the full triple crossover?
[00:28:44] Craig: He did.
[00:28:44] Randall: Yeah. So the bay area, triple crossover, which was published on bike, packing.com over the past week or so, 161 miles, three to four days 65% unpaved and a really, a lot of great photography and so on. And it covers essentially from Marin. North of San Francisco all the way around the bay, back to south bay.
[00:29:06] Maybe in the other direction, maybe that's how they finished up, but it's a, and there's actually a way. Yeah. And there's a way to, and we discussed this in the forum to connect to the bay area Ridge trail through the Santa Cruz mountains. If someone wanted to do an entire loop here, which
[00:29:21] She, she very well may do at some point in posts, but a really cool to see members of the community going out and having good adventures and sharing the routes with others so that others can follow in the footsteps or pedal strokes. As we may say.
[00:29:34] Craig: Yeah.
[00:29:34] for sure. It's so valuable to have this sort of bait out there. And I love all the imagery. I. People should go to the bike, packing.com. Link and you can find it either in the ridership or we'll put it in the show notes for this episode, stunning pictures. And it's so cool. I think there's one picture I'm looking at right now.
[00:29:52] Of the four of them riding across the golden gate bridge. In part of their journey looks like they're heading towards Marin and this pitcher just starting off. I just love it. I'm in such, such sort of iconic. Imagery around the bay area. And for those of you not in this area,
[00:30:07] The idea.
[00:30:08] that you could fly into SFO. Take a Bart train into the city with your bags or even write up and then start on this journey. From a major metropolitan area is just awesome. And even from some of the imagery, you would think you're nowhere near any sort of major city.
[00:30:26] Randall: Oh, yeah, that was one of the things I loved about living in San Francisco was if I needed to be out in the middle of nowhere, I could be so with no one around in 45 minutes over in the headphones.
[00:30:36] Craig: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:30:37] exactly.
[00:30:37] So kudos to MLA for all the great photography and her partners on that trip. Super cool and amazing that they put it out there.
[00:30:44] Randall: Yeah. And another thing just to mention with this too, is a. They're in the forum. And so if this is something you want to do embark on one of the motivations, there was to be able to go to a new region and just reach out to folks and say, Hey, what's the beta. Hey, does anyone want to join me for a segment?
[00:31:00] You know, one of the group rides going on and we've been seeing those dynamics, which is really cool.
[00:31:04] Craig: Yeah, exactly.
[00:31:05] I mean, it's so it's, so it's so great that there are so many sites out there that are publishing adventures and things like that. But being able to talk to people, locals about current conditions or.
[00:31:17] You know, even advice for that. Ad-on you described down into the Santa Cruz mountains, like That kind of stuff.
[00:31:22] is awesome. And invaluable. If You're going to spend.
[00:31:25] a week of Your hard earned time and vacation and money in a particular area.
[00:31:30] I don't know about you, but I, I just want to get the most out of it as, as possible.
[00:31:34] Randall: Yeah, and this is something that you know, a conversation that sprung up organically in the forum and that we're going to be looking to facilitate a lot more conversation around, which is. You know, the role of, you know, what might be called social media, just online tools for connecting with others generally in the cycling experience. And so what is, what is a healthy role? What are unhealthy roles and how do we create something that.
[00:31:58] Facilitates things that, that help people live live better in gets out of the realm of say what certain large players have been accused of credibly in terms of That's the same behavior that is not, is more in the interest of profit and shareholders. Then the the people that they've disk.
[00:32:14] Describe as users.
[00:32:16] Craig: Yeah.
[00:32:17] that, that thread in the ridership's really interesting and some very thoughtful commentary. It's fascinating how different people view different platforms. You know, obviously you've got mainstream social media and then more cycling specific sites that kind of serve similar purposes. So it's something, you know, I know you think a lot about, I've thought a lot about.
[00:32:38] In the context of the ridership and and generally interesting how other people are expressing their sell themselves. And. What types of things they use and don't want to use.
[00:32:49] Randall: Yeah. So this is something that you know, we're also considering how to evolve the, the forum as well. We built it in slack because that was the best. Tool available. But we're exploring other tools and add ons and things like this. And if this is a conversation that interests you we'd really love your, your feedback and it's, you know, that conversation is happening in the ridership. So come join us there and let us know how we can make it better.
[00:33:12] Craig: Yeah.
[00:33:12] As always.
[00:33:13] I mean, we are very open to your input about these episodes and any other episode of the gravel ride podcast.
[00:33:20] The ridership forum is something that, you know, we started from Our hearts but it's really a community run initiative.
[00:33:26] and we want to evolve as the community wants us to and, and directionally where they want us to go.
[00:33:33] Randall: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
[00:33:35] Craig: Yeah.
[00:33:36] Cool.
[00:33:36] I think that's about it for this week's edition of in the dirt Randall. I appreciate your time as always.
[00:33:42] Randall: As always as well. Craig
[00:33:43] Craig: And to all the listeners until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
This week we sit down with Whitney Allison, BWR Cedar City Champion and Co-Founder of the Foco Fondo in Fort Collins, CO.
Whitney Allison Web and Instagram
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos):
Whitney Allison
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast, we have Whitney, Alison who recently won the BWR Cedar city event. I don't know about you guys, but at the beginning of 2020, we are all poised and thinking about gravel racing and looking forward to a whole new crop of athletes coming into the mix.
[00:00:25] With the pandemic. Many of those athletes have to sit on the sidelines. Lines as events were few and far between. We're at the Alison was one of those athletes who was poised to make a great start. In 2020, but with sidelined into 2021. Early in the season, she had a win at Co2UT. And started to be on people's radar.
[00:00:45] Although. Although she deserved to be on the radar far before that.
[00:00:48] With a strong ride to fourth place at Unbound. Around in 2021. I suppose it was no. Surprise that another wind was right around the corner. I originally met Whitney at. The ENVE Grodeo event earlier this year as she's an ENVE sponsored rider and it was great to finally get her on the podcast And Cast We talk about her racing career What brought her to gravel riding and also the Foco Fondo that her and her husband produced in Fort Collins, colorado.
[00:01:13] I hope you enjoy the conversation. And with that, let's dive. Right in
[00:01:17] Whitney. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:19] Whitney Allison: Thanks. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:21] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I'm excited to talk to you about your season and gravel and what's next for you, but I always like to start off by learning a little bit about how you came to the sport of cycling and ultimately how you came to riding off-road with gravel.
[00:01:33] Whitney Allison: Yeah. I find cycling after high school.
[00:01:37] When I got to college, I went the pledget route. I thought I was going to go for. Soccer to being a normal college student got immediately bored. And, but I do lot. And and I ended up going on a group ride with a cycling team and women are worth a lot of points in collegiate racing. So they like really took me under their wing and kind of showed me the ropes and like collegiate cycling is such an incredible way to get into the sport.
[00:02:06] You get to find this really unique balance of both seriousness and fun at the same time, I think, as unique to any other area of cycling
[00:02:16] Craig Dalton: right now. Yeah. It's so interesting and mean, we talk about teams in cycling, but nothing really compares to the idea of a collegiate cycling team.
[00:02:25] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And you have just such a range.
[00:02:28] Athletes from maybe athletes who've never participated into a sport to people who've always been in a sport or maybe even always in cycling and you show up and you're S you're unified, whether you're in like the age category or when I was there, they only have A's and B's for women. So it didn't matter like how good you were.
[00:02:49] You were just still a very essential and important and welcome part
[00:02:53] Craig Dalton: of the. And we'll you riding both road and off-road at that point?
[00:02:57] Whitney Allison: Mostly just road. I didn't really have a mountain bike. I think I borrowed somebody's bike a couple of times for some mountain bike races, but mostly just the road.
[00:03:08] Craig Dalton: And what part of the country where you located in for college? I went to
[00:03:12] Whitney Allison: UT. So it's, I think it was just exclusively Texas for the conference, which is plenty big state.
[00:03:19] Craig Dalton: And was it a pretty popular sport? Was it a large program that you were involved in?
[00:03:23] Whitney Allison: It was really large. My first couple of years, I want to say that there were almost like 30 women competing in the A's, which was like so rad.
[00:03:32] Like I remember my first race and the A's on. I didn't know how to sprint. I didn't know how to get out of the saddle and just like sprinting and saddle and like still ending up on the podium. I had no idea what was going on, which is really funny if you know me too, because I'm not really, I'm a sprinter.
[00:03:50] So that's extra funding.
[00:03:53] Craig Dalton: Did you immediately start seeing post-collegiate opportunities in the professional cycling ranks? Was that an idea that you had early on in your collegiate?
[00:04:01] Whitney Allison: I definitely cat it up pretty quickly. I was also doing a lot of races in Austin at the time. I ended up getting on a development team out of Dallas that I believe it's still loosely associated with DNA pro cycling.
[00:04:14] But this is this would have been like 2008, 2008 or 2009. And so I was able to get on this team and it had a lot of the national level, like each 23 women at the time. And so that was something I was on the team, it was a regional writer. But immediately did really well. So I ended up with more opportunities than what was originally planned.
[00:04:35] And it was definitely like wild, like looking at some of those women. I had a lot of admiration for the. Just really talented women that, who wouldn't want to be an athlete like that. So I did get a race, do a lot of the national stage race stuff, starting my junior year of college.
[00:04:51] And then and my senior year. And then after that, I had to get a full-time job
[00:04:56] Craig Dalton: As many professional cyclists have to do unfortunate.
[00:05:00] Whitney Allison: Yeah, the student loans don't pay themselves.
[00:05:03] Craig Dalton: And then, so what was next for you and the cycling career?
[00:05:06] Whitney Allison: So I definitely still had, I still wanted to race professionally and do well there.
[00:05:12] I've always wanted to be an athlete. It's just something that's very much a part of my identity. So while working full time at this office job in port Collins, which is where I live now, I somehow convinced my the company owner to one Spencer me, and to let me go race all summer while working remotely, which had never been done.
[00:05:33] And it was to their demise because essentially as soon as I paid off my student loans, I like left. And eventually I would get a contract with Colavita in 2013. And stayed with them for, I think, four or five years until joining Superman, Huggins, Roman Superman with my former teammate, Lily Williams, who you've talked to before for the 2018 and 2019 season.
[00:06:02] Craig Dalton: And I've heard everything I've heard about that program as it was such a tight knit group of women and everybody had each other's backs, it sounded like a great experience. Those two years,
[00:06:12] Whitney Allison: it really was. You usually get some of that. I feel like on teams, but it's very rare that you could get it across such a high percentage of the writers.
[00:06:23] So it really was like a special time. We still have a WhatsApp text thread that still gets used. Most of us are all still in touch, which is really.
[00:06:31] Craig Dalton: Was 2019 a planned retirement from the road scene or did something happen? I know the team obviously stopped existing, I think at that point.
[00:06:40] But what was that your trajectory or your expectation prior to that?
[00:06:44] Whitney Allison: My trajectory part of, if we pedal back a little bit in August of 2018, I was hit by a driver with an Airstream a couple of days before Colorado. In Colorado. Classic is like a race I've always done really well at. I broke a bunch of bones, had PTSD, went through all sorts of therapy for that.
[00:07:03] And, I was really fortunate to be on a team that was really supportive. And so they're like, of course you have a contract for next year and let us know what you need, let us know how to support you. But it also meant like I couldn't be on social media and I'm focused on coming back. A good mind as best physical ability as possible while still healing from injuries that will have for their spirit life.
[00:07:26] And managing that's like really hard. And I was really proud to come back for the 2019 season, but it was really hard for me to put together performances that were. I was as good as I was having in 2018. I did finally in 2019 with the last race of the season, I did get on the podium at Colorado classic couple of days after the one-year anniversary of my crash.
[00:07:53] And that was like really powerful, but unfortunately from a professional road standpoint, it wasn't enough to find a similar contract than it. So it was a sad reluctant retirement. And so I thought what about the Scrabble thing? It was something that had always interested me, but I really wanted to ride that professional growth wave wall.
[00:08:16] It was there. Just because those are really special times. Yeah. The green teres and Europe, and do a lot of these like iconic spring classics and things like that are just there once in a lifetime opportunities. So 2021 is going to be my big you're getting into gravel and I'm still off of social media because I'm still in litigation.
[00:08:36] And then the endemic hit. So that was like really isolate. Cause you're like, oh, I I could be a really good gravel racer, but nobody has any idea.
[00:08:46] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I feel like at the beginning of 2020, which there was all this, we knew a bunch of new events were happening. We knew obviously there was other professional athletes, both men and women coming into the scene, but none of that happened and we had no idea.
[00:09:00] So when 2021, when racing actually happened, For me, like watching the women's scene. I just saw all these names that I hadn't heard of before. And obviously when you do a little research, that these women didn't come out of nowhere. They were incredibly talented for a number of years, but I feel like you, they were ready in 2020, but they just didn't get an opportunity to expose their skillset, which is making 20, 21 very exciting as a fan of women's gravel racing.
[00:09:27] Whitney Allison: Yeah, totally. I was entirely under the radar. Just waiting out the pandemic. It did help a bit. Like I was able to finally settle my case and not have to go to trial, which was really, it was a huge relief in a lot of ways. Cause it, I also unfortunately with how our modern world works, you really have to be online.
[00:09:49] And without being able to be online and represent myself as an athlete, it was a. It was a pretty large hit and these other ways that you don't necessarily think of. So I was literally a secret for several years. So yeah, in 2021 rolls around,
[00:10:06] Craig Dalton: did you feel like in 2020 that you had the kind of gravel skillset, the technical skillset to be successful or was 2020 a good opportunity to just spend more time on the dirt and really get those skills underneath?
[00:10:19] Whitney Allison: It was definitely helpful. Cause like that was the only thing that there was to do because everything else was so depressing. It was just like spend a lot of time in the mountains. Yeah, we have lots of incredible writing super close to us. So then that is definitely a gift of 2020.
[00:10:34] Craig Dalton: Absolutely. And so for 2021, did you have your heart set on a certain series of races that you wanted to tackle throughout?
[00:10:41] Whitney Allison: I knew that given my circumstances that I would need to hit up a lot of the quote, unquote like most prestigious or most followed events in order to get my foot in the door and establish myself.
[00:10:59] I. I was curious about Unbound. I thought that there was a chance that I could do pretty well there. Just based on the type of road rider I was, which is just like all power all day, but I've always been curious, like how long does that last, if you actually like try turns out, that 12 hours?
[00:11:22] Yes. I kicked off the season. One of my early season races was Cotuit, which I wanted, which was in Fruita. And it's funny because I was under the radar for so long. Remember some of the feedback I was hearing was is she even fast? Did she win by a fluke in feedback like that?
[00:11:42] Which was funny
[00:11:44] Craig Dalton: That it, that is the booze social media moment when you just get trolls like that coming out.
[00:11:51] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And it's it's whatever I don't really care that somebody off the couch has to say in regards to something like that, but it's still pretty funny. Like I've been here the whole time. It's just.
[00:12:03] You didn't know that
[00:12:05] Craig Dalton: exactly. Hopefully, and I think this is going to be true after 2021. There's not going to be many people who follow this sport who don't know your name. We'll see. So you followed that up with a fourth place at Unbound unbounded, a 200 mile event, which is pretty spectacular.
[00:12:21] Whitney Allison: Yeah.
[00:12:22] And that was like, I honestly thought I was somewhere in the top 10 when I finished, because I had 300. And 47 minutes of stoppage of crash with the front flat. I use like the neutral support paid service for aid stuff. Cause we didn't have a aide support person and the person ripped my candle back apart.
[00:12:46] So I didn't have my Camelback for the race after the 50 mile mark. So I rode with literal plastic water bottles in my pockets for the rest of the 200.
[00:12:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think it's actually a good lesson for a lot of racers that like shit happens and you just gotta roll with it along the way. And so many you can be in first place and go to 10th place and vice versa with just the, the whatever's going to happen on the course.
[00:13:15] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And I think like success in these events, it's not necessarily. Okay. Do you experience bad luck? It's more do you have an absence of bad luck versus having good luck? Like it, it doesn't matter. Like you could ride over the same thing as another person, but for whatever reason, the rock just hits your tire.
[00:13:37] Just that much different. And it's not necessarily oh, you don't know how to choose a line or. You chose a bad tire pressure. It literally just could be a tiny bit of that. Yeah.
[00:13:49] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I talked to so many people who like throw away their favorite tire set because it failed them at Unbound.
[00:13:55] And I keep thinking to myself, it's because the person in front of you turn that rock over the wrong way and you just happened to hit it. It's not that particular tire is too.
[00:14:04] Whitney Allison: I know. I fought it in the most benign sections, which I thought was super obnoxious. I would have rather flooded and the really like pokey technical sections.
[00:14:12] But
[00:14:13] Craig Dalton: the most recently prior to recording this, you had a big victory at BWR Cedar city, which is amazing. Congratulations on that.
[00:14:22] Whitney Allison: Thanks. It was a really nice way to end my first year of gravel racing.
[00:14:27] Craig Dalton: I have to say, as a spectator on the couch, it was great. The coverage of the women's event, you felt like you were there, you got a lot of information along the way, and you felt the ebb and flow between you and the other riders and the top four or five, which was great to watch.
[00:14:40] I also noted that there was a lot of technicality in it. BWR San Diego, for example, not knowing. An extremely tactical event, but this course was technical. I read somewhere that you were there as fraught with the source endurance team and you'd actually previewed some of those technical sections.
[00:15:00] Whitney Allison: Yeah. I was actually there as a camp instructor for the course. I hadn't seen me that and that was actually really helpful. Like I got to see all, but one technical section over the course of the week and even ride some of them multiple times, such as the single track section, which I mean, by the time you get to race day and when you get to the single track section, you're not really sure what you're doing.
[00:15:24] Cause I was really cross-eyed and desperate and just trying not to like flat or crash, it was like my only goal going through there. It didn't matter if I went really slow or. Just as long as I didn't get it delayed by either of those other two options.
[00:15:39] Craig Dalton: How would you rate it in terms of its technicality versus an Unbound?
[00:15:42] For example,
[00:15:44] Whitney Allison: I thought it was significantly more technical. It was I had done a more technical race this year. So the races I did would be like code to. Unbound. And be gritty is not erased, but that is also quite technical. BWR San Diego Steamboat last best ride. And I would say like a lot of those sections in that race were really hard and a lot of really deep sands.
[00:16:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It was interesting. I think more so on the men's side, because there was maybe a pack of 12 or 15 together at one point, but you could see it start to be. Decimated in those technical sections, as one rider would bobble and take out two others. And ultimately, I think half that lead group got shed by accidents and misfortune in those technical sections
[00:16:31] Whitney Allison: at times, there is either one line or no lines.
[00:16:34] So if you're in a group that would be really hard.
[00:16:37] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I'm curious to get your perspective because as a, as someone who enjoys the different events around the country I prefer the more technical events, because I just think they're challenging more of a rider's full bag of tricks as a racer at the front end of the spectrum.
[00:16:52] Do you appreciate that? In course, design,
[00:16:54] Whitney Allison: I think it just goes into your strategy, right? When I go to think about an event I'm looking at anything that would make a change in the race. So For VWR Cedar city, like there is a four minute climb. Maybe it's a little bit longer, like four, eight minute climb.
[00:17:12] That was about 30 miles in. And I knew that was going to be the most important part because after that was a technical descent. And so I knew as long as I could get over the top or near the front, I would be okay. So I see those sorts of technical things as a feature that changes the story. And then you have to decide how you're going to change with the story.
[00:17:36] Craig Dalton: That's interesting. And I imagine most of the people at the front end of the race are taking the course into heavy consideration in their mindset. Is that how they plan their race day?
[00:17:46] Whitney Allison: Yeah, absolutely. And I am coming from a red background. I'm not a mountain biker, like a lot of other people that are coming into gravel.
[00:17:55] And so for me, it's trying to figure out how do I leverage. My strengths and bobble through my weaknesses. In training, always trying to improve them right
[00:18:05] Craig Dalton: now. I noted that in the BWR event that the women and the men started 10, 10 minutes apart. Was that true? How did you feel like that played, obviously this year, there's been a lot discussed about women and men racing together.
[00:18:19] Do you prefer that type of format or are you in different.
[00:18:22] Whitney Allison: I think with my ability, I am more indifferent to it. I think that for example, BWR San Diego had almost a 200 woman person woman's field. And so having a separate women's start there was really amazing. And because it had that size and it allowed like women that are getting dropped, they're probably going to have other women to run.
[00:18:47] And at that particular event, you also had the uncategorized men behind you. And so then once again, you're not necessarily having an entirely lonely day. So one thing that was hard at Cedar city is that the women's field was very small, maybe around 50 women. So the walk women started in front of us and then we were behind.
[00:19:09] And so then you have some women that are not as strong to stay with the women's field. And now they're alone 130 miles. And to me, that's maybe that's probably a consequence of that separate start when the field isn't that large the way for men did catch and we had overlapping courses for about half of the day.
[00:19:31] So some of those women probably had some people to run. But I do think like that is a consequence that has to be considered in those circumstances. But overall, if it's a large women's field, it's super awesome to have a separate start. And if it's a small women's field or a very long distance, like Unbound, it's nicer to have that mixed art because draft ability like helps us get through
[00:19:55] Craig Dalton: the day.
[00:19:56] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the interesting thing when these sort of quote unquote controversies come up, it's. So much of it is getting through the day and that shared experience, whether you're riding with males or females, that's part of the joy. I realize when there's prize money on the line, there's obviously different things to consider.
[00:20:12] And I certainly fall in the category of Hey, if you're pre-planning these kinds of things, that's probably a negative, but that organic, like I get to ride with someone regardless of the category they're in, for me as a mid pack rider is something that I really enjoy about racing.
[00:20:27] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And I think it's pretty obvious when you say it, if you come there with people that are planning on securing your result across categories, that's lame, but if it just happens on the road, that's like totally normal.
[00:20:44] Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. So it sounds like we're at the tail end of your season. Do you have any more events planned for.
[00:20:50] Whitney Allison: I'm running one more camp. So my husband, Zach, Alison and I, we have our business bikes works and we run a couple of three-day camps out of Fort Collins. And so we call them gravel grease land, and we just do three totally distinct routes out of Fort Collins, which includes a lot of single chalk ones.
[00:21:09] More out east with big rollers. And the third day is like out in the mountains. So we have one of those coming up in two weeks. But otherwise, like trying to get through some of those like bucket list rides and stuff that you like really want to do all year, but it doesn't quite work out with training or your schedule.
[00:21:26] Craig Dalton: And you've got to get that in Colorado before the snowfall.
[00:21:30] Whitney Allison: Yep. I am checking the forecast quite frequently.
[00:21:33] Craig Dalton: In addition to the gravel Graceland events that you just described, you've also got your own gravel event. Can you talk a little bit about Foco Fondo
[00:21:43] Whitney Allison: yeah, Foco Fondo. The first year of that was in 2015. So it's been around for awhile. It's just grown. Organically and grads grassrootsy it's very fun if you've ever been to Fort Collins, like it has a really big outdoor culture that is also extremely welcoming.
[00:22:03] People are very excited to take people back country skiing or, out on gravel bikes or mountain biking or climbing. And everybody is oh, here, let me. You can borrow this equipment if you don't have it. So focal Fondo has a similar welcoming vibe and we have a lot of people who come to the event, having never done a gravel event before.
[00:22:27] So it's their first experience. We have everything from 12 miles to 107 miles and the 12 mile is focused on family. We donate a portion of the profits to safe routes to school here in Fort Collins, and they use the funds that we give them for free afterschool bike clubs. Mostly at socially economic disadvantaged schools in our area.
[00:22:51] They'll do other services. For families that can't afford it, they'll show up with a mechanic at an apartment complex and fix up kids' bikes because not everybody has a car to put their kid's bike, to take it to the bike shop and just like other really thoughtful solutions that really elevate our community.
[00:23:09] And then Foco Fonda, the event itself after the ride. Like Rio Grande makes tacos. They're like a very large cycling staple in our community. We have live music and it's just a big fun.
[00:23:22] Craig Dalton: And for riders considering it for their 20, 22 calendar, what month is in and what type of terrain should they expect to be riding?
[00:23:31] If they're riding in the longer event,
[00:23:33] Whitney Allison: our event date should be July 24th. Hopefully hoping I can announce that like more publicly with a hundred percent certainty you the train is mostly pretty rolling. It'll gain elevation overall for the first half. And there'll be pretty fast on the way back.
[00:23:50] The big toss up every year is always the wind. Somehow this year, the writer's got a tailwind around the entire, it ran the entire. So we're like back at home, freaking out because the rat, the top riders are going to get back before lunch was even open. But otherwise it has a little mix of everything.
[00:24:08] There's not too much like technical sections, but there are a few spots and there's a few of those pinch points that you would, if you were going for a result there, you would really want to make some considerations in your strategy. Yeah.
[00:24:22] Craig Dalton: Sounds like a great event.
[00:24:23] So with your successes in 2021, what do you hope for in 2022?
[00:24:29] Whitney Allison: I think I have definitely learned a lot about myself in these events, different types of races. And I'm also looking forward to going back to some of the ones that I did this year. Like with some of those learnings, for example, Unbound obviously is a really great one where I just was on the comeback all day long was just always riding with a vengeance.
[00:24:56] I really wanted to do well at VWR San Diego with how the timing worked. It was the week before Foco Fondo. So I raced, I still got top 10, but I was a mess. So I'm really excited to get to go deep that in may, way before that time. But yeah. I'm looking forward to getting to experience some of the similar courses or same courses, but then see that your story.
[00:25:20] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. I think it is that type of sport that any event. Something's going to go wrong. It's really hard to have a perfect day, whether it's misfortune or just a, something not going your way that day. I think it keeps a lot of us coming back to the same courses, thinking, gosh, I could just do it that much better next year.
[00:25:37] Whitney Allison: Yeah. Kinda a little bit of vengeance that it's just a thing
[00:25:41] Craig Dalton: with you. Yeah, exactly. And for your business, with your husband any changes for next year, we just continue to run fittings and camps and experience.
[00:25:50] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And the recent program is going to do better as well. Like we're really fortunate, like just with having a good year and yeah, I'm excited to share some of the partners that we'll have for next year too.
[00:26:02] And it's fun too. Cause they get to come on like through the Foco Fondo and stuff as well. Like you get to offer a lot to the companies that work with. That's
[00:26:13] Craig Dalton: super exciting. I can't wait to hear about these announcements.
[00:26:16] Whitney Allison: I can't really share them, but it could be awhile.
[00:26:18] Craig Dalton: Thanks so much for joining me, Whitney.
[00:26:20] I appreciate it.
[00:26:21] Whitney Allison: Thank you.
[00:26:22] Craig Dalton: Big, thanks to Whitney for joining the show this week. I hope you learned a lot about her career and a little bit about her future plans for 2022.
[00:26:30] If you're following women's gravel racing, it's sure we're going to have a stacked 20, 22 roster of elite athletes. Fighting for the win at all. The big events.
[00:26:39] It's going to be super exciting. Be sure to check out Whitney and her husband's Foco Fondo website. Check out for the date next year and get registered. What for what looks like an amazing event there in Fort Collins, Colorado. If you're looking to support the show, you can visit us at www.buymeacoffee.com/thegravelride.
[00:26:59] We're also ratings and reviews are hugely important. So I appreciate everybody who's gone out of their way to provide a review for the gravel ride podcast.
[00:27:08] And finally, if you're interested in joining the ridership, our free global cycling community online. Online simply visit www.theridership.com. Until next time here's to finding. Some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with Whitney Allison, BWR Cedar City Champion and Co-Founder of the Foco Fondo in Fort Collins, CO.
Whitney Allison Web and Instagram
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos):
Whitney Allison
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast, we have Whitney, Alison who recently won the BWR Cedar city event. I don't know about you guys, but at the beginning of 2020, we are all poised and thinking about gravel racing and looking forward to a whole new crop of athletes coming into the mix.
[00:00:25] With the pandemic. Many of those athletes have to sit on the sidelines. Lines as events were few and far between. We're at the Alison was one of those athletes who was poised to make a great start. In 2020, but with sidelined into 2021. Early in the season, she had a win at Co2UT. And started to be on people's radar.
[00:00:45] Although. Although she deserved to be on the radar far before that.
[00:00:48] With a strong ride to fourth place at Unbound. Around in 2021. I suppose it was no. Surprise that another wind was right around the corner. I originally met Whitney at. The ENVE Grodeo event earlier this year as she's an ENVE sponsored rider and it was great to finally get her on the podcast And Cast We talk about her racing career What brought her to gravel riding and also the Foco Fondo that her and her husband produced in Fort Collins, colorado.
[00:01:13] I hope you enjoy the conversation. And with that, let's dive. Right in
[00:01:17] Whitney. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:19] Whitney Allison: Thanks. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:21] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I'm excited to talk to you about your season and gravel and what's next for you, but I always like to start off by learning a little bit about how you came to the sport of cycling and ultimately how you came to riding off-road with gravel.
[00:01:33] Whitney Allison: Yeah. I find cycling after high school.
[00:01:37] When I got to college, I went the pledget route. I thought I was going to go for. Soccer to being a normal college student got immediately bored. And, but I do lot. And and I ended up going on a group ride with a cycling team and women are worth a lot of points in collegiate racing. So they like really took me under their wing and kind of showed me the ropes and like collegiate cycling is such an incredible way to get into the sport.
[00:02:06] You get to find this really unique balance of both seriousness and fun at the same time, I think, as unique to any other area of cycling
[00:02:16] Craig Dalton: right now. Yeah. It's so interesting and mean, we talk about teams in cycling, but nothing really compares to the idea of a collegiate cycling team.
[00:02:25] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And you have just such a range.
[00:02:28] Athletes from maybe athletes who've never participated into a sport to people who've always been in a sport or maybe even always in cycling and you show up and you're S you're unified, whether you're in like the age category or when I was there, they only have A's and B's for women. So it didn't matter like how good you were.
[00:02:49] You were just still a very essential and important and welcome part
[00:02:53] Craig Dalton: of the. And we'll you riding both road and off-road at that point?
[00:02:57] Whitney Allison: Mostly just road. I didn't really have a mountain bike. I think I borrowed somebody's bike a couple of times for some mountain bike races, but mostly just the road.
[00:03:08] Craig Dalton: And what part of the country where you located in for college? I went to
[00:03:12] Whitney Allison: UT. So it's, I think it was just exclusively Texas for the conference, which is plenty big state.
[00:03:19] Craig Dalton: And was it a pretty popular sport? Was it a large program that you were involved in?
[00:03:23] Whitney Allison: It was really large. My first couple of years, I want to say that there were almost like 30 women competing in the A's, which was like so rad.
[00:03:32] Like I remember my first race and the A's on. I didn't know how to sprint. I didn't know how to get out of the saddle and just like sprinting and saddle and like still ending up on the podium. I had no idea what was going on, which is really funny if you know me too, because I'm not really, I'm a sprinter.
[00:03:50] So that's extra funding.
[00:03:53] Craig Dalton: Did you immediately start seeing post-collegiate opportunities in the professional cycling ranks? Was that an idea that you had early on in your collegiate?
[00:04:01] Whitney Allison: I definitely cat it up pretty quickly. I was also doing a lot of races in Austin at the time. I ended up getting on a development team out of Dallas that I believe it's still loosely associated with DNA pro cycling.
[00:04:14] But this is this would have been like 2008, 2008 or 2009. And so I was able to get on this team and it had a lot of the national level, like each 23 women at the time. And so that was something I was on the team, it was a regional writer. But immediately did really well. So I ended up with more opportunities than what was originally planned.
[00:04:35] And it was definitely like wild, like looking at some of those women. I had a lot of admiration for the. Just really talented women that, who wouldn't want to be an athlete like that. So I did get a race, do a lot of the national stage race stuff, starting my junior year of college.
[00:04:51] And then and my senior year. And then after that, I had to get a full-time job
[00:04:56] Craig Dalton: As many professional cyclists have to do unfortunate.
[00:05:00] Whitney Allison: Yeah, the student loans don't pay themselves.
[00:05:03] Craig Dalton: And then, so what was next for you and the cycling career?
[00:05:06] Whitney Allison: So I definitely still had, I still wanted to race professionally and do well there.
[00:05:12] I've always wanted to be an athlete. It's just something that's very much a part of my identity. So while working full time at this office job in port Collins, which is where I live now, I somehow convinced my the company owner to one Spencer me, and to let me go race all summer while working remotely, which had never been done.
[00:05:33] And it was to their demise because essentially as soon as I paid off my student loans, I like left. And eventually I would get a contract with Colavita in 2013. And stayed with them for, I think, four or five years until joining Superman, Huggins, Roman Superman with my former teammate, Lily Williams, who you've talked to before for the 2018 and 2019 season.
[00:06:02] Craig Dalton: And I've heard everything I've heard about that program as it was such a tight knit group of women and everybody had each other's backs, it sounded like a great experience. Those two years,
[00:06:12] Whitney Allison: it really was. You usually get some of that. I feel like on teams, but it's very rare that you could get it across such a high percentage of the writers.
[00:06:23] So it really was like a special time. We still have a WhatsApp text thread that still gets used. Most of us are all still in touch, which is really.
[00:06:31] Craig Dalton: Was 2019 a planned retirement from the road scene or did something happen? I know the team obviously stopped existing, I think at that point.
[00:06:40] But what was that your trajectory or your expectation prior to that?
[00:06:44] Whitney Allison: My trajectory part of, if we pedal back a little bit in August of 2018, I was hit by a driver with an Airstream a couple of days before Colorado. In Colorado. Classic is like a race I've always done really well at. I broke a bunch of bones, had PTSD, went through all sorts of therapy for that.
[00:07:03] And, I was really fortunate to be on a team that was really supportive. And so they're like, of course you have a contract for next year and let us know what you need, let us know how to support you. But it also meant like I couldn't be on social media and I'm focused on coming back. A good mind as best physical ability as possible while still healing from injuries that will have for their spirit life.
[00:07:26] And managing that's like really hard. And I was really proud to come back for the 2019 season, but it was really hard for me to put together performances that were. I was as good as I was having in 2018. I did finally in 2019 with the last race of the season, I did get on the podium at Colorado classic couple of days after the one-year anniversary of my crash.
[00:07:53] And that was like really powerful, but unfortunately from a professional road standpoint, it wasn't enough to find a similar contract than it. So it was a sad reluctant retirement. And so I thought what about the Scrabble thing? It was something that had always interested me, but I really wanted to ride that professional growth wave wall.
[00:08:16] It was there. Just because those are really special times. Yeah. The green teres and Europe, and do a lot of these like iconic spring classics and things like that are just there once in a lifetime opportunities. So 2021 is going to be my big you're getting into gravel and I'm still off of social media because I'm still in litigation.
[00:08:36] And then the endemic hit. So that was like really isolate. Cause you're like, oh, I I could be a really good gravel racer, but nobody has any idea.
[00:08:46] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I feel like at the beginning of 2020, which there was all this, we knew a bunch of new events were happening. We knew obviously there was other professional athletes, both men and women coming into the scene, but none of that happened and we had no idea.
[00:09:00] So when 2021, when racing actually happened, For me, like watching the women's scene. I just saw all these names that I hadn't heard of before. And obviously when you do a little research, that these women didn't come out of nowhere. They were incredibly talented for a number of years, but I feel like you, they were ready in 2020, but they just didn't get an opportunity to expose their skillset, which is making 20, 21 very exciting as a fan of women's gravel racing.
[00:09:27] Whitney Allison: Yeah, totally. I was entirely under the radar. Just waiting out the pandemic. It did help a bit. Like I was able to finally settle my case and not have to go to trial, which was really, it was a huge relief in a lot of ways. Cause it, I also unfortunately with how our modern world works, you really have to be online.
[00:09:49] And without being able to be online and represent myself as an athlete, it was a. It was a pretty large hit and these other ways that you don't necessarily think of. So I was literally a secret for several years. So yeah, in 2021 rolls around,
[00:10:06] Craig Dalton: did you feel like in 2020 that you had the kind of gravel skillset, the technical skillset to be successful or was 2020 a good opportunity to just spend more time on the dirt and really get those skills underneath?
[00:10:19] Whitney Allison: It was definitely helpful. Cause like that was the only thing that there was to do because everything else was so depressing. It was just like spend a lot of time in the mountains. Yeah, we have lots of incredible writing super close to us. So then that is definitely a gift of 2020.
[00:10:34] Craig Dalton: Absolutely. And so for 2021, did you have your heart set on a certain series of races that you wanted to tackle throughout?
[00:10:41] Whitney Allison: I knew that given my circumstances that I would need to hit up a lot of the quote, unquote like most prestigious or most followed events in order to get my foot in the door and establish myself.
[00:10:59] I. I was curious about Unbound. I thought that there was a chance that I could do pretty well there. Just based on the type of road rider I was, which is just like all power all day, but I've always been curious, like how long does that last, if you actually like try turns out, that 12 hours?
[00:11:22] Yes. I kicked off the season. One of my early season races was Cotuit, which I wanted, which was in Fruita. And it's funny because I was under the radar for so long. Remember some of the feedback I was hearing was is she even fast? Did she win by a fluke in feedback like that?
[00:11:42] Which was funny
[00:11:44] Craig Dalton: That it, that is the booze social media moment when you just get trolls like that coming out.
[00:11:51] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And it's it's whatever I don't really care that somebody off the couch has to say in regards to something like that, but it's still pretty funny. Like I've been here the whole time. It's just.
[00:12:03] You didn't know that
[00:12:05] Craig Dalton: exactly. Hopefully, and I think this is going to be true after 2021. There's not going to be many people who follow this sport who don't know your name. We'll see. So you followed that up with a fourth place at Unbound unbounded, a 200 mile event, which is pretty spectacular.
[00:12:21] Whitney Allison: Yeah.
[00:12:22] And that was like, I honestly thought I was somewhere in the top 10 when I finished, because I had 300. And 47 minutes of stoppage of crash with the front flat. I use like the neutral support paid service for aid stuff. Cause we didn't have a aide support person and the person ripped my candle back apart.
[00:12:46] So I didn't have my Camelback for the race after the 50 mile mark. So I rode with literal plastic water bottles in my pockets for the rest of the 200.
[00:12:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think it's actually a good lesson for a lot of racers that like shit happens and you just gotta roll with it along the way. And so many you can be in first place and go to 10th place and vice versa with just the, the whatever's going to happen on the course.
[00:13:15] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And I think like success in these events, it's not necessarily. Okay. Do you experience bad luck? It's more do you have an absence of bad luck versus having good luck? Like it, it doesn't matter. Like you could ride over the same thing as another person, but for whatever reason, the rock just hits your tire.
[00:13:37] Just that much different. And it's not necessarily oh, you don't know how to choose a line or. You chose a bad tire pressure. It literally just could be a tiny bit of that. Yeah.
[00:13:49] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I talked to so many people who like throw away their favorite tire set because it failed them at Unbound.
[00:13:55] And I keep thinking to myself, it's because the person in front of you turn that rock over the wrong way and you just happened to hit it. It's not that particular tire is too.
[00:14:04] Whitney Allison: I know. I fought it in the most benign sections, which I thought was super obnoxious. I would have rather flooded and the really like pokey technical sections.
[00:14:12] But
[00:14:13] Craig Dalton: the most recently prior to recording this, you had a big victory at BWR Cedar city, which is amazing. Congratulations on that.
[00:14:22] Whitney Allison: Thanks. It was a really nice way to end my first year of gravel racing.
[00:14:27] Craig Dalton: I have to say, as a spectator on the couch, it was great. The coverage of the women's event, you felt like you were there, you got a lot of information along the way, and you felt the ebb and flow between you and the other riders and the top four or five, which was great to watch.
[00:14:40] I also noted that there was a lot of technicality in it. BWR San Diego, for example, not knowing. An extremely tactical event, but this course was technical. I read somewhere that you were there as fraught with the source endurance team and you'd actually previewed some of those technical sections.
[00:15:00] Whitney Allison: Yeah. I was actually there as a camp instructor for the course. I hadn't seen me that and that was actually really helpful. Like I got to see all, but one technical section over the course of the week and even ride some of them multiple times, such as the single track section, which I mean, by the time you get to race day and when you get to the single track section, you're not really sure what you're doing.
[00:15:24] Cause I was really cross-eyed and desperate and just trying not to like flat or crash, it was like my only goal going through there. It didn't matter if I went really slow or. Just as long as I didn't get it delayed by either of those other two options.
[00:15:39] Craig Dalton: How would you rate it in terms of its technicality versus an Unbound?
[00:15:42] For example,
[00:15:44] Whitney Allison: I thought it was significantly more technical. It was I had done a more technical race this year. So the races I did would be like code to. Unbound. And be gritty is not erased, but that is also quite technical. BWR San Diego Steamboat last best ride. And I would say like a lot of those sections in that race were really hard and a lot of really deep sands.
[00:16:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It was interesting. I think more so on the men's side, because there was maybe a pack of 12 or 15 together at one point, but you could see it start to be. Decimated in those technical sections, as one rider would bobble and take out two others. And ultimately, I think half that lead group got shed by accidents and misfortune in those technical sections
[00:16:31] Whitney Allison: at times, there is either one line or no lines.
[00:16:34] So if you're in a group that would be really hard.
[00:16:37] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I'm curious to get your perspective because as a, as someone who enjoys the different events around the country I prefer the more technical events, because I just think they're challenging more of a rider's full bag of tricks as a racer at the front end of the spectrum.
[00:16:52] Do you appreciate that? In course, design,
[00:16:54] Whitney Allison: I think it just goes into your strategy, right? When I go to think about an event I'm looking at anything that would make a change in the race. So For VWR Cedar city, like there is a four minute climb. Maybe it's a little bit longer, like four, eight minute climb.
[00:17:12] That was about 30 miles in. And I knew that was going to be the most important part because after that was a technical descent. And so I knew as long as I could get over the top or near the front, I would be okay. So I see those sorts of technical things as a feature that changes the story. And then you have to decide how you're going to change with the story.
[00:17:36] Craig Dalton: That's interesting. And I imagine most of the people at the front end of the race are taking the course into heavy consideration in their mindset. Is that how they plan their race day?
[00:17:46] Whitney Allison: Yeah, absolutely. And I am coming from a red background. I'm not a mountain biker, like a lot of other people that are coming into gravel.
[00:17:55] And so for me, it's trying to figure out how do I leverage. My strengths and bobble through my weaknesses. In training, always trying to improve them right
[00:18:05] Craig Dalton: now. I noted that in the BWR event that the women and the men started 10, 10 minutes apart. Was that true? How did you feel like that played, obviously this year, there's been a lot discussed about women and men racing together.
[00:18:19] Do you prefer that type of format or are you in different.
[00:18:22] Whitney Allison: I think with my ability, I am more indifferent to it. I think that for example, BWR San Diego had almost a 200 woman person woman's field. And so having a separate women's start there was really amazing. And because it had that size and it allowed like women that are getting dropped, they're probably going to have other women to run.
[00:18:47] And at that particular event, you also had the uncategorized men behind you. And so then once again, you're not necessarily having an entirely lonely day. So one thing that was hard at Cedar city is that the women's field was very small, maybe around 50 women. So the walk women started in front of us and then we were behind.
[00:19:09] And so then you have some women that are not as strong to stay with the women's field. And now they're alone 130 miles. And to me, that's maybe that's probably a consequence of that separate start when the field isn't that large the way for men did catch and we had overlapping courses for about half of the day.
[00:19:31] So some of those women probably had some people to run. But I do think like that is a consequence that has to be considered in those circumstances. But overall, if it's a large women's field, it's super awesome to have a separate start. And if it's a small women's field or a very long distance, like Unbound, it's nicer to have that mixed art because draft ability like helps us get through
[00:19:55] Craig Dalton: the day.
[00:19:56] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the interesting thing when these sort of quote unquote controversies come up, it's. So much of it is getting through the day and that shared experience, whether you're riding with males or females, that's part of the joy. I realize when there's prize money on the line, there's obviously different things to consider.
[00:20:12] And I certainly fall in the category of Hey, if you're pre-planning these kinds of things, that's probably a negative, but that organic, like I get to ride with someone regardless of the category they're in, for me as a mid pack rider is something that I really enjoy about racing.
[00:20:27] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And I think it's pretty obvious when you say it, if you come there with people that are planning on securing your result across categories, that's lame, but if it just happens on the road, that's like totally normal.
[00:20:44] Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. So it sounds like we're at the tail end of your season. Do you have any more events planned for.
[00:20:50] Whitney Allison: I'm running one more camp. So my husband, Zach, Alison and I, we have our business bikes works and we run a couple of three-day camps out of Fort Collins. And so we call them gravel grease land, and we just do three totally distinct routes out of Fort Collins, which includes a lot of single chalk ones.
[00:21:09] More out east with big rollers. And the third day is like out in the mountains. So we have one of those coming up in two weeks. But otherwise, like trying to get through some of those like bucket list rides and stuff that you like really want to do all year, but it doesn't quite work out with training or your schedule.
[00:21:26] Craig Dalton: And you've got to get that in Colorado before the snowfall.
[00:21:30] Whitney Allison: Yep. I am checking the forecast quite frequently.
[00:21:33] Craig Dalton: In addition to the gravel Graceland events that you just described, you've also got your own gravel event. Can you talk a little bit about Foco Fondo
[00:21:43] Whitney Allison: yeah, Foco Fondo. The first year of that was in 2015. So it's been around for awhile. It's just grown. Organically and grads grassrootsy it's very fun if you've ever been to Fort Collins, like it has a really big outdoor culture that is also extremely welcoming.
[00:22:03] People are very excited to take people back country skiing or, out on gravel bikes or mountain biking or climbing. And everybody is oh, here, let me. You can borrow this equipment if you don't have it. So focal Fondo has a similar welcoming vibe and we have a lot of people who come to the event, having never done a gravel event before.
[00:22:27] So it's their first experience. We have everything from 12 miles to 107 miles and the 12 mile is focused on family. We donate a portion of the profits to safe routes to school here in Fort Collins, and they use the funds that we give them for free afterschool bike clubs. Mostly at socially economic disadvantaged schools in our area.
[00:22:51] They'll do other services. For families that can't afford it, they'll show up with a mechanic at an apartment complex and fix up kids' bikes because not everybody has a car to put their kid's bike, to take it to the bike shop and just like other really thoughtful solutions that really elevate our community.
[00:23:09] And then Foco Fonda, the event itself after the ride. Like Rio Grande makes tacos. They're like a very large cycling staple in our community. We have live music and it's just a big fun.
[00:23:22] Craig Dalton: And for riders considering it for their 20, 22 calendar, what month is in and what type of terrain should they expect to be riding?
[00:23:31] If they're riding in the longer event,
[00:23:33] Whitney Allison: our event date should be July 24th. Hopefully hoping I can announce that like more publicly with a hundred percent certainty you the train is mostly pretty rolling. It'll gain elevation overall for the first half. And there'll be pretty fast on the way back.
[00:23:50] The big toss up every year is always the wind. Somehow this year, the writer's got a tailwind around the entire, it ran the entire. So we're like back at home, freaking out because the rat, the top riders are going to get back before lunch was even open. But otherwise it has a little mix of everything.
[00:24:08] There's not too much like technical sections, but there are a few spots and there's a few of those pinch points that you would, if you were going for a result there, you would really want to make some considerations in your strategy. Yeah.
[00:24:22] Craig Dalton: Sounds like a great event.
[00:24:23] So with your successes in 2021, what do you hope for in 2022?
[00:24:29] Whitney Allison: I think I have definitely learned a lot about myself in these events, different types of races. And I'm also looking forward to going back to some of the ones that I did this year. Like with some of those learnings, for example, Unbound obviously is a really great one where I just was on the comeback all day long was just always riding with a vengeance.
[00:24:56] I really wanted to do well at VWR San Diego with how the timing worked. It was the week before Foco Fondo. So I raced, I still got top 10, but I was a mess. So I'm really excited to get to go deep that in may, way before that time. But yeah. I'm looking forward to getting to experience some of the similar courses or same courses, but then see that your story.
[00:25:20] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. I think it is that type of sport that any event. Something's going to go wrong. It's really hard to have a perfect day, whether it's misfortune or just a, something not going your way that day. I think it keeps a lot of us coming back to the same courses, thinking, gosh, I could just do it that much better next year.
[00:25:37] Whitney Allison: Yeah. Kinda a little bit of vengeance that it's just a thing
[00:25:41] Craig Dalton: with you. Yeah, exactly. And for your business, with your husband any changes for next year, we just continue to run fittings and camps and experience.
[00:25:50] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And the recent program is going to do better as well. Like we're really fortunate, like just with having a good year and yeah, I'm excited to share some of the partners that we'll have for next year too.
[00:26:02] And it's fun too. Cause they get to come on like through the Foco Fondo and stuff as well. Like you get to offer a lot to the companies that work with. That's
[00:26:13] Craig Dalton: super exciting. I can't wait to hear about these announcements.
[00:26:16] Whitney Allison: I can't really share them, but it could be awhile.
[00:26:18] Craig Dalton: Thanks so much for joining me, Whitney.
[00:26:20] I appreciate it.
[00:26:21] Whitney Allison: Thank you.
[00:26:22] Craig Dalton: Big, thanks to Whitney for joining the show this week. I hope you learned a lot about her career and a little bit about her future plans for 2022.
[00:26:30] If you're following women's gravel racing, it's sure we're going to have a stacked 20, 22 roster of elite athletes. Fighting for the win at all. The big events.
[00:26:39] It's going to be super exciting. Be sure to check out Whitney and her husband's Foco Fondo website. Check out for the date next year and get registered. What for what looks like an amazing event there in Fort Collins, Colorado. If you're looking to support the show, you can visit us at www.buymeacoffee.com/thegravelride.
[00:26:59] We're also ratings and reviews are hugely important. So I appreciate everybody who's gone out of their way to provide a review for the gravel ride podcast.
[00:27:08] And finally, if you're interested in joining the ridership, our free global cycling community online. Online simply visit www.theridership.com. Until next time here's to finding. Some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with Whitney Allison, BWR Cedar City Champion and Co-Founder of the Foco Fondo in Fort Collins, CO.
Whitney Allison Web and Instagram
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Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos):
Whitney Allison
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast, we have Whitney, Alison who recently won the BWR Cedar city event. I don't know about you guys, but at the beginning of 2020, we are all poised and thinking about gravel racing and looking forward to a whole new crop of athletes coming into the mix.
[00:00:25] With the pandemic. Many of those athletes have to sit on the sidelines. Lines as events were few and far between. We're at the Alison was one of those athletes who was poised to make a great start. In 2020, but with sidelined into 2021. Early in the season, she had a win at Co2UT. And started to be on people's radar.
[00:00:45] Although. Although she deserved to be on the radar far before that.
[00:00:48] With a strong ride to fourth place at Unbound. Around in 2021. I suppose it was no. Surprise that another wind was right around the corner. I originally met Whitney at. The ENVE Grodeo event earlier this year as she's an ENVE sponsored rider and it was great to finally get her on the podcast And Cast We talk about her racing career What brought her to gravel riding and also the Foco Fondo that her and her husband produced in Fort Collins, colorado.
[00:01:13] I hope you enjoy the conversation. And with that, let's dive. Right in
[00:01:17] Whitney. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:19] Whitney Allison: Thanks. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:21] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I'm excited to talk to you about your season and gravel and what's next for you, but I always like to start off by learning a little bit about how you came to the sport of cycling and ultimately how you came to riding off-road with gravel.
[00:01:33] Whitney Allison: Yeah. I find cycling after high school.
[00:01:37] When I got to college, I went the pledget route. I thought I was going to go for. Soccer to being a normal college student got immediately bored. And, but I do lot. And and I ended up going on a group ride with a cycling team and women are worth a lot of points in collegiate racing. So they like really took me under their wing and kind of showed me the ropes and like collegiate cycling is such an incredible way to get into the sport.
[00:02:06] You get to find this really unique balance of both seriousness and fun at the same time, I think, as unique to any other area of cycling
[00:02:16] Craig Dalton: right now. Yeah. It's so interesting and mean, we talk about teams in cycling, but nothing really compares to the idea of a collegiate cycling team.
[00:02:25] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And you have just such a range.
[00:02:28] Athletes from maybe athletes who've never participated into a sport to people who've always been in a sport or maybe even always in cycling and you show up and you're S you're unified, whether you're in like the age category or when I was there, they only have A's and B's for women. So it didn't matter like how good you were.
[00:02:49] You were just still a very essential and important and welcome part
[00:02:53] Craig Dalton: of the. And we'll you riding both road and off-road at that point?
[00:02:57] Whitney Allison: Mostly just road. I didn't really have a mountain bike. I think I borrowed somebody's bike a couple of times for some mountain bike races, but mostly just the road.
[00:03:08] Craig Dalton: And what part of the country where you located in for college? I went to
[00:03:12] Whitney Allison: UT. So it's, I think it was just exclusively Texas for the conference, which is plenty big state.
[00:03:19] Craig Dalton: And was it a pretty popular sport? Was it a large program that you were involved in?
[00:03:23] Whitney Allison: It was really large. My first couple of years, I want to say that there were almost like 30 women competing in the A's, which was like so rad.
[00:03:32] Like I remember my first race and the A's on. I didn't know how to sprint. I didn't know how to get out of the saddle and just like sprinting and saddle and like still ending up on the podium. I had no idea what was going on, which is really funny if you know me too, because I'm not really, I'm a sprinter.
[00:03:50] So that's extra funding.
[00:03:53] Craig Dalton: Did you immediately start seeing post-collegiate opportunities in the professional cycling ranks? Was that an idea that you had early on in your collegiate?
[00:04:01] Whitney Allison: I definitely cat it up pretty quickly. I was also doing a lot of races in Austin at the time. I ended up getting on a development team out of Dallas that I believe it's still loosely associated with DNA pro cycling.
[00:04:14] But this is this would have been like 2008, 2008 or 2009. And so I was able to get on this team and it had a lot of the national level, like each 23 women at the time. And so that was something I was on the team, it was a regional writer. But immediately did really well. So I ended up with more opportunities than what was originally planned.
[00:04:35] And it was definitely like wild, like looking at some of those women. I had a lot of admiration for the. Just really talented women that, who wouldn't want to be an athlete like that. So I did get a race, do a lot of the national stage race stuff, starting my junior year of college.
[00:04:51] And then and my senior year. And then after that, I had to get a full-time job
[00:04:56] Craig Dalton: As many professional cyclists have to do unfortunate.
[00:05:00] Whitney Allison: Yeah, the student loans don't pay themselves.
[00:05:03] Craig Dalton: And then, so what was next for you and the cycling career?
[00:05:06] Whitney Allison: So I definitely still had, I still wanted to race professionally and do well there.
[00:05:12] I've always wanted to be an athlete. It's just something that's very much a part of my identity. So while working full time at this office job in port Collins, which is where I live now, I somehow convinced my the company owner to one Spencer me, and to let me go race all summer while working remotely, which had never been done.
[00:05:33] And it was to their demise because essentially as soon as I paid off my student loans, I like left. And eventually I would get a contract with Colavita in 2013. And stayed with them for, I think, four or five years until joining Superman, Huggins, Roman Superman with my former teammate, Lily Williams, who you've talked to before for the 2018 and 2019 season.
[00:06:02] Craig Dalton: And I've heard everything I've heard about that program as it was such a tight knit group of women and everybody had each other's backs, it sounded like a great experience. Those two years,
[00:06:12] Whitney Allison: it really was. You usually get some of that. I feel like on teams, but it's very rare that you could get it across such a high percentage of the writers.
[00:06:23] So it really was like a special time. We still have a WhatsApp text thread that still gets used. Most of us are all still in touch, which is really.
[00:06:31] Craig Dalton: Was 2019 a planned retirement from the road scene or did something happen? I know the team obviously stopped existing, I think at that point.
[00:06:40] But what was that your trajectory or your expectation prior to that?
[00:06:44] Whitney Allison: My trajectory part of, if we pedal back a little bit in August of 2018, I was hit by a driver with an Airstream a couple of days before Colorado. In Colorado. Classic is like a race I've always done really well at. I broke a bunch of bones, had PTSD, went through all sorts of therapy for that.
[00:07:03] And, I was really fortunate to be on a team that was really supportive. And so they're like, of course you have a contract for next year and let us know what you need, let us know how to support you. But it also meant like I couldn't be on social media and I'm focused on coming back. A good mind as best physical ability as possible while still healing from injuries that will have for their spirit life.
[00:07:26] And managing that's like really hard. And I was really proud to come back for the 2019 season, but it was really hard for me to put together performances that were. I was as good as I was having in 2018. I did finally in 2019 with the last race of the season, I did get on the podium at Colorado classic couple of days after the one-year anniversary of my crash.
[00:07:53] And that was like really powerful, but unfortunately from a professional road standpoint, it wasn't enough to find a similar contract than it. So it was a sad reluctant retirement. And so I thought what about the Scrabble thing? It was something that had always interested me, but I really wanted to ride that professional growth wave wall.
[00:08:16] It was there. Just because those are really special times. Yeah. The green teres and Europe, and do a lot of these like iconic spring classics and things like that are just there once in a lifetime opportunities. So 2021 is going to be my big you're getting into gravel and I'm still off of social media because I'm still in litigation.
[00:08:36] And then the endemic hit. So that was like really isolate. Cause you're like, oh, I I could be a really good gravel racer, but nobody has any idea.
[00:08:46] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I feel like at the beginning of 2020, which there was all this, we knew a bunch of new events were happening. We knew obviously there was other professional athletes, both men and women coming into the scene, but none of that happened and we had no idea.
[00:09:00] So when 2021, when racing actually happened, For me, like watching the women's scene. I just saw all these names that I hadn't heard of before. And obviously when you do a little research, that these women didn't come out of nowhere. They were incredibly talented for a number of years, but I feel like you, they were ready in 2020, but they just didn't get an opportunity to expose their skillset, which is making 20, 21 very exciting as a fan of women's gravel racing.
[00:09:27] Whitney Allison: Yeah, totally. I was entirely under the radar. Just waiting out the pandemic. It did help a bit. Like I was able to finally settle my case and not have to go to trial, which was really, it was a huge relief in a lot of ways. Cause it, I also unfortunately with how our modern world works, you really have to be online.
[00:09:49] And without being able to be online and represent myself as an athlete, it was a. It was a pretty large hit and these other ways that you don't necessarily think of. So I was literally a secret for several years. So yeah, in 2021 rolls around,
[00:10:06] Craig Dalton: did you feel like in 2020 that you had the kind of gravel skillset, the technical skillset to be successful or was 2020 a good opportunity to just spend more time on the dirt and really get those skills underneath?
[00:10:19] Whitney Allison: It was definitely helpful. Cause like that was the only thing that there was to do because everything else was so depressing. It was just like spend a lot of time in the mountains. Yeah, we have lots of incredible writing super close to us. So then that is definitely a gift of 2020.
[00:10:34] Craig Dalton: Absolutely. And so for 2021, did you have your heart set on a certain series of races that you wanted to tackle throughout?
[00:10:41] Whitney Allison: I knew that given my circumstances that I would need to hit up a lot of the quote, unquote like most prestigious or most followed events in order to get my foot in the door and establish myself.
[00:10:59] I. I was curious about Unbound. I thought that there was a chance that I could do pretty well there. Just based on the type of road rider I was, which is just like all power all day, but I've always been curious, like how long does that last, if you actually like try turns out, that 12 hours?
[00:11:22] Yes. I kicked off the season. One of my early season races was Cotuit, which I wanted, which was in Fruita. And it's funny because I was under the radar for so long. Remember some of the feedback I was hearing was is she even fast? Did she win by a fluke in feedback like that?
[00:11:42] Which was funny
[00:11:44] Craig Dalton: That it, that is the booze social media moment when you just get trolls like that coming out.
[00:11:51] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And it's it's whatever I don't really care that somebody off the couch has to say in regards to something like that, but it's still pretty funny. Like I've been here the whole time. It's just.
[00:12:03] You didn't know that
[00:12:05] Craig Dalton: exactly. Hopefully, and I think this is going to be true after 2021. There's not going to be many people who follow this sport who don't know your name. We'll see. So you followed that up with a fourth place at Unbound unbounded, a 200 mile event, which is pretty spectacular.
[00:12:21] Whitney Allison: Yeah.
[00:12:22] And that was like, I honestly thought I was somewhere in the top 10 when I finished, because I had 300. And 47 minutes of stoppage of crash with the front flat. I use like the neutral support paid service for aid stuff. Cause we didn't have a aide support person and the person ripped my candle back apart.
[00:12:46] So I didn't have my Camelback for the race after the 50 mile mark. So I rode with literal plastic water bottles in my pockets for the rest of the 200.
[00:12:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think it's actually a good lesson for a lot of racers that like shit happens and you just gotta roll with it along the way. And so many you can be in first place and go to 10th place and vice versa with just the, the whatever's going to happen on the course.
[00:13:15] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And I think like success in these events, it's not necessarily. Okay. Do you experience bad luck? It's more do you have an absence of bad luck versus having good luck? Like it, it doesn't matter. Like you could ride over the same thing as another person, but for whatever reason, the rock just hits your tire.
[00:13:37] Just that much different. And it's not necessarily oh, you don't know how to choose a line or. You chose a bad tire pressure. It literally just could be a tiny bit of that. Yeah.
[00:13:49] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I talked to so many people who like throw away their favorite tire set because it failed them at Unbound.
[00:13:55] And I keep thinking to myself, it's because the person in front of you turn that rock over the wrong way and you just happened to hit it. It's not that particular tire is too.
[00:14:04] Whitney Allison: I know. I fought it in the most benign sections, which I thought was super obnoxious. I would have rather flooded and the really like pokey technical sections.
[00:14:12] But
[00:14:13] Craig Dalton: the most recently prior to recording this, you had a big victory at BWR Cedar city, which is amazing. Congratulations on that.
[00:14:22] Whitney Allison: Thanks. It was a really nice way to end my first year of gravel racing.
[00:14:27] Craig Dalton: I have to say, as a spectator on the couch, it was great. The coverage of the women's event, you felt like you were there, you got a lot of information along the way, and you felt the ebb and flow between you and the other riders and the top four or five, which was great to watch.
[00:14:40] I also noted that there was a lot of technicality in it. BWR San Diego, for example, not knowing. An extremely tactical event, but this course was technical. I read somewhere that you were there as fraught with the source endurance team and you'd actually previewed some of those technical sections.
[00:15:00] Whitney Allison: Yeah. I was actually there as a camp instructor for the course. I hadn't seen me that and that was actually really helpful. Like I got to see all, but one technical section over the course of the week and even ride some of them multiple times, such as the single track section, which I mean, by the time you get to race day and when you get to the single track section, you're not really sure what you're doing.
[00:15:24] Cause I was really cross-eyed and desperate and just trying not to like flat or crash, it was like my only goal going through there. It didn't matter if I went really slow or. Just as long as I didn't get it delayed by either of those other two options.
[00:15:39] Craig Dalton: How would you rate it in terms of its technicality versus an Unbound?
[00:15:42] For example,
[00:15:44] Whitney Allison: I thought it was significantly more technical. It was I had done a more technical race this year. So the races I did would be like code to. Unbound. And be gritty is not erased, but that is also quite technical. BWR San Diego Steamboat last best ride. And I would say like a lot of those sections in that race were really hard and a lot of really deep sands.
[00:16:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It was interesting. I think more so on the men's side, because there was maybe a pack of 12 or 15 together at one point, but you could see it start to be. Decimated in those technical sections, as one rider would bobble and take out two others. And ultimately, I think half that lead group got shed by accidents and misfortune in those technical sections
[00:16:31] Whitney Allison: at times, there is either one line or no lines.
[00:16:34] So if you're in a group that would be really hard.
[00:16:37] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I'm curious to get your perspective because as a, as someone who enjoys the different events around the country I prefer the more technical events, because I just think they're challenging more of a rider's full bag of tricks as a racer at the front end of the spectrum.
[00:16:52] Do you appreciate that? In course, design,
[00:16:54] Whitney Allison: I think it just goes into your strategy, right? When I go to think about an event I'm looking at anything that would make a change in the race. So For VWR Cedar city, like there is a four minute climb. Maybe it's a little bit longer, like four, eight minute climb.
[00:17:12] That was about 30 miles in. And I knew that was going to be the most important part because after that was a technical descent. And so I knew as long as I could get over the top or near the front, I would be okay. So I see those sorts of technical things as a feature that changes the story. And then you have to decide how you're going to change with the story.
[00:17:36] Craig Dalton: That's interesting. And I imagine most of the people at the front end of the race are taking the course into heavy consideration in their mindset. Is that how they plan their race day?
[00:17:46] Whitney Allison: Yeah, absolutely. And I am coming from a red background. I'm not a mountain biker, like a lot of other people that are coming into gravel.
[00:17:55] And so for me, it's trying to figure out how do I leverage. My strengths and bobble through my weaknesses. In training, always trying to improve them right
[00:18:05] Craig Dalton: now. I noted that in the BWR event that the women and the men started 10, 10 minutes apart. Was that true? How did you feel like that played, obviously this year, there's been a lot discussed about women and men racing together.
[00:18:19] Do you prefer that type of format or are you in different.
[00:18:22] Whitney Allison: I think with my ability, I am more indifferent to it. I think that for example, BWR San Diego had almost a 200 woman person woman's field. And so having a separate women's start there was really amazing. And because it had that size and it allowed like women that are getting dropped, they're probably going to have other women to run.
[00:18:47] And at that particular event, you also had the uncategorized men behind you. And so then once again, you're not necessarily having an entirely lonely day. So one thing that was hard at Cedar city is that the women's field was very small, maybe around 50 women. So the walk women started in front of us and then we were behind.
[00:19:09] And so then you have some women that are not as strong to stay with the women's field. And now they're alone 130 miles. And to me, that's maybe that's probably a consequence of that separate start when the field isn't that large the way for men did catch and we had overlapping courses for about half of the day.
[00:19:31] So some of those women probably had some people to run. But I do think like that is a consequence that has to be considered in those circumstances. But overall, if it's a large women's field, it's super awesome to have a separate start. And if it's a small women's field or a very long distance, like Unbound, it's nicer to have that mixed art because draft ability like helps us get through
[00:19:55] Craig Dalton: the day.
[00:19:56] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the interesting thing when these sort of quote unquote controversies come up, it's. So much of it is getting through the day and that shared experience, whether you're riding with males or females, that's part of the joy. I realize when there's prize money on the line, there's obviously different things to consider.
[00:20:12] And I certainly fall in the category of Hey, if you're pre-planning these kinds of things, that's probably a negative, but that organic, like I get to ride with someone regardless of the category they're in, for me as a mid pack rider is something that I really enjoy about racing.
[00:20:27] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And I think it's pretty obvious when you say it, if you come there with people that are planning on securing your result across categories, that's lame, but if it just happens on the road, that's like totally normal.
[00:20:44] Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. So it sounds like we're at the tail end of your season. Do you have any more events planned for.
[00:20:50] Whitney Allison: I'm running one more camp. So my husband, Zach, Alison and I, we have our business bikes works and we run a couple of three-day camps out of Fort Collins. And so we call them gravel grease land, and we just do three totally distinct routes out of Fort Collins, which includes a lot of single chalk ones.
[00:21:09] More out east with big rollers. And the third day is like out in the mountains. So we have one of those coming up in two weeks. But otherwise, like trying to get through some of those like bucket list rides and stuff that you like really want to do all year, but it doesn't quite work out with training or your schedule.
[00:21:26] Craig Dalton: And you've got to get that in Colorado before the snowfall.
[00:21:30] Whitney Allison: Yep. I am checking the forecast quite frequently.
[00:21:33] Craig Dalton: In addition to the gravel Graceland events that you just described, you've also got your own gravel event. Can you talk a little bit about Foco Fondo
[00:21:43] Whitney Allison: yeah, Foco Fondo. The first year of that was in 2015. So it's been around for awhile. It's just grown. Organically and grads grassrootsy it's very fun if you've ever been to Fort Collins, like it has a really big outdoor culture that is also extremely welcoming.
[00:22:03] People are very excited to take people back country skiing or, out on gravel bikes or mountain biking or climbing. And everybody is oh, here, let me. You can borrow this equipment if you don't have it. So focal Fondo has a similar welcoming vibe and we have a lot of people who come to the event, having never done a gravel event before.
[00:22:27] So it's their first experience. We have everything from 12 miles to 107 miles and the 12 mile is focused on family. We donate a portion of the profits to safe routes to school here in Fort Collins, and they use the funds that we give them for free afterschool bike clubs. Mostly at socially economic disadvantaged schools in our area.
[00:22:51] They'll do other services. For families that can't afford it, they'll show up with a mechanic at an apartment complex and fix up kids' bikes because not everybody has a car to put their kid's bike, to take it to the bike shop and just like other really thoughtful solutions that really elevate our community.
[00:23:09] And then Foco Fonda, the event itself after the ride. Like Rio Grande makes tacos. They're like a very large cycling staple in our community. We have live music and it's just a big fun.
[00:23:22] Craig Dalton: And for riders considering it for their 20, 22 calendar, what month is in and what type of terrain should they expect to be riding?
[00:23:31] If they're riding in the longer event,
[00:23:33] Whitney Allison: our event date should be July 24th. Hopefully hoping I can announce that like more publicly with a hundred percent certainty you the train is mostly pretty rolling. It'll gain elevation overall for the first half. And there'll be pretty fast on the way back.
[00:23:50] The big toss up every year is always the wind. Somehow this year, the writer's got a tailwind around the entire, it ran the entire. So we're like back at home, freaking out because the rat, the top riders are going to get back before lunch was even open. But otherwise it has a little mix of everything.
[00:24:08] There's not too much like technical sections, but there are a few spots and there's a few of those pinch points that you would, if you were going for a result there, you would really want to make some considerations in your strategy. Yeah.
[00:24:22] Craig Dalton: Sounds like a great event.
[00:24:23] So with your successes in 2021, what do you hope for in 2022?
[00:24:29] Whitney Allison: I think I have definitely learned a lot about myself in these events, different types of races. And I'm also looking forward to going back to some of the ones that I did this year. Like with some of those learnings, for example, Unbound obviously is a really great one where I just was on the comeback all day long was just always riding with a vengeance.
[00:24:56] I really wanted to do well at VWR San Diego with how the timing worked. It was the week before Foco Fondo. So I raced, I still got top 10, but I was a mess. So I'm really excited to get to go deep that in may, way before that time. But yeah. I'm looking forward to getting to experience some of the similar courses or same courses, but then see that your story.
[00:25:20] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. I think it is that type of sport that any event. Something's going to go wrong. It's really hard to have a perfect day, whether it's misfortune or just a, something not going your way that day. I think it keeps a lot of us coming back to the same courses, thinking, gosh, I could just do it that much better next year.
[00:25:37] Whitney Allison: Yeah. Kinda a little bit of vengeance that it's just a thing
[00:25:41] Craig Dalton: with you. Yeah, exactly. And for your business, with your husband any changes for next year, we just continue to run fittings and camps and experience.
[00:25:50] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And the recent program is going to do better as well. Like we're really fortunate, like just with having a good year and yeah, I'm excited to share some of the partners that we'll have for next year too.
[00:26:02] And it's fun too. Cause they get to come on like through the Foco Fondo and stuff as well. Like you get to offer a lot to the companies that work with. That's
[00:26:13] Craig Dalton: super exciting. I can't wait to hear about these announcements.
[00:26:16] Whitney Allison: I can't really share them, but it could be awhile.
[00:26:18] Craig Dalton: Thanks so much for joining me, Whitney.
[00:26:20] I appreciate it.
[00:26:21] Whitney Allison: Thank you.
[00:26:22] Craig Dalton: Big, thanks to Whitney for joining the show this week. I hope you learned a lot about her career and a little bit about her future plans for 2022.
[00:26:30] If you're following women's gravel racing, it's sure we're going to have a stacked 20, 22 roster of elite athletes. Fighting for the win at all. The big events.
[00:26:39] It's going to be super exciting. Be sure to check out Whitney and her husband's Foco Fondo website. Check out for the date next year and get registered. What for what looks like an amazing event there in Fort Collins, Colorado. If you're looking to support the show, you can visit us at www.buymeacoffee.com/thegravelride.
[00:26:59] We're also ratings and reviews are hugely important. So I appreciate everybody who's gone out of their way to provide a review for the gravel ride podcast.
[00:27:08] And finally, if you're interested in joining the ridership, our free global cycling community online. Online simply visit www.theridership.com. Until next time here's to finding. Some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with Whitney Allison, BWR Cedar City Champion and Co-Founder of the Foco Fondo in Fort Collins, CO.
Whitney Allison Web and Instagram
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Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos):
Whitney Allison
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast, we have Whitney, Alison who recently won the BWR Cedar city event. I don't know about you guys, but at the beginning of 2020, we are all poised and thinking about gravel racing and looking forward to a whole new crop of athletes coming into the mix.
[00:00:25] With the pandemic. Many of those athletes have to sit on the sidelines. Lines as events were few and far between. We're at the Alison was one of those athletes who was poised to make a great start. In 2020, but with sidelined into 2021. Early in the season, she had a win at Co2UT. And started to be on people's radar.
[00:00:45] Although. Although she deserved to be on the radar far before that.
[00:00:48] With a strong ride to fourth place at Unbound. Around in 2021. I suppose it was no. Surprise that another wind was right around the corner. I originally met Whitney at. The ENVE Grodeo event earlier this year as she's an ENVE sponsored rider and it was great to finally get her on the podcast And Cast We talk about her racing career What brought her to gravel riding and also the Foco Fondo that her and her husband produced in Fort Collins, colorado.
[00:01:13] I hope you enjoy the conversation. And with that, let's dive. Right in
[00:01:17] Whitney. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:19] Whitney Allison: Thanks. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:21] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I'm excited to talk to you about your season and gravel and what's next for you, but I always like to start off by learning a little bit about how you came to the sport of cycling and ultimately how you came to riding off-road with gravel.
[00:01:33] Whitney Allison: Yeah. I find cycling after high school.
[00:01:37] When I got to college, I went the pledget route. I thought I was going to go for. Soccer to being a normal college student got immediately bored. And, but I do lot. And and I ended up going on a group ride with a cycling team and women are worth a lot of points in collegiate racing. So they like really took me under their wing and kind of showed me the ropes and like collegiate cycling is such an incredible way to get into the sport.
[00:02:06] You get to find this really unique balance of both seriousness and fun at the same time, I think, as unique to any other area of cycling
[00:02:16] Craig Dalton: right now. Yeah. It's so interesting and mean, we talk about teams in cycling, but nothing really compares to the idea of a collegiate cycling team.
[00:02:25] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And you have just such a range.
[00:02:28] Athletes from maybe athletes who've never participated into a sport to people who've always been in a sport or maybe even always in cycling and you show up and you're S you're unified, whether you're in like the age category or when I was there, they only have A's and B's for women. So it didn't matter like how good you were.
[00:02:49] You were just still a very essential and important and welcome part
[00:02:53] Craig Dalton: of the. And we'll you riding both road and off-road at that point?
[00:02:57] Whitney Allison: Mostly just road. I didn't really have a mountain bike. I think I borrowed somebody's bike a couple of times for some mountain bike races, but mostly just the road.
[00:03:08] Craig Dalton: And what part of the country where you located in for college? I went to
[00:03:12] Whitney Allison: UT. So it's, I think it was just exclusively Texas for the conference, which is plenty big state.
[00:03:19] Craig Dalton: And was it a pretty popular sport? Was it a large program that you were involved in?
[00:03:23] Whitney Allison: It was really large. My first couple of years, I want to say that there were almost like 30 women competing in the A's, which was like so rad.
[00:03:32] Like I remember my first race and the A's on. I didn't know how to sprint. I didn't know how to get out of the saddle and just like sprinting and saddle and like still ending up on the podium. I had no idea what was going on, which is really funny if you know me too, because I'm not really, I'm a sprinter.
[00:03:50] So that's extra funding.
[00:03:53] Craig Dalton: Did you immediately start seeing post-collegiate opportunities in the professional cycling ranks? Was that an idea that you had early on in your collegiate?
[00:04:01] Whitney Allison: I definitely cat it up pretty quickly. I was also doing a lot of races in Austin at the time. I ended up getting on a development team out of Dallas that I believe it's still loosely associated with DNA pro cycling.
[00:04:14] But this is this would have been like 2008, 2008 or 2009. And so I was able to get on this team and it had a lot of the national level, like each 23 women at the time. And so that was something I was on the team, it was a regional writer. But immediately did really well. So I ended up with more opportunities than what was originally planned.
[00:04:35] And it was definitely like wild, like looking at some of those women. I had a lot of admiration for the. Just really talented women that, who wouldn't want to be an athlete like that. So I did get a race, do a lot of the national stage race stuff, starting my junior year of college.
[00:04:51] And then and my senior year. And then after that, I had to get a full-time job
[00:04:56] Craig Dalton: As many professional cyclists have to do unfortunate.
[00:05:00] Whitney Allison: Yeah, the student loans don't pay themselves.
[00:05:03] Craig Dalton: And then, so what was next for you and the cycling career?
[00:05:06] Whitney Allison: So I definitely still had, I still wanted to race professionally and do well there.
[00:05:12] I've always wanted to be an athlete. It's just something that's very much a part of my identity. So while working full time at this office job in port Collins, which is where I live now, I somehow convinced my the company owner to one Spencer me, and to let me go race all summer while working remotely, which had never been done.
[00:05:33] And it was to their demise because essentially as soon as I paid off my student loans, I like left. And eventually I would get a contract with Colavita in 2013. And stayed with them for, I think, four or five years until joining Superman, Huggins, Roman Superman with my former teammate, Lily Williams, who you've talked to before for the 2018 and 2019 season.
[00:06:02] Craig Dalton: And I've heard everything I've heard about that program as it was such a tight knit group of women and everybody had each other's backs, it sounded like a great experience. Those two years,
[00:06:12] Whitney Allison: it really was. You usually get some of that. I feel like on teams, but it's very rare that you could get it across such a high percentage of the writers.
[00:06:23] So it really was like a special time. We still have a WhatsApp text thread that still gets used. Most of us are all still in touch, which is really.
[00:06:31] Craig Dalton: Was 2019 a planned retirement from the road scene or did something happen? I know the team obviously stopped existing, I think at that point.
[00:06:40] But what was that your trajectory or your expectation prior to that?
[00:06:44] Whitney Allison: My trajectory part of, if we pedal back a little bit in August of 2018, I was hit by a driver with an Airstream a couple of days before Colorado. In Colorado. Classic is like a race I've always done really well at. I broke a bunch of bones, had PTSD, went through all sorts of therapy for that.
[00:07:03] And, I was really fortunate to be on a team that was really supportive. And so they're like, of course you have a contract for next year and let us know what you need, let us know how to support you. But it also meant like I couldn't be on social media and I'm focused on coming back. A good mind as best physical ability as possible while still healing from injuries that will have for their spirit life.
[00:07:26] And managing that's like really hard. And I was really proud to come back for the 2019 season, but it was really hard for me to put together performances that were. I was as good as I was having in 2018. I did finally in 2019 with the last race of the season, I did get on the podium at Colorado classic couple of days after the one-year anniversary of my crash.
[00:07:53] And that was like really powerful, but unfortunately from a professional road standpoint, it wasn't enough to find a similar contract than it. So it was a sad reluctant retirement. And so I thought what about the Scrabble thing? It was something that had always interested me, but I really wanted to ride that professional growth wave wall.
[00:08:16] It was there. Just because those are really special times. Yeah. The green teres and Europe, and do a lot of these like iconic spring classics and things like that are just there once in a lifetime opportunities. So 2021 is going to be my big you're getting into gravel and I'm still off of social media because I'm still in litigation.
[00:08:36] And then the endemic hit. So that was like really isolate. Cause you're like, oh, I I could be a really good gravel racer, but nobody has any idea.
[00:08:46] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I feel like at the beginning of 2020, which there was all this, we knew a bunch of new events were happening. We knew obviously there was other professional athletes, both men and women coming into the scene, but none of that happened and we had no idea.
[00:09:00] So when 2021, when racing actually happened, For me, like watching the women's scene. I just saw all these names that I hadn't heard of before. And obviously when you do a little research, that these women didn't come out of nowhere. They were incredibly talented for a number of years, but I feel like you, they were ready in 2020, but they just didn't get an opportunity to expose their skillset, which is making 20, 21 very exciting as a fan of women's gravel racing.
[00:09:27] Whitney Allison: Yeah, totally. I was entirely under the radar. Just waiting out the pandemic. It did help a bit. Like I was able to finally settle my case and not have to go to trial, which was really, it was a huge relief in a lot of ways. Cause it, I also unfortunately with how our modern world works, you really have to be online.
[00:09:49] And without being able to be online and represent myself as an athlete, it was a. It was a pretty large hit and these other ways that you don't necessarily think of. So I was literally a secret for several years. So yeah, in 2021 rolls around,
[00:10:06] Craig Dalton: did you feel like in 2020 that you had the kind of gravel skillset, the technical skillset to be successful or was 2020 a good opportunity to just spend more time on the dirt and really get those skills underneath?
[00:10:19] Whitney Allison: It was definitely helpful. Cause like that was the only thing that there was to do because everything else was so depressing. It was just like spend a lot of time in the mountains. Yeah, we have lots of incredible writing super close to us. So then that is definitely a gift of 2020.
[00:10:34] Craig Dalton: Absolutely. And so for 2021, did you have your heart set on a certain series of races that you wanted to tackle throughout?
[00:10:41] Whitney Allison: I knew that given my circumstances that I would need to hit up a lot of the quote, unquote like most prestigious or most followed events in order to get my foot in the door and establish myself.
[00:10:59] I. I was curious about Unbound. I thought that there was a chance that I could do pretty well there. Just based on the type of road rider I was, which is just like all power all day, but I've always been curious, like how long does that last, if you actually like try turns out, that 12 hours?
[00:11:22] Yes. I kicked off the season. One of my early season races was Cotuit, which I wanted, which was in Fruita. And it's funny because I was under the radar for so long. Remember some of the feedback I was hearing was is she even fast? Did she win by a fluke in feedback like that?
[00:11:42] Which was funny
[00:11:44] Craig Dalton: That it, that is the booze social media moment when you just get trolls like that coming out.
[00:11:51] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And it's it's whatever I don't really care that somebody off the couch has to say in regards to something like that, but it's still pretty funny. Like I've been here the whole time. It's just.
[00:12:03] You didn't know that
[00:12:05] Craig Dalton: exactly. Hopefully, and I think this is going to be true after 2021. There's not going to be many people who follow this sport who don't know your name. We'll see. So you followed that up with a fourth place at Unbound unbounded, a 200 mile event, which is pretty spectacular.
[00:12:21] Whitney Allison: Yeah.
[00:12:22] And that was like, I honestly thought I was somewhere in the top 10 when I finished, because I had 300. And 47 minutes of stoppage of crash with the front flat. I use like the neutral support paid service for aid stuff. Cause we didn't have a aide support person and the person ripped my candle back apart.
[00:12:46] So I didn't have my Camelback for the race after the 50 mile mark. So I rode with literal plastic water bottles in my pockets for the rest of the 200.
[00:12:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think it's actually a good lesson for a lot of racers that like shit happens and you just gotta roll with it along the way. And so many you can be in first place and go to 10th place and vice versa with just the, the whatever's going to happen on the course.
[00:13:15] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And I think like success in these events, it's not necessarily. Okay. Do you experience bad luck? It's more do you have an absence of bad luck versus having good luck? Like it, it doesn't matter. Like you could ride over the same thing as another person, but for whatever reason, the rock just hits your tire.
[00:13:37] Just that much different. And it's not necessarily oh, you don't know how to choose a line or. You chose a bad tire pressure. It literally just could be a tiny bit of that. Yeah.
[00:13:49] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I talked to so many people who like throw away their favorite tire set because it failed them at Unbound.
[00:13:55] And I keep thinking to myself, it's because the person in front of you turn that rock over the wrong way and you just happened to hit it. It's not that particular tire is too.
[00:14:04] Whitney Allison: I know. I fought it in the most benign sections, which I thought was super obnoxious. I would have rather flooded and the really like pokey technical sections.
[00:14:12] But
[00:14:13] Craig Dalton: the most recently prior to recording this, you had a big victory at BWR Cedar city, which is amazing. Congratulations on that.
[00:14:22] Whitney Allison: Thanks. It was a really nice way to end my first year of gravel racing.
[00:14:27] Craig Dalton: I have to say, as a spectator on the couch, it was great. The coverage of the women's event, you felt like you were there, you got a lot of information along the way, and you felt the ebb and flow between you and the other riders and the top four or five, which was great to watch.
[00:14:40] I also noted that there was a lot of technicality in it. BWR San Diego, for example, not knowing. An extremely tactical event, but this course was technical. I read somewhere that you were there as fraught with the source endurance team and you'd actually previewed some of those technical sections.
[00:15:00] Whitney Allison: Yeah. I was actually there as a camp instructor for the course. I hadn't seen me that and that was actually really helpful. Like I got to see all, but one technical section over the course of the week and even ride some of them multiple times, such as the single track section, which I mean, by the time you get to race day and when you get to the single track section, you're not really sure what you're doing.
[00:15:24] Cause I was really cross-eyed and desperate and just trying not to like flat or crash, it was like my only goal going through there. It didn't matter if I went really slow or. Just as long as I didn't get it delayed by either of those other two options.
[00:15:39] Craig Dalton: How would you rate it in terms of its technicality versus an Unbound?
[00:15:42] For example,
[00:15:44] Whitney Allison: I thought it was significantly more technical. It was I had done a more technical race this year. So the races I did would be like code to. Unbound. And be gritty is not erased, but that is also quite technical. BWR San Diego Steamboat last best ride. And I would say like a lot of those sections in that race were really hard and a lot of really deep sands.
[00:16:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It was interesting. I think more so on the men's side, because there was maybe a pack of 12 or 15 together at one point, but you could see it start to be. Decimated in those technical sections, as one rider would bobble and take out two others. And ultimately, I think half that lead group got shed by accidents and misfortune in those technical sections
[00:16:31] Whitney Allison: at times, there is either one line or no lines.
[00:16:34] So if you're in a group that would be really hard.
[00:16:37] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I'm curious to get your perspective because as a, as someone who enjoys the different events around the country I prefer the more technical events, because I just think they're challenging more of a rider's full bag of tricks as a racer at the front end of the spectrum.
[00:16:52] Do you appreciate that? In course, design,
[00:16:54] Whitney Allison: I think it just goes into your strategy, right? When I go to think about an event I'm looking at anything that would make a change in the race. So For VWR Cedar city, like there is a four minute climb. Maybe it's a little bit longer, like four, eight minute climb.
[00:17:12] That was about 30 miles in. And I knew that was going to be the most important part because after that was a technical descent. And so I knew as long as I could get over the top or near the front, I would be okay. So I see those sorts of technical things as a feature that changes the story. And then you have to decide how you're going to change with the story.
[00:17:36] Craig Dalton: That's interesting. And I imagine most of the people at the front end of the race are taking the course into heavy consideration in their mindset. Is that how they plan their race day?
[00:17:46] Whitney Allison: Yeah, absolutely. And I am coming from a red background. I'm not a mountain biker, like a lot of other people that are coming into gravel.
[00:17:55] And so for me, it's trying to figure out how do I leverage. My strengths and bobble through my weaknesses. In training, always trying to improve them right
[00:18:05] Craig Dalton: now. I noted that in the BWR event that the women and the men started 10, 10 minutes apart. Was that true? How did you feel like that played, obviously this year, there's been a lot discussed about women and men racing together.
[00:18:19] Do you prefer that type of format or are you in different.
[00:18:22] Whitney Allison: I think with my ability, I am more indifferent to it. I think that for example, BWR San Diego had almost a 200 woman person woman's field. And so having a separate women's start there was really amazing. And because it had that size and it allowed like women that are getting dropped, they're probably going to have other women to run.
[00:18:47] And at that particular event, you also had the uncategorized men behind you. And so then once again, you're not necessarily having an entirely lonely day. So one thing that was hard at Cedar city is that the women's field was very small, maybe around 50 women. So the walk women started in front of us and then we were behind.
[00:19:09] And so then you have some women that are not as strong to stay with the women's field. And now they're alone 130 miles. And to me, that's maybe that's probably a consequence of that separate start when the field isn't that large the way for men did catch and we had overlapping courses for about half of the day.
[00:19:31] So some of those women probably had some people to run. But I do think like that is a consequence that has to be considered in those circumstances. But overall, if it's a large women's field, it's super awesome to have a separate start. And if it's a small women's field or a very long distance, like Unbound, it's nicer to have that mixed art because draft ability like helps us get through
[00:19:55] Craig Dalton: the day.
[00:19:56] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the interesting thing when these sort of quote unquote controversies come up, it's. So much of it is getting through the day and that shared experience, whether you're riding with males or females, that's part of the joy. I realize when there's prize money on the line, there's obviously different things to consider.
[00:20:12] And I certainly fall in the category of Hey, if you're pre-planning these kinds of things, that's probably a negative, but that organic, like I get to ride with someone regardless of the category they're in, for me as a mid pack rider is something that I really enjoy about racing.
[00:20:27] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And I think it's pretty obvious when you say it, if you come there with people that are planning on securing your result across categories, that's lame, but if it just happens on the road, that's like totally normal.
[00:20:44] Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. So it sounds like we're at the tail end of your season. Do you have any more events planned for.
[00:20:50] Whitney Allison: I'm running one more camp. So my husband, Zach, Alison and I, we have our business bikes works and we run a couple of three-day camps out of Fort Collins. And so we call them gravel grease land, and we just do three totally distinct routes out of Fort Collins, which includes a lot of single chalk ones.
[00:21:09] More out east with big rollers. And the third day is like out in the mountains. So we have one of those coming up in two weeks. But otherwise, like trying to get through some of those like bucket list rides and stuff that you like really want to do all year, but it doesn't quite work out with training or your schedule.
[00:21:26] Craig Dalton: And you've got to get that in Colorado before the snowfall.
[00:21:30] Whitney Allison: Yep. I am checking the forecast quite frequently.
[00:21:33] Craig Dalton: In addition to the gravel Graceland events that you just described, you've also got your own gravel event. Can you talk a little bit about Foco Fondo
[00:21:43] Whitney Allison: yeah, Foco Fondo. The first year of that was in 2015. So it's been around for awhile. It's just grown. Organically and grads grassrootsy it's very fun if you've ever been to Fort Collins, like it has a really big outdoor culture that is also extremely welcoming.
[00:22:03] People are very excited to take people back country skiing or, out on gravel bikes or mountain biking or climbing. And everybody is oh, here, let me. You can borrow this equipment if you don't have it. So focal Fondo has a similar welcoming vibe and we have a lot of people who come to the event, having never done a gravel event before.
[00:22:27] So it's their first experience. We have everything from 12 miles to 107 miles and the 12 mile is focused on family. We donate a portion of the profits to safe routes to school here in Fort Collins, and they use the funds that we give them for free afterschool bike clubs. Mostly at socially economic disadvantaged schools in our area.
[00:22:51] They'll do other services. For families that can't afford it, they'll show up with a mechanic at an apartment complex and fix up kids' bikes because not everybody has a car to put their kid's bike, to take it to the bike shop and just like other really thoughtful solutions that really elevate our community.
[00:23:09] And then Foco Fonda, the event itself after the ride. Like Rio Grande makes tacos. They're like a very large cycling staple in our community. We have live music and it's just a big fun.
[00:23:22] Craig Dalton: And for riders considering it for their 20, 22 calendar, what month is in and what type of terrain should they expect to be riding?
[00:23:31] If they're riding in the longer event,
[00:23:33] Whitney Allison: our event date should be July 24th. Hopefully hoping I can announce that like more publicly with a hundred percent certainty you the train is mostly pretty rolling. It'll gain elevation overall for the first half. And there'll be pretty fast on the way back.
[00:23:50] The big toss up every year is always the wind. Somehow this year, the writer's got a tailwind around the entire, it ran the entire. So we're like back at home, freaking out because the rat, the top riders are going to get back before lunch was even open. But otherwise it has a little mix of everything.
[00:24:08] There's not too much like technical sections, but there are a few spots and there's a few of those pinch points that you would, if you were going for a result there, you would really want to make some considerations in your strategy. Yeah.
[00:24:22] Craig Dalton: Sounds like a great event.
[00:24:23] So with your successes in 2021, what do you hope for in 2022?
[00:24:29] Whitney Allison: I think I have definitely learned a lot about myself in these events, different types of races. And I'm also looking forward to going back to some of the ones that I did this year. Like with some of those learnings, for example, Unbound obviously is a really great one where I just was on the comeback all day long was just always riding with a vengeance.
[00:24:56] I really wanted to do well at VWR San Diego with how the timing worked. It was the week before Foco Fondo. So I raced, I still got top 10, but I was a mess. So I'm really excited to get to go deep that in may, way before that time. But yeah. I'm looking forward to getting to experience some of the similar courses or same courses, but then see that your story.
[00:25:20] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. I think it is that type of sport that any event. Something's going to go wrong. It's really hard to have a perfect day, whether it's misfortune or just a, something not going your way that day. I think it keeps a lot of us coming back to the same courses, thinking, gosh, I could just do it that much better next year.
[00:25:37] Whitney Allison: Yeah. Kinda a little bit of vengeance that it's just a thing
[00:25:41] Craig Dalton: with you. Yeah, exactly. And for your business, with your husband any changes for next year, we just continue to run fittings and camps and experience.
[00:25:50] Whitney Allison: Yeah. And the recent program is going to do better as well. Like we're really fortunate, like just with having a good year and yeah, I'm excited to share some of the partners that we'll have for next year too.
[00:26:02] And it's fun too. Cause they get to come on like through the Foco Fondo and stuff as well. Like you get to offer a lot to the companies that work with. That's
[00:26:13] Craig Dalton: super exciting. I can't wait to hear about these announcements.
[00:26:16] Whitney Allison: I can't really share them, but it could be awhile.
[00:26:18] Craig Dalton: Thanks so much for joining me, Whitney.
[00:26:20] I appreciate it.
[00:26:21] Whitney Allison: Thank you.
[00:26:22] Craig Dalton: Big, thanks to Whitney for joining the show this week. I hope you learned a lot about her career and a little bit about her future plans for 2022.
[00:26:30] If you're following women's gravel racing, it's sure we're going to have a stacked 20, 22 roster of elite athletes. Fighting for the win at all. The big events.
[00:26:39] It's going to be super exciting. Be sure to check out Whitney and her husband's Foco Fondo website. Check out for the date next year and get registered. What for what looks like an amazing event there in Fort Collins, Colorado. If you're looking to support the show, you can visit us at www.buymeacoffee.com/thegravelride.
[00:26:59] We're also ratings and reviews are hugely important. So I appreciate everybody who's gone out of their way to provide a review for the gravel ride podcast.
[00:27:08] And finally, if you're interested in joining the ridership, our free global cycling community online. Online simply visit www.theridership.com. Until next time here's to finding. Some dirt under your wheels
Part two of our first Q and A episode. Randall and Craig tackle questions submitted via The Ridership community.
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Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos):
00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to in the dirt from the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host. Craig dalton i'll be joined shortly by my co-host randall jacobs.
[00:00:12] Today's episode is part two of our Q and a episode series. Go back in your feed, a couple episodes to find part one. You can certainly jump right into this episode as we're going question by question. And they don't necessarily. Have relation to one another but if you're interested in part one either after the fact or before you listened to this episode go ahead and jump back and listen to that episode.
[00:00:36] Today's episode is brought to you by our friends at athletic greens. The health and wellness company that makes comprehensive daily nutrition really really simple.
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[00:01:38] I think by now, you've probably heard my personal jam. I like to take athletic greens. First thing in the morning is to get a jumpstart on my hydration. As well as my nutritional needs. And i'm big ride days if i'm feeling super depleted i'll come home and have a second glass so on a saturday or sunday i might double up my servings
[00:01:58] If you're open to giving athletics greens, a try, simply visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride.
[00:02:05] Athletic greens has agreed to give a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs to any gravel ride podcast listener. So be sure to visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. To give it a try today. With that said let's jump into part two of the q and a episode with randall
[00:02:26] Craig: Next question was on optimizing the adjustment and float intention on SPD pedals. I don't think there's much we can add there cause it's a little bit of trial and error. In my opinion. I don't know about the float. I don't even know if mine has like float adjustment. For me it seems like it's just the tension. So I, how hard or easy it is to get in and out. And that's been something maybe I've amped up over time as I become more confident, but certainly starting them out with them. Fairly easy to disengage is perfectly acceptable if you're not comfortable with Clifton riding.
[00:02:57] Randall: Yeah. In terms of tension, I would definitely start with a looser engagement and then tighten it down as you get more confident, Especially when you're first starting out. And what else? Patrick and I actually talked about this in the bike fit episode. Hey recommending shifting the cleats back. So if you're running mountain style shoes, which the gravel bike probably should be if you can run them in the back, the bolts to the back then sliding the cleat. Pretty much all the way to the back. Now if that doesn't feel right, you can always move it forward a little bit, but whereas this new real problem with going too far back there can be issues with going too far forward in terms of biomechanics and so on. And in terms of the float, you want to be in the middle of the float and you never want to be in a position where the you're you're not able to peddle in a natural motion where you're using the cleat positioning to restrict your motion. That is a a good way to end up with an injury. So definitely don't do that. I generally will start with the cleats. In a position where it's restricting my inward motion so that my heel can't hit the crank arm. And then I'll peddle from there and see am I in the middle, middle of the float? Am I in my restricted any part of the pedal stroke? And if not, then that's a good starting point. But to really get this right again it is hard to do this on your own. It's hard to see knee tracking. In souls or thing you want to invest in, in order to help align the full stack from hip to knee through the ankle. And this is where listen to the bike, fit 1 0 1 episode and consider working with a bike fitter.
[00:04:30] Craig: I was just going to say the same thing. It's like one of those things like, oh, bike fit, you don't necessarily go to clique adjustment, but so often when I've observed it, cleat adjustment happens in a bike fit.
[00:04:41] Randall: And it doesn't happen first, right? Everything else has to be right first. So if your saddle's too low and your arches are collapsing and things like that, you're already starting with things out of alignment and are going to have some trouble, but at least the advice that, that I just gave will prevent the worst issues. But again, go get a bike fit.
[00:05:01] Craig: Yep.
[00:05:02] The next
[00:05:02] question. Yeah, The next question.
[00:05:05] was about what's the best technique for using a dropper post? How does this help with the physics of the ride?
[00:05:14] Randall: I'll let you go first. I certainly have an opinion on this one.
[00:05:17] Craig: This is a dangerous one for us. The listener, the avid listener knows we can go into a deep dropper post where I'm whole, but let's try to offer some quick advice. One of the things I like to remind people about with respect to drop her posts is that it's not just a, all the way up or all the way down product. You've got the full spectrum of range, which means you should use it frequently. Obviously when you're in heavy tactical descents with steep, dicentric, you're going to slam it.
[00:05:45] But I quite frequently lower it just a centimeter to just give myself a little bit more room on terrain. Maybe it's a road descent or something that I'm super confident on, but it gives me a little bit more margin for error. And as I'm feeling maybe more nervous about the speed. I'll go down even further just to give myself again a bigger range of just a bigger margin of error. So practice, and no, there's no right or wrong, use it frequently and you'll figure out what feels best for you.
[00:06:15] Randall: You've seen my technique with the dropper. I'm a bit more extreme. So for me, I use the dropper all the time. I have it down all the way on a high-speed road descent, and I use it to allow me to, move my mass around on the bike in a way where, if I want the front end to be more planted, I can put more mass on the bars, but then I can shift my weight down and back over the rear axle to lighten up the front end for say, traversing, really rough terrain. Provides that distance between the bike and the body where your arms and legs can act as suspension. Your front wheel is rolling in sailing. Your rear is doing more of your speed control. And in this way, it really radically. Improves the capability of the bike, not just off-road, but I would argue on road as well. I descend much faster because I know I can grab a handful of both brakes and not be pitching over the handlebars. So for me, even on the road, I'm dropping it all the way in a lot of situations.
[00:07:08] Just because I like to go that much faster and it gives me that margin of safety.
[00:07:12] Craig: All makes sense. Next off, we're going to an area work. Gosh, Randall I almost think we need an entirely new category in the ridership forum just about tires. What do you think?
[00:07:25] Randall: We've been asked for this for a while. By the time this episode airs, if we don't have a channel in there, somebody yell at us in the forum, we'll get that up.
[00:07:35] Craig: The first question comes again from Tom boss, from orange county unicorn tires, lightweight, puncture resistance, fast rolling with lots of grip. What comes closest for you?
[00:07:45] Randall: I'm not getting in the weeds on this one. I defer to the hive-mind and the ridership on this. I can tell you what I ride. But I'm gonna make no claims about it being the optimal.
[00:07:56] Craig: Yeah, do. What are you writing in these days?
[00:07:58] Randall: so currently I'm writing just a WTB Sendero upfront and a venture in the rear. And these aren't especially fancy casings. They're not the most efficient tire. But they're pretty robust and they have great grip and I like the mullet setup. I'm a big fan of going with something NABI or upfront and like a file tread or even a semi slick, depending on your terrain in the back.
[00:08:20] And yeah, that's the way that I go. We actually just brought in some maxes, Ramblers and receptors. So we go a rambler small knob front and a receptor in the back. And I like the six 50 by 47 size. There are situations where I wish I could have a little bit more volume, other situations where I wish I had a little bit more efficiency, which tells me that I'm right in the middle of the range for most of the writing that I do.
[00:08:40] Craig: Yeah. For me. And first off, full disclosure to everybody, I'm a Panorai sir, brand ambassador. So I want to put that out there. The gravel king S K was a tire that I got on my first proper gravel bike. And I just fell in love with it. Then I left for many years and went on to more of a setup that you had rocking the Sandero up front.
[00:09:01] Thinking I was, riding more challenging terrain and could appreciate the knobs, which I did.
[00:09:06] But recently I've gone back to the gravel king as Kay. And I do find it to be a wonderful all around tire because I feel super fast on the road and it does everything that I needed to do in most of the situations that I get into.
[00:09:21] Randall: Yeah, sounds about right. And then there's always, if you're, if you had a really long ride out to the trail you could always, bring the pressure up a smidge on the way out there and then give it a little at the the Trailhead.
[00:09:34] Craig: Yeah.
[00:09:34] And again, it obviously comes down to where you are and one thing I'll just note really quickly, and we've talked about it before is Riding fully select tires at a fat with has been remarkable to me how performance they can be. Off-road you think you need knobs, then all of a sudden you realize where you do need them, but actually if you change your riding style a little bit if you've got a fat rubber tire on there, you can go and do a lot of things.
[00:09:59] Randall: Yeah, the dropper helps a lot with that. In terms of just being able to be more nuanced with your body English as you going over stuff. But yeah, I run 700 by 30 tubeless tires and I'll go out on hard road drives and then I'll pass it on to see a trail and be like, oh, what's over there, I must find out now and then to see. Go and do a little bit of adventuring. And you gotta pick, you gotta pick your lines. You gotta be careful not to hit anything, square, a square edge. That's gonna, bang up against your rim. But if you're if your pressure is high enough and you're gentle enough with your writing, you can do a remarkable amount. Most of the stuff that we've written in Marine together up written on slicks.
[00:10:36] At one point. Yeah.
[00:10:38] not saying it's a good idea, but it's doable.
[00:10:41] Craig: True. And you enjoyed other parts of the ride and leaned into other parts of the ride, presumably more because that's, what the bike was oriented around on that particular day. And maybe you needed to nurse your way down Blazedale Ridge or something, but you got through it.
[00:10:55] Randall: Yeah, and it's definitely more of an uphill thing than a downhill thing.
[00:11:00] Craig: Yeah.
[00:11:00] Randall: go uphill on dirt and then downhill on, on road, but okay. The, we went on a proper tangent there.
[00:11:07] Craig: Yeah, sorry. next?
[00:11:08] one. Next question is from Josh, from east Texas. It's around suppleness. Suppleness in tires is desired by riders. So how do I choose a simple tire without having to buy it and write it with no published measure of scale of suppleness on a given tire from the manufacturer we are left with only this tire field strop sample is TPI and indication.
[00:11:30] Why don't manufacturers provide consumers with this information?
[00:11:33] Randall: So I'm going to volunteer Ben Z and Marcus G in the forum as to people who seem to have written. Every tire I've ever heard of. And some that I haven't. And there are others in there that have as well. But yeah, I think this is a matter of finding out what other people like and kindly asking their opinion and experiences with it.
[00:11:52] Craig: Exactly. I think that's a good recommendation.
[00:11:55] Next question is from Tom Henkel and it's around tire pressure. He acknowledges that he tends to ride harder pressures than a lot of people seem to recommend, but he's also dented REMS and had to wrangle the, straighten them out enough to complete a ride. So he's nervous about bottoming out. How do you know how low is too low? Given the weight of the rider and width of the tire? Also, how does this vary by terrain type?
[00:12:17] Randall: The indication of how low is too low is really. He's denting his rims. And pinch flatting as well you can have two riders of the same weight on the same tires at the same pressure on the same terrain, one we'll be a little bit better at picking lines or at shifting weight around. And we'll be able to push the limits a little bit more. But if you're ponderous and steamrolling through things, then you might need to run higher pressures in order not to bang the rims. Now, if you're not already running the highest volume tires that will fit in your frame, start there for sure. And if you are, and you don't want to have to replace your bike, tire inserts, which is something that we haven't really talked about much. And is in its early days in gravel, but it's increasingly popular in mountain bike. And I'll be getting a set of these to try out. Isaac S in the forum loves his and he rides hard. He used to ride his gravel bike like a full-on mountain bike, and even cracked a rim once, and after he put in inserts he never had any trouble and he was actually pushing his pressures even lower. So those would be the recommendations. I have go biggest volume. You can and get some tire inserts.
[00:13:25] Craig: Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:13:26] It's all trial and error and I am eager as, as well as the listener, I imagined to hear what you think of tire inserts. Cause I do think It's yet another interesting part of the equation that some riders may be able to play around with successfully.
[00:13:40] Randall: Yeah, it has the same effect as adding a little bit of suspension. If you can drop the pressure that much lower and have a two tiered suspension effect where you have the travel of the lower pressure tire, and then right before it bottoms out on the rim, you have this protective layer. So yeah, I think it makes a ton of sense, conceptually. So I'm excited to try it.
[00:13:58] Craig: Yeah, interesting stuff.
[00:14:00] Next question is another one from Kim brown. How do you go around choosing the right tire for the ride?
[00:14:05] I guess I make more like quarterly or seasonal decisions around this and live with it. I certainly have brought my beef feed set up bike two places in the middle of the country that didn't require such an aggressive setup. But it is what it is like I, I'm not super concerned but I imagine if you have the wherewithal and interest you can dig in and find the right tire for every single outing.
[00:14:32] Randall: Yeah. And you definitely again see people who seem to do that. And that's great. For me. I have a bicycle company and I have two wheel sets and I leave the same tires on until they burn out. I'll even take the Sendero Nabil upfront and when it starts to wear a little bit too much, I'll just move it to the back and put on another Nabil upfront.
[00:14:49] I mostly rabid I got, and I got the two we'll set. So I have 700 by 32 blitz and a six 50 by 47 mullet set up. And it's really more of a choice of which wheel package I'm going to go with then. Swapping around tires and things like that, which is a more seasonal or annual decision.
[00:15:05] Craig: Yeah.
[00:15:06] Yeah. Yeah. Same.
[00:15:07] Next one is probably I could've sat in the maintenance section of this conversation, but how do I deal with a pinch flat or puncture or some other common issue in a tubeless tire?
[00:15:16] Randall: Punctures. Dynaplugs, bacon strips. Make sure you have a good amount of sealant in there. And have a spare tube as a backup, if all that fails. If you've got a pinch flat in a tubeless tire if it's on the sidewall, then you know, you do what you can to get home. Sometimes a plug will work, but if it's in the sidewall, you're probably going to want to replace that tire versus in the meat of the tread where the rubber is a lot thicker, a plug can last for the remaining life of the tire. And last thing would be, if you really have a problem and you have a tear in the sidewall, a boot or even just jam putting a dollar bill or something in there so it doesn't continue to spread, just so you can get home, and maybe running lower pressure so it doesn't blow out the sidewall.
[00:16:00] Craig: Yeah.
[00:16:02] If we assume the question came from someone who knows how to change a two-bed tire and has been through that experience, just a couple of other things I would highlight that may not be known unless you've had to go through it. If you are replacing a tubeless tire with an inner tube, you do need to remove the valve core.
[00:16:19] First. And you can expect that if you have ample sealant remaining in said tire. It's going to be a messy situation.
[00:16:27] Randall: Yeah.
[00:16:28] Craig: I don't know what the right thing to do is if you leave the sealant in there, but it's going to be all over you. It's going to be all over the place. It's just something you have to deal with as you get that tire and get your tube in there and find your way home.
[00:16:41] Randall: Yeah, all the more reason to get plugs and just have plugs with you because oftentimes you can get by with those.
[00:16:48] Craig: Yeah. A hundred percent. The first time you plug a tire, it's like a Eureka moment and you just top off the tire and continue on your way. And when it goes beyond that, then you're a very sad. And you will have to deal with quite a mess.
[00:17:02] Randall: There's a picture that think Isaac in the forum shared where he had a hole plugged with eight different plugs in the sidewall and he kept riding it for a while apparently. So Bravo maybe change that casing a little bit sooner. So though.
[00:17:18] Craig: Related to tires, we're going to move into a section on wheels. And matthew Wakeman ask, what kind of situations would be worth considering three wheel sets versus just two for do most of it? Bikes.
[00:17:32] Randall: So my thinking is the first wheel set is probably a wide 700 that can take everything from road to gravel tires and then a even wider six 50, that's more focused on gravel and adventure riding. And then an even wider two Niner that would be your mountain bike setup now, then. Then, that's getting into two bikes. So you have two bikes, three wheel sets between them. If you're just with one bike for everything, then if you're racing or if you're constantly switching between very focused road experience to a fast, hard packed gravel experience to a rugged. Bike packing adventure sort of experience, then it would make sense to maybe have two, seven hundreds and 1 6 50 B. It really would be another 700 slotting in the middle. There.
[00:18:22] Craig: Yeah, for me, it's really around. Tire selection on those wheel sets and yes, it would be a luxury and a full disclosure. I do have three wheel sets in the garage and I'm splitting hairs literally. It's because I'm too lazy to change the tire. And I have the luxury of having the third wheel so that so I've got my sort of NABI. Fairly narrow 700 C off-road sat that will only take me a limited amount of places from where I live. I've got my one that I spend most of my time on which presently is six 50 by 43. And then I've got a 700 with a 30 road tire on it.
[00:18:59] And it's more like Totally when I only had two wheel sets, it was all good. Just choose between road and mountain and don't worry too much about it.
[00:19:07] Randall: I don't even have three wheels. That's Craig. Bravo.
[00:19:10] Craig: Next question comes from Craig. Oh I'm curious on the difference between six 50 B and 700 C and confused about boosts standards, wheels, hubs, rotors and whether it's worth the investment to pursue or just stick with my current wheels. Ideally, I was interested in putting faster, thinner type tires on my 700 C wheels that came with the bike.
[00:19:29] For all their road rides and a second set of six 50 B fatter grippier types for off-road fun. I think we've talked a lot about six 50 B versus 700 C on other podcasts and also on this podcast today. But I was interested in this question around standards, as someone who has a mountain bike, I was aware of boosts standards.
[00:19:50] What is going on with that with respect to gravel bikes and do we see a path towards a boost standard for gravel bikes or are there specific design considerations that make that not likely.
[00:20:03] Randall: So we have one it's called road boost and it seems to have been driven by the emergence of e-bikes as a major category. And what boost does is it increases the spacing upfront 10 millimeters in the back. I believe by six. And it allows the flanges and the hub to be space more widely apart, so that you have more of a bracing angle and more lateral strength. So the same amount of spokes gives you greater lateral stiffness and strength. So that's the benefit now, does it matter for, gravel bikes of, running up to say like a 2.2 tire or even a 2.4 without suspension. It's pretty minor gains.
[00:20:46] I do think that we're going to see a transition towards road boost, which is a one 12 by one 10 upfront and a 12 by 1 48 in the rear. There's, trade-offs one of them being a well for pure road bikes. It's going to be trivially, less Aero, there's always the arrow marketing story . And then two in the back to you end up potentially having to increase the Q factor. Of the cranks. So most people actually benefit from more Q factor than the super narrow ones that used to be common on road bikes so it's not really a problem for most riders, but it's just like another design constraint. There's trade-offs is, are you have to fit a lot of things in a tight package and that's the issue, but it's out there, you see a couple bikes with it. Especially E road bikes and gravel bikes. And I think over time, you'll see that transition, but don't consider it an upgrade that you need to swap your bike to get. It's not mean it's not a meaningful thing in that regard, and you can get most of the benefits by just doing asymmetric rims, which, that's why we and others do asymmetric rims to downs the spoke tensions and angles.
[00:21:49] Craig: Gotcha. I'm going to slip a personal question in that I'd put in the forum. How often should I grease the threads of my through axles if I change wheels frequently?
[00:21:58] Randall: Often enough so that there's always grease on them and no dirt. And if you have any where on the threads you should be doing it more often and use a FIC. FIC Greece. But if you get any dirt in there, like if you drop your through axle or something like that, now you have basically a grinding compound. In the threads. So you want to clean that up. But yeah, that, as with any interface, it will wear over time. So Greece is your way of allowing that interface to last longer than the bike.
[00:22:26] Craig: Yeah, great. We've got a question from Alex, from Tifton, Georgia. What's happening in the gravel scene to involve youth.
[00:22:33] Randall: You seem to be taking out junior. Fairly often on whatever kids bike with whatever tires it's got on there. I think that counts.
[00:22:41] Craig: Yeah, I just want to expose my son to riding off road. And so he's still on a 20 inch wheel bike, but I've put some monster, like two, one tires that I found on it's like a monster truck for him, which I think he enjoys. I think it's the key to bring the youth through mountain biking and discover gravel versus prematurely introducing drop our bikes.
[00:23:06] Randall: Yeah. I'm of the same mind. I've a niece that I take riding in the same way and it's just like she has a 20 inch wheels kid's bike. And I just take her out on the dirt and get her comfortable riding on those surfaces and pushing her comfort zone to try new things. But then also just instilling this deep love of the adventure experience, which for me what we're calling gravel is really all about. It's like going and exploring the area where you live from an entirely different angle than you would get in a car or on foot.
[00:23:36] Craig: Yeah. Agreed.
[00:23:37] Randall: And then of course NICA. We have some coaches in the listenership. Then the new England youth cycling association, actually Patrick in Lee likes bikes are doing a skills clinic with them in October.
[00:23:48] So you have that. And then urban off-road bike parks. Lotta our kids in the city don't have access to trails. And so just providing that access, I think is critical. And there's an example of a McLaren bike park in San Francisco. It's in a part of the city that is pretty far from the bridge and pretty far from the Santa Cruz mountains. And so this would be it, and there is plans potentially to expand that. And building more urban bike parks I think is a big part of that as well.
[00:24:20] Craig: Yeah, for sure. And you bring a huge skill gain to gravel if you come from the mountain bike side.
[00:24:27] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. And starting with a hard tail or even a rigid flat bar bike is a great way to go.
[00:24:33] Craig: A hundred percent. Next question comes from Alex in Columbia, Missouri. And it's a question about frame design. With the growing market of gravel. Where, when does the Aero slash race versus endurance market become two separate markets? Also how far do you think it'll go narrower tubing, et cetera. There seems to be a split already forming with Aero features being added to gravel bikes.
[00:24:57] Randall: I have strong opinions here, so I'm going to let you go first.
[00:25:00] Craig: Yeah. I think the brands are already splitting hairs with these categories as it is. And part of it is positioning vis-a-vis other competitive brands. Part of it is just the designer's vision for what this bike is intended to do. And those lines are blurry and murky and are going to come down to individual brand managers to execute on. So I think it's already a total disaster.
[00:25:27] Randall: I think most Aero claims, especially in gravel are entirely bunk. And it's marketing. And I'll give you an example. So on a road bike, a designer can control almost all of the parameters except for the rider, which ironically is the biggest one more than 80% of the aerodynamic profile, the tire with being a big one, right? So you can have your rim with, and your rim depth matched to the width of the tire. You can have the down tube optimized for that tire to end up really close to the front leading edge of that down tube and the down tube, it can be really narrow. So you have a smooth transition between, rim to tire, to frame in a way that minimizes turbulence. So with a road bike, it's more of a controlled system. And even then the gains are very marginal. And if you look at the. What marketers are usually claiming. If you add up all the Watts that you saved, you'd be traveling at a hundred miles an hour on all the different components you can buy. On gravel, it's worse because you, you have really wide tires. And so you'll have a deep section rim. With a big old tire on it and the tire is much wider than the rim. You're already having detachment of airflow as soon as it comes off that tire. There's a rule which folks can look up the rule of a hundred, 5%, which says that as long as the rim is a hundred, 5%, the width of the tire, then you can generally get good attach flow over the rim, regardless of that rims shape with certain shapes being marginally better. But that one oh 5% rule being more important. But if you have a big old tire on an arrow rim, all that at error rim is doing is adding weights and potentially increasing turbulence, especially in a crosswind where it's going to make it harder to steer. So that's my take on wheels. And then obviously handlebars and all that other stuff very marginal gains, especially given that it's not being designed as a system around the tires and so on.
[00:27:14] Aero helmet and rider position, rider positions the biggest thing that you can do, if you want to improve your. Arrow.
[00:27:20] Craig: Yeah. And I was looking at the question more, less, so about like aerodynamics and more just marketing and bikes in general. And seeing that. There's just a spectrum of bikes that are marketed in different ways. From endurance road bikes, to Aira road bikes, to arrow gravel bikes. I totally agree and understand your comments, and my comments are more just related to the market in general and how there's a plethora of things being directed at consumers and it's ever more confusing to figure it out.
[00:27:50] Fortunately with most quality gravel bikes, you do get this one bike that can do a ton of things. And bikes that you can configure in the way that you ride them.
[00:28:02] Randall: Yeah, I think you'll see the incorporation of some functional arrow. There's no reason not to do a tapered head tube or certain other things, but it's such marginal gains. And really, it's hard to build an Aero bike if you're not controlling for the tire volume and given the divergence in tire sizes that these bikes use that's not a really a controllable variable in design.
[00:28:24] Craig: Yeah. So the final question comes from our friend Marcus in Woodside, California. What are your guesses about the big bike tech quantum leap forward coming next, similar in magnitude to.
[00:28:39] to e-bikes and olive green bib shorts.
[00:28:42] Randall: Marcus is a good friend. And I was definitely on trend with the big shorts there. Really, how do you top that? How does the industry come up with the next thing after olive green shorts?
[00:28:51] Craig: Nothing can make a rider faster or look better than all of Deb's shorts.
[00:28:57] Randall: So that's it. Marcus? I think that's the end of innovation in the bike industry. Yeah, this is a space that you know, that I've put a little bit, a bit of thought into. I'm going to let you go first here as well.
[00:29:07] Craig: I think that makes sense, because I agree this is a tailor made Randall question. I do think the continued use of electronic componentry and other electronics that we all use, has to lead to more integration in bicycles, whether it's like battery packs that are embedded in the bikes that can power both my components, my GPS computer, my headlamp, all these things. I feel like it's a natural point, just like we're seeing in every other element of our lives, where battery and power is required. These things start to appear in more innovative ways. So I think that's interesting.
[00:29:46] I think on the e-bike market, we're starting to see more and more of these bikes that not only is the battery removed, but also the engine, the sort of the motor part of the componentry comes out. So you start to get this bike that has assemblance of ability to ride without the component of it and it's not going to match a pure performance bike, but it may, for some people While still having that opportunity to use the e-bike functionality. So I think those are things that trends that we're definitely going to continue to see. And. And some more forward thinking thoughts.
[00:30:21] Randall: Yeah, I agree with that, and I have a little bit more nuance to add but I want to start with the big, low lying fruit, and we started doing this, Basic things like proportional, crank length. I find it nuts that the industry up until recently didn't really make anything smaller than a 1 65 crank and continues to not offer shorter cranks for shorter riders.
[00:30:41] This is one thing that we did, and then you now see FSA has done a good job of having offerings down to, I think 1 45. To accommodate smaller riders and so proportional, crank length. Proportional wheel sizes, I think is a big opportunity. There's no reason why, it's really small riders. Shouldn't have their wheels scaling to some degree. We already have a 26 inch size, so maybe for the biggest higher volume on an extra small bike, you'd run a 26 by 2.2 or something like that. You do need more tire options, but otherwise it would help to make that bike perform more like the bigger ones with a bigger rider on them. So those are two that I would really like to see.
[00:31:18] I'd like to see continued innovation on integrated quick on and off storage solution. So I think lightweight bags and so on are really slick. And I think that we'll continue to see innovation there. You mentioned electronics. I agree. And it's getting ridiculous with the number of batteries you can have on the bike.
[00:31:34] If you have a wireless shifting system, you can have a battery in each hood battery in each front and rear derailleur. You can have sensors on the bike each with separate batteries, a heart rate monitor, or the separate battery two lights with separate batteries, computer. It's silly and it adds a lot of cost and weight and complexity the system. So I think there should be a single battery on the bike and that there should be a universal standard that all components use. I don't think this is going to happen because everyone everyone wants to trap you into their particular walled garden, but that's a conversation for another day.
[00:32:04] But yeah, those are the big ones. And then lastly, self-contained bike systems that leave nearly nothing behind, maybe some sort of lightweight regenerative braking for this one battery. I would like to see. But first things first and then subtler suspension designs, which I think we're already starting to see with more compliance, like flexible components, you.
[00:32:24] Bar handlebar is built with a little bit of flex or a suspension stem versus going whole hog with a full on suspension fork, just to get 30 or 40 millimeters of travel.
[00:32:33] Did I answer your question? Marcus, let us know in the forum. Hope, hope you're satisfied with the answer. And what is the next color of big short. Greg, what do you think.
[00:32:41] Craig: That's putting me on the spot. Maybe like a tan might do something that makes you a little bit nude.
[00:32:47] Randall: Ooh. Yeah, that would be that everybody would be really comfortable seeing that. Yeah, I'm with
[00:32:53] Craig: dangerous territory.
[00:32:54] Randall: we will have various options to match everyone's skin tone. So we all look like we're riding in the nude.
[00:33:02] Trend leader, Craig Dalton.
[00:33:05] Craig: This was a heck of a lot of fun.
[00:33:07] And it would not have happened without the community. So big shout out to the ridership community and to everybody who submitted questions. I'd love to see us do this again. So we'll probably set up a channel down the line and put the question out there again and see what's gets generated because it was a lot of fun chatting with you about these questions.
[00:33:25] Randall: Yeah, it's what we do on our rides only we've recorded at this time.
[00:33:29] Craig: Yeah, exactly. That's going to do it for us this week on behalf of Randall and myself, have a great week. And until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels.
[00:33:42]
This week's episode is a quick round up from the 2021 Sea Otter Classic featuring quick conversations with BMC, Specialized, Alchemy Bikes, Kogel, Sage, USWE, Panaracer, CushCore, Scott and T9.
Join The Ridership
Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos):
Sea Otter Round Up
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton:
[00:00:09] Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host, Craig Dalton. If you're a regular listener, you may have been expecting part two of our fun Q and a episode. Building on last week's part one. I had the opportunity to head down to the sea Otter classic in Monterey, California on Friday. And I was able to pick up a few short interviews that I thought were worth sharing. There's some great imagery and stories coming out from that story to vent that I thought it would be good to share in a timely fashion.
[00:00:40] For those of you who aren't familiar with the Seattle classic. It's an event that's been going on for, I believe 31 years in Northern California. It's got a rich history, starting with mountain bike racing and later added almost every discipline you can imagine to its four day weekend calendar.
[00:00:59] It's also become quite a large consumer show for the bike industry. So there's booths from hundreds of manufacturers from around the world.
[00:01:06] I took the opportunity to catch up with some old friends and do some quick interviews with some gravel companies that I think you might be interested in. This will also serve as the jumping off point for a few longer form interviews i'll do later in the year.
[00:01:19] This year is October date was pandemic related. The event normally takes place in April.
[00:01:24] So we'll be coming back around on our calendar shortly in 2022.
[00:01:28] Of note, the Sea Otter classic was purchased by Lifetime back in August of 2021. So this is the first edition produced by the seawater team owned by Lifetime.
[00:01:40] Regardless of what type of cyclist you are. If you don't mind a huge crowd, the Sea Otter classic is a great place to geek out over great parts. Watch some killer racing and enjoy the Monterey bay peninsula. With all that said let's jump right into my 10 interviews throughout the sea Otter classic
[00:01:59] Andrew Sjogren (BMC): Yeah, this is Andrew here with BMC USA. And what are we looking at here today? We're looking at our brand new URS LT gravel bike. That's ready for any trail you can throw at it. Yeah. Tell
[00:02:11] Craig Dalton: us about some of the features.
[00:02:12] The frame's been in market for maybe a year last season, but it's got some significant upgrades that I can just tell by looking
[00:02:20] Andrew Sjogren (BMC): at it today. Totally. Yeah. So the new addition at the end of the name there LT for long-term. Comes with our new MTT fork, which is micro travel technology.
[00:02:28] Craig Dalton: The, tell us a little bit more about the
[00:02:30] Andrew Sjogren (BMC): suspension. So with the MTT on the rear, you have a carbon flex chain stay that allows for 20 mils of rear wheel travel, damned with an elastomer that's at the top allows you to maintain traction while you're on. But the new edition with the pork here is a new partnership with Hi Ride , which is a high-end a there come from the motor sport side of things, and they've made a new damper, which has allowed for 20 mils of oil dam suspension that allows it to not overheat like a spring driven system would be, and still has the capabilities of locking out all in a lightweight package.
[00:03:03] That doesn't affect the geometry whatsoever. Now for
[00:03:06] Craig Dalton: the uninitiated, when you look at this bike, you may not notice where the suspension is happening. Can you tell us it's not the two telescoping fork legs? Can you tell us how it's happening?
[00:03:15] Andrew Sjogren (BMC): Yeah. Happening all essentially in the steer tube. So the entire damper unit is at the base of this.
[00:03:20] Makes it so that it's super clean, simple, doesn't disrupt the lines of the bike, but still has a super effective method of getting you a more traction on the trails. Nice.
[00:03:29] Craig Dalton: And the bike is made out of what frame material
[00:03:32] Andrew Sjogren (BMC): a to full carbon frame, and even the fork itself has carbon lowers. So carbon it's full suspension.
[00:03:38] Craig Dalton: Nice. It's a great looking bike, great execution, and I appreciate the time.
[00:03:41] Andrew Sjogren (BMC): Awesome. Thank you for having me.
[00:03:43] Craig Dalton: Okay. Can I get your name and company name?
[00:03:45] Ard Kessels (Kogel): Yeah, I'm art with Kogel bearings.
[00:03:48] Craig Dalton: Thanks art. And what are you showing here at Sea Otter?
[00:03:50] Ard Kessels (Kogel): We have a line of fully gravel approved oversized gorilla cages. So we build them super stiff so he can take him off. We just introduced a line of custom colored titanium bolts.
[00:04:01] So you can get your entire bike matched up.
[00:04:04] Craig Dalton: I was just talking to one of your colleagues. Cause one of the things from the outside, when I've looked at these products was the complexity of installing it. Could you describe like what you need to do to your existing rear derailleur to install the.
[00:04:16] Ard Kessels (Kogel): The installation of an oversized cage requires you to take your derailleur apart.
[00:04:20] So not just remove it from the bike, but completely take it off in pieces. It's, there's no set procedure. So depending on your model of derailleur, some are super easy. Some are definitely recommended to bring to a bike shop,
[00:04:33] Craig Dalton: and it's really just removing the existing cage. And depending on how, whether it's SRAM or Shimano, how complicated they make that process, that's really what.
[00:04:42] Complicated or not complicated. Is that correct?
[00:04:44] Ard Kessels (Kogel): Correct. Yes. And there is no line, one derailleur from a brand might be easy and the same derailleur from or another deter from the same brand might be complicated. And just
[00:04:54] Craig Dalton: really quickly, could you tell the listener, what is the advantage of going for one of these bigger polices?
[00:05:00] Ard Kessels (Kogel): Absolutely. The idea behind it is to open up the chain. So by using a bigger wheel, the chain doesn't have to articulate as much as it has around a small pulley. Bending a chain takes it takes energy. So by this, you reduce the friction by about one or two Watts.
[00:05:16] Craig Dalton: Awesome. Thanks Ard. Thanks.
[00:05:19] All right. Can I get your name and company?
[00:05:21] Bed Edwards (Specialized): Yeah, sure. My name is Ben Edwards. I work with Specialized and part of the road and gravel team.
[00:05:25] Craig Dalton: Nice. Ben, can you tell us about the new crux we're looking at?
[00:05:28] Bed Edwards (Specialized): Yeah, we're super stoked to bring the all new Crux to riders. This thing just dropped yesterday and I think people know the crux as a cross bike, right?
[00:05:35] This is like a world champion for in cross bike, but the little, the kind of the dirty secret crux all has had is that it was a bad-ass gravel bike. And so the new. While it retains a lot of that performance heritage from the cross side is really embracing that, that gravel identity. But beyond that, we've used our Athos which of any of the writers know the Athos it's a 585 Graham road frame.
[00:05:56] We found a way to make these crazy light and incredibly riding road bikes at a carbon. We've now taken those learnings to the crux. So the new crux, the frame set for S works 725. And you're looking at a complete bike at 7.2 kilos, which is almost unheard of on the roadside, with a stock bike.
[00:06:16] And that's what we're doing in gravel now. So that's a key thing that makes that bike. The unbelievable ride quality it delivers is that incredible, lightweight, which is pretty unheard of. And gravel beyond that, we've added some incredible capability by making sure it has room for 47 C tires. So you can, Hey, you want to race on the 30 eights.
[00:06:34] Awesome. You're going to get into some rough. It's got room for this 40 sevens on their incredible capability. For
[00:06:40] Craig Dalton: sure. Nice. I was going to ask you about some of the additional capabilities that have been built in this model versus the older kind of more pure crossbite crux that people had.
[00:06:49] Bed Edwards (Specialized): Yeah, for sure. So that, that, that tire clearance is a big one. We know. For awhile there, 40 was thought of as Hey, 40 is the right size for gravel. We know now these bikes are capable of so much more. So we really feel like to unlock the bikes. Potential riders have to be able to say, Hey, maybe I want to put a 47 on it, or with a bike like this 725 grand frame.
[00:07:08] It's pretty amazing on the road. If you wanna have another set of wheels and throw a set of 20 eights or thirties on it, you've got an amazing platform that allows you. If you thought
[00:07:16] Craig Dalton: about the gravel market on a spectrum from sort of a road plus bike to an adventure bike packing bike, where would you describe this new crux is sitting?
[00:07:25] Yeah,
[00:07:26] Bed Edwards (Specialized): this thing is it's honestly the perfect compliment to our day. With that Diverge, you've got that incredible suspend, the rider, really compliance without any compromise with that future shock. So that's really what we're looking at. As I say, like adventure explore bike, or like crazy long miles when that comfort's key.
[00:07:40] This is really sitting on that performance side of the spectrum, right? When you went that more stripped down, super new. Race day or just real fast gravel riding. That's really what that crux is holding down for us now, while we should also mention this is still what our world cup, cross riders are going to be on.
[00:07:55] And we've had writers like Jed next D bar, world cyclocross champion. He'll be racing this bike as his key cross bike.
[00:08:01] Craig Dalton: Awesome. Thanks for
[00:08:02] Bed Edwards (Specialized): the time. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for taking in.
[00:08:04] Craig Dalton: Okay. Can I get your name and
[00:08:05] Jason (USWE): company? Yeah, Jason McCune with a USWE sports. Thanks, Jason. What are we looking at here today? Today we've got our line of epic hydration backs. We're looking specifically at the epic eight for those of you that are familiar with our brand our kind of our claim to fame as the hardest.
[00:08:19] It's a one buckle harness system. You've got four way adjustability on all four sides and it's got elastic built into it as well. So you can really cinch it down and move around on the bike without the pack, moving on you that's really what people, who are riding mountain bikes and doing all these activities really want to.
[00:08:35] Yeah. As I've seen
[00:08:35] Craig Dalton: some of the athletes like Amanda nom and ride it, that crossover strapping mechanism is what's most visually noticeable about the pack. And now that I've gotten the overview from you and looking at it more closely, I do see how that the sort of the hip side straps are highly adjustable and tuneable.
[00:08:53] Jason (USWE): Yeah. So you can adjust from the sides that go into the yard. That come that way. And then also over the shoulders. So it's really nice. And even when you get it tightened up, up on you, it's got elastic. So when you're moving around on the. Yeah, it allows the freedom of your body to move.
[00:09:08] And the packs just stand where it's at. That's the beauty of it. It's not bouncing all over the place. It's just becomes really part of your body.
[00:09:15] Craig Dalton: The first pack you showed me, do you still get access to a typical cycling Jersey pocket?
[00:09:20] Jason (USWE): So I'm glad you asked me that because yeah, like for, especially for like gravel enthusiasts and stuff like that, the packs are designed, so they sit up high.
[00:09:28] So if you're running late, And you still want access to your pockets to get goose or something real quick. Yeah. All that stuff's totally accessible. And that's what makes that's part of the beauty of it. Awesome. Thanks for the time. Yeah, no worries. Thank you.
[00:09:41]
[00:09:41] Craig Dalton: Okay. Can I get your name and your company?
[00:09:43] Bryce (Alchemy): I'm Bryce with Alchemy bicycles.
[00:09:45] Craig Dalton: Bryce, what are we looking at here today?
[00:09:47] Bryce (Alchemy): This is our all new alchemy rogue. This is the latest addition to our gravel lineup. We still have the Ronin, which is going to be our kind of racier, fast steeper geometry, gravel bike the rogue.
[00:09:59] We want it to be more of an adventure offering. This bike is going to have a little bit longer wheel base Clint clearance for bigger tires. We wanted to build it with the SRAM, Ugh, H so that you get a little bit more peace of mind. You don't have to worry about throwing your chain. You don't have to worry about that rear drill.
[00:10:16] You're taking knocks so much and a lot slacker geometry. So we've got a 70 degree head tube angle on this thing. So it can really be a lot more capable and stable on that. We also designed it to have a lot more compliance than the Ronan. So you'll notice the scallop seat stay as well as the drops or sorry, the scallop seat tube, as well as the drop seat stays.
[00:10:38] That's going to give you a lot better comfort rugged terrain designed it with capability to run a wireless or hydraulic dropper post. Still has a big beefy bottom bracket shell. So when you get out of the saddle, you're going to have that powertrains for that you want. Nice.
[00:10:53] Craig Dalton: Can you specify what tire size, the speical at
[00:10:56] Bryce (Alchemy): least 700 by 50 C.
[00:10:58] You could probably get a little bit bigger on that depending on your wheel and tire combo,
[00:11:02] Craig Dalton: plate size there, and talk a little bit about your manufacturing process and where you're doing that.
[00:11:06] Bryce (Alchemy): So we manufacture this bike in Denver, Colorado. This is a. Semi mana cock construction. We produce the tubes individually, so like the down tube and head to our one piece the bottom bracket, shell and C tube, as well as the chain stay, yolk are one piece.
[00:11:23] And then we wrap those tubes together in an overwrap process to join them. So we also do all of our own painting house. This bike is completely fabricated from the design stage to finishing right in Denver.
[00:11:36] Craig Dalton: Amazing. Now this rogue model is, has stock sizes. Your own and model is also available in custom sizes.
[00:11:42] Is that.
[00:11:43] Bryce (Alchemy): That is correct. So the rogue, we're trying to hit a little bit better price point and make the bike more accessible to people. We are offering a lot more stock sizes than we offer typically on our other bicycles. The rogue is gonna come in an extra small, to an extra large the Ronan is available in sock sizes, but we can do custom geo on.
[00:12:03] This
[00:12:03] Craig Dalton: rogue we're looking at as a beautiful finish to it. Can you talk about the finish? I think there's something unique about the way it's
[00:12:08] Bryce (Alchemy): applied. Yeah, so we have started using cerakote. It's been around for a little while in the bicycle industry, but as far as I know, we're the first people doing it in house as a manufacturer.
[00:12:19] Sarah coat is a pretty remarkable material in that. It's extremely thin and at the same time, extremely true. So we get a really lightweight finish. We get something that you don't have to worry so much about your tire throwing rocks up into, or leaning it against a tree. It's gonna hold up really well and it looks pretty phenomenal, too.
[00:12:41] Awesome.
[00:12:42] Craig Dalton: Congrats on the bike. It looks great.
[00:12:43] Bryce (Alchemy): Thank you very much.
[00:12:45] Craig Dalton: All right. Can I get your
[00:12:46] Jeff (Panaracer): name and company? I'm Jeff Zell and I'm with Panaracer. Jeff. Good to see,
[00:12:51] Craig Dalton: let's talk a little bit about the gravel king tire lineup. And specifically as the gravel king has grown in size and a recently introduced a 700 by 50. Can you just talk about the trends you're seeing and why panel issues go in that direction
[00:13:04] Jeff (Panaracer): now?
[00:13:05] Yeah, it's a really good question because we've been around with gravels since really the inception or the idea of the concept of gravel riding. And at that time, a lot of people were using cross bikes or other bikes with lower frame clearances that even at 32 was big four, but as the popularity of the sport grew, and because we had seen what was happening, we were able to respond to that and create.
[00:13:26] Wits that we're going to correspond with what frame manufacturers were doing because everyone wanted wider tires. So we went with a 35 people, thought we were crazy. We went with it with 40, and that we ended up doing a 43 with people. Thought we were really nuts today. 30 eights are really the goal, 30 eights to forties depending.
[00:13:45] Who's making the tire are really the go-to for the tire with, for people. And we continue to see the need to go bigger, which is where the idea for the 700 by 50 came from what type
[00:13:56] Craig Dalton: of ride quality is a 750 providing for the rider? Is it, what type of solution is it creating sort of suspension and volume and traction are those, all the things you're keying.
[00:14:06] Jeff (Panaracer): It is, and there's a little bit more to it than people really think one of the biggest questions that we always get or are, is what PSI should I ride my bike at? And so much of that is dependent on the type of riding you do, what kind of writer that you are what the terrain is that you're riding on and what you're looking to get out of it.
[00:14:24] When you go to a 50, you're looking for something that's going to end up being a little bit more comfortable that you can run perhaps at a little bit greater pressure than you might normally. On a lower or sorry, on a smaller diameter tire. Sorry, not smaller diameter, but smaller width tire. And that allows for a little bit more room to dial in exactly what you want with it, and also load your bike up more for people that are wanting to take their gravel bikes more on adventures rather than just a two hour gravel ride or gravel event.
[00:14:53] Yeah,
[00:14:54] Craig Dalton: I think it's really fascinating as the frame designers have began to embrace those bigger sizes. You may run a 700 by 50 during certain parts of your season. Maybe it's the off season when you're doing bike packing, and then you can easily go a little bit narrower and go back down to that 700 by 40 for your race
[00:15:09] Jeff (Panaracer): wheels.
[00:15:10] That's exactly right. And we want to have a tire there for everybody's need.
[00:15:13] Craig Dalton: I'm a big fan of the gravel king and I'm a big fan of Panorai sir. And I just wanted to acknowledge and appreciate the amount of support you've provided the gravel events seen over the years throughout the pandemic.
[00:15:23] I know that you guys continued to back a lot of the. Race course event organizers throughout the pandemic, and you've done it in 2021 and we'll continue to do it. So on behalf of this gravel rider and racer, thanks to Panorai, sir, for all that great support.
[00:15:37] Jeff (Panaracer): You're very welcome Craig, and thanks for what you do too.
[00:15:39] It's great to have you getting all the news about gravel out there.
[00:15:42] Craig Dalton: Cheers.
[00:15:43] All right. Can you tell me your name and company?
[00:15:46] Dan (CushCore): Yeah, I'm Dan .
[00:15:47] Craig Dalton: Dan, can you tell us about CushCore and how the product is evolving to support gravel? Cyclists?
[00:15:52] Dan (CushCore): Yeah, so we launched a product or an insert for gravel bikes Kush cores engineered foam insert. So wraps inside your tire. So it's the tubeless system.
[00:16:03] You still use sealant if you need it. And it's designed to do a few things. The obvious benefit is going to protect your rim from big impacts, but it's uniquely shaped and it's part of our patents like a wedge shape. So push it against the tire sidewall. So you get a stiff sidewall, even at low tire pressure.
[00:16:21] So you can run the lower tire pressure without that getting a squirmy tire and also without dinging your room rim or getting a pit.
[00:16:29] Craig Dalton: Nice. And are you seeing riders run lower pressure now because of this type of
[00:16:34] Dan (CushCore): product? Absolutely. A lot of feedback we get from gravel writers is that they can definitely run lower pressure and not, like I mentioned, eliminate that squirm while cornering and and haven't got flats.
[00:16:47] Yeah,
[00:16:47] Craig Dalton: that rigidity of the sidewall seems appealing. Cause obviously we've been lowering our pressure progressively to get more compliance, but there is a bottom line to that you can't go further than
[00:16:58] Dan (CushCore): for sure. That's another way we described the product as it was designed to solve the tire pressure dilemma.
[00:17:04] So high tire pressure. Is good for stability and I stable tire and less likely to ding your rim or get a pinch flat, but it's a bouncy ride. So you actually, it's a high rolling resistance actually, because it's not conforming to the road. And then, but low tire pressure is great for traction compliant, tread patch for comfort, but it's the.
[00:17:24] Pinch flat. It's easy to dinger him, et cetera. So with Kush core, you can solve both of those problems. Get the best of both
[00:17:31] Craig Dalton: worlds. What does the installation process look like? It's a completely sealed unit. So obviously I've got my raw rim and wheel in hand. What's next?
[00:17:40] Dan (CushCore): Yes. Yeah. Like you mentioned, the Kush core is made in the mold, so it's not zip-tied together.
[00:17:44] Strapped together. And it's designed to fit tight against the rim. So we'll Mount the insert on the rim first and then basically draped the tire over that. And then start with one side by tucking the beat in with your hands. You get to the tight side, you might need a tire lever to finish that law was a little bit
[00:18:01] Craig Dalton: off.
[00:18:02] And when I'm doing my sealant insert, I'm pushing that through the valve core. Is that still possible?
[00:18:09] Dan (CushCore): That's how we do it as well. And then our valves are unique. It comes with a set. It actually has three holes. The normal let's say longitude, no hole. And then there's whole holes that go crosswise.
[00:18:20] So that allows the sealant to get in. It allows you to set the air pressure with the cush core would be normally on top of a valve. And then also that allows you to clean that out really easily. Right on. Thanks for the overview. Yeah. Thank you.
[00:18:34] Craig Dalton: All right. Can I get your name and company?
[00:18:36] Dave (Sage): My name is David Rosen and my company has Sage titanium bicycles, Dave. Good to
[00:18:41] Craig Dalton: talk to you again, I'll reference our earlier episode in the show notes for people, but it did want to stop you here at sea Otter. And just talk about the new storm king GP.
[00:18:50] Excellent.
[00:18:51] Dave (Sage): Happy to chat. What.
[00:18:52] Craig Dalton: First thing since we're we have listeners, not viewers. You've got that Rudy suspension fork on
[00:18:58] Dave (Sage): there. Ultimate's this mentioned four. Yes, it's fantastic. It's 40 millimeters. That trap. Gravel fork. It's really progressive. Like it's not what I was expecting it to be.
[00:19:08] It was in the past other suspension forks that I've dealt with are a little bit harsher in terms of the travel. This is a lot smoother and it just, it works great on washboards. That's the easiest way to describe it
[00:19:21] Craig Dalton: about the beautiful storm king that you brought to the envy show earlier this year.
[00:19:26] How have you modified the storm king in lieu of the spec with the explore group? Oh, and the suspension fork.
[00:19:32] Dave (Sage): So this one, I actually suspension corrected the geometry of the frame. So the axle, the crown on this is taller than a standard envy adventure fork, which I would use normally on the regular storm Kings.
[00:19:45] And so as the reason. I actually slackened out the head angle by a little bit, I think a quarter of a degree if I remember correctly. And then just changed up some of the other geometry measurements of the bike to really offset for the taller fork. The reach is actually similar on the handlebar reach on the regular storm king versus the GP is similar, but the actual top tube Blaine on the GP is.
[00:20:11] So I'm having you run a shorter stem kind of more mountain biking style because of the suspension fork and just accounting for dive in the fork and larger tires and that sort of thing. So an evolution of the standard storm king. When you
[00:20:26] Craig Dalton: were thinking about the GP versus the storm king storm Kings was a very capable bike.
[00:20:31] Still is an incredibly capable bike. What were you thinking differently? What type of rider were you thinking about when you came to the storm king GP?
[00:20:40] Dave (Sage): A similar rider. It's definitely for adventure style, riding bike packing, long days in the country, that sort of thing. GP actually stands for Gifford Pincho which is actually the Gifford Pincho national forest, which is in Southern Washington.
[00:20:53] So it borders right up against Oregon. And it's, I forget the numbers, but I want to say it's hundreds of thousands or a hundred thousand square miles or something crazy. Look it up online Gifford Pinchot national forest, and there are the stats and, but there's plenty of gravel, plenty of mountains, streams, lakes, all that sort of stuff.
[00:21:10] And it's a lot more back country adventure. And it's the same rider who was getting the storm king originally. But now with the added suspension, it gives you a little bit more comfort for further adventures of just going deeper into the woods kind of thing. And so that was the purpose. Building a suspension corrected bike
[00:21:29] Craig Dalton: right on Dave.
[00:21:30] I appreciate you being progressive in thinking about the new types of riders that are entering the sport, the new types of things we're going to continue to do with these drop bar bikes as always the finished work is exceptional on the Sage bikes. I encourage everybody out there to go seek out a picture of this bike and UHIN.
[00:21:47] Dave (Sage): Thank you very much. Yeah, it's up on our website, Sage titanium.com. Swam has it. There's it's floating around on social media. So just look for the storm king GP and it's the one and only right on.
[00:21:58] Craig Dalton: All right. Can I get your name and company name?
[00:22:01] John (T9): I'm John D prey from both shield T9
[00:22:04] Craig Dalton: John. I have to stop by. Cause as I was just telling you T9 is my favorite lib. Can you just talk a little bit more about what's behind the T nine
[00:22:10] John (T9): loop? Absolutely. This is the thing about T nine is it's both the protection and the lube and it's good in dry or wet environments.
[00:22:19] It's a wax base. The carrier evaporates away after a few hours and you're left with just a wax coating. So if your chain gets dusty, it'll just rinse rate off. If it gets wet, it'll sluff off. You can use it in the winter, snow won't stick to it. Everything good about T nine is everything that's good about T nine?
[00:22:37] Craig Dalton: Yeah, just for clarity. It's a wax based loop, but it isn't the type of solution that you have to remove the chain, soak it in wax and put it back on. It's a lot simpler than that. It's
[00:22:46] John (T9): Old school in the sense that it's wax, but it's new school in the sense of the internet to dip it into a pan of wax on your stove.
[00:22:53] Truth story.
[00:22:55] Craig Dalton: Exactly why I love the lube. I appreciate you coming out. I hope that you have a great weekend here at Seattle. Oh, cool. Thanks
[00:22:59] John (T9): man. Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy the event.
[00:23:02] Craig Dalton: So that's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. I hope you enjoyed those quick interviews from the sea Otter classic.
[00:23:09] I'm really excited to dig in deeper on the BMC bike. We talked about the alchemy bike. And that Scott, hopefully we can get those guys back on the show and do a little bit deeper dive. Into the intention behind those bikes, all three of them were quite sexy.
[00:23:24] In general, I had a blast down at seawater.
[00:23:27] Between the 9,000 odd athletes competing in the hundreds and hundreds of spectators around it's quite a big show. So it's not the same as going off to some of those gravel events. We love often the mountains where you get the serenity. But if you're a fan of the sport and a fan of geeking out over bike parts, and you like to see the latest and greatest.
[00:23:46] The sea Otter classic is a great place to visit. It's like wandering around one giant bike shop. So that's going to do it for us next week. We'll be back with part two of our fun Q and a episode. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels.
[00:24:03]
This week we tackle our first Q & A episode from The Ridership Community. Randall and Craig tackle your questions in part 1 of 2 fun filled episodes.
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Automated transcription (Please excuses the errors):
Episode 24
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to in the dirt from the gravel. The ride podcast. I'm your host, Craig Dalton. And i'll be joined shortly by my co-host rental jacobs In this week's episode, we're tackling our first Q and a episode.
[00:00:14] We've mentioned the ridership community on a number of occasions on this podcast. It's a community that's full of vibrant questions all the time. So we thought we'd put out an ask to say, what are the things you want to learn about what should Randall an IB discussing? And we were overwhelmed by. By the number of questions we received.
[00:00:34] So much. So in fact that we're going to break this episode down into two parts. So today we'll focus on part one. And in the coming weeks we're released part two.
[00:00:44] Before we jump into this week's episode, I'd like to thank this week. Sponsor Thesis bikes. As you know, Randall Jacob's my co-host in these, in the dirt episodes is the founder of Thesis bikes. Which you might not know is it's the bicycle I've been riding for the last let's say year and a half.
[00:01:01] Over the course of this podcast, I've had the opportunity to ride many bicycles and I keep coming back to my Thesis. As my number one bike in the garage, it really does deliver on the promise of a bike that can do anything. As many of, you know, I operate with two wheel sets in the garage. So I've got a 700 C wheel set with road tires on, and my go-to six 50 B wheel set for all my off-road adventures.
[00:01:26] In the many, many hours of conversation I've had with Randall, I've really come to appreciate how thoughtful he was in designing this bike and everything that goes in the Thesis community. Randall and the team are available for personal consults, which I highly recommend you take advantage of. If you're interested in learning more about the brand and figuring out how to get the right fit for your Thesis bicycle.
[00:01:49] In a shocking statement. I can actually express that Thesis has bikes in stock. It's something we haven't been able to say about a lot of bike brands these days during the pandemic. It's October as we're releasing this episode and they have bikes available for November delivery with the SRAM access builds. They also have frame sets available.
[00:02:10] So I encourage you to head on over to Thesis.bike, to check out more about the brand, the story. Cory and the product and book one of those free consultations with a member of the Thesis team. With that said, let's dive right into this. Week's. Q and a episode
[00:02:25] Craig: Randall, how are you today?
[00:02:26] Randall: I am doing well, Craig, how are you my friend?
[00:02:30] Craig: I am doing good. I'm particularly excited for this episode because it essentially came entirely from the Ridership community. We're doing our first ever Q&A episode.
[00:02:42] Randall: Yeah, people have a lot of trust in us, maybe too much in terms of our knowledge here. So we'll try not to get over our heads in terms of uh what we claim to know, but a lot of good questions here and hopefully we can answer most of them.
[00:02:54] Craig: Yeah, I think that's been one of the cool things about the ridership is I see these questions going on all the time and I quite regularly. See them answered by people Smarter than you and I in a specific area of the sport. They have particular knowledge about a specific region. So it's really cool to see those happening in real time, every day for the members of that community.
[00:03:17] Randall: Yeah, everything from fit related questions where we have some experts in there. Professional fitters like Patrick Carey, who I just did the episode with just before this one, I was in there answering questions, but then also if you've got a question about tires, nobody's going to have ridden all of them, but somehow every one has been written by someone in the forum there. And it's one of our most popular topics.
[00:03:38] Craig: Yeah. And I've seen some really detailed, help transpire between members as well, just like random disc bait break problems or compatibility problems. And I'm always shocked when someone raises their hand digitally and start to answering a question saying, no, I experienced that exact same weird problem in combination of things.
[00:03:57] Randall: Yeah, it really fits into the spirit of The Ridership in which embodied in that word was this idea of fellowship, like writers, helping writers. So it's been super cool to see that community develop organically. And so thank you all members who are listening, and to those who aren't in there yet, we hope you'll join us.
[00:04:15] Craig: Yeah. just head over to www.theridership.com and you can get right in and start interacting as much, or as little as you want. I think the uniqueness of the platform is it is designed inherently to be asynchronous. So you can put a question in there give it a little time to marinate and a couple of days later Get lots of answers.
[00:04:35] This is pretty cool.
[00:04:36] Randall: And in addition to that, there's also rides being coordinated. So myself and another writer here in the new England area or leading a ride. And we have about 10 or 15 people who chimed in wanting to join. And we've seen quite a bit of that in the bay area as well. So that's another use case for this in addition to sharing routes and general bicycle nerdery.
[00:04:54] Craig: Yeah, it's super cool.
[00:04:55] So this episode, we're clearly going to jump around a bunch. We've tried to organize the questions, so there's, there's some pairing around them, but these are questions that all came in from subset of individuals. So They are what they are and we wanted to jump on them. So with that, let's let's dive right in. Okay.
[00:05:12] Randall: All right, let's do it.
[00:05:14] Craig: Cool. So the first question comes from Keith P E. And he says, every time I go out for a gravel ride, I think why is this roadie where I'm like Rhonda trails when there's no podium to win or anybody watching. What is this obsession with wearing skin tight clothing in a sport that resides in the dirt.
[00:05:31] Randall: I don't know about you, but I'm just showing off.
[00:05:34] Craig: Your physique.
[00:05:35] Randall: My, my Adonis like physique, sure. It's just more comfortable for me. And I like to go pretty hard and I'm sweating a lot. And if I had baggier gear on, I would tend to have, potential issues with chafing and the like so for intensity I definitely find that the Lycra is a lot more comfortable.
[00:05:54] Craig: Yeah, I'm sorta with you. Like I do I desire to be that guy in baggy shorts and a t-shirt, but every time it comes down to it, I'm grabbing the Lycra. I think for me, there's a couple of performance things, definitely on the lower body. I appreciate the Lycra just cause I don't get any binding and less potential for chafing. So I'm like, I'm all about a big short for riding, unless it's a super, super casual outing for me.
[00:06:21] And then up top. I think it comes down to, I do having the pockets in the Jersey. So that sort of makes me tend towards wearing a Jersey, even if it's just solely to carry my phone in my pocket.
[00:06:34] Randall: And if you really want to be pro show up to an elite race and like a led Zeppelin t-shirt and some cutoff jorts, and hairy legs and just rip everyone's legs off that would be super impressive. But for the rest of us,
[00:06:45] If you ha, if you have those sorts of legs,
[00:06:47] Yeah, it would be very impressed. Send pictures in to the ridership. If you actually do that .
[00:06:50] Craig: Yeah. So you'll see me. You'll see me. Rock a t-shirt you. As a performance t-shirt instead of a cycling Jersey on occasion. And I just jam stuff into bags, but yeah, nine times out of 10, unfortunately I'm that Lycra. Reclad. Gravel cyclists.
[00:07:06] Randall: MAMIL, I think right.
[00:07:08] Middle aged man in Lycra.
[00:07:11] I'm right behind in the age category.
[00:07:13] Craig: Second question comes from Tom Schiele. And forgive me if I mispronounced your last name, he'd love to get our insights into winter riding, especially tips for those of us in new England who go out on cold dark mornings.
[00:07:29] I'm going to, I'm going to go out on a limb here and Randall and say, it's probably not the guy.
[00:07:32] from California that should be offering this advice.
[00:07:34] Randall: Let's have you go first for that reason.
[00:07:38] Craig: Look. I mean you, new Englanders will throw hay bales at me and make fun of me, but I do find it cold here. And it's all about layers.
[00:07:48] Randall: Okay.
[00:07:48] Carry
[00:07:48] Craig: all about layers.
[00:07:49] Actually, in fact, I just got some great gear from gore and I was Scratching my head because it's really designed for way cooler Temperatures.
[00:07:58] than I have available to me. So a fleece lined tight is something that's just outside of the weather that I'm going to experience as much as I'll complain about it being cold. But I do appreciate a thermal Jersey for the Dawn patrol rides and things like that.
[00:08:12] But for me, it's always come down to layering. And as someone who's Been around.
[00:08:16] the sport for a while, what I really do like about my wardrobe today is I think I have a really good understanding about what to layer on for what temperature And having been in the sport long enough. I've just acquired a lot of clothing along the way. So I even go down to having.
[00:08:32] Like a thicker vest. Than just a standard thin, vast, and they're very nuanced and it's only because of, I had decades worth of clothing kicking around that I've really started to understand and embrace how each garment is for a particular degree temperature. And the layers will get me to a certain point.
[00:08:51] Randall: Yeah. I'm a hundred percent with you on layers. I like to go like Jersey and then maybe a base layer or older Jersey underneath add to that thermal sleeves a vest that has a wind breaking layer on the front. A balaklava. Is also a great thing to have when the weather gets a bit colder, one to keep your head warm and your ears warm, and to keep the wind off your face, but then also you can breathe through it. So you're preheating the air and when it gets bitingly cold, which I don't know, you may not have experienced this, but I've definitely written around the Boston area and five degree temperatures and you got, ice crystals forming on the front of it, but at least you're getting a little bit of that preheating first.
[00:09:29] Definitely wants some wind breaking booties. Wind breaking layers on the front of the body. Generally when it gets really cold. If you must, you could do like heat packs on the backs of your hands. So over your arteries, delivering blood. If you're in real extreme conditions,
[00:09:44] Let's see, Tom also mentioned riding cold dark mornings, which means low pressures for grip. And then also lots of lots of lights, lots of reflectivity. You definitely don't want to be caught out and that's a good general rule, but especially riding in dark conditions when people might be tired.
[00:10:00] And then what else?
[00:10:02] Craig: Going to add the other big thing that I really enjoy is a thermal cap with the little flaps over the years, I find that really just, keeps the heat in there.
[00:10:11] Randall: Yeah, that's a nice intermediate solution before it's too cold to expose your face.
[00:10:16] Going that route. Other things pit stops with hand dryers. So I knew where all the Dunkin donuts were along my routes. I could just go in there on a really cool day and just dry off and heat up. People around here sometimes like in embrocation, gives you like a Burnie tingling sensation on the skin.
[00:10:30] Vaseline. It's actually a big one. It helps with insulation on exposed skin and helps it from getting dried and raw and so on. So I'll put Vaseline on my face and that actually makes a big difference in keeping me warm. And I don't find that it has any negative effects on my skin, my pores and things like that.
[00:10:48] I'm trying to think. Did we miss anything? Oh, tape the vent holes on your shoes. That's a big one. 'cause even with booties sometimes the holes will still, oftentimes the holes will still be exposed. And so close that up. Otherwise you just going to get air flow into the shoe and you'll know exactly where it's coming from. Once you get on the road.
[00:11:08] Craig: Yeah. And I remember. When all hell broke loose. I would even stick my foot in a plastic bag and then put it in the shoe.
[00:11:16] To get a little extra warmth. I don't necessarily recommend that. And I do know and aware em, aware that, you can get like Russ socks now in different kind of obviously wool is a great material to have underneath your shoe. It, yeah.
[00:11:28] Randall: I love wool and I'll take like old wool sweaters and stuff and cut the sleeves and then put it in the dryer to shrink. So it's tight against the body and that'll be a base layer. Cause it's just great for loft and for wicking. So if you're trying to be cheap, that can be a way to go about it.
[00:11:43] Craig: I'm Now like off in my head, imagining sleeveless Randall in a tight fitting wool sweater. And it's more reading burning man then cycling performance.
[00:11:54] Randall: with the jorts, I might show up at a race near you.
[00:11:56] Craig: Our next couple of questions are from Alan Collins and the first one's around everyday carry. What do you always carry with you on every ride tools, parts, spares, pumps, hydration, snacks, gels, et cetera. Are you traveling light or packing an RV?
[00:12:14] Randall: So I'm now back in new England, so I'm often relatively near civilization, so I'm not as comprehensive as I would be say, like riding in Marine where I might be a good five, six mile walk over some mountains to get to anywhere. But critical things. I bring plugs like tire plugs. In my case, dynaplugs bacon strips, same deal.
[00:12:36] Spare tube. A tool that has all the critical things I need. If you're one of our riders, make sure you got a six mil on your tool because that's what you need for your through axles. What else? If there's any risk whatsoever. Me getting caught out in the dark. I'll have lights front and rear might as well.
[00:12:54] I'm trying to think of anything else that I always bring along. That's the key stuff. How about you?
[00:12:59] Craig: Yeah, I'm a mid-weight packer. Like I've really embraced that quarter frame bag. So I just tend to be ready for most eventualities that I expect. And obviously I gear up depending on the amount of hours I plan on being out. I tend to bring one nutritional item per hour that I'm going to be out. Obviously if I'm going out for an hour, I tend to be forgetful about hydration and nutrition. I don't really think too much about it.
[00:13:26] But I do think about it in terms of the number of hours I'm going to be out and then building Certainly my nutrition and hydration on top of that.
[00:13:33] my basic everyday carry same with you. I just want to make sure I can handle.
[00:13:37] the most likely kind of repair scenarios out there on the trail. And I don't go overboard with it. There's probably many more things I would bring on a bike packing trip than I do on a five-hour ride.
[00:13:50] Randall: Yeah.
[00:13:51] And one thing I forgot to mention.
[00:13:53] Yeah, we did the everyday carry in the dirt episode nine. So listen there. That's where we go. Deep nerd on all the things. If you want a comprehensive list of what you might bring. The other thing, I don't know if I mentioned a pump. Duh. So I forgot that one there.
[00:14:06] Craig: Pump and CO2 for sure.
[00:14:07] Randall: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:08] But otherwise it really depends on the ride. These days, I'm doing mostly like hour and a half, two hour higher intensity rides actually oftentimes even shorter, lower intensity rides. So I don't need to bring as much. But I'll where you are, you have micro-climates all over the place on Mount Tam.
[00:14:23] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. So. I'm always rocking like a full spare jacket in there, unless I'm going out mid day, which is rare these days. I just figure if I'm going downhill, I might as well be warm and it just makes it more pleasant. So that's why, again, like I have that quarter frame bag and I just jam it full of stuff.
[00:14:40] After our everyday carry episode, I did get a magic link. Cause it's it's nothing like this. Obviously no weight. And I just threw it in there.
[00:14:48] Fortunately, I haven't had to use it, but it's there. If I ever did need it.
[00:14:51] Randall: Oh, you don't have the technique for breaking the chain and being able to piece it back together without the magic link.
[00:14:57] Craig: I'm fairly skilled at that, But I don't have a chain breaker that I bring with me.
[00:15:01] Randall: Got it. Okay.
[00:15:02] Craig: Yeah.
[00:15:04] Alan's next question was, do you have any tips for prepping a gravel bike for competition in road, gravel mix or cyclocross?
[00:15:11] Randall: Don't do it the night before.
[00:15:14] Craig: Yeah. I I think there's a couple of different ways to go with this question, right? Obviously if you're a cross specialist, there's going to be lots of things you're going to do. For me, if I got the courage to raise cross again, I would just show up with what I got and I wouldn't really mess with it too much.
[00:15:29] Randall: Yeah, I would do basic checks. A couple of weeks out, I would just be making sure that I don't have anything that's about to fail because especially now parts are a challenge to find in many cases, even brake pads. And in fact, if you don't already have a set, get some extra brake pads, just have them around just in case.
[00:15:47] But otherwise checking chain lengthen and the lubrication making sure the sealant and the tires. I'm having all my gear and kit and nutritional stuff laid out, making sure the brake pads have have enough life in them. This sort of thing would be the basics. And I would do this several days in advance and I would make sure to get a ride in before I actually did the race, just to make sure that I didn't mess up anything that's going to bite me later. Like the worst thing you can do is be working on your bike the night before, or the morning of, and then, potentially miss something or break something or have to replace something.
[00:16:18] Craig: Yeah, I forget who I was listening to. It might've even been kate Courtney or perhaps a professional female gravel rider who was saying they arrived at actually the Sarah Sturm. Sorry. She arrived at the start line of an event and realized that her brake pads were totally thrashed. And her mechanic slash partner said.
[00:16:39] I'm going to change them right now. And that would stress me the heck out.
[00:16:43] But he did add new successful. She's Thank God. because I never would have been able to stop on the way downhill. I was swapping bikes from one, the one I had written the other day and just didn't think about it.
[00:16:54] Randall: All right, everyone you've been warned.
[00:16:57] What have we got
[00:16:58] Craig: reminds me, I need to get an order in for some brake pads, because I'm definitely reaching the end of the life of the current ones.
[00:17:06] All right. So the next couple of questions are from Ivo Hackman, and he's asking thoughts on red bull entering gravel with a race in Texas. I don't know if you caught this Randall, but it was calling strict Lynn and pacing pace and McKell then. I have bonded together and are doing a race out of Marfa, Texas that red bull is sponsoring, which is, I a natural because both of those athletes are red bull sponsored.
[00:17:31] Randall: So I'm assuming like extreme gravel jumps, flips things like this. It's just the evolution of the sport.
[00:17:38] Craig: Exactly. I think, both those two guys are so grounded in the culture of gravel racing And in my opinion have been good stewards of conversation as we bring these mass star gravel events forward. I think it's great. I think the bigger question probably within this question is about is red bull coming in as an, as a quote unquote, an Advertiser and sponsor of the event. Is that somehow changing the Experience, is it becoming more corporate? Is it something other than the community wants to see? Again, with those two people involved. I think it's a positive thing.
[00:18:12] Randall: Yeah, I don't see it as a problem, even if it's not not any, my personal thing, for me, I love the really local. Really community oriented events that are much more like mullet rides and yeah, this is a little bit of a competition going on upfront, but it's not a huge deal.
[00:18:27] And, we definitely do see more of a professionalization of gravel. There's a space for everyone and there's a space for different types of events. So I don't see them displacing the events that are even more kind of grassrootsy. So yeah, I don't have a problem with it, especially if they end up doing flips.
[00:18:45] Red bull.
[00:18:47] Craig: The next question from Ivo is how to transition from weekend warrior to competitive rider.
[00:18:54] I feel like I'm better suited to answer the reverse question, to move from a competitive rider to weekend warrior. That one is easy.
[00:19:02] Randall: Yeah. Let's see. Step one. Have a kid.
[00:19:06] Craig: Yeah.
[00:19:07] Randall: That'll That'll take care of that in a hurry.
[00:19:09] Craig: Yeah. For me, this trend, it's all about structure.
[00:19:13] Like I, and I don't have any or much in My writing anymore, but I recognize in listening to coaches and Talking to them, it really is all about structure. And Even if that structure just means. You have one specific interval training session a week, and then your long endurance rides on the weekend to me, by my likes, I think you'll see a lot of progression. And as you progress, I think then you start to see the potential for coaching, more multi-day structured program in your week, If you're willing to go down that route. But to me, from what I've seen first stop is intervals.
[00:19:50] Randall: Yeah. Structure. Intervals is. Is one. And then within the context of a period iodized training program, Which is to say you do different types of training at different times during the season, based on the amount of training time you have available and the events that you're preparing for, because there's no sense in doing a lot of intensity several months out from a race and then, be firing on all cylinders, say, three months out and then just be totally kicked by the time your van comes around, you have that build, you do base training, and then you're doing more tempo. And then towards the events, your hours are going down and your intensity is going up and you're really trying to peak for that specific event.
[00:20:33] The book that was one of the Bibles when I was racing some time ago was Joe Freels I think it was called like the training and racing Bible or the mountain bikers, Bible or something. A book like that would be a good starting point. And then if you have the budget working with the coach, especially early on to really just accelerate your learning and to get someone to bounce ideas off of, and to use them as a way of learning your body. And that last part I would add at the very least heart rate monitor, learn how your body responds to stress, but then a power meter as well It's just a tremendously helpful tool and they're cheap. Now you need a four I power meter bonded onto a lot of cranks for 300 bucks. So there's really no reason not to make that investment if you're spending all this time to train and to, go to events, 300 bucks is pretty low lying fruit.
[00:21:25] Craig: Yeah, it is a great source of truth. Having a power meter.
[00:21:29] For sure.
[00:21:29] Randall: yeah. One last thing would be a bike fit, actually if you haven't done it already, I think everyone should invest in a bike fit if you're doing any reasonable amount of riding, but if you're gonna be racing and training and trying to squeeze out every last bit and not get injured go get yourself a bike fit.
[00:21:44] Craig: Next question, moving on to what we've deemed at components category. JC Levesque probably pronounced that wrong. Sorry jC, appreciate the question he's asking. What about handlebars? There's a move towards wider flared bars and gravel and a few odd ones out there. There's the kitchen sink candle bar from our friends at red shift. The coefficient bar. From our friend, Rick Sutton. Obviously he's mentioned the canyon hover bar, although that isn't an add on it's integrated into that bike.
[00:22:14] But he asked him maybe worth going over the different expectations are for drop bar bikes that is tackling. Gravel versus pavement versus term.
[00:22:22] Randall: Sure you want to. Take a stab at this first.
[00:22:26] Craig: So for me, I think we're going to continue to see more and more riders explore Wider and flared bars. Like when I jumped on that trend and went out to a 48 millimeter with a 20 degree flare, I immediately felt more comfortable. My orientation as a gravel cyclist is towards rougher terrain, More like pure off roady kind of stuff. So I really appreciate. Appreciated that with.
[00:22:52] It is a pretty easy component to you forget about when you get a bike, right? So many things are going through your mind when you're buying a bike. The handlebars just the handlebar it comes with. If you're working with a good shop from a good direct manufacturer, they're going to ask you appropriate questions about what width you should get. But I do think there's going to be this continued trend towards exploring these different types of bars as the gravel market continues to see people ride these bikes in different ways.
[00:23:21] Randall: Yeah, I generally agree. And I think it's a good thing. I'm not sold on the extremes of flare. I just don't see it as necessary. There's not so much torque being delivered through the steering column when I'm riding, even on technical terrain that I'm finding myself needing more control. With a dropper post of course that's the big caveat, right? Cause that's lightening up the front wheel taking, mass off of that front wheel, putting it on the back, allowing the body to access suspension more. So that helps a lot in reducing the need for leverage. We do a 10 degree flare and I find that for me, that's the max I can do with a traditional flare and I was still having my hands in a comfortable position. And I actually find that flair is helpful in terms of my risk comfort in hand comfort.
[00:24:06] And you see this as a trend, actually on road bars to, four to six degrees of flare on road bars starting to happen. You also see a trend towards leavers coming standard with a bit of kick out a bit of flair at the lever itself which goes along with these trends. The thing that I'm actually really interested in is bars like the 3T Aero Ghiaia. I think that's how it's pronounced.
[00:24:26] This bar has a pretty compound bend. So it's relatively standard on the hoods, but then flares out below the hoods and gives you that extra leverage while at the same time giving you more of a roadie position on top. And I really like. Sticking with this one bike trend and making, keeping these bikes as versatile as possible, just because they can be. And in the case of that bar, it's also that arrow profile, I don't think is super important. Frankly, people overblow the value of arrow and we can talk about that. But, it's certainly not a problem. And that arrow profile probably gives it some more vertical flex.
[00:25:02] And I think that's actually a great way to get some additional compliance on gravel bikes is to have some flare in the wings of the bar.
[00:25:10] Craig: Yeah, I think you're right. I think people are going to continue to explore that. It's a market that I think is tricky for manufacturers to play in because people are so entrenched with what they know and have, and exploring some of these new trends can often be costly. It might be $100 to $300 to get a handlebar and try it out.
[00:25:31] Randall: Yeah. For. $400 plus in some cases you can spend a lot of money on a carbon bar.
[00:25:36] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. A related question comes from east bay grants. Just question on Aero bars and gravel.
[00:25:42] Randall: Yeah. Pretty trivial gains. All in all. If you're going to be spending money on, even just on arrow, get an Aero helmet. I think that would be a bigger impact. Then arrow, handlebars. These are just very marginal gains and I wouldn't at all compromise ergonomics or control in order to go arrow. So if you're already getting a new bar and there's an arrow version and a non arrow version that you like. And there aren't any other compromises sure. Go with the arrow version, but I don't think that this is where your low lying fruit is.
[00:26:17] Craig: Yeah. I was reading it as arrow bar extensions on the handlebar and my perspective is it just depends on what you're doing at the end of the day. If you're hauling across the Plains for 200 miles, I understand having a variety of hand and body positions is required and useful, and I'm all for it. If you're ripping around Marin I think you're going to find that you never.
[00:26:39] You never set your arms in a gravel bar if you're actually in the dirt, but that's just where I live.
[00:26:44] Randall: Without, now that you've reframed the question. Yeah, they definitely has their place. And in addition to offering another hand position that's particularly useful if you're just bombing down a really straight road and into a headwind it can be a real aerodynamic advantage there. It also gives you another place to secure gear too. So if you're doing extended bike packing tour. It has that added benefit. There's a place for it, for sure.
[00:27:08] Craig: Yeah. Next question comes from our friend, Tom boss from Marine county bike coalition. He was out riding and he mentioned that he was thinking about how things get named in the cycling world. And how his gravel bike. If he thinks of as an adventure bike effectively, the way he rides it. And then he had a funny note is just about why clipless pedals are called clipless when there's actually no clip.
[00:27:32] Randall: Yeah.
[00:27:33] Craig: Actually. Yeah. So anyway. I think this is something you've been on about the naming convention in cycling, just about these bikes being adventure, bikes, more than anything else.
[00:27:42] Randall: Yeah, it's really like adventure is what we're doing with it. Gravel is one type of surface that we're riding. And I like the idea, granted not only a subset of bikes fall into this category, but we call our bike a onebike. And I think bikes like the the allied echo, the servo, a Sparrow, and a few others fall into this category of being, an endurance road or even in the case of the echo,
[00:28:07] borderline, crit type geometry that you can achieve. While at the same time being very capable for adventure riding. And for that type of bike, you could call it a one bike, but then otherwise, what is being called a gravel bike on the more off-road technical end of the spectrum. I think it's an adventure bike.
[00:28:23] And in fact even if it doesn't has have bosses and other accommodations for bags and bike packing. A lot of these bags and so on, or you can strap on or mountain other ways. So you could go and do some adventuring with it.
[00:28:36] Craig: Yeah, I think they, these names. Of category starts to take hold at the grassroots level and then manufacturers just get behind them. And certainly in the early days of the quote unquote gravel market, It was just easy to call it gravel as opposed to road or mountain.
[00:28:54] Presently, obviously we can acknowledge there's so many, there's so many nuances there and there's this spectrum of what gravel means. So yeah, they are adventure, bikes, plain and simple. But I guess I understand where gravel came from.
[00:29:06] Randall: What's good though, is we have another category, right? So we can get you to buy an adventure bike and a gravel bike and endurance road bike, and a crit bike and a cyclocross bike. And even if all these bikes could be the same bikes. Let's not tell anyone because that gets them to buy more bikes. I think that's the marketing perspective on some of the naming conventions.
[00:29:26] Craig: Next up comes a series of questions from Kim ponders. And we should give a shout out to Kim because she's the one who really set this off. She actually recommended and suggested in the ridership forum that, Hey, why don't you guys do a Q and a episode? And I immediately thought that great idea, Kim, I'm all about it.
[00:29:44] Randall: Yeah. Thanks, Kim.
[00:29:46] Craig: So our first question is what should I do not do to avoid damaging a carbon frame?
[00:29:52] Randall: So I'll jump in on this one. Carbon is strong intention, but not in compression, so never clamp it in a stand or sit on the top tube, use a torque wrench, always. And avoid extreme heat sources like car exhausts, which generally isn't a problem with frames because they don't end up in the main stream of the exhaust, but is definitely a problem with carbon rims.
[00:30:13] We've seen a number of molten rims. And it's usually they fail at the spoke holes first. Cause there's just so much tension on those spokes that as soon as the resin starts to transition. Into more of a liquid glass it immediately starts to crack at the rims that'd be my main guidance for carbon generally.
[00:30:32] Craig: And as we've talked about it a little bit before on the podcast, I think as a frame designer, You're layering in carbon, in greater, greater levels of material in more sensitive areas.
[00:30:44] But you are. Yeah.
[00:30:45] So like your, your down tube and by your bottom bracket. They can take a ding from a rock and they're going to survive.
[00:30:52] Randall: Generally. Yes. So if you're kicking up a lot of rocks, adding a layer of thicker film is definitely a good idea. We put a very thin film on ours. It's mostly to protect the paint. And then film on the insides of the fork plates seat stays and chain stays where the tire passes through.
[00:31:08] I can save you a lot of grief. If you end up with mud caked on your tires. Cause that'll just grind right through the paint and potentially to layers of carbon. So we do that stock for that reason. And it's a good idea. If you don't already have it, get yourself some 3m protective film.
[00:31:22] Craig: Yeah, and for me, I actually run it's essentially a sort of protective sticker layer from a company called the all mountain style and they just, in my opinion, do great visual designs. And check them out because personally, I love when you look underneath my, down to that, you see this. Digital cammo kind of thing on my nice pink bike.
[00:31:43] Randall: Yeah, it's rad. It's definitely a way to pretty things up.
[00:31:47] Craig: Next question from Kim is their basic regular maintenance checklists that I should be aware of. You things I should check every ride every month, every season, every year.
[00:31:57] Randall: Yeah. When you got.
[00:31:59] Craig: I think there's a lot there, obviously, we've talked about the importance of making sure your chain is lubed your tire pressure. Those are the things I check every single ride. Be aware of how your brakes are changing and performance. So keep an mental eye on.
[00:32:14] Your brake pads and how they're wearing, I'm not going around tightening bolts at all. Unless I've removed something, I'm not really messing with Any of that. I do find my Thesis to be pretty much ready to go. As long as I'm paying attention to the tire and the chain lube.
[00:32:31] Randall: Yeah. Yeah, that's that's about right. I would add to that, check the chain length every so often. And there's a question in here about how to do that. Get one of these go-no-go gauges. I've got the the park tools, CC three.
[00:32:44] There's a bunch of good ones out there. And if it has multiple settings to check, go with the most conservative one. Swap your chains early and often, because it will save you a lot of money on your expensive cogs and cassettes.
[00:32:58] And it'll just make everything perform better. And then every so often, if you feel any looseness in your headset, that's a common thing that will come up over time, potentially just, just check that every so often. If you feel any looseness, you want to tighten it up early. So it doesn't start to wear down the cups or things like that.
[00:33:14] Craig: Yeah. And if you can afford it and you don't have the skills in your own garage, definitely bring it in for an annual tune-up. I think the bikes are going to come back working great and you've got some professionalize on them.
[00:33:26] Randall: Yeah.
[00:33:26] Craig: Next question. Kim asked was what's the best way to pack a bike for air travel.
[00:33:31] Randall: So if you try to be. The cheapest option for the packaging. Cardboard box. And if you're not doing it frequently, that's a good way to go.
[00:33:41] Craig: Yeah, agreed. There's a reason why every bike manufacturer in The world is shipping with a cardboard box. As long as you protect the bike. Inside the box with some bubble wrap or some additional cardboard, they generally arrive where they need to go intact and safe. And I've had multiple occasions where I've used the cardboard box on an outbound trip and the box is Perfectly intact for the return trip.
[00:34:05] Randall: And we should say specifically. Carbo box that a bike would have come in. Cause generally this'll be a five layer corrugated box. It'll be a thicker material. And if you need to reinforce it with some tape, At the corners and so on. And if you get, if it gets a hole in it, patch up the hole, but you can go pretty far with the cardboard box.
[00:34:24] I have a post carry transfer case, which I love, it's a bit more involved. I got to pull the fork and it takes me usually about 15 minutes or so. 20 minutes to pack it up, and to squeeze some gear in between the wheels and the frame and things like that.
[00:34:38] But I generally get past any sort of oversize baggage fees and I have the bigger of the two bags too. So oftentimes I don't even get asked what it is and if I get asked, it's oh yeah, it's a sports gear. Massage table. Yeah, whatever.
[00:34:50] Craig: That's the key for me that post carry bag or or, okay. This is another company that makes one of these bags where as you said, you've got to do a little bit more disassembly, whereas typically it might've been take the handle Bazaar off the pedals and your wheels, and you can get into a cardboard box. Would these particular smaller bags, you do need to pull the fork, which seems incredibly intimidating. When you first talk about it, but in practice, it's actually not.
[00:35:15] Randall: It's not too bad. Probably the biggest issue is if you have a bike with integrated cabling, Then it can be a real nightmare. And in fact I might even go as far as to say, if you don't know what you're doing, don't mess with it. A bike with external cabling, or at least partially external, like our bike, you just have to be careful not to kink the hoses. That's the big, probably the biggest city issue, kinking the hoses, or bending the housings and cables in a way that affects the breaking or the shifting.
[00:35:44] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. If you've, if your cables are particularly tight, It then becomes a problem. I think my routing is just on the edge. I do feel like I'm putting a little bit of stress. On the cables when I'm disassembling in that bag, but so far so good.
[00:35:58] Randall: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:35:59] And then of course you have the full sized bags where if you don't care about paying the airline fees, then get one of these was it Evoque I think makes a really nice one that has good protection there's a bunch of companies that make good ones where you just
[00:36:11] Craig: Yeah, I've.
[00:36:12] Randall: the front wheel and throw it in.
[00:36:14] Craig: I've got a Tulay one that is like bomber. It's got like a through axle slots, but one it's hard as hell to move it around. And two, I got dinged on both weight and access size on my trip to Africa. It's out. I was pretty ticked.
[00:36:31] Randall: Yeah. And then the other thing is on the other end can you get it into the trunk of a cab. And so that's actually another advantage of bags like the post transfer case in the oral case ones is you can. I think I know the post one has backpack straps, and then you can fit it in the boot of pretty much any vehicle.
[00:36:49] Craig: Yeah, totally under emphasized attribute and benefit of those types of bags. Totally agree.
[00:36:54] Like you can get into a sedan. With a, a Prius, Uber Lyft driver and make it in. No problem.
[00:37:00] Randall: Oh, yeah.
[00:37:01]
[00:37:01] Craig Dalton: Pardon the segue that's going to do it for part one of our Q and a episode. I thought that was a great time to break and we'll jump into another half hour of questions and answers in our next episode of, in the dirt, which we'll release in the coming weeks. As always, if you're interested in communicating with myself or Randall,
[00:37:20] Please join the ridership www.theridership.com. If you're able to support the podcast, your contributions are greatly appreciated. You can visit, www.buymeacoffee.com/thegravelride to contribute in any way you can to support the financial wellbeing of the podcast. If you're unable to support in that way, ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated.
[00:37:46] On any of your favorite podcast platforms. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
This week we sit down with Kav Helmet CEO and Founder, Whitman Kwok to discuss the companies' innovative 3D printing technology that can produce a custom fitted helmet for every rider.
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Kav Helmets
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride. Podcast. I'm your host, Craig Dalton.
[00:00:08] This week on the show, we've got Whitman Kwok the founder and CEO of Kav Helmets.
[00:00:14] Kav Helmets may yet to be a household name in the cycling industry. But you'll learn. The team has a rich history in the cycling helmet market. They're innovative approach to manufacturing. Using 3d printing technology is a novel approach. And creates a uniquely custom helmet for each rider. I'll let Whitman get into the ins and the outs of the technology but i'm a big fan of the approach as additive technology just opens up a lot of possibilities for where material is laid in the helmet.
[00:00:45] If you're planning on attending this year, sea Otter classic in Monterrey, California, the Kav team will be showing off their 3d printing technology. There they'll even be 3d printing, some key chains, which I think will showcase how the process actually works. If you're not in the area or not attending seawater, be sure to visit the Kav website as they're opening up orders for all.
[00:01:08] Before we jump into this week show, I need. To thank our sponsor. Today's program is brought to you by Athletic Greens, the health and wellness. Wellness company that makes comprehensive daily nutrition really, really. Simple.
[00:01:19] With so many stressors in life, it's difficult to maintain effective nutritional habits and give our bodies the nutrients it needs to survive. Our busy schedules, poor sleep, massive gravel rides. The environment works dress or simply. Not eating enough of the right foods can leave us deficient and key nutritional.
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[00:02:16] The special blend of high quality bioavailable ingredients in a scoop of AIG one work together to fill the nutritional gaps in your diet, support, energy, and focus aid with gut health and digestion and support a healthy immune system. Effectively replacing multiple products or pills with one healthy delicious Drink .
[00:02:36] As many of you know, I've been an athletic greens subscriber for about the last five years. So I truly appreciate their support of the podcast. If you're interested in learning more, just visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. The team at athletic greens, we'll throw in a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your purchase.
[00:02:59] Again, simply visit athleticgreens.com/thegravelride to take control of your health and give AG1 a try today.
[00:03:08] With that said let's dive right into my conversation with Whitman from Kav Helmets. It's.
[00:03:13] Whitman. Welcome to the show.
[00:03:16] Whitman Kwok: That is correct. Really looking forward to our discussion. Yeah, me too.
[00:03:20] Craig Dalton: The manufacturing and additive tech geek in me is really looking forward to this conversation.
[00:03:26] Definitely want to learn how calf helmets came about and what your journey is to creating this bike helmets. And more importantly, what the benefits are for riders in the gravel scene. So let's jump in and let's just in your own words, let us know about cab helmets, how it started and what the vision is.
[00:03:46] Whitman Kwok: Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of impact, even in that simple question. I think fundamentally the vision was. Oh, providing a concierge service to athletes. I had always, as a competitor cycles in college, tweak my gear, adjusted everything from crank buy-ins to handlebar lengths and all, everything to get the most performance and also just make the bike an extension of myself.
[00:04:10] And I don't think anything has changed in the intervening years. And I think in all the sports that we talked to, whether it's a hockey players or something the gears are really important part of the athletic experience. And so for cab it was obvious to us that the helmet market is really large.
[00:04:26] It is a largely at this point a undifferentiated product where there isn't a dominant player per se. There isn't a apple or a Tesla or a Peloton where people just all grab it gravitate to. And as long as you. For the last 30 years, there's been a lot of tweaking and incremental improvements on injection molded foam helmets.
[00:04:46] And I think what we bring with Kav is this generational leap like Tesla's done with electric cars to a whole new mode of thinking around making a helmet or anything for that matter. That's completely custom to the individual. And the moment you do that there's a whole bunch of benefits that we're able to realize.
[00:05:06] There's the obvious ones around comfort that there's 8 billion sizes that we can provide one for every man, woman, child on the planet. And but there's a huge number of performance. Benefits and protection is always top of mind when you're talking about helmets. And the fact that we can tailor the protective characteristics to.
[00:05:23] And individual and how they ride, how fast they're riding the weight profiles, things like that gives a massive potential improvement in protection over just a standard kind of one or two or three size fits all. I'm fortunate. I have a number of co-founders and colleagues that we found in the company together.
[00:05:42] And I think we all had different experiences, but the same. Echo and voice in the back of our head, that there's just a lot better way to do this. And so I'll do a quick shout out to there. And obviously there's a lot of different areas that we can talk through. But Mike Lowe is our VP of products and he was the VP of events, concepts at Euro bell.
[00:06:03] He also worked closely with Ridell. He did early work with Lance Armstrong's time trial helmet, and worked on all the iconic bike helmets. Since. He's been just fantastic to learn from that whole industry or the homicide. There's a lot of honest, non-obvious quirks and things in the industry.
[00:06:20] And it's a very close knit industry. And so there's a lot of great people that we've been able to meet and work through Mike. And on the technology side, they started migrating. Amazing technologists from Google small company called Google and relatively early employee there, I'm working on search quality and YouTube, one of their, two of their smaller products.
[00:06:39] And and he brings this immense knowledge, not just in software, which ironically is where 78% of our IP is. But also a really great understanding of hardware and kind of physics and mechanical engineering. You really have to. That kind of polymath approach in order to build something like a superior helmet.
[00:06:58] So anyway, it's a long-winded way of talking. It's on the people we work with our early vision and some of the high level benefits and can let you pick and choose your own adventure from there.
[00:07:08] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So I alluded a little bit to it in the intro, but just so we don't lose this concept right off the jump, because it's easy for the listener to think about this as a traditional helmet, but let's talk about how it's manufactured because you didn't specifically mention that.
[00:07:24] And I think it's one of the most fascinating parts of the process.
[00:07:28] Whitman Kwok: Yeah, no I do that a lot because I think we always think of it from the N and consumer's perspective. What did they get? And how we get there is really intriguing from an engineering perspective. And I often gloss over it.
[00:07:42] Yeah, we we blended a bunch of material sciences additive manufacturing and software in order to develop the helmets. And I'll speak a little bit more of the additive manufacturing sites since you asked about it, but yes, each of these helmets is 3d printed here in Redwood city, California for the individual.
[00:08:00] And so everything is made to order that has huge implications to everything. Not just manufacturing, but the whole customer. That's alluding to and being kind of concert servers are giving people exactly what they want. And so when an order comes in, we're taking measurements and we dynamically generate actually all the engineering terms, all the CAD files, the dimensions and everything for the helmet.
[00:08:25] And it's not the case that we're just taking three or six or even 12, like shells and then like carving something. We are literally building the helmet from the inside out. So I think, whereas the current concept, the off the shelf is you get two or three sizes and you've got the shell that defines the helmet.
[00:08:46] And then you got to force fit your head into that use foam padding, or several lock things to just sense your head loosely in this kind of bucket idea. And for us you're actually taking the meds. We dynamic create that we define all the offsets that we need to generate and ensure the level of protection than we want for that rider.
[00:09:06] Then we send it through our own what we call printer management software. So we actually have a farm of these 3d printers. So you can imagine it being like analogous to like a data center except of having all these servers slotted in these racks. We've got 3d printers slotted in the. And it basically just creates like all the different parts that you need for your helmet.
[00:09:26] And we have a QA process throughout to measure and make sure what we're printing is exactly meets specs of what we want. And we have to build a lot of that in dynamically because each helmet is custom. And then we do a kind of final finishing process that's done by hand. So you get the best of both worlds of this precision 3d printed.
[00:09:47] But hand-finished and lovingly made here in our shop in Redwood city.
[00:09:51] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I imagine for some of the listeners, this might be a mind-bending discussion because a lot of people haven't seen 3d printing inaction, no one way to visualize it. And this may or may not be a great way, but since I have a seven-year-old in the house if you imagine sort of building from Legos and you're building from the ground, And you keep building successfully on top of each other.
[00:10:15] It's in my mind how 3d printing works, right? You've got the material that's in this printer and it's being laid out layer by layer. And this is based on the very customized measurements that you've received from the future owner of the helmet. So again, the, in the interest of helping to visualize it's being built from the ground up around your individual, Once you've placed the order.
[00:10:43] Whitman Kwok: That's right. And the analogy I like to use is making a soft cone right. Or going into the yogurt machine. And yeah we basically, it can imagine we're taking our proprietary polymers and it's coming out of this very high-tech yogurt machine. But rather than having, it dumped like eight ounces of yogurt into the cup.
[00:11:00] We're a precision layering, at a fraction of a millimeter at a time. These very intricate engineered what we call energy management system and your helmet. And and so it's a little bit like growing the part on this bed. And we're, as you say, we're creating a slice at a time.
[00:11:17] That's a fraction of a millimeter and kind of building up. And each layer is being laid down by this very sophisticated yogurt machine. And and at the end of the. Yeah, exactly. You have a helmet. That's not on a custom fit, but it's not solid. Like it's not like an injection molded part where you're just dumping a bunch of plastic into a mold or or foam where you're like exploding blowing up the foam into a mold we're actually creating like this really complicated, polygon and hex structure within the helmet which is designed to Trumbull really efficiently to provide good.
[00:11:51] But also takes up the fraction of the weight because most of your helmet actually turns out to be air in this case.
[00:11:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah. That's an interesting, you hear the phrase fits like a glove, but this is even the next level of that it's like fits like a glove that has been specifically designed for your personal hand.
[00:12:08] Whitman Kwok: That's why it would be like an iron man glove, right? Like it's one thing to have a fabric that you stretched over your head. It's quite an honor to have this in case structure that still has the same sensation of a security right. And being fit like glove, but it's hard right on the outside to protect you.
[00:12:25] And so it is a next level sensation.
[00:12:28] Craig Dalton: So when I think about, the helmet I have in the garage, I think about, it's got some internal kind of frame and a dial that helps it fit. I understand from your earlier discussion, I can throw that piece out because I don't need that piece anymore because the helmet is built to order to the shape of my personal head.
[00:12:46] I then, if I think about the exterior of the helmet, I often have a hard plastic layer and then not knowing a ton about the interior, but it sounds like we're injecting molding. We're injecting foam. Into a Kavity that kind of creates that if you, if that's accurate and feel free to fill in any details there, but why don't you juxtapose what the outside and the inside of the cab helmet effectively, how that differs and how it changes?
[00:13:15] Whitman Kwok: Yeah. I think the cycling analogy would be it's almost like a monocoque structure, right? If you have a psych, a carbon fiber cycling frame, where for all practical purposes, Like all the tubing and lugs and everything joined in a way where it just behaves as one monolithic well-balanced, machine in terms of and in the traditional process, like you said that in the higher end helmets, you have a, typically like a polycarbonate shell, that's a couple of mils thick and they injection mold, some EPS foam into that have some type of density or multiple densities and The nice thing.
[00:13:49] And so each of those things play a part and they're trying to compensate for different deficiencies in the foam. And so is not it sticks to cement, right? And so you don't want that because it's going to cause bad rotational energies on impact. It's also not very durable and gets eaten up.
[00:14:05] So you have to then create this one millimeter shell to protect it. With all the venting that you put in, it's pretty common now to put like a plastic interior chassis to keep the helmet together on impact. And so I just suppose that with additive manufacturing or 3d printing, because what we're doing is integrating everything into one coherent design, right?
[00:14:26] And so when we're laying down each layer of plastic, we are actually. Integrating the shell with the crumple zone with the chassis, so to speak. And by integrating it just like a well-made carbon fiber frame, we can reduce all the interfaces. And so the helmet's more compact. You don't have air gaps, so to speak.
[00:14:46] It's a lot lighter because we're only putting material where it's needed. It's like the old steel frames, or living on frames where they're double butted or triple butted. We can reinforce it in the right areas. And and it gives us a lot of ability to fine tune each aspect of the helmet.
[00:15:01] So that instead of saying, having a universally, a universal density of foam across the helmet for different impact zones and we learned a lot of this actually from our experience in hockey we can tailor the impact behaviors, of the based on location of the helmet as well, It just gives us just like carbon fiber and forensic gives us a lot.
[00:15:20] The analogy is like the layup, right? The carbon fiber. And what carbon fiber is you use and the residence. We have just a lot more control than just pumping a bunch of foam beets into a mold.
[00:15:31] Craig Dalton: Yeah. That's interesting. And maybe it goes back to some earlier podcasts I've had in discussion around carbon fiber frames and just talking about, how you.
[00:15:40] Layer something differently where it needs more protection, maybe under the bottom bracket, whereas you don't need to use those same layers elsewhere in the frame where you want to have a little bit more compliance. So I imagine given the team's experience in helmet design, it was really liberating to just freely.
[00:15:57] Think about how, and where do we want to put material, because really the sky's the limit, right? You can optimize around. What's going to be best. For impact protection, both on the, hard impacts like hard and fast as well as slower impacts. I imagine you can, you're free to really design something that performs well across a couple of different factors.
[00:16:21] Whitman Kwok: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. Like we have a lot more control in the general use case. And I think in the future as we've done a little bit of this on hockey and we'll bring it into the bike market. What the individual characteristics actually matter a lot, because at the end of the day for a cycling helmet, we have, twenty-five maybe 30 millimeters of offset we can work with.
[00:16:42] If we make it much larger than that people balk at what they look like, there's certain brands that are known for safety. But they're also known for making your head look like a mushroom, right? We don't want that. We want people to love, frankly, we're in the homeless.
[00:16:53] We want to attract people who, frankly, don't wear helmets into the market. I'm gonna do that. We need a thinner profile. And so the way to actually make a safer helmet is have information about what they're riding, right? A commuter, ride with I commute every day and finish going like 1230 miles an hour.
[00:17:09] That's a very different profile than. A road sort of groundwater going downhill at 30, 40 miles an hour. There, that's a factor of three difference in velocity. And if you think about kinetic energy, the velocity is a square root, right? So that's like a, that's a nine, almost an order of magnitude difference in impactful file.
[00:17:27] So there is gain and exactly what we just talked about, but there's an even bigger gain because we know the athlete and we have that relationship like moving forward. Knowing that their commuter or their downhill racer and their weight, their mass makes a big difference to a kid who weighs a hundred pounds.
[00:17:44] It's just going to be way different than someone who's 220. And again, you have a two X factor there that isn't something, that's a comedy for an issue where it's one size fits. All right.
[00:17:55] Craig Dalton: Now the business has been selling helmets for over a year and a half. Primarily in hockey and most recently in bike, do you want to talk about why hockey was the entry point and maybe some of the things you've learned across the customers you've been serving in that space?
[00:18:11] Whitman Kwok: Yeah, no, absolutely. So there are a couple of factors that came into play. So one was frankly, what w what could get it to market the quickest. We just wanted to provide value to people as quickly as possible. The second, where was where's the biggest need? And between those two, and there was a little bit of a personal reason as well.
[00:18:29] But the first two were clearly the overriding. From a technical perspective, it turns out making a hockey helmet is just easier than making a bike helmet. One of the characteristic reasons just wait is not quite as big of a factor in the hockey. And so we wanted to basically use the hockey market as our Tesla Roadster, right?
[00:18:48] Knowing that it's a limited market, it's smaller, but people are willing to pay for the equipment. They're willing to pay the premium. And and we can launch quicker. The second piece of why they pay a premium is that as you can imagine, the concussion rate per activity hour in hockey is almost parallel or equal to.
[00:19:03] And meeting quite high, whereas in cycling, it's somewhat incidental, right? If you get in a crash and get an, a concussion in hockey, 3, 5, 10 times a game, you're taking impacts to the head and getting pinned against the board and falling on the ice. And so we thought that the market would benefit significantly from our protective technologies in that space.
[00:19:25] And. The third reason, which just made me very cognizant of it was my son plays hockey. And when we started the company, his team had six concussions on it. And they were only 12 years old at the time. And there was just an outcry, I think with the parents and all the clubs that I talked to did not feel like there was enough being done.
[00:19:42] And the. Equipment manufacturers and hockey are generally about two to three generations on behind any of the other helmet markets as well. So the need was greater. The products were even further inferior and and we thought we could help people sooner in that market than any other market.
[00:20:01] Craig Dalton: You talked about how as a company and the way you're producing the helmets, that you can evolve with the market and you're understanding. Yeah. Within the hockey market, since you've been there the longest, are you doing things differently for a child's size helmet versus the NHL players that you work with?
[00:20:20] Whitman Kwok: Yeah yes. Besides the fit we've actually made modifications to, I should, I would draw the analogy that it's a case that a surprisingly large number of the benefits for either of those extremes helps. And so they now Joel users in the late nineties, early two thousands car manufacturers are realizing like women had difficulty like getting their groceries in the trunk.
[00:20:40] And because the trunk actually came all the way up to the top of the back and they now if you open the trunk of a car, it, the trunk dips down past the lights right down to the bumper. There's this carve-out. And so you don't have to lift your groceries, like over a wall, so to speak, you can just slide it in.
[00:20:53] Watching. Buy groceries at the time was like a motivating factor for that. But we found that obviously that benefited everyone. Like I don't, I'm lazy. I don't want to list the groceries I don't have to. And so I'll give a kind of example that, which is kids wears glasses, a lot.
[00:21:06] And so we ended up putting in little cutouts for people wear glasses so that it actually just slides in. So a hockey helmet actually comes down further than a. And traditionally, there are pads that go up against your temple. And so you can imagine if you wear glasses, you're literally shoving these glasses into these temples and that the pads are forcing your, the sidearms or your glasses into your temples for an hour and a half while you play hockey really uncomfortable situation.
[00:21:35] And we did that and that ended up bending, benefiting a bunch of adults rests and things that. It turns out like the ice rinks are really dry. So like wearing contacts, it's not always actually comfortable. So say, and vice versa, like there's been a bunch of benefits because obviously the professional levels that impact are taking it's just an extreme example and it really drives some of the protective technologies.
[00:21:58] And even if they No, the squirts and mites don't necessarily have the same level of impact there. There's still a deeper understanding. I think of the types of checking that goes on that informed our products for the kids.
[00:22:11] Craig Dalton: Gotcha. Obviously, given your pedigree as a cyclist and your co founders coming to the bike market was something that you were eager to do.
[00:22:19] Can you talk about the introduction of the first bike helmet and what the goals were there and how for the list of. They should think about whether a cab helmet is right for them.
[00:22:32] Whitman Kwok: Yeah. It's interesting because the engineering side of me and product matter one, be very specific about the goals.
[00:22:38] Oh, we want to hit this weight target and this usability. But what we ended up doing is taking a step back and asking the conceptually what do we want to, what's our mission, right? A reminder, what's our mission of the company on this build the best protective gear on. And as a very important corollary that the best gear is no use of no one wants to wear it.
[00:22:54] So it's got adjust look and feel fantastic. And when we're doing these new technologies, I think it was important for us to blue sky it and not bound herself by certain things. So our goal is just make the best helmet possible. And this. An all road category, right? So with a focus really on gravel and road cyclist, but with the knowledge of knowing that, a lot of cross-country mountain bikers use road helmets, and a lot of commuters would ultimately use it.
[00:23:24] But if we looking at personas and interviewing people, we focus on the road and gravel side of things. And then from there we really just built around it. And I think honestly I'm glad we've done it that way, because we found a lot of surprising things that I think if we constrain ourselves early on, we would not have done.
[00:23:39] One of them being, for example our interior fit pad system is just radically different from a traditional fabric fit pack. And it would not have come if we said yeah, we just want sweat management, whatever way moisture at this level or thermal capabilities.
[00:23:56] But anyway, I happy to go into the details of that, but what we ended up coming out with, I think is we've focused on fit and the protective qualities, what we ended up with was the ability to make something that as least as dynamic as other helmets out there is significantly cooler. Riding.
[00:24:15] And has all the protective qualities. And again, it has some of these comfort features built in on the inside. That, again, we didn't necessarily envision, but the advantage of having a new prototype every week, that we're all riding is you tend to iterate quite quickly through, and I think we're on version 32 right now.
[00:24:30] And 33 is like on the printing press. It's going quick.
[00:24:33] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think that's one of those really cool things about doing both additive manufacturing and domestic manufacturing is that you can continue tweaking the product to optimize it based on consumer feedback which is really powerful.
[00:24:50] Whitman Kwok: Yeah.
[00:24:50] Know that's right. We we have the benefit now that we're far enough along and we're starting to include like a larger and larger swath of people into the kind of the test. And so we had our Kickstarter about a month ago and we had a 20 plus like early adopters sign up through that.
[00:25:05] And we were shipping out shipping helmets out to them and looking forward to get the next wave of feedback and and just improving. And in real time, before we ship out our production ones at the end of the year,
[00:25:16] Craig Dalton: yes. At the process of ordering is a little bit different than, traditionally you might use.
[00:25:21] No your size, small, medium, or large, and put an order in, or go to your local bicycle retailer for the cab helmets. You're sending out a kind of measurement fit kit and actually working at a concierge level with the purchaser, right?
[00:25:38] Whitman Kwok: Yeah, that's right. We the fit process has been really interesting for us.
[00:25:42] I think we're on our third version of the process. Fundamentally, I'm you sign up, we send you this fit kit and it's a caliper and a tape measure. And that allows us we take six points off of your head. And with those six points, we actually map it to a database of 3000 head scans that we've accumulated and basically a little bit of like machine learning type of thing.
[00:26:07] Where we're then extrapolating footnote 16. Other aspects of your head in terms of, the curvature and more details and maybe those six points would initially seem to provide. And we then send out basically we call it like a fit cap and just fun looking, little cap that we 3d print.
[00:26:24] And you can just literally stick it on and wear around the house and slept getting a fine suit, where you get your initial measurement, you put on that. And then you use just some minor tweaks oh, you know what the arm hole just a little bit bigger. Or for me personally, like I like it a little more snug, around the waist.
[00:26:39] And so that, that fit cap gives us some of the subjective feedback, that, that individuals tend to have in terms of how they liked their helmets and fit. And then from there, yeah we generate the the helmet for them and send it to them and ride straight their doorstep conveniently.
[00:26:52] And and then they can enjoy it. And. We've actually found quite a few hockey players. I'm surprisingly, I've gotten multiple helmets because they liked it so much. And it's not a common thing actually in hockey to do that. But they've gotten like different colors and versions of the helmet.
[00:27:06] Craig Dalton: Interesting. Interesting. And then this sort of manufacturing geek in me asked to ask, so the, each helmet presumably comes out of one machine is built in one single process.
[00:27:19] Whitman Kwok: So we actually do you want to in parallel, so we break up the helmet into sub segments and that allows us to print individual pieces.
[00:27:27] It also turns out it gives us some additional engineering design flexibility that you don't get when you print them all as a monolithic structure. And then we basically bond them together. Again, carbon fiber resident type of analogy, holds true here that there's a little bit of. Attachment mechanism and then we adhere everything together.
[00:27:44] And the effectively the joints end up being, stronger than the sub-components and and then, yeah, and then we attach on the straps and do some final QA checks and literally sign off on the box and and then send it on its way.
[00:27:57] Craig Dalton: Nice. One of the sort of visual elements that you'll see for the listener when they go over to the website, which I can include in the show notes is there's a.
[00:28:06] Honeycomb look across the sort of front and middle of the helmet. Is there a sort of design rationale behind the honeycomb?
[00:28:16] Whitman Kwok: Yeah, it is. It's it's an engineer circles. It's w it's known as one of the most efficient energy absorbing structures. It crumbles really well. Which is what you want, obviously in something like that.
[00:28:28] And even better than foam because in foam, what you tend to have is what's called a densification phase where after the foam, if you've got, let's just say 20 millimeters of foam or 20 millimeters from once you start getting past about a third if you've ever been in an accident, looked at your home and you'll see this it'll crack.
[00:28:46] And the foam doesn't compress any further. And so you can think of it like suspension on your mountain bike or your gravel bike. If you have suspension on it it's all about the travel, right? At the end of the day, to absorb the impact you want the most travel without bottoming out. So when you hit a bump, you want to utilize whatever the 30, 45 millimeters of travel that you got. And do you use the full 45 millimeters? You will have had the best ride that you could possibly have had, for that circumstance if you bought them out, obviously not good. Particularly we're talking about your head and if you only do 10 minutes, 10 millimeters of that trial, Then you're not fully utilizing your equipment.
[00:29:19] And so foam has that issue where once it densifies at some point it doesn't compress any further. And so you tend to only get a fraction of that travel. The nice thing about the hacks is that you get nearly the full travel. So the full offset of the helmet can be used to compress it and protect you.
[00:29:39] It also turns out to be quite. And has this other really important ancillary benefit, which is you may not necessarily always be able to see it when someone's riding, but the honeycomb structure extends into, on the interior as well, which means you have an open face structure on your head. And so he can dissipate really easily away from your head as opposed to foam, which is obviously known for beer coolers and other things that has insulating properties, that trap heat.
[00:30:05] So we actually had early versus the helmet that didn't even have venting on it. And the helmet was actually quite cool. I wouldn't say it's the coolest, but it was comparable to the other eight helmets. I have sitting in my shed that I used for testing purposes. And then in the moment we opened it up and added the actual venting, like it's a game changer total game.
[00:30:25] And particularly these last like week or two where we've had some hundred, a hundred degree days, you really feel.
[00:30:31] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. The the sort of follower of me on Instagram, might've seen me Dawn, one of these helmets a few months back when we were able to meet face to face. It is really, you can definitely feel the weight difference.
[00:30:46] It's marginal, but it's absolutely there and our conversation around crumple zones and that idea of. Protection travel in a helmet is super fascinating via the honeycomb design for those listeners and may fall in this camp. What's the guidance by the industry in terms of how frequently you should replace a helmet?
[00:31:09] Whitman Kwok: You know what I do think that varies. The most common I hear is somewhere in the range of three to five years. I think the challenge though, is it's like how often you need to change your bike. It varies so much by your circumstances, meaning if you're like me and somewhat klutzy and you're pulling your bike out and you're dropping your helmet and the process, or my helmet, I don't know how many times my helmet has fallen off my handlebars.
[00:31:31] Every time it's fallen, like you could have, imagine that impact just compresses the foam just a little bit, right in that one area. And honestly, one or two times it isn't going to be the be all end, all. For me, it's a little unsettling to not know, it's not like my toothbrush that has a wear indicator.
[00:31:47] It says, okay. Time to change those bristles. And so the nice thing with the 3d printing, the polymers that we're using, the design that helmet is that there's a step function aspect of it. Like we've designed it so that if you're dropping it casually, it doesn't activate any of that travel.
[00:32:02] Like it, it stays rigid. And it's going to Maintain that performance indefinitely. And so you don't really have to worry about it. We offer a five-year warranty on our helmets and and because we're confident around that which I think is an industry leading whatever warranty.
[00:32:20] So I think, again, I think that the. Wisdom is three to five years, but I think it varies really significantly and it, and I think it's tough to provide
[00:32:29] Craig Dalton: that, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. I think, there's a lot of us maybe who have been fortunate to, to not have crashed and you don't see the.
[00:32:38] Obvious bits of damage to your helmet, but I'm definitely one of those who, whenever I have a conversation about how much and how much the technology, I think to myself, gosh, almost everything in my garage is a PR is probably a pretty long in the tooth in terms of when I should be considering making a replacement.
[00:32:58] Whitman Kwok: Yeah, that's right. It's it's one of those pieces of equipment that's easy to ignore, right? Cause it's not like your bike bond brackets squeaking. Your rim brakes rubbing. It's not going to do that and tell you right. That it needs maintenance or help. Yet obviously it protects the most important part of your body.
[00:33:13] And so it is pretty critical to have at least inspect it and have some regular interval that you swap it out.
[00:33:20] Craig Dalton: Yeah, absolutely. It's a good reminder to everybody and women. I really appreciate you joining us on the podcast and talking us through this technology. I think the. The tech geek in all of us can really appreciate from listening to you how different the 3d printing technology enables you to think as a helmet manufacturer.
[00:33:41] And it's very comforting to know that you've got smart people around you, including yourself and veterans of the industry who have just been thinking about this helmet from the ground. And how to make the best possible experience for consumers. So I know you I'll send people over to the website where they can find more information about the helmet.
[00:34:02] Are these available for new orders at this point?
[00:34:05] Whitman Kwok: We will be taking new orders in about two or three weeks. I'm not sure when this is airing. We wanted to make sure that all the early backers on our Kickstarter were well taken care of. And so we've, we're in a good shape there. And then we'll begin opening up borders.
[00:34:20] We'll be at the Seattle classic. So for anyone who's there it'd be great drop by our booth. Look out for us. You can see that the helmets firsthand and we'll be definitely taking orders at that point.
[00:34:31] Craig Dalton: Amazing. Yeah. I've seen that. I've seen a couple of people in my Instagram feed who were clearly some of your earliest supporters.
[00:34:37] Who've gotten their helmets in already. So that's exciting to see. So once again, Whitman, thanks a ton for this overview. I really appreciated it. And I hope everybody listening got a lot out of this conversation.
[00:34:51] Whitman Kwok: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks Dan and Craig, I'm always happy to talk helmets or anything related to the cycling.
[00:34:56] So thanks for having me.
[00:34:58] Craig Dalton: So that's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Thank you very much to Whitman and the cab helmets team for joining us and talking all about 3d printing helmets. I think it was a fascinating discussion. Definitely check out their website. They're over at calves, sports.com to see a little bit of behind the scenes about the process.
[00:35:18] The guarantees. Auntie's around the helmet and just what a custom fitted helmet could do for. You're cycling enjoyment. As always, if you're interested in giving us feedback and encourage you to join us over at the ridership. Our ship, just visit www.theridership.com.
[00:35:35] That is our free global cycling community for gravel and adventure, cyclists, to talk about the products and experiences and trails and events. We all love. If you're interested in supporting the podcast, ratings and reviews are hugely helpful in the podcast game, our read everything that. You put out there and appreciate it very much.
[00:35:57] If you're able to financially support the show, simply visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. I've put a number of options out there. From one-time support as well as a monthly subscription that simply. Helps underwrite this broadcast.
[00:36:13] So that's going to do it for us. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under To your wheels
This week we sit down with Ewan Shepherd from Trek Travel to discuss their upcoming Girona Gravel Tour trips. We learn about the city, the cycling community and the abundance of gravel that surrounds the city.
Trek Travel Gravel Tour Girona
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Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos):
Trek Travel
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton.
[00:00:06] This week on the podcast, we're joined by UN shepherd European logistics manager for track travel. Based out of Girona Spain.
[00:00:14] As the longtime listener knows I've been super keen on the idea of gravel travel and super excited to see this industry grow up.
[00:00:22] We had an earlier discussion with Juan De La Roca about Southern Colorado and building that up as a gravel destination. And now we're seeing events like LIfeTime’s Rad Dirt Fest crop up over there. We've also talked to event organizers over in Europe, around the gravel epic series that was conceived. During the COVID time and didn't actually get to get its races off the ground.
[00:00:46] But one of the locations we talked about in Europe was Girona. Now for road cyclist, Girona has long been part of the discussion about where professional athletes live. And there's a reason why they live there. Amazing road, riding all over the place. So I was really excited to learn originally from the gravel epic team about Girona as a travel destination for gravel cyclists.
[00:01:11] But even more excited to learn about this trip that Trek travel is putting together their Girona, gravel bike tour.
[00:01:18] They've got a couple more departures this year in November that you can still sign up for as well as a whole host of dates for 2022, starting in the spring.
[00:01:28] After talking to you. And all I can say is sign me up. It sounds amazing. I'll let him explain it in his own words, but it sounds like Jerome has a very special place for cyclists of all kinds.
[00:01:39] And the opportunities for gravel cycling are abundant outside the city center.
[00:01:44] I'm excited for you to learn more about Girona and gravel. With that said let's dive right in to my conversation with you and shepherd
[00:01:52] Ewan welcome to the show.
[00:01:53] Ewan Shepherd: Hey Craig, thank you very much for having me and thank you everybody for listening.
[00:01:58] Craig Dalton: I appreciate you joining us on a Friday evening over there in Spain, I'm super excited about the topic we're going to discuss today as the listener or the longterm listener has known.
[00:02:08] I've talked about gravel travel as something I'm super excited about because as we all know, it's such a great way to explore the world and the idea of packing my bike and going somewhere exotic, like Girona Spain is super exciting to me. So when I got the opportunity to connect with Trek travel, Dig into this trip and dig into Jarana grab gravel jumped at it.
[00:02:31] So you, and thank you for joining me. And let's just get started by a little bit about your background.
[00:02:37] Ewan Shepherd: Yeah, no worries. Thank you again for having me. And I guess we share something in common that we both enjoy eating well by bike. So gravel travel is definitely evident between us all. Huh. So Bob, my background it's been varied.
[00:02:50] I started off as a kid, not really enjoying the power of two wheels on my own preferring Moda, power of motocross, bikes, and motor sport, and pursue the a career in motor sport. I am, I'm only 29, so it's not, it wasn't a long career. And then I decided to jump into the cycle career really because my brother threw me on an old racing bike of hairs and said, we're going trick racing of what is this.
[00:03:14] And yeah. That's how I got into cycling and kind of started to learn about it. Then love cycling, all things cycling really threw me on the amount of bikes for the first time. He threw me on a cyclocross bike for the first time, took me to attract for the first time. And just more and more, I ate it up and started falling in love with with cycling and And then I thought, why not help out in my local bike shop?
[00:03:37] Because I was in between jobs and bugging the owner and the mechanic calling in on the bike and asking for them to help me with this, or could they get pots or for that? And then they were like, Hey, we need an extra hand here. And you're pretty mechanically minded. Can you want to come and help us out?
[00:03:53] And that's how I, it. Wrenching in a bike shop. And from there, it took me to I was actually living in Australia at the time and working in a shop debt. And then I started working for the initial prompt and dealer in Australia, which was pretty fun and interesting. Little folding bikes, which were going all over kind of the Australasia and New Zealand even send a bite that prompted the Fiji.
[00:04:17] And then I moved back to the UK and was starting working for old mountain bike brands that maybe some of your listeners have heard of head of pay cycles. They're one of the first UK monocyte grants set up by, by a young family at the time who did same as me. They love motocross and enjoy bike riding.
[00:04:38] And they wanted a bike to, to train on during the time that they weren't racing on the road. And so they imported mountain bikes yet to important Gary fishers at the time, because there was nothing else in Europe and or in the UK. So he, Adrian is the main designer of the car. And he designed his own on mountain bikes.
[00:04:57] Did y'all say 100, was that famous plus bikes, square tube. aluminum that they rooted out pots of the frame to make it lighter. So I started working for them after they did the whole amount of bike brand and we They had two shops at the time that they just started and started in rental centers.
[00:05:14] So I joined them a running one at that shops. And then they got back into the frames. And that's when started to learn more about frame design, different bikes, and the whole Enduro scene was mounted bike and jurors scene was growing. And that was something that we were really interested in the time.
[00:05:34] And. I was starting to cyclocross race at a time. I would go off a weekend, so cyclocross race and come back to work. And we were designing 29 S slack long, low amount of bikes. And we also had a total. Version cause Adrian and his wife happy love to go off to all sorts of places.
[00:05:53] The, they did Chile, they went and wrote the Santiago combo skeleton and Northern Spain, all of these cycle touring. And he adapted one of the hardtail Enduro steel mountain bikes and put lugs on it. So he could take. And I was like, I liked the look of that bite, but I don't really I don't want to put drop bars on it.
[00:06:14] Can I put drop bars on it? Let's try it. And so here I had a 29 mountain bike slack long, whoa, with with a draw bar on it. And I was like this pretty cool. And they were looking to, they already had an exi carbon bikes. I was like, can we do this a bit lighter? Because. Yorkshire is, I know you're you have family that Craig and it's up down.
[00:06:35] Dale is Dale is a small valley and it's really steep at each side. And I live in between the two national products of the north York Moors and the Yorkshire Dales. And they have so many of these little Dales. So riding across that, you'd go down and it's like down 25% down to a flat valley, then literally back up the other side, 25 to 30%.
[00:06:57] So I wanted something nice and light, but to go all day across the Dales and the malls And so we were making this and thinking, oh, this could be a cool and gravel was coming on the scene at the time. And I was interested in bike packing with it and just testing out something that was a good touring bike.
[00:07:18] But at the same time, I just saw touring at the time as being something that my parents did or all the people did when they retired. So I wanted something fun cause I still enjoyed enjoy mountain biking. So I wanted to take it down some trails at the same time as doing a hundred K on it, which I certainly wouldn't do on my one 60 mil.
[00:07:36] Enjoy a bike, do a hundred K, but so that's where I discovered this cyclocross gravel mix. That we all call gravel today. Which Adrian at the time was like, we used to race on my, on a bikes would drop handlebars XC and downhill back in the 1980s. Cause inventing anything new it's all coming round in circles, the wheels going round, as they say.
[00:08:00] So that was really my early years in the cycling industry playing with that. And then. Being honest, Googled cool bike mechanic jobs in one places which took me back to Australia. And then I wanted to go back to Europe and it took me to the warmest place at the time, which was the Canary islands which was great for gaining some exposure of just massive cyclists all at once.
[00:08:24] Thousands of people on the road, just riding the bikes, having fun on holiday guided, worked in rental shops. Love the Canary island lifestyle. And then I just stumbled across Trek travel. I told the global logistics manager at one day, I was like, I want to come work for you because I want to help out on some of your big trips.
[00:08:41] They were doing tour de France and big Pyrenees trips and out trips. And I just really liked the idea of offering support to. To other people, not the I'd been guy, a guy that I wanted to support the guides. I knew all the tricks of all the problems of being a guide. So I wanted to help them most of all, help back help their guests.
[00:09:04] And that kind of leads me to here where I'm the European logistics coordinator for Trek travel and in our home base of drones.
[00:09:11] Craig Dalton: Amazing. It's such a, it's so interesting. As people who have been around the sport of cycling for a long time to trace back when you first started doing the thing that later became gravel cycling.
[00:09:25] Because obviously as you've indicated, as we've discussed before, People have been riding drop bar bikes off-road for a long time, but it was this kind of gradual progression of componentry, frame, design, methodology, tires, brakes, all these things combined to making what was once somewhat a hacky type experience where you were maybe bringing a bike that wasn't exactly suited for the job to where we are now.
[00:09:53] That depending on where you are and how you want to set up your bike. There's such a wide variety of ways in which you can configure these bikes to ride on the roads and trails wherever you live in the world.
[00:10:05] Ewan Shepherd: Yeah. It's always fascinated me coming from like a motor sport design element.
[00:10:10] Always into aerodynamics working with formula two, formula three. And then I had to, I always had a love for kind of classic cause I raised something in the UK or Europe rally cross, which I don't think you have in us, but it's it's exactly that it's a cross between this second is gravel road and dirt, and you drive a little bit of each and we always used to race the classic mini Coupa's.
[00:10:35] That was my classic love of cause. But yeah, that was a tangent. Sorry.
[00:10:40] Craig Dalton: No, it's an interesting perspective. I hadn't, no, one's brought that up before, but it's totally true. There's parallels in that experience because you had to have a car that drove well on the road. Capable off-road and presumably every driver, just like every rider had to make those difficult choices of, okay.
[00:10:57] Do I want it to be higher performing on-road or off-road and what's that happy medium for me as a, as an athlete.
[00:11:04] Ewan Shepherd: Yeah. And I think that changes with your with you personally, you may be a road cyclist, but you have that instinct to what's down there and it's a gravel road to go off road and explore it.
[00:11:18] And you want to feel safe and comfortable. You don't want to necessarily take your 23 mil tires, cotton road bike down a. The track you want a bike that's comfortable and safe to do it all.
[00:11:31] Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. Talking about Trek travel specifically, obviously with the track name associated with it, people associated directly with the brand, but the company itself as Trek travel.
[00:11:43] Can you tell us a little bit about its origins and how long it's been operating?
[00:11:47] Ewan Shepherd: Yeah it's actually a 20th year of fun. 2020 years since charter travel was thought up in the, in Trek itself where it started with just three people brought into to en enhance the experience that people were getting when they were not just buying a bite or buying into the Trek brand, which.
[00:12:09] Is ride bikes, have fun, feel good. And Chuck just wants to get more people on bikes to have fun. And one of the ways was to offer them a trip of a lifetime of vacation, of a lifetime to somewhat. And that idea grew over the last 20 years studying in the U S and then Trek bought into the protein of yeah.
[00:12:30] Trek. And they started running a VIP trips to the total France and bringing clients across. But that specifically to see the tour and see the classics that the ring in Europe have the outs to, to climb out west, to do Mon Von to go to the pyramids and do the tour of my life. The real bread and butter of your.
[00:12:51] And that's grown just more destinations, more places to ride more great experiences by bike. And yeah, that's brought us to now at 20 years
[00:13:01] Craig Dalton: old. Yeah. And for those of you who have not done a bike tourism trip, it really is amazing. And a luxury. It's obviously a luxury to be able to afford it, but to be able to go over and do this and to have someone plan out the best of the best to plan out the best roads, the best routes when you're coming off the Tourmalet or a mom volunteer to knowing the right cafe to stop in having extra gear for you, having a guide that, speaks the language, but more importantly can help you get integrated into the culture in my personal experience, having done several trips over and yeah.
[00:13:37] It was just such a great time. If you can afford to spend that time on your bikes, spend a week on one of these trips. It's just so amazing, which is why I remained super jazzed and excited to talk about the gravel tours that track is introducing. When did you first start to see gravel cycling as something that you could package a trip around?
[00:14:01] Ewan Shepherd: Yeah. I don't know who or when the first kind of the idea here's what talks about it. Cause I'm sure it's been something we're always looking at new trends, new you, new ways to travel that that people want to do. And new experiences and to we're primarily on the road, we started with mountain bike trips.
[00:14:20] Think I wouldn't say five, six years ago. And dos were in small pockets in Iceland, Norway, and that's a great way to get completely off the road. But then we found a a lot of people. They still want it to, they still want it to do a bit of everything. They want it to go on the road still.
[00:14:38] They wanted to do the classic climbs as well as being off the road. So it was like that mix of, we took you to this beautiful forest, but actually you want it to be on the road as well in the same week. And, but you didn't want to do it on the amount of bike. And at the time there was no real bike that we had.
[00:14:56] Do it and then as the Demani that tried to money evolve, it's got this name as being the, do it all bike. Whether it's ISO speed and its ability to take why the tires it's really comfortable Fabienne Cancellara famously designed the bike to to win Piru bay and and Flanders of all the couple and mixed terrain.
[00:15:14] Yeah, this this is a bite that we can use for multipurpose. And three years ago we started using it as just guides and company. People would come to drone and all they say is, Hey, can we go right gravel with, we don't want to ride the road round here. We heard the gravel is amazing. So we'd stick some hybrid tires on the demand and off we'd go, just exploring off the beaten track.
[00:15:36] And that's. Where it came from and grew from that with into a week long trip here in Barona. And yeah that's why I came. That's
[00:15:46] Craig Dalton: great to hear it. It's interesting to hear that it came from the riders up and great to hear that you, as a company, listened and started to build more experiences around that, as we've talked about a little bit offline, Girona for anybody who's follows.
[00:16:01] Professional road. Cycling has always had this huge allure as a destination for a lot of pros live there. So we presume there's a lot of great road riding out there. Do you feel that in the city, is, are there a ton of road cyclists around every week?
[00:16:20] Ewan Shepherd: Yeah, I would say there's, I wouldn't say there's a ton of road cyclist.
[00:16:23] I'd say there's thousands of cyclists in general. On any given weekend, you can see mountain bikers road bike as gravel bike is like trick bikers nowadays. But. All the time. You can see people on bikes. It's a city which has a big network of city bikes and like docs every way. When you can pick up the city bikes for three years, you can rent the bike for the day to ride around town.
[00:16:47] It's not a no that we call it a town. Although it's a city, it's very, it's a small, condensed old town. So it's great to explore by bike with all this small streets and things. And yeah, as you said it's known it's gotten more well-known because of all the professionals that live here modern, the bike roads you name it, there's many triathletes Yan for Dino to name one of the big biggest triathletes pulls this, his house.
[00:17:11] And it's yeah, in Europe, it's known as one of the places where particularly I'm going to say foreign writers come from Australia and New Zealand, Canada, us they use this, is that is that personal? And I'd probably say right now in Jarana you have upwards of 8,200 pro cyclists living here which is really high for any city in the world.
[00:17:34] Given the amount of pros in general, living in Jonah, and you have three of the biggest teams here locally, you have EDS Israel cycling academy have a small base here. You have a couple of continental teams, a couple of the U S continental teams have their European basis here. So you not only have teams, you have sorry.
[00:17:56] You not only have writers, you have the support here as well. And they say, if you just want a massage, it's the best place in the, in Europe. Go from mass massage because of the level is so high, they used the pros. You never get a bad massage here at all because the misuse could have been rubbing right.
[00:18:14] Chris from the day before he attends to you, so you get pro service, whatever you're doing, and that's not just in cycling related. I'm sure we're going to talk about this, but the coffee scene, the food scene everything has that little twist towards catering. Which is amazing. Yeah. I think that's
[00:18:32] Craig Dalton: super interesting, obviously the writing I want to be doing is off-road, but as someone who's a fan of professional cycling in general, just having that be infused as part of the city, in addition to the culture, which maybe we'll talk about a little bit more.
[00:18:46] It's just going to be a fun addition to that trip for us geographic challenged Americans, where Israel.
[00:18:53] Ewan Shepherd: Yeah, so Girona is it's in Spain. It's in the region of Catalonia which is to the Northeast. We border on Spain. We bought it with Spain and Dora and France. And. Yeah.
[00:19:09] And the Northeast, and
[00:19:10] Craig Dalton: It's not specifically on the coast, but how far of a ride is it to the coast from Jarana city center?
[00:19:16] Ewan Shepherd: Yeah, so Girona is it's probably for any cycling destination is really well situated. It's just a 40 minutes drive to them. And 40 minutes drive from the Pyrenees.
[00:19:28] So yeah, slap bang in the middle of mountains and see and give you perspective in writing terms. I'm sorry, I'm going to talk in kilometers. But we're looking at about a nice 50 mile loop to the coast and back.
[00:19:43] Craig Dalton: Okay. And look at just having Google maps open as we speak, it looks like there is a lot of, kind of national parks base in green space, just outside the city.
[00:19:53] Ewan Shepherd: literally the back of the town has a very famous climate song of UVS might be of huddle of L's angels. It's just over seven, 10 K climate just over 6% is always say to the first and last day, you're hearing Jerone. You're going to write this. If you don't write it every day.
[00:20:10] And that leads into a beautiful national pocket, the bat at the back, which has miles of more, more challenging gravel all the way to the coast. And then on the inland side of Jerome, just straight into two massive valleys, which just keep going up and up and before, it you're in the parodies.
[00:20:29] Craig Dalton: For those clients immediate,
[00:20:31] Ewan Shepherd: very little flat writing.
[00:20:33] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's going to ask for those climbs immediately outside of Dharana. How much elevation do you gain to get to a local peak? Is that a thousand feet or 200 meters?
[00:20:43] Ewan Shepherd: L's angels is about 600. Elevation was very, to the very peak the closest high point around here, you're looking at about a thousand meters up to the highest peak in Catalonia itself is just shy of 2000 meters.
[00:21:00] So the elevation is not super high but you are going from sea level. Most of the time But it's all the little undulations. It's a rolling terrain. I would say, yeah.
[00:21:09] Craig Dalton: Gotcha. Yeah, it certainly sounds like those, they jet up pretty quickly as a lot of coastal ranges do so for the writing, when we talk about the gravel riding in Jarana, we've talked about how great the road riding is.
[00:21:21] But what does it look like to get on these gravel roads and what are they like? Are they super chopped up or are they smooth or did you get a little bit of both? I'd love to just get a sense for what you're out there. Riding.
[00:21:33] Ewan Shepherd: Yeah. I think you have a bit of everything we say, Girona is the Disneyland of cycling.
[00:21:40] And I first experienced kind of the gravel, as I said, we just. Through some hybrid Taya, some 32 mil hybrid tires on a demise and went straight on lucky living out slightly outside of Toronto. So just 10 K from drone essentially itself. And it's mainly farm lands and going back to my kind of love for cycling in in the UK.
[00:22:02] With the Dales and we have things called bridleways and I was in search of these things to start with because it's not well publicized gravel anyway. So you just go out the door and go, okay, take the first, left off the road. That doesn't seem like a road and see where it heads.
[00:22:17] And sometimes you end up with a beautiful, smooth gravel track with that. Evidently to S at a, an extra road to people's houses all you get unlucky and you end up and it tends into single track and actually becomes quite flowing. This is actually it's maybe a mountain bike route, and you guys through a single track, really nice employee through the woods can be quiet Rocky in places.
[00:22:40] This part of Spain is very Rocky with granite. I'm limestone. Costa brother, the literal translation is like a rugged coastline. So that is evident all the way through. But you have also what they call via Verde green routes, which are smooth, hard-packed almost manmade smooth gravel, Sandy tracks which becoming more and more common.
[00:23:05] From Girona itself to the little towns, to get people off the roads from all levels of cyclists, from kids to families, you can see them just packed on these green ones. Which a fantastic to start a new route on, and then you head either to the mountains, or maybe you want to go to the coast and you can just hop off on to onto something.
[00:23:24] As long as it doesn't say, don't go this way. Is such a friendly kind of feeling towards cyclists. The even if you I've ended up some days, just going along a little, same little track down a shoot and I'm in the back of someone's garden and raking up leaves. Oh, sorry. That's the end. To direct you back onto the track and you were meant to be down that I take you're meant to go that way, but yeah.
[00:23:48] So it's a bit of everything. That's amazing.
[00:23:52] Craig Dalton: It's so cool that, to be able to leave the city and choose your own adventure and just have that ability to explore and find all kinds of different terrain that, that sounds like such a special area and not surprising why you guys decided to introduce the Girona gravel bike tour trip, which looks amazing.
[00:24:13] Can we talk about that trip and what it entails?
[00:24:16] Ewan Shepherd: Yeah. So to give you an an idea of the overall of the trip, it's it's a one hotel trip based here in Jarana. Chose to base it right out of the center. We work with a really great hotel, Nord in the center. It's really cycling focused. And we do that.
[00:24:33] It's based kind of off our right camp, which not to diversify what I'm talking about. It's all about eat, sleep, ride, repeat. So we make it nice and simple to focus on the writing and it's for four days of writing and it's designed to. The slightly taken on the more intermediate to advanced side of kind of people's levels.
[00:24:55] So we say the most people should be have some experience. It shouldn't be their first time writing a gravel bike to get the most out of it. And we have easy days which are, like I say, just using these Greenways, getting out of the city, heading to see some of the beautiful, rugged coastline.
[00:25:13] And then we have some more avid days which heads. What's the mountains. And we actually found some of our routes through used to calm. Are you still does? Comes here every year in the spring to do some training before he started his road season. And we'd always wait till he hummed, we see him here.
[00:25:30] And then when we're looking on struggling, why did he go? Where did he go? Because he always seems to find some stupidly hard climbs, some great gravel climates. We didn't know that. And we actually introduced some of these to the trip and it's like a, like an outdoor as of gravel, just snaking switchbacks one after the other, up to this beautiful peak point with a big cross on the top.
[00:25:53] Yeah. And then you're trying to work out where he went and then you look down the other side and oh, he went down there and you you try it. But then for. For many people, it's probably too much of a Rocky rock garden. So you end up heading back down like a beautiful the switching snaking all the way back down is the safest way sometimes.
[00:26:14] But yeah, that's a, an overview of a gravel trip.
[00:26:18] Craig Dalton: Nice. I've done trips of my two trips. One. We were moving basically every year. And the second we had a home base and I have to say my preference is for that home base, because I think it allows you to just absorb the culture a little bit more and be a tourist in the city that you're staying in.
[00:26:35] You don't have to pack your gear up every night. So there's something nice about having that hub and ride mom.
[00:26:41] Ewan Shepherd: Yup. Yup. It definitely just opening your suitcase, getting it, your kid out, put it in the wardrobes and you don't have to pack it again. The following day to move on. I like that it's focused on eat, sleep, right?
[00:26:53] Repeat, enjoy your writing. The guy. Take care of everything else. And you're in the center of the city and you're a Stone's throw from the old town. You can go for a walk on the evenings, your afternoons and evenings. yours your own to either relax, take a massage or wander the town, go sit and sip coffee.
[00:27:12] Do all the locals. Do any afternoon, go have a beer and get ready for your evening meal. And and that's what people want.
[00:27:18] Craig Dalton: Now our writers on these trips typically bring in their own bikes or are you providing a bike for them?
[00:27:23] Ewan Shepherd: Just really most people take a bike from us, the Trek demonic.
[00:27:28] You can bring your own bike. It doesn't does it affect price? It doesn't affect the price, but we do it because it saves you having to pack your by like in a box and all the hassle of bringing it to the building it. Yeah. All of that. You just turn up and on the first day, your bikes there, it's already set up with your measurements, to your bike from home and ready to go.
[00:27:46] You don't need to worry about it. And our guides full train mechanics and take care of your bike throughout the whole week. And particularly as gravel can be hot on your bikes. And you don't want any problems with your own bikes, cause it's only going to compromise your riding,
[00:27:58] Craig Dalton: as someone who can be hard on the bike. I appreciate that. So at the end of the day, I can hand my bike off to someone and it's going to come back to me better than I left it.
[00:28:05] Ewan Shepherd: Yep. Every day, I'm sure the guides gonna look after that bike and and give you it in the morning. Like it's brand new, no issues,
[00:28:14] Craig Dalton: particular trip.
[00:28:15] Are you providing the routes like GPX files? How does it work from a kind of a day-to-day practice perspective?
[00:28:22] Ewan Shepherd: Yeah. So normally day to day, you'd wake up do your morning routine get dressed, go for breakfast. Get a hot tea, Catalan breakfast. Then head down to, to pick up your bikes from the bike room.
[00:28:35] Your guides would meet you dad. Give you a kind of a morning briefing. The route has to go. We provide every guest with a Garmin, with preloaded GPS routes. And your guide is going to typically you have one guide on the bike, possibly two, and then a guide in a support vehicle following behind not only any issues that you have, but also by signature snack tables along the route.
[00:28:59] So you could be riding through a wood and then suddenly. The van is just there and your guide has gone out a table and put some beautiful snacks out. So right in the moment when you're like, I wish I had put more water in my bottle, I wish that I brought an extra bar. That's when you're going to get to find your guides.
[00:29:18] We know those spots well,
[00:29:20] Craig Dalton: nice. And, as athletes are going to be coming over with different ability, levels and fitness levels and sort of interest in flogging themselves levels. Is there an ability for, if we look at it a daily route and say I'd fancy doing a little bit more.
[00:29:35] I want to come home with my legs broken every day. Are there those types of options and flexibility built into these things?
[00:29:41] Ewan Shepherd: Yup. Yup. It sounds like most of our guides they always want to go do more. So yeah, we yeah. Have a standard route for the day and then w what we call that the avid group for the day.
[00:29:51] So I guess, Craig, this is for you the extra little add on which could be anything from an extra climb or an extra loop that you just hit the route on your GPS and adult. It'll take you. And we have a, an ethos of ride at your own pace. Yeah. I don't really ride. It's nice, right.
[00:30:11] As a group, but also it's nice experience at your own pace. So we definitely encourage that. Guides will move around you rather than you having to stick to your guide. And they'll accommodate if if you've got slow riders or if you want to go up and do the route quite often you're going to have the guide wanting to go with you and show you that extra little climb or.
[00:30:30] Take you on a, an extra level route or redo a route from two days ago because you, it was such an amazing experience. Definitely it does something for me.
[00:30:40] Craig Dalton: That's good to know. Yeah. For me, when I'm able to carve out this time in my life and I may be unique, but maybe not, when I go on one of these trips, since I don't have the responsibilities that I have at home, I don't have to care for my son.
[00:30:54] I don't have to do, I need the things I need to do around the house. All I want to do is ride my bike and really, as long as I can prop myself up at the dinner table that night, that's about all I need to achieve in the rest of the.
[00:31:06] Ewan Shepherd: Yup. Yup. Did that have. A full vacation of a lifetime that's that's catered for you.
[00:31:13] And that's definitely why I think people do a group trip or an organized talk because you mentioned that if you can afford to do it, but can you afford not to do it? If you've only got 20 days holiday a year, To spend spend your time planning for your holiday, and then once you get that to spend time working out, okay, what should I ride today?
[00:31:34] Or where should we stop for lunch? Or where's the best place to have dinner tonight? It's all done for you. You can just make the most of what you want to do, which if you want to go on a cycling holiday and you want to ride your bike as much as.
[00:31:47] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And I think it's, it's further complicated when you're trying to ride gravel.
[00:31:50] So I did a self guided tour in the Alps and there were it was pretty easy to understand the road routes that were famous to the famous climbs and figure that out on my own. But when it comes to gravel and this is something I've spoken about a lot on the podcast, there's just so much to be gained from having a little bit of local knowledge.
[00:32:09] Because you cannot look at a path necessarily. And know, is that a super Rocky path that I'm going to be going four miles an hour on? Or is it actually, a smooth, single track that I'm going 16 miles an hour. And we can't know that from the outside, without talking to cyclists in that local area, while we still want to have that sense of adventure and allowing the ride to unfold.
[00:32:34] It's just really nice in my opinion, particularly if you're going to spend the money to go travel to a destination, to just have a little bit of this served up to you and be able to get out there, worry for you.
[00:32:44] Ewan Shepherd: Yeah. Yeah, no, I definitely agree in something that you spend all the time working out, attract to go down and then suddenly it leads to nothing and you've wasted an hour of your ride to, and then you have to backtrack.
[00:32:59] And that's yeah. With a small amount of time in Europe or wherever you're traveling, you want to make money. My
[00:33:06] Craig Dalton: Spanish is bad enough that if I end up in your garden, there's probably going to be an international incident.
[00:33:11] Ewan Shepherd: Yeah. Yeah. But everybody's friendly hand signals are just, yes. It's I like, I think I've written in a lot of places in the world and definitely definitely Spain is a really good for.
[00:33:26] Craig Dalton: Yeah. When you have that many cyclists moving through a community, obviously the locals are experienced seeing these people and they realize, they're good for the community.
[00:33:36] Hopefully we're good. Environmental stewards and polite cyclists. So it's just a symbiotic relationship for the committee.
[00:33:43] Ewan Shepherd: Yeah. Yeah. And as we are in a. Company we're based in Madison, Wisconsin. And we've also been in Jerone now for nearly six, seven years. So we have a good hold in the community. We employ, we have lots of people that work for attract travel, who live here locally.
[00:34:00] Who are deep rooted in the community. So we often we work a lot with our subcontractors. We work really hard to find the best people who not only have the best winery or the best restaurant, but they have the best ethos to, to work with us and help our guests have the best experience.
[00:34:19] It's not just about the product that serving, but how they're making our guests and us as a company feel. So it's really important that local aspect, but everything that's involved,
[00:34:29] Craig Dalton: such an amazing opportunity that travel affords the traveler, just the ability to see how things that are important in the culture.
[00:34:37] Are manufactured and meet people who are doing them and, meet you, meet the restaurant tours. Like all of that is just what has kept me traveling my entire life and hopefully will have me continue traveling. So a couple of final questions for you. UN what is your favorite local cuisine? What can't we miss when we go there?
[00:34:57] And what is your favorite part of Sharona from a tourist perspective?
[00:35:01] Ewan Shepherd: Yeah, that's a definitely a hard question. I don't even have a closer prepared, good answer. Where do I want to start? Definitely Girona has a lot of local cuisine Catalan cutline cuisine. It's a very simple way of cooking in one aspect.
[00:35:18] And why. One thing that people often. Think of it all. I'll Paya, no, throw that away. It's it's not Paya that you'd come to get here. They have something called pinch Hills, which is very similar to tapas and it's one of my favorite local it's not a particular dish.
[00:35:37] It's a way of eating and. In the restaurant, you have lots of little plates on the counter with little chunks of bread with on top of them, either fresh fish with with all sorts of toppings or. Saw or booty FADA, there's the sausage which they do in many different kinds of blood sausages.
[00:35:56] And lots of little dishes. And often you don't sit down at a table. This is going to freak people out in COVID at times, but it's a great social way of eating because you're taking small plate and you're taking it and you're just standing in a bar basically. With everybody else who's enjoying it, but it's that great atmosphere of eating together in the center of town, which often spills out into the streets on a Friday and Saturday of just people standing out on the streets with small plates and a little what they called Canada, a little glass of the local beer, which they have a lot of really good local breweries here.
[00:36:30] Which I know a lot of people love to test out all the local. And Catalonia to the complete other scale of things has some of Europe's best Michelin star restaurants like per area, just in, in Rona, this small area, up to 45 Ks from the center, you have 35 Michelin star restaurants.
[00:36:50] For gastronomy it's an amazing place because of all the local ingredients of the winery. You have a lot of cider production with apple and pear farms, which you ride through. One of my favorite rides to the coast air takes you through just miles and miles of apple orchards and tail orchards which is just going to be picked in about a half a month's time.
[00:37:13] It's main picking season here. Delicious. Yeah, it's a, and I haven't even talked about coffee coffee, the culture of coffee, drinking. Was brought to your owner with cyclist, cyclists, need coffee, and they need good coffee. And the Canadian Chrystia and Maya was one of the more well-known people who brought the coffee culture and his own roastery of the service costs.
[00:37:34] And Lamatsia his his coffee shop. And from dad nearly 10 years ago, it sprung into. That each corner was developing its own taste for coffee. And as the locals really have a passion for it now at brewing really good speciality coffee, which, like I said, we can't live without it.
[00:37:51] They definitely have a captured audience. Indeed.
[00:37:54] Craig Dalton: This is amazing. Girona has always been tops on my list of places to go and it certainly remains. In that post COVID top slot for me, I can't wait to join you on one of these trips. At some point, I know there's a couple trips left this year.
[00:38:09] It looks like November 7th and November 14th are available for departure dates. And obviously once again, in the spring in 2022. So for all the listeners out there, you can just visit Trek, travel.com and just write search for Jeronica dry gravel. And you'll see the trip we've been talking about. It looks like a heck of a lot of fun and you can almost guarantee you that I'll be there one of these days.
[00:38:32] Ewan Shepherd: Yeah, I will look forward to it. Look forward to meeting in person and hopefully you'll get to experience your own home and it won't be your last visit to drone, or I can assure you for that much.
[00:38:44] Craig Dalton: Thanks for all the great information you and I appreciate you joining us.
[00:38:48] That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big thanks to you and for joining us and telling us all about that great trip that Trek travel has organized. Again, those dates are November this year. As well as throughout the Springs to go, please visit truck travel.com. To figure out what itinerary might work for you. I hope you're stoked. Like I am.
[00:39:10] I'm desperate to get my tires overseas. And sample some of that great gravel in Spain and elsewhere in the world. We'll leave it at that for this week. If you have any questions, feel free to join us over at the ridership. Just visit www.theridership.com to join that free community.
[00:39:29] If you're interested in supporting the podcast, ratings and reviews are hugely helpful. It's something easy you can do to support what I'm doing. And if you have a little bit more energy or means feel free to visit, buymeacoffee.com/thegravelride
[00:39:44] To help underwrite some of the financial costs associated with this broadcast. Until next time. Here's to finding. some dirt onto your wheels
This week on the podcast we tackle Gravel Bike Fit 101. Randall interviews Coach and Fitter Patrick Carey about the fundamentals of fit with key takeaways for every rider.
Patrick / Speed Science Coaching Website
Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos):
BikeFit 101 with Coach Patrick Carey
[00:00:00] Randall: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm Randall Jacobs, and today I'm joined by Patrick Carey. Patrick was on the pod with us in February of 2021. Craig and him had a conversation about the five skills every gravel cyclist needs to master.
[00:00:17] Patrick wears a few different hats. He is the founder of speed science coaching. He does full-time training for cyclists and endurance athletes. He's a skills coach with Lee Likes Bikes and Ride Logic, and he travels all over the country, teaching bike skills. He is an SICI. I train bike fitter and their approach is very much integrating some of the thinking from the medical and physical therapy fields into bike fitting. And in a previous lifetime, he was a mechanical engineer, so he really understands how mechanical systems work, including, biomechanics.
[00:00:45] Before we get started. I'd like to remind you that if you'd like to support the podcast, there are a few different ways you can do so. Firstly, you can go to buymeacoffee.com/thegravelride and make a donation or become a recurring supporter.
[00:00:58] All proceeds, go directly to Craig and offset his costs in producing the pod. Secondly, you can join The Ridership and contribute to the conversations that are happening there.
[00:01:06] And lastly, if you'd like to support the work that I do, thesis currently has a limited number of build kits for complete bikes for delivery this fall. If you're a friend you're interested now, it'd be a great time to schedule a consult so we can work together to create the perfect spec for your unique fit, fitness and terrain.
[00:01:21] And with that, Patrick, welcome back to the podcast.
[00:01:24] Patrick: Hey, thank you. I'm so happy to be back. This is going to be a lot of fun.
[00:01:27] Randall: Yeah, this is a conversation I've been wanting to have with you for quite some time. So let's just dive right in. How do we even define a good bike fit?
[00:01:34] Patrick: I think that's a great place to start. My take is that every good bike fit starts with the bike fitting the rider, not the other way around. And unfortunately, oftentimes what happens is people are shoehorned onto their bikes and that's really the opposite of what we want to happen.
[00:01:50] We want to set every bike up for each rider so that the rider just naturally falls into position on the bike. There's no pain points. You're not running into impingements and you're also not contorting yourself in any way you're not overreaching. You're not bending your wrist some awkward way, and in that same idea, if something hurts when you ride your bike, it's not right. Don't ever let someone tell you "oh, that's just how riding a bike is. It's supposed to be a little uncomfortable". No, it's supposed to be joyful and it's supposed to be wonderful. And when you get your bike set up correctly for you, it can be that.
[00:02:25] Randall: This is very much aligned with what I often talk about. We're not creating a bicycle. We're creating a cyborg. And the interface between the animal and the machine is how you achieve that. Let's dive in even further. So different approaches to fit.
[00:02:37] Patrick: Probably what most people have been used to it's the throw a leg over it approach.
[00:02:41] You literally stand over the bike. If you can clear the top tube, that's probably a good place. And then, when you throw the word fit in there usually what ends up happening is, you eyeball the saddle height, the stem maybe, gets flipped. It probably does not get changed. And then also, a lot of that is relying on fit charts, right? So bike companies put out the fit charts that says if you're five, seven, you should be on this size bike. If you're five, 10, you should be on the size bike. And I personally believe that very often, unfortunately, results in people being on the wrong sized bike. Typically a bike that's too big.
[00:03:17] Which means that they are overreaching on that bike and you ended up chasing the front end of the bike. So the front end become somewhat fixed in space and you can always shorten the stem so much. So then that rider ends up being shoved way, way forward on the bike. And yeah, bikes are meant to create enjoyment. This takes away from it.
[00:03:35] Randall: And when you go with too short of a stem. It does take some of the mass off the front axle. So for say high-speed canyon carving that front end is not gonna feel as planted. Works fine. Say for gravel. But in a road application, it can really make the bike feel vague upfront. So it's this handling issue as well.
[00:03:53] Patrick: It can work okay for gravel, I think one of the beauties of gravel bikes is their versatility.
[00:03:58] For me personally, I have a couple of dedicated cyclocross race bikes, mostly because they're the ones that I blast with a pressure washer after every race. But my gravel bike has become my only other drop bar bike. I have wheel sets that I switch around so that I have a set of road tires a set of gravel tires.
[00:04:14] But that bike has amazing versatility. And so what you don't want to do is compromise the handling to a point where, okay, it feels good when you're sitting up going slow on a dirt road, but then boy, it feels nervous at speed, down that same dirt road or on pavement.
[00:04:28] Randall: Yeah. Let's keep going with this. So we have the throw the leg over it approach. What would be a better approach? Let's go soup throw nuts starting with a new machine.
[00:04:36] Patrick: Okay. So if we call the throw leg over the approach the worst case scenario, the best case scenario as a coach and fitter would be to work with someone before they ever buy a bike. So work with the athlete and figure out first what they want to do with the bike. What their ideal setup would be, but then look at their body completely separate to the bike.
[00:04:55] First thing we would do is a functional movement screening. And this is something I do for any bike fit, where I'm actually looking at people's ranges of motion. I'm looking at any impingements they have. We're looking at their specific body proportions.
[00:05:09] There's a great book called Bike Fit by a guy named Phil Burt, and he worked for many years with Team Great Britain, which is a pretty dominant force in the cycling world, and he starts the book off right away by saying that if you look at just average proportions and you define things off of average proportions, you're only catching about one third of the population you're catching the middle of the bell curve. So you're right away missing two thirds of the population. Okay. If you take that then into bike fit, if you just look at, say someone's height, that doesn't take into account their arm length that doesn't take into account their inseam versus their torso length.
[00:05:47] So that's really important to factor in any kind of bike fit and the beauty. When we're talking about this approach is that we can really factor that in because the next thing I would do after that functional movement screening is I would put someone on a fit cycle, which barely looks like a bike. Other than that, it has crank seat and handlebars, but it allows you to move those points in space in the X- Y axis, and that way you can adjust and find someone's ideal position, right? The position where they just fall right onto it. They're able to comfortably generate power. They're able to ride in that position for a really long time. And then we take that position. And we can now compare those points in space against actual bikes and come up with a list of bikes that fit them. So someone might come to me and say, I'm looking at these three different bikes, right?
[00:06:37] Either, they tick the boxes. I like the idea of them or they're available right in this day and age. And so then we can say, okay, this is the size for that particular bike. This is the size for that particular bike. And it's quite often they're not the same size, right? Because that sizing, as we will talk about a minute, that sizing is oftentimes misleading, meaningless, right? Doesn't refer to real measurements. So we're able to go by actual, stack, reach measurements like that. And then, depending on what someone wants to do, we can come up with a complete custom build all the way to their custom crank length bar with, everything, or they can buy a bike off the shelf and, we can say, okay, this is going to get us the closest possible, and then we're going to change the stem and that's going to get us there. Or maybe, for some particular proportion that you have, you really do need to change the bars or something like that. But that really would be best case scenario because now you're totally eliminating the risk of someone ending up on the wrong size bike from the start.
[00:07:41] Randall: Yeah. And fit cycles the most advanced ones, have quite a few degrees of freedom in terms of what you can adjust. Everything from crank length and Q factor and stance. And you can adjust all these variables in real time, as you're seeing the rider pedal and that ability to calibrate the machine to the rider and see the rider in motion is vastly superior to just having, static measurements and trying to graph them onto the bike. It's a good starting point, for sure, especially if you're trying to just select a bike and know if a bike is going to work at all, you could start that way, but going and getting this functional analysis, this analysis in motion is just next level. I can only go so far. For example, when I'm doing a bike consult for one of our bikes and I can get everyone, somebody the right frame size, crank length. Handlebar with and those types of parameters through asking some questions and having them take some measurements, but stem length I can't get for sure, because that's an output of all these other variables that need to be locked in first, the crank length, saddle height, saddle for- aft and so on. And then also I'm not able to see, what you had mentioned about their flexibility and looking at their physiology and then seeing them in motion.
[00:08:50] There really is no substitute for this sort of analysis with somebody with a scientific mindset and a lot of experience seeing lots of riders on bikes.
[00:08:59] Patrick: Absolutely. And this is probably some of the best money you could possibly spend. If you're going to make the investment in a bike. We're talking in the range of two to $300 probably is what a complete, pre- purchase fit like this would cost, and that's going to a professional fitter that has a fit cycle. That's going to spend.
[00:09:19] Upwards of a couple hours with you laying all this out. And then it's also going to be available to you to walk through the process of buying your bike. Because maybe you come up with some ideal setup and then. Ugh that bike's not available. So now you have to go back to the drawing board. That person will help you through that process.
[00:09:34] That is the best money you can spend because even if that represents a significant percentage of what you're going to spend in the total in the end, right? Like maybe you're going to, maybe you're going to spend. $1,500 or $2,000 on a bike. Spend $300 upfront and that bike will fit you better. You will enjoy it more. You will have it forever.
[00:09:54] As opposed to you don't spend that money, make a mistake on something and now it's never what it could have been.,
[00:10:02] And the other extreme of this is the person who spends a lot of money on their gear, gets the Aero wheels, the Aero helmet, and, carbon rail saddle, and all of these things that are really marginal gains at best.
[00:10:13] A bike fit, it's not something that you can show off to your friends. It's not something where you can hand the bike off and have people pick it up and be like, Ooh, it's so light. It's so fancy. But it is this animal machine interface and having that just be as dialed as possible unlocks performance in a way that no components can.
[00:10:32] Track 2: Absolutely. And I see all the time, I'm always at events, I travel around the country coaching and it's just so often it's actually rare for me to see a person who's bike is totally dialed for them.
[00:10:42] I hate to say it, but it is rare. And I oftentimes see people are like, wow, like they would enjoy riding so much more, riding would be so much easier for them. Even if it's as simple as cut that stem length in half. You oftentimes see it, people have their seats slammed as far back in the rails as possible. And it's surprising. Sometimes it just ends up that way and they don't know any better or it came that way from the shop and they didn't know they could change it. And oftentimes you're talking about close to free as far as some of these changes.
[00:11:13] Randall: Yeah. And if you have to spend a few bucks to swap a stem or something to get that dialed fit again, some of the best money you can spend.
[00:11:20] So we've talked about two extremes. One is how most people end up on the wrong size bike with the throw the leg over it approach the other is this really ground up clean slate sort of approach. But what if you already have a bike, how do we make that bike fit better?
[00:11:33] Track 2: Yes. And to be fair, this is probably 80 to 90% of the people that I work with as a fitter. And and this is also probably 90 plus percent of people out riding in the world. We're talking about, if you have a bike that is close to the right size for you, right? Maybe you could have split hairs and said that you should have a slightly smaller, slightly bigger bike, but this is how I work on a regular basis with riders as they come to me for this. We would confirm that bike is a close starting point. And I always use reach as that cornerstone. And reach in the sense of the stack and reach those two measurements to define where the top of your head tube is. That's the thing on a bike you can change the least, reach then affects where your front end is. And yes, you can absolutely can and should change stem length and amount of spacers above or below, or flip the stem, but. Compared to say saddle height, where you can telescope that seat post up and down a tremendous amount, reach actually is the least adjustable thing on the bike, your front end. So we would always start there.
[00:12:37] Randall: And how's reach measured. We should probably talk about that.
[00:12:39] Track 2: Oh, yeah. Thank you. So reach, if you were to take your bottom bracket, which is the spindle that your crank spin on, and if you draw a line vertically up from that, It would be a measurement from that line horizontally to the center of your top tube. And usually that oftentimes includes the headset cap as well. And then stack is if you measure up, it's where those meet. So it's how high the front end of your bike is above the bottom bracket. So that gives you X, Y coordinates for where your head tube is. That's your starting point.
[00:13:14] Randall: yeah. Center of the crank spindle vertically to the line that intersects with the height of the center of the headset bearing. And there's some other measurements out there that people will talk about virtual head tube. Seat tube. We've already debunked the idea of sizing being universal, but let's talk about that a little bit.
[00:13:30] Track 2: Oh, yes. I'm glad you brought that up.
[00:13:32] Used to be, years ago when we were talking about road and cyclocross right before what we now think of as gravel bikes, road bikes generally speaking had the exact same head angle and the exact same seat angle almost across the board. And you could use quote unquote standard sizing and before that bikes were also what they were called square, meaning the length of the seat tube and the length of the top tube were the same. Some were along the way in the last 20 years that has moved away. A lot of it is that there's no need to have the top tube cranked all the way up. We can get better stand over that way.
[00:14:10] But then bike companies have also been shifting around the angle of the seat tube. And so The horizontal top tube measurement can become a seriously misleading thing. If your seat tube is pressed way forward. It's going to create a shorter, horizontal top to measurement. If it's pushed way back, it'll make it longer.
[00:14:32] To make it even more confusing for riders, unfortunately, companies have clung to putting number sizing on their bikes, right? So they call a bike, a 54.
[00:14:43] Or a 56. And if you look at the actual measurement chart for that bike, or if you take a tape measure to that bike, it's not uncommon that nothing on that bike measures that dimension anymore. They call it virtual sizing. And unfortunately, I'll use myself for example, I'm five, 10, somewhere along the way. Someone told me that someone who's five, 10 belongs on a 56 centimeter bike. So for years and years, I was riding 56.
[00:15:11] And I could not understand why, no matter what I did with adjustments, I had all kinds of neck and shoulder discomfort. I'm talking tingling hands, right? All kinds of tension. And somewhere along the way I went, dammit like all this fit stuff, it's not actually correct. Some of this stuff is definitely outdated. And I got a 54 and lo and behold, it was super easy to get that bike to fit me well,
[00:15:35] So that's an important point for riders too. If someone told you in the past that you're a particular size, don't let that guide your future decisions.
[00:15:45] Randall: And I want to take a second to hit this from a different angle, and then I can cue you up. One of the things I also want to make clear to listeners that a lot of companies still use number sizing. They'll quote things like virtual top tube, or top tube length or seat tube length, all of these parameters can change without changing the reach, or the stack. And the reason why we use reach primarily, and then stack secondarily, is because these variables don't change. Even when you change the seat tube angles such that the seat tube angle is more slacked back, you could always run the saddle further up on the rails or flip the saddle clamp to allow a more forward saddle position and your points in space would be identical. So this is an important point that people really need to understand. All these numbers that are quoted, most of them are entirely irrelevant. reach most important stack is number two and then stand over just to make sure you have enough clearance. And that's really it. And the rest of it is really getting into how the bike will feel and perform and handle given how your points in space are grafted onto it.
[00:16:50] Does that resonate with you?
[00:16:51] Track 2: Absolutely. It does. Absolutely. It does. And one more thing that I see, we're finally moving away from it, but there was a period of time companies were making quote unquote women's geometry bikes. Because again, they were looking and saying if you look at the typical woman's proportions. Long legs, short torso. Longer arms. Okay. But if you look at the cross-section of the population, there are so many people that don't line up into that. And there's plenty of guys that line up into that.
[00:17:20] I think it's very important to not let labels cloud that don't say I'm a female, I must need a women's bike or I'm a guy I must. Luckily companies are actually abandoning a lot of that whole shrink it and pink it idea which I think a lot of people were really misserved by.
[00:17:38] I think that's super important. You are a human being. You are not a man, a woman, a six foot tall person. You're a human being and you have unique proportions that we can address by finding those right points in space.
[00:17:50] Randall: Yeah, women's specific was much more of a marketing ploy than anything else.
[00:17:55] Track 2: Yes, that's all it was. And I'd like to say too. Most of it was defined by a bunch of six foot tall dudes, right? I always love when those people absolutely are convinced that they know the experience of a five foot two woman.
[00:18:09] Randall: Hmm.
[00:18:09] Track 2: Okay. Yeah.
[00:18:11] Randall: Yeah, I may have seen some of that behind the scenes.
[00:18:14] Let's continue on. What's next.
[00:18:17] Track 2: Okay. So if we said, okay, we've got the right size bike, we're in the ballpark. Now let's actually come up with a bit of an actionable list of steps. And this first one is probably gonna seem very counterintuitive because it doesn't have a lot to do with the bike. And that would be that your bike fit actually starts with your foot.
[00:18:34] If you think about it, you have five total touch points on the bike, right? Two hands, one, but two feet. Your feet are responsible for all your power transmission. Every time you stand up on the bike, they're bearing all your weight. So if we don't have proper support in the form of the correct shoes, and also support in the shoes, you may have issues that will never be addressed by any other part of the fit process. And on that, if you ever go to a bike fit and they don't look at your feet, they don't look at your shoes, they don't leave your cleat position, they just put you on the bike and start adjusting things, they missed a lot. And that's a question you can ask before you even go to a fit. What's your process. And if they don't talk about this, that should be a red flag.
[00:19:17] So first and foremost, if you were going to buy shoes, go to a shop, go to a brick and mortar shop. Ideally have your feet measured. If you remember the old Brannock device that we all used to get our feet measured as kids with. I still use one as a bike fitter. They make a Euro sizing Brannock devices.
[00:19:36] And that tells you the length of each foot and it tells you the width of each foot. So go to a shop and get the right size shoes. It's so common for me as a fitter to have people come and they've got shoes that are one, two sizes too big. And then they're crushing those shoes down to try and take slop away. It's putting the cleats in the wrong position. And then when I say, how did you arrive at these shoes? They say I bought them online, I tried to match my street shoe size. I bought them online.
[00:20:03] Don't do that. Go to a shop. Buy the shoes from that shop, pay them the money because they had the inventory there. They're providing you that service.
[00:20:11] Randall: Yeah. you really need to try on the actual shoe and see if it is a good fit for your foot. The measurements may even work out, but it just doesn't feel right. And that is enough reason not to buy a shoe.
[00:20:22] Track 2: Absolutely. And some brands are higher or lower volume, a wider or narrower lasts. Yes. You want your foot to slide in. And the closure system is there to just do the final snugging. It's not there to. To crush the shoe around your foot.
[00:20:37] Randall: Great.
[00:20:38] Track 2: Yeah. And then just by carbon soles if you're going to ride clipless pedals where carbon soles it's only the lightest riders that can get away with either a carbon plate or a thermoplastic sole. You're talking about putting a lot of power transmission and a lot of force through a pretty small area with that pedal.
[00:20:57] It's just worth it. And they'll last longer. Sometimes the thermoplastic, so we'll be stiff enough to begin with. And then they will start to gain flex over time and over time, it'll feel like you're standing on golf balls. Because we're talking gravel. Some riders like using flat pedals and shoes.
[00:21:12] That works great. Everything we're going to talk about still applies. Use good pedals that have grippy pins. Metal pins and then aware of bike specific shoe, like a five 10 or something like that, because that shoe is actually going to be built in the same idea of transmitting power and supporting your weight. Not to mention, it's going to stick to the pedal. Now you've got these great shoes, right? You've spent real money on them. Don't cheap out here, spend if necessary, spend another, whatever it is, $40, something like that on proper insoles that support your whole foot. If you look at how our feet are made to move, our feet are built not for bike shoes. Feet are built for running, walking. Where you would, your foot would naturally pronate. And I think of that as you would land on the outside of your heel and your foot is going to roll across and your arch is going to flatten as you leave off your big toe.
[00:22:04] That's just normal pronation. That's how our feet are built to move. The problem is on a bike you're in a constrained plane of motion and if your arch collapses, what ends up happening is now your ankle collapses to the inside your knee, collapses to the inside. Sometimes that can translate all the way up to your hips, and a tremendous amount of discomfort that people have is just simply because maybe they have higher arches and they don't have high arch insoles.
[00:22:30] Randall: And just as a sidebar here this is often the source of a lot of pain and repeated stress injuries. So to the meniscus or to the IT bands or what have you. So this is a an issue that I used to have, and I tried everything I could, but there are other parameters of the bike. And finally, I got some custom insoles made and everything aligned.
[00:22:50] Track 2: And I bet you've had those insoles forever, too.
[00:22:52] Randall: Coming up on 13 years.
[00:22:54] Track 2: There you go. So they probably an expensive investment to begin with, but man, they've changed riding for you over the
[00:22:59] Randall: Yeah, I even run within souls and it makes a world of difference.
[00:23:02] Track 2: Same here. And so just to put a bow on, that if you pull a rider's insoles out and marks individual marks from their toes that means that they're calling inside the shoe to try and create stability. That can be solved with proper insoles. Sometimes people have a verus twist to their forefoot. I think I forget what the percentage is. It's approaching half the population has this. I certainly do. And so I put a very thin angled shim under my forefoot. Inside the shoe between the shoe and the insole. And the goal here between all of that is to create so much support for your foot, that you pushed down through the entire sole of your foot. And there's no arch movement.
[00:23:41] Everything can just move smoothly. You don't want any kind of tension in the foot, the ankle, the knee to try and stabilize that motion.
[00:23:50] Randall: So we've talked about shoes. We've talked about insoles. What's next.
[00:23:53] Track 2: And now the last part of that is how does that connect to the bike. So cleats and pedals. If I had to put money on what I'm going to see when someone comes to me for a fit, it almost always includes that their cleats are slid too far forward. We're typically talking about mountain bike shoes for people riding on gravel, so if you look at the underside of your shoes, there's two sets of threaded holes for whatever reason most people put their cleats in the front set of holes and then they might even be slid forward from there because there is some sliding adjustment. If you want a catch all for the easiest thing to do, put them in the rear set of holes and slide them all the way back.
[00:24:29] They're very few shoes that actually have adjustment ranges that will allow you to put it back further than is comfortable. And you'll know that you're feel like you're peddling behind the ball of your foot. But even in that case, there's no downside to pedaling from a midfoot position.
[00:24:44] But there are a lot of downsides to pedaling with the cleat towards your toes. If you think about it, you don't walk upstairs by putting the tips of your toes on the stairs. Cause that would add all kinds of tension to your calf, just to be able to walk up the stairs. So why do we want to pedal from the front of our foot where we're going to have to tense our calf and our ankle with every single pedal stroke.
[00:25:07] It's amazing oftentimes just by moving someone's cleats you'll they'll have a history of calf cramps. Just go away.
[00:25:15] Randall: Or tendonitis in the Achilles, which was an issue that I had until I made that adjustment all those years ago.
[00:25:21] Track 2: Yup. Absolutely.
[00:25:23] Randall: I'd add in addition, this is really why getting the right size shoe is so critical because if you have a shoe that's too big, you're not going to have sufficient rearward adjustability in that clique in order to get this optimal position.
[00:25:34] Track 2: Absolutely the longer your shoe is the further forward those cleats go and you can't get them back far enough. And then the last part is the pedals themselves. this is this pretty simple, I always recommend people onto an SPD style nothing wrong with the others that are out there. But the reason that I do, if you look at either the Shimano XT or the XTR pedals, and I have no affiliation with them
[00:25:57] They have these two small machined areas on either side of the mechanism on the pedal itself. Those are for the tread of your shoe to sit on. So you actually get a massive amount of contact area. I don't even ride road pedals anymore. Again, I said my gravel bike is my only drop bar bike, but I'll go on 200 kilometer rides with my SPD pedals. Because you're getting such a big bearing surface. It's like you have a big road clean. You're essentially getting the best of both worlds.
[00:26:27] Randall: Yeah, I definitely second that the SPD style with a bigger platform to interface with the tread of the shoe is really the way to go. I could see some opportunities to improve on that, but maybe that's something that I explore in the future.
[00:26:40] Track 2: I would love to see that. Okay. So those things aren't going to feel like they're super connected, but if you miss that, you're going to have potentially knees wobbling all over the place. You're going to have all kinds of little problems that you may never be able to chase out otherwise. So let's come up with an actionable list as far as what would that process look like? This is something you can do at home.
[00:27:03] The very first thing to do would be get your rough satellite correct. In my fit studio, I use motion capture software. I use angle measurement device. I do all kinds of things. All of those line up with the heel method where you need to be balanced against a wall or even better on fixed trainer, but the idea is. Be in the saddle and unclip from your pedal. And now push the pedal all the way till it's at its furthest point away from you at the bottom of the stroke and with a totally straight leg, your heel should just be making contact with the pedal. If you're making firm contact your seat's too low, if you can't touch the pedal, your seat's too high.
[00:27:45] And when you get it in that range, what happens is when you bring your foot back to the ball of your foot's on the pedal, you end up with a pretty nice knee bend. So that's a really good starting point. And depending on your flexibility, you can adjust up and down from there, but it's pretty darn easy for anybody to get their saddle correct that way.
[00:28:04] Randall: Yeah. I'd like to add to this that it can be good to say backpedal and make sure one, you don't have any leg length discrepancies, but also that you're not rocking your hips or otherwise reaching While you're doing that one legged check. So backpedaling we'll help you to ensure that you really got that dialed as well as possible given the method being used. There's another way that this can be done that I often use in virtual fits, which would be the 92% of barefoot inseam. Again, this isn't gospel. This is just a starting point for getting the appropriate saddle height.
[00:28:35] But in this case, barefoot against a wall jam, a hardcover book between your legs firmly so it bumps right up against the bottom of your pelvis, make sure it's square and then take that measurement. and 92% of that would be a rough approximate saddle height.
[00:28:48] Track 2: Where would you measure that satellite from, and to when you translated that to the bike?
[00:28:52] Randall: So center of the crank spindle, along the seat tube to the top of the saddle. Now as you can see depending on whether the fat saddles more four or more AFT, it's going to change the effective distance to the sit bones, right? So it's not a perfect method. It's no substitute for actually going to a fitter, but it gets us in the ballpark in the same way that the bare foot inseam does and combining these two methods, one can have a nice checking effect on the other.
[00:29:20] Track 2: I totally agree. And then we're going to talk about some things too, that should hopefully help you tune in from that standpoint? As far as okay. If I'm experiencing this, what do I do?
[00:29:29] So the next step, once we've got the rough satellite, we would want to set rough draft. And if you're doing to the measurement that Randall mentioned, you probably want to do this first. So that, that way you're setting to the same point. Years ago. I'm thinking late nineties, early two thousands timeframe, essentially all the leading minds and fitting. Had this idea that we wanted our saddles as far backwards as we could get them so that we would be able to bear all of our weight on the saddle. And this is a case of where they were thinking in terms of physics, not biomechanics.
[00:30:03] That really is outdated. What ends up happening is you're pulling your hips back and you're closing up the angle between your thigh and your torso. Most people don't have phenomenal hip flexibility. And what ends up happening is if you're pushing yourself into the back seat like that, you're closing that angle up and you run out of your active range of motion.
[00:30:26] And you end up now starting to stretch your hips with every pedal stroke. And if you've been behind a rider and maybe you've experienced this yourself, but it's easier to see it on someone else. If you're riding behind someone down the road and you watch their knee come out to the side with every pedal stroke.
[00:30:43] That's their hip angle being too closed up. Now it could either be that their saddles too low, or what I see very often is that their saddle is too far back.
[00:30:52] So if we want a good starting point. Start in the middle of the rails. But be mindful too, of how much setback your seat post has. If you have a seat post with, say 15 to 20 millimeters or setback, you may have to set your starting point pushed forward. I'm finding more and more.
[00:31:09] That that most riders are best served with a zero setback seatpost, and when you have that, now the saddle generally falls right in the middle of the rails. Okay, so next step, as you're doing this, don't stress out over your knee- over pedal spindle. One it's pretty darn hard to measure yourself, but two, if you use that as a guiding principle, it will oftentimes push you back too far. And you'll, again, end up with those hip impingement issues. I measure knee over pedal spindle at the end of a bike fit, but I don't drive the fit around it. Whereas years ago you would set everything using that.
[00:31:45] Randall: And using and doing it in a way that actually ended up putting more strain on the front of the knee. Used to be you would take a plumb Bob from the front of that bony protuberance just below the knee cap and wanted that to go directly through the center of the pedal spindle. that puts more strain on the front of the knee. The newer thinking on this, which is something I've adopted long ago. And I use in my remote fits is a slightly higher and more forward saddle position opens up the hip, and that ends up putting more of the center of the joint over the center of the spindle. Not that it has to be perfectly there, but that more forward position ends up seeming biomechanically more sound, more comfortable or efficient.
[00:32:26] Track 2: Absolutely. And it's, and you're just, you're running into these impingements so much less, so it's much easier to get the pedal over the top of the stroke. It's much easier to get into the downstroke, the power stroke. And we want no dead spots in the peddling. And we don't want to be creating them with some of these artifacts of fit.
[00:32:43] And then as far as where your knees are tracking, I mentioned before knees flicking out to the side, that's usually a saddle that's too low or too far back. If your knees are diving to the inside, that's usually Back to support inside your shoes. But don't chase those things with side, decide adjustments on the bike.
[00:33:04] Certainly never use adjustments in your cleats to try and constrain your body into a certain path of motion. And on that same idea. We all have a natural stance. Some people their toes are pointed out when they're just standing. Some people, their toes are pointed in. There's no good, bad, right wrong there.
[00:33:24] Unless you're trying to force yourself out of that natural stance. So don't say okay, I'm naturally a little bit of a pigeon toed, so I'm going to try and crank my cleats or my adjustment to try and straighten that out on the bike. That's the worst thing you can do, because that is how your body was built.
[00:33:41] That's okay. And don't let people say, oh, your heels need to track behind your toes. No, your body needs to track how it naturally does.
[00:33:49] Randall: Yeah. And forcing it is really where injuries come into play.
[00:33:53] And so having your cleats dials right into the center of the float for that cleat pedal system is ideal. There should be no restrictions whatsoever in your natural motion is essentially what you're getting at there.
[00:34:06] Track 2: Okay. We've got the saddle in the right spot. So we'll move on to the front end. And this will set the rough handlebar position. And this is the thing it's. It's very difficult to do by feel yourself. It's much easier if you say film it or have someone take pictures or help you eyeball these things.
[00:34:25] What you on the bike? Them standing there. In the terms of our goal for upper body position. No matter how high or low your front end is, we want to get about a 90 degree angle between your upper arm and your torso. Within a gentle bend at the elbows. When you do that, you end up naturally bearing your weight so that your shoulders are being pushed back, your shoulder blades are being pushed together.
[00:34:52] This carries your weight really comfortably. You don't have to have tension. You don't have to to engage muscles, to hold yourself there. One of the most common ways I see people go wrong here. Is that if you're feeling, say discomfort in your hands or your shoulders or your neck, They will shorten up their reach and they will sit themselves up higher. And the idea is we're going to get more weight on the saddle. We're going to get weight off our hands.
[00:35:19] The problem is not weight in your hands. The problem is how you're carrying that weight. And when you close up that angle between the upper arm and the torso, right? When you take that from 90 degrees and you start shrinking that angle. Now if you picture your arms down more close to your sides, when you push up, push your elbow up.
[00:35:39] It's now hunching your shoulders. That's not a comfortable place to be. So what you end up doing is you tense your shoulders and your neck to hold your arms back down. And now try holding that for a couple hours at a time, through bumps and while you're always trying to stabilize a pedal.
[00:35:56] And so it becomes this losing battle. Oh, I still have a sore neck and shoulder, so I'm going to shorten it even more. And then it never goes away. In this case, don't be afraid to go a little longer and certainly don't be afraid to go lower. I very commonly lower riders front ends, especially if they've been playing this game, as far as trying to get away from that pressure. What ends up happening is when you move yourself into that position of carrying your arms, your upper arms at 90 degrees. From the torso, all your weight almost feels like it disappears. And if you were to do the physics free body diagram of it, there's more weight in your hands. There's more weight pushing through your arms, but biomechanically you're carrying it in the way your body was designed to carry it.
[00:36:42] Randall: And that in turn has an impact also on handling.
[00:36:46] Because one, if you're not comfortable, it's hard to handle the bike over a long duration ride. That's one thing. But then too, in terms of the planted ness of the front end, if you're constantly going. More and more upright taking mass off the front end. That can work in a straight line dirt descent, but if you're trying to plant the front end on a high-speed road turn, for example it's exactly the opposite effect that you want. So having your body balanced on the bike, so the bike can dance under you in a way that maintains optimal control is also something that comes into this fit component too.
[00:37:15] Track 2: Absolutely. And if I put on my bike skills, coach hat for a moment one thing that I see very often when riders sit too far upright, or they push themselves into the back seat, they extend their arms completely. And what ends up happening is when your arms are totally straight, you can't really lean the bike very well.
[00:37:33] You end up having to steer instead, and bikes really are not built to be steered. They're built to be leaned. And then the geometry of the bike takes over and does the appropriate amount of steering itself? So by getting a little bit lower and by getting a nice, comfortable, say, 15 degree bend in your arms, and also, then when it's now cornering time, get that little bit lower.
[00:37:57] You now have room to reach and lean the bike, which makes a massive difference in how confident the bike feels. And it will essentially, the way it would manifest itself is if your front wheel is constantly washing out on you, you're steering, not leaning.
[00:38:10] Randall: That's a great pointer. Let's continue here. So what else? What's next from here?
[00:38:14] Track 2: Okay. So now when we're still on the bars There is an ideal angle for your handlebars, and there's an ideal angle for your hoods. And there are two independent things, meaning just because your bike came, with the hood set at a certain place, the hoods, meaning the shifter brake levers. Just because they came in a certain place and they're all taped up and beautiful and neatly packaged does not mean that someone was thinking about you when they set that up. Most of the time, those hoods are too far down, they're tip too far forward, and what ends up happening then is you have to cock your wrist downward. So it almost be like you're pointing your thumb downward and you're creating this pressure in your wrist.
[00:38:57] That is not something you want to be doing for hours on end. And when you're on gravel and you're handling bumps like that, man, that is not fun. It can result in a lot of discomfort.
[00:39:07] Randall: Or injury. There's a on the carpal bones at the base of the wrist.
[00:39:10] I've definitely made that mistake and had to rotate things back to, to alleviate it.
[00:39:15] Track 2: Yeah. So the, if you truly don't feel comfortable on taping your bars, you can roll the bars themselves back, but I'm here to tell you don't be scared of bar tape. It's it's very easy. You actually only have to untape as far as the hoses themselves. And then the hoods just have a simple band clamp that holds them in place.
[00:39:34] Bring them up to a point where you can put your hand just naturally falls right onto it.
[00:39:40] Don't want to have to cock it up down. What you'll also find too. It because it's now coming up a little bit more. You will have a far more secure grip on it. All of my drop our bikes, just by coincidence, have the SRAM hydraulic levers. They have a big horn on top, that can feel pretty secure. Most of the time. It feels like a joystick. When you have them tipped up like I'm talking about.
[00:40:02] But on say a Shimano lever that's got a much more subtle horn. When you're going down bumpy stuff, if you feel like your hands are slipping off the front of the hoods, this will make that go away because you'll bring it up to a place where you're actually catching the web of your hand in that.
[00:40:18] Randall: Yeah. And one thing I want to throw out for folks too, is that if you have an existing bike, If you're reaching in order to get your hands into that natural position on the hoods, if you're having to stretch and you find your hands sliding back when you are going in a straight line and relaxing that means your front end is probably too long.
[00:40:35] And so that would be one way to get some anecdotal indication that your stem length is off or some other fit parameter is off.
[00:40:43] Track 2: Yeah. I would absolutely agree with that. And I see that, like I mentioned, most people come to me on bikes that are on the big side for them. And then their hands, their happy place where they're hands naturally fall, was somewhere between 10 and 30 millimeters behind the hoods.
[00:40:59] So you want to adjust where your front end is using the stem. That way the web of your hand every time naturally falls right into the bend of the hood, where you're just naturally locked in there and you're not having to grab the hell out of the bars to have a good purchase on the bike.
[00:41:15] Randall: Yeah. And you're not constantly moving your hands back on the bars to, to, get comfortable because the natural position is on those hoods. Cause they're positioned properly. Now. There are some other things that, that people can do to get a more dial fit. And I think especially for smaller riders, one of these things is crank length.
[00:41:32] Track 2: Yes. Yes, absolutely. Our traditional crank lengths. I'll just go out and say, if they're too long for most riders And the only reason that this stuff sticks around is because we have not as a community been asking the industry consistently enough for shorter stuff. that's really what it comes down to. And so people don't know that they should be on shorter cranks. I'll give a personal example. I just went down a three week rabbit hole, trying to find a set of 1 65 millimeter cranks for my mountain bike. Partly, I was trying to gain a little bit of clearance off the ground with it because it has a low bottom bracket, but mostly I was trying to smooth out my pedal stroke. And I'm someone, I'm five, 10. I literally am a professional writer. That's what I do for my living. I ride bikes and and yet I was finding that one 70 fives, even with decent flexibility, they were just too long for me.
[00:42:26] So I finally found one set and bought them. And man, it is like an instant difference. Pedal strokes, moved out, comfort increased. I can spin up faster. It's mind blowing.
[00:42:39] Randall: And I'm going to jump on this this soapbox with you for a moment and just say that. from my perspective crank length is the foundation of fit. Meaning you start with crank length in that circle, you get the foot position dialed, then you get your saddle position, dial and then you get your hands in the right position and that determines frame size and so on. But really that circle that you're spinning in is a key driver and should scale proportionally. Saddle height is a good proxy. So the ratio that we use is a 22%. Ratio of crank length to a properly set saddle height. And that works for the vast majority of people.
[00:43:14] Now some people will be concerned about, oh, I'm losing torque.
[00:43:16] Every five millimeters at that scale is only a 3% difference in torque, but at the same foot speed, your cadence is 3% higher. So you're not really losing power. Torque is not power. Torque is torque. It's a component of power.
[00:43:29] So really this is one of those areas that for riders of our scale, I'm writing one seventies, I think you're writing one 60 fives. It has some benefit. Are you on five 11? You're five, 10.
[00:43:40] But for smaller riders, especially a lot of component brands don't even offer anything below 1 65. So just finding something that is proportional scale, I do find it an entirely different vendor and then push them hard to create a whole new tool, to create a 1 55 length crank so that we could accommodate smaller riders properly. And that's really unfortunate because there's a pretty large market for riders who are, five foot. To five six that are not being taken care of currently by the market.
[00:44:08] Track 2: No. And unfortunately too, if you don't know any better, you just assume that the bike must come with the appropriate size. So in my coaching, I work with a lot of women and I work with a lot of women who happened to be on the petite side, in the five foot to five, four range. And we've had this conversation and they are very frustrated that their bike, an extra small bike is coming with 170 millimeter cranks. And actually, I was just working with one of my athletes this weekend and she was getting low back pain. And she notices that when she rides the pike with one seventies, she gets a low back pain when she rides pike with one sixties. And I'm sorry, not even one 60 fives. So tiny difference note and we have the Fitz dial. It's really just the matter of that, that longer crank really does push out beyond the natural range of motion.
[00:44:57] Randall: Yeah. And this plays into gearing. If you're using a one by drive train, and you're concerned about the jumps if you're using a proportional crank, then you're able to spin at a wider range of cadences more comfortably. And so the concerns with jumps go away.
[00:45:09] Also when you're pulling your leg up to go over the top of the pedal stroke you're working against your glutes. And so if your crank links are too long, your glutes are pulling even more against you trying to get your foot over and thus impacting your power over time. So there's a lot of benefits that come from going with proportional and for the vast majority of people. Shorter cranks that I guess I'll step out, step off the soap box. At this point, we can move on to the next
[00:45:34] Track 2: No. What I appreciate though, there is like you put your money where your mouth is there on that. In that you actually did go out and develop short cranks, right? You were not satisfied with what was available. You spent considerable time and effort to go out and develop short cranks. Actually, when I was going down that rabbit hole, I was like, God, I should just put thesis cranks on my mountain bike. And the only reason I didn't was because the spindle would not be long enough to fit a boost mountain bike.
[00:45:58] Randall: Yeah, I believe FSA does a good job here that they recently released some shorter length crank. So if anyone's looking that might be a good place to start. And now hopefully other brands come around on this as well, because it's a place where a significant gains can be had. So what else would we like to wrap up with here in terms of fit considerations?
[00:46:14] Track 2: Yeah. Let's see. It. Even though it does not necessarily determine the geometry of your fit. I think a dropper post actually is a contributor to good fit. Reason being, if you're talking about a gravel bike that you want to be able to handle comfortably, in chunky terrain then.
[00:46:31] You don't want to run a lower saddle height all the time with a fixed post, just to have more comfortable handling. It's much better to have a dropper post that you can then push down to an even better position. But then the rest of the time, spin on an optical satellite.
[00:46:48] Randall: Yeah. I'll often tell folks who are concerned about the weight that you're adding say three quarter of a pound. to be less than half a percent. and you're gaining by having the appropriate saddle height. You're probably gaining more than that half a percent in terms of efficiency and comfort and the sustainability of being in a given position for a long period of time.
[00:47:07] And so it's one of those ways along with certain other, other things, wider rims and so on. Bigger tires were adding weight to your bike can actually improve your speed and your performance.
[00:47:18] Track 2: Unquestionably. Yup. I absolutely agree.
[00:47:21] Randall: How about saddles?
[00:47:22] Track 2: Yeah. Saddle shouldn't hurt, man. And I really mean this to female riders as well, because I think that oftentimes, some dude at a bike shop tells them yeah, it's just how it is. Your saddle hurts. No.
[00:47:36] Unquestionably no. And this is from also a medical standpoint too, and an injury standpoint. If you have discomfort that you are enduring for hours on end, that can lead to tissue damage, that can lead to blood vessel damage. No, to not do that.
[00:47:52] You don't have to spend a fortune on saddles. What you need to do is find one that works for you. And this is again, another place where your local bike shop can really come in handy.
[00:48:03] Saddle right. have demo fleets of saddles where say a company will send them one of every kind of saddle in every width, and you can take that saddle home and ride it for a few days and say, oh, okay. I like this, except it's not wide enough. I like this, except it's not padded enough or whatever those things are. And they can help you tune in so that you're not spending money only to find out that you don't like that.
[00:48:30] Randall: Yeah.
[00:48:30] Track 2: And just, oh my gosh, the seats that come on, a lot of bikes are oftentimes downright horrible. And do not assume that just because your bike came with a certain seat means that seat should be comfortable for you. This is a case of spend a few bucks and you will change your experience drastically.
[00:48:48] Randall: Yes. And the other end here is that if you have a saddle that's not comfortable while it may not be the saddle, there's some adjustments. Some tilt adjustment in particular that may need to happen in order feed a, find your sweet spot on that saddle and the right angle and the like.
[00:49:03] Track 2: And those adjustments are really minor.
[00:49:05] When I'm doing fits, I actually use a digital level because you oftentimes can't see how fine the adjustments are required to make a change. I'm usually making about a half a degree change at a time. You cannot see a half a degree. If you're making adjustments by eye, you're probably oftentimes overshooting.
[00:49:23] Randall: Wide nose saddles. The specialized power was one of the first ones there. back
[00:49:42] There's a bunch of different ones out there that are using the same philosophy ours included. And these generally can work for a wide range of riders. And they got their start in the triathlon world where you're in that extreme position for a really long period of time. So comfort is that much more important there, but now you're seeing them adopted, in road, in, in cross and gravel and even in the mountain bike spheres.
[00:50:03] Track 2: Yeah. And to that point, I actually ride the exact same saddle on every one of my bikes. Once I found the right one that really works for me, I then put it on every single bike. And that includes mountain bike cyclocross. Gravel bike. Find the right one for you because it's out there.
[00:50:19] Randall: What about someone's considering getting a new handlebar for whatever reason, maybe it's comfort or maybe they want to try a new flare so on how do they determine bar with.
[00:50:26] Track 2: Okay, so this is super common in the gravel world. I think the easiest way to think of it is you want to match your bars to your shoulder width. You can go wider, I would say up to about 20 millimeters. And that would be the measurement at the hoods, that would be your center to center measurement at the hoods. if you want to measure that, what you would do.
[00:50:46] Is put your hand on the outside of your shoulder and you'll feel like you're in soft tissue. And then work your way up, just creep your hand up until you come over and you'll feel all of a sudden, a bony protrusion, you'll feel where your arm goes in. And your shoulder bone comes out. Find that on either side. And have someone else measure that on you. you can't take this measurement by yourself. You want your bars to match that and they can be up to about 20 millimeters wider.
[00:51:15] Now I'm sure you've seen all the fashion trends in gravel bars lately.
[00:51:21] But what's your take on that?
[00:51:22] Randall: wider bars. Um, but But if you're looking for my philosophy with these bikes is I want a bike that is going to perform well on road.
[00:51:35] And on dirt. And I don't find that I have any handling deficits, even on the most technical dirt that I can tackle with my six 50 by 47 tires and dropper posts, which is some pretty rough terrain. And. What you gain from going wider is that you have more leverage. But if you are shifting your weight down and back over the rear axle and lightening up the front end while you're reducing the torque loads that are being applied through your steering column by the terrain as you're traversing it.
[00:52:05] And so really a dropper posts negates the need to go super wide there. But there were other considerations. Some people just prefer it. That's fine. Wider is better than too narrow is a problem. And then also if you're a bike packing and you want to have a huge bar bag up there that can be another consideration as well.
[00:52:20] Track 2: are coming in with really flared bars.
[00:52:27] I find that oftentimes those lead to more compromises than they than they help. And I'm talking about bars that are 15 to 25 degrees of flare what ends up happening with that? Or in the drops.
[00:52:46] But it's very difficult. And it requires a tremendous amount of iteration to try and get all of the positions on the bars, comfortable with those. And then it also, oftentimes even if you can get it there you're crushing your hands with the brake levers when you squeeze the breaks in the drops.
[00:53:02] My personal take, I'm riding bars that are 10 degree flared which is not insignificant. But I think that's about the the widest flare, you can go to have really natural use of all the positions on your bars.
[00:53:14] Randall: Yeah. I'm with you there. All right in closing, anything that we didn't cover today that you want to bring up.
[00:53:19] Track 2: No, I think we went pretty deep. I hope this spurs a lot of thought and some questions in the community. And then, what I'd like to do is keep the conversation going. Let's all get better at this. together. And what's that's a big part of what's so cool about gravel is that, that growth in the community. Do what I say and you'll be happy. This is let's all learn together.
[00:53:45] Randall: Excellent. Can you take a moment, just tell folks where they can find you.
[00:53:48] Track 2: I made it super simple recently. It's just coach patrick.bike. And so from there you can find all the different things that I do and and all the social links and you can interact with these super easily through that.
[00:54:00] Randall: Yeah, this is the bike fitting. This is the coaching. This is the skills camps. And so on.
[00:54:05] Track 2: Absolutely.
[00:54:05] Randall: Also Patrick is a member of the ridership, so if you have questions, you can definitely jump in there and we will have the episode posted in some conversation around that as well. So if you have questions or feedback on some of the things that we covered today would love to have you join us in that conversation.
[00:54:18] Patrick, thank you very much for joining me today. It's been a pleasure chatting with you and catching up, and I look forward to seeing you this summer and hopefully revising my personal bike fit using your expertise.
[00:54:30] Track 2: Yeah. I think we're gonna be able to be together in a month or so. I'm really looking forward to that.
[00:54:33] All right. My friend. Be well.
[00:54:35] Track 2: you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
This week we sit down with Adam Eggeberecht from Spooky Cycles to talk about the resurrection of the brand and how modern day aluminum is crafted for gravel bikes. This episode is presented by ENVE.
This week we are republishing an interview from The Gravel Lot podcast where your host, Craig Dalton gets to share a bit of his journey into podcasting and community building with Jon and Doug of The Gravel Lot fame.
The Gravel Lot Web
Join The Ridership
This week we are republishing an interview from The Gravel Lot podcast where your host, Craig Dalton gets to share a bit of his journey into podcasting and community building with Jon and Doug of The Gravel Lot fame.
The Gravel Lot Web
Join The Ridership
This week we are republishing an interview from The Gravel Lot podcast where your host, Craig Dalton gets to share a bit of his journey into podcasting and community building with Jon and Doug of The Gravel Lot fame.
The Gravel Lot Web
Join The Ridership
This week we are republishing an interview from The Gravel Lot podcast where your host, Craig Dalton gets to share a bit of his journey into podcasting and community building with Jon and Doug of The Gravel Lot fame.
The Gravel Lot Web
Join The Ridership
This week Randall and Craig catch up on all things gravel. We discuss introducing friends to gravel riding and events, suspension on gravel bikes and comparative bike geometry.
Geometry Geeks
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This week we sit down with Dave Rosen, founder and CEO of Sage Titanium. After connecting at the ENVE Custom Builder Round Up, we sat down to talk about the Titanium Storm King, its performance goals and the multiple finishes that adorned this show bike.
This show was presented by ENVE.
Sage Titanium Website / Instagram
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Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos):
ENVESage Titanium
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton.
[00:00:07] This week on the podcast, we've got Dave Rosen, CEO, and founder of Sage Bicycles out of Oregon. Dave. And I happened to meet at the ENVE builder Roundup, and this is one of five episodes related to the NV Roundup that happened at the end of June in Ogden, Utah. I have to reiterate. If you're known for the company, you keep.
[00:00:29] ENVE is known for exceptional relationships. That room was filled with outstanding builders from all over the world that chose to spec their custom creations with ENVE components and parts, including their adventure fork stems bars. And of course their wonderful gravel wheels. If you haven't already followed ENVE on social media channels.
[00:00:54] Definitely do. And I highly highly recommend you seeking out imagery from the grow Dio event. So many beautiful bikes, so many beautiful paint jobs really worth looking at and keeping on your calendar for next year. If you happen to have the opportunity to race the grody. Event. It was an amazing ride out of Ogden, Utah.
[00:01:18] That really checked a lot of boxes for me. It was both technical and challenging and scenically. Beautiful. Definitely one to have on your gravel calendar for 2022. With all that said let's dive right in to my interview with Dave Rosen, from Sage bicycles. Dave, welcome to the show.
[00:01:39] David Rosen (Sage): Thanks Craig.
[00:01:40] Craig Dalton: Great to see you. After seeing you in Utah at the ENVE builder, Roundup, what a, what an event. It was.
[00:01:46] David Rosen (Sage): It really was fantastic. I had such a good time. It was so much fun.
[00:01:49] Just being able to reconnect with friends. Doing industry stuff. Again, it just, it was way too long. And to be able to, meet new customers and that kind of thing, it just, it was just, it was great. And then just riding bikes, it was all about bikes. Just everything we did from to the little short track event, it was a really good time.
[00:02:08] Yeah. I thought it was
[00:02:09] Craig Dalton: funny that some of the builders were actually taking the bikes they built and racing them or riding them in the grody event.
[00:02:15] David Rosen (Sage): The next. Yeah that's what I did with mine. It was just, that's why I brought it. It was it's meant to be written. It's meant to be raced.
[00:02:22] Although I really wouldn't classify my writing as racing so much as it was surviving at my own pace. So I can make it back in time for beer. There was a bit
[00:02:31] Craig Dalton: of that survival strategy in my day as well, but it was a great reminder and seeing all these great builders that I've wanted to have more of these conversations and particularly excited to talk about Sage Titanic.
[00:02:43] So why don't we just start off with learning a little bit more about what led you to start the company and when it was started?
[00:02:50] David Rosen (Sage): Yeah, so I started the company officially on paper in 2012. My first inventory was produced in 2013. At the time the original intent with the brand was to actually make the frames overseas.
[00:03:06] For that in the beginning with the idea of offering a lower cost price point, competitor to what was out there. I knew I wanted to do titanium. It was always about titanium. I've been in love with titanium as a frame material for ever since the eighties, when I would see, titanium, Italian bikes rolling around and, central park, New York city, which is where I'm originally from not central park, mind you, but New York city.
[00:03:28] And for me, it was always about Thai, but in this instance, I thought, it might be good to do a price point. And what I realized is over the course of that first year is the quality suffered. And, the reality is you get what you pay for. And yeah, the pricing could be cheap, blah.
[00:03:44] There's a reason why it's cheap. And so the quality of the bikes suffered, the stuff we put out was fine, but we had more failures than we had successes. And, we've taken care of all of our customers that have had issues. And then there are others. Never heard from him. Everything's fine.
[00:03:59] Wasn't it. Dave, was there a particular
[00:04:01] Craig Dalton: style of bike that you targeted at that time? It was a bit early, obviously for gravel in those days in 2012.
[00:04:07] David Rosen (Sage): Yeah, we did actually a while we did have a road bike it was more about the cyclocross bike and we actually had a commuter bike that would be the precursor to the current gravity.
[00:04:20] It was designed around larger tires. Not as massive as what you're seeing today and their geometry was more relaxed than a road bike, similar to a cross bike, but with a longer wheel base. So it really was very versatile and we actually marketed it more as a commuter bike both a drop bar and a flat bar version, basically the same frame, just different builds.
[00:04:40] But it showed the versatility of the bike for what it is. Gotcha. So in
[00:04:44] Craig Dalton: that first year, you were unhappy with the production partner in China that you had. Yeah. It could very easily have been the end of Sage titanium at that point. But what did you do?
[00:04:54] David Rosen (Sage): I basically just stepped back for a moment and analyzed what was going on.
[00:04:59] People, customers. The concept of our brand. They liked what we were doing as a small builder, or, the just the ability to offer it's this Oregon, the Oregon brand connection, all that sort of stuff. The bikes were authentic. The designs were good. But it was just, they liked what we were doing, but they didn't necessarily like the maiden China aspect.
[00:05:21] And so it really. Yeah, you're absolutely right. We could have folded up right then and there and not known what to do, but instead I made the decision to push forward with maiden USA. And so in 2014 is when I pivoted the brand. And instead of being more of a budget focused, mid tier titanium brand, I was like, we're going all in on the premium stuff.
[00:05:43] And that's when we started our relationship with ENVE and instead of buying. Shimano 1 0 5, we're now buying Shimano duress. And it's all carbon this, then it's just, we're going high end and frames are made in USA. That is always the key and being able to push that out and and get that out there.
[00:06:00] And then as we've, as the brand has moved along, we've been able to slowly evolve it. So the designs have gotten better. The line has expanded. We found our niche. Gravel bikes in particular. And then the mountain bikes are doing really well for us. But then we've been able to expand with now our finishes.
[00:06:16] And so we've been able to continue to evolve the brand over these past from where it started nine years ago, to where it is now, the brands, It's a complete turnaround. Other than the name there, there's not much, that's the same between the two,
[00:06:29] Craig Dalton: interesting. So can you talk to the listener a little bit about why you love titanium as a frame material with a particular eye on the gravel market and what makes it a great material for gravel bikes?
[00:06:40] David Rosen (Sage): So the reason I love titanium is it was always for me growing up, it was that space, age material, it was the stuff that was used in the space shuttle and, fighter jets and that sort of thing. So it's got this mystique about it, if you will. It was back in the I'm trying not to date myself, but back in the eighties, it was like, It was sexier.
[00:07:04] It was it. Wasn't nothing wrong with steel. I love steel. I love aluminum. I love carbon. Everything has its place for where it should be, but the tie bikes back then there was just something mystical about them. You'd see plenty of steel bikes riding around plenty of aluminum bikes, but it was very few titanium bikes.
[00:07:22] When you saw one, it was special. And so that always made an imprint on me kind of thing. And that's where I initially fell in love with it. The. What has drawn me to it from a builder standpoint? And the reason why I only focus on titanium is because of the durability of the material.
[00:07:38] The the, how far it can bend the fatigue, resistance of the material. If the fact that it's rust-proof it's, I live in the Pacific Northwest, steel bikes are awesome, but they can rust if you don't take care of them. And if you take care of them, they're fine. But if you don't, they can rust titanium.
[00:07:55] Doesn't rust. Titanium has a higher fatigue resistance point where you can bend the tube farther in titanium and it'll snap back before it breaks versus steel or aluminum for that matter. So inherently, then it then gives itself this ride quality. Again, maybe this is an old term, but it was called the magic carpet ride because it just smooths everything out.
[00:08:19] And it's one of those things that when you're on it, if you ride a carbon bike on chip seal or an aluminum bike on chip seal or even steel for that matter, but then you write a tie, it there's a vibration, but if you ride titanium on chip seal, it mutes it out. It's just, it's really amazing what the material can do.
[00:08:36] And the fact that it can be repaired easily. It's the forever bike. You're going to have a tie bike for 20, 30, 40 years. The only reason to change it at some point is just because it's outdated and that's, and even then, that's not really a reason to change it. Cause there's always, the desire to keep those historical bikes.
[00:08:55] So yeah, my
[00:08:56] Craig Dalton: father's got one sitting in the garage with, I think a mag 21 fork on it and cantilever lever brakes.
[00:09:02] David Rosen (Sage): And he'll never get
[00:09:03] Craig Dalton: rid of it, a reason for him to replace it, other than he doesn't know what he's missing, because he's never written disc, disc brakes at this point.
[00:09:11] David Rosen (Sage): Exactly. But beyond that, it's just, it's a bike he's going to keep, and he's got a lot of good memories for it.
[00:09:16] So
[00:09:17] Craig Dalton: early it's at Sage, thinking about the cross-market and the commuter market. When did gravel start to become a thing? When did you start to see those trends start to appear and what your customers were asking for?
[00:09:30] David Rosen (Sage): I would say I started to see it in 2015 2014 and 2015. So the, our first USA frames were 2014.
[00:09:38] We had a road, we had a road frame and a cross. Which we brought up, we improve the designs based on what was originally made in China, made some refinements to it okay, we've took, we've taken our learnings and move forward. The commuter bike we dropped. And it just, it wasn't where I wanted the brand to be it.
[00:09:54] Wasn't where I wanted the brand to focus on. And so drop that and just started with the two bikes to begin with. But it left this hole in the line of where I felt we needed to another bike in place to round things out. And my friends and I, at that time would go out on these rides. We take our cross bikes and we were going and doing gravel rides on our cross bikes.
[00:10:15] Some guys would use their rode bikes and they, 25 mill tires was considered a fat tire back in 2014 and 2015. And we'd go out and go ride gravel. And, some buy, somebody would get a flat sometimes. You wouldn't and sometimes, we'd get into some gnarly stuff and that's why you wanted a crossbite, cause it had bigger tires, but then the road bikes always beat you to the gravel, and so it was just this weird mix of what's the right bike. And there were quite a few events. Grind Duro is a great example of one where it was very much about choose your weapon. And because there were, there's plenty of paved road and grind. But then there's plenty of crazy stages of, single track and gravel road and what's the right bike.
[00:11:01] And so people were bringing all these different bikes and there was no specific bike that you could just point to and go, that's the type of bike I need for this event. And there was, it was a wild west kind of mentality, which is really kinda cool. And I still think the gravel segment the way it continues to evolve.
[00:11:18] Exhibits that kind of, bring what, run what you got thing and, and modify what you can, but it was around them that I started seeing that desire for something along those lines. And for me here for where I live in Beaverton, Oregon, which is just outside of Portland, I'm a little west of Portland.
[00:11:34] Yeah. There is, there's plenty of good gravel, like 10 miles from my house. So I'm not going to drive to the gravel. I'm going to ride my bike to the gravel. So the initial gravel bike I designed was really around the concept of, I wanted it to be fun on the road. And when I got to the gravel, I could tear up the gravel and then go ride for 40 miles on the gravel and then come back home for a 20 mile paved ride or whatever it was, wherever it dropped me off.
[00:12:00] And so that was the Genesis of the first gravel bike. It was, you had to ride it to the gravel. It wasn't, I get people have to drive sometimes, that was the idea. And was
[00:12:09] Craig Dalton: that the
[00:12:10] David Rosen (Sage): Barlow? That was the Barlow correct.
[00:12:13] Craig Dalton: And so what sort of tire size capacity did the bar
[00:12:16] David Rosen (Sage): Barlow accept?
[00:12:17] It's always accepted 40 millimeter tires. 700. Or six 50 by 50. There weren't a lot of tires in that size when it first came out. I use the ENVE all road fork as the fork of choice for the Barlow, because it was it's designed around a 38, but we can actually squeeze in a 40. So we've done it.
[00:12:34] It's certain tires, it works great. Some tires not as great because the fork is designed for what it is. The frame clears a 40 no problem. But it's, the fork is a little bit of a. But we designed the bike around that. And so that gave us the ability to really push the envelope. So where everybody's saying, oh, 30 and 32 millimeter tires of the gravel, I'm throwing 30 fives and who's got the fattest 40 millimeter tire I could find.
[00:12:58] And at the time that was great. And so the Barlow was really ahead of the game in that regard. And then
[00:13:04] Craig Dalton: subsequently you introduced an, another model, the storm chaser. When did that come into the world? Sorry, storm. Storm king my bad. When did the storm king come into being and what were the sort of the drivers from the industry and riders that you were seeing that said, okay, the Barlow is one thing, but the storm king is going to be this other thing.
[00:13:25] David Rosen (Sage): So I, I have a rider I sponsor he's a retired former world tour pro and he. He w he still races for me kinda thing. He does mountain, and he does gravel, and those are his focuses. And he took the Barlow to Unbound before it was relaunched as Unbound when it was DK.
[00:13:44] And this was back in 2018, I believe if I remember correctly. And he took the Barlow there and he used, he was using the Barlow and all the gravel events that were popping. And he was encountering challenging terrain would be the best way to put it. Just, big rocks big, just nasty, just eat your tires up rocks kind of thing.
[00:14:07] And he came back and he said, okay here's my opinion on everything. We need bigger tires. And I need a little bit more of an upright riding position as opposed to not quite as well. Cause the Barlow is is a little bit more aggressive. It's not as aggressive as our road bike, but it's definitely slacker and a little bit more upright.
[00:14:25] But he wanted it even more. And so that was the main driver because it was based on race input. So it was, is doing skull hollow, one 20 and DK at the time were the two big ones, other events, it was working great. But for these other events these, just these handful of them. Where the terrain was nuts.
[00:14:44] He said, we need something bigger. And I saw the writing on the wall as there's more of these crazy events that are starting to pop up, we're going to need a bike. That's going to be able to compete in those events. Not just SBT is a great example of the Barlow's perfect Belgian waffle ride. The Barlow works perfect.
[00:15:02] It depends on which Belgian waffle ride right now. But anyway, that was the gig. I find that
[00:15:06] Craig Dalton: fascinating for someone at that end of the spectrum of the sport, a professional athlete, noting that bigger fatter slacker is actually going to be faster in these events, because I think it is something that the listener can really take away.
[00:15:20] It's really easy for you to think, oh, being on one of these road, plus bikes is what's going to make me faster, but in a lot of these events and particularly for the more average athlete who spending a longer time in the center, A more comfortable bike, a more stable bike with buy bigger tires could actually be the bike of choice.
[00:15:38] I
[00:15:38] David Rosen (Sage): would agree. If you think about it, if you're choosing between a 32 millimeter tire versus a 40 millimeter tire or a 36 and a 50, whatever it may be. And you're thinking the smaller tire is going to be faster because it's less rotating weight and it's going to roll faster for the tread, whatever it may be.
[00:15:57] Yeah. You're probably right. How many flats are you potentially fixing and how much time are you going to waste with flats? Whereas the rolling resistance of the larger tires, isn't really that far off of the smaller tires. Yes. You're carrying more weight, but if you have more assurance that you can go faster through the rough stuff without damaging the bike, you're going to be faster overall.
[00:16:18] You look at the, you look at some of the pros like Ted king and those guys, I think they're always trying to push as big a tire as they can run without it being. So early slower,
[00:16:28] Craig Dalton: that seems to be the trend. And for me, like I'm spending 30, 40% more time out there on these courses than the pro athletes are.
[00:16:35] So I've got to think about the general wear and tear. My day is probably more akin to an iron man triathlon than American Don,
[00:16:42] David Rosen (Sage): you and me both 12 hour days for you. Exactly. Yeah, me too.
[00:16:47] Craig Dalton: So let's talk a little bit more specifically about the storm king and the type of tires it can access.
[00:16:52] David Rosen (Sage): So it's designed around a 700 by 50 six 50 by two point.
[00:16:58] Oh, I'm sorry. 2.2 is usually pretty good. Because we can make, because we make each storm king individually, one at a time, the customer really has the opportunity to specify, I am going to run this size tire kind of thing, so we can modify the rear end of the. To accommodate the tire, obviously picking the right fork is always key.
[00:17:19] Of course. In instances we just had a customer, he sent us the wheel, the full wheel and the tire, and it's okay, great. And then we just, we throw it in the frame and make sure it fits. So this way we can truly customize it to what's the worst case scenario you're going to run on this bike.
[00:17:34] Craig Dalton: Do you have a stock chain stay length that on the storm king or does it going to modify based on those criteria that the customer entrance.
[00:17:43] David Rosen (Sage): It's gonna, it's gonna modify based on it's this no, no stock chain stay length. It's gonna modify based on the based on the wheel size, the tire size and actually the drive train and the dry train specifically.
[00:17:57] So is it GRX? Is it Eckhart? Is it force wide? Is it Altegra stuff like that kind of thing? All of those factors we actually play in to to designing the chain, stay length because if you get it wrong and you make it too short, you run into clearance issues that it's you're stuck, but if we know what you want going into it, we can build it specifically.
[00:18:19] And we really we're dialing in the process. We continue to do it every day or making it,
[00:18:23] Craig Dalton: That might be a good segue into just describing for the listener. What does that customer journey look like if they want to get on a storm king, what does the process look like? How long does it take to get one?
[00:18:34] David Rosen (Sage): So the process usually begins with the customer, listening to this podcast, seeing a review online or an ad in a magazine or something along those lines. And then pretty much reaching out through the website is usually how it works. It's very rare. As crazy as it sounds that somebody will buy a bike, sight unseen through the website, it happens, but it's, a complete stock build. Here you go. This is what I want. And that sort of thing. That's, it's rare because this is a very personal purchase. And so usually the customer is going to reach out through the contact form on our website.
[00:19:10] Usually usually it's me who is responding, but it could be one of our other folks here. But nine times out of 10 it's usually me that everybody's speaking to. And they'll reach out through email, I'll respond back and we start a dialogue and it could be a case of let's get on the phone and talk it through and what's understand what the build is you're looking for.
[00:19:30] And we can really customize the spec and the bill. You know of the complete bike. Some customers are only looking for a frame or a frame set, and that's fine too. And it's, let's go through the specs of that. And the process is quite a bit of email quite a bit of phone calls if needed. When the customer's ready to move forward, they put a deposit down and then the design process begins.
[00:19:51] Usually if the customer has a fit that they've done recently and they want to use those fit numbers, then we use. If they're here local in Portland, then we have them see our fitter and we get, they get a professional fit done. And if they want to come into town, I've had a couple people actually fly in from Northern California, for example and have fits done here.
[00:20:10] And then I get the numbers and, go to town on designing the frame and lead time on frames right now, I'd say is about four months from when we actually, when the design is. So that doesn't include the lead time. It doesn't include the time that we spend talking prior to and dialing in all that sort of stuff.
[00:20:28] When the design is handed off to my welder right now, we're at about a four month lead time for framework.
[00:20:34] Craig Dalton: Are there limitations in terms of the areas of the bike that can be customized? Head tube, size, top tube lent anything that's off the table or is everything on
[00:20:42] David Rosen (Sage): the table now everything's on the table.
[00:20:44] I've had one or two customers that have been very vocal about, I want the head tube to be this, and I want this to be the seat angle and that sort of thing. And it's a process we go through and I'm more than happy to accommodate the customers if they're, sure. That's what they want kind of thing.
[00:20:59] But usually it's a case of, if I get your X, Y coordinates from your fit, I'm going to build you a storm king. And that's what it's going to be. If you want something that's completely dead. I'm working on an iron man bike for somebody right now. And that's a totally different bike than anything we offer.
[00:21:15] So then that's much more of a personal process of what are you looking for and how do you want it to be, rather than I know what I want the storm king to be, and I'm going to make a storm king that fits you. Gotcha.
[00:21:25] Craig Dalton: Let's talk about that. Beautiful storm king. You brought to Utah, it had a lot of different finishes on it.
[00:21:31] It did. Really and is that is for, we didn't have paint on it as well. It had cerakote. Okay. So let's go through, I think it's amazing that the number of options you offer and certainly the execution on that bike I'll post a picture of it because it was beautiful. Everybody needs to look at it, but let's talk about the different options for finish on a titanium frame.
[00:21:50] David Rosen (Sage): We have four different options. We let's see, let's start with the standard finish that you see on most of the bikes on the website is our brushed finish. It's a raw titanium. It's very silvery looking. It's shiny. It's great for just durability. If you scratch it, you can take a Scotch-Brite pad and little shoeshine motion, then you can buff it out.
[00:22:12] It's a great it's a great finish and it's just the classic titanium finish. That's finished. Number one, finish number two is bead blast where we basically put the frame in a giant cabinet, if you will, a sealed cabinet and we shoot it with a what's called media and media can be anything from glass beads to Walnut shells.
[00:22:33] It just depends on what. And it, it impacts the frame and it changes the appearance and the finish and the texture of the frame itself. It doesn't damage the frame in any way, but it changes the finish. So a bead blast is usually a it's just, it has a different look to it. It's more of a dull look to it from there.
[00:22:53] We then start getting into colors and that's where we've really exploded this year for the options and the custom work that we've been doing. If you look through our social media feed and as well as our custom page, we have a custom bike page where every custom bike gets a photo shoot and we do all that sort of stuff.
[00:23:08] You can see the differences, but we've been doing a lot more with cerakote and with anodize for the frames anodize is if you seen the Chris king parts, they're blue they're purple. They're good. That's all anodized aluminum kind of thing. It's dipped in a bath. That's electrified. It comes out at a certain voltage.
[00:23:26] It gives you a color.
[00:23:27] Craig Dalton: I think it's interesting David to drill into. I've seen some super intricate anodized look. Unlike the Chris king headset, which is, orange or red or whatever they do, you seem to have a technique in which you've got the titanium frame, which is maybe the, the brush titanium or whatever, and then small areas that are animated.
[00:23:45] David Rosen (Sage): Yeah it's just a matter of the artwork that we do every custom frame that we do short of it just being, I just want logos done, but if there's artwork involved I have a graphic artist on staff. It has been in the art world for quite some time. He's a cycling buddy of mine. We've known each other for years, but he's an artist, a true artist kind of thing.
[00:24:06] Like he does art shows and all that sort of good stuff. And he designs all the bikes. So every single bike is never repeated. Each individual bike is a rolling piece of art. If you want the bike, you're seeing the show bike that we have on the website, I can do something similar, but it'll never be that again.
[00:24:23] It'll be it'll be sister bike. It won't be an identical twin kind of thing. But yeah we get a little crazy with the finishes that we do. And then we mix all of that in with Sarah code, which is we've. We been using paint, wet paint for quite some time. And paint's awesome. It, you can color match with it and we still do wet paint.
[00:24:41] If a customer requests it, you can color match very specifically. To a specific item. If you have it, you can mix colors and that sort of thing. What we found with paint though, and with gravel bikes in particular, is it's not as durable as we would like. And the problem is that if you get a rock strike on your titanium, gravel bike with paint it is possible.
[00:25:02] It could chip. And so that's not really an ideal situation. So we switched to cerakote, which is a ceramic coat. That's cured onto the frame and it's actually used on guns tanks, rocket parts, jet fighters. As whenever you see the paint that's on these vehicles and these, munitions, if you will that's cerakote and it's super resistant to heat damage from any sort of debris flying out of it.
[00:25:29] I Heck if somebody can shoot a gun at a tank and the, the tanks spine cause of the Seroquel. That sort of thing. I'm pretty confident the bike is going to be okay from a rock strike. And and yeah, our painter is able to actually mix all of these all of these four different finishes together.
[00:25:44] And we're able to make these incredible bikes of just total variety of just really just pushing them. The
[00:25:51] Craig Dalton: cerakote was the one I was least familiar with. And a couple of builders were using it out there in Utah at the end of the builder Roundup. How has it actually applied? Is it applied like a paint or a
[00:26:02] David Rosen (Sage): no it's more of a paint it's sprayed on.
[00:26:05] So there is a masking process that goes on. The masking actually takes the most time for the bike itself for the actual paint work to be done. And basically once the bike is massed up, you pretty much split. As, you peel off the layers and as you spray it and that sort of thing. And then when all is said and done, you cure the bike it goes into an oven to cures and it can be sprayed in the morning, cured by lunch and ship out in the same day in the afternoon.
[00:26:30] And it's done. Like you don't have to worry like the paints, soft, or it needs to still time just it's ready to ship. So it's pretty crazy. And it's super. And is
[00:26:39] Craig Dalton: it something that you can apply, in almost any design on the bike to any part of the bike,
[00:26:44] David Rosen (Sage): just about any design? It's really the limitation of the, of my artist and of the painter and being able to mask it.
[00:26:51] Sometimes there are issues with tube shapes and that you're people thinking, people think of art and they think in a two dimensional sense as a flat canvas and the arts applied to it. But the reality is bicycles are three-dimensional rounded. There is no hard point to start and stop here and there.
[00:27:10] So sometimes you have to make decisions and you have to make choices about how the artwork is going to lay on the frame itself. Because sometimes it may not work even the best intentions. It's eh, just not going to look right. And the tubes aren't exactly large like a canvas. So you have to think those things.
[00:27:28] Yeah. I think that's
[00:27:29] Craig Dalton: The value in having. Artists be also a cyclist. They understand how the bike is constructed and the tube shapes and everything and also how it plays out, how it's going to look visually from within a Peloton to out there on the gravel road.
[00:27:42] David Rosen (Sage): Yeah, absolutely.
[00:27:43] No he's fantastic about making the bike stand out for sure. And this particular show bike is I think it's, I think it's one of my favorites, period. There are some others that we've done that are pretty amazing as well. It would be hard honestly, to stack them all up next to each other and pick one.
[00:27:59] So it's a rough thing. So I'll take this one for right now and go. This is my favorite for the time being nice. Are
[00:28:05] Craig Dalton: there other trends in the gravel market that you're looking forward to exploring?
[00:28:09] David Rosen (Sage): I think I'm interested to see where suspension goes. It's I'm not saying I'm fully.
[00:28:17] Committed to suspension and I think it should be on all bikes. I think it's certain applications in certain arenas and I don't necessarily think it should be a mountain bike fork. For example, that's just slimmed down. I think it needs to be its own technology because I think gravel is different. And I think there needs to be different engineering behind the design of the fork itself.
[00:28:40] It needs to be lighter. It does need to be sexier. And it needs to, it's minimal travel. We don't need, you don't even need a hundred millimeters. Yeah. Travel for a gravel bike. It's, at some point again, I always go back to the original. My Barlow of you have to ride, you could ride from your house on the pavement to the gravel ride back to the pavement, ride back home.
[00:29:00] So the bikes should be able to handle both. Other than that, if it's just only good off road, then it's really a drop bar mountain bike at that point. I'm interested to see where that goes. I think dropper posts will continue to I think that's more of an immediate trend that's coming.
[00:29:16] I just, I see the value of it and, I saw it a grow DEO. There were guys that were just bombing down those descents baby head rocks, and just blasting down them on 50 mil tires and the dropper posts because they got the saddle out of the way. And it. It, it does add to the capability of the bike.
[00:29:32] And then when we got out on the road, they pop the seat back up and everything was fine. Yeah.
[00:29:36] Craig Dalton: That was my technique. I knew I was going to get gapped off on all the climbs, but I had a hope, I had a hope if I rode my bike card with that dropper post down on the dissents, but I might just bridge back up to the group that just dropped me.
[00:29:47] David Rosen (Sage): Yeah, exactly. No, it
[00:29:49] Craig Dalton: works great. I too. And the listener well knows. I'm fascinated by the idea of suspension in ground. All your points are spot on. It's going to have to be this delicate balance, to not take away the capabilities. We're not trying to build mountain bikes here. They still need to be bikes that can get fast on the road, but to each their own in terms of gravel, right?
[00:30:09] We've got listeners all over the world whose experiences are dramatically different. And what I hope is that it just becomes this type of thing, where you look at someone who has a more aggressively set up gravel bike. You just understand that's probably what they have in their backyard and someone who's, riding the Barlow with 30 twos on it, that could be totally capable.
[00:30:30] It could be overkill for the types of gravel roads they ride, but to each
[00:30:34] David Rosen (Sage): their own. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. It's, it's we see the same sort of thing with mountain bikes. There's this trend towards not a trend. It's here. I wouldn't call it a trend and I'm a big fan of it.
[00:30:45] Big hit long travel bikes with slack, that angles that basically five years ago were downhill bikes. And now they're single crown and Duro bikes. And guys are, we're doing, I'm doing crazy jumps on the weekends and all that sort of stuff, but does the person in Florida, for example or Texas where it's pancake flat for the most part and I'm sure there are technical steep places where you need it.
[00:31:07] So I apologize. Not, I'm not trying to characterize the entire state that way, but generally speaking Florida is pretty flat. So do you need a long travel, slacked out bike? Probably not thing. And to your point about the gravel, there's places where that, a 32 mil tire is going to be perfect there, and there's other places where a 50 mil tire and it's their backyard.
[00:31:28] So yeah, I would totally agree with that.
[00:31:30] Craig Dalton: You'll start to get that feedback next season in 2022 for people running time. Front suspension, forks on their bikes. And it would be curious to see, much like your professional athlete gave the feedback that ultimately led to the storm king. We may see that feedback coming back saying having a little bit of suspension on the front simply makes the bike faster.
[00:31:52] And if it's faster, people are going to go for it from a race perspective.
[00:31:56] David Rosen (Sage): Yeah, no, I would agree. At some level it is 1990 for mountain bikes. But at the same time, it's the gravel bikes of today are far more capable than those. What were mountain bikes back then? And it's pretty impressive with how the bike is evolved.
[00:32:10] Yeah, I totally
[00:32:11] Craig Dalton: agree with you. I had that same feeling back in the early nineties around mountain biking that every year, every month it seemed like a new idea was being put forward and people were testing and learning and it took, it was this great and super enjoyable journey. If you were involved in it to watch it out.
[00:32:28] David Rosen (Sage): Yeah, no, absolutely. It was a lot of fun. And it's, I think gravel is going through the same sort of, evolution
[00:32:34] Craig Dalton: actually. We're all here. We're all listening. We're all involved the communities as all eyes on the innovation. Super exciting time. I appreciate you joining me today, Dave, and giving us a little more of an overview, a deep dive into Sage titanium.
[00:32:48] I loved the work that you showed in Utah, and I wish you all the.
[00:32:52] David Rosen (Sage): Thanks. I really appreciate it. This was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me.
[00:32:55] Craig Dalton: Cheers.
[00:32:56] Big, thanks today for joining us this week, I have to say, I really do love that storm king. It takes a lot of boxes for me, the finished work was beautiful. The clearances are right up my alley, and I think it would be a hell of a lot of fun to ride that bike. Also another big, thanks to ENVE for sponsoring the podcast this week. And for sponsoring this entire series, it's really been a pleasure. Getting introduced to a lot of their partners around the world, looking through their componentry and touring their factory. I've mentioned it on earlier podcasts, but I was very impressed with the amount of testing they do. In-house and just the fabrication process in general, in Ogden, Utah, the attention to detail.
[00:33:40] The passion of the employee base. And everything about ENVE's work there in the United States just really makes me happy. So be sure to check them out.
[00:33:49] When you support our podcast partners, you're supporting the podcast itself.
[00:33:53] I wouldn't be able to continue doing what I'm doing without their support.
[00:33:57] And I wouldn't do this without your support. The gravel community has been super embracing of what I've been doing.
[00:34:03] And I've loved getting to know some of you in in-person events. But more broadly through the ridership community. If you're not already a member of this free community, just visit www.theridership.com. We'd love to have you. And if you're interested in supporting the podcast further, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride.
[00:34:24] There's any number of ways in which you can support what I'm doing here. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
Exclusive interview with SRAM's Chris Mandell discussing the new XPLR line of product for gravel. We dig into the SRAM XPLR components, the RockShox REVERB AXS wireless dropper post and finally RockShox's new gravel suspension fork, Rudy.
Join The Ridership
Full automated transcript (please excuse the typos):
SRAM - Chris Mandell
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Craig Dalton. Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host, Craig Dalton.
[00:00:08] We've got a big show for you this week. So I'm going to keep the intro short. I'm welcoming Chris Mandel from SRAM
[00:00:14] To the show to talk about the new explore series just launched today, August.
[00:00:19] This is really three shows in one, as we talk about grupos dropper posts. And suspension forks.
[00:00:25] I'm super excited to dive into this conversation. I've been testing the products a few weeks down here in Topanga, California. And really excited to bounce my ideas off of Chris.
[00:00:36] And get his insights about the new XPLR line.
[00:00:39] So with that, let's dive right in.
[00:00:41] Chris, welcome to the show.
[00:00:43] Chris Mandell: Thanks for having me. I'm real excited to be here.
[00:00:45] Craig Dalton: This is a conversation that I feel is eight or nine months in the works.
[00:00:49] Chris Mandell: Yeah, for sure. That's that's generally how these things go, your word developing and working on products for quite a long time before they actually make it out into the world.
[00:00:59] Craig Dalton: So yeah, I'm really excited for this discussion and I'm super stoked that this is on the day of the big launch. So if you're listening on August 10th, which is when this podcast is first released, SRAM has got some things to talk about today. But before we get into that, I always like to get a little bit of information about you as a rider where you're living and how'd you get into the sport.
[00:01:22] Chris Mandell: Yeah. Thanks for that. I've been a passionate cyclist for a really long time, my dad did a bit of road racing back in the day and we always had bikes around. Yeah. But I got distracted with American football in high school, and then ended up going to college to play American football and found really quickly in college that I did not want to keep playing at that level.
[00:01:44] And so I stopped that and was really lucky in that the town that I lived in McMinnville, Oregon had a small but strong mountain bike scene. And the people there took me under their wing and I started mountain biking with them. And then eventually started working at the local bike shop Tony's and just fully embraced it and was obsessed with it.
[00:02:02] And then after I graduated from college, I got a job working full speed ahead, which took me up to Seattle which was great. Cause there was ton of really good cross country riding outside of Seattle, but there was also. A lot of like free side and downhill riding. So at that point I branched and was, writing a commuter to, and from work riding and racing cross country, race bikes, and then also going up to the Whistler bike park and riding that as much as possible kind of fast-forward became a product manager at Kona bikes and developed full suspension bikes at cone bikes for a long time.
[00:02:38] And then eventually made the jump to become the rear shock product manager at RockShox. Which had me moved from Bellingham where I was working for Kona, Bellingham, Washington to Colorado Springs, Colorado, and had a great four and a half years living in Colorado Springs, Colorado being really detailed, focused on full suspension, mountain bikes and what it takes to.
[00:03:02] Tune shocks and developed shocks for OEM customers like specialized or Santa Cruz. And then at a certain point, unfortunately, due to some family reasons my wife and I needed to move back to Bellingham to be closer to her family. And so we, when we made that shift I switched over from working in product development, to working on the PR side of things, which is what has me on the phone with you.
[00:03:25] But in this, in a similar timeframe, we also, I, had a child and I was getting a little bit older and I'd always like commuted and like dabbled in, in rode bikes a little bit, but I'd never really rode bikes. Never really grabbed a hold of me, but gravel bikes started to grab a hold of me.
[00:03:42] And it was about that time about when I had, when we had our child that I got a gravel bike and really started riding one pretty consistently. Fell in love with a lot of what, the early days of cross country riding, where for me, which was exploring your local area and like finding the different nooks and crannies and gravel roads and going to the places that you hadn't been to before.
[00:04:07] But also really being able to like physically push myself, on, on a mountain bike on one hour mountain bike ride, you go up and then you come down, but on a one-hour gravel ride, you're basically peddling your brains off the entire time. So like the fitness side of that was really helpful for me.
[00:04:22] In addition to connecting with the original spirit of what caught me in the cross country, mountain biking back in the day. So yeah, and so now living in Bellingham and I started that gravel journey in Colorado. Which is a really excellent place for gravel riding, but now living in Bellingham, Washington, which we're obviously very well known for our mountain bike trails and the mountain bike trail network is super expansive between, Galbreath mountain, which is the hill with a lot of mountain bike specific built trails, right in town.
[00:04:52] And then the Chuck nuts, which is a little bit south of town, which is more hiking trails with some bikes specific trails, but a much bigger, longer area. But there's actually quite a bit of graveling to do here. This area I'm actually mountain bike got started here in, in logging terrain.
[00:05:07] It's all working for us in this part of the country. And in order to have a working forest you have to have fire roads. And so there's just fireworks roads running in every possible direction. And then a lot of those thyroids have single track connections to them. So you can really get out and go quite far on your gravel bike from your door and have some pretty, pretty amazing adventures and get to be able to see some pretty big mountains.
[00:05:31] Craig Dalton: Amazing. What do the climbs look like in your neck of the woods? Are they long hour long climbs? Are they short and punchy stuff?
[00:05:39] Chris Mandell: Yeah, it really depends what really depends what you want. There's definitely like hours long, slow grinding climbs, and then much to my friends.
[00:05:48] Dislike. One of my favorite climbs around here is this climate called pine the theater. And it's basically just straight up the hill for about 25 minutes. And you're pretty much searching for traction on your gravel bike the whole time. Cause it's the climb. So Steve, so yeah, it's all of that.
[00:06:03] It's long slow slogging fire roads, and then there's also just straight up the hill hiking or single track climbs.
[00:06:10] Craig Dalton: Nice. It sounds like a great place for gravel riding. Cause it sounds like you can pick and choose whether you want just a logging road that doesn't have a lot of technical requirements, but you can also push your limits on the single track and mountain bike style trails.
[00:06:23] Chris Mandell: Yep. Yeah, that's exactly. I think that's exactly the case, like from my house is about 12 minutes to Galbreath on a rails to trails, an old railroad grade that they've converted to an inner urban trail. So I can take that over to golf. Which is crisscrossed with fire roads and then single track.
[00:06:42] And so I'll generally climb up single track and then descend down the fire road on my gravel bike, because, my perspective is a lot of the times like it's capable as a gravel bike is do do having my mountain bike on the single track a lot of the time, but it's like a great in terms of options and my friend.
[00:06:58] And I'll always joke. Cause we can, you could look down at the dirt here cause we get quite a bit of moisture in a normal time and you can see how many people are starting to gravel bike on the hill because you can tell the gravel bike tires.
[00:07:11] Craig Dalton: That's amazing. Yeah. I love that. I If you're in the fortunate position of having both the gravel and a mountain bike and live in a place where you can take all these different, make all these different choices, it's so much fun.
[00:07:22] Cause you just pick and choose your own adventure. I could go on and on talking and learning about Bellingham, because it's an area that I've heard a great things about, but we've got so much ground to cover with Schram's announcement today about the Explorer series. And I'd love to get into it.
[00:07:38] I think we'd look at the componentry first and the wheels, and then we get into the hotly debated stuff that we'll talk about later.
[00:07:46] Chris Mandell: Yeah, totally. Yeah. I I think the round out the gravel side of things, the last thing I'd add there is I think the other thing that's nice about having a gravel bike and a mountain bike is you can get so much more out of your mountain bike if you spend time on your gravel bike, because your fitness just goes through the roof.
[00:08:02] And that's one of the things that's been, I've been loving about having a gravel bike alongside the mountain bike.
[00:08:07] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And I also imagined, from, if I go back to my origin story and mountain biking, riding orig rigid bike, there's a certain skill level you acquire by learning how to pick your lines when you're riding a rigid.
[00:08:19] Or a lightly suspended bike as it were versus when you jump on a full suspension bike, you can start off being pretty sloppy.
[00:08:27] Chris Mandell: Yep. For sure.
[00:08:28] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So let's talk about explore.
[00:08:32] Chris Mandell: Yeah. So this is pretty exciting moment for us. It's really three, three of our big brands coming together.
[00:08:40] In a way that we think is really going to allow the gravel rider to have more complete experiences on their bikes. So from the Zipp side we're bringing a gravel specific wheelset from the SRAM road side of things. We're bringing a gravel specific drive train, and then most new to the market would be on the RockShox side of thing.
[00:09:06] We're going to bring a fork and a seat post that are gravel specific into the market. And I think it's really cool that these three brands were able to come together and make this specific explore products collection. But I do think it's also important to note that we still think our entire product line is totally relevant in the gravel sphere.
[00:09:29] So we have this specific collection of products that we designed for gravel use, but we have a ton of other products that will end up on gravel bikes. And we don't think that those parts shouldn't end up on gravel bikes. It's just, these are the ones that we've specifically designed for.
[00:09:45] gravel
[00:09:47] Craig Dalton: Interesting.
[00:09:48] I'm sure there's someone who immediately heard the word suspension on gravel bike and is already hitting the internet to start a debate. We won't get into that listener. Don't worry. I'm super excited. I've been riding the fork and I have my opinions on, it's a super excited to talk to Chris further about it, but Chris, why don't we start off with that?
[00:10:06] We'll set.
[00:10:08] Chris Mandell: Yeah. This has been in the gravel market for quite some time with the product line that we offer today, specifically the 303 S and the 303 Firecrest both of which are excellent products for gravel riders to use like their light. The internal width are appropriate for a larger size tire.
[00:10:30] And they provide a good balance of aerodynamics. However, we recognize that there's like a full spectrum. Travel experiences out there. And there are people who are going to push the limit a little bit more on the aggressive riding side of things. And for those riders, they're looking for a different setup in terms of, like balancing comfort and control on the trail with aerodynamics.
[00:10:58] And so that really pointed us to what we're already doing with zip on the mountain bike side of things, where we have the zero three Moto rim, which is a single wall, not Mike Ram that was designed to allow the rim to have what we call ankle compliance. So the rim is able to work with the tire to provide the rider with more control and conform to the ground better.
[00:11:26] As we have that have had that wheel in the mountain bike side of things for a long time, we have a lot of customers and a lot of interest in like bringing something like that over into the gravel side of things. And so that's what we're doing with with the 1 0 1 wheel set and really what it gives the rider is the ability to have a wheel set.
[00:11:44] That's going to decrease their fatigue when they're out riding because the rim is gonna work the terrain with the tire in a way that allows the rider to keep the bike going in the direction they're going to want and isolate the rider from a lot of the vibrations and other like hits to the rider that are to the overall bike system that would create fatigue.
[00:12:06] Craig Dalton: So is there some sort of suppleness built into the rim? Is that what you're saying?
[00:12:11] Chris Mandell: Yeah, totally. So the way that the rim system is able to work is that the spokes are run through the center of the room. And because it's not a box section, then it's a single wall run. The rim is able to use what we call ankle compliance.
[00:12:27] So when it sees a hit say on the left side of the rim is able to move up and out of the way a little bit and allow the front axle and the whole bike to continue to carry forward, but give a little bit in a way that provides more comfort and more control and becomes less fatiguing to the right.
[00:12:46] Craig Dalton: Gotcha. And that 27 millimeter wide internal profile is that wider than the 3 0 3.
[00:12:54] Chris Mandell: Yeah. We've actually got like really nice steps from the 300, three S all the way up to the one-on-one. So the 303 is 23 millimeter. The 303 Firecrest is 25 and then the one-on-one is 27 inner. And really that's just optimizing for those different sizes of tires that you're going to have on there.
[00:13:15] You're able to use quite a small tire on the one-on-one. But it's also going to give you a lot of good stability on the larger side tire.
[00:13:23] Craig Dalton: Yeah. We've had a discussion about that on the podcast before, and it seems like this trend towards that 27 millimeter is really beneficial for the gravel rider in terms of the contact patch of the tire and just how the overall rim performs.
[00:13:38] Chris Mandell: Yeah, totally. And I I think it's, it's preference in tires and it's there's so many factors that go into what tire pressure you run with tires you run and all that stuff. And I think, having options is good in that space. And we really look at like the one-on-one.
[00:13:53] If you're looking to take on more challenging terrain, if you're going to be spending long, long periods of time in the saddle over, not so great conditioned paved roads or rough gravel roads that extended period of time, but one-on-one is really going to bring a lot to you because it's going to save a lot of energy and it's going to, it's going to stop the vibrations and all the things that fatigue you on a gravel ride from getting up to you.
[00:14:21] Craig Dalton: Nice. And for the listener, I'll just note that it's available in 700 C and six 50 B.
[00:14:27] Chris Mandell: Yep. Yeah.
[00:14:29] Craig Dalton: Did you want to talk about the G 40 exploratory?
[00:14:33] Chris Mandell: Yeah. Yeah, we can mention that one real quick. So the G 40 is a tire that we've offered for a while now, but we are rebranding it explored to fit into the rest of the collection.
[00:14:45] And it's a pretty sweet tire. It's sitting right there in the middle at 40, which is I think a very common tire size for people to be using. It's got a nice center line rolling tread, which is really great for efficiency, but then it's got good, not too aggressive, but just aggressive enough cornering logs.
[00:15:04] So you've got the grip in terms or when the ground gets soft, you're still able to dig into those cornering lugs and hold align really well. And then the thing that as a mountain biker I really appreciate it is it does have a robust sidewall, so you're not looking at getting getting flat tires that often.
[00:15:21] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Nice. Let's move on to the driver.
[00:15:26] Chris Mandell: Yeah.
[00:15:28] Craig Dalton: So tell us about that. XPLR, drivetrain, and how it fits in you gave a little bit in your opening about it, but just contextualize it a little bit further and talk some of the details about what you guys are providing.
[00:15:40] Chris Mandell: Yeah, totally. I think if we look at where we're at with drive trains today, we offer a 10 36 1 by drive train, and we offer and through the access ecosystem, we're able to take our road hoods and connect them to a 10 50 mountain bike drive, train to provide, two pretty good experiences for the gravel rider.
[00:16:05] The one by gravel rider looking to have either, very lightweight set up with the 10 36 and tight gearing stuff. Or with the 10 50, bigger gear steps, but a huge range which is greatly beneficial when you're like waiting the bike down or living in a place where there's really steep climbs.
[00:16:22] And you're looking to just go straight up the hill, but for sure, we recognize that there's space in the middle of it. And for us, the one by experience is really what makes it makes the most sense on a gravel bike, where you're just looking to keep things clean and simple and straightforward.
[00:16:40] Maybe he's got a dropper posts on your bag too. That's a whole lot of thing, different systems that you're managing on the bike and for the gravel rider, the one bike is a really good solution a week, but we saw that gap in between the 10 36 and the 10 15. We knew that there were writers who spend time in the mountains and need range, but also spent a lot of time on the tarmac and the tight gear steps.
[00:17:04] And that's what brought us to this. 10 44 cassette and as well as a derailer that goes along with it and allows you to have a one by specific trailer, which will shift that 10 44. And we're offering that trailer hat red force as well as rival. So you can get in all three of those access price points and really be able to complete your experience from pavement to growl.
[00:17:31] Craig Dalton: Gotcha. So these ones with the explore moniker on it are exclusively one by correct. They
[00:17:38] Chris Mandell: are exclusively one by, and a good way to think about that is when you're developing a derailer, you've got to optimize it for the cassette that it's running across. And then like how much chain it needs to take up.
[00:17:50] So when you have a front derailleur system, you've got to think about the chainring moving between two pretty big sizes. So we changed the way we developed the cage and where we placed the pulleys. So it helps us provide a better shifting product and a lighter weight product. If we are able to divide those up a little bit.
[00:18:08] So for this derailleur, we did end up making it one by specific, and we specifically built it to work with a 10 44 cassette, but it does also shift a 10 36
[00:18:18] Craig Dalton: cassettes. Gotcha. And for clarity, you mentioned this before SRAM’s other group PO's are mix and match compatible. So for my friends like Jason at the Gravel Cyclist who rides to buy all the time, you've got a two by setup.
[00:18:35] That's totally suitable for the gravel market.
[00:18:38] Chris Mandell: Yep, exactly. Yeah. And if that rider wanted to switch to one by specific setup or maybe like dabble in it. Yeah. You could take those same controllers and you could add one by rear derailleur to them and they would work just fine. It would just be a matter of repairing it to the new derailleur.
[00:18:58] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's been interesting. The demo bike that you provided to me, which is a canyon Grizl, we've set up with a mullet setup. And while I've been on SRAM on my personal bike for many years, this was the first access bike that I've had for a prolonged period of time. So it was fascinating to play around with the app pair, the different things that were on the bike in the app, and just understand that system a little bit more.
[00:19:24] Chris Mandell: Yeah. And it seemed like it was pretty straight forward and working pretty easily for you. And that's really what we're going for with this, like we want to make this as user-friendly and. It just things like the shift log logic, like it's very easy for you to understand in your brain.
[00:19:39] Oh, I pushed the left shifter to get the chain to move left forward on the cassette. And I pushed the right shifter to get it to move right on that cassette and all those little details and all that little, like ease of use stuff adds up to a better experience for everyone in the channel, from the person who's ending up riding the bike to the bike shop and setting it up.
[00:19:59] Craig Dalton: Yeah, for sure. And the fact that, and we'll get into the dropper post later, but the fact that the dropper post and the rear derailleur are using the same battery just gives you that comfort. Should you ever get caught out of pocket? You can swap the battery around and give power to the rear derailleur and take it away from your dropper posts, for example.
[00:20:17] Chris Mandell: Yep. Yeah. And that's a perfect example. I actually, probably because I was driving around with my bike on my car the other day I had to do that exact thing and it was totally fine. Took two seconds and I was back out on my bike and riding again. And to, like the batteries are real small.
[00:20:33] And so you can actually just get an extra one and throw it in your pocket.
[00:20:36] Craig Dalton: The other fun thing you told me, that was a mixed sense, but I didn't realize it right off the bat was that there's a mini accelerometer in all the componentry, so that it wakes up essentially when it's, when you're moving and goes to sleep if it's in your garage.
[00:20:54] Chris Mandell: Yeah, exactly. So the way all the access systems work is they add little, as you mentioned, little accelerometer in them and to save power they go to sleep, but they're like checking in and. When you grab your bike and, move it out of the stand or wherever you have it set, those components are able to wake up and immediately respond to whatever you're trying to get them to do.
[00:21:15] And that allows us to save a lot of battery life so that you're not wasting battery when the bike is just sitting in the garage, but also allows us to immediately respond to your needs as a rider.
[00:21:24] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And the additional pro tip you shared with me is if you've got it on the back or top of your car, take the battery out, put the little safe plastic piece in there.
[00:21:33] So it doesn't think it's awake for your six hour drive to a ride.
[00:21:37] Chris Mandell: Yep. Yeah, definitely take that step.
[00:21:41] Craig Dalton: You mentioned. The sort of mixed compatibility of explore group a with everything else. And I definitely appreciate it as running the mullet setups and having some components from the mountain bike side of your lineup, everything visually works together.
[00:21:56] There's no standing out of the explore versus the mountain bike side of things.
[00:22:02] Chris Mandell: Yeah. So we definitely feel like the full suite of products that we offer should all be able to come together and work cross-functionally as much as they can. And one thing you'll notice on all of the explore products is the explore.
[00:22:18] Call-out is pretty small and pretty subtle. And I think your bike is a good example of that is a gravel bike. It doesn't feature the 10 44 cassette. For you attend 50 was a better solution, but you could actually have a 10 44 set up for that bike and very easily just remove the cassette and the derailer and the chain, and then add a 10 44 set up to it with the trailer and the chain and the cassette, and then repair your shifters and go out and ride that 10 44 setup.
[00:22:51] Craig Dalton: What's the difference between the chains in those two setups?
[00:22:56] Chris Mandell: So the Explorer 10 44 drive trains use the flat top chain that we have on the roadside. And then the mullet drive train that you're using the 10 50 and the Eagle rear derailer use a standard 12 speed.
[00:23:10] Craig Dalton: Gotcha. And not to get too much in the weeds, but I was curious about this the way SRAM’s, what are referred to as a magic link works to put the chain together.
[00:23:19] Is it true that you can pretty easily pop those off and take the chain out?
[00:23:25] Chris Mandell: Yeah. So you can pop those off and take the chain out. The one thing to keep in mind with that is we don't recommend that you reuse that quickly. And the reason we don't is if it's a press fit and that's what holds it together.
[00:23:36] And when you break that link, you will, you do wear that pressed it up a little bit. So we don't recommend that you reuse that quick link, but it is like a really easy way to be able to take your drive, train apart without making your change shorter or anything like that. And in fact, park tool and a few other tool manufacturers actually make a tool that's specifically designed to, install the quick link, but also on installed the quick.
[00:24:01] Craig Dalton: Ooh, I might have to take a look at those I, one of the things that tripped me out, I was on a trip with some of the guys from VeloNews and saw that one of them was riding access and in his bike bag, he had taken the chain off and just remove the derailer. And it was just, he, in fact, he traveled with the derailer in a separate bag, which was just a trip to me when he pulled it out of the box and was putting back all together.
[00:24:24] And it's just such a handy, protective way of transporting the bike.
[00:24:30] Chris Mandell: Yeah, totally. I do the exact same thing when I travel, just because, even with a mountain bike, flying with a mountain bike that derailleurs like in a vulnerable place and those bike bags, and it's not supported by the rest of the system.
[00:24:42] And I actually do the same thing and take it off the ticket off the bike. And, I'm able to put it in inside of a bag somewhere else inside of my bike bag, which is a great way to.
[00:24:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah let's get let's shift gears and let's start boiling some of the listeners blood by talking about dropper posts and suspension.
[00:25:01] Let's start with the dropper posts.
[00:25:04] Chris Mandell: One, one not to jump ahead to our not to pull us back. But one thing I do want to mention really quickly is we will we, in addition to the 10 44 cassette and the 10 44 specific red forest and rivalry trailers that we'll offer for, with XPLR we will also offer a one by specific cranks.
[00:25:26] So same crank arms at the red enforce and rival level, but it has a new lighter weight single ring, and it's available on 38 through 46 sizes. So yeah, just quick touch that
[00:25:37] Craig Dalton: way, jumping in the suspension. Yeah. So let's talk about the access reverb dropper seat.
[00:25:47] Yeah, so draw, look, this is no surprise to anybody who listens to this podcast. I am pro dropper all the time for almost every situation.
[00:25:59] Chris Mandell: And what do you feel the dropper gives you when you're out riding your bike
[00:26:07] Craig Dalton: when I'm descending and this descending is not just oh, I know I'm going to be bombing downhill for 25 minutes.
[00:26:13] It's basically anytime I'm going downhill, being able to lower the saddle ever so slightly and create a greater area of space in my, underneath my undercarriage between my undercarriage and the saddle enables me to corner with greater confidence. Pretty much do everything with greater confidence.
[00:26:35] Chris Mandell: Yeah.
[00:26:36] Yeah. And that's the same. That we would, when we would speak to what you get out of a dropper post on the mountain bike side of things it's the same situation because you're able to move wherever you need to move from the front of the bike, to the back of the bike without being obstructed by your seat post or your saddle rather lends a huge amount of control to you because you can waste the front tire as you need to, you can weight the rear tire as you need to without worrying about catching yourself on the satellite as you're making those motions.
[00:27:08] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And I like, go ahead, Chris,
[00:27:14] Chris Mandell: you got it.
[00:27:15] Craig Dalton: When when I talk about using the dropper post, I'm talking about it in not the extreme mountain biking style stuff exclusively. I use it all the time. So descending on the road, like I think the advantages are there. When you do get into the hectic stuff and a local rider here in Southern California tipped me off to this trail called horse drop, which I finally hit the other day.
[00:27:39] And as the name would dictate, there was a bunch of drop-offs. It was truly a hectic trail for a gravel bike, but a ton of fun. And there's no way, I shouldn't say there's no way it would be super challenging to do those drops with your saddle fully extended and even using the 50 millimeter drop AXS.
[00:27:59] REVERB I had, it was plenty of space to get the bike underneath me and allow it to come up to me as I was handling those drop-offs.
[00:28:10] Chris Mandell: Yeah, that makes total sense to me. And I think circling back to even in less extreme terrain, it still makes a huge difference. Like you imagine hitting the apex of a road corner.
[00:28:23] You're going to want to be in a different position on your bike versus the way you entered the corner. You have to move your center of gravity and your body weight around to get the bike, to track well through a corner. And like any flat corner on a gravel bike where you're trying to use a little bit of subtle body English to move the bike through the turn.
[00:28:45] If you have to, all of a sudden, move from the front of the bike, to the back of the bike and then raise your center of gravity up to move your body up and over your saddle, that's going to disrupt your grip on the ground. And I think it's one of the advantages of having a dropper
[00:29:00] Craig Dalton: posts.
[00:29:01] Yeah, a hundred percent. I think in my mind, it's the number one upgrade in terms of how it will affect your performance on the bike that anybody can do. So this post, obviously rock shock has been making. Dropper posts for the mountain bike sizes for a long time and has a full range there. This REVERB AXS XPLR is in the 27 2 millimeter diameter.
[00:29:24] It comes in 400 millimeter lens as well as three 50, the three 50 has a 50 millimeter drop. And I think the 400 has a 75 millimeter drop that. All correct, Chris?
[00:29:35] Chris Mandell: Yeah. The 400 is actually available also in the 50 millimeter drop. So you can get the 400 either in 75 or 15.
[00:29:43] Craig Dalton: Gotcha. And how did you guys decide on those length drops as being what you want it to be?
[00:29:49] Chris Mandell: Yeah, that, that really came from riding these types of bikes around and thinking about how much they needed and then listening to rider feedback on how much they thought they needed. So it really was those two sides of us doing our own work internally. And then listening to rider feedback on it.
[00:30:12] And I think too, before we already get too close to the tech side of things and, I think we just had a really great conversation on the advantage of a C post. I can go from top out to bottom out. When we were looking at the gravel market and thinking about what we needed to bring to the table, we did not think it was enough just to make a post that dropped, like for sure that was going to be an advantage for the gravel rider.
[00:30:37] But we recognized that it was a different use case and we needed to bring more to the table to get a gravel rider, to understand the benefit of having a dropper post and want them to take that leap. And so one of the things that we did with is we actually Came up with a new internal design which allows us to have what we call active ride for anywhere from top out to when the seat post achieves full travel.
[00:31:06] So that means like if you move the seat post and a millimeter, the seat post is giving you what we call active ride, which is a bit of compliance in the post so that the rider is able to stay seated through rough terrain and continue paddling without having to stand up and get their butt off the saddle.
[00:31:26] So at full top out the post is rock solid, but anywhere after full top out the C post features active ride. And that is one of the things that we see as a huge advantage to a gravel rider. Who's going to spend a ton of time paddling across rough terrain, needing to stay on the gas and needing their butts to stay on.
[00:31:49] Yeah,
[00:31:49] Craig Dalton: that's super thoughtful element of the design. If you think about riding across stutter bumps or anything where you're going to be needing to peddle being on the saddle, just being able to take it down a millimeter, which is likely what you'd like. Anyway, you get some advantage out of having a little bit more space there to have that sort of suppleness built in is gotta pay dividends over longer rides.
[00:32:14] Chris Mandell: Totally. Yeah. One of the, one of the initial test riders for this post actually set his, see post height a little bit too high, and then he would just move the CBOs into the travel so that he was always riding in the active ride position, which is a great way to do it for me personally. I do having the, from top out and we think a lot of writers are going to want that.
[00:32:34] So we actually, like just with the CBOs, you get to have your cake and eat it too.
[00:32:38] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. I think that for me, my setup's always been, I'm probably like that rider and yeah. My I set my droppers up slightly higher, maybe ever so slightly. So it feels comfortable early on in the day, but oftentimes I find myself running it a little bit lower as a more fatigued or just cruising home at the end of the day.
[00:32:58] Chris Mandell: Yeah. I totally sad for me. One of the other things that I've really enjoyed about having a dropper post on a bike too, is a gravel bike is just like ease of getting on and off the bike because you do end up having to get off your gravel bike in difficult terrain sometimes. And it's helpful to be able to like, get the seat down before you finally step off the bike.
[00:33:20] Craig Dalton: Totally agree with you there. And for clarity for the listener, this is an access product, which means that it has a wireless activation to it.
[00:33:29] Chris Mandell: Yep. Yeah. So this lives in our active ecosystem. So again, it uses the same battery as the drive trains. We were just talking about. And uses the same communication protocol.
[00:33:40] One of the things that's huge advantage of that is that it's, we leave it open to the end user in terms of how they want to activate the system. So you can use a standard reverb access shifter on a flat bar setup to activate this seat post on a drop bar setup, you can use double click on the sh on the road shifters to do that.
[00:34:05] And then if you have force or red shifters, you can get one of our blips or multiplex and plug that into your shifter and then use that to control your dropper posts. And then lastly, you can also get a blood box and plug a multi-client or a blip into that, and then use the blip blocks to flip the box, to control the seat post.
[00:34:28] So there's a ton of options in terms of how you interact with a post. Craig, I think you have double tap on your bike right now. Correct?
[00:34:40] Craig Dalton: Yup. Yeah. And it's, it's interesting. I was laughing with you the other day that I found that I actually do have scenarios where I'm activating the dropper post with one hand, which seemed crazy.
[00:34:50] Wow. We were talking about it, but I was out on the bike again yesterday. And it's oftentimes where I am. I'd be grabbing a sip of water while, beginning to start a downhill, not a, on a fire road or something. And then I found myself historically with my other SRAM bike where it's cable activated, I would swing the left lever and drop my post in anticipation for putting the bottle down and hitting it on the descent.
[00:35:15] So it's funny to get used to that. So I am interested in trying the blip set up and I do think it's interesting that the blip box exists. So if you're a writer that maybe not be, is not on an access group oh. Today on your bike, but is looking forward. I think. Investing in this product and just getting the blip box so you can control it on any bike that does not have electronic shifting is a good future proof system and investment because when you do upgrade to the access shifters, you can easily repair it and remove the blip box from the scenario.
[00:35:51] Chris Mandell: Yeah, totally super good solution. And it's the flexibility that we're given through access.
[00:35:58] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Any more comments on the dropper posts that you wanted to relay to the listener?
[00:36:04] Chris Mandell: Yeah. Yeah. I think the last thing I would touch on there is obviously, we hit on it's available in 50 and 75 millimeters of travel.
[00:36:12] And then three 50 and 400 millimeter lengths. One of the other things too, to keep in mind with that C post is that the rail clamps are compatible. I don't know a meter or standard rounds or oval seven by nine. And then there is a separate clamp available for seven by 10. So we have all of the rail configurations covered in that oral as well.
[00:36:34] Gotcha. Pretty excited for the CBOs to get out there and people will be trying it.
[00:36:38] Craig Dalton: Yeah, for sure. You ready to make people really mad?
[00:36:43] Chris Mandell: Yeah.
[00:36:45] Craig Dalton: So RockShox is introducing their Rudy explore suspension fork for gravel bikes today.
[00:36:51] Chris Mandell: And I think, it's interesting making people mad cause I think it's also good. I think this is going to expire a lot of people too, if we go back to the origins of mountain biking, there was some hesitation and even moving to suspension in the first place on a mountain bike and.
[00:37:05] We kinda know exactly how that ended up not suspension is the name of the game on a mountain bike these days. And I think, from RockShox perspective and from where we're coming to it, we look at any time a bike is getting off-road or even on a rough road as an opportunity for suspension to play a role and to really allow for more comfort and control and traction, which at the end of the day can equate to more speed or can equate to more fun.
[00:37:37] And I think, we're all really riding our bikes at the end of the day to have more fun. However, you slice it's on me winning a race. That's what it means, but it means you need to go faster. So from the RockShox perspective, we looked at that and that was really what drove us to develop this part.
[00:37:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's clearly a natural place for part of the market to go. And I think you and I would be the first people to state that it's just part of the market, just as we've seen a trend towards bigger and bigger tires, wider handlebars, all these different configurations that riders around the world are discovering to customize these gravel bikes for their local terrain.
[00:38:18] No one will sit here and say that bigger tires, wider handlebars suspension forks are for everybody. There's certainly vast parts of the country and world that riding without a suspension fork. And in fact, riding a glorified road bike is totally suitable for the gravel in your backyard, but as someone who rides mostly in Marine county or here in Southern California in the Santa Monica mountains, like I'm really embracing this product and seeing some huge advantages, just five or six rides into.
[00:38:54] Chris Mandell: Yeah. From our side, we don't think there's a wrong way to gravel every time someone's getting on their bike and taking it from tarmac to gravel, to single track, and then back onto the tarmac, like that's their experience. And as a components manufacturer, what we're really looking to provide users with is the ability to tune their experience.
[00:39:22] So the best that fits what they're trying to do and what's fit their needs. I think one of the things that's really interesting is with, and it's it's not totally unique to grab the gravel space, but it is like an interesting thing that's like pretty pure in the gravel side of things is you almost really build your bike.
[00:39:39] You can build your bike really to you. Where you're lacking. So if you do you, aren't a good defender, but you're a great climber, that current for today, like that would point you to putting much bigger tires on your bike and trying to get more traction and get more control and a dissent just by, by putting bigger tires on your bike.
[00:40:00] After today, that rider is able to go back to a smaller tire and use suspension and use a dropper post to get a lot more control in those situations where they feel anxious, because they don't necessarily have the confidence to, to be taking their bike down, down horse drops or whatever it is but using suspension and using a dropper post is another way to get that control back into the writer's hand and regain calm.
[00:40:30] Yeah,
[00:40:30] Craig Dalton: exactly. I feel like I, the more and more that I advise people on how to get, how to purchase a bike and how to think about what gravel bike makes sense to them. There's all these levers that you're pulling. And it comes down to where you're riding, as you said, what your comfort level is and descents.
[00:40:46] I can't tell you how many people I see out there who just are exceptional going uphill, but the moment they go downhill, they start to get terrified and really tense up and, white knuckle, the handlebar, and really have a bad experience on the bike. Whereas adding some elements of suspension, whether it be this fork or larger tires or suspension stem, like all of these things help alleviate some of those challenges, if that's where you're deficient as a cyclist.
[00:41:14] Chris Mandell: Absolutely. And the Rudy. So the fork we're bringing is part of the Explorer product line is called the Rudy. And it really is. Bill with the gravel cyclist in mind in terms of providing more grip, getting more control into the rider's hands and allowing the rider to save their body for later in the ride and for pedaling and providing much more control and steering confidence in Russ stuff.
[00:41:46] But honestly, even just bombing the regular tarmac road in America, you're going to get a better connected front tire to the ground and you're going to be able to carry more speed through that.
[00:41:58] Craig Dalton: Yeah. One thing I can say, and this is probably the least controversial thing I'll say all day is unequivocally with this fork on your bike, you can go down a hill faster.
[00:42:07] So if you think of yourself as a six out of 10, in terms of descending skills, I think you've automatically bumped yourself up to a 7.5.
[00:42:17] Chris Mandell: Yeah, that's great. I love him.
[00:42:19] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And then I would say that, I did play around a lot with the lockout. Totally bombed, totally locked in. So if I was out on the road with this fork it's pretty easy to reach down.
[00:42:29] I think just because of the geometry of gravel bikes, it was actually easier to reach down and reach the lockout lever than it was on the mountain bikes that I've written recently. And very easy, obviously to swing it back the other way I tended to climb off-road with it open because I've found that having the tire just be able to roll over the things that were coming in front of me was advantageous even on the climbing.
[00:42:52] And I, I did not feel like I was losing a lot to set the stage for the listener. We're talking about 30 or 40 millimeter trout as the travel options in terms of what this fork provides today and tire clearance up to a 700 by 50.
[00:43:10] Chris Mandell: Yeah. So that's a good jumping off point to talk through some of the spec details on this fork.
[00:43:16] So as you mentioned, 30 or 40 millimeters of travel is an air spring. And as an air spring that was specifically developed for the Rudy. And our vision with this air spring was to keep this air spring really supple and sensitive off the top so that the writer's hands felt good on the bars. And they were able to have good traction.
[00:43:36] We also knew that we didn't want to have it bottoming out harshly at any point during the ride experience. So there's a big bottom out bumper in this fork, which catches it in the second half of the travel and really provides a lot of control as you're going towards Baltimore. The other, another feature that's really specific to this gravel and I think shows how much attention we were paying to the needs of the gravel road.
[00:44:04] And we've got two different levels of vendor compatibility. So we have a short fender that we make and sell that bolt-on with three bolts to the arch of the lower leg. And then the fork features threaded holes at the bottom of the lower leg, which allow for standard full coverage vendors to Mount onto this fork as well.
[00:44:28] And so no fender, a short fender or for the winter riders, full coverage fenders. We really tuned that in for the gravel experience.
[00:44:38] Craig Dalton: Gotcha. And from a visual design perspective, I found the fork to be as subtle as it could be. Obviously it's got telescoping legs and it's, it is what it is.
[00:44:49] But I do find as you're glancing over the bike, it's not sticking out like a sore thumb in any way in my life.
[00:44:57] Chris Mandell: Yeah, that's great to hear. I think we spent a lot of time and effort in the work on this fork, refining it and making it as light and free moving as we possibly could so that it had the best suspension performance and the lightest weight package that we could get on it.
[00:45:15] But we did pay attention to the fact that it was going to end up on mostly carbon fiber gravel frames, and it needed to have a clean aesthetic to it. And so we did spend a good deal of time looking at the existing carbon forks were out there on the market today, knowing that we wanted to build this fork in a traditional magnesium, lower leg, aluminum, upper tubes and aluminum crown fashion, because that provided us with the most opportunities for re refining the overall performance with four, in terms of weight and sensitivity.
[00:45:49] And so we really spent a lot of time on that. So it's really great to hear that from you.
[00:45:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Awesome. And you've also got some OEM partners that are you're working with on this today, and I'm sure more will be dropping in the coming months.
[00:46:02] Chris Mandell: Yeah, totally. So we definitely have had a lot of OEM interest in uptake on this product, the canyon is one of those partners and they will have models dropping with this fork on it.
[00:46:14] And we're pretty excited that they're working with us on that front. There will be numerous other OEMs who are out there also dropping dropping bikes featuring this product and the full product line. Yeah. I
[00:46:25] Craig Dalton: think it's going to be important that riders are able to test and take a look at these products and getting them out there on more bikes and hopefully bikes that might be out there and demo fleets in the future will be great because I think it's it's counterintuitive.
[00:46:39] Bike performs with this fork on it. You think, you might think certainly if you have a mountain bike background that certain things are going to happen, you're going to experience certain things in a certain way, but it's clear that you guys had a ground up mentality to make this fork fit.
[00:46:54] Gravel bikes.
[00:46:55] Chris Mandell: Yeah. Yeah, no, totally. I think that's an important thing here. That the RockShox is invested in improving the rider's experience on the trail or on the road. And we know and understand that like when we build a cross country fork, that means that we need to be laser focused on the needs of the cross country riders.
[00:47:18] And then when we build a downhill race fork, we need to be laser focused on the needs of a downhill racer. And we brought that same approach when it came to developing the Rudy and developing the Rudy as a hyper-focused. Gravel product. It doesn't mean that we didn't pull from our experience on the cross-country and Enduro side of things.
[00:47:42] We definitely pulled from that heritage space, the damper. So the thing that provides control on compression and control on rebound in this fork is a scaled down gravel specific version of our race day damper, which you find in our Sid and sit FL cross-country race corks. And that was really, and we developed that damper.
[00:48:08] It was really a revolutionary, super lightweight, but very high performance in terms of the control it provided in open and then the way the lockout function. And we took that damper and we scaled it down. And tuned it to the needs of the gravel rider. Both in terms of the functionality for rebound and compression performance, but also just made that thing even lighter than it was before.
[00:48:32] And that's the hard work and the nitty gritty details that we put into the forklift, into the Rudy to make it specific for gravel.
[00:48:41] Craig Dalton: Nice. I want to revisit something you commented on earlier. Cause I do think it's important. It's going to be interesting to see over time. Just the idea of suspension forks, helping with overall rider fatigue, obviously as you're going down super technical stuff, like it's immediately apparent what that looks like, but I also think it's going to be interesting over time that as we see these forks on beneath riders who are tackling 200 mile gravel events, et cetera, To see how they're walking away from those rides in terms of how their upper body feels and how that equates to their overall time and experience on these long courses.
[00:49:23] Chris Mandell: Yeah, totally. I remember a conversation that I had with Meg Fisher he's an ambassador for us. And it was right when she found out that we were making this product and she was ecstatic on the phone. Cause she was telling me about how, in some of the longer gravel races she does, she ends up with blisters on her hand from the amount of like bumping and just like carnage.
[00:49:46] That's getting transmitted from the road up through the entire system, to, to our hands on the bike. And she was really excited about trying to Rudy because she felt like that this is a way that she can isolate our hands and the rest of her body from those rough vibrations. Even on just a gravel road, race scenario.
[00:50:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. Now it's going to be interesting. Right. And I, I'm always encouraging event organizers to add more sort of off-road technicality to their courses. Cause I just think it becomes more interesting when you see writers of different disciplines excelling in the events. I'm always a fan of the mountain bike background guys and girls doing well in these gravel races because of their technical skills, because I think they should be rewarded and course designers should continue to push those limits.
[00:50:39] So I do think it's going to be super fascinating to see when we start seeing these Rudy forks underneath riders and who they are, are they elite athletes trying to gain a competitive advantage on a particular course? Or are they the rank and file athlete who is just looking to have a more pleasurable experience and less fatiguing experience over these long runs?
[00:51:03] Chris Mandell: Yeah. I think without a doubt, you're going to see all of that. This, what this means for a rider is less body fatigue because you have less energy coming up from the road into the rider and you have more control as a rider. Your tire is going to be stuck to the ground more often. And that increase in control will give the rider more confidence and enable them to have more fun on their ride and allow them to push harder, allow them to go faster.
[00:51:31] If they want to go faster or have more fun that the speed that they're going. And then the other thing, and I touched on this a little bit in the last one, but like more traction means that it's going to the bike is going to predict or is going to handle it in a more predictable fashion. And you are going to know more often than not where the front tire is.
[00:51:54] You're going to be able to get it to where you're going. And you actually touched on earlier. Like obviously that plays a role in the sense, but even on, challenging climbs being able to keep your front wheel exactly where you want it to be is pretty important. And this fork allows for that, even on the Quan,
[00:52:12] Craig Dalton: the final area I wanted to explore with you is just the use and sale of this fork in the aftermarket.
[00:52:20] So you've mentioned a number of companies are building kind of ground up designs around this fork, but what about the many listeners who have a bike that was designed prior to this date and time, and prior to the knowledge of the Rudy fork existing, how should they think about the changes in geometry they might experience when running one of these forks?
[00:52:42] Chris Mandell: Yeah, totally. Just re I'll run through a couple they, aftermarket detailed side of things. So as you mentioned, it will be available in 30 or 40 millimeter. The Rudy fork will be available in 30 or 40 millimeters of travel. It will come in 45 offset. The come in two different colorways that will come in like a gloss black or what we call quicksand, which is which is a tan colored product that fits with our overall explore product line.
[00:53:10] So what do you want to consider as you're looking to upgrade your existing bike with this fork is in most cases, it probably will resolve and that increase in the axle, the crown.
[00:53:24] That is something we want to watch out for, but it's something, the thing that we think is actually a benefit. Gravel bikes today are built around the idea that you're going to be changing your tires around. You're going to be, maybe trying six 50 and then, or using 700.
[00:53:40] So there's a whole lot of flexibility inside of the existing gravel frame. And there may be a result in an increase in actual crown versus the rigid fork that you have on your bike today. But in our testing so far, what we've seen is people appreciate that and the handling of the bike because of the added suspension element improved versus a rigid fork on the bike.
[00:54:04] You do want to check with your manufacturer to make sure that their warranty covers having a suspension product to the frame. That's a good first step to do, but really at the end of the day, It's a matter of you decided that suspension is a good path for you. Riding out on an existing demo bike or taking the plunge and adding it to your friend it's available in and 1.5, our inch and a taper to 1.5.
[00:54:29] So you're looking at needing to have that head tube on your
[00:54:32] Craig Dalton: bike as well. One of the things that we had discussed offline was, in my particular case, I tend to run, I couldn't say off the top of my head, but a fair number of spacers underneath my headset. And as this fork will naturally lift my head to about higher.
[00:54:48] The very on-point suggestion you made was if you take those spacers out and slam the stem lower down in that stack, all of a sudden you mitigate some of the rise in handlebar position.
[00:55:03] Chris Mandell: Yeah, totally. And that's a really easy one to do, you just take it. The actual, the crown of your existing for today and subtract the actual, the crown of this fork.
[00:55:12] And that's how many space or, whatever that number is. It's 10 millimeters. You just, move 10 millimeters of spacer from underneath your stem to above your stone.
[00:55:21] Craig Dalton: Yeah. That I think on my personal ride that would effectively be completely possible. And I think that's interesting.
[00:55:30] And I think the point around, the changes in handling being pretty subtle, it's worth noting, but it also is worth noting that, your riders have not really commented much on the changes in geometry, on the bike.
[00:55:44] Chris Mandell: Totally. And I think, another important aspect of that is keep in mind, like these gravel bikes are built with a lot of this in mind.
[00:55:51] We, I run 37 C tires all the way up to 45 C I have run all the way up to 45 C tires. The same gravel bike, so a lot of these bikes you're switching from like pretty big changes entire sizes. And that's what the bikes were built to accommodate. And it's it's no different on the fork side of things.
[00:56:11] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:56:12] Craig Dalton: And anything else on the fork that you wanted to share, Chris?
[00:56:16] Chris Mandell: I think that covers it pretty well. You made the point about 700 by 50 being the tire clearance. And I think we've touched a lot of the points. I'm really excited for the Rudy. And I think it's going to be a, I think it's going to Herald the new age in the gravel experience.
[00:56:30] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I share that enthusiasm. I think it's good for the market. I think there's going to be a lot of debate online about the existence of this product and what it means, but I guarantee that over time, People are going to see the advantages of a product like this. And we're going to see more and more bikes come straight out of the factory with suspension built into them because the advantages are super high for a lot of different types of riders in the gravel market.
[00:57:00] Chris Mandell: Absolutely. And even with this product out there, like not every bike is going to end up with a Rudy on it, but the bikes that do end up with a Rudy on it is going to open a bunch of doors to a rider that would have been shot previously. So I think, there's no wrong way to gravel. And if this is something that makes sense to you as a rider, because you have the defense is a place that you struggle or on longer rides your stand start to hurt, or you just want to be able to.
[00:57:29] Keep up with your friends a little bit better or drop your friends in certain instances, this is a great great way to have a little bit of fun on your, a little more fun on your gravel bike and add a little bit of capability. And, we didn't, I touched on this a little bit, but this is one of those things that can allow you to run a smaller, lighter tire because you don't need to rely on the tire as much as you were previously and what other doors can moving and trying suspension unlocked for you.
[00:57:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I had that in the back of my head, cause we had talked about that earlier and I hesitated to open yet another can of worms around tire sizes, but point well taken like all these advances in technology. Whether it's the fork that dropper posts, et cetera, they're all changing things slightly and changing the considerations for any individual rider says, you said what might have driven me to a 50 millimeter tire previously, I may be able to draw back on that because I don't need the suspension elements of the fork, all sorry of the tire.
[00:58:27] All of a sudden I'm getting that in the fork. So it's yet another thing as we've talked about time and time again, there's this long spectrum. And I think it can, it's even getting even longer today between a road pro plus style of gravel bike and something that's very, off-road, iSTYLE gravel bike.
[00:58:44] There's not a definitive solution. That is the best for everybody across the world. But to your point, very early on in this conversation, SRAM RockShox zips. You're trying to be there for all those riders and give them a wealth of compatible componentry to build the rigs that are going to make them stoked to ride.
[00:59:09] Chris Mandell: Exactly. Yeah. I, we are cyclists at strand and we are having the same writing experiences and want to have the same range of experiences. And you can just see that easily from our locations. The team in Chicago has thoughts. The team in Colorado Springs has thoughts. The team in San Luis Obispo has thought the team in Vancouver, British Columbia has thoughts.
[00:59:30] The team in Taiwan has thoughts the team in Germany, out of Sox and all those come together and really push us to make products that allow writers to have full breadth of experience.
[00:59:42] Craig Dalton: Chris, thank you so much for all the time. Congrats on the explore launch. Super excited to get this out.
[00:59:48] Chris Mandell: Thank you so much for the time.
[00:59:49] And I'm really excited to hear more about your rad experience on that bike.
[00:59:54] Craig Dalton: Big, thanks for Chris for that long detailed conversation about the new XPLR series from SRAM, super excited about what they're bringing to the table.
[01:00:03] Natural. I'm particularly excited about the suspension fork.
[01:00:07] To be an exceptional product for some. for everyone, but I think it's going.
[01:00:14] And I'm confident it's going to continue pushing the gravel industry forward.
[01:00:18] As always thank you for your support of the podcast. Dot or even become a member. ride to make a one-time contribution. www.buymeacoffee.com/thegravelride www.theridership.com. I t's a free global cycling community for adventure and gravel cyclists. Deals. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
[01:00:52]
This week we sit down with Nicolas Serrano from Colombia's Scarab Cycles. This episode was recorded at the 2021 Enve builder round up. We learn about the brands origins, ethos and manufacturing process. This episode is presented by ENVE.
Scarab Cycles Instagram and Website
Join The Ridership:
Automated transcription (please excuse the typos):
SCARAB_Nicolas
Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton.
[00:00:06]This week on the podcast. We welcome Nicolas Serrano from Scarab cycles in Columbia. I met Nicolas at the envy builder Roundup earlier this year and
[00:00:16]Was super impressed with the bike. They brought to the Roundup, the paint job, and even more impressed once I learned the story behind scarab cycles.
[00:00:24]This episode is brought to you by our friends at ENVE composites.
[00:00:27]ENVE has been a huge supporter of the gravel industry producing
[00:00:30]Products since the inception of this type of riding. Up of exceptionally quality. their seat posts. And of course their lineup
[00:00:39]Of gravel wheel sets. Envy across all social media channels.
[00:00:44] And check out envy.com for a dealer locator. I know it's always great to go into your local bike retailer and get your hands on these products and even better yet,
[00:00:53] Maybe getting out on a test stride on some of these components.
[00:00:57]Out to all the new members from www.buymeacoffee.com/thegravelride.
[00:01:05]
[00:01:05]It means a ton to me that you've selected to support me with your dollars memberships, start at $5 a month. So big, thanks to John Rankin.
[00:01:14]Two. Nicolas Marzano, high Plains, drifter mark S just a few of the most recent members to the buy me a coffee.com program.
[00:01:24]And further, thank you to the one-time contributors.
[00:01:28]With that said let's dive right in to my interview
[00:01:31] Nicolas: [00:01:31] hey, it's Nicolas from Scarab cycles from Columbia,
[00:01:34] Craig Dalton: [00:01:35] Welcome to the show.
[00:01:36] Nicolas: [00:01:36] Hey, thanks. Thanks for inviting us. And we're pretty happy to be here.
[00:01:40] Craig Dalton: [00:01:40] And I'm pretty excited to talk about that bike. I just saw downstairs here at the NV Roundup.
[00:01:45] It's totally beautiful. But before we get into that, why don't you just tell us a little bit about your background and what led to the formation of the company and a little bit about the company?
[00:01:55] Nicolas: [00:01:55] Of course. So, as carb cycles has started back in the day, six years ago our founder Santiago Toto, who started the company with a local frame builder, it used to have another name before.
[00:02:05]And then in migrated toward nowadays is described cycles in as the name, it started in 2018 with the name script cycles, but we've been building bikes since 2000 16, more or less. And tell us
[00:02:17] Craig Dalton: [00:02:17] about where the company
[00:02:18] Nicolas: [00:02:18] is located. So our company slug is based in in the outskirts of managing it's Antioquia it's a more or less 30 minutes from aging, which is the second biggest city in Colombia .
[00:02:29] Craig Dalton: [00:02:29] And does Columbia have a large bike building scene?
[00:02:33]Nicolas: [00:02:33] Not a bike building scene, but it's home of the world known as kind of house, which is basically the we explored world-class cyclist. So we've been there's not a strong bike building scene. There's couple of our one or two or three frame builders in the country.
[00:02:48] But mostly what we have in our country is Cyclists. There's a strong love for the sport. The bicycle itself, it's a very strong object or thing for the Colombian culture. So it's not only a way of transportation. It's a, it's not only a sport. It's just a way of life, a way of being, and it's an element, the bicycle that connects us all as Colombians, you can go to a road and meet you can be with us.
[00:03:12] With farm guy, a company CNO, which he's just training in his Sunday ride and you can actually be writing with a pro. So these two guys are going to have the same own time, and they're just like shredding their ass off a very high speed. Or you just can have on weekdays, a kid going from his very small town moving to a, another small town to go to school.
[00:03:32] So basically the bicycle is a very strong element in the Columbia.
[00:03:37] Craig Dalton: [00:03:37] That's awesome to hear football and soccer, obviously big sports as well. How would you rank cycling? I mean, obviously like with NARIC and Tanya going back five, six years and all the emerging Colombian superstars today, was that sort of the generation where cycling really took hold in the culture or did it, does it date back further than that?
[00:03:53] It
[00:03:53] Nicolas: [00:03:53] comes very, it comes back way that with a load, like when we started having a world-class cyclist . Going to two, two big races in Europe winning the winter. Spania for example, that's when we started like getting a name of a cycling and that's where. When they started starting calling us this kind of office, this climbing little box that goes up and up a hill without any problem he just is very good for claiming, so it go, it goes back to the eighties, nineties when everything started seventies, eighties, and nineties.
[00:04:23]But there has been a new hype since NATO containers, as you mentioned it since 2000 five eight but back before from that, it was we had another hype with, for example, cyclists, like Santiago taro, which was which was on our he was the Olympic champion for time trail, individual time trail.
[00:04:40] And then he won as well. The polka dot a Jersey and a tour de France. So there's a lot of history behind cycling, but nowadays I believe it's, as you asked at the beginning of the question if it was soccer or. I bet we're having a very good and strong hyper on cycling. Not only because of the results, but the pandemic has moved people towards this sport.
[00:05:02] So nowadays everyone in Columbia has a bicycle and it's riding around maybe four or five years ago. It was just like a couple of hundreds of people. Now it's thousands. The streets are packed with cyclists in all of the levels. Like you see very good cyclists, like pro classes. And amateur cyclists and like everyone's riding a bicycle from kids 10 years old to like people 60, 70, 80 years old, just sharing the road.
[00:05:27] It's amazing. It's crazy. And we also have another very good thing is that we, Columbia it's divided by three mountain ranges, so there's mountains everywhere. So there's 86 kilometer climbs old paved, which is called Algolia. There was this well, a hundred kilometer, gravel appeal rights, which is called for example,
[00:05:46] So you go from almost zero meters above sea level to 4,000, 200 meters above sea level. That's 12,000 feet. Incredible elevation just in one. Right? So there's many aspects, a little bit of history, a little bit of good results with NATO Cantana egg and Bernard and all those cyclists doing very good in the cycling scene.
[00:06:05] And of course the topography of a country and the culture, which has very deeply embedded the bicycle in its culture. So tell
[00:06:13] Craig Dalton: [00:06:13] me a little bit more about the brand and when the brand came together, what type of bikes were you intending to make? What types of materials were you using at the time?
[00:06:23] Nicolas: [00:06:23] Yeah, so we've always used we've always been fan or we're always been. Very happy with the results we can have with steel bikes. So we've always been using steel used to, we've always been using, for example, a Columbus steel, which is what we still use. Nowadays we're mixing a little bit doing some blends, for example, Columbus and or Colombian sand Delta Chi, which is an Italian manufacturer of steel as well.
[00:06:47]And when it started we, our first bikes were mainly meant to stay on tarmac, but giving the conditions of the country where 90% of our roads are secondary roads. That means it's a ground country. So it's basically a gravel paradise where we used to ride our road bikes in gravel conditions take into account that they were very good steel.
[00:07:06] There wasn't a problem with that. But then we started diving into the gravel section. And then our first model was born maybe three and a half year, four years ago. It was called MERITO. MERITO is a town that's located in in in one of the, in the central mountain range, which is called the
[00:07:22]So it's, it lays almost 4,000 meters above sea level. So it's the town that you can only get there by. So that was our first model. And then it evolved to where this town is located, which is a Panama, Panorama is an ecosystem. That's lies between 3000 meters, 3,200 meters above sea level to 4,200 meters above sea level.
[00:07:40] And that's basically the source of all of our water or Edric sources come from the Panamas. So it's a very fragile, yet unique ecosystem. You can only get there by secondary roads or gravel roads. So that's where our bike came from. It comes more, it comes out of function and then function follows form, which is why we create a little bit, a big, bigger tire clearance a little bit more of responsive wheel base a little bit longer to have more fun when you're going down.
[00:08:07] So then we had to do a little bit of twitches in the aspects of the frame. And then w Westwind the Paramo was board, which is our actual ground.
[00:08:16] Craig Dalton: [00:08:16] So the model name for the bike that I'll show in a picture and linked to you in the show notes, which model
[00:08:20] Nicolas: [00:08:20] is that? So that's the upper Buena, which is Santee likes to call it.
[00:08:24] It's a road bike with a track shoes, trekking shoes. So it's a road specific bike. Well, not, that's not a road specific bike. It's an old road bike, but it has the. Reactiveness the stiffness, the responsiveness, our road bike bad. It has tires. It can fit tires from 32 to 38 millimeters. So it's very good.
[00:08:44] If you're running on tarmac the time of ends, and then you want to go around for trails or a hard-packed gravel. You're going to have. For example, this morning, we did some of the trails with the guys in that bike. And it was perfect. Well, not the perfect bike for that condition, but we did it and it was fun.
[00:08:59]So that we have three models at the moment, which are our road bike which is called it's named after the longest climb in Columbia, longest paved climb in Columbia, which is 86 years. That's a road bike, a proper road bikes, TAFE fun, reactive there's this rim brake model, and then comes the in-betweener, which is the old road.
[00:09:18] It's a mix between road bike and grab a bike. So it's this in between, or that has a tight curious for from 32 to 38 millimeters. It's called. Which it's it means road in Spanish, in you know, an indigenous tongue in limitations language. So that's where Poona comes from and then comes to Panama, which is a proper gravel bike men for like proper backpacking, shredding killing, getting the decents going uphill.
[00:09:45]Everything you want, that's the undestructible bike. Let's
[00:09:48] Craig Dalton: [00:09:48] talk about the tire clearance on that particular
[00:09:50] Nicolas: [00:09:50] bike. Perfect. Yeah, that one, since all our bikes are custom made, it depends on what the client needs. It can be optimized either for 700 C 700 by 48, or it can be optimized for 6 50, 6, 50 by 50 millimeters.
[00:10:06] And depending on SIM, in some case, we run bigger. It depends on what the client wants. So there's, there comes some people with the specific requirements. Yeah. I want this. I'm going to fit six 50 bees by 55. We can manage to it. Or most of them like standards six, we recommended six 50 by 48. If they do
[00:10:23] Craig Dalton: [00:10:23] go to those larger sizes, 50.
[00:10:25] What type of modifications do you need to make to the frame in order to accommodate that kind of big tire on?
[00:10:30] Nicolas: [00:10:30] So that's basically the change stays a little bit more of about a white capability and we will upgrade to the NB envy adventure fork, which has a bigger tire clearance for the front and for the back.
[00:10:42] Will you just have a bigger space for the, in the chain stays for the
[00:10:45] Craig Dalton: [00:10:45] You may not know this figure off the top of your head, but what is the chain stay length turned out to be for a 50
[00:10:51] Nicolas: [00:10:51] ish fish? No, I'll tell you that. I'm not sure I kind of recall like the numbers for that specific geometry.
[00:10:56]But we usually have well, it depends on the customer. I rather have a short chain stays. It makes a little bit more of a fast bike and reactive by. Yeah.
[00:11:04] Craig Dalton: [00:11:04] Yeah. It's been something that I've been thinking about a lot lately because I just got a demo bike. Longer chain stays and the most sluggish.
[00:11:12] Yeah. I'm trying to internalize the personality of this new bike and understand it. So it's been really interesting for me and now I'm keying in on. That length when I'm talking to other builders, just to try to understand what are you building around? And obviously, as our listener knows, when you go to the big tires, there has to be some compromises.
[00:11:30] You need to make the room
[00:11:32] Nicolas: [00:11:32] somehow to make the room somehow. And that's that's the first button. That's one of the first questions we ask our clients, what are you going to use this bike for? But usually you don't have a right answer for that because I might be doing some really fast trails when I buy this bike.
[00:11:46] But then I discovered by. Or backpacking races across the world, or just I don't know, very long races or like very, I went to have something very comfortable with a bigger tire clearance, so it might change over the time but usually focus, always center on what the client needs and what you went and w and where do you want to take your bike to?
[00:12:02] Yeah.
[00:12:03] Craig Dalton: [00:12:03] Can you talk me through the beautiful paint job on the bike? We saw downstairs,
[00:12:06] Nicolas: [00:12:06] just amazing thing of our bike. First we're launching the Poona, which is the old road. And second, we're launching our new pain ship called humbler, which means jungle. And it's basically inspired in the Western part of the country. . We have a very deep jungle, which is called the Chaco and rainforest. And it's one of the most biodiverse was there by libraries, places on earth. It's home for lots of species found and flora. Many are endangered many and demic many are unique in that area. And there's just, there's just a couple of roads or basically one road that leads into the jungle.
[00:12:39] It's a 120 kilometer gravel ride. Very muddy. It depends on the time of the year you go. But usually it's very muddy because it's rains a lot. It's the place with most precipitation on earth, basically. So it's rain, it rains every single day. Wow. So when you're riding towards it, You just see a huge deep green sea, it just looks green and very steamy.
[00:13:01] You just see a big green shade. And were you sort of paling towards that? You start to discover there's a lot of detail and there's a lot of immensity into the jungle. And then you start to discover a lot of different trees. Lot of different leaves, a lot of different indigenous groups around walking.
[00:13:17] Maybe you don't see them, but if you look close enough, you see people that are absurd. There is somewhere hidden in the path or in the road. Same as animals. You, if you stop by at a waterfall to fill your bottle up, you might not look carefully enough to see there's a small, poisonous frog besides you.
[00:13:35]So you have to be very careful and look very deep into the forest and enjoy what you're seeing to be able to discover what the forest has to offer you. So basically that's a, it's a whole much to that Shaquan forest. And that's why when you look at the page you see a green by white bike with green panels, but if you look deep and close enough, you start discovering a little bit of animals flamingos here and there, turtles humbug whales, which do their mating season in this part of the world, in the Pacific ocean, the Columbia Pacific ocean in the Gulf of
[00:14:02]So basically that's where our inspiration came from that, for that paint job. It's a whole, much to that Shaquan, right?
[00:14:09] Craig Dalton: [00:14:09] It's absolutely gorgeous. And I think your description did do it some justice, but I'll put a photo up, please sign for people to see, because as you said, there's just a ton of intricate detail in there.
[00:14:20] Little things you discover when you get closer and closer. Whereas as you said, if you're, you know, 10 feet away and you just see this white bike with green panels, so it's incredibly well
[00:14:31] Nicolas: [00:14:31] executed. Exactly. That was the idea that was the exact idea. And that was what we felt when we were peddling towards.
[00:14:37] Chuck forest, who were like, wow, this is a huge green in mirrors. See you just see green. You not is between one tree and another. And as soon as you start going in, you're just like, wow, this leave is very different from this one. And there's this animal and this and that. And there's a lot of detail as soon as you get into it.
[00:14:55]So same when you look at the bike wide bike with green panels, and then when you look in, when dive in, there's a lot of detail behind it and that's one of our. One of the best things, that's kind of cycles that we focus on, not on the painting, on every detail. Everything we do in scrub cycles is done.
[00:15:12] In-house so painting is done. In-house the welding, all of the parts everything's done in-house so we have enough time to, to dedicate to every detail of the painting. So that's one of our crazy ones. We have some, of course, a more sober ones with basic colors. Nice finishes maths glossies with a basic lettering from scrub cycles, but that's one of our crazy details.
[00:15:36] Craig Dalton: [00:15:36] I love it. I love it. Chips. Yes. For the listeners who are getting excited about buying one of these bikes. Now, what does that process look like for a north American customer to work with you, to get one of these bikes built? Okay.
[00:15:47] Nicolas: [00:15:47] So basically we have a worldwide shipping. We have our shop in factory in Ethiopia, but we have of course shop as well.
[00:15:55] From Windstar shipping facility for worldwide orders. So if you happen to live in San Francisco and you want to order a bike, it's just drop us an email. We have actually a 18 week lead time and that's where all the process and the magic starts with an hi email quoting. And then we accommodate according to what you want, depending if you want a full bike or a frame set starts at 2,800 and full build start at 4,000.
[00:16:22] So depends on what you want. You can first select your model, and then we start to talk a little bit about what you need. What are you going to ride if you're living in San Francisco, what kind of grabbing writing are you going to do trails or are you going to do just a hardcore gravel or bike packing or long trips or just aggressive racing?
[00:16:39]The first four to five weeks to decide a little bit of a, about the geometry we present to you that you are meant to, and we both decide what's best for. Then comes the fun part or what I call the fun part, because it's the paint part. So you decide one of our paint, chimps seasoned paint chips.
[00:16:54] For example, it can be a humbler can be achiever, which is an another of the over crazy pain teams or one of our stock, normal pain shapes. You just think a little bit about the color pallette. We're sending some samples, some pictures of samples, then you decide the colors and then the process starts or in.
[00:17:10] For the fabrication in week 16, we get your bike ready. We ship it to Miami. And then from there, it ships to San Francisco
[00:17:17] Craig Dalton: [00:17:17] and with the customer, if they've ordered a full bike, will it get built up in Miami and then
[00:17:22] Nicolas: [00:17:22] disappear Miami? Yeah. And some assembled in Miami and then shipped very right to San Francisco.
[00:17:27] Yep. It's just out of the box. Just put the front wheel, put the handlebars and just run.
[00:17:33] Craig Dalton: [00:17:33] Awesome. Well, as you know, I've had the pleasure of seeing one up close in San Francisco, one of our local riders, Patricia.
[00:17:40] Nicolas: [00:17:40] She has a very amazing bike. This white with pink, a pinkish or yes, a bike it's.
[00:17:47] Craig Dalton: [00:17:47] Yeah, it's very stunning.
[00:17:48] So if you want to say hello, she's a listener. So you might
[00:17:50] Nicolas: [00:17:50] Patricia, we're glad to have you there in San Francisco. We're very happy that you're shredding our bike the proper way. So we're good to know that we have a happy side. Hi peas. It's corrupt cyclist in San Francisco. Yeah,
[00:18:02] Craig Dalton: [00:18:02] absolutely.
[00:18:02] Well, it goes, thank you so much for the overview. Congratulations on this bike here at the ENVE builder Roundup, it looks phenomenal. And can't wait to see more of them out
[00:18:10] Nicolas: [00:18:10] there on the trails. Great. Thanks for the invite to the gravel ride podcast. Keep, stay tuned for more upcoming podcasts about this show because it's been pretty amazing what they've got here.
[00:18:20] No doubt. And we're more than happy to help any, if anyone needs something about scrub cycles, we're more than happy to attend your inquiry. Awesome. Great. Thanks again. Okay, man. Thanks.
[00:18:29]Craig Dalton: [00:18:29] That was amazing to get to know Nicolas A. Little bit and a little bit more of the story behind Scarab Cycles. I remember getting introduced to riding in Columbia back in episode 75. When Matt, Katie was talking about some of the bike packing routes that he had developed in that beautiful country. And he just relayed so many great stories about the off-road terrain.
[00:18:52] The mountains and everything else about the Colombian experience. So to get to sit down with Nicolas here in the United States, when he was over for the ENVE builder, Roundup was a huge pleasure. Definitely, definitely, definitely go out and seek some pictures of what scarab cycles does with their bicycles.
[00:19:11] The paint jobs are exceptional. The quality of work, just a lot of dedicated craftsmanship under the hood there. Huge. Thanks to envy for continuing to support the podcast. It's been a pleasure interviewing all these builders and seeing the NV components highlighted. Across all these bicycles.
[00:19:32]If you are interested in supporting the show, sharing it with a friend is very much appreciated. Ratings and reviews are hugely helpful in the podcast game. And obviously visiting buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride is a direct way to financially support what I'm doing here at the podcast. If you want to get in touch.
[00:19:53] Please hit me up over at the ridership. If you're not already a member to this free global cycling community. Just visit www.attheridership.com for your free invitation. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
This week we sit down with Olympian Lily Williams who will represent the United States on the Women's Pursuit team. While track cycling is not our typical fare, Lily has a cyclocross background (and a maybe a gravel future). In addition to representing our country, Lily is the Communications Director of Bike Index.
Lily Williams Instagram
USA Cycling Olympic Track Schedule
Automated Full Episode Transcription (please excuse the typos):
Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton.
[00:00:10] This week on the podcast, we've got Olympian, Lily Williams, joining the show. Lily's got a bad-ass background as a cyclist particularly as a cyclocross racer after a career as a collegiate runner.
[00:00:24]Team. Lily races professionally on the road with the Rally Cycling,
[00:00:28]And caught the attention of USA cycling and was brought to Colorado Springs for some performance testing on the track. I'll let her explain what happened next but a pretty amazing journey from someone who just found cycling after college.
[00:00:41]Like many professional cyclists, Lily also holds down a full-time job, full disclosure. We work together at the nonprofit bike index. And we'll talk a little bit about that. And the mission bike index is on.
[00:00:54]Before we get started, I needed to thank this week sponsor Athletic Greens, who also happens to be a sponsor of USA cycling.
[00:01:04]Athletic greens is N S F certified for sport. Meaning they take their product seriously. Consistently testing and auditing it to ensure what's on the label is actually in the pouch. As you can imagine, that's critically important for Olympians and professional athletes and gives us average athletes the confidence to know what's going in the body.
[00:01:27]I'm actually drinking my post ride athletic grains right now, my personal way to prepare it. I like two big heaping scoops of ice, and then a heaping spoonful of Athletic Greens.
[00:01:39]Athletic Greens is a complex blend of 75 vitamins minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients. Athletic greens is green powder engineered to help fill the nutritional gaps in your diet. Their daily drink improves everyday performance by addressing the four pillars of health energy recovery gut health and immune support
[00:02:00]I've said it before. I'm a little bit embarrassed at times as to how poor my diet can slide when I get stressed out. But with athletic greens being packed with for recovery. Probiotics and
[00:02:12] Digestive enzymes for gut health, vitamin C and zinc
[00:02:17]For immune support, it's just an easy all-in-one solution to help your body meet its nutritional needs. And boy, I could use all the help I can get. My program, I'd take one scoop every morning, and then I'll typically do two glasses on days where I've depleted myself through a big gravel ride. It's keto, paleo vegan. Dairy-free and gluten-free. All in a drank with less than one gram of sugar that tastes great over ice .
[00:02:45]So, whether you're looking to boost your energy levels, support your immune system or address gut health. Now's the perfect time to try athletic greens for yourself. Simply visit athletic greens.com/the growl ride to claim my special offer today and receive free. K-12 wellness bundle with your first purchase.
[00:03:05] That's up to a one-year supply of vitamin D as an added value. When you try, they're delicious and comprehensive daily, all in one drink. You'd be hard pressed to find a more comprehensive nutritional bundle anywhere else. Again, that's athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. Would that business of supporting our sponsors behind us. Let's jump right in to my conversation with Olympian Lily Williams. lily. Welcome to the show.
[00:03:31]Lily Williams: [00:03:31] Hey Craig. Thanks for having me
[00:03:33]Craig Dalton: [00:03:33] Our weekly calls. Aren't enough , Lily and I work together at the nonprofit bike index.
[00:03:38] So we are in frequent communication.
[00:03:40]Lily Williams: [00:03:40] It's true, but nonetheless, I'm happy to be here.
[00:03:42] Craig Dalton: [00:03:42] And in the context of this conversation, huge congratulations for being selected to the Olympic team for the United States.
[00:03:49]Lily Williams: [00:03:49] Thank you. Yeah. So exciting. How many people have told me I'm fulfilling a dream and I'm just like, forget how
[00:03:56] cool it is.
[00:03:57] Craig Dalton: [00:03:57] I think it's absolutely amazing. And I'm one of those people who constantly feels the need to remind you what an amazing journey you've been on.
[00:04:04]Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate it. Thank you. For the
[00:04:08] listener. I want to be clear, unfortunately, this is not the Olympic gravel cycling team.
[00:04:12]Lily Williams: [00:04:12] Not yet, but what might
[00:04:15] Craig Dalton: [00:04:15] happen?
[00:04:15] This is the Olympic pursuit team on the track.
[00:04:19]Lily Williams: [00:04:19] Yes. Yeah. Which is about as far from a gravel race as you can get. But that doesn't mean I don't have a passion for all things off-road as well.
[00:04:27] Craig Dalton: [00:04:27] Is this true? And we will get to this Lilly. There is a tie into gravel cycling and dirt riding. For Lily. And we'll get to that.
[00:04:36] In fact, where I wanted to start the conversation. I know you were a division one runner in college and transitioned and went into grad school, found the bike, but why don't we start there on your journey about where you started riding the bike, what you started getting excited about. And then we have to, for the listener, figure out a way to show them how you ended up.
[00:04:56] Being on the Olympic track team of all things.
[00:04:58]Lily Williams: [00:04:58] Yeah. That might be worth some explaining. Yeah, so I started, I got my first bike as an adult, I think my sophomore year of undergrad. Maybe no, it was my freshman year of undergrad and I just had a bike that I was riding around campus. And then I was running track and cross country for my university.
[00:05:14] And anytime we had an off week, I would ride my bike around town. So I definitely really enjoyed. Riding the bike, didn't wear a helmet or flip flops. Wasn't a cyclist, just was a person, bobbing around getting to the grocery store. And then I moved to Chicago for graduate school.
[00:05:30]And that's where I really started writing. I started working at a bike shop and got a road bike and pimped out my computer so that I could get to and from class, which was downtown and I lived in the north. Northern part of the city. Yeah, I really started as a commuter, even though I was an athlete before in a different sport.
[00:05:48]And then, because I was working at a bike shop, my coworkers coerced me into trying to become an athlete again. So that's where it started in 2016. So as I
[00:05:58] Craig Dalton: [00:05:58] understand it, your collegiate running career was. Maybe challenging for you in terms of what you thought it was going to be and what it turned out to be.
[00:06:07] Were you looking for another athletic career at this point?
[00:06:11]Lily Williams: [00:06:11] No, my collegiate sport experience was pretty terrible. And a lot of it was just like me not knowing how to balance being basically a full-time athlete, which is what division one athletes are and getting, going to school and not failing.
[00:06:24]And I also just yeah, socially, there's so much fun things to do at school. And you just find a way to prioritize the thing you like the least, which at that time was sports for me. So I was pretty ready to not be an athlete ever again. When I went to grad school and that lasted all of four months before I found cycling.
[00:06:42] Craig Dalton: [00:06:42] So you found cycling at the, you said in the context of a road bike, but quickly discovered that cyclocross was an interesting part of the sport for you.
[00:06:51]Lily Williams: [00:06:51] Yeah because I was living in Chicago people may know that the Chicago cyclocross cup is a pretty big deal. There's a bunch, I can't remember how many, 10 ish race, weekends, all within driving distance of city throughout the course of the fall and winter.
[00:07:06] And the money's really good and the it's just a really good time. And the competition is pretty good. And quickly started borrowing a demo bike from the shop that I was worked on. Shop that I was working at and was taking it to cyclocross practices in town just after class, just to, I don't know, just hang out with people and have a good time.
[00:07:28]And then doing the races to have a good time as well. And I started having a lot of success in cyclocross, at least locally which kind of motivated me to want to try to do some of the bigger events as well.
[00:07:40] Craig Dalton: [00:07:40] And so you use that. Springboard. And I think you had mentioned there was a really good shop in Chicago land that leans into cyclocross and had a good team that you could get to be a part of.
[00:07:52]Lily Williams: [00:07:52] Yeah, 100%. So initially I was aware being at Turin bicycle, which is a shop in Ravenswood, which is the neighborhood I was living in. And then I did just a season with the club team based out of Turin which is called bonkers cycling. And. Then I also did a few races for Northwestern because I was at Northwestern for school and was able to compete and cross and on the road and cyclocross for Northwestern.
[00:08:18]And then that would have been in winter of 20 16, 20 17. And then my partner and I at the time wanted to do a full UCI calendar of cyclocross the next winter. And we approached the pony shop, which is in Evanston, which is the city immediately north. Of Chicago and they hooked us up.
[00:08:37] They helped us get all of our equipment and kit and race entries and everything. And we just jumped head first into a full UCI calendar. And it was awesome. Like we got on some podiums and we got UCI points and it was really fun, a fun program. That's still going by the way and is growing.
[00:08:54]Craig Dalton: [00:08:54] That's amazing. I remember getting introduced to the idea that Lily is going to be my coworker. And I think our coworker south basically said that Lily she's based in Chicago, she likes, she races. Cyclocross was very sort of unassuming introduction. Given what you've subsequently been able to achieve.
[00:09:15]Lily Williams: [00:09:15] Yeah Seth and I, we just bombed around town and had a good time. And at the point that I knew Seth in Chicago, we didn't really I did not have any aspirations to be a professional athlete. I was really just looking to meet new people and enjoy like exercising for fun, crazy concept. And yeah, over the years, even since you and I have been working together, I think it's changed quite a bit into something a little more serious than what it was initially.
[00:09:39]But yeah, I thought I was going to full gossipy, a cyclocross, a pro, and race in Europe and be sick over there. So things have just changed drastically, as you may assume, have assumed.
[00:09:50] Craig Dalton: [00:09:50] And after those results in 2018, you signed on board with rally cycling on the road.
[00:09:57]Lily Williams: [00:09:57] Is that right? In 2017, late 2017.
[00:10:01] So I had already done. Oh man. I'm like already losing sense of the timeline. It's been four years and I can't even remember what I've done. In, so even before I had really done a full UCI cross calendar, I had been racing on the road and doing all the professional road races. And so in 2017 I reached out to Hoggins Berman Supermint and then signed with them for 2018.
[00:10:26]As my first pro road contract. And then, so before I ever raced with Superman, I did after I signed, but before I raced, I did a full winter of cyclocross racing for the pony shop. Yeah. And then the following the subsequent year, I continued with the pony shop and did another full season of UCI cyclocross and one of my first UCI race.
[00:10:44]And then after 2019 Superman, I signed with rally cycling for 2020 cause Superman folded.
[00:10:54] Craig Dalton: [00:10:54] Gotcha. And at what point did you start getting the interest from USA cycling to introduce this idea of riding on the track?
[00:11:01]Lily Williams: [00:11:01] Yeah, so it seemed so you got a new women's endurance head coach for the track program after Rio.
[00:11:09] And his name is Gary Sutton. So he's our coach now. And he was just bringing people in from the road since he got to the U S so the team was really strong. They were defending world champions, Olympic silver medalist. But Sarah Hamer, who was one of their key riders retired. And there were just a few spots that they needed to fill.
[00:11:25]So he was bringing people in just based on who was doing well on the road. So in late 2018, so this would have been after cyclocross nationals, two of 2018. So the first one was in January and Louisville, Kentucky, or excuse me, Reno, Nevada. And then the second one was in December in Louisville. I flew two days after Louisville out to Colorado Springs to do some testing as one of many people.
[00:11:50]And then realized I might be able to be good enough and then started pretty heavily coming to the track starting early 2019. So I was coming to Colorado Springs for camps once a month, at least before my first race in July of 2019,
[00:12:06] Craig Dalton: [00:12:06] the identification testing look like. So you go to Colorado Springs and they make you do something.
[00:12:10] What do they make you do? And what are they looking for?
[00:12:12]Lily Williams: [00:12:12] I was like, yeah. So I was trying specifically for the team pursuit. Like I knew that going in because I'm literally,
[00:12:20] Craig Dalton: [00:12:20] why did you know that? I'm just curious.
[00:12:21]Lily Williams: [00:12:21] I guess I didn't really know that I just assumed that, but I was a 1500 meter runner in college, which is a four-ish minute event, like four minutes.
[00:12:30] 20 seconds or whatever. And then the team pursuit, the world record is like a four, 10, great Britain has it. So I knew that there was an event that was similar to what I would be doing. And then I came to USA to the us Olympic training center and did some power or testing on a watt bike. So I did like a sick test, 32nd test, four minute test, just to see where you are.
[00:12:53] I think my six second test was the worst test they'd ever recorded. And then my four minute test was like the best test they'd ever written. So they were like, there's something here. We don't know what it is. And then when I got on the track, so I actually wrote the track. They put me on a pursuit bike.
[00:13:08] So with the arrow from run end and I was doing pursuit specific efforts, just like riding the bike behind the motors. The motor and then like doing some flying 32nd efforts, ish, just to see how quickly I can cover ground without falling off the bike was of course I'd never written one before.
[00:13:23]So yeah, it was like two or three days. And then they were like, if you want to come back we'd love to have you, but obviously, like you have to want to do it. And at that point it would require me giving up my cross program and potentially missing a lot of road, which I ended up doing. But yeah, so it's been pretty full gas since.
[00:13:39] Probably January of 2019.
[00:13:41] Craig Dalton: [00:13:41] Yeah. I can only imagine how challenging it was getting on a track bike for the first time.
[00:13:46]Lily Williams: [00:13:46] I guess that's not really a true rule. I have written it Northbrook, which is the velodrome. And once again, just north of Chicago, but just two or three times, just for the summer series.
[00:13:55]I borrowed one of the bikes they have at the track. I had no idea what gear was going on it, I think I probably switched the seat height between me and my friend riding the same bike the same night. So I didn't really know what I was doing. I was just like, I'd been on a bike, but not really.
[00:14:12] Then I remember
[00:14:13] Craig Dalton: [00:14:13] you got to try over the course of our relationship. You would ask for things like, Hey, I need to reschedule a call because I'm going to be in Lima, Peru, and then you'd come back and say, oh, we won this medal. And then you said, Hey, I have to go to Berlin and not knowing the track schedule as well as I might know, road scheduling.
[00:14:33] I didn't realize it was the world championship. And lo and behold, I see. Oh, I came back with the gold medal, wearing the rainbow striped Jersey on the track.
[00:14:43]Lily Williams: [00:14:43] Yeah. I remember that night I was in bed in the hotel doing some work and you were like can you just stop and go celebrate for a little bit?
[00:14:51]I'm busy. I have to answer my email. Yeah, it's cryptic, especially in the U S where there really aren't that many velodromes to race on. I don't think people, I certainly didn't know what. What I was doing or what track cycling was about. And it was only until I started going to the world cups, which I got pretty fast tracked into.
[00:15:07] Did I see what a track cycling is and it's the, how it's popular in other countries and what events there are. But yeah, we've gone to some interesting places. We spent 10 days in Cochabamba, Bolivia, which was that like 10,000 feet for a race. So it's kinda cool.
[00:15:23] Craig Dalton: [00:15:23] And for clarity, you race on a four woman pursuit team.
[00:15:28] Can you talk about those team dynamics and what you're looking for? Because I know over the process of the Olympic selection process, there were multiple women vying for spots, and I'm imagining as a coach, you're trying to factor in certain things. I'd be curious, like what things were they trying to factor in?
[00:15:44] And what's important in the dynamic between you and the other athletes.
[00:15:48]Lily Williams: [00:15:48] Yeah, that's a great question. So you're right. It's four people and you basically just want to maximize the four that you have. So everyone in the group is going to be doing something a little bit different from, starting position one to starting position four, or, if you're Chloe you're spending the last three laps on the front, when someone else in line might only be able to do.
[00:16:11] Three laps, total of the race. So you really have to maximize the four that you have in a combination. That's going to be the most effective and that's completely different for every team and is completely different depending on the combination of riders that you have. We set out a schedule the night before, or the morning of the race and say, this is where you're going to start.
[00:16:29] This is how much time you're going to spend on the front. We like go over our communication strategy because things can always go wrong and you have to be able to tell whoever's on the front, what's happening three wheels back. And then we'll have the coach walking the line on a certain pace.
[00:16:43] So we always know where we are relative to the other team. And we always know exactly what pace we're riding to equate or the final time. So for something that's relatively simple there's quite a bit that goes into it. And there were seven women on it. The team pursuit, long team and five women were selected.
[00:17:03]So even though it seems like there were a pretty, if you were on the long team, you had a pretty good shot of making it even getting on the long team was a big challenge because you had to either have podium at a world cup or written a certain time standard. It was definitely a tight selection.
[00:17:19]Craig Dalton: [00:17:19] Within there are limits to figure out how to phrase this. So for clarity, everybody in this particular event needs to finish at the same time. So your time is taken on the last rider going across the line.
[00:17:30]Lily Williams: [00:17:30] Yes. So you start with four and you only have to finish three writers. So for most countries the starter who does the most work at the beginning of the race does not finish.
[00:17:40]Our starter is a woman named Jen Valente, who Usually finishes the ride. She's pretty good. So is there a benefit
[00:17:47] Craig Dalton: [00:17:47] for her hanging on throughout the rest of the ride?
[00:17:49]Lily Williams: [00:17:49] Not necessarily, but she's good enough at it that she can still do more with the start. Those of us who are newer and not quite so strong.
[00:17:57]So it, the time is taken on the third rider across the line. So in theory, you're. Your three writers come across at the same time, you like fan up and all right across the line together. Sometimes it goes wrong. Somebody gets dropped or you crash or something. So you start four, but time has taken on three.
[00:18:14] Craig Dalton: [00:18:14] And so that starter that you alluded to with maybe slightly different physiology, is it just sheer power and Watts to get up to the speed? The team needs as quickly as possible.
[00:18:23]Lily Williams: [00:18:23] Jen is the best starter in the world. She has a really, she's probably got the longest track background of anyone on the team.
[00:18:28]She definitely does. And she is has a history in doing the sprint events too. So she's by far the quickest of all of us over the, just getting out of the gate and getting us up to speed. The us will typically start almost a second faster than. Some most of the other teams, which is not insignificant when races are won by tenths of seconds,
[00:18:50] Craig Dalton: [00:18:50] your stacks up the track and she starts, and then you've got, obviously everybody else is starting at the same time.
[00:18:56] And you've got to, you've got to tuck in. If Chloe is your cleanup batter, so to speak, is she expanding a little less energy at the start? Because she can fade into the fourth slot.
[00:19:07]Lily Williams: [00:19:07] No, because she normally, yeah, I'll start second, which is the second most challenging position because you're getting up to speed basically at the same pace as the starter, and then the starter pulls off and you have to do your turn immediately.
[00:19:20] Whereas say at worlds, I started in fourth position. I had three people's terms before I had to take my first turn, so I could settle into the ride and then do my turn. Whereas someone like Chloe, who is. Next level world-class she can do the star behind, P one and then also, take her pole right away without any recovery.
[00:19:41] Craig Dalton: [00:19:41] Okay. And then as far as when you peel off from the front, how many rotations would you typically get in an event?
[00:19:47]Lily Williams: [00:19:47] It usually it totally depends. We've tried a bunch of different structures, I think. If you look at any of our footage from past races, normally we do two to three on the front depending on where you start in line.
[00:19:59]So for me, it's always been two. I think I'll be able to contribute quite a bit more after an additional year of training, but traditionally the races I've done, I would take two turns on the front.
[00:20:10] Craig Dalton: [00:20:10] And is it you, I think you mentioned that is likely decided the morning of the event via your coach and you're just following a plan.
[00:20:18] Lily Williams: [00:20:18] Yeah. It's pretty much based. Yeah. It's based on a plan that's laid out. We have some input as well if we want. Which is really nice because I think of course we all know each other in our own bodies very well. And yeah, the structure as we call it, or the schedule is usually not. Sent out until pretty close to race time.
[00:20:35]Which is good. I think it minimizes the stress of thinking about it and it always is very logical. There's never anything crazy in it. Like they would never say Lilly are doing the eight laps in the middle of the race. So we all know what is going to happen? How many
[00:20:49] Craig Dalton: [00:20:49] laps total are we talking about?
[00:20:50]Lily Williams: [00:20:50] So a track is a track that we would race on is 250 meters. And we'll do 16 laps. From a standing start. So it's four kilometers total for the team
[00:21:01] Craig Dalton: [00:21:01] pursuit. Another team on the other side of the track starting at the same time, right?
[00:21:06] Lily Williams: [00:21:06] Or is that not the case? Yeah, so to, to confuse it even more, there were three rounds in the first round is called qualifying in.
[00:21:14] The second round is called first round. The third round is called finals, but qualifying is just for time. So the, at the Olympics there'll be eight teams. And you will all ride individually with no other team on the track to set a time. And then they seed you based on the time that you have written and qualifying.
[00:21:35] So there's a there's then three man, and I really don't even know, like I really should know this. But then there are then in first round, they race, I believe they race first and fourth from qualifying together against each other. And the winner of that ride goes onto the gold medal round and then they race second and third in the winner of that ride also goes on to the gold medal round.
[00:21:59] And then whoever gets S whoever gets seconds in the, yeah.
[00:22:07]Yeah. I really don't even know. I'll be honest with you. I know that. I know how you get to the gold medal round, but I don't really know how you get to the silver or to the bronze metal round, so I never have to learn it. But yeah. And then they'll slot the fourth, fastest time from quals in or a fourth fastest time from first round in to the final in that bronze medal ride, I think, or maybe from the non.
[00:22:34] Yeah, but I don't know.
[00:22:35] Craig Dalton: [00:22:35] So I'm curious, you mentioned something about being able to take clues from your coaches about the timing. Are they flashing you up, assign each lap about where you're at?
[00:22:45]Lily Williams: [00:22:45] He'll stand on the line that we started. So if he's in front of the line, it means we're going too slow and he's behind the line.
[00:22:51] It means that we're up. There'll be different things. It's a different part of the race. So like the first part of the race, he'll be standing on the line based on the time that we set for ourselves. And then later on, he'll be walking the line based on how far ahead or behind we are the opposite team.
[00:23:04] So yes, as I forgot to mention, quals is an individual just for time ride. And then first round and finals are with another team on the track. So you are thus pursuing each other.
[00:23:16] Craig Dalton: [00:23:16] So for that qualifying round, you presumably the coach has in his or her head, this is the time we need to hit in order to seed ourselves one or two or whatever you're going for
[00:23:27]Lily Williams: [00:23:27] in theory.
[00:23:28] But it always ends up just being full gas. If we were really up in. Calls is always full gas. Cause you want to set the fastest time because you want to automatically be seated in a first round ride. That'll get you into the gold medal final. Yeah. And then first round you definitely, all you have to do is beat the other team to move on, but at the same time you are still going pretty much full gas because it's hard to beat the other team, there's not as much strategy in it as you would think. And then of course finals is full gas too. So it's it's pretty much three. Three, all out rides. That seems
[00:23:58] Craig Dalton: [00:23:58] what I could imagine. It's just, you're going to be going hard and fast and it's hard to take it up to the next level. Even if someone's saying you have to, because you're behind.
[00:24:08] Lily Williams: [00:24:08] Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because calls is first as one day. So you do that and then you know where you're at. And then first round and finals are on a together on another day. And when we won worlds in Berlin first round felt easy. Like we, four of us finished and we were all just this is interesting.
[00:24:25] And so we moved, went into the final feeling, pretty confident. Even though sometimes it feels easy, but you're really still going very hard and accumulating fatigue. But yeah, you kinda just have to take it one round at a time. Yeah. That's
[00:24:37] Craig Dalton: [00:24:37] interesting. Are there, which countries are you looking out for the most in terms of competition for the Tokyo Olympics?
[00:24:43]Lily Williams: [00:24:43] So great Britain has won great Britain, won London and Rio, and the U S got second in London and Rio. And then we won worlds and great Britain was second, which is what happened before Rico as well. So the U S women were world champions, and then I got to great Britain at the Olympics. So we know that great Britain always comes to the Olympics prepared like they do a full four year cycle with the really, the only goal of winning an Olympic gold.
[00:25:07] So they're certainly the ones who are on paper, the best to be. But Germany set a pretty fast time at worlds as well. So we know that they have at least one really fast time in them Oz Australia or the world champions in 2019. I'm sure they will be on good form. And knowing our coach, Gary, who came from Australia knowing how good of a coach he is, you have to assume that.
[00:25:28]Whoever is coaching those women now also knows how to make them best. And then New Zealand is very fast. They almost broke the world record in 2020, and rumor has it that they almost broke it again in training this year or at nationals or something. And then Frank, it's had a couple of really fast rides two years ago.
[00:25:47] So there is really, the eight teams that are there are really. All metal capable on Canada. Canada got bronze in in Rio and consistently podium at world cups. So there's a lot,
[00:26:02] Craig Dalton: [00:26:02] it sounds like you're going to be looking over your shoulder at basically everybody who's on the opposing end of the track.
[00:26:07]Lily Williams: [00:26:07] Pretty much. Yeah. I'm trying not to get overwhelmed by how stressful it is, but I also feel very confident in our group. I take a lot of solace in that. And I
[00:26:17] Craig Dalton: [00:26:17] believe I saw from our friends that felt that they've got a pretty sweet track bike for you guys to race.
[00:26:23]Lily Williams: [00:26:23] Yeah. So they built it for Rio.
[00:26:26]And it's left side drive. And sometimes I pull out my road bike, my normal felt road bike. And I'm like, why is the crank on this side? And then I remember that's what a normal bike is like. Yeah, so it. Pretty much the same as a regular track bike, but in theory, the left side drive decreases drag because it's traveling the shorter there's drag on a shorter distance, if that makes sense.
[00:26:45] So the inside of the track is shorter than farther up on the track. So if you have the cranks or if you have the crank set on the inside the drive train, then it's spending less time in the wind. And we have some other secret stuff that we're developing on the bikes right now, or just fitting the bikes out with.
[00:27:05]It's going to be exciting. Everyone shows up at the Olympics with at least so I've heard because I've never been with crazy new bikes and equipment and skin suits. And it's people don't realize that track cycling like the cutting edge of all of this arrow stuff that USU and the.
[00:27:20] Are you shun in the gravel world? But a lot of it's pretty, pretty cool. And arrow bars are, people are using arrow bars on the gravel now, too, so I can empathize.
[00:27:29] Craig Dalton: [00:27:29] Yeah. It's definitely one of those things I always look out for when the Olympics come around to see what kind of snazzy new tech or bike is going to be introduced.
[00:27:37] I know as you mentioned, the UK always seems to introduce new, fast looking bikes. And that felt like with the drive train on the other side is just But when you talk about marginal gains, like that little bit of moving it from one side or the other.
[00:27:49] Lily Williams: [00:27:49] Yeah. Yeah. We're talking like half of 1%.
[00:27:52] So in my opinion, I'm just like, okay, I'm going to work so hard that none of those one percents matter, so that nothing can go wrong and I don't have to think about anything else. But they make a big difference. They all add up and especially when you're trying to get an Olympic medal, you really have no room to let other teams.
[00:28:07]Take extra from you where you could be doing the same thing. Yeah. I
[00:28:11] Craig Dalton: [00:28:11] mean, we want all you athletes to feel fast in your clothing, your bikes, your helmets, everything, right?
[00:28:17]Lily Williams: [00:28:17] Yeah, absolutely. And there's a lot of thought that goes into it. I don't think people realize quite how much time and money and energy is spent on making sure we have the best of everything.
[00:28:28] Yeah.
[00:28:28]Craig Dalton: [00:28:28] It's going to be awesome. I'm excited. I'll put links to where people can watch the stream. I think I looked it up correctly. Is August 2nd sound right? For one of the start of the events. Yeah. And it sounds like it's going to be around 11:30 PM. Pacific time to watch.
[00:28:43]Lily Williams: [00:28:43] I hope so. I looked it up on NBC.
[00:28:46] I'm not sure it'll even be aired because most people are at once again are like, what is track cycling? But hopefully, especially if. We have multiple events that are metal capable. NBC has some incentive to yeah. Just show it. Exactly.
[00:28:58] Craig Dalton: [00:28:58] There's nothing worse than my, my, my past when I've stayed up at night to watch something on the Olympics and they're covering something totally different than the sport that I wanted to see.
[00:29:07] Lily Williams: [00:29:07] It's like a question or something and you're like, dang it. Yeah. But this is going to be awesome. Olympic trials yesterday. It's finally happening. It's
[00:29:15] Craig Dalton: [00:29:15] exciting. Definitely. Wow. I'm excited to be along for the ride with you. I know you've worked tremendously hard to get to this point and we've already said we don't want you working on bike index stuff while you're over there.
[00:29:28] Yeah.
[00:29:28]Lily Williams: [00:29:28] Yeah. We'll try. I'll try really hard. I'm going to have to shut down slack and some other things are also being really tempted. I get on and talk to you guys.
[00:29:36] Craig Dalton: [00:29:36] If it's relaxing, talk to us. If not we'll survive.
[00:29:40]Lily Williams: [00:29:40] Yeah. Sometimes it's so nice to have a tie to normalcy. I'll be perfectly honest when all you've done is be at the track all day.
[00:29:46] And you just want to talk to someone about something that isn't splits or which drink mix to put in your bottle or which gear to put on the bike or whatever. Yeah. So
[00:29:55]Craig Dalton: [00:29:55] In what may seem like a giant leap for the listener bike index is a nonprofit where a stolen bike, sorry, where a bicycle registry and stolen bike recovery platform.
[00:30:06] So at its basic level, You register your bike, it's free to use. You can do that as a, as an owner. You can do it a lot of times, right? At the shop level when you purchase your bike. But the really interesting things that Lily and I get to see are on the stolen bike recovery side. And I thought it might be fun just to share a couple of stories of some of our favorite recoveries that we've seen on bike index.
[00:30:29]Lily Williams: [00:30:29] Yeah. I'll steal our favorite one. We have recovered a bike that somebody reported stolen on bike index when they were an undergraduate. I think in Iowa, I think at Iowa state or a university or some, one of the universities in Iowa, and then. I think it was six or eight years later, they were back at the same school for their medic getting their medical degree.
[00:30:51] And they recovered the bike that they had reported stolen when they were there for undergrad. So that was a pretty fun. Yeah. Yeah. It's always
[00:30:59] Craig Dalton: [00:30:59] incredible. Basically once it's indicated as stolen on the platform, it's just going to sit there. And as a nonprofit, we've got a pretty wide community of volunteers that are looking out for it.
[00:31:10]If they see something that's. Listed on offer up or Craigslist or Facebook marketplace. That looks too good to be true. Oftentimes our volunteers will just check bike index and be able to reconnect with the owner and at least give them a heads up. Hey, I think we've seen your bike here, or I think it's being sold there and it gives you a fighting chance to recover your bike.
[00:31:29]Lily Williams: [00:31:29] Yeah, 100% or recovery rate is growing from around 10%, which is the highest reported recovery rate of any registration service. And yeah, not only volunteers, but law enforcement officers and members of the community of which we have hundreds of thousands are all looking out for stolen bikes and sending messages to people just out of the goodness of their hearts about.
[00:31:53] If they see your stolen bike somewhere, they can let you know where it might be, so you can recover it. So it's pretty successful.
[00:32:00] Craig Dalton: [00:32:00] And while we can't talk about the details in this context and listener, I do trust that you won't you won't share this too widely until we tell you it's available, but we have been tracking this absolutely massive theft ring ranging all the way from Northern California.
[00:32:16] Into Mexico and we've traced over $500,000 worth of bikes to one seller. We've got active police investigations in a number of different cities and counties in California that are all triangulating around this same effort. We've got a national publication. That's been following it along with our partner who focuses on stolen bike recovery.
[00:32:38] And it's going to be the biggest bicycle theft ring I think ever uncovered in the United States.
[00:32:44]Lily Williams: [00:32:44] Yeah. Pay attention. But like that really galvanizes people, I think when you rely on your bike as transportation or your way to get to work or your sole opportunity for recreation it's really a problem.
[00:32:55] And hopefully it, we are here to make it better. Yes.
[00:32:58] Craig Dalton: [00:32:58] So thank you for your continued efforts on that behalf, Lily.
[00:33:01]Lily Williams: [00:33:01] Of course,
[00:33:03] Craig Dalton: [00:33:03] but time to focus on the Olympics, we have high expectations for you. We can't wait. We're all standing at your back and I appreciate you sharing with our listeners. I'm sharing this because you started in the dirt.
[00:33:15] You're going to go into metals. I think you're going to come back to the dirt and we're going to see you at some of these big events in the future.
[00:33:21]Lily Williams: [00:33:21] I think you're probably right. I've paid close attention to a lot of them. And I'm just wondering, like when I'm going to bite the bullet and do Unbound or one of the other big races domestically or as I was telling Craig earlier pseudo dirt, Go over to Europe and hopefully rice, the first ever women's Perry Ruby in a few months here, if my team rally cycling gets the invite.
[00:33:43]So yeah, I did one gravel race in 2017. I did Barry Ruby up in Michigan. And it was for reasoning. It was like 40 degrees and raining, so it wasn't cold enough for it to be snow. And it was just wet and miserable the whole time. But I did win. So I think that I will come back at some point and I'll probably bring the arrow bar.
[00:34:04] Craig Dalton: [00:34:04] Oh, controversy right there.
[00:34:07]Lily Williams: [00:34:07] I feel like that's an old controversy now. There's always something new and arrow bars are just like part of the litany.
[00:34:14] Craig Dalton: [00:34:14] Yeah, exactly. Cool. Thanks for all the time today, Lily. I appreciate it.
[00:34:18]Lily Williams: [00:34:18] Yeah. Thanks Craig. It's good to talk to you as always.
[00:34:22]
[00:34:22] Craig Dalton: [00:34:22] Huge. Thanks to Lily for joining us on the show this week. I'm so proud of her for making the Olympic team and so excited for the women's track team in Tokyo. Her event is starting on August 2nd, Monday, August 2nd, the first rounds, and then the finals will be on August 3rd.
[00:34:42]Make sure. And send USA cycling and Lily, your support over social media. I'll put her handles. In the show notes. I know it can be funky finding cycling on the streaming and television networks. But do what you can. I think for the USA cycling program. We've got a great shot at gold in the women's pursuit. and i can't wait to follow the journey.
[00:35:03]
[00:35:03]Thanks again to this week's sponsor athletic greens. Remember visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride to obtain that special offer. And thank you. Thank you for all the new members. Thank you for all my one-time supporters. When you visit, buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride, that's your way to directly support what we're doing over here at the podcast. We couldn't be doing what we're doing without the support of members. Like you.
[00:35:32] And also the generous sponsors from the industry. And outside the industry.
[00:35:38]One final ask would be, if you have a friend or a group of friends that are getting into gravel cycling, please share the gravel ride podcast with them. I'm endeavoring to create a body of work. That'll take a new rider on a journey and take an experienced rider through some deep dives. We want to create content that just helps people stay stoked.
[00:35:57] On the sport of gravel cycling. Until we speak again. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with Tony Pereira of Breadwinner Cycles to learn more about this Portland, OR based custom builder. Tony was part of the 2021 ENVE Builder Round Up in Ogden, UT.
This week's podcast is generously sponsored by ENVE.
Automated Transcription (Please excuse the typos):
Breadwinner
Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] Tony, welcome to the show.
[00:00:01]Tony Pereira: [00:00:01] Thanks for having me, Craig.
[00:00:02] Craig Dalton: [00:00:02] It's great to see you virtually from your office there.
[00:00:05]Tony Pereira: [00:00:05] It's funny now that we're all accustomed to this it's it makes it really easy.
[00:00:08] Craig Dalton: [00:00:08] Yeah. It really is. If you don't have your setup dialed at this point, I don't think you ever will.
[00:00:13]Tony Pereira: [00:00:13] Yeah. Right.
[00:00:15] Craig Dalton: [00:00:15] So let's start off a little bit by getting to know you and what led you to becoming a frame builder
[00:00:21] Transcribing...
[00:00:22] Tony Pereira: [00:00:22] It's been a while now.
[00:00:23]I worked in, I started out in the outdoor, your industry, I started working in ski shops when I was 16, which was in 1985 and grew up working in ski shops. And then in college, I started working in a bike shop and after college, I moved to Utah and skied and rode and worked in bike shops there.
[00:00:44] And I got really active. Like community when I lived in salt lake did that for quite a while. Eventually got bored of being a bike mechanic, just hit my limit on that and what I've always been a tinkerer. Playing around in the garage, working on cars and motorcycles and of course, bicycles.
[00:01:01]I learned how to breeze a little and weld a little bit from a friend of mine. And then just brought all those things together. And I was a fan of the old mountain bikes, the, IBUs and salsa. And of course the Richie's, the Richie has always had those beautiful, huge fillets.
[00:01:18] And and I'm like, I knew how to braise. So I'm like, I wonder if I could make a mountain bike and, it was, that was two, this was 2002 or so, so almost 20 years ago. The internet was there. We were using all like listserv type communication. But there's a pretty active frame, builder listserv.
[00:01:37] It's still exists. But I got on there and started figuring it out, build a couple of mountain bikes and I, after building one, I was like, oh man, I gotta do this. Bringing my love of bikes together with making things and And I just, I was hooked for sure. Riding that first bike is such a joyous,
[00:01:54]it's gotta be an amazing feeling to ride something that we've actually made super gratifying.
[00:01:59] It sounds like you and I came up in the same era, which was that period of time where there was a lot of great mountain bike, frame builders and custom steel bikes. Every state seemed to have a builder of some notoriety. Yup. Yup. So how did you teach yourself? Was it really through, obviously you had a little bit of hands-on experience from your father's friend to teach you how to weld and, know what equipment was needed.
[00:02:25]Craig Dalton: [00:02:25] Were you able to glean some of the basic fundamentals from that list? Serve and ask questions?
[00:02:31] Tony Pereira: [00:02:31] Yeah. Yeah, it was great. I know I, Richard Sachs is one of the. More professional frame builders that was on there. And he's always been really generous with his time. And there were a number of others as well, but I remember him in particular, but yeah, there was a great group of people that, that I, you know, some of them I'm still friends with.
[00:02:49] Remember Steve from Coconino was getting started exactly the same time. And the two of us were like bouncing things off of each other. And just getting our feet wet, but I, I'm fortunate to have, I have a natural aptitude for using tools and problem solving and, figuring things out.
[00:03:08] So yeah, I was able to teach myself, with the help of that listserv, obviously how to make it all come together. And, I look back on those early frames and I still have a couple of them and they were pretty bad. The first there's 20 or so that I built for me and my friends. So they were pretty rough, I should say rough.
[00:03:25]They weren't, the finish was rough. They worked fine. But I started building bikes for customers after about the first 20 or so bikes mostly worked, went to my friends and. And they were starting to get pretty good by that.
[00:03:36] Craig Dalton: [00:03:36] And did that just happen via word of mouth with the 20 out there, people would see it and say, where did you get that thing?
[00:03:42] I had some, I had a core group of friends in salt lake that worked in the bike shop with me, or were associated with the bike shop called wild rose. It was a, early mountain bike scene, mouth bike shop. And two of my friends, Alex and Jeff. They were all, they were 100% on board with me.
[00:03:59] They were like, yeah, you got to do this. And we're going to help you build a, some bikes, let's go racing. And we went out, we were all mountain bikers. So we were out riding a single speeds and the inner mountain cup series in Utah, which is a, I think still exists was a really popular mountain bike series.
[00:04:18] There were, I think there were 10 races around the whole state. And we got out there and we were top five races. In the single-speed category we started doing that and we would do 24 hours of Moab every year. So we just got out there, we just put it out there and we were having fun and people liked what we were doing.
[00:04:33] And I know our very first, my very first customer, he was a guy that we beat in a race and he came up to me at the end of the race. He was like, you guys are having fun. I want one of those.
[00:04:43]That's awesome. Were you operating under the breadwinner brand at that point? No. That was Pereira cycles.
[00:04:50] The names, namesake brand at that point.
[00:04:52] Tony Pereira: [00:04:52] Right. So that was in Utah and in 2004, or so, and then I moved to Portland in 2005. And when I moved here, I decided not to get a job and go in full-time building bikes. I had a few orders under my belt. And I just, I went for it and it worked out.
[00:05:11] Craig Dalton: [00:05:11] And did you stay under your namesake as the
[00:05:13] Tony Pereira: [00:05:13] Brandon? Yeah, it was prayer cycles until 2013. That's when I hooked up with IRA, we've been building under his name, I Ryan, and and we started breadwinner.
[00:05:26]Craig Dalton: [00:05:26] What about that partnership with IRA made it attractive to you to bring different perspectives and skillsets to the team?
[00:05:33] Yeah.
[00:05:33] Tony Pereira: [00:05:33] Yeah. Different types of riders, but have a like-mind as far as there are eye for style and quality, we both worked with the Rafa clothing company and their very early years, we were friends with the guys that got it going here. And when they were based in. And our friend Daniel conceived of this project called the continental.
[00:06:00] And it was a group of writers, originally six writers and IRA. And I were two of them who wrote around first in the Northwest here. And, we have a photographer along with us and they'd made some beautiful images and created that whole brand. That's now Rafa. And like a lot of that, the imagery that they still use is of that same stuff.
[00:06:20] But like big mountain rides and we're actually doing a lot of gravel riding on 23 millimeter tires and our road bikes. But riding some really cool round, the epic kind of rides that everybody makes fun of Rafa for now.
[00:06:33]Craig Dalton: [00:06:33] I certainly remember that era when those finished visuals and videos came out and they were.
[00:06:38] They were certainly evocative of where ultimately gravel slotted in this big mountain adventure, not your Saturday group, not your normal Saturday group ride type of riding.
[00:06:49] Tony Pereira: [00:06:49] Right yeah, that was super fun. And out of that Rafa asked us to build, they decided that they were going to get five bike companies.
[00:06:58] We were the smallest one and market alignment. That was all through their website. They took the orders and then we would, we build the bikes and I can't remember. I can't remember exactly. It was like Cinelli I know Chanel Lee was one of them. It's they're slipping my mind now, but they're all like big bike brands.
[00:07:17] And then it was me and IRA and we were the only ones that were on that continental team. So we called that bike, the continental. And it had my logo on the right side of the down tube in Iris on the left side of the down too. He built mostly with lugs. So it had a lugged head tube and a talk to C2 junction.
[00:07:37] And then the bottom bracket was Phillip raised, which is my style,
[00:07:40] Craig Dalton: [00:07:40] interesting collaboration
[00:07:42] Tony Pereira: [00:07:42] together. We sold 22 of them. So not very many, but out of that, we've found that we really liked working together. And we were like, all right and honestly, we made some good money off of it. Like building that money.
[00:07:55] That was how many bikes each of us would build in a year. Right back then I was building 25 likes a year or maybe even a
[00:08:01] Craig Dalton: [00:08:01] little less. Yeah. It's funny. In talking to other builders, you talk, you think about the pace in which these bikes get built. If you're building them all by yourself. Two three weeks to build a bike is, about what it takes and do the math.
[00:08:14] You can't do much more than 20, 25 in a year, and
[00:08:18] Tony Pereira: [00:08:18] you nailed it. We were doing the math and we're like, all right, we can't scale what we're doing now anymore. Some people can, there's a few builders out there that can crank them out, but we couldn't. So we're like, let's figure out a way to keep building bikes, but make more of them.
[00:08:34]And maybe make a little bit of a. And the breadwinner name was really something that we hung on that first Rafa project. It was just what we used to open a bank account. You've never had any plans to make it a brand. It was a, kind of an inside joke.
[00:08:51] Craig Dalton: [00:08:51] Yeah. I love that. Yeah. We can't make bread any other way.
[00:08:54] This is the breadwinner project.
[00:08:55]Tony Pereira: [00:08:55] Yeah. Yeah. My S my son had just been born. IRA had just gotten married and we were. We got to figure something out here and we started calling breadwinner. It was again, a joke between us, but a year or two later actually a year after the Rafa thing we got approached by the folks that were starting up Shinola.
[00:09:14] Yep. Just now mostly a watch
[00:09:16] Craig Dalton: [00:09:16] company. Sure. I remember those bikes. Were they, were you behind them? Bikes as
[00:09:20] Tony Pereira: [00:09:20] well. And we designed there. And bill built some prototypes for that. And we got paid well for that. And we took that money and started breadwinner.
[00:09:33] Craig Dalton: [00:09:33] Okay. Yeah. You know it, I imagine it's always a challenge as a frame builder.
[00:09:38] Once you have the knowledge of all the different types of machinery that could make your process more efficient. Acquiring said, machinery is a big financial outlay. So having those rare opportunities like with Shinola. Rapha before that I'm sure, really accelerated your ability to be a builder that can kick out more than 20 a year.
[00:09:58] Tony Pereira: [00:09:58] Yeah. And it helped them. It gave us a little bit of time to come up with some new ideas. Like we could sit back and go, okay, what do we want this, what do we want this thing called breadwinner to be? And we realized that a lot of our customers. If we're waiting a year, sometimes two years to get their bike at the end of that long wait, they were often not happy.
[00:10:21]There are lots of opportunities for things to go wrong and or for them to just lose interest or, just, it just it's too long. So we said, all right, with breadwinner, we're going to deliver the bikes in eight to 12 weeks. And that we've tried to do that the whole time. We've done pretty well until this.
[00:10:39]And now that's completely out the window. It's six months now.
[00:10:43] Craig Dalton: [00:10:43] Fortunately, everybody's waiting that long for a group of, at this moment. So you're all right.
[00:10:47] Tony Pereira: [00:10:47] Yeah. The frames, we can turn around, we can build the frames in the same amount of time. If we can get materials, there's, we're run out of tubes.
[00:10:55] We run out of head tubes or bottom bracket shells or whatever it is. And we've had moments where we just have to stop. We can't build bikes in the last year. That's really been unusual, but then our painters backed up because, there's this bike boom. So he's extra busy and but anyway, yeah, so it's a little longer now, but yeah, excuse me.
[00:11:17]IRA's always been more of a a road rider and a gravel rider. He won the first trans, Iowa gravel race. And I've been a mountain biker. I started mountain biking in 87 and started riding a road bike. When I wrote with those Rafa guys,
[00:11:31] Craig Dalton: [00:11:31] you said it sounded like at the inception of breadwinner, did you see the market opportunity being a little bit more adventurous road, bike style?
[00:11:39]Tony Pereira: [00:11:39] Not particularly. We, that was just. So our first lineup, we didn't have a gravel bike. Sure.
[00:11:48] Craig Dalton: [00:11:48] Yeah. And was it a mountain frame? Go ahead.
[00:11:51] Tony Pereira: [00:11:51] Bye. The continental, which is a classic steel fork road bike, we still have that the low lows, our road bikes still are our mainstay road bike.
[00:12:00]We have the JV racer, which is our cross country mountain bike. And then a city bike called the Arbor lodge, just the neighbor neighborhood we lived in. And we had a touring bike, which we don't actually don't offer anymore. So that was it. Six bikes that first year. And I believe it was the next year when we came out with the B road, which is now our most popular bike.
[00:12:20] And that was our first ground.
[00:12:22]Craig Dalton: [00:12:22] Interesting. So how long did, what did that look like in terms of the proportion of which frames were selling and when did you start to see that? Hey, the be road is actually the bike that is most appealing.
[00:12:34]Tony Pereira: [00:12:34] At first we didn't have it. So it was, we were mostly selling Lolo's.
[00:12:38] That was our logo was a Continentals, definitely on the road. And then we put the B road out there and the low the road bikes were still more popular for that first. So that would have been 20 14, 15. I think in 2016 it started to shift significantly. And then it was like 50% road or gravel bikes.
[00:12:58] And then we came out, I think we came up the G road, the following year. And now. 60 or 70% gravel bikes, gravel slash bike packing bikes. Yep.
[00:13:09] Craig Dalton: [00:13:09] Yup. Yeah. That's in that, that tracks, what I imagined would happen, it seems on point I was imagining that based on your sales stats, you would have your finger on the pulse of where, and when that gravel product started to break and break free of the pack.
[00:13:25] Yeah.
[00:13:25] Tony Pereira: [00:13:25] Yeah, no, it's been, yeah. It's. Four years or so where it's been clearly the front runner. And I feel like this year we did a few more road bikes and some of those were people that had bought gravel bikes from us. And they were like, all right, now I want to road bike. Yeah. People still have their quivers and the gravel bikes have been, real quiver, quiver busters.
[00:13:45]A lot of people use those bikes for everything. When you come around and you're like, all right, I want a real fast bike too. And then you get that
[00:13:53] Craig Dalton: [00:13:53] road bike. I think, as we were talking about offline, the geometry changes in mountain bikes have made them a different beast than what we were riding in the late nineties and a hell of a lot more fun.
[00:14:06] Yeah. And I imagine that's a, kind of a growing segment of interest because people are looking for something special to have underneath.
[00:14:14]Tony Pereira: [00:14:14] For in the mountain bike world. Yeah. I would love to sell more mountain bikes, but the reality of it is that we it's a niche thing for us. So we do a handful of mountain bikes a year.
[00:14:24]I love them. I are good. Water's my all time favorite bike. But those it's designed around the plus tires. So I've been running two sixes or two eights on it lately. But man, that's just such a fun bike for all, all around riding and yeah, you're right. The geometry has changed. I think because forks have gotten longer, it's forced us to change the bikes, but the other thing that's changed a whole lot is the trails.
[00:14:48]We went from old hiking trails that were Rocky and not necessarily flowing. Just go pick in your way through, through these trails to trails that are built for bikes, the bill for around bikes, with berms and jumps and rollers and all kinds of features. So the bikes have had, had to evolve with the trails.
[00:15:07] Yeah. But yeah, I love riding the hard tails and the the they're super fun. That's, it's been a good, that has been a fun evolution to be, to feel like I've been.
[00:15:16]Craig Dalton: [00:15:16] Let's talk about the mountain bike. One of the bikes you're bringing out to Utah for the envy builder Roundup. I know some of the listeners have probably caught pictures of it already, but why don't you talk us through that model?
[00:15:25]Tony Pereira: [00:15:25] Sure. I told you about my friends, Jeff and Alex that helped me get started mountain bike with breadwinner or with prayer cycles. Jeff, his name is Jeff Bates. He passed away. A number of years ago of skin cancer. And so the first mountain bike that we made was called the JB racers named after him.
[00:15:43] We still, and we still have it. That's our classic 20 Niner hard tail, cross-country machine. And we've, we'll always have that in our lineup. It's very similar to the bikes I was making under the Pereira banner. Talking about this trail evolution a few years ago I started riding a bunch at a trail system here near Portland called Sandy Ridge.
[00:16:03] And it's this new Invus style flow trails are built just for mountain bikes. And that cross country bike is not the right bike for that. So I'm like, all right. And I'd had this in my head for a few years. I'm like, I think I want to build something that's more slack. It's a bigger. It's still a hard tail.
[00:16:21] It was there weren't a lot of them happening at the time. But finally I'm like, all right, I'm building this thing. And so pretty slacked out. I think at the time that was a 66 degree head to bangle with a 1 64. It was around 27, 5 wheels. The first-generation about Otis and we started.
[00:16:39] So we came up with the design and when it came time for a name, I thought about my buddy, Alex, who was the other guy that helped me start get started. And he's a funny guy. He'd always come up with these funny sayings and give everybody nicknames and just have these funny phrases. And he, one of them was when.
[00:16:58]You'd see a cool bike or something. You'd say, dude, that's bad Otis. There's out of nowhere, I don't know where it came from, but he just used to say it all the time. So I'm like that's a great name for a bike. I'm going to call the bike bad Otis. So called the bike bad Otis. You bring it to the two north American handmade bike show, which was in, I don't remember where it was that year Sacramento.
[00:17:23] Environmental. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was. Brought the bad odors to Sacramento, big hit. We got some nice press on it. A couple of weeks later, I get a note from a guy on Facebook and his name, bad Otis. He's Hey, like I see bad odors pop up in my messenger. Hey man, why do you have this bike called bad Otis?
[00:17:47] That's my name? I was like, I don't know who you are, but all tell me why that's your name? And it turns out he's a fairly well-known artist in the punk rock world. Interesting. In the LA punk rock, like old school, seventies, eighties, he was like the t-shirt artists that did like the circle jerks and black flag.
[00:18:10] And like all those I might be wrong about some of those bands, but He, if you see his work, it's like it's of that era and he's still working artists. And we had a conversation. I was like, I'm like, man, I don't know anything about you. I wish I did. Cause I'd want some of your, I would've wanted some of your stuff back then, This is just the name that came out of nowhere from my friend.
[00:18:32] And he was like, all right, that's cool. He was totally cool about it, but he thought he's been ripped off over the years. Yeah. Like people that work in that realm there's counterfeit, there's making rip offs of his old t-shirt designs from the eighties and he's had enough of it. So he saw his name pop off and he's oh, here's another one.
[00:18:50] And it turns out there was, it wasn't that wasn't the case. But Long story that has nothing to do with the bike, but funny about the name. Anyway, last year, we've seen this long travel hard tail, so big fork, hard tail, a ball over the past few years. There's a lot of them out there.
[00:19:10] And just like with the full suspension bikes to get really slack and the head tube angle tend to have a long. Front center so much longer talk to you, but with a steep C2 which gives you a lot more stability when you're in the air, you're diving into berms or going down really steep stuff. And, we said, Hey, we should try this.
[00:19:29]I guess maybe a year ago we built a bike cry there was for a Chris king event and and he's been riding that for the past year. And so just again, slacker, I think we went to a 64 degree head to bangle or something like that. His really steep, like 76 degrees C to bangle.
[00:19:47]So it climbs you get your weight far enough forward that the front end doesn't want to walk you're around. Okay. But then once you put your dropper down, you stand up, you've got that hard charging, like super slack.
[00:19:57] Craig Dalton: [00:19:57] Yeah, I find it really interesting. Just it helps looking at those bikes helps me think about gravel geometry in many ways.
[00:20:03] Not that there's any parallels between the two, but I've often. Yeah, I had trouble like figuring out, what is the steepness of a C2 bangle do? What does the head tube angle do? And the more I play around with different bikes and different equipment, you start to see. And some of these things creep their way.
[00:20:18] Some of these philosophies, not these extremes creep their way into gravel bikes in one shape or form IMS.
[00:20:24] Tony Pereira: [00:20:24] Yeah. Yeah. W you've got the, I forgot what it's called, the transition. They have that
[00:20:28] Craig Dalton: [00:20:28] crazy that isn't the slack evil Shammy, Hagar. Exactly. Tony let's talk about the gravel bikes in your lineup, and I'd be curious for you to describe to the listener, the different models and the different tubes that's that you use.
[00:20:43] And, with carbon being like the material, that a lot of these bikes get pumped out. Yeah. Why don't you talk to the listener about what a steel bike can do and how it feels and why it's so special? Sure,
[00:20:56] Tony Pereira: [00:20:56] sure. I think cars, there are many wonderful carbon bikes. There's nothing wrong. I'm not like a agnostic.
[00:21:03]Gotta have steel. Steel is real guy I have been, but I've left all that behind, I think. Many great materials for bikes. The thing that, that keeps us making steel bikes is how great it is for custom bikes. Yep. And small production, small scale production. So there are, I don't know how many hundred hundreds of different tubes to choose from so we can really vary the.
[00:21:34]The ride of the bike based on the two parameters. So your two parameters are the diameter, the wall thickness, and then the, but pro budding profile. So steel tubes are thicker on the ends. We call that the, but everyone's heard of budded tubing. Most people don't know what it means. But they're just, they're thicker on the ends where you do your welding is the welding affects the strength of the material.
[00:21:57] So it has to be a little bit stronger where you. And then the middle of the two where you don't heat, it can be a lot thinner and a lot lighter. So you save some weight. And then each tube comes in a certain length and the butts are a certain length as well. You removed some of that to get your finished to blank.
[00:22:12] So you, we can really tailor each individual to, for each bite and dial in, optimize the weight of the bike and optimize the ride quality, mostly through the diameter mall, thickness of the tube to the field. Optimize it for weight and strength.
[00:22:30] Craig Dalton: [00:22:30] Is there in that sort of get to know the customer process, you're learning their weight and riding style.
[00:22:36] Exactly. And you can make adjustments to the way the bike feels based on what they're telling you. How
[00:22:43] Tony Pereira: [00:22:43] exactly. Exactly. Yeah. We have people come to us, oh yeah. I used to be a football player and I'm pretty big and I stomped on him. What I want to really like, bike, packing bike, and we're like, all right we're going to make it a little heavier and we're going to use a little bit bigger tubes and it's going to give you the best ride, and then on the other side, we have somebody that's a hundred pounds and they don't, they, and they don't want the bike to feel like a dead brick. We can either use a smaller van or two to where later to tailor to that, to their style and their size and their.
[00:23:16]Craig Dalton: [00:23:16] For most of the listeners, I'm imagining that they aren't custom bike owners as someone, when they're going through the purchasing process, obviously the sky's the limit to blends things like that, that you can help work with them on how do you help guide people to get to the right spot?
[00:23:33] Tony Pereira: [00:23:33] Yeah. Yeah. The way that we work we've we try to make it approachable and easy. That was another goal of ours with breadwinner was. When I'd made my Pereira cycles, I was like, what kind of do you want, and I would make you a road bike or a cross bike, or they didn't have names.
[00:23:49] There was no model names of any kind, but, and I realized that was, that made it hard for people to come through the door. So now we have like our gravel bikes, our first one was called the be road and be roads are like rural roads in the Midwest where I grew up. And And so you would say, okay, I want to be road.
[00:24:06] And that has a carbon fork and a steel frame. And we work with people on there with their fit and everything and how they want the bike to ride the design side's all on us. The customers, our customers, sometimes they want to have more say in what goes, where, and, but we've got a pretty good idea for what works and the materials we should use.
[00:24:25] So we have all that. And then, yeah, and then the component. Whenever you
[00:24:29] Craig Dalton: [00:24:29] want. So that be road model sounds like maybe it was the gravel bike extension of that continental. That was it more in their kind of road plus world than that to a cross bike.
[00:24:41]Tony Pereira: [00:24:41] Yeah, we based it on our cross bike. Mostly because at the time the carbon forks you could get, it would fit a wire tire we're cross forks.
[00:24:49] Yeah. So it kinda just fit into that realm. And we were we're very limited in what tires there were that time. And there was the the panel racer Passilla was really popular Yon Hina from
[00:25:01]
[00:25:01] Renee Harris, which was compass, which before that was something else I can remember what he called it, then they had, and there was another name before compass.
[00:25:10]Those tires were around anyway. They weren't very wide. I think our first B road had 30 twos on it, which is like a big road tire now. Yeah. So yeah, we did the D road for awhile. I think two years. And then people started asking for, six 50 V with wider tire and said, all right how are we going to do that?
[00:25:28] There wasn't a carbon for two years. So we've talked to our friend, Chris Iglehart who's across the street from us over here. And he's been making those segmented forks since he was at fat city
[00:25:40]Craig Dalton: [00:25:40] back in the eighties. That's so the moment you said that, and I've got a picture up of that fork right now, and you're absolutely right.
[00:25:47] That was the fat fork.
[00:25:49] Tony Pereira: [00:25:49] Yeah. So Chris was the guy that made all those forks. Amazing. Yeah. And he's now across the street and he also welds all our bikes. So IRA and I have, we still touch every bike and I tack weld all the bikes, but Chris does our finish welding. Gotcha. We build three bikes a week, so we can't have a welder on staff.
[00:26:10] We can't, you just can't have somebody. That's not a full-time job. Yeah. So ever since the very beginning of breadwinner, we built over, we built going on 900 bikes. Now Chris has welded every one of them. And so when we decided we were gonna, we were gonna do another bike Soon to be called the G road.
[00:26:27]We went to Chris and Hey, how about we use an I go for it? And he was all for it. And man, those forks, he's got some magic dust in those forks. They are they're spectacular. And they look like the old fat forks, but they're not they're just the same style. He has a custom drawn fork leg made by Reynolds.
[00:26:48] It's a one inch heat treated steel tube. The fork blades are made out of. And he has his own little gussets that he uses and is the way that he puts them all together. Just their magical fork. They've a really fantastic ride quality. And to go back to your earlier question about why steel it really, hasn't been a fantastic ride call it's springy and lively.
[00:27:12] It's stiff when you need it to be, but compliant enough, it's really comfortable. I feel. It's everything that a carbon bike designer is trying to, and trying to work out. You're
[00:27:24] Craig Dalton: [00:27:24] probably right there.
[00:27:25] Tony Pereira: [00:27:25] Yeah. Yeah. If, oh, if we could only make this bike ride like a steel bike, it, and many of them do, some of those carbon bikes are beautiful.
[00:27:31] They ride great. But anyway, but yeah the G road steel fork is fantastic. And that's still what differentiate differentiates the B road from the G road. It'd be roads, the carbon. Gravel bike erode the steel for both can be built with 700 C or six 50 B wheels. The B road. We now use that the envy the G series for the gravel for which works with six 50 B.
[00:27:54] And it's got the mounts for cargo cages and internal wiring for life. Got all that stuff that we couldn't get before. And that's, that was what got us going with the idol for the idle fork, it's got a straight intranet, an eighth steer tube, so it has a different aesthetic to it.
[00:28:11] It's a more slender bike. It looks like an old school mountain bike. We usually set them up with drop bars, but sometimes we do a flat bar too. And man, a flat bargy road feels a 1993. Bad city fat
[00:28:24] Craig Dalton: [00:28:24] chance. That would be an amazing bike to have in your clinic.
[00:28:28]Tony Pereira: [00:28:28] Probably a little lighter than that bike was just because the tubes are better now.
[00:28:31] Yeah. But yeah I I love that. I love that style of bike. It's really fun to ride. Yeah. It brings me back to those early mountains.
[00:28:38] Craig Dalton: [00:28:38] And which one will you be riding in the out in Utah.
[00:28:41] Tony Pereira: [00:28:41] I've got I've got, it's actually the bike that we brought to envy last year. It's the it's a be rode with. And last year was when they launched that adventure for, I guess that's what it's called.
[00:28:52] It's called the adventure for, and so yeah, the road with the adventure fork and I've got six 50 B, you've got these G won the Schwalbe, the G one bite, the two, the 2.0. That's such a fun tire. And again, it's like a really lightweight old-school cross-country tire reminds me of a, like an old continental damn.
[00:29:13] What was that? The vertical. You remember that time? I don't remember that one before,
[00:29:19]Craig Dalton: [00:29:19] but I do. I do. And appreciate that tread pattern. I'm a Panaracer gravel king plus guy were asking me the STK for the most part, and I love the way it rides on the road, but it's super capable. Off-road so you'll see that on my bike out.
[00:29:33] And you great. Yeah. Cool. Tony, I appreciate the. I'll have links to all the bikes and the pictures and everything the listener needs to get to know Breadwinner a little bit better.
[00:29:43] Tony Pereira: [00:29:43] Excellent. Thank you so much.
[00:29:44] Craig Dalton: [00:29:44] Cheers.
[00:29:45]
[00:29:45]
This week we sit down with Tony Pereira of Breadwinner Cycles to learn more about this Portland, OR based custom builder. Tony was part of the 2021 ENVE Builder Round Up in Ogden, UT.
This week's podcast is generously sponsored by ENVE.
Automated Transcription (Please excuse the typos):
Breadwinner
Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] Tony, welcome to the show.
[00:00:01]Tony Pereira: [00:00:01] Thanks for having me, Craig.
[00:00:02] Craig Dalton: [00:00:02] It's great to see you virtually from your office there.
[00:00:05]Tony Pereira: [00:00:05] It's funny now that we're all accustomed to this it's it makes it really easy.
[00:00:08] Craig Dalton: [00:00:08] Yeah. It really is. If you don't have your setup dialed at this point, I don't think you ever will.
[00:00:13]Tony Pereira: [00:00:13] Yeah. Right.
[00:00:15] Craig Dalton: [00:00:15] So let's start off a little bit by getting to know you and what led you to becoming a frame builder
[00:00:21] Transcribing...
[00:00:22] Tony Pereira: [00:00:22] It's been a while now.
[00:00:23]I worked in, I started out in the outdoor, your industry, I started working in ski shops when I was 16, which was in 1985 and grew up working in ski shops. And then in college, I started working in a bike shop and after college, I moved to Utah and skied and rode and worked in bike shops there.
[00:00:44] And I got really active. Like community when I lived in salt lake did that for quite a while. Eventually got bored of being a bike mechanic, just hit my limit on that and what I've always been a tinkerer. Playing around in the garage, working on cars and motorcycles and of course, bicycles.
[00:01:01]I learned how to breeze a little and weld a little bit from a friend of mine. And then just brought all those things together. And I was a fan of the old mountain bikes, the, IBUs and salsa. And of course the Richie's, the Richie has always had those beautiful, huge fillets.
[00:01:18] And and I'm like, I knew how to braise. So I'm like, I wonder if I could make a mountain bike and, it was, that was two, this was 2002 or so, so almost 20 years ago. The internet was there. We were using all like listserv type communication. But there's a pretty active frame, builder listserv.
[00:01:37] It's still exists. But I got on there and started figuring it out, build a couple of mountain bikes and I, after building one, I was like, oh man, I gotta do this. Bringing my love of bikes together with making things and And I just, I was hooked for sure. Riding that first bike is such a joyous,
[00:01:54]it's gotta be an amazing feeling to ride something that we've actually made super gratifying.
[00:01:59] It sounds like you and I came up in the same era, which was that period of time where there was a lot of great mountain bike, frame builders and custom steel bikes. Every state seemed to have a builder of some notoriety. Yup. Yup. So how did you teach yourself? Was it really through, obviously you had a little bit of hands-on experience from your father's friend to teach you how to weld and, know what equipment was needed.
[00:02:25]Craig Dalton: [00:02:25] Were you able to glean some of the basic fundamentals from that list? Serve and ask questions?
[00:02:31] Tony Pereira: [00:02:31] Yeah. Yeah, it was great. I know I, Richard Sachs is one of the. More professional frame builders that was on there. And he's always been really generous with his time. And there were a number of others as well, but I remember him in particular, but yeah, there was a great group of people that, that I, you know, some of them I'm still friends with.
[00:02:49] Remember Steve from Coconino was getting started exactly the same time. And the two of us were like bouncing things off of each other. And just getting our feet wet, but I, I'm fortunate to have, I have a natural aptitude for using tools and problem solving and, figuring things out.
[00:03:08] So yeah, I was able to teach myself, with the help of that listserv, obviously how to make it all come together. And, I look back on those early frames and I still have a couple of them and they were pretty bad. The first there's 20 or so that I built for me and my friends. So they were pretty rough, I should say rough.
[00:03:25]They weren't, the finish was rough. They worked fine. But I started building bikes for customers after about the first 20 or so bikes mostly worked, went to my friends and. And they were starting to get pretty good by that.
[00:03:36] Craig Dalton: [00:03:36] And did that just happen via word of mouth with the 20 out there, people would see it and say, where did you get that thing?
[00:03:42] I had some, I had a core group of friends in salt lake that worked in the bike shop with me, or were associated with the bike shop called wild rose. It was a, early mountain bike scene, mouth bike shop. And two of my friends, Alex and Jeff. They were all, they were 100% on board with me.
[00:03:59] They were like, yeah, you got to do this. And we're going to help you build a, some bikes, let's go racing. And we went out, we were all mountain bikers. So we were out riding a single speeds and the inner mountain cup series in Utah, which is a, I think still exists was a really popular mountain bike series.
[00:04:18] There were, I think there were 10 races around the whole state. And we got out there and we were top five races. In the single-speed category we started doing that and we would do 24 hours of Moab every year. So we just got out there, we just put it out there and we were having fun and people liked what we were doing.
[00:04:33] And I know our very first, my very first customer, he was a guy that we beat in a race and he came up to me at the end of the race. He was like, you guys are having fun. I want one of those.
[00:04:43]That's awesome. Were you operating under the breadwinner brand at that point? No. That was Pereira cycles.
[00:04:50] The names, namesake brand at that point.
[00:04:52] Tony Pereira: [00:04:52] Right. So that was in Utah and in 2004, or so, and then I moved to Portland in 2005. And when I moved here, I decided not to get a job and go in full-time building bikes. I had a few orders under my belt. And I just, I went for it and it worked out.
[00:05:11] Craig Dalton: [00:05:11] And did you stay under your namesake as the
[00:05:13] Tony Pereira: [00:05:13] Brandon? Yeah, it was prayer cycles until 2013. That's when I hooked up with IRA, we've been building under his name, I Ryan, and and we started breadwinner.
[00:05:26]Craig Dalton: [00:05:26] What about that partnership with IRA made it attractive to you to bring different perspectives and skillsets to the team?
[00:05:33] Yeah.
[00:05:33] Tony Pereira: [00:05:33] Yeah. Different types of riders, but have a like-mind as far as there are eye for style and quality, we both worked with the Rafa clothing company and their very early years, we were friends with the guys that got it going here. And when they were based in. And our friend Daniel conceived of this project called the continental.
[00:06:00] And it was a group of writers, originally six writers and IRA. And I were two of them who wrote around first in the Northwest here. And, we have a photographer along with us and they'd made some beautiful images and created that whole brand. That's now Rafa. And like a lot of that, the imagery that they still use is of that same stuff.
[00:06:20] But like big mountain rides and we're actually doing a lot of gravel riding on 23 millimeter tires and our road bikes. But riding some really cool round, the epic kind of rides that everybody makes fun of Rafa for now.
[00:06:33]Craig Dalton: [00:06:33] I certainly remember that era when those finished visuals and videos came out and they were.
[00:06:38] They were certainly evocative of where ultimately gravel slotted in this big mountain adventure, not your Saturday group, not your normal Saturday group ride type of riding.
[00:06:49] Tony Pereira: [00:06:49] Right yeah, that was super fun. And out of that Rafa asked us to build, they decided that they were going to get five bike companies.
[00:06:58] We were the smallest one and market alignment. That was all through their website. They took the orders and then we would, we build the bikes and I can't remember. I can't remember exactly. It was like Cinelli I know Chanel Lee was one of them. It's they're slipping my mind now, but they're all like big bike brands.
[00:07:17] And then it was me and IRA and we were the only ones that were on that continental team. So we called that bike, the continental. And it had my logo on the right side of the down tube in Iris on the left side of the down too. He built mostly with lugs. So it had a lugged head tube and a talk to C2 junction.
[00:07:37] And then the bottom bracket was Phillip raised, which is my style,
[00:07:40] Craig Dalton: [00:07:40] interesting collaboration
[00:07:42] Tony Pereira: [00:07:42] together. We sold 22 of them. So not very many, but out of that, we've found that we really liked working together. And we were like, all right and honestly, we made some good money off of it. Like building that money.
[00:07:55] That was how many bikes each of us would build in a year. Right back then I was building 25 likes a year or maybe even a
[00:08:01] Craig Dalton: [00:08:01] little less. Yeah. It's funny. In talking to other builders, you talk, you think about the pace in which these bikes get built. If you're building them all by yourself. Two three weeks to build a bike is, about what it takes and do the math.
[00:08:14] You can't do much more than 20, 25 in a year, and
[00:08:18] Tony Pereira: [00:08:18] you nailed it. We were doing the math and we're like, all right, we can't scale what we're doing now anymore. Some people can, there's a few builders out there that can crank them out, but we couldn't. So we're like, let's figure out a way to keep building bikes, but make more of them.
[00:08:34]And maybe make a little bit of a. And the breadwinner name was really something that we hung on that first Rafa project. It was just what we used to open a bank account. You've never had any plans to make it a brand. It was a, kind of an inside joke.
[00:08:51] Craig Dalton: [00:08:51] Yeah. I love that. Yeah. We can't make bread any other way.
[00:08:54] This is the breadwinner project.
[00:08:55]Tony Pereira: [00:08:55] Yeah. Yeah. My S my son had just been born. IRA had just gotten married and we were. We got to figure something out here and we started calling breadwinner. It was again, a joke between us, but a year or two later actually a year after the Rafa thing we got approached by the folks that were starting up Shinola.
[00:09:14] Yep. Just now mostly a watch
[00:09:16] Craig Dalton: [00:09:16] company. Sure. I remember those bikes. Were they, were you behind them? Bikes as
[00:09:20] Tony Pereira: [00:09:20] well. And we designed there. And bill built some prototypes for that. And we got paid well for that. And we took that money and started breadwinner.
[00:09:33] Craig Dalton: [00:09:33] Okay. Yeah. You know it, I imagine it's always a challenge as a frame builder.
[00:09:38] Once you have the knowledge of all the different types of machinery that could make your process more efficient. Acquiring said, machinery is a big financial outlay. So having those rare opportunities like with Shinola. Rapha before that I'm sure, really accelerated your ability to be a builder that can kick out more than 20 a year.
[00:09:58] Tony Pereira: [00:09:58] Yeah. And it helped them. It gave us a little bit of time to come up with some new ideas. Like we could sit back and go, okay, what do we want this, what do we want this thing called breadwinner to be? And we realized that a lot of our customers. If we're waiting a year, sometimes two years to get their bike at the end of that long wait, they were often not happy.
[00:10:21]There are lots of opportunities for things to go wrong and or for them to just lose interest or, just, it just it's too long. So we said, all right, with breadwinner, we're going to deliver the bikes in eight to 12 weeks. And that we've tried to do that the whole time. We've done pretty well until this.
[00:10:39]And now that's completely out the window. It's six months now.
[00:10:43] Craig Dalton: [00:10:43] Fortunately, everybody's waiting that long for a group of, at this moment. So you're all right.
[00:10:47] Tony Pereira: [00:10:47] Yeah. The frames, we can turn around, we can build the frames in the same amount of time. If we can get materials, there's, we're run out of tubes.
[00:10:55] We run out of head tubes or bottom bracket shells or whatever it is. And we've had moments where we just have to stop. We can't build bikes in the last year. That's really been unusual, but then our painters backed up because, there's this bike boom. So he's extra busy and but anyway, yeah, so it's a little longer now, but yeah, excuse me.
[00:11:17]IRA's always been more of a a road rider and a gravel rider. He won the first trans, Iowa gravel race. And I've been a mountain biker. I started mountain biking in 87 and started riding a road bike. When I wrote with those Rafa guys,
[00:11:31] Craig Dalton: [00:11:31] you said it sounded like at the inception of breadwinner, did you see the market opportunity being a little bit more adventurous road, bike style?
[00:11:39]Tony Pereira: [00:11:39] Not particularly. We, that was just. So our first lineup, we didn't have a gravel bike. Sure.
[00:11:48] Craig Dalton: [00:11:48] Yeah. And was it a mountain frame? Go ahead.
[00:11:51] Tony Pereira: [00:11:51] Bye. The continental, which is a classic steel fork road bike, we still have that the low lows, our road bikes still are our mainstay road bike.
[00:12:00]We have the JV racer, which is our cross country mountain bike. And then a city bike called the Arbor lodge, just the neighbor neighborhood we lived in. And we had a touring bike, which we don't actually don't offer anymore. So that was it. Six bikes that first year. And I believe it was the next year when we came out with the B road, which is now our most popular bike.
[00:12:20] And that was our first ground.
[00:12:22]Craig Dalton: [00:12:22] Interesting. So how long did, what did that look like in terms of the proportion of which frames were selling and when did you start to see that? Hey, the be road is actually the bike that is most appealing.
[00:12:34]Tony Pereira: [00:12:34] At first we didn't have it. So it was, we were mostly selling Lolo's.
[00:12:38] That was our logo was a Continentals, definitely on the road. And then we put the B road out there and the low the road bikes were still more popular for that first. So that would have been 20 14, 15. I think in 2016 it started to shift significantly. And then it was like 50% road or gravel bikes.
[00:12:58] And then we came out, I think we came up the G road, the following year. And now. 60 or 70% gravel bikes, gravel slash bike packing bikes. Yep.
[00:13:09] Craig Dalton: [00:13:09] Yup. Yeah. That's in that, that tracks, what I imagined would happen, it seems on point I was imagining that based on your sales stats, you would have your finger on the pulse of where, and when that gravel product started to break and break free of the pack.
[00:13:25] Yeah.
[00:13:25] Tony Pereira: [00:13:25] Yeah, no, it's been, yeah. It's. Four years or so where it's been clearly the front runner. And I feel like this year we did a few more road bikes and some of those were people that had bought gravel bikes from us. And they were like, all right, now I want to road bike. Yeah. People still have their quivers and the gravel bikes have been, real quiver, quiver busters.
[00:13:45]A lot of people use those bikes for everything. When you come around and you're like, all right, I want a real fast bike too. And then you get that
[00:13:53] Craig Dalton: [00:13:53] road bike. I think, as we were talking about offline, the geometry changes in mountain bikes have made them a different beast than what we were riding in the late nineties and a hell of a lot more fun.
[00:14:06] Yeah. And I imagine that's a, kind of a growing segment of interest because people are looking for something special to have underneath.
[00:14:14]Tony Pereira: [00:14:14] For in the mountain bike world. Yeah. I would love to sell more mountain bikes, but the reality of it is that we it's a niche thing for us. So we do a handful of mountain bikes a year.
[00:14:24]I love them. I are good. Water's my all time favorite bike. But those it's designed around the plus tires. So I've been running two sixes or two eights on it lately. But man, that's just such a fun bike for all, all around riding and yeah, you're right. The geometry has changed. I think because forks have gotten longer, it's forced us to change the bikes, but the other thing that's changed a whole lot is the trails.
[00:14:48]We went from old hiking trails that were Rocky and not necessarily flowing. Just go pick in your way through, through these trails to trails that are built for bikes, the bill for around bikes, with berms and jumps and rollers and all kinds of features. So the bikes have had, had to evolve with the trails.
[00:15:07] Yeah. But yeah, I love riding the hard tails and the the they're super fun. That's, it's been a good, that has been a fun evolution to be, to feel like I've been.
[00:15:16]Craig Dalton: [00:15:16] Let's talk about the mountain bike. One of the bikes you're bringing out to Utah for the envy builder Roundup. I know some of the listeners have probably caught pictures of it already, but why don't you talk us through that model?
[00:15:25]Tony Pereira: [00:15:25] Sure. I told you about my friends, Jeff and Alex that helped me get started mountain bike with breadwinner or with prayer cycles. Jeff, his name is Jeff Bates. He passed away. A number of years ago of skin cancer. And so the first mountain bike that we made was called the JB racers named after him.
[00:15:43] We still, and we still have it. That's our classic 20 Niner hard tail, cross-country machine. And we've, we'll always have that in our lineup. It's very similar to the bikes I was making under the Pereira banner. Talking about this trail evolution a few years ago I started riding a bunch at a trail system here near Portland called Sandy Ridge.
[00:16:03] And it's this new Invus style flow trails are built just for mountain bikes. And that cross country bike is not the right bike for that. So I'm like, all right. And I'd had this in my head for a few years. I'm like, I think I want to build something that's more slack. It's a bigger. It's still a hard tail.
[00:16:21] It was there weren't a lot of them happening at the time. But finally I'm like, all right, I'm building this thing. And so pretty slacked out. I think at the time that was a 66 degree head to bangle with a 1 64. It was around 27, 5 wheels. The first-generation about Otis and we started.
[00:16:39] So we came up with the design and when it came time for a name, I thought about my buddy, Alex, who was the other guy that helped me start get started. And he's a funny guy. He'd always come up with these funny sayings and give everybody nicknames and just have these funny phrases. And he, one of them was when.
[00:16:58]You'd see a cool bike or something. You'd say, dude, that's bad Otis. There's out of nowhere, I don't know where it came from, but he just used to say it all the time. So I'm like that's a great name for a bike. I'm going to call the bike bad Otis. So called the bike bad Otis. You bring it to the two north American handmade bike show, which was in, I don't remember where it was that year Sacramento.
[00:17:23] Environmental. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was. Brought the bad odors to Sacramento, big hit. We got some nice press on it. A couple of weeks later, I get a note from a guy on Facebook and his name, bad Otis. He's Hey, like I see bad odors pop up in my messenger. Hey man, why do you have this bike called bad Otis?
[00:17:47] That's my name? I was like, I don't know who you are, but all tell me why that's your name? And it turns out he's a fairly well-known artist in the punk rock world. Interesting. In the LA punk rock, like old school, seventies, eighties, he was like the t-shirt artists that did like the circle jerks and black flag.
[00:18:10] And like all those I might be wrong about some of those bands, but He, if you see his work, it's like it's of that era and he's still working artists. And we had a conversation. I was like, I'm like, man, I don't know anything about you. I wish I did. Cause I'd want some of your, I would've wanted some of your stuff back then, This is just the name that came out of nowhere from my friend.
[00:18:32] And he was like, all right, that's cool. He was totally cool about it, but he thought he's been ripped off over the years. Yeah. Like people that work in that realm there's counterfeit, there's making rip offs of his old t-shirt designs from the eighties and he's had enough of it. So he saw his name pop off and he's oh, here's another one.
[00:18:50] And it turns out there was, it wasn't that wasn't the case. But Long story that has nothing to do with the bike, but funny about the name. Anyway, last year, we've seen this long travel hard tail, so big fork, hard tail, a ball over the past few years. There's a lot of them out there.
[00:19:10] And just like with the full suspension bikes to get really slack and the head tube angle tend to have a long. Front center so much longer talk to you, but with a steep C2 which gives you a lot more stability when you're in the air, you're diving into berms or going down really steep stuff. And, we said, Hey, we should try this.
[00:19:29]I guess maybe a year ago we built a bike cry there was for a Chris king event and and he's been riding that for the past year. And so just again, slacker, I think we went to a 64 degree head to bangle or something like that. His really steep, like 76 degrees C to bangle.
[00:19:47]So it climbs you get your weight far enough forward that the front end doesn't want to walk you're around. Okay. But then once you put your dropper down, you stand up, you've got that hard charging, like super slack.
[00:19:57] Craig Dalton: [00:19:57] Yeah, I find it really interesting. Just it helps looking at those bikes helps me think about gravel geometry in many ways.
[00:20:03] Not that there's any parallels between the two, but I've often. Yeah, I had trouble like figuring out, what is the steepness of a C2 bangle do? What does the head tube angle do? And the more I play around with different bikes and different equipment, you start to see. And some of these things creep their way.
[00:20:18] Some of these philosophies, not these extremes creep their way into gravel bikes in one shape or form IMS.
[00:20:24] Tony Pereira: [00:20:24] Yeah. Yeah. W you've got the, I forgot what it's called, the transition. They have that
[00:20:28] Craig Dalton: [00:20:28] crazy that isn't the slack evil Shammy, Hagar. Exactly. Tony let's talk about the gravel bikes in your lineup, and I'd be curious for you to describe to the listener, the different models and the different tubes that's that you use.
[00:20:43] And, with carbon being like the material, that a lot of these bikes get pumped out. Yeah. Why don't you talk to the listener about what a steel bike can do and how it feels and why it's so special? Sure,
[00:20:56] Tony Pereira: [00:20:56] sure. I think cars, there are many wonderful carbon bikes. There's nothing wrong. I'm not like a agnostic.
[00:21:03]Gotta have steel. Steel is real guy I have been, but I've left all that behind, I think. Many great materials for bikes. The thing that, that keeps us making steel bikes is how great it is for custom bikes. Yep. And small production, small scale production. So there are, I don't know how many hundred hundreds of different tubes to choose from so we can really vary the.
[00:21:34]The ride of the bike based on the two parameters. So your two parameters are the diameter, the wall thickness, and then the, but pro budding profile. So steel tubes are thicker on the ends. We call that the, but everyone's heard of budded tubing. Most people don't know what it means. But they're just, they're thicker on the ends where you do your welding is the welding affects the strength of the material.
[00:21:57] So it has to be a little bit stronger where you. And then the middle of the two where you don't heat, it can be a lot thinner and a lot lighter. So you save some weight. And then each tube comes in a certain length and the butts are a certain length as well. You removed some of that to get your finished to blank.
[00:22:12] So you, we can really tailor each individual to, for each bite and dial in, optimize the weight of the bike and optimize the ride quality, mostly through the diameter mall, thickness of the tube to the field. Optimize it for weight and strength.
[00:22:30] Craig Dalton: [00:22:30] Is there in that sort of get to know the customer process, you're learning their weight and riding style.
[00:22:36] Exactly. And you can make adjustments to the way the bike feels based on what they're telling you. How
[00:22:43] Tony Pereira: [00:22:43] exactly. Exactly. Yeah. We have people come to us, oh yeah. I used to be a football player and I'm pretty big and I stomped on him. What I want to really like, bike, packing bike, and we're like, all right we're going to make it a little heavier and we're going to use a little bit bigger tubes and it's going to give you the best ride, and then on the other side, we have somebody that's a hundred pounds and they don't, they, and they don't want the bike to feel like a dead brick. We can either use a smaller van or two to where later to tailor to that, to their style and their size and their.
[00:23:16]Craig Dalton: [00:23:16] For most of the listeners, I'm imagining that they aren't custom bike owners as someone, when they're going through the purchasing process, obviously the sky's the limit to blends things like that, that you can help work with them on how do you help guide people to get to the right spot?
[00:23:33] Tony Pereira: [00:23:33] Yeah. Yeah. The way that we work we've we try to make it approachable and easy. That was another goal of ours with breadwinner was. When I'd made my Pereira cycles, I was like, what kind of do you want, and I would make you a road bike or a cross bike, or they didn't have names.
[00:23:49] There was no model names of any kind, but, and I realized that was, that made it hard for people to come through the door. So now we have like our gravel bikes, our first one was called the be road and be roads are like rural roads in the Midwest where I grew up. And And so you would say, okay, I want to be road.
[00:24:06] And that has a carbon fork and a steel frame. And we work with people on there with their fit and everything and how they want the bike to ride the design side's all on us. The customers, our customers, sometimes they want to have more say in what goes, where, and, but we've got a pretty good idea for what works and the materials we should use.
[00:24:25] So we have all that. And then, yeah, and then the component. Whenever you
[00:24:29] Craig Dalton: [00:24:29] want. So that be road model sounds like maybe it was the gravel bike extension of that continental. That was it more in their kind of road plus world than that to a cross bike.
[00:24:41]Tony Pereira: [00:24:41] Yeah, we based it on our cross bike. Mostly because at the time the carbon forks you could get, it would fit a wire tire we're cross forks.
[00:24:49] Yeah. So it kinda just fit into that realm. And we were we're very limited in what tires there were that time. And there was the the panel racer Passilla was really popular Yon Hina from
[00:25:01]
[00:25:01] Renee Harris, which was compass, which before that was something else I can remember what he called it, then they had, and there was another name before compass.
[00:25:10]Those tires were around anyway. They weren't very wide. I think our first B road had 30 twos on it, which is like a big road tire now. Yeah. So yeah, we did the D road for awhile. I think two years. And then people started asking for, six 50 V with wider tire and said, all right how are we going to do that?
[00:25:28] There wasn't a carbon for two years. So we've talked to our friend, Chris Iglehart who's across the street from us over here. And he's been making those segmented forks since he was at fat city
[00:25:40]Craig Dalton: [00:25:40] back in the eighties. That's so the moment you said that, and I've got a picture up of that fork right now, and you're absolutely right.
[00:25:47] That was the fat fork.
[00:25:49] Tony Pereira: [00:25:49] Yeah. So Chris was the guy that made all those forks. Amazing. Yeah. And he's now across the street and he also welds all our bikes. So IRA and I have, we still touch every bike and I tack weld all the bikes, but Chris does our finish welding. Gotcha. We build three bikes a week, so we can't have a welder on staff.
[00:26:10] We can't, you just can't have somebody. That's not a full-time job. Yeah. So ever since the very beginning of breadwinner, we built over, we built going on 900 bikes. Now Chris has welded every one of them. And so when we decided we were gonna, we were gonna do another bike Soon to be called the G road.
[00:26:27]We went to Chris and Hey, how about we use an I go for it? And he was all for it. And man, those forks, he's got some magic dust in those forks. They are they're spectacular. And they look like the old fat forks, but they're not they're just the same style. He has a custom drawn fork leg made by Reynolds.
[00:26:48] It's a one inch heat treated steel tube. The fork blades are made out of. And he has his own little gussets that he uses and is the way that he puts them all together. Just their magical fork. They've a really fantastic ride quality. And to go back to your earlier question about why steel it really, hasn't been a fantastic ride call it's springy and lively.
[00:27:12] It's stiff when you need it to be, but compliant enough, it's really comfortable. I feel. It's everything that a carbon bike designer is trying to, and trying to work out. You're
[00:27:24] Craig Dalton: [00:27:24] probably right there.
[00:27:25] Tony Pereira: [00:27:25] Yeah. Yeah. If, oh, if we could only make this bike ride like a steel bike, it, and many of them do, some of those carbon bikes are beautiful.
[00:27:31] They ride great. But anyway, but yeah the G road steel fork is fantastic. And that's still what differentiate differentiates the B road from the G road. It'd be roads, the carbon. Gravel bike erode the steel for both can be built with 700 C or six 50 B wheels. The B road. We now use that the envy the G series for the gravel for which works with six 50 B.
[00:27:54] And it's got the mounts for cargo cages and internal wiring for life. Got all that stuff that we couldn't get before. And that's, that was what got us going with the idol for the idle fork, it's got a straight intranet, an eighth steer tube, so it has a different aesthetic to it.
[00:28:11] It's a more slender bike. It looks like an old school mountain bike. We usually set them up with drop bars, but sometimes we do a flat bar too. And man, a flat bargy road feels a 1993. Bad city fat
[00:28:24] Craig Dalton: [00:28:24] chance. That would be an amazing bike to have in your clinic.
[00:28:28]Tony Pereira: [00:28:28] Probably a little lighter than that bike was just because the tubes are better now.
[00:28:31] Yeah. But yeah I I love that. I love that style of bike. It's really fun to ride. Yeah. It brings me back to those early mountains.
[00:28:38] Craig Dalton: [00:28:38] And which one will you be riding in the out in Utah.
[00:28:41] Tony Pereira: [00:28:41] I've got I've got, it's actually the bike that we brought to envy last year. It's the it's a be rode with. And last year was when they launched that adventure for, I guess that's what it's called.
[00:28:52] It's called the adventure for, and so yeah, the road with the adventure fork and I've got six 50 B, you've got these G won the Schwalbe, the G one bite, the two, the 2.0. That's such a fun tire. And again, it's like a really lightweight old-school cross-country tire reminds me of a, like an old continental damn.
[00:29:13] What was that? The vertical. You remember that time? I don't remember that one before,
[00:29:19]Craig Dalton: [00:29:19] but I do. I do. And appreciate that tread pattern. I'm a Panaracer gravel king plus guy were asking me the STK for the most part, and I love the way it rides on the road, but it's super capable. Off-road so you'll see that on my bike out.
[00:29:33] And you great. Yeah. Cool. Tony, I appreciate the. I'll have links to all the bikes and the pictures and everything the listener needs to get to know Breadwinner a little bit better.
[00:29:43] Tony Pereira: [00:29:43] Excellent. Thank you so much.
[00:29:44] Craig Dalton: [00:29:44] Cheers.
[00:29:45]
[00:29:45]
In the Dirt 22 with Craig Dalton and Randall R. Jacobs. This week we drill further into the discussion around bike geometry, flip chips and fit in our continued exploration of the sport of gravel cycling.
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In the Dirt 22 with Craig Dalton and Randall R. Jacobs. This week we drill further into the discussion around bike geometry, flip chips and fit in our continued exploration of the sport of gravel cycling.
Support the podcast
Join The Ridership
This week we sit down with Jon Freeman, Rapha's Head of Hardgoods to discuss the Explore Powerweave gravel cycling shoe. We look at what it takes from a design perspective to build a shoe and what gravel cyclists should be looking for in a shoe.
Rapha Explore Powerweave Shoe
Presenting Sponsor: Athletic Greens
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Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos):
Rapha
[00:00:03]Craig Dalton: [00:00:04] Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the show, we've got Jon Freeman from Rapha, joining us to talk about shoes. I've wanted to talk about shoes for a while now, and really dig into the ins and outs of what makes a great gravel shoe.
[00:00:21]I'd been riding a comfortable, but not maybe high performance shoe. That was great for all day rides. Great for hiking. But I was curious to get into something a little bit more high performance without giving up that comfort.
[00:00:33]So it was great to hear from an expert about how the shoe was designed. We talk about the Explore power weave shoe from Rafa. One of their most recent models focused on the gravel
[00:00:45] Before we jumped in, I needed to thank this week sponsor. This week, the show is brought to you by Athletic Greens, the most comprehensive daily nutritional beverage I've ever tried. You've heard me before and I'll say it again. I've been an Athletic Greens customer for a number of years. It's my go-to kind of nutritional baseline that I take every day, just to make sure with all the corners I may cut in my diet that I'm getting what I need.
[00:01:12]Athletic Greens is definitely part of my big ride day plans. I'll do a drink in the morning just to get on top of my hydration early, before the ride. And then when I come back, I know I'm always crushed and really depleted. I'll do yet another serving of Athletic Greens. One scoop of Athletic Greens contains 75 vitamins minerals and whole food sourced ingredients.
[00:01:34] Including a multivitamin multi-mineral probiotic, green superfood blend, and more. They all work together to fill those nutritional gaps in your diet. Increase energy and focus aid with digestion and support a healthy immune system.
[00:01:48]
[00:01:48]All without the need to take multiple products or pills. That's what does it for me, it's just simple one scoop every day. And I feel like I've got my bases covered.
[00:01:58]So that's my pitch for Athletic Greens.
[00:02:00] You know, I love it. You know, I recommend it. Simply visit Athletic Greens.com/the gravel ride. And get your free year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs today. Again that url is Athletic Greens.com/the gravel ride.
[00:02:18]Big, thanks to Athletic Greens for their continued support. And thank you for going to check them out. With all that said let's dive right in to this week's interview with Jon from Rafa.
[00:02:29]
[00:02:29] Jon welcome to the show.
[00:02:31]Thanks.
[00:02:32] Jon Freeman: [00:02:32] Thanks,
[00:02:32] Craig Dalton: [00:02:32] I haven't me.
[00:02:32] Yeah. I'm excited to get into shoe technology with you. It's something that I think I've ignored a little bit in my gravel life. I used to think a lot about it from a road shoe perspective and a mountain bikes you perspective, but it took me a while to come around to really understanding what I wanted out of a gravel shoe.
[00:02:48] So why don't we start by just getting a little bit about your background and what led you to Rafa?
[00:02:53]Jon Freeman: [00:02:53] Yeah, sure. I think there's Two parts of that, really. So it's my background in design. And then a background in terms of bikes and it basically converged at Rapha, which is A great thing to be able to call a job.
[00:03:03] Cause they're two big passions of mine, but yeah. And bikes have always been a part of my life. I grew up riding DMS never to any kind of great level, but just as a teenager, it was really immersed in that sort of culture of BMX building dirt jumps, hanging out in skate parks, that kind of thing.
[00:03:18] I grew into mountain bike a bit as I got older. I always loved taking bikes apart and building bikes and learning the mechanics of how bikes work as well. And I think that sort of passion for taking things apart and problem solving led me down the degree of or the road of kind of a degree in industrial design.
[00:03:37]So I, yeah I studied and industrial design and graduated and then went on to work for one of the. Large design agencies here in London working on a broad range of industries, different product categories. That's the nature of agency work is that it's super varied, but I spent quite a while back and working on a lot of things have been consumer electronics, wearable tech, and those kinds of other areas.
[00:04:01]Just getting an understanding of what, where am I kind of passionate land design, but at the same time, I. I purchased the road bike and had my eyes open to just like how much further and how much faster you could travel on a bike with kind of skinny tires and drop bars. And that was just this like spotless passion for road riding, and I started down that journey of just becoming. Really immersed in the sport and the culture and trying to consume everything that goes along with it. So it became this thing where I was working in, in, in design, but I was writing was everything else outside of work.
[00:04:37] And it was waking up early to get training rides in before work and then sneaking off early to go and race like local criteriums and that kind of thing. It was everything. And I think around the same time, I. Got introduced to the then creative director at Rapha and I knew of raffle.
[00:04:52] I was really aware of them, but I think like purely as a sort of an apparel brand at that point. And they were doing really well at the time kind of rappers always. And on this quite, quite steep growth card, which is great. And they were starting to think more seriously about expanding into other categories outside of apparel.
[00:05:11] So we started discussing this and yeah, after a while I basically ended up making the jump to joining Rafa full-time and then helping them to grow the side of the product offering that we categorize as hard goods and accessories. So it's essentially everything that sits outside of the apparel.
[00:05:27]And covers a number of different categories, but a big part of that's definitely been the kind of push into footwear.
[00:05:34] Craig Dalton: [00:05:34] Nice. What were just out of curiosity, what was the first kind of outside of apparel product that Rafa released
[00:05:43] Jon Freeman: [00:05:43] very first? There's always been bits in the range, I think like from a small accessories point of view and things and there's has always.
[00:05:51] In an ambition to have parts alongside the apparel. It's like this idea of dressing the rider from head to toe. And so there's been packs and things like that there for a while. And I think w when I joined actually the main focus was in Iowa. So we spent quite a bit of time trying to think about how we could transition into like fully on bike performance, Iowa.
[00:06:11] So that was quite a focus. And I think that was where we. The first time we really started thinking like ground up, in-house kind of development about a true kind of hard, good product.
[00:06:22] Craig Dalton: [00:06:22] Gotcha. Then when you decided as a company to move into the shoe category, is my recollection collect the correct that you were working with another manufacturer to realize the design originally?
[00:06:34] Jon Freeman: [00:06:34] Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. So she's been in the range for quite a while. 2012 I think was the first. Our first kind of entry into the market and yeah, you're right. That was in collaboration with Giro in those early days. Yeah, that was a great partnership. I think, creating around footwear comes with a lot of like unique complexity and there's a lot of investment involved in the tooling and things like that.
[00:06:56] So it was really good for us at the beginning to be able to collaborate with someone who had, have those expertise and had some parts in place that we could share essentially. So the basic premise of those early early styles that we had was using the Giro sole units and narrow on they're lost, which is the part of the shoe or the part that, that the shoe is built around, then it defines the fit.
[00:07:18] So we were using those kinds of elements from them and then creating our own unique offers to go on the shoes. So yeah, that, that was before my time with Rafa, but I think, yeah. The approach to those styles was definitely the same as how Rapha entered into the apparel market in terms of just like seeing a category of product that was visually quite cluttered and over branded and just trying to simplify and refine.
[00:07:44] And I think we saw the same opportunity in footwear, and that was what led the design of those early shoes. But GT shoes, The first one. And I think, yeah, I think that, I think it's really stood the test of time. We still see people in that shoe today. And I think it's really good.
[00:07:59] And largely what we've gone on to do since it's been an evolution of that, is that it
[00:08:04] Craig Dalton: [00:08:04] that's interesting when you talk about that design process and as you were describing, collaborating with Giro on that foot bed makes a lot of sense to decouple having to tackle every element of the shoe.
[00:08:17] I think as the listener, if you can look down at your footwear right now, you can start to see the different parts that we're going to be talking about and how the sole and the foot bed might be one thing. And the uppers might be another thing. And taking on that entire design challenge, particularly with all the size ranges of shoes, seems like a pretty monumental challenge.
[00:08:35] Monumental challenge from the jump.
[00:08:38] Jon Freeman: [00:08:38] Yeah. Yeah, it is absolutely. It's massive. And it's got quite a lot of unique complexity versus other kinds of categories. Yeah, you need to know what you're doing, going into it. And I think, yeah, as I say it was, yeah, we're really proud of the work we did with JIRA.
[00:08:52] I think it was a great kind of way of starting out. We learned a lot until we came to the point in mid 2016, when he decided we were a place as a company where we'd grown and. And we built the confidence in the category through those collaborations to say, okay, I think it's the right time for us to move away from this partnership and go alone into footwear.
[00:09:14] So can't started down that road of creating our own kind of built from the ground up in house range of shoes. Now
[00:09:23] Craig Dalton: [00:09:23] imagine part of any partnership decision and product development decision there's economics, right? So there's the economics of working with a third party for that foot bed. And that soul was it, was there parts of the design that you could not realize because it was someone else's foot bed that led you to bringing it into your own house and developing it from the ground up?
[00:09:44] Jon Freeman: [00:09:44] Yeah, I think so. Yeah. That's yeah, I think definitely like you, you are working with. A fit that someone else is defined when you're working in that way. And Jerry, she is a fantastic, there was nothing that we were struggling with really.
[00:09:58] But I think we just, yeah, we had our own opinions through the things that we'd learned and we had our own kind of vision for where we wanted to take footwear. So yeah, going it alone and making those investments in the tooling and the. The molded components of the shoe does enable you to, have the scope to define everything with regard to how that shoe performs
[00:10:19] Craig Dalton: [00:10:19] with that particular partnership with JIRA.
[00:10:21] Had you introduced to gravel Shu at that point or was the gravel shoe a ground up Rafa design?
[00:10:27] Jon Freeman: [00:10:27] Yeah, we had an, that was a ground up one. We had the GT sheet, which is a good, our grand tour shoe. So it was very much road specific or round shoe. And then later on, we'd followed that again with Giro with the climate issue, which was a lighter weight version of that shoe intended for kind of those big days in the mountains, weight saving focus.
[00:10:48] So yeah, we just had those two with JIRA.
[00:10:50] Craig Dalton: [00:10:50] And then when do the gravel shoe come into the lineup?
[00:10:53]Jon Freeman: [00:10:53] So yeah, it was in 2016. We decided we were. Looking to do our own footwear and what we first launched with the classic and Explore shoe. So they were They were the first two models and Explore is the category, which we define as adventures off-road.
[00:11:09] So that kind of a big part of that is gravel kind of encompasses that. So that's a big focus of what that Explore shoes intended for. So let's break
[00:11:18] Craig Dalton: [00:11:18] down gravel shoe technology and what the listeners should be thinking about when choosing a shoe. Do you want it in pick wherever you want to start?
[00:11:26] If you want to start from the uppers or the soul?
[00:11:29] Jon Freeman: [00:11:29] Yeah. Yeah, sure. I think it's interesting when you think about what gravel means in relation to, to footwear is there's definitely some crossover with other disciplines and kind of cyclocross and cross country mountain bike shoes. But then at the same time, it's, there's definitely some really unique requirements for gravel specific shoe.
[00:11:48] I think one of the main things That's should be a fundamental consideration that kind of applies to all cycling foot lab before we're just specifically gravel is the sets. And I think, shoe brands are going to have a slightly different set and different approaches to fit.
[00:12:04] And feet vary massively even with one size bracket. So I think for anyone looking to, to purchase a gravel share, it's super important that kind of really considering the fit and. Taking the time to probably try different brands, and that's why getting into your local store, trying out different shoes and wherever you can try on different models yeah.
[00:12:24] Spending the time to do that, obviously can be, not always possible to ride in those shoes, but even just putting them on and walking in them can tell you a lot about how they're going to work for you. It was an individual. And I think, in gravel, that fear is even more important because.
[00:12:40] There are, the shocks from the road that you're experiencing repetitively over the duration of a long ride can really like, be quite tiring on the foot and accentuate any issues that might be there that you might not experienced saying on the road ride so much. So it's super important, I think as well that walking in the shoes I think it brings you onto a second point, which is really relevant to gravel riding. And that's the kind of walkability of the shoe is actually, the kind of traction off the bike is a really important thing. So a lot of the times in gravel, you can find yourself having to navigate sections where it might be like hike a bike or something where you're not riding.
[00:13:17]And so it's really important that the shoes comfortable for you in those situations as well. Sometimes a shoe that's focused entirely on. On kind of pedal efficiency and power transfer can be really unforgiving if you try and walk in it off the bike. As well if you're camping overnight or if if that's the kind of, part of the gravel ride, then having something which, you can wear the whole time and not having to take an additional pair of shoes can.
[00:13:43] It'd be a huge benefit. So yeah. Yeah. I feel
[00:13:45] Craig Dalton: [00:13:45] like the modern road shoe is basically this sheet of carbon fiber that doesn't flex on the bottom whatsoever.
[00:13:53] Jon Freeman: [00:13:53] Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of times gravel shoes that kind of go down the same road with a little bit of token tread on there. But really, I think when you look at gravel as a whole it it does often encompass that time off bike.
[00:14:05] So I think that's really important.
[00:14:07] Craig Dalton: [00:14:07] Yeah, I was just going to ask. In the soul, you mentioned shock absorption as part of it as well. Are you changing the amount of carbon fiber or material in the soil or increasing the padding in some way so that you can get some, shock absorption in the shoe?
[00:14:21]Jon Freeman: [00:14:21] It comes down to the fit, really?
[00:14:23] Both of our Explore shoes have. Have a carbon sole. And then there's the insults when we have varying arch supports in there to make sure that the foot is properly supported. But it's not tuned per shoe necessarily, but there are some kind of things that we're doing specific to, to that come for off bike within the soul.
[00:14:42] Craig Dalton: [00:14:42] Yeah. Obviously you've got, it looks like maybe two different durometers of rubber and the sole on the Explore shoe.
[00:14:49] Jon Freeman: [00:14:49] Yeah. Yeah. So we've got a front and a rear section of the rubber outsole on that shoe. Yeah. And we've also got the carbon footplate that sits under the rubber is cut a little bit shorter at the toe and at the heel.
[00:15:03] And the intention for that is so that you still have that real, a strong connection between the foot and the cleat with the carbon plate. Cause the other part. With this, you're constantly trying to balance the walkability, but with paddle efficiency. So you want to make it comfortable off the bike, like I mentioned, but you don't want to make it feel really sloppy and not well connected when you're paddling.
[00:15:25] So with the plate that we've created, the idea is to make sure that you've got that real Steph carbon connection under the ball of the foot, but then it stopped short at the toe and the heel. So that you're just as you roll throughout the throughout the motion of walking onto the toilet onto the talent on the Hill, you're just putting your weight down on that rubber section.
[00:15:45] And it's able to flex a little bit more, which just helps if.com a little bit.
[00:15:49] Craig Dalton: [00:15:49] Yeah. This seems like it's yet another one of those parts of the gravel sport that you just, you need to make choices based on what you're looking to achieve. So if you're only looking to race in a shoe, you might go towards something super stiff.
[00:16:03] If you're only looking to walk in a shoe, you're going to get something way Lexi and somewhere in the middle is probably the right choice for most riders.
[00:16:11] Jon Freeman: [00:16:11] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's really true. There's so many different kind of Mindsets, within gravel that they, there are different products that cater to those different sort of approaches to the discipline, I think.
[00:16:23] Yeah. And it's all,
[00:16:24]Craig Dalton: [00:16:24] This better than anybody it's in design, it's all trade offs.
[00:16:28] Jon Freeman: [00:16:28] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And those are the other, when you, what are the other considerations, when you think about what you're looking for a gravel shear, you get into that place of How much do you want to spec up or spec down the purchase and what are the unique kind of things that you're looking for?
[00:16:41]Do you really want to optimize the performance that you're going to get out of the shoe in terms of you really looking to eat out every little bit and seeing it? Yeah. It's a, an all out like high end yeah. Race shoe. Or do you want something which kind of maybe prioritizes the comfort a bit more and there's a bit more of an all around shoe.
[00:16:58]That influences a lot of the decisions. I think you need to make with regard to materials and closure systems and those kinds of things.
[00:17:05] Craig Dalton: [00:17:05] So speaking of that, so on the Explore shoe lineup, you've got two models. The, I think it's just the regular Explore and then the power weave. Do you want to talk about those two different uppers and the effect on performance?
[00:17:18] Jon Freeman: [00:17:18] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. They're the two that we've got. So the They Explore. She was the one that came first. And then we more recently followed that with the Explore pathways and a lot of the a lot of what kind of informed the Explore power wave actually came from the learnings that we made when we created the pro-team sheet.
[00:17:36] So a few seasons before we released the protein shoe, which was we worked really closely with a lot of our protein athletes on the development of that kind of. One of the insights that came from them really early on was that they wanted a shoe that could fit like a glove. And you would essentially feel like you're wearing nothing at all on your feet and which it seems quite obvious, but it's actually quite interesting when you think about an athlete at that level, that name priority is comfort.
[00:18:06] And so we've hold sort of direction that we've built around foot wear. And particularly within these later models is. Prioritizing comfort without kind of sacrificing performance. We're looking at it from a comfort first point of view and how that can enable you to perform better.
[00:18:23]I think it's all well and good. A lot of the like creating the lightest shoe in the world or the Steph Fest out on the market. But a lot of the time in pursuit of those kinds of things, you end up like, for kind of weight saving, for example, you ended up looking at issue and thinking, what can we afford to remove here?
[00:18:44] And it becomes this game of trying to take things away and inevitably, like you do sacrifice a bit of comfort when you're going down that road. And I think you might reach that bar of the lighter shoe, but, if you're. As a customer, if you're ATK into a long ride and something really starts to neglect you, then we'll experienced how frustrating that can be and how that really does affect your performance on the bike.
[00:19:08] So we really focused in on how we can achieve this performance through comfort and That kind of took us down this road of developing this power we fabric, which is essentially like trying to create something which would fit incredibly close to the foot and really be supportive and hold the foot, but have this sort of sock like feel.
[00:19:28]And so power weave is a it's an engineered woven upper that we produce. It's a single layer construction. And yeah it's very close fitting to the foot. It breves extremely well and also repels water from getting in. So it's it was a really good development that we came up with the protein that we were quite proud of them thought that was a lot more scope to grow it.
[00:19:51] And that's where we came away thinking, okay what else can we do with us? And we started looking to how it could lend itself to off-road performance. And so then we started a new development working with the same process of weaving the material that was specific to the demands of off-road riding.
[00:20:08]So that's where the Explore power weave was built out of, in terms of the materials that were actually. Weaving in a really highly durable kind of coated yarn into that alpha, which just makes the shoe much more resistant to scuffs and abrasion. And then in addition with dash, that style versus that the Explore style, it's it uses the double boiler dial, which is obviously another kind of element that, if you are looking to really if you're a rider, who's looking to push that on a performance on gravel and seeing it as a terrain to essentially like a new terrain to kind of race on and ride as flat out as you can then having that, like on the fly adjustment that, that the bullet dials afford is.
[00:20:52] It's really K there's not, that I was pretty leading in that regard. There's not really another closure system where you can get that level of kind of fine tuning on the fly. Yeah that's why we've incorporated those pilot dials into that model as well.
[00:21:06] Craig Dalton: [00:21:06] Gotcha. Yeah.
[00:21:07] Two comments about my experience with the shoe thus far, you mentioned this notion of it feeling like a sock, the guy named to the first ride on Strava that I did testing out some new slippers. Because it very much did feel it could flex with the bones in my toe as I was moving around, but I felt with the double boa system, very secure and on the first long ride, I was out for four, five hours on them.
[00:21:35] And I do remember, like I made an adjustment on the lower Bo because it was, I sorta over tightened it at the time and it was a really great adjustment to be able to make that.
[00:21:45] Jon Freeman: [00:21:45] Yeah. Yeah, definitely
[00:21:48] Craig Dalton: [00:21:48] the execution of the bow, as I have another set of shoes with bow as that that's the lacing system seems to be connected throughout the entire shoe.
[00:21:56] Whereas having the two separate lacing systems on this shoe, I think is great because I can really make more micro adjustments to what's going on then having the, my whole foot bed grabbed by the, the boa
[00:22:08] Jon Freeman: [00:22:08] system. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. There's kind of lots of different configurations that you can do with the Butler dials.
[00:22:15] And we've settled on the one that we have as being optimal and we have it on both of the models that we have on the Explorer and the protein. And just like you say, it gives you that opportunity to really lock the foot down, both kind of the But it's in step the mid foot and then towards the toe at the front as well, and have kind of adjustability at both of those points.
[00:22:37] Yeah. And then
[00:22:37] Craig Dalton: [00:22:37] on the standard shoe, it's a lace-up shoe with one Velcro strap, right?
[00:22:42]Jon Freeman: [00:22:42] Yeah. That's right. So it's got the tow strap that we have, which is yeah. The idea there is that the tow strap is something that you set and you might set it when you first get the shoes and then you sometimes call it this kind of set and forget sort of fixture.
[00:22:54] So you tune it to yourself and then you can actually come in and out of the shoe without always having to undo that quite a lot of the time. So it's just like a way of fitting it to you and controlling that volume in the toe of the shoe. But, and then the license become your main closure and laces.
[00:23:11]Fantastic closure. That, that pretty unrivaled in terms of not creating any bulk on the upper, there's no requirement for molded parts when you have a laced setup, so you can get a fit, which is like incredibly supple and moves with the foot.
[00:23:31] Craig Dalton: [00:23:31] Thank you for that additional description.
[00:23:32] I remember when I think it was Giro maybe with their empire shoe kind of re-introduced laces into the world of cycling. Obviously they've been around forever, but that's interesting that, that feedback from a design perspective about what you don't have to do when you put laces in and obviously laces give you a ton of flexibility in terms of how the shoe is going to fit to your foot.
[00:23:55]Jon Freeman: [00:23:55] Yeah, absolutely. And the amount of. Contact points you've got through the, just the number of eyelids that go down the throat of the shoe. It means that you've got that, a lot of very well distributed tension down the shoe, which is which is great. Yeah. And it's yeah, I they're fantastic.
[00:24:12] It's interesting. Actually, we on the pro-team shoe that we have, we started out with the notion of that being a laced shoe, because. There are so many benefits to it. We feel that we actually found out pretty early on from working with our athletes that kind of, for them, for those guys who are like, taught level, the requirement for Butler is a non-negotiable.
[00:24:33]So for that shoe we changed tact and went down the Butler route and it was the right decision. That on the fly adjustability, as I mentioned is it's key for that kind of riding, but Yeah. Licensed definitely have their place as well. I think I ride lace shoes a lot and love them.
[00:24:49] Craig Dalton: [00:24:49] Yeah. You always see the pro tour riders on the road in the last two kilometers who are gearing up for the sprint reached down and strap that bow a dial.
[00:24:57]Jon Freeman: [00:24:57] Yeah, definitely. I think part of that's a psychological, as it is it definitely like gearing in flat five and spread,
[00:25:04] Craig Dalton: [00:25:04] right?
[00:25:05] Exactly. It's signals. It's on people. Yeah. Development of the shoe, obviously. I don't imagine. Are you developing these in Asia? Is that where the manufacturing happens?
[00:25:17] Jon Freeman: [00:25:17] Yeah. So that w we're producing and yeah, we're producing in China. We work, it's yeah we have some parts that are made in Europe and then we're finally producing in China.
[00:25:28]Yeah the power we fabric, for example, that were weaving that in Italy with a partner there. And then we assembled the shoe in China. We have a really close relationship with the factory over there. Yeah. It
[00:25:40] Craig Dalton: [00:25:40] seems like it's one of those things like tires that at a certain point, you're all in because you've bought the tooling.
[00:25:46] You've put the pieces together and, I imagine there's a limited amount of tweaking you can do at that final mile.
[00:25:52] Jon Freeman: [00:25:52] Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely a point where you have to make that leap to committing. And like I said before, the tooling is pretty significant. When you think about shoes, when you consider all of the different sizes.
[00:26:04] So yeah, you want to be confident that you've that you're happy with it and it's. Performing how you want before you press that button on on opening the tooling. So we stay in one size quite a long time, actually like at the beginning. So to, to really refine before you spread it out to all of those all those other sides.
[00:26:21] Craig Dalton: [00:26:21] Oh, got you. So you might have a 42, that's your sample size and you keep drilling on that one until you get the product that you want and then expand the molds out to the other sizes.
[00:26:31] Jon Freeman: [00:26:31] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's the normal process and yeah. If there's a specific when I test the rock fleet that we want to work with, who is a different size than them?
[00:26:39]Kind of invested, not that size earlier on, but yeah, normally a 42 is the starting place. And then we have a kind of Network of people that we've got built up over the years who are that size and who can give us really reliable feedback. Yeah.
[00:26:54] Craig Dalton: [00:26:54] Did you have some athletes on the gravel and adventure side that were working with you early on in the shoe?
[00:27:00] Jon Freeman: [00:27:00] Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So we yeah, we worked with a range of athletes. It's, we there's kind of stages to the testing, I guess it's we're lucky in London, we're in normal times, it's 200 quite engaged cyclist under the roof and in London, which is, a really great resource to have.
[00:27:16] It's not a requirement that you're a cyclist when you join Rafa. But yeah, that helps. And I think those who are quite quickly get swept up by it. And yeah as a kind of resource for testing, that's amazing. Cause we've got people from complete novice through to domestic pro levels.
[00:27:32]
[00:27:32] Craig Dalton: [00:27:32] So as you send your CV and do you have to indicate your shoe size
[00:27:37] Jon Freeman: [00:27:37] definitely helps definitely. On the foot wet. Yeah. Yeah. No it's brilliant. Having that kind of like pool of people to work with and everyone in the buildings, on the payroll as well. So they have to test things, even if it fails on them.
[00:27:51] So that's normally our sort of starting point, and once we built up the confidence that, and we'll move into athletes because you don't want to do that too soon because those guys are got jobs to do and they don't want, they want to be sure that the product is going to support them in that.
[00:28:07]Yeah, we worked internally with the team in the company and then like a group of. Kind of writers who are just close to the brand, who we know are really reliable and can give really good feedback at the beginning. And then yeah, once we get to that point of confidence, then we'll open up to, to ask.
[00:28:25] Yeah. Yeah. And we did, we definitely did on the Explore shoes. We work with, so we have the protein ETF, Nepo who, where we sponsor, and then we have a really good kind of, quite a long relationship with those guys now. And we've often. You use them for testing. Lack of Morton, I don't know if, he's a super strong, dedicated writer, but also just a really interesting character and just a great guy.
[00:28:49] And like me, we worked really closely with him on the testing actually. And he's one of these pros is like really up for just trying stuff and also really able to. Articulate feedback quite well. And I think that's really important because sometimes pros and like understandably, so can be a little bit reluctant to change that care, which, completely get that.
[00:29:11] But others are just they love it and they want to try stuff and see how it works out. And he's definitely testing stuff, which is brilliant insights. Yeah, we work closely with him on. On the Explore shoe in particular, actually I can remember we so he, we've been working quite closely on him with him on this alternate Palander, but then if you've seen that we've released in partnership with BF where it's the idea is to allow writers to take part in other events that sit outside of the normal calendar and just to let them encourage them to do the things that.
[00:29:43]That passionate about and bring out that characters through, through these sort of events. And so Lachlan identified quite early on. I think they wanted to do the Badlands race, which is like a 700 odd K unsupported, gravel race in the South of Spain. It's like crazy kind of intense that it goes across like the only desert and in Europe, I think it's it's pretty serious ride.
[00:30:09] At the same time as he was gearing up to that, we were at a point with Explore power where we'd we were quite confident in them through that internal testing. And we decided to get them over to him and said, these are early prototypes. First time we've gone to an athlete and get familiar with them, take them for a ride, be interested to know what you think.
[00:30:29] And. Quite quickly got a note back just saying, yeah, I love them. I'm going to ride bad lines with them. It was like I'm home and I'm like, okay, you sure that's going to be great feedback, but like quite, hope they lost hope. They're not going to be the cause of you having to scratch midway.
[00:30:45] Yeah. I'm sure you
[00:30:45] Craig Dalton: [00:30:45] all looked around the design team and said I hope we got this one, right?
[00:30:49] Jon Freeman: [00:30:49] Yeah. Yeah. Use this arm if it speeds or wok toss it for him. But yeah. Yeah, no, yeah, I think he wasn't the only one having sleepless nights during the race, but I mean he ended up like obliterating, it just like smashing the rest of the field.
[00:31:02] I think he came in a day ahead of like second place. It was incredible performance. But I think the video is out there if anyone's not seeing it as worth watch, but yeah, it was fantastic. And sometimes you need those moments. I think in the process to really. Validate an idea.
[00:31:18] Like we were really confident in them, but it can take that for the company to be like, okay, like these are legit. Like we, we need to move on this. There's a real kind of, if they've performed at that level, then they're doing the job and we need to. Get them out.
[00:31:32] Craig Dalton: [00:31:32] Yeah.
[00:31:32] That's great to hear all this backstory and great when companies invest so much in the athlete community to get the real world feedback. It's not these aren't marketing strategies of putting different bits and bites on the shoes. It's really about what's the highest performing thing our riders would want to wear.
[00:31:47]Jon Freeman: [00:31:47] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We spend a lot of time with them just trying to get an and you saw it on that as well. And Yeah, it's exactly that it's building the relationships with the ones who are really thoughts coming with that and can articulate exactly what they're having.
[00:32:01]A lot of people can say it's uncomfortable here, I'm having an issue here, but really being able to explain that and articulate why they're experiencing that is, is really valuable for us. And it's amazing with those athletes, like the. The level to which they're in tune with their equipment is just they're riding their bikes all day, every day, pretty much.
[00:32:21] So they there's the tiniest little difference. They can pick it up and things like us mere mortals probably wouldn't even register, they, they can flag exactly what's different.
[00:32:32] Craig Dalton: [00:32:32] Yeah, exactly. Particularly as you're pushing this category forward, these real nuanced tweaks to the shoe, or what elevates the shoe to the next level.
[00:32:41] And yeah. I think I'd be a loss it's expressing like what my footwear is, where it's pinching me or what it's doing. And I could see that lining up with athletes who can really understand how to speak the design language is critical.
[00:32:56] Jon Freeman: [00:32:56] Yeah, no, it definitely is.
[00:32:58] Craig Dalton: [00:32:58] Yeah. Jon, I appreciate the overview of the shoe.
[00:33:00] This was amazing. I loved getting the backstory of the design process and how the athletes weave in there. So I appreciate all the time.
[00:33:07] Jon Freeman: [00:33:07] No, no problem. It's absolute pleasure. Yeah. Thanks.
[00:33:10] Craig Dalton: [00:33:10] Cheers. Great, Jon. That was fun.
[00:33:13] Jon Freeman: [00:33:13] Yeah, that was really good. Thanks very
[00:33:15] Craig Dalton: [00:33:15] much. Yeah, I appreciate that. That, that, that was great.
[00:33:17] I loved all the backstories.
[00:33:20] Jon Freeman: [00:33:20] I realized one thing as I was going, and I didn't want to backtrack, but actually I mentioned that we hadn't done an explosive with GRI, but it was before my time. And that was a, that wasn't a cyclocross shoe kit in collaboration with GRI. Sorry, that's going to be a bit of a inaccuracy there, but I don't know if there's a way we can.
[00:33:40] Yeah, I don't,
[00:33:41] Craig Dalton: [00:33:41] I don't think it's particularly important or game changing in the discussion. I think. If you hadn't sung the praises of the Giro partnerships so strongly, like maybe it would be worth correcting in some way, but I you were very clear that you admire what they do and the partnership was great.
[00:33:56] So yeah, no, I think we're good there. I think I'll ping Ryan on the marketing team and include you on it. But I think since Ryan was saying the shoes were coming back in stock, so I wanted to get the episode out, I think at the end of the month,
[00:34:11] Jon Freeman: [00:34:11] Yeah. Yeah. They all, yeah, that'd be great timing.
[00:34:13] Yeah.
[00:34:14] Craig Dalton: [00:34:14] Yeah. Cool. Have you been riding in them? I have, yeah, I've put two, maybe three rides in them and I'm really enjoying them. I, it's funny. I had very high end road shoes and I had mountain bike, race shoes, and I was just riding gravel in some Enduro shoes that JIRA had given me.
[00:34:31] And I just picked this shoe versus that shoe. There's a very noticeable weight difference. And I'm excited to take these out on longer days just to test that concept of, is this an all day shoe for me? Because it's definitely going to be stiffer than the one I had been riding.
[00:34:48]Yeah. But so far so good. I felt great, like to be able to do four hours right out of the box and was a good sign.
[00:34:55] Jon Freeman: [00:34:55] That's cool. Yeah. I'm glad to hear it. Yeah, definitely. Let us know if you, what you find as you spend a bit more time with than this. So it's really helpful.
[00:35:02] We're thinking about where we go with them next as well. So yeah, it'd be really appreciated. Yeah.
[00:35:07] Craig Dalton: [00:35:07] Yeah, absolutely. pleasure Jon, thanks again for the time.
[00:35:11] Jon Freeman: [00:35:11] Yeah. Cheers
[00:35:11]Craig Dalton: [00:35:11] I hope you appreciated that deep dive into gravel cycling shoes. As much as I did. I learned a heck of a lot in terms of how they're constructed and Rafa was generous enough to supply me with a pair of the power. We have Explore shoes and I've been riding them for about a month.
[00:35:28]I've been super impressed with the comfort level of the shoe. I'm really enjoying the boa strap system and how it's been implemented. I feel like I can get a lot of fine tuning. So I've been out for at least a five-hour ride at this point with the shoes and I've made some micro adjustments along the way, but it does have that all day comfort that I was worried was not going to be there super happy with these shoes.
[00:35:51] I understand they've just come back on stock online on the Rapha store. So check that out online. I'll put a link in the show notes or go check out your local Rafa clubhouse. That's going to do it for us this week. If you have any feedback for the show, please visit the ridership.com. We'd love to have you as part of the community.
[00:36:11] I'm always looking in, getting recommendations for new areas to cover on the show. And it's been an exciting community to be a part of. So please join us. www.theridership.com. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels.
[00:36:29]
Interviews on-site at the 2021 ENVE Builder Round Up and Grodeo. We grab interviews with custom builders: Falconer, Holland, Inglis, Mosaic, No.22, Pine Cycles, Sage, Salt Air, Sycip and Wies.
Episode presented by ENVE Composites
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Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos)
ENVE Builder Mash Up Episode
Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to a special edition of the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton.
[00:00:07]I'm releasing this week's podcast, just on the heels of returning home from Ogden, Utah. I was visiting this week. Sponsor ENVE composites.
[00:00:16]ENVE was hosting their annual builder Roundup showcase. As well as a new event called Grodeo
[00:00:22]The builder Roundup is a who's who of ENVE partners from around the world. I saw a ton of gravel and adventure bikes. A few mountain bikes, fat bike. An electric bike and all sorts of amazing things.
[00:00:37]The words you'll hear in this podcast will be challenged to really express. How truly unique and gorgeous and impressive. The craftsmanship on all these bikes were. I encourage you to seek out these pictures
[00:00:50] On the web on Instagram of posts, some on my account. But really look at the details of these bikes because it's clear these craftsmen are exceptional. At their work. I wanted to get you an opportunity to hear from some of the craftsmen in their own words. So I did some mini interviews about a dozen of them that I've cobbled together in this episode.
[00:01:14] You'll notice some variation in the audio, as some of the interviews were held in a room while others were on the show floor. But i really wanted you to hear from the builders themselves so i'm just going to let them fly and hopefully any ups and downs in the audios will be okay when you walk away from the totality of this episode
[00:01:34]Before we begin just a couple more words about our sponsor and V composites. I got to do a full factory tour while I was out there to see. The rim manufacturing, handlebars. He posts. And also the full frame set from ENVE, that we talked about with Neil Shirley a few episodes ago.
[00:01:53]A couple of things to share about that tour. That really impressed me. First of all, all the manufacturing is done in house.
[00:02:02]We got to see the raw rolls of carbon fiber come in the templates in which those rolls and carbon fiber are cut. And laid into molds to create the various products that you know so well.
[00:02:12]We also got to see the elaborate in-house testing labs. That they run and the various machines that they torture these products with to make sure they. Obtain the standards that ENVE is known for around the world.
[00:02:26]From my vantage point, these machines absolutely abused the products. We saw a frame being torked to know, and we saw spokes being ripped out through rim holes. We saw the impact test machine for rims. It was really impressive. And clearly when NV gets some feedback from the road, someone saying, I was just riding along, they can safely say, there's no way you were just riding along with that impact. You must have been hit by a truck because we know our products are tested to such an extreme standard. So that was really cool.
[00:03:03] I am a sucker for U S manufacturing. So I was super geeked out and stoked to see. Not only all the machinery but all the craftsmen and women that were operating in ogden utah and just the passion that they have as a company for creating exceptional products in the marketplace.
[00:03:22]After the builder Roundup on Friday was Saturday mornings Grodeo event. It was a 200 Ryder event and my first mass participation event. Since the pandemic began. So it was very excited to toe the line. But quite nervous. The stated course had over 8,500 feet of climbing. And I believe was supposed to be clocked at around 85 miles.
[00:03:46] I had a little ride in from the hotel. So at the end of the day, I rode a hundred miles. Did that 8,500 feet of climbing.
[00:03:54]My total ride time was just over eight hours and 30 minutes. So it was a huge day out on the bike for me. Hats off to Neil Shirley and anybody else who had a hand in course design. It was really a showcase of the area. We had some beautiful canyon road rides. Single track. Tough Rocky fire road, climbs and descents.
[00:04:16] Very beautiful surrounding just when you thought you were done Neil through a couple of loops on the way back into town. On some interesting single track that Ogden had to offer. It was really one of those courses that in my opinion, tested , every element of you as a gravel rider.
[00:04:35]Sarah was hard, beautiful and challenging. A perfect gravel course.
[00:04:40]With all that said, let's jump right into my dozen mini interviews. They're going to jump around a bit. So just follow along, you'll catch up. Each builder introduces themselves and their brand. And gives a little bit of an overview of the bikes they brought to the Roundup. I've also got four more long form interviews coming up.
[00:04:59] Off the top of my head Breadwinner Cycles, Scarab out of Columbia. Spooky and most likely Sage titanium. So keep an eye out in your feed for those as well. Let's dive right in All right. Can you tell me your name and the brand?
[00:05:14] Cole Bennett: [00:05:14] My name is Cole Bennett and I run Weis manufacturing.
[00:05:17] Craig Dalton: [00:05:17] And where are you located?
[00:05:19] Cole Bennett: [00:05:19] In Brooklyn? New York.
[00:05:20]Craig Dalton: [00:05:20] So tell me about this very special bike here at the end. ENVE Builder a Roundup.
[00:05:23]Cole Bennett: [00:05:23] This is our gravel SL model. It's a 7,000 series aluminum construction and with a carbon seat mast.
[00:05:33]There's like a gravel racer that we build. It's got. A lot of details. If you look closely pretty much everything we don't use any off the shelf parts. So all our dropouts bottom bracket tattoos, we design and see have CNC made for us. And a lot of our tubing profiles are also custom. So yeah, I don't know.
[00:05:53] It's been a lot of work went into this thing.
[00:05:55] Craig Dalton: [00:05:55] It's hard to over the microphone. Describe the backend of this bike. Can you try to do it some justice?
[00:06:02] Cole Bennett: [00:06:02] So basically all of our frames have an asymmetrical rear ends. This is a trickle-down from our first frame model, which is a racing track racing bikes.
[00:06:11]So the asymmetrical rear end is a stiffer driver's side. It's bigger diameter, tubing, and a drop stay. Just like you'd see in a lot of race bikes, but they do that on both sides. So yeah, the gravel bike also has that.
[00:06:26] Craig Dalton: [00:06:26] What is the process look like for a customer wanting to get one of these.
[00:06:29]Cole Bennett: [00:06:29] Right now it's I've actually closed the orders.
[00:06:32] So the process right now is get on the mailing list and wait for us to release some frame slots. But basically the way the process goes is that they're working with me. It's a small operation, it's me. And one other person that's helping me. And yeah, from start to finish, it's a customer experience is a big thing for me.
[00:06:50] So from start to finish, I'm with the customer. Talking through custom paint, custom geo, everything soup to nuts.
[00:06:58] Craig Dalton: [00:06:58] And are you in that discussion, if they come to you and say, Hey, I want a six 50 by 50 millimeter, tired versus somebody who wants more of a road plus bike. Do you make modifications?
[00:07:09]
[00:07:09]Cole Bennett: [00:07:09] I've actually started to put my foot down a bit on that kind of stuff.
[00:07:12]Because basically what I tell customers is look, we put a lot of R and D into figuring out tire clearances, everything that's good. So let's not alter the basic platform of the model, but we're happy to do custom geo to really dial in your fit. But if you want to grab a bike, we have a gravel model.
[00:07:31] If you want a road bike, we have a couple of road models and so on.
[00:07:34] Craig Dalton: [00:07:34] Gotcha. Cool. What's an absolutely stunning bike that you've
[00:07:37] brought here. So the congrats.
[00:07:39] Cole Bennett: [00:07:39] Thank you. Thank you.
Falconer
[00:07:41]
[00:07:41] Cameron Falconer: [00:07:41] Hey, my name is Cameron falconer, my company falconer cycles, and I'm in Quincy, California. Good. Save there, here at the ENVE builder Roundup before the party starts I make custom TIG welded, steel bikes, and most of what I make is pretty simple and pretty straightforward.
[00:07:59]Definitely function. The bike I'm showing here today is an odd one. It's a coaster brake 700 by 50 millimeter flat bar bike. So what is it? Well, I don't know. It's meant to be a tribute to pneumatic tire safety bicycles of the 1819. And these were the bikes that were the first spikes that would appear to us as modern cyclists with pneumatic tires and equally sized wheels and a chamber.
[00:08:28] Yeah. And the visual cue is the really tall head tube and the one back bars and the sloping top tube, you see, you saw this in the 1890s and that sort of era, and I've always liked that sort of aesthetic. And finally decided to make something. So it is the couple of things that are interesting on it.
[00:08:47]The front hub is a Paul from Chico, California, but I had to make an axle for it to make it work with the through axle. And the front rack is an idea I had and it's made from two curved pieces of titanium sheet metal welded together, and the curves reinforce each other. So it creates rigid. It's designed to hold something pretty small and light like a sleeping bag.
[00:09:10] And then the rear hub is an American made Bendix from the fifties. You still can't give this finer a Custer brake hub. So thanks for listening.
[00:09:19]Inglis Cycles
[00:09:19]Curtis Inglis: [00:09:19] Curtis Ingliss from Napa, California. I build under retro tech in Inglis cycles. What I brought to the NV open house this year is a retro tech fund Durham in titanium. So we have been doing over the years, we've made titanium bikes, a couple of different versions but.
[00:09:36] Long-term and we've always just stuck with steel. So we're attempting to play with Ty again. And we were working with simple up in Portland, so I do all the bending so far, the two, two batches we've done. I've went up there and helped build them as well. But I do all the bending in house in California and then drag everything up there and then we build them at the simple factory.
[00:09:54] So
[00:09:55] Craig Dalton: [00:09:55] is there anything specific about the geometry of this bike?
[00:09:58]Curtis Inglis: [00:09:58] This is pretty standard funder. So long front end slack head angle fairly short chain stays, but not you know, crazy short. The idea is trying to like, not make, I'm not racing towards the most extreme geometry, you know, the slackest head angle and all that.
[00:10:11] I still want a bike that can be written across country. And handled everything pretty decently but not definitely not shooting for like the most extreme, you know, downhill hard tail bike. I'm looking for a bike that's like fun to ride uphill and down.
[00:10:25] Craig Dalton: [00:10:25] And have you seen a difference, like when you're riding your steel funder versus this difference in the way it feels that you might advise customers to think of?
[00:10:33] Curtis Inglis: [00:10:33] That's a great question. I haven't actually written a mountain bike type in titanium in my gravel. I have a steel one and a Taiwan. And other than being a slight hair lighter, I both red green, or I don't know. I enjoy both. The geometry has changed a little bit on the new bike. So it's more, I can't tell you.
[00:10:54] I haven't tried the mountain bike yet. So
[00:10:56] Craig Dalton: [00:10:56] I'm sure for most people, there's just a certain allure of titanium that makes it a dream material to eventually get
[00:11:01] Curtis Inglis: [00:11:01] to. And why I built myself when I built six customer's bikes and the seventh bike was mine, and I had just built myself one so that I could have this answer.
[00:11:09] I just can't keep, I can't, I never feel comfortable making something that I haven't tried. Usually when I try something new in geometry or whatever, it's on myself or a good friend, so I can get good feedback from them. And on these, I wanted to make sure that like I was the one trying it out and seeing how they rode and if there was going to be tweaks that I needed to do for different sized people and that sort of stuff.
[00:11:28] Perfect. Thanks
[00:11:29] Craig Dalton: [00:11:29] for the overview. Yeah.
[00:11:30]Sycip Cycles
[00:11:30]Jeremy Sycip: [00:11:30] Hi, my name's Jeremy Sycip with Sycip designs. I'm up in Santa Rosa, California. And this year for the ENVE show, I brought a it is a, an electric assist mountain bike, but using an ENVE har rigid fork. But it's mainly the main purpose of this bike is to carry. Kind of whatever you need your needs are.
[00:11:49] And in this case I have a barbecue in one of these bags and and it's the hall drinks and some to cook with, to trails. And that's what the purpose of this bike is. And it's basically our carry all electric assist, bike it to help, you know, to help you peddle up Hills and stuff, because it's going to be fully loaded.
[00:12:05] Craig Dalton: [00:12:05] Nice. And you've so you've got the, is it the ENVE adventure fork on the front?
[00:12:08] Jeremy Sycip: [00:12:08] This is not, this is their mountain. Because it's the built, the frame is built around mountain bike, geometry. And so at 29 or wheels and it fits up to a 2.6 tire. Yeah, so it's just one of those just showing off that I can do custom frames and they build all different kinds.
[00:12:19] So this is just one of
[00:12:20] Craig Dalton: [00:12:20] them. Can you tell us a little bit about the brand and how long you've been doing it?
[00:12:24] Jeremy Sycip: [00:12:24] So the brand was started my brother and I started the company back in 1992 and we were in in San Francisco area. Until 2001, and then recently, or not recently, 2001, we moved to Santa Rosa, California.
[00:12:37] So it's next year it's going to be our 30th year anniversary. So that's going on for awhile. Okay.
[00:12:42] Craig Dalton: [00:12:42] Amazing. And what type of frame materials are you usually using?
[00:12:45] Jeremy Sycip: [00:12:45] So these days I've actually offered titanium recently the last few years. So steel aluminum and titanium and building any kind of custom bike, basically tandems rode mountain bikes.
[00:12:55] Gravel bikes. You know, I have my commuter line, which I call them my Java boy, Java girl blind. And then these are the one I brought here to S E bike is basically like an like a specialty bike, custom bike lane where it can do whatever people want, basically
[00:13:08] Craig Dalton: [00:13:08] on the gravel bikes. Are they always a hundred percent custom?
[00:13:11] And how do you what's that process look like when you're working with the custom.
[00:13:14]Jeremy Sycip: [00:13:14] Yeah. So all the bikes these days are all custom. So I work with an individual person, one at a time. We do a full fitting if they're near our area or they send me their body measurements. And I kind of work from that and design a frame around what their needs are, you know, tire size components.
[00:13:30]And then we come up with a bike, CAD drawing and you know, when they find it, when they okay, it, the customer okays, then it looks to be what the. And that's designed around their body measurements. And then that's how the build actually starts to happen at that point.
[00:13:44] Craig Dalton: [00:13:44] Can you tell me about one of the signature features on the bike that I've seen on?
[00:13:48] I think is it all your bikes that I see this on? Yeah.
[00:13:50] Jeremy Sycip: [00:13:50] So the wish, well, basically it's a wishbone stay that I do. And and I use pennies to cap off the tubes. So that started back in the nineties, like early mid nineties, maybe. I think I was trying to get I used to co cap them with steel caps that I used to make.
[00:14:06] And then I realized that Penny's fit over there and it cost a penny each. So it was a lot cheaper than having them fabricated somewhere or a machine shop to make those caps. So that's what started that. And and so the gravel and cross bikes, if the customer wants a wishbone stay, I use dimes to cap off the tubes because there are 16 mil stays and the mountain bikes use a 19 mills day, which has a penny size.
[00:14:26] Cap that go on there. So you don't feel it. Our mountain bike, it's a 2 cent rebate and the gravel vice Guetta and the across vice get a 20 cent rebate. So you get some money back at dam, the only frame builder that offers money back. When you buy frame,
[00:14:38]Craig Dalton: [00:14:38] you heard it here first. If someone's looking to order a gravel bike, w what kind of turnaround time do you have for custom bikes?
[00:14:43] Jeremy Sycip: [00:14:43] So right now it's about four to five months, a little longer for titanium. And then if it's a custom paint job, it also takes a little longer, but most of the bikes get a one color powder coat. Yeah.
[00:14:53] Craig Dalton: [00:14:53] Perfect. Thanks Jeremy. Yeah.
[00:14:55]Sage
Dave Rosen: [00:14:55] So I'm Dave and my brand is Sage titanium. Okay.
[00:14:58] Craig Dalton: [00:14:58] We're at the eENVEthe builder, Roundup wanting to tell the listener about what we've got in front of us.
[00:15:03] Dave Rosen: [00:15:03] So the bike we have in front of us is our storm king gravel bike. This is the, do it all quiver killer monster gravel race, bike that you can also take adventure, bike, packing stuff on kind of thing.
[00:15:16] Like it's just, it does it all. It was designed around 700 by 50 millimeter tires. It's a pretty aggressive geometry in general, but the reality is every bike is built custom one at a time for each individual customer. So we can actually customize the geometry to the individual. So if somebody really wants a storm king to be more relaxed for more loaded touring.
[00:15:39] Sure. No problem. But the general nature of the bike itself is more race oriented kind of thing. And yeah, so that's the storm king for where we're at. and let's,
[00:15:50] Craig Dalton: [00:15:50] let's talk about the frame material and what you guys typically work with.
[00:15:53]Dave Rosen: [00:15:53] All of our bikes, you know, a hundred percent USA made the storm king in particular, we make in our shop in house in Portland we only use titanium three to five, you know, us source.
[00:16:03]Straight gauge across the board for the storm king no, no budding or anything like that. But of course, if a customer has a request, we're more than happy to accommodate. And you know, the frame itself has a variety of finishes that we can offer as well. So generally really we offer a brushed finish with maybe standard decals as a easy way to just get you out the door. But we do from a custom finish standpoint, we can offer everything from paint to Sarah coat, to anodize the bead blast to, you know, mass graphics like across the board.
[00:16:36] And so the show bike we have. Is a combination of just about everything we do. So we've actually got cerakote finish fading to a bead blast with raw graphics, raw titanium, mixed in and anodized logos on top of it. So it's really it's four different finishes on one frame, which is insane, but it came out
[00:16:56] great
[00:16:57] Craig Dalton: [00:16:57] though.
[00:16:57] Yeah. It's very visually interesting. It's not over the top, but you can see when you get up close. The level of detail and the changing techniques that you've used it to the finish the bike.
[00:17:08] Yeah. Yeah,
[00:17:09] Dave Rosen: [00:17:09] no, it's are our pain or just outdid himself. You know, I, the thing I love about the fade for example is that it actually is a true fade when you actually get close up on the bike.
[00:17:19] I've seen a lot of fades where it's a much harder edge and this just, it blends so naturally kind of thing. It's just, it's great. And then just being able to match in the Sarah. We actually cerakote all of the NV components so we can cerakote carbon, which is a bit unusual that it's not in order to cerakote carbon in order to cerakote something, you actually have to cure it at, I think it's 350 or 360 degrees and carbon doesn't like being heated up.
[00:17:44] So our paint shop has figured out a way to, to actually cerakote the carbon and. And it's all good to go. And we've been Sarah coding, customer bikes for a while now, forks, bars, stems, everything, and everything's been great. So we were, we went over the top with this one with just really just making the graphics
[00:18:01] Craig Dalton: [00:18:01] pop on it.
[00:18:02] Well, you definitely got to show up with your, a game here at the builder Roundup seriously.
[00:18:06] Dave Rosen: [00:18:06] I mean, it's like the level of bikes around here. You can't come slacking off to this show. It is full game on it's a game or go home. So
[00:18:14] Craig Dalton: [00:18:14] thanks for the overview, Dave.
[00:18:15] Dave Rosen: [00:18:15] Thanks. Appreciate it.
No.22
[00:18:17]Craig Dalton: [00:18:17] All right. Can you introduce yourself and the brand you're representing today?
[00:18:20] Tony: [00:18:20] My name is Tony Bren Dottie, and I work with number 22 titanium bicycles out of Johnstown New York.
[00:18:27] Craig Dalton: [00:18:27] And tell me about the break you've brought to the ENVE builder
[00:18:29] Tony: [00:18:29] Roundup. So this is our titanium all road bike called the great divide disc.
[00:18:36] What makes this particular one unique is the fact that we used NVS integrated front end. So there. One piece bar in stem and headset that allows the brake lines to be run internally through the head tube and steer tube so that all the lines are hidden inside the handle bar as well. Yeah, that gives
[00:18:56] Craig Dalton: [00:18:56] it a very kind of striking and unusual look when you eliminate all the cables from the front end of the bike,
[00:19:03] Tony: [00:19:03] really leading into that, making it look different.
[00:19:06] We also adopted the use of cerakote on this particular one. So this is actually called Stormtrooper white cerakote. And we also did our, what we're really known for is our anodizing finish. And this is gold. Ano
[00:19:23]Craig Dalton: [00:19:23] Can you describe what serotonin that finish
[00:19:25] Tony: [00:19:25] is? So Sarah coat is a ceramic coating that goes over the tubing in contrary wet paint is a very similar process, but in its makeup, it is entirely.
[00:19:40] This is durable. It's incredibly thin. It also allows us to do different things that wet paint doesn't do, like being able to put it in places that are a bit more flexible because paint can't flex the same way. A lot of cerakote coatings. Can
[00:19:58]Craig Dalton: [00:19:58] I can't let you go without asking about these fenders on this bike,
[00:20:02] Tony: [00:20:02] the titanium vendors are definitely unique.
[00:20:05] They really bring this bike together. They're full titanium. We even down to the package of making the small little brackets and bolts that attach it to the bike, those are all titanium. And those that we could analyze we did.
[00:20:18] Craig Dalton: [00:20:18] Now this model is erode plus model. Can you talk about the gravel models that you have in the number 22
[00:20:23] Tony: [00:20:23] lineup?
[00:20:24] So the gravel models that are a bit more, you know, big tire oriented, like 700 by 40 fives, we've got the drifter and the drifter. Drifter X is a bit more race oriented, a little bit more aggressive geometry. It also has a tapered head tube and a titanium ISP. So it's very visually striking for those that are looking for a little bit more of an adventure style, gravel bike, the standard drifter uses a traditional seatpost, which a lot of people like, because some end up using dropper posts as well as a slight.
[00:20:58] More relaxed geometry. So it's more adventure based your bike packing things where people like to get a little bit more out in the woods and
[00:21:07] Craig Dalton: [00:21:07] for a customer looking to get a number 22 bike, how long do they
[00:21:11] Tony: [00:21:11] need to wait? So at the moment, we're at 22 weeks lead time and that's a moving target. We have been able to get all the parts that we need for complete bikes, but we still need to make the frames.
[00:21:21]Our sales have been increasing. Outpacing what we can manufacturer, but that's a good problem to have.
[00:21:29] Craig Dalton: [00:21:29] Absolutely. And the manufacturing is in-house in
[00:21:31] Tony: [00:21:31] New York, it's all done in Johnstown, New York. So basically halfway between Montreal and New York city.
[00:21:39] Craig Dalton: [00:21:39] And w is the customer buying from a stock selection of frame sizes or are you a custom
[00:21:43] Tony: [00:21:43] shop?
[00:21:44] We do both. We have the standard sizes and stock options, but we also do custom options and custom could be down to. You know, getting the fit details from a customer and the overall, even just the visual appearance could look better with a different size head tube, for example, or if it's somebody who is a slightly larger writer, we can change certain tube sizes to make it stiffer or ride within what we expect of that frame that we designed.
[00:22:12] Craig Dalton: [00:22:12] Awesome. Thanks for that overview,
[00:22:13] Tony: [00:22:13] Tony. No worries. Anytime.
Pursuit
[00:22:16]Craig Dalton: [00:22:16] All right. Can you tell me your name and the brand?
[00:22:18] Carl Strong: [00:22:18] Yeah. My name is Carl Strong and the brand is pursuit cycles more out of Bozeman, Montana. I've known for titanium bikes, strong frames, but I've recently started a company called pursuit and we do custom modular monocoque carbon fiber frames that we make entirely in house in Bozeman, Montana.
[00:22:37] Nice.
[00:22:37] Craig Dalton: [00:22:37] And this particular gravel bike that's in front of us. What are some of the attributes?
[00:22:41] Carl Strong: [00:22:41] Well, we call it an all road because the max, our size is a 40 on a 700 wheel or a 50 on a six 50. So it's a little more towards the road end of the spectrum versus something that might go more into the adventure.
[00:22:53] And so it does, it's a perfect race bike for something like Unbound gravel. I'm riding it here on mountain bike rides, like crazy. And it's performing flawlessly. We're real excited about that, but some of the attributes are, is custom sized. We can tweak the geometry. It's got we do custom lamps, custom paint, custom parts picks the features that we're most excited about are we have the internal bearings on a tapered head too.
[00:23:18] We've chosen to bond in a titanium threaded bottom bracket. It's a T 47. So there's no squeaking or pressing issues that you get with a lot of carbon frames. For the same reason, we bonded in a mandrill wound seat tube. So you have a perfect fit for your post. We use an external clamp, so you there's no fussing around or fiddling with a saddle or the posting put we do.
[00:23:40]Compression, molded dropouts, which allows us to machine the brake for a perfect brake alignment brake machine, the brake surface. And then we bond in titanium axle guides so that there's no wear and tear on the on the dropouts. When you put your wheel in and out, we've also sandwiched that drilling.
[00:23:58] Between the hub and the dropout, so that it stiffens up the rear derail your hanger, which gives you better performance with electronic shifting, because that puts a lot of force on. So what is the customer
[00:24:11] Craig Dalton: [00:24:11] journey look like when they call you up to order a bike like this?
[00:24:14] Carl Strong: [00:24:14] Well, they start by placing a deposit that puts them in the queue and it kicks off what we call our design.
[00:24:20] And so the first thing we do with our customers is we figure out what method we want to use to determine their fit profile. Do you have one, do you have a fitter you like to work with that can provide us with one or do you want us to do it once we need to figure out which one of those we're going to do?
[00:24:36] We do it. We generate a fit profile. And from that I'll draft them out a schematic of a bike with their fit profile. So that we can discuss all of the little nuances of their fit, the way it integrates with the bike, their priorities, and and desires. Once we get the fit nail and the geometry nailed, we talk about layup, which is going to determine the way the bike feels.
[00:24:59] And then we moved from there to the finish. That's a big thing. We have a lot of finish off. We have design services. They can choose to go with it. They want something that's custom made by our professional graphic designer specifically for them. And then after that we do the whole parts pick and then build it delivery time is usually when you can get parts about three months from start to finish, if they're quick on their decision to make.
[00:25:24] And we try not to speed anybody up in the process. We want them to work at a comfortable rate of speed, making their decisions, not feeling under pressure. And we want to make sure that they're confident that when they do finally sign the, okay, they know exactly what they're going to get and it performs exactly as they expect.
[00:25:43] Perfect. Well, this is a
[00:25:44] Craig Dalton: [00:25:44] gorgeous looking by. Congratulations. Thank
[00:25:45] Carl Strong: [00:25:45] you very much. Yeah. Appreciate it.
[00:25:48]
Pine Cycles
Craig Dalton: [00:25:48] Can I just get your name and your brand?
[00:25:49] Kevin Mcclelland: [00:25:49] Yeah, my name's Kevin McClellan. My brand is pine cycles.
[00:25:52] Craig Dalton: [00:25:52] I hadn't heard of pine cycles before brand new, right.
[00:25:55] Kevin Mcclelland: [00:25:55] We are a new brand launching today at the MV builder Roundup.
[00:25:58] Craig Dalton: [00:25:58] Yep.
[00:25:59] That's awesome. Tell me about the bike we just looked at.
[00:26:01] Kevin Mcclelland: [00:26:01] So this bike is our attempt to make the most versatile bike that we possibly. Some of the unique design features of it is it has a custom dropout that has unique inserts that you can interchange depending on how you want to ride the bike. So the insert on the bike is 12 by 1 42 flat Mount for disc brake use.
[00:26:21] And then we also have a standard QR dropout for if you want to run the bike with rim brakes, and then you can swap the fork or attract dropout if you want to run single speed or fixed gear. Not only that, but the bike also fits three separate tires. So it fits 700 by 35, 6 50 by 47. That's on the bike here and then 26 by 2.3.
[00:26:42] And those all work together really well because they're all roughly the exact same outer diameter. So the geo is not changed. It's not compromised when you change over those wheel sizes. Amazing.
[00:26:51] Craig Dalton: [00:26:51] So all the way out to a 2.3 is that we said, yep, incredible. I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have gotten that.
[00:26:56] Just looking visually at the rear end of the bike. That's pretty impressive. Feat.
[00:27:00] Kevin Mcclelland: [00:27:00] Yeah. It's I mean, because the title. You know, that is a little bit smaller size as the chain stay in seat, state tapers. It allows for more clearance with the same sort of chain state length. And it's a pretty short chain states of four 18 mill chain state.
[00:27:12]So very much should sporty road geometry riding bike, and then
[00:27:16] Craig Dalton: [00:27:16] on the front end of the bike, which ENVE fork are you rocking?
[00:27:19] Kevin Mcclelland: [00:27:19] We're actually running an allied all road dysphoric made in the USA. And the reason that we do that is. Meets the exact geometry of the whiskey long reach rim brake fork.
[00:27:29]It's a 3 75 mil, so that those two forks can interchange with the frame for when you want to run it rim, brake, or disc brake.
[00:27:37] Craig Dalton: [00:27:37] I don't think I asked you about the frame material you've chosen for the
[00:27:39] Kevin Mcclelland: [00:27:39] spike. So it's a steel frame it's made out of Columbus zona tubing the entire frame, every single every single tube is Columbus donut.
[00:27:48] Craig Dalton: [00:27:48] Nice. And what type of, you know, if you were advising the listener as terms of the ride quality of the bike, that, that type of tubes that delivers, how would you describe it?
[00:27:56] Kevin Mcclelland: [00:27:56] Yeah I mean, zona is slightly on the lower end within Columbus's line. So a lot of the bikes that you'll see in the show are going to have a life or spirit, which are really nice, really lightweight tube sets.
[00:28:09] So ours is a little bit more budget. But still provides that really amazing steel ride quality. It just may be a slight bit heavier than some of these really nice steel bikes that are, and you guys are
[00:28:19] Craig Dalton: [00:28:19] based in salt lake city, Utah. Yup. Exactly. Nice. Yeah. Cool. Well, Kevin, thanks for the overview.
[00:28:24] I appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you, sir. Yeah. Congrats on that. Great looking bike. I appreciate it.
[00:28:29]Mosaic
[00:28:29]Cool. Let's start off. Why don't you give me your name and the brand you're representing?
[00:28:33] Zack Spear: [00:28:33] My name is Zach Spear. I'm at mosaic. We're in Boulder. We make titanium bikes. We do maybe one steel road bike a year, but everything else is yeah. Straight titanium. We're on track to do maybe mate, we're crossing our fingers, hoping for 200, 250, maybe 2 75 frames.
[00:28:52] Craig Dalton: [00:28:52] That's amazing because every one of them, ones that I've seen come out of the mosaic shop is super special and unique, at least aesthetically.
[00:28:59] Zack Spear: [00:28:59] Yeah. It's it's good. I think so, too. I'm setting up the fixture for each and every frame we do. And usually I'm talking with mark trying to get a picture of who we're doing this bike for, and he's always got a cool story of you know, this person may have hurt their back or this person's like a big crit racer, six foot six rower from Stanford.
[00:29:15] He needs big tubes. He's putting down big Watts. So we're getting there. You know, we're making frames for people. It's cool. I love
[00:29:21] Craig Dalton: [00:29:21] that feeling. She started on that thread. I always like to ask the question, like what's that customer journey look like for someone who picks up the phone and gets in contact with mosaic?
[00:29:30]Zack Spear: [00:29:30] Typically we like, we, like when our bike shops are putting the frames out cause they can we're starting to get a big influx of orders and it helps when our bike shops can do some of that upfront work for us and figure out how the Bill's gonna look. What cranks are we using? What tires of this guy want.
[00:29:45] And then yeah, mark a whip up a geo he'll start talking paint with the customer. And then when it comes into my hands, we have a total idea of exactly how this bike's going to look. What kind of pain we're going to do. Head badge is going to be mirror, finished everything. Then I build it. Aaron welds it.
[00:30:01] We QC it. Make sure it fits all the everything's right. It's to spec. And then we send it over to paint. And that's when you. The moneymaker paying jobs.
[00:30:10] Craig Dalton: [00:30:10] What does that what does that look like from a timeframe perspective? I know it varies all over the place, but right now ask
[00:30:15] Zack Spear: [00:30:15] me that I'm not at Liberty.
[00:30:17] No we're slammed right now. I think for me personally, I'm doing, I average about one and a quarter frames per day. And I'll try to do big batches of prep work and then batches of frames and One in a quarter. So like I'll do two frames a day for a week and then I'll start prepping frames the next week.
[00:30:35] But that's about my timeline.
[00:30:36] Craig Dalton: [00:30:36] Gotcha. And tell me about the beautiful bike you've brought to the end of the
[00:30:39] Zack Spear: [00:30:39] build around, up. Yeah. This guy named Charlie in Chicago, he went through Vela Smith. They put you tap in V on it and it's a GT 1 45. He's got some oversize tubes on it. He wants to drive some Watson to that frame.
[00:30:54] So he's got a. 19 millimeter see stays. He's got a 44 millimeter down to a 34, 9 seat too. It's going to be good and stiff for him. If it's a 45 millimeter tire, pretty slam geo it's going to handle pretty snappy. It's like almost like a gravel crit bike, so you can really shred some dirt with, and he wanted some green in there.
[00:31:14] He was talking with mark and mark was thinking, man, let's do a Tri-Faith for this. And we made it like a mango Tri-Faith and. Before it went to paint. Mark got the idea of do let's throw some basketball sparkle in there. And when you see that thing in the sun has got there's some purples in some greens in, in the orange part of the Tri-Faith.
[00:31:33] It's beautiful.
[00:31:34] Craig Dalton: [00:31:34] Yeah. It does really pop as a show bike. It's gorgeous. And how cool is it that's an actual customer bike that's going to be delivered presumably weeks after the
[00:31:41] Zack Spear: [00:31:41] show. It's a, I think it's really cool. I mean, I've never been at mosaic when we've purposely built a show. W everything we're doing is customer bikes.
[00:31:50] And it's cool that our customer bike is a show bike and vice versa. You know, we're getting to that level where every bike has dialed coming out of the shop. We'll take any of them to the NBA, open house and be proud of what we're bringing.
[00:32:01] Craig Dalton: [00:32:01] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the weld quality is just always top. It's
[00:32:04] Zack Spear: [00:32:04] amazing.
[00:32:05] Yeah. And he's got way more than those 10,000 hours, you know, he's good that I can weld. He can slap a beat down. Cool. Well, I appreciate
[00:32:12] Craig Dalton: [00:32:12] the overview. This is awesome.
[00:32:13] Zack Spear: [00:32:13] Awesome. Yeah. Good to meet you.
[00:32:15]Salt Air
[00:32:15] Craig Dalton: [00:32:15] All right. Why don't we start off? Just give me your name and the brand name.
[00:32:19] Matt Nelson: [00:32:19] Yeah, Matt Nelson. Pretty much the builder at salt air cycles. It's just me. And where are you located? Salt
[00:32:25] Craig Dalton: [00:32:25] lake city. And tell me about the types of bikes you like to build.
[00:32:28]Matt Nelson: [00:32:28] It's pretty much gravel. I mean, when I started building it wasn't necessarily called gravel, off-road mixed terrain bikes with Dropbox.
[00:32:36] It's been my forte and that's what people come to me for the most part. I mean, I do hard tails occasionally. Like I, I love mountain biking. I have a couple of hard tails myself, but yeah, it's, you know, sometimes it'll just be like a road bike that takes 30 twos. But it's mostly, you know, something to take up to a 40 sometimes more yeah, with drop bars.
[00:32:56] Craig Dalton: [00:32:56] And is it a completely custom operation?
[00:32:59] Matt Nelson: [00:32:59] It is. Yeah, I don't do any production bikes. And to be honest, my price point doesn't really yet reflect full custom. But they're all, you know, they're, one-offs, you know, so my price point basically will include custom geometry, custom sizing just because of the way I am.
[00:33:16] Great. And
[00:33:17] Craig Dalton: [00:33:17] how long have you been building
[00:33:18] Matt Nelson: [00:33:18] bikes for? I built my first bike in 2000. I went to a UBI, the United bicycle Institute in Portland. And at the time I was a, an architect and I just had the bug and built my first bike really loved it, came back home to salt lake and just wanting to do more.
[00:33:38] So building for friends and just getting more experience. And then in 2014, I think I registered as a business with the salt lake. But I still had a full-time job as an architect. And then it just grew from there. And then as of January, 2016 on my full-time job and tell
[00:33:55] Craig Dalton: [00:33:55] us about the frame materials you'd like to use PRI
[00:33:58] Matt Nelson: [00:33:58] primarily steel.
[00:33:59]I occasionally I'll do some stainless like full stainless frames but it's a lot of Columbus Sometimes Reynolds, but yeah, I've ventured. I've done. I did do one stainless frame with carbon yeah. CMASS, which actually collaborated with NBN. But yeah, steals my thing and I'm actually a braiser so I don't, well, I'm not a TIG welder, so I do fill it braised bikes lug bikes for people that like the classic look and then sometimes mix and match.
[00:34:26] Like I'll do a Bilan.
[00:34:29] Craig Dalton: [00:34:29] And tell me about the ride quality. If someone calls and asks about, you know, what's the output? What do you, what's the feeling the writer's going to get on one of your bikes?
[00:34:37] Matt Nelson: [00:34:37] Yeah. So I mean, a lot of people will think of steel or what's been circulated out.
[00:34:42] There is like steel is real and you know, it has a great ride quality, especially for off-road. And that's true. I mean, you can build a steel bike. That's. What's the right word. I mean, it's more forgiving. It's going to flex in all the right parts, but you can also build a very S stiff frame you know, say someone wants to do crit racing or whatever, and they just want a stiff frame, you know, that they can race on for 45 minutes.
[00:35:05]It's just there's. I mean, the tube technology that Columbus and the other brands Reynolds have continued to push even when after aluminum and then car. Became the top performing materials. They've continued to make their toot differ stronger and thinner wall. So they can be lighter. But yeah.
[00:35:28]So to answer your question, I mean, I, my personal, like for mixed dream writing is a bike. That's like an, oh, what they call oversize tube standards. So in these days, if you look at the bike and it looks like a skinny tube bike, but yeah. It's actually pretty stiff depending on the size, but it can you can do, you know, it feels great.
[00:35:50] It doesn't beat you up on a long 90 mile, 8,500 feet climb, mixed train ride. And then again, for a bigger writer that might be flexing a frame that, yeah. You know, someone who weighs 150 pounds, you can up-size those tubes and. You can tune the ride, you can tune the quality of the ride.
[00:36:08] Craig Dalton: [00:36:08] Is that sort of, part of the customer journey with you?
[00:36:10] If I call you up looking for a bike, do we work through what I'm looking for? What my body, weight and
[00:36:14] Matt Nelson: [00:36:14] sizes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, I want, there's a big thing I want to hear from you. Like how do you plan on using the bike? What kind of writing do you like to do? Aesthetics comes into, I mean, I do get customers who are like, you know, I love steel, but I don't want to S I don't want one of those skinny tube.
[00:36:30] Or old school looking bikes. And you know, like Columbus came out with their Cento tube set, which is like their a hundred year anniversary, I think in 2019. And that's probably the stiffest that tube set alone is probably the stiffest steel tubes that I've ever seen. It just has a massive 44 millimeter down tube and, you know, tapered seat too.
[00:36:53] Oversized integrated head too. And then the the chain stays are actually much taller. I think they're like 36 compared to the standard 30 oval design. So it makes a super stiff bike, still relatively light as well, depending on what size it
[00:37:08] Craig Dalton: [00:37:08] is. Can you tell me about the bike that you've brought to the NV builder?
[00:37:11] Roundup?
[00:37:12] Matt Nelson: [00:37:12] Yeah. So that bike is, I mean, I'm calling it the rodeo, especially all it's set up to do these, you know, 60, 70, 80, 90 mile gravel grinders, mixed terrain. I mean it's a lot like a cyclocross bike, but through some water bottle losses on it, a a little bit more clearance for a bigger tire.
[00:37:31] So the one I brought too is, you know, can fit up to a 4,700 seat by 40. Again, this one's a Phillip race bike actually. Most of my frames, I send to Colorado to get painted. But I went did a liquid job locally and it turned out really well. I, this bike is actually for a local writer who w he's going to ride tomorrow and it's going to be his first time.
[00:37:54] Right. But I think he'll be he'll be stoked on it. And he's he's a mountain goat here. I think he's going to really Excel on this bike and on this course tomorrow.
[00:38:03] Craig Dalton: [00:38:03] Nice. Thanks for the overview. I appreciate it.
[00:38:06] Matt Nelson: [00:38:06] Yeah, you bet. Thank you.
[00:38:07]Holland Cycles
[00:38:07]Craig Dalton: [00:38:07] Let's start out by getting your name and the company
[00:38:09] you
[00:38:09] work for.
[00:38:10] Cody Stevenson: [00:38:10] Cody Stevenson from Holland cycles out of San
[00:38:13] Craig Dalton: [00:38:13] Diego, California. And tell us a little bit about Holland.
[00:38:15] Cody Stevenson: [00:38:15] So Holland has been in business now for 47 years building frames. It's bill Holland. And I came on into the fold with bill about 10 years.
[00:38:25] And
[00:38:25] Craig Dalton: [00:38:25] when he started out, was he starting in a steel bike?
[00:38:28] Cody Stevenson: [00:38:28] Exactly. He did steel frames and then he went through, into the titanium realm back with Eisentrout many moons ago. And and then we also offer in the last 10 years here, we've offered a carbon option as well.
[00:38:43] Craig Dalton: [00:38:43] Interesting. Tell me about the show bikey brought to ENVE.
[00:38:46] Cody Stevenson: [00:38:46] He had a show like that. We brought is it's our HGT. I, so it is a, it's one about gravel models. This one is a two-by system with clearance for 50 mil tires. It's got a real sweet, so the AR 3.4 was on it. It's my personal bike. So I get to rip it up tomorrow when the Graziadio and you know, just a lot of the features that you want to touch on with with a gravel bike.
[00:39:08] You want it to be able to perform, obviously you want it to be comfortable. And you wanted to. That's
[00:39:13] pretty
[00:39:13] Craig Dalton: [00:39:13] big tire clearance. How are you able to achieve that?
[00:39:17] Cody Stevenson: [00:39:17] Lots of bending. Yeah, just bending stays and placement of of the stays at the bottom bracket. Just really honing in on how can we get the best of both worlds in regard to clearance for the tire and also have enough clearance for your
[00:39:32] Craig Dalton: [00:39:32] chain rings.
[00:39:33] What does the journey look like for a customer who wants to get a Holland titanium frame?
[00:39:37] Cody Stevenson: [00:39:37] First thing that a customer needs. Pick up the phone and give me a call and we set up a feeding appointment. We're really big on doing the feedings. In-house we have people flying all over the country to come and do the fitting because we feel that the fitting obviously is the first piece of it, but we also like to figure out.
[00:39:54] The individual wants from a ride quality and a handling perspective, because there's so many options that we can do with the frames. And then obviously anything with custom it's hurry up and white. You get put into the build list. We do complete bikes or frame sets and obviously lead times were much easier to decipher 18 months ago.
[00:40:15] And right now We are in a nice position of being able to still get blacks out the door. But obviously with the influx of ordering where nine to 12 months out on delivery at this
[00:40:27] Craig Dalton: [00:40:27] point. Gotcha. Was there a point in time going back a few years since you've been there 10 years, that you started to see this influx of, Hey, I want a bigger tire.
[00:40:36] Hey, I'm writing this off.
[00:40:38] Cody Stevenson: [00:40:38] Absolutely. And I I mean, I'm a roadie per se, but I grew up racing BMX. So I love to taking my bike off road, even though it was a road bike with caliber brakes. And definitely we we got more and more of the, sort of the murmurings of you know, can we put it 28 on this?
[00:40:55] Can we, you know, whichever. Was this, you know, some astounding width tire and you know, can we run 90 PSI? And you know, so from there, it, obviously they evolved into, you know, let's get rid of calipers and where we're all in on, you know, whatever whatever clearance we can get for options. I mean, if you can get as much clearance, you can always put a 32 or 35 times.
[00:41:19] If
[00:41:19] Craig Dalton: [00:41:19] you had to hazard a guess, what percentage of the bikes are tending towards gravel?
[00:41:22]Cody Stevenson: [00:41:22] Basically for us, it's almost split directly down the middle. So we offer our gravel blocks with titanium and then we have a carbon road frame as well as an option. And we actually still do that in a rim brake option.
[00:41:34] So remain disk in on the carbon roadside of things. But yeah, I mean, if we get a call for a titanium frame, it's a Graebel frame.
[00:41:42] Craig Dalton: [00:41:42] And are you on the carbon side? Forgive me if I missed this, but is it exclusively on the roadside or do you make carbon gravel bikes as
[00:41:49] Cody Stevenson: [00:41:49] well? We do not make a carbon Graebel buck.
[00:41:51]We feel that titanium is a better material, just from an impact perspective. We do our road bike has clearance for 35 mil ties, but it is not a graveled life. Right.
[00:42:02] Craig Dalton: [00:42:02] That makes sense. Since I'm curious. And you mentioned it earlier about that internal process, right? Making carbon fiber frames out of San Diego.
[00:42:11] Can you just talk it? I sort of high-level for the listeners, so they understand, I mean, it blows my mind that the carbon fiber is coming in these sheets and you're going from there.
[00:42:20] Cody Stevenson: [00:42:20] Sure. So yeah, obviously with the carbon fiber road friends, we use lugged system to customize it. So we have obviously individual chews that are laid up just like any tube.
[00:42:31]And and then we have lugs, which are, as part of the matrix are designed to accept certain angles and Wolf thicknesses. So there's 86 different molds to make all of the custom frames and all of the custom sizes. And
[00:42:46] Craig Dalton: [00:42:46] is the, are the lugs made out of a different material?
[00:42:49] Cody Stevenson: [00:42:49] No, Barbara as well.
[00:42:51] And so yeah, it's a completely common, yeah. And the nice piece about it is that the ride quality that we get out of the lug design is that you get a vibration damping quality when you have a material. Two dissimilar materials put together. And the poxy that's bonding the carbon together at the lug dissipates vibration.
[00:43:12]You get a really nice subtle right out of it. And you can make the frame really nice. And fortunately region
[00:43:18] Craig Dalton: [00:43:18] as you're manufacturing the tubes, are you going back to that customer discussion? Right? You know, this is a 180 pound person, and they're looking for this ride quality and making modifications to the weeds.
[00:43:28] Absolutely.
[00:43:28] Cody Stevenson: [00:43:28] We have zero stock of anything, carbon fiber, except for the carbon fiber sheets themselves. Everything is laid up for the individual. We use different modulates for the individual. We do obviously different bias. I mean the whole nine yards. Everything is for the individual, not just from a sizing perspective, but ride quality and.
[00:43:50] I
[00:43:50] Craig Dalton: [00:43:50] think that's super cool. I mean, a lot of times when you think of buying that custom bike, historically, it was going to be a metal bike and you thought about the person welding it, et cetera, but it is mind blowing to imagine that you can weave the carbon fiber tube based on my personality.
[00:44:04] I want the bike to it.
[00:44:05] Cody Stevenson: [00:44:05] Absolutely it is. And the big reason behind being able to do that is that we have Mike Lopez on board with us who. Reynolds composites back in the day, the Reynolds ouzo pro fork came out of the same shop that our carbon is coming out of. He built all them, the Vici with Serrata all of the carbon that was on Serota otros.
[00:44:27] It came from Mike Lopez and he is the brains behind all of that. And we're really fortunate to be a team working.
[00:44:33] Craig Dalton: [00:44:33] Amazing. Thanks for the overview. I appreciate it. You're very welcome. Thank you.
[00:44:37]Allied
[00:44:37]Okay, why don't we start off. Can you tell me your name and the company you work for?
[00:44:41] Drew Medlock: [00:44:41] Yeah, I'm drew Medlock CEO at ally.
[00:44:44] Craig Dalton: [00:44:44] Drew. Tell me about that beautiful allied echo that I just saw.
[00:44:49] Drew Medlock: [00:44:49] Cool. Yeah, actually it's my bike. We even are not. It's my personal bike that has now turned into a show bike.
[00:44:55] That's a good feeling. It is a good, it's a good ability to get, to show it off all the time, but I haven't got to ride it.
[00:45:00] Craig Dalton: [00:45:00] It had to stay clean for this event, I imagine. Yeah. Will it get dirty tomorrow, like rodeo? Maybe
[00:45:05] Drew Medlock: [00:45:05] I think rodeo tomorrow sounds more like an able run. So if I'm reading that one correctly.
[00:45:10] So I think there'll be bigger tires than the echo.
[00:45:13] Craig Dalton: [00:45:13] Let's talk about the echo as you and I were talking about offline. It's a really unique beast in the gravel market because it bridges that fine line between super capable road, bike, and super capable. Off-road.
[00:45:27] Drew Medlock: [00:45:27] Yeah, absolutely. When we designed it, we were actually trying to start ground up with a amazing road bike that also could do gravel.
[00:45:34] And we really worried that you'd arbitrary and the performance really on a grand tour level road bike. So we were thinking like, this is why you should compete against a tarmac at a grand tour, but then also be able to run up to 40 millimeter tires. And that's from the aesthetics and also the performance that's really what we
[00:45:50] Craig Dalton: [00:45:50] were going for.
[00:45:51] So let's talk about that unique. Chip technology that kind of enables this to happen.
[00:45:57] Drew Medlock: [00:45:57] Yeah. So the bike uses a flip chip, which, you know, from mountain bikers out there know that's nothing new, right. That's been done a lot. But what it allows us to do on this bike specifically is lengthen the chains day by one centimeter.
[00:46:10] So you go from like a grand tour, erode geometry, super short chain stays to a centimeter longer and run 10 millimeters, more tire volume. And then on the front raises the axle to crown by one centimeter. Greases the tire volume.
[00:46:23] Craig Dalton: [00:46:23] And does that change the head tube angle?
[00:46:25] Drew Medlock: [00:46:25] So it slackens out the geometry of the bike just a little bit.
[00:46:28] So you actually do get a true different geometry for road and gravel mode. I think for me personally, I've written a lot of bikes that are like a gravel bike that you can also put road wheels on. And for me that somebody is designed to work with bikes. I always feel like the road bike, you know, I'm riding a gravel bike with small tires on it.
[00:46:46] It really doesn't handle the way a true road, race bikes. And so we wanted something that really could do both.
[00:46:52] Craig Dalton: [00:46:52] So on that flip ship, on the fork, it's a vertical movement. Correct. And then on the stay it's a horizontal, correct? Yeah.
[00:46:59] Drew Medlock: [00:46:59] So just links into the chase day or raises the axle to crown.
[00:47:03] Craig Dalton: [00:47:03] And then tell me about the adjustment that you need to make on the brake caliper to achieve that movement and how you've
[00:47:09] Drew Medlock: [00:47:09] executed that.
[00:47:10] Yeah, so basically the breakout per the chip actually is on a It's mounted to the fork. So the caliper is actually mounted to the piece that moves. So the caliper on the front doesn't actually have to be readjusted at all, given that if you're using it we'll set with the same hub, right? When you shut, swap away, same for the rear.
[00:47:28]The rear, you do have to take one caliper, bolt out to move it, but the caliper still stains in the same position. So if you're using the same set of hubs St. Brander rotors, you probably will not have to change your readjust your brakes after swap.
[00:47:41] Craig Dalton: [00:47:41] When you're in gravel mode, what type of tire clearance
[00:47:44] Drew Medlock: [00:47:44] do you have?
[00:47:45] 40 millimeter actual. And the tire cleaners is at that peace of mind, cause everybody like what your tire says on a hot stamp on side has nothing to do with actually what size it is. So for all you all writers out there, it's a good thing to know. I've seen 40 millimeter tires that measure 38, 40 millimeter tires at wizard or a 44.
[00:48:04] So we are measuring actually 40 millimeters attire. And that's including four millimeters of additional parents at the rear of the bike as well. Right. You know, Collin actually ran bigger than a 40 at Unbound gravel that a lot of people notice he's running in 42 specialized Pathfinder.
[00:48:19]So it does fit because we actually do have clearance, but he was in the our safety zone for parents that we'd like to keep for everyday years or so with mud and, you know, Yeah. Junk fluids through your frame, just to make sure you
[00:48:32] Craig Dalton: [00:48:32] protect it for it. Yeah. That's what Collin mentioned to me. He said he's like on a dry day, I stuck a 42 in there.
[00:48:37] I didn't have a concern, but I wouldn't be doing that in a muddy course. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, I mean, it was super exciting to see him ride that bike on Unbound 201 weekend and then Tulsa tough criteria I'm
[00:48:51] on
[00:48:51] Drew Medlock: [00:48:51] the road. Yeah. That was nuts and completely unexpected. And you know, it was even going to Unbound.
[00:48:57] He was really like. You know, different bikes, he was gonna ride the able, or the echo. And in the end he'd been putting most of the miles on the echo and he felt the most comfortable on it. And it's a lower front end. So he's got a lower profile on the bikes. So it was probably a little faster on the bike as well.
[00:49:12] So that was the call to go with the echo. And then, you know, for Tulsa tough, like manage, like we said, we designed that thing as a road racing machine, you know, with the road setting for the geometry. No problem. When he was in the breakaway and crab crybaby hill. So worked out pretty good.
[00:49:25] Craig Dalton: [00:49:25] You expect interesting and new things from allied at Unbound every year. So the pressures just keep, keeps getting amped
[00:49:32] Drew Medlock: [00:49:32] up. Well, we did have a skip year, so that gave us a little bit of breathing room. So
[00:49:37] Craig Dalton: [00:49:37] that's true. So you might be on an every two
[00:49:39] Drew Medlock: [00:49:39] year cycle. Yeah, we'll see. think we've got some new stuff come up or sleeve, so we'll see what the timing looks like.
[00:49:44] Craig Dalton: [00:49:44] Awesome. And it's worth noting. You're manufacturing in America. See, it's all under one roof now, is that right?
[00:49:50] Drew Medlock: [00:49:50] Yeah. Everything's under one roof far full manufacturing team is located in Northwest Arkansas and we build everything from the ground up there. The echo is a real special bike for us, not just because of the performance, but also that bike was developed all by the new team after we moved to our new factory and Rogers, Arkansas.
[00:50:08] And so it's a huge achievement for our team and this being able to put it off. No just performance and sports stuff out there, but also all our, you know, maturity and our, their manufacturing techniques together for the spike. And so we're really excited about it. And we're building, you know, almost every single part of that bike in house, including all the alway flip chips and dropouts and the stem.
[00:50:30] So it's super exciting.
[00:50:31] Craig Dalton: [00:50:31] Nice. What does a customer journey look like to get their hands on one of these
[00:50:34] Drew Medlock: [00:50:34] bikes? Yeah, so I go, does it as an ally cycle works. You can actually jump on and we have several different bill options and you can check it out and actually configure, you know what wheels you want, paint, you want all that stuff online and then you can hit us up directly.
[00:50:47] Or if you have a good local dealer you can open them up too.
[00:50:50] Craig Dalton: [00:50:50] And what does turnaround time look like these days
[00:50:53] Drew Medlock: [00:50:53] for echos? We're running between eight to 10 weeks delivery. Of course, that major caveat there is on lead times for parts. Somethings we are better on than others right now. So that's always, you know, the tricky questions because we're good at making echoes within eight to 10 weeks, but Shimano and Schramm are not very good at delivering REITs right now.
[00:51:14] Craig Dalton: [00:51:14] Yeah. It's you can throw extra labor at building something fast, stay up late, really hit that customer delivery date, but we can't control global supply chains.
[00:51:23] Drew Medlock: [00:51:23] Yeah. Unfortunately
[00:51:24] Craig Dalton: [00:51:24] we can't. Yeah. Well, congrats on the execution of the ACA I think it's a great bike and I'm super excited to see where it goes.
[00:51:31]
[00:51:31]So that's going to do it for this week's episode of the gravel ride podcast.
[00:51:35]I hope you enjoyed those mini builder interviews. And got a little bit of a sense for their process and what it's like purchasing a custom bike. There are a ton of great options out there. All the builders represented in the NV partner network are creating exceptional products. Some of them, one of a kind.
[00:51:54]Take a look at some of the websites, take a look at some of the videos out there online.
[00:51:59] You won't be disappointed at what you see from the ENVE builder Round-up.
[00:52:02]Huge, thanks to ENVE for their support of the podcast and a huge thank you for them putting together this event. I know, I look forward to seeing it every year and to be out there in person this year, followed by that massive grody or ride was a real pleasure. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with UNBOUND 200 winner Ian Boswell. We get to unpack his big win, but also dig into a new partnership between Wahoo and The Migration Gravel Race / Team Amani in Kenya.
Breakfast with Boz Podcast
Automated Transcription, please excuse any typos:
Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast, I'm excited, very excited to welcome Ian Boswell to the show.
[00:00:12]We scheduled this interview many months before Unbound, knowing that Ian was participating. But certainly not expecting that he was going to end up with the top spot on the podium.
[00:00:22]This episode also kicks off a new relationship for the podcast and Wahoo. I've been a longterm Wahoo customer on the computer side. Having first started with the ELEMNT BOLT and now using the ELEMNT ROAM. I've also been a big fan of the Wahoo frontiers series on the web. I love the videos and getting access to these writers, having adventures and just the stories behind it so when i connected with the team at Wahoo and learned about some of the initiatives they have going this year i was super super stoked to bring them on board as a sponsor.
[00:00:56]On the podcast, we'll get the opportunity to talk to some of these Wahoo athletes and get a little bit of the behind the scenes. Look. At some of the adventures they'll be having this year
[00:01:05]I'm very much looking forward to these conversations and I hope you will be too. For those of you who don't know Ian Boswell, Ian had a career in the world tour riding for teams like Sky and Katyusha before retiring and moving on to a full-time role with Wahoo as an employee.
[00:01:25]Additionally, he set his sights on participating in the gravel racing scene. I don't know about you but i recall that time the beginning of 2020, just questioning where ian would fit into the roster of these pro tour athletes who were moving into gravel and what the impact might be on the sport.
[00:01:44]We all had to wait quite a bit longer than we expected to find out what that impact was going to be. So when the 2021 season finally kicked off, And Unbound was on the calendar. It was inevitably going to be thrilling to see where Ian was going to fit in. And to see him win. The biggest race on the calendar this year was quite exciting because it really couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
[00:02:08]We get to dig into a little bit of as experience at the Unbound 200 this year. But equally important, we get to dig into a new initiative from Wahoo
[00:02:18] In conjunction with the Migration Gravel Race in Kenya, East Africa. I won't get into too many details in this introduction, because I want you to hear from Ian. And with that, let's dive right in to this week's episode.
[00:02:31]
[00:02:31]Ian. Welcome to the show
[00:02:33] Ian Boswell: [00:02:33] thank you for having me.
[00:02:35] Craig Dalton: [00:02:35] It's funny. I cannot believe that your win at Unbound is going to be the second, most exciting thing that we're going to talk about today.
[00:02:41]Ian Boswell: [00:02:41] Yeah, it's yeah, it's been a very fortunate couple of weeks I've had and more fortunate for what's coming up.
[00:02:48]Yeah, excited to chat about, Unbound, but more importantly, the next couple of weeks of of travel and racing and cultural experience. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:02:56] Craig Dalton: [00:02:56] Yeah. So let's get into your victory at Unbound. What was your mindset going into Unbound? Obviously, when you retired from the pro tour and expected last year was going to be your first year as a quote unquote gravel athlete.
[00:03:10] It didn't go as planned and you had to wait a long time to get to a start line. Let's talk about what your mindset was going into Unbound. I know you had one an event, the rule of three under your belt previously, but Unbound being the sort of world series or Superbowl of gravel is really a next level experience.
[00:03:29] Ian Boswell: [00:03:29] Yeah. In hindsight, in all honesty, it probably benefited me that I didn't race last year, cause I had just come off of, seven years in the world tour and I don't know, 10 years prior to that, racing road bikes, and trying to climb this ladder to the top of the sport on the roadside.
[00:03:45] And, I retired and was very much, still felt like a racer. I took a position at Wahoo, so I just had less time to ride and move back full-time to Vermont where the weather is not the south of France, where I was living for the previous seven years. So there was very much this constant underlying level of not stress or anxiety, but just oh, I'm not doing what I used to do.
[00:04:06]And it was very much a transitional year where, I was still had this mindset and this, feeling, whether it was, internal or psychological of I'm not training the way I used to. And lo and behold no race has happened. So I spent the first ever, I guess probably is the longest I had spent in one place since I was 14 or 15 years old.
[00:04:25]Just riding in Vermont and my mindset over the last, I guess throughout 2020 really shifted a lot to very much alright, I'm at a very different chapter in my life now I'm not a professional world tour, a road cyclist. There are things in my life that are, far more.
[00:04:42] No, I don't say important, but I just, I became interested in so many other aspects of my life. Things I've always longed to do, garden and, we got chickens and we got a puppy and I joined the volunteer fire department. That's actually where I am right now with the volunteer fire department.
[00:04:55] Cause we have terrible internet at our house. So I got involved in all these other kind of aspects to my life and, Which kind of led to, the return to racing this year. And I was very much of the perspective of is I'm looking forward to races happening again, but if there's another year of kind of pandemic and no events, great, I get to spend another year at home and riding and, maybe going for some KOMS here and there and doing some, some small group rides.
[00:05:17]So my mental state. Long answer here, but my mental state going into Unbound was very much have that mindset. Hey, this is an awesome opportunity to be here, but I'm no longer, a athlete or an individual who's putting my sole focus and soul and time and energy into performance at the highest level, which. In all honesty is probably a great way to approach a 200 mile race because, you can burn a lot of nervous energy early on in a race that is going to take 10 hours and you can finish three or four hours in and just feel like I am mentally fried. And, I very much had a fun and enjoyable. Race just because I was so happy to be there. I'm so curious about.
[00:05:59] I think that's the other thing is there is a culture and the etiquette to gravel events that I'm still very much learning, so I'm much more. An observer than I am a kind of a leader or, someone like Strickland is very much a, a patrol of the Peloton, he knows what's going on and people respect him.
[00:06:16] And, there were countless people that I met, the day before, or even at the start line. And, they had no idea who I was and like, that's great. I'm happy that no one knows who I am, but where I've come from, because they're not gonna look at me to take a big pole or control the Peloton or attack.
[00:06:29]Which was great, but I don't think that's going to be the case in events going forward.
[00:06:33] Craig Dalton: [00:06:33] I think you're right. I think you might be a mark man at this point. Those are really interesting comments. And I really appreciate what you're saying about mindset and I can't help, but ponder, if some of the other sort of.
[00:06:45] Quote, unquote, big name athletes that showed up at that event. Might've had more of a race mindset. And when the terrain, when the course, when the other competitors dictated something unexpected, they really didn't have the mindset to thrive that you've clearly acquired in your time and run up to the event.
[00:07:06] Ian Boswell: [00:07:06] Yeah, definitely. And it was the first event, I was there almost a week in advance to do some other stuff with specialized and with Wahoo and, it was the first time really since probably the tour de France in 2018, that felt that not nervous energy, but just There was a lot happening, and it was, and I think for a lot of people, whether it was myself or, someone like Amity Rockwell who had won before, it was the first time in a year for most people that there was this, just journalists and interviews and, people wanting to take picture of your bikes and ask you questions about your equipment and all these little things But yeah, I just, I didn't have to answer too many questions in detail because I was just in very, in a very simple way.
[00:07:44] I was almost naive to the event. I had Pete stepped in as mechanic lend me a pump on the start line because I didn't pump up my tires in the morning which is brings it all back down to earth. It's rather than being worried about my start position or, the first 10 miles, I was like, oh cool.
[00:07:58] Like I should probably pump up my tires right now because tire pressure I guess, is awfully important and gravel. And I had pumped off the night before, but I just didn't have a pump in the morning to put air in them. So I was like, cool. This is a nice distraction to put air in my tires at the start line.
[00:08:12] And it's also, there's I had other missions on the start line as well. I had 10 of the trans pride. Sweat bands with me as well. And so I was trying to find, some people who I knew wanted one and some people who I thought, would appreciate receiving those.
[00:08:26]I had other kind of things on my mind at the start, which, brings it back full circle to thinking about the bigger. Topics around the event rather than just the race and being worried about my performance and my kind of expectations internally. That's great.
[00:08:40]Craig Dalton: [00:08:40] And I just want to pass along just a personal note on that front, a close personal friend of mine been in the bike industry for a long time, reached out to me and just, he knew I was interviewing you today and yeah. Acknowledged how important that was to him and his family that you made that gesture and having listened to your interview with Molly Cameron on the breakfast with boss podcast, it just came full circle.
[00:09:03] And I think it was, it's little gestures like that, that show your character and the type of things you believe in and are willing to put forward in your life.
[00:09:12] Ian Boswell: [00:09:12] Yeah I appreciate that and very much wasn't a PR stunt or something I was doing to get attention, cause if I had finished even second or third or hundreds, no one cares, just by nature of winning people pay attention to it, it has become something that I'm more aware of and, back to this whole mentality over the last, 12 months in pandemic and just reflecting on my life up to this point and realizing, how incredibly fortunate I have been and, realizing that so many people haven't had that same life experience that I have, and just been more aware of, different people from marginalized communities or backgrounds or upbringings and realizing that, There's a lot of people who are suffering a lot in this world and are fighting for something far more important than a victory at a gravel race.
[00:09:55] And, just to be able to shed a little bit of light on, on those topics and those, movements and groups, it really does bring me a lot of. It makes me feel so good just to receive messages from people and, hear their stories. And it opened up this whole dialogue of conversation, which is so amazing that, such a simple gesture and, really my response to most of these people, it's it's literally the least I can do.
[00:10:14]I spent a hundred dollars on wristbands and passed them out. It's that's nothing, but. It's created this, just dialogue and really awareness, which I think, for me, it was the first step in just, learning more of it's just awareness. And I think that's really, can make the industry and just the world and, so many people more informed and more connected and more understanding just to.
[00:10:34] To be aware of these different, points in our society and our culture and our world. I think if we can just open our eyes a little bit and be a bit more aware, then it's going to be a better place for all of us. Yeah.
[00:10:44]Craig Dalton: [00:10:44] It's so true. It's the cycling industry, the world, it seems to move so slowly towards these things.
[00:10:50] And I think it is these baby steps that are critically important.
[00:10:55] Ian Boswell: [00:10:55] Yeah. And it really is, and having spoken with Molly, I, realized that more. That, Molly's in this for the long run, this isn't something where we're going to wake up tomorrow and there's going to be radical, change and reform.
[00:11:06] But if there is a critical mass, and I think, for individuals like myself who have come from a very privileged background can just be aware that people have had very different life experiences. And to be understanding to that, that, we can. Move in the direction of change and it, it really does just start with that with conversations and with, knowledge, that's such a powerful tool that we have in our quiver.
[00:11:28] Craig Dalton: [00:11:28] Yeah, absolutely. And I'll put our link to your breakfast with BAAs episodes, because I think it's important for everybody to listen to that one while you're at the start line, how different was it to line up with another thousand athletes at the same time, that's gotta be one of the largest races you've ever started.
[00:11:45] Ian Boswell: [00:11:45] Definitely. Yeah. Most you think most world tour races are races. I had done as a junior, under 23, most maybe you have 200 riders. Yeah, it's it was crazy, thankfully I was able to be near the front just to, squirm through the first few turns, but, with, and I had a friend who had done the event a couple of years ago and he said, man, just make sure you look back at some point.
[00:12:02] And we'd had a couple, L turns early on and, because you're in these relatively flat open Plains, looking back with the sunrise and just seeing as far as you could see. A group of riders. That is cool. And that was like the first time I think, in the event that I really realized what a special day it was going to be.
[00:12:21] And you're not just for performance and trying to win, but just how many people decided to, travel to employ Kansas, to take part in this event. And, I really didn't understand what it was and what it meant until I looked back early on and just saw this, Stretching Peloton as far as the eye could see.
[00:12:38] And that was yeah, it was cool. Definitely it was nice being, being near the front cause you just have less chaos to happen in front of you. But very quickly from there, it turned from, alright, this is beautiful and gorgeous to okay, like the pace is picking up and I should probably keep my eyes on the road in front of me and make sure I'm in somewhat of a reasonable position to make sure I'm just stay out of trouble.
[00:12:58] Craig Dalton: [00:12:58] What did those first 50 miles look like? I imagine that at that point, there's still a lot of jockeying for position and whether you're a pro or a talented amateur athlete, there's still a lot of people around you. How did it start to break up?
[00:13:12] Ian Boswell: [00:13:12] Yeah. To be honest, and I know multiple writers have said that the beginning was fairly sketchy and I think there were a few crashes and punctures and whatnot.
[00:13:19]I didn't find the first, I think 26 miles was the first unmaintained section. Up until that point, I felt relative, surprising. I felt actually really comfortable in the Peloton. I hadn't done a big race like that and I did the rule of three, but that started on a hill and broke up instantly.
[00:13:34]But because it's flat, it stayed together really up until that first section. And because it has gravel roads and the surfaces are different, the Peloton is just naturally more, there's more space within the group. And, having raised in the world to where we have, someone's hip on your handlebars and someone else's handlebars on your hip, I was like, wow, there's actually a lot of space in, in the bunch to move around and, a lot mutual respect that all change when we did hit the first section at mile 26, because then people start seeing red and that's when the race picked up and people start taking these risks and forgetting the fact that they have a hundred and.
[00:14:07] 75 miles to go, but it's that was kinda where the race first started to split up and people started flatting and puncturing and crashing and, having mechanicals my, again, even up until that point, my mindset was still very much just find a safe spot in the Peloton.
[00:14:21] You're not gonna, You're going to be much better off making it through here safely with your wheels and tires and intact than you are, on the front of the bunch, taking, taking risks that you know, could potentially in your race. So that was very much my strategy.
[00:14:35]Did I didn't really discover until we got to that point, but just having not done it, I didn't really know what to expect and what the Peloton was going to be like. But yeah, I found myself pretty far back compared to the other contenders early on, but just knowing it was such a long event and there's no, teamwork or team dynamics I was happy to just surf the surf, the wave for the first, I guess probably 30, 35 miles.
[00:14:57] Yeah.
[00:14:57]Craig Dalton: [00:14:57] And then 35 miles to 65 miles, did separations begin to occur? And did you find yourself having to hop and bridge up to different groups?
[00:15:06] Ian Boswell: [00:15:06] Yeah. Separations happened a lot quicker than I had thought just through crashes and the level of rider is big at a race like that.
[00:15:12]You think you have someone like, Quinn Simmons or Mateo Jorgensen who, he just came off the Jiro one of, the, probably the hardest races in the year up to this point, regardless of the surface. And then, you have people who, have been training five, 10 hours a week at, in the same Peloton.
[00:15:27] So it broke up fairly. Quickly. And it wasn't really until, probably around nine 40, when we, the group got down to maybe 30 riders and, just kept becoming, it's funny to say it's a race of attrition in a very much is, but the fact that 40 miles and you're already starting to see this, people sir come to the conditions was a little bit puzzling.
[00:15:48]But again, I think a lot of that just has to do with the expenditure of nervous energy and, people over exerting themselves. I don't wanna say unnecessarily, pushing harder than they need to make these splits. But yeah, we rolled into the first aid station at mile 68.
[00:16:02]With probably only 15 riders. And I thought it was going to be much bigger than that. I thought it was going to be a group of a hundred people and it was going to be chaos rolling in there because there were so many writers, but yeah, a relatively small group after, just 60, some odd miles.
[00:16:17] Craig Dalton: [00:16:17] Yeah. I imagine at that point, the incentive to work together was pretty strong for the remaining riders.
[00:16:22]Ian Boswell: [00:16:22] Surprisingly not definitely. Yeah. I was really surprised with that. And, we had, there are people who are definitely rolling through and, hats off to people like Ted and Pete and Colin, those, those individuals were always up there rolling through, like they never drifted to the back.
[00:16:38] They never, Didn't pull even, Robin carpenter was there and there was some writers who understood like, Hey, we have a really good thing going here. Let's keep it rolling. And even myself personally, I realized that, just with my physiology, it's much easier to roll through at a steady pace than it is to like, try and drift off the back and then, catch up with five guys and then drift off and then catch up.
[00:16:56]And that was an incentive, not too long after the aid station, when Colin Strickland came up to me and said, Hey, it looks like he's a lot of people are really hurting in this group. And I was like, just happy to be in the front group of 15, almost, over a third through the race.
[00:17:11] And I was like, all right, man, let's hit it. So I went hard up a little roller and I can't remember if I jumped across to Robin carpenter or if I did a little surgeon, he came with me, that very quickly whittled it down to eight riders. And once we had those 8, 8, 8 of us up front That's when it became more, more cohesive.
[00:17:30] And then again, after little Egypt, when, Pete really, shredded the race through little Egypt, and that was when the selection of the five of us went away. And that's when the, the front group of us, stetting on myself, Ted Lawrence and Strickland, that's when it became this.
[00:17:46] Incredible group of very committed and very, cohesive group of riders just rolling through. And that was, still over a hundred miles to go, I think still 110 miles to go. We, was just five of us. And that was really cool to see that, we got to the point where you had made these separations and it was just a group of people who are willing to ride and just keep rolling through also knowing that there was a lot of headwind coming back towards Emporia.
[00:18:11]
[00:18:11] Craig Dalton: [00:18:11] And it sounded like from the accounts that, and what you just said, you guys were willing to work together. I'm curious, at what point does it come into your mind to do something, to make an attack in that scenario?
[00:18:24]Ian Boswell: [00:18:24] That was one of my biggest questions. And I did a ride with Ted and I asked him, on the ride, I was just like, how?
[00:18:29]And it felt so evenly matched and because there was a headwind. That kind of nullified anyone trying to go for a long range of attack like Strickland did in 2019, just because, it's a pretty, it was a pretty smart group, tactically of riders, knowing that, okay, if if Colin attacks and the remaining four of us had any sort of intelligence, we'd be like, all right, let's just stay together, let him do his thing. And we'll just keep rolling steady. And there's so much wind that he's going to be, he's going to be brought back. So the wind did play a huge factor. I think in how the race was tactically being played out. And, once we got closer to aid station 2 there's a series of kind of pretty big rollers and some steep sections on a, an unmaintained road. And, Pete kind of hit it there as well. And, it became very apparent that everyone was very equally matched. And because the wind, if you're not going to get it, if you're roll over the top and you have a.
[00:19:21] Three four second gap and you look back and there's four, four guys behind you. You might just consider like, all right, I don't have a big enough gap to keep pushing on. So I'll wait for the guys behind me. We also had a group of people who have done a lot of road race, and, you think myself, Laurens, Ted and Pete had all come from the world tour.
[00:19:38] And I think with Colin's experience of crit racing and red hook, he's very tactically savvy and really understands the benefit of drafting and wind dynamics. So yeah, I was definitely one of the questions in my mind was how is this gonna break up? Because everyone is so equally matched and the wind is such a big factor.
[00:19:54]I thought there was a reasonable chance that, maybe we'll all roll into back onto the pavement and Emporia with five of us. Wow.
[00:20:02] Craig Dalton: [00:20:02] And what ultimately happened to create the separation that left you alone with Lauren's ten Dams?
[00:20:08] Ian Boswell: [00:20:08] Yeah. So with it's about 30 miles, maybe 25, 30 miles to go.
[00:20:11] We hit the last kind of unmaintained section of road, which I had actually written with Laurens the prior Wednesday. And so I upped the pace there, knowing it was a crucial section and also it wasn't incredibly technical, there was times when, like there was one path that was definitely the best path to take. And if you didn't, if you weren't on that route, then you know, it was either Rocky or you might be riding to a puddle. And that's when Pete hit it pretty hard over the top of me. And then Laurens went over the top of him and we'd all strung out.
[00:20:37] And, I looked back at one point I saw that Strickland was distanced. I think we, between the rest of us, Ted was probably the, probably one of the better sprinters out of, Us kind of three climber, former climbers. So we knew it was like, okay, the races on here, if we can, every time you lose one rider, it's your odds increase of winning you go from five to four and.
[00:20:57] Then Pete had a mechanical. I think he somehow, I don't know if he was trying to go down to a small ring or up to his big ring, but he had some chain suck and, had to jump off his bike to adjust that at which point, I went around him and caught up to Lawrence and Ted was just behind us and wound up catching on just after the last unmaintained section ended.
[00:21:15]At which point I was like, wow, we're going to like the three of us. We'll probably roll to the line. If we continue working at At a good pace because it's less, Colin comes back to Pete, and that's still, two chasing three is harder, even though, Colin can definitely roll quickly on the flats and downhills.
[00:21:29]But yeah we just kept rolling for not too long. And then we hit a small climb and I think Ted just hit the wall, he made a big effort to bridge across to Lawrence and I and so he got popped maybe around 20 to 23 miles to go. And at which point it was just Lawrence and I still felt good and he felt.
[00:21:45]He felt well. And we just realized that this is our chance, and if we can keep pushing the pace, the most likely the writers behind aren't going to be able to come back together and, bridge across if we keep riding. But at that point you're also catching riders in the 100 mile ride.
[00:21:59] So it does become a little bit more confusing, especially when you're looking back, trying to decide, is that Pete and the red Jersey, or is that, someone we had just passed in the a hundred mile event and because you're. Nearly 10 hours into an event, you don't really remember what color jerseys of the people you passed are.
[00:22:16]So we just knew we could had to put our heads down and keep riding. And, another factor is we also, neither of us had aerobars in our bike which I think mentally for both of us was. Really cool to be upfront. And Laurens made a comment to me, probably 10 miles to go where he, yeah, he said, yeah, I won't use the word here, but anyways, yeah, he was happy that we weren't that both of us on aerobars and, knowing that we knew we had to work even more efficiently together because the people behind did have aerobars and, they probably are faster and, they did have a slight advantage, especially on the, the flat more.
[00:22:49]Smooth roads. Yeah, but thankfully we still had enough. Both of us had enough kind of reserves in the tank to keep pushing it all the way back into town. Now in that
[00:22:58] Craig Dalton: [00:22:58] situation, obviously both of you understand the tactics you've been in the world tour. You understand how races are won. Do you have to speak about what needs to be done or is it just so innate in both of you that you knew where you were going to work together as far as you needed to go to keep the chasers off?
[00:23:16]Ian Boswell: [00:23:16] I don't know. I don't know. Laurens has history with races and winning. Road races with someone else. But I had never really been in that situation, maybe as a junior, when I was 14 years old I knew we had to work. And, at that point I think we both realized being first or second in this event is a huge result.
[00:23:30] And so many things can go wrong in that race. The fact that we had made it that far, neither of us having any. Any major issues. I do know that Lawrence had a small puncture early on, but was able to make it back, before mile 25 or something. So the fact that, we knew that regardless of the outcome, we were both ecstatic that we were still there and we were off the front and we were gonna come into more than likely come into town together.
[00:23:54]Other than having a catastrophic meltdown or a puncture in the last few miles Yeah. W we did speak about it. We talked about I think I said to him, and he said to me like, Hey, let's just, let's roll into town and we'll sprint it out. Which is then, that's when you're ultimately going to get caught, you have the opportunity to finishing first or second.
[00:24:09] And then you decide to start, cat and mouse in it and attacking each other and stopping and attacking and stopping. And before you know it, Pete's back with you and Ted's back with you and maybe Colin's on. And then you wind up finishing fifth when you could have almost had a guarantee first or second, and then you wind up, being the worst sprinter out of the five riders and, finishing in fifth place.
[00:24:27] So we were both aware that, it was. Most beneficial to us to keep rolling through just knowing that neither of us were, an excellent sprinter, had it been someone with a better sprint, Ted or, maybe even Colin that's when I think the tactics get a bit more complicated because you may want to.
[00:24:43]If you're calling, you may be like, Hey, I don't need, there's two of us. I'm probably going to beat you in the sprint anyways. And I'll beat the riders behind me in the sprint. So I don't need to work here. I'm going to save my effort for the sprint. But I think sprint is very much an unknown strength of both Laurens and I.
[00:24:57] So I think we are both willing to go to the line and just see what happened once we got there.
[00:25:01] Craig Dalton: [00:25:01] Yeah. What a great result for both of you. I think it's fantastic.
[00:25:06] Ian Boswell: [00:25:06] Yeah. I think we're both pleased. And I think of the five riders up front, I don't think either of us really meant or knew what it meant to win that race.
[00:25:13] And I knew that Lawrence had won the gravel Locos a couple of weeks prior. So he probably had a little taste of kind of the thirst and the, interest in gravel cycling and. Globally, but really here in north America. I had no idea what it meant. I knew it was a big event and I'd seen the attention that Colin had drawn in 2019, but even without, I didn't realize the weight that is put on the shoulders of, the individual who wins, whether it's the a hundred mile event or the 200 or XL, male and female, there's an incredible amount of attention put on.
[00:25:44] That event and an importance, not just from media, everyone who is involved with, your support team and partners and sponsors, everyone is so happy to see those results and to be part of that, really that team of, people who, get behind it from, The week out and get together and make sure that everything's ready to roll.
[00:26:04] Craig Dalton: [00:26:04] And particularly in this moment in time, as we hopefully put the pandemic in the rear view mirror here in the U S and eventually around the world, just to have an event of that scale happen and have the community just have that collective release of energy. I think it was just super exciting.
[00:26:20] Ian Boswell: [00:26:20] Yeah, it was, and that was one thing, I was a little bit curious about was, the energy around the event compared to last, prior years. And I, I had thought about that a lot in 2020 was, oh man, did I miss this kind of golden window of gravel? When you know, it is fun and there's this party like atmosphere and, post pandemic.
[00:26:37] Is it going to be a completely different world? Is there going to be no samples anymore at, at the expo booth because it's, not COVID safe. It is cool to see that, a lot of the excitement and buzz and party and just community atmosphere, didn't really change all that much in an eye.
[00:26:54] I heard from a few people that the expo is slightly smaller and there are a few people, in downtown Emporia at the finish, but, compared to, what I had expected, it was a lot more and there was a lot more excitement and energy around the event then, I had feared would not be there due to the pandemic.
[00:27:08] Yeah,
[00:27:09]Craig Dalton: [00:27:09] I'm glad you got the full experience. That's amazing. So it's really funny to me that we scheduled this interview way in advance of your race at Unbound. We knew it was happening, but you had mentioned, it was a total unknown, so it was great to get that overview, but I'm equally excited to jump into your day job with Wahoo and a partnership with the Migration Gravel Race in Kenya.
[00:27:34] Can you give us a little bit of an overview of what that race is and what this partnership is all about.
[00:27:40] Ian Boswell: [00:27:40] Yeah a couple of colleagues brought it to me probably back in, in January. It's, Hey, there's this, there's this event happening in Kenya and we're going to partner with this, this African cycling team called the Amani foundation.
[00:27:52] And I was like, cool. When is it? And it's mid, late June and. The same time as an event that was happening in Oregon, the Oregon trail race, which is, the race, really, if there was a hometown race. And that's where I grew up was in bend. And I was like, sure, Kenya sounds awesome, but it's probably not likely that we're going to go.
[00:28:07] This was still in, January when it still very much looked like things were closed down and shot and travel, wasn't going to be possible. I put my hand up, I was like, I've never been to Kenya and it sounds like an awesome, an awesome trip, but it has evolved into so much more than just.
[00:28:22] A bike race, get some context. Wahoo has partnered with the Amani foundation, which is, like I said, an African cycling team and really just trying to provide opportunities, resources, and, the chance for these African riders to travel and also show themselves on a global stage.
[00:28:36]We've been providing them with the products they need, whether it's head units, heart rate monitors, trainers which is, a huge resource, but I think the most beneficial thing, and which I think is probably the coolest thing that we've been able to provide is, access to having them work with the Wahoo sports science center out in Boulder, Colorado and work with a coach like Neil Henderson who also coaches, Rohan Dennis, who's getting ready to go to the Olympic games in Tokyo. And when you look at the. Just the difference in culture from, Western Europe or north America to Africa, there's some phenomenally talented. Athletes globally. You look at, in cycling the growth of, grand tour contenders coming out of south America.
[00:29:15]It's because someone went there and invested in those athletes and gave them the opportunities and the resources to show what they're capable of doing. And I think it's very much a similar situation in East Africa. When you look at Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, There are athletes that are performing at the highest level in the world when it comes to, marathon running or athletics, but there's not a whole lot of athletes who make the transition to cycling.
[00:29:40] And a lot of that it's, it is a barrier of entry, both financially, but you think logistically as well, there is all this equipment and, the. The tradition of, training in cycling is so much different than running, running is becoming a more complicated sport, but it's grassroots.
[00:29:56] It's very simply, and you can have a pair of shoes and you can go run, but cycling, there's the equipment and there's power meters, and there's, SU so many kinds of obstacles to jump through which is. Making this trip, all the more valuable, the fact that, having had one Unbound and having Laurens Ten Dam finished, second, we're both attending this race and we both were, gonna attend it prior to Unbound, but to go and actually race with these athletes and, hopefully, we do well, but I think it's even cooler, just.
[00:30:25] To have the opportunity to give these African riders an opportunity to show what they're capable of. If I look at, my story of coming up through the ranks here in north America, it's really defined by excelling at these very few opportunities that you had to go against the big riders, whether that's national championships or, jumping into a pro on two race.
[00:30:45] And they just happened to be a world tour rider there and you performed well. And then all of a sudden, everyone noticed you. And when you think about, these riders who are currently racing in Africa, they're very much racing in a bubble where, there may be one or two riders who are winning every race and they might be doing, these amazing power numbers.
[00:31:00] And they might be, Tactically and technically, perfect, but no one knows what they're capable of because they're not racing against, somewhat more recognizable names. So by, heading over to this race and having Lawrence go and, some other, prominent figures in the cycling and gravel community, it's giving these athletes really the opportunity of a lifetime to show what they're capable of, which is, all that really someone needs to really changed their entire life. And, cycling has brought so much joy and privilege and opportunity to my life. How cool is it's now being a position where I get to go to Kenya and do a bike race, and potentially, change or alter the course of someone else's life through. Hopefully having them beat me in a bike race.
[00:31:43]How cool would that be if a couple of these riders from the Amani foundation just absolutely hand it to Laurens and I, and that sets them on a course that changes their entire life. And Yeah, it's just such a cool opportunity when you think about it and, when I reflect on my upbringing and moving through the ranks and cycling but on top of that, with Wahoo, we're taking the three best riders from the gravel race of the highest three performing athletes are then coming to the U S later in the year to, to participate in SBT GRVL up in Steamboat Springs, and then Belgium Waffle Ride Asheville, which, performance aside, like how cool is that an African rider gets to perform well on a race and then gets a trip to the U S to see our country.
[00:32:23]I get to go over to Kenya and see their country. And it's just the, really the beauty of cycling and the international exchange of cultures and traditions. And yeah, I actually just received a message from one of the Kenyan riders I reconnected on Instagram. And we've been a F.
[00:32:37] Doing some WhatsApp back and forth, and he's Hey man, like when you get to Nairobi, let's go for a ride. And I know some roads and he's you're a, you're such a big deal over here in Kenya. Everyone was watching the Unbound gravel. And I'm like, it's crazy to think that, you're doing this race in Kansas and people in Nairobi are watching the event.
[00:32:54] Craig Dalton: [00:32:54] That's amazing. Amazing that the technology allows you to communicate with people all over the world at this point.
[00:33:00] Ian Boswell: [00:33:00] Yeah, and it really is. And and thanks to technology, it does make it feasible for someone like Neil to coach someone in Kenya, the same way that he would coach me.
[00:33:10] Had he been, my coach here in Vermont. So it's, yeah, it's a very cool event on so many levels, and I talk touched on a lot of, the cultural and, Opportunities, but I'm also going to Kenya to, just to see Kenya it's a four day. I guess I should explain the event a bit more.
[00:33:24]It's a four-day gravel stage race in the Masai Mara. Which, I've seen quite a few documentaries is an absolutely stunning place. And, I just, yesterday I got my vaccines that we're recommended by the CDC and I guess the travel advisory board here in the U S so yeah, hopefully I'm set to go.
[00:33:43]But Bike racing aside. What a trip to be able to go to Kenya and spend four days in Maasai, Mara riding my bike around.
[00:33:51] Craig Dalton: [00:33:51] No, I there's. No doubt. It's going to be a spectacular experience. We talked a little bit about the migration gravel race on an earlier episode of the podcast. When I first caught wind of it, it immediately caught my eye having done a couple of stage races in Africa, myself.
[00:34:06] It's otherworldly to be racing and look across and see some zebra in the field or some other animals. It's just unbelievable. So I'm super jealous and excited for you to have that experience.
[00:34:19]Ian Boswell: [00:34:19] If I may, I want to ask you a question, what should I prepare for? I'm about to pack my bags.
[00:34:23] What should I be? Packing as far as, Is there any, are there any items and the race has done a phenomenal job of sending out a manual of like things to bring. But is there anything that you did not have that you would have liked to bring when you went?
[00:34:36] Craig Dalton: [00:34:36] The guy I was in the mindset of this is going to be an adventure.
[00:34:40] So as much as any races getting from the start to finish line every day and getting your body ready for the next day, I think I made sure to have. Ample gear on my bike for unexpected catastrophes, much like I'm sure you did it Unbound in just things are going to get thrown at you and you're going to have a wilderness experience out there.
[00:35:04] So you need to make sure you're
[00:35:06] Ian Boswell: [00:35:06] self-sufficient. Okay. Yeah. Good tips. I'll make sure to pack some extra tubes. And I did from a previous trip a river fishing trip. I did have ordered a LifeStraw. So if I do find myself a puddle, hopefully I'll be ready and I'll yeah, I'll throw it in my swap box.
[00:35:21] So I I always have it with me. How
[00:35:23] Craig Dalton: [00:35:23] many athletes has Wahoo sports science been working with in preparation for this race?
[00:35:28] Ian Boswell: [00:35:28] So there's a team of 10 athletes and we've been supporting all of them. Which is awesome. And there's only 75 riders actually participating in the Migration race. So it's a relatively small field, which, coming off Unbound, which is, a huge event.
[00:35:40] And, there are people that I had meant to connect with prior to the event. People I knew from Oregon or from California, who, I didn't get a chance to chat with. That's another cool aspect of this event is it's going to be very. Intimate. And, there's a lot of time around the camp to, to speak to these athletes and riders.
[00:35:57] And, I'm just, I'm really curious to see there. You know their setups, but also just answer questions about, tactics and drafting and, there's so much to be learned as well, just through observation and, by, myself and Lawrence going, having that direct ability to be able to ride with athletes and, obviously Neil and the sports science team at Wahoo have been.
[00:36:16] Coaching the athletes, which is, a huge part of performance is just having the motor to pedal and push and ride these distances. Another aspect that, and I think this is probably one of the most challenging things for people coming from countries that don't have a super strong.
[00:36:31] Cycling race background. And, I know that, Rwanda has, a big cycling history and culture, but it's so different when an athlete comes from there and races in Europe or north America and the etiquette or the tactics and the dynamics of the races are different. That's the.
[00:36:46]Almost my job on the ground is, to be able to speak to the writers of the Amani foundation, after the races or during the races and, give them small pointers about, drafting or cross winds or where to put their tire on on a rough section of road.
[00:37:00]And by no means, am I a great expert at navigating rough and technical descents, but, There's ample opportunity to be there in-person and providing, not so much the training aspects that's already been covered, but the application of, okay, you have this power, you've done the training now, how do you maximize, The race side of it, and I'm happy to be a I don't know, maybe a director in the race, telling people, Hey, this is a great time to attack.
[00:37:24] You should go for it. Cause I know Laurens is going to be, he's going to be out there to win and I'm sure he wants to get one over on me after unbalanced, if I can yeah. Employ some of the African riders to try to get them up there and potentially PIP Laurens for a stage or two, then you know, that would be awesome.
[00:37:41] Craig Dalton: [00:37:41] I can't wait to follow this. And I do think, as you mentioned, the fact that this is a multi-day stage race and having a camp at night, it's just going to be this really intimate opportunity with that gravel community. For everybody participating in the race, to learn from each other, to have a laugh at the inevitable folly that happens in a gravel event stage.
[00:38:04]It's just so much fun. Unlike maybe some of the stage races you've experienced before in Europe, where you went off with your team and you had your bubble and it was just people you knew. I think the community much like you described and experienced in Kansas is going to be there in droves and they just think there's going to be a lot of love at that event.
[00:38:22] Ian Boswell: [00:38:22] Yeah and I've already said this to a few people who were heading over there, like inevitably something is going to go wrong and not just because it's, we're heading to Africa, but it happens that, I spoke to people who did Oregon trail and like it's a gravel stage race.
[00:38:35]Something is going to, you're going to break something, hopefully it's not your body. Hopefully it's a piece of your bike or, a buckle on your shoe or, a random thing's going to go wrong or you might get food poisoning or dehydrated. So I think it's important for everyone attending to also realize that, things could very easily not be optimal, which I think is the beauty of going to events like this is, it's facing adversity and, really integrating into the location and the landscape and the environment.
[00:39:02] And also the culture, which I think is I don't want to go there and, eat pasta and red sauce. I'm not sure what the what's on the menu, but I would love to, Be exposed and open to trying new foods and flavors and fruits. And I think that's one of the coolest things about traveling in this era that we live in, where, you can fly almost anywhere in the world and experience a culture that is so different than the one that we live at home.
[00:39:26] Craig Dalton: [00:39:26] Whatever I love about this program that Wahoo has put together, it's not only as fans of the sport and just interested. SA, if people on the sidelines we get to see not only what happens during the migration, gravel race. But then later in the year in Asheville and at SBT gravel, we're going to see a few of these athletes make the trip over and what a great way to just round out the year and see how these athletes progress and see what that investment, that Wahoo has a company and other partners have made to bring them over there.
[00:39:59] And hopefully, as you said, make this a stepping stone for a great future career in cycling.
[00:40:05] Ian Boswell: [00:40:05] Yeah, exactly. And just the opportunity to meet them and become friends, because like you said, we are hanging out around a campfire at night, so the opportunity to be a friendly face and what, the same way when I go over to Kenya, someone who is completely out of my element, for them to have a friendly face when they do come to the us to, be a friend on the start line and help them at registration and, lead them on a local ride and talk about the rules of the road in the U S compared to how they are in Kenya.
[00:40:31]It's those little things that, I've traveled enough and, Been alone in foreign countries where you just feel like you're on an island and everything is moving so quick around you. So to be able to, make those connections early and then, really welcomed them to, to the U S later in the year is such a cool opportunity.
[00:40:45] And, the Masa Mari is up at over 6,000 feet. So these athletes are very well equipped to, race up in. Steamboat Springs, at altitude. Yeah, it's cool. And I'm sure we'll see, regardless of the level that they're out now, I'm sure that we'll see them, at a completely new level, once they do come to the U S just through the experience and observation of, riding with people from a different racing background.
[00:41:08]Craig Dalton: [00:41:08] So for the listener, this is going to drop on a Tuesday. Ian will be starting this race tomorrow. So hit the social media channels. Follow him. Let's all try to follow the Migration Gravel Race. I'll put links in the show notes to everything we've talked about. Ian, best of luck over in Africa. I can't wait to revisit this conversation when you come back and and follow the journey of these athletes.
[00:41:30]Ian Boswell: [00:41:30] I really appreciate it, Craig. And yeah, I'll do my best to keep everyone in the loop. I'm not sure what my. Connectivity will be out in on the Masa Mara, but yeah, I'll do my best to keep everyone posted and I'm sure there'll be some some feeds and some posting from the from the race organizers as well.
[00:41:46] Craig Dalton: [00:41:46] Right on. Thanks Ian.
[00:41:47] Ian Boswell: [00:41:47] Thank you, Craig.
[00:41:49]Craig Dalton: [00:41:49] So that's it for this edition of the gravel ride podcast. Huge. Thank you. And congratulations to you, Ian Boswell,
[00:41:56]And thank you for Wahoo for their support of this podcast. I'm super excited to follow the migration, gravel race. I've been stoked about it ever since I heard it announced at the end of last year,
[00:42:08]For those north American European athletes attending the event, it sounds like a great adventure. And for those east African athletes participating in the race, it sounds like a great opportunity. Not only do they get to test their metal against some of the best gravel racers in the world. They get potentially the opportunity. To come do it on us soil.
[00:42:29]I'll do my best to keep you updated on the podcast and in the ridership community. But I also encourage you to subscribe and listen to Ian's podcast. Breakfast with Boz. I think he's going to be picking up some very interesting conversations. While he's in kenya and that's going to be a great place to follow what is going on.
[00:42:48]Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with Brad Waldron, founder of Kali Protectives to take a deep dive into helmet tech and the new Grit gravel helmet.
Kali Protectives Web / Instagram
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Kali Protectives
Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to The Gravel Ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton this week on the podcast. We've got Brad Waldron from Kali. Protectives talking to us about helmets.
[00:00:15]Before we jump in just to reminder, The Gravel Ride podcast is sponsored by listeners like you and a select group of sponsors from the industry and outside the industry. We appreciate any contributions to the show's www.buymeacoffee.com/thegravelride. And when we do bring a sponsor on board, please make sure to check out their products because without their support, we couldn't continue doing what we're doing.
[00:00:40]
[00:00:40]With that said let's dive right into my interview with Kali. Protectives. Brad. Welcome to the show.
[00:00:46] Brad Waldron: [00:00:46] Thanks for having me
[00:00:47] Craig Dalton: [00:00:47] I'm super stoked to talk helmets. It's interesting. It's one of those categories that. I haven't covered on the podcast thus far. So I figured going to an expert and talking about it will give the listener a lot of value about helmet technology for gravel, riding
[00:01:02]Brad Waldron: [00:01:02] looking forward to it.
[00:01:04] Craig Dalton: [00:01:04] Why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about your background and how Kali was started?
[00:01:09]Brad Waldron: [00:01:09] Sure. I was super lucky in a previous life career. I worked for an aerospace company working on military aircraft. So I was a carbon fiber R and D engineer. Mostly on the process side, not on the material side.
[00:01:22]I was fortunate enough to work on the B2 bomber F eighteens joint strike fighter, and then a few airplanes that had never made it, but just stuff you've made it and broke it to see what we could do. And this will give you the idea of my age, but I was at Northrop Grumman in between the first Gulf war and the second Gulf war.
[00:01:41] And they didn't want to put a lot of money in production at that time, but they want to put a lot of money into R and D. So I was just in the perfect place at the perfect time where you could almost do anything you wanted. If it made sense. I, one time my boss walked in and said, DARPA's going to be here next week.
[00:01:57] Think of something. Go back to my desk and I, without five different projects and the next week sit down in front of these generals and you. Present these ideas in here I'm, in my late twenties, early thirties, somewhere in there. And they're like rubber stamping, all of them and oh shit.
[00:02:12] Now I got, I do, so I got to build a $12 million milling machine and then just things like that. So that's where my real just try it. Mentality came from, when you hear are, you can't do that. And get into some of the things that people told me we couldn't do at Kali. It's let's just try, and that's been like theme sentence.
[00:02:30] So I worked that and through some changes in life, I went to work or another aerospace company and didn't love it, so I was down in the Southern California area, working there. And then I moved back up to Northern California where I was born and raised. And I was in R and D at this satellite company and it just wasn't everything I wanted.
[00:02:49] And lo and behold, there's this ad for the big red S in the paper. And so I put on my suit and went to my interview. Nobody's wearing a suit, got called back for a second interview and go, what do I wear when I knew I wore the suit? Yeah. So I guess it worked, they offered me a job as the Pumps and locks, designer, something like that.
[00:03:09]And I was so happy to take my 25% pay cut to be in the bike industry. And there was, and then on my first day they said, Hey, you know that job, we offered you the helmet guy quit. And would you rather that job on the helmets over locks? Hell yeah. But the ironic thing was they, at that time, specialized was still assembling the helmets at, on a site and.
[00:03:32] We tested our helmets and they said, there's the test lab. There's 10,000 helmets sitting over there that can't be shipped. So you say they're tested and Don, w oh, and by the way that the helmet technician quit at the same time. And so I walked into this test lab with this equipment I never seen in my life and go, okay, what did we do here?
[00:03:50] And fortunately somebody who's become a good friend and who I trust in testing. Dr. Terry Smith came and trained me how to run the equipment. The best thing I did was I tested all the helmets at specialized for the next year. I didn't hire another technician. So getting that lab experience and seeing how these helmets broke personally, not just people come and say, Hey, look at this, here's your, reading reports and stuff it's was a great launching point for
[00:04:17] me.
[00:04:18] Yeah, absolutely. I can imagine just having your hands on that many. Tests to see how these helmets are performing just was like training by fire.
[00:04:27]I tell people frequently that I'm a mediocre engineer. I'm really a better technician. I just somehow wiggled my way to get my degree, but mostly I just love being in the shop.
[00:04:36] If you saw my office next to me as a drill press on the other side of the bandsaw, just being out there with my hands is the way
[00:04:44] Craig Dalton: [00:04:44] I work. And did you have a background at cycling when you were in the aerospace industry?
[00:04:48] Brad Waldron: [00:04:48] I had started cycling with some friends and just, around the LA area.
[00:04:52] And if, I lived in first and Palmdale. When I first moved into Palmdale, I walked into a bike shop and this long hair blonde guy walks up and says, can I help you? And I said I'm new to the area. Can tell me where some trails are. And he's I'll pick you up Saturday morning at nine, it turned out it was insane.
[00:05:10] Wayne crows Dale. So my first ride was insane, Wayne, and he there's a long story on board with it all, but he basically rode a wheelie up the fire road next to me, up and up. And, but we had a, the time rode with Wayne A. Little bit and then, got into riding there. And then the transfer down further.
[00:05:29] Into the depths of LA, where you have to drive an hour just to get to the dirt. lot of people around me were riding and that's where I really got started riding was during that.
[00:05:39] Craig Dalton: [00:05:39] Yeah. Right on. And you brought that to specialize and obviously specialized has a big riding culture down there in Morgan hill.
[00:05:45] Brad Waldron: [00:05:45] Yep. Yeah. We're actually about 500 meters from them. Our building is they actually have to pass us to get to their building. And so we painted big ass Cali letters all over the building. Just to annoy him.
[00:05:58]Craig Dalton: [00:05:58] So then at some point you decided I'm going to jump off and do this on my own. What, was there a particular market opportunity that you saw?
[00:06:05] Something that you felt wasn't being done at the bigger companies?
[00:06:08] Brad Waldron: [00:06:08] No, not yet. That's not really where it happened. At the time when I was in special ed, so I had moved on from helmets and eventually became the head of engineering that specialized for everything for bikes. Mostly. What I concentrated on was the carbon fiber projects.
[00:06:22]The the, I worked on the tarmac and Robi mostly on the layups and things like that. Other guys who had much better frame experience than I did you know, the geometry? So I would go the factories and work with the carbon layups and things like that. And we would make it and break it. I still have, I have tarmac frame, number two, doesn't look, anything like what went to production.
[00:06:43]It had a split top tube who knew that was UCI illegal, but so my re people see it all the time. It doesn't say special. I didn't say anything on it. So it's got carbon, top tube and chains and seats tubes, and and then the underbody is aluminum. So the idea was it was going to be nice, crisp, feel of the aluminum, but where your body touches, you're going to have that forgiving carbon fiber Conceptually feel.
[00:07:09] And so I still have that bike when people see me out on it I'm not a big roadie. I don't ride a lot on the road, but they're like, what the hell is that? Because it's totally unrecognizable, but it's pretty cool. So I actually left specialized primarily because they were going through some transitions at the time they had wanted to transfer a lot of the engineering to Taiwan.
[00:07:32] And I wasn't interested in that job. I had my first kid, I didn't want to travel, did not want to travel at all. And so I actually resigned from the position. It was a great experience. It took me nine months to leave. Because I didn't have another job. I hired my replacement. I finished those two bikes and then just started consulting a little bit.
[00:07:52] So I consulted. A little bit with true beta worked on their first carbon bars. With Jared Smith, they're headed for engineering their first carbon cranks, things like that. And it bounced around a little bit. Then somebody came to me and said, we need a carbon fiber factory in China to feed these other factories.
[00:08:12] And I just quit specialized cause I didn't want to travel. And they came to me and said, Hey, can you help us start the Stackery? And I'm like, how many times a year will I have to come? Then they were four times. I'm like four, okay. Talking to a non traveler. Now I said, I can come for four times a year. I spent no less than 150 days a year for the next seven years.
[00:08:33]I just couldn't let it go, try to get the thing up and running and working the way. And we made things like skid plates and pipe bards. KTM was one of our biggest customers. But one of our customers was a helping it factory. So they came to us to make a motorcycle helmet shell, and they, we looked at this thing and we made the shell, we sent it over.
[00:08:52]And they knew I also had some testing background. They were showing me these test results. And I was seeing some things that I didn't like. Basically I was seeing a double spike in G-Force and what that meant to me, it was inside your school or your brains just slapping around. Cause you're seeing a double impact.
[00:09:10]That was happening because as the impact hits the outer shell was so stiff that if you forced a spike up, then as the shell breaks down, they start to fall. Then you hit the foam and they spike up again. I'm like okay, what's doing, that is the gap between your foam and my shell.
[00:09:27]Let's get this thing tighter. Arrive, for example, really prides themselves on the fact that they designed their foam and shell to fit so well. Not everybody spends that much time on it. Then I had this really, according to them, stupid idea. He said, why aren't you in molding these like the bike helmet?
[00:09:43] And they're like, that's impossible. It's a processing problem. You'll never make it work. And that's where that let's just try it thing came in. So we went in and we tried it. It took a couple of years to finally get it to work, but we started in molding motorcycle helmet. So now you're eliminating that gap between the farm and shop.
[00:10:03] Then on top of it, you start to learn, oh, I don't need that much shell. I can thin the shell down because I've got the phone, backing it up. And by the way, I don't even have to have as high of DPS density. I can lower that too. So now I'm finding out that when I have the impact, instead of having that double spike and G-forces, I've got this nice smooth curve that spreads the load much more efficiently, then I got less shell.
[00:10:29] I got lighter foam. I got a much lighter helmet. And I always liked to tell people I never start a project with a weight goal. I think that's not a good way to start a project that, that compromises safety in my opinion. But that process was helping us make a much lighter helmet, which in the end is simple physics force equals mass times acceleration, reduce the mass.
[00:10:51] You're going to reduce the force. So we started, Perfecting this process showing these results around, tried to sell the patent. I did not. I was not looking to start my own company. That being a CEO, being in sales and marketing, not my favorite thing. We had a few people who were really close to buying it and then backed off.
[00:11:11] And then somebody who somebody came along a golden investor, essentially. Came along and said, you got to do this and I'll back you. And so I've got one silent investor in his company has been nothing but amazing. Always allowing me to make safety decisions first over simply. What are your sales today?
[00:11:30]Craig Dalton: [00:11:30] You mentioned that's amazing. You mentioned that you started with that motorcycle helmets technology did Cali launch where the motorcycle
[00:11:39]Brad Waldron: [00:11:39] we did and nobody cared. Literally we, we went to the Interbike of Moda, which was Indianapolis. There was in Indianapolis motor sports show and we got our booth and I'm standing there my first day.
[00:11:52] And you could hear the yarn from the industry. Nobody cared, had the cutouts, you could see. So the second day I'm like, I spent all of my money to get here. I stood in the aisle and made people pick up the helmet. Cause it was significantly lighter. Then what people were used to, and, know, you get the response, like that's it's okay.
[00:12:09] But I guess just put it in your hands and if you don't want to talk to me, move on and then you put it in their hands and go, what is this? And then through that, the rest of the next few days, I only had one guy actually put it in my hand and walk on. Everybody else said, all right, what's going on?
[00:12:22] And then we would explain what was happening with the in molding process and why we could do what we could do and, and show the results of the
[00:12:30] Craig Dalton: [00:12:30] testing. Was it always in the back of your head to move into the cycling market?
[00:12:35]Brad Waldron: [00:12:35] I was more of a cyclist than I was Moto. When I started doing good, if I get involved with something, I want to get into the sport.
[00:12:41] So when we started making skid plates and pipe guards, I went and bought motorcycles, started riding dirt bikes. Now I ride a Ducati and in a fixer and and but cycling was definitely more my heart. But it, so it wasn't that I was necessarily looking to do that, but we had found a way to build full shell helmets that I believe in, I drank my own Kool-Aid that when you put that on your head using that technology, you were putting on a safer product on your head.
[00:13:11] So the next thing of course was to do a full face download on it. So we did that and immediately the bike industry was. More welcoming. Yeah. The motor industry is great, but it's complex. It's the distributors have all had their own helmet brands. So in our industry, we've got the different distributors BTI, K Chaz QBP, all these different guys.
[00:13:34] They don't have their own brands. When you start talking about Modo, they all have their own Hammad brands. If you think. The answer for example, is open owned by a company called Rocky. There's just the complexity of getting past the house brands where, when you were finding people were interested in our conversations.
[00:13:51]We'd go to Interbike and people wanted to talk to us. They wanted to hear about what we had and yeah, and that's where we really started taking it off is when we were having these one-on-one conversations, it wasn't through any advertising. We did it. Wasn't through. The talk, it was meeting people and just showing them what we did and answering questions.
[00:14:10]And that philosophy is still super important to us today. You call Kelly today. You better get somebody on the phone, somebody better to answer the phone. Cause that's our, we want to talk to people and respond. And that's an important part of who we are. So
[00:14:24] Craig Dalton: [00:14:24] is it safe to say that the sort of signals the bike industry was giving you around the full face helmet suggested, Hey.
[00:14:30] We need to lean into this and create a range of helmets for cyclists.
[00:14:34]Brad Waldron: [00:14:34] Yeah. It came into, when you started talking to shops and what their needs are it's one thing to walk in with one helmet, it, when you're going up against, but let's be honest, you're going up against track, specialized, giant Cannondale, Scott, these guys all have, all their products behind them.
[00:14:52]And they all have helmets and there's incentives to bring in those helmets. You get a discount if you bring that in. Then the only, other, not the only, but the other big boys would in are, bell Jiro who do have a complete range, that doesn't leave a lot of room for a lot of other people.
[00:15:04] So expanding your range and it's something that makes sense for a shop carry. I still love bike shops. I still love walking in and smell the rubber. And still today Over 90% of our sales are still two independent bike dealers. Our, the amount that sold online is small. And that's a whole nother, probably podcast to talk about how that continues.
[00:15:29] But our main focus is still to, to maintain those relationships with those independent bike shops.
[00:15:35] Craig Dalton: [00:15:35] Interesting. So when you develop that range and I guess we can slip into the. More road and gravel helmets that you guys have been releasing over the few years. What features were you leaning into at that point?
[00:15:46]You talked about how originally the differentiator turned out to be the weight and the technology around protecting the head and maybe a different way than had been done. Where did that go to for the road slash gravel helmets?
[00:15:59] Brad Waldron: [00:15:59] Sure. Really what's what continues to drive us as technology.
[00:16:02] We're always looking for stuff that can help us make. The next step. And we started with a technology from a guy from Australia called conehead, where you got the geometric shapes inside these helmets and they crushed the, but to get more specific to answering your question, some of the difficulties, when you start talking about road, helmets is ventilation is so important, right?
[00:16:24] So getting big vents, getting air flow through. When you do that, you have to really crank up the density of the foam to get the enough to stop the impact according to the standards. When you do that let me put it another way to start with this. I believe all helmets are too hard.
[00:16:41] We're hurting people by the foam densities. We need to get the foam densities down. It's based on how the interpretation of the standards are, which are built to take the worst of the worst crashes. We're not doing enough to deal with them. Where the majority of crashes are, which are according to a study at the Imperial college of London.
[00:16:59]80% of all bicycle accidents are below 160. G's, yet all I got to do to pass a test and sell you a helmet is go to the test lab and make sure it doesn't go over 300 GS. Now 300 GS is close to death. Alrighty. How do we address both of those big hits? But also the majority of those hits.
[00:17:21] And so that's where, that's where a lot of my time gets focused on. It's not specifically for a genre of helmet per se, but how do we lower the density of the foam? How do we put stuff next to your head? That's softer. How do we start reducing impact at zero G's? So now I jumped back to the question of how do we deal with the gravel helmets?
[00:17:45]Again, now I'm battling. I got to put a lot of foam in a small space, which means I got to Jack up the densities. What's cool. Even though a lot of people don't know about Kali, we're known within the industry and the other helmet companies know each other. But getting a reputation is it somebody who wants to try technology?
[00:18:03] We get people coming to us all the time saying, Hey, you want to try this? And my answer is always the same. If it works right, you bet. I'm going to try it. W we were approached initially by Don Morgan, that physicist from Australia with the corn head later, we were approached with a from a chemical company out of Italy that had this carbon nano to acrylic based material that they were trying to pitch as a multi impact material.
[00:18:27]It didn't work as multi impact, but it works. So now I can bind the code ed and EPS. And I'm finding I'm able to lower the density in the helmet that we're probably going to talk about, which is the grit. And so much that I was shocked at the first round of testing that I was expecting the typical results where I got to put it way too hard, the higher density, if I'm in a place that I don't really want to put it, but by putting the right materials in the right combinations I'm getting better results then than I expected.
[00:19:03]Craig Dalton: [00:19:03] And so did that sort of Eureka moment happened early in the process and allow you then to pursue different elements of the design?
[00:19:11]Brad Waldron: [00:19:11] It wish she was at easy. We actually took, originally took that structure that I talked about and put it in an Aero helmet. And the other way I can go with this stuff is I can.
[00:19:24] If you look at our Tada helmet, it's an Aero helmet. I think I've sold a hundred of them, so I don't think you've seen it. Probably. I think we have it on the Danish road team. So unless you've been there Copenhagen lately, I'm not sure you've seen this helmet, but if you actually look at it and you look at cross-section of it, it's one of the finished how much you've ever seen.
[00:19:43]Which was interesting. For me as an engineer, that I could actually get this thing to work and pass the test. But because passing the test is not my goal. My goal is saving lives. Maybe cheeky about that, but it really is what we give a shit about. We want people to get on their bikes and ride more.
[00:20:04]I want to get on my bike and ride more. I've been helicoptered off the hill before we want that to happen, but when I went back to more. Realistic thicknesses and I could drive those foam densities down. Now I'm getting the results I want and not only on linear impacts, but rotational impacts and I'll skip back.
[00:20:24] We're doing a lot of testing and outside labs. So we took some of our helmets. We put in MIPS in it. We put in what we call Rian, which is our low density layer. That's Material developed by a professor out of London. We put in like five different anti-rotation systems and we tested them against each other.
[00:20:42] And they all do an interesting job. A little better here, a little better there. Sometimes this system works, sometimes this is the work better. What consistently worked better was we threw in a. Helmet with extremely low density in it. It's actually a homophobic. We sell in Europe, but can't sell here because the density is too low and that helmet consistently performed way better in rotational forces.
[00:21:06] So all these systems that we put in help, but what really matters is put softer shit next to your head. Let's get these things to be more crushing and more the pillow's a little bit overrated, but just get that stuff that will crush next to your head. So when I'm talking about using the nano material in the Coneheads structures, I'm basically talking about a way in a much smaller area to get the foam density down where it's really making a difference for you during that crash.
[00:21:37] Craig Dalton: [00:21:37] Is that right? A way to articulate upon impact how a Cali helmet performs versus kind of maybe a major brand helmet in terms of how it crushes how the materials work?
[00:21:48] Brad Waldron: [00:21:48] Sure. I don't know how to say it. It's that I can say, I'll go continue to go back to that foam density thing. Most people don't put as much energy as we do in trying to find how to get to that lower density.
[00:22:01] So basically if the density is too hard, that thing you're going to smack and it's going to crack cracking is fine and a big hit on the helmet cause that's releasing energy. But what I really want is I want it to crush. And I wanted to crush equally. And then by having those, like those geometric shapes in that center, it's actually, if you look at it, it looks like an Oreo because the nanomaterials white, you've got the black DPS around it.
[00:22:25] And as that outer side crushes, then you hit another material that's meant to crush and send the energy laterally away from your head in those geometric structures. Rather than a smack and a crack, you're just seeing a progressive crack with multiple different materials there to help dissipate that energy.
[00:22:44] Craig Dalton: [00:22:44] Yeah. That resonates with me. And it's, it's hard to visualize in a conversation at times for the listener potentially. But if you think about that, just the, I think the pillow analogy works for me where it's just progressively becoming more and more supportive as my head is unfortunately impacting the ground or dirt, wherever I'm riding.
[00:23:01]Brad Waldron: [00:23:01] And, a lot of your impacts are small. And so you don't even get into the part, but it has to really, get harder and harder to stop that big hit. And that's my kind of, my complaint with the way that our testing is that, we're only testing for those big hits.
[00:23:16]When we have, a lot of hits, we're actually hurting people by doing it the way we're doing it. So w we just got to look at it from all aspects, rather than just. Th there's one test that we do in the test lab. Yeah.
[00:23:27] Craig Dalton: [00:23:27] I managed to ring my own bell, this pandemic on a gravel ride. So I've it's resonating with me that having a look, it wasn't a super devastating crash, but I had one of those impacts that I definitely rung my bell.
[00:23:41] Definitely like maybe it was not concussed, but needed to be escorted home by a friend.
[00:23:47] Brad Waldron: [00:23:47] Some level of brain trauma happened there. It might've been like, but something happened. Yeah. It happens at a surprisingly low amount of G-forces and that's why I keep talking about, we need to start managing those impacts from all levels, not just from the highest levels.
[00:24:06] Craig Dalton: [00:24:06] Yeah. And you said that you said before, like the testing is just very. With the tests, one thing, and it's easy to design around that one thing without really thinking about the athlete and the impacts.
[00:24:17] Brad Waldron: [00:24:17] Yeah. Our tests are based on tests that were done in, in, in 1973 where we dropped cadavers on their heads and measured for skull fracture.
[00:24:27] Cause we didn't know enough to measure the brain trauma. And at that time we terminate that it took 300, G's a helmet. It head took 300 GS to crack the school. So that became. Where that 300 GS came from it's cracking your skull, and that was fine at the time, but we've moved on. We have better technology and people are trying, people are trying to make changes.
[00:24:46]People ask me about MIPS and I always say, I respect them. What Dr. Haller did was taught us about rotational forces. And we've learned a lot about those rotational forces. I happened to have a different philosophy on how to manage those. Then what MIPS does, because I want to start with something softer next year, head, they use a slip plane thing that is between your head and the EPS that needs.
[00:25:12] Yeah, I was going to
[00:25:12] Craig Dalton: [00:25:12] say, I think a number of listeners might be familiar with MIPS as a technology because it has been pretty heavily marketed and it's that little plastic frame inside the helmet that is designed to move. Yeah.
[00:25:23] Brad Waldron: [00:25:23] Yep. Yes. And in my test it works. It's a technology that, that works.
[00:25:28]Again, I, it, I think there's another way to attack it and we do by using something that crushes more immediately and then it gets off the rotation, but I'll even go beyond that. Forget my systems, my low density layers versus MIPS versus somebody else's. What I found in my tests at the university of Strasburg and that dynamic research and other labs that we use our own labs is the lower you can make the foam, the lower density.
[00:25:56] You can make the foam the better it performs in rotation as well. So that salt. What's off your shit next to your head
[00:26:05] Craig Dalton: [00:26:05] keeps coming back to that, Brad, doesn't it
[00:26:07] Brad Waldron: [00:26:07] really what it comes down to, it's not as simple is that right? Otherwise we just put something, we go use those old ProTech helmets that just, had the soft stuff in it.
[00:26:14]Those bottom out and they do bottom out at a low number you're in trouble. So we have to, we're trying to manage, all the impacts and that's, what's hard. I had somebody at MIPS. Tell me once. Those are two different helmets and I'm like, You guys invented the anti-rotation thing.
[00:26:29] We're smarter than that. We can do this, just different philosophies. Yeah. So
[00:26:33] Craig Dalton: [00:26:33] all this culminated recently in the grit helmet, coming to market, is there anything you want to mention about that helmet that we haven't covered?
[00:26:40]Brad Waldron: [00:26:40] Yeah. The grit was it, there's pressure that pressure.
[00:26:45] There's a lot of requests from our distributors, especially in Europe that. So look at the road side of things. I'm I'm a dirt guy through and through. And we the grit got the name. We actually started, the name was called the nickname was the dirty road. And we saw that as something that was much more Cali.
[00:27:04] Then if we said, oh, we're going to go try and put a helmet on it on a tour de France rider. We got a couple of helmets that are in that category that they the UNO and the grit, the UNO is like a hundred dollar helmet. It's nice. It was actually designed by Hildegard Mueller.
[00:27:20] Hilgard was the head of design for JIRA for, he was a Gero for 20 years. I don't know how long he was head of design, but. And then, and he freelances now and he helped us with that design. Because as you know is primarily amount biker. And when the lights, gravity a lot our line had led, leaned that way for a long time.
[00:27:38] And then the grit was designed by Alan O Kimora who I've worked with quite a bit. And he's former bell specialized worked on several specialized road helmets. But we really worked on these thinking more towards the gravel market than the road market, because it fit us and who we are more than you're saying, like I said, we're going to, we're going to go sponsor.
[00:28:03] I was like saying sky because they're dead and they're not a team anymore, but it's just, something like that and more to, to what we are. Yep.
[00:28:11] Craig Dalton: [00:28:11] And you certainly have some great athletes riding the helmets on the gravel scene, former guest and friend of the pod. Amanda Nauman is a great friend of Cali's.
[00:28:21] Brad Waldron: [00:28:21] She's just super chill and rides like a monster. You know what she did at the XL. Just shows that and, just a great attitude and somebody that's fun to just watch and see her progress.
[00:28:33] Craig Dalton: [00:28:33] Yeah. Yeah. It was a great racing debut for the helmet. For sure.
[00:28:37]Brad Waldron: [00:28:37] Appreciate that.
[00:28:39] Yeah.
[00:28:39] Craig Dalton: [00:28:39] Cool. Brett, I appreciate the overview. I hope the listener got a bit out of this in terms of the type of helmet tech that they should be looking at. I think I'm probably guilty of not looking at my helmet enough and saying, Hey, it's time for a new one time to replace it. So this is a good reminder, this conversation to to think about what's hanging in the garage.
[00:28:58]Brad Waldron: [00:28:58] Yeah. Do you want to keep that thing for us, especially if you're using it a lot. And it's not saying that it's not always has to be a Cali there's other helmets, there's other people making helmets they're out there like me that. Give a shit that want people to do well.
[00:29:11]We have our philosophy and like I said earlier, I drink my Kool-Aid. I think what we're doing is right on and on target. But yeah, make sure that you're, taking a look at what you're putting on your
[00:29:19] Craig Dalton: [00:29:19] head. Sure. And I'll make sure that the listener knows how to find you.
[00:29:23]Brad Waldron: [00:29:23] I appreciate that.
[00:29:24]Craig Dalton: [00:29:24] So that's it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. I hope you learned a lot more about helmets than you did prior to listening. I know I did.
[00:29:33]It's an area. I probably should be thinking a little bit more about given the state of my current helmet.
[00:29:38]Thank you for spending a little bit of your week with me this week. If you're interested in giving us any feedback or joining our community, please visit the ridership it's www.theridership.com. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
This week we sit down with former Pro Tour rider and current Ribble Cycles Head of Product, Jamie Burrow. Jamie walks us through the range of Ribble Gravel Bikes across three frame materials and highlight the companies' unique custom bike builder.
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Automated transcription (please excuse any errors)
[00:00:00]Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton.
[00:00:08]This week on the podcast, we have Jamie Burrow. He's a former pro tour rider on the road and current head of product for the UK brand Ribble cycles.
[00:00:19]As you'll learn from Jamie, Ribble offers a full suite of gravel bikes across a range of materials.
[00:00:25]And also offers a direct to consumer model via their website with a unique bike configurator tool that allows you to customize every element of your gravel bike. So if you're looking for those wide bars or 650 wheels, Or a little different saddle or set up, you can go through and individually customize every part and piece of the bike.
[00:00:46]Making it uniquely yours. Including a custom paint job, which I just learned about during the podcast. Which i think is a fabulous opportunity for anybody looking to ride something unique.
[00:00:56]Before we jump in, I just wanted to send a huge thank you to those of you who have elected to become members of the podcast. Via buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride your monthly support to my efforts at the podcast are hugely appreciated
[00:01:11]And I wouldn't keep doing what I'm doing without your support. With all that said let's dive right in to my interview with Jamie. Jamie. Welcome to the show. I appreciate you joining us all the way from the UK. You're welcome. I know we could easily do an hour on your backstory as a cyclist back in the pro tour, but [00:01:30] for the purpose of this conversation, why don't you just tell us what led you to your current role at Ribble?
[00:01:35]Jamie Burrow: [00:01:35] I suppose it's just taking a different path to most people who, you know, X, Y, Z, as you go down the kind of sports director, team management role. I come from a cycling family and grew up around bikes, really. Dad told me to build bikes when I was probably about five years old, I think.
[00:01:50] And the early days my dad was a designer himself by trade. And it just passionate the bikes as a kid. I started designing my own bikes as a teenager, honestly, back in the days when everything was made by steel I was designing my race bikes that sort of 15, 16, and had a local frame builder would build them for me.
[00:02:08]And then you go into the whole race career thing. And even as it has it sides where obviously all your equipment is given to you, you don't have choice on things. Sometimes on the best equipment, sometimes it's not the best and, seeing the sides of things and then get out, it would be so much better if you could have this or who could have done this way.
[00:02:26] So suddenly finding yourself, coming out the other side of a career where you're effectively right in the kit for seven, eight hours a day in all conditions, you know what you want, what's good. And, what's missing. So then suddenly be, behind the steering wheel of, being out of an input in those things.
[00:02:42] That's a pretty cool.
[00:02:44] Craig Dalton: [00:02:44] Yeah. It's gotta be pretty amazing to take your vision for what a bicycle should be and deliver it to the world.
[00:02:50]Jamie Burrow: [00:02:50] That's right. Yeah. Honestly, my main background was obviously road riding and obviously there's so many different forms, disciplines of of cycling, but It does [00:03:00] help when, when you've ridden bikes in every situation at higher level to know what they need, for OEM performance wise, aerodynamics everything map, you just, if are those kinds of get to know things, is it that you get to know on the road?
[00:03:15]Craig Dalton: [00:03:15] Can you, I was really tickled to learn about Ribble as such a storied UK brand that I hadn't really heard of. I suppose I'd seen it in some races. But it really didn't connect the dots until after I got introduced to it. Can you tell the listener a little bit about Ribble's history as a brand?
[00:03:33]Jamie Burrow: [00:03:33] Yeah, so it's actually a very old brand.
[00:03:36] It was originated in 1897. So it's a pretty old comes from the Northwest of England. The Ribble name comes from the river in the river valley. It was a family business for generations. Changed hands a few times. As we went into the 20th century I even from my own point of view, growing up, I would say coming from a cycling family where and obviously way before online sales in cycling weekly magazine in the UK where the back pages were always full of adverts rebel was always the big.
[00:04:06] Out of the taken up the last two back pages of the magazine, and it was one of the premium brands of the UK. Foods, seventies, eighties, nineties, they would sponsor some of the biggest elite teams in the UK of a national team sponsor. They were the official Barcelona Olympics supplier guys, like Boardman rode them for years previous to it before going to approach or career.
[00:04:30] [00:04:30] Wiggins, even Geraint Thomas, they're all guys that have written on Ribble over the years and, because they were one of the, one of the big brands. And you come back in that era
[00:04:40]Craig Dalton: [00:04:40] and then it sounded like in talking to you offline, the brand took a little dip as bicycle companies started to move from steel to carbon and other materials.
[00:04:49] And then it seems like over the last, five, six years has had a really big resurgence in the UK. Can you talk us through what was going on there?
[00:04:57] Jamie Burrow: [00:04:57] Yeah, man. I think that not just rebel, I think it was actually quite a fast change from steel and then a brief period into titanium. A minium, at least as far as a vote were concerned.
[00:05:09] And then into carbon, obviously when carbon come along as a material, took away the ability for small builders, as the UK was falling small frame builders, as well as a lot of the bigger brands like Ribble And as soon as you go to the gun of those different forms of production, and obviously everything went over to Asia, I was, did the bigger brands managed to want, I suppose they directed it from the beginning and it made it harder for the smaller brands to be able to keep paces, things a lot more expensive, especially when you look back at the beginning of of.
[00:05:41] The carbon industry mounted costs, everything production costs were so much more expensive than they are now. And I think a lot of brands did get lost through the nineties early two thousands, but now things are a lot more accessible to everyone and, it's been our job to bring Ribble back on
[00:05:57] Craig Dalton: [00:05:57] the map and now Ribble building out of all sorts [00:06:00] of materials.
[00:06:00] Right?
[00:06:01] Jamie Burrow: [00:06:01] Yeah. That's great. That is one of our kind of. Key USBs is the fact that we offer so many materials across. So the same genre of bikes.
[00:06:11] Craig Dalton: [00:06:11] Yeah. And I want to dig into the gravel series because that is clearly represented with the aluminum carbon titanium. I did want to point out that rebel has an exceptional web property.
[00:06:23] At this point, it was really enjoyable going through the bike configurator and in talking to one of your colleagues, just learning about. The sheer amount of customization that is available and the amount of holding that the team provides for an e-commerce experience, I think is really exciting and notable in the industry.
[00:06:42] Do you want to talk about that direct to consumer model and how you make the consumer feel like they're in the showroom with the employees, even throughout the pandemic?
[00:06:51]Jamie Burrow: [00:06:51] Yeah. And the whole key kind of USP for the business is our bike builder function, which allows you to effectively, you can have a choose a bike from one of our pre-spec's.
[00:07:02] And I've obviously been put together from our knowledge, but then obviously that's the way that most of the bike brands do outside of that, the bike builder gives you the options to customize effectively everything. Whether you want to start from a frame platform or a group set. And to manage everything.
[00:07:18]The choice of handlebars from materials to size is handlebars, stems. seatposts, settles tires, 700 c, 650b wheel sizes, especially on the, on a gravel bike. It [00:07:30] flared bars, standard bars, crank lengths, all of these things we offer as well as for good part of it, year and a half, two years now, we've been offering custom color.
[00:07:39]And all of this is done in house. So every single bike is from the moment of order. It's one bike, it's one mechanic. So the whole process for obviously to do go, directly onliner you said from we've got our go install platform, which is, a virtual instill experience, which is proven really successful in a lot of people go on there.
[00:07:59] Maybe initially with an idea of one product and actually walk away with another product because they didn't have a full understanding of what they really needed. Yeah. Or just someone who didn't have an understanding and needed that expertise to, to find that buyer. And obviously starting from the kind of right, and the person wants to do budget, obviously, and the facts, the way the bike builder works, you couldn't completely customize that bite to the rider.
[00:08:25]You're not. Is there a lot of kind of bike shops would do in the past. You all, can you set it in the bottom of something, the shop floor, and it's the salesman basically sell it, trying to sell that, buy it to the customer because he's got it in stock, regardless of whether it's the right size or the actual product the customer is after.
[00:08:43] Whereas obviously we can offer you exactly what you need.
[00:08:47] Craig Dalton: [00:08:47] Yeah. I think that's particularly interesting and germane to the gravel market simply because the consumers have to go through so much thought process of. What is my terrain look like, what do I want to do? What are my intentions? [00:09:00] And these gravel bikes are so configurable and their personalities can be so different based on tire wheel, size bar, with all these things that you give them the option to.
[00:09:10] So to me, when I looked at the Ribble site, I said, this is almost an accelerant for the consumer to have all the conversations they should be having with themselves about what they want to do with this bike. So they make sure they get it. As they need it right when it comes off the factory floor.
[00:09:26] Jamie Burrow: [00:09:26] That's right. Yeah. And I think gravels is the unusual, one of, all of the the different sort of sectors that we sell bikes in, because it's new to the point where I don't think, across the industry, hasn't become a stable platform of what is a gravel bike and what is gravel, geometry. And a lot of it does come down to the end use of it, obviously.
[00:09:47]Gravel, we're still talking about gravel. When we look at mountain bikes, when you look at trails and Euro downhill cross country, we look at them as individual categories. We don't just say mountain bike anymore. Whereas gravel, we're still just saying gravel. Even when you look into the events that are currently on offer globally A lot of them.
[00:10:05]A lot of it as the whole pandemic is stopped. Obviously mass participation events, nothing compared to the side of gravel probably would have taken a massive step forward. Last year. I know the UCI, I'm talking about you jumping on the bandwagon, tend to the world championships and all sorts of competitive racing.
[00:10:24]But for the moment, outside of, over there, you've got Things like that. It cans over here. We've got the day of [00:10:30] either kind of more, a lot of guys have taken it more backpack in adventure rather than the race side of things. And obviously you've got such a difference between fully loaded in a bike to take on a long adventure than racing effectively.
[00:10:48] Off-road and it's still. No, I think as the events unfold and people get more into it, we'll see the more, it develop more. From our side as a brand, and we started with our CGR model, which is cross gravel road and I suppose initially thinking it was the fact that gravel in the UK was slightly slower than it was in in the states to actually get moving.
[00:11:14] And we can see that. And it's one useful thing with our bike builder tool, because you're not, you haven't got pre specked, a catalog bike, it's you get to see through the bite load of what the end consumers actually using the bike for. And then the year one this is quite a UK thing, but as a commuter that you could tell that most people buying the bike we're buying as commuter or running vendors we're rack.
[00:11:39] What a kind of heavy duty road tires, lights. So it was more of a ride to work bike rather than a gravel bike. As the gravel scene took off, you saw they've gone into bike and go to button the same frame platforms, but then switch into one by systems. Gravel tires, fled bars, start to [00:12:00] come in all these kinds of things that I've picked up in the gravel trends.
[00:12:04]And, it's been good to see the development and how the end consumers have taken sight of that. The other thing on our side, and it's what led us to move on to having a grubbing specific range on top of the CGR was the fact that the CGR was born as effectively relaxed road geometry with bigger clearances.
[00:12:26]And then we've taken the we've taken a. Hint more from, mountain biking, hardtail mountain bike in. So the new gravel range, we've got to have a slightly longer and lower geometry. So a bit more stable off road, where if you want to a full on gravel bike, you can take it out there. More kind of gnarly road trails rather than just.
[00:12:46]Craig Dalton: [00:12:46] Yeah, I thought
[00:12:47] it was really interesting as someone who's been involved in the sport intimately, the last three years, you've got an article on the website about the CGR geometry versus the gravel geometry, and just seeing the frame superimposed on one another was really interesting because I think it is indicative of that.
[00:13:05] Trend in gravel, as you said, to make these, to take them out and bike influence and make these bikes hugely capable while still balancing the ability to ride them on the road and enjoy them. Obviously it's not a pro tour level road bike anymore. You've made compromises, but at the same token, for most riders, it can be extremely enjoyable as their quote unquote road bike and massively capable as their gravel [00:13:30] bike, their bike, packing bike, et cetera.
[00:13:32]Jamie Burrow: [00:13:32] Yeah, so I don't have nothing. It's just been interesting to think. A lot of people in the beginning it was, I can buy one buyer that does it all. And then I think we saw on the other end of the scale, people that may be at a real high-end road by the high end mountain bike and wanted the second bike. And it was a plus one.
[00:13:51] And, maybe he did go in for a more cheaper than she'd ever bought it because it was a plus one. And now we're seeing again, it's developed so fast. But now people are buying high roadway and a high-end gravel bike, rather than it just being the plus one to just give it a go.
[00:14:08] Craig Dalton: [00:14:08] Yeah. And particularly as people focus more and more on the racing side of things, they're going to be willing to make compromises about comfort, to go for speed and performance.
[00:14:18] And I think I always want to hazard our listeners to say get the bike that's right for you. It's no use. Chasing that pro athlete who can replace his equipment and get new wheels, et cetera, and just really wants to go super fast versus the bike that you need in your garage to get, to make you your rides as much fun as possible.
[00:14:38]Jamie Burrow: [00:14:38] Yeah, that's right. That's one thing. One key thing. I think we're one of the few brands still offer all the different platforms across different frame materials. And often you'll find that. I switched frame material. You'll end up with a complete different bike and link different geometry with a different purpose.
[00:14:54] Whereas we're we don't want to compromise the end consumer, the consumers, [00:15:00] like kind of end goal of where they want to ride the bike in the material. If you want that style bike, then got the choice of material, whether it's a choice, but there's a budget wherever it's a choice because of, it's just a choice from the heart kind of steel to titanium because you like.
[00:15:14] a more kind of classic material, always performance based, you can choose either of those frame materials and you're not hindered by a different geometry or something
[00:15:24] like that.
[00:15:24] Craig Dalton: [00:15:24] That's a perfect segue into my next question, which is going specifically into the gravel range and talking about, as you just alluded to rebel offers an aluminum model, a carbon model, and a titanium model.
[00:15:38] Can you talk through, if you were talking to a customer, how they should think about those different frame materials and what the effect might be on performance and budget.
[00:15:46]Obviously budget wise that element is always the starting point. And, I say a bit because you're on a budget or a lot of people, maybe it's the plus one as an entry into the gravel.
[00:15:58]And again, a lot of it is depends on what your end usages. We say a lot of titaniums definitely back with the boom, with titanium sales across all models has grown dramatically over the last year and half, but obviously gravel and the CGR models. It's it's a material that really lends itself to it, for its durability.
[00:16:18] It's got a perfect properties with, a bit of compliance for off-road riding carbon. Again, it's maybe firat from outside possibly one of the kind of slower responding the ones. But I [00:16:30] think because of it is probably seen as more of a race bike. It does have the attributes, outcome bike takes all of the attributes of our SLR road frame, which is that the front of our men's and women's use are proteins.
[00:16:43]It's you know, it's at the same, is it the same two profiles? Carbon lapses are high end road bikes. It's got aerodynamic attributes to it. But obviously until things like mass participation events and natural gravel racing, take part maybe there isn't such a need for that kind of bike.
[00:16:58] Whereas at the moment it is more a do it all bike. The aloe and the titanium are popular.
[00:17:04]With it, I noticed aesthetically, one of the signature marks of the rebel design on the gravel is a drop stay. Is there a performance benefit to that design?
[00:17:15]Jamie Burrow: [00:17:15] Yeah, not just to calm the gravels across the whole range, it's it is obviously there is the assessment side to it, but the compliance, it does offer a more comfortable ride.
[00:17:26]Yeah, especially on the insurance products on the driver bikes and the CGR.
[00:17:29] Craig Dalton: [00:17:29] And does that translate to the aluminum offering as well as their sort of tuning of the frame material that can allow? I know aluminum has the reputation of being incredibly stiff and harsh. Can you design in some of the, some subtleness to that rear end on the aluminum bike as well?
[00:17:46] Jamie Burrow: [00:17:46] Yeah, you can from obviously the shape of the seat stays. And another thing that is very popular is. No, as you can do with that bite value is things like the carbon seatpost carbon safe bikes is one of the most popular upgrades yeah. [00:18:00] On the Aluminium bikes, because the job stay along with the compost.
[00:18:03] It does give you a notable difference in flex and comfort.
[00:18:07] Craig Dalton: [00:18:07] Yeah. I was always surprised by that. I had a hard tail mountain bike from I think BMC back in the day and they had a drop stay and had a carbon post and the suppleness is notable and it's not disconcerting. And I think certainly for the gravel side of things, you need to look at all these elements to get the suppleness that you're looking for in the bike.
[00:18:30] Jamie Burrow: [00:18:30] That's what I mean. And I think one of the main, probably the biggest difference, the biggest, fastest growing trend across all bikes at the moment is tire size. In an age con you think how long we were on kind of 19 to 21, 23 mill tires for years and years. And then it went 25, 28, 32 on road bikes very quickly.
[00:18:51]I don't think we long before. Maybe outside of racing, a 32 mil tire is pretty much the standard, even on the road, for comfort and using the tires as well as part of your compliance. I was still on the graphic bikes. You've definitely got that.
[00:19:06] Craig Dalton: [00:19:06] Yeah, you're absolutely right.
[00:19:08] As far as tire clearance goes on the gravel range, is there a difference between the CGR models and the gravel models in terms of tire clearance?
[00:19:16] Jamie Burrow: [00:19:16] They're both 45 mil with guards with
[00:19:19] Craig Dalton: [00:19:19] 700. Is that 700 C.
[00:19:21] Jamie Burrow: [00:19:21] 700 C and a 47 by six 50.
[00:19:25] Craig Dalton: [00:19:25] Okay, great. And, And do you see that for UK riding, is that sort of size [00:19:30] range pretty much covered the gamut of the type of terrain you'll get into in the UK?
[00:19:34]Jamie Burrow: [00:19:34] It does in the UK? Definitely. Yeah. I know some brands are out 50 mil but I think for the UK 45 mil definitely covers it.
[00:19:42]Craig Dalton: [00:19:42] Speaking about the UK market. I'm curious since we've had a few guests on from the UK, but I'm just curious about the UK gravel market. In general you mentioned a couple notable events.
[00:19:53] What are some of the other ones that, that people outside the UK should have on their calendar of interest?
[00:19:58]Jamie Burrow: [00:19:58] It is still very new over here. Seven going on right now is the Tuscany trail. So not in the UK, but obviously in Italy. And that's dubbed as being the biggest pot packing event in the world.
[00:20:08]And sounds like a cool event. Some at the moment, we've got day reliever. I did that myself two years ago. Last year. Honestly, that's canceled it. I don't know, two years ago. And. That was a great event. And that really does show the popularity and the growing popularity.
[00:20:22] Craig Dalton: [00:20:22] Is that a single day event?
[00:20:23] Jamie Burrow: [00:20:23] The Dirty Reiver? Yeah. Similar events that there's a hundred Ks, the short one and 200, just to fall for distance. That's up in the north of England. And it's all on nice fire tracks. It's not too technical, but it's 200 K never crosses the same. Same track twice, obviously for the UK, that's pretty amazing to do 200 K in effectively one big loop.
[00:20:45]And the kind of event that I think it, entry sold out within two or three days. So that kind of thing is obviously that's, what's going to be, I'm pretty sure that it's going to be the new, big thing. And as I think if we hadn't have had the everything locked down last year, we would have [00:21:00] seen already a massive increase in events.
[00:21:02] Yeah, I
[00:21:02] Craig Dalton: [00:21:02] think you're right that last year it was just EV all the trends were telling us that every event was going to be challenging to get into. And there were going to be some massive new ones on the calendar. So there is so much pent up demand. And as you've mentioned, as a lot of bikes got under people's bodies this past year in the pandemic, and they're just re waiting to take them out on some sort of event.
[00:21:25] Jamie Burrow: [00:21:25] Sorry. Yeah, because one is even seeing where people are riding them, just fun, social writing. Cause we don't really, apart from, that area in the north of England, they say there's hundreds of kilometers of travels to ride. But for the rest of the UK, it's, I've a canal path, tow paths, which are obviously very basic terrain.
[00:21:45] Otherwise it's taken it on effective mountain bike trails. We don't have to. Hundreds of kilometers of kind of white roads that you know, you guys probably do. And so you see it in a complete different style of what is driving a ride in one of the guys? It works real well. He runs one of the biggest forums gravel writers in the UK.
[00:22:05] And he was saying he was at the weekend and he was on a effectively, a mountain bike trail and everyone was surprised that he was there and he's governed by it. What are you doing on there, on that bike?
[00:22:13]Craig Dalton: [00:22:13] Yeah, I think it's funny. Cause you can, a lot of, in a lot of situations like that, you can ride your gravel bike to the mountain bike area, ride the loop and then ride home.
[00:22:23] Whereas the mountain bikers are all getting in their car and cruising over to begin with. Yeah. So that's exciting. Is rebel [00:22:30] involved in any of the events specifically as a sponsor? No, sir.
[00:22:33]Jamie Burrow: [00:22:33] Not at the moment. I think basically because. I think over here, yes, events have started to take place again, but so many events are still on the even events are happening.
[00:22:47] It's so touch and go down to the last minute, wherever they're going ahead or not. So we've, I think generally we took a bit of a back step on events over the last year. We had a big events plan for last year, which the whole thing had to be canceled. And obviously sales were so good last year.
[00:23:03] Anyway, that. Between the events canceled and sales gamble, our focus has changed in other than once things do to return to normal or we'll be back, we had even talked about things like that, raver and having a presence there because and we know are important, they will be moving forwards.
[00:23:18]Craig Dalton: [00:23:18] Yeah. We're just starting to see, I think this month here, June in the U S that the big events are starting to kick off again. We're fortunate that vaccination rollout's been pretty strong here in the U S so a lot of people have gotten the vaccination shots. So Unbound formerly dirty Kanza is actually going off probably the weekend before this episode roll release.
[00:23:38] So we'll see. That's really the first one. I think that's going to kick off the very, very major events here in the U S side.
[00:23:45]Jamie Burrow: [00:23:45] Yeah. Yeah. I think we're a, seems to be time trial and that's pretty much the only one that's got the guaranteed participation and
[00:23:53]provided it's a bit more difficult.
[00:23:56] Craig Dalton: [00:23:56] Yeah, absolutely. time-traveling has had a rich history [00:24:00] in the UK. It's so different than it is here in the U S I know time-traveling used to be just part of my father's youth growing up every week, he would go visit the county time trial and try to rip out a good time.
[00:24:11] Jamie Burrow: [00:24:11] Yeah, I think you can probably ride a club time trial every day of the week in the UK somewhere.
[00:24:17]Craig Dalton: [00:24:17] That's amazing for the Ribble brand. Are you selling across Europe and across the world at this point?
[00:24:24] Jamie Burrow: [00:24:24] Yes, we are. Obviously UK is still the biggest market, but we definitely have expanded globally.
[00:24:29] Us is probably the largest growing outside of the UK. What else should we be seen? A pre even pre pandemic growth into a lot of other countries where we hadn't previously touched on which is good to see because it has been all natural growth, we've not actually done any real targeted marketing for any particular kind of territory outside of the UK.
[00:24:51] So any growth has been No it's come naturally, which is obviously very promising.
[00:24:56] Craig Dalton: [00:24:56] Yeah. I think you'd get a, like a heightened level of commitment from the riders when they've found you naturally, they fall in love with the brand. They get it underneath them. They're going to be very passionate users.
[00:25:06] Jamie Burrow: [00:25:06] That's right. Yeah. I think from why then I think one, the products that helped us was probably our eBike range. When we started our e-bike range, basically we knew that whole range in one go. And one of the key bikes, like a bit on the gravel within Europe, UK was probably the slightest responder in the bike market were Northern Europe, particularly places like Germany, [00:25:30] the e-bikes as a non biker as a everyday hybrid commuter and become kind of a.
[00:25:36] And everyday thing the years in UK was such a popular trend and we reverse things in a way by starting with a lightweight carbon bike to fit in with our heritage as as a road brand, but reverse the trends of way through announcers during my starting with mountain bikes and hybrid bikes, and then going towards rode bikes.
[00:25:55]But I think in doing so, and I think when we launched it, we launched the light is carbon e-bike in the world. I think that puts us on the map as a brand, whether customers are interested in an e-bike or not. And I think that bike helped drive awareness of the brand. And from there, we've obviously just seen it grow and grow in all sectors.
[00:26:15] Craig Dalton: [00:26:15] Interesting one final question. One of the big challenges for the entire industry has been supply chain and componentry and getting your hands on the parts. You need to get these bikes out the door. How are you feeling about the current state of supply chain and how are you guys looking for inventory at this point?
[00:26:31] If listeners are interested in picking up a gravel bike?
[00:26:34]Jamie Burrow: [00:26:34] Yeah, it is, it's difficult as it is with everyone. I think we are probably one of the best placed. Out there. And a lot of it, because we were very fast to respond, which was good. But the key thing is the fact that because of our bodybuilder and every bike is built to order, we're not running a model years or catalog of models where if you're going to have that model, and then that was the [00:27:00] invention for that year, then you're stuck.
[00:27:02] We can make those small changes, even if it's for a lot of people, it could be that bike and that spec. It might be the tires that are in that bike that they're taking the lead time from being next month to be in seven months. And because they are built one bites, one mechanic, we can just seem to call up the customer and say, look, you want to change your tires.
[00:27:23] You can have that by next month. You can just where you see the dates on the website and then, you might see it by this kind of five, six month lead time, but it can be that one part. And we have got that flexibility too. To change that one part. And they say sometimes is as simple as, a tire handlebar tape, anything like that.
[00:27:40] And, we can respond to that by switching these parts out which is one of the ways trying to stay on top of all the time to make. So we've always got these parts available, but, even if it is a bike that you've ordered and then that one part is a difficulty, we will contact the customer and let them know, you can change this by how you're gonna have your bike a lot sooner.
[00:27:59] Which is something that not many other people have gone on the error on their side.
[00:28:06] Craig Dalton: [00:28:06] That's very true. I hadn't thought about it that way, but if you're a big through the independent bicycle retailer channel and you show that you've got a pan eraser tire and you don't have a Panner racer tire, All of a sudden you can't ship that bike because it's false advertising or what have you.
[00:28:22] And if everything becomes crazy and you can't get it out the door, I love that. I also love what you noted earlier about how [00:28:30] much data you get in real time from the customer. If they're moving towards flared bars or bigger tires, all these things really makes the Ribble business model interesting and flexible.
[00:28:41] So that was super exciting to learn about that. And I encourage the listener to go to rebels website, play around with the bike configurator. It's just a lot of fun because it forces you to think through what's the ideal bike from me because you're not buying off a catalog. You're buying the bike that's built for you.
[00:28:59]Jamie Burrow: [00:28:59] That's right. Yeah. And even downtown see the custom color. And that's been a real interesting experience in seeing where people have spend extra money on color over something that a more experienced person to say I've gone back to the kind of the age old thing of upgrading your wheels is always going to be one of the first things you should always do on a bike.
[00:29:22]But maybe taking a fairly basic spec drive chain and we'll set, but then they'll spend a fair amount of money on out in the color. And, we see that all the time and it's one of those things, in my head, I would think, I don't know, why would you do that? But then you see it more and more.
[00:29:38] And, obviously by having the bikes built here on premises ones where a mechanic, you walk for every day and you just see. What colors people are going for what specs and so interested in seeing what people are going for. Cause it's, they have got the freedom to do pretty much what they want.
[00:29:53] Craig Dalton: [00:29:53] Yeah. I love that. I love that. I had a manufacturing facility myself and some days I would see the custom work going out the door and [00:30:00] think, God, that person's crazy for picking that color way. And other times I would see combinations that would never have dawned on me and think that is absolutely brilliant.
[00:30:09] What a great idea.
[00:30:11] Jamie Burrow: [00:30:11] Yeah. When we launched out. Few months back, we launched our CGR step-through e-bike. And one of the first ones. So on the shop floor was, had been aspect to carbon wheels, carbon bars, you would never find a pre -spec step through by we've covered wheels, cotton ball.
[00:30:29] I don't think in any brand in the world, obviously someone out there maybe for mobility reasons needed. Step through for, even ease of getting on and off the bike, but didn't mean to say they weren't after a high-end performance bike, so why not put the to carbon wheels and carbon bonds on it?
[00:30:48] Craig Dalton: [00:30:48] Yeah. Why not? Jamie, I appreciate all the time. It was great to get to know you a little bit and get to know the Ribble brand.
[00:30:54]Big, thanks to Jamie for joining the show this week and telling us all about the Ribble brand. Very excited about what they're working on and very excited to get one underneath me and myself. Keep following me on Instagram. And you may see me on one of their gravel bikes sometime soon.
[00:31:10]This week, my big ask for you is if you've got a gravel cycling friend, please share this episode with them or one of my other episodes.
[00:31:16]I'm always looking to connect with new riders and hopefully provide a little bit of help in their journey to become gravel, cyclists. Until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
This week we sit down with Andrew Onermaa, founder of Ozark Gravel Cyclist. Andrew is a passionate gravel cyclist and bikepacker who has channeled energy and love into creating a hub for Arkansas gravel cyclists.
Ozark Gravel Cyclists Web / Instagram
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Automated Transcription, excuse the typos.
[00:00:00]Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] [00:00:00] Andrew, welcome to the show.
[00:00:02] Andrew Onermaa: [00:00:02] Hey, thanks for having me, Craig,
[00:00:03] Craig Dalton: [00:00:03] super excited to learn more about your project. It was our gravel cycling, but the more I've talked to you on offline, the more I want to hear about your personal journey to the bike and all the things you've been doing.
[00:00:15] So why don't we start off by just a little bit of your background. As an athlete and what led you to gravel cycling?
[00:00:21]Andrew Onermaa: [00:00:21] That's a great question. So the journey of the bicycle has definitely evolved a lot in the last decade. So I realized, or did riding bikes in college as a means of transportation. My vehicle died on me.
[00:00:36] Okay. I can't buy another car. What are we going to do? So what's the cheapest bike you can possibly find. It's going to be a bike that has. One gear and has nothing extra on it. So got a six gear bike, cause I was starting to hear about it. I was cool. This is in 2011, 2012, and I started really getting addicted to just the motion of moving through the landscape and interacting with vehicles and people and pedestrians.
[00:01:09] And I started delivering sandwiches for Jimmy John's in the middle of the night, I'd be doing a graveyard shift of 10:00 PM til three or four in the morning and just doing it all by bike. And I didn't have navigation on my phone, so I'd be printing up stuff in the shop, turn by turn navigation and using [00:01:30] that to deliver sandwiches.
[00:01:32] And I ended up just spending a lot of years traveling. Out west always had a fixed gear bike. It'd be my fun way to explore, but I'd still be pursuing other things. Climbing backpacking, mountaineering skiing, really just fully embracing the outdoors. But the bike was always, there is more of just a really fun way to explore in a way to shake things up.
[00:01:54] And it. Like within the last two, three years, I finally got my hands on a road bike with multiple gears brakes, and it opened up a whole new world of cycling to me that I'd never seen. I can suddenly do much, much bigger Hills. I was living in salt lake at the time I was doing these canyon passes, seeing the landscape from essentially mountaintops.
[00:02:18] And I was just blown away by how much you could see in an afternoon, they didn't even have to be a full day. And so that just fully consumed me. I was doing a lot of where I would bag multiple peaks in a day via foot. And I was like, man, I can apply this to the bike instead. Let's like, how many high points can I hit?
[00:02:40] And so that really opened my eyes to how much distance you can travel on the bike. And then. I started looking over and what about these dirt roads that I'm seeing? I'm getting tired of all these cars living by like ruining the vibe per se. Like I'm out in nature and [00:03:00] all of a sudden you have 20 cars blow by and one person has to roll down their window and yell something or whatever.
[00:03:06] And so I started dabbling into some dirt, but I wasn't confident with the skinny tires. So I went west. On the other side of the salt lake or it's flat. And that was my introduction to gravel. It was just this big open space with these random gravel roads, no information, no signage. And I would just try and I go for awhile for as long as I felt comfortable.
[00:03:31] Yeah. And then I would turn around and come back and just cross my fingers for whatever reason I was thinking now that I'm on gravel. My bike's gonna explode. Everything's gonna go wrong. And I kept having rise where it's whoa, that was actually really peaceful and enjoyable. And I was by myself the whole time.
[00:03:49] And that's, I started honing in on that aspect of this is something different. This is combining a lot of years of playing outdoors and this love of the bicycle. And so that's the quick summary of bikes. Over the last, almost decade until I moved back to Arkansas and got a proper gravel bike, my first gravel bike, and it's been a little over a year having a bike that's designed for this style of riding and it's just been phenomenal.
[00:04:22] And just the more I've done it, the more I've just, I don't know, absorbed as much as possible as far as learning. [00:04:30] And getting faster.
[00:04:33] Craig Dalton: [00:04:33] That's a super cool journey to the bike. I, I remember in connecting with the originally, when you were talking about your passion for mountaineering and climbing and hiking it's, as you came to it from a road biking perspective, it's pretty natural that you started to see those same peaks you'd hike and say, why don't I go up a dirt road rather than the paved roads.
[00:04:53] It's really cool to hear that store, that backstory about how you got into gravel cycling.
[00:04:58] Andrew Onermaa: [00:04:58] Absolutely. And a lot of the hesitation initially was I felt like it was going to calm, complicate things of being out in nature in that environment. Since I always did things by foot or by skis, I, it felt very minimal.
[00:05:13] And I thought, oh, now that I bring a bike, I'm going to have to bring tools in case it breaks down, I'm going to have to bring bags to carry things and it's going to have to attach the bike. So a lot of the hesitation was more so thinking is going to complicated all and take away from the joy. But it turns out and you can just cover so much more ground.
[00:05:31] And for the most part things work out. So you're not getting out there and just getting flats all the time and derailers falling off or anything like that. It's, you're just doing what you love and you're doing it in a really cool. Environment.
[00:05:45] Craig Dalton: [00:05:45] Yeah. You came into the sport at the perfect time, because a lot of the kinks had been worked out of the system on the bike.
[00:05:51]They are super reliable and I definitely see what you're saying about hiking versus biking. I often think to myself as I'm [00:06:00] hiking with my family, we're just covering so little ground compared to what I do on a bike. We have to pick such a small section to hike, whereas that would be one eighth of what I might ride in any given day.
[00:06:12] And I always feel a little bit guilty, the amount of terrain I'm able to cover versus when I'm hiking with my family. And they're just seeing this little tidbit of what's on the mountain
[00:06:22]Andrew Onermaa: [00:06:22] for sure. And then one, one thing I was overlooking for a long time was the. The element of enjoyment of downhill, running, hiking, whatever going downhill is not nearly as fun my foot as it is on a bike or on skis or something like that.
[00:06:39]That in itself adds a lot of extra joy on covering that terrain. Cause you get to. Experienced these crazy speeds and be making on the fly decisions and audibles to Dodge, a little boulders, or hop over ruts and things like that. So that's, it's a blast. You work, you like earn your journey is the term and skiing.
[00:07:01] And I feel like it relates to gravel riding really well. Really well,
[00:07:06] Craig Dalton: [00:07:06] so true. I had run into a friend of mine's wife who was out on a all day, a mountain biking trip down onto the peninsula to a great spot called Scags. And she told me, oh, I got a text from him saying he just had the time of his life.
[00:07:21] And he's, she's I don't, I just don't get it. And I'm like, it's hard to explain to a non cyclist, but it brings us back to our youth. It's. It's like [00:07:30] playing video games, wrapped into working out this constant decision making that you have to do. When you clear a section you want to just high five, your friends and you just have a laugh because it's just such an exhilarating sport.
[00:07:45] Andrew Onermaa: [00:07:45] Yeah. There's many times where I'm in the middle of the nowhere and those are laughing, going down a dissent or just grinning ear to ear. Cause it's. It's so much fun,
[00:07:55] Craig Dalton: [00:07:55] so true. I'm smiling. Just thinking about it. So you mentioned, and that your journey took you back to Arkansas and you are new gravel cyclists at that point.
[00:08:04] And the reason I was super stoked to connect with you is because I love these community based projects. So you started a group called Ozark, gravel cycling. What led you to begin that journey and put a stake in the ground and say, Hey, I'm going to be a hub for activity. Nos are in the Ozarks and try to unearth information for, would be cyclists and start a community around
[00:08:26] Andrew Onermaa: [00:08:26] gravel.
[00:08:26] Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. So through fix gear riding, I honestly just spent a ton of time by myself cause it's such a very niche aspect of riding bikes that is hard to find other writers that did the same thing. And to have the same fitness or goals or schedules. So whenever I got a road bike, I was about to start racing for a team by no means was I going to be going to local crits or road races and dominating or anything, but I was just really excited on the aspect of [00:09:00] here's a group of people that love bikes and we're going to hang out and we're going to ride bikes and we're going to travel sometimes to events.
[00:09:09] And do more riding bikes. So it was just this really cool group setting that got me excited. It reminded me of sports in high school, growing up junior high, middle school, things like that. It was just, I'm an adult, but also I have the shared activity that we all get to enjoy together. And so I was just really thrilled on having friends through a common activity.
[00:09:38] And as soon as the pandemic happened, everything got canceled. So I never got to actually go to these races. I got to do a team camp, started doing some practice rides and then boom, everything canceled. So I was like, oh man, I was so fired up for this idea of traveling and riding bikes and checking out new spots.
[00:10:02] And so when I moved back to Arkansas, one is to be closer to family. My grandparents are here. I wanted to help them with grocery shopping. I didn't want them to have to go out and do all these things by themselves. So I, one move was definitely to be around family, but the other was, Hey, things are shifting the ski resorts no longer open than I work at.
[00:10:27] This seems like a good time to [00:10:30] pursue the bike a little bit more and just skip a few months of winter and jump straight to spring by moving down south. Showed up in Arkansas and I knew one guy that rode gravel in Arkansas, and that was literally it because we knew each other in college and our very first gravel ride together.
[00:10:50] I basically told him, Hey, I was really excited on riding bikes with a group and trying to travel around and check out more places to ride, essentially make friends. And I told him that idea. He said, yeah, that's cool. We don't really, we have different, smaller groups, but there's no like central thing.
[00:11:08] That's dedicated only to gravel right now. And so I pitched an idea of, Hey, let's. Let's do that. Me and you, we're having a good time right now, right? You probably have chief friends like this. I bet there's other people in Arkansas. We know there's other people in Arkansas that ride gravel.
[00:11:23] Let's just try to connect more people. And that's really how it started was just me and one other person went on a gravel ride, had a great time together. And wanted to do it more and find other people to do it.
[00:11:36] Craig Dalton: [00:11:36] So did you start off with a Facebook group? Cause I know now you have, you've got a website up and running.
[00:11:40]How did you get started?
[00:11:42] Andrew Onermaa: [00:11:42] Yeah, so it was whenever I first came back, I couldn't get a job when I first came back to Arkansas. So I was living with my mom and my grandparents and I was applying and trying to get jobs anywhere. Couldn't get a job. When I wasn't riding my bike, [00:12:00] I decided to make pursuing this a job per se.
[00:12:04] It didn't feel like a job is I loved every single minute of it, but it's like, what can I do? I can create an Instagram account. That's like the very first thing I did create an Instagram account. Those are gravel, cyclists, boom. Here's three photos from our ride. Here's two people that like riding gravel.
[00:12:22]What are some popular hashtags related to gravel? Who else in the area is riding gravel. So looking up ride Arkansas, anything I could do to try to find people through basically social media, I try to follow them and comment on their rides and be like, Hey, this is really cool. Where was this at?
[00:12:42] And so it was just very genuine. Because I wasn't trying to do this Hey, this is a gravel authority and America is very, just start small, start local start focused. I didn't like, I love what's going on in the country, but I want to know what's happening right here, where I live. Yeah. Oh, I love
[00:13:03] Craig Dalton: [00:13:03] that, and I've spoken to the Ohio gravel grinders and a couple other groups on the podcast and it's just so critical.
[00:13:09] I think part of it seems to me that, there's. There's a challenge. Anytime you're getting out there in the wilderness. And just knowing someone did this route before you, or finding a group, that'll go do it with you. It's just so confidence inspiring. And it just accelerates that learning curve of, once you get hooked on gravel cycling, you just [00:13:30] want to explore new and different places as frequently as you can.
[00:13:34] Andrew Onermaa: [00:13:34] Yeah. Hands down. And so it was that's what a lot of it was getting people together. Check out new roads that at least one person had been on it before. So we're like, cool. You've been on it. You're still alive. You're still talking to us, but let's go check that one out. And then on my days where I couldn't ride with anybody, I was scouting out new roads myself and trying to create new routes.
[00:13:57] And then eventually bring people out to this other area I saw and then started adding some more consistent group prides. It was just once a month. And then it was every Thursday night and it just has grown very quickly just because. One there's a huge scene for gravel in Northwest Arkansas, but two we've just been consistent, no matter what it's been for a year straight, we've had a group of people riding gravel every single week.
[00:14:27]Craig Dalton: [00:14:27] Amazing. So for the listener that may not be familiar with the Ozarks and Arkansas in general, can you just tell us where in the country Arkansas is and where are the regions that you love riding most in Arkansas?
[00:14:41]Andrew Onermaa: [00:14:41] Yeah, that's great. So when I lived in Utah, it was actually one of my jokes.
[00:14:46] I'd say, Hey, I'm from Arkansas named three states that border Arkansas, and a lot of people can do it. So Arkansas we're above Louisiana. We got Texas down to the Southwest. We [00:15:00] got Oklahoma, Missouri Tennessee, all these different states bordering us to we're south central and. The Ozarks themselves is I was just looking at this earlier.
[00:15:14] So it's 1.2 million acres of incredible forest. It's big rolling Hills where the highest point is 2,700 feet tall. That's Mt. Magazine, and you have a ton of these scattered peaks that are. In that range of 2000 or so feet. And what happens is, as you're riding through this terrain, you get to a high point here on original line for a little bit.
[00:15:43] And then you drop way down to where these rivers and creeks are, which are down at maybe 300 feet elevation, 400 feet elevation. So you constantly get. These repeating Hills of a thousand feet or so. And so it's this very engaging up and down rollercoaster you can't ever see for too far in one direction either cause the tree coverage or just cause it's so winding that it just really.
[00:16:12] Pulls you in you're really engaged. You can't just stare off into the distance, that stuff, because you gotta be looking at what's in front of you.
[00:16:20] Craig Dalton: [00:16:20] So my limited experience riding in Arkansas was out of Bentonville on the big sugar course, and it was the bits I did, which was only, I think about 35 [00:16:30] miles, a lot of gravel roads, wide gravel roads, wide enough for a couple of cars to go back and forth on pretty rough gravel roads.
[00:16:37] As it turned out was she was a little bit surprised about. When you compare that type of writing with what you might find in the Ozark national forest, what would you, how would you describe the differences between the two?
[00:16:49] Andrew Onermaa: [00:16:49] Yeah that's cool to bring that up because even a lot of people that live here, they tend to still hover around.
[00:16:57]What's right by Bentonville arrived by Fayetteville and the way you describe it, I say that's a great representation of what's. Around these towns. I agree. It's pretty chunky and it can get steep and anything that you find out and those, the proper roads aren't national forest is just a more amplified version of what you experienced just outside of Bentonville.
[00:17:19] So it certainly sounded like
[00:17:21] Craig Dalton: [00:17:21] certain certainly sounded like the climbing in the Ozarks was, maybe 500 feet more than you might see or in and around Bentonville.
[00:17:30] Andrew Onermaa: [00:17:30] Yeah. Yeah. And then just the vistas are that much more beautiful and the rivers are that much bigger. The creeks are that much bigger.
[00:17:37] So it's really just like anything that's near Bentonville. It's just, I don't even know how to, it's hard to, that's why I'm so obsessed with. Getting out there and trying to develop new routes because I just think it's absolutely phenomenal. And I know how much people love the riding right by the towns we're at.
[00:17:59] So if [00:18:00] you love this and you're willing to push yourself a little bit more, to go a little bit further up the hill, then you're going to get this much bigger of a reward going downhill or seeing this view. So to me, the Ozark national forest is just the. The absolute pinnacle of what Arkansas has to offer concerning gravel, riding and bike packing.
[00:18:26] Craig Dalton: [00:18:26] Are you finding that the athletes that you're riding with and yourself, are you riding bigger tires because of that chunky terrain?
[00:18:33] Andrew Onermaa: [00:18:33] Yeah. So some of the guys that have been here for a while and girls they I've been pushing them to go bigger and bigger tires. I've never finished a ride and been like, man, you know what?
[00:18:44] I should've had a smaller tire. I should've had a smaller tire. And a lot of it stems from, of course, people coming over from the road culture and wanting to keep speed on pavement sections. So if it's your Thursday night ride out of town, there's going to be a fair share of pavement. Say we're doing pace lines.
[00:19:01] People are going to want a smaller tire and go faster. But the thing is I run a 47 seat tire. All the time. It doesn't matter what, I'm doing 40 17 tire. And that's truly just because that's the biggest tire I can fit in my frame. If I could go bigger, I would honestly be looking into a 50 CC tire, potentially, especially getting out.
[00:19:22] If you do a ride only in the Ozark national forest, that's where you're getting in the train of man. Maybe I want like a fully rigid mountain
[00:19:30] [00:19:29] Craig Dalton: [00:19:29] bike and stuff. Yeah, no, I was thinking about the exact same thing today and I'm with you. Like I just, I. Go as fat as my bike will allow, and I never seem to regret it.
[00:19:40] I was thinking about it also in the context of descending and just how much more confident I am to have a bit more fat rubber there. It's like going uphill and I've been experimenting with some really narrow tires just to test the other end of the spectrum. And it's all good going uphill. Like I'm perfectly fine.
[00:19:55] But the moment it starts going downhill, I start getting nervous about, how much suspension is that tire providing? How hard can I hit this rock garden that I'm going through? And lot of times it's out of your control. You're, you get into some rough stuff going fairly fast.
[00:20:10] You got to have equipment underneath you. That's going to survive the abuse. You're giving it.
[00:20:14]Andrew Onermaa: [00:20:14] Absolutely. I feel like I remember whenever I listened to your podcast, like quite a few episodes in the last year or so, didn't you have a phase where you're starting to. Experiment more with six 50 B, just like you can go bigger tires.
[00:20:27] Craig Dalton: [00:20:27] Yep. For sure. For sure. And yeah know, it's funny. I just posted something on Instagram this weekend, about three sets of tires and wheels that I had and which one did I choose? And it's going to be a no surprise to anybody that it was the biggest tire that I could fit that weekend. I really like, unless it's a very specialized ride oh, I want to do this.
[00:20:46] Particularly longish road section, and then I'm going to go on a completely smooth, gravel climbing back. I'm definitely gonna go with the big tires and I hate to sound like a broken record on the podcast, but I think like you [00:21:00] suggested a lot of people get into the sport from the road side and start thinking, oh, like a 700 by 38.
[00:21:05] That's perfect. It's way bigger than my road tire, which is true. But I think we're starting to see trends in the industry more and more. But the frames are coming with a 700 by 50 tire with capability. And I think that's a positive trend.
[00:21:22] Andrew Onermaa: [00:21:22] Absolutely. And it truly, it varies by region. So when I'm talking about those are national forest, I definitely am going to be preaching a bigger tire.
[00:21:31] Sounds like same thing with where you're at. And is it Marion county? Yeah. Marin county. Yep. Yeah, Marion county. You get some people maybe in Iowa. So I just, I did a race in Iowa, not too long ago. And out there I can tell, I didn't need that tire. I could have gone. A little bit skinnier, but it was what I was used to.
[00:21:49] So that's part of it. I'm used to it. I know how it handles and it still felt good. I never felt like I was sacrificing speed, but definitely by region. I think that's where you see trends just coming back to the different communities. It's that there's established community in the area and their bell curve of tires, tire, width.
[00:22:10] Is at a certain point. That's probably what you're going to hear recommendations for.
[00:22:15] Craig Dalton: [00:22:15] Yeah. I had a similar experience to yours in Iowa when I went to Steamboat Springs and. Tire people I was talking to, you were saying, oh, you can race that course on a 38. And I was like, no way. And I did come down to a 40, which I thought was a good [00:22:30] accommodation, but at the end of the day, like I totally could have done it on a 38.
[00:22:33] And I know a lot of the local guys and girls were running 30 twos because they call it champagne, gravel out there. And it's, it's not technical at all compared to what it sounds like you and I are used to.
[00:22:45] Andrew Onermaa: [00:22:45] Yeah. Yeah and teach their own. I w that's what I love about gravel is that there's so many different consistencies and styles that you take a road trip and you're like, man, this is.
[00:22:58] A brand new experience. Not only is it new scenery, but just the way I am riding is a completely different experience. Yeah.
[00:23:06] Craig Dalton: [00:23:06] And you design your equipment for what you want to make. Maybe you're designing around a weakness, you want to climb faster. So you get a lighter set up where maybe you're not confident descending.
[00:23:16] So you get something big and burly to allow you to keep up with your friends. And, as you said, it's all good. And it's fascinating to see different people's setups.
[00:23:24]Andrew Onermaa: [00:23:24] Yeah. And no matter what, whatever a person brings, I'm excited for him. You're here to ride. Let's do it. And we're going to bring, to get through this ride together.
[00:23:35] Hopefully there's not many mechanicals, but if there are so be it or flats, it's the fact that you can pull someone and experience something like this together. That's more important than sometimes getting into the nitty gritty of what's the right call. It's more like the fact that you have the enthusiasm to come do it.
[00:23:56]Will overpower a lot of those little things with the equipment. [00:24:00] 100%.
[00:24:00] Craig Dalton: [00:24:00] It's all about riding. What you've got. Like you said, when you're out there in Utah, you just had the desire to test those gravel roads out there and you just rode your road bike and it was all good. And as it became a passion of yours, you're like maybe I want to get more specialized equipment over time.
[00:24:14]And you did. And now look what you're doing. Adventures all over the place.
[00:24:19] Andrew Onermaa: [00:24:19] Yeah. Yeah. It's so much fun. And I'm just barely getting started. So that's definitely exciting thing. It's finally being like, all right, I've found something I'm in it for the long haul and it's going to progress a lot over time in so many different capacities and I'm going to keep doing everything I can to help the local community while I'm at it.
[00:24:39] Craig Dalton: [00:24:39] That's so great. That's so great. Speaking of racing and being in it for the long haul, I can't help, but ask you about the Arkansas high country race. Now that I learned you did it and you cry, you crushed it. So was that your first ultra distance race?
[00:24:56] Andrew Onermaa: [00:24:56] Yeah, that was my first ultra distance race, first gravel race.
[00:25:00]So several firsts in that one outing and. Crushing it's, I don't know about crushing it. I went in with the mentality of I'm going to either pull off something crazy. I'm going to go up in planes. And I think I did a little bit of both. I did enough to where I was in the conversation with.
[00:25:21]Like a caliber of an athlete of tagging. Just the fact that they kept mentioning my name for the first few days and I was around the same [00:25:30] mileage and all of that. So that was really cool. Ultimately I had never pushed that far in my life as far as my mental and physical. And so it was an awesome learning experience and sleep deprivation as well.
[00:25:44] I slept. Two and a half hours in the first, like three days. It was just, yeah, it was a lot and it was exciting and a really cool way to start. So I'm definitely looking forward to more ultra distance racing. I think that's definitely the sweet spot for me personally, is just getting on the bike and living on the bike for days on end.
[00:26:06]Craig Dalton: [00:26:06] How many miles was that event?
[00:26:08]Andrew Onermaa: [00:26:08] That event it's right around 1,037 miles. They've still been shifting the route over the years, whether it be due to flooding or closed roads. So it's still a little bit of a dynamic route. It's not a hundred percent set in stone, but yeah, just over a thousand miles.
[00:26:27] So that's a pretty substantial distance that be covering, especially just in one state.
[00:26:32] Craig Dalton: [00:26:32] Oh, it's massive. And what I thought was interesting about that event, you can choose to go clockwise or counter-clockwise right?
[00:26:39] Andrew Onermaa: [00:26:39] Yeah. It's wild. So it's definitely with bike packing, being newer bike, packing racing.
[00:26:45] Let me say being newer in the United States, you have your classics, like the tour divide, the Colorado trail. I'd say those are when it comes to bike, packing, racing, and routes. Those are the prime examples. [00:27:00] With the most history. And it's very clear, you start at one end and you end at the other, and for the Colorado church drill, you can do it either direction.
[00:27:12] And there's an SKT for both and an overall MKT with the tour divide. As far as I know, the race has always been north to south. People have done the route, both directions, but the race is north to south. And so what's a loop, right? What they've been developing here is, Hey let's shake things up with this loop.
[00:27:30] You can go either direction for one, two, you can start anywhere. So we've had people start all over this route for the race. It's a mass starts. Everybody starts together. But even that in itself, that mass starts going to change every two years. So it's this crazy dynamic race where. You can go one year and then you go again three years later and you're starting in a completely different city.
[00:27:56] You might even be going a different direction. The weather might be completely different. It's, there's a lot of things that they're tying together just to keep it very interesting,
[00:28:06] Craig Dalton: [00:28:06] which is cool. And how did you feel about your choice of direction and what was it this year?
[00:28:10]Andrew Onermaa: [00:28:10] I like the counter-clockwise direction.
[00:28:13] A lot of it was strategic in the fact that starting from say a bill for last year and this year being the host community, you get the hardest stretch out of the way and the first 250 miles. Okay. So that [00:28:30] has the hardest train. So my mentality was get the hardest section out of the way right away.
[00:28:35] The biggest run out of no resupply, which is, I want to say around 150 miles and no resupply, no service, barely any water, definitely no food. Just knock that out and then keep trucking along. So that makes sense. I liked that idea. I think part of the problem was I definitely didn't keep in mind that I.
[00:28:57]Was covering different terrain than the leaders and the other direction. So in this case, this was taking, so he was covering different drain and I didn't need to be even with him at mile 300 I should have been behind, but instead I was even, and so it, it really does mess with your pacing strategy when you're looking at dots on a website and you're trying to base decisions on what other people are doing versus.
[00:29:22]Solely on how you're feeling and what you think is the right call for you to put out your best time.
[00:29:28] Craig Dalton: [00:29:28] That makes sense. And what was your sleep system and what was your sleep strategy?
[00:29:33]Andrew Onermaa: [00:29:33] Sleep strategy and system went hand in hand. My strategy was sleep as little as possible, ride the bike as much as possible.
[00:29:42] So I brought as little as possible when it came to sleep to ensure that I didn't give myself the choice. So I was like, whenever I get to a major town, say halfway through, get a motel sleep for four hours, get back on the [00:30:00] bike, make another huge push, occasional plopped down in a ditch in the middle of the night and put on emergency busy and all your layers and sleep for an hour.
[00:30:09] That was my mentality, which that's not what I do for a tour or a fun ride. But for. Race of competing against people of that caliber. I knew that's what personally I would have to do to be able to make up that differential and fitness and experience
[00:30:26] Craig Dalton: [00:30:26] you did decide to bivy in a ditch.
[00:30:28]What was your body telling you? Just like I'm completely done or was it your mind? You couldn't ride a straight line anymore?
[00:30:35]Andrew Onermaa: [00:30:35] The first time I slept. I was just not nodding off, but I was yawning som starting to ride slower. The hill started filling bigger and harder and I just decided, okay, go ahead and take a break, take a nap and get back after it.
[00:30:56] And so Alan worked great. Second time I took a nap. I was on the wooden floor of a community church. In the middle of nowhere and luckily the doors were unlocked. So I just laid down on the ground between two pews on the hardwood floor and my knees were crazy creaky. When I got back on the bike and everything hurt terribly bad.
[00:31:18] And sometimes I just, that will last for 10 minutes and then your body goes, oh, okay, here we go. Back to what we've been doing. And sometimes you're working through that for two or three hours and you're just [00:31:30] in your head nonstop. All right. Like surely this is going to change, right? It's so it's definitely a lot of mental warfare.
[00:31:38] I'd say the mind is. Equally important as any other aspect when it comes to that kind of racing. Yeah.
[00:31:45] Craig Dalton: [00:31:45] Yeah. And the idea that you're gonna feel so many things from throughout the day, and it's going to change you're gonna feel like everybody's going to feel like crap at a certain point during the day.
[00:31:55] And the ride is so darn long that you're bound to feel better at some point, presumably.
[00:32:01] Andrew Onermaa: [00:32:01] Yeah, absolutely. And which are you doing that route one kind of coming back to the whole inspiration with Ozar gravel, cyclists was having the opportunity to do that route over the summer while I was still looking for a job, I was so blown away by the terrain that it sealed the deal for me.
[00:32:19] I was like, I'm definitely gonna live in Arkansas for the rest of my life. This is incredible. I'll take trips other places, but this is a great home base. And I can train here for the rest of my life and ride here for the rest of my life and be so happy. So that route gave me just so much joy and fulfillment that for one, it just got me incredibly excited on Arkansas riding, but too.
[00:32:46] I knew that we were just barely dancing through this terrain, 1.2 million acres and the national forest of the Ozarks alone. And we just do one little line and through it a couple of times. [00:33:00] So what about all these other roads that we don't see on that route? And so that's been just the utter joy of.
[00:33:06] Every weekend I can go sample one or two more new roads, make new connect actions, keep changing up loops. And right now my summer project is to make a new bike packing loop in Arkansas. That's around 300 miles, but it's way more. Gravel way less pavement. So 80% gravel, 90% gravel, and you're getting 32,000 feet of elevation in 300 miles.
[00:33:37] And you share almost no roads with a high country. So it's just this beautiful sample of you want to know what bike packing and gravel riding is an Ozarks check this out all in the Ozarks. Exactly. And yeah. Ultimately it's to make a bunch of smaller loops within that loop. So you don't have to go do a hundred mile day.
[00:34:00] I want to be able to have people here's a 25 mile route that you will love. And then you can eat a burger at the oldest cafe in Arkansas right afterwards, or something like that. I have all these friends in this community that are all stoked about it, and we're all getting out together and exploring.
[00:34:16] We have this community everyone's so excited. And it's just been so uplifting for everybody. It's just the Spire and more and more people are jumping in as time goes on. [00:34:30] So it's just this beautiful snowball effect that who knows what's gonna be the scene in another year or two, but it's only getting bigger and better and more exciting.
[00:34:41] Craig Dalton: [00:34:41] I love your passion for it, Andrew and it's definitely, Arkansas has definitely been coming on the map more and more over the last few years between the big bike packing race and big sugar and other events that are going on. It's truly a place that if you love off-road riding, you got to get to one of these days.
[00:34:59]I think that's a good place for us to end. I really appreciate the time and truly appreciate anybody who's growing a community from the ground up. Ozark gravel cycling is such an amazing resource and I'll put a link to it in the show notes for anybody in the region. Who's looking for great routes.
[00:35:16] You hear the passion in Andrew's voice for what he's doing. So go visit him, hit him up on social media and get out there and try some Arkansas gravel.
[00:35:26] Andrew Onermaa: [00:35:26] I would love it. And I do get messages from people coming out of state and they want to know where to go and what to see. So it's it's very rewarding to share this with others and I'm glad to have.
[00:35:39] You asked me onto the show. Cause it's just helping us reach an even broader audience that maybe one person is going to make a road trip to Arkansas. And that's because of you having me on the show. So thank you.
[00:35:52] Craig Dalton: [00:35:52] I think we might be getting a rush of people to Arkansas after this. I love it.
[00:35:56] Thanks Andrew.
[00:35:58] Andrew Onermaa: [00:35:58] Absolutely. Thank you. [00:36:00]
This week we sit down with Kemi King, Director of Philanthropy for World Bicycle Relief. World Bicycle Relief is an international, non-profit organization based in Chicago, IL that specializes in large-scale, comprehensive bicycle distribution programs to aid poverty relief in developing countries around the world. Their programs focus primarily on education, economic development, and health care.
World Bicycle Relief -- Donate to support my team
Automated Transcription (Please excuse the typos)
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton.
[00:00:05] This week on the podcast, I'm thrilled to have Kemi king from world bicycle relief. join the show.
[00:00:12] If you're not already familiar with world bicycle relief, it's an amazing 15 year old non-profit that has delivered over 500,000 bikes to those in need around the world.
[00:00:24]I'm very excited for you to get to know a little bit more about world bicycle relief from Kemi, and also hear about their ride on June 5th, the pedal to empower ride it's something, regardless of where you are in the world, you can get involved in. As well as three in-person events around the country that we'll get into. Stick around until the end of the podcast Cause we've got a special announcement about how local gravel riders in the bay area can get involved.
[00:00:52]Ordinarily, this would be where I ask for your support of the podcast. But today I'd prefer that you go over to world bicycle relief.org and contribute to what they're doing.
[00:01:03] As you'll learn from Kemi every $147, and that's a new bike for someone in need. So let's get together and support this great cause. With all that said let's dive right in to my discussion with Kemi.
[00:01:18]
[00:01:18] Kemi welcome to the show.
[00:01:20] Kemi King: [00:01:20] Hey, thank you so much, Craig. Thanks for having me. And I'm excited to, to chat.
[00:01:25] Craig Dalton: [00:01:25] I'm really excited to learn more about world bicycle relief and it was super [00:01:30] fortuitous that I ran into one of your contributors on the trail a couple of weeks ago, and learned about the upcoming events you have.
[00:01:37] So super excited to dig into that, but before we get started, let's just find out a little bit about your background and how you got involved in cycling and. Ultimately joining the world bicycle relief team.
[00:01:49] Kemi King: [00:01:49] Sure. It actually all started during a tough period of my life. I personally embraced cycling as a positive force and I wholeheartedly understand really how a bicycle can change everything.
[00:02:00] And I think a lot of the listeners here can relate to that. For me, it really was profound. I went from a really unhappy overweight lounger to an, a joyful elite cyclist in three short years. I at that time founded a women's pro road team and found myself training and racing among some of the world's strongest people on earth.
[00:02:22]I had been a supporter and kind of long time. Donor for world bicycle relief and was thrilled to take on the role of director of philanthropy for the Western us and Canada, just about two years ago. And now I get to support their mission daily and spend some of my time training and looking for that next extreme challenge, whether it's on a road or dirt.
[00:02:47] Craig Dalton: [00:02:47] First off what an amazing journey into cycling. And I think as you noted, a lot of our listeners have mimic that same story back to me that the bicycle has been really transformational in some element of their [00:03:00] life. So it's really exciting to hear you say that and really excited to learn that you've changed that.
[00:03:05] You've fueled that passion into a career first founding a cycling program, the racing program, and later finding world bicycle relief. Can you tell us about world bicycle relief and what the focus is?
[00:03:19] Kemi King: [00:03:19] Sure. Yeah. World bicycle relief or WBR as we like to shorten it because it's a mouthful was founded in 2005 by FK day.
[00:03:28] One of the founders of Ceram and Liam is buck day, a documentary photographer in response to the tsunami in the Indian ocean. And they want it to be able to provide some support to the people in Sri Lanka. So they quickly rounded up as many bicycles they could and traveled to Sri Lanka to distribute them and through the beautiful stories that Lee Leah captured.
[00:03:52] And the time that they were able to spend just meeting with the people and capturing all that information, they brought back this this. Devastation to light to the rest of the world. And they quickly learned that their work would not end there so together with support from Ceram and other industry leaders FK and Leah designed a rugged, especially design and locally assembled Buffalo bicycle and launched.
[00:04:19] World bicycle relief to mobilize and empower people with bicycles to help them conquer the challenge of distance, achieve independence and thrive. Over the past 15 years, [00:04:30] we've distributed more than 550,000 Buffalo bicycles to students, healthcare workers and entrepreneurs across Africa, south America, Southeast Asia.
[00:04:41] It's a sustainable and scalable program. That's led by strong infrastructure of trained local mechanics, assemblers and supervisor supervisory committees.
[00:04:52] Craig Dalton: [00:04:52] There's a lot to unpack there. I have a question, when they first saw the tsunami disaster, was there something they knew specifically that the bicycle could change in that community?
[00:05:03] Obviously, people were throwing money at it, but throwing bicycles at it was probably a unique proposition at that moment. Yeah, it
[00:05:10] Kemi King: [00:05:10] really was. They just, they knew that people couldn't get from place to place. Everything had been completely destroyed. And the only thing that kind of couldn't make its way through any of the roads or the destruction was a bicycle.
[00:05:22]And they were able to quickly provide some of that.
[00:05:25] Craig Dalton: [00:05:25] You mentioned the specifically designed Buffalo bicycles, which some of the listeners may have seen pictures of, but can you describe why it's important? The sort of important elements of the design, and I know you alluded to them being locally assembled and some of the local infrastructure that probably revolves around having the exact same bike in every project you're involved in.
[00:05:47] It
[00:05:47] Kemi King: [00:05:47] actually came from some exploration in the field. We, we believe that all answers are found in the field. And as our team was spending time in Africa, they were looking at these what they called bicycle shaped [00:06:00] objects, and they were bicycles that were falling apart that weren't actually fulfilling the needs that the people using them were required, were requiring.
[00:06:09] So they decided that something had to be created. That was a little bit more sturdy and a little bit more capable of hauling loads up to 250 pounds and working in that That area of where the train was a little bit more rugged. So they created the Buffalo bicycle and it is one, one size fits all.
[00:06:30] It's one bicycle. It has all the same parts and pieces we have about 2,500 mechanics in the field that service those bicycles and shops that locally that assemble the bicycles to distribute and keep those bikes up and running.
[00:06:46] Craig Dalton: [00:06:46] So I've seen pictures of people riding with multiple family members on the back or big loads of maybe they're the wears that they've had from a farm or something to transport.
[00:06:56] So it sounds like it's a very utilitarian bike that can serve a lot of different purposes.
[00:07:02] Kemi King: [00:07:02] It can, it's a, it's something that's amazing that just this bicycle. Helps those, access medical care, they get farmers and produce and milk to the markets. And. Pile on the kids to get them to school.
[00:07:17]Craig Dalton: [00:07:17] So it's been a 15 year journey and presumably the organization has continued to grow both in its size and impact over the year. Had there been any changes, obviously with the global pandemic, have there [00:07:30] been any changes in your plans or execution across the world? Yeah,
[00:07:34] Kemi King: [00:07:34] so much has happened obviously in 2020 with COVID and we were able to transition a little bit last year to provide 2,500 bicycles for COVID 19 response, pretty immediately. As COVID hit and we distributed still 40,000 bicycles last year hitting our historic 500,000. Along the way, we also launched our 21st program country in Columbia. So even though last year had some.
[00:08:02] Crazy times. We still were able to take care of some of those needs and focus on, some immediate needs at hand with
[00:08:10] Craig Dalton: [00:08:10] COVID. Yeah. I have to imagine a lot of these bikes are being used in unexpected and new ways to help support, PR potentially getting vaccinations out or certainly servicing the health needs of rural communities.
[00:08:23] Kemi King: [00:08:23] Yeah, just livelihood needs to find food and other things in those areas as well.
[00:08:28] Craig Dalton: [00:08:28] You mentioned Columbia as being the 21st program and that's in south America are the majority of programs across Africa or what territories have you been addressing?
[00:08:38] Kemi King: [00:08:38] Yeah, most of the programs are in Africa who found that the largest need was there.
[00:08:43]But there's definitely need. All over the world. Like I've mentioned, we've been in Sri Lanka, we've opened up into Columbia. We had some really unique partnerships that allowed us to open up there. We also are working on a multi-carrier drive training, which will open up a few more [00:09:00] opportunities and allowing us to distribute In areas where there might be a few more Hills
[00:09:04]Craig Dalton: [00:09:04] co Columbia may qualify as one of those countries.
[00:09:08] Kemi King: [00:09:08] Yes. Yes. At the moment we're focusing on some flat areas, but definitely has has its needs with the Hills.
[00:09:15] Craig Dalton: [00:09:15] Like when you introduce a program into a country, is it critical that you build on the ground infrastructure to support the bicycle as you're delivering.
[00:09:24] Kemi King: [00:09:24] Yes. Yeah. We've got programmed facilities now in bettering Kia, Colombia, where we've got a team that supports a warehouse and provides the assembly and the mechanics that are needed for that area.
[00:09:37] And as we can distribute around those areas and spread our little bicycles throughout the country He had some really interesting programming there's of course, with COVID things have been shut down a little bit more and schools have been closed. So our programming has been a touch different, but now the need to get back into school is dire.
[00:09:58] And I'll touch a little bit more on that as we go as well.
[00:10:00] Craig Dalton: [00:10:00] Yeah, that'd be great to talk about where WBR is today and in 2021, what are the kind of key need areas that you guys are trying to address?
[00:10:10] Kemi King: [00:10:10] Yeah. As we look at what's happened and where we are, the odds against women and girls in developing regions actually have amplified over the past year.
[00:10:20] That's where a large focus of ours will be because 47 million women have been pushed into extreme poverty. And about 10 million [00:10:30] additional child brain brides have happened over this past decade, 11 million girls won't return to school this year. So with the pandemic, it's created short and long-term challenges for our communities.
[00:10:43]While I, as the world's eyes ways to open back up, we need to ensure that those programs aren't left behind provide opportunities to ensure that they can rebound and thrive.
[00:10:54]Craig Dalton: [00:10:54] How is the organization funded to do all this work?
[00:10:58]Kemi King: [00:10:58] We've got a couple of different ways, obviously. We look for donors support too.
[00:11:03]Everyone and anyone, we get some corporate partnerships. We have major donors and grassroots donors. Everyone that's willing to give whatever they can. We also do have some social inner enterprise programs with our Buffalo bicycles. So Buffalo bicycles is its own entity that allows us to provide.
[00:11:24] Purchase programs for entrepreneurs. We also have other additional programs that will purchase the bicycles from us and distribute themselves UNICEF being one of those. We've got several other partners within Africa that purchase the bicycles and distribute as well. So we have a couple of different ways of bringing those those dollars into the organization.
[00:11:44] Craig Dalton: [00:11:44] So when you referenced micro entrepreneurs that might purchase Buffalo bikes, are those people in these countries who have pass some certification and are looking to finance, bringing bikes into the country and distributing them.
[00:11:56] Kemi King: [00:11:56] We've got a little bit of that.
[00:11:57]We also have just, people that [00:12:00] come in to purchase the bike save their pennies and purchase a bike for one 47. Each bike costs $147. And they're eager to come in and make their own purchase. We've got small companies that purchase bikes. We actually had quite a few security companies purchasing bikes through COVID to get individuals to different areas or even into work.
[00:12:20]So yeah, it was interesting to see the growth on that social enterprise side of the program.
[00:12:26] Craig Dalton: [00:12:26] That's super interesting. You mentioned quite frequently Just the efforts you're making towards helping women around the world. And I think you've got a new program that you recently launched on that subject.
[00:12:39] Yeah,
[00:12:40] Kemi King: [00:12:40] actually as this errors are a new women on wheels program, we'll we'll be launching and that is to help these women build their businesses care for the sick reach school on time, serve the community, avoid harassment advocate for girls. Increase their incomes. There's a whole list of different things that these women are continuing to do by breaking boundaries and serving their communities.
[00:13:06] So we've got this longstanding relationship with people and partners in the field who have first hand experienced what is needed to drive those meaning that meaningful change. We've proven repeatedly and recently, without response to that, to the pandemic outreach, we're positioned now with our Buffalo bicycles to lead on more programming and hope to bring in more [00:13:30] communities where we can mobilize.
[00:13:32] Craig Dalton: [00:13:32] Is that an initiative that you're fundraising for specifically, or do you tend to fundraise as an umbrella organization and then fund the different initiatives internally as makes
[00:13:41] Kemi King: [00:13:41] sense. We do both. We do focus some interesting campaigns each year on a specific area. So this is really focusing on our women on wheels and how we can message around focusing just these funds on providing that that need for women.
[00:13:58]I there's so many different stories of how those women's lives have changed. One of my favorites, I'll just start sharing a couple of stories. Dull Shawnee was actually one of our very first recipients in Sri Lanka to receive a bicycle and it allowed her to go to school and become a nurse.
[00:14:16] And my favorite part about devil's Johnny's bike is that 10 years later, her sister used that same bike to travel to school. Amazing. Amazing. We've also got ion, which she's one of my favorites because there's a video of hers and there's so many amazing videos on our website. I would, invite the listeners to go onto the websites, see the pictures and stories, watch the videos, but she is.
[00:14:44] Started in one of the videos and it starts with her saying when I'm stressed out, I just take my bicycle and go for a ride. It's amazing. I just feel I'm not even in this world. I don't know how to explain it, but it's just the best [00:15:00] feeling I can. Anyone can experience in his or her life. And as we were talking before, so many of our listeners can feel that exact same way.
[00:15:08] I think I know that I do. I can't even believe I said that without getting choked up because she's been just. Inspirational. She's been inspirational to her community as well as the girls have met her. She's actually the first Muslim girl in that community to receive a bicycle. And as she was riding to school, the other girls realized, oh my gosh, she could ride bikes.
[00:15:31] She can, she's just like us. And she loves riding a bike as well. And those friendships were started. And as. As they were able to become friends and continue writing, they set aside some differences, which at this time in this world right now is one of the best things we can ask for.
[00:15:49] Craig Dalton: [00:15:49] Yeah. That's so amazing.
[00:15:50] It's and it is such a universal sentiment. As you said, we so often on the podcast talk about how the gravel bike allows us to explore and get out of our daily lives and how. We've all made connections with other athletes solely because we see someone next to us riding and you don't think about what their race is, what their sex is, where they're from, what they do for a living.
[00:16:15] All is them pedaling up the same hell. You're paddling up with a smile on their face. And it's just an easy way to make connections.
[00:16:22] Kemi King: [00:16:22] Absolutely. And that's, we're seeing it so many places with our distribution to that. They're experiencing that too. Not [00:16:30] only are these bikes changing their lives for, other various reasons for, providing food for their families or extra income, or just getting to school, but they're loving riding those bikes, which we do too.
[00:16:42] And nothing else matters.
[00:16:44] Craig Dalton: [00:16:44] Very true. Very true. So you're just drilling in a little bit more. You had mentioned a bicycle costs $147. Is that the amount that if one were to want to donate. $147 is what they should donate in order to. Believe that they've purchased one bike for someone in need.
[00:17:02] Kemi King: [00:17:02] Yep. One by one 47.
[00:17:05] Of course. That may be a lot to ask of someone and $10 is awesome. Any, anything we'll obviously help, but that one 47 does provide that one bicycle too. Person I need. That's
[00:17:17] Craig Dalton: [00:17:17] really cool. So this is an exciting moment in time where we'll air this in may and in early June, you've got one of your bigger kind of global outreach programs going on that may help some listeners drive towards that being a date.
[00:17:31] They're gonna donate some money to w BR can you talk about what's going on June 5th?
[00:17:37] Kemi King: [00:17:37] Yeah. Yeah. So June 5th We've decided it should be our global world bicycle relief ride that we call pedal to empower. And this is to celebrate, obviously our women on wheels campaign that we'll be running and to celebrate world bicycle day.
[00:17:55] And for those of you who aren't aware of possibly June 3rd has been [00:18:00] made world bicycle day, obviously to celebrate bicycles as a simple, affordable, reliable, and environmentally sustainable. Mode of transportation. So we've thought what better way than to celebrate that day and our own day of, creating hopefully what we could call a global movement of participation to pedal to empower.
[00:18:23] And our focus obviously is now to pedal, to empower women and girls as we try to get those needs Of getting the girls back into school. Mostly
[00:18:31] Craig Dalton: [00:18:31] WBR done these types of rides before. I feel like over the last few years, I've seen friends in the community host rides where they just doing that on their own, or was that a coordinated kind of
[00:18:41] Kemi King: [00:18:41] effort?
[00:18:42] We actually have hosted rides annually here, especially in the bay area. There's been one or two rides, one often in mill valley. Couple of down in the peninsula. And last year we decided that we wanted to create. A little bit larger scale ride and hopefully make this global impact COVID hit and transitions happened with everybody and we went for a virtual ride.
[00:19:06] And what was great about that is it allowed us to create this virtual ride that can happen everywhere every year. We did change the date from last year sheer. It was the ride happened to September. In hopes that we could really take advantage of that June 3rd world bicycle day, and really target that and celebrate that at the same time.
[00:19:27] So yeah, this year has moved to June [00:19:30] 5th and we're very excited to be able to. Provide that virtual event, what we're calling a DIY adventure, you can sign up, register for that DIY adventure and take advantage of the pedal to empower app that we provide as well. There'll be a few challenges so you can get, create something or create your own.
[00:19:52]I know there's 160 mile challenge for anyone that wants to get a little bit crazy. And a few other little ones involving. Your kids or writers in the community that, may not be hardcore writers, like. Many of us. And so there's that kind of stuff. Solo option, where you can create that DIY adventure and that's in hopes that we can really get some global limbo.
[00:20:13]We'd like to see a thousand participants in all 50 states, across 35 countries, we'd love to see a million plus in so social media and that registration is free and it allows us to track towards our goals. Go on the website pedal to empower.com and register. Join us, create your own DIY adventure.
[00:20:35]There's a couple options. If you want to take it a next step up there's a option to host or join a team where you could organize a group locally, invite your friends, family, coworkers. We've got toolkits to provide for the team captains to help. Guide through some fundraising options.
[00:20:52]If you were interested in that and not option and then exciting to have returned this year, some in-person [00:21:00] rides and there'll be small events. We're trying to keep in mind the local protocols and the concerns of in-person events right now. And those are planned for New York, Chicago, and the bay area.
[00:21:13] So we would love to see, Anyone that wants to join us in those areas. They are road rides, road events, but we could get a little creative with the gravel.
[00:21:22] Craig Dalton: [00:21:22] Nice. Nice. The New York city ride, is that sort of starting in Manhattan or is it outside yourself?
[00:21:28] Kemi King: [00:21:28] In Tarrytown. Okay. So yeah, you'll see those familiar with that area.
[00:21:34]We'll be in in Tarrytown.
[00:21:36]Craig Dalton: [00:21:36] And then how about
[00:21:37] Kemi King: [00:21:37] Chicago? Hold please.
[00:21:39]Craig Dalton: [00:21:39] I didn't mean to put you on the spot. So
[00:21:42]Kemi King: [00:21:42] it's the Chicago north shore. I apologize. This is what I should know. It's starting from the community house. For those that might be familiar with that area and these details can be found on our website too.
[00:21:53] As you click to register, there's the options for the DIY ride and then farther down, you'll see, join the Chicago ride the New York or the bay area. And Being local in the bay area, one I'm all over that one. I know where that one is. And can give you the details. It will be starting in mill valley at
[00:22:11] Craig Dalton: [00:22:11] floodwater.
[00:22:12] Add water for the local listeners in a newish restaurant. Attached to the holiday Inn express, as you enter mill valley. Yes.
[00:22:21] Kemi King: [00:22:21] Floodwater is where we will be. We've got all the waters here, so which we will be riding and seeing all the beautiful waters as we take the routes
[00:22:28] Craig Dalton: [00:22:28] here. That'd be perfect.
[00:22:29]It's [00:22:30] an easy ride in from San Francisco. That's right off the bike path as a starting point. And I, I've been so excited. About learning more about world bicycle relief and wanting to contribute what I wanted to offer. If you're game is I'll lead any local gravel riders on a gravel route where we'll try to aim to a similar destination as the road group, but we'll take an off-road off-road route, certainly on the climbing aspects and then circle around and end up at floodwater to meet everybody post dried.
[00:23:04] Kemi King: [00:23:04] That would be awesome. And we can make sure we arrange and lead your group off on a separate adventure.
[00:23:10] Craig Dalton: [00:23:10] Yeah. So if you're interested in that, obviously we're mostly gravel cyclists. Although we do dabble on the road here on the podcast, definitely register for the event. Look for details either directly from me, or if you're in the ridership forum, I'll be posting there.
[00:23:25] We'll pick a time to start that ride. They're going to, as I understand it, Kemi, you're going to have multiple different rollout times for the shorter version and the longer version of the road, correct?
[00:23:36] Kemi King: [00:23:36] Yes. Yeah. We're going to have staggered times that all of the locations where you can even pick a time that works with your group or the, the kind of our communities are pretty strong in each city and there's different.
[00:23:46]Groups that love to connect with each other and find each other again. So we're hoping that they'll self-select and start those times, obviously, mostly to keep this, a distance scene a little bit hard still and
[00:23:59] Craig Dalton: [00:23:59] yeah. [00:24:00] And just for clarity writers should bring their own sort of nutritional supplies and water for the ride.
[00:24:07] Yeah.
[00:24:07] Kemi King: [00:24:07] We will have actually some aid stations along the way. I'm happy to have Rafa supporting those actually in each of our locations. So the longer rides we'll have an aid station, the shorter route may not have that, but we will have sag support. So there will be a kind of food and water and drinks along the way if needed.
[00:24:25] There'll definitely be some setup at the beginning to to pack your pockets and have stuff
[00:24:29] Craig Dalton: [00:24:29] ready. Okay, great. As I think about designing a route, I'll try to get from you where that aid station might be. I've got a couple ideas on how to get over the mountain, where we might encounter some water.
[00:24:39] So everybody is safely hydrated and fueled up for the
[00:24:42] Kemi King: [00:24:42] day. Wonderful. Yeah, I can definitely get that aligned for
[00:24:45] Craig Dalton: [00:24:45] you. This is going to be a lot of fun. I was really excited to learn more about world bicycle relief. It's so amazing. The impact you've described such a relatively small amount of money. When we think about all the expensive bikes that are out there in the world, that $147.
[00:25:04] Can really trans transform someone's live overseas. So it's such a great cause. And I appreciate you giving us an overview of it.
[00:25:12] Kemi King: [00:25:12] Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to be here and to be able to chat about it.
[00:25:16]Craig Dalton: [00:25:16] So that's it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Thank you for spending part of your week with us this week. As we just mentioned on June 5th is the pedal to empower ride. Please go over to [00:25:30] world bicycle relief.org and make a donation today
[00:25:33]As you've learned your donation will have an outsized impact on someone's life. If you're interested in joining me in mill valley on June 5th. For the dirt version of the world, bicycle relief ride.
[00:25:47]Please head on over to the ridership@wwwdottheridership.com or follow me on social media as I'll be posting details as to when to meet and how to register for the event. Until next time, here's the finding some dirt onto your wheels.
This week thanks to vaccinations, I'm able to interview my father without whom I'd likely never have discovered a passion for the sport. At 84 years old and still riding every Sunday, I hope the conversation keeps you stoked to ride into the future and gives you a little glimpse into my introduction to the sport of cycling.
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This week we wish Randall well on his cross country journey, highlight the Gravel Adventure Field Guide from Trinidad, CO and discuss casual cycling shorts.
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This week we welcome the team from the Southeast Gravel Series to the show. Ben Renkema and Boyd Johnson discuss the journey to creating a 6-event race series in North and South Carolina. The team share their passion for the Southeast region and the desire to create a competitive, yet inclusive series to serve the area.
Southeast Gravel Website
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Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos):
Southeast Gravel
Craig Dalton: [00:00:00]Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the show, we've got Ben Renkema and Boyd Johnson. Founders of the southeast gravel series
[00:00:15] As you know, I love talking to event organizers because I think they're the lifeblood of the community and the sport. It's great having people put effort in and in the southeast ben and boyd have been
[00:00:26]Contributing to the community for a number of years, both as riders and racers and Boyd as the founder of Boyd cycling.
[00:00:34]The team decided to create a six events series throughout 2021 with the falling Creek pinnacle Punisher, actually coming up this weekend, May 8th. So if you're in the region, make sure to grab a slot.
[00:00:47]There are three additional races stretching out to October 2nd. So if you're in the region or fancy a trip to the region, there's still time to get some great racing in.
[00:00:56]Before we get into the show, I've got to thank long time program sponsor athletic greens. The most comprehensive daily nutritional beverage i've ever tried.
[00:01:04]As gravel cyclists were often required to go super deep in our rides to reach those milestones we're shooting for. And if you're like me, you struggle a little bit with your nutrition and that's where athletic greens comes in and helps.
[00:01:18]Athletic greens contains 75 vitamins minerals and whole food sourced ingredients, including a multivitamin multi-mineral probiotic
[00:01:26]Green superfood blend and more that all work together [00:01:30] to fill the nutritional gaps in your diet increase energy. Focus aid with digestion and support a healthy immune system. All without the needs to take multiple products or pills. That's the key for me. I love taking a drink every morning and just knowing that I've got my nutritional basis covered for my athletic greens use. I like to mix it with ice and on big ride days, I'll actually take it after the ride, as well as my daily drink in the morning. I've been an athletic greens user for many years prior to this podcast. So I was super excited to have them come on board as a sponsor. And even more excited that they've been a long-term sponsor. If you're interested in checking out athletic greens, simply visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride.
[00:02:15]
[00:02:15]And if you do so today they're throwing in a year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs. So remember, visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride.
[00:02:26]With all that said let's dive right in to my conversation with Ben and Boyd about the Southeast gravel series.
[00:02:32]Gentlemen. Welcome to the show.
[00:02:34]
[00:02:34]
[00:02:34]
[00:02:34] Ben Renkema: [00:02:34] Thanks for having us.
[00:02:35] Craig Dalton: [00:02:35] Yeah. Happy to be here again. Yeah. Excited to have you back Boyd and happy to meet you Ben for the listener, we had boy Johnson on the show.
[00:02:43] I think it was episode 30 back in 2019. Talking about Boyd's experience as a writer. As well as the founder and owner of Boyd cycling, a great wheel manufacturer out there in South Carolina. So I encourage you to go [00:03:00] back and listen to that Boyd. You're in rarefied air of being a two time guest on the show.
[00:03:04] I think there's only two or three others in that group.
[00:03:06]Boyd Johnson: [00:03:06] That's good to be in that company. Yeah.
[00:03:09] Craig Dalton: [00:03:09] Cool, Ben, welcome to the show for the first time. We always start by getting a little bit of your background as a writer. If you could just start by, just give us a quick synopsis of how you came to the sport and how ultimately you ended up riding off road on gravel bikes.
[00:03:24] Ben Renkema: [00:03:24] Definitely. So I like to tell people that I've been riding gravel since, Oh, the early two thousands. I grew up in Holland, Michigan, and before I even knew bike racing was a thing. He used to take my crappy road bike and just bombed down gravel roads. Cause that's what we had a lot of. About a year later, I found out bike racing was a thing.
[00:03:40]So I went with my best friend did my first bike race. And that was it started as a mountain bike race, or mostly gotten into road racing. About 2007, started racing at a professional level on the road, did that all the way until halfway through 2019. And then, yeah, partway between that, Boyd and I were teammates for awhile And yeah, we both had this common we'd love to explore, ride off road on road bikes.
[00:04:04]And that's kinda how Southeast gravel came about.
[00:04:07] Craig Dalton: [00:04:07] Nice. And if I'm not mistaken, you spent a little time with some stars and stripes on your back.
[00:04:12] Ben Renkema: [00:04:12] I did. Yeah. I was lucky enough to have won three national championships as a cyclist. I'm the best one being 2017 elite national championships for the criterium which, trying to win that race for a long time.
[00:04:25] So I was super stoked to win that. Nice.
[00:04:27] Craig Dalton: [00:04:27] A good way to go out. And probably 2019 [00:04:30] was a good time to end a professional career on the road. Given what happened in 2020.
[00:04:34] Ben Renkema: [00:04:34] Oh, it made it very easy to end my career that I had a heart condition halfway through 2019. It forced me into, retiring.
[00:04:42]But I'll tell you what, 2020, when no one was racing, it wasn't as hard as it should have been.
[00:04:48] Craig Dalton: [00:04:48] I bet. I bet it gave you a little bit more time to think about gravel. I imagine
[00:04:52] Ben Renkema: [00:04:52] exactly. Yup. What's really important. So
[00:04:56] Craig Dalton: [00:04:56] gentlemen, why don't you tell everybody where in the country you're located and then I'm excited to get into the Southeast gravel series?
[00:05:04] I think it's a real unique set of events and I was excited to watch the last one unfold on Instagram.
[00:05:13] Boyd Johnson: [00:05:13] Yeah, so Ben and I both live in Greenville, South Carolina. He was actually living in Florida and he was talking about moving up to Greenville. I think this was 2012. And he was working at a bike shop.
[00:05:24] He had been building some wheels and so we actually hired him as one of our first wheel builders and got him to move to Greenville. And we've been here ever since. He started his own company outside of. Southeast gravel as well. And so he's no longer working for Boyd cycling, we remained friends and we run Southeast gravel together and we run that out of Greenville.
[00:05:45] Craig Dalton: [00:05:45] How did the series come about? Is this the first year for it, or did you have events prior to 2021?
[00:05:51] Boyd Johnson: [00:05:51] So this is technically the third year. It's funny. The first year just happened by accident. I'm a big map geek. I like to go out and find [00:06:00] new roads and I plotted a 80 mile course down by Clinton, South Carolina.
[00:06:06] And after I got done with it, there was not a single Strava segment on the course. And I was like, Oh, we have to turn this into an event. And so I just put out a Facebook message a post and I said, Hey, Joe, just did this ride who would be interested in a cycling event up here. And 200 people commented and said that they would come out to it.
[00:06:25] So we quickly made a bike Ridge. Paige started the event and we got 200 people to come to that first one. We really, it wasn't even Southeast gravel at the time. We didn't really even have a name for the event or anything like that. Ben came and raced it. And I think Ben, you got second or third place.
[00:06:43] And after that we were talking about it and we knew that we had to make the series even bigger and better.
[00:06:50] Ben Renkema: [00:06:50] Absolutely. Yep. Yeah. I think it was like that afternoon to the next day. Boyd's this is going to be a thing, like I need your help. Let's do this together. And I was a hundred percent on board.
[00:07:00] Craig Dalton: [00:07:00] Amazing. I remember from our earlier conversation, Boyd, your love of adventure and just getting out there and discovering the lesser known gravel roads in your neck of the woods.
[00:07:12] Boyd Johnson: [00:07:12] Yeah. And a lot of times, when I go out for an exploration ride, it's usually by myself because. Sometimes I find an amazing route like that.
[00:07:19] And other times I ended up just hiking through the woods for awhile, carrying my bike with me.
[00:07:24] Craig Dalton: [00:07:24] It's important to know your partners when you're going out for an adventure and what they're actually going to get into for sure.
[00:07:31] [00:07:30] Ben Renkema: [00:07:31] Yeah, boy, Boyd has a little bit of reputation in Greenville. Eventually everyone started calling them Boyd rides where, he would try to get his friends to come with them, but everybody knew that.
[00:07:41] Okay. We're probably going to be carrying our bikes through the woods. But it's funny. It's full circle. Now people pay us for that pleasure.
[00:07:49] Craig Dalton: [00:07:49] Nice. Can you characterize the roads of South and North Carolina that you tend to. Tend towards for these gravel events.
[00:07:58] Boyd Johnson: [00:07:58] So a lot of the, it's very different because we've got six different events.
[00:08:02]Most of the gravel that we have it's cars can travel down the road. There's very rarely a situation where you're gonna find where vehicles can't get to. The brace we just had, we have a little bit of single track in there, but it's only about a mile or so Some of the roads are big, chunky gravel, and others are, you can ride a road bike on them.
[00:08:21] No problem.
[00:08:23] Craig Dalton: [00:08:23] Gotcha. So as far as equipment choices go, it sounds a fairly narrow tire would suit for most of the courses.
[00:08:30] Ben Renkema: [00:08:30] I would say we, we've got our first two events while our first event is Clinton. We actually in 2019, our winner did it on a road bike with 32 mill tire. That being said he was a very skilled professional not something that everybody wants to do.
[00:08:45] And then we have, I would say our roughest course is May 8th coming up falling Creek, pinnacle Punisher, that's something where you're gonna really want more of a 40 to 42 mil tire. Something even bigger if you want to be comfortable and have lot of competence, because [00:09:00] there are big boulders there's, big, gnarly gravel fast downhills with rough rocks.
[00:09:04]And I think that's what makes Southeast gravel so cool is it's not just one event. It's very different. Yeah.
[00:09:10] Craig Dalton: [00:09:10] So as you guys have laid it out, I believe it's a six event series. Is that correct? Yes. And starting in March, fairly early in the season and ending in October, obviously that's a, a full cycling season journey for the athletes as you laid out the courses.
[00:09:28] Did you think about that? And did you think about adding elevation or complexity and technicality to the courses over the journey of the series?
[00:09:37] Ben Renkema: [00:09:37] Yeah, we definitely put a good amount of thought into it. Originally the first event, which is the gravel battle of Semper forest was earlier, it was kind of February.
[00:09:46]But I think 20, 20 Boyd, correct me if I'm wrong. I think it was like 30 degrees at the start. And so we decided to move it, a little later we put it into March. It what we did is we took our two S Southern most events that are, lower elevation. And we put those early in the year because it's usually about 10 to 15 degrees warmer that far South of Greenville, which is when you go North of Greenville kind of up into the mountains, it gets pretty cool.
[00:10:10]So we stuck our events more towards the summer that are up in the mountains where it's cooler. So that was our thinking for that. And then also we wanted the. Doing air quotes here, the easier course, which would be the Clinton and the Greenwood chorus earlier in the year, just because, a lot of people don't have as much fitness yet.
[00:10:27] So start with kind of the easier courses
[00:10:30] [00:10:30] Craig Dalton: [00:10:30] and are the core, are you offering multiple distances for the athletes during each event?
[00:10:36] Boyd Johnson: [00:10:36] Yeah each one has a a short and a long, and the thing with the Southeast gravel series is, It's not the ultra endurance gravel that, some events are popular with.
[00:10:47] So our distances tend to be between 30 to 40 miles for the short course, and then between 60 to 70 for the long course.
[00:10:55] Craig Dalton: [00:10:55] Great. Yeah. I actually liked that. That's my sweet spot. I found that kind of. Extension of this ultra endurance race kind of category doesn't necessarily fit with me personally.
[00:11:07]I did my Leadville one hundreds, and I did that stuff when I was a little bit younger, but now it's nice. If it's a hundred K, I feel like I can go out there regardless of what my family duties have taken me away from my training. And I can still have a great day and it could feel APIC, but I'm not absolutely destroyed afterwards.
[00:11:25] Ben Renkema: [00:11:25] Yeah, absolutely. It's something where, you can, you could do this event every weekend. And it's a lot of the racing that Boyd and I personally are used to, going into a criterium or, sub a hundred mile road race. It's not something you have to train months for.
[00:11:39] Craig Dalton: [00:11:39] I also think it's neat. Sorry to interrupt, but I'd also think it's neat that you designed the earlier courses to be a little bit, maybe more beginner and intermediate friendly, just in terms of the profile and elevation so that someone can get into the sport early and get a taste of what riding and event might be like.
[00:11:56] And then train up and learn the technicality for those more [00:12:00] mountainous stages or races later in the year.
[00:12:04] Boyd Johnson: [00:12:04] Yeah, I think, we get the question all the time. It's I don't really race my bike. I want to come out and, can I just ride this? And so having some of the, easier to rain courses earlier in the season and less people get out and we encourage all levels of people to come out.
[00:12:19]Whether you're averaging eight or 28 miles per hour, it's got a course for you. And we've had a ton of people where each event, we have so many people where it's their first ever gravel event and they come out, they have a good time and they're hooked and they want to do more of them.
[00:12:34] And if they never want to race, it's great. We have rest stops. We've got food afterwards. It's a great community atmosphere.
[00:12:41] Craig Dalton: [00:12:41] Yeah. How have you seen over the last few years, the gravel cycling community in the Carolinas start to grow up?
[00:12:47]Ben Renkema: [00:12:47] It's definitely growing a lot. I actually went and did a.
[00:12:51] A group ride yesterday up in Bravard, which is a little North of Greenville. And there was a lot of people telling me that, man, I've had people coming into the bike shop here in they're buying real gravel bikes because they're like, there's this, the series called Southeast gravel and we're doing all of them and we want to get better.
[00:13:06]We're buying a more specific bike for it. And yeah, my wife and I Christie with our company. We're a coaching company and we have so many of our normal athletes that are runners that are triathletes road cyclists, and they're getting into gravel just because, Hey, everyone's doing it.
[00:13:21] I want to try it. And they try it and they just absolutely love it.
[00:13:25] Craig Dalton: [00:13:25] Yeah, it's certainly been a great couple of years. And I think one of the other things I love about the [00:13:30] series aspect of what you're doing is if you're local to Greenville and picking up a gravel bike, you can look at a series like this and just get in your mind.
[00:13:38]These are areas where I can ride and train all year long, irrespective of race day. And I can get out there and know where other gravel athletes are putting down some miles.
[00:13:50] Boyd Johnson: [00:13:50] Yeah. And on our website, one of the things we have is, for every event we have instructions for, if you want to come out and pre-read the course, here's where you park, here's the course file information like that.
[00:14:01]Some of our some of our events, then you can't park there on race day. So we give alternate parking places. So you can go out and just ride the course. That
[00:14:09] Craig Dalton: [00:14:09] makes sense. That's awesome. I love that about the gravel cycling community, that across the board, everybody's very giving about information and it's so great to see you facilitating that at the Southeast gravel website hub.
[00:14:24] Can we talk a little bit more about some of the more mountainous races. I think you were talking about the fallen Creek, pinnacle Punisher and the race to Valhalla. What are those courses like in terms of technicality, how much elevation, how much climbing is happening during those events?
[00:14:40]Boyd Johnson: [00:14:40] Both of those you're going to get over a thousand feet per 10 miles.
[00:14:44]And I can't remember. I know that the Hala is 69 miles, 7,400 feet of climbing. That course actually has the least amount of gravel. It's got some very long gravel sections, but there's road in between them. But the cool thing with that is you're [00:15:00] in the very Northwest corner of South Carolina near the Georgia and sorry, North Carolina border.
[00:15:06] And. That area, no traffic up there. You get some very cool roads. Great scenery. So that's by far our hardest course, but it's also the one where it's just enjoyable to go out and ride.
[00:15:19] Ben Renkema: [00:15:19] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think the ball Hala course. We haven't had an event there yet. This will be the first one. Yeah, Boyd's right.
[00:15:26] It's right at 70 miles. It's 7,000 feet of climbing and it is the least amount of gravel of any of our courses. But I guarantee you, I don't think anyone's going to complain about that. Cause the gravel is hard and the road sections that are on the course are beautiful. There's some really nice paved road climbs.
[00:15:42]So it's not like when you are on the pavement, they're not like these kind of crummy transfer road stages where a lot of traffic they're beautiful. And so same thing with the wall holler course with our Clinton and Greenwood, boy, I, we whipped this course together just based off of maps and, looking at, Google, well maps.
[00:16:00] And I went out there one day early in the morning and I just wrote it, the 70 miles. And immediately I called Boyd. I said, this is perfect. I don't think we should change the course at all. This is incredibly ideal and I uploaded to Strava and there are two people. They have ever written the most of the gravel sections on the course and the one really hard climb that I think is the coolest part.
[00:16:21] And of course two people have ever written it. Which I thought that was the coolest thing. Yeah.
[00:16:25] Craig Dalton: [00:16:25] That's amazing. I talked to another a couple other sort of regional groups that are putting together [00:16:30] events and it's funny when they. Talk about how the locals are just amazed and flabbergasted that all of a sudden on a weekend, you're now getting a dozen riders out there, training in these rural communities that see very little car traffic, let alone cycling traffic.
[00:16:48] Ben Renkema: [00:16:48] Yeah we get that a lot. It's pretty funny. Like, why are all these people suddenly coming to Greenwood, South Carolina? Like it doesn't make any sense.
[00:16:56] Craig Dalton: [00:16:56] Did we talked about how this is this six race series? Are you tracking athletes performance in each race and doing a kind of overall season long competition?
[00:17:07] Boyd Johnson: [00:17:07] Yeah. Each one of the six races, as soon as you enter one of them you're eligible for the omnium. We've got a points calculator and it actually tracks it as soon as you've finished, we know your omnium results and we can track that. And so we do a year long series for omnium points as well.
[00:17:23] Craig Dalton: [00:17:23] Nice. And you're a couple events down already, and I imagine, a lot of the men and women athletes that have been attending, are you seeing throughout the series different skillsets that are favoring. One type of athlete versus another start to emerge?
[00:17:40] Ben Renkema: [00:17:40] I think so definitely. I'm really excited for falling Creek coming up May 8th because now we start to get into the climbing.
[00:17:47] I was actually just talking to two of my athletes and one of my teammates the one did really well at the first two events. But he's not going to do so great at the next one. Just because he's a bigger, more powerful rider. Yeah, so it's exciting to [00:18:00] see that, if you don't do great in the flatter ones, but you're a climber.
[00:18:03] Okay. Now it's your chance to shine and vice versa.
[00:18:06] Craig Dalton: [00:18:06] Yeah. Just out of curiosity with you mentioned that you've got your new coaching organization that you've been working on red rocket revolution.com is the URL for the coaching services, right? Yes. Yep. And so for that athlete, the bigger guy who's does well on the lower elevation and lower climbing routes.
[00:18:27] What type of transition are you making for him as a coach to try to make him as competitive as possible when it starts going uphill more?
[00:18:34]Ben Renkema: [00:18:34] It's a lot of mental. A lot of the people that we work with me being a racer, I was always a sprinter and I would go into these races. And think, okay, there's climbing, I'm not a climber.
[00:18:45] And so guess what, the second back climb starts, you just give up and you don't even try. So of course, changing the training up a little bit but just mental, like it is so much mental people don't realize that, that, okay. There is a lot of descending on the score still, and there's still some plat riding.
[00:19:00] You never know what's going to happen. You just get on that climb, you ride your pace that, you can hold. Maybe don't try to stay with the leader, stay within your limit and then race your strengths on the dissents and the flats. So really, I think just kinda, in between a year is just the mental
[00:19:15] Craig Dalton: [00:19:15] game.
[00:19:15] Yeah. There, I think there's a lot to that in gravel, in general. Just the idea that everybody around you is going to be suffering at some point. And this is obviously extendable to cycling in general, just knowing that everybody's going to be [00:19:30] hurting. And it's the athletes that can push through that. And keep motivated, keep moving forward, always moving forward.
[00:19:36] Those are the people who are going to Excel in gravel racing.
[00:19:39] Boyd Johnson: [00:19:39] Yeah. And I think a good example of what Ben was just talking about. If you watch the video for the Greenwood gravel
[00:19:45] Craig Dalton: [00:19:45] grinder
[00:19:45] Boyd Johnson: [00:19:45] after the first card sacks and you had a lead group of five riders and, you may have looked at that of Oh, the FA the strongest five or up the road. And, but the second and third group caught up with them after 20 miles and all of a sudden it's a whole new race.
[00:20:01] Craig Dalton: [00:20:01] Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was interesting.
[00:20:02] And I do want to get into your Instagram coverage cause I felt like to a degree I was there, which was awesome. I agree. I was watching it and I think Ben was commentating out there and there was the lead group up the road and it felt like a foregone conclusion. And then all of a sudden, boom, you had this big group bridge up and it was really fun to be part of the action.
[00:20:23] Ben Renkema: [00:20:23] Yeah, it was cool. And I think even, when I was doing my on the motorcycle announcing, I was like this is our six rider group. Like this is it for the day. But I was actually quite surprised that we had three groups once we hit the first pavement section and it all came together.
[00:20:38] So I think we had 30 people going into kind of the first hard little climb of the day. And I was super surprised by that. But really cool to watch that
[00:20:47] Craig Dalton: [00:20:47] happen. Yeah, for the listener I was watching via the Southeast gravel, Instagram account, the same weekend as rock cobbler was going on out in California.
[00:20:57] And it had some other coverage from the team at [00:21:00] pure gravel. It was just a lot of fun as a fan of the sport to be able to see those two events. Can we talk a little bit about your vision for how to cover these events? That it's incredibly complicated. You're out there in a Mo motorcycle, trying to get as much footage as you can.
[00:21:15]What did you learn? And as a fan who saw it, great job getting out there. What did you learn in this event and what are you going to try to do in future events to keep fans around the country and around the region watching and participating from their armchairs?
[00:21:30] Ben Renkema: [00:21:30] Yeah, totally. The coolest thing about having six events in one year is we can.
[00:21:35] Quickly make changes and make things better. In that, see, we have all these categories of things, the food, the courses the coverage. So what I want to do better for the next time is I'm actually going to put some on them, someone on the motorcycle with me so I can get closer to the group safely and get that.
[00:21:51]Inside of the group coverage, really seeing those paint faces get a really good shot of, okay, who are these riders? And the biggest thing that's been a struggle from for me doing this on my own is I want to get coverage of the women's race. Especially our first event. We had 40 pro women out there.
[00:22:07]But unfortunately as the lead Modo, I have to stay with that lead group for several reasons. If our core signs get taken down by some time locals I have signs that I put back up just to make sure no one gets off course. And then at the few busy intersections we have, I do stop the traffic.
[00:22:25] For the front public groups. So what we're going to do is we're actually going to put people on course at our rest stops that [00:22:30] are gonna be logged into the Instagram. So they'll do live updates of, okay. Here's the lead group of the women. Here's the second group, here's the third group. And so on.
[00:22:38]So yeah, we just want to beef that up, not just show the very front of the
[00:22:42] Craig Dalton: [00:22:42] race. That'd be great. So Instagram fans May 8th is the next one. Then July 10th, following that I'll have a link to the Instagram account and the website in the show notes. I think it's super cool and exciting that you're out there doing that.
[00:22:58] Ben Renkema: [00:22:58] Yeah, it's a, it's definitely a fun way to watch the race unfold. When we did the first event, Clinton, it was an absolutely massive group going into the first section of gravel. Looked like Stratta Bianche with all the dust. And part of me was like, I am so glad I'm not in that group.
[00:23:13] But also I was like, man, I wish I asked that
[00:23:16] Craig Dalton: [00:23:16] group. I can only imagine. I sort of sense that as you were giving your commentary that you'd be itching to get out there. If you weren't one of the people running the event.
[00:23:27] Ben Renkema: [00:23:27] Absolutely.
[00:23:28] Craig Dalton: [00:23:28] Yeah. One of the challenges I think, which is a bit of a bummer, I was going through the Southeast gravel, Instagram account and, the way Instagram stories work, they don't save and retain themselves.
[00:23:39] So it was unfortunate that I couldn't go back and rewatch any of the footage prior to this conversation.
[00:23:46] Ben Renkema: [00:23:46] So actually if you go to our Instagram account I've made highlight reels. Great. So yeah, if you actually look down the highlights I've saved, so you've got Clinton and you've got Greenwood's, you can go back and actually rewatch all of it.
[00:23:58] And what I did [00:24:00] is I actually also downloaded those using just the race coverage clips and maybe a video that's on YouTube. Oh,
[00:24:08] Craig Dalton: [00:24:08] perfect. Yes.
[00:24:09] Ben Renkema: [00:24:09] You can actually go back to Southeast gravel and Instagram. You can actually rewatch it, which is cool, but a lot of people that's. Yeah. It's easy to miss.
[00:24:17] Craig Dalton: [00:24:17] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I might have to pick your brain offline to figure out how to do that myself.
[00:24:23] Ben Renkema: [00:24:23] It's actually I'm not a super techie person. It's like intricate complicated, but once you've learned how to do it, it's pretty easy. Yeah.
[00:24:29] Craig Dalton: [00:24:29] That's good to know. I did it early on in the pandemic.
[00:24:32] I started doing a little bit of Instagram live recording of this podcast and it was fun. But at the end of the day it was just hard to say for me to figure out how to save that content. So I ended up moving away from it, but maybe I'll revisit it a little bit in this coming year. As I get out there to some more events.
[00:24:49] Definitely. Is there anything else you guys want to share about, you got four more events coming throughout this season. Anything you want to share to athletes who may be planning on registering for those events or otherwise?
[00:25:02]Boyd Johnson: [00:25:02] I think the main man passages, the people who are coming out, they're having a blast.
[00:25:06]You have people that worried if they're going to be fit enough to do it. We've had long people or people who do the long course. And halfway through, they realized that maybe they should transfer to the short course and we can adjust the result on the fly. Really, we just want people coming out and joining the roads, having a good time.
[00:25:24]We've got a really good community atmosphere with, free lunch afterwards. We've got a really good beer [00:25:30] sponsor and it's just a great time, a great day on the bike.
[00:25:35] Ben Renkema: [00:25:35] Yeah, I absolutely agree with that and to piggyback off that is, I like to tell people. This is if you're a pro bike racer.
[00:25:43] Yeah. You're going to have a lot of fun. There's awesome competition. But the Mo most of the people out here are not bike racers. And that's what I love about gravel is, being a criteria, my road racer it's if you're a beginner, you go out there we've all seen it. You get dropped two laps in, you get pulled off the course okay, I drove three hours for a five minute race.
[00:26:03] And it's probably embarrassing. That's not what grapple is. We have people who take, who average eight miles an hour for the day. And our pros usually average about 23 miles for the day. So you do not have to be a bike racer to come to these events. Most of the people doing them are not it's fun.
[00:26:19] We've got rest stops and yeah, you finish up, you can drink some ONTAP Thomas Creek beer usually at barbecue or burrito. So it's awesome.
[00:26:27] Craig Dalton: [00:26:27] Nice. And where are you seeing riders come in from, to get to these events? That how big of a draw regionally?
[00:26:35] Boyd Johnson: [00:26:35] Obviously mainly, we get a lot from the Carolinas from Georgia.
[00:26:38]We've been starting to get people from Florida coming up. Some of our first people that registered for the whole series are from Florida. Recently we've had a really big draw from the Washington DC area. And we've got some writers up there that are, trying to get more of their friends to come down to the series.
[00:26:54] So we really appreciate that. I don't think because we have the six events I don't think any [00:27:00] one of them is particularly going to be a bucket list where, like you have people flying from all over the world to do an Unbound. We've got a little bit more manageable where, you're coming it's okay.
[00:27:10]One day or a weekend event y'all have to plant, a week and a half of travel around it.
[00:27:15] Craig Dalton: [00:27:15] Yeah, that makes sense. So not any one of the events is deemed the queen of the series per se.
[00:27:26] Ben Renkema: [00:27:26] Yeah,
[00:27:27] Boyd Johnson: [00:27:27] Clinton won the battle of Sumpter forest. The first one that we had, because we've had that now for three years, that's been our largest attendance. It's the first, one of the year, people are itching to get out and ride their bike in a competitive environment. I think the Valhalla one has the potential to be that really hard challenge that people are looking for.
[00:27:46]So each one is unique and its own
[00:27:48] Craig Dalton: [00:27:48] aspect. Yeah. Nice. And then, regionally, are you seeing more and more events crop up in 2021 that hadn't existed before we started to see a growing trend in that region for more events?
[00:28:03] Boyd Johnson: [00:28:03] Yeah. I There's obviously more gravel racing that happens. Ben and I have already gone and done a few races this year. But we've had some pretty good staples in the area for a while. Southern cross up in Northern Georgia, we've got monster cross and Pisgah. We just went down and did the swamp
[00:28:18] Ben Renkema: [00:28:18] pretty good.
[00:28:20] Boyd Johnson: [00:28:20] So there's a good series, a good amount of events that happen around
[00:28:24] Craig Dalton: [00:28:24] here. Yeah, it certainly seems as a region Southeast has had gravel athletes [00:28:30] for many years now that have been standouts and a lot of participants out of that region.
[00:28:37] Ben Renkema: [00:28:37] And we get a good
[00:28:38] Boyd Johnson: [00:28:38] draw. We get a good draw because we've got such a good mountain bike scene here.
[00:28:42] And the road scene been really good too. And gravel is where the mountain bikers and the road riders are starting to play with each other.
[00:28:49] Ben Renkema: [00:28:49] Yup.
[00:28:50] Craig Dalton: [00:28:50] Okay. Yeah. It's super interesting. Are you, do you get a sense that more getting drawn from one sport or the other.
[00:28:57] Ben Renkema: [00:28:57] No, I, what I've noticed is it's an absolutely mix.
[00:28:59]So Clinton, our first event this year, where we just had an absolutely massive profield for men and women, it's evenly split. W there's a lot of pro mountain bikers that live up in Bravard kind of Asheville area. And they were, they all came out. And then we had. A handful of pro road racer.
[00:29:15]So I think it's a really even split. And then also cross racers. We had a handful of legit cross racers who live up in Asheville. So I think it's a really like pretty much 50, 50 split of mountain bikers and roadies. Yeah,
[00:29:28] Craig Dalton: [00:29:28] I guess that makes sense. As the bikes have become more capable.
[00:29:30] I remember starting out as a mountain bike racer, begrudgingly getting a road bike because I knew I needed to train on the road in order to be competitive as a mountain biker. But I suppose today you're probably not going out and buying a pure road bike. If you're a mountain bike, you're getting one of these gravel bikes and then falling in love with all the great things about.
[00:29:49] Drop bar riding on road and mixed terrain, and then discovering, Hey, this can really push me even as a technical mountain biker riding these drop bars on these [00:30:00] trails can really push me and challenge me in a way that's super exciting.
[00:30:05] Ben Renkema: [00:30:05] Definitely.
[00:30:06] Craig Dalton: [00:30:06] Yeah. Gentlemen, thank you so much for the overview of Southeast gravel.
[00:30:10] As I said, I'll put all the appropriate links in the show notes for this, and I hope you guys have a successful series. Awesome. You're
[00:30:18] Ben Renkema: [00:30:18] going gonna, you're gonna, you're going to come out and race with us, right?
[00:30:21] Craig Dalton: [00:30:21] I hope to, and I've been itching to get to some East coast events for a long time. I thought last year was going to be a year of great gravel travel for me, but obviously that imploded.
[00:30:31] So I'm slowly getting around to the idea of getting on a plane and getting out there. So I would definitely love to hit some of your events,
[00:30:40]Ben Renkema: [00:30:40] but we'd love to have you.
[00:30:42]Craig Dalton: [00:30:42] Big, thanks for that invitation, Ben and Boyd. And thank you for joining us this week on the gravel ride podcast. Great to learn more about the Southeast gravel series. I love that it's a year long series of events. I think that's so great for a region in nor Cal. We have the grasshopper series, which I know is the cornerstone for many bay area athletes. And I imagine Southeast gravel does the same duty. They're in the southeast region
[00:31:07]I'll have all the appropriate links to their accounts and websites in our show notes.
[00:31:12]And if you're looking for regional information as a gravel cyclist, I encourage you to join the ridership. The ridership is an online forum where a gravel cyclists are connecting on a regional basis, as well as discussing the macro trends in the industry. It's also the number one way to get in touch [00:31:30] with me or provide feedback about the show. Simply visit www.theridership.com for your free membership
[00:31:38]And if you're interested in supporting the show further, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride.
[00:31:46]I genuinely appreciate all the contributions that have been made today to cover the overhead of the show. And it gives me a little fire in my belly to keep churning out the episodes. Until next time. Here's defining some dirt under your wheels
This week Randall and Craig take a look at the new Cervelo Aspero and discuss its fit in the spectrum of gravel bikes. We then dive head first into a discussion of the myriad of ways one achieves suspension on a gravel bike.
Automated Transcript, please excuse the errors
In the Dirt 20
Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]Hello and welcome to in the dirt from the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. I'll be joined shortly by my cohost Randall Jacobs.
[00:00:13]Each week we muse about gravel cycling and how it's fitting into our lives.
[00:00:18] These episodes are supported by listeners. Like you simply visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride to support the podcast. Additionally we encourage you to visit the ridership a free global cycling community
[00:00:33] It's something we created to serve the cycling community. And also serve as a back channel for any suggestions you had for the podcast
[00:00:41]With all that said let's dive right into my conversation with Randall. . hey Randall,
[00:00:46] how are you doing?
[00:00:47]
[00:00:47] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:00:47] I'm doing well, Craig,
[00:00:48] Craig Dalton: [00:00:48] how are you? I'm doing okay. A little bit rainy day here in Marin. So I'm glad I got a nice ride in yesterday.
[00:00:55] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:00:55] Very much needed given the water table throughout California and fire risks coming up next season. So not a bad thing.
[00:01:03] Craig Dalton: [00:01:03] Yeah. Fortunately they were actually, so I looked at the weather forecast and I made sure I got our ride in on Friday, which was great to see you. And then I got a nice ride in on Saturday.
[00:01:11] So I feel relatively fulfilled with my last few days of riding.
[00:01:16] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:01:16] Excellent. Yeah, I've gotten been back on the bikes since being back in the Bay and I've gotten a few rides in with friends and it's been great. Two people who are vaccinated. The statistics increasingly show that the risk of transmission is exceedingly [00:01:30] low, at least with the variants that are out there now.
[00:01:32] And so being able to go out for a ride with a friend and not have it be, something that has to be overly worried about is quite a relief.
[00:01:39]Craig Dalton: [00:01:39] Absolutely. I think we talked about this maybe on the last, in the dirt. It is a little bit awkward right now. I We run into people on the trails and there's still, I'm pulling my mask up to be courteous, but it, I feel like there's going to need to be some statements by the government to say, Hey, it's okay to be outside.
[00:01:54] If you're not, if you're vaccinated and eventually we can get back to normal trail use.
[00:02:00] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:02:00] Yeah. There's a lot that shows that outdoor mask usage, when you have a lot of space can be somewhat performative. But I do think that, especially in dense urban areas, there's still some value to that.
[00:02:11] And plus people are just getting over this traumatic experience of Being afraid of this pandemic. And so when I'm out and about, I have my mask with me and if I pass somebody even if I'm sufficiently distant, if they're wearing a mask, I honor their boundaries by putting my mask up and just, just so everyone is comfortable, but we're slowly getting to a greater degree of normalcy while at the same time needing to remain vigilant.
[00:02:34] Yeah.
[00:02:35] Craig Dalton: [00:02:35] Yeah. And we certainly have to acknowledge that other parts of the world aren't. Getting as close as we are to returning back to normalcy. So keep masking up, keep protecting yourself and keep protecting others for sure. Yeah. Yeah. But on, onto the gravel world, I saw pretty cool announcement from about their newest Sparrow.
[00:02:53] Did you catch
[00:02:54] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:02:54] that? I did. Yeah, it seems that they have shed some weights and gone internal with all the [00:03:00] cables and hoses and the I also,
[00:03:02] Craig Dalton: [00:03:02] they did a good job of, aesthetically, it's a sexy, fast looking bike and I've always appreciated that they're very much in this race, bike category, which may not be for everybody.
[00:03:13] But I think it is for some, and it's, it's an attractive package.
[00:03:17] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:03:17] Yeah, and it's in the same mode of the, endurance, roadie type geometry. So this could be an excellent bike as the one bike for everything. Yeah. It's 72 head angle reasonably sporty handling and so on.
[00:03:30]And they have this flip chip that is interesting in the fork too. So it's in the fork, the flip chip.
[00:03:35] Craig Dalton: [00:03:35] Correct. And what's that
[00:03:36] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:03:36] all about? So the way that, that they're marketing it in the way that they've implemented, it is it's really a way to maintain the same trail figure when you have tires of different radius.
[00:03:49] And so if you have a six 50 by 47 tire, right? That's going to be 10 millimeters less radius than a 700 by 40. If you go 700 by 45, it's 15 millimeters. But just taking those two sizes. So it's going to be about 10, 10, 11 millimeters difference, depending on tire pressure and things like that.
[00:04:07] And so they have a flip chip in there that keeps their, the trail figure at, around 58, 58 and a half millimeters, which they. Have defined as the sweet spot. And so if that's important to you to maintain the same trail with two different wheel tire volumes tire radio, and then that can be useful.
[00:04:24] Craig Dalton: [00:04:24] So not effect of that. So what when for the uninitiated, what does that trail figure when you're [00:04:30] designing a bike and you said that, that 58 or whatever was what they thought was the ideal is that have to do with the steering quickness, the stability. What does it, how does it play out?
[00:04:41] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:04:41] He can think of it partially as quickness. It's really like the proponent. It's also the propensity of the bison to want to travel in a straight line. And so it's hard to explain without a diagram, but just in terms of numbers, yeah. A lower trail figure is going to be a little bit more responsive.
[00:04:59] So the ratio of input at the steering to output in terms of turning and so on we'll be great. Will be greater versus a. Larger trail figure, getting into 60, 65 or so that's going to be slower handling. So the inputs at the steering are going to be result in less outputs in terms of the bicycle actually turning.
[00:05:19]Craig Dalton: [00:05:19] Okay. So if you talk about extremes, like if we talk about a chopper, that's got a very extreme high trail number. And as everybody can imagine riding a choppered out bicycle, when you turn the handlebar, it's very slow to steer.
[00:05:34] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:05:34] Correct. And you end up with another problem. Which when you're talking about subtle differences in trail and, relatively steep head angles and the like, 70 to 73 range then you know, we'll flop, isn't an issue, but if you've ever been on like a really slacked out mountain bike, you'll notice that like the bicycle when it's straight.
[00:05:54] It's at one height. And then when you turn it one way or another, the bicycle actually drops a little bit. So the bicycle has a natural [00:06:00] propensity to want to turn in. And in fact, the more it's turning the faster it's going to turn. Cause there's the weight, your weights pressing down is causing that turning it's supporting that turning.
[00:06:11]And so that, that can be an issue when bikes get really,
[00:06:13] Craig Dalton: [00:06:13] so that's the net effect on climbing, but the net effect on descending, if we talk about on the mountain bike side is. Just stability through rough
[00:06:21] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:06:21] terrain, correct? Correct. And also when you're descending, you're, you're pointed downhill.
[00:06:27] So your head angle relative to the downward vector of gravity is going to be more steep when you're going downhill. And so the steering characteristics are different. And so there's a bunch the variables here.
[00:06:39] Craig Dalton: [00:06:39] Yeah. No, it makes sense. As I jumped from my. Heavily cross-country oriented 29 or a mountain bike to a more kind of all mountain bike that was full suspension.
[00:06:49] It became way back in Slack and climbing became maybe less fun, but descending became a hell of a lot more fun. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Particular bike. I know if with the gravel athlete, a lot of times maybe you don't get into thinking about the geometry and what it's going to do when you're buying the bike, but you mentioned that.
[00:07:09]The flip ship is just making it a neutral change between tire sizes. If you had two wheel sets on there, right?
[00:07:16] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:07:16] Yeah. And neutral in terms of, again, this trail figure. So steering input to steering output and the propensity of the bike to want to travel in a straight line. And this is one way to achieve this.
[00:07:26]And the other thing that, I look at this and it's okay, that's great. [00:07:30] But actually through the bikes geo in a little CAD program, and I just, queried what if I took the just. The standard, 51 millimeter trail position, and to change the wheels without flipping the chip, what would be the the impact on trail and the impact on trails only three millimeters.
[00:07:49] So we're actually not, I'm not sure that the juice is worth the squeeze. With regards to having this extra components three millimeters of trail may be noticeable to somebody who's really can appreciate that subtlety, but frankly our bike actually has the same front end geo.
[00:08:05]The DOB one is the same front NGO, 72 degree head angle in the large and a 51 offset. And I've written it with the 700 by forties and the node, the difference is subtle, but actually. The higher radius tire, like a 700 by 40 will, oftentimes you'd be running that tire when you're doing more straight, flat stuff anyways.
[00:08:25] And maybe you want slower trail when you put on that higher rate, the greater radius tire. And so that change in trail is actually a benefit because it's it makes sense for the the tire being mounted. So are you
[00:08:37] Craig Dalton: [00:08:37] suggesting maybe this particular implicate implementation of a flip ship didn't go far enough?
[00:08:42]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:08:42] And think that there's it is useful if you are, if you really have a a sense of the subtlety when you change this, but don't expect a radical difference when flipping the chip versus
[00:08:54] Craig Dalton: [00:08:54] changing the tire. It sounds if you're committed to one wheel size or another. When you put the six fifties on and you [00:09:00] put the chip in that particular position, you've got the bike that the Savallo engineer designed, correct?
[00:09:06] Precisely. So if you're like a one wheel set kind of guy or girl. You got, what's promised to you by the engineers, but it's not necessarily trying to change the performance from more of a road bike experience to more of a off-road bike experience.
[00:09:22] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:09:22] Correct? Yeah. It's really keeping the gravel focused experience.
[00:09:27]Consistent across different wheel sizes though, at the same time, like there is a, I'd have to take a look at how they've implemented here, but presumably one position there would be well, so there's a, trade-off here too, in that you, in a road bike geo you want. You also want the generally the handlebar position maybe to be lower and maybe the axle to be more underneath your where your hands are on the bar.
[00:09:54] So the either bars going out, the axle coming in, so that front ends more planted because on the road take like a high-speed road descent. You really want that front end planted because you have the grip and you want to feel you don't want the wheel wallowing. And then a lot of your braking performances there too on the dirt, it's exactly the opposite.
[00:10:13] You want to be able to get your weight back. You have limited traction up front, you don't want the front wheel to wash out. And so you'd want to be a little bit more upright the axle a little bit further out and so on. And it's hard to this, this implementation doesn't really achieve anything with regards to changing that dynamic.
[00:10:27] So it doesn't really make it more of a road, [00:10:30] more or less of a road bike in different positions. It's really about again, maintaining consistent trail. Across the two different wheel sizes that it accommodates. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:38]Craig Dalton: [00:10:38] I think it's interesting. It's an interesting model. I know a number of people who ride this bike, a number of people, frankly, who have given up their road bike, because this one was so good at riding on the road, as well as off-road, as you mentioned, very close to an endurance road bike, geo with the exception that they D they have built in decent tire clearance.
[00:10:57] I think at a six 50, you can go all the way out to a 49.
[00:11:01] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:11:01] Correct. Yeah. And I can't recall what they allow with a 700 I'm guessing at least 700 by 40. Maybe it fits a 42 or 45. I think it was a 42. Yeah to overlap, probably come. That becomes an issue in some of the smaller sizes in particular, beyond that point, which gets into yet another one of these like variables that have to be considered when you're looking at all these geometry PM parameters.
[00:11:24] Cause you can have the perfect geo, but if if you're gonna have to overlap, that's going to be a real compromise and may result in some safety issues.
[00:11:31] Craig Dalton: [00:11:31] Yeah, for sure. I feel fortunate that I'm in the medium or 56 kind of size because typically I do all right. When it comes to toe overlap,
[00:11:40] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:11:40] Yeah and I think we did one 70 cranks fee or one 60 fives.
[00:11:44] I would not
[00:11:45] Craig Dalton: [00:11:45] capitulate at the time in which I bought my bike and I went one 72, five, but I think I'm sold now that I would go one 70 in the future.
[00:11:53] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:11:53] Yeah. Proportional, crank length helps with that a little bit and allows you to do a slightly tighter front-end geo on the smaller bikes without adding to that [00:12:00] risk of a tow, right?
[00:12:01] Craig Dalton: [00:12:01] Yeah. And I don't have a particularly large foot, so that helps as well. It makes me skirt, the issue entirely.
[00:12:08] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:12:08] So this gets into, so we talked about a little bit about geo. The other thing we wanted to discuss today is the advent of, suspension. We're starting to see suspension particularly for, front end suspension on gravel bikes.
[00:12:18] Craig Dalton: [00:12:18] Yeah. I've been obsessing a little bit over it. Just trying to figure out the best way to articulate a conversation around suspension, because I think. A lot of times, and this may be true for some of the listeners out there. The moment you mentioned the word suspension, you get a hard stop.
[00:12:36] I don't want to hear about it. I've got no interest in suspension whatsoever, but the reality is every single bike out there in the world is suspended in some way.
[00:12:45] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:12:45] Absolutely. We use pneumatic tires. Exactly. As a suspension system.
[00:12:49] Craig Dalton: [00:12:49] And when we talk so much about tire pressure, as we have ad nauseum on this podcast, that is the number one spot in which a lot of people are getting their suspension.
[00:13:00] Correct.
[00:13:00] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:13:00] Yeah. And it, it is a pretty ideal place to get it too, because there are other benefits that come with getting your suspension from the tires. It is a rolling efficiency, comfort, traction, and so on versus say adding a suspension fork you're getting. It's helping with traction for sure.
[00:13:17] And that's one of the key benefits and helping with comfort, but you're adding a tremendous amount of weight and potentially some slop in the front end. So even if you block that out, it's never going to have the responsiveness when you get up and [00:13:30] stand up and really hammer on the pedals that are, a standard solid fork would have.
[00:13:34] Yeah.
[00:13:34]Craig Dalton: [00:13:34] I think that's an experiment it's like going back to tire pressure. I've got an experiment that every rider should do. And I encourage is go out there and ride on high tire pressure and see what happens in terms of traction and control.
[00:13:49] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:13:49] Oh, geez.
[00:13:50] Craig Dalton: [00:13:50] For us, for us and me, particularly here in Marin, like that, the repercussions become a very stark and are delivered very quickly.
[00:13:58] Like you can't, you just can't keep control of the bike.
[00:14:01] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:14:01] You get a little bit of a Pogo effect. And you just can't maintain traction because you have a much smaller contact.
[00:14:07] Craig Dalton: [00:14:07] Yep. Yeah, because I think you've got traction as one of the vectors that you need to think about around suspension. You've got just overall performance and how it, how the.
[00:14:17] Bike is feeling underneath your body, right? So we can only all take a certain amount of abuse from these bicycles. Sure. So again, figuring out suspension on the bike is critical. First starting point is, tire volume and tire pressure, and to put some specific numbers around it. And we riffed on this, on our ride.
[00:14:38] If you've got a six 50 by. 47 millimeter tire. How many millimeters of suspension do you think you get? If you're running a reasonably low tire pressure?
[00:14:48] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:14:48] So this is pure speculate. And if somebody hasn't done a study on this, I'm sure that we'll see this at some point. Think about like really when I set my tire pressure I'm [00:15:00] setting, when I have my tires on on a nice wide rim, so I can run them low without them squirming around. So in the case of the 60 feet by 47, this is like 25 millimeters. Plus I run on a 27.4 internal and that's plenty wide. So then from there it's what are the, what is the lowest pressure I can run and not bottom out the rim, given the train I'm riding and how hard I'm riding it.
[00:15:21]And so wanting to have a little bit of buffer in there. The one way I think of it as like over the course of the ride, I'm probably using. Two thirds of the tires travel. So 47 and be around 30 millimeters or so of the tires travel, just going over rough stuff as I'm, descending and so on.
[00:15:40]And then for those bigger hits, I still have a little bit of buffer there and the pressure is actually increasing slightly as the tire is being compressed. And so there's almost like a, it's a, it has a ramped air spring. Yeah.
[00:15:53] Craig Dalton: [00:15:53] And I think as we talk about other ways in which bikes are getting suspended, just having that 30 millimeter odd figure in our head is going to be interesting for discussion.
[00:16:02] Obviously, if you're running a 700 by 40 tire, you're getting less than that. So maybe it's, 22 or something, but as a listener keeps that in mind as we move forward, as some of I've been riding the Redshift suspension STEM for gosh, well over a year now, in fact, I just. Got sent the pro version to shed a little weight on it.
[00:16:25] I put the thing on, I initially thought that, I'd ride it and test it and let [00:16:30] people know what I thought about it and I'd take it off, but I haven't taken it off. And it's because it is just blended in the movement and motion, which I've set up to be around 15 millimeters. So again, half of what I'm getting out of the tires is subtle enough.
[00:16:44]And the performance changes is in my mind, positive that I keep that I've kept that on this whole time. So that's yet another way to achieve suspension on the bike.
[00:16:54]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:16:54] And with that STEM, they have different elastomers that you can put in so that you could get like the first bit of travel. Maybe your tires are more sensitive.
[00:17:02] So the first bit of travel is coming from the tires. And it's only when you have a bigger hit that suspension STEM is starting to engage. Yeah. And then
[00:17:10] Craig Dalton: [00:17:10] you do have some frame manufacturers building a little bit of travel into their frames. I should state that in a different way. You have some that are building, the capacity for travel within a rigid frame.
[00:17:22] And then others obviously are gone. I've gone to completely fully suspended route like the Niner, for example.
[00:17:30] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:17:30] Yeah. And I think maybe we start with the first one. So this would be like the steerer based suspension systems. And I think that on the one hand it is ultimately If we put aside the E any sort of structural complexity or compromise it's created with such a design in terms of the handlebar and not rotating that's a benefit relative to a suspension STEM, right?
[00:17:52] So you get, with your bars, I assume that you rotate them back a tiny bit so that when they're fully compressed, your hands aren't sliding forward on the [00:18:00] leavers, is that right? Yeah. This
[00:18:00] Craig Dalton: [00:18:00] is a slight adjustment to be made. Yeah.
[00:18:02] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:18:02] So a small adjustment. And I think that adjustment, frankly is a better compromise than, getting a suspension steer, which keeps the bars oriented in the same way.
[00:18:11] They just dropped down, but adds a huge amount of complexity in an area that is there's a lot of stress and it's very high consequences. If something goes wrong and if a part fails or something like that, and nothing bad happens while you still, you can't just swap it up. Apart really easily.
[00:18:27] Or if you don't want suspension on the front anymore, I guess you could lock it out. But with, a suspension STEM, you could always just put in a normal STEM. Yep.
[00:18:35] Craig Dalton: [00:18:35] Yeah. And there's also the rear end of the bike works. Some people are doing some trickery. I know BMC with their URS bike has a little bit of movement designed into the back end and even going back so far as their hard tail mountain bikes, which I owned one from about 10 years ago, they always brought the stays in.
[00:18:54] Pretty super low on the seat tube. So you got a little bit of movement designed into the carbon fiber. Now we're not, we are talking about a little bit what might you guess, like five millimeters?
[00:19:04]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:19:04] I think it's more than that. So in the case of that design, I'd have to look it up. Anecdotally, I have actually been to the factory where that is, is designed to without, as manufactured in Southern China.
[00:19:13] So I've seen how it's built and they're just using an elastomer in the upper part of the seat stays. And then the inherent flex in the carbon chain stays in order to achieve. Probably if I had to guess it's probably on the order of 22 millimeters of so or so. Okay. So it's not nothing.
[00:19:30] [00:19:30] Craig Dalton: [00:19:30] Yeah. Yeah. In the grand scheme of things, as we're adding things up. Let's do it as to what's your maximum amount of suspension that you could build into a bike. That's not insignificant,
[00:19:40] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:19:40] but I'm guessing they're adding a solid 200 grams or so to the frame to achieve that. And so you have the additional, the addition of the weights, plus again, as a road bike, you get out of the pedals, you want that, that responsiveness, and this is something that's inevitably sapping some energy.
[00:19:54] So there's always some trade off that bike. Of course is very much optimized for the off-road, all day in the saddle, hammering sort of scenario. You can see it reflected in the geo has a pretty long wheel base a shorter STEM pretty slacked out, front end. I think it's on the order of 79 or less than sorry, 69 degrees, 69 and a half degrees.
[00:20:15]That's pretty, pretty slacked. So you wouldn't really want to use that as a road bike anyways. It would feel somewhat piggish on the road. It's probably a good compromise for that specific application that bike is designed for. So then the question is do you want a bike that is really targeted?
[00:20:30] Or do you want a bike that is very much general purpose and versatile? Yeah.
[00:20:35] Craig Dalton: [00:20:35] I think this is really interesting to me because it reminds me of the journey that mountain bikes have gone on over the decades and how you really started to see the. Emergence of, these cross-country specific bikes that had these specific attributes and specific handling characteristics and you had on the other end of the extreme, downhill and the Enduro bikes that are completely different beasts at this point.
[00:20:58] Yeah. And [00:21:00] similarly, in the gravel market, I feel like there's maybe a little bit intention around the existence of all these bikes. Whereas you don't see that on the mountain bike side. When I see someone with a DH bike, I just assume they like to go downhill and they don't like to go uphill.
[00:21:16] You know what I mean? That's just your choice. That's where you're looking to optimize. And we're starting to see that around gravel bikes that you're you, as we've always said, gravel bikes, it's going to be so dependent on where you are and what you want to ride. How you're going to set these things up.
[00:21:31] So when you see a friend from out of town, come with a radically different setup, don't start Hocking them crap about their setup. Start to embrace and understand they're going to kill it in one section of the ride where you've elected to compromise the other direction on your bike, potentially.
[00:21:46]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:21:46] Yes though. I still I have a pretty strong point of view on this. Which, which how amount of not shy to share, I've shared it before, which is start with a bike that is as versatile as possible. So this is where I really like, we mentioned the, a Sparrow, it has like more of an endurance road, geometry.
[00:22:03]It, that, and then make accommodations to that bike such that it allows it to go as much into kind of off-road borderline cross-country as possible without compromising, that on-road feel. And you can do that. In a way that actually you get the best of both worlds and the trick to it is a dropper post because with the dropper post, if you think about one way you can do it is with Gio MITRE to make it more competent off-road so you [00:22:30] longer wheel base shorter STEM slacker, head angle more trail and everything that will make the bike want to travel in a straight line, give it stability and make you feel more confident.
[00:22:39]But the dropper posts. You can have the snappy or front end geo shift, your center of mass down and back over the rear wheel. Now your front wheel is nice in lights and can roll in sail over terrain. You don't have a bunch of mass distributed over that front axle in that situation.
[00:22:55]Those road surface that the trail surface is not causing significant torques. Torques to be applied at the handlebars. You can control that and I'm using a rear wheel for speed control. And so you can have a bike that has a snappier on-road geometry. But then when you go into downhill mode, you can get your weight so far back that you still have immense competency.
[00:23:15]We ride a bike that has the same front end. Is this a Sparrow with the thesis and with the dropper, you can ride it, down some pretty gnarly stuff. You're really limited by tires. Rather than
[00:23:26] Craig Dalton: [00:23:26] geometry. Yeah. I don't think we specified that the sort of the greatest travel in suspension between the bike and body is the body.
[00:23:34]If you allow the bike room to to you to really use your legs and arms and knees and elbows to absorb shocks, that's where the big suspension is
[00:23:45] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:23:45] happening. And allowing the, by having your upper body nice and loose and the front end, nice and light. The, not only can you be using your arms as some suspension, but the bicycle can rock.
[00:23:57] Underneath you and dance underneath you as [00:24:00] your, your legs and your arms are taking that up. And once you learn that technique, it is a night and day difference in terms of one's ability to ride even pretty rough stuff. Quite hard on these bikes.
[00:24:12] Craig Dalton: [00:24:12] It's true. The final category we didn't actually discuss yet is the emergence of gravel specific suspension forks.
[00:24:19] Yeah. Which would probably be, from an equipment perspective. The place where you could gain the most travel in a single location.
[00:24:28]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:24:28] I'm still very much in the dropper post camp in that regard given the amount of travel with these forks, but what's your take on, have you written one yet?
[00:24:36] I
[00:24:36] Craig Dalton: [00:24:36] haven't I should say I've written the Fox acts a little bit, but never on my home terrain. And similarly I've demoed a lefty Oliver, but never really in a place where I could compare it specifically to what I've, what I'm used to. I will say, when you make comments about, your setup versus mine, I increasingly feel inclined to have more suspension.
[00:25:02] And I think about it. In the context of, my rides versus yours, even if we're doing the same loop, because you're riding over to meet me from the city, my ride may have 90% dirt and 10% pavement. And the mileage you ride from the city may put you at, 25% pavement, just throwing something out there.
[00:25:22] And do you
[00:25:23] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:25:23] have a dedicated road bike still?
[00:25:24] Craig Dalton: [00:25:24] I don't. And it's a great point, Randall I've all, but given up on road riding, and I [00:25:30] may on occasion, I've mentioned this before, like a friend may come into town that just rides on the road and I'm, I'm happily, I'll happily join them for the company versus my desire to ride on the road.
[00:25:39] So more and more, I find myself willing to relinquish the road part of the performance of the bike and traded off for off-road performance.
[00:25:50]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:25:50] And that totally makes sense. And that's where I think starting to look at one of these more focused machines may make sense for some writers. I still am of the mind though, that you can like, so there's an evolution of what we have now where, you run a bigger tire up front.
[00:26:07] So imagine a two to five upfront and a 2.0 in the rear and imagine there's some magic through which the geometry could be changed slightly so that the front end comes up a little bit. The bigger front tire is further out. So the geometry slows a little bit. So now you have the suspension of that extra volume plus shifting your weight back and increasing the stability.
[00:26:27] But then when you throw your road wheels on, you can change the geometry and still maintain that snappy that snappy handling. This is possible. And look forward to talking about that in the future
[00:26:37] Craig Dalton: [00:26:37] mean. I think that's super cool. And I totally hear you on the tire size. Cause if we go back to our kind of armchair calculation about getting 30 millimeters of travel out of a 47, maybe when I'm going up to a two to five, I'm actually taking that up to 45 millimeters of travel in the tire.
[00:26:57] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:26:57] Yeah, it's a 57 millimeter tire at [00:27:00] 2.25. So yeah, you could use a significant chunk of that and have that tire running at lower pressure. So it's going to be even more sensitive to the initial hit as well. Yeah,
[00:27:10] Craig Dalton: [00:27:10] I think it's interesting. Again, I harken back to just the world of mountain bikes and how everybody sets it up based on how they want to enjoy their personal rigs.
[00:27:20] And I, for 1:00 AM radically open. To radical diversity in gravel, bike, setups, and design.
[00:27:29] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:27:29] I think I really like these new even more aggressive, gravel bikes that we're seeing that are designed for like more aggressive, single track and so on with a flat handle bar and dual suspension and a bigger fork.
[00:27:40] I think they're called down country.
[00:27:44] Craig Dalton: [00:27:44] I was going to say, that's absolutely where you lose me on the flat bar, gravel bikes. I wouldn't have it. I, yeah you, it's a bridge too far into close, potentially to mountain bikes. Cause you know, for many of the listeners, they may not own a mountain bike.
[00:27:56] I know a lot of gravel athletes come to the sport from. From road cycling. And I will say I'm still a big fan of mountain bikes. They're just they're fun in a different way. And I continued to ride them to this day for sure.
[00:28:10] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:28:10] And I'm still like minimal number of bikes for the maximum amount of experiences is what I'm all about.
[00:28:16] So I'll be continuing to bang that drum for a while,
[00:28:21] Craig Dalton: [00:28:21] right on. The conversation was a lot of fun. I hope the listener got something out of it again there's a lot of products coming to market, lots of different ways to [00:28:30] personalize your ride experience based on where you are.
[00:28:33] And yeah. If you're interested in commenting, we're always here in the ridership forum for you to meet us and talk to other members of the community.
[00:28:43] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:28:43] Yeah, we'd love to meet you there. There's a lot of let's take a moment to talk about the ridership real quick. These we're starting to see some interesting dynamics there in terms of now that people are getting vaccinated, starting to coordinate rides, reaching out, being like, Hey, I'm in, this particular region, anyone nearby.
[00:28:57] And we're seeing people chime in and be like, yeah, let's get a ride going next weekend. This is exactly the mission of this is to facilitate those offline connections. The more people that we have participating, the more of those connect, more of those connections there are to be made.
[00:29:10] So we'd love to have you join us for that as well as all the components nerdery and route sharing and all that good stuff. Yeah,
[00:29:17] Craig Dalton: [00:29:17] totally. It's a blast seeing that community take off in different ways that. We aren't guiding. It's just happening naturally as these things do as when you're a member of the community you contribute and you navigate and you create, yeah.
[00:29:32] If you have questions, you get out there and just get in the mix. It's been a lot of fun to see.
[00:29:37] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:29:37] Yeah. And a reminder, everyone, we did buy a group rabid GPS account. That is offered to members free of charge. And if you'd like to sign up, just go to the ridership.com and you can get into the Slack and start getting some of these benefits right
[00:29:51] Craig Dalton: [00:29:51] on.
[00:29:52] Perfect. Gretel. I will talk to you soon, my friend.
[00:29:55] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:29:55] Yeah, I'm looking forward to it again soon. All right. Bye.
[00:29:58]Craig Dalton: [00:29:58] So [00:30:00] that's it for this week's edition of, in the dirt, from the gravel ride podcast. Thank you for spending part of your week with us this week, we'll be back next week with a long form interview on the gravel ride. If you're interested in supporting the podcast, please visit. www.buymeacoffee.com/the gravel ride.
[00:30:20] And if you're interested in joining the ridership, a global cycling community. Simply visit www.theridership.com. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
This week we talk with adventurer, instructor and guide, Ben Shillington about an upcoming 12 day guided bikepacking trip offered by TDA Global Cycling in Quebec, Canada.
TDA Global Cycling Guided Bikepacking trip
TDA Instagram
Discuss in The Ridership
Episode Transcription (please excuse the typos):
Ben Shillington - TDA Cycling
Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. On this week's episode we've got expedition guide adventure consultant and adventure instructor ben shillington coming on
[00:00:17]To talk about a new guided bike packing trip from tda global cycling.
[00:00:22]As we've talked about more and more bike packing and adventure riding on your gravel bike on the podcast. I thought this was a great extension.
[00:00:30]And a really cool concept i hadn't seen elsewhere the idea of a guided bike packing expedition .
[00:00:37] We'll get into all the details about the 12 day trip and what it entails. But before we jump in just a quick, thank you. To everybody who's been visiting. Buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Your financial support for the podcast means the world to me.
[00:00:53]And it keeps me eager to find new guests to keep you on your gravel cycling journey, just as I continue to be on mine.
[00:01:00] You may have gathered from some of my comments on the podcast over the last few years, that I'm a big fan of adventure. That includes adventures both on and off the bike.
[00:01:11]Which is why I was super stoked to talk to Ben. Ben's been in big mountains all over the world, both as a Mountaineer. A guide and a cyclist.
[00:01:21]With all that said i hope you enjoy my conversation with ben and let's dive right in
[00:01:26]Ben, welcome to the show.
[00:01:28] Ben Shillington: [00:01:28] Hey, Craig thanks. Thanks for having [00:01:30] me on, I appreciate appreciate your time and looking forward to chatting with
[00:01:33] you.
[00:01:34] Craig Dalton: [00:01:34] It's growing trend on the podcast throughout the pandemic to be talking more and more about adventures you can have on the bicycle and on a gravel bicycle.
[00:01:43] So I was excited when the team at TDA cycling reached out to me and informed me about the new guided bike packing trip that they're offering this year. Yeah. We'll definitely get into the details about that, but I'd love for you to give the listener a little bit of your background. It's so diverse as an adventurer that I think it's relevant to the trip and just the experience that gravel cyclists will tend to have when they go out on their first bike packing expedition.
[00:02:15] Ben Shillington: [00:02:15] Yeah, sure. Yeah I guess they're given a full CV. I've had the opportunity and pleasure, to work full time in the adventure guiding industry. So I started professionally, making money When I was 18. So I've been guiding and instructing in a variety of different fields from obviously cycle touring and bike packing mountaineering and tracking polar style trips, winter camping, so on and so forth.
[00:02:38]So I've been able to have the opportunity to travel all over the world, leading expeditions or guiding on expeditions at least and instructing and educating folks in a variety of different skill sets. Yeah, over the last two decades. Yeah, I
[00:02:52] Craig Dalton: [00:02:52] think that's so interesting bringing that broader adventure guide and instructor mentality to cycling.
[00:02:59] I think [00:03:00] most of us, we'd get a bike as a child and we learned to ride it. And as we become passionate about cycling, we just ride further a field and get off road, et cetera. But it's not often we think about the need for guidance or instruction. Whereas in other sports, certainly mountaineering getting a mentor and getting guidance and instruction is so critical to your own personal safety and your ability to tackle more adventurous mountains and situations.
[00:03:30] It's great to see that philosophy come into cycling via TDA cycling.
[00:03:36] Ben Shillington: [00:03:36] Yeah. Yeah. We're pretty excited about that. as you've mentioned there at the top of this, that this is a new I guess a Avenue or a new venture for TDA global cycling. So TDA has been guiding cycling trips all over the world and pretty spicy ones.
[00:03:50]And as far as adventure goes and getting into some, areas that you may not be it may not be first on your bucket list to think about doing something like that yourself. But the whole concept of that bike packing is to bring a little bit of an educational as well.
[00:04:04]As the experiential kind of option to the table where folks can come out on this trip and although we're providing some security and we're, as far as some amenities and backups so on and so forth. We're also able to it gives them skills at the same time.
[00:04:21]So that folks may feel a little bit more empowered or a little bit more confident on going out and doing their own maybe backyard adventures. And as they build [00:04:30] those skills and that confidence maybe take that a little bit farther on
[00:04:32] Craig Dalton: [00:04:32] their own. Yeah, absolutely. So stepping back for a second about TDA cycling, I.
[00:04:38] Since it was a, I almost say it was a bit of an understatement to speak to how crazy these trips are that they've put together. Okay. I know you mentioned to me offline that you guided a three and a half month long silk road bike packing trip for that company. I
[00:04:57] Ben Shillington: [00:04:57] did. Yeah. And that was a, that was my first trip that I did with TDA.
[00:05:01]And it was it was quite the experience, especially as leading that trip and guiding on that trip. Yeah. So it was a multi month three and a half months, I think pretty close. And we rode from Istanbul, Turkey to Beijing, China. So I think that would be what seven or eight countries that we specifically road through across the way.
[00:05:18]So you can imagine a variety of different borders to cross a lot of different cultures to encounter quite a few stories because although, you have a plan and a backup plan, there's a lot of unforeseen little adventures that can arise on the way. We can't, I'd say probably 75% of the way.
[00:05:35] And as I'd mentioned before probably say about 25%, that would be in what you may call a hotel. And especially as we got a little bit further East in the more populated Eastern side of China crossing the Caspian sea being I wouldn't say stranded, but I guess stranded on on a Russian barge across the Caspian sea to hitchhike in somewhere equipment across the the mountains from Turkistan into China and [00:06:00] bypassing a war and a whole bunch of intermittent little surprises along the way were a couple of the a couple of the.
[00:06:07]Adventurous port. So that particular expedition with TDA
[00:06:11] Craig Dalton: [00:06:11] amazing. When I think of bicycle tour companies, I think of the typical, or we're going to take you to the Alps or the Pyrenees and France and the week long cycling trip. So to learn about a company that is doing not only multi-week, but multi month trips, it's pretty amazing to check out.
[00:06:30] Ben Shillington: [00:06:30] Yeah, for sure. And as you mentioned, it's these are bike paths or cycling expeditions really. Because, although there's an a to B there's no real guarantees, but the the skill set that TDA and primary staff have for keeping the thumb on the pulse and knowing what's going on internationally and having communications.
[00:06:47] And these guys are experts at logistics and problem solving. And it's just amazing. Anytime that do get the opportunity to work with these guys they can make pretty much anything happen and deal with things in such a calm and collected manner that you know, even as a. A professional guide and I've worked in a whole bunch of different genres that always something to learn with how these guys are able to choreograph and really have these successful trips going through these amazing areas that you may not have otherwise thought you could even expose yourself to.
[00:07:18] Yeah, there's
[00:07:18] Craig Dalton: [00:07:18] absolutely both an art and a science to bring a group through. Some of these countries, even like landing in the airport and fi figuring out how to get your gear together and how [00:07:30] to get the right Porter or the right car, having someone in the background, just handling those logistics can make something that's still truly going to be an Epic adventure.
[00:07:40] That's going to push her personal limits just a little bit easier and frankly, a little bit safer to pull off.
[00:07:46] Ben Shillington: [00:07:46] Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So the individual still has to have their head in the game to make it through whatever that day's offering is. But like we keep mentioning, it's some of those really off the beat challenges that may come in that we don't have, that your average lady or gentleman wouldn't have experienced with that we can take
[00:08:02] Craig Dalton: [00:08:02] care of.
[00:08:03] As someone who's approaching, guiding that three and a half month trip with clients, was there criteria or communication with the client and the advance to make sure that they were prepared both physically and mentally for that type of trip.
[00:08:19] Ben Shillington: [00:08:19] Yeah. So for most of these TDA trips and especially these longer ones and moving into the bike packing one, there's a lot of communication that comes ahead.
[00:08:26]So that people understand what they're signing up for, want to make sure that the experience that they're signing up for is. Is what they are actually considering. Sometimes things might look different on a webpage or in a description than what you have in your own mind.
[00:08:40] So the communications through email phone conversations happened way ahead of time. And then there's a bit of consulting. So on these other, the classic TDA tours there's bulletins that go out bike checks, medicals. Yeah. Gear, packing request sheets, or even mandatory, like on some of these trips, if we go back to the silk road, right?
[00:08:59] You could only [00:09:00] bring, these two size bags and if it didn't fit, you weren't allowed to bring it on. You had to have these X amount of spare parts and nothing extra, so on and so forth. Because. The environment is changing so much that you can't be overburdened. So being selective with what you have, but making sure that folks bring the right things with them especially if there's no opportunity or limited opportunity to top up on those supplies.
[00:09:23] So yeah, a lot of work goes in to getting people to buy into the trip objective and be as ready as possible. For day one, starting out on some of these bigger journeys.
[00:09:35] Craig Dalton: [00:09:35] Was your experience that the relative fitness level of the clients made it so that it was a kind of simpatico team?
[00:09:41] Or did you have outliers one way or the other.
[00:09:44] Ben Shillington: [00:09:44] No. There's a suggested level of, fitness or strength or fitness would probably be the the right word, but no it varies across the board and my experiences with the trips that I've ran with TDA specifically you set that kind of expectation.
[00:09:57] So people know physically what they're getting themselves into. And traditionally, just because of the longevity and the amount of organization people have on their end, To prepare to depart or leave, their lives behind for a month or three months. That general conditioning is there and, we hear it often sounds cliche maybe, but it's so much more in your mind than it is in your body.
[00:10:18] That if you arrive with the right Headspace or you can keep your head in the right Headspace, the body's going to catch up eventually. So the spread across the day and these trips is, not particular riding in a solid group where everybody has to maintain a [00:10:30] minimal pace. There's a briefing in the morning, there's a general layout of the description of the route and the directions.
[00:10:36] And, as obviously as times moved on, it's went into you being able to have GPX files. But it's always good to pair that up with the map and people can just. Unfold as they see fit and they'll check in, at a particular, lunch points throughout the day. So whether that ride day is a hundred or 190 kilometers, that are a particular spot where they'll check in for some food they'll need to arrive in camp.
[00:10:57] There's always a sweep rider. And depending on the trip, there'll be an emergency vehicle out there. Even though these clients will be spread out, over, tens or, Maybe half, maybe 50 kilometers worth of terrain. We always kinda got an eye on where everybody is and they can just roll in at their own leisure because the whole objective of a lot of these trips is to connect people with the region that you're traveling in.
[00:11:19] And the beauty of the bike is being able to move swiftly and efficiently, but also you can slow down and you can get off to check anything out that you see or, have those personal encounters and just be in the moment.
[00:11:30]Craig Dalton: [00:11:30] Yeah. Absolutely. It makes it so special. And I think part of getting out there and nature often is experiencing a little solitude and a little time by yourself.
[00:11:40] So doing that in foreign country, and as you said, to be able to experience the community and the food at your own pace is a really nice benefit and really adds to that spirit of adventure. I imagine.
[00:11:53] Ben Shillington: [00:11:53] Yeah. And, and everybody has their own objective, right? So they might sign up to bike from Istanbul to Beijing, but, you might be a history [00:12:00] buff or you may, maybe you might be a fitness buff and you want to crush those miles as hard and fast as you can every single day.
[00:12:05]Cause that's your goal. Maybe you might be into food or photography. Being able to give folks a bit of a heads up on what they may encounter and how they may get the most out of that experience. Then as long as they're not in a. A major time restriction, everybody can take that day in as they see fit.
[00:12:22] Craig Dalton: [00:12:22] Yeah. We could continue to talk about the silk road all day because it's an area that I'm personally fascinated in and I've seen some of the bike packing events over in that region. It looks stunning. It looks rugged. It looks remote. It just looks like the place that any adventurer would dream of going.
[00:12:39] Yeah, for sure. Transitioning over to the bike packing Quebec trip, that's on the calendar for this year. Let's talk about some of the details where it starts and stops the dates. And then we can get into kind of what the rider should experience and what you're looking to provide to them. Sure.
[00:12:58] Ben Shillington: [00:12:58] Yeah. So the bike pack in Quebec, it's a Walton Quebec, the province of Quebec here in Canada, which is on the Eastern side of the country.
[00:13:06]It's a, about a 15 day trip total that's with pre posts and the starting, or the preparation day will happen on August the 14th, which would be a Saturday. So it'd be day one, stage zero. So we have two days of prep that's happening in Ottawa where we can come together. And do a little bit of a equipment check, build up the bikes.
[00:13:26]Just an overall shakedown in preparation because we will be [00:13:30] consulting with declines beforehand on, helping them get the right gear, the right bike, have the right equipment with them. Not too much, but not too little. If there's a couple of gaps or a few little things that we need to fine tune, then we'll have that opportunity in the city.
[00:13:43]It'll be a a finished day on the 28th in Quebec city. So we're going from Ottawa to Quebec city and the road takes us over those two weeks. There'll be two rest days in there to break things up. But it brings us up in, around out of Ottawa through the Gatineau park getting up quite a bit, North end was a wrench and mountains.
[00:14:02] And we've been back around, down into Quebec city. And does that
[00:14:07] Craig Dalton: [00:14:07] cover a lot of elevation? Is there a lot of climbing in that region?
[00:14:10] Ben Shillington: [00:14:10] Yeah. And you're going to ask that being out in California. So in the end of the wrench in mountains here we've got, we don't have the long rise that you guys do or the run, sorry, but we have a repetitive run.
[00:14:22] So there's lots of steep climbs and descents, but just back to back, I'm so thrilled to the luncheons. You can get anywhere from 9% to 20% gradients and on your average day if I look at my layout here, I can tell you what some of the average day climbs are, but up to about 1200 meters of climbing on an average day for this particular route.
[00:14:44] Yeah. Nothing too crazy, but definitely some steep pitches. But it's more so being off of the beaten path as opposed to a cumulative elevation gain. And
[00:14:53] Craig Dalton: [00:14:53] as this as a team of cyclists, Okay. Are you out there on your own or are there support [00:15:00] systems, vans following you?
[00:15:01]What's the situation?
[00:15:04] Ben Shillington: [00:15:04] Yeah. So the situation in that, the point that we're trying to sell or promote the folks is that we're creating a real kind of, self-sufficient. Opportunity to get out there on your bike. So the bikes everyone will be loaded with everything that they need for sleeping for eating.
[00:15:18]So a multi, like a fuel stove a solo self-supported or, free-standing tent, your change of clothes, snacks. Yeah. Water purification so on and so forth. So there'll be a emergency four-wheel drive vehicle in the ether that will have access in the event that there's an emergency.
[00:15:35]But there's no lag wagon per se or anything. That's meeting us from point to point. So when we roll out in the morning, collectively as a group, folks who have a GPX file. I'll do a morning trip briefing to let folks know, here's what the terrain is looking like. If there are any amenities to, to see, to stop out along the way, there are going to be several days where there are no amenities, so that classic coffee shop, or, pastry top up will not be available for portions of this ride.
[00:16:01] So we'll discuss that all out in the morning. And so when we leave out, people will have a good sense of the directions where they're going what they may encounter. And one of us will be riding. Within the group and, move around from front to back, keeping a physical check on everybody, but not being with everybody all at the same time.
[00:16:19] So when we do roll into camp in the evenings, everything will already be on the bike. We can roll in, we can set up, get cleaned up and then progress with our afternoon and evening. [00:16:30] Nice. Will
[00:16:30] Craig Dalton: [00:16:30] each athlete then have a complete bike packing setup? I think you referenced this, but I want to make that point clear.
[00:16:37] So each person would effectively be self-sufficient with their own food, their own ability to cook their own ability to purify water.
[00:16:47] Ben Shillington: [00:16:47] That's correct? Yeah, that's correct. So we'll make sure and that'll be a part of, the pre-trip support that we're going to offer. So obviously everything is via zoom and, depending on where folks are coming in from we're setting up a couple milestones ahead of the time so that we can review those bikes or help them, make a choice with what they already have or what they may need to add to that setup.
[00:17:06] So depending on what their philosophy is for their own rig the bike pack. Frame bags, so on and so forth that they might use the equipment. And we definitely are gonna consult and give some, high suggestions on certain particular pieces of equipment that they come out with them as far as their sleep systems go and for cooking.
[00:17:23]Yeah, you're correct that when we roll out. If we're on stage four and we're rolling out from lack Ernest to and it's a 80 kilometer day and 20, 55% of that is dirt, gravel, and Doubletrack, they have every single thing that they need on them. Let's say worst case scenario, we had to stop midway and set up camp.
[00:17:42] We could everything's right there. It's not in the van or in Surrey or in the truck.
[00:17:46] Craig Dalton: [00:17:46] Yeah. Interesting. That type of advice is invaluable. I think in bike packing, certainly editing is critical in terms of getting the right amount of gear, but not too much gear.
[00:17:58] Ben Shillington: [00:17:58] That's right. Yeah. And [00:18:00] that's it.
[00:18:00] And I think that's, that's what we want to provide here. And this is the idea is that, we talked about, it's nice having that little bit of security or peace of mind that you have support with you. So whether that be an experienced guide, that's out on the trail, whether he's 10 kilometers.
[00:18:12]It had a, you or 20 kilometers behind, that, he or she is coming. Understanding the system as a whole and being able to progress and get a little bit more efficient on packing that bike a little bit. So it's handier to get up the things that you need throughout the day.
[00:18:26] Being a quicker and more efficient at setting that tent up at night, how to stake things out. So your tent is more breathable so that your dryer in the morning, how to manage your clothes, how to eat differently when you should prep your water and why. So these are all the things that myself and the staff at TDA on this expedition are going to be able to work with clients beforehand.
[00:18:48] But then also work with them throughout the trip. So it's a progression of knowledge and experience. When we go on through these systems every single day and recalibrating, everybody has their own philosophy, but we can help each individual fine tune that philosophy.
[00:19:04] Fine tune those skills and figure out how they may want to progress. In the future, if they were to do this again on their own. Yeah. It's so important.
[00:19:12]Craig Dalton: [00:19:12] I think the modern bike packing bag set up is so amazing. But it also involves cramming things in places, compressing things.
[00:19:21] And as you referenced, knowing where everything is and having a system in your own mind is so important because there's [00:19:30] nothing worse than realizing you need something that's absolutely buried and inaccessible in your bike, packing bags.
[00:19:38] Ben Shillington: [00:19:38] That's right. And when you have some anytime and you can make some refinements, sometimes you just, you have what you have and that's okay.
[00:19:44] And sometimes the decision I find decision fatigue. I, I teach cycle tour guiding courses for an outdoor adventure guide diploma program that I'm a full-time instructor for. And a lot of the stuff that we go through in these bike and courses, and even some of the other stuff is, decision fatigue, and often.
[00:20:01] You have way more stuff than you actually need. So being able to look at that kind of objective and saying, Hey, this doesn't kill two birds with one stone, so I don't really need it. And this can do a couple of things here, so maybe I'll keep that. And if I shift this up to this bag and bury this in the bottom, I don't have to think about sifting through that until we get into camp at night and.
[00:20:22] Even though, that's a mental energy expenditure. So we're looking at trying to be as efficient as possible. You can select a gear to be more efficient. You can breathe differently to be more efficient, but also just being able to quickly. Access some of those tools that you need throughout the day allows you to put more energy into the ride and being familiar with your surroundings, as opposed to stressing about, jamming things into the, these places or having things that you'd really didn't need in the first
[00:20:48] Craig Dalton: [00:20:48] place.
[00:20:49] Yeah, I think it's interesting with the modern day bike packing bags and, being a fan of bike, packing myself, looking at people who have done these big expeditions and seeing they only had a frame bag, a [00:21:00] front roll and a seat bag. And if they managed to get everything they needed for three months in that bag, clearly I can go for 48 hours and fit everything I need in.
[00:21:09] So if it doesn't fit in, it's clearly not needed.
[00:21:12] Ben Shillington: [00:21:12] Exactly. Yeah. And, I find for me anyways, I find it half the fun now. Pact for so many different types of trips. And, even if we just talk about bikes specifically, and every time I think, half the fun really is preparing and laying out all my stuff and kind of, figuring out, Oh what's going to work just a little bit better this time and or how can I make that lighter or a little bit more convenience.
[00:21:33] And I've done many a night where, everybody's in bed here at the house and I'm packing, unpacking, and laying things out and just having fun, trying to fine tune. Yeah. There's some
[00:21:43] Craig Dalton: [00:21:43] personal satisfaction in pulling out a small item that takes your comfort to the next level when your peers have forgotten or hadn't thought about
[00:21:53] Ben Shillington: [00:21:53] it.
[00:21:53] That's right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
[00:21:57] Craig Dalton: [00:21:57] I remember my, I went bike, packing it up in Oregon on the Oregon timber trail and I just. Decided I was going to bring it an extra pair of warm gloves with me and a few mornings where we got up to elevation, it was bitterly cold. And I had these essentially like skiing gloves with me that were the envy of my two expedition mates.
[00:22:19] Ben Shillington: [00:22:19] Oh, that's nice. Yeah. That's a feather in your cap there for sure.
[00:22:24] Craig Dalton: [00:22:24] Which is probably the only feather garnered in that trip because I was clearly the rookie and very, a [00:22:30] reliant on the other two for a number of the more critical details in life. Yeah
[00:22:35] Ben Shillington: [00:22:35] safety in
[00:22:35] Craig Dalton: [00:22:35] numbers, right? Exactly. I think that's one of the things that made me keen about having this conversation and just this concept of, this coached bike, packing expedition, because as we talked about, and obviously anybody can go out and have these adventures it.
[00:22:50] Go out for 24 hours. Any mistake you make is not going to be critical. You're going to get home fine and you'll learn a ton, but being able to have a coach to guide you into this 12 day long experience, I think is a super opportunity for someone who maybe doesn't have the bandwidth in their personal life to figure all these details out, but really wants to get out there and experience a true bike packing experience.
[00:23:17] Ben Shillington: [00:23:17] Yeah. Yeah. It gives a bit of a kickstart, right? Cause it can, everybody's got the capacity to learn on their own, but like you said, the bandwidth or the time to you got to learn by making a lot of mistakes. So how I see, especially. As I, instruct and educate and run courses all the time is that you can really help people fast track.
[00:23:35] They'll still need to put the miles in to build the intuition. But being able to help them bypass some of the the beginner mistakes, or oversights, really not really mistakes so much, but just sometimes you just don't know what you don't know. And if somebody else can help you buffer through that the potential is there to have.
[00:23:52] Faster and more time out on that bike and on your own
[00:23:56] Craig Dalton: [00:23:56] as well. If for me personally, a couple of the things that [00:24:00] have always created anxiety around bike packing, and I do realize these are going to be region and routes specific have been food and hydration. And just making sure that I had an understanding of when my next resupply point might be for both water and food and managing that effectively.
[00:24:20] I find personally, I'm always very conservative. So I end up carrying a lot of extra weight potentially on the bike because I'm fearful that next resupply point is not going to come when I need it.
[00:24:33] Ben Shillington: [00:24:33] Yeah, that's right. Yeah, for sure. And sometimes it is better to be a little bit more conservative and in the end, if you have to, Del pass a water bottle out, or you got an extra bar too, that's no problem, but there is a tipping point for sure.
[00:24:45] And I think a lot of that, and this is what we want to go over with folks as well is there's th there's the whole riding your bike from a to B, but there's everything before that, that route planning and deciding on why you might, Take this road, as opposed to that road and how long you might think something might take, because if you change the oil, the elevation gain, or the terrain that you're riding on, just because you ride at this pace and this terrain doesn't mean this is going to work here.
[00:25:11] So where's that water gonna fall in? And do I need to carry that? Or is there an opportunity to get that, from a. A Lake or river and if so how do I purify that? And the same thing with that chloric intake, right? We often think we need way more food than we do, but if we change the foods that we select and we put it in our body in a [00:25:30] slow trickle, you often get more miles over to that.
[00:25:32] So it changes the bulk. So yeah, there's, it's intimidating, but also fun as well because there is so much to learn and you always get just a little bit better and a little bit more refined and you push that next trip, and just to touch more. Yeah,
[00:25:45]Craig Dalton: [00:25:45] It's interesting, a lot of the listeners and myself included may have come from a bike racing background where it was pretty easy to have, eight power bars or the equivalent with you.
[00:25:56] For an eight hour event, but in bike packing, shifts because I find that, if you're out there for multiple days, you don't want to be eating eight power bars or goos or Clif blocks, like all day long, every day, you really want to be fueling up on more natural foods and more things that you can cook and buy.
[00:26:15] So it's an interesting shift for people. And as you said, definitely a learning curve there.
[00:26:21] Ben Shillington: [00:26:21] Yeah. And it's, one thing I I always use the reference. It's a game of chess, so when, you can fake it for an overnight but when you're adding multiple nights on, there's a snowball effect for every decision that you make.
[00:26:31]When you're on stage one or two, you've got to think about stage eight and nine. And Yeah. So some of those things change when you're adding duration to the big picture. Yeah,
[00:26:40] Craig Dalton: [00:26:40] totally. And I imagine that also that statement applies to people's physical nature as well, because you can go out and you can hammer day one's climbs and crush everybody and put a lot of effort into it.
[00:26:53] But day two and three, those efforts are gonna come back and haunt you. So it's important to measure out your physical efforts [00:27:00] as well. I imagine.
[00:27:01] Ben Shillington: [00:27:01] Both exactly. Yeah. That's exactly sure. And if you've got enough daylight, you don't have to come to hot out of the gate. We play around with that, your gear, selection, and cadence and breathing and fueling, and, you'd be surprised like you can settle into, what, I just call that sweet spot.
[00:27:17] And if you're managing all those systems together you can match your physiology and you can really, take your body. Over those multiple days and get quite comfortable and adapt relatively, relatively easily, per se.
[00:27:30]If you're taking a look at all those different avenues, write down even to, to sleep your sleep patterns and stuff at night and rest. So
[00:27:37] Craig Dalton: [00:27:37] that was encouraged people to get out there on multi-day experiences because there's something absolutely liberating. And in this modern society where.
[00:27:45] We've got so many responsibilities and we're always on and always connected when you realize you're on a 12 day bike packing trip. And literally the only thing you need to do all day is pedal your bike. It just is such an amazing and freeing experience.
[00:28:01] Ben Shillington: [00:28:01] Yeah. That's back to the basics or I call it, active meditation is something I use to describe that.
[00:28:07] And, I think people don't often give themselves enough credit or just. Don't, some, sometimes people just need a little bit of a confidence boost to say, Hey, compete, you can do a lot more than you're probably giving yourself credit for. So if you can just kinda have a little bit of taste of that success, whatever you define success to be it's it sets the ball in motion or it's exponential for the next challenge that you may try to [00:28:30] tackle.
[00:28:30] Yeah, for sure.
[00:28:31] Craig Dalton: [00:28:31] One of the final things I wanted to talk about is when loading a bike fully for a bike packing expedition, obviously you're putting a lot more weight on the bike and experience has shown and certainly stories have been told about how. Bike mechanicals are probably more likely to happen than on your daily tours.
[00:28:52] Can you talk about how you guys address that and what type of coaching you provide and what type of extra parts you encourage people to bring out on these bike packing trips?
[00:29:02] Ben Shillington: [00:29:02] Sure. Yeah, that's a great question. So I always think proactive instead of reactive. And when I say that it's more one really knowing your bike having it fine tuned, whether it's by yourself or, your local mechanic to make sure.
[00:29:14] Every part of that bike from, the integrity of the frame to how good your sidewalls on the tires that you're choosing to use fresh cables. And there's no leaks. If you're running hydraulic brakes, the drive train is fresh rate. So if you're on the cusp of any of that, you want to take that out of the equation, right?
[00:29:30] So you start off with a peace of mind, not fingers crossed. I always want people not to have fingers crossed as far as that goes. So when you're coming in with all those avenues of your bike, taking care of. Bearings as well the wheels being trued, so on and so forth, we have a list of recommendations for what should be, certified or checked off by yourself or your mechanic.
[00:29:51] So that'd be number one, being proactive instead of reactive, and then the reactivity in the field. That's what we want to give folks as well. We'll do little modules in the field [00:30:00] on, Some people just don't know how to take that route. We offer their bike cause it's quite intimidating during dealing with those gears and the chain so on and so forth.
[00:30:07] So we'll show people how to, remove those wheels, put them back on, how to replace a derailleur hanger. That would be something that's going to be in your kit. Some innovative trail side repairs that you can deal with it if you do blow a derailer apart. But I always do to bring one spare derailer with me, depending on the duration or the accessibility, because as you're probably aware, you can single speed or kind of Jimmy rig that driller to get you to the end of the day, but you don't want to be riding multiple days with rickety, single-speed hack.
[00:30:35]But also, how to splice a chain. So if you have to take a couple of big chunks out of there and you're out of master links, how can you use that tool and splice that chain and lock out the limit screws on your rear derailer. So you don't accidentally. Shift into something that's going to stretch the rest of it out.
[00:30:51]So a lot of those things we're going to go through in the field with folks. So we will have a suggested tool list and a minimal spare parts list and really focus on proactively. Keeping an eye on that bike in the morning, and then at nighttime. So doing pre and post ride, full bike inspections before doing the day's
[00:31:10] Craig Dalton: [00:31:10] ride.
[00:31:11] Yeah. That's good advice. I think out there on the trail necessity is the mother of invention they say, and people do all kinds of creative things to get their bike through the day or to the town where they can get a repair done. It's fascinating, but you do need to have a minimum set of.
[00:31:28] Gear and [00:31:30] supplies and skills to even get that far.
[00:31:33] Ben Shillington: [00:31:33] Yeah. And and that's w when I look at it too, a lot of times, like when you're rolling out and everything's dialed in correctly, and there's no fingers crossed and the bags are packed and they're clipped on and secured and you know how everything's going often, your three key breakdowns is going to be a broken chain.
[00:31:48] And that's typically, if it's getting really mucky or you make a bad choice shifting under pressure, those things can happen, but there's. Typically there's a reason for that happening a flat tire. So if it goes beyond tire pressure, depending on if you're running two lists or two, it's a puncture and that happens, and that's not a big deal.
[00:32:04] Anything outside of that typically is bike trauma. It's typically a bike trauma thing. So even just, rethinking the way that we ride and how we're descending some of these Hills or how we're approaching some of this terrain may change that potential for those breakdowns. Just reeling things back a little bit.
[00:32:21] If we're on day six of a 12 day trip, if you're on a one day, you might ride this train this way, but to be on reserve for potential bike trauma, maybe we'll cut things back a little bit for longevity.
[00:32:32] Craig Dalton: [00:32:32] Yeah, I think that's an absolutely great advice and tracks to my personal experience, where, you know, going back to that additional weight on the bike, once you start pointing it downhill, you start to have those fun flavors and you want to hop off of things, but then you realize you're not only hopping your normal bike with you on it, but you've got an extra 20 pounds that are slamming every time you come back down to the ground.
[00:32:57] It's probably not the best idea in the middle of a big trip. [00:33:00] That's
[00:33:00] Ben Shillington: [00:33:00] right? Yeah, it goes to the big picture.
[00:33:03] Craig Dalton: [00:33:03] This is a lot of fun. Ben, are there any like key takeaways? I know we've covered a ton of them already, but are there anything you want to leave the listener with? Who might be approaching their first bike packing trip?
[00:33:14] Ben Shillington: [00:33:14] Yeah. Yeah, I think we did check on a few, but I think, I dunno, probably one was just make, do with what you have. I think it's pretty easy nowadays to get wrapped up in wheel sizes and bike frame, geometry and bags and this, that, and the other thing we often don't realize that some of the stuff that we have at home for clothes and equipment and the bike that we have, maybe put a couple bucks into.
[00:33:35] To, to swap out a tire or something like that, but just make, do with what you have and get out there because, if you get out there just for your first 24 hour rod or even one big day ride where, you do have to pack a substantial amount of food and have a half decent repair kit and come home and sleep at night.
[00:33:51] I mean that, that's all skill-building and that's just going to progress into more miles and more confidence.
[00:33:58] Craig Dalton: [00:33:58] Yeah, that's great. I love that underlying theme that we continue to revisit on the gravel ride podcast. It's just get out there and do it. I think that's one, that's part of the magic of these new off-road capable bikes that we have.
[00:34:11] It's just, you can get out there. You can create very. Clever roots that bring you places that you've never been before. And as you said before, your body and mind are capable of a lot more than most people think that they are capable for. So just get out there and get after it.
[00:34:29] Ben Shillington: [00:34:29] Yeah, for [00:34:30] sure. Yeah, certainly.
[00:34:31] And if you want a couple more tips I'd discuss that layout and eliminate that's another one. If you're a cone to pursue something, maybe your first, overnight, you often don't need half as much as you think. And I think you always need to have a coffee plan.
[00:34:45] Craig Dalton: [00:34:45] Probably good tip done right on it. I appreciate the time. I'm excited for you guys to kick off this first trip in August, this year out of Quebec, and I'll put links to it in the show notes where everybody can find the trip and they can find you.
[00:35:00] Ben Shillington: [00:35:00] That's great. Thanks so much for your time there, Craig was a nice chatting with you.
[00:35:03] Cheers.
[00:35:04]Craig Dalton: [00:35:04] Big, thanks to Ben for joining the podcast this week. I hope you enjoyed learning about that guided bike packing expedition. There'll be hosting later this year. It sounds like a fun concept to me. I often have benefited from having a little bit of expert guidance when I've tried new things to just take the edge off.
[00:35:24] And what I love. It's not just a weekend trip. It's a true 12 day expedition that they've put together. So I really love that concept. And I think it's going to be. A fantastic addition to the gravel cycling calendar every year.
[00:35:39] So that's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast i appreciate you joining us i hope you're having a great week and finding some time out on the bike if you're interested in getting in touch with us please visit www.thattheridership.com it's our free global cycling community and [00:36:00] love to hear feedback and i'm getting many ideas for future episodes directly from the forums and from all you members out there.
[00:36:07] Until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
This week on In the Dirt, we tackle tire volume (courtesy of a Rene Herse discussion in The Ridership), Road Tripping, Group Riding, the AZT 750 and vaccinations.
Rene Herse Tire Volume Discussion
Join The Ridership
Episode Transcription (please excuse any errors)
GRP In The Dirt Ep. 19
[00:00:00] Craig: [00:00:00] Randall welcome to the show
[00:00:01] Randall: [00:00:01] Always a pleasure to be with you Craig. How are you my friend?
[00:00:04] Craig: [00:00:04] I'm doing good. At this point I think you can almost say Craig welcome to the show
[00:00:09] Randall: [00:00:09] Yeah you're still hosting vastly more often than I am so I need to up my game here.
[00:00:16] Craig: [00:00:16] Speaking of upping your game you've transported yourself yet again since our last broadcast So you were in Utah
[00:00:23] Where are you?
[00:00:23]Randall: [00:00:23] So I am back in San Francisco staying in the marina for the month I was very fortunate to have some friends who were out of town and just said here are the keys to the apartment So I have been road tripping and house sitting and otherwise Taking advantage of a very flexible situation over these months which has been great
[00:00:41] Craig: [00:00:41] Yeah it was cool on your way back from Utah did see you in Palm desert California was nice for an hour for a coffee and a little conversation
[00:00:51] Randall: [00:00:51] Yeah
[00:00:52] we had a coffee and a slush tone My Watching your son go down and slip and slide the bunch of other kids in Palm desert
[00:00:58]Craig: [00:00:58] That may be interesting to some of our listeners I think where are you headed next even more interesting is that before or after you headed to the grand canyon
[00:01:06] Randall: [00:01:06] That
[00:01:06] was after So I had been in Southern Utah for a couple of weeks podding with a couple of friends and actually my youngest sister which was great So we hit up Bryce and Zion and a few different Parks in that area a lot of trail running a lot of hiking and a lot of just being outside Brought a fire pit along since sitting around sitting outside around a fire pit making things in the walk really lovely time and [00:01:30] a reminder of what life was like before pandemic two of my friends had been vaccinated and the rest of us got tested And so we did it in his safe away as we could and then being
[00:01:40] Craig: [00:01:40] It's so nice to have some of that Normalicy creeping back into our lives I feel the same thing There's just been some casualness to my interactions with people that wasn't present A month ago prior to me getting the first shot of the vaccination Anyway
[00:01:55] Randall: [00:01:55] Yeah And I just got my first shot today which I'm very pleased about and it's no panacea the effectiveness with new variants is still being tested and is shown to be a little bit less or potentially quite a bit less effective with new variants and then there's still research to be done on how long it lasts But with boosters and with more people having some degree of immunity does seem like the worst is behind us which is such relief Plus the risk of serious illness is significantly lessened with these vaccines to so strongly encourage everybody to take advantage as it's opening up to the full population
[00:02:30]Craig: [00:02:30] And after this is published tomorrow I'm going away for my second shot So I'm excited about that.
[00:02:35] Randall: [00:02:35] Very cool Very cool
[00:02:37] Craig: [00:02:37] So you actually made it you actually made it into the grand canyon Did you not
[00:02:41] Randall: [00:02:41] I did after I left my group of friends and my younger sister there drove down to the south rim and camped out and then woke up the next morning had a lovely breakfast and coffee on the rim and then ran down to the river A really nice way to spend a day got back up at about one o'clock or so one 30 [00:03:00] then, Had a beverage with a friend in Flagstaff and then continued on to Sedona
[00:03:05] Craig: [00:03:05] Nice Is that a 3000 foot drop off the edge
[00:03:09] Randall: [00:03:09] I think it's 48
[00:03:11]
[00:03:11] Craig: [00:03:11] Been a hell of a day of getting back out
[00:03:13] Randall: [00:03:13] Yeah I was more beat than I was expecting to be but granted it was a bit brazen of me to do aGrand Canyon run relatively off the couch. I haven't been training much at all I've been using this time to Recover overall And I was definitely hurting towards the end of it but it was something I'd been wanting to do for some time and was really a day well spent
[00:03:33] Craig: [00:03:33] Yeah the one time I went down there I remember the way out It was like it was all good until it wasn't and that's like still got another 1500 feet to hike out of here
[00:03:42] Randall: [00:03:42] Yeah Yeah It was it was stunning though I just went didn't out and back on the south Kaibab trail for those in the know or who are curious there's also you can do rim to rim I didn't do that People who do that rim to rim in a day that's pretty ambitious and you can also go up the Angel's Landing trail I believe which is a bigger loop which I didn't tackle because it was another seven miles of flats And I didn't need that.
[00:04:05] Craig: [00:04:05] Okay Hey did you know that the Arizona trail race the AZT there's the 350 and the 750 And the 750 involves hiking the grand canyon rim to rim with your bike on your back
[00:04:21] your tires are not allowed to touch the ground. You can't ride in that park as you probably saw, so to complete the Arizona trail 750 [00:04:30] you have to hike down and out the other side
[00:04:33] Randall: [00:04:33] oh that sounds awful and even if you were allowed to ride your bike down it would probably be a bad idea at least not without a proper dual suspension mountain bike with knobbies And on which case you have that much more bike to carry up all the stuff that is completely unrideable
[00:04:50] Craig: [00:04:50] Yeah for the listener There are a few really good documentaries I've seen on Netflix I believe Maybe Amazon prime about the AZT 350 and the 750 Really cool, Definitely not gravel bike terrain It's purportedly a very difficult Rocky route In fact many people find it just too rough to even attempt but it's one of these bike packing races that has a grand de par day And people just go off and it was finished Days and weeks apart from one another
[00:05:22] Randall: [00:05:22] Okay So people are stretching it out over a period of time enjoying the scenery It's not like a 24 hour slog or something like that where people are just knocking out 300 400 miles a go.
[00:05:33] Craig: [00:05:33] It's longer than that but it's definitely raced So I think every year there's people who are doing it as dare I say tourists but that's probably not the right word but there are definitely people going forward and there's definitely an FK T For the AZT Three 50 and the seven 50 that people are gunning for periodically
[00:05:51]Randall: [00:05:51] Beast mode. That's that's a lot of riding or more than I I have the stomach for at the moment
[00:05:57] Craig: [00:05:57] Exactly So speaking of riding [00:06:00] and racing I actually had a good time I think both Saturday and Sunday I saw the return of proper gravel racing. And while it may be a little too soon for me to don a number of both physically and really just where I'm at in terms of the pandemic it was really cool to see my buddy Sam Ames' race the rock cobbler go off outside of Bakersfield in California The race has been around a number of years He's been a guest on the podcast I was excited to see they were sponsored by Bianchi this year So getting a little bit more resources behind the event. Sam's known for the quirkiness of his events. The first year I think had riders ride through someone's house part of the course Which is crazy So I was waited with bated breath to see what's was going to be the shenanigan of the year And the one thing I saw Courtesy of our friends at pure gravel who were filming a lot of it Was they had a ball pit can say from the footage I saw unequivocally If you're ever presented with a ball pit in a gravel race do not try to ride it I think 100% of the people I saw crashed and some crashed heavily
[00:07:13] Randall: [00:07:13] How deep is this ball pit I suppose there's like a there's a zone where if it's not deep enough it's really bad. But if it's deep enough it's you're still going to crash but it'll be delightful.
[00:07:23] Craig: [00:07:23] Yeah I think it was I think it was not deep enough for the way that people were grimacing when they stood up
[00:07:30] [00:07:29] Randall: [00:07:29] Oh geez
[00:07:31] Craig: [00:07:31] But anyway I mean that the guys again follow pure gravel on Instagram They've got some footage of that race and I think people get a kick out of and then another account on Instagram I started following with Southeast gravel And there was event called the Greenwood gravel grinder which had some hitters out in it Out on the east coast and it was fun they had a motorcycle out there capturing footage So it reminded me of maybe mid south in 2019 where I was just able to sit as an armchair quarterback and watch athletes just rip through these gravel courses fun Again we were as we were talking about a few minutes ago Just the sort of senses of a return to normalcy beginning to be there And so that was a lot of fun to see
[00:08:13] Randall: [00:08:13] Excellent Yeah I have a couple of events that I'm looking at for the late spring, early summer on the east coast And It does feel like these things can be pulled off safely Now granted with a lot of good protocol and people adhering to it
[00:08:27] Craig: [00:08:27] Yeah I think when you subtract out maybe the food and beverages afterwards or at least alternate how they're delivered you really do have the opportunity If writers are being safe then I think you can pull these things off
[00:08:40] Randall: [00:08:40] Yeah I think the biggest thing is out on that I can think of is like you can stagger the starts So people are all grouped together but really having a rule around drafting and things like that Cause it's actually in that draft That is also the sweet spot for any sort of vapor coming out of one's mouth And so it's a good place to get a good dose of [00:09:00] COVID if you're drafting somebody
[00:09:02] Craig: [00:09:02] That's the trickiest thing for me because as when I'm dying late in the race if I see a wheel to follow I'm definitely going to hop on
[00:09:08] Randall: [00:09:08] Yeah Yeah It definitely needs to be an explicit rule that stated and that everyone agrees to I think so for all you event organizers out there something to consider
[00:09:19] Craig: [00:09:19] another event popped onto my radar that I thought the listener might be interested in in Trinidad Colorado lifetime who's the owner of crusher and the Tuscher and Unbound gravel formerly dirty Kanza And started a new event called the rad dirt Fest And it's part running festival part gravel festival
[00:09:38]Long time listeners may be familiar with Trinidad Colorado because I had an interview back in 2019 With Ron Della Rocha reached out to me and said I really want to make this region of Colorado which is in the The very Southern tip very close to New Mexico A gravel destination because we've got phenomenal roads We've got some nice mountain passes just a perfect place for gravel racing So it was interesting And I reached out to Juan and asked him if he had been in contact with the lifetime team And he said he had interesting that they're picking another kind of mountain community To impact and hopefully in a very positive way for a region that doesn't have going on Now that certain industries have left the region
[00:10:25]Randall: [00:10:25] Very cool it's springtime in the gravel events world
[00:10:29] Craig: [00:10:29] Yes [00:10:30] the blossoming of gravel again once again hopefully this tail end of the year is were hoping 2020 would be where gravel events were plentiful The investment and organization levels were continued to increase and improve And people were just out there having a blast
[00:10:47]Randall: [00:10:47] And it ties into the other end of the gravel event spectrum now that we are going to chat about today which is impromptu gatherings of people and being able to facilitate that more effectively
[00:11:00] Craig: [00:11:00] Yeah Yeah
[00:11:01] exactly Speaking of impromptu gatherings you had a bit of an adventure last weekend right
[00:11:07] Randall: [00:11:07] I had a great adventure so talk about quirky events.PanocheSo there's the the super pro series here in California which my good friend Isaac has done in the past and has volunteered for And so he had all the beta on the route that we did in the Panoche Hills which is not a very well known area of California but it is stunningly beautiful And we got there it's halfway between LA and San Francisco off the five So off the five kind of and then if you go west of there on the other side is Hollister and there's Panoche road That goes through and it's a pockmarked paved road but lots of potholes but I was fine barnstorming it in my Prius So a really stunning area And we got there before everything had dried out So you had these beautiful hues of different greens and wild flowers out and then some brown Hills in the distance and a good amount of [00:12:00] elevation I think the highest point is 3000 plus hella steep like brutally steep in sections both at the end down so we definitely got worked and it was a just a really delightful time weather couldn't have been better And we stayed at the Mercey Hot Springs which is a stunning little sanctuary in the middle of this desert area Where there's the only Grove of trees for some distance and it's just filled with birds that wake you up in the morning and you wake up to a beautiful sunrise really fantastic
[00:12:29] Craig: [00:12:29] That's awesome How would you characterize the dirt as compared to Marin county
[00:12:33]Randall: [00:12:33] Marin county the actual trails themselves are way more fun to ride I would say what's unique about being out there is the vistas and the beauty of the terrain and the fact that you can be so remote So close to a major metropolitan area it was just gorgeous for that And being able to do a monster loop and just see the whole ridge line that you're going to tackle as you're riding
[00:12:56] Craig: [00:12:56] Was it a sort of double track slash fire road Or were you on single track
[00:13:00]Randall: [00:13:00] Mostly Doubletrack And some of it was properly fun and technical I tend to like the faster flowy mixed Doubletrack single track stuff that we have here in the bay but this was rewarding in a different way This was a cover lots of ground slog your way up a big hill Get a beautiful view rewarding ride
[00:13:19] Craig: [00:13:19] So out of intellectual curiosity if you were living in that area you think your wheel set would be different than it normally is And for normal I always have in my mind that you're [00:13:30] a 650x47 guy
[00:13:32] Randall: [00:13:32] Yeah actually no I wouldn't run any more and I wouldn't run any less in Marine I would run more and in fact in when we'll keep that mostly under wraps but I do have some plans for something that would allow for a little bit more in the future
[00:13:47] Craig: [00:13:47] Yeah I was find it interesting as everybody knows I'm usually in that 650x47 although I'm down to 43s right now camp And I wonder if I went somewhere with a little less technical terrain whether I would opt for something narrower as plenty of riders do
[00:14:02]Randall: [00:14:02] It actually ties into another thing we're going to discuss today which is this article from Rene Hearse Who you had on the podcast before that was shared in The Ridership talking about whether wider tires are slower or faster And its findings suggest that tire construction is a major determinant there not tire volume And so there's really no upside to going with those 650x43s but there is the downside in that you don't have all that extra volume to take the shock away. So I would I'd be sticking with minimum 650x47 for the sort of stuff that we ride I am curious about how you find those though
[00:14:41] Craig: [00:14:41] Yeah I'll let you know since I'm just switching over to them again I've on this journey to test the limits and everything in between So I've got a 700 by 32 slick setup but a durable tire from Panaracer gravel king plus And then the Gravel king SK [00:15:00] 650x43 now that the set up on and I should disclose And I'm very excited about this I was invited to become a Panaracer ambassador for the year
[00:15:10] Randall: [00:15:10] Awesome That's great.
[00:15:12] Craig: [00:15:12] And it's a little bit like coming home. It's fun because the Panner racer gravel king SK on my original open 650x48 Was the tire and the bike set up that really opened my eyes to what gravel could be and mean And I don't think I'd swap that tire for two years In fact I only stopped running it when I got my open simply because WTB or WTB was the tire offering that that you guys had to offer on the Thesis yeah it's fun coming full circle and seeing if these tires were everything that I remembered them to be And as I said I've set up these super narrow road tires It's super nice It's funny to say super narrow at 32 millimeters But I've slept them up and I've been trying to ride a little bit of dirt on them just set again just to test the limits and also encourage myself to choose different routes. Get further north into Marin before I hit the dirt and try some new stuff
[00:16:12] Randall: [00:16:12] I do find it remarkable how capable that set up can be on hardpack. I've ridden around here on the peninsula this the Sweeney Ridge loop that has a section of single track going up and some beat up broken down paved sections coming down and between [00:16:30] 700x30 setup on our wide rims and then having the dropper post So I can really take the edge off by using a bit of body English letting the bike dance underneath me it's remarkable how fast that stuff can be hit especially if you I think I have the added advantage of knowing that I can replace the rim cheaply enough but So I take I might take more risks than most but nonetheless
[00:16:52] Craig: [00:16:52] Yeah I was riding I was in Topanga for the last weekend and I was riding it on some dirt those 32s And I will say it was definitely in my head descending no problem whatsoever climbing As it was flowing I felt good I didn't feel like I was getting too crazy in the corners but as I started to pointed downhill I really found myself backing it off
[00:17:13] And that's where the big tire volumes You just don't have to think about it I think that's what I love about running big it'll get up the Hills and no problem when you're going down the Hills you can just hit more stuff
[00:17:24]Randall: [00:17:24] And I want to come back to this article that I was brought up a moment ago because it's relevant to this conversation It's talking about essentially they're making the argument that without a well constructed which means higher end materials generally what in the aftermarket with tires like Rene Hearse there are others who make premium tires as well with similar construction incidentally in their case by Panaracer you're not losing out on rolling resistance And in fact it was a very interesting phenomenon that they found here Which was they're looking at tire pressure And
[00:17:56] Craig: [00:17:56] favorite subject
[00:17:57]Randall: [00:17:57] Yeah and I this is actually something that it [00:18:00] makes sense to me having read it but I definitely didn't Intuit it at first. I want to use his words here So he's looking at optimal tire pressure And what they found was that Having a lower pressure can have low rolling resistance or relatively high efficiency having a higher pressure can have a relatively high efficiency but there's a middle pressure where it's actually the worst of both worlds And the mechanism that they suggest is this, and this is a quote is the tires are pumped up harder Suspension losses caused by vibrations increase more than the hysteric losses caused by deformation of the tire because those as those go down as a result the total combined resistance goes up at first So you can either minimize suspension losses with low pressure Or hysteric losses with high pressure but the compromise means that both suspension and hysteric losses are relatively high and you go slower than you would at either end of the spectrum. Which for me is a license to continue running low pressure which I was going to do anyways.
[00:18:58] Craig: [00:18:58] Yeah it's fascinating And I will link to my conversation with the author Jan Renee from Renee Hearse cycles And I encourage everybody to check out his blog on Rene or stock com and we'll link to the conversation in the ridership and you'll be able to find your way to these blog posts but it was fascinating And as you and I were talking about offline I'm not totally sure I've got a crappy gauge on my pump relatively crappy I'll say and it's just consistent Like it's crappy [00:19:30] across every time I pump up the tire So I know what I think I know I'm not exactly sure where I'm at I do a little bit by feel and a little bit by the gauge But I'm concerned that I may end up in the middle zone because I think that's the easiest place to be it's pretty easy to your tire up to the maximum recommended tubeless pressure And know that you're too high on the pressure
[00:19:54] The too low side is maybe something that's we fear hitting Because there are realistic concerns right Of going too low on the tire pressure You're going to bottom out You might damage your rim but how to avoid being in the middle for your individual weight and set up is tricky and it's probably going to involve a little bit of personal trial and error maybe that's all investing in a little bit better Quality tire gauge
[00:20:19] Randall: [00:20:19] Yeah it's the tire gauges that come on the vast majority of bumps are pretty rubbish and they're good from a relative perspective measuring from one day to the next in comparing those pressures So if you ever pressure you like stick with it but not as an absolute measure of accuracy And so I'll probably be investing in the same So at the same time There's still that element of knowing how I ride how things feel and that limits of where I can tell that I'm close to bottoming out a rim on the terrain that I'm riding And that tends to be one of my gauges cause I ride pretty hard So that limits the low end of the pressure I can use especially A bit of [00:21:00] the dropper posts and a bit of body English helps to mitigate that to some degree but at the same time one bad line can be a bad day with a cracked carbon rim
[00:21:09] Craig: [00:21:09] Yeah I think my experience on the mountain bike is definitely so much time and time again like experiment on the lower side of the spectrum not the higher side of the spectrum
[00:21:17] Randall: [00:21:17] Oh yeah you don't want to poke a stick
[00:21:21] Craig: [00:21:21] Exactly fascinating stuff as always And as we know people will geek out over tires and tire pressure all day long
[00:21:28] The other thing that was cool I wanted to highlight is you've been getting together with That select group of people via The Ridership And of the things we all have always talked about in the ridership is we're out of this pandemic How do we facilitate getting people together and think about tools to make that coordination easier and better
[00:21:50]Randall: [00:21:50] Already we're seeing this behavior just emerge so we're currently running the forum on slack And so in slack you can have direct messages with I think up to eight people Is that right. So in this case one person suggested it. And then another person chimed in with a route And then three more people hu We're interested So the hell's Yeah and I think from there it went to a DM or maybe it started in a direct message thread. And these are people who I had met One was a good friend two others I actually met through Thesis they were early Thesis riders And then the fourth was a friend of theirs And we had only ever interacted as a group [00:22:30] Out through the forum and then described came together and started planning the camping arrangements Who's bringing what and all that stuff And just being able to do it asynchronously but quickly in this sort of format and invite people and share materials like routes and campsites And so on on the fly was a great experience And so there's some things that we could probably do to enhance it further and we'll be experimenting with some plugins and so on in slack but it was really just very encouraging It's this it's the second or third time that I've had this sort of thing come together and we're seeing other people do it as well Other people in the regional channels saying Hey I just got vaccinated does anyone want to plan a ride for later in the month This sort of thing
[00:23:11] Craig: [00:23:11] Yeah That's what it's here for not to overly plug The Ridership but everybody listening is invited a free forum to connect with other riders And as Randall said we're actively listening to everybody in the forum and trying to build great things that are going to enhance your cycling experience
[00:23:30]Randall: [00:23:30] Online tools for the facilitation of offline connection and experience And everyone gets a free RideWithGPS account as well
[00:23:37] Craig: [00:23:37] Yeah Absolutely I think that's a good time for us to call it quits for this week Good to reconnect And now that you're in the bay area before you leave again and we're going to get for a ride together
[00:23:48] Randall: [00:23:48] Yeah
[00:23:49] I will see you on Friday
[00:23:51] Craig: [00:23:51] Right on
This week we sit down with Neil Shirley to discuss the new ENVE custom road bike. Yes, that is not a typo, we are talking about a road bike. :).
ENVE Custom Road Website
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Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos):
Enve Custom Road Interview
Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the show, we have Neil Shirley from envy on to talk about the ENVE custom road. You heard me correct custom road.
[00:00:17]Not to worry. We're not renaming the show, the road ride, but I thought this project was so interesting. And how they're manufacturing in the United States. That was worth highlighting.
[00:00:27]In last week's in the dirt episode, we had so many questions about how envy was pulling off this custom road. . That I thought it was worth talking to the team at ENVE and who better? Than to talk to our old friend, Neil, Shirley.
[00:00:39]The gravel ride podcast is supported by a limited number of sponsors as well as listeners. Like you. If you're interested in supporting the show please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride
[00:00:52]And now let's jump right into my conversation. Neil Welcome to the show
[00:00:57]Neil Shirley: [00:00:57] Thanks for having me on Craig I'm excited to talk bikes
[00:01:01] Craig Dalton: [00:01:01] You're back again You're in a rare breed of second time guests on the gravel ride podcast
[00:01:07] Neil Shirley: [00:01:07] Really Wow It's been a how long has it been two and a half three years since I was on the show last time
[00:01:12] Craig Dalton: [00:01:12] Yeah cause I think it was just before you moved out to Utah joined the team at ENVE
[00:01:18] Neil Shirley: [00:01:18] Yeah I'm a Yeah happy to be back thanks for letting that making it happen
[00:01:22]Craig Dalton: [00:01:22] When you work for a company like envy and you drop a project like envy custom road Despite being called the gravel ride [00:01:30] podcast I was instantly drawn To having this conversation with you
[00:01:34]Neil Shirley: [00:01:34] It's an exciting exciting bike but the whole project itself is really cool because as I'm sure You're thinking like a couple little tweaks to some of the molds and all of a sudden it's a gravel bike too Right
[00:01:48] Craig Dalton: [00:01:48] Yeah absolutely Why don't we start off Neil I'm going to refer everybody to our earlier conversation to learn a little bit about your background but for the listener Neil's a long time road mountain gravel athlete And it's really put in a lot of effort into the gravel community As has envy it's been a company that has been just thinking a lot about gravel and putting very thoughtful products in products that are used by a lot of custom builders Your handlebars are super well popular in the gravel cycling community But why don't you talk a little bit about envy as a company And where it got its start And then we'll get into this new project
[00:02:27] Neil Shirley: [00:02:27] Yeah so envy we're located in Ogden Utah So just about 40 minutes North of salt Lake and we have a large military base just just South of a vog Din And so the area for a small area it has a lot of kind of has a long history of composites and some good engineers come from the area Envy was founded in Ogden 15 years ago And It's founded by a group of four people that really wanted they had the carbon expertise Had an idea around [00:03:00] manufacturing in the U S and We're all avid cyclists and decided there's a room there's room in the market in a need for some of the products that they really wanted to ride and experience themselves that just really didn't exist or at least not at the level because they wanted them out that's where envy started with mountain rims and then moved into road rims and just as the company progressed was able to dial in aerodynamics and the road side of the business really continued to take off three years ago We moved into a new facility still here in Ogden but really what makes envy special It isn't inherently that us manufacturing is superior to manufacturing anywhere else It's I think really what makes envy special is the fact that everything all of our rims are engineering this new bike that will jump into everything is done in house So we have
[00:04:01]Design engineering Prototyping manufacturing shipping marketing everything under one roof and sit the collaboration between the different teams that actually get a product to market is all done Cohesively and efficiently there isn't shipping stuff back and forth Asia to iterate on and test it It's all done
[00:04:25]In the same building here in Austin And so that's I think that's really what makes us [00:04:30] special as a brand
[00:04:31] Craig Dalton: [00:04:31] is a really special thing to highlight I think oftentimes the layman doesn't realize how long it takes to develop an iterate on products Having had a little experience as a manufacturer myself knowing that you can go to the factory floor Make a tweak test it very quickly It's just so much more efficient than shipping a product back to Asia with notes scribbled on it and having a Skype conversation then getting a factory overseas to ship it back to you Each one of these cycles takes two or three months to sort itself out So you can imagine that just how long it takes to get a product to market
[00:05:09] Neil Shirley: [00:05:09] Yeah you're right It's the time and the expense honestly to have shipping back and forth oftentimes having an engineer that's having to spend A considerable amount of time in Asia and coming back and forth And so just to be able to do it To do it right here And honestly lunch ride and I mean we have so many of the people within envy We have 200 employees here at envy and quite a few of us are avid cyclist some of the engineers are elite level cyclist on the line the daily run lunch ride typically some prototype or sample product is getting tested and A day or two later maybe that rim that someone's riding is going to be iterated on a new prototype is made and a day or two later we're out test riding it on the lunch right Again So that's [00:06:00] a spring through fall is what you can expect
[00:06:03] Craig Dalton: [00:06:03] Super interesting as you the components gain steam presumably at some point you moved into manufacturing tube sets for other builders Can you talk about that process and what that's been like
[00:06:17] Neil Shirley: [00:06:17] Yeah the tube sets so early on with envy we really And still what we're doing now We looked at the market and w we could carve out a spot for ourselves And not that really came at the time was serving the custom handmade builders that were predominantly Using steel or titanium We We were able to roll tubes and do carbon tubes them And we still do it's a very that part of the business shrunk as more bikes are molded now molded carbon now but we've think we still work with Calfee doing some of their tubes we worked with Parley in the past independent fabrication So of the more notable handmade builders we've been able to service them and still to this day I mean a lot of those builders are using the forks Forks is a large part of our business Yeah the builders have been really They've been a huge part of our success
[00:07:18] Craig Dalton: [00:07:18] I have to say that That
[00:07:19] Neil Shirley: [00:07:19] where we're at today
[00:07:20] Craig Dalton: [00:07:20] the envy builder Roundup is one of my favorite events of the year
[00:07:25] Neil Shirley: [00:07:25] Yeah
[00:07:26] Craig Dalton: [00:07:26] so
[00:07:27] great Just looking at all those bikes there They all [00:07:30] everybody comes out It's like the handmade bike show
[00:07:33] Neil Shirley: [00:07:33] Yeah I'm excited unfortunately The North American handmade by Cho is not happening this year And so this will be year three for us for the builder Roundup it's June 25th This year and
[00:07:48]Fingers crossed we'll be able to last year it was just a virtual show which was great It challenged us in new ways and it allowed us to really take that content and serve it to a bigger audience not just doing the open house this year we'll do the same but we'll also have an open house so hopefully we can have Have people out here we'll have a number of the builders here inside envy visiting us And of course the bikes on display So yeah it's It's really cool to see every each of these builders their own idea of what their ideal bike is and the custom builders they're ahead of the curve in what trends are because can make a bike so quickly If you have to if you're waiting on Cannondale or specialized or some of these brands like they're doing great stuff but there there are two years behind what the custom builders are doing so you can look and see what going on with these builders and see what How people are riding bikes how much tire clearance they want I mean there was a lot of were a number of gravel bikes at the show last year with 700 by 50 tires on it It's Whoa this is a trend I mean Mo bigger and bigger tires Anyway it's really cool see what each builder has [00:09:00] in mind and how their bikes are being used
[00:09:02] Craig Dalton: [00:09:02] I remember seeing that last year And I think it coincided with the introduction of your adventure fork If I'm not mistaken but just seeing that trend which is aligned with where I'm going personally I think bigger and bigger tires just fits where I want to go and what I want to do on the gravel bike Which is interesting And I think a lot of the conversation on the podcast this year Has been around Bike packing and adventure rides As the events got taken off the calendar More and more riders were looking to just create their own adventures
[00:09:34]Neil Shirley: [00:09:34] Yeah I mean that's Everyone was some of the rides I saw on Strava People I was following were doing it It was like almost without the racing They had were no limits or boundaries 200 plus mile rides on a Saturday and multi-day bike packing rides So people got really creative I was I was jealous Some of the rides that people were doing because I mean that's really That's the spirit of want to say just gravel because there's you can do it on the road too but I think truly gravel brings that out more and Allows people just to have More of that adventure that they're looking for And that usually leads to just some over the top rides
[00:10:22] Craig Dalton: [00:10:22] Yeah And as I've been talking about a lot lately just the idea for me about calm combining road and off-road [00:10:30] riding In creating these loops that are just atypical from what I would normally do is really inspiring me for 2021 to frankly set my bike up a little differently and definitely think about where I'm going to go differently
[00:10:45] Neil Shirley: [00:10:45] Yeah
[00:10:47] Yeah I agree I
[00:10:48] Craig Dalton: [00:10:48] Yeah I've personally been on a little bit of a road kick which I'd never thought I'd say I think I've just it's I had a friend come into town who had only had a road bike and I just I remit started to remember all the things I used to love about road riding So when this new project got publicized the NV custom road bike it was like it couldn't have been more perfect timing Let's sit down and talk about it So let's it sounds like the bike was a long time coming So do you want to talk about The history behind the bike and then we'll get into some of the details
[00:11:21] Neil Shirley: [00:11:21] Sure So the bike
[00:11:23] The
[00:11:23] bike was much the original product that envy it was when envy was found that it was actually called the edge And then after about a year and a half two years The name was changed to envy but it was one of the very original products and it kept kidding Getting pushed back because there was a greater the management team felt that there was Greater potential with expanding the wheel line and then components from there And frame just get caught in a got kicked down the road a bit and then It was two and a half years ago that the project started in earnest [00:12:00] and it was That was when the engineers actually started really looking at what is the spike and a B In 2016 envy released the 4.5 AR wheels which is one of our still to this day One of our best-selling wheel set The problem with that wheel set is that at the time in 2016 there were very few frames that wheel work in so it's a 25 millimeter internal which and it's made for 28 plus millimeter tire So it was the wheel design for Dimension data the world tour team that we're working with to race at Perry Ruby so they could still have aerodynamics that they would want on a race wheel set with a high volume tire and they're just very few frames that had the clearance to a few race frames performance bikes
[00:12:54] were that
[00:12:55] would allow that size wheel entire That's when the engineers were like okay what would what would this modern road bike look like so that kind of was the catalyst of okay let's put together some ideas So then finally two and a half years ago They actually started drawing it out and then it's been about a year and a half that we've been riding prototype frames The first I got on the version one prototype The last would have been a year ago in January and then That was looking [00:13:30] at okay what are some of the geometries and then from there what does
[00:13:33]What is the laminate The layup look like how steep is it Stiff enough as a two-step just understanding the ride quality and then I've for about the last three and a half four months I've been on the final version which is the bike that we just launched last week It seems To us around here It's been a really fast project and stuff happening quickly but now stepping back and thinking like wow two and a half years that's a really long time
[00:13:55]Craig Dalton: [00:13:55] So the bike that was launched is available One of the couple of points I wanted to clarify because I was a little bit confused when I first read it it's available with two different geometries of the race and the all road And then from there there's additional amounts of customization that are available on a rider by rider basis
[00:14:15]Neil Shirley: [00:14:15] It is it
[00:14:16] is custom geometry When What that means though What we're customizing is the fit Basically the stack and the reach is what we're allowing customers to customize And so want to make sure that each rider gets exactly where they need to be and we're not fitting them on the bike with a stock Top two blanks
[00:14:43] A stock
[00:14:44] head to blanks and then just using STEM length to try and dial them in All of those are customizable not allowing people to do which is why we have a race in an all road We have [00:15:00] geometry To determine basically the ride that we want each of these bikes to deliver so we're not allowing customers to say make a gravel bike out of our road bike we're not allowing them to adjust chainstay length Those Those numbers We are We have determined what those are with our fit calculator then when a customer reserves the bike And they walked through geometry with our customer service rep that is dedicated to the bike we look at currently riding if they've had a bike fit A number of different things to determine the best fit for them And so what we can do If someone is writing say a specialized tarmac SL
[00:15:52] in
[00:15:53] 56 centimeter with a one 20 STEM and they really love they fit on it really well but they have say 25 millimeters of spacers under that STEM we can match them exactly to that fit but w what we can do head to blank that brings it so that they don't have to have any spacers or they can have five millimeters of spacer So you get really that clean pro look
[00:16:20]That
[00:16:20] perfect fit that you're looking for
[00:16:22] Craig Dalton: [00:16:22] Right Yeah
[00:16:23] Neil Shirley: [00:16:23] does that make
[00:16:23] sense
[00:16:24] Craig Dalton: [00:16:24] and it totally translates into the visuals I've seen of the bike There's no [00:16:30] spacers Underneath the STEM on any of those bikes they look super clean And I imagine in talking to some custom frame builders there's always a bit of back and forth That the frame builder will say Hey that's your we can do that but you're going to make a sloppy bike and all you guys have done and said This is the way this part is but there's plenty of ways in which we can really customize it to you Your unique fit needs
[00:16:55] Neil Shirley: [00:16:55] Yeah
[00:16:55] exactly I mean I think if you look if you think about it it's basically the best way to describe what's possible is One millimeter size increments between say a 47 to 63 Send me your bikes So 47 48 49 50 then with within those sizes we can
[00:17:15] We
[00:17:15] can go lower with the head tube We can go higher with the head tube Obviously STEM length within five millimeter increments we can change the stim link so what we do When we come up with the geometry we have comes up We have a thing called the bet fit calculator that Kevin Nelson Arlie lead bike engineer developed
[00:17:36] And
[00:17:37] When we it calculates and spits out Geometries or the best fit So three or four best fit recommendations for the person So that could be top tube Of X centimeters with a with a STEM length of one 10 or could go slightly [00:18:00] shorter top tube and a STEM length of one 15 And then we walk the customer through okay this is We
[00:18:06] allow them to say okay this is what I'd like this is the style I like ultimately though We're finding a few ways to get the the customer in the exact spot They need to be
[00:18:17] Craig Dalton: [00:18:17] That makes sense And speaking of integrations you've got an integrated bar STEM as well as at a seat mask situation going can you talk about the decisions to go that down those routes
[00:18:28] Neil Shirley: [00:18:28] Yeah when
[00:18:29] we looked at the bike and what we could deliver That Being able to do it in house here And the fact that it was custom made for each customer there
[00:18:40] was there was no reason to do this integration and some of the biggest complaints and complaints I personally have had with a one-piece bar STEM Is that if you're buying a stock
[00:18:53] bike oftentimes like that bar STEM is probably not going to fit you Because 56 centimeter Frame that you're buying is probably going to with between a one 10 or a one 20 STEM So unless the bike brand is allowing you to really trade out the bar STEM Stock to something that is it was gonna fit you it's a huge hassle we're taking that factor out We're making we're ensuring that this bike is designed your fit needs And What you achieve without one piece bar STEM one it looks Looks so good Two Eric it's more arrow [00:19:30] Three I personally think it just adds A higher performance field like in the drops you're out of the saddle Like it stiff it feels incredibly fast then one of the one of the last things is and it's not necessarily achieved one-piece bar STEM but it's our internal it's our internal wire and hose routing you don't see any wires or hoses It's a special Integrated front end that we developed we we worked with Chris to develop the headset for it So all the All the wires and hoses go through in through the STEM through a hole in the back of the handlebar And then the hoses and wires are routed special headset and down into the frame and through the forks So it's incredibly clean we will We will This summer we'll be introducing the same system but in a two-piece design so it's our standard a R S C S a R road handlebar with a N V STEM is dedicated to that the front end system
[00:20:34] Craig Dalton: [00:20:34] Okay And going with the seat mass did that allow you some additional ride tuning capabilities
[00:20:40] Neil Shirley: [00:20:40] Exactly one It allowed us to reduce take a little bit of weight out of the frame but also yeah you nailed it You can think about if you had a seat post that goes slides into the frame It's a lot harder to tailor And dial in that ride quality Compared to an [00:21:00] integrated seat mast and what we can achieve with that And again since each bike is made each customer the length of the seat mask and having to trim it and all that stuff wasn't a factor
[00:21:10] So
[00:21:11] there was no reason not to And then the seat mass Topper It's a nice carbon topper That's also made here here in our facility it has 35 millimeters of adjustability There's never going to be an issue where if you change shoes or pedals and your saddle height changes by a centimeter and a half you're going to have plenty of adjustability So that's not going to be an issue only issue could be is
[00:21:36] you
[00:21:37] happen to sell your bike down the road to someone else and there's a Decent height difference So that would be the only issue
[00:21:45] Craig Dalton: [00:21:45] Yeah When I first looked at the bike I always do get a little bit sensitive around seat mass and integrated bar stems for the reasons you've talked about but it is important And you made this point twice to say this is a bike that's being uniquely made for the purchaser And it would almost be a disservice to them to not give them The ultimate bike that fits like a glove
[00:22:09] Neil Shirley: [00:22:09] Yeah Yeah And do you know and that's what we set out with this project Like what is the ultimate bike What are the coolest things that we can do because we're making it here and we're making it for each customer And so that's what the custom road represents like the no hold No holds barred coolest thing that we could design [00:22:30] and manufacturer and then I'd say the lastly kind of along the same point topic is integration can be a point of frustration especially for people that are traveling I travel with my bike a lot and so I want something that's easy to pack And we all know that internal routing and integration is a huge pain when having a pack of bikes So that's why we made the decision
[00:22:57] To
[00:22:57] work with Saigon and we have high end bike bags at $800 retail bike bag That comes with every chassis rolling chassis or complete bike So each one is shipped in this bag And with this bag you don't have to take off
[00:23:13] the ham
[00:23:14] You don't have to take off the bar STEM combo seat topper all you remove or the wheels it's literally a five minute pack job And in most cases unless you're packing this case full of extra stuff going to come in well below the 50 pound weight limit to fly free on Delta and American airlines So really cool solution get around any hassles of traveling with your bike
[00:23:40] Craig Dalton: [00:23:40] That's awesome Early on in the conversation you talked about with your support for builders Providing rolled tubes is that the type of tube set that is integrated into the custom road
[00:23:53] Neil Shirley: [00:23:53] No these are all these are all molded Molded tube sets and how this frame is constructed in the [00:24:00] our ability to do sizes with it So it's nine different pieces that create the frame So you have the top tube with
[00:24:08] the
[00:24:09] Top half of the head tube is one piece down tube with the bottom half of the head tube is another piece And then from there we have a fixture that we created that cuts when we have all the customer's
[00:24:25] exact fit there is program where this tube cutter cuts tubes for the bike at the same time And that's also what Sure For the head tube we determined the head tube length and all that gets cut all these then all these pieces we have a frame jig they go into the frame jig the pieces slide together I don't want to say Like tracks not it's not a lug
[00:24:52] Craig Dalton: [00:24:52] Okay
[00:24:53] Neil Shirley: [00:24:53] But It is like male female fit And then there's a there's an overwrap that that goes on them
[00:25:01] Craig Dalton: [00:25:01] Gotcha in the mold is the mold one size And then that cutting technology cuts them down to the custom dimensions of the purchaser
[00:25:10] Neil Shirley: [00:25:10] Essentially And we do have multiple molds dependent for between the extremes of the biggest size and the smallest size But yes essentially what you're saying
[00:25:19] Craig Dalton: [00:25:19] Fascinating And is that something to your knowledge is that a unique process at envy or have other companies been doing a similar type approach
[00:25:26]Neil Shirley: [00:25:26] I believe it is unique for us because we there's plenty that [00:25:30] have the process that not really showing I think what's really special is how we're able to do it while achieving some of the arrow shapes frame Which is as far as I know hasn't really been done yet
[00:25:43] Craig Dalton: [00:25:43] Yeah that was one of the big questions when Randall and I were talking in the last episode of in the dirt about it we just weren't quite sure how you were pulling off custom dimensions on the tubes
[00:25:54] Neil Shirley: [00:25:54] Yeah so really it's a remarkable process we've already had we've had a couple of media out here seeing it prelaunch we have a couple more that have expressed interest in visiting post-launch so it's It's Yeah I think our engineering team that we have here in house Some really brilliant people And Kevin who was is behind the bike key Even though this is 10 Clinically the first bite for envy as we've been talking about we've worked
[00:26:21]With bike
[00:26:22] builders a lot in the past and we also worked with And designed and manufactured the front end of their Ex triathlon time trial bike And then Kevin before he came over to envy he worked I mean he worked in G T back in their heyday when you know the lotto bikes and building some of the bikes and going over to Perry Bay with the team So he's got great stories and then some time specialized developing the first rebate Even though it's a new it's a new category for us There's definitely a lot of know-how within the building in And how to put together A road [00:27:00] bike
[00:27:00] Craig Dalton: [00:27:00] Yeah exactly And then much like a lot of the other custom offerings out there in the world at the end of the day you get to choose from Looks like a pretty vast selection of paint schemes
[00:27:13] Neil Shirley: [00:27:13] Yeah we brought in a painter a year ago we already had a paint shop here where we paint mountain stems that are made here in our disc rear time-travel wheels And so we brought in this painter and for the last year he's been painting we all have custom painted forks and handlebars Now just trying to keep him busy until we had till we had frames to be feeding through there
[00:27:36] But he
[00:27:36] put together basically his paint shop And so with the help of our design team And they created four different four different paint templates for the frame and then 38 color options and Matt versus gloss as options as well There's mean you can about having a unique bike without even having to spend extra on on extra custom paint or anything which which is an option but anyone that has seen the coverage on our site and some of the different paints that are painted bikes that are coming out like there's man you can do some really cool stuff I was just down in the paint shop this afternoon And seeing like we were doing a bike for Chris King now That's just unbelievable so it's really cool to be able to offer something like that I know aesthetics the paint is not something that
[00:28:30] [00:28:30] That
[00:28:30] doesn't make you any faster but I it's these bikes as we know like have a relationship with your bike and I don't just look at my bikes as a tool and so to be able to have something a little more individual and show some personality I had a storm trooper My bike is mostly all white but I had a storm trooper logo put on the hammer bar STEM because it just reminded me of that All that stuff is really cool When you're talking about a bike that you're going to have for years and years
[00:28:58] Craig Dalton: [00:28:58] Yeah absolutely I mean you're preaching to the choir here I ride a pink bicycle so I know it I know what it means to make your yeah Choose a paint color that makes you happy when you're out there on the roads and trails
[00:29:08] Neil Shirley: [00:29:08] Yep
[00:29:09] Craig Dalton: [00:29:09] That's awesome Neil So how long would one have to wait at this point to get one of these bikes
[00:29:14]Neil Shirley: [00:29:14] So as we as of last Friday we launched As we expected we had a con A considerable number of orders came in So I think we're looking at if someone went on in Went to nv.com today You're probably looking at Fall late fall
[00:29:37] Craig Dalton: [00:29:37] Gotcha
[00:29:37] Neil Shirley: [00:29:37] for delivery of a bike seems under normal circumstances that would be a really long time
[00:29:43] But
[00:29:43]In COVID reality right now it might not seem that far off when a lot of the a lot of the big bike brands are not able to deliver until 20 22 in a lot of cases it's it is a long time Some of the first people that were able to get in line No [00:30:00] they're going to have bikes delivered to them next to as soon as April
[00:30:03] Craig Dalton: [00:30:03] Nice as you mentioned with COVID It might take you just as long to get a group of these days
[00:30:09] Neil Shirley: [00:30:09] No and that's that's a big factor for us as as well there's If people those that are choosing the chassis are rolling chassis only option they're likely to get the bike a lot quicker And source their own Shimano or saran parts elsewhere
[00:30:25] Craig Dalton: [00:30:25] Yeah exactly I've talked to a lot of builders who have a lot of frustration in the current state of affairs because they just can't move full bikes out the door which is quite a shame
[00:30:34]Neil Shirley: [00:30:34] It isn't and it's I really feel for a lot of the a lot of the brands out there because the business we're in a really interesting situation where there is Is much business the taking it's really up to you how well you do and many of them have their hands tied right now because they literally their order books are so full they don't have parts or they don't have frame sets from their vendors or any of that we in the bike industry we have our ups and downs So when when the business is there you want to be able to capitalize it on it and not to be able to do that is really really sad
[00:31:13] Craig Dalton: [00:31:13] Yeah no doubt about that Good news is I think we are looking forward We're trending towards people getting vaccinated We're trending towards some of these events happening hopefully by the time like a BWR San Diego runs around rolls around We'll start to see some of these envy custom [00:31:30] road with the all road geometry racing those types of events
[00:31:34] Neil Shirley: [00:31:34] know I'll be out there with mine We're going to have They'll there'll be a handful of them out there I sure hope I'll Yeah I can't wait to go test mine in the some of the single track the lemon twist in Bergen Some of those fun sections
[00:31:49] Craig Dalton: [00:31:49] Yeah that's awesome As we were talking about offline I think for me the gravel world has this spectrum from Road plus which is this 35 millimeter kind of size tire all the way on the other extreme to the bike packing side So it's thrilling to see brands continue to push the limits on both sides because I think depending on where you live in the country Yeah either or is going to make sense for you depending on your local terrain
[00:32:14] Neil Shirley: [00:32:14] Yeah
[00:32:14]That's totally true I Wasatch mountains here just out our back door here in Utah so Rocky and rugged like I would never Even a 700 by 40 is you're under biking most of the time like at six 50 B and 47 to 50 Mill tires way to go But know like we were talking about in Lincoln Nebraska when I did gravel worlds out there I raced a 32 C tire And so it really Jew is geographically dependent on terrain is definitely for BWR San Diego I'll happily run a 32 C and in my custom road and it's going to be a It's going to be an awesome bike And then my as a gravel guy here and a [00:33:00] number of us hearing Envy that that ride gravel consistently we're
[00:33:04] pushing for that next That next version that can fit some big tires in there I think we need to really just understand The demand that's that we have for for the custom road and then understand how we can scale up and be able to Keep up with the demand and then add hopefully add a gravel version as well
[00:33:24] Craig Dalton: [00:33:24] That makes a ton of sense I mean envy has been such a great supporter of the gravel community as I said before So I'm sure that Mike will come which is why it was important to have this conversation today
[00:33:34] Neil Shirley: [00:33:34] Yeah
[00:33:35] Craig Dalton: [00:33:35] Cool Neil thank you so much for making time today I really appreciate it
[00:33:39] Neil Shirley: [00:33:39] Yeah Thank you Craig And so it's fun to talk about It's it's something that we've been living the last two and a half years, so to be able to launch the bike and start telling people about it has been so exciting.
[00:33:51]
[00:33:51]Craig Dalton: [00:33:51] That's it for this week's episode of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks to Neil for coming on and talking about the NV custom road project. It's really exciting to see both sides of the sport. Continue to innovate. I tell you, it looks like one fast machine. I'll put a link in the show notes to where you can find out more information about the NV custom road bike.
[00:34:13]Definitely check out some of the custom paint jobs that neil was mentioning truly beautiful bikes.
[00:34:18] If you've made it this far on the show, I hope that you're already a subscriber, but if not, make sure to hit that subscribe button. We put out episodes just about every week and we've got about a [00:34:30] hundred in the back catalog for you to peruse.
[00:34:32]Until next time here's the finding some dirt onto your wheels.
This week Randall and Craig discuss the new ENVE Custom Road Project, SPD Power Meter Pedals from Garmin and what vaccinations are going to mean for our own group riding.
Links:
ENVE Custom Road
Garmin Rally SPD Power Pedal
Join The Ridership
Full Transcription:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of in the dirt from the gravel ride podcast i'm your host craig dalton i'll be joined shortly by my co-host randall jacobs.
[00:00:10]Every two weeks Randall and I discuss how gravel cycling is fitting into our lives in that particular week. And also look at recent product drops and events being announced in the industry. It's been quite quiet over the last few months, but I feel like with vaccinations coming, we're starting to see new product launches and a lot more talk about events. In person later this year.
[00:00:35]
[00:00:35]If you're a first time listener. Welcome. In the alternating weeks, I have long form interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. With a goal of shedding light on the ever nuance sport of gravel cycling.
[00:00:50]We've got quite an extensive back catalog of episodes with about a hundred already recorded. So if there's an event or product or an athlete that you're curious
[00:01:00]About just scroll back in your podcast feed. I think you'll find we've covered a lot of territory over the last two and a half years. The podcast is sponsored by a small number of supporters, but mainly by listeners, like you. Simply visit, buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride.
[00:01:19]And choose how you'd like to support the show. Your support is greatly appreciated. With that said let's dive right in to this week show. [00:01:30]
[00:01:30] Randall. Good to see ya.
[00:01:33] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:01:33] Good to see you as well. Craig, how have you been?
[00:01:35] Craig Dalton: [00:01:35] I've been well , for some reason it feels like I haven't talked to you in a long time this week.
[00:01:40]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:01:40] I have been largely off grid. So, I on a road trip was in death Valley with my colleague, Sam, and then now I'm in Southern Utah and where I've been for the past couple of weeks.
[00:01:50] So it's been a good amount of time since we,
[00:01:53] Craig Dalton: [00:01:53] yeah, that makes sense. That's awesome. I forgot that you were intending on meeting up with Sam. Did you guys end up camping and doing some riding together?
[00:02:00]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:02:00] So we left bikes at home and I've actually left my bike at home entirely for this roughly four week trip intentionally.
[00:02:06] So a lot of trail running and hiking and long walks and so on. Just because of. Yeah, I figured it's one. I have a Prius camper and so I can fit the bike, but it's a lot more work to pull it out and then put in, pull it out, lock it up, outside the car to camp and then, throw it back in and so on.
[00:02:21] But then also I just wanted some time away from the bike to, so I could fall back in love with it. And I've been really enjoying trail running and going up a little bit of light mountaineering and things like that on this trip. And so. So yeah, time away. So they do
[00:02:34] Craig Dalton: [00:02:34] not take away your gravel cyclist membership card if you cycle for a month.
[00:02:40]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:02:40] I think I think I got a lifetime membership for the amount that I've put into this particular space. Hopefully people will forgive me for being off the bike for a bit. Yeah. It
[00:02:48] Craig Dalton: [00:02:48] often feels that way. I think, I growing up in the eighties as a cyclist, more primarily in the nineties, obviously.
[00:02:56] There was this going sort of vision as a [00:03:00] cyclist that you just have to ride all the time in order to be a cyclist. So it's, I'm stuck in that mentality. I sort of start to get itchy. If I take a prolonged amount of time off the bike.
[00:03:12] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:03:12] Yeah, I'll be honest. Like I, my relationship to the bike is very different than it used to be.
[00:03:16] I used to have that kind of compulsive need to put the miles in, but I'm really enjoying both the change of scenery, change of lifestyle, still working on the road, of course, but just a completely different Headspace and out of my usual routines and the bike being one of those. When I get back to the Bay area, I'll definitely be doing plenty of riding.
[00:03:34] And then again in Boston when I'm out that way, starting probably in may.
[00:03:38]Craig Dalton: [00:03:38] Yeah. I mean, the thing is, and the truth is, and everybody listening knows it. Like the bike is always there for you. And that's the beautiful thing about it. Certainly when my son was born that first year, I was pretty light on the bike and that predated my interest in gravel cycling.
[00:03:53] And when I came back and discovered gravel cycling, I just sort of grabbed hold of it and was all in again.
[00:04:00] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:04:00] Well, one thing I will say that I'm quite excited about is vaccination. So you got vaccinated.
[00:04:05] Craig Dalton: [00:04:05] Yeah. So I'm one shot in.
[00:04:07] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:04:07] Yeah. So you have the next
[00:04:09] Craig Dalton: [00:04:09] one coming up. Yeah. The next one's coming up, I think April 15th.
[00:04:12] And it was quite a powerful experience actually. I took the time to talk to a lot of the people who were volunteering at the vaccination site and they were like, you wouldn't believe it. Like we have people burst into tears of relief. Just to have started that process. And I definitely felt [00:04:30] that, I mean, by no means am I being cavalier in my life and my protection at this point, one shot in, and obviously my family is not vaccinated yet, but I have a sense of hope.
[00:04:40] I'm really excited about more of my friends getting vaccinated and just slowly returning back.
[00:04:48] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:04:48] I definitely feel that the combination of the, having the pandemic and then having the long, cold winter and both of those lifting and having the thing really excited about as well.
[00:04:59] I'm here potting with friends who are themselves vaccinated met up with a couple other friends who were in the medical field and are vaccinated. And we took precautions, but we could relax a little bit and. By the time I get to Boston, I hope that group rides can be a thing again, granted with appropriate precautions and so on and trying to not have too many people out and keep some distancing and so on.
[00:05:18] But with some responsible protocol, that being a thing. Yeah.
[00:05:23] Craig Dalton: [00:05:23] Curious to learn sort of how we all have appropriate protocols. I know that the ridership forum, one of the members posted an article originated from USA cycling, but also offered and layered in a lot of his. Personal precautions and experiences and riding throughout the pandemic.
[00:05:41] It's just going to be strange. I went on a ride over the weekend of my largest group ride in, 14 months, six people, three people vaccinated. So obviously we were massed up and trying to stay distanced, but it's weird. It's awkward to sort of be half in half out. And I think we're all going to go [00:06:00] through with this.
[00:06:01]The next four or five months potentially, and it's just important that we stay strong and conservative so that we can go into the winter as a country in a good, in good position.
[00:06:14] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:06:14] I think the other thing that we need to be mindful of is that these vaccines are very effective, but are not 100% effective and with new variants and so on, we might need boosters.
[00:06:25] And, some degree of precaution protocol will be necessary for awhile, but to be able to know that the worst of it is over or hopefully over is an immense relief. So yeah, absolutely. With you there. I think we get mine in April when I'm back in the Bay. I think California is going to. Offer them to everybody starting either on the first or the 15th of April.
[00:06:44] Craig Dalton: [00:06:44] Yeah. This is the 15th of April. It's open to everybody. And I do think, the it was like an assembly line where I went, it was in a high school gymnasium and they were just pumping people through, which is great to see. So I do think if you're motivated, you're going to be able to get in there.
[00:06:59] And I, I hope my wife has sort of similarly is just going to get in on the earlier side of April yeah. To get our household vaccinated. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. But this is not a pandemic COVID medical podcast. We're here to talk about gravel bikes as usual. I feel like a few companies are starting to put new things out there, which is exciting because a few more products coming to our desks.
[00:07:22] I know you sort of, one of them caught your eye and a couple of caught my eye that we should talk about.
[00:07:28] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:07:28] Yeah. So mine would [00:07:30] be the Donna plugger from Dyna plug. And not that it's anything radically new, it's just a much less expensive solution to their already great Dyna plug set up. And I've been using the bacon strips just because I found the dyno plugs cheap, even though the dyno plugs are.
[00:07:45] Arguably more effective or less, less fussy with this, I really have no excuse and I think neither does this will be something that I'm recommending to pretty much all of our right well, to all of our riders from here on in 25 bucks comes with four of the plugs. You can get the replacement plugs as well.
[00:07:59] It's super lightweight and it just works. And it's way better than having to pull off your wheel and pop a bead and dump out your ceilings and pull a valve or pull a valve STEM out and so on and throw a tube in. So. Yeah, good job, Donna plug in making this more accessible.
[00:08:15] Craig Dalton: [00:08:15] Yeah, I think that's cool. Just to drive that point home.
[00:08:17] I mean, they brought the price down from 50 or 60 plus dollars in their original kits that I'd been using previously down to what is it? 29 95. So that's awesome.
[00:08:28] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:08:28] 24 99, I think with these. And I believe that they're made domestically as well domestic to the U S so that's cool.
[00:08:34] Craig Dalton: [00:08:34] Yeah, that's awesome.
[00:08:36] It was funny. I was out Riding Laurel Del maybe three weeks ago. And I had just. I had gotten the GoPro max camera. So I've been playing around with my three 60 photography and my buddy, Jason, shout out to Jason. If he's listening, he is bombing down. There's no tomorrow through Laurel Dell having the time of his life.
[00:08:55] I think he was thinking I was going to catch him, but his speed and velocity was [00:09:00] so intense. Like I kept getting close to them, him, and then losing him again. And he blasted through the rock garden at the bottom before the Creek crossing and the tire just explodes upon crossing the river.
[00:09:17] So we were he was like, that was just the greatest five minutes of my cycling career. And we're like, now it's going to be the worst four hours of your life. As we hike up to the Ridge and try to find your way home, et cetera. But we had it, we had a couple of plugs which is why I'm mentioning it.
[00:09:35] We plugged the tire, but it was too far gone. He'd actually dented the rim and we did have to pull it out. We put a 700 by 30 inner tube for a six 50 by 43 tire. So it was sort of overinflated on the inner tube in, and quite a bit wonky on the way out. But, we were able to ride all the way home, which I considered a victory.
[00:10:02] He finally reflated again, right when we got to mill Valley. So someone was able to come back and pick them up.
[00:10:09] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:10:09] Now it makes me think. He might want to add another solution, which is we have a few riders mentioned my friend Isaac before who's in the ridership and he uses the foam inserts. I can't recall which ones he's using.
[00:10:20] It's the air force or one of the others, but these detonating tires and denting rooms in the process, maybe that's something to add into the package.
[00:10:28] Craig Dalton: [00:10:28] Yeah. I think if you're a larger [00:10:30] rider, That seems to make a lot of sense. I didn't really think about it in that context, Jason's definitely well, over six foot tall, a bigger guy, so he's hitting things hard.
[00:10:39] Those crushed core or other types of foam inserts might be something of interest.
[00:10:44] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:10:44] Yeah. I actually just recommended it to one of our riders who wanted to start exploring lower pressures with our carbon rims. And it's well, they're very robustly made. And when you run them too low and you hit a rock, it's going to be a very expensive repair.
[00:10:58] So, yeah. Yeah, the people I know who ride them really like them adds a little bit of weight, but if you're riding that aggressively, who cares, you're already on a very efficient machine. Yeah.
[00:11:07] Craig Dalton: [00:11:07] Particularly if you're a bigger guy or gal, like why not? Right. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that I have here, yeah.
[00:11:14] I was going to say the thing that I've picked up over the transom was these new power meter pedals from Garmin, they're called the rally power meters. And they're built on an SPD chassis, which to my knowledge is the first sort of SPD style, power meter pedal that's existed.
[00:11:36] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:11:36] I feel like there may have been another one made by Expedo or some, one of the other Taiwanese pedal makers.
[00:11:44]Don't quote me on that, but these definitely look really well-made SPDs, as I ride them. I'm a big fan. They're ubiquitous. They're a little bit heavy. It adds like relative to an XD. I'm seeing XDS at 170 grams a piece. These are 220 grams. So an extra 50 grams per [00:12:00] pedal. But dual-sided power meters.
[00:12:02] You can transfer them to any bike. They install really easily and you don't have to buy a set of pedals because these are your pedals. So, in all those regards, it makes sense. They're a bit pricey. I think there a thousand
[00:12:13] Craig Dalton: [00:12:13] bucks. Yeah. Over a thousand bucks. So definitely pricey. I mean, I think, yeah. Well, you would know better than I, what can you get into a crank ARM-based power meter for,
[00:12:23]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:12:23] so if you have crank arms that have a flat inner surface there's a good chance that four I's power meters will work for you. And this is what we recommend to our riders. Cause we have our cranks are hollow, forged aluminum, so it's a smooth surface on the back.
[00:12:37] And so this is like a nine grand power meter that you can get either with a coin cell or rechargeable. They both have their upsides and downsides. I like the coin sell myself cause it lasts a really long time and you replace it really easily. And there's no port to get contaminated, but different strokes for different folks.
[00:12:54]And it's 300 bucks. Now the downside is that you have to remove your crank set and ship your crank out and be without your bike for two weeks. So that's a bummer, but it works really well. It's single sided. So it's not giving you. You an average of the two sides. It's not giving you a sense of any sort of imbalance, but most people are pretty balanced and frankly, like it's accurate enough for you to understand your progress.
[00:13:17] And I think that's really the critical thing.
[00:13:18] Craig Dalton: [00:13:18] Yeah. Imagine if you're a professional athlete, knowing about a little bit of imbalance between your legs is something you can work on with your coach. But as the average athlete, as you said, we're, hopefully mostly balanced [00:13:30] and it works itself out in the wash.
[00:13:32] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:13:32] Yeah. Yeah. And as far as the weight is concerned, nine grams. So you could actually buy the cheapest Shimano pedals, like the M five twenties, which I recommend all the time, because it just bomb-proof add one of these nine grand power meters and be at $300 versus a thousand dollars and still have a lighter setup.
[00:13:49] So I think that's something to consider.
[00:13:52] Craig Dalton: [00:13:52] Yeah. Now that you're mentioning it, cause I, I thought, Oh, this would be really cool to be able to swap between the two, but you might as well at $300 price point.
[00:14:00] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:14:00] Get one, one, three different bikes. You have a hundred dollars to buy yourself a nice meal.
[00:14:05] Craig Dalton: [00:14:05] Exactly. Have you ever trained with power?
[00:14:08] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:14:08] Oh yeah, I trained, I had the original wireless power tap with a, an old school Garmin edge, seven Oh five, which was like the big unit back in the day. Yeah. And it was it was pretty radical at the time. And I remember reading I think it's Andrew Cogans book training and racing with the power meter and then Joe Freels book the mountain bikers Bible or something along those lines for a title.
[00:14:33] And it just I'd always trained with heart rate. And hardware gives you a lot of great information and you can correlate that with your perceived exertion and your cadence and so on and learn a lot. But adding power to the, I mean, power is just such an absolute metric. Like I weighed this much.
[00:14:52] I can put out this much power for this much time. And how does that correlate to my heart rate? And how does that correlate to my cadence and how can I optimize those things in [00:15:00] my body, temperature manager and my fueling strategy and so on to get that power number. As high as possible, as long as possible.
[00:15:07] Craig Dalton: [00:15:07] Yeah. I think that's what always interests me about it. There's a purity to a power number that you just can't get anywhere else.
[00:15:15] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:15:15] Yeah. At the end of the day it's if you're in an event keeping all else equal, like power, is it though granted? One of the beautiful things about training with power is it kept me from over-training.
[00:15:26] Right? So now you have all of these ways of looking at being in a certain zone for a certain amount of time based on your. Your threshold power and your max power and so on in this kind of a curve. And then you can see. And so, like I, I found when I first started training with power, that was over-training.
[00:15:41] And so I backed off and focused on recovery more and did more intensity before major events and it actually made a huge difference.
[00:15:50] Craig Dalton: [00:15:50] And were you using the power meter while you were racing off
[00:15:53] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:15:53] road? No. Back then power. The only. I think it was the SRM. And then there was, which was a crank based, very expensive, very accurate but very expensive.
[00:16:01] And then there was the power tap, which was a hub based system. And so I had built up a set of wheel aluminum wheels, training wheels. It was back in the day when you had training wheels and race wheels. Now, everyone just has really nice wheels with disc brakes. Cause you don't really have to worry about wearing them out.
[00:16:16] Peters work well in carbon wheels are relatively inexpensive now, but yeah, only on the road bike for training. And then I would just use heart rate and perceived exertion in my events.
[00:16:26]Craig Dalton: [00:16:26] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you sort of see the road racing the road, racers, [00:16:30] looking down at their power meters and you understand, how scientific the coaching staff can be back in the cars because they know exactly what kind of power numbers these athletes can put out.
[00:16:42] They're like, okay, go ride the front. We'd add such and such Watts and keep it there because we know you're capable of doing that. And we know you can do that for 20 minutes. And at 20 minutes in one second, we're going to pop you off. We're going to slot the next athlete in there.
[00:16:59] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:16:59] Makes me think back to the conversation.
[00:17:01] I had a few weeks ago with Ted Kwong and he was talking about you have different racers and it's they're feeling good today. Well, you can actually verify that with a power number. Like what, how has somebody's training been? And, we now have things like 24 hour heart rate monitors.
[00:17:15] So you can see how heart rate variability is a reflection of training recovery and all these things, and really make a science out of it to a much greater degree. It's pretty impressive. I still just like to go out and ride my bike. I actually have a power meter on my bike and I haven't charged it for awhile, but But, for training for events and so on, or just understanding how your body works and how it responds to stress.
[00:17:38] It's
[00:17:38] Craig Dalton: [00:17:38] it's really useful. Yeah. For me. Yeah. At most it would be a curiosity. I do think it, part of the thing that I love about gravel is I do feel like skill plays such an important role in your performance. Vis-a-vis other athletes at events, or even in group rides. Like I can't tell you how many more powerful riders I ride with.
[00:17:58] That just don't have the technical [00:18:00] skills to navigate the terrain we have here in Marin County.
[00:18:03]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:18:03] Yeah. One last thing that comes to mind on this topic is in terms of the benefits for say an experienced rider, who's not racing, which is where I put myself versus a obviously a racer. This would benefit there.
[00:18:15]But then the other end, somebody who's relatively new. Who has the budget power meter together with a heart rate monitor really helps you to understand how hard to go. And so, as an example, imagine going up a 20 minute climb. And at the beginning of the climb, you're relatively fresh and you go a little bit harder.
[00:18:32] And by the end of the climb, you're really, suffering quite a bit and maybe your power is way off. And had you just backed off at the beginning and spread out your effort more over the course of the ride, you would end up with a much better overall time up the Hill and end up feeling better.
[00:18:47] But that's something that has to be learned through experience.
[00:18:50] Craig Dalton: [00:18:50] Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I think every new cyclist has, is going to go through that climb where they absolutely blow up a quarter of the way up and realize they went out way too hard. And yeah, maybe having that power data helps you understand that in advance and you don't make this rookie
[00:19:05] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:19:05] mistakes.
[00:19:07] Yeah. Disciplined really disciplined and understanding your own physiological response to stress.
[00:19:13] Craig Dalton: [00:19:13] Yeah, exactly. So I've had a buddy come to town who only has a road bike. So I've been out on the roads and I've been sort of surprisingly happy with the riding I've been doing when he originally came down and he was like wanting to ride.
[00:19:28] I was frustrated [00:19:30] thinking I'm not riding off road. I'm all about the gravel riding, but it has been nice getting back on the road and sort of feeling that efficiency of riding on the road. And it's opened me up a little bit to, maybe I should spice it up a little bit more because oftentimes I feel like.
[00:19:47] I'm overly abusive on my body with all the off-road riding idea and a little like phone and get in road riding would do me. Good.
[00:19:55] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:19:55] Yeah. You do you still have a dedicated road bike?
[00:19:59] Craig Dalton: [00:19:59] I don't. I don't. And the reason I bring it up is twofold. One. I sort of have been road riding with a little bit of chagrin being the gravel cycling guy and going out on the road.
[00:20:08] It's just giving me a laugh, but I also, this week caught wind of envies new road plus bike. Envy as some of you may know, as a component manufacturer and a tube manufacturer, they've been great supportive company to the gravel cycling scene via their wheels and some great handlebars to push the limits back in the day, but they've come out of their Ogden Utah factory with this new custom road plus bike that accepts I think about to a 35 C tire, but it's pretty fascinating that.
[00:20:42] An Ogden Utah based company is now offering a full custom frame set. So I just wanted to get your thoughts on it.
[00:20:50] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:20:50] Yeah. This thing. So my initial impression was, Oh, here we go, another really expensive bike and it's got a seat mast and so on. Not that interesting, but when I dove [00:21:00] into it, it's custom geometry.
[00:21:02] And so they had to develop a different manufacturing process to accomplish that because usually in a mass produced carbon bike, like our bikes, our frames you would essentially do usually the front triangle in one mold and you'd have five sizes of that mold. And then you do the rear triangle in another mold, and you may have, anywhere from one to three different rear triangles for that to correspond with the different sizes.
[00:21:27] And that's it. And they were allowing, it seems that they're allowing more or less full customization of all the two blanks. And that's that's really hard to do. This is not a mass production process. And so it makes sense why it costs what it does and even the seat mast, which I'm not a huge fan of because it makes it so that a bike has very limited adjustability.
[00:21:47] Well, already this bike is being very highly tailored for a very specific rider. And so in that sort of scenario, a seat mass does offer some very subtle advantages potentially in terms of weight in terms of being able to tune the frame. Just so, it's not a decision that I would make, but I can see why it's done here.
[00:22:07] Craig Dalton: [00:22:07] Yeah. Interesting. Oftentimes we've talked in the past about custom steel builders and that experience when you have the wherewithal to get accustomed bike, it's just a beautiful process. To work with a builder and have it totally customized to you. And to your point, to be able to do that out of carbon is a pretty special experience.
[00:22:29] I'm [00:22:30] excited for the team at envy to have cracked whatever code and put that out there to the cycling community. I'm
[00:22:37] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:22:37] actually very, I would be very curious. They probably won't let me in because I work in the space, but I'd be very curious to see how they're doing the customization. So I'm Craig Calfee is as a friend and I've been down to his workshop down in Santa Cruz.
[00:22:52] And at one time well, I assume he's still doing it this way. He was 3d printing, molds, custom molds for lugs, and then the L and then he would use a carbon tube to lug sort of construction. Which is an older style, which used to see on, steel brace frames and so on, but it allowed him to do a custom carbon setup.
[00:23:11] And in this case it doesn't seem to be, there doesn't seem to be lugs. I'm not quite sure how they're joining the frame joining the tubes. There's no weight figures on here. So I can't even really guess, like if it was on the heavier side, I would think there was probably lugs cause there'd be more overlap and more material.
[00:23:25] So I'd be very curious to see how they're pulling that off. And if they're even doing things with say custom tube, stiffnesses. For different riders have different weights to get the tuning characteristics you want either, something as a little bit more flexible for a lighter rider or an off-road or a rough road rider versus something stiffer for someone who's bigger, more powerful and, or riding more on smooth roads.
[00:23:48] So quite curious here.
[00:23:50] Craig Dalton: [00:23:50] Yeah, it's curious, it sort of reminds me of that Australian company bastion cycles who was doing. Extensive amounts of 3d printed [00:24:00] titanium. So they were 3d printing the whole bottom bracket shell, the head tubes, so they could get the angles as well as the other bits and bobs around the bike.
[00:24:11] And then they were using carbon tubes to bring it all together. Is it possible that envy is actually printing the mold shape custom for the individual and then, doing the process from there. That's I'm wondering if like mold technology has evolved in such a way that, that, that becomes possible.
[00:24:31] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:24:31] I haven't seen anything like that. I could speculate on some possibilities just for fun and see if we if we get it right. But I mean, the way that it's usually done. So it used to be you lay, put the layup on you have a two-piece mold. You lay the carbon in the mold all around, according to a certain schedule, a typical frame might have, a couple hundred plies or potentially more to tune the flex characteristics and so on.
[00:24:55] Just so in stiffness to do custom, I mean, you could do tube to lug if you want. Oh. And then you would put a bladder in, or now the, they use a a foam. And in fact, it's a combination process where it's a foam that is dipped in latex and in that latex creates a bladder. So now you get the best of both being able to force air into a bladder to really push out all, any sort of voids, but then also the foam is expanding too.
[00:25:23] So, the mass production technique is really advanced. Now
[00:25:26]Craig Dalton: [00:25:26] Is that inflation is that to basically push [00:25:30] the. Carbon fiber applies to the outside of the mole, then create whatever the ultimate frame tube shape is going to be.
[00:25:37] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:25:37] Okay. Yeah. It's the, compactified those carbon layers. So all those layers get pushed right up against the inner surface of the outside of the Mo.
[00:25:45]What's the way to explain this this, the outer surface on the inside of the mold, just getting pushed up against there and to the extent that you can. Have more pressure pushing that as it's being cured. You're essentially getting rid of a lot of the voids that are in that material.
[00:26:00] Inevitably, you're still going to have some voids to the extent that you can minimize them and keep them small as well it just makes for a stronger, more consistent frame set
[00:26:10] Craig Dalton: [00:26:10] and talking to you previously. I mean, it's the mold, as you're designing a bike, the mold is a great expense.
[00:26:16] Obviously you've got to engineer what that looks like. But then minting that mold is a big step in the process, correct?
[00:26:23] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:26:23] Yeah. So doing it in granted, things might be getting more expensive. Now, a supply chains, as we've talked about on the pod before are mess right now and the, even the frame vendors are seeing, Much higher than usual demand, which means that they're probably charging more for molds.
[00:26:40] But last I checked from a tier one high volume vendor, a set of five molds would run say 50 or $60,000. And you might spend another say 30 to $50,000 for the molds for the the the foam that goes inside. Okay, so you have this [00:27:00] expanded polystyrene. And so that expanded polystyrene that you're putting in the mold to expand outward and push the carbon applies up against the inside of the steel mold that needs a tool as well.
[00:27:13] And that tool can usually be a bit made out of something like aluminum. That's cheaper as opposed to steel, which is more durable, but much harder to machine. But nonetheless you can easily on a standard say like gravel frame set. Be investing anywhere from 50 to a hundred thousand dollars or even more, if you have, tighter size runs, maybe six, seven, eight sizes in order to launch a new model,
[00:27:35] Craig Dalton: [00:27:35] Right. And then your to tune sort of how you want the bike to perform within that. There's different grades of carbon fiber that you can use and obviously different numbers of layers that you can put on any given part.
[00:27:50] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:27:50] Correct. And of course, tube shapes are that kind of stuff, starting point.
[00:27:54] So a bigger tube is if you have a round tube and you make it bigger, it's stiffness is going to go up exponentially relative to the increase in the diameter of the tube. And so working with tube shapes first. And then from there you can tune flex characteristics, but that mix of tube shapes, and then you can adjust further with the layup schedule the particular modulates of the carbon.
[00:28:17] And you might also want to consider, say using high modulus carbon in a place that requires a lot of stiffness that doesn't have a lot of risk of impact, but then you want lower modulates carbon say on a down tube. [00:28:30] Where you could have rocks kicked up and so on. So there's a lot of considerations in optimizing this complex set of compromises in order to get an optimized structure for whatever you're going for as a product manager or an engineer, which I am not to, by the way.
[00:28:44] Actually, I should just make clear, like I'm a, I am a physics nerd who spends a lot of time in factories. Who's picked up a lot from engineers, both state side and in China. But there are people who know this stuff far better than I do. Yeah.
[00:28:58] Craig Dalton: [00:28:58] Presumably the team at envy, going back to their nice bike.
[00:29:01] Exactly. They've got a lot of smart people over in Ogden. Utah are working on this needless to say, I mean, it's not specifically. Or non-specifically a gravel bike. It's really our road plus bike, but I encourage you and I'll put a link in the show notes for people to take a look at it because I can give them one thing for certain they've produced a beautiful looking machine that people need to put some eyes on.
[00:29:27] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:29:27] Indeed. Indeed.
[00:29:28] Craig Dalton: [00:29:28] Yeah. I appreciate you nerding out with me a little bit. I always learn things from our conversations. I hope the listener. Is happy to go down the rabbit hole. I've I find it fascinating just how much can go into carbon bicycles. It's just much more than meets the eye. You think, Oh, you just slap in some tubes together and that's that, but there's so much nuance from, as you describe the layup process, the shape of the tube, et cetera, that goes into producing a great riding bike.
[00:29:58] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:29:58] Yeah. And before we hop [00:30:00] off, actually, there's one, one other topic I wanted to bring up, which is a, B I did my first episode recording in which you graciously provided the platform for. And we got some feedback and we got a lot of good feedback and pretty overwhelmingly positive, but there was one bit of feedback that I thought was really useful and it made me think and that was from a listener.
[00:30:20] Who mentioned that we were talking about because we weren't making a living as a, as professional cyclists, we weren't technical technically professionals. And we said that kind of off the cuff and self-deprecating Lee, but she made the point that I thought it was a very valid point that by that standard, a lot of women racers wouldn't be professional.
[00:30:40] And that was by no mean, the intention of that statement. And I can see why the distinction there. This word professional has a particular meaning and it's really about the level of achievement as opposed to making a living at it. And so I wanted to call that out and just acknowledge that was an area where I learned something from a listener.
[00:30:59] Craig Dalton: [00:30:59] Yeah. That's awesome. No, I appreciate that. Yeah it's hard to sort of. Talk about the disparity in wages, in professional cycling between men and women, and a lot of strides have been made, but absolutely there's a lot of men and women who are out there acting as professionals, being professional cyclists that aren't earning the living that they deserve to make.
[00:31:23] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:31:23] Yeah. Yeah. And maybe didn't, I should give ourselves a little bit more credit too for having a. Accomplish what we did, even if we weren't, [00:31:30] front of the pack making, making our living at it was definitely a great experience. So please keep the feedback coming. We'll be doing a couple more of these episodes in the upcoming weeks.
[00:31:39] Craig Dalton: [00:31:39] Yeah, that was awesome. And we got a lot of great feedback in the ridership forum. If you're not there already. And you have comments about this envy bicycle or power meter training. Definitely go over to the ridership.com. Get your invite and jump in. We'd love to hear from you and get that feedback.
[00:31:56] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:31:56] Yeah, and even more so with the ridership now that vaccine genes are being widely distributed.
[00:32:03]We can start thinking about really facilitating the sort of in-person interactions amongst listeners and in books, amongst members of that community that we've been wanting to with that platform all along. And that's something that excites me immensely, especially as I prepare to go back to the Bay and then go back to Boston where.
[00:32:20] I have a lot of old friends who I haven't written with in years, not to mention a lot of people in the forum who I'll get an opportunity to meet and explore their local trails.
[00:32:28] Craig Dalton: [00:32:28] Yeah. It's been great to see people sharing the roots, which I've been putting in our ride with GPS club. And as you and I have said all along, our hope is to build something.
[00:32:39] That really facilitates real-world interactions. We're not trying to suck people into some digital void where we advertising. We want you to get out there and ride, and we want you to discover new places, meet new people and let's get out there and have some fun when it's safe.
[00:32:57] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:32:57] Yeah, absolutely.
[00:32:59] Craig Dalton: [00:32:59] Cool. Well, thanks [00:33:00] for the time this week, my friend.
[00:33:01] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:33:01] Yeah, always a pleasure chatting with you, Greg. I'll talk to you soon.
[00:33:05] Take care.
[00:33:06]Craig Dalton: [00:33:06] Okay. So that's it for this week's episode of, in the dirt, from the gravel ride podcast. I appreciate you spending a little time with us this week. If you're not already a subscriber, please go ahead and hit that subscribe button. That's hugely indicated of how we're doing at the gravel ride. It means a lot to me. If you're interested in financially supporting the show, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride.
[00:33:31]Until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
This week we sit down with Gavin Coombs from Dead Man Gravel. We get into the details of this new July event in Colorado including conversation about the events' efforts towards diversity and the financial investment it takes to get an event off the ground.
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Dead Man Gravel - Full episode transcript.
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] \Hello and welcome to the gravel ride
[00:00:03] podcast i'm your host craig dalton on this week's episode,
[00:00:07]We have Gavin Coombs, one of the founders of the dead man gravel event in Nederland, Colorado.
[00:00:15]The event is scheduled to take place on July 31st, 2021. Our conversation ranges from diversity and inclusion. To the economics of event production. And obviously the ins and outs of dead man gravel. Before we begin. I'd like to apologize for about a minute of poor quality audio. In the last episode, I only learned it after the fact.
[00:00:39]From a listener. In the ridership. I appreciated that feedback, but thank you for bearing with me. I apologize for that. I'd also like to say a big thank you to those of you have supported the podcast via buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. In particular, those of you who have chosen the membership option.
[00:01:00] Having a consistent baseline level of support from you? The community means a ton to me, more and more. I'm having to move things around in my life. In order to hustle to get these episodes out the door. But knowing that you're counting on me, puts a little fire in my belly. When I first started the podcast, my intention was to cover an equal mix of athletes.
[00:01:22] Product designers and event organizers.
[00:01:26]As the COVID pandemic took hold in 2020. [00:01:30] It largely took events out of the equation for the podcast last year. So I'm happy to be slowly bringing them back into the fold. I'm cautiously optimistic that in the latter half of 2021. We will see events safely going off with riders and organizers, both sharing.
[00:01:47] In the responsibility of safety. I have a ton of respect for advent organizers as you'll hear in my conversation with gavin even with a modest event size it often can carry significant expenses associated with it i hope you'll walk away from this episode with a little bit better understanding of what organizers go through in order to give us these experiences in the gravel community With all that said let's dive right in to my discussion with gavin about dead man's gravel. Gavin, welcome to the show.
[00:02:21]Gavin Coombs: [00:02:21] Thanks Craig. Excited to be here.
[00:02:22] Craig Dalton: [00:02:22] Yeah. I'm excited to talk to you about dead man. Gravel. It ticks a couple things that I really like about events.
[00:02:30] It's got a funny name and it looks really hard and adventurous.
[00:02:36] Gavin Coombs: [00:02:36] Yeah, definitely. We wanted to be a really fun event. And, I think the area that we live in up here in the mountains is a pretty special place. And yeah, it's going to be a great event. I think
[00:02:47] Craig Dalton: [00:02:47] Before we get into the event, let's learn a little bit about you and your background as a cyclist.
[00:02:52] And after that, I'd love to learn a little bit more about what inspired you to create an event.
[00:03:00] [00:03:00] Gavin Coombs: [00:03:00] Yeah. In all, honestly, I am a new cyclist and I know lot of people pretty new to gravel riding. I was a professional trail runner for a number of years and would occasionally ride as like cross training.
[00:03:13]I've been riding a bike, for a really long time. But just never in any kind of like structured or organized way. But it was always a runner and in my leader, Career was like a trail and ultra runner. And what really drew me to that is just the ability to be able to get out into the mountains and explore and just see just everything that.
[00:03:31]That all has to offer. And then recently I ended my running career and then had a a skiing accident where I messed up my knee. Pretty good. And after a couple of surgeries, I've gotten more into cycling and just as a way to, to continue to do the things I loved about trail running I was able to do on a bike as well.
[00:03:50] And was that's what really drew me to, to gravel cycling and in terms of starting an event I've been wanting to do something like that. I operate another business that runs dead, man gravel called peak-to-peak endurance. And we do like retreats and camps, and then wanting to get into the event world for a while now.
[00:04:08] And saw this as an opportunity to create an event where there wasn't one here in Boulder County, Colorado, there are a few bike races not. A ton of gravel, specific ones, there's a couple races or one race in the winter. That's a little kind of gravel bike. And then but there's not a lot of races in this [00:04:30] area.
[00:04:30] And so we saw an opportunity and kinda just threw ourselves into it and just went after it. That's
[00:04:36] Craig Dalton: [00:04:36] awesome. So I want to go back to something you said about how gravel cycling is ticking some of those same feelings you might have had of adventure. W when you were doing your ultra marathoning, it'd be, if you drill into that a little bit, do you feel like it has similar elements in how you feel after doing a big adventurous workout?
[00:04:56] Gavin Coombs: [00:04:56] Absolutely. Yeah. The similarities, on the surface, there can it's easy to see some similarities between, gravel and trail running. And then as I've just gotten more into the gravel community, the similarities are just incredible. Just. Based on the community, everyone's like super welcoming and that's what drew me to trail running initially from the roads.
[00:05:18] And like just the fact that everything's just super chill and people just want to have fun and adventure and explore. And the same thing I've found the exact same thing with gravel riding and that, it was just a huge draw for me. And And you can still do the same things.
[00:05:32]Obviously you can't ride a gravel bike everywhere you can run, but you can still get a lot of, to a lot of really incredible places and can get, go a lot further, it's yeah. It's one thing to go run 50 miles. It'd be completely trashed, but you can go out and ride 50 miles and, be able to see, just as much or a lot of different stuff in, not it doesn't totally destroy your body and Yeah know, so there's just a lot of similarities there.
[00:05:56] Craig Dalton: [00:05:56] I didn't draw it connection until this moment about the ultra running [00:06:00] community and the gravel cycling community, but that's so spot on, I think, sport to sport. There's those elements that you described of once you started running off road, it just became this different thing. It wasn't about running a six minute mile.
[00:06:14] It was about covering this amazing mountainous terrain by any means necessary. And sometimes that meant walking. Sometimes it meant running all the time. It meant getting dirty. Oftentimes it meant getting bloody. But it was, just really about getting out there. And obviously there's so many similarities from road cycling to gravel, cycling where all of a sudden a light bulb goes off and roadies are discovering, getting dirty and getting out there on these mountain roads that are right there in their community can be so much more rewarding than the same road routes they've been doing forever.
[00:06:50] Gavin Coombs: [00:06:50] Totally. Yeah. And I think you're definitely seeing that in the industry. Obviously gravel is exploding and in a lot of that's driven by new people getting into cycling because it is more approachable. I feel like. But you see a ton of people going from the roads to gravel because, honestly I think.
[00:07:05] That being like a former road runner. I know how exhausting that world can be. Yeah. Just mentally and physically to come to a place that is just so much more laid back. And it's not about, like you said, it's not about hitting a specific time or pace. It's just about. The overall adventure. And, I think people are really drawn to that,
[00:07:25] Craig Dalton: [00:07:25] Not to drill too much into the ultra community. and I certainly won't profess to be an active [00:07:30] member of it, but I do remember in the ultras I've done, there was just a creativity in the wardrobe and attitude of all the athletes. I remember going to an event and, seeing like tie, dye, tall socks, and people running in Hawaiian shirts and it just immediately broke down.
[00:07:47] Any kind of performance anxiety, because it just felt like we're there for an experience. And whether you're, this amazing 60 year old runner with a long white beard or, a new athlete in their twenties, like everybody just wanted to be part of this experience in the wilderness. Totally.
[00:08:09] Yeah. And then gravel's obviously the same way. And I love that about it. I love, I think it's just this great reminder. Anytime I see someone wearing a Hawaiian shirt or doing something goofy on the bike that, we're just out there acting like kids and just, triggering that element of our psyche.
[00:08:26] Gavin Coombs: [00:08:26] Absolutely. Yeah. It's just fun, and. Obviously there's becoming as with anything the more popular it gets a level of professionalization that's happening which has bound to happen. And I don't think it's bad for the sport because I think ultimately people are still the majority of people out there riding gravel and doing a lot of these events are just having fun with it.
[00:08:43]Like wearing jorts and like you said, like Hawaiian shirts and it's just about having fun, and that's the most important thing.
[00:08:49] Craig Dalton: [00:08:49] So that obviously plays a role in any event design, just to set the stage for everybody listening, who may not be familiar with Colorado.
[00:08:58] Can you just talk [00:09:00] about where the event is located and maybe a little bit about what the terrain looks like?
[00:09:06] Gavin Coombs: [00:09:06] Totally. Yeah. Generally we're in the, what's considered the front range of the Rocky mountains, which is the Eastern edge of the Rockies. And most people are at least familiar with Boulder.
[00:09:16]We are about 15 ish miles West of Boulder and about 3000 feet higher. The race. Is all at elevation starts about 8,200 feet. Never goes below 8,000 tops out at about 10,300 hundred feet. And so it's hilly, there's there's, you're up and down the whole time. There's not really any flight section whatsoever, and that's just kind of part of the geographic nature of where we live.
[00:09:41] It's. It is mountainous. We're at the base here at 8,000 feet. We're at the base of a whole string of 12,000, 13,000 foot mountains. We see, right out our front door and that you get to look at pretty much the entire course, you get The views are just incredible.
[00:09:57] You never get up like about treeline or anything, but it's just pretty incredible views. And but it's not in terms of setting the like elevation and the altitude aside, it's really not that much different than what you could find in gravel roads anywhere. Most of the roads are really well-maintained County roads.
[00:10:17] And the kind of our long course, which is about 66 miles is about 70% gravel. And so those are just really nice, normal dirt roads that, nothing special about there are a couple of County roads that are a little bit [00:10:30] further out that are a little bit Rocky.
[00:10:32]Some kind of like baby head kind of staff and but are easy to To maneuver through definitely it's all very much gravel bike friendly. You certainly wouldn't need a mountain bike or a hardtail mountain bike to do anything that, that th these courses offer
[00:10:46] Craig Dalton: [00:10:46] Do you think that terrain is going to be ultimately what, or the climbing is ultimately what breaks up this race?
[00:10:52] Is it the type of event that riders can likely stay together from a technical perspective, but ultimately it's going to come down to horsepower.
[00:11:00] Gavin Coombs: [00:11:00] I think so. Yeah. There's not really any sections where that are going to favor someone with more technical bike handling skills.
[00:11:07]Are like I was saying our, I guess we were considered like the premier race, the, we call it our tungsten course. Cause tungsten was a mineral that is, and it was mine out here. And it's also. The hardest mineral that's mined. And that's what we're calling our hardest course.
[00:11:20] And like I said, 66 miles with about 8,300 feet of climbing so pretty stout. And there are a few. Big climbs. And so I think that's really ultimately, what's going to end up separating people and who can adjust to the altitude to, coming someone coming from sea level is going to, have a little bit harder time.
[00:11:37] Craig Dalton: [00:11:37] Yeah. I was going to say it's it's always been one thing for me to be in Boulder at 5,000 feet coming up from sea level. But getting up to 8,000 feet is definitely, it definitely has a huge effect physiologically on me.
[00:11:50] Gavin Coombs: [00:11:50] Yeah. And it does honestly, with people From Boulder to, it's the the effects of altitude are not like in a linear way.
[00:11:56] It's ex it's exponential. So like coming from Boulder to up to [00:12:00] here is about the same from going from sea level to Boulder. And for those who don't know, Boulder sits about 50. Three 5,400 feet. But
[00:12:07] Craig Dalton: [00:12:07] yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So that's definitely going to play a role in it. Why don't we look? Course, by course, and I think it's, always like to tease out as an event organizer, how you thought about creating these routes and what type of challenge did you want to create with each route?
[00:12:25] Gavin Coombs: [00:12:25] Yeah. So we really set out when creating these routes when we wanted to keep it's simple, we didn't want to make it overly complicated with more turns than were necessary. And we wanted to highlight, some cool features. So one, we wanted to make sure we got some really Yeah, Epic views in there.
[00:12:41]Highlight a couple of the big climbs in the area. And then there's just some cool historical stuff, there's a ghost town that you go through that's been abandoned for. Oh, I don't know about a hundred years or so. And so there are just some cool historical features and some just interesting areas that we wanted to highlight.
[00:12:59]And so breaking it down by, we have. Breaking it down course. By course we have three course offerings. We call them our tungsten course, our gold course and our silver course which were all minerals, mined in this area. And the gold course and the tungsten course start and they share the same first 20 miles or so.
[00:13:18]And They both hit, that really big the first, really big, long climb. It's about five miles with 1500 feet of climbing. That's pretty Rocky. You need to, pay attention to pay attention when climbing it for sure. And then they [00:13:30] diverge in the tungsten course continues on and hits another big climb before coming back into town and doing another loop that all describe it a second, but, and then the gold course continues on, in a different direction, which stays on the road a little bit more.
[00:13:43] So the gold course, if someone's coming in and wanted more of a like a bit more, maybe coming from road background or, is not Feeling like super strong at altitude or something. The gold course is a really good option just because it does have a little bit more pavement to it.
[00:13:57]Takes out one major climb. And so that's at 40 miles with just under 5,000 feet of climbing. Yeah, there's just a little bit more approachable. And then we have our will, we're really pushing as like our, or really beginner friendly course. And I think we'll get to this a little bit later, but the.
[00:14:12]We wanted to have a course that was really approachable to anyone who maybe had just an interesting gravel if they had never done a race before. And it's about, it's just about 20 miles. Just just over 2000 feet of climbing. So it's still a challenge, but it's about 50, 50 pavement to road pavement to gravel.
[00:14:31] And so it's just a much more approachable. Approachable kind of course. There's no technical sections. You could probably do it on a road bike and be just fine. Tire size and selection, isn't that big of a deal. And I'm sure we'll even have probably some people do it on a mountain bike and that's great too.
[00:14:46]It was just a really Beginner friendly course, to get your feet wet with some gravel riding.
[00:14:51] Craig Dalton: [00:14:51] Yeah, I think it's so important. You want people to be able to hop into a course and get the thrill and invigoration of being out there in the [00:15:00] woods and get the feel and sense of gravel without putting them in a situation where.
[00:15:05]They're going to come home crying because it was a horrible, too difficult experience. And, I think it's great when race organizers are able to embrace that and be inviting into the community.
[00:15:15] Gavin Coombs: [00:15:15] Yeah, totally. And, we've scaled back and we may end up doing, in and then next year, or, maybe a following year, more like an adventure style race where, it gets.
[00:15:24] It gets pretty gnarly and really pushes your bike to the limit. We didn't want to do that this year just because we wanted everyone to come away from this race, having a really good experienced that's one reason why, like all of our courses have a downhill finish. They all start and finish in the same spot, which is right in the town of Nederland.
[00:15:38]But so they all have a downhill finish, which we felt like. No one wants to finish a hard race on an uphill climb. And we made sure that, the last few miles are going to be really fun. And so it kinda end with, that, that good feeling, and at the front of your mind.
[00:15:52] And and so we did we authored the courses quite a bit before we ended up on a final final course. And we just wanted to make sure that, regardless of which course you choose. You're not going to walk away from it with any bad feelings. Obviously there's always the chance you could wreck or, flat out a bunch of times and, we have hopefully the support for that, but we want everyone to have a good time with it.
[00:16:12] Craig Dalton: [00:16:12] It sounds like there's a solid chance. We'll all be gasping for air, but besides that it'll be a lot,
[00:16:16]Gavin Coombs: [00:16:16] definitely. Yes, for sure. Everyone will be struggling for air at one point or another.
[00:16:22] Craig Dalton: [00:16:22] You've also put a stake in the ground about your desire to be super inclusive for the race. Do you want to talk about that [00:16:30] kind of value and what it means to you?
[00:16:32] Gavin Coombs: [00:16:32] Absolutely. Obviously, and I feel like there's slowly but surely beginning to be a change in the general cycling world. And I think he's see that very specifically in the gravel world. And we, me as the race director and also the team that I have around me recognize that we have a certain level of.
[00:16:52] Of privileged that we can, just decide to start an event like this. And that we have a certain platform that comes with that. And so from the very beginning I wanted to use that platform that we have to try to lift other people up and and not exclude anybody, we don't want we don't want our race.
[00:17:12] To be a part of the problem that is the kind of homogenous. And typically at least on the surface appears to be, exclusionary world of that road cycling has that connotation too. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm not, I guess I certainly would not make that broad statement to everyone who rode rides on the roads or anyone who rides a bike is just a middle-aged white man that doesn't care about anybody else.
[00:17:35] But but there is that sort of that perception in the world of cycling and so we wanted to be very conscious of that and do what we can in our own small way, realizing that we're not a huge race and we're not going to have, Just, hopefully we'll have a big impact in our local community.
[00:17:51]Colorado is not exactly known as the most diverse place in the world and but we want to do what we can to help other people Experienced [00:18:00] new things, find a new passion have a chance to express that passion that they have. And and so we felt this is a perfect kind of vehicle to be able to do that with.
[00:18:08] Craig Dalton: [00:18:08] Are you, if you, are you making any sort of adjustments in the way, the number of slots that are available for particular gender?
[00:18:15]Gavin Coombs: [00:18:15] Yeah, so we are. First off, the one thing that we're doing, which is just an easy, thing that we felt like we could do right away is our first week of registration is going to be open for people who identify as female or by Bach.
[00:18:29] And That is just one way. So like they get first dibs on all the spots and so if it sells out in that first week and all of our women, all of our writers are women or athletes of color that then that's great. And so we didn't, we don't necessarily have a set number of spots set aside, but we are trying to create opportunity where If you want to be able to register, you should have hopefully that time to be able to do we are, I guess I shouldn't say we aren't setting aside any spots because we are also partnering with a couple of organizations. One of which is an organization based here in Denver called ride for racial justice. And we have a number of Athletes from them that are coming, that we've committed to and helping provide resources for to get to get them to come to our race and just be able to participate in something like this.
[00:19:11] And there's that, and we're working with a couple of local, like women's teams to provide spots for. And we really just want to create. A space where people feel welcome and are able to to join, if they still want.
[00:19:25] Craig Dalton: [00:19:25] Yeah. I think it's just important to model that I often find myself lacking [00:19:30] the right words.
[00:19:31] I have the sentiment and the feeling, but I often find that I struggle with how to make the sport more inclusive, but it all starts with efforts like this, where you're just opening your arms and saying, Hey, we can't solve a lot of the problems that make cycling a difficult sport to get into.
[00:19:47] I E like affording equipment, et cetera. But what we can do is say, if you can get over that hurdle in some way, Everybody's welcome.
[00:19:56] Gavin Coombs: [00:19:56] Yeah, definitely. And that's part of the reason too. Why lie? We wanted to. We're trying to set up our race and the feel of our race, and try to toe that line between like just recognize yes, they were high level professional athletes that were probably be at our race and that's great.
[00:20:10] And we want to encourage that and we think that's good for the sport, but we also want to be able to create a space where people can just come and have fun and enjoy their time out in the mountains, push themselves and challenge themselves. But they can also do it on. Whatever bike they don't need, a $6,000 gravel bike.
[00:20:27]They can come on, there are some bikes we would probably discourage, but you don't need to gravel specific bike and necessarily and we don't want it to, we wanted to create just the whole event, have a feel of. It was just open and welcoming to whoever wanted to come and do it.
[00:20:41] Craig Dalton: [00:20:41] Yeah. It's important to just with gravel ride, what you've got, find out if that sport is something you're interested in. If you have an old mountain bike or even a road bike, you may have some issues here and there, but just go for it. The community and the infrastructure of these events are going to try to support you with whatever bike you show up on.
[00:20:57] Gavin Coombs: [00:20:57] Totally. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:21:00] [00:20:59] Craig Dalton: [00:20:59] So the other big issue with an event, your events, July 31st, 2021 is obviously COVID safety. We don't know where we're going to be as a society or where Colorado is going to be as a state. At that point, obviously things are trending in the right direction and I probably wouldn't have had this conversation if your event was in.
[00:21:20] June, or certainly may, because I really have strong concerns that those events just aren't going to be in the best interests of our country. But why don't you talk about how you're going to approach COVID safety and what it's going to be like during the race?
[00:21:34] Gavin Coombs: [00:21:34] Yeah, absolutely. So that is obviously our number one concern.
[00:21:38]We wouldn't in your you're, we wouldn't be having this conversation if our race was any earlier, we. We feel like we're going to be, we're positioned that to be in a really good space. I think in terms of vaccinations, just on a national level we're really optimistic that things are looking are trending in the right direction, at least.
[00:21:57]And so we feel good about it. We are very confident that our event is going to go off in person. And that, it's going to resemble. A quote unquote, normal bike race. Now that being said, there are certainly going to be some changes. There are a lot of local restrictions that we have to abide by.
[00:22:18]Probably the biggest one is just going to be limiting the size of the event based on the town that we're in and the, just the general area. We're never going to be, several thousand people we don't have that desire to have, a [00:22:30] 3000 person race. But I think we will be probably limited a little bit more and the numbers that we're going to be able to have and, the powers that be aren't even giving me a number yet.
[00:22:39] So I don't know exactly what that, that. Final number is going to be a registered, but so that's going to be the number one thing is just going to be, it's going to be a smaller event. We're not going to have a mass start, so it's not going to be all two or 300 people or whatever.
[00:22:52]On the start line at once, we're probably going to be starting in waves rolling out waves every minute or two for probably a couple of hours, honestly. Everyone will be required to wear a face mask which, makes sense. Unfortunately, if they feel like most people are used to now and not during the race, but while they're at the start finish area at aid stations when you're, in line for the port-a-potties or whatever, like you have to have a face mask on.
[00:23:15]And fortunately we don't have to require that while riding which is a big plus and so that's a pretty common thing. And then and we're going to be doing all this social distancing stuff and having, hand sanitizing stations and, a ton of porta-potties that we'll be rotating through.
[00:23:28] So there they stay clean and just even for, we think we're still going to be able to have like our vendors and sponsors have tents set up we're going to have a one-way traffic flow and, in. Yeah, Mark. And that's six foot social distancing, kind of guidance.
[00:23:41] And so we still feel like, because we're because of the timing we're going to have, it's going to resemble, a typical bike race with kind of the same stuff that people are getting used to now, at least with the face masks and the hand sanitizing and, keeping your distance from each other.
[00:23:54] Craig Dalton: [00:23:54] Yeah. I think that makes sense. A lot of times when I talked to race organizers, I'm sympathetic because a lot of the [00:24:00] responsibility actually is down to the writers because you can set the stage. You can provide all the materials and hand sanitizer stations and rules, but writers really need to take to heart that if we're going to continue to have these events, we just need to be buttoned up.
[00:24:15] When we're in the start finish area, we need to take. Maybe be overly precautious, just to make sure that events can be successful and are pointed to as, a super spreader event. God forbid.
[00:24:28] Gavin Coombs: [00:24:28] Yeah, definitely. And, like just start finished areas as clearly the easiest example of what's going to feel a little bit different.
[00:24:36] And so ours will look like we'll have, cones on the ground that are spaced six feet front and back and side to side. And you got to stay at your cone with your mask on. And then we're gonna, shuffle people from, One group will go off and then we'll move that the next group up.
[00:24:48] And so it'll be, logistically it's not super easy and it's going to feel a little weird probably for most of the writers but it's something I think that it's worth it. I think, people are excited to get back out there. Yeah, we've seen that with other events and Steamboat gravel is sold out in two hours in lie.
[00:25:04]People are excited to get back out and, participate in these events again.
[00:25:08] Craig Dalton: [00:25:08] And yeah at the end of the day, I think the start line experience is such a minimal part of the overall day. I will say, I think we are all missing that finish line, have a beer and taco kind of experience that.
[00:25:22] Yeah. Yeah. It'll be back. It may be different this go around, I think we'll get there and hopefully sooner rather than later.
[00:25:30] [00:25:29] Gavin Coombs: [00:25:29] Yeah. We're still have. Some festivities, most of our post race activities will take place actually at a brewery in town. That's separate from the start finish area.
[00:25:39] And that it will still be all outside and plenty of space, at that specific location. And unfortunately you're right. Like we're not going to be able to, to. Even, we still haven't even fully decided what an award ceremony is going to look like.
[00:25:52] And just because we can't really have people gathering and that makes sense. Yeah. So some of those logistics are still, we're still waiting to hear, to get some more guidance and, there's even different guidance from County to County and, we're just Trying to figure all that out with everybody else.
[00:26:05] Everyone's trying to figure it all out.
[00:26:07] Craig Dalton: [00:26:07] Yeah. And then it definitely. So just so that when we send this out to your registration, registered riders, they get a little bit more detail on equipment. Can you drill into it? You've you mentioned it a little bit, that you felt like some of the sections could require, a pretty lightweight gravel bike, but others are more intense.
[00:26:25] Where do you find the sweet spot would be for tire size, for example?
[00:26:30] Gavin Coombs: [00:26:30] Yeah. We definitely have some of that drilled into a little bit on our website. So anyone who wants to check out Dedman gravel, we do have some equipment recommended. We strongly disagree, courage like a gravel slick.
[00:26:42]I think you got to have something with some tread on it is definitely going to be beneficial. We're recommending A minimum tire width of about 35 which is certainly on the small end of gravel tires, nowadays. And that would be, I know people who have written parts of our course with a tire size like that.
[00:26:58]And it's not always the most [00:27:00] comfortable, obviously the bigger tire you have, the more comfortable a ride you're going to have. And like we talked a little bit about before it's not. This is not like an all-out speed kind of race. Having it better, having a little bit larger tire, that's going to give you a little bit better traction and stability and some, some little rougher areas.
[00:27:19] It's probably going to be beneficial. Even if you lose a tiny bit of, top end speed, because you, there, aren't going to be many sections where we will have a lot of top end speed. And just having something a little bit bigger is probably better. We're not going to be out there measuring tire sizes.
[00:27:34] And if you choose to run yeah. 35 something smaller than a 35 a slick kind of road tire and you flat five times, like that's on you, we want you to be safe and be smart about it. But we're not going to also can't really be out logistically.
[00:27:48] Can't really be out there policing everyone's tired choices.
[00:27:51] Craig Dalton: [00:27:51] Yeah. Not at all. There's guaranteed to be some good ones and some bad ones. Now, in talking to you, it sounds like when you started this event, you had a multi-year horizon and vision for the event. I know for a lot of listeners and people have pinged me on just understanding as a, kind of a, someone who created an event financially, how much do you need to put on the line to get an event off the ground?
[00:28:17] Gavin Coombs: [00:28:17] Yeah. So that's a great question. And that can, that varies. To a huge degree. And it really, I think ultimately you got to start with what type of event do you want to have? So are you looking [00:28:30] more at a grassroots local sort of just fun event or are you looking to put on like a, world-class like.
[00:28:37] Big time event and super professional or whatever because there's probably, a hundred thousand dollar difference in there. And yeah we're a little bit in the middle, we want to certainly have that hometown feel, but also put on a really high level event to give everyone, an idea and to be totally transparent our budget's going to be around $50,000 which is not like.
[00:28:57]No, certainly I don't want just have $50,000 laying around myself. There's been some financial commitment from us personally to get the ball rolling and so we feel like and from what I've heard from other race directors that I've talked to, you could probably bet on somewhere between 40,000 and $60,000 as like a for a small to medium-size event.
[00:29:18]It would be about what your budget is.
[00:29:21] Craig Dalton: [00:29:21] And do you, and is there a vision as a race organizer that, perhaps it's obviously not year one, but over time that you can break even with event registration fees, et cetera.
[00:29:32] Gavin Coombs: [00:29:32] Yeah. So certainly, it's a fine balance of. We wanted to price our event in a way that was not exclusionary for anyone.
[00:29:41]But obviously we still have to cover our costs in order to continue to be an event. And so we, we feel like we struck a pretty good balance between, sponsorships that we were able to bring in. Plus registration fees that we are, we're expecting. And as of now, I can say we're looking pretty good and at least [00:30:00] staying in the black a little bit for our first year, which can, which I know is hard for a lot of first year events than so I feel like because of that, I feel like we've struck a good balance between registration fee prices and sponsorship dollars that we were able to bring in.
[00:30:14] And obviously the better we do, the better event we can put on next year and, continues to build on itself.
[00:30:19] Craig Dalton: [00:30:19] Yeah, I appreciate, I appreciate you being transparent on that because I, putting some real numbers against it, it starts to make a lot of sense. I think for athletes coming in right.
[00:30:26] It's pretty easy. And I haven't looked at what your event registration fees are, but just for simple math, if it's a hundred dollars registration fee and you have 300 riders, you can then generate $30,000, which still hasn't taken care of all the expenses, so to speak for the event.
[00:30:42] And that's maybe at the outside, that might be hard for a rider to recognize, like how much is actually on the line to put off a great event.
[00:30:51] Gavin Coombs: [00:30:51] Yeah, absolutely. And, you definitely you're a hundred percent, and it is hard. It's obviously sponsorship dollars come into play in that and help make up that difference.
[00:30:59]And and it's not, we're not really making a lot of money, no one at least at races, like our size, no, one's like getting rich off of this, we're doing it because one, we love it. I love doing this stuff. It's super stressful. It takes up a ton of time and work, but we love it.
[00:31:13] And so that's why we're doing it. But almost all of our money goes to Paine police officers to be out on the course and providing food for the athletes. And there's a lot of things that cost a fair bit of money. And so it's not that like we're making a ton of money on it?
[00:31:28] Craig Dalton: [00:31:28] No, exactly. Like I imagine [00:31:30] when you chop up that hundred dollar entry fee, and again that's just my made up number. You're talking about 85, 90% of that likely going to just overhead costs that have already been spent and day of event, experiential things like, food and safety things like the police officers.
[00:31:47]Gavin Coombs: [00:31:47] Yeah, totally. The margins are pretty low. And it does, and we want to put on a good event and so we want to make sure everyone's having fun and and all of that, but, we also don't want our entry fees and just so you know, you're so our. Our long course that are 60 mile course is is a hundred dollars starting off with, for registration.
[00:32:05] And then our gold course, which is like a medium distance is 80. And then the short course is 35. And so we try to keep our. Yeah, price is reasonable and approachable. While still being able to, cover the bills. And that's why I think too, when you know, so many races being canceled and obviously certainly no one anticipated COVID just decimating the race season.
[00:32:26] And I it's I've certainly gathered a new appreciation for race directors, like not being able to give back a hundred percent of the money, cause so much money is spent upfront that, most of your registration fee is already spent, months before the race.
[00:32:39] And so it is hard for, especially for a new or small race, we rely on those, that money each year. We don't have a huge, war, chest of money sitting around that we can survive another year without.
[00:32:51] Craig Dalton: [00:32:51] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You wouldn't fall to any event organizer who lost a ton of money in 2020 for not [00:33:00] wanting to get back in the game.
[00:33:01] So I, I think it's always been part of my mission at the gravel ride podcast to interview race and event organizers, because I think. You guys are definitely putting yourselves on the line every year to put these events, whether it's financially, emotionally, and certainly all your time and dedication that it's important for athletes to understand and just give a socially distance high five to the next event organizer you get in front of them.
[00:33:26] Gavin Coombs: [00:33:26] Totally. Yeah. And it's actually, I feel like driven more of a comradery even between, event organizers is, there's, I know there's a couple of groups of, some events that are really large in Colorado that are working together to even help, lobby the state in their local municipalities to like, let's get some clear coverage on this and so everyone's trying to, everyone's trying to work together because ultimately, people realize that.
[00:33:47]If we can work together as race directors and not as competitors necessarily, then you know, it's going to be better for everyone.
[00:33:53] Craig Dalton: [00:33:53] Yeah. And at a statewide level, just being able to provide economic opportunity for these rural communities, I think is a very noble and important thing to be doing.
[00:34:03] Gavin Coombs: [00:34:03] Yeah, absolutely.
[00:34:05] Craig Dalton: [00:34:05] Yeah. Gavin, thank you so much for giving the overview of dead man. Gravel I'll have links to the event and your social media handles in the show notes. And it sounds exciting. I can't wait to continue following it.
[00:34:17] Gavin Coombs: [00:34:17] Yeah, thank you for having me and for giving us the opportunity to share about our race.
[00:34:22] Craig Dalton: [00:34:22] My pleasure.
[00:34:22]Big, thanks to Gavin for joining the show this week.
[00:34:26]I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit more about the [00:34:30] dead man gravel event. And in particular, I hope you walked away with a little bit better understanding about both the time and financial commitment. These event organizers have to go through in order to bring you to these types of events. Next time you get in front of an event, organizer, give them a high five.
[00:34:48] Let them know that in addition to paying for the event. You really recognize the amount of effort they put in
[00:34:55] Because for most organizers, these clearly aren't big money-making events.
[00:35:00]So that's it for this week's episode of the podcast. I appreciate you joining us. If you're a new listener. Welcome. If you're a frequent listener thank you it's great to be part of your life each week If you're not already a subscriber please go ahead and hit the subscribe button that's a big deal for us in the podcast community as it's really a big signal that what we're doing is taking hold.
[00:35:24] Until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels.
This week Randall and Craig discuss the essential gear for early morning and evening rides. Go to gear for every gravel cyclist.
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This week we talk with Taylor Bushong from DT SWISS about gravel wheels. We dig into the considerations surrounding rim width and wheel sizes to tease out the considerations when upgrading your wheels. We also get a glimpse into the company's interesting history.
DT Swiss Website
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Full Episode Transcription:
DT Swiss
Craig: [00:00:00] [00:00:00]Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton.
[00:00:10]This week on the podcast i'm excited to welcome taylor bushong from dt swiss to the show.
[00:00:15]We're going to explore a little bit of the interesting history behind DT Swiss as the company. But also critically explore some of the dimensions and rim technology and some of the features. You need to be considering when looking at wheel sets.
[00:00:30]Before we jump in, I need to thank this week, sponsors our friends at athletic greens, the most comprehensive daily nutritional beverage I've ever tried. As you know, if you've been a listener, I've been a athletic greens customer for about three years. And I really consider it the fundamental building block.
[00:00:48] Of my, sometimes less than perfect nutritional strategy.
[00:00:52]With so many life stressors this last year and into 2021 with the COVID pandemic, it's difficult to maintain effective [00:01:00] nutritional habits and give our bodies the nutrients. It needs to thrive where their busy schedules, our workouts are tough rides. We simply cannot eat enough of the right foods and it can leave us deficient in key nutrients.
[00:01:13]For me, that's where athletic greens slips in with 75 vitamins minerals and whole foods sourced ingredients. Including multivitamins, multi minerals, probiotic. Green superfood blend and more. They all work together to fill that nutritional gap in my diet, increase energy and focus aid with digestion and support a healthy immune system.
[00:01:35] All without having to take multiple products or pills. So, if you're interested in more information, please visit athleticgreens.com/thegravelride gravel ride. They've been a long time supporter of the show and you having curiosity about what they provide is very important to me and the podcast. So thanks for visiting [00:02:00] www.athleticgreens.com/thegravelride to check them out.
[00:02:02]
[00:02:02]One further note from last week's episode where Randall had a great interview with Ted Wong. I'm definitely curious to get your feedback on that episode. It's a bit of a departure and something I felt strongly was well within Randall's wheelhouse. To conduct that type of interview and really extract those points about motivations around why we ride.
[00:02:24] I was excited to hear it myself. It was great being on the other side of this feed and getting delivered at episode I enjoyed. So if you have any specific feedback about that episode, definitely hit me up or visit us in theRidership forum. www.theridership.com to let us know your thoughts. With that said let's dive right in to this week show.
[00:02:46]Taylor welcome to the show.
[00:02:48] Taylor: [00:02:48] Thanks. Glad to be here.
[00:02:49]Craig: [00:02:49] Yeah. I'm excited to have you and just kind of dig into wheel technology and rim technology for the listener. I think so many people, obviously we get a wheel [00:03:00] set with the bike we buy from the bike shop and at the onset, we don't think too much about it, but as we get into the sport more and more and learn a bit more.
[00:03:10] A replacement wheel set, a wheel set upgrade is always been one of those things that can really increase the performance of a bike. So it's going to be great to dig into some of those details with you.
[00:03:22] Taylor: [00:03:22] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as you know, as we all know, you're the motor on a bike, so the more efficient you can make that motor the the better time you're going to have, whether it's a update in the wheel or anything along the lines.
[00:03:34] So
[00:03:34] Craig: [00:03:34] right on, we'll tell her, let's start off by just learning a little bit more about you and get a brief background about you as a cyclist. And then let's talk about some of the storied history of DT Swiss as a brand.
[00:03:46]Taylor: [00:03:46] Okay. Yeah. Not that I have an incredibly exciting cycling background. I studied exercise physiology in college that got me real excited on you know, more endurance during sports.
[00:03:56] I grew up in Valdez, Alaska, where there's a [00:04:00] heavy adrenaline rush. You know, upbringing there, you have snowmobiles snowboards, all that sort of business. So I'm the kind of the combination of the two led me to more, more of the the Enduro free rides type mountain biking. But then as I went through the schooling there got realized that cardiovascular health is a very important for longevity.
[00:04:20] So I started making roads into the more narrow, tired drop bar realm and been. Yeah, recreationally and recreationally competitively riding bikes for probably seven, eight years now. Right. And how long have you been working at DT Swiss? Yeah. So I am rounding out year with, with DT and I am the representative for North America in most of the marketing activities, whether that's a road, mountain gravel, I'm just kind of the liaison between our think tank over in Switzerland and the us market and North American market in general.
[00:04:58] So.
[00:04:58] Craig: [00:04:58] Nice for [00:05:00] me as someone who's been around the sport for a while. I always think about DT Swiss in terms of the hubs. When we were talking earlier, before the broadcast, you were telling me about some of the rich history of the company, and I'd love for the listener to understand more about DT Swiss and what was the origins of the company?
[00:05:19] Taylor: [00:05:19] Yeah, that's a great question. And you know, when most people revert back to the, the huggy hub and the star ratchet system, as knowing though that's the identity of DET we actually have a long lineage. It's been in Switzerland for many, many years. DT as most people know it started with a management buyout in 1994 from United wire works.
[00:05:39]And United wire works was a manufacturer spokes in Switzerland, probably since then, early 1930s. And prior to that if you're aware of what drawn wire was used for in Switzerland as, as a very neutral area in Europe that's where the hired mercenaries lived and worked. And that drawn wire was [00:06:00] actually used to make chain mail.
[00:06:01] So way back in the day this drawn wire was used for chain mail and it slowly, it started working its way into bicycles as that, you know, turn of the century became a little more. Exciting to do. And then in 94 our current man, our current owners you know, did a management buyout. And at that time they had three skews of spokes.
[00:06:20] That was the revolution, the competition and the champion. So since 1994, our portfolio has grown to having a skew chart. So big that I can't tell you everything that's on it today. So. It's kind of a short, skinny, amazing. So that says it, suffice it to say that it sounds like DT Swiss as whoever figured out to put metal spokes on a bicycle DT Swiss sounds like they were around for when that happened.
[00:06:48] And we're supplying spokes to the first wheels that were ever made. Yeah. And, and I don't want to say that was DT Swiss at that time. It would have been United wire works. But yeah, I mean, long, [00:07:00] long ago they realized that the stainless steel or steel in a spoke provided a better ride quality than you know, wooden spokes or something.
[00:07:08] So since then it's been the meat and potatoes kind of, of DT Swiss. Spoke to themselves. So
[00:07:14] Craig: [00:07:14] interesting. Well, I wanted to speak to you as an expert on wheels and wheels technology, because I, as I said earlier, I think a lot of listeners think about getting an upgraded wheel set for their bike and with gravel as with everything in this sector of the sport.
[00:07:29] There's so many variables to consider whether it's. The size of wheel between 706 50 B the type of spoke the type of Ram. So kind of Le let's break down the wheel set for people and just talk about those different components and the effect it has on ride quality. For example.
[00:07:49] Taylor: [00:07:49] Yeah. So that's a good place to start with, with anyone looking for any sort of upgrade or, or, you know, entry-level or any sort of level of bike.
[00:07:58] My first question would [00:08:00] be, what is your intended purpose? What are you trying to get out of the ride? What are you trying to get out of the bike? Because that could really, that could really narrow down your selection and make it a lot easier to digest. I mean, we're in. The today's the day and age where you can pretty much anything under the sun is available.
[00:08:15] If your pocket book is large enough. So that's, that's the best place to start is what are the intended needs of the, of the rider and then going from there.
[00:08:25] Craig: [00:08:25] How broad would you like if we were having, if you were asking me about it, what are the broad categories we're talking about there? Are we talking about a spectrum from.
[00:08:34] Hey, I want to race my gravel bike on one side too. Hey, I want to go on a bike packing trip on the other side.
[00:08:41] Taylor: [00:08:41] Yeah, that's, that's a great question as well. And that's why I think the gravel space is so cool is because there's not the biggest definition of you know, what a gravel bike is. I went to an event I guess that was two years ago now where I had never seen a flat bars on a six 50 B with a frame bag and a dropper post, but that's [00:09:00] gravel and that's, that's, that's just fine.
[00:09:01] So there's there's categories from, you know, more skinny tire. Not DK. Oh, what is that one called now? Unbound gravel. Yes. There's, you know, more skinnier tire events like Unbound gravel, or more party type atmosphere with a bigger tire like grinders. So or any bike packing needs in between.
[00:09:20] So whether it's recreational or racing, there's also different avenues within those within gravel and particularly picking a particular wheel to match your needs. I think. Goes far better than than just getting something off the, off the shelf and going from there.
[00:09:35]Craig: [00:09:35] Before we blow out and sort of talk about wheel sizes and rim diameters, let's start at the hub.
[00:09:42] Is there, are there things that we should be considering when looking for a wheel set in terms of comparing one hub to another, for example?
[00:09:49] Taylor: [00:09:49] Well, in general I would say, GRA gravel can get you into some places kind of far away from any sort of support. So, number one, to me, my thoughts would [00:10:00] be durability reliability of those products, but also that comes off a little bias as I am you know, work for DT.
[00:10:06] And, you know, the, the restart ratchet hub has been pretty, pretty strong for many, many years. So yeah, hubs As long as you have something that's durable, reliable engagement is somewhat of a question, you know, but also drag is, is another thing to keep in mind because you are going to be on these these bicycles for a really long period of time, not have to be, but that's kind of the allure of gravel as well.
[00:10:31] Craig: [00:10:31] Is there a way to quantify these things sort of beyond the reputation of the hub manufacturer?
[00:10:37]Taylor: [00:10:37] You know, there that's, that's a good question. And getting me kind of on point here. I don't know if we actually have exact data that says you know, one system or one type of system is better than another. But yeah, that's definitely something that I should follow up on with you and see if I can provide more info.
[00:10:54] Craig: [00:10:54] Yeah. Not to put you on the spot. Cause I do think, you know, for me, oftentimes I seek out. [00:11:00] The reputation of the brand to get a sense from other writers as to the hubs durability, but at the end of the day, you know, who knows how hard people are riding these products when they're giving me their personal feedback, you know it's going to vary a ton, I imagine.
[00:11:16] Taylor: [00:11:16] Yeah. Yeah. And the, and the interesting thing that we see with gravel especially is you get kind of in a In the middle ground between the road, you know, road grupos and mountain group hose, and people are mixing and matching certain things and you can get really big cassettes that put more torque on the, you know, on the hub driving systems.
[00:11:36] So that that's where a durable, reliable hub in a gravel wheel is pretty important because you can get these super low gear ratios. And if your bikes weighed down and you're pedaling up a steep Hill, that's you got to think that that's Wearing on your equipment, a little more than a you know, a smaller cog set with a, you know, a road road set up on there.
[00:11:54] So
[00:11:55]Craig: [00:11:55] that's a good point that it's so interesting to think about because obviously we're all these [00:12:00] bikes, regardless of what category and you're pedaling the bike. You're putting some torque on your components and onto the wheel set. But thinking about how you apply torque to the bike on a mountain biker, gravel bike is obviously different than sort of the consistent power you're often putting into a road bike.
[00:12:18]So if we, if we move out from the hub now we're then into the spokes. Is there a modern kind of sort of average number of spokes that people are putting in these wheels? Or is it, is it all over the board? Is that something that as a buyer you need to consider at this point?
[00:12:33] Taylor: [00:12:33] Yeah. You know, if, if you have some specific needs you know, in terms of, you know, that you're going to.
[00:12:39] Put all of your life on this bike. Then, you know a higher spoke count is probably, is probably the, the place to go. But I would say most you know, speaking for our brand itself, DT itself we've, we've settled in at 24. Spokes is for the, for the gravel or application, but we also do have.
[00:12:57] Components that are available, that if a [00:13:00] driver has specific needs, you can bump that to 28 32 holes. So it, you know, our system wheels not to get into our product, right. Right out the gate we're fixed on a 24 hole setup, but yeah, there's different, you know, different needs require different products.
[00:13:16] So there are,
[00:13:17] Craig: [00:13:17] is it safe to assume then that your mountain bike wheel sets would have more than 24 spokes?
[00:13:23] Taylor: [00:13:23] That is safe to say. And the DT mountain bike wheel lines, if it's a you know, out of the box, DT set is going to be a 28 hole.
[00:13:31] Craig: [00:13:31] Okay. And then do they go even less for road wheels or is 24 kind of where you landed there as well?
[00:13:37]Taylor: [00:13:37] 24 is where we landed with our road wheel lineup. If you start getting into rim brake road wheels with the less, you know, less torque off the hub itself and more on the rim there are options that have 20 and 21 holes. Actually our road wheels have like an asymmetric lacing where two to one on the rear wheels.
[00:13:54] So it just kind of depends on the intended use of that product. And that's where You know, knowing, [00:14:00] knowing kind of what you're going for is, is a great place to start. And then, then folks can help you narrow down those best to use categories for you.
[00:14:09] Craig: [00:14:09] Yeah. It's an interesting thing. You highlighted around the torque on the hub and I hadn't really thought about it specifically until you mentioned it.
[00:14:16] The idea that obviously the disc brake is putting a lot of torque on that hub and it's gotta be a little stronger down there than a rim brake equivalent.
[00:14:25]Taylor: [00:14:25] Yeah. Yeah. And breaking force is pretty darn heavy compared to peddling force peddling forces, mostly, you know, not all the time, but it's a, it's oftentimes consistent or breaking force.
[00:14:37]Something runs out in front of you and you grab a whole handful. Like it's that's a lot.
[00:14:42] Craig: [00:14:42] Yeah. And then if we continue moving out along the spoke, you then come to the nipple. And in modern wheel technology, you, you have both, I don't know if it's referred to as nipple LIS, but you've got nippled spokes and, and sort of non replaceable spokes.
[00:14:56] When we talked earlier, we had talked about how [00:15:00] bike packing sort of the replaceability factor is, can be super important and critical. Can you talk about the differences between a nippled spoke and a non nipple spoke?
[00:15:12] Taylor: [00:15:12] Yeah. So with that Speaking for our brand. We've moved away from any of the proprietary stuff that would, it would require a nipple list.
[00:15:20]Fastener. Now what we're using is called hidden spoken nipples that are actually inside of the rim. So they just, they have a little concaved. Piece that fits buttons right up in next to the rim. And that saves a few you know, half a water, so on, you know, for those people who are looking for aerodynamics, but you're exactly right on a bike packing more adventure type setup.
[00:15:40] The external spoke nipple is a, is a. Far more practical use for those. And you know, if you're weighing down that bike with everything, you're on it you know, a watt or two in aerodynamic gains may not necessarily be the most highly sought after items. So the fact that you know, you have external [00:16:00] spoke nipples and can, and can, you know, true up something if you know, right there on the bike using, you know A chopstick and a zip tie or brake calipers, if you're a rim breaker or, you know, anything like that.
[00:16:10]So that's where the external versus internal spoke nipples would be beneficial for each intended use. And if you've got an internal spoke nipple, is it a different tool that's used in truing? Yeah, so you're gonna have to for one the tire, and if there's an inner tube, the inner tube will have to be removed.
[00:16:31] If there's tubeless tape, the tubeless tape would have to be removed. And then there is a specific square driver that would fit into that rim that allows you to actually turn those. .
[00:16:41] Craig: [00:16:41] Gotcha. As you say, more labor intensive. Yeah. As you say things, I'm just processing in my mind thinking, Oh, okay.
[00:16:47] I get how that would work.
[00:16:50] Taylor: [00:16:50] And imagine if you had a sew up that's glued on these days, man, that's even another step. Absolutely glad we're behind the, those for the most part.
[00:17:00] [00:17:00] Craig: [00:17:00] So going out to rims and rim with let's tackle rim width first, because I think that's one area that I struggled to get my head around for a while.
[00:17:10] So for the uninitiated. How do people, how should people think about the width of a rim and the ramifications on, you know, the tire, et cetera?
[00:17:21]Taylor: [00:17:21] Yeah. So that's, that's all, that's great question there. And that's one that can be hotly debated, depending on who, where, what you're, you're looking to do rim with does it does a multitude of things.
[00:17:32] It also increases the amount of air volume that you have in your. Having your tire because that just simply makes that chamber a little bit larger. And the biggest thing that we're seeing with a wider rim with is that you can lower those tire pressures and that allows for a little less rolling resistance.
[00:17:51]And the rolling resistance is that tire deforming, that leading edge of that tire deforming, as it hits the ground, the less air you have in [00:18:00] that tire, the easier it does that. But the less air you have in that tire, if you have a low volume, then you can get the snake bites or pinch flats. So with an increased volume, you can reduce the amount of air.
[00:18:12] And one way to do that without only going with the tire is increasing that rim. So that's where a gravel bike may differ from a cyclocross or a road bike, is it allows for bigger tires and bigger rims too, to do that is to lower that air pressure. So that's just one Avenue.
[00:18:28] Craig: [00:18:28] So maybe to set the stage for the listener.
[00:18:31] And if we think about, and I, and I know this number could be all over the board, but if we think about a road bike rim, and maybe even take one that someone might've had for the last five years, what type of rim diameter would that likely be? Ballpark wise? Rim diameter or rim wit that we're talking. What do you think is the easiest thing for people to understand?
[00:18:52] Between the two
[00:18:54]Taylor: [00:18:54] well rim diameter on the drop bar segment, hasn't changed much in a long [00:19:00] time. We have now started to see the introduction of the six 50 B or the 27 and a half inch wheel making its way to the road bike or gravel bike aspects. So I would say maybe in a rim width would be a better place to start and set the scene here because.
[00:19:19] Yeah, cause there's a S a more incremental changes that we've seen over the years in those, in that realm that has got us to where we are today. And so what would our inner rim width, what would it, what would one be on the road typically? So a road bike say five to eight years ago. You'd probably see a 15 mil internal rim with And, you know, five to eight years ago, mountain bikes had a 22 mil internal rim.
[00:19:47] So, and that has grown over the, over the years with you know, roadies, Anita. 30 or 23 C with a 15 mil rim, because narrow is arrow and it's light. [00:20:00] Well with a little more technology behind things we're finding you know, other things like rolling resistance are a bigger Bigger headwind to overcome.
[00:20:07] So those rims have bumped our aerodynamic road wheel. These days has a 20 mil internal rim. So if you're following me, mountain bike of five to eight years ago was at 22. Now our aerodynamic road wheels that we're putting on triathletes and time trial, his bikes are coming in at a 20 mil internal rim. So just to own it.
[00:20:29] Yeah, there's a huge progression in that, you know, inner rim width moving, moving forward. And over the past years it's changed quite a bit.
[00:20:37]Craig: [00:20:37] And where did it go for mountain bike rims then if it started at 22 millimeter five years ago, where is it today?
[00:20:44]Taylor: [00:20:44] You know, it, it, it did one of the, you know, the classic it got wide enough and has been reeled back in.
[00:20:50] And so now we're finding about, about 30 mil is, is the You know, if you're using a microwave number, a number that ends in a five or a zero, it's probably right there. Some [00:21:00] brands use a 29, some brands use a 32 but about 30 mill from all disciplines our, our land in there. I mean, even in cross-country racing, we're starting to see 30 mill internal rims with 2.4 inch tires on, on a cross-country race track.
[00:21:15] So which, you know, three, four years ago, you wouldn't. See a 2.4 anywhere except, you know, downhill purposes. So the about 30 mil is where mountain bikes have landed. All right. So we've, we've sort of looked at the, the inner and outer edges, where do your gravel wheel setups land? The gravel comes. The gravel wheel line from DT comes in at 24 mil.
[00:21:38] And the cool thing about that number is from our entry-level wheel on the G 1800, all the way up to our high end carbon wheel, they will have the same internal rim width. So doesn't matter. The quality of the components used the. The ideas behind them are going to be the same, whether entry-level or top of the line.
[00:21:58] Craig: [00:21:58] And does that number [00:22:00] stayed the same between 700 C and six 50?
[00:22:03]Taylor: [00:22:03] It does. Yes, it does.
[00:22:06] Craig: [00:22:06] And yeah. Is there a thought on the optimum tire size for that, or is it, is it sort of based around a range?
[00:22:16] Taylor: [00:22:16] It's based around a range and also your, your intended use. If you're doing the Unbound gravel, and you, you have a, you know, you want to keep 20 miles per hour for X amount of time, then we'd recommend, you know, a, about a 40 C tire on that 24, because then you still gain some aerodynamic advantages.
[00:22:37] If you're going to be using a six 50 B wheel You know, on a, on a bike packing application pretty much is as wide as your frame will accept or about 2.2 is what we, 2.2 inches is what we say is is that range for that 24 mil internal.
[00:22:52]Craig: [00:22:52] Gotcha. That makes sense. Yeah. And then, so if we look at the DT Swiss lineup, I [00:23:00] believe you've got three models focused on gravel right now.
[00:23:03] Is that right?
[00:23:04] Taylor: [00:23:04] That is correct. Yeah. So the G 1800 is the most entry-level wheel. The gr 1600 is our mid range. And then the GRC 1400 is the, the high end option.
[00:23:18]Craig: [00:23:18] And from your website, I'm just going to read to give people a context of what these wheels let's go for. The G 1800 has an MSRP of $492.
[00:23:28] The gr 1600 has an MSRP of $707. And the GRC 1400, which is the carbon wheel set is starting at 24 79, 2,479.
[00:23:45] Taylor: [00:23:45] Yeah. Yeah. And that's exactly correct. And you notice that there is a, you know, pretty close jump between the two aluminum versions and then a large jump into the the, the carbon option. And there's some R and D purposes that maybe we'll get into a [00:24:00] little later in this talk behind behind what, what led to those Those different price points, but yeah they're pretty wide range there to meet different needs, but also hopefully a price for an entry-level set to get someone excited, whether they have a 700 C current set and want to just give six 50 B a try without breaking the bank.
[00:24:19]That's, that's a great spot for that entry-level wheel.
[00:24:22] Craig: [00:24:22] There's a lot of interest in that, in my audience about getting that second set of wheels, regardless of whether you started it. Six 50 or 700. I see a lot of people obviously riding the wider tires on their six 50 B wheel set for more adventure riding or hardcore off-road riding.
[00:24:40] Whereas the 700 C might be your road wheel set, or your more lighter gravel fare.
[00:24:46]Taylor: [00:24:46] Yeah, that's definitely a good, a good mix between the, between the two. And that's, that's honestly what I'm doing with my gravel bike as well. I got a G 1800, six 50 set and a GRC 14, 700 C set, [00:25:00] so narrow and arrow and Widen having a lot of fun on the other ones.
[00:25:05] Craig: [00:25:05] And frankly, for me, for me, the realization has come, you know, I'm not religious about six 50 versus 700, but I am more religious about the ties, the tire size that I want to be riding. And as frame design continues to evolve, we'll probably start to see. And obviously there are examples of this in the market today of 700 C.
[00:25:30] Wheel sets on frames that can take a 700 by 50 tire.
[00:25:36] Taylor: [00:25:36] Yeah. And that's that's do you know, that's one thing where people ask wheel brands, Hey, are you the one who's changing the HubSpot, Hey, are you the one who's changing this? And that's all down to the frames, you know? So those guys keep pushing those frames a little wider.
[00:25:49] That's going to continue. I'm making for adaptations on the component suppliers. So. Yeah.
[00:25:55] Craig: [00:25:55] Do you want to dig into sort of what type of riders or experiences each, [00:26:00] each model of wheel is sort of designed for in your mind?
[00:26:04] Taylor: [00:26:04] Yeah. I think starting with just kind of the, the, a little bit of the technical differences between the two, because what I don't want to do is put a rider, you know, exclude them from a category.
[00:26:14]What I think would be best is, is talking about the differences between, between them and let the viewers figure out why, you know, what might be the most relevant for them. If that's a good place to go. All right. So just starting starting from the work in the way from entry to the, to the top of the line and we'll start from the inside out.
[00:26:33]Just kind of the way we did with with the breakdown of hubs, spokes, nipples, and rims. So the G 1800 is based around DT. Swiss is three Paul hub design. So if you're familiar with the star ratchet system, this wheel does not feature that system. This and that, that's what gets you that you know, very entry level price point, and that is an entry level for DT Swiss, not necessarily entry-level for the bicycle industry [00:27:00] itself.
[00:27:00] So just getting that out there right away. But with that, there is no hold backs from you. You can, you can run it. 12 by one 42. So the actual spacing and the ability to change within those axle spacing, not future proof, but future resistance is also built into this wheel as well. We are using a bladed spoke on this wheel to give you some it allows for radial you know, with radial torque to it, it's very stiff, but also allows for a little lateral compliance.
[00:27:30] If you're getting off of a, you know, onto a bumpy gravel ride because of the, because of the intended use of these wheels, more adventure, more You know, that that sort of element there are external spoke nipples and it is a sleeve jointed, aluminum rim. And the reason I say it like that is that's another breakdown between the 1800 and the 1600 model.
[00:27:52] So when the rim. Leaves the extrusion, there is a small aluminum sleep that is placed in there and then pins. It [00:28:00] does accept a tubeless tire and as long as that tape inspect the tape and it goes from wall to wall and that tire fits in there. So it is a tubeless ready rim profile. And that's kind of the, you know, 10,000 foot view of what what's inside the G 1800.
[00:28:16] Okay. And then onto the, the gr 1600. Yep. And so moving on there, that is that, that hub based in that one is a three 50 level hub. If, if your viewers are familiar with the breakdown of DT Swiss hub hierarchy, the three 50 is the the entry point to the star ratchet system. So with that It has an 18, two star ratchet in there.
[00:28:41] It does have the ability to swap freehub bodies, just like all wheels in our lineup. Whether you have even the new, even the new campy 13 speed or XDR or GX or whatever you would like to use these wheels. All throughout the whole lineup do have and are free, have bodies and end [00:29:00] caps that can be changed to, to accommodate those differences.
[00:29:03]Like I mentioned before at is 24, 24 hole 24 spoke wheel. This also features the same arrows bladed spoke to. To have that radial rigidity, but a little bit of lateral compliance built in there. And then moving on to the spoken nipple, it does have the external spoke nipple because the, the idea of this gr 1600 from our product management was to be kind of an all around wheel, if you wanted to You know, get out and bike pack on it.
[00:29:31]It's, it's a really robust, really sturdy rim in this product. And it also has a welded rim joint. So I mentioned when the rim comes out of the extrusion on the 1800 it's asleep, but then on the 1600 model, then we actually do a finishing weld around that sleep joint to just make a more robust product.
[00:29:51]It is a tubeless ready rim as well. So To meet all of the, you know, all of those cool new tires that everyone else is trying out, whether it's a [00:30:00] 57 C or a 38 C you know, it can it's compatible here. So that's kind of the, the over overview of the 1600 model. Nice. And I will say I've been riding the DT Swiss three 50 hub on my primary wheel set for at least the last two years.
[00:30:20] Craig: [00:30:20] And I, it, it takes everything I've ever thrown at it. It's, I mean, there's a reason why it's been a industry standard hub for so long. It's just super high quality in my opinion.
[00:30:31] Taylor: [00:30:31] Yeah. And so when you do look at this, this hub, it'll look just a little different than than the aftermarket three 50 that's out there.
[00:30:38] That's black with the white and black sticker down the middle. These wheels all are designated by the spline or the straight pole line of wheels. So it is the gr 1600 spline that spline references, the straight pull hub. So this is a three 50 version of that straight pull hub. So just getting that one out [00:31:00] there as well.
[00:31:00] That was a nice, nice lead in
[00:31:03] Craig: [00:31:03] and onto the the top end of the line, the GRC 1400.
[00:31:08] Taylor: [00:31:08] Yeah. So as you could see, there's a C in the nomenclature, it stands for carbon. Anytime you see that in the DT wheel lineup, whether it's the XMC or which is a cross mountain carbon, or an all mountain carbon wheel, or the PRC and the road we align, that's the performance road, carbon line.
[00:31:26] So that's just like designation there. But the cool thing with this particular rim, as well as a few other Road wheels in our product lineup, we partnered with an aerodynamics expert called Swiss side. That group there is you know, they came from the formula one racing background and designed wind foils for those different cars.
[00:31:44]Well they happen to be. Extreme bike nerds. So they fully dove into helping us design the aerodynamic profile of this rim. So that's where that tire rim combination recommendation earlier. As soon as you start getting too wide [00:32:00] out of that recommendation, of course it will work, but.
[00:32:03] If you become less arrow at that time. So some of those design features in this wheel also give it that bigger jump that we talked about earlier in price points. But I kinda jumped ahead and went straight from the rim to the rim, not started with the hubs. So I'm going to backtrack just real quick.
[00:32:19] This is a two 40 version of the straight pole hub. So with that, it has a little more refining than that three 50 version on the The hub shell itself. So you get a little lighter weight product. And , the inner axles and bearings are a little higher quality than the three 50 version, but you still have the same star ratchet system inside, but this one comes stock with the 36 tooth upgrade.
[00:32:44]And as well freehub bodies. Future resistant as possible. Axle spacing resistant as possible on this product. So the classic DT tool necessary swapping is exactly what you'll get with this product. [00:33:00] Spokes are a arrow comp and arrow light on this product. So a little, a little lighter weight, but still bladed spoke that you saw featured in the other two options.
[00:33:11]And this is just you know, To help increase the, the quality of this product and have the most durable, reliable one out there. So moving on from the spoke comes the spoken nipple with this product. The fact that it has a aerodynamic prowess to it. We chose to use the hidden or internal spoke nipples on this one.
[00:33:32] So you will notice that no, no turning from the outside on these ones. And I already dove into the rim tech behind this, the sky rims developed by Swiss side, full carbon full carbon rim. And it's got a 42 millimeter. Deep rim on it that allows for that to aerodynamics, to, to play more of effect in there.
[00:33:54]And as I mentioned earlier, they're all 24 mil internal rim. So interesting. And that I [00:34:00] have to say that GRC room, that wheel set is a badass looking wheel set. It does. And you know, if you, if you choose to go that direction with a six 50 B and put an extra big tire on there, you're starting to get into, you know, it looks like a deep dish wheel on a gravel bike.
[00:34:17] So it's kinda, it's kind of a cool look to it.
[00:34:20] Craig: [00:34:20] Yeah, definitely. It's interesting. When are we can, vanity is in bicycles. No one's ever bought a product just because of that. Yeah, exactly. I had a question for you on the on the ability to change the, the axle. How does that, how does that work in practice?
[00:34:36]Taylor: [00:34:36] So the, the I'm gonna check you there real quick. We're not changing the axle. We're changing the end caps, which allows the interact are for the. The axle of the bike to meet the specific needs. So the interactional itself say on the rear wheel is just over a 12 mil because it's a fit a 12 mil axle through there.
[00:34:58] You're going to have to be just a tiny [00:35:00] bit larger. But with that, if you, if you happen to have a bike that has the one 35 quick release But still with disc brake option, then those end caps can actually pop off. And that quick release skewer will then push the frame to, to push on those end caps and use that 12 mil inner axle as, as the support piece.
[00:35:22] So whether your QR or there's a 10 mill interacts, all that was used kind of before through axles were a thing. Those are options in all three of these different wheels.
[00:35:33] Craig: [00:35:33] Gotcha. So it's just as an capstan. Is that a tool free swap over.
[00:35:38] Taylor: [00:35:38] Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're pressed fitted on there with, with the two 40 version of the hubs.
[00:35:42] So the GRC 1400, there's a little there's a little detent cut into the interactional. So yeah, you can even you know, yeah, it's tool-free and that's, that's the whole name of the game. It doesn't pop off, you know, very easily. There is a little bit of elbow grease that's needed in there. But there's a YouTube video out there probably [00:36:00] by not just us to show you any sort of compatibility needs there.
[00:36:05] Craig: [00:36:05] Yeah. Gotcha. If you have the opportunity as a listener, if you're listening in front of your computer or have access to your computer, the DTS was.com website. Has some very useful visuals, obviously you'll be, you can see the wheels as we've described them, but also have some visuals. If you're looking for an adventure wheel versus a race wheel, some of the different dynamics that come into play across the product line.
[00:36:30] Taylor: [00:36:30] Yeah. Yeah. And I appreciate you mentioning that we have been working to put some more 3d renderings on our website. So if you're curious about what the inside of a hub looks like while it's actually ratcheting around you can see what's going on with the, with the little Springs and the gears that are rolling on each other.
[00:36:48] So if you, if you have questions yeah. Toodle around on there. And you could probably answer them or if not hit that support button and just doesn't matter what region you're in. We'll have someone reply to you in whatever your native [00:37:00] languages,
[00:37:00] Craig: [00:37:00] so perfect. Taylor, thanks for the overview. I appreciate you letting me dig in a little bit and I hope we've provided some good guidance to people as they're thinking about upgrading or swapping out wheels for their gravel bikes.
[00:37:12] Taylor: [00:37:12] Yeah, yeah. Not a problem at all. And like I mentioned, if you have more questions, have you have your listeners reach out? We're happy to help.
[00:37:18]Craig: [00:37:18] Cheers. Thanks, Taylor.
[00:37:20] All right. Thank you.
[00:37:21]So that's it for another episode of the gravel ride podcast. I hope you enjoyed digging into wheel technology with Taylor. I appreciate his time and I appreciate everything DT Swiss has done in the wheel market over the years.
[00:37:36] We've always got a pretty active discussion about wheels and tires over in the ridership forum so if you've got interest in engaging in that discussion just visit www.theridership.com for your invite or if you're already a member jump right in
[00:37:52]And finally, if you're interested in supporting the show, as you know, we're supported by a small number of sponsors. But we're also supported [00:38:00] by listeners. Like you simply visit buymeacoffee.com/thegravelride and contribute to our efforts here at the gravel ride podcast and the ridership community.
[00:38:12]Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels
On this week’s podcast, we kick off a series of conversations about the meanings and motivations that underlie why we ride. Our first guest is two-time Olympian (wind surfing), former Pro cyclist, Pro team founder, Sport Psychologist, friend, and Ridership member Ted Huang. Together Ted and I explored collaborative vs. coercive team dynamics, the power of vulnerability in leadership, intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, perfectionism and the inner critic, flow states, mindfulness, inclusion and belonging, and other aspects of the riding experience that extend and indeed originate well beyond the bike.
The goal of these episodes is to spark conversation that is of value to the community and its members, and we hope you’ll join us over at the The Ridership forum (sign up at www.theridership.com) with your ideas, questions, and feedback.
Ted Huang Website
Ted Huang Instagram
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Join The Ridership
Ted Huang - Episode Transcription
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm Randall Jacobs, and this is the first in a series of episodes that Craig has graciously invited me to host in which i'll be bringing on guests to unpack the meaning and motivations that underlie why we ride.
[00:00:12]Like Craig's episodes and our joint In The Dirt series, these episodes will simply appear in your feed as they're produced.
[00:00:18] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:00:18] Before we get started. I'd just like to encourage anyone who enjoys the podcast to support Craig in his work by going to buymeacoffee.com/thegravelride and making a donation.
[00:00:28]My first guest is Ted Huang. Ted is a two time Olympian in the sport of wind surfing, a former cat one road racer who competed in professional races here in the U S, a co- founder of two professional teams, one men's and one women's, and finally he is a sports psychologist who helps elite and amateur athletes alike achieve both their performance goals and a more balanced life through cycling. And with that, let's get started.
[00:00:53] Ted Huang, welcome to the podcast. So glad to have you on.
[00:00:57] Ted Huang: [00:00:57] Thank you.
[00:00:58]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:00:58] So this is the first [00:01:00] in a series of conversations here on the pod, talking about this concept of ridership. This concept is pretty broad in the sense, you and I have discussed before around, fellowship and friendship and the bicycle is a vehicle for connection and what does this experience mean in a deeper sense? So I'm really excited to explore this with you. If you could give the audience a quick sense of your background, where you come from and what you do now?
[00:01:23]Ted Huang: [00:01:23] I was born in the Bay area, Sunnyvale native, and I wasn't really into team sports so much when I was younger, I had a couple of bad experiences and ended up falling into the sport called windsurfing some of you may have heard of, it's basically a surfboard with the sales stuck on top that you hang on to and then go cruise to different places. So it's really the ultimate exploration machine on the water.
[00:01:49] And I did that starting the age of 11. Very supportive parents started competing, ended up going to two Olympics in wind surfing and then [00:02:00] also loved the sport of cycling and actually went into road racing. I wanted to see how far I could take that sport just for fun cause I wanted to try something more aerobicly challenging and little did I know road cycling actually was much more of a team sport and help me develop my sense of belonging to something. So I was part of a team really took to the teammates, actually co-founded two professional cycling teams of men's and women's teams, and did that for a number of years.
[00:02:33] And it just made me realize this whole power of many trumps the power of one in terms of satisfaction and reward. So that really helped me find my way to what I'm doing today, which is a mental performance coach. Went back, got my degree in sports psychology, and now trying to help people become the best versions of themselves, or be more comfortable in their own skins.
[00:02:58]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:02:58] That resonates [00:03:00] granted I didn't go quite as far in my professional athletics career. I was a pack fodder pro cross country racer.
[00:03:06]Ted Huang: [00:03:06] That's not what I hear, but yeah.
[00:03:07]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:03:07] I was a decent local competitor at one point.
[00:03:10]And at this point my relationship to the bike has shifted a lot and I really want to explore what is the deeper meaning of this experience? So you talked about connection, for example, and in fact, I recall very fondly being on a group ride and meeting you and we had a brief conversation and it was less the conversation itself than the feeling of here's somebody who's really kind who wants to include everyone in the ride experience . So when we started this off, it was very natural to reach out.
[00:03:35] Ted Huang: [00:03:35] Likewise, when I first met you, it was like this very positive and curious person who was so impassioned by not just cycling. Now it all seems aligned, that you wanted to share the same sense of community with your cycling experience to others, and maybe that's part of your thesis bikes vision is, creating that sense of community with other people.
[00:03:59] [00:04:00]To me it doesn't matter why we ride, how fast we ride, how slow we ride. It's just that we get out there. And that's the most important thing, because I don't know how many times people like, Oh, I don't want to ride with you. You're gonna be too fast or whatever. I'll be too slow . It doesn't really matter. Don't apologize for anything about your speed or your technique, because I'll be the first one to say, I suck at mountain biking, my technical skills are horrible. But I still enjoy it for the same reasons and you're right. It takes time and self-belief and confidence to get past that. I still have trouble, that lack of confidence and things you don't know how to do, but that's the whole neat thing about cycling is there's no shortage of people out there to help you who want to help you. And going back to community, that would probably be the common theme here is that helps build that sense because we all want each other to have fun. At least the riders I want to ride with are like that.
[00:04:52]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:04:52] Yeah, I definitely recall when I was racing particularly within the roadie scene to a lesser extent, the mountain bike scene have a [00:05:00] really strong competitive element. And there was almost on the one hand a masochistic need to suffer and a glorification of suffering. And I can suffer more than you and somehow that's a source of worth.
[00:05:11] And then also I'm going to punish the other riders. I'm going to rip your legs off. I'm going to make your lungs burn and I think it feeds a baser instinct than the reasons I ride and the types of riders I'm attracted to now why they ride and the opportunity for riding and the bicycle itself to be a vehicle for connection . So I'm curious tell me about the transition for you from a wind surfing to riding on a team. What age? Was there a lot of overlap? Was the bike tool for training.
[00:05:41]Ted Huang: [00:05:41] So my high school graduation present was a 1988 Bianchi Superleggera Columbus SLSB tubing, beautiful bike. I bought it from a ski shop and I loved riding it, but it was just a cross-training tool and I just [00:06:00] liked the aerobic nature kind of allowed me to get into that quote unquote zone more quickly than having to drive 45 minutes, unpack your wind surfer, build it up. So basically, it's just a much more efficient way to get that. So I really took to it, but transitioning from the wind surfing, it was just so gear oriented I would be going around the world, carrying the 12 and a half foot long Wind Surfer for, with the 16 and a half foot mast show up to every airline counter, and you think bicycles are hard to transport. I'm showing up there and I'm like, "Hey, my name's Ted. I'm part of this team would you mind the excess baggage fees?". It was like basically a panic attack before every trip, because Airline desk people would be shaking their heads as I'm walking to the desk with all this stuff, in luggage carts and it was just stressful.
[00:06:48] So once I was done with my wind surfing career after the 2000 Olympics I was at the time cross training with cycling and taking a step back. I will say that in 2000 I [00:07:00] telecommuted, full-time from Sydney, Australia training for the Sydney Olympics and the only new friends I made were from the cycling and triathlon community that year.
[00:07:11] Cause I was cross training in their local equivalent of central park, New York, but Centennial park in Sydney, and I did some of the group training rides and people were so nice. So that helped build my good vibe feeling towards cycling. So when I was done with the Sydney Olympics, I literally stopped windsurfing, cold Turkey and decided I would immerse myself in cycling. And there happened to be this bike race in San Francisco that went up the streets of San Francisco, the really hilly ones, and Lance Armstrong came and they had all the European teams came. So it was quite a big event. So that was my goal was to get in there, but.
[00:07:48]But really the only way to get in there with it to somehow turn your team professional. So I think I joked with the earlier, my dream was to get the free bike. I had to start my own pro team to get the free bike, so the hard way [00:08:00] getting to that point. But in the process, I just became so fascinated with human behavior, so that was also my degree at Stanford in college, but just the human behavioral component and having all these just. So talented in the lab teammates who couldn't quite put it together on the race course, whereas you'd have other less talented, physiologically speaking, cyclists who were just spot on, they could just do what you told them to do very consistent.
[00:08:32] And it was all in the attitude all in the mind. But with the team , you could leverage each other's strengths and weaknesses and actually build a better team. It almost didn't matter. It's almost like a puzzle. You could just put together the different pieces and if you lead them correctly, then you have a pretty successful team.
[00:08:51]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:08:51] So what do you see as the critical elements of healthy team dynamics?
[00:08:55]Ted Huang: [00:08:55] I think leadership by example is extremely important. [00:09:00] I also think that the team leader needs to be very open and transparent with other teammates on his own strengths and weaknesses.
[00:09:11]I really gained the most from the one year we had Chris Horner on our team and why he was such an effective leader is he would figure out all of our strengths and weaknesses and then he would maximize our strengths. So he'd be like, " Ted, you're not really a climber, so get me to the bottom of the Hill and you're done". So he would set these little milestones for me that were very incremental or for teammates. So what was incredibly special is, he harnessed our strengths and made us feel good about them and let us essentially celebrate them without tearing us down, he wouldn't tell us, "just keep pulling at the front". He would give us very specific instructions. We want to keep the break at 30 seconds. Don't pull too hard. He was very specific. And because he gave these incremental milestones to each of us, it empowered us to really step up in that [00:10:00] to me was important. And also our team director for the women, Karen Brehms, she treated everyone with respect and everyone fairly and the same.
[00:10:08]Granted, I was the quote unquote team owner dating one of the women on the team. So I got extra " don't mess with my team dynamic" direction from Karen. It was very clear she wanted to preserve a team that felt equitable amongst its ranks. So there was really almost no room for backroom talk or talking behind people's backs.
[00:10:30] Everything was open. And I don't know how many of the women came back and told Karen that was the best team experience they've ever had because of the team dynamic she helped create. So those are parts of what I think are important to creating a successful team environment, but also doing what you say you're going to do for the management level to we paid our riders on time.
[00:10:50] We had the pro-team, we were. Oh, it's try to be very organized. And what was really interesting was when the year we had Chris Horner, we had a first time director, [00:11:00] super smart guy, but never directed a team before. So he just let Chris essentially handle the rains and you just help facilitate.
[00:11:07] So knowing your strengths and your weaknesses and being willing to learn is also another important component of a team dynamic that will create a successful path. And also specific goals. Of course we can't underestimate the power of goal setting and the aspirational goal.
[00:11:25] Our goal as the men's team was " we want to see if we can win the San Francisco grand Prix, our budget was missing two zeros compared to every other team and they're race so it was like, How is this going to work, but we just plugged away at it and we acted as professionally as we could.
[00:11:42]We had team selections for the race . And Chris Horner on the day asked Charles Dion, how are you feeling? I was pretty sure Chris could have won the race, but Charles who'd won the first edition of the race in 2001 said, "I'm feeling really good". So Chris is okay, I'm writing for you.
[00:11:58] So literally [00:12:00] this being so clear in factual and then Charles, knowing he has someone like Chris riding for him stepped up as well as us as the working stiff team stepped up too. And we're able to fill in the gaps.
[00:12:14]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:12:14] I'm hearing themes that I find common in any sort of healthy community or even friendship, dynamic ones of an ability to acknowledge one's limitations, but also one's strengths and the strengths and limitations of those around you and discuss it in a very open and vulnerable way.
[00:12:29]I'm going to follow up on the things that I said I'll do and this reframing of leadership, I think that in our culture, a common sense of leadership is the person being in charge.
[00:12:40] And that is a coercive form of leadership. That's something taken versus a leadership that is given due to the merits. We all lead in different ways in a healthy team. How talk to me more about like your experience within the team dynamic and how that evolved over time, what you learned.
[00:12:57]Ted Huang: [00:12:57] So what's interesting to me. I want to go back actually [00:13:00] really quickly, the first comment about the roadie- type competitive attitude. So I came into cycling is just like a new hobby. I had no intention of really being that serious. My goal is to become a Cat 1 and I did that. So I didn't really have another goal after that , I never had a five-year plan, so that's maybe a problem, but also helped shape who I am today. So I just fell into things
[00:13:25] an accidental pro?
[00:13:27] Yeah, totally. Because I never was paid to ride a bike, so I'm not really professional. I feel if you make your livelihood, riding a bike, then you're professional, but I never did that. I ran a team it was back in the day when you had to be a cat 1 to get the pro license.
[00:13:43] So at least it was legitimate in terms of that was the path. But after that you could be cat five and just buy the pro-license, but I digress. So I had more perspective coming from a different sport and I was just amazed at how competitive people would [00:14:00] get, and it almost took the fun out of it.
[00:14:03]They were so aggro and so intense. That's the problem we have is our identities, whether it's in a recreational cyclist or competitive cyclist, that can be wrapped up in how you do on the bike, whether it's in a competition or not. So I was just amazed at that intensity.
[00:14:20]And I reframe the situation and tried to just be more light-hearted about it. But. What helps diffuse that is when you have a leader come in, who's , like you said, vulnerable and open and able to take criticism and doesn't necessarily say he has all the answers. He has his opinions or her opinions, but they're just speaking from the heart.
[00:14:46] And that to me really resonated in a way to help wade through all the personality, differences and ego differences and helps diffuse those issues. But I want go back to that whole [00:15:00] concept of effective leadership in a very uncertain environment.
[00:15:06]When you have lots of uncertainty in the race dynamics, you have to figure out the controllables. So a effective team leader focuses on those controllables to help empower his or her teammates to feel like they have control of those things, opposed to feeling overwhelmed.
[00:15:25] So my wife's leadership skills , she was a team leader of the Webcore women's professional team, you have to be empowering of your teammates. You had to be an example, essentially a role model. And then you had to show that you really cared about your teammates too. In an authentic way. Not just use them and abuse them and spin off the back , because they're going to be there for you day after day. As a leader, you want to make your teammates want to ride for you in a way that's not putting too much pressure on the teammates. It's almost like you give no room [00:16:00] for pressure to build up.
[00:16:01] This is the job we have in front of us. And if you set these incremental goals that I'll help you set for yourself Ted pulled to this juncture in the race, or, okay. Is a climber. We're saving you for the climb to help me on the climb or you need to get me within 30 seconds of the break up the road and I'll do the rest.
[00:16:18] Just very clear steps then suddenly it opens up what's possible versus all the things conspiring against you.
[00:16:25]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:16:25] You bring up a bunch of themes that I think are great to explore as a way of contrasting different modalities in which some definition of success can be achieved. Cause you hear about teams that have a power or fear based structure and they may be quite successful in some sense. Though, you don't have to question "what are we ultimately hoping to achieve and why is that our motivation?" The contrast between a power- based team dynamic and an empowerment based team dynamic is something that I'm hearing as you're expressing how you went [00:17:00] about things. Why do you think more power and coercion based dynamics also have some success and how do you contrast the two modalities?
[00:17:10]Ted Huang: [00:17:10] I think that's a very interesting question. The minute you said power-based Philosophy for leading a team I thought, at the time when we had our team, the health net team, at least my impression of them, was a very, ego driven, we're doing it this way, and it's all business, and it was unclear to me how much fun they were having, was like, "we have a job to do". But it works when you have extremely dominant personalities that essentially are leading by example and give riders no room to think otherwise. And in my opinion, it's not as sustainable model.
[00:17:51] It works for specific goals. But you also have to have a pretty hardened personality. I don't want to say [00:18:00] that we were all soft, but we definitely were more sensitive than your quote unquote real professional riders that were actually on the circuit full-time and that was their livelihood. When you have less alternatives, you can take that type of Leadership style. I don't think you necessarily have to like it, but there's different ways that work.
[00:18:21] And also, let's say the domestics or the other riders see that they care actually about you or care about the success of the team, that can feed on itself. I work with kids and their high school coaches, right now it's all about positive psychology and positive reinforcement, which I totally agree with. I think that's the best way to coach kids. But there are still what I call it old-school coaches out there that they're just the hard drivers. They yell at their kids , but they yell at them equally, meaning, they'll tell them to harden the F up and all this stuff. And a lot of the parents seem completely on board with that because [00:19:00] they recognize that these coaches are putting their heart and soul into it. So they are so invested in it that they think they have the best interest of the kids at heart. That makes sense.
[00:19:10] So it helps them not justify the behavior, but if it were coached that seemed like they were just malicious, then that would be a difference. So I think that makes a difference. It is building community, even that type of environment can build a community, Different types of community, I would say less healthy, less sustainable.
[00:19:32] If these leaders are showing that they care about the program, care about the writers so that, they're really trying to achieve the goals are their core values .
[00:19:41]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:19:41] Craig and I talked in our last podcast together about our own motivations for getting into the sport and I can identify.
[00:19:49]Some unhealthy egoic motivations for me wanting to check the box of having had a pro license. I was never making a living at it, and so by your definition, which I fully [00:20:00] agree with, I was not a professional. I was just good enough to ride with the pros and to see how much stronger they were.
[00:20:06]And to be able to sit with that. But I feel if even if the goal of winning the race is achieved what is the ultimate motivation behind that. So getting back to identity, at the time, I had several things that were propping up in identity. I had just gotten my pro license. I had won a couple races. I was going to a fancy grad school. And, I had other aspects that were like, "this is why I am valuable". I think that speaks to a much deeper conversation about how we're raised, how our culture treats us to get our worth externally.
[00:20:40]And with the lens that I have now, when I think about team dynamics that are more power-based and more egoic, there would seem to be some underlying wound you're trying to heal by doing the things that get you the external validation that you're not able to generate internally because you maybe didn't get it in childhood from your primary [00:21:00] caregiver. No fault of bears because they're the children of parents as well. So I'm curious to tug at the loose thread of this sweater and see what we dig up.
[00:21:09]Ted Huang: [00:21:09] So in sports psychology, or just psychology in general, you have the extrinsically motivated athlete or the intrinsically motivated athlete, and studies have shown that if your motivation comes from within, like self-improvement, "how far can I take this sport?", "how much can I improve?", That's healthier in the long run, whereas external motivators, like "I want to win this race" there's a lot of variables that you can't control, a lot of uncontrollables, or "I want to beat this person", which is an external motivator, that's also helpful for those little carrots that need along the way, you need both, and most top athletes have both, but in the end it's better to be leaning toward the more internally motivated or intrinsically motivated person.
[00:21:53] So I have what I call that chip on the shoulder motivation, which is external experiences, motivations that a lot of [00:22:00] athletes who maybe feel either disadvantaged or didn't have everything line up for them may have a chip on their shoulder. Maybe it's the press harshing on them for some reason.
[00:22:11] And then any chip on the shoulder can really help drive an athlete big time. If you're spending a lot of your time or the majority of your time doing something it's logical, that your identity would be wrapped up in that. And you're getting rewarded with little endorphin and dopamine hits whenever you do well. That just makes you feel better. So it just feels itself and it's a vicious cycle. And then of course, when it's time to retire, it's like the rug got yanked out from under you then what do you do?
[00:22:43]Quick aside. My wife had her medical career. She was working full time when she was training for the Olympics.
[00:22:48] So she always had her medical career, so she had no problem transitioning after she did her Olympic thing. It was like, boom. That's not what defines me, it's a medical thing. And that was, I think, [00:23:00] instrumental in her just being able to pivot just like that. I had problems switching, even though I was not quite as full time as some athletes, but my identity was wrapped up in the sport even became wrapped up in the cycling. And to some degree, it still is in terms of, this vicious cycle. "I want to stay fit to prove myself", but for what? Like we talked about, you have a goal, you accomplish the goal, and then what?
[00:23:25] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:23:25] The dog that caught the car.
[00:23:27] Ted Huang: [00:23:27] And then what? So I had a German training partner in windsurfing in '96, and he was significantly better than I was. He was European champion. He wanted to win the Olympics 96. He didn't. He was so driven, and we were training partners, and we were one place apart at the Olympics, and he was just crushed.
[00:23:47] But then he talked to me afterwards and told me, Ted, I can't believe it. You are so right. I didn't enjoy the process enough. I was so fixated on this goal. That I could have [00:24:00] enjoyed the path so much more. Instead, I was just fixated on the result. And now that period of life is behind me. And now I got to go to work and I'm leading a mundane life now, and my glory days were behind me, opposed to soaking up every bit of each day along the way. And that really resonated with me in that. Wow. He finally gained perspective that it's not all about the Holy grail of the wet metal, that the media only focuses on the podium finishers at the Olympics.
[00:24:28] And it really is about the experience. And then interestingly my wife at the Olympics, you get postcards from the local kids at the different Olympics. Like they write a little postcard and she had a patient come in and read one of the postcards. And it was France, it was a French kid who wrote it and the translation said "the best among us", the English translation of this French phrases. And she said that's odd. That's not the real translation. The translation is "the [00:25:00] best within us". So that's like huge difference. So the English translation of one of the Olympic mottoes is twisted.
[00:25:10]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:25:10] It's very American.
[00:25:12]Ted Huang: [00:25:12] Exactly. Opposed to the best within us. And so that really struck a chord because it's exactly how we're brought up thinking of Olympians, is it's all about beating them.
[00:25:22]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:25:22] There's a better than worse than .
[00:25:24] Ted Huang: [00:25:24] Yeah. opposed to striving to be the best that you can be.
[00:25:27] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:25:27] That really captures the difference between a healthy and an unhealthy relationship to the sport. Are you doing it to be the best amongst us? Are you doing it to be the best version of yourself as part of a broader program of being a complete person?
[00:25:42]
[00:25:42] Ted Huang: [00:25:42] Yeah. And tying this back to the leadership component, that's what good leaders do. They don't make you feel bad because you didn't perform up to the par of your teammate who might be more physiologically, talented on that day . It was like, you got the best out of yourself.
[00:25:58] So these leaders, [00:26:00] whether it would be Christine or Chris, would compliment you on how well you did among your own strength. Like you did the best you could that's good enough, as opposed to comparing you to a teammate or to another team. And then another small thing I want to share as an interesting tip is we talk about perfectionism, right?
[00:26:18] And perfectionistic tendencies are unhealthy. Would you agree with that?
[00:26:23]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:26:23] I think they tie into broader issues of low self-esteem. So you have to a project some perfect version of yourself, and it keeps us from getting started.
[00:26:33] Ted Huang: [00:26:33] At it does, it's fear of failure. You don't want to. Fail at something perhaps too.
[00:26:37]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:26:37] I can say that this is the first episode of this series for the podcast that I'm doing. And I've sat on this idea for quite some time. And it was my perfectionist tendencies and lack of a feeling of security, a feeling that I could pull it off, that put off this thing that I needed to do for so long. So I can see that reflected in any number of different situations in my life. And as I observe other people with this lens, so [00:27:00] let's absolutely continue exploring this.
[00:27:03] Ted Huang: [00:27:03] Yeah. I love that you share that quote unquote vulnerability, because that's like to me. So cool that you recognize that and you just chose to go forward and do it. And I'm actually honored that you picked me as your first interviewee or your conversational partner in this.
[00:27:22]I'm hoping our conversation will inspire and allow people to introspective and more reflect on why we ride our bikes and what it can do for us versus having too many extrinsic perfectionistic parts that we tend towards.
[00:27:36]So we're going to pull on that thread a little bit more on the perfectionism piece. I recognize I'm in that boat with you where I'm always looking for external reinforcement.
[00:27:45] Affirmation essentially.
[00:27:47]Affirmation. I get down on myself when I don't perform. Like I think I should. And so sometimes I have trouble moving past mistakes. And I remember asking my wife, Christine, " are you a perfectionist?" And [00:28:00] she said quite emphatically, "no, I'm not a perfectionist" because what I recognize is I'll make mistakes, but then I know they're just mistakes.
[00:28:09] I'll just learn from them and just move on. How do you do that?
[00:28:11]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:28:11] Again, from this lens I've gained from doing a lot of difficult introspection, especially in recent months, I see that in our culture, vulnerability is not a norm. And part of vulnerability is an acceptance of one's own limitations and a feeling of being worthy of acceptance from other as one actually is as opposed to some idealized self that you project out.
[00:28:35]Social media is in a way like a crescendo of this narcissistic tendency to want to project some idealized self, and then our relationships are built on this projection versus who we really are. And I find that vulnerability is not weakness. It is a superpower because now you have resilient friendships and relationships, and you talked about team dynamics, same sort of thing.
[00:29:01] [00:29:00] Ted Huang: [00:29:01] Yeah, that term projection. When working with kids, that's a huge issue even if it's only implicitly part of the culture in kid's sports, or kids academics , you're always supposed to be striving for more and we don't emphasize celebrating the small victories along the way. So I think in some sense, I don't want to say there's a cure for perfectionism, but if you allow yourself to celebrate the smaller wins along the way, you're not settling for less.
[00:29:35] Which a lot of the kids I talk to I can sense. What they're feeling is that they, celebrate too much. Maybe their parents will say, Oh, you still haven't hit your goal yet, but that's going to help them have a healthier attitude towards what they've accomplished. Because I think at least in the Bay area, I can only speak for the Bay area having grown up here, there is this underlying permeating [00:30:00] pressure cooker environment amongst kids and adults to strive, because, you're seeing thousands of Teslas driving around you and you start judging other people attitudes, their, life livelihood, et cetera.
[00:30:15] And that I think is also unhealthy. And I think that's also feeding on this very oppressive atmosphere that I think is the unhealthy part of Silicon Valley . And if we can keep ourselves more curious and open-minded whether it's through mindfulness or meditation or healthy community I think we can tame those perfectionistic tendencies, but we have so many things conspiring against that healthy outlook. I think you and I both know that's one of the things we're trying to grapple with is can cycling, how does that help, steer us into more healthy life balance or [00:31:00] mental balance.
[00:31:01] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:31:01] It very much ties into the motivation for starting this series. What is a life well lived? What is the deeper or meaning and purpose? What is it that this particular activity serves?
[00:31:11]For me, the bike was my on ramp to mindfulness and meditation. I didn't know it at the time. At the time I started riding, it was "here's something that I'm good at". I had certain advantages in terms of my physiology. And I get rewarded cause I'm good at it.
[00:31:27] So it was chasing that. And I was on a cycling team at Northeastern. And it was, the seeking of belonging. If I look back and think about my motivation, it wasn't to win races or even the right experience itself. It was that feeling of belonging. That was the motivation. And now, recognizing that I don't really have any desire to compete.
[00:31:48] In fact, my desire for fitness is dictated by wanting to be able to have the experiences I want to have with the people I want to have them with. And that is my motivation.
[00:31:57] Ted Huang: [00:31:57] I feel the same way. my only [00:32:00] goal was to become a cat one way back in the early nineties and happened a long time ago , and then it just became that sense of belonging and being, what the team goal, right?
[00:32:10]The personal goals are mixed in there as well, but it was that sense of belonging. And that's why I so gravitated and towards cycling and cut the windsurfing cold Turkey. Cause, to me that was a bit of a more individual loner sport because you can't really socialize when you're going like 30 miles an hour on the water.
[00:32:26]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:32:26] Have you gone back to it at all? Do you still wind surf?
[00:32:29]Ted Huang: [00:32:29] Very occasionally I'll just see a board or there's like a little race somewhere in Tahoe and I'll jump in and be sore for the next week. Cause I, have muscle memory, but then I have no muscles, so I can fake it for a little bit, but No.
[00:32:43] I also like doing things with my wife, so I want to mention briefly we haven't written our tandem in months until yesterday. And it was an incredibly spectacular day. And there was this whole just when you're in sync, can we talk, I can talk about the zone with you and just [00:33:00] where it's, we weren't like this the whole time but it helped me become more intentional in how I pedaled the bike even cause you're, so you're connected right.
[00:33:08] With the with your front and Stoker and the captain, you're connected through the belt. And when everything's in sync, there's nothing like that. We talked about belonging, it just felt more connected with the other individual in more ways than one, when you're in sync and the peddling styles, Similar. It just, it was just in the beautiful scenery that, to me, it was like not in the Piff money, but it was just one of those moments where it's wow, this is what cycling is all about, where you're just cruising. And we both like speed. And so it's, in tandem you got 300 pounds, it was just amazing to feel that and it was like our own little community.
[00:33:46] And so we didn't really need anyone else around us, but just the two of us.
[00:33:51] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:33:51] It sounds very intimate, like a feeling of completeness in the moment fully present flow state
[00:33:56]Ted Huang: [00:33:56] Yeah, it was, and I think that's [00:34:00] also the feeling I get with some of these group rides where we're all on the same wavelength clicking.
[00:34:05]And that's what I feel is the neat part about riding is you can be on that same wavelength for different reasons, but there is a certain fundamental appreciation of not just the sport, but of each other, all enjoying it together.
[00:34:19]I dunno if you've heard of Deci and Ryan's self-determination theory. So self-determination is a theory of human motivation that looks at our fundamental tendency toward growth, and that we have three core needs and those needs are autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
[00:34:41] So when you describe elements of cycling, and when I think of elements of the why we ride, autonomy. We got that autonomy of riding the bike , we have control over where we go and who we ride with and you have that competence. You have to have some level of skill.
[00:34:58] So we want to be fit [00:35:00] enough to do the rides we want to do, with the people we want to ride with and feel competent. And then of course there's a really important piece of being connected and being in it together, the relatedness or human connection.
[00:35:11] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:35:11] When I think about how racing and big events have shifted in recent years, there's been a tendency away from, crits and road races towards gravel events, and you can go and get the experience that you want, and if you want to race you race, and if you want to just ride and, end up with different groups along the ride, you tend to pack up and then end up as an individual on some of the single track you can have that experience too. And maybe even you don't even know what experience you're ready for in a given day.
[00:35:38] So the last thing I did Lost and found in the Sierras. I get anxious before any sort of events. I was like, I don't want to raise this today. I don't feel great, and ended up riding and as the day progressed feeling pretty strong and I ended up racing. And both outcomes would have been fine. And I met a lot of lovely people along the way. Some of whom I'm still in touch with. And this idea of the best of [00:36:00] the compete to complete M.S. Ride sort of events and then a full-on competitive race where everyone is able to get the thing that they want and the thing that they need. And at the end, not have this sense of Oh, I was up at the front, I'm better than you, but Hey, how was your ride? Oh, it didn't you like that section. This shared experience.
[00:36:19] Ted Huang: [00:36:19] And so I have a question for you. Did you, at any point in that experience, feel like had any FOMO fear of missing out because you weren't at the pointy end?
[00:36:28]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:36:28] In that case my, my identity is very much not tied into my fitness at this point, which is a good thing is I'm not very fit these days.
[00:36:36]But for that event, I had registered for the intermediate distance and, the second half I really I was feeling good and I was feeling like I wanted to go deep and I just buried myself. For the second half of the event and in a way that I hadn't in quite some time, it actually was very invigorating to realize, Oh, my body can still do this. And it feels really good. I ended up winning my [00:37:00] category at that particular event. But it, even that was a nice thing to have happened, so the best of the rest in my particular age bracket. But as far as missing out on being at the front. No, not at all. I got exactly the race I wanted. I went hard. I chased wheels. I pulled away when I wanted to. I dealt with the voices inside my head saying "just stop, just pull over for a while, just rest, just let off.
[00:37:23]And, I sat with that and pushed through. So yeah, not at all. It was a great weekend.
[00:37:30]Ted Huang: [00:37:30] I love that because I feel like you were able to not have that former bike racer identity cloud, the purity of that experience. I have that problem is what I'm saying is sometimes, Oh, my former self could have done this, making those comparisons, which I think are sometimes unhealthy, but you were able to pivot to this new experience of actually smelling the roses along the way, enjoying the experience, opposed to it's all about that [00:38:00] outcome.
[00:38:00]And just striving, to be the fastest when you're actually enjoying the experience during the race.
[00:38:08] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:38:08] Now I'm curious, you mentioned that you did an undergraduate at Stanford.
[00:38:12] Ted Huang: [00:38:12] Yeah, it was in organizational behavior.
[00:38:14] It's under sociology, but you take a lot of courses in the biz school. And it's about organizational dynamics, how organizations make decisions, and what's interesting to me is that my favorite theory of course, was one of the simpler ones called the garbage can theory by James Marciano also happened to be my advisor.
[00:38:32] And there's all these organizational theories, highfalutin theories that consultants and companies use to justify their decisions. But honestly, at the top, It's a garbage can theory, words, all these inputs that come in and literally outcomes a decision. And it's usually based on the CEO's instinct or in other words, they take everything in and they don't use some theory to devise their decisions.
[00:38:56] It's actually based on all their experiences that they've [00:39:00] taken in. And then outcomes. The decision
[00:39:04]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:39:04] you mean it's not a purely linear, logical, scientific sort of the process?
[00:39:10] Ted Huang: [00:39:10] Yeah I Appreciated that because okay, so it's like they have to own that type of means to justify their decision making.
[00:39:17] So if it falls in some model, that's great, but it's not always like that. That's not to say that all decisions are like that, but oftentimes it's just gut instinct and I, and I witnessed this firsthand, when I was working for the company, that was the title sponsor of the web core team. The Webcore CEO at the time , he used a lot of his business instincts to make decisions such as, Oh, I'm sponsoring the King of the mountain to Fillmore street.
[00:39:41] So I'm paying X number of dollars. I want my club team in the race and, the organized was being desperate to get money. Said. Okay. And then after the fact like, Oh shit, we're only supposed to let pro teams in this race, what are we going to do? So we became us national team members for a single day.
[00:39:58] We actually wore stars and [00:40:00] stripes jerseys. And we were literally the laughingstock of the Peloton could, they're calling us the masters national team because
[00:40:07] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:40:07] that's great.
[00:40:08] Ted Huang: [00:40:08] We're not national contracts. That was pretty. That was pretty funny, actually.
[00:40:12] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:40:12] And then that was the one that you won that your team won?
[00:40:14]Ted Huang: [00:40:14] No. That was one of the back East, but this was one of the editions to the San Francisco grand Prix, the one that goes up Fillmore street and so forth.
[00:40:22]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:40:22] The word rationalization popped up in my head, as you were talking about how sometimes we will we'll think about making a decision based on logic and evidence and so on.
[00:40:31] But at the end of the day, there's some underlying feeling and we find a narrative that aligns with that feeling. I used to disparage this sort of decision-making, but now I can see how there is something deeper than pure logic. There's a feeling that taps into something that for me was off limits for a very long time.
[00:40:51] I was a very logical person. I was a very scientific person, physics nerd, math nerd. And not in touch with my feelings, nevermind other people's [00:41:00] and it's very limiting in terms of how it drives decisions that in turn reinforce how the decisions were come to.
[00:41:07]Ted Huang: [00:41:07] I actually want to hear a little bit more about that because it sounds you felt like everything had to be logic based.
[00:41:14] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:41:14] Yeah so to be very personal for a moment. I grew up in a Catholic household and there was a certain version of, spirituality that was presented in Catholicism, this celestial dictator which I did not resonate with at all. And so it didn't feel right, and it was not okay for that to not feel right. And so I had to reject it quite strongly and I threw out the baby of spirituality and being in touch with my feelings, with the bath water of all the negative emotions associated with what felt like a very coercive and unaccepting set of dogmas in this community.
[00:41:50]It's only in recent years where I've gone back and revisited because that purely scientific mindset didn't really work. I have been on an entrepreneurial [00:42:00] path for some time, and I thought that was going to satisfy this need and it didn't. I thought that's being a bike racer and achieving certain things would satisfy this need that I was chasing. And it didn't. I thought that going to a fancy grad school would satisfy but it didn't. And at the end of the day, I had to go back and say, okay, there are certain things that are true that I can't get to through using the tools of science and looking externally. They're actually things I have to go inside and tap into my feelings in order to access those truths. What works for me, what decisions should be made in my personal life with something of consequence, what do I spend my time doing?
[00:42:39]Ted Huang: [00:42:39] The thing is, we're made up of the sum of all of our experiences. I would argue that it's extra challenging to introspect without external data points or external experiences, but at the same time, those external experiences, you get knocked off whatever internal path of self-reflection sometimes if you [00:43:00] have a negative experience externally here, cause it causes judgment. Cause all of our learnings about meditation, it's all about non-judgment.
[00:43:09]And so your experiences naturally, cause that. so, I think that how you self reflect it's extremely important. And so the work that you're doing and actually having conversations with people like me and others is extremely important in helping you gain more and more perspectives so that you yourself can sort through all these different stimuli that you're getting and then find your own path.
[00:43:39] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:43:39] Ties into the power of community and the super power of vulnerability. So if you can create a dynamic, whether it be in a team or a community or a family system , where you can show up as your authentic self and express the feelings that you're having and have the vocabulary around it and have the safe container for it.
[00:43:56]And for me, I had to learn that later on. Podcasts where I've [00:44:00] seen this behavior modeled. Or a certain friends that had a particular toolkit. You mentioned judgments and I love there's this tool that I have found really powerful, which is. Every time I judge, I say, okay, how is that a projection? And how is that projection a useful mirror on myself as to what within me hasn't been accepted. Because you can't recognize something in others that you don't have in yourself.
[00:44:25] Ted Huang: [00:44:25] So you what's funny, before you even said that I was thinking about myself and how I feel like I'm really getting better at not judging others, but I'm constantly judging myself harshly. And I'm still having significant issues with stopping that behavior sometimes.
[00:44:43]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:44:43] And it's one of the beauties of being in community where it is safe to be vulnerable. I also have that, the internal critic, and I bet there's a lot of people in the audience who can relate to that because we're told to have this internal critic.
[00:44:56]Ted Huang: [00:44:56] Yeah. I have tools, they tell others to [00:45:00] think about when they're the internal critic is going off, if you were talking to your best friend about something they're going through, would you be saying to them what you're saying to yourself? Probably not.
[00:45:11]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:45:11] And I love to think about where, the original wound happened in childhood. Cause a lot of this comes from childhood, and being able to say imagine seven year old Randall, or seven year old Ted. Or even four year old, Ted would you speak to him that way? What would you say to that version of yourself? And this gets into ideas of re-parenting, of going back and doing the parenting work to help one's inner child get through that developmental stage and learn the ability to self-esteem as opposed to other esteem. I feel like the conversation to be had is , "how do we support each other on this journey?"
[00:45:46]The bicycle is just an on-ramp for me to this practice .
[00:45:50] Ted Huang: [00:45:50] And honestly, I need to mention this pretty special bike ride, which I don't know if you've come down for. But the Dave stall ride.
[00:45:57] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:45:57] No.
[00:45:58] Ted Huang: [00:45:58] So right now there's a big love Fest [00:46:00] going on the day stall group.
[00:46:01] But Dave stall is a piano tuner is a friend of mine and I, an early days, early nineties, he would just have this conditioning ride on Wednesday. So that was the, he had off and it attracted all sorts of competent riders from aspiring Olympians, Derek Bouchard hall, Linda Jackson, all these, early riders Karen Brams and then, later on he retired from leading it.
[00:46:25] And so Catherine Curie, a good friend of mine started leading this ride and just develop this community. Cause anyone could show up, you leave your attitude at the door was not stipulated. It was just everyone lead by example. So all the PR for current or former pros who did the ride, it was just, we're here to enjoy the bike, here to enjoy the community.
[00:46:47]And just the comradery of being able to be out in the outdoors. And it really epitomizes what you're talking about and all the virtuous parts of riding a bike was what happens on this, ride of course there's [00:47:00] some egos, but most of the time it's just checked at the door because the current pros are very careful to be inclusive.
[00:47:06]Maybe you go harder on the climb, but it means nothing. You just regroup at the top, and it just super-duper nice, no drop ride. And, what is neat about the ride, although it's on hold right now. since the pandemic. Is that people of all fitness levels could enjoy the ride. Some people never raced versus, Olympians. It was cool. And Kate Courtney would show up sometimes and it would be one of her anything goes day.
[00:47:30] So she knows this expectation that she not going to do a certain workout, so it can be a ride that you get out of it, what you want out of it. But the whole idea is camaraderie and spirit. Now I've never encountered another ride like this with such lack of ego and anything remotely resembling attitude.
[00:47:48]We have all different backgrounds. We have Eric Wolberg three or four time Olympian from Canada. We would just have fun exploring new roads. And honestly, something [00:48:00] I think is special and it really brings out the best in why we do the bike riding thing.
[00:48:05]That's part of what makes riding a bike special is because it levels the playing field. Even though there's different fitness levels, it really does level the playing field.
[00:48:15]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:48:15] Granted you have to have a certain amount of means in order to both acquire a bicycle and have the time to ride it. That's something that we should all be very mindful of. And that accessibility element isn't available to a significant majority of people really there's a lot of privilege that comes with riding a bike. Which is reflected in its demographics.
[00:48:35] Ted Huang: [00:48:35] Exactly. I'm thinking the same thing, right? I don't want to go into the doping thing, but yeah. There's like in Europe, if you were professional bike racer, that's your way out of, let's see a life of farming, for example.
[00:48:46] I think it's different in the U S versus different parts of the world, but all in all, it is a privilege and it's not to be taken for granted, right? Because a lot of people around the world don't have access to something is simple as [00:49:00] a bicycle.
[00:49:01] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:49:01] This might be a fun thing to dive into a bit is topics of inclusiveness.
[00:49:05] So we've talked about some of the dynamics that would go into a ride that feels inclusive amongst those who join it. And that's an important thing, but if you look at the bicycle industry, if you look with bicycle owners it's predominantly white, predominantly male, the average income amongst cyclists tends to be higher. You're an Asian American man. Was there anything particular about that experience that was unique or not?
[00:49:27]Ted Huang: [00:49:27] Yeah, so in cycling, I just recall quite vividly there hardly any other Asian American writers, obviously there was even fewer black writers.
[00:49:38]Like maybe one or two during my bike racing career. But very few Asians. And I didn't feel like I was treated any differently, but in some sense, I felt like I was imposing my own stereotypes on how Asian riders were.
[00:49:56] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:49:56] Oh, interesting. I'm curious what those stereotypes were.
[00:50:00] [00:49:59] Ted Huang: [00:49:59] The stereotype I had was , we were more fast Twitch. We couldn't climb very well. Couldn't do longer climbs very well. And I never really saw a really good Asian except for Campo Wong from Hong Kong. He was at another level or more at the world tore level, but domestically, I just didn't see Asians being successful in bike racing.
[00:50:20]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:50:20] I would imagine the community, as much as it is still majority white and male, at that time there was, even fewer non white males riding bicycles.
[00:50:29] Ted Huang: [00:50:29] Yeah. So for me, actually, my main experience in terms of inclusion in running a pro cycling team at the disparity in wages between women and men.
[00:50:38] And that still remains a huge sore point for me, that women make so much less than equivalent male counterparts. Even they work equally as hard and that's all media based. We could go for hours on this, and that's why we had such a highly educated women's team because they were all coming at this [00:51:00] post grad school , most of them.
[00:51:01]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:51:01] I think it was Rebecca Rush, I was at a dinner party when she was at and. She was sharing, that she worked a lot in the off season. She was one of the top female athletes in the sport, and yet she was still, working a side hustle, and had to work really hard for her sponsorships. That speaks to something, not just in cycling, broader systemic issues.
[00:51:21] Ted Huang: [00:51:22] Yeah, in windsurfing, I was the only Asian American at one point on the U S team. And I was treated differently, but I thought it was mostly because I was youngest one on the team, but I didn't feel like a sense of belonging if we talk about belonging, being different looking than everyone else, even though they treated me mostly the same at the higher levels, the institutional level, I'm not so sure. I was treated equitably, but there was definitely some potential structural bias happening. At my age, I didn't really recognize it. It seemed like there's a little bit of, shall we say, different treatment.
[00:51:57] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:51:57] Institutional bias, even [00:52:00] subconscious bias amongst individuals, which doesn't really get surfaced unless there's a safe place to actually talk about it, including for the people who have the biases. I can definitely identify biases within myself that I held. And I certainly will unpack more that are just subconscious things that are absorbed through culture.
[00:52:18]Ted Huang: [00:52:18] I have them too, and recognized them. The last few years, I'm pointing out to myself. Wow, I have my own biases and it's so hard to shake and they're so subconscious that you don't even know they're happening , it's so unconscious, but still affects outcomes of conversations.
[00:52:35] So going back to your theme again of belonging, I heard this the other day in this medical forum because of Christine that, it should be diversity inclusion and belonging. The belonging piece, I think, is crucial to helping be a solution to inclusion.
[00:52:51]Because if you don't feel like you belong, you can include somebody, check the box, but is that really being inclusive if they don't feel like they belong?
[00:52:59]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:52:59] A bit of [00:53:00] counterintuitive wisdom that I've picked up in recent months is that feeling of belonging is something that you have to give to get. Which is to say, show up in the world in a way that is authentic and vulnerable and accepting of other people , and there will be a gratitude for having created that space and a sense of connection.
[00:53:19]Looking to the world to provide your sense of belonging is actually part of the problem. We co-create this feeling of belonging, you don't have one way feelings of belonging amongst people or amongst groups. It has to be something that is emergent. At some point, somebody has to be aware in order to help to create the conditions. And I view my own responsibility is becoming ever more aware and mindful and then showing up in the world in a way that models what I've learned and had imparted on me by people who've become aware and creating those conditions together.
[00:53:51] Ted Huang: [00:53:51] Yeah, you completely hit it on the head. I think, really the distill it down, I feel like you need to bring vulnerability into the conversation, but if you can recognize everything is a [00:54:00] two-way street. Maybe that could be the mantra. You find yourself slipping into the one-way street.
[00:54:05] You go, this is a two-way street. So shut up and listen. So how many times are we so focused on getting our point out there that we don't actually listen to the other person? Cause that's, that creates a sense of belonging. Like literally that could be the first step. And I'm actually feeling like that's probably one of the more important Skills to learn is what we call active listening. Part of my philosophy is create space for you to respond more intentionally opposed to just reacting.
[00:54:34]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:54:34] There's an element of, if you want to be heard, sit and listen and find resonance in the experience of others and create that container where they can step in, and then they're curious. My own practice early on the first bit of awareness I had was of caching. It's like, Oh, we're having this conversation. You're talking. It triggered this idea in my head and I'm going cache that. Now I'm focusing on cashing cause I don't want to forget this really important point, and then I'm [00:55:00] not listening.
[00:55:01]So an intermediate point toward active listening is letting go of your point. If it's important, it'll emerge later in the conversation.
[00:55:10] Ted Huang: [00:55:10] I love that. So essentially trusting that it'll come back. That's why we react a lot of the time. Cause we don't want to lose the thought. You don't want to, have to come back to it. If we have eye contact and aren't writing it down. Because you might forget, but it's almost trusting yourself.
[00:55:26] Randall R. Jacobs: [00:55:26] And it gets into the deeper meaning of the conversation or the ride experience. It's this connection element, what facilitates connection. Is it that point that you had to make, or is it that hill that you had to beat everybody up or is it the shared experience in this feeling of being part of something belonging and so on?
[00:55:44] Is there anything we didn't cover today that you'd like to dive into as we start to wrap up the conversation?
[00:55:50] Ted Huang: [00:55:50] I just think, in this day and age of the pandemic, mental resiliency is key to being happier.
[00:55:59]And so [00:56:00] I think we talked about briefly in a past conversation about our ability to reframe situations or ways to look at situations that made to seem like there's no positive side to it . If you can take a moment, take a couple of deep breaths, and then see if you can see what positives are coming from what seemed to be a completely negative situation that you're encountering. Because usually it takes days to come back to recognizing the benefits of something terrible happened to you. But if you can use the power of your breath or paying attention to how your breath is traveling in and out of your body for a few moments to quickly reframe, I think you'll more quickly become on the path to perspective and moving on. I think that's an important point I want to impart to listeners is that, even riding your bike, you may be hearing stuff you don't agree with from your ride [00:57:00] partners take a couple of deep breaths, reframe. Could be when you're in excruciating pain, trying to keep up, focus on your breath. And all you're doing is you're distracting yourself from these woulda, coulda, shoulda. What if thoughts, and judgmental thoughts, and then you're getting back to being in the moment.
[00:57:16]My whole goal with helping people is to achieve that moment to moment presence. I'd like to keep that theme alive with listeners. I think that's part of the reason we ride our bikes is to have that moment to moment presence that riding a bike helps us to get to.
[00:57:32]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:57:32] This idea of who's to know what is good and what is bad. Oftentimes we will want to avoid difficult feelings and difficult experiences because they hurt, because they're painful, but there's this idea of post-traumatic growth, using one's triggers as teachers, sitting with it and saying, what is this trying to show me about my opportunity for growth, for wholeness.
[00:57:52]Even the pandemic, you might view as a cause of a lot of suffering, but there's actually another framing. This idea of "change [00:58:00] happens when the fear of change is less than the pain of staying the same". The pandemic for me and I think for a lot of people has ratcheted up the pain in the sense of, all of a sudden we're forced to sit with ourselves. And that can be really uncomfortable.
[00:58:13]But the other side of that equation as the pain is ratcheting up is the fear of change. One of the things that I use in order to feel balanced is "how do I reduce that fear of change". So I appreciate you coming on to participate in this experiment in conversation about the deeper meaning of the bike as an on-road to exploring the psyche and community.
[00:58:35] Ted Huang: [00:58:35] Thank you for having me Randall. It's been an honor and a privilege. I hope the listeners enjoy it and, take from it what they will. I think you're on a wonderful path to not only self enlightenment but exposing others to so many different facets of what riding does for us and beyond. It's just so much depth to our experiences you're helping to flesh out.
[00:58:56]Randall R. Jacobs: [00:58:56] A note to listeners to this before we go. If you'd like to engage with Ted, you [00:59:00] can do so at the ridership where we'll have a conversation going in The Gravel Ride Podcast channel that Ted the attending to answer your questions and connect. You can visit his website, Ted performance.com. Or you can find him on instagram @tedperformance.
[00:59:13]And finally, I would like to thank you the listener for joining this experiment in conversation. And I'd like to encourage you to join us on the ridership forum to share your thoughts on this new concept, as well as some guests that we might bring on in the future.
[00:59:26]Craig will be back next week. So to honor him in the meantime, I'll simply close here by saying, "here's to finding some dirt under your wheels."
This week we sit down with Matt Kadey to unpack (pun intended) the world of bike packing and route design. Matt has designed adventures in Columbia, Costa Rica and Canada. We learn about the design of routes, the idea of the Grand Depart and tools we can all use to design adventures.
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Columbia Bikepacking Route
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This week Randall and Craig take a look back at how each of them found 'the bike' and think back to how ego played a role in improving as a cyclist. Fast forward to today, we reflect on how ego has largely disappeared and our enjoyment of the sport comes more naturally and independent of competition.
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This week we sit down with Patrick Carey from Speed Science Coaching to look at the 5 skills every gravel cyclist needs to master. Whether you come from road or mtb, gravel demands an adaptation of your existing skillset. Patrick drills into 5 foundation level skills you need to know.
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Show notes:
- Floating Through Rough Terrain
This is something that riders coming from the road are going to find different right away. From rough surfaces and washboard to big bumps and holes, on gravel we have to be more fluid and let the bike float around more. This bike-body separation can feel very foreign to someone who's used to a relatively static position. Being able to move around on the bike and to be engaged, but not tense, allows for increased speed and fun, while also being way less tiring.
Learning to hop over holes, bumps and rocks is a huge help on gravel. Many things can be cleared with the "roadie hop" where we jump up and pull the bike up to us. When we need more height, learning a true bunny hop that uses a row/anti-row motion allows us to clear some very large obstacles. There is a video demonstrating this on the Speed Science Coaching YouTube channel. It's demonstrated on a mountain bike, but the movement is the same no matter what type of bike we're on.
- Turning
This is the next thing people experience. Where did all the traction go? On gravel we have to make the most of what traction we have. This means leaning the bike over without leaning ourselves with it. Getting our weight on that outside pedal and off the saddle will help the bike hook up and will give us a good position for controlling any slides.
Also, steering inputs at the bars will often result in the front wheel sliding out if we're going over 5-7 mph. That's why learning to lean the bike is vitally important. When we come into a loose corner too hot, it's important to commit to this lean and stay off the brakes. If we start to wrestle with the steering or we get onto the front brake, we are making that turn even more difficult.
- Braking
Learning to use our brakes independently, especially the front brake is very important. When we need a lot of braking power that front brake is going to give us 70-80% of our total braking, especially if the surface is very loose. Along with this, learning to brake in places where the traction is good allows us to get a lot of braking done and then get back off the brakes where the traction is worse. Our tires have to deal with many forces and braking robs traction from turning. It also can tend to stand the bike upright and make turning difficult even when traction is good.
Learning to really modulate those brakes will help us avoid skidding (unless we're trying to show off and then skid away!).
- Climbing
This is something that will be very new for riders coming from the road - going uphill and having the rear tire spin out. There are some tricks we can do here with pedaling smoothly, rather than just all on the down-stroke. We can also use our gearing to help add traction. Spinning can help when traction is decent, but leaves us more likely to spin out. A slightly taller gear will help with a move even, round application of power. It's also much better if we have to stand up to navigate a feature in the climb like a rock, hole or ledge.
Changing our body position to hover above the saddle and also to get our chest lower to the bars will help keep our weight centered on the bike. This gives weight to our rear wheel, allows for a bit of float, and it prevents the front wheel from rising up on really steep climbs.
- Descending
What goes up must come down. Descending on gravel can be super fun if we're able to relax and let the bike float around. Being able to get low and into the drops gives us more control, but it can be awkward with a high saddle position. This is where a dropper post can help a gravel bike come alive. It allows us to get much lower on the bike and to create a proper separation. Hinging over at the hips, rather than arching our backs pushes our weight back. This balances our weight over the pedals and gets us out of a squatting position, which can be exhausting for our quads. It also allows our arms to relax, because they're not carrying our body weight. This allows for engaged control of the bike without being tense. Tension is exhausting and it makes the bike handle very poorly.
- Bonus Tip: Looking Forward
On the road we can often get away with looking wherever. As long as we're looking generally ahead of us, there usually aren't too many surprises. On gravel, the surface and features are far less predictable. Keeping our eyes up prevents surprises and allows us to choose lines through and around these features. Seeing what's coming and envisioning our line through it before we get there allows for a feeling of flow and relaxation. Not to mention it's safer, faster and more fun.
This week we sit down with Zachary Lambert, founder of Blackheart Bike Co. in Venice, CA. Zach walks us through the brand's namesake titanium frame and his new retail venture Luft launching in March 2021.
blackheartbikeco.com @blackheartbikeco luftlosangeles.com @luftlosangeles growcyclingfoundation.org @growcyclingfoundation @ornamentalconifer rideforblacklives.org @rideforblacklives
This week we look at the options a full-frame bag creates for gravel cyclists as well as a look at the new Farr Twin-T. Finally, we dive into a discussion of flat-bar gravel bikes and drop-bar mountain bikes to explore the various edges of the sport.
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Part 2 of my discussion with Gregor von Medeazza and his experiences at The Munga in South Africa. Gregor showcases his determination and equipment choices on his way to surviving this 1000km gravel event dubbed 'The World's Toughest Race'. Gregor reveals the backdrop of his motivation, raising awareness for The Bicycle Empowerment Network Namibia.
Bicycle Empowerment Network Namibia
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This week we travel across the globe to Africa with Gregor von Medeazza. In Part 1, Gregor tells tales of Namibia's Desert Dash and South Africa's The Munga (self-described as 'The Toughest Race on Earth'. Gregor's story should inspire anyone looking for a gravel adventure.
Namibia's Desert Dash
South Africa's The Munga
This week we conclude the year with a discussion of the 2020 gravel bike boom and bust looking at some of the challenges faced by the industry (and endured by consumers). We also look at some of the trends in 2020 that will continue to affect what we will be riding in 2021 and beyond.
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Randall's Path Less Pedaled discussion on fact and myths of bike manufacturing
Kimo Seymour (Life Time) and LeLan Dains (UNBOUND GRAVEL) take a look back at 2020 and forward to the 2021 gravel event season including UNBOUND GRAVEL. We take a close look at the COVID protocols the team has put in place to ensure a safe event.
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Episode Transcription:
Craig:
Gentlemen, welcome to the show.
Kimo:
Thanks for having us.
LeLan:
Yeah, thanks for having us, Craig.
Craig:
Yeah. So it'd be a good place start off since I've got two of you on the line today. Why don't we start off with Kimo, and then go on to LeLan? And just talk about your respective roles at Life Time. And maybe Kimo, prior to that, you could just tell the listener about Life Time in general.
Kimo:
Okay. So Life Time may be more nationally known as a leading health club company around the country. We operate 154 what I'll call destination health clubs around the country, and very nice, I'd consider pretty high end type health clubs, very family oriented company in 30 plus states. So Life Time's been around 20, I think we're coming up on 28, 29 years now. I'm fortunate enough to get to work on the events and partnership side of the business, so partnerships meaning most people think of it as sponsorships. We call them partnerships because it's an opportunity for us to share our partners with our audiences, and that happens to live both in events, which are outside of the walls of our clubs, as well as our members, which a couple million members, which attend our clubs.
Craig:
So how did Life Time start to see exterior events, events outside the club, as being an opportunity for a health club?
Kimo:
It's a great, great question. I think it was prior to my involvement. I've been with the company a little over nine years now. And my understanding was the idea was we kind of positioned ourselves as what we call a healthy way of life company. And I think the thought at the time, and continues to be our thought process that clubs and these destinations are an important component of a healthy way of life, but not necessarily the only component of a healthy way of life. To live healthy, you have to eat healthy. You have to have activity every single day. And clubs are an important component of that, but we also saw that to keep people in the ecosystem, it's important to engage them beyond the walls of the clubs, and events were an opportunity like that.
Kimo:
On top of it, events were a great brand. We found out that, gosh, you get a lot of really good exposure for your brand if you go create great experiences outside your clubs, a lot of media exposure. A lot of people start to learn about your ecosystem through these events, and so I think it was a combination of extending that lifestyle beyond the walls of the clubs, but also it was a marketing idea. It was a way to extend the brand, if you will.
Craig:
And were those first events things that Life Time conceived of themselves and created? Or did it start with sponsorships or partnerships?
Kimo:
To my understanding, I think there were a few sponsorships early on. But our CEO is, I'll say very protective of the brand. And the idea that we would put our brand on somebody else's experience and not control what that experience is like, he didn't like that idea. He liked the idea that we want to deliver a premium experience in everything that we do, therefore, we probably need to really do that effectively, we need to control that experience. So we get asked frequently if we would like to sponsor other events. We've chosen typically not to do that. We've found more success where we can kind of control and really engage with the consumer with our brand, that putting our name on somebody else's event hasn't been as effective for us.
Craig:
I remember the first time Life Time got on my radar was from the Leadville 100. And I think it was the year after I did it, the acquisition was announced, and it was really interesting because I know how much the founders of that event, how much passion and love they had for it, so it was very kind of curious when this outside entity came in and acquired that event. And then it was very heartening to see how much involvement the founding team has and still has in it, and how the character of the event didn't change.
Kimo:
Yeah. That's a great example of one where I think Life Time sponsored it for two or three years prior to the acquisition. I was actually, I came on shortly after that acquisition really, and that was my first job, was to make sure that we didn't "screw it up." And first and foremost to me, I thought it's really important to keep those founders because they're the ones that keep us engaged with the community. And they're the ones that know how to make sure that thing continues with the heart and soul that it had developed over the 25 years previous to our involvement, so yeah, I think that's an example of one where I like to think we've done an okay job of continuing that. And hearing you say that we've continued that experience, and like you say, the heart and soul of it is still there. And I think that's thanks to Ken and Merilee. And now Cole, who's Ken's son, has moved over to start helping us as Ken and Merilee reach a point of potentially retiring. We've got to have some of that continuity there in the Leadville community.
Craig:
Yeah. And obviously with mountain bike events and gravel events, any mountain event in these small communities, it's just so critical that you have the local team involved, because as you said, it's sort of the heart and soul of the event, and no one wants to lose that.
Kimo:
Right.
Craig:
LeLan, maybe that's a good time for you to introduce yourself as part of the team at the event formerly known as DK, now known as Unbound, which we'll get into later. Why don't you introduce yourself and what you do in the family?
LeLan:
Yeah. Well, I was one of those former owners of DK Promotions at the time. And we'd built up this DK event. And it was just a little over two years ago now that Life Time acquired us. Member of our team were getting on in the years, and we knew that there needed to be a strategy for a succession, if you will. And Kimo was one of the first people saying, "Hey, we want to make sure that you are part of this." In fact, I think it was we don't want to acquire this without you staying on board and helping us run it. So I now work for Life Time as the event director for the Unbound family of events, so that's our training camps in the spring, Unbound of course, first weekend after Memorial Day, our summertime lunar ride, and then that also led into the creation of Big Sugar down in Arkansas, which I help oversee.
Craig:
Yeah. That brings me back to a year ago in 2019. I had visited the Big Sugar preview ride in Bentonville, which was awesome in October. Life Time had announced its acquisition of Crusher in the Tushar. There was all these big things, and I think as one member of the community, I was so looking forward to 2020. I thought we had so many amazing things planned. I think you guys share that with me. At a strategic level, once COVID came into our lives in February, March, I think it really started kicking up. Obviously, Bobby Wintle's event, The Mid South, was probably the biggest event on the calendar that actually just managed to kick off. How did you guys see that and start thinking about it? It must've been incredibly challenging.
LeLan:
Yeah. I mean, there was so much unknown for everyone as we came into the start of 2020. Initially, to be honest, I personally didn't think it would affect our event, which was end of May, would've been end of May this year. And so you're there in January, February, and we're thinking, "Okay. If we all play by the rules and we kind of isolate ourselves for a few weeks, this ought to just go away," and boy, were we wrong. I was certainly wrong in that assumption. And so it didn't take long to go from, "Yeah, we're still having event this year," to, "We need to pick a postponement date." Then you get into the summer and you're like, "We're not having anything this year. And so it was, definitely didn't see that coming, for sure.
Craig:
Kimo, from a corporate level, obviously when this started coming down, it affected all of your events. What was that like on your end? And how did you kind of react corporately to the situation?
Kimo:
Well, yeah, at the corporate level obviously there was a lot of focus on the fact that we had to close down 154 clubs across the country. And boy, what a huge impact on our business. I'll say we're ... I preach this to our team a lot, I'm just incredibly thankful that in a time like this, we have a big company like Life Time behind us. There's a lot of people out there say, "Life Time, this big corporate giant coming in and gobbling up events and these things." And I think, "Well, these are the times where it's a pretty solid benefit to have that bigger company behind us." And I really feel for a lot of the smaller event producers that aren't getting any support from the government, kind of like restaurants. Right? I don't know how they're surviving. And I just feel terrible for them. You know?
Kimo:
And we're so fortunate that we were able to, I mean, obviously we canceled. I think we did two events in the beginning of the year. We've canceled the rest of our events for the year. Obviously, hard when you cancel 30 plus events, that's a big, big impact both to our business and to our parent company. So the irony was it didn't happen overnight. Right? This, as LeLan said, this thing evolved. Even in March, we thought, "We still got a chance. By beginning of June, we should be good. We'll come back out of this thing." Little did we know. We're talking about next June now. You know? And when we'll be able to get events back on next year, not this year. I think the hardest, the toughest decisions for me, nobody was going to fault us for canceling an event. People would fault us if we tried to put on an event. Right?
Kimo:
You'd have probably 50% of the people would be the ones bashing you for it, and 50% would be applauding you for it. We couldn't take that ... We couldn't risk exposing people like that, so the decision was not difficult to cancel. The hardest decision for me was what to do with the team, with the company. We furloughed close to 38,000 team members across the company. And unfortunately, some of those, we still haven't been able to bring back because of this. So we've been fairly fortunate in our business. We did lose a few people along the way, but we've been able to bring a number of people back, and those are probably the hardest decisions that we've had to make this year.
Craig:
Yeah. I can only imagine. I felt like at the time, there was a lot of sort of woe is me from individual riders who were seeing the one event they were aspiring to do for the year get canceled. But at the end of the day, like you said, whether you're a larger corporation or a small event producer, this hit hard. And being able to rebound back and be someone we can count on to create events in 2021 is super important. And I hope we didn't lose any events in all this, but I think inevitably we may have.
Kimo:
I think so. I think that's yet to be seen, Craig. I think unfortunately, there will be some of the smaller, maybe some of the bigger ones too, that just don't make it through because that's tough to go a year without your ... You got your operating expense that you kind of have to live with throughout the year. And then you've got all your revenue comes from a single day event, typically.
Craig:
Totally.
Kimo:
It's tough.
Craig:
And it's not like events are these huge revenue making machines, by any means, so the margins are quite small. And if you're required to give refunds to people, et cetera, there's a lot to it. On a brighter side, you gave a lot of riders the opportunity to donate their registration fees to charities, which I thought was a great way to kind of turn the tide on this. Do you want to talk about some of the success you had with that program?
Kimo:
Yeah. Really good question. We did. We selectively chose a number of events and gave people the option to donate to a variety of charities. In most situations, in most markets where we do events, we also through our Life Time Foundation, we support and are implementing school, kind of an improved school lunch program across the country, and doing what we call eliminating the harmful seven. And there's seven ingredients that we believe just children shouldn't be exposed to in school lunches. And so we've now extended that. We're impacting about two and a half million kids across the country through the Life Time Foundation. And those communities, our athletes are starting to recognize that it's pretty neat what we're able to do in those communities where we host events. And so Emporia, where LeLan lives, is a good example. We've entered into an agreement with the Emporia School District. And a number of our athletes for what was DK, now to be Unbound, chose to donate their entries. We gave them the ... We guaranteed people the opportunity to get back in this next year, but they donated this year's entry fee to support the lunch program in that school district.
Kimo:
And it evolved from not just eliminating the harmful seven in these school lunch programs, but it actually evolved into a COVID relief type lunch program in a lot of our school districts around the country that turned into not only a COVID lunch relief, but many, many districts, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, where there were really high unemployment rates and families that were really impacted. Leadville's a perfect example. I think in total we raised almost a quarter million dollars for that school district to support their COVID relief program throughout the summer and kept feeding not only kids, but their families, where they just didn't have access because they were unemployed. So really grateful for our athletes that jumped in to help out, and it was pretty impressive.
Craig:
Yeah. It's a great result, considering how much corporate level trauma, with all the employees you had to furlough, and all these sort of negative things going on, to at least be able to put something positive back into the world.
Kimo:
Yeah, I think so. We're really fortunate and appreciative of everybody that stepped up to help.
Craig:
So LeLan, I know last year, DK pivoted to a virtual event. And then there was also a virtual event for Big Sugar. I don't want to drill too much into the details of the virtual event. But is there anything that you guys learned running virtual events that might be useful going forward?
LeLan:
Yeah. I think the biggest lesson was learning that virtual events can be really good and really useful for a lot of people. Take our camp, for example. We had a virtual training camp, and that reached over 1000 people. And it really opened our eyes to the fact that our in person events can be rather limiting when you really think about it. DK, when it was owned by us had been a lottery long before Life Time acquired us because the demand was so high. We can only fit so many people in Emporia. Well, through the, I guess, forced use of virtual events this year, we realized that on top of taking people here in town, we potentially can create meaningful opportunities to engage with people that aren't able, either aren't able to travel to Emporia, or weren't selected to come to Emporia. And so it is certainly our hope that moving forward that we can use virtual activities to continue to engage people beyond those that can come here to Emporia. And so that was definitely an aspect that was exciting to me.
LeLan:
We had, like I say, I refer to our virtual training camp, what a great success that was. And in fact, we were able to add content that we wouldn't normally have in our in person training camp. We were able to engage more sponsors that don't always travel to town to be with the in person athletes. And we just had all kinds of information and great activations and great input from a lot of people to make that happen. And I think we only charged something like $10 to join that virtual training camp, and so the value return was immense. And I believe those profits were donated to either the Life Time Foundation, maybe a combination of organizations, so that was definitely in my opinion a huge success.
Craig:
Yeah. I think that was definitely one of those interesting silver linings to 2020, was just that we fleshed out a number of different virtual formats, and some of them are going to stick and some of them aren't. But at the end of the day, I just think it was a way to bind the community together in a time where we desperately wanted community, but we couldn't safely come together.
LeLan:
Our goal has certainly been to invite and welcome in as many people from the gravel community as we could. And as we've alluded, because of the use of our lottery, because the demand was so high, we couldn't capture all those people. So this will definitely give us an opportunity to engage. Will it be the same as riding hundreds of miles in the Flint Hills? No, not quite. But again, I think we can create a value in that experience that is appropriate and still makes the end user feel like they were a part of something pretty special.
Craig:
Yeah. I think one of the offshoots of that was a lot of great routes got created and shared across the community, which was really cool. I've benefited from going to different towns and riding routes that someone posted in their virtual DK race. The other big thing obviously in 2020 was DK rebranding to Unbound. For either of you, would you like to talk a little bit about that process and how you arrived at the name Unbound and what it means to you?
Kimo:
Want to take that one, LeLan?
LeLan:
Well, sure. Yeah. Well, it was a process indeed. As you can imagine, DK had positioned itself as the world's premier gravel event. And it was going on 15 years in 2020. This would've been the 15th running. And so imagine renaming your 15 year old child or something like that. It was a tall order. But we did, I really liked the process that our marketing team implemented. They pulled together a great committee of people, or group of people, if you will. And that included community members from right here in Emporia, key members from the Life Time team, couple professional athletes that were well involved with DK sponsors. So it was a very eclectic group of people from ... And not everyone was necessarily a hardcore cyclist. They just had an interest or a stake in the event in some way. And we invited them into the process, and it was just pages upon pages of words and phrases and names that we liked. And you start the process of scratching names out.
LeLan:
And Unbound was one that always just kind of was there. And we would always kind of pursue something else, and it wouldn't work for a number of reasons. And Unbound was there. And I really started to think about what that word signifies, what it means. It became very clear to me personally, a lot of people on the committee, that Unbound does represent the spirit of not only this event, but in gravel in general. The whole purpose of gravel was to get out there with nothing but a paper map and a cue sheet, and your own legs and whatever supplies you could carry, and to really be free out there and explore uninhibited. And that's what Unbound refers to really. And so we found it to be a name that was very applicable and captured the spirit in a lot of ways.
Craig:
Yeah. I think the end result was great, and I like the name, personally.
LeLan:
Well, good. Many people do. If you go onto social media, you might think otherwise, but the critics, as they tend to be, are really few in number. And there were some people obviously who didn't want the name to change at all. And we understand that, and so they likely weren't going to like anything that we produced, and that's okay. We understand there's a lot of emotion wrapped up into it. But when we were floating this around, it was clear to us that partners, industry partners in particular, really liked the name, and that really helped us solidify that selection.
Craig:
Nice. Well, let's get practical now. I really want to have a conversation for our listeners and the community at large about how events can be run safely in 2021. Unbound is scheduled for June 5th, 2021 at this point. And I know from talking to you, LeLan, you guys have fleshed out a lot of precautions. Can you talk through what Unbound is going to look like and how it may differ? And this again, for the listener, this is assuming we're still in the really tricky state of the pandemic, as we are now.
LeLan:
Yeah. And I warn everyone going into everything that I'd love to share here that this is a largely hypothetical. Here we sit in December, and as a production team, we desperately need to have ... We want some answers and we need to get started on our prep and planning, but those answers just don't exist. I go and I talk to my public health officials and city officials here, and they say, "LeLan, what do you want me to tell you? That's six months away. I can't tell you what next week is going to look like, let alone June." But the positive is that most everyone, everyone I've spoken with is optimistic that a bike ride can take place in June here in Emporia. And that's really reassuring to us.
LeLan:
And what that means is everything else might look pretty different. And there's obviously going to be a lot of safety stuff that I want to share. But at the end of the day, we think that a bike ride can take place. And that can happen because we can spread out the start line a little bit. And we're talking about hundreds of miles of Flint Hills, open air. There's really few better opportunities for us to have an even than out in the Flint Hills riding our bikes. And so I think that really lends a lot of positivity to something will take place.
LeLan:
But when you look at the other facets of the event, we really believe that we can make some alterations that still give the participants, our athletes, a great experience. So you take a look at our riders meeting. Okay, it has been a phenomenal gift to be able to gather in the Granada Theater and have those riders meetings. And the energy in that room is eclectic. Probably not going to happen in '21. We'll probably live stream that, and we'll still be able to disseminate the information. We just won't be able to gather in the theater. Packet pickup, we're really going to have to reduce the numbers and control the flow, so we'll probably do things like only the rider will be allowed to go in and sign in for themselves. As much as we love for the family to be a part of that experience, we just, there's not a ... We can't risk having the extra bodies in there.
LeLan:
Naturally, social distancing and mask usage, assuming that is still in use, will be followed wherever applicable. That's kind of a given. But just controlling the flow a little bit, reducing the numbers in any of our indoor facilities, those types of things. Our Finish Festival is going to probably be the biggest difficulty because if anyone's ever been to our finish line, it is thousands of people. I've heard as many as 10,000, some estimates have been. And they're milling around within a few block radius, and they've got a beer in their hand and a taco or pulled pork sandwich in the other. And you obviously can't have a mask when you're doing that. So that's an area where we're going to really have to scrutinize what we're able to do, what's prudent to do. But again, I go back to our worst case scenario. It may just be a finish line. There might not be quite the fanfare in years past.
LeLan:
But I don't think most of our athletes will be too upset about that. Is it great to have the crowd there? Absolutely. But if it means being able to have a ride, and that's a part we might have to give on a little, then it's something we're certainly willing to concede on here. But that's an area where we have a little bit of time to figure out what this thing might be looking like come springtime. It's an area that we'll have all the scenarios from A to Z try to figured out. And by the time we get to March, April, we'll know where in that line where we might have to be in terms of execution.
Craig:
Yeah. I think I heard Michael Marx from BWR say that putting on an event is twice the effort in the current situation that it has been previously.
LeLan:
Twice is being generous. I mean, we've got multiple plans and schemes and angles. And we want to be prepared for just about any scenario. And we feel pretty prepared as of today.
Craig:
Yeah. It's comforting that you guys have posted your COVID guidelines already on the website. I really like to see that.
Kimo:
Yeah. Craig, I think there's even maybe a bigger picture question that's still yet to be answered. It's something we don't know. And it probably extends beyond just our little industry. But in general, is there going to be ... We're starting to think about it. Will there be some period of time where it may just be required for certain activities, for certain businesses that you show up with a negative COVID test and/or proof of a vaccination? And I don't know that we're going to lead in that area nationwide, but I think there may be scenarios, and there's always a lot of talk about that, that some industries may just, they may go to that for some period of time.
Kimo:
If you're going to get on an airplane, countries and states are doing that now. To get into Hawaii, you have to show that you got a negative test from the last 72 hours. And I think we're going to see that evolve, and we'll probably see more of that over the next, I would imagine, 12 months. And so we're prepared. We're preparing for that scenario that we have to think about across all of our events. Potentially, it could be that you have to ... We end up having to be ... A municipality or local jurisdiction might require us to check that every single person that's coming has had a vaccine or has had a negative test in the last 48 hours or whatever it is.
Craig:
Yeah. It's sort of mind boggling to play out. I mean, do you have two finish lines for some people who have been vaccinated and some people who haven't? It's incredible.
Kimo:
It is.
Craig:
But I think any way you slice it, 2021's going to be a little bit topsy turvy. I think you do have the benefit, as you said, LeLan, of being a June event gives us a little bit of time to kind of see how things are playing out. There's a couple other big events on the gravel calendar that will have gone off, and hopefully gone off without a hitch so we can learn some lessons.
LeLan:
Even right here locally, not everyone ... If you've been to Emporia, you've probably learned this, but this is a big disc golf town as well. In fact, in April, Dynamic Discs, which is located here, hosts the world's largest disc golf tournament. So we'll also get to take some clues from them right here at home how that is operated and how it goes off. And so we do have that good fortune of being right in the middle of the calendar year. And so we'll get to learn from others on best practices as well.
Craig:
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's critical that throughout the gravel cycling community, if a rider's intending on attending an event, that they really take a high level of personal responsibility for their attendance. And whether that is in representing a negative test, or just showing up and following the rules, I think that's where we're going to fall down because I know all the event producers I've been speaking to, they know how important it is for them to set the right stage. But if the riders themselves don't take the responsibility, that's where the challenges are going to come.
LeLan:
Yeah. If you think about it, we utilize the help of a few hundred volunteers. It's an extraordinary number, but that's to manage thousands of people, not just riders, but their support crews and spectators. And so we can't have eyes everywhere all the time, so when we make a statement like, "We need you to wear a buff or face covering on the start line," we need your participation in that because it's very difficult to go row by row, person by person, and enforce something like that. It's simply our expectation that you're coming here with the goodwill and a desire to participate the way we need you to.
Craig:
Yeah. And I think obviously the other big thing is just responsibility during the travel to Emporia. Being a small community and drawing athletes from all over the world, that's huge. You could be coming from a territory that does not have precautions in place and bringing it to a community that does.
LeLan:
Yeah. I think most people recognize that even in larger communities, our larger cities, the healthcare system is overwhelmed. But then you look at a place like Emporia, which has 20 hospital beds, we just can't facilitate a big outbreak, so it could be very detrimental.
Craig:
With the precautions stated behind us, how excited are you to get the community back together this year?
LeLan:
Well, nothing would please me more. It's been an interesting year, where to Kimo's point, I've been grateful throughout the entire year to have employment, to continually be working towards the next objectives. But it's just felt weird. What have we been working towards? What have we accomplished this year? While I know we've accomplished things, it's been hard to recognize and see those things when you don't have those tangible events to execute. So nothing would please me more to get back to, I'll state it again, to just have a bike ride. I really think if we just view it as that, I think we can accomplish that much and get back to really what all this is really about, which is riding our bikes in beautiful locations and coming together as community in whatever capacity we're able.
Craig:
Yeah. And I know you're both cyclists yourselves, so you both personally must be missing the normalcy of group rides.
Kimo:
I'd say a little bit. Yeah. Definitely. I miss, whether I'm in our events, whether I'm riding, or just there to pick up trash, or whatever I do around the events. I miss it. I miss seeing that. There's nothing more. I mean, I'm telling you, if you stand at the finish line of Unbound, or Leadville, or any of these events, and if you don't shed a tear at some point, you must not have a heart. I mean, it is unbelievable the power that these events have to change people's lives and to have lasting impressions on the riders and their families, I mean kids seeing their parents do that. The example that people are setting for the next generation and all these things, it's really powerful and impactful. And it's all gone right now. That made me more anxious to see that than to necessarily cross the finish line myself, or get out on a group ride. Yeah, that's the part that's hard. It's a bummer that we've lost that for a year.
Craig:
Yeah. I mean, there's absolute magic in the last person to cross the finish line. You see the pros come across very quickly and are very able to have conversations and go on their business, sign some autographs. But that last person who turned themselves inside out, and maybe this is something they've never done before, I mean, it definitely gives me goosebumps even talking about seeing those athletes come across the line.
LeLan:
Oh, absolutely. As you well know, we are there, Unbound finish line is open until 3:00 AM Sunday morning. We're standing there until the very last come home.
Craig:
Amazing. Well, there's absolutely a reason why Unbound is on a lot of gravel athletes' bucket list of events to attend, for sure. So Kimo, for Life Time, you've got a suite of gravel events throughout the year. Have all the dates been set for the big events at this point?
Kimo:
They are all set, yeah. So all the big ones, we've kind of put them back on their traditional dates. At this point, we're contemplating whether or not something in the spring might have to get moved to the fall, things like that. As far as the gravel events right now though, it looks like we've got everything kind of where it traditionally has been in the past.
Craig:
Okay, because Crusher was later in the summer, I believe. And then Big Sugar obviously is at the end of the year. Right?
Kimo:
Right. Right. We've still got Crusher in the middle of July. And then, yes, Big Sugar for late October.
Craig:
Okay. And have you set the stage for when event registration for those later events will be available?
Kimo:
We have, actually. And I don't have the dates in front of me. LeLan, you probably know better than I do.
LeLan:
You'll have to fact check me on Crusher. It's either mid January or early February. Big Sugar, we have not made that announcement, but look for a springtime opening for that registration.
Craig:
Okay. For both of those events, I imagine there's a lot of deferred athletes that are potentially given the first slots.
LeLan:
You are correct, yeah. But I'm glad you bring that up because even with Unbound, there were many people who donated their entries, or asked for a refund. A lot have deferred. But I do want to mention to the listeners that there will be a lottery registration for Unbound. There will be new spots available for athletes. And that opens up January 15th. So definitely be, if you're wanting in this year, there's still opportunity.
Craig:
Awesome. That's super exciting to hear. I just sort of assumed that it was already locked up.
LeLan:
Yeah. And that's why I'm glad you brought it up because I imagine most people are feeling that way. And I don't think we've made big to do about that. This is one of the first times we've been able to get on air with anyone and talk about our registration will be opening. So definitely put your names in the hat.
Craig:
And then for registered athletes, is there a deferment or refund policy that you guys have already crystallized?
LeLan:
Yeah. Another great question, I'm glad we're hitting on that because in years past, we've taken a pretty hard no refunds. And even before Life Time had acquired us, we had moved to a no transfer policy, which we used to allow transfers. But this has definitely made us realize that this was something that's obviously out of everyone's control, but we did want to recreate a deferral and a refund policy that would be more generous and maybe a little more fair to everyone. So folks, and I'll kind of rattle some of this off, but you can visit unboundgravel.com, look at our COVID-19 guidelines. And you'll see our little Q and A, which includes the deferral refund policy. But from 90 days out or more, there's a 70% refund available to the riders if we need to cancel the event because of COVID. Then it goes down to 50%. And then within the last couple months, a 40% refund.
LeLan:
Now I will say this, obviously it'd be our goal to try to postpone. Because we do take place in June, there is a chance like we had tried in 2020 to maybe try further down the road in the year. But if it all comes down to cancellation, then we do have a policy in place for a refund. It's a little more generous than in years past, and an outright deferral at no cost as well if a person wants to try again the next year. Now that's there, but we're not going to need it. Right? Knocking on wood, and it's not going to be an issue. We're going to be able to ride, let's hope.
Craig:
Yeah. Let's just keep all our thoughts intending that way. I'm definitely struggling a little bit as I'm sitting in Los Angeles County and they've just entered another strict lockdown period. As I'm looking online to register for events, it's hard to get my head around it.
LeLan:
That's the struggle we find ourselves in now is it's hard to take the blinders and put them on. We need the blinders on right now. We don't want to see what's happening today. And we need to think about what we hope things are looking like next year.
Craig:
Yeah. That's absolutely right. I mean, I think we're all optimistic about where things are going. It may not go as fast as we'd like to go, but I think things are finally starting to head in the right direction in terms of potential vaccine, et cetera. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for the time. I appreciate you talking about what's been going on at Life Time and about Unbound and the other events you've got on the calendar for this coming year. I'm excited, and again, optimistic that I may be able to see you both in person again.
LeLan:
Definitely.
Kimo:
Oh, we will. We'll see you, Craig. We'll be there.
Craig:
Great. Thanks, guys.
Kimo:
Thanks for having us.
Craig:
Take care. Happy holidays.
Kimo Seymour (Life Time) and LeLan Dains (UNBOUND GRAVEL) take a look back at 2020 and forward to the 2021 gravel event season including UNBOUND GRAVEL. We take a close look at the COVID protocols the team has put in place to ensure a safe event.
UNBOUND GRAVEL Instagram
UNBOUND GRAVEL Covid Safety
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Episode Transcription:
Craig:
Gentlemen, welcome to the show.
Kimo:
Thanks for having us.
LeLan:
Yeah, thanks for having us, Craig.
Craig:
Yeah. So it'd be a good place start off since I've got two of you on the line today. Why don't we start off with Kimo, and then go on to LeLan? And just talk about your respective roles at Life Time. And maybe Kimo, prior to that, you could just tell the listener about Life Time in general.
Kimo:
Okay. So Life Time may be more nationally known as a leading health club company around the country. We operate 154 what I'll call destination health clubs around the country, and very nice, I'd consider pretty high end type health clubs, very family oriented company in 30 plus states. So Life Time's been around 20, I think we're coming up on 28, 29 years now. I'm fortunate enough to get to work on the events and partnership side of the business, so partnerships meaning most people think of it as sponsorships. We call them partnerships because it's an opportunity for us to share our partners with our audiences, and that happens to live both in events, which are outside of the walls of our clubs, as well as our members, which a couple million members, which attend our clubs.
Craig:
So how did Life Time start to see exterior events, events outside the club, as being an opportunity for a health club?
Kimo:
It's a great, great question. I think it was prior to my involvement. I've been with the company a little over nine years now. And my understanding was the idea was we kind of positioned ourselves as what we call a healthy way of life company. And I think the thought at the time, and continues to be our thought process that clubs and these destinations are an important component of a healthy way of life, but not necessarily the only component of a healthy way of life. To live healthy, you have to eat healthy. You have to have activity every single day. And clubs are an important component of that, but we also saw that to keep people in the ecosystem, it's important to engage them beyond the walls of the clubs, and events were an opportunity like that.
Kimo:
On top of it, events were a great brand. We found out that, gosh, you get a lot of really good exposure for your brand if you go create great experiences outside your clubs, a lot of media exposure. A lot of people start to learn about your ecosystem through these events, and so I think it was a combination of extending that lifestyle beyond the walls of the clubs, but also it was a marketing idea. It was a way to extend the brand, if you will.
Craig:
And were those first events things that Life Time conceived of themselves and created? Or did it start with sponsorships or partnerships?
Kimo:
To my understanding, I think there were a few sponsorships early on. But our CEO is, I'll say very protective of the brand. And the idea that we would put our brand on somebody else's experience and not control what that experience is like, he didn't like that idea. He liked the idea that we want to deliver a premium experience in everything that we do, therefore, we probably need to really do that effectively, we need to control that experience. So we get asked frequently if we would like to sponsor other events. We've chosen typically not to do that. We've found more success where we can kind of control and really engage with the consumer with our brand, that putting our name on somebody else's event hasn't been as effective for us.
Craig:
I remember the first time Life Time got on my radar was from the Leadville 100. And I think it was the year after I did it, the acquisition was announced, and it was really interesting because I know how much the founders of that event, how much passion and love they had for it, so it was very kind of curious when this outside entity came in and acquired that event. And then it was very heartening to see how much involvement the founding team has and still has in it, and how the character of the event didn't change.
Kimo:
Yeah. That's a great example of one where I think Life Time sponsored it for two or three years prior to the acquisition. I was actually, I came on shortly after that acquisition really, and that was my first job, was to make sure that we didn't "screw it up." And first and foremost to me, I thought it's really important to keep those founders because they're the ones that keep us engaged with the community. And they're the ones that know how to make sure that thing continues with the heart and soul that it had developed over the 25 years previous to our involvement, so yeah, I think that's an example of one where I like to think we've done an okay job of continuing that. And hearing you say that we've continued that experience, and like you say, the heart and soul of it is still there. And I think that's thanks to Ken and Merilee. And now Cole, who's Ken's son, has moved over to start helping us as Ken and Merilee reach a point of potentially retiring. We've got to have some of that continuity there in the Leadville community.
Craig:
Yeah. And obviously with mountain bike events and gravel events, any mountain event in these small communities, it's just so critical that you have the local team involved, because as you said, it's sort of the heart and soul of the event, and no one wants to lose that.
Kimo:
Right.
Craig:
LeLan, maybe that's a good time for you to introduce yourself as part of the team at the event formerly known as DK, now known as Unbound, which we'll get into later. Why don't you introduce yourself and what you do in the family?
LeLan:
Yeah. Well, I was one of those former owners of DK Promotions at the time. And we'd built up this DK event. And it was just a little over two years ago now that Life Time acquired us. Member of our team were getting on in the years, and we knew that there needed to be a strategy for a succession, if you will. And Kimo was one of the first people saying, "Hey, we want to make sure that you are part of this." In fact, I think it was we don't want to acquire this without you staying on board and helping us run it. So I now work for Life Time as the event director for the Unbound family of events, so that's our training camps in the spring, Unbound of course, first weekend after Memorial Day, our summertime lunar ride, and then that also led into the creation of Big Sugar down in Arkansas, which I help oversee.
Craig:
Yeah. That brings me back to a year ago in 2019. I had visited the Big Sugar preview ride in Bentonville, which was awesome in October. Life Time had announced its acquisition of Crusher in the Tushar. There was all these big things, and I think as one member of the community, I was so looking forward to 2020. I thought we had so many amazing things planned. I think you guys share that with me. At a strategic level, once COVID came into our lives in February, March, I think it really started kicking up. Obviously, Bobby Wintle's event, The Mid South, was probably the biggest event on the calendar that actually just managed to kick off. How did you guys see that and start thinking about it? It must've been incredibly challenging.
LeLan:
Yeah. I mean, there was so much unknown for everyone as we came into the start of 2020. Initially, to be honest, I personally didn't think it would affect our event, which was end of May, would've been end of May this year. And so you're there in January, February, and we're thinking, "Okay. If we all play by the rules and we kind of isolate ourselves for a few weeks, this ought to just go away," and boy, were we wrong. I was certainly wrong in that assumption. And so it didn't take long to go from, "Yeah, we're still having event this year," to, "We need to pick a postponement date." Then you get into the summer and you're like, "We're not having anything this year. And so it was, definitely didn't see that coming, for sure.
Craig:
Kimo, from a corporate level, obviously when this started coming down, it affected all of your events. What was that like on your end? And how did you kind of react corporately to the situation?
Kimo:
Well, yeah, at the corporate level obviously there was a lot of focus on the fact that we had to close down 154 clubs across the country. And boy, what a huge impact on our business. I'll say we're ... I preach this to our team a lot, I'm just incredibly thankful that in a time like this, we have a big company like Life Time behind us. There's a lot of people out there say, "Life Time, this big corporate giant coming in and gobbling up events and these things." And I think, "Well, these are the times where it's a pretty solid benefit to have that bigger company behind us." And I really feel for a lot of the smaller event producers that aren't getting any support from the government, kind of like restaurants. Right? I don't know how they're surviving. And I just feel terrible for them. You know?
Kimo:
And we're so fortunate that we were able to, I mean, obviously we canceled. I think we did two events in the beginning of the year. We've canceled the rest of our events for the year. Obviously, hard when you cancel 30 plus events, that's a big, big impact both to our business and to our parent company. So the irony was it didn't happen overnight. Right? This, as LeLan said, this thing evolved. Even in March, we thought, "We still got a chance. By beginning of June, we should be good. We'll come back out of this thing." Little did we know. We're talking about next June now. You know? And when we'll be able to get events back on next year, not this year. I think the hardest, the toughest decisions for me, nobody was going to fault us for canceling an event. People would fault us if we tried to put on an event. Right?
Kimo:
You'd have probably 50% of the people would be the ones bashing you for it, and 50% would be applauding you for it. We couldn't take that ... We couldn't risk exposing people like that, so the decision was not difficult to cancel. The hardest decision for me was what to do with the team, with the company. We furloughed close to 38,000 team members across the company. And unfortunately, some of those, we still haven't been able to bring back because of this. So we've been fairly fortunate in our business. We did lose a few people along the way, but we've been able to bring a number of people back, and those are probably the hardest decisions that we've had to make this year.
Craig:
Yeah. I can only imagine. I felt like at the time, there was a lot of sort of woe is me from individual riders who were seeing the one event they were aspiring to do for the year get canceled. But at the end of the day, like you said, whether you're a larger corporation or a small event producer, this hit hard. And being able to rebound back and be someone we can count on to create events in 2021 is super important. And I hope we didn't lose any events in all this, but I think inevitably we may have.
Kimo:
I think so. I think that's yet to be seen, Craig. I think unfortunately, there will be some of the smaller, maybe some of the bigger ones too, that just don't make it through because that's tough to go a year without your ... You got your operating expense that you kind of have to live with throughout the year. And then you've got all your revenue comes from a single day event, typically.
Craig:
Totally.
Kimo:
It's tough.
Craig:
And it's not like events are these huge revenue making machines, by any means, so the margins are quite small. And if you're required to give refunds to people, et cetera, there's a lot to it. On a brighter side, you gave a lot of riders the opportunity to donate their registration fees to charities, which I thought was a great way to kind of turn the tide on this. Do you want to talk about some of the success you had with that program?
Kimo:
Yeah. Really good question. We did. We selectively chose a number of events and gave people the option to donate to a variety of charities. In most situations, in most markets where we do events, we also through our Life Time Foundation, we support and are implementing school, kind of an improved school lunch program across the country, and doing what we call eliminating the harmful seven. And there's seven ingredients that we believe just children shouldn't be exposed to in school lunches. And so we've now extended that. We're impacting about two and a half million kids across the country through the Life Time Foundation. And those communities, our athletes are starting to recognize that it's pretty neat what we're able to do in those communities where we host events. And so Emporia, where LeLan lives, is a good example. We've entered into an agreement with the Emporia School District. And a number of our athletes for what was DK, now to be Unbound, chose to donate their entries. We gave them the ... We guaranteed people the opportunity to get back in this next year, but they donated this year's entry fee to support the lunch program in that school district.
Kimo:
And it evolved from not just eliminating the harmful seven in these school lunch programs, but it actually evolved into a COVID relief type lunch program in a lot of our school districts around the country that turned into not only a COVID lunch relief, but many, many districts, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, where there were really high unemployment rates and families that were really impacted. Leadville's a perfect example. I think in total we raised almost a quarter million dollars for that school district to support their COVID relief program throughout the summer and kept feeding not only kids, but their families, where they just didn't have access because they were unemployed. So really grateful for our athletes that jumped in to help out, and it was pretty impressive.
Craig:
Yeah. It's a great result, considering how much corporate level trauma, with all the employees you had to furlough, and all these sort of negative things going on, to at least be able to put something positive back into the world.
Kimo:
Yeah, I think so. We're really fortunate and appreciative of everybody that stepped up to help.
Craig:
So LeLan, I know last year, DK pivoted to a virtual event. And then there was also a virtual event for Big Sugar. I don't want to drill too much into the details of the virtual event. But is there anything that you guys learned running virtual events that might be useful going forward?
LeLan:
Yeah. I think the biggest lesson was learning that virtual events can be really good and really useful for a lot of people. Take our camp, for example. We had a virtual training camp, and that reached over 1000 people. And it really opened our eyes to the fact that our in person events can be rather limiting when you really think about it. DK, when it was owned by us had been a lottery long before Life Time acquired us because the demand was so high. We can only fit so many people in Emporia. Well, through the, I guess, forced use of virtual events this year, we realized that on top of taking people here in town, we potentially can create meaningful opportunities to engage with people that aren't able, either aren't able to travel to Emporia, or weren't selected to come to Emporia. And so it is certainly our hope that moving forward that we can use virtual activities to continue to engage people beyond those that can come here to Emporia. And so that was definitely an aspect that was exciting to me.
LeLan:
We had, like I say, I refer to our virtual training camp, what a great success that was. And in fact, we were able to add content that we wouldn't normally have in our in person training camp. We were able to engage more sponsors that don't always travel to town to be with the in person athletes. And we just had all kinds of information and great activations and great input from a lot of people to make that happen. And I think we only charged something like $10 to join that virtual training camp, and so the value return was immense. And I believe those profits were donated to either the Life Time Foundation, maybe a combination of organizations, so that was definitely in my opinion a huge success.
Craig:
Yeah. I think that was definitely one of those interesting silver linings to 2020, was just that we fleshed out a number of different virtual formats, and some of them are going to stick and some of them aren't. But at the end of the day, I just think it was a way to bind the community together in a time where we desperately wanted community, but we couldn't safely come together.
LeLan:
Our goal has certainly been to invite and welcome in as many people from the gravel community as we could. And as we've alluded, because of the use of our lottery, because the demand was so high, we couldn't capture all those people. So this will definitely give us an opportunity to engage. Will it be the same as riding hundreds of miles in the Flint Hills? No, not quite. But again, I think we can create a value in that experience that is appropriate and still makes the end user feel like they were a part of something pretty special.
Craig:
Yeah. I think one of the offshoots of that was a lot of great routes got created and shared across the community, which was really cool. I've benefited from going to different towns and riding routes that someone posted in their virtual DK race. The other big thing obviously in 2020 was DK rebranding to Unbound. For either of you, would you like to talk a little bit about that process and how you arrived at the name Unbound and what it means to you?
Kimo:
Want to take that one, LeLan?
LeLan:
Well, sure. Yeah. Well, it was a process indeed. As you can imagine, DK had positioned itself as the world's premier gravel event. And it was going on 15 years in 2020. This would've been the 15th running. And so imagine renaming your 15 year old child or something like that. It was a tall order. But we did, I really liked the process that our marketing team implemented. They pulled together a great committee of people, or group of people, if you will. And that included community members from right here in Emporia, key members from the Life Time team, couple professional athletes that were well involved with DK sponsors. So it was a very eclectic group of people from ... And not everyone was necessarily a hardcore cyclist. They just had an interest or a stake in the event in some way. And we invited them into the process, and it was just pages upon pages of words and phrases and names that we liked. And you start the process of scratching names out.
LeLan:
And Unbound was one that always just kind of was there. And we would always kind of pursue something else, and it wouldn't work for a number of reasons. And Unbound was there. And I really started to think about what that word signifies, what it means. It became very clear to me personally, a lot of people on the committee, that Unbound does represent the spirit of not only this event, but in gravel in general. The whole purpose of gravel was to get out there with nothing but a paper map and a cue sheet, and your own legs and whatever supplies you could carry, and to really be free out there and explore uninhibited. And that's what Unbound refers to really. And so we found it to be a name that was very applicable and captured the spirit in a lot of ways.
Craig:
Yeah. I think the end result was great, and I like the name, personally.
LeLan:
Well, good. Many people do. If you go onto social media, you might think otherwise, but the critics, as they tend to be, are really few in number. And there were some people obviously who didn't want the name to change at all. And we understand that, and so they likely weren't going to like anything that we produced, and that's okay. We understand there's a lot of emotion wrapped up into it. But when we were floating this around, it was clear to us that partners, industry partners in particular, really liked the name, and that really helped us solidify that selection.
Craig:
Nice. Well, let's get practical now. I really want to have a conversation for our listeners and the community at large about how events can be run safely in 2021. Unbound is scheduled for June 5th, 2021 at this point. And I know from talking to you, LeLan, you guys have fleshed out a lot of precautions. Can you talk through what Unbound is going to look like and how it may differ? And this again, for the listener, this is assuming we're still in the really tricky state of the pandemic, as we are now.
LeLan:
Yeah. And I warn everyone going into everything that I'd love to share here that this is a largely hypothetical. Here we sit in December, and as a production team, we desperately need to have ... We want some answers and we need to get started on our prep and planning, but those answers just don't exist. I go and I talk to my public health officials and city officials here, and they say, "LeLan, what do you want me to tell you? That's six months away. I can't tell you what next week is going to look like, let alone June." But the positive is that most everyone, everyone I've spoken with is optimistic that a bike ride can take place in June here in Emporia. And that's really reassuring to us.
LeLan:
And what that means is everything else might look pretty different. And there's obviously going to be a lot of safety stuff that I want to share. But at the end of the day, we think that a bike ride can take place. And that can happen because we can spread out the start line a little bit. And we're talking about hundreds of miles of Flint Hills, open air. There's really few better opportunities for us to have an even than out in the Flint Hills riding our bikes. And so I think that really lends a lot of positivity to something will take place.
LeLan:
But when you look at the other facets of the event, we really believe that we can make some alterations that still give the participants, our athletes, a great experience. So you take a look at our riders meeting. Okay, it has been a phenomenal gift to be able to gather in the Granada Theater and have those riders meetings. And the energy in that room is eclectic. Probably not going to happen in '21. We'll probably live stream that, and we'll still be able to disseminate the information. We just won't be able to gather in the theater. Packet pickup, we're really going to have to reduce the numbers and control the flow, so we'll probably do things like only the rider will be allowed to go in and sign in for themselves. As much as we love for the family to be a part of that experience, we just, there's not a ... We can't risk having the extra bodies in there.
LeLan:
Naturally, social distancing and mask usage, assuming that is still in use, will be followed wherever applicable. That's kind of a given. But just controlling the flow a little bit, reducing the numbers in any of our indoor facilities, those types of things. Our Finish Festival is going to probably be the biggest difficulty because if anyone's ever been to our finish line, it is thousands of people. I've heard as many as 10,000, some estimates have been. And they're milling around within a few block radius, and they've got a beer in their hand and a taco or pulled pork sandwich in the other. And you obviously can't have a mask when you're doing that. So that's an area where we're going to really have to scrutinize what we're able to do, what's prudent to do. But again, I go back to our worst case scenario. It may just be a finish line. There might not be quite the fanfare in years past.
LeLan:
But I don't think most of our athletes will be too upset about that. Is it great to have the crowd there? Absolutely. But if it means being able to have a ride, and that's a part we might have to give on a little, then it's something we're certainly willing to concede on here. But that's an area where we have a little bit of time to figure out what this thing might be looking like come springtime. It's an area that we'll have all the scenarios from A to Z try to figured out. And by the time we get to March, April, we'll know where in that line where we might have to be in terms of execution.
Craig:
Yeah. I think I heard Michael Marx from BWR say that putting on an event is twice the effort in the current situation that it has been previously.
LeLan:
Twice is being generous. I mean, we've got multiple plans and schemes and angles. And we want to be prepared for just about any scenario. And we feel pretty prepared as of today.
Craig:
Yeah. It's comforting that you guys have posted your COVID guidelines already on the website. I really like to see that.
Kimo:
Yeah. Craig, I think there's even maybe a bigger picture question that's still yet to be answered. It's something we don't know. And it probably extends beyond just our little industry. But in general, is there going to be ... We're starting to think about it. Will there be some period of time where it may just be required for certain activities, for certain businesses that you show up with a negative COVID test and/or proof of a vaccination? And I don't know that we're going to lead in that area nationwide, but I think there may be scenarios, and there's always a lot of talk about that, that some industries may just, they may go to that for some period of time.
Kimo:
If you're going to get on an airplane, countries and states are doing that now. To get into Hawaii, you have to show that you got a negative test from the last 72 hours. And I think we're going to see that evolve, and we'll probably see more of that over the next, I would imagine, 12 months. And so we're prepared. We're preparing for that scenario that we have to think about across all of our events. Potentially, it could be that you have to ... We end up having to be ... A municipality or local jurisdiction might require us to check that every single person that's coming has had a vaccine or has had a negative test in the last 48 hours or whatever it is.
Craig:
Yeah. It's sort of mind boggling to play out. I mean, do you have two finish lines for some people who have been vaccinated and some people who haven't? It's incredible.
Kimo:
It is.
Craig:
But I think any way you slice it, 2021's going to be a little bit topsy turvy. I think you do have the benefit, as you said, LeLan, of being a June event gives us a little bit of time to kind of see how things are playing out. There's a couple other big events on the gravel calendar that will have gone off, and hopefully gone off without a hitch so we can learn some lessons.
LeLan:
Even right here locally, not everyone ... If you've been to Emporia, you've probably learned this, but this is a big disc golf town as well. In fact, in April, Dynamic Discs, which is located here, hosts the world's largest disc golf tournament. So we'll also get to take some clues from them right here at home how that is operated and how it goes off. And so we do have that good fortune of being right in the middle of the calendar year. And so we'll get to learn from others on best practices as well.
Craig:
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's critical that throughout the gravel cycling community, if a rider's intending on attending an event, that they really take a high level of personal responsibility for their attendance. And whether that is in representing a negative test, or just showing up and following the rules, I think that's where we're going to fall down because I know all the event producers I've been speaking to, they know how important it is for them to set the right stage. But if the riders themselves don't take the responsibility, that's where the challenges are going to come.
LeLan:
Yeah. If you think about it, we utilize the help of a few hundred volunteers. It's an extraordinary number, but that's to manage thousands of people, not just riders, but their support crews and spectators. And so we can't have eyes everywhere all the time, so when we make a statement like, "We need you to wear a buff or face covering on the start line," we need your participation in that because it's very difficult to go row by row, person by person, and enforce something like that. It's simply our expectation that you're coming here with the goodwill and a desire to participate the way we need you to.
Craig:
Yeah. And I think obviously the other big thing is just responsibility during the travel to Emporia. Being a small community and drawing athletes from all over the world, that's huge. You could be coming from a territory that does not have precautions in place and bringing it to a community that does.
LeLan:
Yeah. I think most people recognize that even in larger communities, our larger cities, the healthcare system is overwhelmed. But then you look at a place like Emporia, which has 20 hospital beds, we just can't facilitate a big outbreak, so it could be very detrimental.
Craig:
With the precautions stated behind us, how excited are you to get the community back together this year?
LeLan:
Well, nothing would please me more. It's been an interesting year, where to Kimo's point, I've been grateful throughout the entire year to have employment, to continually be working towards the next objectives. But it's just felt weird. What have we been working towards? What have we accomplished this year? While I know we've accomplished things, it's been hard to recognize and see those things when you don't have those tangible events to execute. So nothing would please me more to get back to, I'll state it again, to just have a bike ride. I really think if we just view it as that, I think we can accomplish that much and get back to really what all this is really about, which is riding our bikes in beautiful locations and coming together as community in whatever capacity we're able.
Craig:
Yeah. And I know you're both cyclists yourselves, so you both personally must be missing the normalcy of group rides.
Kimo:
I'd say a little bit. Yeah. Definitely. I miss, whether I'm in our events, whether I'm riding, or just there to pick up trash, or whatever I do around the events. I miss it. I miss seeing that. There's nothing more. I mean, I'm telling you, if you stand at the finish line of Unbound, or Leadville, or any of these events, and if you don't shed a tear at some point, you must not have a heart. I mean, it is unbelievable the power that these events have to change people's lives and to have lasting impressions on the riders and their families, I mean kids seeing their parents do that. The example that people are setting for the next generation and all these things, it's really powerful and impactful. And it's all gone right now. That made me more anxious to see that than to necessarily cross the finish line myself, or get out on a group ride. Yeah, that's the part that's hard. It's a bummer that we've lost that for a year.
Craig:
Yeah. I mean, there's absolute magic in the last person to cross the finish line. You see the pros come across very quickly and are very able to have conversations and go on their business, sign some autographs. But that last person who turned themselves inside out, and maybe this is something they've never done before, I mean, it definitely gives me goosebumps even talking about seeing those athletes come across the line.
LeLan:
Oh, absolutely. As you well know, we are there, Unbound finish line is open until 3:00 AM Sunday morning. We're standing there until the very last come home.
Craig:
Amazing. Well, there's absolutely a reason why Unbound is on a lot of gravel athletes' bucket list of events to attend, for sure. So Kimo, for Life Time, you've got a suite of gravel events throughout the year. Have all the dates been set for the big events at this point?
Kimo:
They are all set, yeah. So all the big ones, we've kind of put them back on their traditional dates. At this point, we're contemplating whether or not something in the spring might have to get moved to the fall, things like that. As far as the gravel events right now though, it looks like we've got everything kind of where it traditionally has been in the past.
Craig:
Okay, because Crusher was later in the summer, I believe. And then Big Sugar obviously is at the end of the year. Right?
Kimo:
Right. Right. We've still got Crusher in the middle of July. And then, yes, Big Sugar for late October.
Craig:
Okay. And have you set the stage for when event registration for those later events will be available?
Kimo:
We have, actually. And I don't have the dates in front of me. LeLan, you probably know better than I do.
LeLan:
You'll have to fact check me on Crusher. It's either mid January or early February. Big Sugar, we have not made that announcement, but look for a springtime opening for that registration.
Craig:
Okay. For both of those events, I imagine there's a lot of deferred athletes that are potentially given the first slots.
LeLan:
You are correct, yeah. But I'm glad you bring that up because even with Unbound, there were many people who donated their entries, or asked for a refund. A lot have deferred. But I do want to mention to the listeners that there will be a lottery registration for Unbound. There will be new spots available for athletes. And that opens up January 15th. So definitely be, if you're wanting in this year, there's still opportunity.
Craig:
Awesome. That's super exciting to hear. I just sort of assumed that it was already locked up.
LeLan:
Yeah. And that's why I'm glad you brought it up because I imagine most people are feeling that way. And I don't think we've made big to do about that. This is one of the first times we've been able to get on air with anyone and talk about our registration will be opening. So definitely put your names in the hat.
Craig:
And then for registered athletes, is there a deferment or refund policy that you guys have already crystallized?
LeLan:
Yeah. Another great question, I'm glad we're hitting on that because in years past, we've taken a pretty hard no refunds. And even before Life Time had acquired us, we had moved to a no transfer policy, which we used to allow transfers. But this has definitely made us realize that this was something that's obviously out of everyone's control, but we did want to recreate a deferral and a refund policy that would be more generous and maybe a little more fair to everyone. So folks, and I'll kind of rattle some of this off, but you can visit unboundgravel.com, look at our COVID-19 guidelines. And you'll see our little Q and A, which includes the deferral refund policy. But from 90 days out or more, there's a 70% refund available to the riders if we need to cancel the event because of COVID. Then it goes down to 50%. And then within the last couple months, a 40% refund.
LeLan:
Now I will say this, obviously it'd be our goal to try to postpone. Because we do take place in June, there is a chance like we had tried in 2020 to maybe try further down the road in the year. But if it all comes down to cancellation, then we do have a policy in place for a refund. It's a little more generous than in years past, and an outright deferral at no cost as well if a person wants to try again the next year. Now that's there, but we're not going to need it. Right? Knocking on wood, and it's not going to be an issue. We're going to be able to ride, let's hope.
Craig:
Yeah. Let's just keep all our thoughts intending that way. I'm definitely struggling a little bit as I'm sitting in Los Angeles County and they've just entered another strict lockdown period. As I'm looking online to register for events, it's hard to get my head around it.
LeLan:
That's the struggle we find ourselves in now is it's hard to take the blinders and put them on. We need the blinders on right now. We don't want to see what's happening today. And we need to think about what we hope things are looking like next year.
Craig:
Yeah. That's absolutely right. I mean, I think we're all optimistic about where things are going. It may not go as fast as we'd like to go, but I think things are finally starting to head in the right direction in terms of potential vaccine, et cetera. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for the time. I appreciate you talking about what's been going on at Life Time and about Unbound and the other events you've got on the calendar for this coming year. I'm excited, and again, optimistic that I may be able to see you both in person again.
LeLan:
Definitely.
Kimo:
Oh, we will. We'll see you, Craig. We'll be there.
Craig:
Great. Thanks, guys.
Kimo:
Thanks for having us.
Craig:
Take care. Happy holidays.
Kimo Seymour (Life Time) and LeLan Dains (UNBOUND GRAVEL) take a look back at 2020 and forward to the 2021 gravel event season including UNBOUND GRAVEL. We take a close look at the COVID protocols the team has put in place to ensure a safe event.
UNBOUND GRAVEL Instagram
UNBOUND GRAVEL Covid Safety
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Episode Transcription:
Craig:
Gentlemen, welcome to the show.
Kimo:
Thanks for having us.
LeLan:
Yeah, thanks for having us, Craig.
Craig:
Yeah. So it'd be a good place start off since I've got two of you on the line today. Why don't we start off with Kimo, and then go on to LeLan? And just talk about your respective roles at Life Time. And maybe Kimo, prior to that, you could just tell the listener about Life Time in general.
Kimo:
Okay. So Life Time may be more nationally known as a leading health club company around the country. We operate 154 what I'll call destination health clubs around the country, and very nice, I'd consider pretty high end type health clubs, very family oriented company in 30 plus states. So Life Time's been around 20, I think we're coming up on 28, 29 years now. I'm fortunate enough to get to work on the events and partnership side of the business, so partnerships meaning most people think of it as sponsorships. We call them partnerships because it's an opportunity for us to share our partners with our audiences, and that happens to live both in events, which are outside of the walls of our clubs, as well as our members, which a couple million members, which attend our clubs.
Craig:
So how did Life Time start to see exterior events, events outside the club, as being an opportunity for a health club?
Kimo:
It's a great, great question. I think it was prior to my involvement. I've been with the company a little over nine years now. And my understanding was the idea was we kind of positioned ourselves as what we call a healthy way of life company. And I think the thought at the time, and continues to be our thought process that clubs and these destinations are an important component of a healthy way of life, but not necessarily the only component of a healthy way of life. To live healthy, you have to eat healthy. You have to have activity every single day. And clubs are an important component of that, but we also saw that to keep people in the ecosystem, it's important to engage them beyond the walls of the clubs, and events were an opportunity like that.
Kimo:
On top of it, events were a great brand. We found out that, gosh, you get a lot of really good exposure for your brand if you go create great experiences outside your clubs, a lot of media exposure. A lot of people start to learn about your ecosystem through these events, and so I think it was a combination of extending that lifestyle beyond the walls of the clubs, but also it was a marketing idea. It was a way to extend the brand, if you will.
Craig:
And were those first events things that Life Time conceived of themselves and created? Or did it start with sponsorships or partnerships?
Kimo:
To my understanding, I think there were a few sponsorships early on. But our CEO is, I'll say very protective of the brand. And the idea that we would put our brand on somebody else's experience and not control what that experience is like, he didn't like that idea. He liked the idea that we want to deliver a premium experience in everything that we do, therefore, we probably need to really do that effectively, we need to control that experience. So we get asked frequently if we would like to sponsor other events. We've chosen typically not to do that. We've found more success where we can kind of control and really engage with the consumer with our brand, that putting our name on somebody else's event hasn't been as effective for us.
Craig:
I remember the first time Life Time got on my radar was from the Leadville 100. And I think it was the year after I did it, the acquisition was announced, and it was really interesting because I know how much the founders of that event, how much passion and love they had for it, so it was very kind of curious when this outside entity came in and acquired that event. And then it was very heartening to see how much involvement the founding team has and still has in it, and how the character of the event didn't change.
Kimo:
Yeah. That's a great example of one where I think Life Time sponsored it for two or three years prior to the acquisition. I was actually, I came on shortly after that acquisition really, and that was my first job, was to make sure that we didn't "screw it up." And first and foremost to me, I thought it's really important to keep those founders because they're the ones that keep us engaged with the community. And they're the ones that know how to make sure that thing continues with the heart and soul that it had developed over the 25 years previous to our involvement, so yeah, I think that's an example of one where I like to think we've done an okay job of continuing that. And hearing you say that we've continued that experience, and like you say, the heart and soul of it is still there. And I think that's thanks to Ken and Merilee. And now Cole, who's Ken's son, has moved over to start helping us as Ken and Merilee reach a point of potentially retiring. We've got to have some of that continuity there in the Leadville community.
Craig:
Yeah. And obviously with mountain bike events and gravel events, any mountain event in these small communities, it's just so critical that you have the local team involved, because as you said, it's sort of the heart and soul of the event, and no one wants to lose that.
Kimo:
Right.
Craig:
LeLan, maybe that's a good time for you to introduce yourself as part of the team at the event formerly known as DK, now known as Unbound, which we'll get into later. Why don't you introduce yourself and what you do in the family?
LeLan:
Yeah. Well, I was one of those former owners of DK Promotions at the time. And we'd built up this DK event. And it was just a little over two years ago now that Life Time acquired us. Member of our team were getting on in the years, and we knew that there needed to be a strategy for a succession, if you will. And Kimo was one of the first people saying, "Hey, we want to make sure that you are part of this." In fact, I think it was we don't want to acquire this without you staying on board and helping us run it. So I now work for Life Time as the event director for the Unbound family of events, so that's our training camps in the spring, Unbound of course, first weekend after Memorial Day, our summertime lunar ride, and then that also led into the creation of Big Sugar down in Arkansas, which I help oversee.
Craig:
Yeah. That brings me back to a year ago in 2019. I had visited the Big Sugar preview ride in Bentonville, which was awesome in October. Life Time had announced its acquisition of Crusher in the Tushar. There was all these big things, and I think as one member of the community, I was so looking forward to 2020. I thought we had so many amazing things planned. I think you guys share that with me. At a strategic level, once COVID came into our lives in February, March, I think it really started kicking up. Obviously, Bobby Wintle's event, The Mid South, was probably the biggest event on the calendar that actually just managed to kick off. How did you guys see that and start thinking about it? It must've been incredibly challenging.
LeLan:
Yeah. I mean, there was so much unknown for everyone as we came into the start of 2020. Initially, to be honest, I personally didn't think it would affect our event, which was end of May, would've been end of May this year. And so you're there in January, February, and we're thinking, "Okay. If we all play by the rules and we kind of isolate ourselves for a few weeks, this ought to just go away," and boy, were we wrong. I was certainly wrong in that assumption. And so it didn't take long to go from, "Yeah, we're still having event this year," to, "We need to pick a postponement date." Then you get into the summer and you're like, "We're not having anything this year. And so it was, definitely didn't see that coming, for sure.
Craig:
Kimo, from a corporate level, obviously when this started coming down, it affected all of your events. What was that like on your end? And how did you kind of react corporately to the situation?
Kimo:
Well, yeah, at the corporate level obviously there was a lot of focus on the fact that we had to close down 154 clubs across the country. And boy, what a huge impact on our business. I'll say we're ... I preach this to our team a lot, I'm just incredibly thankful that in a time like this, we have a big company like Life Time behind us. There's a lot of people out there say, "Life Time, this big corporate giant coming in and gobbling up events and these things." And I think, "Well, these are the times where it's a pretty solid benefit to have that bigger company behind us." And I really feel for a lot of the smaller event producers that aren't getting any support from the government, kind of like restaurants. Right? I don't know how they're surviving. And I just feel terrible for them. You know?
Kimo:
And we're so fortunate that we were able to, I mean, obviously we canceled. I think we did two events in the beginning of the year. We've canceled the rest of our events for the year. Obviously, hard when you cancel 30 plus events, that's a big, big impact both to our business and to our parent company. So the irony was it didn't happen overnight. Right? This, as LeLan said, this thing evolved. Even in March, we thought, "We still got a chance. By beginning of June, we should be good. We'll come back out of this thing." Little did we know. We're talking about next June now. You know? And when we'll be able to get events back on next year, not this year. I think the hardest, the toughest decisions for me, nobody was going to fault us for canceling an event. People would fault us if we tried to put on an event. Right?
Kimo:
You'd have probably 50% of the people would be the ones bashing you for it, and 50% would be applauding you for it. We couldn't take that ... We couldn't risk exposing people like that, so the decision was not difficult to cancel. The hardest decision for me was what to do with the team, with the company. We furloughed close to 38,000 team members across the company. And unfortunately, some of those, we still haven't been able to bring back because of this. So we've been fairly fortunate in our business. We did lose a few people along the way, but we've been able to bring a number of people back, and those are probably the hardest decisions that we've had to make this year.
Craig:
Yeah. I can only imagine. I felt like at the time, there was a lot of sort of woe is me from individual riders who were seeing the one event they were aspiring to do for the year get canceled. But at the end of the day, like you said, whether you're a larger corporation or a small event producer, this hit hard. And being able to rebound back and be someone we can count on to create events in 2021 is super important. And I hope we didn't lose any events in all this, but I think inevitably we may have.
Kimo:
I think so. I think that's yet to be seen, Craig. I think unfortunately, there will be some of the smaller, maybe some of the bigger ones too, that just don't make it through because that's tough to go a year without your ... You got your operating expense that you kind of have to live with throughout the year. And then you've got all your revenue comes from a single day event, typically.
Craig:
Totally.
Kimo:
It's tough.
Craig:
And it's not like events are these huge revenue making machines, by any means, so the margins are quite small. And if you're required to give refunds to people, et cetera, there's a lot to it. On a brighter side, you gave a lot of riders the opportunity to donate their registration fees to charities, which I thought was a great way to kind of turn the tide on this. Do you want to talk about some of the success you had with that program?
Kimo:
Yeah. Really good question. We did. We selectively chose a number of events and gave people the option to donate to a variety of charities. In most situations, in most markets where we do events, we also through our Life Time Foundation, we support and are implementing school, kind of an improved school lunch program across the country, and doing what we call eliminating the harmful seven. And there's seven ingredients that we believe just children shouldn't be exposed to in school lunches. And so we've now extended that. We're impacting about two and a half million kids across the country through the Life Time Foundation. And those communities, our athletes are starting to recognize that it's pretty neat what we're able to do in those communities where we host events. And so Emporia, where LeLan lives, is a good example. We've entered into an agreement with the Emporia School District. And a number of our athletes for what was DK, now to be Unbound, chose to donate their entries. We gave them the ... We guaranteed people the opportunity to get back in this next year, but they donated this year's entry fee to support the lunch program in that school district.
Kimo:
And it evolved from not just eliminating the harmful seven in these school lunch programs, but it actually evolved into a COVID relief type lunch program in a lot of our school districts around the country that turned into not only a COVID lunch relief, but many, many districts, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, where there were really high unemployment rates and families that were really impacted. Leadville's a perfect example. I think in total we raised almost a quarter million dollars for that school district to support their COVID relief program throughout the summer and kept feeding not only kids, but their families, where they just didn't have access because they were unemployed. So really grateful for our athletes that jumped in to help out, and it was pretty impressive.
Craig:
Yeah. It's a great result, considering how much corporate level trauma, with all the employees you had to furlough, and all these sort of negative things going on, to at least be able to put something positive back into the world.
Kimo:
Yeah, I think so. We're really fortunate and appreciative of everybody that stepped up to help.
Craig:
So LeLan, I know last year, DK pivoted to a virtual event. And then there was also a virtual event for Big Sugar. I don't want to drill too much into the details of the virtual event. But is there anything that you guys learned running virtual events that might be useful going forward?
LeLan:
Yeah. I think the biggest lesson was learning that virtual events can be really good and really useful for a lot of people. Take our camp, for example. We had a virtual training camp, and that reached over 1000 people. And it really opened our eyes to the fact that our in person events can be rather limiting when you really think about it. DK, when it was owned by us had been a lottery long before Life Time acquired us because the demand was so high. We can only fit so many people in Emporia. Well, through the, I guess, forced use of virtual events this year, we realized that on top of taking people here in town, we potentially can create meaningful opportunities to engage with people that aren't able, either aren't able to travel to Emporia, or weren't selected to come to Emporia. And so it is certainly our hope that moving forward that we can use virtual activities to continue to engage people beyond those that can come here to Emporia. And so that was definitely an aspect that was exciting to me.
LeLan:
We had, like I say, I refer to our virtual training camp, what a great success that was. And in fact, we were able to add content that we wouldn't normally have in our in person training camp. We were able to engage more sponsors that don't always travel to town to be with the in person athletes. And we just had all kinds of information and great activations and great input from a lot of people to make that happen. And I think we only charged something like $10 to join that virtual training camp, and so the value return was immense. And I believe those profits were donated to either the Life Time Foundation, maybe a combination of organizations, so that was definitely in my opinion a huge success.
Craig:
Yeah. I think that was definitely one of those interesting silver linings to 2020, was just that we fleshed out a number of different virtual formats, and some of them are going to stick and some of them aren't. But at the end of the day, I just think it was a way to bind the community together in a time where we desperately wanted community, but we couldn't safely come together.
LeLan:
Our goal has certainly been to invite and welcome in as many people from the gravel community as we could. And as we've alluded, because of the use of our lottery, because the demand was so high, we couldn't capture all those people. So this will definitely give us an opportunity to engage. Will it be the same as riding hundreds of miles in the Flint Hills? No, not quite. But again, I think we can create a value in that experience that is appropriate and still makes the end user feel like they were a part of something pretty special.
Craig:
Yeah. I think one of the offshoots of that was a lot of great routes got created and shared across the community, which was really cool. I've benefited from going to different towns and riding routes that someone posted in their virtual DK race. The other big thing obviously in 2020 was DK rebranding to Unbound. For either of you, would you like to talk a little bit about that process and how you arrived at the name Unbound and what it means to you?
Kimo:
Want to take that one, LeLan?
LeLan:
Well, sure. Yeah. Well, it was a process indeed. As you can imagine, DK had positioned itself as the world's premier gravel event. And it was going on 15 years in 2020. This would've been the 15th running. And so imagine renaming your 15 year old child or something like that. It was a tall order. But we did, I really liked the process that our marketing team implemented. They pulled together a great committee of people, or group of people, if you will. And that included community members from right here in Emporia, key members from the Life Time team, couple professional athletes that were well involved with DK sponsors. So it was a very eclectic group of people from ... And not everyone was necessarily a hardcore cyclist. They just had an interest or a stake in the event in some way. And we invited them into the process, and it was just pages upon pages of words and phrases and names that we liked. And you start the process of scratching names out.
LeLan:
And Unbound was one that always just kind of was there. And we would always kind of pursue something else, and it wouldn't work for a number of reasons. And Unbound was there. And I really started to think about what that word signifies, what it means. It became very clear to me personally, a lot of people on the committee, that Unbound does represent the spirit of not only this event, but in gravel in general. The whole purpose of gravel was to get out there with nothing but a paper map and a cue sheet, and your own legs and whatever supplies you could carry, and to really be free out there and explore uninhibited. And that's what Unbound refers to really. And so we found it to be a name that was very applicable and captured the spirit in a lot of ways.
Craig:
Yeah. I think the end result was great, and I like the name, personally.
LeLan:
Well, good. Many people do. If you go onto social media, you might think otherwise, but the critics, as they tend to be, are really few in number. And there were some people obviously who didn't want the name to change at all. And we understand that, and so they likely weren't going to like anything that we produced, and that's okay. We understand there's a lot of emotion wrapped up into it. But when we were floating this around, it was clear to us that partners, industry partners in particular, really liked the name, and that really helped us solidify that selection.
Craig:
Nice. Well, let's get practical now. I really want to have a conversation for our listeners and the community at large about how events can be run safely in 2021. Unbound is scheduled for June 5th, 2021 at this point. And I know from talking to you, LeLan, you guys have fleshed out a lot of precautions. Can you talk through what Unbound is going to look like and how it may differ? And this again, for the listener, this is assuming we're still in the really tricky state of the pandemic, as we are now.
LeLan:
Yeah. And I warn everyone going into everything that I'd love to share here that this is a largely hypothetical. Here we sit in December, and as a production team, we desperately need to have ... We want some answers and we need to get started on our prep and planning, but those answers just don't exist. I go and I talk to my public health officials and city officials here, and they say, "LeLan, what do you want me to tell you? That's six months away. I can't tell you what next week is going to look like, let alone June." But the positive is that most everyone, everyone I've spoken with is optimistic that a bike ride can take place in June here in Emporia. And that's really reassuring to us.
LeLan:
And what that means is everything else might look pretty different. And there's obviously going to be a lot of safety stuff that I want to share. But at the end of the day, we think that a bike ride can take place. And that can happen because we can spread out the start line a little bit. And we're talking about hundreds of miles of Flint Hills, open air. There's really few better opportunities for us to have an even than out in the Flint Hills riding our bikes. And so I think that really lends a lot of positivity to something will take place.
LeLan:
But when you look at the other facets of the event, we really believe that we can make some alterations that still give the participants, our athletes, a great experience. So you take a look at our riders meeting. Okay, it has been a phenomenal gift to be able to gather in the Granada Theater and have those riders meetings. And the energy in that room is eclectic. Probably not going to happen in '21. We'll probably live stream that, and we'll still be able to disseminate the information. We just won't be able to gather in the theater. Packet pickup, we're really going to have to reduce the numbers and control the flow, so we'll probably do things like only the rider will be allowed to go in and sign in for themselves. As much as we love for the family to be a part of that experience, we just, there's not a ... We can't risk having the extra bodies in there.
LeLan:
Naturally, social distancing and mask usage, assuming that is still in use, will be followed wherever applicable. That's kind of a given. But just controlling the flow a little bit, reducing the numbers in any of our indoor facilities, those types of things. Our Finish Festival is going to probably be the biggest difficulty because if anyone's ever been to our finish line, it is thousands of people. I've heard as many as 10,000, some estimates have been. And they're milling around within a few block radius, and they've got a beer in their hand and a taco or pulled pork sandwich in the other. And you obviously can't have a mask when you're doing that. So that's an area where we're going to really have to scrutinize what we're able to do, what's prudent to do. But again, I go back to our worst case scenario. It may just be a finish line. There might not be quite the fanfare in years past.
LeLan:
But I don't think most of our athletes will be too upset about that. Is it great to have the crowd there? Absolutely. But if it means being able to have a ride, and that's a part we might have to give on a little, then it's something we're certainly willing to concede on here. But that's an area where we have a little bit of time to figure out what this thing might be looking like come springtime. It's an area that we'll have all the scenarios from A to Z try to figured out. And by the time we get to March, April, we'll know where in that line where we might have to be in terms of execution.
Craig:
Yeah. I think I heard Michael Marx from BWR say that putting on an event is twice the effort in the current situation that it has been previously.
LeLan:
Twice is being generous. I mean, we've got multiple plans and schemes and angles. And we want to be prepared for just about any scenario. And we feel pretty prepared as of today.
Craig:
Yeah. It's comforting that you guys have posted your COVID guidelines already on the website. I really like to see that.
Kimo:
Yeah. Craig, I think there's even maybe a bigger picture question that's still yet to be answered. It's something we don't know. And it probably extends beyond just our little industry. But in general, is there going to be ... We're starting to think about it. Will there be some period of time where it may just be required for certain activities, for certain businesses that you show up with a negative COVID test and/or proof of a vaccination? And I don't know that we're going to lead in that area nationwide, but I think there may be scenarios, and there's always a lot of talk about that, that some industries may just, they may go to that for some period of time.
Kimo:
If you're going to get on an airplane, countries and states are doing that now. To get into Hawaii, you have to show that you got a negative test from the last 72 hours. And I think we're going to see that evolve, and we'll probably see more of that over the next, I would imagine, 12 months. And so we're prepared. We're preparing for that scenario that we have to think about across all of our events. Potentially, it could be that you have to ... We end up having to be ... A municipality or local jurisdiction might require us to check that every single person that's coming has had a vaccine or has had a negative test in the last 48 hours or whatever it is.
Craig:
Yeah. It's sort of mind boggling to play out. I mean, do you have two finish lines for some people who have been vaccinated and some people who haven't? It's incredible.
Kimo:
It is.
Craig:
But I think any way you slice it, 2021's going to be a little bit topsy turvy. I think you do have the benefit, as you said, LeLan, of being a June event gives us a little bit of time to kind of see how things are playing out. There's a couple other big events on the gravel calendar that will have gone off, and hopefully gone off without a hitch so we can learn some lessons.
LeLan:
Even right here locally, not everyone ... If you've been to Emporia, you've probably learned this, but this is a big disc golf town as well. In fact, in April, Dynamic Discs, which is located here, hosts the world's largest disc golf tournament. So we'll also get to take some clues from them right here at home how that is operated and how it goes off. And so we do have that good fortune of being right in the middle of the calendar year. And so we'll get to learn from others on best practices as well.
Craig:
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's critical that throughout the gravel cycling community, if a rider's intending on attending an event, that they really take a high level of personal responsibility for their attendance. And whether that is in representing a negative test, or just showing up and following the rules, I think that's where we're going to fall down because I know all the event producers I've been speaking to, they know how important it is for them to set the right stage. But if the riders themselves don't take the responsibility, that's where the challenges are going to come.
LeLan:
Yeah. If you think about it, we utilize the help of a few hundred volunteers. It's an extraordinary number, but that's to manage thousands of people, not just riders, but their support crews and spectators. And so we can't have eyes everywhere all the time, so when we make a statement like, "We need you to wear a buff or face covering on the start line," we need your participation in that because it's very difficult to go row by row, person by person, and enforce something like that. It's simply our expectation that you're coming here with the goodwill and a desire to participate the way we need you to.
Craig:
Yeah. And I think obviously the other big thing is just responsibility during the travel to Emporia. Being a small community and drawing athletes from all over the world, that's huge. You could be coming from a territory that does not have precautions in place and bringing it to a community that does.
LeLan:
Yeah. I think most people recognize that even in larger communities, our larger cities, the healthcare system is overwhelmed. But then you look at a place like Emporia, which has 20 hospital beds, we just can't facilitate a big outbreak, so it could be very detrimental.
Craig:
With the precautions stated behind us, how excited are you to get the community back together this year?
LeLan:
Well, nothing would please me more. It's been an interesting year, where to Kimo's point, I've been grateful throughout the entire year to have employment, to continually be working towards the next objectives. But it's just felt weird. What have we been working towards? What have we accomplished this year? While I know we've accomplished things, it's been hard to recognize and see those things when you don't have those tangible events to execute. So nothing would please me more to get back to, I'll state it again, to just have a bike ride. I really think if we just view it as that, I think we can accomplish that much and get back to really what all this is really about, which is riding our bikes in beautiful locations and coming together as community in whatever capacity we're able.
Craig:
Yeah. And I know you're both cyclists yourselves, so you both personally must be missing the normalcy of group rides.
Kimo:
I'd say a little bit. Yeah. Definitely. I miss, whether I'm in our events, whether I'm riding, or just there to pick up trash, or whatever I do around the events. I miss it. I miss seeing that. There's nothing more. I mean, I'm telling you, if you stand at the finish line of Unbound, or Leadville, or any of these events, and if you don't shed a tear at some point, you must not have a heart. I mean, it is unbelievable the power that these events have to change people's lives and to have lasting impressions on the riders and their families, I mean kids seeing their parents do that. The example that people are setting for the next generation and all these things, it's really powerful and impactful. And it's all gone right now. That made me more anxious to see that than to necessarily cross the finish line myself, or get out on a group ride. Yeah, that's the part that's hard. It's a bummer that we've lost that for a year.
Craig:
Yeah. I mean, there's absolute magic in the last person to cross the finish line. You see the pros come across very quickly and are very able to have conversations and go on their business, sign some autographs. But that last person who turned themselves inside out, and maybe this is something they've never done before, I mean, it definitely gives me goosebumps even talking about seeing those athletes come across the line.
LeLan:
Oh, absolutely. As you well know, we are there, Unbound finish line is open until 3:00 AM Sunday morning. We're standing there until the very last come home.
Craig:
Amazing. Well, there's absolutely a reason why Unbound is on a lot of gravel athletes' bucket list of events to attend, for sure. So Kimo, for Life Time, you've got a suite of gravel events throughout the year. Have all the dates been set for the big events at this point?
Kimo:
They are all set, yeah. So all the big ones, we've kind of put them back on their traditional dates. At this point, we're contemplating whether or not something in the spring might have to get moved to the fall, things like that. As far as the gravel events right now though, it looks like we've got everything kind of where it traditionally has been in the past.
Craig:
Okay, because Crusher was later in the summer, I believe. And then Big Sugar obviously is at the end of the year. Right?
Kimo:
Right. Right. We've still got Crusher in the middle of July. And then, yes, Big Sugar for late October.
Craig:
Okay. And have you set the stage for when event registration for those later events will be available?
Kimo:
We have, actually. And I don't have the dates in front of me. LeLan, you probably know better than I do.
LeLan:
You'll have to fact check me on Crusher. It's either mid January or early February. Big Sugar, we have not made that announcement, but look for a springtime opening for that registration.
Craig:
Okay. For both of those events, I imagine there's a lot of deferred athletes that are potentially given the first slots.
LeLan:
You are correct, yeah. But I'm glad you bring that up because even with Unbound, there were many people who donated their entries, or asked for a refund. A lot have deferred. But I do want to mention to the listeners that there will be a lottery registration for Unbound. There will be new spots available for athletes. And that opens up January 15th. So definitely be, if you're wanting in this year, there's still opportunity.
Craig:
Awesome. That's super exciting to hear. I just sort of assumed that it was already locked up.
LeLan:
Yeah. And that's why I'm glad you brought it up because I imagine most people are feeling that way. And I don't think we've made big to do about that. This is one of the first times we've been able to get on air with anyone and talk about our registration will be opening. So definitely put your names in the hat.
Craig:
And then for registered athletes, is there a deferment or refund policy that you guys have already crystallized?
LeLan:
Yeah. Another great question, I'm glad we're hitting on that because in years past, we've taken a pretty hard no refunds. And even before Life Time had acquired us, we had moved to a no transfer policy, which we used to allow transfers. But this has definitely made us realize that this was something that's obviously out of everyone's control, but we did want to recreate a deferral and a refund policy that would be more generous and maybe a little more fair to everyone. So folks, and I'll kind of rattle some of this off, but you can visit unboundgravel.com, look at our COVID-19 guidelines. And you'll see our little Q and A, which includes the deferral refund policy. But from 90 days out or more, there's a 70% refund available to the riders if we need to cancel the event because of COVID. Then it goes down to 50%. And then within the last couple months, a 40% refund.
LeLan:
Now I will say this, obviously it'd be our goal to try to postpone. Because we do take place in June, there is a chance like we had tried in 2020 to maybe try further down the road in the year. But if it all comes down to cancellation, then we do have a policy in place for a refund. It's a little more generous than in years past, and an outright deferral at no cost as well if a person wants to try again the next year. Now that's there, but we're not going to need it. Right? Knocking on wood, and it's not going to be an issue. We're going to be able to ride, let's hope.
Craig:
Yeah. Let's just keep all our thoughts intending that way. I'm definitely struggling a little bit as I'm sitting in Los Angeles County and they've just entered another strict lockdown period. As I'm looking online to register for events, it's hard to get my head around it.
LeLan:
That's the struggle we find ourselves in now is it's hard to take the blinders and put them on. We need the blinders on right now. We don't want to see what's happening today. And we need to think about what we hope things are looking like next year.
Craig:
Yeah. That's absolutely right. I mean, I think we're all optimistic about where things are going. It may not go as fast as we'd like to go, but I think things are finally starting to head in the right direction in terms of potential vaccine, et cetera. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for the time. I appreciate you talking about what's been going on at Life Time and about Unbound and the other events you've got on the calendar for this coming year. I'm excited, and again, optimistic that I may be able to see you both in person again.
LeLan:
Definitely.
Kimo:
Oh, we will. We'll see you, Craig. We'll be there.
Craig:
Great. Thanks, guys.
Kimo:
Thanks for having us.
Craig:
Take care. Happy holidays.
This week Randall and Craig discuss 2020: the year that was and the year that wasn't. While the pandemic canceled most of the gravel cycling events on the calendar, it did open up opportunities for adventure and community.
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This week we learn the ins and outs of gravel bike tire sealant with John Vargus of Orange Seal. John gets into some tips and tricks every cyclist should know and discusses his support of the Orange Seal Off Road Racing Team featuring Payson McElveen and Hannah Finchamp.
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Orange Seal - The ins and outs of tire sealant with John Vargus
00:00:01 - 00:05:06
And welcome to the gravel ride. Podcast i'm your host dolts. This week's podcast is brought to you by our friends. At the nonprofit bike index bike index is a free bicycle registry and stolen bike recovery platform having recovered over thirteen million dollars in stolen bicycles. Bike index is really making a dent in crime by connects is currently. It's end of year fundraising campaign. Donations can be made at bike. Index dot org slash. Donate this week on the podcast. We've got john vargas from orange seal. John gets into a little bit of the history of the company and the ins and outs of tire sealant. Why it's beneficial to gravel riders some installation tips and some great maintenance advice on how to keep your ceiling topped off as an interesting side. Note the idea for this podcast actually came from the ridership forum. There was a community member who made a post about tire sealant going into winter and asserted thinking about. Who do i know who could answer all these great questions. So the real pleasure. Getting to talk to john with all that said. Let's dive right into this week's interview john. Welcome to the show morning. Thank you pleasure to be here. I'm excited to dig into the topic of sealant because United states matching tee off. I'm surprised that you know number. My listeners are still running tubes. And i think the advantages of sealant are so vast that i really wanna convey a lot of good information to them before we dig into the details. Can you just tell us a little bit about where you're located and how the company came about. Yeah no i'd love to So we started or unseal in twenty eleven. The the process started about two years ahead of that we had Started with the right across the parking lot. And we picked up a shard of glass or something and it was not see link so my partner Were my best friend at the time and now a partner said you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna make something. So he worked on it for about two and a half years and We finally got the formula where it was performing at or better than the sealants that were on the market at the time. We didn't want to just develop another mouse trap. We wanted to take the best. And the worst of all the sealants in the market and designed something different We looked at natural look at synthetically tech. Would latex we looked at other materials and what we came back to is latex Natural latex is best plugging material and so then we just had to refine our formula. So that We could actually adhere to the robber versus just creating a plug. And that's what makes our formulas different is at once we create a plug. It's a permanent plug in the did. Here's from the inside out. So it's like inserting Plug or Bay construct from the outside. But we do it from the inside out and we'd coat the inside of the tire. What most people don't realize is Today's tires especially today or getting lighter faster center and so there are a lot more porous. Rubber is very poorest by by default and so are latex actually goes in and seals up all of that prosperity and creates A sealed cavity. So that you can hold your pressures longer and what another area that people don't realize that there's major leakage is in the tire bead mating surface and we go in and seal up those imperfections in the tire bead mating surface and so When you feel up entire beat mating surface still up the city and you still up. Anything that comes in from the external You've got a pretty bulletproof system and as we all know not. One formula is going to fit every single environment and every type of terrain and such and climate so we have three finalists. We came up with a regular formula endurance formula and our sub zero formula Regular is really was our original formula designed to seal faster bigger holes while the enduring it was formulated to last longer And not feel as fast but still seals permanently and then we created the sub zero for really when the fat bites took off and riding and Extreme cold climates down to minus twenty was necessary.
00:05:06 - 00:10:05
Because don't wanna be changing a flat at minus twenty and so we've had huge success with the equivalent of did arrive Rebecca rush has run are several times in the fat bike. I did rod race and very successful. Jay I can't think of this last did very well So we have three formulas each geared towards climate and ceiling capability and We also have Versus which work into if you're on tube still you've got to look at a taping mechanism a toothless vowel system embassy which we can talk about more second. Yeah there's a ton. I wanna unpack their john Question for you about when you guys were originally working on the formula did did either of you have a sort of chemical engineering background or were you just so passionate about solving the problem that you did research over those two years and figured out what could work and what wouldn't work. Yeah so My partner does have a little bit of a chemical mad scientists background and he was just i think we all passionate there was a group of About ten of us and we're all passionate in cycling and we were tired of putting Tubes in tires and so Just became very passionate about solving the problem. Amazing yeah it's amazing what you can solve as an entrepreneur when you really dig into it whether your professional experience lead you to that point or you're just passionate about figuring something out we you set the stage a little bit but i really wanna make sure the listener whose unaccustomed to the idea. Sealant understands what we're talking about. Historically bicycle tubes have had an inner tube inside that you inflate pushes against the tire wall. Can you tell us about what how sealant works. And how it's different from that setup sure so traditionally Like you mentioned Tubes have come in and tires you inflate it keeps the tire into the be so that it doesn't fall off the room so to speak and it holds air on the inside because to bliss tires were even more porous and did not have a hook into the room as to bless tires involved. They've created a bead hook which allows the tire to stay on the rim and mounted securely even when hitting large rocks and jumps. And all that. Good stuff So the tube is it was. Multifunction is two purposes holding air in the tire and keeping the be attached Keeping the tire attached at the be. So if you remove that now you've got to You've got the possibility of spoke holes And you've got to cover that up with tape And then you will need to insert a tube less valve which is no longer connected to a vinyl tube. Butyl too yeah. I think that's an interesting visual so when you're looking at it too tired doesn't look any different because you still have the valve core coming out that you used to inflate the tire but when you have the tire off the rim what you'll see as a as an owner is that you've just got Tape around the rim to cover the nipples as you mentioned but then that valve sticking out when the tire gets on and you put the sealant into the tire. That's what creates the seal that you're able to inflate against right so i mean really a we. Just add a we seal off the imperfections in the be Tire mating surface. But really the air. That's why you When you go to to bless you have to have a initially a high volume of initial air to pop the bead our pop the tire into the channel For the rim. And so you either need to have air compressor or a high volume pump or a friend that can take a standard pump and just go Really high volume pumping that up. But there's some tips and tricks to to getting tired. Play did which we can cover in a little bit. Yeah absolutely. I remember it sort of the early days. I just had that one friend who had a tire compressor an air compressor. And i'd have to go there every single time. I wanted to change the tire. Because he was the only one who give me that burst of air. You're describing that sort of pops pops it against the rim and gets that steel seal started.
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Yeah i mean every neighborhood. There's always one guy on the street that has an air compressor as as these. He's going to be your friend to seven tires to bliss but today's today's tires are are getting more They're more easily set into the be standard high pressure pumps and such. I mean alex while she recently just set up his tires with a standard palm Brand new tires and orange peel and to blitz vows in standard pump. and like. I said there's little tips that you can do to get. The tire started onto the shoulder. Which will set it into the beat which we can cover in more detail when we talk about setting up to plus. Yeah yes interesting. I had a set of tires a set of slicks this year. That were so porous that i could see. Every time i pump them up. I could see little bits of the white sealant coming through the actual rubber of the tire as really quite surprised by that. Yeah i mean they're just getting everybody today. Once lighter faster thinner And so it's like you know when you add the the materials kevlar strips. In their to stop punctures. The tire becomes very heavy. Nobody wants to ride on tractor tires When they're trying to go uphill or run through a rock garden So that's why downhill tires are. They're still pretty beefy. And exc- tires are very lightweight. I mean even my racers today and the orange off road team in hannah. Both are always want lighter faster tires but they don't punctures so they rely heavily upon ceiling and punctures are not just center of tread. They're going to be on the sidewalls as well. because riders are under tackling more features more exposure and just really pushing the limits of of what we used to do in the maybe twenty years ago. Y'all have to say the first time i got a puncture with sealant tire and it started spray out and eventually sealed. It was one of those eureka moments. Because you know darn well you would have been sitting on the side of the trail changing that tube and spending a lotta time and when the sealant can just do its job while you're still rolling and potentially even seal up before you lose a significant amount of air it such an amazing benefit. Oh yeah exactly. And we call it. The badge of honor When you Get a puncture and the spray is is seals up and three revolution so to speak and the person behind me is going Hey you're spraying me. Well three revolutions and done. I remember one time we route ride and i my wife's like hey. You're spraying back here and my tire was spewing then sealed up and we'd just kept on going. Yeah remember vividly this year. Just getting hit from behind with some spray and wondering what the heck is going on and then finally dawned on me like oh. It's not any water going on. It's a big hole in my tire and being sprayed with sealant. Yep yep it's Definitely a badge of honor. We considered a badge of honor. You mentioned some of the sort of setup tricks that you guys have explored figured out over the years. What are a couple of the top ones that our listeners should learn about. Sure so When mounting a tube wistar. let's just kinda take it from ada zero quicks First thing we always if it's a brand new connection or a brand new setup on a tire room specify A new setup on a new tire and room you definitely want wanna do it dry To make sure that you don't have any additional problems because a lot of first-time users they'll put the ceiling in an expected to just automatically seat and then they waist length they get frustrated. 'cause spills on the floor so i always recommend set the bead. I and so the way you do that is you. I know it's gonna try to visually explain what on visually walking through with my hands here. you definitely wanna start opposite of the vowel stem and pop the be the into the center of the channel On one side mounted all the way because the specifications between tire and wheel varies in the industry so there are certain tire will come. Buzzer gonna fit tighter than other will combos so you may have to really use one. Two three lever tire levers to get it on there So get in the center of the channel away from the vowel stem because of oust him creates additional depth That takes away from mounting.
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Then once you get that one side on then you go back to your opposite your valve stem start putting it in the channel. Bring it around And pop it all the way on. Hopefully you don't need tire levers now If it's really loose If it's that tight let's go back to how tight it is. I if you have a really tight fitting one You may need a little lubricant to get the tire up on the shoulder so it can seat down in the bead and you can use a slight lubricant. I just put a little bit of ceiling in there Around the tire bead and just let it run all the way down and then hit with a blast of air now. You can leave a valve korean. But that does restrict airflow. So i would remove the vow cork and then injected with the air. Wait till you hear the pops but never never exceed. The tire manufacturers recommended Maximum air pressure for a mountain bike tires anywhere from forty to forty fifty psi. Don't ever exceed that. 'cause what's going to happen is you're going to blow the tire off the rim. And that's not going to be fun for anyone especially if you have ceiling in there. It's going to go all over the garage you hopefully. You're not doing it in the house on the persian rug. We've had people right in. Hey how do i get ceiling. How the persian brook. We don't recommend doing that in my house. Definitely keep it in the garage. Hey john one question for you. I had used a very light mixture of sort of dish soap and water historically to kind of make the rubber slide up against the side walls. More quickly when i'm popping it on is that advisable are making an error there I definitely don't recommend the dishwashing soap Definitely you're gonna get Creates a Bubbling effect inside if some does get in with the ceiling You don't wanna it will dilute the sealant. So like i say i would i try just sealant itself. It does have a little bit of a slipperiness to it And then there are some Tire manufacturers that make a special Applicator like swale bay. That has there's Tire mounting soap I would just use minimal as possible. And then i would also Self that's visits if it's really tight fitting another tricky can do. You can take your tire lever. You go down and grab it out of the center of the channel and pull it up onto the shoulder ride around the vowel stem and take it as far as you can and put it on the shoulder that will help immensely setting it into the be and then if you could do that. On both sides you can set it up with air pump. I imagine you guys have some videos of these techniques. Somewhere is that true We don't actually working on our video series. There will be some next year. Gotcha gotcha some of this as you said is a little bit hard to visualize but once you get in there and you try it for yourself you start to realize like why these tips are out there. Yep yeah i mean it's it's It's it's daunting as your first time at But once you get through it it's really simple and you can do it like an old pro and no time exactly so you talked about a tight what. How do you approach a loose tire. Yeah loose tire. You definitely want to use your tire lever. Get both sides up onto the shoulders and you can almost kinda push it into the shoulder. And then with a loose tire you're really gonna need that air compressor blast of air Initially the senate. And if it's too loose i would almost recommend against it. I mean most tire Will combos are pretty pretty tight if it's too loose it's definitely not. It's gonna become unsafe because what's going to happen when you go into a turn. I mean the beautiful thing about two blisters. You get to run. Lower tire pressures I'd more grouping on the on the rocks and such and when you're at lower tire pressuring you're taking a railing on a turn you don't want your sidewall to to flex and pull it out to be so. I always be very cautious about someone. That's mounting of really loose tire.
00:20:01 - 00:25:13
If you don't if you don't need tire levers to get it on. I would probably say it's too loose now. There's things that you can do to make that tighter but You can put a layer of gorilla tape in there on the shoulders because it's thicker And there are certain tire will combos. You definitely don't want to use guerilla tapan because it creates too much of a of a spacer in there and you'll never get your tire. I've had one tire will combo that. It took me two hours. Nine hundred a cut my tire off to they had used guerrilla tei to cover the spoke holes and they went from the to be and so that was just absolutely horrible edges. Most of the tire rim combinations. I've tried on the gravel space when you're taking a tire from a quality manufacturer that sets have generally been Quite good from my experience most definitely and there's so many good gravel tires and wheels out now back about five years ago when gravel was just kinda still getting its foothold. It was a little bit Tougher but you know. There's so many good tire combos today. So now that you've got the tire on without sealant in there. And hopefully the listener by now's has thought about removing the valve cores. Being there right approach. Do you advocate inserting the lubricant. Just via the the valve core via the valve. I definitely do and that's why we We have an injection system attached to our forums and eight ounce bottles And you just slide that over and injector On a gravel tire one to two ounces And then while you're there we also include a dipstick with our sealant A little black thing. It's coffee stir bourbon. Stor a ceiling. checker You definitely want to stick that in there and get a measurement and that's what you're gonna use to check your sealant levels every thirty to forty five days just like you check your air pressure every week you wanna check your ceiling with the dipstick. Because every time you break the bead you are just creating additional workload. I mean that was another thing that we won at our sealant to do That other sealants didn't is we didn't want it. We didn't want to use their tap to open up their tire to remove Things that had built up in there. That were free-floating called asteroids or whatever monsters There's no reason to check your ceiling with orange seal. Just keep topping it off. I mean i have tires on one two years and i just talked them whenever the dipstick tells me to add some and i just pulled a tire off my mountain bike that i've been writing here lately on the road a lot lately throughout the year and I mean i wore the rubber out and there's not a huge up on the end side. 'cause remember i mean people always worry well if i keep top it off. Do i need to peel out the inside layers adding weight. You're taking it off because you're burning rubber the logs off at a greater amount that you're adding more way because a lot of it is dissipating in When it dries out so for seven hundred by forty four tire how much sealant or are you putting in. i would. I mean you can't go wrong with two ounces. one and a half is is sufficient. I would say two ounces can't go wrong it's not gonna hurt you There's been several studies done. Does it add to rolling resistance And it doesn't Support one of our professional world tour road teams the israeli started nation and they just did some extensive testing With one and a half ounces in a twenty five c tire and there was negligible Rolling loss watch negligible amount of watch loss. Okay so and going back. Just so i understand correctly. With the dipstick you provide a my sort of holding the valve cores removed just sliding through the valve and sort of testing. How much sealant is pool down there at the bottom. Yep it's just like checking the oil on your car. You wanna make sure the valve is up the six o'clock position and then you just stick your mouth Dipstick down in there. And based upon i mean you know people always ask. Well what mark do i said it to. Will there's so many different wits and depths of tires that we recommend that when you put in initial two ounces stick it in there and get a mental measuring checkmark so to speak the key is if you stick it down in there and nothing comes out.
00:25:13 - 00:30:01
Then you're definitely emptied. You need to talk paul Got a healthy fear. That when i do that later today in my current set of tires it's going be bone dry. We'll make sure your posts pictures. That'd be great visual so just to help to drive the point home so when you have sealant inside the tire and you you get a nail goes through or staple or what have you what what's going on the inside. The what does that liquid doing for us. Yeah so You know we always like to say we train the monkey defined the whole and When a nail comes in It is going to go it's gonna shoot out due to pressure and fluid is always going to escape out the whole There's mad science that happens in that process of the sealant escaping that we can't really talk about But with that said if you get big nail or puncture in your writing and it doesn't feel up sometimes you have to get off the bike. Put it down so that the sealant starts to come out and then rotated back up and actually the sun is your friend. Put it in the sun. And it'll help speed up that process of vulcanized the latex into rubber compound Creating permanent plug if it still seems to be leaking out at a greater rate than looks like it's going to be able to seal is that should the rider be looking at a tire plug kind of solution in that scenario. I would if it was me. I'd give it a couple of world i mean your air pressure is gonna drop A little bit i I ride typically eighty psi and i have gone down to forty psi before with a really large slice There are i mean center of tread. More than likely it's going to seal. If you just put the rotate it down let the ceiling come out rotate. It back up let it dry let it go back down. Get more ceiling. Come up let it dry. If you're up for that a couple of times. I have sealed up some pretty big slices that way And i- full disclosure. I was out on the ride recently. And i took a piece of glass Sooner of tread and Guess what. I forgot to check my ceiling before i left and i definitely flouted and it's the first time in eight years i forget to put tubes in I had to call for sag wagon. Because all i forgot i just forgot to check my ceiling and it was stri. Yeah it's going to happen does the does the sealant sort of efficacy change. Or evaporate where. I'm with him in hot conditions versus cold conditions. Yes most definitely. The what people don't realize is we do recommend Probably a larger amount of sealant On initial use and top offs Because what people don't realize is feeling of prosperity so it's using sealant right. Away is filling up the imperfections in the tire bead meeting surface. And then you're going to get punctures that you don't even know about the clock. The hot and cold climates the aired climates all that affects the rubber which expands and contracts at different rates so of the tires so definitely The frequency you ride at the air pressure you right out. And that's why we always recommend we haven't talked about initial setup when you set up a tire initially Traditionally there's been video circulating where you put the elon and then you turn the tire on one side rotated on the other side spended around in our opinion all that ceiling up is the imperfection and the tire bead meeting surface. What we recommend is when you first. Put the ceiling in Aired up to get your bead set. Make sure you go round and look at the beat on both. make sure it's completely seated Usually takes forty or on a on a gravel tire up to Eighty psi maybe and then drop it back down to your riding way but don't exceed manufacturers maximum air.
00:30:01 - 00:35:02
Drop it down to your writing. Wait thirty five forty psi And then go right it because that pressure enrolling over obstacles creates it opens up the pores of the tire on the sidewalls and we wanna feel that prosperity And that will ensure long term success of your tire sealing up internally says that recommendation basically like get work on your your sealant entire setup and then go for a quick ride immediately afterwards. Okay and do do lazy age. If you can't go very far you've got five minutes to go out and do lazy eight's Make sure your tire pressures down low and that'll really get that tire flexing and pulling in sealant to where it needs to be josh. Okay cool and obviously there's there are other sealants on the market. Is it a bad policy to mix sealants if you had set up one with one brand and then you happen. Have some other around well Sometimes when you're in dire need and you forget your low or it's feeling properly. I mean you gotta do what you gotta do if you need to make sealants. Mix them It's you're gonna get results. It's not the last guy that was in. That's the failure or success it's It's a combination of them. As a general rule we don't recommend mixing sealants because it does change the properties of sealants. But if you're in a bind definitely mix somewhere if your buddies low and he's going to have another ceiling and they're definitely wanna give some orange seal. It's going to help and make sense. I was just gonna say without within our formulas the regular the endurance and sub you can mix are within our range now if you mix endurance and regular. you're going to get a hodgepodge of longevity and faster seedling. Just note that and with with when you mentioned longevity. Is that extending the amount of time. Like if i'm if i'm checking every thirty days out checking every forty five days because of the endurance formula or is it formulated around something else. That's exactly right We have seen up to one hundred eighty days with our endurance. But i still say it's you know you just don't know how many punctures you get while you're writing or if your tire pressure was really low and use more In the beat. Or whatever. I mean i just recommend for endurance checking it about every forty five days with regular every Fifteen to thirty days and subzero. You can check that every sixty days. Okay yeah so they. I really need to drill into my own. Head is just the idea that the and is constantly working. Whether it's because i've got a poorest tire or there's micro cuts coming in here and there when i'm riding you kind of only think about the sealant when you get that gaping hole where it sprang sealant and finally seals but i really readily acknowledged after this conversation that clearly like there's a lot going on with sealant every single ride yeah and I appreciate the most users. Just don't realize how. How how that works and i think if you know what what i've learned over the years is i finally acquired the right equipment to deal with With sealant tires set up his. You know once you have that valve core remover once you have a you a bottle with the appropriate applicator on it like you've described with the with the orange seal product. It can be really easy to just pop. The core out top it off and beyond your way doesn't have to be a real long involved maintenance session. No i mean. I was really mad at myself because i spent an hour sitting on the side of the road and i could of just. If i just checked my feeling this morning it would have taken me ten minutes literally. And i would have saved an hour sitting on the side of the road waiting for someone to bring me some Ceiling or tube or a ride home at that point because he we i mean muscles are done after sitting for an hour. Hopefully this conversation's just gonna be a reminder for everybody to go in the garage and find a bottle seal and make sure they're topped off most definitely and i do want to go back just a little bit so i know there's a big push in today's market for to bliss But there are some users that just are. Don't want to make that switch yet or don't have the wheel set. They have the tires whatever. You can run tubes and you can run our sealant in tubes. If you have a removable while court now.
00:35:02 - 00:40:09
It's not going to give you the same level of protection but it's going to be better than not having any sealant 'cause we have sealed up. Numerous punctures inside of a tube on a on a on inside of tire. Yeah that makes sense. I know for me. Like i've got an electric cargo bike. That just is not set up for to us. But i don't care about any extra weighed might as well have as much protection inside that inner tube as possible. Exactly i mean if you're running the e bike or cargo bike. I definitely would have removable of course because those are so heavy in their kinda just miserable to change a tire on anyway. You definitely want to remove that valve coron inject Some sealant in there are ceiling. Absolutely before i let you go today jonah. I want to acknowledge. Orange seals commitment to the sport and supporting racers. It's it goes. It should go. I should. I wanted to mention it. Because i think it not. Every company invest so heavily in the sport. Is you guys. Do you support too. Big gravel athletes pace in and hannah that have had a great year despite being in the pandemic. they've done some great things. Why why do you invest so heavily in these athletes. Yeah it's a great question you know. It took us Five years to really understand why we wanted to create a team and look into sponsorship. And it's really just about why we went into the ceiling business. It's about creating a problem. Free ride as far as the tubes and the flats go and we just love. Investing in and pacing are phenomenal people first and foremost and we have so many other ambassadors That use our sealant and we just appreciate the fact that they are human and just enjoy having a good ride with people and not worry about changing flaps and they can hand it out with Confidence that when they give it to somebody and recommend it that it's going to perform where it needs to be great. It's great seeing the team out there at the gravel events. When they're when they're going on. I was really excited watching them. Both in the mid south pulling off victories. It was just a great battle across the day. It was really fun to see It was so much fun. I'm still pulling mud out of the jeep A year almost a year later But i mean that was. Hannah's i Gravel race and she was when she came across the line. She was so empty. Cashew is running on empty for the last two hours and pacing To good thing he'd practice is cross skills in the offseason carrying his bike and running through mud. I mean it was just that event and all gravel events just so It's about community. It's about the experience it's about having fun it's about helping each other and Hannah i mean when she first came to us Wanted to only focus on mountain biking we talked about compromising and what we explained the perils of gravel racing and the gravel community and. She said. I definitely want to be part of that. And so she is Definitely putting gravel into her agenda even though she's focused on world cups which is two different spectrums for an athlete and She absolutely loves the gravel. Seen as well as pace and We've got big plans for next year. And hopefully you know i mean. That's what's nice about hannah and patient as they can go out and compete at the elite level. But they're also hanging out in the booth and having fun chat with others about the perils and fun of highs and lows of gravel racing and the community and the gravel is just so. It's about community and bobby he's A like his his title. He's the master of stoke out there. It's kinda funny. Yeah that's the attitude. I want from race organizer for sure. It's been fascinating to me to see as gravel evolves how certain events are gonna favor athletes that have more of a mountain bike background and i remember watching the coverage for mid south and seeing when pace and was battling peter stat. Nah seeing caissons differing techniques in writing. And how he spent a little time in the creek rinsing his bike out now he sort of was gingerly shifting because he had that memory of we've all been in that sloppy mountain bike mud.
00:40:09 - 00:44:49
And knowing that you can't treat your bike like it just came off the the mechanics at that point. You really gotta be a little bit more gingerly with it and you know. The results spoke to that fact when he crossed the finish line. I yeah i mean I remember catching some of the highlights of the race organizer Team and they were talking about how by how clean their bikes were during the race and we had really put a lot of thought into tire. Preparation tire choice Wait tire pressure. Tire pressure makes a world of difference when you're whether you're on mud or dry roads And we played with all that the day before and then we had A pit crew. That did a phenomenal job. At the halfway point where we clean the bikes and lewd the chains and and we know from past experiences You wanna shift minimally in heavy mud but i mean to schramm's a testament of the access system When patients duncan is completely battery operated electronic system in a creek and it runs flawlessly. And he's still riding that that same component trie everything and it worked flawlessly after dunking it in that muddy water and it was it was so caked up with mud and he didn't rip a derail her off so it's we have phenomenal Sponsors and we could not do it without their support. So it's really a it's a team. Effort that goes into it and pacing was cheered on just by all the other riders and and the people out there. It's that's what gravel is about. It's about community and it's about everyone being there supporting everyone and you can have your elite racers you can have your Weaken warrior racers. You have everybody comes out. Just has a blast. That's so much fun about global so trio and i. I really hope as i'm sure you do that. Twenty twenty one. We can have a safe and racing packed year You know it's been sad with the cova pandemic this year that so many races had to be canceled or postponed. But i'm optimistic and speaking to race organizers. About some of the covid safety protocols they're putting into place and different ways in which we could make sure that we can congregate together. But we can do it safely and consciously most definitely were definitely praying and hoping for You know things to come under control with the cova condemning and race promoters definitely get a covid plan in place. 'cause we definitely want to get out there. We missed the people. I mean just not from a race perspective but just hanging out and just having users come by and hang out in the booth and talk about whatever. I mean why they're there and how much fun it is what they're looking forward to and hanging out talking with pace and absolutely much john. Thanks for all the great information about orange seal and seal it. In general. I think the listeners can gain a lot from this conversation well It was my pleasure and thank you for having me on what you do as well Love listening to your podcast. You have a lot of great information. A lot of Great insight. From other people. So anytime door's always open. We appreciate it big. Thanks john for all the insights into tire sealant. I know i learned a thing or two. And the next thing i'm gonna do is check my tire sealant levels. Because i guarantee i'm bone-dry after this conversation and a big thanks to you for spending a little bit of your time with me. This week if you're able to support the podcast. I'm about thirty percent through my own. Fundraising goal at by me. A coffee dot com slash the growl. Ride your membership dollars. Really help offset all the costs in producing this podcast and are going to allow us to expand to new topics new territories etc. And if you're unable to make a financial contribution ratings and reviews are hugely helpful in the podcast. Industry are discover ability to go on over to your favorite podcast app and leave us a review. And finally if you're interested in connecting with other gravel an adventure cyclist. Please send me a note for an invite to the ridership our new global resource for gravel and adventure cyclists. So that's it for this week until next time. Here's the finding some dirt under your wheels.
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This week we sit down with Dave Pryor from the Pennsylvania gravel event, UnPAved to discuss how the 2020 events was executed in a COVID safe fashion. We get into the changes in format that may be here to stay and how other race organizers can learn from his experiences to execute future events.
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UnPAved -- Dave Pryor and COVID safe racing
00:00:00 - 00:05:00
Hello and welcome to The Gravel Ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. Today's podcast is brought to you by our friends at athletic greens. The all in one daily drink to support better health than peak performance even with a balanced diet. It's difficult to cover all your nutritional basis a three athletic greens will help their daily drink. Is like nutritional insurance for your body. That's delivered straight to your door. Athletic greens was developed from a complex blend of seventy five vitamins minerals and whole food sourced ingredients and has been scientifically engineered to help fill the nutritional gaps in your diet. So how does all this come into. Play for the gravel cyclist. If you're like me you definitely have gaps in your diet athletic. Greens has zinc which promotes better muscle recovery and better sleep magnesium for nervous system recovery and function as well as better sleep as well as red beets to improve and ginger to help reduce inflammation so daily athletic greens drinker at this point and on big ride days. I might even have two servings of athletic greens just to make sure that. I come back out of the hurt locker. I've inevitably put myself in in those big weekend rides so encourage you to give it a try whether you're looking to boost your energy level support your immune system or address gut health. Now's the perfect time to try athletic. Greens for yourself simply visit www.athleticgreens.com/thegravelride to claim my special offer today and get a free d three k. To wellness bundle with your first purchase. That's up to a one year supply of vitamin d added to your order. You'd be hard pressed to find a more comprehensive nutritional bundle elsewhere again that's athletic greens dot com slash. The gravel ride this week on the podcast. We're talking to dave. Prior from the gravel event unpaved out in Pennsylvania throughout twenty twenty. We've seen most of the major gravel events across the country be canceled due to the global pandemic when it started to hear rumblings that unpaved was going to continue in a modified format. At first. When i saw this i thought wow it's quite too early. But then after listening to dave and some of his partners speak about why they were proceeding with the event in what they were doing. I started to understand and be optimistic that they could pull off a successful event. They were following Pennsylvania guidelines in terms of how many people could get together and obviously modified the race quite substantially in order to make sure as as covid- safe as possible. After the event went off dave and i connected and i thought it was important for other race organizers and ride organizers to get a download from dave as to what they did the changes they made and how they felt the event went overall. I think there's a lot of lessons. Learned for event organizers and really things that as participants we should understand about what. Our event organizers go through undoubtedly twenty twenty one is not going to be like twenty nineteen. We're still going to have to leave in this post. Covert environment and as participants. We wanna feel safe. And as race organizers wanna feel motivated to put on all these events so my hope is can get a little bit out of this conversation and that we can get ourselves organized to have a great twenty twenty one. We've been having a little bit of this discussion in our new slack. Forum called the ridership user. Or you're curious. Were building a global resource for gravel ended venture cyclists. So please reach out to me for your invite today with all that said. Let's dive right into my conversation with dave dave. Welcome back to the show. Thanks greg great to be here. Thanks for longtime listener. It's this is cool. It's actually rare. That i say welcome back and you were on. We have thirty you episode thirty three when we were talking about. Would it have been the first or the second unpaved event that was i think epa first but that was my partner. My coon okay. You're right yeah can garner listener. I don't well then welcome to the show. I apologize for that. I feel like. I feel like i know you because i hear your name drops by selene. Oftentimes on her. Former podcast. And i hope our current podcast is going. Well it is going well. She's doing they're doing great stuff. They're churning out content right now as you know. Podcasting is a is a thing. It's really busy and so yeah. It's going pretty well. Yeah and from understanding correctly very female focus subject matter for her latest effort so for you women athletes out there. Selena got a great new podcast. That's really speaking to something.
00:05:00 - 00:10:00
i think. All women athletes go through obviously in their lives. So i encourage you to kind of check out what she's doing over there. Yep it's hit play not paused and so it's an works does work for everyone. The rebecca rush in particular was really great. But yet there's this large group of say over half our population that goes through all sorts of things. Yeah we should talk about it more. Yeah it's really interesting stuff so hats off to her for doing that. The dave i mean you guys had just put on a few weeks back. One of the few big gravel events that actually manage to go off in twenty twenty In this cove era. So i thought it would be really interesting for us to touch base and see how that event went before we dive into that once. You just give the listener. Who may not know about on unpaved a little bit about the event where it is and The history behind it sure so unpaid to the susquehanna river valley. This is our year started a few years ago. That's what three is but it feels like longer because we worked on for good three years before that to I went mike. And i could partner in this and going to his events longtime time. I started getting promotions back in two thousand thirteen with a single Across world championship. That's a fundraise to put on your first event. Ever his tienanment blinky junkyard cross to. We had a great weekend in philly and also the year i went to dirty kanza rebecca's private idaho and those were great times to are too few times. Just come back to mike talking him psychotic great to have on these giant gravel events that are starting to happen around the country like where we do this in pennsylvania and he said. I know exactly where we could do pennsylvania. He went to bucknell university. Which is in the borough lewisburg right dead center. They just put in a nine mile rail trail out of town. The took it to the foot of the foothills of the bald eagle state forest which had tons of perfect dirt and gravel roads. Just absolutely great with big hills which people seem to like those challenges So a lot of things kinda came together pretty quickly. We started working with the susquehanna river valley borough. They saw was happening with growl. Events bringing people into regions and we started working pretty hard on in two thousand now who is our first year. We had i think six eight hundred at that one. Last year we had a thousand in our big three distances and a couple of hundred in our three miler Land for this year was to go to twelve hundred but then this year happen so We kind of went along. Guy binds of pennsylvania's done a really job keeping covetous under control as possible. We certainly had giant spikes early on. We had a lot of mayhem. Everything shut down. But it's been really thorough responsible journey back in things move forward in that gets a little too far. The new scaleback Increasing really job as far as states go as keeping things as fighting the curve. I guess what we used to stay a while ago. I think it still applies So with that outdoor events they kept it in a maximum two hundred fifty people which basically plied to high school sports in college boards. And things like that. But you know we fall under that category. Because there's no real category that works for us as far as the state goes and goodness knows busy with a lot of other things. The dealing with Running races and things like that so we stuck with two fifty and made that two hundred people to register in the one hundred twenty mile long ways because we needed but forty people set aside for staff and volunteers marshalls and things like that. So that's what we put on. We not set in july and fill that up too long story. How did that process. But it worked pretty well because holy cow. This community is so generous. I wanna say that too but so accommodating so flexible in the as we kept throwing keep saying. The world's learnings occur balsa overthrow newsletter in beijing. And we had so many changes to win into the event and they all with us and it was really really well received. So that's great. I mean it was. It was definitely nice to see it. Go off and for the listener. Who's not familiar with unpaved. Definitely go check out the website. And i can put that in the show notes. You'll see a video that just shows how gorgeous the writing is in pennsylvania. And it's an area that i haven't been back to in a long time but i did spend a lot of time mountain biking in that area and it was just. It's there's so much to it. It's so gorgeous and when the event was announced three years ago. I remember thinking to myself. Well that's a no brainer.
00:10:00 - 00:15:06
This is definitely going to be a place where they can pull off an amazing event and there's such a great cycling community you know within ninety minutes drive of their any direction you you clearly are drawing from a lot of passionate east coast athletes and athletes the country to make the trip over there. There's no doubt and it goes on in the middle of october which is peacful and we had i think. Vp foliage day this year instagram's on pay pennsylvania in his. Just see of what. A fall like northeast. Good governance is just outstanding and beautiful thoughts on this great pitcher so then the the longest distance of the event remind me how long the long distance one is is one hundred and twenty miles an and how much is around. Ten thousand feet of climbing niche pending on your device yet we got seven quality peaks and that no people in colorado. I'll call the mountains but then people come here and climb the milk now the other mountains. It's it's nice that as far as pennsylvania goes they're not the steepest things around but they are pretty consistent. Throw but the lead to some of the best ascending. I've done on a bike. Yeah i mean that's the thing about that east coast area riding. It's like it's you don't have colorado utah style climbs. But they add up. Obviously ten thousand timing over one hundred. Twenty miles is is no joke. Whether you're from the mountains from from sea-level and especially when you count in eighteen of that israel trail so it's nine miles out nine miles back at the finish and so in between we throw them climbs edge so obviously when kovic started to be top of mind depending on who you are and where you are in the country certainly within the first quarter of the year. Everybody was knowing that this was a big deal. And you know we got the mid south off under our bell for pretty much everything after that was dropping like flies and everybody was canceling events. I imagine at that point earlier in the year. You guys were thinking well. Gosh were in october. At least we don't have to make a decision now and hopefully this will all pass through and we'll be able to go ahead as planned at. What point did you start thinking. Hey this might go knock off as planned Always until the wednesday before honestly. If you're right we. I put on another Similar but shorter in the valley called monkey knife fight and it was supposed to go off the first weekend of april and we were having in hong what to do with that and beside you know. Let's just cancel it And that night the nba. Shut down like okay. I guess we've called that bright After that is when everything's starting shutting down shutting down fortunately for unpaved we had not have been registration yet so we just pushed the opening of registration back to i may instead novus up yet. We'll see what's going to happen. Everyone has much bigger things to worry about them. Agreement so get back to may in. May things weren't any better said okay. Lips sweet till july. See things get any better and by july things at least a little dauphin pennsylvania pretty well in. There was no reason to cancel it yet. As far as state guidelines went know the two hundred person two hundred fifty max people was a huge limiter versus twelve hundred and we can talk about the business side of that but it became like a. We can do something it's different. It's not what we had in mind. It's not going to have a festival the day before. It's not going to have a post party. Probably if those things can happen later of the world changes in we got a vaccine would open that stuff back up but it really became. Here's what we can do so all right. We'll do that and if we can do more we'll do more but least we can do that in all along with all the registers like this can't be cancelled any minute. Here is the plan for refunds deferrals scheduled for that. You know three days out than it'd be like you have your money back for all to accept. I think up thirty days. It was full refunded referral two weeks executives. Thirty fifty percent. Off or deferral in africa Forget the numbers right now but attentive is like a week before it was like sorry folks. We're in this together. Yeah so it's interesting that you mentioned that. I think a lot of events that i was referring to earlier had the challenge of the fact that they had already accepted people's registration and and presumably in a lot of cases already spent that money on women. Or what have you. And i and i know tyrants exactly. I talked to a few other event organizers. That was the real conundrum they were in and they were looking at their registrants thinking. Well if i give you one hundred percent refund this event will go away and in its entirety. Because i will have lost ten thousand dollars. And i do this not necessarily as moneymaking adventure But more to put back something in the community and show a love for the trails.
00:15:06 - 00:20:07
I have outside my back door. So i do imagine it gave you a lot of freedom. At least that you hadn't accepted that money. And perhaps you could as you said you just sort of shifted the registration date back to a point. Where at least you knew okay. A two hundred person event you could then go back to the sponsors and how to negotiate. Wh what exactly does that mean because unpaved has the benefit of of great sponsor support. But i imagine you had to go back to those companies and say look. It's not going to be the same thing we still need your support. But how can we make it fair for everybody. I imagine those were really difficult conversations. They were in the weren't at the same time like it's the same sort of things like it's two hundred people but you know if this does happen. At least it's a big relevance can happen. We'll get some exposure for things in the understood that as well and they also you know there's a few companies did this before in stands sterling when the data for us like we committed we committed we have those conversations before we didn't sign a contract yet but we're in rin so they knew that it's still important to keep these things going motivation going. Even with a chance of it not happening tourism same way salsa floyd's gu like they're all kept. You're trying you're doing what you can and we'll do it. We can with you so that's great. Yeah i've always been advocating to the listener that we have to approach this with a whole bunch of grace. There's gonna be no perfect answer and if we want to continue we just have to roll with the punches and we have to be accommodating to those smaller event organizers who may need to keep a roof over their heads like let's look at the long game this absolutely i mean for everyone's like it's not fair like you're right it's not fair that this is a pandemic it is absolutely not fair to anyone in any way shape or form. That's not fair that's Vincent could happen. It's definite events that could not happen. The grass roots ones. That didn't you know lost money because of all the stuff that they had to buy at the last minute. It's we're not a this yet. So yeah yeah. I think that's one of the reasons i wanted to get. This conversation. Recorded a lot of event. Organisers listened to the podcast. And if we can have some takeaways from them just about how to approach the race and how you were successful in putting together a covid safe race. I think it can help. Create a framework for twenty twenty that we can be shared. Widely amongst race organizers. So hopefully we can have more of these events even if they have to be small. So you'd mentioned you sort of shifted gears and what was going. Be a twelve hundred person. Event was now going to be two hundred athletes and fifty volunteers to adhere to local guidelines. I remember when you announce that. And i to be honest. Dave had mixed feelings. Because we you know we in california. We've been in a lockdown situation. And i had the privilege of listening to selene. Talk about it over a couple episodes of the podcast and it was nice and i actually found myself warmed to the idea. And obviously i've been wishing for success the whole time but came to appreciate the types of changes you were making for the event to make covid safe and maybe it would be a good time to just sort of talk about the day. Look like for athletes and the type of rules that you enforce to try to make sure everybody could safely participate in the event and have a great day. Integrate experience. sure one big thing. Is you know two hundred people's a lot different from thousand twelve hundred people so you are able to do a lot more quote handling a lot more Customer service in making some slight accommodations for people Tons of people. And you're getting all those emails and phone calls right before your friday. Sorry it's this is. What is that. I said saturday check. It must be saturday checking this time. It's like okay. It's saturday check in but if you need to come in sunday morning figure it out. Just be patient with us and people were because they're also anxious to do an event. So i think they were more accommodating three to try and spread things out as much as possible saturday. Check in something we've always had. We've had a big festival parties around that in reasons to go out at night in lewisburg those things were kept act that we still had of the two hundred people. We had one hundred fifty people up on saturday like they were still happy to come in and get their things done. They didn't have to worry about it in stand in line early sunday morning in a tight line. They definitely took that seriously. Masks were mandatory everywhere. You're talking to anyone wear a mask except when you're riding a bike when he got the start you could take your mask off and ride your bike when she pulled new aid station. It's back damascus. Up unless you're actually eating something at the time. All volunteers wearing masks hand sanitizer everywhere temperature check in the morning Code questionnaire We one thing i can pick them is the volunteers of the a station.
00:20:07 - 00:25:02
So instead of like water coolers are going would go up in like press the water dispenser with their water bottle or neath. We were planning on having the volunteer. The pressing of the water dispenser with the rider holding their model of you. Don't touch those two things but we get pictures of water. I saw that at a quick indebted event. The volunteers at pitchers water. That works so much. Faster like how efficient way of doing things a big thing. We changed this year. That i think we're going to stick with his segment. Timing instead of start finish timing. We did it so that people would relax in the stations and not rush in not skip a protocol in that anxious. Do that sort of thing and people really liked that opportunity to relax aid station to get their stuff together. Not forget to eat. We did pretty heavy drop bags service in so they had their own stuff. And i think we're going to keep with that because it also relaxes pace on some of the roads know. There are some favorites in between that. Have more cars on them. So that's not a race segment. the chose not segment which is kind of been an issue. Just because it's sunday morning in the amish are going to church on the rail trail too so it's great. Having racers mix amish kids riding their bikes on the road. Show so a couple of questions huge but a couple of questions in there so one as it came up on a another podcast to writer bags were you. Are these drop bags were a rider. Sorta filled it with their own nutrition. And and you told them it'll be at mile fifty or whatever it was going to be at so they all. Riders got two bags and they were going to be a two different spots that you whipped by twice on one hundred twenty There's a mile Ballpark thirty and then you'd also that same spot again at mile ninety and then the other one was like fifty and you hit it again Upset eighty whatever. Those numbers were so he did that. We can't do it like dirty decay. Whatever the name will be called next where people drive out in become their support people. Because we'd have too many cars on the same roads of people are biking on. So we had the pennsylvania council. They actually did volunteering for that and a shuttled the drop bags. Does that mean that you did not have other than water neutral. Nutrition out there. We did have neutral energy Floyd's sent a bunch of Stuffing we did supplemented with some basic snacks from the local grocery stores. Just to make sure there is potato chips and things like that some Everything prepackaged we didn't have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We didn't have last year. we have perogie bacon. Meatballs name out works to the whole spread out encores so limited. All of that. No espresso stop this time but right Yeah i want to unpack that a little bit. Because i think the idea of drop bags is something. That's popularity in the sport of triathlon for example and it's interesting to just get perspective on you know obviously there's the logistical challenge of transporting organizing that in such a way that whenever whatever athlete you know from one thousand comes through can find their bag and pick it out. It's a little less of a problem with two hundred but logistically did that. Work out okay for you. It seemed to for two hundred. We've done it the system we use. What we've picked up from transylvania mount by epic which coon started in. I helped her in the last few those before. We sold it off to another group. Who's running it now. But what it is is reasonable grocery bag okay. Can you get that at the start with your number written on it. And that's what you bring back is what you want us to dropbacks. So he's it as our swag bag when you sign in all your swag from the sponsors in there and then the next morning you bring it filled with stuff you want at the aid station and it's numbered so than when they get to the age station they're laid out in the miracle order and to go from there But we set up. This time is go through it when you're done with it the first time. Put it back in and go do that next section of the ride and then come back in the second time you're through with it move it to the other side to get transported back to the finish. Okay yeah that creates. I've participated in a number of events with drop bags and it actually does create this great opportunity. You know if it's really cold at the start you can mining your vest. And arm warmers. You can drop them in your drop bag. You can also get that one specific item that you crave on a long ride and no. It's going to be there so i think it's rather interesting solution. That potentially will see more of in this kind of covid era. I think what we're going to learn from this as people this year of had to learn how to figure out their own day for the most part whether it's a virtual challenge or whether digits doing something around like i i did my own ninety five mile. Ride just go do what i could do in food.
00:25:02 - 00:30:06
Could i pack. And that sort of thing where i could get water and i think a lot. More people are figuring out how to figure out their day. They don't need an event to say here's the chorus here's whether water stops are the food i'm going to give you because they've had to be self-sufficient this year. So how can we apply that to grab events. And i think drop eggs are a decent way of doing that so they know i like this sort of stuff i like. You said the jackets Are starts typically fairly cold in the morning if you do hundred twenty mile right in the middle october in pennsylvania. You probably start with a coat or least a pretty good jacket. But after that i climb. You probably don't want it for a while so you took it away at mile twenty seven and you can pick it back up again a mile ninety seven because it's that point much cooler again you've got a big descent to get back down into myth lemberg and then you. There's your jacket waiting for you. So i think these things can happen. It will be interesting to see our pull off thousand but that's next year's problem. Yeah it's it's definitely doable. I think again the advantages there. I mean you do see you know. An event like decay where you do have aid stations with self supported teams there. Were you're coming in and you can grab the lighting system. You don't need for the first hour you're all sorts of things in the van for that. It was great so yeah a little less than that. Yeah i imagine the the sort of big tough thing for you guys was unpaved. I imagine how to lot of community events that sort of post race meal and beer where everybody can just share their stories from the day. How did you handle that. And how did you feel kind of emotionally can represent the emotional question of the riders that that maybe those changed pretty dramatically Yeah we handled it by not having it at all and there was none of that We because the done paved party afterwards with beer flowing from a local brewer and Where we had the as another change we made very started the event the first two years of this miller recreation center which is a giant gym facility that every community should. Have you know. Twelve basketball courts. All clement you'd ever want need classes in all that sort of stuff and they just let us use their courtyard which is at the a star. The rail trail enter kitchen maids amazing food. And there's coffee and then we'd bring a beer with beer. Used their whole car. Urban had a great party. When i the first place i went to when restrictions lifted in pennsylvania we could travel outside of our counties was there and as i was going into the miller center to like look around and see how i felt about this really cute a couple walking in to go to the gym for the day like no. We can't use this place like we can't the possibility of bringing something into another community. Just note that's out it's impossible outdoor stuff is okay but we can't be in their facility. Those kind of heartbreaking having the conversation with them and people loved having that sort of stuff. But it's this year. We just made adjustments instead it. You're gonna get a whoopie pie. The finish in a maybe a slap on the back with my glove on with our masks up in tell you can go in town to get a bite to eat and something to drink and we'll try it again next year and for the most part people not the most everyone understood that. And for those people still happy with having a righted. but i've been saying is it was disappointing to have the festival outpost post party. The manner course did not disappoint that day. It was spectacular so people really happy another bike redden than manage from there. I'm sure i mean just the pent up. Demand and desire for athletes. Be doing something anything. I'm sure it was so huge by that. October that You know it was just a release of joyful energy on the course yeah pennsylvania. We've had a few nephew. We found a number of events happening. Since i would say july. A mountain bike races spread out or time trial system and few other small gravel vents in the two hundred rain to fifty range in so just being in touch with all of them. There hasn't been any code outbreaks related to the events In as still three weeks now there haven't been any positives to Any positives to come from the event that About nine Couple times like twelve riders. Please let me know. I'm just trying to do chasing letting other writers no in volunteer works universities of human got tested immediately afterwards just to be show her and he's negative so it seems like outdoor events can happen in some shape way informed so we should continue to do them because they do help. Keep people going through all of this. I'm thankful we have a number of test cases out there between unpaved and Bwi are in utah.
00:30:06 - 00:35:00
These will be good markers for us all to look at and learn from. It's an at least from our experience. It's doable so you mentioned one thing i wanted to come back to. Dave was the idea of doing segment based racing of. We've got events like grinder. Oh that sorta started out in that format. I'm curious from your perspective. You know it's all well and good and totally fine for amid packer like myself. I could sort of totally get behind that and really couldn't care less either way. How do you feel how did you get any sense for. Would the front end of the pack. The guys and girls who racing for the win do they feel the same type of experience as i'm racing. One hundred and twenty miles. It's really interesting question because we had two very different experiences are men's winner ben right who's youngster out of virginia. Think he's in his early twenty s. He just went like judas racing. He finished like i in one twenty men and had the fastest times on all the segments so we had thirty miles of segment timing on one hundred twenty mile course note. I would like that to be little more mileage if we continue with us and sorry to interrupt because i was going to ask you about that because there is that interesting thing grinder. I think the sections were were smaller than that. Maybe i could have my my my memory wrong on that. I have not look. There's done we have another one year keystone gravel. It's been doing second racing. The their fifth or sixth year of that event. They've always done it in one of the reasons we didn't because it's a similar a month before us they do that. We're going to do something else. You know just trying to keep events different. Yeah there's so many ways you can do that. Yeah there is a sense that one hundred twenty mile day five six hour day whatever. It turns out to be that you know. I don't know what the right number is. But it seems like there's gotta be a good enough number of segments that hopefully the the strongest athlete for both the technique of each individual section which actually comes into play if you're designing them correctly but also just having the strength and fortitude to race that extremely long day it's a it's interesting with segment based racing to try to find that balance right because it's very easy to make it a hill challenge and especially with our course because we had We have so many hills and we did. We work with our timers. Or what basically can we afford to do with two hundred people in like let's do four segments instead of six to seven because i just made it affordable so that helped limit as sort of thing one thing with our course we have this thirty miles called the difference which is typically. We have a ninety mile element. Of course you can do instead of one hundred twenty miles thirty miles loop from one eight station back to that station. It's got four climbs. It's got the gnarliest section of quote unquote road on our course. It's funny that for one hundred twenty miles. Everyone talks about four miles of colonial draft. It's is a very chunky jeep road. Descent the drives people insane. Put one of our best mechanics from the dutch royal impede hall at the bottom of it. Because he's saved. He saved our men's winner the first year. Because it's derailing was up in his spokesman he fixed it guiding Macrophylla still winning the next year. Mcenroe brokers wheel on the descent. Picot him growing again at least got to the finish in this series single speeded. Someone's gierek's and got to the finish so we knew that had to be a segment but we made twenty miles to thirty just because there's still some have really fast ascending with coupla corners. I didn't want people to think this is my one moment to race. Overcook a corner. 'cause we had people were corners the first two years in. Yeah that's where we have set up 'cause you need to but this year we had none of that because we turn those massive descent sections off and we had to bandaids administered. The entire course gets as a vip promoted. Yeah turning off. The sense is a thing. Now like the longer segments of course but safety i so i think it's there's gonna be a real artistry to creating segment based events were you give. The climbers and opportunity. You get the flat. Landers and give the real technical riders an opportunity all kind of factor into. Let's find the most talented athlete of the day. Yeah it transient epic enduro racing for that as well as the thing but we also had a segment called east coast rocks because not all the trails were downhill d'oro segments than they were some of the like climbs or just flat across tussey ridge in its four six miles across it's ridge it's really technical and it doesn't count as an enduro. Enduro razors will be pissed off. We made that a segment of their race. We all right. It's an east coast rock segment so we made a different competition for that.
00:35:01 - 00:40:01
And i think with technology you can do these things and it can't be strava am sorry But that doesn't work for the sort of thing because they aren't really dialed wealth for how the event should be set up in increasing a new segments of pain in doesn't match with this other one has in yada yada yada so we went legit timing okay. So that's what i was. Just gonna ask you timing chips and you had a timing system that could accommodate those crossing that those areas. So i'd interrupted you. You were talking about the marines winner. Who was kind of you know from from beginning to end. He just hammered the whole thing and he was not only the first man across the line but he was the fastest cumulative with the sacraments did. The women's winner have a different strategy. They hit a very different strategy. So i noticed. When i was going through reg that three of the women in it had finished on the podium before kelly catala who'd one year before two thousand nineteen haley wicks. Who finished second or third get which the year before and vicky barklay who also finished second or third in our first year and there were only returners from putting none of our men's for men were coming back so i gave them all numbers one two and three and typically. We're going to do a time. Trial start at the beginning to Still treat it as a race and give them some special treatment. We're gonna have an amish auctioneer send people to go down and said often thirty second segments but because it's two thousand twenty. A hurricane remnant was coming up. The coast is threatening of severe rain. Thunderstorms like all right. Just start when you want in the morning. You want to try and beat. The rain started seven thirty. Am the forecast changes. And you like to start the later because it's warmer. You can start at nine anywhere in between. They decided they contact each other like. Why don't we just ride together. Let's spend the whole day the three of us riding together and they had a best time. They wrote the rail trail just chatting about their year. Got to the first segment in raced up in think haley when that first segment and they regrouped and they talk to each station right afterwards. They got their stuff and they rolled over to the second station. At some point picnic. I think too and they then they went out and then they got to the start of the next segment and then they race each other and then at the end of that segment they regrouped waiting for each other in road to the next segment together and they had the best day Kelly qataris blog post on is apps and missed it up. It was so great about how the day went for her. And then i doubt that sold me on it and if she was super nervous about that whole idea about not doing a start finish time thing said it was like one of the best race day. She's ever had. I think there's a thing for segment racing. I think it's like it's real. I think the front. It'll be happy with the to interesting but as you did not just for the other race organizers and event promoters out there there is sort of logistic of getting making sure obviously a. You're running with timing chips which may be as a no brainer for for most of the big events but be but be you know having those sensors at the right points that they're calculating the segments out there on the course yet it kind of depends on the size of the event to we're trying to be one of the bigger ones. And so we're going to invest in that tiny thing i keystone gravel is fantastic Before ours in it's a guy puts it on in his party at his farm. We spend the day riding our bikes. We empty our tanks out on his course in refill them back in his farm having barbecue and beer. He doesn't stop. That works totally fine to everyone's having a good day in that's what it is. It's the day so it depends what you're worth all is with kind of investment you wanna put into it in those results to be so it both will work. You do hope that as more as as more time passes more infrastructure will get created around these things that can make events safer. If that's if we need to keep being locked down in twenty twenty one. I got to imagine whether it's strava other companies across the board. All the things that you need as an event organizer. Hopefully you've got partners. Who are stepping up and creating the systems and products that you need for safe that and especially when you have to spend money on a lot more sanitizers than masks and all that other stuff more porta johns at events and things like that so yeah. Are there any other sort of weird things that sort of came up you. Just referenced like creating more porta-pottys which i guess makes sense right. Give give less traffic to any given area. Yeah spreading the. Fortunately i mean we budgeted for a lot more for two hundred. Four hundred is really kind of adamant about not being the down side of the road. So be it. A large segment of our budget set aside report john's anyway but it was still express them up further in been events for their kind of back.
00:40:01 - 00:45:06
So you can have lines on other sides and things like that and just requires more space. Fortunately we have that sorta space where we set up our two major eight eight stations. So that wasn't too big a restriction. Other things it's all a blur. Now i know you you mentioned obviously you put hand. Sanitizer stations and on tears and and and athletes were required to wear masks while interacting. That will make sense. Did you do anything. Like sort of digital put your Pre-race speech online or anything like that to kind of limit. The need for people to get together. Yeah we four. We've done them in the local theatre which is beautiful in sweden at all the wonderful things. You want with gravel But yeah this year. We said he was gonna do them hourly on saturday and we'd had really small one point was like one on one like. Oh you're the person here at three o'clock all right we will Talk to you about doesn't your questions but we the friday night mike. An idea to facebook live on our the unpaved facebook page in that worked really well because we got a lot of questions and that's been fun when stupid like some fun interaction at kept things light and lively so yeah using those digital tools are not do a digital waiver We were thinking about but then it just became respected enough time it was like two hundred versus two thousand trying to do it so you have to wonder sort of all this collective experience of us all with zoom calls and video conferences. There are not some valuable things that can be used in future events to build community prior to the event. Maybe there'll be some nice things that come out of this bill community. Also the logistics of one thing. I've been things like i know. No one reads the emails in the registration page in the waiver. Because i know the questions. I get everyone needs to read the registration page before you sign up. Read the waiver that you're clicking on and then read the emails because things are going to change constantly when the next year or two. It's going to be constant change for events. We're going to be jumping through hoops. We're gonna be throwing things at you so you need to dealer aware of everything that's going on we. I kept telling people. Well we people sign up from all of the country as like. I'm sorry but right. Now you're on the list of pennsylvania's quarantine for two weeks before you interact with the public. Are you willing to do that. From paved not. Will you give a refund and people got it. 'cause they're not looking ahead of time but we need to so just flexibility but then read all that stuff. 'cause the waivers are changing one of the things you mentioned in our email conversation. If i'm not mistaken was a fun photo experience you had at the end. That may be different than you had in previous years. Yeah we Because we weren't going to have a post bardy. We also turned off the idea of having podiums in part because i mean gone to plenty events and i know it can be a while before you get official timing of things fortunately for gravel unfortunately for unpaved we haven't had sort of delays in results. But i knew that segment racing would could cause that sort of thing we can. We did not have the problem. That was getting messages immediately. Like that person just crossed the finish line a half mile away. We did have a timing thing for when they started finished. Just keep track of people out there. they'll be here in the second in the fastest time so far is able to as cigarette them when we got there timing chip and gave him. There won't be pies said. Hey currently have our fastest time. Let's take your picture at the podium. Now in case you are winner. Worked really well for our first place because he won the first one or twenty miler in took his photo in ballots. The only when we really needed to take took a few others just in case so that helped and then people could go on with the day. I mean i know people are married. A fast person weeding around for podiums can take a while. Yes my only goal. When i did. Events is to finish in time for podium soccer photo in fort like. Oh that's gonna take forever for them to do results. I can have another beer. So i know it can take a while and it can be frustrating for the elite athletes to head home and her thing and if we had made ben stick around stick around her until nine o'clock for putting voted with segment. Time you don't know who's out there. You know who started at nine. Am and stated age stations for an hour or two each took a nap between segments. You would know these things. And so i think that helped with segment timing to second racing to is just the have those things inside. You can do those announcements and stuff later. You don't necessarily need to do them that night. The added that's also is a non so check back with my wife and see us. She would feel about if that was her well. This has been great dave. I appreciate all the information. And you know i know. The gravel cycling event community is tight net. And there's been great communication over the last few between people because we're all trying to make these things better.
00:45:06 - 00:47:39
So i appreciate you coming on board and just putting out there some of the things that you guys were able to achieve with unpaved in the year. Twenty twenty and hopefully for those event organizers listening and even for future participants. We all just a little bit more knowledge and a little bit more correct expectations. About what the future will hold. Well i should also send a big thank you to all. The event organizers who had talked to him who did not have events that happened Rebecca decay lifetime crew that so many people we just like start bouncing ideas off of left right and center what we can do it. We couldn't do. And i was really fortunate to be in pennsylvania and that the state handle things really. Well our Handle things really well so that was will we had going forward versus a lot of other places so i'm very thankful for all of them. Yeah absolutely well thanks again. Dave thank you appreciate it big. Thanks today for joining us this week and telling soul about how unpaved twenty twenty went down in pennsylvania. I sure i'm jealous of all the writing that they have in that neck of the woods. Hope to get over there some day and i'm grateful that dave has decided to share what they went through. Because hopefully other organizers will get a little bit to add to their playbook in thousand and twenty one so we can start seeing some of these great events come back on the calendar and have confidence that it's the right thing to do for all of our communities. I also wanted to add a huge. Thank you to everybody. Who's been joining the gravel. Ride podcast membership program. Just visit by me a coffee dot com slash. The gravel ride for details. We've got a number of members only perks in place including a discount on the new gravel. Ride podcast jersey which preorders are ending today. So pigmy immediately. If you're interested in that product as always i welcome your feedback. You can hit me up directly at craig at the growl ride dot bike or come join the ridership on slack you can ping me directly for an invite to that platform or hit me up on facebook or one of the social media channels. We've got a lot of vibrant conversations from all over the world starting there and we're hoping to create this global searchable database of information for gravel and adventure cyclist. So we welcome your inputs over there until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
This week we sit down with Dave Pryor from the Pennsylvania gravel event, UnPAved to discuss how the 2020 events was executed in a COVID safe fashion. We get into the changes in format that may be here to stay and how other race organizers can learn from his experiences to execute future events.
This week the tables are turned and your host, Craig Dalton gets interviewed by Randall Jacobs. Craig covers his personal story leading up to the beginnings of the podcast and his journey into gravel cycling.
This week the tables are turned and your host, Craig Dalton gets interviewed by Randall Jacobs. Craig covers his personal story leading up to the beginnings of the podcast and his journey into gravel cycling.
This week we check in with George Huxford from Apidura makers of cycling bags for every gravel cycling adventure. We learn the various types of bags from tip to tail of the bicycle and get some practical advice on packing and load distribution.
Episode Sponsor: PNW Components (15% off with code 'thegravelride')
Apidura online
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Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos)
Apidura: George Huxford - Bags for every cycling adventure
00:00:05 - 00:05:12
Hello and welcome to The Gravel Ride podcast I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week's podcast is brought to you by our friends at P. N. W. Components. I've been riding the coast handlebar at four hundred and eighty millimeters and the coast dropper post for maybe almost three months now, and after tell you I'm really sold particularly with my recent move down to two Panga California. I've really started to own my appreciation for the suspended dropper post. So, let's make an important distinction. there. I'm a big fan of the dropper post the ability to drop your saddle down via technical sections the Costa Dropper Post is actually a suspended dropper post. So it's air actuated meaning. You can tune it to your body weight and preference, but the post will actually dipped down when I hit a rather aggressive hit with the back end of my bike. So I'm using the dropper component. When I know I'm going to get into some rough stuff and the suspended component when I don't. The net result of this is I'm always protected when I get into the rough stuff saddle up saddle down I've got a little secret weapon. This dropper post combined with the wide handlebars has left me as comfortable as I've ever been getting into the technical terrain. So if you're looking for something to up your technical elements, definitely give pm w components look at pm w components, dot com, and for the gravel ride podcast listeners, you can get fifteen percent off coupon for your first order using the code the gravel ride. So onto this week's guest, really excited to welcome George Houck's furred from the bag company Applera based in London England. Abdur has a full range of bags for gravel cycling bike packing excetera. You guys know I love bags. So as exciting to talk to George and take bags from every different angle on the bike and talk about mixing and matching different bags to meet your gravel cycling needs so I. Hope You enjoy this interview and with that said, let's dive right in George Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you. It's great to be here Yeah. It's a real honor you listen to podcasts for. Rages now. Yes. Fantastic guests and yeah. So It's going to be amongst them I appreciate that. Well, let's start off by learning a little bit about you and your cycling background, and then about epidurals and how it came about and I'm excited really everybody on the WHO listened to the podcast knows I'm a big bag geek. So I'm excited to kind of just go from tip to tail and talk about the full range of bags that grovel cyclists can be using to satisfy. Their their gear capacity heeds. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That sounds great. I'm Yeah. I'm a massive Geek on as well. So we're GONNA need someone to stop too much into the details to a perfect house zips work and all that kind of thing. But yeah, we'll try and keep interesting right on. So how did you? How did you get into cycling and how did you find your way to aperture and how did the company get started? Well, I've I like a lot of your guests start off in white shops. Growing up at always been into bike since anything really racing mountain bikes riding Banamex is all kinds of stuff. Are Not led me working in bike shops Off the. Ships bit moved up to the what can brand and. I ended up driving a big van for the demo bikes round the UK, for a number of years to events, setting people up full suspension bikes setting up in talks and trial sentences, which was which was great and that sort of led me down a kind of marketing within the cycle industry Yeah and then I I came across the aperture once they've been what's been going for little bit to kind of help them with the with the growth than. Themselves in the in the kind of wide cycling market. So. Yeah. At this point, I've been here. Account even think maybe it's three is Yes go relatively young company and. Yeah I'm not spend time with them now and when the company was first founded, they've was it founded around us certain specific product or opportunity. yet to ascend extent. So the company was actually founded in two thousand thirteen, but it was it was about a year and for products came out. So a found a tour had been been writing for a great number of years and had really gotten into the side riding coming mugged on a long distance cross country background, and then moving into longer longer events. I'm basically found that the kind of the on offer at that time to kind of backpacking gear wasn't the same kind of experience maybe wasn't the same kind of technical stand as she used to in kind of clothing and in the bikes and suspension electron stuff and I wanted to kind of.
00:05:13 - 00:10:02
Add a bit more technology and make a little bit if people actually get the stuff on their bikes. So having done toward abide, she decided to kind of. Out in south accompanied. By, two thousand fourteen. I packs were on the market. And since then I think we've really entered the golden age of bags on bikes. The innovation has been. Super staggering the last few years. Likes, and we now see bags attached almost everywhere across the bike and I needed. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's a good point I mean when? When bought packing I died it was really. It was more about what it wasn't. It wasn't racks and Patios and that meant people can put bags on the kind of bikes that particular surface they weren't to right. Instead of starting with a bike, the luggage you start with the ride bike for the kind of writing once. said, he wanted to ride for a week on a mountain bike of two weeks on a road bike you went. Held back trying to find something that could run a rack Sarah it comes style that way the the archetype. Like packing ranges probably the saddle pack then quite quickly. So handlebar pox name frame packs. And those kind of like there's three pieces make what most people think the covered. By packing south. You're quite right and plenty of of places on the bike where you can squeeze and space if you want to. Yeah I think you know one of the big takeaways I wanted to have the listener? Arrive at from this conversation was just they already have a bike that's capable of doing massive amounts of adventure from. Multi Week, multi-month touring to just being more comfortable on a long big day ride. So if we talk about the different types of packs I thought, it'd be a good way to start just a start at the front of the bike and let's go through all the different modalities because you've referenced handlebar bags frame bags and saddlebags which will drill into but there's also additional mounting points from top to mounts to folk mounts two. Different I know you've got different accessory packs that velcro onto the bike anywhere you want who? Let's start at the front of the bike and maybe down at the fork and just talk about what's possible. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's a really good way of going I'm semi when I look at a kind of applied this I'm always trying to balance out is. Accessibility, that's it's the the white and the white balance on the bike So as you get kind of. Away from where you are a writer, that's the kind of stuff way you've got limited accessibility it's so stop worrying to go into maybe just the beginning of the ride or at the end of the ride. So on the full quayle talking about this there's loads of companies now, really getting into the idea of helping white pack is out wiping more mounts on their bikes. On the foot mounts really good spot for that image you can carry around comfortably zero solid mountain place. what it lacks is that kind of accessibility from the Saddle Sipho may be in stuff that. That was like kind camping out maybe or needed for the the at the end of the Roy robinsons want to be getting into as far as weight distribution George. So I don't have any experience with extra weight on the forks like that on the side how to how does one think about that does the imagine it slows the steering down quite a bit. So is there you packing your most lightweight? Non, every moment needed items down there. Yeah that that would certainly be my suggestion. Packs on the four care of some of the last packs I would add to pretty full sets up. So it's the kind of thing if we. Sang out for. To a three week trip and you needed some extra stuff worth it got really cold Planning Mountain Pastas awebber changeable. It's real good spot for an extra thick sleeping bag or another layer sleeping system as well as a a down jacket or something like that generally that yeah. January the principal we wanna think about is the heavy of the item the closer to the bottom bracket we want to put it. That just keeps the handling as you'd expect on your bunk and the key thing about the packing set is that we can use a whole system of smallpox to kind of to achieve that objective robin putting everything just in one spot mobike. Yeah. That makes a ton of sense and when you look at the a line up, you can see a lot of these different small areas and accessory packs that are possible and as you said, it's it's really about kind of taking the the big areas which might be the the seat pack, the frame pack and handlebar role, and augmenting them as necessary depending on the duration of your trip. Yet you caught right there and you know.
00:10:02 - 00:15:13
A mixture of smaller packs, a larger number of smaller. One Big One it also helps to organize if you've just getting into one, they kind of a really large pack trying to find that one small thing you need it, it can be a bit difficult having things more organized into lots of small places can sometimes help you up. Yeah, absolutely. So going up a little bit onto the handlebar now, there's a couple of different style bags that you guys offer. I had previous experience with kind of a role side bag. which until I went to a larger handlebar, my gravel bike, it actually wouldn't fit on my gravel bike with a kind of forty four centimeter bar and to your point earlier, I would sort of focus a lot of stuff that I wasn't going to need during the day. So I might put my sleeping bag in there because I was always a bit conscious of the weight on the front end of the handlebar just in terms of the effects of the steering. Yeah I completely agree with that often myself this is exactly what goes that my sleeping bag up a baby bag or Top shelter in here. It's a thin you WANNA be getting into the beginning and end of the rod of getting ended derailing. It because of the shape that you've got that you're quite right their offspring restrictions based on how you've likes out. So Away Hood saw. How Wide Jabbar is sometimes, you'll find different shifts with a different amount of fro on that Liba when you shifting can affect this as well. So it's always best to to really check those before what when setting a backup you'll find most people's packs similar to ours have kind of that role feature on that allows you to just the the. Width of what you're putting it on most things are going to put American principal. So you can really shaped up to how you want it. I do think I do think that the size restrictions on these bikes is actually super positive thing because I. Think new bike packers have a tendency to try to bring everything in the kitchen sink with them and. Being forced to edit is so crucial I found in getting a bike that still writable and just getting the minimal amount of gear that you need to have to be safe. Yeah you're entirely right. I mean we say here Super Light. It is we spend a Lotta time trying to make as light as we can, but some of the biggest weight savings just the up in there. So the the biggest savings on the stuff that gets left home when send your bike things, you don't really need. Yeah and I think when we talk about handlebar bags, there's definitely arranged right there's obviously like the sort of the expedition style pack which is trying to carry as much gear as possible but there's also smaller packs which I've talked about on the podcast before and You know in the wintertime just having a small handlebar bag can be super super useful location for your extra Jackie, your gloves and a little bit of food. Yeah Yeah I agree with that. Kind of the maximum space that we can really use a areas something probably in the twenty liter range and that's on a ball. You know it's really wide like a real flat drop. Well, maybe even a flatbed depending on your up and then yeah, we can go right down to something a lot smaller. Those kind of the smaller Bob it's opening. Really, good for grapple as you suggest that kind of. Semi accessible I call it kind of one on clipped accessibility where you could just put that one Riyobi's from the bike and grab a jacket or bar something is, is it really useful spun? You can still. Get that benefit even when you go into a full packing south by using an accessory pocket or another Pao Chung from of that. Any brands that have a similar approach Abbott. Let Lil extra. Accessibility is important things you might want to grab on the road. So I think it's a great time to be having this conversation as a lot of parts of the world they're going into winter time and just the idea having a a little bit extra storage capacity somewhere on your bike for an extra jacket or vaster gloves can really adds to the comfort level is slipping back a little bit on the bike. Another popular area is that top tube pack for. Kind of power bars, maybe holding your phone little bit small amounts of food for those of you who have stared down at the two bolts on your top tube and scratched her head as to what the heck. Therefore they're really for these top two packs that can add just a little bit to the to the bike. Yeah. This is a this is a fantastic was any ride to be honest And it's great. We're seeing so many more people. Deciding to to carry hit. This Israeli for the things that you normally putting your jazzy pockets. But maybe if you're riding gravel with a little bit more room, you don't want to be reaching behind and riding one hand trying to dig out own or never energy bars a this is a much basketball. You can instantly grab it. You can see what you're carrying multiple different sizes options out there depending on whether he'll balancing lightweight or you once it's fully waterproof all like mentioned, you want some of the used bolts on the top of your bike extra ability that was actually one of my first piff unease of bags on the bike for gravel and I.
00:15:14 - 00:20:03
What You said is spot on when you're off road reaching back to your pocket becomes more difficult. So having something in front of you while you're on a sort of a bumpy climb that you can unzip or flip flop over and just grab some food or any item, you need quick access to as really been a game changer for me really enjoy that I've stopped using it a little bit in as I've moved to the next bag I wanted to talk about, which is sort of the the quarter or half frame bag. Can you talk about that type of bag how it attach is and maybe the storage capacity those bags offer. Yes sure Yeah. Experience that she very similar deals. Sa-, this kind of pack occupies the Front space of your frame triangle I refer to Lisa's of like a wedge. The key thing with this kind of packing there's it's not size Pacific your bike. It still allows you to run water bottles have access just normal typically in this space on the bike, we can give you somewhere between two full elitist spending. What kind of a self you've them what kind of patchy get that's about double. What you get from atop cheap pack the cool thing about the easiest that really really stable typically be connecting to your down tribute talk to you potentially around your head chief as well which means that just lock in there that really out the way. Completely clear of your knees. However, you writing doing Yeah I'm for me I quite honestly mainstay time. Now this there's no downside to it. It works equally well, completely full or empty So yeah. If you put on that sped up and eat snacks then left with. Any Yeah I already skipped over that one. I'm glad you brought that up because that's one one that I haven't used personally kind of the smaller right up to the front bag I jumped right to the quarter frame bag going all the way to the seat tube Yeah. Yeah. So I think I think that's a great point because. And that's that's the takeaway I think for the listener is kind of look at the range of bags. Your favorite supplier has if you go to the APP Adora site, you'll see all these different things and you'll start it'll start to click in your mind. Oh, that would be a good combination maybe it's a atop to to bag and this little bag or a different seat bag or handlebar bag, and you start to piece together the storage capacity that you need for your style of writing. Yeah, that's quite right and if you find pox that really worked fuel kind of epic on a day rights and then you want to take up something a bit further and it's just a matter of. adding. Something small you. If you beginning packs with the idea, feel one weeklong trip year you'll you wouldn't have as much use some time. Yeah I'm I'm frankly probably guilty of carrying too much stuff on the daily just because I have that full of length of the top tube quarter frame bag on my bike but I, just love the convenience I don't really have to think about editing too much my gear I just have a full repair kit in their plus jacket an extra gloves almost every ride yeah. Yeah this is a great. It's a great kind of pop going all the way back to that a seat cheap the the other benefits you know when you are the longer trips is that things tent Poles that they can start working in that when she using the full length, your top cheap. Depending on how big your bike is. You have to stop thinking about how you're going to carry Walter this point if you're in a smaller bike, you may have to use kind of bowl cage relocated or consider using a small all even side entry cages just to make sure that you still access But yeah, for most people, this kind of offering packed like that. Isn't again, the Weber much is going to give you storage capacity up to about about five liters depending frame size. Yeah. Let's point actually I did move to those kind of side mounted or side accessed bottle cages to just accommodate two water bottles on my medium size frame and not style bag. The other thing I want to point out is I've sort of eliminated for my daily rides, any other type of bag on the bike so I'm no longer using a seat bag. Or handle bag when I have that what I call the quarter frame bag I think you're referring to it at the half frame bag when I put that on I just kind of consolidate everything into it and I do enjoy the kind of clean aesthetic look to it, and also the knowledge that with some smaller bags whether it's reattaching seat bag or handlebar bag I sort of dramatically open up from a percentage perspective what I can carry. Yeah. Yeah. That's quite right and. You know moving away from storing stuff under the saddle does not more options.
00:20:03 - 00:25:02
The drop opposed spoke essentially lot mud gods. Just, nodding your hands in their way, you often get Plus. Lots more, snacks. Exactly, now let's move onto the big guy something I've never personally owned the full frame pack. So that's that's something that's occupying almost the entirety of the area and the main triangle of your frame. But as you alluded to earlier from kind of a weight distribution perspective, getting a lot of your geared down in that area is super important in terms of ride quality. So can you talk about full frame packs and how you see them being used? Yeah. Full frame pack is is actually one of those packs a often people on. If. They end up using one and kind of take the plunge. It becomes when the favourite packs the me this is the kind of gear that you'd be thinking Abou- If you're doing a multiday right the the main advantage chairs that you're really maximizing all space in that triangle if you think about it autism bowl cage, pretty inefficient way of filling that kind of triangle shape if if given a triangle using two cylinders the best. Way To use it a lot. So completely filling that that frame shape with pack and then being able to carry water in there should way something like a bladder. Just pulled out you camelback still down low means that you get so much more storage device and you carrying on this to really close the bump bracket, which is gonNA mean you're handling it. Some isn't an impenetrable load and I noticed on your pack you've got to Zipper access points are actually a divider in there somehow Yay on on our pipe steroids, such a removable dividers. So depending on how you'll get up You can have that kind of shelf in that. It's something all us us used lower-half. Eva For yeah. For Water. Glad. Like I said, will temporarily the tools down this heavy spats. If it didn't along trip and you may be expanding that repack role kind of situations that repressed oats and ten polls and stuff then took it can quickly grow and having it can of low and stable down there a good spot for it, and then the shelf Bisi means that you have that that frame packed the Joe using on the top. So you can just use that achy normally. Would you also have? cable ports there. So if you are running a bladder, you can run a hose out if you're using it to store batteries to power lights or your GPS, then you can run cables in and out. Okay. So if you're if you're running a bladder, the the hose of the bladder can actually run interior until the top where there's a port to kind of it to come out. Yeah. That's that's quite right. So you know it's moving onto a pretty pretty full like packing up at this point that if you re looking to maximize the space blog than the full impact snakes where to go, I was playing around with a bladder in my quarter frame bag and it got stuck on kind of what to do with the tube as it was kind of dangling around and how to make that kind of you know most efficient and and safe. Frankly can you talk about how people deal with the tubes once they're coming out of those packs? Yeah. Yeah. It's. It's actually something that's really developing a lot. We didn't see even a couple of years ago. So often sing it more and more start lining racist now. At tends to be people using magnetic solutions to manage that cheap. So the quasi companies that will make it kind of hose management, kind of little clip that would normally on a rucksack with something like that and we seen people taping it to that Baas or using it. I'm for the straps of their other like packing setup settlers a mind on I, run a small clip through one of abstracts. Around, my stem holding a food pouch or something and then yeah, the hose just flips amount of grab it when I need, you see a lot of people will he'll use a era extensions really long already false ride search with the up was it allows them to just rest on their elbows drink power and along. Yeah. That makes sense now. Thanks for. Clarifying that a little bit I was kind of scratching my head and I knew there's Probably. Someone had a solution out there, but I eventually just gave up and. Put the put the cages back on. Yeah. Well, it's. Like. Backing you have to kind of adapt and overcome. You get these kind of strange problems. Come up you have to kind of think of it sideways. Yeah the yeah. So shifting back towards the back of the bike, we now have the the saddle pack and I remember my first proper bike packing saddle pack. It was I opening to me how much stuff you could get in there, and also how well these bikes can still ride fully loaded. So let's talk about the big saddle packs offer.
00:25:03 - 00:30:01
Yeah. Yeah. I mean the saddle pack Israeli the kind of the. Piece of packing luggage. Again. It's can workers any bill bikes Being held by having to a rackl nothing about the space that we'll saddle packs old away from five years up to seventeen leads depending on what kind of riding doing. And this space is really flexible the best advice is again to try and get the heavy stuff to bracket. So tools knows that settled pack bring it was the center. The bike is going to result in a more stable Jack I'm handling and then software up in there as also conform better. So I'll look at clothes. In the I'll have my kind of wash kit maybe in the nose and then potentially. Mother Lot clothing leads I might want to grapple whilst on the ride still easy to access this One phone clipped inside the road. It's not stuff that's necessarily locked away the whole world everybody. I had purchased one of these bags and then a buddy of mine at work had asked to borrow it. So I gave it to him and he gave it back to me at work one day and I had been in a routine of carrying everything on a backpack in a backpack. With my sort of. Ten Mile Commuter Fourteen Mile Commute into San Francisco, but I happen to have this bag at the office one day. So I shoved everything in it and it was like a light bulb went off and. Kicking myself for having this thing in the garage, most of the year and not using it for my commuting because it's it's I mean, it's very clear when you think about it but it was quite easy to to have a full set of spare clothing whatever I needed and just kind of roll the back down more tightly than I would sort of having a bike packing setup, but then I. had. All the convenience of having nothing on my back and having the bike ride well in the commute. So I you know after the quarter frame bag I highly recommend getting one of these saddlebags into your stable just because it can have utility much beyond you know a big back bike packing trip. Yeah. Yeah. You'll. You're exactly right that and generally with these pat stat adjustability is is a real bonus. Typically you can rollaway about half the capacity of the park. So no big biggest pack of some seventeen leaf is you can easily get rid of off that Vice and sin good compressive rolling and make it kind of flexible place stuff. Yeah I'm the the handling impact isn't isn't as great as you might imagine, you know the the bike is designed to have a lot of white in the saddle already. So just putting a little bit more behind that. Doesn't really affect it too much to. Especially if balance still allow just sets up with a few. around the bike. You can really have a very neutral handling. Still carry carry. The I really like what happened in your lineup because a lot of us might think of a saddle pack. That's where you have a spare tube and your repair kit etc, and it's it's quite small, and then we started to have this vision of a we've seen these bike packing bags but with your racing saddle pack, it's kind of the best of both worlds where it's got, you know certainly a lot more capacity than a basic tool bag it's got the rolltop functionality but. It's not this massive thing. So if you're looking for something to just pack like a puffy jacket on for a winter, ride the descent I think that racing south pack size looks super useful. Yeah. You're quite right again, the the racing series really came from a lot of a fast the kind of support friends who really you know really rolling away all the capacity even of our smaller packs while other series, they really wanted something smaller lighters they were using really minimal setups. So that's where the development came from but it's ended up being more useful for the rest of us even even derides in similar having just five Lee is behind the saddle really isn't going to impact you much until. It's really lightweight pack talks right out the way not gonNa have any impact on your peddling position up just like you said, you can. You can really increase the of the Kinda gave the occurring and be ready for for more things and take them challenging writes. Yes. If you're not jazzed perhaps on the visuals of how a quarter frame pack looks or maybe as you mentioned earlier, you're riding a small frame that would necessitate you not having bottles on the bike going with that kind of racing style rear repack I think is a super useful alternative. Absolutely and you know it's not. It's not one of the really massive ones. You've maybe seen on full packing. It's not going to hold you back in Sam's white or nothing like that. Yeah. Exactly and I have to say for for those you unfamiliar with APP Adora over to Adora Dot, com, and not only peruse the sort of various bags that they have to offer because I think it will again spark your imagination as to what's right for you. But check out the ambassadors page.
00:30:02 - 00:35:04
You may recall that I interviewed Jenny tough a few months back and she was talking about her use of the dirt bags on her all her expeditions including that. Spectacular. Story of the Atlas Mountain Race. Zero. You know for me I. Love. Geeking, out I may never do something like the Atlas Mountain Race but I love reading these stories and again, it will just shed light on how people are using these packs and how durable they are, and frankly how capable the bike you have in your garage is for this type of expedition. Yeah. Absolutely. You you just a couple of packs away from having the really ride ride anywhere and say that is embassador on our over friends. So important in developing the scare you know we designed pox here in London and it's it's not like we can kind of. Cross mountains in our lunch breaks contest out the function. So we really rely on the Community of friends embassador to be putting up protesting, and that means sending them to. All over the world where people are going to take on the next big challenge we really need all our fool it ends up on our website to. been doing multiple multi week trips to to make sure it's up to standard and an friends are absolutely crucial in that. Yeah. It's a Lotta Fun, is a couple other things. One thing that you guys came out with I, think just this year was that expedition down to pack and I think this falls in the category obviously of like if you've exhausted every other location, this is a neat way to carry things but I just thought it was cool that you've created kind of durable role sack that can essentially attach anywhere on the bike. Yeah. I mean, we didn't realize that could attach anywhere until people started doing it. And then it turns out that people have a lot better ideas than us. Yet this is this kind of came around in response to what we've been doing for while anyway that that space onto the bump brock is a great space to carry something heavy. You don't need very often been strapping. A stove or an extra wool, a bottle using duct tape and. Wire and stuff to make another bowl catch down there for a number of years. So the jumps don't you make some things specific. There was some was really good. It means you can get that kind of. The benefit of having a third wall cage down that what you look box now coming with a on any bike, and you can use that space something that isn't just won't This is a perfect spot. Kind of mole will see toolkit for for an expedition or long ride and it gets it right out the way. Olek areas fully Walker's expedition series I will accept packing get on the market. So even though into the spot where it's GonNa have a pretty hard time with elements everything that's going to be driving you. Yet I think the thoughtful part of the design here is that the cylinder shape is edited down. So it's not going to become to Bulbous to affect you know pedaling with your cranks or get in the way retire there, and that's that's important. You know obviously, there's a lot of great hacky ways of attaching things to your bike, and certainly if you're unable to to purchase any of these things hack away, that's the beauty of gravel and the beauty of adventure cycling but. When you do work with a company that sort of thoughtful in sort of the proportions you do get these really nifty pieces. Yeah. I thought I'd got away from. Boston bracket dramas when I left pikes behind where we get open all the spreadsheets and trump will bracket tops down to make sure that the pack wouldn't get in the way of anyone. Anyone's cranks will ever come a south they were. Using so yeah. Different types. But yeah, we were there get I'm sure the other funny thing we were talking about offline line that you you had shared with me. We talked about how you know when you're gearing up for your bike packing expedition particularly sort of in my case when I've only done a handful of these, I pack everything very precisely and I try to Max out every nook and cranny of my bag capacity. But then at the end of the day I roll up to talk correa and I wanna get a Burrito and a coke and I've got absolutely nowhere to hold it what what would have you guys done to solve that problem Yet yet you describe the problem exactly and it's one. It's one the we had on the better. We got a packing on gear the worse it came we were always telling people to pack seems best base just for this This year, we decided to actually try to design some packs would with allow people to to solve this problem. So yet palpable series of a Mazzetti backpack up is designed for this that Suka palpable miniature packs. You can have one scrunched up in Jersey pocket or in any other space in your bike got straps attached to any spat hog frame and then when you get. Yeah and when you want that big feet up or you can get food and take take it to the campsite.
00:35:04 - 00:40:03
All you know you decide maybe a trip is. For it might be in the beginning maybe a couple of days in that's going to be will be involved in. You've maybe planned to the beginning. You've got extra buy stuff yet to pick up supplies souvenirs anything fancy really, and then when you've eaten drunk fill, you can pack it down to get get out the way your reminds me of the kind of reusable grocery bags that we have in the US that sorta down to less than the size of your fist. It's a similar material I imagine to that but just kind of formulated in a in A. A backpack style so you can carry it easily on the bike. Yeah Yeah, they would definitely an influence. The key one of these is that we were on make more to prove all is proved. So we spent a lot time trying to work out how we can make them fully waterproof and then adapting the fit and size. So they would actually work when you're on the bike. So this this mole structure to the to the shoulder straps to be used to Kinda grocery bags. It's a bit more comfortable carrying. Along the way yeah it's nice. I mean I. Think as an industry kind of moved away from big. Backpacks carrying heavy gear because we've all experienced, how awful that can be to your posterior and your back and say like with all these great bags, you've moved it onto the bike. But certainly, for trip to the grocery store, a six pack of beer and some Burritos, it's great to kind of just be able to throw something that you can safely ride after a long day. Oh definitely. You know we've we've had people send US messages that really enjoying these packs toting coming from kind of a bike packing background. It's all that this little package strapped with about cage or like I said maybe in the Jersey Oak and at the end of a appeal to our road drive with friends like Pasta bursary store not take stuff home robin the. Plastic carrier bag hanging from the draw swinging dangerously to spokes you make your way home exactly now, I think you know I think that's a common thread in our conversation just this idea like once you get one of these bags whatever it is and who's ever at from it really Oh, just opens up a world of possibilities because they're so versatile and the bikes are capable of carrying so much when you need them to. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely and people shouldn't be afraid to go dry stuff out Lots of cool developments of happened in cycling in general grabble most specifically have been when people have kind of left those rules will Rhode Ride ten years ago behind embraced wider ties, smaller wheels likes the can do more things. And I think you know using PACs boxes is part of that. Some people might not like the way. It looks once you've got one of these smaller talk she paco the small frame Paco small saddle pack on there you'd find it so useful. And it's really liberating allowed to do so much more we go riding. That's funny. Match the look of it, and maybe this is sort of something you experience in spades we in the UK in just in terms of the road culture and the aesthetic that's been pushed down our throat for the last thirty years. It is hard to make that shift away from it but to your point once you do. In my case, I was happy to take the flak from my Rhody Buddies because I knew that I had so much more comfort with me in terms of an extra jacket or what have you on my bike? Yeah Yeah you're absolutely right and the unite if fosters your thing then Yeah I a challenge you ticket a jail Lava Jersey pocket as quick as you can get out of the top G. Pack where it's right in front of you and you can still be have your hands in the right list. So true. So true. George I appreciate you geeking out with me on the bags and just kind of giving the listener rundown of all the different things that are possible these days. I'm I'm always super excited to talk bags and I always encourage everybody to just take a look at what's out there and sort of put it on your longer term wishlist because it can be really game changing for your Gravel Comfort. Yeah Yeah yeah absolutely. Great Song to you as well and yeah I mean the main thing here is I, have spoken about you can. Pull it any of your list bugs as well. You know the we're not encouraging people to buy never bike here everyone who's listening to this already has packing bike. So you know with the right combination of Fox from wherever they decide to get them they can. They can have a block that could take a two days weeks months whatever they WANNA do right on. Thanks George. Big thanks George for joining the podcast this week. I, hope you took a lot away from that conversation definitely check out their website to understand everything we've been talking about because I know it can be a little bit hard to visualize how some of these different bags attached to your bike and what they look like but suffice it to say you can find any and every combination of bags you need for just enhancing your daily rides your winter rides, we have to carry a little bit of extra gear to those huge bike packing expeditions.
00:40:04 - 00:40:45
It is all possible with the bike you have I love how? George ended the conversation just reminding us that the bike in our garage is an adventure bike and it can do much more than we think it can. So that's it for this week's pod. Thank you so much for joining us and big thanks to everybody who's been joining the membership program at by me a coffee dot com slash the gravel ride. The support means a ton to me as do your ratings and reviews love reading what you have to say. So please visit me at by me a coffee dot com slash the gravel ride or ratings and reviews can happen on any of your favorite podcasts platforms. Until next time here's the finding some dirt under your wheels.
This week we tackle some of the basics around nutrition for gravel cycling setting the stage for deeper research and understanding. Craig checks in from his new residence in Topanga while Randall plans a return to the West Coast from Massachusetts.
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This week we sit down with Ray George one of the founders of the Ohio Gravel Grinders group. Using grassroots community-building tools, OGG has assembled an ever-growing resource for regional gravel athletes. These regional efforts are an incredibly useful tool and can be replicated by anyone to benefit their local communities.
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This week we are tackling what to carry on your gravel bike rides. We discuss the must-haves and the why nots of carrying a little extra gear for those unexpected emergencies. We close with a discussion on living and riding in the moment.
Talking gravel tires this week with Jan Heine of Rene Herse Cycles. Drawing on decades of experience and very specific testing, Jan walk us through all the tire considerations from size to pressure to knob patterns. This episode is a must-listen for any gravel cyclist.
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Rene Herse Cycles - Jan Heine takes us on a gravel tire deep dive
00:00:00 - 00:05:00
Hello and welcome to another edition of the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig. Dalton. This week's episode is brought to you our friends at P. N. W. Components. I got to sit down with Erin Kershaw and one of the CO founders of peon w a couple episodes ago, and it was great to learn the back story of the company I've always been impressed as a customer from way back when as. To their customer service and I've been even more impressed by their products. I spoke a little bit more about the coast handlebar. I've been riding a few episodes ago but I wanted to add on the coast dropper post the suspended version. That's right. Not only am I in the dropper camp but I'm writing suspended post and I've been really excited about how it's been performing. I've had a bit of a bad. And while I keep the pressure quite high because I don't want a lot of movement in it when it does move I realized that I've probably taken a pretty substantial hit on the back of my bike, and this is really saving my body. I'm a big advocate of configuring your bike to support you for longer and longer journeys and I think taking the edge off really. Falls into that camp. So I've been super jazzed by the coast dropper suspended post. So head on over to pin W components, dot com, and check out the product line that they're offering and see if anything they're offering helps you get where you need to go with your current bike set-up gravel ride listeners can use the code the gravel ride for fifteen percent off their order. So guys you to click in and grab those handlebars because we're on for an awesome ride today. got. Yon. Haina from Rene air cycles coming to talk to us about tires. I don't think there's a single episode IV recorded that I've learned more than in this conversation with John It. All kicked off in episode for of in the dirt where we discussed an article yon had posted on the Rene our website blog entitled wise seven hundred c wheels don't roll faster Randall and I, both had our own takes on the article but suffice it to say it was extremely thought provoking I got a ton of emails and a ton. Of comments on facebook about our conclusions and it was a natural place for me to go to talk to Yon and say, Hey, why don't you come on the podcast and talk us through all the different things that went into that blog post and all the different things you've kind of accumulated in terms of tire knowledge over the last decade, we touch on rim sizes we talk about tire casings we talk about tire tread patterns, and we talk about tire inflation I'm going to warn you. I think this is one of those. Ads that you might need to listen to more than once in order to take it all in I know for me tires of been this journey of understanding and nailing down my tire pressure numbers has been something I've played around a ton with to try to get the personality of the bike that I'm looking for as Yon Concludes the conversation he highlights something I believe as well that the. Tire and wheel combination is very unique and important area of any gravel rig and it can dramatically change the performance personality and characteristics of your ride. So it's something don't be afraid to play around with try things that are radically different, try higher and lower tire pressures to figure out what the sweet spot is. Well, that's probably enough preamble. Let's dive right into this week's episode. Welcome to the show. Hi. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk to you too. DAD LOVES TO START OFF BY JUST getting a little bit about your background as a cyclist before we jump into learning a little bit more about your. Company. G. Yeah. Since liking on my life pretty much I grew up in Germany and there were eye I lived on the very popular route for for braces to train. So every weekend, there were these groups of five, six, seven people on the beautiful bikes you know flying by the House and it just seems so so we're learning. Mountain racing inside the racing, but they'll also. Always was thinking about what sort of behind the horizon always wanted to explore for the so Back in Germany I rode to visit friends all over Germany on weekends sort of taking off You know after after Joshua's in college and writing all day and You know exploring new places and that. So from that became yeah. The the long distance is just so appealing to see how far you could go and what you could see.
00:05:02 - 00:10:03
Amazing and that eventually transition to you becoming professional in the bike industry. How did that come about and? Rene was not your first company. I know the brand predates all of us. Yeah so What happened? Here in in in Washington we We have only limited on the roads because it's the mountains and valleys. We have some really really beautiful roads, but there's more and more traffic and we started wondering about the lines on the map that we had seen that Nobody was overwriting on we found these gravel roads and we. Started, exploring them and part of it was the bikes that we had back. Then we're not so useful for that. I started out with a touring bike with specialized try cross knobby tires thirty five millimeter seems huge at the time when we were racing on nineteen on the road. But. It wasn't quite the same feeling as writing on the road. The bike didn't perform the same tires to perform the same. It's we didn't have that. Feeling of almost effortless. You know gliding along that. They enjoyed so much. So the where if you fall starts starts and we finally realize that we need to. Basically racing bike for gravel. And the touring bike nothing bike and renita racing tires for gravel. And that was a consequence through the interest in long distance cycling random during I had done pears pairs. Famous, right. In France, one of the oldest bike races that became an amateur events at seven hundred, fifty miles. And has a long history and all the old riders and racers and Randall nurse. Telling me about these wonderful handmade made tires that they had the nineteen forty that rolled so fast and there were you know thirty five or even forty two movies as wide and. And nothing like that anymore and what a shame. So we started looking into making stuff like that. Again, I imported some very obscure tires from Japan called Mitsubushi Trim lines that We're very good start but we realized that could be improved and we started testing different tires figured out. What makes it? Realize that high pressure weren't necessary to roll past this time when we all wrote that like one, hundred, twenty, five years AJana twenty millimeter tires and we something realize that that's actually was slower than eighty PSI and the twenty millimeters what's lower than twenty five and that sort of set in motion. The whole revolution we publish the findings we talked to some guys were advising professional teams, and then suddenly you saw Servando and others experimenting with Wider Tyres, they went from twenty three to twenty five pressure's lower that was on the road side but we really want to do the gravel, and so you know twenty five didn't do it back. Then even the we called gravel grinders where twenty eight millimeter tires which is. We laugh about it. Now that we were riding other people were writing eighty PSI twenty, twenty, eight millimeter tires on gravel and. So we were you know we looked into the forty two we looked into the smaller wheeled sixty and all that. and. All those roads sort of led to to the trench spikes because back then in the mountains of the Alps. In France of course, most roads were gravel. So they didn't think of gravel writing. There was this writing and if she wants to do go up the DA or something like that you went on Garoppolo growth. And so the bikes without existed and there were quite sophisticated because. The, how to say the technology hasn't changed that much apart from carbon titanium but otherwise. Human bodies. Sort of are still the same now where fifty eight years ago. and the technology was really well developed by nineteen thirty. And filter pretty quickly down to bicycles like and that's where renting come in who was an airplane builder who worked on prototype aircraft. including the first thing to fly across the Atlantic compares to New York which. A few years after Charles. Lindbergh. But was against the win. So it was a lot harder. They took thirty six hours of non of flying and. Anyway the reindeer started making bikes because he was an avid cyclist and Vice. Where sort of the gravel bikes that we need with the big tires very lightweight basically racing bikes for gravel road, racing bikes, fenders, and racks for bringing a few things lights who riding at night. But still high-performance bikes touring bikes ranks. That's sort of opened our eyes of what was audible.
00:10:04 - 00:15:02
That's an amazing origin story. Can I ask you to describe sort of random nearing as a aspect of the sport because I think some of my listeners imagine many of them aren't familiar with what that term actually refers to. Well. Originally, it's a French term that basically just made heike and it was. Transferred, to bicycle. As going long distances on the bike Really you know high pay and the light load. So not carrying a tent and you know your kitchen sink but carrying a small bag and. Yeah. Pushing the boundaries software you could go there was Oregon the Nineties magazine Sevilla's you put all the challenge for hours. How far can you get in forty hours and all these reader it's and said, I went to the mall to from Leon back and all kinds of adventures. So it's sort of took off from there. It's really interesting to me looking at it because I clearly, it's the same. Spirit as what we associate with growl riding today and in many ways even more. So with these multi-day, super long events that Renner's tend towards. Yeah I mean it's really you know now we have a lot of them gravel tour divide. So mountain race things like that are are sort of going back to the roots of cycling of exploring places that we usually don't go and so on. So, and rendering became a little more established. They organize these events two, hundred, three, hundred, four, hundred, six, hundred, and one, thousand, two, hundred kilometer they called pervades, which means basically you get the diploma you have passed the test or something and how it works is the you check in at certain points to show that you've completed the whole course you get your card stamped and often it's a convenience stores you just you know get the receipt or something. And at the end, you can get the medal So that's the institutional part of the sport and it's also great fun. But more often we just had thousand miles is because we wanted to see where we can go. Once we set ourselves a challenge going from Seattle to the highest roads on Mount Saint Helen then to the highest roads on Mount Rainier and back in twenty four hours. So that was really fun project we finished with twelve minutes to spare and But one of the greatest memories. Of Riding Bikes in the cascade that I think there's a lot of stories out there for people who are interested in understanding Randy nearing a little bit more. It's it's seems like an amazing side of the sport and just a unique way of challenging yourself that doesn't involve necessarily pinning a number on it. It's from listening to you. It seems like it's really about. The adventure and setting a challenge to lower what your world around you. Yeah. Absolutely I mean the one thing that I really enjoy about random dorien. It's much more about teamwork because. I recorded, but it's not there's no winner. So first of all, just the fastest if you're the fastest, but you aren't any better than the others, but taking the for group of people comes in together the times the only report it to the minutes. So there's no sprint. Yeah. You know when I was racing was always you in the breakaway with three other guys and you're working well together and just sort of this feeling of almost loved like everybody's doing their part you're. Does Well oiled machine of of a baseline rotating, and then suddenly they signed a two one kilometer and you turn into end, you need to think about how can I out smart the other guys how can out sprint them and deep down I was always feeling like well, the other guys deserve to win just as much as I do but that's not how you racist. So rendering sort of allows that where you all across the finish line together and you know you like. Related and you did yeah and one of the four that I won other three say I'll shoot you know I should have. Stars in my sprint a little sooner or puts a little more into it or not taking that many pools earlier or stuff like that. You know they're no regret. Yeah and. That's the way I know I feel in the middle of pack of a gravel racism I'm happy to have completed the event and I really love that whether it's the first person in line or the last person at the end of the race. We all had that similar experience. We can enjoy ourselves talking about the roads we just conquered in the trails we just concord. That's really why grabble rating has taken off so much I mean gravel itself I find fascinating because the bike has a little more freedom to move around. So you can play with the bike into the more vs on the roads where if you break traction usually you go down.
00:15:02 - 00:20:11
So it's it's more prescriptive on the broke whereas on gravel. If you go to fast, you get the big slide and he said, well, I should call them slower next time And but I think the main thing is the competition is this but it's much more friendly. It's much more. You know nobody said, well, I can eighty nine I'm better than you because you came only ninety. Yeah absolutely. My brief foray into the sport of triathlon I distinctly remember sort of people wanting to race me for four hundred place at Ironman not even that probably way back of the pack, but you know what? I don't in a gravel race I don't look at the guy next to me on a climate and think, oh, I need to beat you up this climb i. kind of look at him or her and say to myself. We're in a beautiful place we're exploring. We're having an adventure sure and much like mountain biking when you have those skit out moments in a gravel event and your heart races, it's just fun. It's part of the overall experience you kind of pushing the bike and your body to its limits. Absolutely, so let's talk a little bit about tires for the listener. Tie creating tire is a difficult and expensive process. Can you just give us the high notes because I know between like creating a mold and selecting the rubber compound? There's a lot of. Design decisions that go into and expense to get to the tires we see in the market today. Yeah I mean there definitely is I think the biggest revolution was realizing that high pressure aren't necessarily because before you had A. Big Tradeoff and this more now, just about the about the basics of tires. where you could either make a wide tire that was supple and you know how to say like a racing tire, but it hasn't really pressures because as the title gets wider the. The case gets a lot more stress. So you can have a narrow high pressure tires. You can have wide tires that either has low pressure or had to be really stiff to withstand the high pressure. Since we all thought that low pressure were slow high-pressure passed. It was really no way of making a high performance tire because. In with an tired, you make a really supple tire like hand May. And you can still inflate the two hundred and thirty PSI because it's so narrow the forces on. So small. But it was the why has the choice of either the touring Kinda tire that was reinforced everywhere, and you could run that say hundred PSI or you could make a hypothetical racing tire forty, two, million whiz but with only take sixty I or something like that and then sixty. PSI. That's GONNA be so slow and sluggish. So nobody even tried. I think the the revolution came when we realized that the higher precious make the bike vibrate faster. So it's fueled faster to lot of writers. Because you know vibration frequency either changes because of the tire pressure or because of you speed if you're going twice the speed, your bike hits all these little capitals on the road twice as quickly, and so the vibration has also doubled. So there's a sort of Prosieben you pump up your tires harder and faster, but it actually isn't it's we measured that on real roads with real right or power meters, roll down all kinds of different. Methods to make sure that that are results really weren't just flukes. statistical analysis all that stuff I want to into that too much. We realized that it's really not true. You can let out as much air as you want almost until the tire so that it becomes almost undrivable and only roughly at that point, it does get slow. Tell you flat tires really slow but there's no need for a hundred and thirty. Even with Racing Geyer and you know now we all say, well, of course, we know that but that was quite revolutionary. What's fifteen years ago or so and so that's realize those tires I mentioned earlier that the old French guys we're talking about really it works you make a racing tire that forty two millimeters wide you only inflate the to. Forty, or fifty PSI, and do all the stuff that you do on the twenty three millimeter racing i. Yes definitely it's definitely one of those things I tell you time and time again, I, speak to you athletes who are coming from the road side of the world and they are absolutely gobsmack. Them, you know I'm running on my six fifty be forty-sevens you know under thirty Psi they they absolutely cannot believe it. Yeah, and you know what's happening is actually physically it's quite interesting and easy to understand There's two ways the tire causes resistance. Wonder if the tire flexes, it's sort of like when you squeeze a tennis ball, how you hand gets tired because you know at the bottom, of course, the tire deforms and the more it deforms the more energy is absorbed, but also the harder it is the more energy as a source else squishing marsh mental doesn't take much for swishing tennis balls much harder because sensible, it's sorta hard.
00:20:14 - 00:25:02
And from that perspective, it would make sense to run higher pressures because less defamation means that energy absorption do one however the tire that's as supple as possible because again, for the same deformation he wants to use as. Possible. What people had overlooked in the past was that there's another way of absorbing energy and does sport. We called the suspension losses one week what is called the suspension losses? It was the US Army's that secret this way back in the sixties when they test the tanks used for some really lightweight for top secrets vehicle and they found that if the vibe the too much the rider's body absorb a lot of energy. It's sort of like you drop a beanbag on the ground and it doesn't bounce up because all the energy. Of the of the drop has been absorbed by friction between the that'll beans inside. And the human body is very good that absorbing energy to so she by vibrates. You slow down just because energy is lost it's sort of the discomfort that you feel you can. Even if you're rising really rough roads, you can feel your body gets warm So it's a huge amount of energy loss the. Two Thousand Watts know you and I know there's no professional sprinter who can put up two thousand watts. So in theory, you could absorb all your peddling energy on through those suspension losses and you can feel that if you go from the smooth wrote to a restaurant, how much you slow down? Even though. You know it's still a flat road there. There's no more wintry this than the tired deforms a little more but of that goes into the suspension bosses. And so of course. The Nest of vibrates? Let's ascension office you have. Which means? You're gaining again what you lost because the tire more with lower pressures. So with high pressures, tire states colds there's no energy loss, the tire, but your body gets warm. You're uncomfortable you lose all the energy there with low pressure. You don't do any energy in your body. You'll lose a little more tire, but the net result is the same so you know if I play my tires to the Max pressure or to. Something much more reasonable as. Really. No. Bearing on how fast the world on the smooth wrote. It's such an interesting equation and it comes up. So often in gravel cycling I, find because you definitely have to balance what your body is receiving as an input along with the efficiency of the bicycle that you're on. So. Yeah. What's interesting on gravel is that actually equation turns in favor of the low pressures. Because there's so much regulation that running lower prices just simply more Christians I think that well, we did this we ran on rumble strips that you have on the sides of highway because gravel it sort of not uniform were for scientific experiments you want something that's more replicable. So, we wrote on the smooth pavements. Nixed to the rumble strip on the brand new roads, and then we rolled over the rumble strip where the power meter and it was quite interesting. First of all, of course, how much harder I I was the experiment because everybody else refuse to write twenty miles rumble strips. I can tell you it eats up especially back then because we're on twenty eight goonies attire but on the rumble strips lower pressure was so much faster as you can imagine I mean. So you know running a forty two millimeter and thirty PSI versus sixty PSI on the rumble strips. The sixty PSI was waste law yet. That's so interesting. I also noted on your site, which is unique for tire manufacturer. The you've got four different casing options. Can you talk through kind of what those translate to for the writer? Yeah. I mean really what testing found and I guess what pro reads known forever is the only thing that really matters and making attire fast is the case thing how much energy is absorbed the marshmallow versus the tennis ball versus I don't know what maybe even something even harder and so It's always of course, the tradeoff you can make a super super fast casing. But but it's very fragile because it's paper send it. Doesn't you know doesn't withstand the rigors of real rose then also gets quite expensive. We talked about Kiai the finer the threads are the the more suppled vacationing gets the fastest. It's also the easier it becomes to cut unfortunately because you know fine threads, you can't cut one by.
00:25:03 - 00:30:10
Did. You ever think thread. Resist that there. So Really, the logical way of thinking about tires casings. So the trade pattern especially when gravel, it doesn't make that big of a difference because you're sliding rocks US sliding on rocks anyway. You're just pushing stuff around. So it's not really how much traction you have on the playoff gravel. It's more how much rocks have months each other so what you really you? Sing on my microphone. Became talk here got what you really want in the in to think about your tires, which cases you want to run. And in our case, we have four one this the extra light, which is sort of the. Top embracing casing that the. Is Actually not as fragile as love. The people think because one of the advantage with the white tires we have is that they run at such low precious they become a charter to cut. as you come out I mean you ever tired two hundred twenty Psi you right over something the only place that has to go into the tire and the tire can't before him around it. Whereas if you're right over, you know glass with a bike five PSI. Nothing's GonNa cut that tie. It's like PSI accept a really big nail or something because I just deforms around around the the obstacles. So you know even with a forty eight millimeter tire. At say twenty, five pm you have a lot fewer flats than you would with a narrow tire even with the same casing the same about the sidewalk cuts again, if the sidewall can can deflect than get cut you know it's much less fragile. but still you know you are in the gravel race, you're the Peleton you don't see where you're going I will ride the extra vacation. Okay. So for that, we also have a standard casing, which is mostly a more economical option. The threads are a little wider thicker. It's a little stronger. Of course, it's a little slower. It's a little less comfortable. but that's sort of the the he was called the standard case and that's the one we started out with before. We really pushed the envelope with the extra night. We have reinforced casing, which is the fine threads of the extra light, but with a picture and cuts proof layer underneath both the side walls and the tread. So that sort of our goto gravel, a racing tire because it's just a lot more punter country this and. Then, we have the endurance plus which is for. It King. Thirty can you know where basically just the rocks are really rough. Speeds are really high it's stuff. The people don't see where they're going. They just hit stuff right next and. It's sort of yeah. Let's say carnage but but you know that's that's sort of even stronger tire with a stronger puncture resistant layer. It's still remarkably fast because we say high end materials but it's it's definitely pushing toward. Toward the durability is the I would say outside the down the mountain bike world is one of the strongest is you can find your I think when anybody talks about the dirty cans, of course, they always talk about sidewall cuts as being the you never one risk factor. The and you know especially in the race I mean if I'm renting for example where my absolute time is the goal. If I have a tire that saved me hour over say two hundred ride and I have one slack. I can fix that in less than an hour. There's sort of by trade off. The race and I mean the front group. If I'm ten seconds duck, I'm already dropped I'm never gonna see those guys again. And so the calculation becomes quite different. It's orpheum game theory sort of analysis where in racing. The how to say the risk of getting draft is made concern but not your absolute time. Yeah and I think that calculation is something that a lot of athletes tend to make some errors in in thinking that they are in the front end of the race meaning they are the King Group. Versus. You know being realistic and saying, where where am I going to better serve myself going back to are taking care of your body part of the equation. You're much better to take care of your body and go faster than set up really hard bike and hard tire setup that's not going to serve your body well. The funny thing is it's not koster either you know the the idea from road racing in the old days. Especially, if I can suffer I'll be faster because I run narrow tires run higher pressures been drawn and you seen pro racing. You know now the Tour de France was going on, you don't see anybody on twenty million tires anymore even twenty three don't exist anymore it's all twenty five people run twenty, eight nobody's at one hundred thirty PSI anymore because what we found is because of those vibration losses, the suspension losses.
00:30:11 - 00:35:08
Suffering doesn't make you faster actually comfort is faster because if you look vibrating, you are not losing energy it's sort of the same as you look at the off road racing truck for the Baja raised or something they have huge tires that have suspension and it's not because they want to be comfortable for the driver. It's they wanted to get the speed you know and. It's the same thing for us. Oh, you know people always say this too much higher for that event and really. That question doesn't exist. You Never GonNa be South on the twenty eighth than on the thirty five even on pavement but much less on gravel and a forty two is going to be faster than the thirty five and forty eight will be even. Yeah. You're. GonNa say I was interviewing Ted King think of his last year or maybe even the year before he had made a comment saying he's never regretted going wider on his tire. Although it took some convincing him when we came out with with white tires. Yeah, because you know I mean there is of course, one of the equation and that is as a racer if you are the strongest race or And you have the same equipment that everybody else you're GONNA win. and. So as long as you feel that you're stronger than the other guy's using different equipment from the other guys carries the risk because we sometimes don't know everything like you know the current signed says the current sites signs ten years ago said or fifteen years ago. So that should run twenty millimeter tires the hundred and thirty five, and I can tell you those things are way slower than twenty five. I mean it's like completely easy to measure. We don't have to do a huge amount of of of of measuring. And so if but if everybody's on the twenty, one, hundred, thirty PSI is. The stronger guy wins and every race or of course at the field they're stronger otherwise they wouldn't show at the start line. So it's very rare. You know the fake fame Greg Lemond Arab our story where he was so far behind he had nothing to lose and no the only hope of winning what to get some sort of equipment advantage but that's extremely rare usually. You know you don't want to make a mistake and so if you do what everybody else does. It sort of the same thing to do and it makes perfect sense for racer. Yeah. That's an interesting. That's an interesting comment. I think it's at the conclusion of your article Wi- seven hundred don't roll faster that. Ted has been exploring and using six fifty and a lot of his adventure ridings but he's still racing on seven hundred C and it sounded like at the end of that article and you you had just said this that you know it's the safe choice for him. Yeah and you know it's just like. How to say signs always changes so. how to say it's sort of like even medical science. You don't take medication I miss you are you're sick you know because then you say, well, what do I have to lose? Greg Lemond or even the guy like me you know, I need every advantage I can get. So I'M GONNA run the white tires and the casing and all those things. I mean, I'm not gonNA stay with Ted King I can tell you that. But at least you know I can I can maybe stay with the group that otherwise couldn't stay with. But if you're the guy who wins anyway. By Gosh look on the run any risks? Yup. So one of the things that is a constant source of debate around the gravel community is obviously seven hundred versus six, fifty be and I don't think it. So much as a debate, it's more around what tire with your bike can accommodate. Right. So as as option in the article. Go Ahead I think that's actually the biggest constraint with tires is not that wide slower. At some point, you get to the point where you can build a performance bike anymore. Right and you know you look at the mountain bike on is slower than the gravel bike because it goes wider cranes because there's all kinds of constraints and then you look at the path bike that's really slow and the main reason it's slow is just you can't peddle it efficiently because the cranks are too wide and it's all about bio mechanics. and. So from that perspective, your the real problem is, what can we fit into a bike and still make it? Be a racing bike. Right. Yeah, I think I'm guilty for sort of leaning into the six fifty versus seven hundred. But as I analyze my thoughts, it's really about the width of the tire more. So than a care, one way or the other about seven, hundred, sixty, six, fifty b because as you've you've said in the article like the, it's very small differences in size at the end of the day particularly, it's often made up by the tire volume itself.
00:35:09 - 00:40:05
Yeah I mean definitely, yours interested about forty eight has the same outer diameter as a seven, hundred, twenty eight. So you know it's not and if big O. Tires really role better than you should put the tires or bigger wheels, you should put the biggest hires on because you know you can gain you get another few million. But it's always it was A. Rate, the bicycles thinker and scientists Jim Popadopoulos who said sites always very good at identifying potentially important variables and then arguing over meaningless differences. Just, like we talk about a pardon bracket high side millimeters lower makes the bike handle better, and then you look at where you sent gravity is it's about three feet off the ground and you know lowering that by five millimeters if you can't feel that. I want to see it. You know, and so I think we the tendency clearly i. mean it makes sense if you run a twelve inch wheel or something like that, it's going to be slower no doubt about it. But like you're saying between six, sixty, seven, hundred teeth, the difference is small and the other thing people. Think about either is that the tire isn't brown it stopped at the Boston. So most of the vibration gets absorbed into the bike doesn't have to get lifted over all these little box like you know like an old carriage did and don't care when you look at the stage coach from the rest of that huge wheels. Of course, the roads were really rough but The main reason is that if you need to lift the whole the whole vehicle, you know the whole bike, the whole carrots over those bumps speaker, we'll do work better. But ONCE YOU HAVE AIR YOU'RE TIRED You're sort of. Say. It's almost like the cat ATTRAC- where the Boston slopped, right? Yeah. It's interesting and you've got some great hand-drawn they look. Diagrams in that article on your blog. So I encourage listeners to go over to the site and I can link to it and our our show notes. I wanted to go back to a comment. You made about the tread patterns because I've been exploring. It seems like less and less tread on my gravel tires even though I tend to ride pretty aggressive terrain in. Marin. County can you go back to your comment about tread patterns and how you guys think about it? Yeah I mean we started out with road tires because that's all we have and You know we rewrote the some Nabis and song really found that there was very little difference on gravel because as said what happens is you're pushing around gravel sliding you're not. You know on the road what happens is they asshole doesn't move your tire slips on the asphalt. So kids even more drips you can get between asphalt entire the less likely you're gonNA slipped but on gravel that's not really a problem you're sort of tires digging into the ground anyway, and then just push. The gravel because usually the gravel is news and easy to to move so. That's what's happening and so tired I can't really help you there because you're balk sliding on box and the tired doesn't even touch the parts that. That, the sliding. So are your are. It looks like you're knob pattern is quite similar between like Juniper Ridge and a Pumpkin Ridge. So you've got that in one category and then you essentially have a slick tire as the other category of of tire that you offer. Yeah. Well, basically, what we found is there's to use. The two scenarios. One is where you can make a print footprint in the in the soil, but say it's news. Loose soil usually my I mean I'm coming from the sites across background and they of course, you need because because the just slips on the on the top layer of the deep you can dig in the mud, the better the the attraction you get. And So basically, I would say the the simple rule that if you can new tire tracks really making making little holes in the ground. Then then tread does make a difference. unless it's really new sand where really again uses pushing around San. You know there's there's not much that helps when you look at the Dune Buggy doesn't have a very aggressive tread. It's just the biggest tires they can fit on the on the Volkswagen Beetle Chassis or whatever they're using these right so. Yeah, they think there's two ways of thinking about about our tire treads. One is is basically a row tire which is optimized fast. Fox and you owned one to real slick tire for the assault because there needs to be a little bit Off Linking between the road surface ends the tire.
00:40:05 - 00:45:12
That's also why roads are never totally smooth when you talk to role billed as they say, yeah, we could make perfectly smooth asphalt, but the braking distances would just be too great. So they they always have some some roughness building and the tire that can interlock with a brusqueness gives you attraction especially in the wet I mean when you think about it the Coefficient of friction is about how when the roses wet but you and I know that we can go faster than the speed on the wet road than the driver then this it's already or something but. and that's because they that interlocking between higher and you always get some of it's because the rubber is is, is of course flexible. But if you have little ribs like traditional racing tires you get more of it and I think the traditional racing tires had because the rubber compounds way back where not very good and especially in the wet day they didn't drip. So they need to get every help. They could they got these these trips hazards but even with today's rubber compounds which are much better it's surprising. How much more group you get with a really really good tread on asphalt in the West especially. Smelling gravel I would say on loose gravel it doesn't that you can write anything because you're pushing around rocks and gravel and and that's it. It's a little different on dirt and so it depends on what you gravel looks like I think you're and by gravel look somewhat similar in Seattle in the cascades in Marin County, it's pretty new stuff. I would say Thai attract doesn't help you a lot in most cases unless it gets muddy or snowy or something I think going east like Vermont and so it's a little different there. It's more more soil and dirt on those roads and there you can get better traction with the Nabis and so we developed the knobby at first of all that I took cross but you know all so. for for for those conditions And then of course was always frustrating to me. Is I run these wonderful you know handmaid's be Nabis. Tiny knobs that spread really widely and on mud. It's amazing how well they grip but each across rates has a little bit of pavement an unjust like the knobs are folding over and I can be pedaling just waiting until I get back on the mud. So I can put down power again I thought this is ridiculous. I. Should make speed on the on the pavements and so the question we had was, can you make a Nabi that? Works well. and well in the mud. The past we've had these sort of center ridge kind of knobby tires that really too many dogs to work in the mud because they you know to roll smoothly they put more and more knobs on the. But then clogs up with mud and doesn't care itself as it rotates So you just basically started writing on the budget brother than then digging into the surface you have sleep tired that made out of. interesting folks from from my be cross raises I? Mean there's some some peanut butter mother where you can't do anything anyway. But you know sort of that compromise our question was, could we make the not so big that they don't squirm on the pavement But still have enough space in between. That they kill themselves and still make them small enough that they dig into. The answers yet? it took a lot of experimentation or we started with calculations because as you mentioned earlier the time over very expensive, you can't just make a prototype. You basically commit to to more or less production run. but anyway, and we found you can I mean you can make a knobby tire the the coroner's really well, the rights almost like a slick tire on the road. And that still drifts extremely well in the modern smell and so on. So that's the second pair we offer, which is basically you know A. A mutt tire that works really well on the road versus the other tire that the road tire that works really well on gravel and gravel the intersection where I would say. He can run either I mean tha king ran the Nabis endured cancer in In the mid south ran the slicks and. You know he says there's there's not much in between between them on those courses. Yeah I think it's really interesting and sort of mind blowing the first time you ride a slick tire off road and. It's surprising how well they do perform. A. Mean. Realistically you look at you know you drive your car on the gravel road you don't have huge op speaking out of those tires either if it's not to say it's not necessarily. Well like a lot. About the I mean you know if you're in snow and you know that your car to drive on snow it's super easy to spin the wheel even though with even though you might have four wheel drive because just they don't drip and if you have real like rally snow tires on your car, you know it's it's different than the same with the bike.
00:45:12 - 00:48:45
I mean that's where you know if if I expect any snow or mud on the right definitely puts the NABIS. On one hundred, zero saved in between right and that's the beauty of. Of the tires we were able to develop his role. So well, payment actually better than the month of racing slicks in our testing. That you don't have to compromise so much anymore you can. You know we did one right where we traverse the cascades. In January not the super hypothesis because you know ten feet of snow, it's not like you want to do but we went at the foot of months in Helen on roads that are close to car so. Wonderful writing. But we had like a hundred miles of. What we call transport states just roads riding to get that because we took the train to the you know to the jumping off point. Then we rose across the the mountains and took a train back. And Really It wasn't a chore to write all that Pavement on the on the in fact, we forgot about the now time Britain that course many times wasn't any slower than usual would be right. Interesting. Will Jana I appreciate all the time today it's given a great background to your company and your history and a love getting the insight into these tires because I think there's a lot of thought that goes into it in. It's worth my listeners understanding the different variables that you need to be considering when purchasing attire. Thanks a lot and yeah, I mean definitely. Yeah. I. Think the tires are probably part of your bike that makes the biggest difference in how the bike fields and performs and Maybe, we made those tires because we wanted tires to ride ourselves, and that's always been sort of driving or development. is where and how and what we want to ride. So. Thanks a lot for having me. Big. Thanks John for coming on the show and I hope you learned a ton about tires, tire pressure and tire treads during the conversation I. Know I did there was a lot to that conversation. So don't be afraid to rewind and hit play again and take some notes. I think we can all learn a lot from yawn and the great news is a lot of the things he said can be applied to your existing wheel, set your existing tires to test and learn and see if some. Of the things that he's discovered in his writing and testing match with your own personal tests on the road and trail. Big. Thanks again to this week sponsor pin W. components do not forget about that discount code the gravel ride I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast and big thanks to everybody who's been visiting by me a coffee dot com slash the gravel ride to check out how you can support the podcast and some of the different membership perks and membership options that we've been adding to that page from time to time. Supporting the PODCAST is not within your means, ratings and reviews, and simply sharing the podcast with your friends is incredibly helpful to me, and it really puts them wind in my sails. So that's it. For this week my friends make sure to hit me up on social media and remember we've got that new facebook listener forum. I'd love for you to join where I'm looking for episode, suggestions and questions you might have for us to cover in the dirt. So until next time, I'm signing off and here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
This week we tackle gravel bike maintenance 101 with the goal of equipping you with tips for daily, weekly and monthly habits that will keep your gravel bike rolling well in the dirt. We also discuss what to look for in a riding buddy and the value of camaraderie in gravel cycling.
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This week we speak with PNW Components Co-Founder, Aaron Kerson. We dive into the growing influence of MTB technology and philosophy within the gravel market and the benefits. Wider handlebars and dropper posts are making their way onto more and more gravel bikes. What do you think?
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This week we tackle the $1200 and $2200 price point gravel bikes via the Cannondale Topstone Sora and Landyachtz AB1. We dive into what can and should be upgraded versus what is better left alone. We then jump into the idea of gravel cycling scratching a particular itch and what to do when that is not possible.
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This week we speak to Jenny Tough; ultra-endurance bikepacking racer and adventurer. Jenny was the 1st woman to complete the 2020 Atlas Mountain Race and the inaugural Silk Road Mountain Race. We unpack some of her many adventures and strategies for thriving when the going gets tough.
Episode sponsor: PNW Components. Use promo code: 'thegravelride' for 15% off.
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Jenny Tough: Bikepacking Racer and adventurer
Automated Transcription, please excuse the errors.
Hello everyone and welcome to the growl ride podcast I'm your host Craig. Dalton. This week's episode is brought to you by our friends at P. N. W. Components I mentioned the company a few episodes ago and the great customer service I received ordered a mountain bike. See Post many ago. So I was super excited to start talking to them about what they were doing in the gravel market specifically this week I wanted to highlight the coast handlebar I've been writing the four. Hundred Eighty millimeter version of the bar, which is about forty millimetres longer wider. Excuse me than the bar I had previously been riding. They also do make a five hundred twenty millimeter bar. It features a shallow drop and a twenty degree flair which all translates into a super stable bar. When you're getting aggressive on the bike I'm really valuing the width of the bar in terms of getting leverage from the outside to throw the bike around the shallow drops seemed to make it. Easy for me to move around between positions, I feel very comfortable when I combine a dropped saddle with shallow drop bar that I'm very much in the pocket of my handlebar and I very much in control of the machine. So I've been super keen on it. It's definitely a different look for the bike. If you're more used to a Rhody type position going to the wider bar feels a bit extreme to begin with, but it quickly fell into the recesses of my mind. As I took advantage of the attributes of the bar and as I said I feel really great in the technical terrain so much so that we really want to dig in and do a full episode on these wide bars because I think it's super interesting for certain writers to consider depending on the type of riding they're doing what they're looking for. So head on over to PM W components, Dot Com and use the code the gravel ride for fifteen percents off your order. This week's guest on the podcast is Jenny tough. I'm not sure where to begin talking to you about her resume. She's an amazing adventure athlete both a runner and a bike pack racer. We got to talk about the Silk Road Mountain Race and the Atlas Mountain, race, and these bike packing events are going to blow your mind and you absolutely have to go visit Jenny tough dot com and see some of the pitchers and interviews and videos of these events Kazaa absolutely breathtaking in terms of the terrain and incredibly inspiring about what the human body is possible of just talking to. Her about the lack of sleep and the challenges that one goes through in these expedition style races was really inspiring for me and I remember my last long ride thinking about how I was suffering and thinking. Well, that's nothing compared to what these athletes like go through. So I hope you enjoy the episode Jenny's one of the APP Adora ambassadors for the bad company out of the UK who made the introduction for me. So I appreciate that and I very much appreciated this conversation with Jenny and I hope that you take a look at all her adventures and enjoy the conversation. So with that, let's dive right in Jenny. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Awesome. I Love I always like to start off by finding a little bit about your background and I think in this conversation, your background is both an athlete and someone who's riding gravel bikes. Athlete is a really strong word I don't know if I'd go. Hi. Yeah I mean, my background's always been adventure and travel was always one of my biggest passions and and on the. Side of that I was also really into endurance sport like why I mean like a normal person I guess I started doing marathons before realize marathons are just terrible thing to do to yourself and I started. Cycling actually because I was running marathons going to spin class. Now he's actually really So when I graduated university I. Spent what little money I had on a touring bike and I cycled all the way to the Yukon from my hometown. Calgary having never rode a bike anywhere before only best-in-class. And then I just realized that this combination of my two loves endurance sports and travel was really what made my heart sing and that was really where I found my bag, what I want to keep doing so you know that was Eleven years ago and I guess you say it keeps us going and getting a little bit out of hand. So, that after that first trip did that sort of spiral your imagination to like Oh, I'd love to go ride here an adventure there. Yeah I think it really opened my eyes because before that didn't I mean I didn't know anything about like or cycling. I didn't have any friends that are cyclist at the time I certainly didn't. So I just wasn't exposed to this world and then I just kind of when I did that bike tour and I started another cyclist realized there's this concept that there is nowhere in the world that you can't go got a bicycle and you can just explore and you know.
00:05:09 - 00:10:12
Tire widths depending go really anywhere and yes, it did it did sparked my imagination once I started getting a little bit more comfortable being alone with the bike I mean going on your first trip to a place like the Yukon where you're really alone when you've never wrote a bike is just a dumb thing to do I didn't know how to. I didn't know how to fix a puncture at all I had like a handwritten note in my bag. Like I've been watching youtube the night before I left on your trip teaching me how to change change of time. Just in case I had to do it like I didn't even know there were tubes inside like that's how. About Bikes and I left the front door and cycled off to the Yukon. So that was my only real apprehension was I had no idea how bikes worked and if it broke, I literally had no concept of what to do about that. That's both amazing and refreshing I think. Audience I don't WanNA project too much. But I think a lot of my audience may come from a traditional bike racing background and then they discovered gravel silica adding on adventure to their love of cycling is kind of this new thing and to hear you just talk about adventure was the main driver and the bicycle was just this means to kind of get out there and discover the world is kind of something refreshing and I think a lot of my listeners should probably take in and put in their pocket for the to have a little bit more perspective on what you can do with the bike. It's really cool and I think I never fit in with the bike the traditional bike touring culture because I also really did get off on pushing myself really hard and trying to do really big days walk the adventure. For me sport is part of it. It's not just about getting to waste is also like how far can I ride before the sunsets kind of stuff I love doing not so it's it's both of them combined. And that seemingly has led you down this path of bike packing, and for the uninitiated, what how would you define? What bike packing is? What are you doing to your bike that enables you to duet and what are you able to do when you pack your bike full of everything you need? And most pure form it's taking whatever bike and stopping whatever stuff you need to it somehow and going on an adventure Overnight Adventures obviously is what makes it like packing but it's really whatever works for you whatever type of bike you have. Every type of bike is a packing bike i. do a lot of back country stuff where I've got you a tent or Viviana out there for ages. But then he's also do the clamping stuff where those hotels and being bees and you have a really nice trip. So it's it's really whatever works for you. In my opinion there are no rules. There's no minimum distance. There's no specific Hitless. A you have to have it's you know it's adventure it's open. Do what do you think it's adventure is one of the most creative. Things out there. So yeah no rules. And I feel like we're in sort of the golden age of bike packing bags whereas before you know fifteen twenty years ago there might have been this notion that okay. You've got to put a rack on the back. You GotTa Have Panthers and it's going to be pretty unwieldly off road. Today's bike packing bags are just quite a bit different. Can you talk a little bit about your setup? Yeah. It is really incredible what we've got available now and not when I say everybody is like packing bike that's largely because this has to place where even your respect bike squishy mountain bike, whatever it is there are bags available to do it and I ride with Dr Bags, and been working with them for a couple of years and in my opinion, make the specs out there. I do have three bikes, but my gravel bike is definitely my favorite bike packing bike and we've been to five conscious together now My Kit will change a little bit every time based on the terrain, but basically, it's got the gravel bikes got a front row bag I'll keep my sleep system, which might be might be a tent in my frame bag will be all the tools, and then in the saddle pack will be the stuff that I need to survive like spare clothes waterproofs maybe a stove going quite remote. But not usually I'm just whatever. Whatever I need for this specific adventure at hand, it's it's pretty basic. It's pretty minimalist that I can are you trying to distribute the weight in a specific way like you putting the heavier stuff in one area of the bike versus other? Yeah You're definitely going to be happier if you can keep your weight in the frame and that's where full frame bags are. Quite popular just because that keeps the weight really Lo- low like that's obviously where you normally keep your water anywhere because that's where your bottle cages are So people are putting the heavier stuff like water down there Yeah. Heavy, and that's I think that's the great thing about passing bags or Hispanics opinions I mean I remember how many? And how long it would take me to make sure that the right side and the left side were even if they weren't, you're going to have a disaster of a day.
00:10:12 - 00:15:07
But biking. It's. It's a lot easier to just chuck stuff in because everything's really compact on the bike. It's kind of hard to mess it up I. Think. I do like to keep the front kind of light and like I said the frame kind of heavier but really i. It is it is a lot easier to get way with a lot more. It's it's not that complicated. Yeah. For those of you haven't seen any of these type bags, I mean imagine sort of just a rolltop bag that you can really stuff a lot of stuff into I've been amazed kind of rear seat bags can hold I mean you really you can hold basically a week's worth of compressed clothing in there if you need to. Yeah and I have. I'm sure you have and then I questioned on the front bar now you mentioned kind of trying to keep that a little bit lighter. Have you found had experience if you overload the front bar that front end is just too heavy and it's making you more. Puncture. Potential. I haven't memories with the front. Bar Is that that's the one I will use I will never open during the day. So like there's two to fast one is that you ride fast in your your bike is late on the other. The Scottish term for faffing around. The time always having a dig at every wants something on your bag. You have to take everything of it to reach at that kind of stuff if you can just be really slick in your packing. You never do that. So my front bag, just because it is the most fiddly one because I've got drop ours as if it on a mountain bike on job bars, you know you kinda gotta squeeze it in between them. So it's harder to get into during the day. So I only ever keep my sleep system there because I only need that once lots at the end of the day right? So yes or no I've not really had problems genuinely the move from bike to bike packing. And just easy this works. And then what type you mentioned you writing drop bar bike, what are you writing and how big it's higher? Are you able to ride in that bike? So the biker us the most love my life is my shine stew she which is a steel bike maintenance Scotland with carbon forks and it's kind of for me. It's the ultimate by packing bike because it takes to wheel size this I've got seven hundred sees if I want to go on a road adventure but most of the time I run my six Fifty v wheels. I think tires of. I, don't even remember what has gone on there. I want to say the two and a half The more tired you have the more comfortable you're going to be. to bliss obviously is GonNa Increase Your Comfort. The difference between going out for a nice bike ride or who's going bike packing up by packing you're going to do this all day and then you're going to get up tomorrow and it again and then you're gotta get up tomorrow do it again so comfort becomes a lot more important if you're bouncing along I'm really high pressure. You're going to end up having saddle sores by the end of the week. So so I'd always prefer comfort. So I I love my big tires and I would never go. They can never go skinny ties again I'm with you on that and the listener knows them a broken record that bigger is better on tires. Yes. I also questioned on the front handlebar. Are you writing particularly wide drop bar to accommodate the bag? Is your front bag just kind of fit nicely and what you would traditionally ride on your on your road bike. Yeah I I. DON'T I think I. Attempted. Going into flair bars because that will give you a bit more space. But I've been on standard I mean all my road bike I do actually have lady sized handlebars so I don't use those on my gobble bar. So that's the only thing I would say that they are bigger as the standard. man-size drop. Virus. Gotcha. But no I've I've been okay and that certainly that's where you needed to make more space. That's something you would look at I. Mean because I've gone on tours with my mountain bike with flat bars and that just got unlimited space with bars. Obviously. no, but I I mean again, it's you've got to have your stuff. We've also got to be comfortable like it's going to be sustainable. Something you're going to do for a week or more. You've got to be comfortable and I. Just always think if I had the wrong bars I'm going to be uncomfortable. I'm going to get an injury I'm not gonNA be happy. So I'd rather make everything work around the bike and keep the bike something. That's enjoyable. Yeah, absolutely. So we've set the stage of Jenny as a bike packer but I don't think we've scratched the surface of doing justice to the type of adventure athlete you are. So I want to jump into a couple of these events that listener may not ever heard of one being the Silk Road Mountain race in. Conserv. Stan probably. Oregon Dan, and then the Atlas Mountain Rise. Atlas Mountain Race could you just in broad terms give the listener an idea of what these epic adventures look like.
00:15:08 - 00:20:06
So. This style of bike racing is single stage unsupported writing rolls off the tongue. So out doesn't it? So. The idea is that there's a set route for these ones and you have to pass through I think those ones had three or four checkpoints each and the distances were epic and you got given a cutoff time. So the Silk Road I, think we had fifteen days to finish it in the atlas. We had eight days to finish it and single stage unsupported means you've got to carry everything that you need to keep yourself and your bike going and the clock never stops. So you. You will sleep, but the longer you sleep the less likely you are dual So it is this really cool competition where you see so many different styles by packing people doing what works bound the atlas race, the guy that won it outright he didn't sleep at all but a guy that finished. In second place James was two hours behind him and he slept every night for a few hours knew that he would ride better if he did that I again, the unsupported means if anything breaks on the bike, you've got to fix it You know and can give you any age. So you have to find your own food out in these countries that most of us have never been to into Norway around everything, you've got to be self sufficient and really really cool. It's so much fun. To just put a fine point on it for the listener. I mean, these are races that I think the Silk Road Mountain race was over eleven hundred miles. The Atlas Mountain Race was seven hundred and twelve miles. These incredible distances relative to what we often talk about on this podcast is being long events like the decay two, hundred being two hundred miler here in North America. Let's talk about the Atlas Mountain bike race in Morocco because the imagery from that just look. Amazing. You talked about sort of going at your own pace and deciding to sleep when you WANNA to sleep and acquiring food. However you WANNA acquire it. Can you just walk through what those six days look like for you because I think it's just an epic tale. Yeah and it's it's really crazy now to. Realize that I did that in twenty twenty like it just feels like a pass life not doesn't it Yep? Yep My strategy. My strategy for these races is my what line is keep your shit together like just keep everything functioning and get yourself onto some kind of circadian rhythm with your sleep that's going to be brutal. But so my strategy was we all left Mary cash and we had to get over the high atlas leaser like the snowy peaks. We have a really huge climbing obligation day Am My only plan was to get out fast on that first day and get a good good day under me. And then after that, it was Tried to sleep at the same time. So miraculous quite equatorial, which meant that we had twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of night, and that was one of the big challenges in the race was that half the time. Urine darkness and you have to keep your lights running so mostly by using dynamos on their bikes to keep the bright headlights going So I would. I would ride as consistently as I could all day and not around midnight or one am is when I was busy down. So I would just roll out my sleeping bag on the sand or the rocks by the side of the trail and try to for two to three hours to mount how I was feeling, and then get up quickly put that sleeping bag away my role bag and keep riding again, and then just rides. All Day Long whenever there was a town or village that you went through you dolphins you have to stop get supplies Morocco's really difficult on water in particular. So you had to be quite meticulous making sure that you'd never run out of supplies like obviously riding those kind of hours you're trying to ride for. My ride time each day would be eighteen nineteen hours. The calories are going through your cutting, such a fine line keeping yourself like you just can't eat enough. So you had to be. You had to be pretty well organized making sure that you hit those resupply locations. This is all blowing my mind. So lots of questions for you were you running where you're running a Dynamo Dynamo is a hub mechanism that generates electricity as it's going around. So you were using to kind of keep a light charged. Yes well, so I've got a USB charger on it. So I was able to keep everything going. So I'd have power. Bank. And my computer. So you have to follow the route, your other ACC biking you're going for that long as well. I had exposure lights that were helmet mounted because. I mean it was pretty gnarly. It was a gravel riding event but I think it was by far the GNARLIEST gravel I've done like a lot of you thought and kind of wish I was on full saw straight now. So yeah, you want help mounted like. Student Fall off the mountain. Obviously keep your phone going because I'm not doing something like that without podcast and play to keep me from going insane via the Dynamo.
00:20:06 - 00:25:07
Is What kept my power going on? If I went to a village or something, you could try and plug it in a cafe or something like that. Try to find the electricity. Because, you're just it's such a losing battle to keep that much technology running smoothly. Yeah. I mean we're you successful in kind of having battery when you need it. Yeah I. So I took two lights and that was probably the smartest thing that I did because. That much night writing and I don't like to mess around with a small light. Proper going down a mountain trail I I wanna see it. So, and that's also why I slept at night like some people will just sleep whenever they feel like it and just be. All entire now and take a little micro nop or something like that. But I always thought it was a waste of time to sleep when the sun was up when I didn't need to waste my life battery. So. Yes. It was definitely something I had to stay on top of and be really conscious of keeping it going because if you're going up. Like if you're. Doing I mean there was a lot a lot of Haiku bike and we do not the downloads obviously not running like pretty to be over ten kilometers an hour to keep the working. Six Miles. Yeah, that's the Dynamo things always been super interesting to me as a piece of technology that people should look into. So then going to sleep, I mean you mentioned you just sort of rolling out a lightweight Vivian and sleeping wherever on the trail made sense wherever your body was saying, Hey, it's time to go. were. You were you did you bring a stove with you? So when you got up, you could have some tea or coffee or make a little bit of food. In this race. Because Rocco's a lot more compact in its population and also. It is fairly warm that you know you didn't have to worry about that kind of stuff. so I didn't bother with stove. I would just have dry food like I. Think I had. Wasn't GonNa make me sound like a Canadian stereotype hippie. GRANOLA. To get me around the course every morning I would take my little bagnall out and try to stuff something in my face before I got going again. but yeah, I think just dry food like biscuits and chocolate bars is just i. mean the Diet is not good. Let's be honest like. The Diet is pretty unhealthy. Imagined like whatever cafe you stumble across. You're just ordering whatever seems like it will survive when you pack it up to the counter and you just say what food do you have that can be really quickly in my face and that's basically what you're gonna eat you. You just don't care anymore even calories. And how was that journey across Morocco? I mean did you feel? Were there multiple days where you weren't interacting with any villages along the way. So one really big factor in this race is that North Africa is. is a place where men and women have very different roles in society. And in this race, we compute as equal. There's only one podium. There's no difference between like we unofficially acknowledged the women's race. But officially, it is one race for all of us. No matter your gender or your age or your abilities. but but in Morocco it is it is a fairly difficult place to be a woman. I wouldn't be around the Bush interest in Morocco. You're kind of okay. You can probably even go around and the Bikini in some places but we were in very rural areas where. being woman come with extra complications. women traditionally can't actually go to cafes and restaurants in those kind of places especially on their own. So I kind of have to hide between the other riders. which was an interesting dynamic because technically they are my competition. But on the guys in the race, you know I gotta say I'm just still really blown away. By how sensitive they were to the fact that the women in the race had this extra kind of penalty against them that we had an extra complication that we had to look out for our safety and we had to comply with dress code and we had to be a lot more culturally sensitive and. There were some incidents like there was one woman in particular who had a really hard time with kind of male harassment. So We had to deal with that stuff on top of this, very difficult by grace. So. That was a factor I've been to Morocco before actually on a solo expedition running. So I knew all that and so this was very different experience because I have these male writers with me so I can have this pack and again like it was just so such a cool thing in this community that is really competitive but they put competition to the side every time that we went through a village to make sure that the women in the race. Felt and were safe. That's amazing. So we. As a community, we came together and that was that was such a nice thing about the race and I imagine just the of spirit of adventure that everybody who signs up for these races is in for there really are whether it safety.
00:25:08 - 00:30:04
In villages or just mechanical issues or what have you I imagine everybody's kind of looking out for one another to the degree. That's possible. Yeah absolutely. Yeah and. It's kind of hard because you really love each other like it's you know it's the tribe. We all become instant best friends on these things but with the self supported rule actually if someone has a mechanical, you can't help them or else you've disqualified them because they've accepted your health right See You. You can't just be next to someone sometimes going like, Hey, buddy looks pretty broken and you just have to sit. There with your arms full that and watching tat to them or whatever. But if you take one out of your bag and it's so hard as a cyclist like we live by this creed that someone's GonNa Puncture you help them if you've got a tube for them whatever. And these races you you just you can't on it. So Weird So awkward I'm it's probably the thing that I hate the most is that you can't help each other that you just have to watch someone else suffer and and hope that he's GonNa figure it out and be okay back because a lot of these situations I'm sure like you know you break your driller off and you're on the top of climb or whatever you've got no choice you've got to continue forward. You've got to convert that bike into a single speed or do whatever you have to do to keep going forward or you're just walking. Yeah exactly, and I should say the scraps rate in these races is really high. You mentioned the Silk Road? One. Done a couple of years ago. I think out of one, hundred, thirty, one finished. the atlas was a little bit better than that I can't really remember how many people cross the finish line but you know the chances of finishing it sometimes goes pretty close to fifty percent. you know just things are not gonNA fix or obviously you're in these foreign countries the likelihood of getting sick The justices are insane. So injuries takeout quite a lot of riders and yeah, it's it's just to finish. Absolutely and how do you keep yourself sort of mentally with it and focused on the on the prize throughout these events. Yeah that that can be hard because you are so low. So I I really do like music and podcasts I think music is great for manipulating your mood. So for me night riding can be the hardest because I'll just. I'm such a like Zan rider all just happily slow down and look at the stars and have a really nice time. But that's not how you WANNA race. So I do sometimes have to pull out some kind of playlist that's GonNa get me like turning those pedals and get me really mega The Nice thing about these races when it's on a set route is that you are passing the riders all the time. So even though you can't help each other ride together and draft. you can ride in proximity to other people as long as you're not pairing up and actually helping each other in the race. So I did have quite a lot of hours spent other riders people from all around the world that would have never met otherwise completely different lives but the one thing we have in common is gravel bikes. So How'd that company in that Camaraderie and that was really cool. So Yeah I think you just you gotta stay on top of it with your mental game. You know if you start thinking negatively if you start focusing on how much pain urine because by the third hake guaranteed you are in pain If you start zoning on that stuff, you're in a losing battle you know you've got to find a way to come back from that and keep yourself just thinking positive thinking about how much you love your bike even if that's not feeling very honest right now, you just you've got us to be proactive about it is what I found. So that's where. The music and podcasts to manipulate remove or with the other riders or your gratitude was huge for me. Said being Morocco is very difficult place for a woman. You Know I. It was really hard to to. Lose focus on the fact that I'm so privileged. I. Get to compete in this sport by his very melt Arment I get to fly to other continents around the world and ride my bike freely and you know get the spare time and health and money to be able to be an athlete. You know like my gratitude levels see that race were so through the roof though just look around you like this is cool. You get the opportunity to do something like this like it hurts but you chose that hurt you know yeah. Yeah that's amazing I. think that goes a long way just everything you're saying about a positive attitude whether it's One hundred mile ride or an adventure like this just. Knowing and understanding that everybody from the first person to the last person is GonNa have a moment of almost deep despair in how they're feeling and not thinking they can turn the pedals over another moment. But at the end of the day, the body is capable of more than you think it is in most cases.
00:30:04 - 00:35:02
So just keeping that positive attitude and keeping moving forward seems like a great mantra. Yeah, absolutely, and I read a study in. A couple of years ago that you actually will get to the top of a climb faster. If you keep repeating yourself the phrase, I've got this versus. Oh my God is hard. I don't like this hill So scientifically proven to say Nice things to yourself back yourself and think positively not maybe doesn't come naturally to me, but you know we start doing it and see how it works and you know it totally helps. So. Can we talk about how that attitude applied during the Silk Road Mountain, race and that I climb. That I've read about. Off that I climb, it was like a punch in the face right out of the start of that race like we had I think the first time was just over four thousand meters altitude, which is a serious altitude for. anyone. You know it was a it was a hard climb. We got hit by a thunderstorm while we were doing at. The last bit was hike bike. And then the big going down if he even got over that pass, which a lot of people didn't on the first day going down that pass also. So Mike Bike and when you're hiking down, that's like hard on everyone's mood like. What am I doing walking downhill? This is an appropriate. It seemed like there was this calculation that you had to make as a writer right out of the gate about how far you were. GonNa, make it in that first day, and if you were going to be giving in the snow and all kinds of horrible choices that if you didn't get to where you thought, you were going to go your your your beginning of your race could start awfully difficult. Yeah because you're really committed. I mean you don't want to set up camp four thousand meters is a dumb thing to do So you've got to decide am I going to actually make it over the past or am I not. Yeah it wasn't. Then that thunderstorm I think a lot of people didn't expect the thunderstorm again at actually been to carry on an expedition before. So I was kinda familiar with the flow of the nature out there, which is very typical in the summer to have a bill of of a thunderstorm late afternoon and it's GonNa. Last couple of hours but then it's GonNa stop. So, when the thunderstorm hit, I know a lot of people set up their tents and bunker down and just thought you know oh well. Like bad luck. Back Down and I kept going because I knew that if I kept moving I would stay warm and I would eventually be drying a couple of hours when this will all stop and I could just keep going so i. Went through the thunderstorm which. I think kind of steals my race start for me at least that I I did do that and I didn't stop The. Yeah I remember that day really well, it just seemed like chaos. There were just riders everywhere clean like what? Everything's hard. Everything's getting thrown at US exactly I. Remember it must have been like two seventeen when I became aware of that race and event and I looked very much forward to kind of observing it and being dot watcher and they did a great job of kind of conveying information from the field via their podcast and other kind of social platforms and. All that anticipation as a fan to look at it, and then to see how challenging that first day was for people. It really just blew me away as an event. Yeah I mean you definitely knew right from the start with not your cut out for this. And there was no gentle warm up. It was really like you're either in this or you should just go home now like this is going to be hard and you know and it stayed true to that theme every single. They had a new punch in the face like it was a hard. Arteries and without event did you feel more remote for longer periods of time than you in Morocco? Yeah absolutely, and that event does require a level of back country skill and one that you are at altitude but also there are really remote stretches. So you had to carry a lot more in this race. So you had to have things like water filters a stove on, you would have to carry several days worth of food at any point. and they're just being a lot less villages means you know your mechanical 's you don't get to walk to the next mechanic or someone that can help you like it's going to be days and that village probably isn't GonNa have anything like there aren't bike shops in the countryside curious down like that doesn't exist. So yeah, I did I think that one. Felt. A lot more like a mountain expedition race with bicycles rather than a bike race, right? So you were fortunate that Atlas Mountain Bike Race happened early in twenty twenty. So you actually got a big event under your belt. Did you have any other events planned for the year or is there's are there things are excited about pursuing in the future? And yes I. I don't raise very often on more of an adventure, but actually I stay in racing because of the tribe because of the get together of all these really cool people that we get to ride together the racing element is always really weird for me because I'm not back. Actually So I.
00:35:02 - 00:38:27
I am gutted that we're not racine at the moment that it's going to be a while on I did not another race bond for the atlas was GonNa be my event. So I'm yeah I'm just beyond grateful that I got it and then I was going to do. More bike packing, and touring kinda around Europe which isn't having at the moment of actually speaking to you from Whistler. As a Canadian citizen quite lucky that I get to just hide out here. Yeah it's not about place. I have not gotten a bike packing trip around nine Cougar island which family lives. So have managed to keep going again I'm really grateful because I know a lot of people aren't able to adventure on the levels that that I am. Yes I'm just I'm just not thinking about it too much. It'd be nice to do a race and get the tribe together but you know if it's GonNa be a while before we do that again, I'm just not going to dwell on it. Yeah. I think that's a good attitude. We've all had certa just take a deep breath and a pause and say like we love being out there in the Wilderness we love riding our bikes and do it for that, and we'll find a way to get the community gather when it safe and healthy for everybody. Yeah exactly and thank goodness for bikes I mean if you how can you get through this without cycling I now I think we all need to get outside. This is what we need. I now I would have gone nuts I. Remember we talking briefly about Spain before we were recording and some friends over there who were limited to riding bicycle trainers on their balconies. Yeah, and so I did quarantine when I arrived in canvas to weeks worth of a terrible trainer. And for about two weeks, I could probably keep it interesting. But I I, mean I think longest I ever stayed on it was two hours and I was just like. Support. Seen anything new and you know to I ride I mean come on I need way more than that. Yes. It's certainly sounds like it. Well, this has been awesome Johnny I really appreciate you. Talking to the listener about these great events and anchorage everybody did check out. Jenny's website which I'll link to because there's some amazing film that you've created about some of your vendors. And also pointing to other coverage of the Silk Road Mountain raise in the Atlas Mountain race that are worth watching, and then I'm also Jenny geeking out over your running expeditions because I think that's awesome as well. Yes I do have fun. So fun stuff. Thanks so much for the time Jenny. That'd be great. Wow, quite a story right I find athletes like Jenny and those races, the bike packing races so inspiring. So want to do something like that at some point in my life don't know if it will be these week long events, but certainly something overnight I think would be an amazing challenge for any of us. So that's our episode for this week. Appreciate you joining us. We've just started a new forum on facebook to kind of have conversations about these items. So if You have any questions make sure to check out that forum. You can find it by finding the gravel ride podcast page and just look for our group over there. As always we welcome your feedback and we love hearing from you can be reached at Craig at the gravel ride dot bike. Next week we'll be back with another episode of in the dirt with my co host Randall Jacobs, and we look forward talking to you that until next time here's defining some dirt under your wheels.
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This week we speak with Dr. Allen Lim, founder of Skratch Labs about fueling up for big gravel rides. Allen's experience preparing athletes for big events such as The Tour De France has left him with a wealth of experience in how to prepare for massive days in the dirt.
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Dr. Allen Lim - Founder of Skratch Labs talks gravel nutrition
Hello and welcome to another edition of the gravel ride podcast I'm your host. Craig. Dalton this week, I get to welcome on board another amazing sponsor of the podcast P. W. components. Peon. W was founded by husband and wife team Aaron and Emily up in the Pacific northwest after a long history working in the bike industry I I discovered pm w probably four years ago when I got a dropper post for one of my mountain. Are Really loved their focus on the customer. The product was well reviewed when I looked at it over the web and the delivery of the package was awesome. I just overall had a great experience. So was pretty stoked when I started to learn about their growing focus on the gravel sector. Because as you know, I've been fascinated by the growing influence of the mountain bike side of the sport to gravel whereas it's been dominated historically from a road orientation I think this outside influence from the mountain bike side is really starting to benefit consumers. So I've been using the PEON W dropper post on my gravel bike right now, I'm actually using one of their. Suspended dropper post which has been interesting and I want to give you some more feedback about that in a later episode but suffice it to say it's been really eye opening part of my writing. The second component I've been using has been there coast handlebar at forty eight millimeters. It's considerably wider than I had been using and what's been remarkable is the leverage. I can get from the outside of the bar that combined with short drop and a twenty degree flair has made me feel super dialed in the technical side of my riding. So anyway, go check out what they're doing at P. N. W. Components, Dot Com i. think as you dig in you'll. Start to see where their philosophy comes from and start to appreciate whether that'll fit into your writing. They've generously offered our listeners fifteen percent off their first order simply use the code, the gravel ride upon checkout, and that fifteen percent off will be applied to your order with thanks to pm W. Let's talk about this week's episode this week we've got Dr Alan Limb founder of scratch labs on the podcast a couple of things I. Love about Dr Lim is that he's a super straight shooter and he's the first person to tell you go cook something in your kitchen before buying something off the shelf I had the pleasure of talking to him while he. Was Actually running and coaching training camp from his car out in Colorado with some professional athletes. So as a few hiccups and fun things that happen during the conversation that I've left in for you to enjoy Allen's work with tour, de France, athletes, and ultra endurance athletes are really applicable to what we do in the gravel seen many of us are normal rides might be two to four hours, but a Lotta the events we sign up for be eight, ten, twelve hours. So how do you graduate you're feeding and nutrition and hydration strategy from the shorter rise to the longer rides with Dr Lim describes and recommends really resonated with me and I hope it does. Too, with all that said, let's dive right it.
Dr Allan Lamb. Welcome to the show.
Thank you very much for having me. Glad to be here I. Think it'd be interesting for my listeners to hear what you're doing at this exact moment. skills and drills I'm actually in the middle of a training camp following a group of writers who are doing some speedwork based on work on a little loop here in. Colorado we're doing a little bit of experimentation today with some hydration strategies, and after they finish this, we're gonNA give them you know argue super product that we've been playing with. We're GONNA try a little experiment do a time trial effort up big climb here, and then the workout today so. We're back in training camp mode, which is You know Kinda strange and a weird but glad to be added again, a a lot of caution being taken. It's super exciting to hear that it's super exciting to hear that kind of we're getting back in action because I know it's to look forward to the idea that racing and events are going to happen later in the year. So that's good to hear to take a step back for a second. Allen, could you tell us a little bit about scratch labs and how the company was formed and what the mission was? Yeah. So scratch lab started in two thousand twelve. It was myself a good friend Ian Macgregor who was a former pro cyclists and my old college buddy Aaron Foster and really scratch came from Kind of the work that I did on the pro cycling tour you know I worked as a sport scientists for many years in pro cycling and Developed a lot of I.
Guess you know recipes ideas around nutrition doing the athletes I worked with. and. Around two thousand and ten or so I ended up on the radio shack teamed with Lance that whole thing kind of exploded and I just wanted to strike out on my own and not deal with all the bs around pro cycling anymore athletes were asking me for sports drink I used to make from and I never really thought it could do a business, but you know started making it to help them out and slowly through word of mouth, this company has grown into what it is today. We've always had a mission to help people become better that was and has always been my mission as sports I just and a coach and. When you get stressed labs, not only because we believe that drink is better from scratch. So we have these cookbooks wish your Thomas How's the you know cookbook affordable don't cable but I was starting my life over again. So you know the name really comes from the idea that no matter where you find yourself in life, it's never too late to start from scratch.
Gotcha, and so that original hydration mix what was the composition of that and was it? Was it different than what you're seeing on the market at that time?
Yeah you now. On the market at the time. I think that principally everybody who I knew who was an athlete was diluting their sports drinks and they're deluding deleting sports drink because the sports drinks were too sugary they were sweet their flavoring was too strong and they would often give athletes flavor fatigue and for many athletes especially long days and grand towards like the like twitter funds everyone would get gi distress and then lastly. Conventional Sports just never had enough sodium to actually replace what was being lost in sweat. So typical sports drinks might have four hundred milligrams of sodium per liter but a normal athlete you know would be losing between eight hundred, two, thousand milligrams of sodium per liter. So it wasn't like it was revolutionary we jus- diluted sports, drinks and added more salts. that was all that was needed. But I, think that most sports drink companies were trying to sell to Nas market consumers make these tastes super. Super. Syrupy. That was just. Not Tenable for most of the ethics I worked for. Do you think there was also sort of a line of delineation between the products on the market that we're focused more on on shorter events or just that that sort of instant gratification of a sweet drink versus kind of the longer toward of France level stage racing that you had spent a lot of time thinking about. Yeah most streams that were on the market were. Made for people stuck on Four, oh, five, and California. I. Do drink one, I'll be like Oh. That was I'm an athlete I'm stuck in traffic no big deal I mean, why do you want why did they sell sports rings a jazz station so I mean, come on give me a break right? Thing is kind of ridiculous.
Yeah. It's interesting for me. You know the ads, a gravel cyclists as gravel events have taken on this new shape and form of being almost ultra distance in nature. I think it's really kind of forced cyclist. Nutrition a little bit more seriously because obviously there's a huge difference from your your three hour Saturday group road ride to a decay two hundred. Have you seen sort of the rise of gravel kind of create additional demand maybe additional thoughtfulness from customers.
Well we certainly see a lot of gravel customers I. I think that generally speaking because they. Eat when they want to or there's a little more flexibility because the day is so long that the you know the the idea of real food that we really brought to the pro peloton really resonates with that crowd as well. Nobody wants to be. Eating. A ton of sugary. Syrupy Gel like substances, they certainly have their place and there's certainly needed at times but if you can supplement. Think. the whole entire competition becomes much more enjoyable. Right and you have less gi distress you can encourage more eating. You can get more more more salt and savory flavors back into a person's body. So I do see this moving towards real food in that world the interesting thing that. We also see you know now that we've released a superficial product, a lot of buying from that crowd without liquid fueling as well. Right.
So it's it's it's both sides of the extreme and I think that travel updates are pragmatists more than anything else yeah. Absolutely. I think there's two things I'd love to drill in on because one one thing I love is your you always make a point to mention kind of real foods and that being an option and I know you have cookbooks that can help cyclists make foods for on the go use. Can you talk about some of those things that you encourage people or cookbooks? Yeah, you know I I always tell people that sports nutrition starting your kitchen. It doesn't start with the package that you open up. Right it starts with how you're feeling during your entire week leading up to an event how much carbohydrate you're getting? Loaded etc. Are you sharing meals with good friends and allies? Are you keeping yourself both physically and emotionally? Well? Social come on food plays a role in all that as well. So you know the fact that we do so you know prepackaged products and you know sports drink and all of these products that are convenient for athletes to be able to better fuel in Hydrog It It's true also that you need to be making as much. Real food is possible if you're going to be a high-performance obsolete so i. I wanted to make sure that people understood both sides of the story. Yeah, absolutely. That's interesting. Moving onto this the new super fuel product that you guys recently released. It's a drink mix, but it's got a high caloric count. I think that can be a foreign concept for a lot of people.
Could you kind of talk about that product and how you're how people were using it pre-production and how you envision now that it's in the market athletes using it?
Yeah. So I always felt that if carbohydrate solution was too high, you know anything about six percent. That it had could create problems of creating gi distress. And what was you know effectively we happening is that if you've got something that is too high concentration. The Malek. Killer concentration is high and water likes to follow a a gradient from Of Low concentration of high molecular concentration. So you know for reference point blood is about two hundred and eighty, two, two, hundred, ninety, million osmose per liter. That's a way of measuring the molecular concentration of blood. So to eighty to ninety. You have a sports drink. That is higher than that. You'RE GONNA. Have a difficult time getting water into. The body if you put one hundred grams of just basic sugar into sports, you'll have a number like five hundred. Fifty five right. You'll have a number us is just way too high for water to or You the more complex carbohydrates. On the market for things like all extra, which would digest too fast and when they digested, you'd have a bunch of simple sugars. It'd be like loading up playing with a bunch of passage passenger giving birth as soon as you know, they got on the plane. So, we knew that there was an issue while. Athletes can't always eat their food in the middle of the race. It's easier to drag it because they're breathing so hard because are tactical things going on because you know they might not be able to reach in the back of their pocket and actually you know handle it so. But we also knew that we needed to make something that didn't explode there that wouldn't give them. I stress. The solution came when we found a really really complex carbohydrate that looked more similar say Muslim Pica June, which is the way carbohydrate is stored in in in muscle where you have this very, very branched very complex. Carbohydrate, it's very big. So it's got like sixty, two, seven sugar units whereas a typical motel only have five to fifteen and it's wrapped itself kind of like a like a like a we. net net it ends up slowing aside Justin and makes it Super Super Cycle. So it it feels and tastes more like water but you can end up putting a lot of calories into it and it solves the problem of being able to. Treat your fuel because this carbohydrate is more like a regular. You know say carbohydrates starch than it is a simple sugar or even also extra.
Interesting. So you know in in a long gravel event how would you use this? Like if you're if you're taking bottles, you know every hour is something that someone could theoretically use every hour or is it the type of thing that every other hour every four hours you might want to get one of these in your resupply kit? It depends on how many calories you're burning right.
So Calorie is still a calorie is still a gallery people get all sort of messed up when they hear that it's a high carbohydrate solution that has a lot of flexibility they think that there is some prescription that all of a sudden they can change the rules in terms of their caloric consumption, but the reality of it is this. Is that if you're trying to get three hundred calories an hour, you still need three hundred calories an hour. This is be convenient way to do that If you need to get you know four hundred calories in our you know this is a convenient way to do that but you can't separate what you're alarming are from your hydration. So maybe what you actually need is you know Four hundred calories an hour but you also need leader and a half of fluid while you know if you're drinking. Regular sports drink, which is eighty calories and you need chew those bottles and our one, hundred sixty calories and you've got your hydration and so maybe you don't need a drink half a bottle of the super field to get those extra calories and. So, there is some math to be done, but that math is always predicated upon what it is that you know you need in terms of both water and calories. It's I'll give you an example. You know when the providers ef uses throughout the year, what we see is a very different behavior when it's hot versus when it's cool. So during the classics when they're fluid needs are much lower, maybe they only need a bottle. But there. are still very high maybe they need more hundred calories an hour they might just use super fuel. The whole entire time because it's got the same amount of sodium per bought allows a regular sports drink, but it's just more locally dense. But as they got into the say that the hotter races in the summertime. Because they eat so much more. Maybe two or three bottles and our they're making up a lot of those calories volume and they only drink one super fuel bottle. You know every two or three hours or you know so they might end up only drinking too high talbot bottles over the course of. But. They might end up drinking fifteen regular bottles, right? Right. So doing that math there is there is a calorie number that the body cannot process per hour that you you. Where do those calories go or the just wasted calories in your body? Not, that your body can't use them your body, will you know your blood sugar will rise you'll you know you'll end up throwing that in the muscle or fat? You know if somebody galleries like during a dinner, you release the hormone insulin which moves those calories into fat cells and muscle cells. For Storage I think that what you're really referring to is that there's a maximal absorption rate for calories so Person can't absorb. Hundred grams of carbohydrate across their small intestine. Our right. and it depends on on your body size. Certainly, a bigger person with the bigger gut is going to be able to move more carbohydrate and but as a rule of who is really fit and who has got a really good gi tract will only move hundred grams of carbohydrate and What happens that accesses it starts to you know create a bit of a traffic jam. Trying to get more people into Disneyland, the gates can actually pull across and so you got some traffic, and if you build up too much traffic, you end up getting gi distress, and if that geologists trust is really prolonged, water can flow from the inside of your body to. Women and enough enough water then moves into the intestinal and then it comes out your butthole and that's called diarrhea. Not, good for any race day. No. But as a pro mail, you probably know that you get yourself at least one half every year to accidentally shit yourself right. Exactly, there's a reason why? Golden that. There's a reason why I've got a roll of toilet paper in my bike bag. Exactly. Everyone's seen. Everyone knows you have is.
That is really interesting and I remember going back to my days as an Ironman triathlete when I really I thought about liquid calories because I was struggling to continue to eat the same things hour after hour because I'm not the fastest traffic in the world. So as interesting and actually my first go around with liquor liquid calories did not end up going well because it was early days and I think it sort of just I couldn't get my body couldn't process it in the way that it sounds like your product is designed to be processed.
Well, it's not so much processing. It might have been that your body processes to fast you. I guess too fast and you went from having you know the big complex carbohydrate molecules weren't taking up much room in the gut. Blowing up like a Trojan horse all these little pieces, and here's what's interesting about this idea of Osmosis or as pressure water likes to move from a concentration of low to high right and concentration is dependent the number of molecules number of things not to the mass or the caloric density of those things. So you're talking about you know one big legos structure may would like one hundred legos. If all those connected that one big legal structure even though it's a hundred times bigger than a single lego puts the same amount of pressure on the gut. And so what you want is you want a big carbohydrate molecule that breaks apart slowly. Digest, evenly so that you never overwhelmed the gut as those little molecules break off. Quickly by the body, and so you don't build up this excess. Traffic Gentler pressure. You know at the at the gates of your of Your Gi tract or your small intestine. So. Yeah and you know a lot of the original kind of high calorie liquid carbohydrate stuff were made with. these long chain carbohydrates that weren't actually that long. They were more like as I said earlier five to fifteen lugos units as opposed to the Super, Bowl. Hydrate called clustered action or highly rent cyclic textured, which is between two seventy goes through nuts in a more complex structure that takes a little harder to break down. Yeah I. Think you know one big takeaway for one big takeaway from the listeners I think. Test and learn to figure out what your body can. What you enjoy, what you can eat you know some people can eat blocks all day long or bars all day long but other people will either get bored with it or they're all their stomach will revolt and simply won't. Enjoy it or allow it to go down. Yeah and you know use commonsense in some ways there are no rules like if you love eating little potatoes that are soaked in Parmesan cheese and olive oil Napa on assault.
That sounds pretty good to me. You know if for some reason, sticker bars worked for you then go for it. Right your your own experiment everyone is different. There are some rules of thumb about how much. Fluid, salt and carbohydrate you need. So be mindful of that and crates implant experiment with them and the field and and see what seems to work best for you. And I think one of the things that's been interesting during the pandemic is with all these diy gravel challenge is being thrown out there. I've got upcoming S bt virtual gravel event in August where it's going to be a massive day and I need to figure out exactly how I'm going to resupply what I'm going to be able to bring with me where am I going to get my water from throughout the day and I think a lot of gravel athletes are kind of going through the. Same thing it was one thing to to plan for a decay two hundred where they knew there were going to be aid stations but it's another one planning your own diy gravel event in your own neck of the woods and figuring out how do I get the right things for my body at the right time during a long day out on the bike.
Yeah exactly and. A lot of that just takes time and patience and the prep do off. The bike is as important as what you do on the bike. So you know getting your little food cut up and prepared you know wrapping them properly getting them in the bag is getting the coolers out you know convincing a friend or you know someone who lives with you to come out and support you that day or two you know whatever driving out on the course beforehand and leaving stash bags for yourself it all takes time and work. If you're gonNA, do it and not totally fall apart and have as enjoyable of experiences possible, right?
Yeah. No I think those are good words of advice because it's IT'S It's not every day we go and bang out eighty miles off road with ten thousand feet of climbing or something like that. You gotta be. You gotta be conscious that one of the great things about going to an event they've got you've taken care of a little bit like a safety net with the aid stations and you know and doctors on course and things like that. But if you are out there on your own, it's it's important to think both about your nutrition and your hydration and obviously your equipment and and sort of Ability to repair bikes on the trail as well. Yeah Yeah Yeah exactly bring that to bring your cell phone bring those tools, bring the salt, bring the water bring the carbohydrate Don't forget the Sunscreen, right? Exactly.
I also wanted to touch on recovery drinks because I know I. Know You have a product in that vein, but also know you sort of talked about how you can make them on your own. Is it important to kind of look at a recovery drank a recovery product after every ride or is that only rides of certain duration?
You know I would say that it's any time that you're working really really hard. So you know even with the best riders in the world that I work with, we might only do two or three hard workout. So a week I they might be writing every day but only two or three of those really just totally take it out. And when you do a workout that really takes it out of you or you any work out at all it's really really important that you eat. After that worked out There are a lot of metabolic advantages to eating after a workout. You'll preferentially put that fuel that you just ate back into the muscle that was just working whereas if you eat most of your calories when you're at rest the. Insulin will work on both adipose cells and muscle cells so you. Fuel possible entire body in proportion to your fat and muscle mass. But when a muscle has just worked out, it's hypersensitive to the hormone insulin and so when you eat after a workout. What you eat goes back into. Restraint. Lean as an athlete, right? So you know. The outages always tried to eat after I worked out now what? You need a recovery or you don't need a recovery really depends on I think convenience. We only use recovery drinks in those situations where we know we need to get a lot of calories back in an athlete, but we don't have a bowl of chicken fried rice thing around right? We don't have a chef you know who has a meal prepared for the athletes you know I went back home for Christmas to stay with my mom and visit and. You know she's A. Eighty year old Chinese woman and I got back to my ride. She was like I. Made You some recovery food. I was like all right. This is the best ever. you know the neighbor recovery only connotes that something that you're eating after a workout to start that recovery process. It could be a drink. It could be food it could be chocolate milk it can be whatever is convenient. We make products effectively chocolate milk were a charter milk or coffee note Four to one ratio of carbohydrates. Protein keeps to work the best in terms of restoring pocketed but you know. You have a you can have a pizza if you want to.
Five I've certainly been known to do that Allan.
Awesome Yeah I'll tell you this much. Response I worked seventeen out of the 21-stages, the riders, a chicken Fried Rice would they got back on the team bus and the other four stages they had pizza. That sounds good. Let me ask you another question. Allen on occasion I've come home from a long gravel ride and just felt like, Hey, I hadn't hadn't eaten enough maybe when I was out there on the trail and maybe twenty minutes from home and easy pedal and I might choose to have another. Another energy bar. She am I better served kind of waiting to shift gears into a recovery mix of recovery food. Or should I eat that bar if I'm hungry? Hungry. And in fact, if you are doing a really long ride and you're coming home and you're really hungry and you got your pocket. Starts the recovery process by eating all that food during your cool down the sooner that you can eat and the more you can eat while you're exercising the more that will actually go back into restoring that muscle glycogen and so even in a bike race if athlete has been dropped and they're just winding the group or the last packing into the finish, we'll start loading up them up with food drink at that point time we won't wait until they come off the bicycles to do so okay, and is there an ideal window to get that recovery meal in once you've gotten off the bike Yeah. Probably within an hour is the most ideal scenario. eight grade I went to stop these writers for second and load them up with more fuel now that we're talking about fuel. So hang tight for a second. We'll keep keep on going you got. You Guys WanNa. Repeal it up. That was pretty good guys. Feel. Let's Let's switch bottles and just go easy. 'cause we got that effort up we hill. Was the old. If, you could put much of that bottle down between here.
and. He'll not. All you're doing is just everything you need to drink, but you're totally popped up. But we start. In fuel you just. I. Yeah. Yeah. I'm in the middle of podcast right now you guys wanted to do a cameo on you wanna say something for the world. Ellen Noble? Everybody.
Every evening yeah. You could go either either super fuel or go to white state whatever I just want to guys. Off so that when you hit that climb, you don't you detonate because you got you don't because he is out of fuel. Straight. The ride for a week. Yeah. Yeah not because you balk right there's a difference between not having the energy on that last supper because you're not you're versus. Just. Because I do want some experience with this because it situations where you guys are racing and you're not gonna be able to. Actually. Take you. About that you're interrupted no worries I don't think there's a better way to underscore the importance of calories and hydration than overhearing your conversations with these athletes and just underscoring how fueling up before that last hill climb in that last repeat is going to be critical to their performance. Have because here's the deal they're going to be going so hard and not lasts forty five minutes effort that they. They won't be able to feel and if they're not feel before that effort, it won't matter they won't be able to make enough in that last effort of the day right? So, now that we're done with that, just offer it and they have about thirty minutes before they start the next one. This is the only time that they can actually stock up again. And have the fuel onboard the last effort I think it's interesting as as gravel athletes obsess over the events or the roots that they're going to be tackling to kind of think about it in that context of like, okay I need be fully topped off before this big climb or this technical descent because I'm not going to be getting anything in my body for at least half an hour because it's just not feasible even reach down and grab a water bottle. Yeah exactly. So when you your nutrition as a gravel rider, it behooves you to look at the course and maybe not even do it based upon like anything more than the logistics of what's possible and Where you're going to be the under. Yeah I think that's the if you don't think about it in that way, inevitably, you're going to get caught out and get into a situation where you haven't physically been able to consume anything for a while.
That's right. That's right and I love simulating this stuff is training because it's when the point gets driven home like you can talk about it in theory but if you're not constantly reminding the athletes to do it in training the. They're from them to feel the difference then it doesn't get home.
All right yeah. No, that's exactly true and I think there are a lot of really hard lessons for the average gravel athlete because these events can be so outside your norm, the distances or course profile can be so different from what you're used to. It's really important to put a lot of thought into nutrition hydration before tackling one of these things and as you said, do a little testing and learning put yourself in the hurt locker in a place where you're you can be safe and you can get home rather than trying to figure it out at SPD gravel or dirty Kanza.
That's right. That's right. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah. That was actually really really appropriate right in terms of. The five wall and and and what what what what what happens. Yeah. Totally and I appreciate you making the time today to join the podcast and you just got back from another training camp in here in the middle of coaching athletes right now. You gotta try to cap was interesting. The other training camp was interesting. It was with Nike Barbara Track Club So all running right but same type issues With. Respect to fueling and. All. That sorta stuff. Yeah I think the so it is interesting in in it must be super fascinating for you as a as a sort of someone who looks at this from a scientific perspective to see how performance in other disciplines other sports kinda relates and differs from what we experience a cyclist. Yeah exactly. Exactly. Cool Man.
Cool. Well, I will put a link to scratch labs and all your products in the show notes and Again, I really appreciate the time and advice for all our listeners.
Yeah. No problem anytime if you guys ever have any questions don't. Hesitate to reach out I'm easy to find the INFO at scratch labs walked I've got a great team. But for questions, they can't handle they usually come to me so we're always. Awesome have a great one allen. Good to talk to you man. Okay thanks crank enjoy. Bye.
I hope you learned as much as I did in that conversation I think there was some great takeaways and it was a lot of fun having the conversation. Big. Thanks to pin W for sponsoring this week's episode and big thanks to you and everybody who's been visiting by me a coffee dot com slash the gravel, ride your contributions and support are critical to what we do at the gravel ride. As always we welcome your feedback across social media channels or hit me up directly at Craig at the gravel ride dot bike if you have ideas for future episodes or any comments about this episode until next time, here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
This week we drill into the value of the DIY gravel movement in the time of Covid and how excited Craig is about his SF routes for SBT VRTL. Randall dives deep into a Rene Herse blog post about what tire size rolls faster. We conclude with a discussion about wide handlebars for gravel and the use of 3d printing technology.
Register for SBT VRTL
Rene Herse blog post: Why 700c wheels DON'T roll faster
This week we speak with Caroline Dezendorf of the Easton Overland Gravel Team and the Marin County Bike Coalition. We learn of Caroline's start in the sport and her work supporting cycling in Marin County and beyond.
Sponsored by Athletic Greens, the all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance.
Episode Links:
Caroline Dezendorf Instagram
Marin County Bike Coalition Website
Automated Transcription, please forgive the typos.
All right, Caroline, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Craig.
Yeah, we always like to start off by learning a little bit more of your background as a gravel cyclist. Can you talk about how you originally discovered riding off road and maybe a progression from other elements in the sport until gravel racing?
Yeah. I didn't get into bikes till the end of college. My senior year of college, I needed a sport that, of like to fulfill the void of growing up, playing soccer and not really having anything. And I found triathlon and did triathlon for a year in college at UC Santa Barbara. And it was really fun at his background as a swimmer, but the only thing I really liked about it was the bike. So I started racing on the road instead, and then went immediately to grad school and walked into a shop in Eugene, Oregon. When I first got up to a university of Oregon for grad school and the guys in the shop were like, have you heard of cyclocross? And I was like, no, they're like, great. You should come out to a race tonight and borrow a bike and like try it out.
And I was, so I got out there, crashed over every barrier I encountered but was immediately hooked. And so I started racing off-road and cyclocross, and then racing in the Bay for team Mike's bikes. I decided to start racing mountain bikes and really enjoyed it. And then it's just kind of like taken off from there. I think my first gravel race per se was the nog girl grind Duro. I think that was 2015. And I raised my rock lobster cyclocross bike and won it, won the pro women's category and it was kind of hooked on this like long distance gravel writing, something that I always do with my friends, but like, it was kind of fun to have this new format that, you know, normally my races are 45 minutes around a very small, you know, two mile a track for cyclocross. And so it's kinda cool now having this like adventure thing that is competitive, but more just hanging out with friends and going on a cool adventure.
Yeah, it's interesting. I was talking to Amanda Naaman a few weeks back and she had mentioned she had the similar progression from triathlon to cyclocross. What do you think it is about the sport of cyclocross that kind of was attractive to you at the time?
For me, it was in Oregon. The cross crusade series is so incredible. It's just like this huge series. Like you go to these events and there's a thousand, 2000 and the women's fields are 50 plus deep and just, you know, amazing talent like Beth and Orton. When I first started racing was like my idol. She was just like this, this amazing. I mean, I love Beth. She's still a really good friend, but she was just like this amazing person. And it was something that I hadn't experienced. And I think, you know, even though you're, you're doing these small circles and cross it's no two races are the same. I mean, you know, there's races. I go back to year after year after year and every year, the conditions are different. The weather's different, you know, the competition is different and it's exciting and it's challenging.
And it's even though like, it's, you know, you can race with a team or race, you know, you're racing with a bunch of really strong competitors. You're really racing yourself. You're, you're challenging yourself and you know, the other people in the race really don't matter. There aren't very many, there are some cross races where you do find road tactics in play. You are in a small group and you are attacking each other, but I'll often, you know, in, in muddy races, it's just, you're fighting yourself and trying to figure out how to do it yourself. And so at the end of the day, you know, you all hug and smile and laugh and high five each other. And like most of my best friends now I've met through racing cyclocross.
Awesome. And cyclocross, obviously being traditionally a winter sport, although it kicks off pretty early here in Northern California. What type of writing were you doing in the off season from cyclocross the last few years that kind of set the stage for you to kind of jump full force and the gravel racing?
I mean, quite honestly it was, it was adventure riding. It was going out on long rides on my cross bikes. I really like riding my cross bikes on single track and on technical trail and kind of challenging my skills in that way. So it was going on these long adventure rides. I, I'm a total math geek. I love making routes. I love finding new routes and challenging myself with like these new places I haven't been. So a lot has been like, I really want to go out to this really remote place that I've never been before. And so let's find a gravel or a mountain bike loop that, you know, is 45 to 80 to whatever a hundred miles and let's go check it out. So a lot of that kind of writing.
Yeah, that's awesome. And we'll get into your work at the Marine County bike coalition, but I have the Marin County bike map and I just geek out over it because having the gravel bike and the great roads we have around here, you can just create these amazing mixed terrain loops that I never thought was possible prior to kind of getting this type of bike and, and getting that map.
Totally. Yeah. That map is amazing. Or actually I'm just updating that map with tons of new trails that have come up recently and it should be, it should be out in the next month. And I'll, they'll show a lot more of the good stuff in Marin.
Yeah. I'm excited for that to go check out the Bill's trail that I read about. And a couple of the other pieces that the Marine County bike coalition has been working on.
Yeah. Bill's, if you haven't had a chance to check it out is definitely a worthwhile trail. It's four miles long, but it's incredible. And it was made well re remade. It was a trail already, but re-established with mountain biking in mind, so it's really flowy. And it's through my favorite kind of ecosystem is Redwood Fern forest. And it connects so it's Alan, Samuel P. Taylor, if you haven't been out there which is really cool. So it's a California state park and it's really nice to have another mountain bike trail on the state park and it connects devil's goals, fire road to Mount Barnaby. And so the views, when you're up there are incredible. And then, I mean, connecting that with like San Jeronimo Valley and the fire roads out there, you can just put together such an amazing loop.
Yeah. Interesting note about Samuel Taylor park, it's the birthplace of recreational camping in the United States? I found out,
Huh? I did not know that. That's awesome. They also have bike camping there.
Yeah, absolutely. So 2020 was clearly designed to be a pretty big gravel season for you. You were, you were selected to join the Eastern Overland team. Can you talk about that team and what the vision is and sort of just give us a little insight about what it's like being a member?
Yeah, it was, this is such a surreal season. I was really excited to be racing with Eastern Overland. It's an amazing group of people. Matt Harlan is a team manager and he's just compiled this like amazing group amny Rockwell or who's one dirty Kansas last year at Caitlin Bernstein, who is my best friend in the entire world. And Matt Licata, who's up in Oregon and Michael Vanderham, which is a super awesome Canadian super amazing cyclocross athlete as well, Canadian national champion. And so it was just like this incredible group of people that I was excited to write race with. I've raced with Easton for a cyclocross for the last couple of years, they've been a big sponsor. And it was really nice to be able to like raise with them a little bit more have their support in this different capacity.
And you know, the, the team is really unique in the fact that it brings together people with very different backgrounds and skillsets. And also we get to kind of have our own style in it. So I raced with [inaudible] on the Sparrow and the other members of the team, Matt Leanna, also races on Savella. And the other members of the team also have their own bike sponsors. And so it's kind of neat cause we get to bring our own kind of flare and style into it. And that kind of a water audience and also just represent in different capacities. So I really liked being able to have my personal relationship with Cervelo, but at the same time, like be part of this team and this kind of conglomerate that we all, you know, currently our conversation right now, cause we have nothing else better to do is how to make sourdough bread the best we can make it. I'm not a bread maker, so I'm just kind of listening in, but it's amazing the, the detail that goes into a sourdough bread making.
Yeah. I think it's a super refreshing concept. I love seeing all the team members with different frames. It's just, it, I think that's sort of, to me, it's like, what's, gravel's all about right. We don't want these big pro squads coming in and dominating, but like I love that it's a squad that each member has its own personality in a way to kind of reflect the brands that they want to be riding with.
Yeah. And it highlights the uniqueness of the writers. You know, I, I I'm predominantly an off road athlete. Like I dabble in road races. I did one road race this year before you know, the season got shut down, but I definitely, you know, come from a little bit more of a road background and, and like re like riding on the road. And so having the Savella, that's very much oriented as like a an endurance like fast paced, you know, Peloton kind of racing. Gravel bike is perfect for me, but that being said, it's still rips on descends and still rips on single tracks. So I ride that bike everywhere, but then, you know, Caitlin Bernstein she's on DaVinci and that bike is totally a mountain bike, like Caitlin on, on that bike. I can't keep up with, because it's, the geometry is just so much more of a mountain bike and it's, it's a very different, you know, style. So it's really cool because when we're all together, every bike and every person riding has this unique flair and unique style and it's kind of fun to see it that way. It's very different from any other team I've been on.
Yeah. And I think that's, again, going back to it just being sort of indicative to the sport in general, I love that, that you need to choose the equipment for how you want to ride the bike. So if you want to be aggressive, you can go bigger tires and a slacker geometry, or if you're more comfortable on the road section, you know, and that were, you know, roadie type position. That's cool too. But at some point in any given race or ride, you're going to have a shortcoming or you're going to have a better setup than the other person. And I think it just makes it really interesting when you're out there.
Totally. Yeah. Before everything got, got shut down this year, I was able to race the super sweet water grasshopper, and I raised it on my server yellow with 35 millimeter Schwabie tires. And so I definitely had a gravel set up for this very much long, you know, 60 plus mile road race, but that bike was amazing. I was, you know, up there top five women for the majority of the race and, you know, keeping up with everybody on 28 millimeter tires and on, on, you know, true road frames. And the Sparrow is just like, it's so fast. Like it climbed so well. And it was like ideal for that. And then two weeks later, you know, we, we flew out to Oklahoma for mid South gravel, right before shelter and place happened. And I threw on 33 millimeter essentially cyclocross shall be cyclocross tires.
And, you know, we had this eight hour Mudfest through Oklahoma red clay and, you know, the bike on that, like handled super, super well just, you know, so it's like it's and, you know, Caitlin and I rode together and she was on her DaVinci with like 40 millimeter tires. And, you know, we're, she's, she's pushing the pace on the climbs and I'm doing my best to keep up with her. And then I, anytime we hit like a flat section, I was just like, alright, right on my wheel, let's go. We were just like, use our strengths in different ways to work together. But it, and it was kinda nice cause it could compliment each other.
Well, that race was certainly a sloppy mess. Did you make that tire selection kind of knowing that it was going to be quite muddy on race day?
Yeah. Yeah. Matt Lido. Who's on my team and also rides for Savallo. I, I probably bugged him every day for like two weeks going into mid South, trying to figure out the best hire selection. And ultimately we decided the narrowest hire, I could run would be better and, you know, so something that would shed really well and give me the most clearance. They, before the race gave us like Pete six to scrape the mud off our wheels. And thankfully I never actually had to use it. My demise in that race came at mile 90 when my chain dropped between my frame and my chain ring and Katelyn and I spent 45 minutes and watched the 15 girls go past us trying to get my chain and stuck. And it was just, we know, we went from sitting in like top five to sitting top 20. I was like, Katelyn, just leaving. And she's like, we've just done 90 miles together in seven and a half hours. I'm not leaving you out here on the side. And so yeah, that was, that was really the biggest bummer of that race. But it was yeah. Tire choice for that one was pretty key. I think there are a lot of people I ended up running selects for that reason.
Yeah. I've heard stories from that race. It's a really interesting in terms of like what the, what, what worked and didn't work for people. At the end of the day, I don't think there was a particularly good choice to other than making sure you had at least as much clearance as possible.
Yeah. That, that totally was the biggest thing was just get enough clearance and hope that you don't get bogged down and hope that you know, any chances where you're going to get that peanut butter, mud, or clay all over your bike, just run. And like, so I never even dealt with the, my tire clearance was perfect. I had, my equipment was a dial and I just got super unlucky with a drop chain that I couldn't get unstuck.
Yeah. What were you, what were your plans for the rest of the season?
Let's see. I, I don't know a lot. I wanted to do, I really wanted to go to raspy Tita in Vermont. I was really looking forward to the Jackson grasshopper that was supposed to happen to may. I was going to go up to Canada for a ride for water. And then, you know, Downieville, which just got canceled, lost and found. I always love racing stuff up in the Sierra Buttes. And then, you know, trying to figure out a couple more from there. I had seen Bo on my radar Oregon gravel was on my radar, a couple of, up in, in Oregon as well. So I was trying to be selective with races because I do usually have a full cyclocross season that runs from September to December and that ends up being a lot of travel and a lot of racing. But at the same time I was feeling really good at the beginning of the season and really excited to be racing. So I kept like texting Katelyn and be like, what about, should we go to the lessons? Should we go to that? And should we go to that? So my season kept expanding because I was so excited to be racing gravel with Easton. And there's just so many cool events that happen all over, all over the place.
Yeah, absolutely. I think most of those events that you mentioned we've had as previous guests on the podcast and I would love to see them all.
Yeah, yeah. There's some, and everyone is so unique and has its own vibe and experience. And you know, the thing I love about gravel and I think that brings me back is just the community around it. And just how amazing everybody is in the as like I said, famous cyclocross, like as competitive as everybody is like at the end of the day, you're having a drink and celebrating each other and just excited to be out there racing. And I kinda love the comradery that comes with that.
Yeah. I hope everybody listens time and time again to the podcast gets that loud and clear because it's really just show up, hit the start line. You're going to have a blast, whether you're first or last. And that's the beauty of this sport. It's quite unlike. It may, maybe it's similar to cyclocross, but quite unlike other elements of the sport that people may have experienced like road racing, where if you get shelled off the back, it's a pretty miserable experience. It's just simply not the case in gravel.
Totally. It's, it's totally unique. And I mean, even, you know mid South this year, like Katelyn and I are on the side of the road, we're trying to fix my bike. And everybody that came by, I was like, are you guys okay? And I'd be like, no, we're not okay. And you know, they'd be like, do you want our help? And you know, we kept having all these groups of people come and try to help us, you know, that's knowing you don't get enrolled road Pilcher. Like people aren't just like people are, are in it for themselves a little bit more than helping each other. And I just love like, and gravel that, you know, you're just out there to, to be there. You're not out there like to, when you're out there to enjoy it and to see a unique place and, and ride with, you know, hundreds of your friends.
Yeah, absolutely. So you're also working with the Marin County bike coalition as communication director. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about that role?
Yeah. So it's a new role for me. I came on with red County bike coalition in March, so I'm just started there, but it's been an organization that I've known very well for the last five, six years since I got into bikes, I moved into the Bay move to the Bay area. And so it's a great organization, it's they do so much good work in Marin, on the roadside, on the off-road side and on education and outreach. And it's been a really unique time to work with them because we've kind of had to change the way we're structuring to deal with the current pandemic. The most amazing thing about this time for us is there has been such an increase in the number of people, riding bikes. And so we're really trying to reach them and, and reach out to them and get them involved with us to be able to support them and give them that better infrastructure.
I mean, Marin is just, it's, it's a Mecca for a cycling, the paths you know, beyond grief and Barack, he's our policy and planning director. He works on the roadside and he's worked so hard in the last four years since he came with the organization to really improve on road infrastructure and Moran and, you know, make it a more bike friendly place for everybody there. And you know, Tom boss who runs our off-road program, he's phenomenal and, you know, really, really working to get access to more trails and trail stewardship and, and engaging with so many different people in different groups of people. So you know, I coach I started at NorCal league high school league mountain bike team last year. So it's a program that's really near and dear to my heart. And Tom works really closely with North Hollywood, with Vanessa [inaudible] to get students out, doing trail stewardship and learning how to build trail and Morin.
So the last trail day they had was out on the Ponti Ridge trail, which isn't open trail yet. It's a trail and Marin wood Lucas Valley area that will be opening hopefully later this year. But we had 150 kids out there from high schools, high school league working on building trail. So I'm really excited for that trail to open. Hopefully it will open under the season and you know, Bill's trail, like we already mentioned as new trail and Morin that took 14 years to finally be bike legal. I think plans were put into place in 2006 for it to finally be, to, to submit it, to change of use for us to get access to it for a cyclist. And, you know, Tom has been instrumental and, and projects like that that have really opened up more and more land for for mountain biking and Morin.
Yeah. And I think it's been done in a really thoughtful way. I remember when Diaz Ridge project was announced and like it's a six or seven years to get that trail finished. And now it's just such an amazing single track for a gravel bike or a mountain bike. And it's such an important connector. And I know one of the future projects is kind of connecting the bottom of Diaz Ridge to coastal view trail, kind of a, they have Heather cutoff, which is a running trail, but cutting another trail through there. And it's just that kind of thoughtfulness that makes me super pumped to have Marine County by coalition supporting my, my desire to ride new trails. Cause it's just going to be an a, it's going to be an amazing connector and all these pieces, I think Tom and the whole crew they think about like, what does that do for your loop? All of a sudden it makes this completely, off-road starting at the golden gate bridge and going all the way, the other side of Tam completely off-road and completely legal possible.
Yeah, totally. We that's called our, we have this project that's the gaps initiative. And so it's closing three of the biggest gaps of off-road or lack of access to off road from the golden gate bridge to point rays. And so that connector that you just described between Diaz Ridge which drops you down to near beach, you have to go on highway one to connect to coastal and hopefully we'll have a trail there soon. It's still on the planning phase. And we're hoping to get some more grants and money to help us work on that. And then there's another one out kind of on the backside of Mount Tam and the lakes region that's Azalea Hill and that we just got notice that the water district is going to give us access, give bike, to ask, ask, give bikes, access to a mile and a half of trail that will connect to fire roads and help start decreasing that gap a little bit more. So we're, we're making progress and Tom has been huge and in getting those things done and Moran such a unique place because we're dealing with a lot of different land managers. And it's really amazing to see the relationships built with those and how, you know, the, the progress progress that we can do. And so many different unique environments.
Yeah, I think for the problems like this around the country and around the world who are listening, Marin County is an amazing place to ride a bike and there's tons of miles and miles and miles of trails and a lot of great loops that you can create. It's interesting because I think other parts of the country or world might have somehow a little bit more cachet as a destination to go ride your gravel bike. But by my likes, Marin counties should be tops on anybody's list.
Oh, totally. I a hundred percent agree with that when I moved down after grad school and moved to San Rafael and Moran I think that's what hooked me. Like we would go out, you know, on these all day adventures and you'd be on road for maybe a mile and he'd be on trail for, you know, 45 miles and, you know, circumnavigating Mount Tam and have these amazing views of the golden gate bridge and, and the Pacific ocean. And it was just like, it was incredible. I mean, there's no other place like it. And you know, there were a lot of nights, like in the middle of the week that we'd be like, Hey, let's go bike camping up on Mount Tam. Cause there's these bike camping spots that no one goes to. And it's something that's really.
Yeah, absolutely. You disappeared for a second. It might've been on my end, but no worries. I know also the, the Marine County bike coalition is putting on a couple of events later this year pending obviously the safety of events you've got the dirt and then adventure revival, two events, which showcase those trails we were just referring to and how good they are. Do you want to talk a little bit more about the plan dates for those events and you know, how people should be thinking about it in their calendar, giving you know, everything in the uncertain and be going on in the world?
Yeah, so the dirt Fondo is one of our signature events that happens August 15th. And it's, it's a really amazing event, gravel friendly it's mountain bike friendly. I could argue that you could do a lot of it on a road bike because I've read a lot of those trails on a road bike, but not recommended. But it highlights the Marin Headlands and it highlights Mount Tam. So the Queens, the queen route, if you will is 45 miles and it starts when we're at Hedlands and climbs up to the top of Tam and back around. And it's, it's incredible. And then there's routes that are, you know, 30 miles, 20 miles, 10 miles. So it's something that, you know, the whole family could go out and do I drag my sister out there a couple years ago gave her my mountain bike and I rode my cross bike and, you know, she did 30 miles and she's written a mountain bike like four times.
And I was like, yes, you're so awesome. It's something that's, and it's, it's just beautiful and everybody's out there. It's not a race, it's not a competitive event. Everybody's out there to have fun and to enjoy the trails and to just like be part of this amazing community. So we're really hoping that happens this year. We are kind of chugging along with plans for that. We're, we're paying really close attention to the gift current situation. And I think, you know, Tom and I are, are talking every day about it, you know, and trying to see what's going to be like, but it's a small event. Registrations capped at 300 people. So we're hoping if anything, this is the kind of event that will happen because it's a regional pole, it's a small event. And we're keeping our fingers crossed because the more we talked to people and the more, you know, we talk, we, we need things to look forward to.
And with, everything's starting to be canceled. We're just kinda, we're hoping we don't have to, because we want that normalcy back and we want to be back with our communities. And, you know, we're, we're making contingency plans just in case and where we're strategizing, you know, how potentially, if we are allowed to have a small event, how we can kind of keep social distancing requirements met. So really, you know, taking into consideration what our County and what California says, but we want to be able to, to host it this year, it's a really special event for us.
[Inaudible] Wow. And then adventure to revival the later man supports the mountain.
Yeah. So adventure revival is September 12th. And that we run in combination with nor Cal league high school league. And so it's a fundraiser for both MCBC and the high school mountain bike league. So again, it's something near and dear to my heart because I coach a team. I ran a team I love I've been involved with the high school league for the last five years. And so that one's really cool. It's it's promoted as a gravel event. So it's a little more fire roadie and a little more has a little more road in it, but it also highlights, you know, some of the most amazing gravel routes around Marin. And so going out to places that are a little more off off the beaten path.
Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's super creative loop that Tom created over there. I hadn't been on some of those trails kind of in I guess Sandra Autonomo and they were awesome. Like it pushed all the buttons, like you have this great, I think all single track bales, arrow, big climbs, like it was on a route that I, and, and support that event.
Yeah. It's and there are trails that don't get written very much. There, it's funny cause they're really not that much farther away than everything else, but they seem a little more rugged and some really steep climbs, but it's beautiful. It's rain. We're we normally put together like training routes for, or training rides for the Fondo and the venture revival to get people out and writing some of these things beforehand in a group setting. And obviously we can't do that. So what we're doing instead is doing kind of curated DIY gravel rides. So I just put together a ride that we shared with our member base and it's on our website. We're calling it the dirt ramble, but anybody wants to check it out. And it's, it kind of highlights some of those Sandra animo Ridgeline. Why am I often forgetting the name of where, where it's going out behind the lakes but highlighting a lot of those trails that you don't get written as much and highlighting just like the unique terrain around Marin, because there's so many different ecosystems and so many different habitats and, and you can experience so much in such a Stuart ride.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just having as a, sort of a city-based rider previously, having those roots and understanding like, Oh, maybe I'll ride the road out to Fairfax and then start hitting the trails. You all of a sudden on your gravel bike create these really interesting loops that you never thought of. Because if you, you know, that's, that's quite a long way if you're riding off-road the entire way from the city, for example. But if you bypass it cause with the efficiency of the gravel bike and just hop into the trails, like there's some great stuff up there.
Yeah, totally. And it's, it's, you know, it's easily accessible from so many different locations from the city I used to my parents live in Petaluma, so I I'd ride, you know, out from Petaluma and hit the Belinas Ridge trail. And you have this amazing really hope it's a long day, but it's so worth it to come down and ride these trails.
Yeah, definitely. So is your plan this season to go back to cyclocross at the end of the year again,
We're, we're kind of making the joke with Eastern Overland that it's like hashtag cyclo mountain gravel season, because everything is now being pushed into one. So right now I'm just looking forward to riding the dirt Fondo and writing adventure revival in September and kind of going from there seeing what what's still happening and seeing what changes I definitely will still race cyclocross. I'm hoping maybe to start a little later this season so I can do some other gravel events as they happen in late September, early October. But, you know, I think at this point, the biggest thing that I want to focus on is connecting back with my community and having fun and racing. You know, obviously I'm competitive, obviously I want to do well on my racing, but I'm kinda like it's secondary right now. Like I miss my community, I miss my friends, I miss my competitors. I want to see them. And I also just want to have fun. And it's kind of weird because I'm still training, hoping everything happens and, you know, putting in the hours and putting in the miles and really trying to find to the engine. But I also am trying to balance that with just having a good time on the bike and seeking the ventures that are really important to me.
Yeah. Well, I think that's the dream for all of us. It's just to have something back on the calendar that we all get our municipalities approving us getting together and enjoying that gravel community. Cause I think the important thing to remember for everybody listening is it's still there. If anything, there's more pent up demand and love and desire to get back together as a community, as you just said. So we'll get through this together.
Yeah. I think, I think just staying hopeful right now is the biggest thing. And knowing, you know, that bikes aren't canceled, like you can get out and ride, you know, like I said MCDC is putting on our kind of own challenges. There's a lot of other challenges out there, although I'm biased towards the challenges that I'm creating. So I would, I would encourage you to check them out on our website. But you know, we can stay connected in different ways. I started twisting a little bit more to stay connected with people. But I think that's the biggest thing is staying connected, staying hopeful and hoping things work out soon.
Absolutely. I think that's a good note to end on Caroline. I appreciate all the time and the insight about the events. I'll put some links out to Marin County bike coalition so people can find the events we're talking about and I wish you the best of luck and hopefully, I'll see you out there soon.
All right. Thank you, Craig.
This week Randall and Craig discuss new bikes from Ride Farr and 3T. Two dramatically different bikes on differing ends of the gravel bike spectrum. We also talk 'mullet' tire set up and the possibility of a San Francisco to Los Angeles gravel route.
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Ever wonder what happens if you dent, ding or crack your fancy carbon frame? I did, so I asked the experts at Ruckus Composites. Shawn and Dan walked us through what can be done to salvage a damaged frame or component.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos.
All right, welcome. Everybody. We're live from the gravel ride podcast. And today we've got some guests from, from Ruckus talking about carbon warfare. It's actually quite timely for me as a couple of friends that asked me about some carbon repair work they wanted to have done, and I had no idea how to approach it. So gentlemen, welcome to the show.
Thanks for, thanks for having us.
Can you guys start by introducing yourself?
Take away. All right. Yeah. As Dan said, I'm Shawn and the owner and founder, and I started ruckus over 12 and a half years ago.
Yeah. My name is Dan and I am our repair strategist and customer success person
Right on Shawn. What was the impetus behind starting Ruckus?
Okay.
Is kind of a long rambling story of, I was 24 at the time, fresh out of engineering school and really liked bikes. And didn't really fit the traditional mold of being an engineer. I'm not an office guy per se. Um, I can't spend all my day on a computer, so I would like working with my hands a lot, really wanted to create a business where I could work with my hands, but also kind of create the ideas that were locked up in my crazy head
Right on. And were you, did you start it off as sort of a one man show?
Oh yeah.
Robot or two. I probably had a Roomba at the time that Rubin's ever around, but I always try to keep a balance of one human and one robot at every time.
There you go. That's the engineering year. Right? Exactly. So I was excited to talk to you guys about carbon bike repair, cause it is a little bit of a mystery to me, how it all works. And you know, you think about cracking a carbon frame or at least I did prior to this conversation that, you know, the thing's hosed it's, you know, I'm never going to be able to ride it again. Can you talk about the types of repairs that are possible for carbon frames?
Did Dan you're good at this one?
Yeah. I mean, it's, for us, it's kind of the circumstance of we can repair almost anything, but it's only really, we take it to the point where we think it's safe to do so. A lot of times, you know, things that will decline, for example, our car and bike situations where a rider will get into an accident and, you know, bikes that have four or five visible damages. Um, technically we could repair something like that, but we don't really deem it safe to do so. Um, that's like the extent of things that we won't do. Um, but for the most part, you know, we do basic tube repairs. We do dropout replacements. Uh, we can do full bottom bracket, repairs and replacements as well. Um, you know, we, we will, a lot of things that we've been seeing recently, uh, our tire rubbed damages on gravel bikes, for example, people, the combination of too wide of tires in a given condition that isn't suitable, um, front derailer mounts have been coming off. Boy, am I missing anything? Sean? There's a lot. We do. We do a, we do a lot, a lot, a lot of different types of repairs on a very regular basis.
Yeah, it's pretty, very, but you know, at the same point, it's just, we see the same bike over and over or same bikes over and over and over again. So it's some days it feels a little bit not honest. And you kind of forget that. We see some of the most interesting things on the bike side. Like we already got a brand new specialized 20, 20 Shivan and it's like, I haven't even seen this bike online. It's got this kind of cool, uh, course of the camera. Cool. Like vertical cross cross fork, and you look at it and you're like, okay, bikes are getting crazy again. It looks just like that. It looks just like the Lotus track bike fork. Oh yeah,
Yeah. It's that dual, that dual bladed thing. So yeah, we do. Um, it's, it's again, it's like we can, we can repair almost anything, but we choose, you know, specifically based on whether it's safe or not to do
Right. What did that poor individual with the brand new Shiv do to his bike to put it in your hands
Shipping damage hasn't even been built for assembly yet. And it's just getting shipped across the country. And I don't know a lot of shipping companies that are generally fine, but you know, you throw enough probability into it and you know, there may be 10%, 5% of scenarios and you're going to be on the losing end every now and then. So shipping insurance is always good.
So what does that process look like on your end? So let's just say I've cracked my chain stay and maybe, you know, I see some damage, but I don't see a hole. Do I send it up to you? And do I get some sort of analysis back for me to consider if the repair is something I want to move forward with?
Yeah. Where we usually start with something like this as we'll have the customer send us pictures, um, and a variety of ways, email, we, our number also gets texts as well. So it's, it's an easy way to communicate with people, but we usually start with photos. Um, on the odd chance we can actually tell, um, you know, through a photo only, um, if the bike is okay, we'll just tell the customer to monitor it. But most things start with the photo. Um, and then we take out a case and we'll bring in the bike. And if the area is in question of if it's broken or not, it goes through the ultrasound scan process. Um, and through that, we can determine, you know, empirically within a thousandth of an inch, whether the bike is actually damaged or not. Um, and then after that's all said and done, we'll communicate with the customer again, if the bike is okay, it's, you know, ready to send home at that point, if they want, uh, if they want to paint, touch up, we can do that. Or if the bike actually needs to be repaired, they'll get a confirmation of the original estimate at that point. A and then we can
Begin the repair process if it's a normal tube repair, uh, at pretty much at that time. So yeah, it usually starts out with photos and a conversation of what, you know, the rider was doing at the time, what the damage looks like and kinda on top of that, like we've seen over 13,000 cases. So we were pretty good idea if someone says, Oh, I have this type of bike and this type of bike and they go, Oh yeah. Is your seat stay broke. Okay,
Cool. Gotcha. So when I imagine ultrasound, I'm thinking of a doctor and a pregnant woman and that little gel, what goes on when you ultrasound a bike?
I mean, that's exactly, that's exactly it. It's, it's a very, it's a it's that. So Sean has a couple of fluid that he puts over the area and our transducer is, is what, two and a half to 2.5, right? Shawn, 2.5 millimeters in diameter. No, it's four it's four. Okay. So he has a four millimeter transducer that he puts over the area and it puts a wave sound into the bike and comes back. The readout would be different from something that you would see in the hospital. Uh, it's more of a wave form than actually an image, but Shawn is able to tune the wave based on the specific layup of the bike to gain the information that he would need to determine if something would be broken. So if I had to,
I say I had a really bad scratch, you know, from a rock. And I clearly went through the paint and into the carbon fiber. Is that analysis able to tell you, you know, from that wall thickness, you've gone halfway through it or three quarters of the way through it.
Yeah, exactly. So kind of how that works is the ultrasound is Dan said, it kicks out a wave the way it penetrates through the carbon bounces off the backside. And it comes back to my transducer. That's kind of how we read it. And if we hit something that would be an air pocket or Boyd, or, you know, if there was less material, the screen's going to show that and we have to, you know, we have to interpolate it a little bit or interpret it quite a bit to kind of convert that squiggly wave form into, you know, a bicycle, but it's kind of the gist of it.
And is there, is there some amount of carbon kind of deep scratch that is okay and livable and you'll message back to the customer, Hey, you know, you're only 15% down. It's probably safe.
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's, it kind of, every single bike is different. Every single rider is different. Every single location is different. Like, you know, it doesn't matter the material per se, but almost every bike, the wall thickness of whether it's steel or aluminum or titanium or carbon changes so much throughout a bike. You know, we have, we see some mountain bikes nowadays that are over three millimeters thick of carbon, which is insanely thick. Wow. And then we have certain seat stays that are our top tubes that are only 0.7 millimeters, which is like next to nothing. So everything's gotta be kinda comparative or you kinda look at the whole picture of like, okay. And then, you know, we don't like to think of like the rider too much. We like to think of just making sure everybody's safe. So we don't really take into account if someone's like, well, I don't really hit too big of jumps. And you're like, you know, we talked to some guys up in Bellingham or Whistler and you know, to them and I don't, I personally don't leave the ground. So anything leaving the ground is a big job. So
Yeah, absolutely interesting. And so the, can the range of repair work go from, you know, that deep scratch that has affected structural integrity to a complete break in a tube?
Oh yeah. The entire tube could be severed off or even missing. We've replaced entire tubes before, you know, it's a little more severe. Um, but really, you know, there's not a lot of limits and that's kinda one of the cooler things about composites as a material versus like some of the metals is, you know, your repair work is so much smaller. Um, it's more of a localized repair versus having to replace an entire tube, you know, with a metal bike, you know, you can repair any metal bike as well. Um, but it typically takes an entire to replacement. So it's surprisingly way more expensive. You know, most composite repairs are about 500 bucks or less on average, but you know, metal repairs, you're closer to a thousand.
So let's, let's take a couple of the different scenarios. Let's stick one on the one hand, which is just maybe a, a piercing or a scratch that is, is definitely dangerous and needs to be repaired. What does that repair look like? How do you actually address my carbon frame with the materials you're going to use to really support it?
Good question. Um, it's, as far as the repair goes, our process for let's say it, you know, some something that we've seen a number of times is a very piercing strike on, on a down tube. Uh, but Santa's mountain bike, especially recently, the way that all of the down tubes are being extruded from the bottom bracket with more of an exaggerated curve, we see a lot of damage to that area. So the process for our repair is repeatable, but not necessarily, not necessarily always similar if you know, we're doing the same steps towards every bike, but every damage is different. So it's not exactly the same process. Um, so the cost options that we provide are not tuned towards the repair. It's all on the finishing side. So basically every normal tube repair that we do, we'll give our customers a range of options from just a basic mat, black paint or a Mason or basic matte black vinyl wrap to a full paint match. And that customer is getting the same exact safe repair lifetime, but we're going to give them a different option of price depending on what they want it to look like. Because some people don't care. You know, some people are like, Hey, it's my mountain bike. I'm going to beat the crap out of it. I'll take the $500 repair rather than the full paint match. You know, that, that works fine for somebody they're getting the same fix either way.
So if I've pierced my frame, um, is it sort of like you're taking some carbon material and almost bonding a bandaid of carbon over top of that,
It's a little more involved than that. It's, you know, carbon composite repairs better on the aerospace industry for a long, long time. So there's already proven standards written by the American society of mechanical engineers or American society of testing and materials. And we really follow up pretty similar guidelines of repairing tubes is a little more complicated, especially tubes of insane geometry that bikes have nowadays, whether they're, you know, ovals schools, squares, or rectangles around. Um, but it all kind of starts with, you know, we evaluate that whole area and we kind of have to like map out how far the damage goes for starters. And then after we map out the damage extent, we got to kind of map out the repair extent, which is usually extents. You know, let's call it three inches and every direction around it. And what we do is we then kind of excavate or machine out all the broken fiber and we get rid of it. You know, it's not doing anything there's not really much you can do with it to kind of repurpose it. So then we kind of machine out all that area and sand it all out and get rid of it. And now we apply a brand new carbon fiber on top of it and taper it out through the entire tube to make sure the entire tube is completely strong repaired, and we're not creating any stress risers anywhere on the bike.
Gotcha. And then we add one of our listeners write in and ask about, you know, the completely broke the stay. Are you basically then sort of sawing off the, you know, the completely mangled sections and adding in an entirely new tube?
Uh, we could be, we do a lot of three D printing in house. We have a big, we've always had a big strap, like professional, industrial Stratasys 3d print machines. So we can pro um, or three D print and design molds and tools and inserts. And you know, and the hardest part with honestly with bikes is in maintaining the integrity of alignment. You know, if there's a slight variation at your dropout, um, your wheel's going to be crooked and with everybody's running huge tires right now, which is great. But if you then have a, like a, a little bit of a dropout misalignment and then multiply that over 13 inches of a wheel radius give or take, and that exacerbates the angle so bad that it pushes your wheels straight into your chance. So the hardest part is sometimes alignment more than anything, just making sure, you know, we're trying to align kind of thin air with certain repairs. You're like, well, I need to put this seats.
I need to put a seat, stay back in the frame, but there's a huge gap in between. So how do we fill that gap?
There's a lot of puzzles involved
Frame alignment tools. Yeah. We probably have almost every tool you can, you end up having frame alignment tools to help in that process? Yeah. We have framed jigs. We've had a lot of custom built tools. We have, you know, end mills for milling and mitering. We have drill presses of, you know, we have almost every tool you can think of. Like, don't forget the lady, boy, the lady boy, which so we can lay it all around tools and answers. Um, repair is more about like being inventive and tool creative than anything. You're like, how are we going to hold this shape? That's not a shit, you know, like a wacky school goal type thing in alignment, or we have, we have two granite tables as well for alignment that are, I think they're done to it like 10,000, no more than that 0.000001 of an inch of alignment.
So we can always plot things on there and make standoff blocks or use dial indicators. So before, before we move on from, uh, from Greg's question of being able to repair that seed stay, this is actually a, uh, the case in point of an example of where we wouldn't do Greg's repair until we performed a full inspection on this bike. Um, you know, 45 mile an hour front flip that bike didn't come to a complete stop immediately. Uh, I've I've had a crash similar to this, uh, about 10 years ago and it was really, really bad. Um, so we would basically say that this bike is going to start out at the full ultrasound inspection for the frame and fork and pending us finding damages elsewhere in the frame. Then, then we would begin to consider the other repairs on this bike because that's the beauty of ultrasound.
And that's why I think we shine as an organization is we're not only fixing things that are visible, we're actually able to impuricably discern other damages in the bike. So we're not just guessing that one area is going to be okay. We're able to see every other area on the bike if it's okay or not. And you know, a lot of times we'll find in these kinds of situations, we'll find the fork to be broken, um, based on, you know, the bike tumbling or the steer tube getting, getting tweaked, um, and a lot of our customers, once they find out that the fork is broken, if it's an older bike, they'll decide not to do the repair because it's going to be very difficult to source a, you know, proprietary fork from 2013. So not only are we keeping people safe, uh, for a low costs, we're able to steer people in the direction of a new safe bike, you know, because now that they know that they're not going to be able to get these parts anymore. So that's, this is a scenario that we see all the time of there's an visual damage, but we need to take a step back and look at everything before we commit, just to make sure that everything is safe and able to work well down the road together. So yeah, that's something that we see almost, you know, I see this like two or three times a week talking to our customers.
Yeah. I think I would be a bit torn up if I cracked my carbon frame and I would just be grappling with, you know, do I send it to you guys for repair? Or at what point does it make sense to upgrade? It's a tough call, but it's, you know, many of us are riding bikes that we absolutely love and would hate to sort of send out to pasture earlier than they need to, you know, in an ideal scenario, I want to ride a bike hard, love it, and then pass it on to someone else who can love it.
Correct. And for me, one of the things that I always say is if you have bought your bike within the past five years, and aren't dreaming of a component of a serious component upgrade, then it makes sense to fix your bike because that's usually the thing is if you decide to replace your bike, you know, and that's been made in the past couple of years, there's going to be some chances are there's going to be some kind of proprietary element that you need to also get. So you're not just going to be in shipping repair return, shipping fee. You're going to be in that additional cost as well. So, you know, I still, my, my personal bike is a Scott addict, rim break. It's been broken two or three times. Luckily I work, but I don't, you know, I it's, it's my good weather road bike. I don't dream of a disc road bike for the summer. So it made a lot of sense to get it fixed because that bike serves that utility. So if you know, if it's a bike that you want to keep for a long time and you have components you like on it, then it's almost no question repair is usually the way to go. But if an upgrade is then your future and we can help you figure that out, Hey, then we're happy to do that too.
So we talked a bit about the assessment process and the repair process, and you alluded to a couple of different options. You can just get the black carbon put on the frame, if you just kind of want that. You know, I don't care what my mountain bike looks like on the down tube kind of phenomenon. But I also saw on your site, some immaculate paint matching and repair work you've done on some beautiful bicycles. Are you guys doing that in house? Are you working with someone local to you?
No, we do it all in house. The hard way, uh, growing our paint department was kind of a very hard and painstaking process because bike painting is it's socks. Um, it's super hard. Yeah, there's no shortcuts. And you know, you could go to an auto body shop, people that can paint cars, they all think they can paint bikes. And the idea of there's people that can paint flat things. There's people that paint round things. And there's two different words. And we know almost all the bike, major bike painters that are independent bike painters in the country as well. They'd say the same thing like spring a tube is so different spraying a quarter panel, a, you know, on like a card or something. And laying graphics is so hard. So we grew everything internally, painstakingly very, very painstakingly and learning how cheap paints will kind of screw you some days versus expensive paints or cheap clear codes versus expensive clear codes.
And I don't think the average person knows how expensive paint or clear coat is, but some of our paints are, you know, if you're talking about like half a pint, you know, it's almost 70, 80 bucks. Uh, and our clear coats are almost $500 for a gallon. And it's like, yeah, they last a while, but they don't last that long. You're maybe talking like five to 10 full bikes, maybe, um, depending how many bronze and clear you want to shoot this. Stuff's just very expensive and the guns are expensive. You know, they're, you're in a thousand to 2000 bucks just for the gun air compressor. And Oh, I could go forever about this, but luckily we have a great painter in house. You could just freakishly max a match, everything under the sun, all the insane specialized, uh, glitter coats that are doing right now, the shimmer codes we've done all the Thermo chromic paints where they change color with different heat signature. Oh, Dan's bike actually changes with different colors. He does. Yep. Wow. All,
I think I was looking at a picture of a [inaudible] on your site that was beautifully color match and had intricate pin, like a pin Stripe line through the color. It was, it was insane. And from the picture it looked brand new.
Some of those coal Naga restorations are absolutely the fine are some of our painters finest work there, boy, they're not cheap. Um, but at that point, you know, and the owners even agree with us. It's like, you're doing a classic car at that point. So, you know, why would you want to do it inexpensively anyway, you want it to be proper and in its pristine condition and he has the ability to do it. Um, yeah, they're, they're, they're not cheap and they take a long time, but the end result is boy, if they look the third doing some of the photography around here, those are some of the best bikes to shoot. Cause it's an endless amount of detail that we have to do to them. So yeah, we, uh, we have quite the range of, of, uh, finishing that we're able to achieve here. Be it the most basic vinyl and, and get it out as quickly as possible to, you know, uh, hand pin striping [inaudible] but yeah, he does it all. It's pretty, it's pretty, pretty wild.
Yeah. I'll put, I'll put some photos up on, on Instagram and Facebook and I'll obviously put your URL in the show notes so people can go over and it out before
We go tonight, do you guys have any sort of funny or outlandish stories from the over 13,000 bikes you guys have inspected, that would be fun to share on the podcast. Poof,
There's so many, we've seen stuff from a lot of pro racers, so like very household names, um, from the pro tour, even we even have one in the shop right now, those from the tour de France last year. Um, so do stuff on that level. I just saw there was a repair request from today of a guy that like ended while doing a manual at 25 miles an hour to show off is to show off in front of his 11 year old. Uh, I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of great stories are like peop bikes have gone through forest fires and boy, I dunno, what do you got damn.
The one of our classic favorites is, uh, I think we tell this story every time, but it's, it's so great. Somebody dropped an industrial waffle iron on their top tube and broke it and that's all we got. And that's why it's one of my favorite stories because there's so much intrigue and mystery into the details of this story, full iron. Why, how big is it? How, how many waffles can it make? Why do you have, what were you doing? What kind of waffles did you make? Right. So that's the mystery also, where are they? Uh, that one's great. Um, some of boy, I mean, we've seen somebodies beloved house cat chew through their seat's day sounds. I mean, the stories we see you can't make up. Um, I'm also thinking of, um, on the inspection side, one of the thing, one time we, we, somebody brought in a damaged bike and it had some issues or in front of, uh, or excuse me, kind of like right behind the bottom bracket on the chain stay.
And Sean did the ultrasound scan and was like, this is, I don't know about this. This is pretty bizarre. And right along the crack line, we found a piece of pre preg backing paper that wasn't mold that was molded into the laminate. Um, and Shaun's ultrasound readings were, were totally wild. He was like, I don't know what to say. I've never seen anything like this. And it was like, I forget what brand it was, but it was an older bike, like 2010 or 2009. Uh, yeah, prepregs backing paper in the laminate. And that's exactly where the damage occurred. Um, we've found tons of dirt in bikes from the factory. Those are
Inside the frame, like closed off and we poured out like, I think it was like 90 grams of dirt. And we were like, okay,
This bike is brand new. You're like, how did all this?
And then also imagine you get the, uh, I drove my car into a parking garage.
Well, daily, weekly, yeah. At least one at least once or twice a week. Every, every, every once a week. But that one, yeah, that's a full inspection. Those are always full inspections. So if you're listening and you did that, don't yeah. We know, you know, don't think it's going to be okay that you just hit your car into a house, even if it was only five miles an hour. Yeah. I just say you take like
Moveable object of your house and like a 4,000 pound car and then a 20 pound bike. And you're like, alright, that's going to stop.
But all that apparently. All right. Yeah. It's simple. All the time we saw, we, we have seen people doing like longer descents, uh, who have hit deer who have hit deer before. Uh, also also a full inspection, definitely full inspection. Those bikes can be pretty, I don't know, but sometimes we do the full inspection and Sean and I joke about this all the time. It's like, sometimes they're, there's nothing wrong with them and you know, it's, it's not every time we do a full inspection, the bike is completely smoked. Um, you know, oftentimes they're, they're totally okay. But at least people are able to walk away with that peace of mind. And, and now that now, now they know they have the safety to do all their favorite rides again. But yeah, we've seen so many wild things over the years. That's awesome.
Well, I appreciate all the information you guys, there's a lot of fun for me to learn about carbon repair. I think one of the takeaways specifically for our listeners who are obviously the majority gravel, cyclists, is just pay attention to that tire diameter and mud damage.
I have one more for you as well. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, drops chain stays. It's all the rage be careful.
And how do you see that playing out with the drop stays? Cause that is a design feature in a lot of these gravel bikes. I know
I was actually looking about like, I like to do a just review and analysis and thinking about drop chain stays versus res chain stays, you know, like on the Trek, uh, stash has a raised chain stay and I'm like, okay, that totally removes the chain suck issue. But with the drop chain state, it kinda like puts it more in harm's way. And I think people are trying to run a one buys system, which I love one by systems. But when you try to maximize your chain ring side, let's say you go to a 38 on a drop chain, stay on a like standard road with bike. You're playing with fire a little bit. Um, and you start to see, you know, like you're bouncing along. And even if you have a clutch or whatever, I don't think it really matters. Um, either way the chain kind of comes up a little bit on the bottom lower side of the chain ring and it just comes right into that chance today.
So I would like to say like, give yourself
A little more room or you may not be that.
Okay.
I dunno, stoked, but maybe run a slightly smaller chain ring. Like go down to six, maybe. Um, give yourself a little more room there. Just get that chain away from that drop chain state.
Yeah. This comes from being a lot of these. Yeah. Next time I'm grinding some mud through my chain stays. I'm going to have a little bit of fear in my heart after talking to you guys. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It's an easy fix. So just let us know Craig, you can just let us know, just keep pedaling if anything happened. Just peddle through it. That's my alright guys. Well, I appreciate you joining me live and I appreciate the insight for our listeners take care and we'll, we'll talk again soon. All right. Thank you so much. See you guys. Thank you. Bye bye.
In the Dirt covers the latest news and commentary from the gravel cycling community. This week we discuss the impending name change for DK and some of the voices we should be listening too. Followed by a discussion about the exploding field of gravel bike bags to optimize your ride. Each week we conclude with 'can't let it go' where Randall and Craig talk about what they can't let go of gravel cycling or otherwise.
Alexandera Houchin's thoughtful article on The Radavist. A must-read.
This week we speak with Geoff Duncan and Chris Moore from the Hellhole Gravel Grind stage race in South Carolina. The team has an innovative format making for a fun weekend away!
Episode Sponsor: Athletic Greens, the all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance.
Hellhole Gravel Grind Stage Race Website
Hellhole Gravel Grind Facebook page
Automated transcript (please excuse all typos):
Jeff and Chris, welcome to the show.
Hey Craig, thanks for having us. Thanks for having us.
Yeah, I'm super stoked to learn more about South Carolina gravel and some of the events you guys are putting on over the years. And let's start by talking a little bit about your history as riders and when you both discovered gravel riding, and then also what made you jump into event, organization and promotion?
You want to, you want to start Chris? Yeah, sure. Say wow, let's go back all the way to college days. Back in the early nineties I raised I was, I wrote kind of ride bikes whenever I was in high school. And then in college, this is the early nineties. The mountain bike scene started getting gone and got a mountain bike and started doing some races here in South Carolina. And then continue that until I got out of college. And then from there, you know, the work and trying to find a career and everything kind of took over. And then I got back into it in the mid to mid early, mid two thousands. And just progressed from there. Raced road, raced mountain bikes dabbled as a triathlon a little bit started as a USA cycling official, worked up through that.
And then we just started putting on a race about 10 years ago, a mountain bike race. Interestingly enough, the mountain bike race, one of the, one of the, one of the favorite mountain bike races I did whenever I was in college, it was called the killer three mile bike series up in Sumpter of near Sumter, South Carolina. And that went away in the mid nineties. And then so our first race that we started promoting Jeff and I was the return to killer three and it was just a single mountain bike race at the same place where we used to we're where the series used to be back in the nineties. And we started doing that in what 2009, somewhere around there 2009 was with that event. And then that grew into the the not mountain bike race, which is now, which was part of the Southern classic series. And now part of the King King Creek cup. Nice and windows.
When did you start riding drop bar bikes off road?
So that started in, in the what, probably 2010 or so. The cyclocross scene was kind of getting, going here in the Southeast and w we really didn't have a lot of places to train. So we would go out in the Francis Marion forest and ride the gravel roads and the bike, the, the, the hiking trails out there. And that was like I said, probably 2010, 2000, and then that morphed into this would be a great place to put on a gravel race. And this was, you know, in the beginning, kind of the beginning stages of the gravel and 2013, we decided to come up with the, the hell hole, gravel grind, stage race, and that's where it all started from there.
Nice. And Jeff, how about you? Yeah, so I think I have a little bit abbreviated time on the bike compared to Chris. I didn't start riding a bike until around like 2006. And unit road was always my interest. I don't know that I ever was very good at it. But you know started out just riding a bike and then entering and doing some crits and whatnot. Think I met Chris around like 2009. I met him and his wife on a couple of group rides, or maybe, maybe it was a crit, a local crit. And we just started talking and I think we wanted something different from the team that we are on. So we just kinda created our own thing. And, you know, like Chris said at the, at the time it was a requirement.
If you want to, if you want to be on a sanction team, you had to put on your own race you know, through USA cycling. So that's how the, the knock came about. And that killer three is what it was called, but we've been doing that for 10 years. And, you know, during the course of those 10 years, we've, we've done state time trials, cyclocross, state championships circuit races. And then I think, like Chris said about 2010 ish, we have a, we had a mutual friend named Patrick and he, he was training hardcore for things like trans Iowa. And, and it was still probably, you know, in the earlier days of dirty Kansas. And you know, we, we kind of took an interest in like, Hey, what, what is this all about and why, why do I always see Patrick riding in this forest it's right in our backyard?
It's like Chris said, we, we hopped on cross bikes and went out there. In retrospect, that was just brutal what it does to your body on a cross bike for that distance. But yeah. And then, and then I think we always you know, we're always thinking of new and innovative ideas for events to put on. And for some reason we wanted to do a road race out there and called the tour de Frances Marion by road race scene is kinda, you know, it was kind of fallen off. So you know, we're like, Hey, let's do this gravel. And we started with hell hole gravel grind and 2013. And it was interesting to see just who showed up to that and, and just what that actually became. And it took off for us. I mean, I think the, I think when we, we launched the page within hours, it had over hundred likes and
I remember texting Chris and I'm like, what, what did we just get ourselves into here? So that was pretty, it was pretty cool. Yeah. I imagine back in 2013, the spectrum of bicycles that showed up were, you know, anywhere from a mountain bike to a cross bike potentially to even a road bike. What were you guys seeing back then?
I think, I think that first year, I think on the podium, I think we had all three. I think we had a road bike, a cross bike, and a mountain bike on the podium that first year.
And I'll do you one better, Craig, we had a guy show up on a, a 36 inch diameter unicycle. It was, was pretty amazing. He did, he did 75 miles on that, you know, cycle. So, so when I come to ride with you guys in South Carolina, we're going to see a lot of unicycles around. No, it's, it has just, you know, just like the industry. You know, we see, we seem to still see some newbies showing up, which is great. And we encourage, you know, show up on whatever bike you feel comfortable riding out there, but you definitely can tell, you know, everybody is starting to get or ask about, you know, what kind of bike should I get? What kind of gravel bike you know, they're asking about things like tire tire, width, and, and wheels and brakes and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's get into it. I know you guys do three gravel events each year, but I'm super excited to talk about that the hell hole gravel grind, because it looks like, you know, at this point you've got a stage race and some really kind of unique elements to that weekend. Can you talk through what the weekend looks like and when it starts? Yeah. so,
You know, kind of, kind of the whole, one of the reasons that we decided to get with the whole stage race idea was because here in the coastal area of South Carolina and it's flat and, and very flat, we, we will go out for a, I think, I think what the 75 mile one day portion of the hell hole is about 400 feet, about 400 feet of climbing.
That's so incredible to me, I think about going out for a lunch ride today. And like, there's no route I can pick out of my, my house that is going to net less than a thousand feet of climbing. Oh yeah, yeah,
Yeah. Sometimes our road rides on Saturday. I mean, we can go, we can go 40 and 50 miles and do you know, less than a hundred feet. So, so, so the, the, the idea was to say, okay, well, how can we, how can we take this to the next level? And do something different to try to get people, you know out here. So we, that's where the whole stage race idea came from.
And
Basically the, the Friday night before the race it's it's on Saturday is stage one, Sunday is stage two. And, and on Friday night, what we have is we have a six mile prologue just to get your, of, of what the gravel is like in, in in the Francis Marion forest time, trial style, little lollipop course that surprisingly a lot of people, I would say last year, what we had about 60 people come out for it.
Yeah. The front, the Friday night time trial portion is optional. Because we know people can't always make it in Friday evening for the, for the whole weekend. So we make that optional and offer, you know, the participants they get, they get a time bonus compared to everybody that does not participate in that. But yeah, we, we have a good turnout people generally like it because they, they are going full gas for the, you know, the 10 K like Chris said, and it's kind of a dusk and Twilight. So you have to be despite the fact that the terrain is flat, you do have to be somewhat careful out there when you're, when you're going at speed you know, cross side, because you're going full gas. Right.
So, so then, then on Saturday, it starts out with a stage one and in conjunction with stage one, we, we have the, the, the stage raise portion. We have a one day 75 mile, and then we have a one day 40, usually between 35 and 40 mile route for, you know, for, so that people can slowly progress up. And then on Sunday, it is strictly just the stage two, which would be another 75 miles. So the stage racers are looking at 150 miles over two days. The, the S the one days we're looking at 75 miles and between 30 and 40 miles,
And are the two 75 mile courses, are they different routes? Well, so for the, for the first iterations of hellhole, the answer is yes. So we, we had a stage one and two completely different. And I think we did that for the first three years. But, you know, it's, it's largely just Chris and I, that are out there Mark in the course. And, and we do have a group of stalwart volunteers that come out and help us. But you know, the, the forest is 400 square miles and it's, it is remote. There's not real good cell phone reception out there. And so it does provide some logistical challenges. So after the third time, the third year, we decided that we were going to stick with the same core stage one to reverse it. And then we keep people guessing we do make a few course alterations, and those are usually around like the more technical sections you know, there's, there's bits of single track that we can tie in to connect different, different portions.
So, you know, where we lack elevation and things like that to, to provide a challenge, we, we do other, we, we throw in other means to, to keep people on their feet. That sounds like fun. So on those, do you find that groups are able to stay together on parts of the course and then, then are broken up by the single track sections? Oh, for sure. Yeah. So the other reason we try to keep, keep the single track sections in there is we, we wanted to kind of keep it from being a strictly a road race. You know, we had some, some, you know, some pretty fast roadies come down and just, you know, try to try to blow apart the field. So we'd like to keep, keep the technical sections in there as well. And, you know, one of the things about all of our events you mentioned, you know, our groups able to, to, to form up and work together out there.
His you know, we, we, it is a stage race and we do have the one day, the one day rides that are available for people, but our, our whole philosophy has always been that those that are out there to race are going to race and it's going to be hard for them. And those that are out there to ride are gonna go out there and ride, and it's going to be, you know, equally as hard for them relatively speaking. So it's hard for, it's hard for everyone and everyone's going to, you know, leaves feeling very challenged that, but also, you know, very rewarded. Yeah, for sure. I love that mindset of yours to kind of use the terrain to kind of break things up. And I think it's one of those things that's gonna continue to be discussed in relation to events, because as we get more roadies coming into the market, the last thing most of us want to see is massive. Palatines riding 90% of the race together. And then it coming down to a group sprint, I'm a big fan of throwing people into single track and technical terrain. I love when you sort of start to question your bike choice because you chose one thing that was great on the, you know, more fire roadie type stuff, but it, it really is failing you on the single track. Cause you should have to make those choices and think about your equipment when you come into these events.
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, the, the, the, the courses, some of the roads out there, you know, it's, it's, there, there are the main roads, and then they're like the A's and B's and C roads that the force designates. So, you know, like after the events, it's always interesting to hear people talk that, Oh, I was with this guy up until hell hole B. And then, you know, he just took off and I just couldn't, I couldn't, you know, get through that section and stay with that group. It's, it's always interesting to hear those stories, cause there's certain roads that stand out and that we try to fit in the courses just because we know that that's a, that's a road that some people Excel at, but yet some people do not Excel at. And you know, that's, that's what, the little challenges we like to throw in there. Nice.
You guys mentioned that you get the question
That, that every promoter gets, which is like, what tire width with tire size should I be running? What are you usually recommending for people? And what do you, what would you ride yourself?
Yeah, so we generally speaking, I'll, I'll talk for Chris here on this, but you know, if I'm just out there riding, riding by myself, my normal route, I'll, I'll throw on a 40 millimeter tire. And, and we are, we are sponsored by Schwabie and we liked that. And so Schwabie G ones. They they're very low profile in terms of traction. There's not a lot of technical sections out here until you hit some of the single track, but the 40 millimeter gives you some protection against the, the bumps and the ruts that you're gonna face, but enough you know, enough with good rolling, you know, minimal rolling resistance that you can build up some speed. But we have seen, we have seen people come out and against our better judgment, you know, they'll ride a 28 millimeter road tire out here. And so you know, it varies and in some of our other events, we've even had people come out on fat bikes and do relatively well. So it really just, it really just, it's a question of how, how much how much do you want to feel like you are about to get beat up? If, if you will, you know, the, the wider, you go a little bit more plush of a ride you're going to have.
Yeah, that's exactly it. It's kind of funny to think about. And I've had this conversation with a number of people, just the idea that you do have to consider not only pure speed in gravel, but also comfort. And if you're, you know, if the front of the packs finishing the race in three hours, but you're a six hour person, you're probably going to need a little bit more compliance in your equipment, then the guy or girl who's upfront you know, doing it in half the time.
Yeah. Right. And there's been some very good discussions recently about, you know, tire selection and tire pressure. And, and generally what I'm hearing is that, you know, narrower and higher pressures, aren't, aren't generally better. And, you know, that even might even translate onto the road. So we, we tend to go fairly, fairly low pressures, but fairly wide, they give you that, that Kush for the longer distances, it's your body will. Thank you.
Yeah. And I've also been really impressed when riding, you know, like I upset my slick or, you know, just very, very small knobby tire when you increase the volume, it's actually pretty amazing. The off-road terrain you can ride comfortably and safely. I've definitely found that I, you know, I lose a little bit in high speed cornering, and certainly if I'm breaking the backend has a greater tendency to slide out. But generally speaking, like, I feel like I can get over a lot of stuff on a semi select tire when I started the sport, I would not have thought that was possible. Yeah. Yeah.
So, so lately in the gravel cycling press and cycling press in general, there's been a conversation about USA cycling, getting involved in gravel, and they recently did a gravel summit in in Bentonville Arkansas to get a few of the bigger events together. I'm curious because you guys have a long history in promotion of off-road events and you, your, your mountain bike events are held under USA cycling. I'd love for you to give the listener a little bit of a sense for, you know, what's it like working with USA, cycling on the mountain bike events, and then not having to work with them at all. And the gravel events
I guess I'll feel down first, but it, yeah, I guess there's two different aspects. Kind of like what you said is, is, is it working with them or is it just what comes along with working with USA cycling? So I will at least say with our mountain bike event and I mentioned this earlier is, is if we didn't have to use them, I don't know that I would, however, you know, working with them whenever I need something from them. Our, our local association is pretty good at being responsive with regard to that. Now, you know, that being said, I, I don't think we would. And I'm skin gonna speak for Chris on this too, but I don't know that we'd ever go to USA cycling for a gravel event. We don't have, I don't think we have any desire to sanction our event.
We do use them for insurance purposes. But the, the, the rigmarole that goes along with USA cycling people just want to ride their bikes. And, and like I mentioned, you know, we have people that come out just to ride and they wanna see what gravel's all about. We have people that come out and want to race but there's nothing tied to it. There's no, there's no cat up points. There's no you know, no advance, you know, you're out there just to prove something to yourself and I don't need additional paperwork or additional fees. We try to keep our, our fees relatively low barrier to entry because we want people out there at our events and, and the less, we less red tape we have. I think that's the better for us.
Are you, were you saying you're able to use USA cycling's insurance on the gravel events?
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And just so you know, they have a
For there for, they call them grand fondos. So they allow you to, you know, there's no license required. There's no anything required, but you can submit for their insurance. And I think it's like $4 and I think it went up this year, $4 and 75 cents
A a rider per day. So w you know, what we've is
Currently at the, at the levels that we have in it, it's still the most economical. And without having to do any type of you know, additional licenses or anything like that, it does it
Yeah.
For the level that we're at right now. It is, it is the better choice.
Gotcha. And then if you look at the mountain bike race compared to the gravel race, how much more expensive does it end up, you know, having a fully sanctioned race versus a, you know, just go on your own route on the gravel.
I would say considerably you know, you, you know, each, each rider as they walk up to pay for their, for their race, you know, if they don't have a an annual license, they have to buy a one day license. You know, so you know, that right there is, you know, X number of dollars more that they may not be anticipating.
I would say, I would say for, for our mountain bike event, you know, you can, you can bank on, if you don't have a USA cycling license, you're going to pay at a minimum 25% more just to register. And, and if you want to get an annual license, then the annual license itself is more than it costs to do our event. You know, so as an example, you know, we could have new people to the sport show up and you're like, Hey, do you have a license? Cause you have to check and they show you their driver's license. And they have no idea that no USA cycling requires you to pay this fee to have a one day license. And it does partially cover the insurance. But again, it's a, it's a barrier to entry. These people just want to experience the event and determine if that's something that they want to get into. And, and I find that any kind of barrier to entry like that it's to, it's going to turn some people off and people, some people just won't show up because of that. There's a flux, you know, on the flip side, some people come out just because of that. But I don't, I don't feel like at all, that, that, that is that there's any, I have not, I've not wanted any of our gravel events. Anyone has approached and said, when are you going to make this a sanctioned event? Yeah.
And, and the thing is, is, you know, even with the insurance, through USA cycling, you know, this year from between last year and this year, I think it's went up 50 cents per rider per day, which, you know, I think it went from four 25. Now it's four 75. So, you know, it, it, it is, it is increasingly getting to the point where you know, it probably in the future, we'll start looking at other forms of insurance.
Yeah, I mean, it is a nice benefit. It is a nice benefit that USA cycling is there and can provide that insurance piece. But I agree. I mean, a lot of gravel athletes may just sign up for one event a year. And even in that, even if they're signing up for a multiple, most could care less about points and upgrades and, and all that. I think that kind of motivation tends to change the racing, just given people's competitive nature, et cetera. So it's certainly an open-ended question that USA cycling is grappling with to try to see how they can add value to the community. When you know, a lot of people from the outsider thinking they're not adding any value whatsoever. Cool.
Well, I appreciate the time you guys, I appreciate the events you guys are putting on. I have to say that going to Charleston and racing hellhole, it sounds like a hell of a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, you know, at the end of September, it's, it's usually warm. And unfortunately in the patent a few years, we've had to battle some close calls with hurricanes. We actually had to postpone it a what, two years ago, because of a hurricane. But yeah, it's a great place. A lot of people will usually come down and make a whole weekend of it, bring the wife and the kids and they go do the downtown Charleston thing and they hang out out in the forest and race their bike right on. Well, I'll make sure to put some information in the show notes about how to find you on the web.
And I can't wait to hear about all the racing this year from you guys.
Great. Thanks. We appreciate it, Craig.
Introducing 'In the Dirt' a bi-weekly show covering the latest product drops and general musings about gravel with co-host Randall Jacobs.
This week we tackled the everpresent question, What is a gravel bike? Then we tackle the controversial subject of fully suspended gravel bikes.
This week's 'Can't let it go' were Dynaplugs and Inclusion.
This week we talk with one of gravel's finest; professional racer and event organizer, Amanda Nauman. Amanda is a 2x DK100 winner and runner-up in this year's Mid-South event. In September, health conditions dependent, Amanda and team are introducing a new gravel event, Mammoth Tuff in Mammoth Lakes, CA.
Episode Links:
Amanda Nauman Instagram
Mammoth Tuff Gravel Event
Automated transcription: Please excuse the errors
Amanda, welcome to the show.
Hey, nice to see you, Craig. Yes, there, we have it.
So Amanda, we all start off the show by learning a little bit more about your background. How did you come to gravel cycling
A long roundabout way, but I can give you the short version is basically I grew up swimming and from there I was swimming in college. I started getting sick of it and then I started doing triathlons. And from there did a few collegiate bike races enjoyed bike racing, got a job in the bike industry at felt bicycles. All my coworkers raced bikes. They kind of said, Hey, you know, you should do some of this racing stuff. It's fun. Sure enough, I was kind of good at it and that's how cyclocross and like cross country mountain biking started. And then the next thing was all the gravel events that started coming up. And I was kind of using those events as training for cross. Cause it was a good time of the year to be doing all those longer events. And then yeah, I found success in gravel events and that's, that's the shorthand version.
So where you start, did you start off with a road bike? Was that your first bike when you were doing triathlons?
Yes. Yeah. Good question. But yeah, so I got a road bike first and then when I started getting good at triathlon stuff, then yeah, I got a triathlon bike after that.
And then did you get a mountain bike to kind of just dabble in off-road riding?
I think so. I, I had always had a mountain bike, which is funny because I grew up going to mammoth during the summers. And so my dad really liked mountain biking. So my definition of mountain biking growing up was like going up a chairlift and riding down. So I remember when I was, yeah, I remember when I was in college distinctly having a conversation with somebody that was like, mountain biking is so hard and I was like, no, it's not. You just go downhill the whole time and not, not having any idea, like actually what it was all about. But yeah, my first bike, like first bike under the Christmas tree that I can remember that was actually usable, was a mountain bike and that's how I got into it. And so when I wanted to get the road bike, my dad was riding road at the time and he was like, yeah, let's do it. And so it was something that we could do together also.
Neat. So it's probably, it sounds like it, those early skills kind of left you with some great bike handling relative to the overall spectrum of triathletes.
Yeah. Surprisingly, it's something that I look back on and realize that, you know, my dad taking me to ride mountain bikes at a young age was he didn't know he was developing all these skills I would need later. But yeah, I was lucky to, to have that
True. And as you were sort of adding disciplines to your cycling career, were you living in Southern California at the time?
Yes. Yeah. So I grew up here swam here, but I went to college in the East coast, in New Jersey. And so that was like indoor swimming, you know, dealing with winter and stuff during triathlons and all that. But I applied for a job at felt bicycles cause it was an Irvine, which is like 10 minutes away from where I lived with my parents at the time and I got the job. So after the summer before my final year at Stevens, I went and did an internship there and came back and they, they said, you know, if you finish the school year, you can have a full time job after you graduate. So that was how all that happened. So basically I lived on the East coast for five years and came back home and yeah, I'm still in pretty much the same area.
Nice. So the leap from triathlon to cyclocross is pretty huge. How did that happen? Is there a big cyclocross scene down in Southern California?
Yeah, so the triathlon stuff I was doing pretty good at, and the funny thing is like all my coworkers in the engineering department, it felt raced cross cause it was fun. Short. The Soquel scene was pretty good and there was like a local grassroots team that was sponsored by felt at the time. So I would go and watch the races first before I ever raced them. So I would go and watch them the first event that I ever went to, to like actually spectate was cross Vegas, cause I was working in her bike at the time. And so we all just went to watch it. And that was when I realized like this cyclocross thing is amazing. Cause if you think about my first introduction to like big cyclocross events was cross Vegas and I thought all of them were going to be like that and it was nuts. But yeah, so I fell in love with just watching it from there. And then, you know, I had some friends that convinced me to do it. David actually signed me up for my first race by just like telling me to show up to this event. And then he signed me up without telling me, and I just happened to have all my bike stuff cause we were gonna ride afterwards. Yeah. So my first cross race was like him just signing me up without telling me.
And as it turns out you had some running skills from your triathlon career assets.
Oh, barely. That was my worst discipline. I don't know if you'd call those skills. I would just, you know, yeah. I can get off my bike and trot for a little bit again.
Nice. Do you remember the first gravel event that you entered that you'd consider kind of a gravel event?
Yes. It was Belgian waffle ride. I, you know, jokingly, I still consider that a road race. But that was the first style of that event that I did. Yeah. and I don't remember if it was the second or third annual. But it was still when it was at spies headquarters. Like it still felt small. I remember like Jonathan Page and Nicole Duke were in the race. And so as a cyclocross racer, I was like, Oh, this is awesome. Like these pro cross racers are here. So then at the time it wasn't anything more than what felt like, like a really long cyclocross race. Really.
Okay. Yeah. And you know, one of the questions I definitely wanted to ask and it may come up in the context of our discussion about mid South is as a female athlete in these mass start races. How do you kind of navigate that? Obviously, you know, you're on the trying to be on the front end of these things, but you're mixed in with men and women. How do you, how do you kind of navigate that as a professional woman?
Yeah, it's definitely something that's evolved over time. I mean, I can remember the first two years of dirty Kansas still making the front group and that was totally normal at the time. But as the, the speed of the front got faster, you know, it's way less possible for me to be able to hang at the pace that Ted King's cruising net, you know? So I think what happens in the women's race is everybody just goes and hangs on for dear life. And for a lot of people, I mean that first hour is like across race, whether you're male or female. But I think specifically on the women's side too, it's like, we're trying to get in as fast as group of possible in the beginning and try to hang on with wheels as fast as you can. And yeah, I mean, even I was writing some notes down in my mid South race and like the beginning of it, we just, we were going so hard and it was so unpleasant and it's one of those things where like, I'm going to be out here for like eight more hours after this.
Yeah. I got to imagine it's tack the tactically really interesting for you to kind of figure out because yeah, maybe you don't want to be on the Ted King, Peter [inaudible] pack. So killing yourself to be in that is not going to be in your best interests, but you do want it, you, you are going to finish relatively high obviously for the overall. So finding that right group to hook on with and hoping your other women competitors aren't hooked into the same group is that is kind of a tactic I suppose, right?
Yeah, for sure. And I, it's hard to, it's hard to say which one is the better tactic because you think about like, Amedee, Rockwell's start at dirty Kensal last year, she came in, you know, maybe in the top 10 to that first checkpoint and she admits to not having a good start at all and not being where she should have been. But you know, at the same time there are events where like I can say I've won or did really well because I did make the fastest possible group in the beginning. So it's a trade off and I think the distance and the length of the events plays into it, you know, there's some where you absolutely have to be as far up as you can in the beginning or else, you know, it's almost impossible to get to the front. But yeah, I think it's very event specific for sure.
Do you find yourself thinking about that in training to say to yourself, like I gotta be able to go full gas, but then back it off and you know, obviously make the distance.
Yeah. yeah, you cut off a little bit, but I think, you know, you were asking if it applies to training and for sure, I think there's a lot of times where you that's honestly, how I think about it is the first hour is like across race and then you're just hanging on for dear life. Some of the training rides that I've done in the past have been like showing up to our local group ride around tears called Como street. And so I I'll go do Como street on my road bike, which can be like a good two, a little over two hours. I'll get back here and get on my gravel bike and then ride for another three or four hours. And that's the best simulation I've figured out how to do where I'm going, as hard as I can to hang on to this group.
And then, you know, still being able to like fuel and drink enough to be able to ride for X amount of hours after that. That makes sense. Have you had occasions where you've made sort of made the group and maybe dropped off later in the race and you found someone else rode a wave forward and ended up bridging up to you because of the work of other athletes in the race? Like they bridged to me from behind. Yeah, because they just happened to sort of get involved with a simpatico pack. Yes. Yeah, for sure. My first mid South in 2018, 2018, yeah. 2018. I made a really good group in the beginning. I got to the checkpoint, I had to pee. So I had this like whole ordeal running to a porta potty. And so when I left, I was completely by myself and I was by myself for a while.
And this group of guys along with Chi Takeshita showed up behind me and I was like, God damn it. Like, you know, you're going through this thought process of like, she caught me because she's in this group and I've been by myself and this sucks. But I ended up having a conversation with the guys in the group and I was like asking them, you know, cause there were, her teammates were in the group as well. And I was like, if you are just going to pull her, like let me know now, cause I don't want to play this game. The guy was like, no, I'm going to let you guys have your own race. And so he ended up attacking so that the group would split apart. And that was what happened. Like everybody ended up stringing out and we regrouped in different places and that was where I ended up dropping her.
So yeah, there've been quite a few instances where all get caught. You know, if you're in a group of like five or six and somebody solo, there's a really good chance you're going to catch them without doing more like, less effort than the person ahead of you. So it definitely becomes a strategy tactic game for sure. Do you get the sense with your fellow women competitors that, you know, people are just like, it is what it is and sometimes it's going to fall in my favor and sometimes it's going to happen against me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, especially as these events got bigger and there are more women, there are more people period. Like there's just a lot of different variable speeds. And a lot of times like that, that just shuffles the board completely. And, and definitely, I think I'm more stressed now because in, in the early days of the gravel racing, like where you ended up in that first hour, there was a pretty good chance that was like where you were going to finish. But now with so many more people out there and a lot of different people who are similar speeds to you as well it's easier for that duck to shuffle a bit more. So yeah. It makes it more fun I think. Yeah.
So I was excited to talk to you about your second place finish at mid South this year, I was watching the coverage and it was a bit of a bomber that the women didn't get as much camera time as the men did in that race. But clearly like you turned yourself inside out for that performance. So I'd love to hear just kind of how it played out.
Yeah. Thanks. And it's funny cause like I then the night before, so Thursday night the night before the expo and all that I was hanging out and Ansul Dickie was there, the guy from Vermont social who does a lot of Ted King's videos, he does a lot of the, the wall wahoo stuff that's coming out now. And he was part of that group that was doing the coverage of the front of the race. And he said to me, he was like, yeah. Bobby brought us on to do the coverage at the front of this race. And I was like, Oh, that's awesome. But never, it didn't cross my mind at all to ask him like, Oh, what about the women? It just, I had assumed that it was only going to be the men's coverage and I'm kind of mad at myself now for even just thinking that way, you know, because I was just cutting myself short for one.
But yeah, it was kind of a bummer that had happened that way. I know they learned their lesson and they've already addressed that. Cause people were pissed and I saw the comments afterwards and I was like, Oh God, this is, does not look good. But I know that he's gonna, you know, take care of it two fold next year for sure. But yeah, it was, it was a very difficult race and for a lot of reasons, I think the, some of it was like even emotional as much as it was physical. And everything was just stacked against us. I think from the beginning, like I felt guilty even starting the race. We were sitting in the car that morning and I'm texting people like, is there going to be a lightning delay? Cause it was thundering and lightning all around us.
It just felt like everything was saying this event is not happening or it shouldn't be happening. But yeah, we got to the start line and it was crazy, you know, the usual jitters of the event and we took off. And I honestly didn't think it was going to be as hard as it was in the beginning and we it's pavement for a bit but not very long. And then there's a stretch of gravel, another stretch of pavement. And then it's pretty much gravel for a long time. And I knew that I had to stay ahead. Cause as soon as they hit that second stretch of pavement, it's they go pretty hard. Cause there's a little bit of a climb then it starts spreading out from there. But basically once we got into that pavement and then the next stretch of gravel, it was just full gas.
And I was looking at my power and I went, there was like 15 minutes in that section where my normalized power was two 85, which is like a climbing repeat effort for me. Like I can normally my workouts, if I do that, it's like an eight, nine minute effort, not 15. And yeah, so like five minutes after that Hannah got away in a group that I could see, it was like, you know, you hit one little mud section wrong and all of a sudden you're like five seconds back from where you were because you come to like the screeching halt and I can just see her riding away with this group of guys. And I knew that if I wasn't going to get there, it, I knew it probably just wasn't going to happen, period. Which sucks. But that's the reality. That's the reality of it too.
Sometimes unless I get in a group of guys or something happens to her, it's going to be very hard for me to close that gap and then suddenly it just that whatever group she was in just got away completely. And so I was kind of in whatever third group was hanging out behind that. And yeah, once we hit that bridge that everybody has those pictures of where people had to dismount and get across it, cause there were all those boulders. There, the other girls that had been around me at that time were no longer there. And I was kind of in no man's land knowing that I was in second cause I saw a hand and get away. And that was where I pretty much stayed for the rest of the race. Mine is going back and forth with Lauren Stevens for quite a bit of the first half actually. And then even into like miles 65 or so was when she finally, I think hit a little bit of a wall cause she had been traveling from Europe the day before. No big deal. And yeah, so yeah, she ended up fourth. I think her teammate pastor at some point in the second half and I was second.
And to set the stage just to, just to set the stage a little bit more for the listener who may not have seen the weather conditions, it was absolutely dumping, raining cats and dogs before you guys started, did it continue raining through that first half of the race or when did that stop?
It probably stopped about two hours in, so it wasn't too bad, but it was annoying enough for those two hours that I could tell from the condition of what we were riding through. Like I wanted it starting the race to be a six hour day. And I remember two hours in, I was riding with somebody that I know and I looked to him and I was like, I think this is going to take like seven and a half, eight hours. And it that's, that's how long it took, it sucked, but I just knew the speeds that we were going and like how muddy it actually was and how much it was slowing our, our regular average down. It was just going to be a really long day. But I, you know, I really like how that second half of the race was almost, you know, everybody kind of ended up in one place and everybody was either going super far backwards or staying kind of in that same area.
Like Hannah was only three, a little over three minutes faster than me in the second half of the race. So had we been, had we left at the same time, it would probably would have been more of a race, you know, cause, you know, within three minutes you can probably see that, but because she had 10 minutes on me in that first half, you know, there was no way that I knew that she was going to be 12, 13 minutes up the road, so it makes it less of a race. But yeah, it was interesting how the conditions really just made it all even for everyone.
Yeah. And what, what did you, what were you riding and any specific choices you made because you knew it was going to be a slop Fest?
Yes. Good question. So the bike Niner RLT a nine RDO frame, it's just their gravel frame, but it's the new one this year that has all the extra mounting bolts and tire clearance specifically which I was very stoked about because last year with the older frame, I had less tire clearance in my tire choice last year in just the one stretch of mud that we had last year, brought my bike to a screeching halt and it was terrible. So this year I knew what kind of peanut butter mud I was dealing with. And because of that, I decided to bring an extra set of wheels with mud tires on it, the Panner racer, gravel King muds, which I've written in dry conditions before and really liked. So I know that they work well regardless of what the conditions had been. And yeah, so that was the big I guess change that I made knowing that it was going to be disgusting.
Yeah. And inevitably, I mean, obviously mud did accumulate on your bike. Did you have some techniques preplanned to try to help you shed some mud?
I bought Pam and I sprayed my down tube. I was considering spraying my wheels and I was sitting there at the front of the car hunched over with the Pam and David was like, do not spray your wheels. Cause if that gets on your rotors, you're not stopping. And I remember I was actually thinking to myself, like, there's this, there's going to be some point in this race where I'm not stopping anyways because I'm not going to have brake pads anymore as it doesn't matter. But yeah, I did. I bought Pam and sprayed me down too, but I don't think it made that much of a difference, but that's a little cyclocross thing there.
Yeah. I'd heard a couple of stories about that kind of stuff, which is kind of interesting. And I was also, it was interesting hearing from paisan about him choosing a slick tire saying to himself, like I'm kinda kind of hosed one way or another, so I might as well choose something that's just gonna accumulate less mud.
Yeah, I know. But I'm to, maybe I might be the only person to critique him on that. I don't think that was a good tire choice because it messed him up in the beginning and it ended up collecting too much. And I think had he had a little, just a little bit of knobs on it, you know, it's able to shed in a different way than like a completely smooth surface is just continuously collecting stuff sometimes. So I know, I mean it's pacing. He has the ability to ride whatever he puts on his bike honestly, and probably still do well. So he's like, Oh yeah, this is great. And I'm like, yeah, but stop telling people that, cause it's probably not great for everyone. Right. Like I honestly don't think it is. And I don't think people should be like, well, if paisan did it, I'm gonna ride this. Like and he can give me crap for that if he wants to. But I don't think it's a good all around her for everyone.
Yeah. I think we're going to need a pan racer or IRC to do some studies on, on that before we take it to heart. Yes. Well, cool. I mean, I saw some of the pictures of you crossing the finish line and you just looked destroyed from that effort. How did you feel when you hit the finish line? Okay.
Great relieved. I mean, it was, yeah, it's hard when you want it to be a six hour day and it ends up being an eight hour day. Like I said it's not that hasn't happened very often for me. Mutually in the events, you know, you have a plan a where everything's gonna go well, and you have a plan B when it's not in that you still plan for that. Like dirty Kanza for example, I always pack like extra clothes and, you know, brighter lights in my third checkpoint bag, knowing that something could happen, but I've never had to like dive into that Oh, crap stuff. And this event I had to, like, I knew it was going to take a long time. And so it takes a toll on you mentally. And it's one of those things where looking back, knowing that Hannah had issues with like nutrition and not getting enough calories at the end, you know, if somebody had told me that when I got to the halfway that that was going to happen, like maybe I would have dug a little bit harder, who knows, you know, it's just a lot of things that go on where it was just such a brutal day that I was like content with where I was honestly I'd hate admitting that, but it was like, I just wanted this to be over with seriously.
Yeah. I mean just keeping the pedals going in those kinds of conditions is a huge accomplishment. So yeah, I don't blame you. It is interesting in these long races that notion, and I think, you know, anybody at your level obviously knows this it's it's you gotta keep going. Cause you never know what's going to happen in gravel. People could have mechanicals or as you said, they could have just had a bad nutrition moment and all of a sudden the wheels completely fall off.
Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. And, and that is, I mean the same thing happens in cross. Anything can happen to the people in front of you. It's just one of those things where it's a lot more grueling, do it for an extra four hours or whatever. The one nice thing about this year's event was it's the same. It was pretty much the same course as the year before. And so I knew that they had like a secret, a wasteless thing around mile 80, which the year before I took maybe a shot of tequila or something, I don't remember what it was. I wasn't having a good race last year, so I needed to stop there. And this year I was like, I don't care if Hannah's a minute ahead of me, I need to stop and get a shot of something. So I stopped at this Oasis and the guy had like all these liquor bottles sitting out in front and these little plastic cups to pour into. And I was like, just give me a shot of something. He's like, well, what I'm like, I don't know. Just whatever. So he's like, here's some Jameson I'm like, okay, thanks. And yeah, right after that section, it's like really Sandy, even when it's wet, I don't know how it's still hard to describe sand section for about 20 or 30 minutes. And I knew like it was going to help me get through that.
Nice. You heard it here guys pro tip from Amanda?
Yeah. Make it fun.
That's awesome. So, you know, pandemic aside, what would your year have looked like? Like what were your key events that you were targeting and what we'll talk about, like how the rest of the year is gonna play out, but what was your calendar looking like?
So I would have been in Kansas last weekend for the DK camp and then I would have been at sea Otter coming up. And then I would have been spending some time in mammoth coming back for Belgian waffle ride and then pretty much getting ready for DK XL after that. And then in July I was going to go do the rift. That's probably definitely not happening. And then August I was considering going to grab a worlds for the first time, which is kind of a bummer. And then, yeah, I had a big plan actually the beginning of September to do this event called the caldera 500, which is a really small, underground backpacking thing, but it's in the Eastern Sierra and it starts and finishes and mammoth. So my whole goal this year was three 50, figure out how to ride 500 miles in the mountains and then, you know, get ready for mammoth tough and do that event for everyone. So, yeah, that was the original plan
When you were, I didn't realize you were, you were doing DK XL, not just DK. Yeah. Yeah. How were you thinking, how were you thinking about that? Were you just sort of thinking, you know, you're at the point where your, your body's ready to kind of tackle some more ultra distance style stuff?
No, I don't think I was physically ready for that at all. It was, it was honestly more of a mental thing when you finish five of the Kansas, you get this like grail cup thing and it's the, the thousand mile club basically. And so David and I both finished five last year and once you finished five, it's like, okay, now what, you know? And I think it was nice to have the option of the three 50 because the way that I look at going back in 2015, when I was thinking about doing dirty Kanza for the first time I wasn't concerned about winning. I honestly just wanted to finish it. And I had no idea if I could do 200 miles or not. And that was the biggest appeal to me, honestly, of going to do that because David had done it the year before, and I was like, you're nuts doing 200 miles.
Like why would anybody do that? And you know, fast forward five and a half years, and it's the exact same thing I'm saying about the three 15, it's a fun place to be. I'm afraid to do something new. Cause that was the whole reason why we started doing this stuff to begin with. And I think it'll be interesting to see what happens over the next decade, if that is a natural evolution for some people or if it is the kind of distance that's a little too daunting. But the way things are looking with, you know, increased participation in that event, I think maybe it becomes the next step for people.
Yeah. It is interesting to think about like, what is too much even like, you know, obviously DK 200 for the average athlete is that, you know, Dawn to evening kind of endeavor you know, much like an iron man distance triathlon. And once you start taking it fully overnight or over a couple of days, yeah, it does become this sort of rarefied area of athlete that is going to say, Hey, that sounds like a good idea.
Yeah. Yeah. So that's a big commitment. And th the unique thing about it that I've heard people talk about, who've done it before is, you know, like a J Peter, very who does these ultra events and this really long distance stuff, sleep is a factor. And it's something that is a tactic in those events, but you go to a distance like 350 miles, it's doable in one swing, you take sleep out of the equation. And all of a sudden everybody's dealing with like sleep deprivation instead of strategizing naps, like they would for bike packing stuff. So it is something that makes, I think that distance unique because it's doable in 24 to 36 hours, so you can get away with not sleeping, but how does the body handle that?
Yeah, I think that's the interesting thing. Like you, it's really hard to simulate that and to imagine doing many of them in any one year. So I feel like you're going to learn, you would learn a lot of tough lessons when you do it. Oh, I should have done this. Right. I could have saved myself hours if I had just made that one critical decision and it's going to be, you know, a multiyear process of learning like these guys, you know, like J Peter Barry that you mentioned have figured out, like they know where they can push the body where they need to turn it off and just take a break in order for the bigger goal of just moving forward.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know I was talking to URI about it at DK camp last year, asking him about it and if he would ever do it again, and he said, never like, he doesn't want to touch that thing ever again. And that's so scary to me because it's like, I don't know. There's still a lot of hard things that I've done where you think like, I can do that better, or I want to try it again and try to do it better. And he's just like, I am not touching that thing again. And I'm like an emotional level. It was too much for him. That's really fascinating. So the other big thing, yeah.
Obviously like for your fall this year is you, you guys actually started to plan your own event. Can you talk about how that came about and what are the details?
Yeah. so it probably happened, I don't know, three years ago or so. David and I would go ride in Bishop, which is a little bit South of mammoth and there's a bike shop there called Arrowhead cycles. And these local guys just do these gravel rides out there. And we showed up to one, we did a couple cross races with them and it was so much fun. And we realized during these rides that they have like the most amazing gravel in that long Valley caldera and all the areas surrounding mammoth. And, you know, we had done dirty Kansas traveled across the country to go to all these races and here, you know, five and a half hours North of where we lived with some of the best gravel that we had ever seen. And we were torn between, do we want to keep this a secret and leave it to us only?
Or, you know, as we started going to other events, we were like, no, we want to bring our friends here to do this and ride this area because it's so awesome. And yeah, that's kind of, that was the Genesis of it. It was just knowing that we had something so beautiful in what we would call her backyard. Cause we're up in mammoth so often. And we, yeah, we wanted to share it with people. So it started with doing all these adventure Ries and we were like, okay, well what kind of route could we do? And yeah, that was how it was all birthed was basically these knuckleheads that live in Bishop that know all the great roads down there. Right.
That's awesome. And mammoth obviously has a story tradition in the, on the mountain bike side of the sport as being just this Epic destination for a race and all the pictures you guys have posted so far leads me to believe that gravel is just awesome out there.
Yeah, yeah, it is. And it's interesting you say that because they have historically hosted those kamikaze games for a very long time and it does have a rich history of mountain biking. And 2019 was the year they canceled it. So they canceled kamikaze games, you know, just didn't have enough traction anymore for the mammoth and we're not making enough money, whatever the case may be. And we strategically picked that weekend to host mammoth tough because we, it would be nice to bring enough people back up to that area that, you know, maybe the kamikaze games could come back in the future. It would, that's like the big goal is to turn it into a nice bike festival of sorts. Again, whether that's, you know, gravel and mountain or whatever. But it's, it does have such a rich history in bike racing period. And so that was part of the reason why we wanted to go back there. And the nice thing about that weekend is it's still the, the closing weekend of the bike park. So it's the last time, you know, the chairlifts are running and you can still go ride mountain bikes if you want to. And your friends can do the gravel race if they're dumb enough to.
So tell us the details. What's the actual date and what does the event look like? How long is it? What does the climbing look like?
Yeah, so it's September 19th, 2020, if we're still allowed to be in mammoth at that time. Right now they're, you know, obviously trying to keep visitors away from mono County. And yeah, it is a short distance of around 41 ish miles and the long distance, I just went through the route again today it's 108 miles and it's going to be a doozy. And yeah, I would highly suggest if you're like concerned at all about the distance of doing 108 and eight miles at that elevation to start with the shorter one. Because if you're questioning it at all, I would rather have you finish the event and get a taste of what it's going to be. And that was kind of the way that we wanted to set it up anyways, to make it like a stepping stone of sorts to get into the, to be able to do 108 miles up there.
But the cool thing is also a lot of the short course is most of it's actually going to use roads that aren't in the long course route as well. So it's a complete, almost a different event cause it's going to be in a different area. And yeah, so hopefully those two options are going to be good for people. The, that weekend is also the same time they do October Fest in the village. So we've partnered with them to know, you know, do food and beer and all that stuff at the end. So it's kinda nice that they have a party set up for us.
Yeah. That's totally handy. And that the mammoth, the start lines at about 8,000 feet, is that correct?
Yes. And that's pretty much as high as you'll get, cause you're going to go downhill from there and then back up to that elevation and you might match 8,000 at some point, but you're never going to be climbing over that. So it's not going to be anything crazy like Leadville.
Okay. That's good to know. Cause I was thinking a couple thousand more feet of climbing at thousand feet. The lights are gonna turn off.
Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, no, I mean, it's going to be hard though. It's one of those, like another reason why we wanted to do this event, I go and ride up there a lot because it's really great training because of the altitude. And it's, it's so funny riding up there consistently and knowing like exactly how much lower your power is than at sea level, because it's, it's so hard, but it's a lot of fun. It's pretty, it's worth it.
Now. It's exciting that that type of event is now on the calendar because I think like Leadville and other sort of high elevation events, they just become this interesting thing, this interesting challenge in the community, just something different to target, right? Like I know I can ride 108 miles, but can I do it at 8,000 feet of elevation?
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I think that's, that's one of the cool things that makes gravel so great period, is that everything about it and all these different events, there's something unique at all of them, you know? And they're like, I like to think there are, there's like the Midwest style gravel rolling Hills. And then there's also this like mountain gravel, which, you know, it's funny to call it that, but there is that separate discipline. That's completely different from a Kanza or a grovel worlds where there are sustained climbs. And that makes it a very different event than something where it's con rollers like the whole time. Some like lost.
I'm glad you mentioned that because it's been something that I've tried to tease out over the last couple of years because it, when I got into gravel and I chose like a bike that maxed out at 38 C tire, actually less 36 see tires, I was like, this is just not the right bike for me, but it dawned on me like for the things I was reading about in the Midwest, it probably was a totally suitable bike. And for me, you know, I ended up in this sort of mountain style gravel here in Marin County and I won't shut up about six 50 B, 40 sevens and 50 tires. And I'd probably go even bigger if my current frame allowed it.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, and that's, what's so cool about it. Like I said, like, that's your definition of it. You have your equipment that fits that. And there are people that, you know, are on the complete opposite end of the spectrum where like their definition of a gravel of ant is doing Belgium waffle ride every year. And that's like, you know, a road bike with 28 seat tires. So, you know, you can find anything in between.
I'm always surprised when people online will totally discount something, like take the Niner, MCR, the full suspension bike, like it does have a home unequivocally I'm prepared to say that like, that is a great bike for some writer. Whereas, you know, as you said, it may be totally unsuitable for some writers out there in their native terrain.
Yeah, exactly. And
That's the great thing about it is that there's something for everyone and it's, you get to define what you want gravel to be. That's the great thing is like it's not road racing or crit racing where there's a pretty good definition. You know, what to expect in those events. And gravel is like, well, you can get a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And like you can pick a small event that is 200 people, or you can pick a big event that has got 5,000 like and anything in between. So I like that it's up to you to define what you want it to be. Yeah. And then the other thing is like the personality of the bike can change with just the simple change of tire.
Yeah, yeah. For sure. I was just talking to somebody. Yeah,
Yeah. Go ahead Amanda.
Oh, so I was just talking to somebody about you know, what's the, the, the easiest thing I can do to make like a gravel ride comfortable. And I said like tubeless tires and like wider tires and that's it. And it's so true how it's something very small and minuscule, but if you take the time to figure out right tire pressures and good sealant and all that stuff, it could make a world of difference and make the ride quality completely different. And like a lot of these bikes with the same, to be quite honest and, you know, but the difference between having 60 PSI and knowing that you can get away with 23 PSI in a specific tire and make it super cushy, that's a huge difference. And it's going to be the difference between rattling your brains out and like having a nice, smooth ride
Totally. And having, just getting that skill set. I think of being able to change a tubeless tire is important as gravel cyclists, because you can really maximize your enjoyment. Like I, I have some sort of semi slick tires that I put on the bikes specifically to explore further routes that are, are gonna involve more road riding. And like, I, I would not take that route with my knobby tires just because I'm like, why would I do that? But once I put a semi slick on all of a sudden, I'm like, cool, I can ride 20 miles on a road and explore some gravel that I've never seen before.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And in that, in that same vein I started working with Rene Herse this year and on their tires and that's opened my eyes in like what's possible with a really fat wide you think is a slow tire and it ends up being super fast and awesome. And being able to like change tire pressures on a ride, you know, if you know, you're gonna have to be on the road for an hour, you know, you can pump it up a little bit and then as you get to dirt, take some out. But yeah, it's been fun. I've had the privilege of not having a tire sponsor for all the years that I've been doing gravel stuff and I've had the ability to just test whatever and ride a lot. I love there's like certain that I'll ride for certain events because I know that they have tires that fit that.
And then, you know, I don't have like a deal per se with a Renee her's tires this year, but, you know, they're giving me the opportunity to test a bunch of their stuff and find out what I like in that line. And it's been fun cause I, you know, as a cyclocross nerd tire choice and pressure and all that stuff is huge in that discipline. And it's been a lot of fun to carry that over into gravel because you go from like four or five different tread options to like 400 different tread options. So yeah, yeah.
Right on, well, as we close the podcast section of this conversation, is there any advice you'd give up and coming women athletes who are looking to gravel as kind of an opportunity in the cycling space?
Oh yeah. That's a good question. I think the, the biggest piece of advice I have is like, don't be afraid to just try something new. I, I was lucky enough to have a lot of friends that wanted to go do these crazy adventure rides with me. And I think that that's a big barrier to entry for a lot of women is feeling uncomfortable to go do it themselves. But what I've found is that there are a lot of like really inclusive, welcoming people in the community that even if you go do one of them by yourself and you're afraid to go do it, I promise you'll make a friend when you're out there riding. And that's, I think my favorite part about doing these events is like, I'll go in it knowing six or seven people, my teammates, you know, guys that I want to ride with. And I ended up finishing the event with a bunch of other friends because, you know, stuff happens out there and you end up with people that are riding similar strength to you. And that's the best part it's like walking away at the finish and you're like, Oh, I'm going to find you on Strava. Or like, okay. Yeah, here's my Instagram. And you make new friends. And I think that's, that's the best part, but it is scary to jump in and commit to it. So that's my, my biggest thing is just try it.
Yeah. I think that's great advice, Amanda. And I think that's a good place to end the podcast section. So thanks for coming on to report the record the podcast this week. And we had Amanda, we had one more, we had one more question that came over Instagram about the Michigan coast to coast. And just, I think just generally getting your feelings on that race
About it, like should do it. Yes. Yeah. So I did, I've done the past two years when it including the inaugural year and that started because Matt Aker came up to me after mid South in 2018 and he was like, Hey, I'm doing this crazy 200 mile race in Michigan. And all I was thinking of was like, I dunno if I can do another 200 miles in the same year as you know, doing 200 for dirty Kanza, but they convinced me to go. And the, I knew mento Dijon was going to go and at the time he was writing for cliff and also writing for Niner. So I think we both were like, okay, let's just go do it and see what happens. And it ended up being awesome. It's this point to point race. And do you normally the like closer to the end of June?
So you have like three or four weeks after dirty Kanza to get ready for it. I tell people if you don't get into dirty Kanza, you should do Michigan coast to coast because it's a good backup plan. You know, if you don't get in the lottery for decay. And it's a super fun, I like it. The, the fact that it's a point to point is a pro and a con the pro is that it's awesome to never have to see the same thing twice. And then the con is logistically it's kind of hard to plan for because you're, you gotta get your car to one end, you know, or whatever your transportation is. But there's a lot of people that will do the relay. So your, your partner does the first hundred and then, you know, you switch and somebody does the second hundred, which is pretty cool. Okay.
And do they have, do they have like a bus or something that will bring you back if you have to get back to your car?
Yeah. There's I think the service that they do is you, you park your car at the end and then they like take you that morning or something. I don't remember. Yeah. Yeah. But it's a lot of fun. It's definitely unique. The psycho crossers out there will enjoy it. Cause there's a ton of sand. So I know like a few people that did the event that weren't expecting that weren't very happy about it. Cause like you have to know how to ride sand and or else it sucks.
Oh man. I'm, I'm all for it in events to throw different skillsets at you. Cause I think I want to see that, like I want to see the winner having good power on sort of flat, you know, the gravelly Rowley roads, but also have the technical skills to handle rock gardens and sand, sand pits, everything.
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I mean, and that's, you know, not to throw too much shade, but that was why I was really excited to see how Stetten his year was going to go. Cause he's such a roadie that like how how's he gonna, you know, bike handle at some of these events?
Yeah. I mean, clearly like anybody who's spent as much time on the bike to become a pro roadie, like they're going to have the handling skills, but I did notice like, you know, you were too busy racing, but I was watching that coverage of mid South. And when, when it got gunked up on the bike and he's like, man handling his derailer, I couldn't help. But think like here's the disaster waiting to happen. Whereas, yeah. Whereas Payson's like dipping his bike and, you know, shedding the mud and very carefully shifting gears knowing that like, if they've all falls apart, it's on him. So I thought that was fascinating. And I'm kind of with you, I don't want to throw shade, but I was kinda like, yeah, like you have to have experience in the dirt and grit and mud. I want, I want you to have to have that to win these races.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's not so much shade as it is. Like, that's what makes this stuff interesting. Like, you know, he's all in to try and win this stuff you're like, but should you have really written through the mud like that? And you messed up your derailleur.
Yeah. And like looking at BWR, it's like, you know, okay cool. Like if, if I realized that, you know, it's going to be won and lost in the dirt, but it's a different skill set than a full dirt race, you know, I think that's interesting. You do see different athletes shining there. They're not going to make them shine at some of these other gnarlier events.
Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Cause when I was talking to Renee Harris at the beginning of this year about doing the tires, you know, Ted King obviously rides those tires and I got her on the phone with him to talk about stuff and he's like, yeah, you know, I rode the 30 fives at Belgian waffle ride. And his thought process was hoping that Stefano was going to have a hard time in the dirt and that the 30 fives would be an advantage for Ted. And it's like, I love stuff like that. I love like the thinking and the thought process behind all of that.
Well, that's definitely my jam. I'm just hoping it gets really, really technical if I'm ever going to get ahead of anybody. Yeah, exactly. Out of my way. All right, Amanda. Well, this was awesome. I appreciate you making the time to catch up with us. And it was, it was fun to see this and do this looking at you face to face.
Yeah, yeah. For sure. You, you've got a lot of great podcasts and you know, as somebody that was trying to put on an event for the first time this year, you have a lot of great conversations with race promoters. And it's, you know, I want to say thank you for doing that because it's a different side and angle of this discipline that I don't think people talk enough about like, yeah, there's so many great events and stuff, but the work that goes into putting on an event, like you talked to Sam and you talk to the Mount lemon, you know, gravel grinder guys, like all those stories, it all comes from a love of the places that you ride. And I think that that's so cool. And it's great to see all these promoters, you know, wanting to share the great roads that they know about with everybody else. And, and that's something I think that's so unique to, to this discipline. So it's great to hear that side of the story and I, and I appreciate you taking the time to talk to those people, not just, you know, bike racers that are trying to go smash it on those roads.
Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate those kind words and absolutely. I mean, I think now more than ever, we need to be showering, love and respect on event organizers. And as we've talked about offline, like this, fall's going to be complicated in terms of there's going to be so many great events. And you know, my advice to people is just put as many on your calendar as you can possibly do and kind of spread the love around between different events. Because if we're not supporting the event, organizing community, they're not going to be around next year. No one is, this is not generally speaking of money, making venture for anybody. It's really coming out of a love of showcasing the great roads trails in their neck of the woods, as you said. So. Yeah, I think it's super important.
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, what, what were you going to be at? Let's say we're allowed to start racing August. What was your August and September going to look like?
Yes, it's a good question. So I had a little bit of a back issue over the winter, so I was kind of like personally looking towards the end of the year already. So, you know, not say the pandemic worked in my favorite cause it's been utter hell, but yeah, I wanted to do lost and found. I wanted to do Rebecca's private Idaho. I was thinking about the Oregon trail, gravel grinder, but worried, I might not have the time to spend a week up there, but I love what those guys have created up there. Yeah. Yeah. So those were the three that were on my mind. And then here in Marin County, we've got adventure revival. There's a bunch of the grasshoppers that are awesome. So like wherever they might fit into my life, I would love to kind of add those guys in because again, the community is great.
They're mellow. Like the Miguel, the organizers just been, he knows how to do it. Right. And it doesn't feel overblown, but it doesn't feel under done as well. Yeah, so those are my thoughts. I still like super excited to go to Idaho. If that works out, I've got a podcast coming up with Rebecca and like she was preaching to the choir whenever she says things like, Oh, I wanted to put something more mountain biking in here. I'm like, yes, because I could, I could at least thrive in one section of the course. And I love, I love being in the mountains. And you know, when I heard about mammoth tough, I had a similar type reaction. I'm like, that's one. I definitely want to get on my longterm list because like, I just know when I'm looking around, it's going to be, it's going to just fill my soul with joy. And that's, I mean, that for me, that's what the mountains do. And those are the events that I'm generally drawn towards.
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And I know what you mean and yeah, it's kinda, I just wonder what's going to happen later this year. I know that look, were you planning on being a dirty Kanza
Or no, I wasn't going to be able to make it okay. Yeah.
Yeah. And that moving to September you know, I listened to the conversation with Jim and you know, all the weather and everything seems like it should be pretty similar to the conditions in June. But I, at the same time, like, I don't even know how many people are going to be comfortable traveling still at that time. And that's what makes me weary about all these events coming up. And you know, in two weeks from now, we can look back on this conversation and just laugh. Cause maybe it's not even possible at all. But I'd like to remain hopeful, you know, that some stuff keeps happening. Oh, I do want to take a minute and remind people to freaking quit riding in groups. Do you need to go on that rent? Cause it's still happening and I am. Yeah. I'm not happy about it. Every time I go out on the weekend specifically, I'm like, I know all of you don't live together. This needs to stop I'm with you as well. Yeah. Instagram is throwing up a timer that says I have one 48 left. So apparently there's a time limit on this thing. And we found it. I feel like super accomplished that we hit it. Nice. Nice. Alright cool. Well Amanda, thanks again. And we'll talk again soon. All right. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks everyone.
The global Covid-19 crisis has lead to the cancelation or postponement of most gravel events this year. With community health of utmost importance, race directors have and continue to have to make tough decisions about their events. Meanwhile, professional and amateur gravel athletes alike have been forced to create new goals and objectives.
The Lyman Agency brought together a who's who of the gravel event and gravel racing community to have a friendly conversation about what is next for gravel and how we all should be looking at 2020 and beyond.
Panelists
Directors-- Amy Charity, SBT Grvl; Bobby Wintle, Mid South; Burke Swindlehurst, Crusher in the Tushar; LeLan Dains, Dirty Kanza; Rebecca Rusch, RPI; Steve Matous, NICA ED (until 2:30).
Pros-- Amanda Nauman, Colin Strickland, Kaysee Armstrong, Payson McElveen, Pete Stetina, Ted King.
This week on the podcast we speak with 'The Queen of Pain' Rebecca Rusch about her gravel event, Rebecca's Private Idaho and The Be Good Foundation.
Episode Links:
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Rebecca Rusch Instagram
Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos)
Rebecca, thanks for joining the show.
Oh, it's awesome to be here. I'm stoked. Thanks.
As is customary. Even though you've got to have well-documented history. I'd love to just hear how you got into gravel riding specifically.
It's kind of funny cause I got into gravel. I'm kicking and screaming. I was forced into it. I'm a mountain biker. For those who don't know, I'm a mountain biker, a at heart and rock climber. And had a sponsor that really wanted me to go to this race called the dirty Kanza. And that was maybe 10 years ago, nine, 10 years ago. And I didn't want to go mostly because 200 miles on a gravel road to me seemed like a death by boredom. And it was the first race that I used headphones and was kind of looking, the distance didn't scare me.
It was more I, I just wasn't intrigued by riding on roads as a mountain biker. And I was really surprised when I went at how unique and interesting and how gravel roads are really, you know, kind of the combination of the cool things about mountain biking and cool things about road and really were sort of a melting pot in a way where you needed technical skills to kind of maneuver the chunky gravel and you needed some road skills to sort of stay alive at the beginning and find a wheel if you could. But really it was, it trended a lot more towards the solo mountain bike. Things that I really gravitated to. And really going to that event was the impetus for me to launch Rebecca's private Idaho. And I'd always wanted to launch an event in my hometown because it's a really special place.
I wanted to support my community to some fundraising rides, but I always thought it was going to be a mountain bike stage race. And it ended up, you know, once I got intrigued by gravel and the second event I did that year was an event called Levi's grand Fonda, which is a road event. And again, a sponsor made me go. And I was pleasantly surprised at the community that they built around that with a festival and a party and all sorts of things for everybody from, from kids to elite athletes. And so the combination of those two events in one year really inspired me to take, you know, some of the best things I love about riding, which is, you know, being alone and you know, out in the wilderness and having a really kind of solo experience, but then also coming together as a group in a community at the end to really celebrate.
And that really is kind of the flavor of, of what Rebecca's private Idaho is about. And so, yeah, I was, I got involved as an athlete because my job required it, but it really did sort of spawned this whole new facet of my riding in my career. That opened a lot of doors for me. There's places in my hometown I've never written. So I started exploring for a course for private Idaho. I was just like, wow, I've never been here. I've never been here in Idaho. Has a lot of dirt roads. So it's a, it's been a really fun multi-year experience for me and I never could have imagined that I, you know, what I launched was a really big event. We're going into year eight now. And I, I just did not expect even anyone would come. Or that, you know, I was on the front end of this sort of gravel explosion. I had no idea. I was just presenting what seemed cool to me and a style of writing that seemed fun for me. And little did I know it was gonna eight years later be really kind of blowing up. I'm in the cycling world.
Yeah. Yeah. One of the things, and one of the reasons I was excited to talk to you today as I share a mountain bike passion and a mountain bike background, and I think sort of anecdotally, it seems like a lot of people get drawn into gravel from the roadside of the market, not necessarily the mountain bike, mountain bikers, you know, we've all written those sections and experienced those high fives. You're like, why would I ever want to go on the road or why would I ever want to ride gravel? Like mountain biking is so fun, but as you noted, there's, there's something different about the gravel bike and it's not to take anything away from our shared continued love of the mountain bike, but the idea that you can explore a little bit further than your normal mountain bike loop and you can forgive yourself. The notion like, Oh, I might just ride on a road for a little while to get somewhere. I definitely found myself getting out the Marine County map trail map and sort of just tracing out places I wanted to explore that I just never would have reached on my mountain bike.
Totally. I did the same thing like I've lived here for almost 20 years and I just started looking at maps and seeing like can I connect these dots? And it was super exciting for me. And I do feel like you touched on something that's really special about gravel is that it is exploratory and it is this feeling of like what's around the next corner and can I go a little further? And you know, I've been that kind of, I've had that sort of spirit and mentality of explorations even since I was a little kid. Like I would camp in my backyard. I wanted to like see what was the next block over. And with all my sports that I've done, I've just kind of wanted to see what was over the next Hill. And cycling really has provided such a great template for that because like you said, you can just go further on a bike than you can walking, you know? And I love paddling and climbing and hiking and running, but I can see more on a bike. And so it's that childlike curiosity in me that you know, is alive and well and the bike is such a good, a great tool for that.
And I think that's one of the really cool things about the gravel event community is you're seeing event organizers over the country basically take what you and I just described, that passion for their local community, that obsessing over maps and trying to figure out the best routes and then saying, I finally nailed it. Come to Vermont, come to Kansas, come to Oklahoma. These are the roads you want to ride. So you don't have to think about it. Just get over here and I'm going to take you on the best tour possible for the next hundred or 200 miles.
It's so cool. And I think that is where you touch on something. You know I talked about how gravel is, is really is kind of a coming together, a meeting place a mixing pot of gravel or of road community and mountain bike community. But the spirit to me and what you just described of life, like
Going to explore, offering checkoff at this cool route, this spirit to me it feels much more like it's not to dis
Yeah.
When, Oh this is really,
Cause it's, it's in there. The road aspect of steering a meter, you know, catching that next person and getting on a wheel and not losing a wheel wheel and you're, you're so focused on staying in the draft that you're not looking at the Sioux all the time and think when roadies could be shaped sort of the dirty, gritty, you know, different nature of gravel level. And I think that's why mountain bikers like it to be true because it does feel it's dirt in, you know, it's, Oh, it's like the dirt. There are mites like something this isn't totally smooth underneath your tire. And you know, as people come in and as gravel
Travel grows and grows, it's real.
That's really important to me. That's roots and gravel community maintain that grittiness of grit, call it that. And that gravel doesn't become just a cookie cutter of what didn't, didn't work on the road. And I know U S USA cycling is looking at that kind of stuff and people will, you know, the community is, is kind of like what's going to happen with gravel. And I think, I think what's really cool as we have these discussions, discussions, and we're in this sort of like, we're probably in the, in the golden age of, of gravel events right now as they're growing, they're popping up people, people are loving them, but there's also the growing pains of the pains of like what is gravel, what's it going to become? Come. And there is a, there is a uniqueness in every single single event and mine's more towards my personality as a mountain biker and I'm going to try to make it as rough and technical and, and off-road as possible. Where another other event might trend more towards a road aspect. Like, like Belgian waffle ride is a good example where there's a lot more pavement and it's not to say it's not a good, a good event, but it has a very different style and personality that you then, then what my event would and, and I, I liked that they're all different. I think that's really important for him to maintain that uniqueness.
Yeah. I think that's great. As as we currently have a schedule or a calendar that allows athletes to kind of go wherever they want. And there's not like this, Oh you have to do these five events in order to win some sort of calendar. Cause I think the danger there is yeah, you want to have events that have multiple different personalities. I love the idea of an event testing everybody's skillset from raw horsepower to super, super technical terrain.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's why I launched a stage race in the way that I did the queen stage race, which Chaz, you know, stage one is all an motorized trail 50% single track. And then stage two is a five mile uphill time trial, you know, which suits a totally the road. Please love that one. I've had some of the mountain bikers beg me to get rid of that stage. You know, it's like, no, I'm not getting rid of it. And then the third stage is, you know, the, the, the long course, the baked potato around the a hundred miler that has as kind of a bit of everything. And so, so yeah, I I, you know, try to offer up something for everything and the, you know, the regular private Idaho course. So one day there's, you know, sections where, you know, the big Hill climb at the beginning.
Trail Creek summit is a, you know, more than thousand foot climb and you know, that really separates everybody. And then there's a couple of small sections where if you do have a road and, and pace land mining skills, you can hop in with people and then I throw them for a loop and get people off on a really rough double track that I call LD abuelito. It was a new five mile section this year and not really split everybody up on the way back home. And some people loved it, some people hated it. But yeah, I want to offer places on the course that suit a variety of different riots writers so that you may hate me on what part of the course, but you're going to look at me on another part of the course.
Yeah, I love that. Personally as an athlete, I love, I love when I hate my bike during one section saying like, Oh, I made it to off-roading on this road section. Like I feel like that's the Mark of a good course designer. Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna, we're here today really to talk about your event. Rebecca's private Idaho. Can you just kind of break it down for everybody? What are the dates? Where is it located? You talked a little bit about why you started it, but I'd love to hear it just a little bit more specifically about the event and what people can expect.
Yeah, the is labor day weekend, so this year that falls on September 3rd through six and you know, the main event is on Sunday of labor day and that has everything. Now. We've grown to a 20 mile tater tot route to the, you know, 60 ish mile French fry and a hundred mile baked potato root. And those are all on the Sunday of labor day weekend. I've also expanded to include the queen stage race, which is a three day gravel stage race that takes place over four days. And really what I found is Ketchum, Idaho, sun Valley, Idaho, where I live, my hometown is where the event takes place and it is off the beaten path. It's the reason I call it Rebecca's private Idaho. Because it is quiet and, and intimate here and it's a small town and it's hard to get to.
And that's why I put it on labor day weekend. One is, it's a beautiful time of the year here, but also to allow people that extra holiday to travel. Because once you get here, what I find is people don't come for one day. They come here and they want to stay a few extra days and they want to explore a little bit more. And that's why after about the fifth year of private Idaho, I launched the stage race because people have asked me, Oh, this year we're going to come, we're going to say a few more days. Where can I ride? Where can I ride next? And so I decided to just put that platter out for everybody to select from. And you know, and there's a big parade that weekend, my goal was, was not just to host a bike event, but to really show people this special place to support my community, to support bike charities and eventually my foundation that I launched.
And so, and also I want my friends to stay a little longer. You know, we've all been to those bike races where you drive up in your car, you got your gear, you, you know, unload, get dressed right at the back of your car, go do the race, load up your car and go home. I didn't want that kind of experience. I wanted, you know a bigger sort of by end of the season bike celebration. And that's, that's what it has grown to become. It's, it's really cool. I really look forward to it. But I, and I do try to, the reason we've launched different distances and is to try to welcome everybody in. So the tater tot, for example, it's 20 miles. It's non-competitive and hopefully it's a stepping stone for people who've never tried gravel or you know, parents of kids who want to ride and then they step up to the French fried and they step up to the big potato. And I have a course in my head, 125 mile course that eventually I'll add when I can call the twice big potato. So, and Rebecca on that tater tot route, is that sort of dirt roads that kind of, you know, anybody who's sort
Of comfortable riding a bike is likely to be able to achieve?
Yeah, totally. It's about 50% payment, 50% dirt, and you get a nice little taste of this cool road called corral Creek, or you ride out and you get a view of the pioneer mountains. And it is kind of like this little little teaser to, to one show you that, Hey, riding on growls just fine. And number two to make you feel like you want to see what's over that next Hill on the pioneer mountains. Cool.
Nice. And then does the French fry get into any sort of dual track or single truck,
The French fries and the big potato they had out the same way. And so you know, you climb the really big Hill at the beginning up to trail Creek summit and that's the same route that the wagons came over during the or days, you know, where they were mining for or across the Hills. They come over that same Hill and much of that terrain as you had up and over that Hill. It's kind of the gateway into the copper basin, which is very remote, very few homes. It really looks the same as it did a hundred years ago and it's the same route that the giant wagons traveled over. And that's the parade that we have is our wagon days parade. So it's pretty cool. Once you leave Catchum, you know, you ride about 20 minutes on pavement then you drop cell phone coverage, then you hit the dirt and you don't get off the dirt until you return back to town.
So you really do, it is kind of a gateway for me into like going back in time and you leave the technology, you, you leave it all behind and, and climb up and over trail Creek summit, that first big climb, that's the biggest climb of the route, which people are always kind of like, Oh my gosh, it's such a big climb. But what's really nice is it's pretty cold in the mornings in the mountains at that time of year. And so it does two things. It warms everybody up and it also really breaks apart the groups. And so it's nice if you're, you're nervous about riding in a big group or like me, you, you like to ride in smaller groups. The trail Creek Hill climb really does kind of separate everyone. So you end up with these nice pods of, you know, might be a 1500 person start line, but almost immediately it doesn't feel like that because the Hill kind of puts you where you know where you should be and people that are riding your speed and it instantly makes the community feel smaller. And that's the biggest climb of the day. So I was telling people once you're up and over that, you know, it's not the biggest challenge of the day, but it's definitely the biggest climb of the day that you get out of the way early.
And how much, how much elevation are you gaining in that climb?
I think it's about 1200 feet. So you know, you go from, you go from, you go from 58, 6,000 feet up to eight. No, it's, I have to look, I should know this number. It's, yeah, it's, it's over a thousand feet of climbing. And so a nice big time you know, I think fastest times are, you know, 35 ish minutes up at S, you know, up to twice as long as that. So, so you get warmed up right away, get nice and nice and sweaty and into the group, and then you really do drop into what feels like you're going back into time into the copper basin in that area. And both the tater tot and or sorry, both the French fry and the baked potato go up and over and do the same beginning part of the course and share a lot of the same course.
Cool. And then, so you're over that Hill then what's next on the big of the baked potato? Yeah, in the copper basin. You know, then you hit some nice smooth fast road for a while where the road diesel will be enjoying that. It's a pretty well traveled road. But then we hang a right over towards wild horse. It gets chunky again. And what's cool, the summit that you've climbed over for trail Creek, you're, you're crossing the pioneer mountains. And so the view from Ketchum, you see the pioneers from, you know, from the one side, from the West, and then you cross over and you, you just get these beautiful views of this mountain range from the other side. And so you're completely on the other side of the range. It's very remote. You'll see antelope, you'll see you know, probably more wildlife and definitely more bicycles than you will cars.
And it's all public land out there. There's a few ranches but mostly it's public land. And so it's, it's really a special place. And there I do, like I said, I do put people on a couple turnoffs that are nice and chunky. So WildHorse Canyon is a Canyon that both courses go up the French fry and the baked potato and that gets real chunky and you know, loose gravel and splits. The Peloton is apart again. And then that's the point where the French fry folks turn around and head home back to catch them. And the baked potato people continue on to copper basin loop road, which is, you know, your along the big lost river for a while, which is really beautiful. And then you do the copper basin loop, and that's the most remote loop. It's 23 mile loop.
I think that's one of the hardest parts of the course, cause you're the first, the furthest out you have the longest stretch between rest stops. And the road is, is quite bumpy, can be quite windy. But it's also in my opinion, the most beautiful part of the course and you really are rewarded with these stunning views of the mountains. So I try to get people to look up if they can back there. And then you have the long journey home. You know, at that point when you finished copper basin, you still got 30 miles to get, to get back to catch him. And you know, there is a very predictable headwind that happens every day. You will have a headwind going home from private Idaho. It's just how it is. The slower you are, the stronger your headwind will be.
So it's motivation to get yourself back up and over been over trail Creek, your last rest stop. And then one of the most beautiful distance in the world over the climb that you came up in the morning is back into Ketchum down the trail Creek you know, Hill climb and, and back to the wood river Valley. And it's pretty special. I mean I, I train on that Hill all the time cause it's really nice, awesome grade of a Hill. And I never used to see anybody like doing intervals or riding up and down that Hill. And what's cool now is I see people all the time just out there and it's, it's pretty awesome.
Yeah. And for those of you haven't been to Idaho, I encourage you to go on Rebecca site, the Rebecca private Idaho site, and check out some of the images. They just look spectacular. I love it.
It's pretty special. And that's the point. You know, we ride our bikes to challenge ourselves and I'm all about being competitive and pushing myself and going hard. But we also ride our bikes to be with our tribe and then to be in a beautiful place. And it really is, you know, people place and purpose, you know, those are kind of the things that, that drive me for private Idaho is the people that get to come here and be part of it and, and share this special place that I live. And then the purpose, which is, you know, as we talked about a little bit about the be good foundation and helping other people ride bikes.
Yeah. Yeah. So we talked about how you can pop in, you can do just the Sunday event, but you've, you've created this whole kind of four day ride experience. So if you're signing up for the whole shebang, I know we do a rider meeting on Wednesday, but tell us about Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Yeah. So Thursdays
Of course. And I will say, you know, this stage Reese at this point I'm the queen stage race. It is sold out because it's only, my permit only allows 250 people. And so it's a much smaller offering as I can expand that I will. And so for those of you who are bummed, you're not in the stage race. I do have on, on Saturday there's a ride. On Thursday we do a, a night or Friday we do a night ride. That is a we're a dark sky preserve. And we're also we have some history with Ernest Hemingway here who lived here. He wrote here and eventually took his life here. And so we do a dark sky reserve, Hemingway ride to some of his haunts, like his grave and the Hemingway Memorial and read some poetry. So even if you're not in the stage race, I do try to put in a whole bunch of rides that are open to anybody so that if you come here for a few days you have something to do with us.
And there's the parade. We have two different expos. So if you're not in a stage race, don't be all bummed out and sign up earlier next year. But stage one is and they're all different with this. The goal of this stage race was to show people three very distinct, different parts of the wood river Valley. And so stage one is it the Galena, Galena lodge trails. And that is mostly single track mountain bike trails really that are rideable a hundred gravel bike. You know, and you do have to use the same bike for all three stages. You can change tires, but you know, you can't ride a mountain bike. And stage one, a TT bike on stage two, for example. And so stage one is a lot of single track, quite a bit of climbing. You're up at higher elevation.
I'm about 50% single track. And then the other 50% is a non-motorized trail that is our cross country ski trail and sort of double track ish wide. But that's the Harriman trail and that goes to up and down the entire wood river Valley. And so you do a bunch of single track and then you drop onto the Harriman trail. And that's a about a 50 mile stage. And I think when you times are about three hours, but it's, it's, it's cool because you're doing like whooped dues and bermed corners and you know, roots and rocks. You know, on a mountain bike it would feel like easy single track. But on a gravel bike and it gets pretty spicy, there's a lot of flat tires. There's, there's a lot to be said. If, if you have the skill of a mountain biker you're just going to be able to avoid flats a little better, be smoother, you know, and find a better line. So it, the mountain bikers really love that stage. And I think for the gravel writers, what's cool is it really shows you where you can take your gravel bike. I have had so many people finish that stage who were like, Oh my gosh, now this opens up a whole like menu for me at home. I didn't know I could take my gravel bike on that type of riding. And that's, I really love that because it opens their mind to go explore where they live.
And then stage two is I, stage two is probably my favorite stage because the race part of it is only five, four and a half miles, the uphill time trial. But the whole stage together is 50 miles because there's like a 20 mile neutral ride out to this very remote Hill called dollar summit. And then a neutral ride back. And so it's kind of the best, it's the best part because everybody's riding chill. They want to save their legs for the, their race segment, the time segment. And so for 20 miles, you're just riding and chatting with all my friends and all the pros are up there talking to each other and it's cool. Social ride with a really hard uphill time trial. And then a social ride home and there's hot Springs on the way back. You always see people who are like got into the hot Springs and they're soaking there on the way back from the ride. And so it just feels really festive. Even though you know you're going to taste blood in your mouth on the uphill part of the time trial the rest of it is super fun and exciting and, and I really love that stage. It's my favorite one.
And then there's a rest day for the stage race folks and that Saturday and so that's the day of the parade. We have a big social ride. If people want to do that, that is free to anybody. We have our welcome expo that happens with, you know, vendors and you know, all that kind of good stuff. So Saturday is a pretty fun social day. And then Sunday, you know, of course is the big day with the baked potato, the French fry and the tater tot and 1500 people all lining up. And then, you know, when we finish, we have a giant expo with live music and you know, shooting potato guns and you know, there's a game we had called Gulen de coughing that is sort of like you know, sliding beers into the air and trying to catch them and pour them on your face. But yeah, I mean, people take it seriously when, you know, they're the writing of chill Creek, but the idea is to celebrate when you come back. And, and we've had we had a wedding at the finish line last year. That was pretty exciting. There's a lot of cool stuff that goes on at the end.
Yeah, it sounds like an amazing weekend. In addition to the amazing writing and event that you've put together, you're also focused on raising some money for your, the be good foundation, right?
Yeah, exactly. And I'm, you know, private item has always been a fundraising ride and I've always partnered with sorry, I can hear my dog bark panel here. That's Gracie. So private Idaho has always been a fundraising ride since you're number one. And my goal really was to give back to bike charities that I feel really strongly about and I wanted to do that on a local, national and global scale. And so locally we have combined, we have partnered with our wood river trails coalition, which, you know, takes care of our trails here and our local Idaho, Idaho high school cycling league. So those are our local partners nationally, people for bikes, which if you don't know, they do the hard work. With the government to maintain transportation funding for bikes and pedestrian and you know, non-motorized transportation support around, you know, the U S and then globally the world bicycle relief, which, which helps provide bikes for people in Africa to make their lives easier to get to school, get to market.
And so from year number one, I've always partnered with those groups. Last year I was able to officially launch my foundation called the be good foundation and the be good mission statement, you know, it was the impetus for, it was the ride I did down the whole human trail to find the place where my dad's plane was shot down and I came back from that ride realizing I could use my bike for a bigger purpose. And so I launched the be good foundation in his name because it is how my dad signed all of the letters home from the Vietnam war that he wrote to us. And so I felt like he was giving me a message and I was able to officially launch the foundation last year. And the mission statement really is to use the bike as a catalyst for empowerment, healing evolution.
And so I have kind of three main categories that I work under. One is clearing unexploded ordinance in Laos along the [inaudible] trail and the bombs that are still left there from the Vietnam war. And so every year I do a big fundraising ride over there and do a lot of work to clear those bombs. And second big mission is to provide bike access for people from Idaho to Africa. And that's where private Idaho falls in, is putting bikes in more people's hands under their legs. And, and you know, whether they're using a bike in Africa to get to school or whether a kid is using a bike to with the high school cycling league to find confidence and learn who they are or, you know, or you're riding with me, I'm in private Idaho. And so, so that's the second big mission. And then the third big mission of the be good is protecting public lands and the spaces where we want to all ride.
And I honestly believe that nature is therapy for people and if we don't protect these public spaces you know, one, we don't have anywhere to ride our bikes, but I also feel like our sort of emotional health is really tied to open spaces. And so that's what the be good, excuse me. That's what the be good foundation is about. And it's so cool to see how many people come together during private Idaho and year round. Actually people are realizing that you and me and a lot of us really do need that tool. It's a simple two wheeled machine. That really does do a lot more than just make us physically strong.
Yeah, absolutely. I think in this time where this year where we've all experienced personal and municipal restrictions around our time and where we can go, it's become all the more important and all the more kind of valued. When you're able to get out there and ride amongst all this turmoil in the world, you can just free yourself. Do you, as you said before, when you get over that first mountain pass and you just feel like you're in this remote area, it's so invigorating and revitalizing for your soul.
Yes, it is. I know. And it's like, it's hard as that Hill is. It does. It's like an entry, you know, you work super hard physically to get up the top of trail Creek and then you're just like, okay, you know, and you get this downhill on this breath of fresh air and like no buildings, no cell phone and it is an entry into another place. And hopefully people can mimic that in their backyard, on their trainer indoors, you know, with some visualization. But I do believe we all need to get to that sort of physical and emotional place on a pretty regular basis.
Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that we, going back to the first part of our conversation, the gravel bike is this great enabler. I've always been surprised, you know, even in a, you know, 15 miles North of San Francisco where I live, if I put a little bit of effort in, I can be riding completely by myself and see no one. And that is just such a gift.
That's really, it is a gift. It's really special.
Yeah. Well, Rebecca, thanks so much for giving us an overview of Rebecca's private Idaho. I will put a link to the website and registration and hopefully people can hustle over and still at least get a slot in the final day event.
Yeah, there is space and the tater tot, the French fry and the baked potato right now. So hopefully I'm, yeah, people go in and sign up and I really look forward to hosting you and everybody else in my hometown in September.
Right on. Thanks Rebecca. Absolutely be good.
This week we speak with longtime coach, fitter, and women's cycling advocate Lorri Lee Lown about some of the roadblocks to growing participation in the sport and general tips and tricks for riding off-road.
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Automated Transcription, please forgive the errors.
Lorri, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Craig. I'm excited to be here today.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to our conversation. I'm always kind of excited to talk more about the women's side of the sport and how we get more women into gravel cycling. But before we begin, I'd love to give the listener just a little bit of your background. So if you could talk about how you got into cycling and later how you discovered gravel cycling, that would be an awesome place to start.
Sounds good. I started writing in the nineties, which makes me feel really old. But the reality was it was 1999 so it's not that old. And I had moved to California and I was not an athlete, but when I moved here, everybody was fit and healthy and rich and beautiful. And I was like, I might be just like them. And I got the fit part down. That was good. And the healthy part, I don't know about the rich and beautiful. I participated in the California AIDS ride. I had signed up and had nine months to train. I didn't even really have a bike. I had a 1980 something specialized hard rock that I was training on. And at the time I thought this event was for world class athletes and Olympians and I was none of those things. I was a drinking, smoking, non-athletic person.
And over the course of nine months training for the event, I realized, first of all, I was pretty good at riding a bike. I had never been good at sports, but in my mind all sports and bald, bald, you had to catch and you had to throw. And I couldn't do either. But then I realized there's this whole other area of sports that I was actually pretty good at, which were at sports. So things like skiing and skating and cycling. And because I have this pretty obsessive personality, I found that I really just wanted to ride my bike and ride my bike all the time and ride my bike fast and climb mountains and that kind of thing. So I started riding. And long story short, I was given the opportunity to change careers by my then employer. This was in 2001, Charles Schwab.
And when the Bailey basically imploded, I found myself with some time on my hands and a career change in sight and I decided I wanted to share my love of cycling with other people in particular women. I had found that there weren't very many women who I saw riding bikes and I knew they were out there cause I'd see a big group of dudes and there would be one woman hanging on where their tongue hanging out at the back of the group. But I didn't see them riding together in groups and I knew that that was something that women really enjoy. I have a MBA in gender relations, so I spent some time studying what motivates us and women are really motivated by community and being involved with other people supporting each other in a very different way than men are. So men will compete against each other, women will collaborate. And I couldn't find an organization like that. I wanted to become a coach and I decided to start my own, even though my coach at the time said, who would want to ride with you? You're not a pro racer. And so I started Velo girls
And that was back in 2002 right. Amazing. And Vela Vela girls, was it a road club or a mountain club?
Well, we started as a road club and I was pretty adamant in my mind of what I wanted to do with the organization. We were only going to ride road. I didn't want to compete with Jackie felon who at the time was running wombat, and I don't know if you know wombat, but it was probably one of the first women's mountain bike organizations and we weren't going to race. I was going to race, but I was going to race with a different club and I just felt that we needed an organization that was really founded on fitness and friendship and fun and being inclusive. And luckily I listened to members. So when members started saying, Hey, we'd like to have mountain bike rides, even though originally I was reluctant, I was like, okay, let's try this. And I did not ride dirt at all when I started, I was strictly a roadie and I never intended to read dirt.
And then when we started having large groups of women who were fast, I thought, okay, I'm going to start a racing team even though I knew nothing about racing. So in our second year we had our first racing team, 40 women, 39 of whom had never raced a bike before. And I felt this social responsibility to teach them how to ride their bikes because most of them were pretty sloppy and I didn't want them out there crashing out other racers. And so I developed a curriculum to teach folks how to ride their bikes and how to raise their bikes.
Amazing, amazing. And I mean, obviously you, you, you set the intention to invite any woman who wanted to throw a leg over the bike to kind of give them the tools and the community to join in, which is amazing.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And we've taken on many different iterations over the years. We had a protein for awhile that raised all over the U S we continue to have a road racing team and a development program for 12 years. And I finally got tired. It's hard to keep developing and recruiting and developing and recruiting and developing and churning out racers, many who have gone on to raise on proteins and we've had national champions on. So we during those years as well, we started mountain bike racing. We really had a multi multidisciplinary team. So we had four aspects. We had road racers, mountain bike racers, cyclocross racers, and then endurance road riders. So women who just wanted to train together with some structure and participate in events together. So go do the Cinderella classic or ride a century and have continued that model. So as I slowly retired the racing aspect of the club, we've continued the riding training, recreational aspect of the club.
Okay. And I know we're going to circle back to some more of those elements and details around the training and clinics and skills that you, you helped build. When did gravel cycling start to come into your life?
I was thinking about that. I so I was, I started cyclocross racing in 2003, which is kind of interesting cause I had intended a road race first and it didn't happen and I was okay from a fitness point of view, but I couldn't ride on the dirt. So then I decided, okay, I better mountain bike. And I worked at a bike shop at the time, so I borrowed a mountain bike and it was a disaster. I was terrified of the dirt. I didn't understand. I had the roadie mentality of right around things, not over things. I overinflated my tires. I didn't understand suspension, including my own body suspension. And so it took a long time for me to start to feel really comfortable with the dirt. I had started road racing and then I was coaching high school mountain bike team through the shop I worked at and this was back in 2005.
And the high school league was pretty new and it was a bunch of boys who were BMX riders and we had an agreement that when we went out and trained I would do anything that they did and it really up to my bar from a skill point of view. And then I continued to, I really believe in lifelong learning. That's a part of me. I've been a teacher throughout my career before I was teaching bikes and so I continued to take clinics and I continued to learn. And mountain bike clinics have been super fun for me because it really pushes my envelope and I'm pretty conservative as a, as a person, as an athlete. So being on the dirt, I'm not the shredder type who's going to go and do crazy stuff. I am very practiced and measured in my writing, which is probably my detriment, but you know, I'm 54 years old, so I want to keep the skin on my knees in general.
I continue to ride and race, cross and mountain bike and I guess the gravel thing really it happened when my relationship happened. Truthfully we, so I was mostly a roadie who I often joke owned mountain bike and I started dating someone who is mostly a mountain biker and a cyclocross or who owned a road bike. Actually he didn't even own a road bike at the time. He owned a cyclocross likely he would ride on the road and somehow those two worlds converged and we started doing an awful lot of road riding but going off road as well on a road bike. So hashtag gripping center and that continued and then we'd ride our class bikes under. But as you know, a cyclocross bike is not the most awesome gravel bike in the world. There are definitely some geometrical differences and some handling differences. So I would say probably in the last five years or so, really seeing an uptick. And spending time on the dirt as well.
Yeah, I think the, you know that timeline exactly coincides with this acceleration of gravel specific equipment and enabling technologies such as tubeless tires and hydraulic disc brakes.
Right.
It's definitely a confidence booster and having the right tool I think is super important. I know we'll talk about that a little bit with bike fit and how that plays into it, but having a gravel bike that's awesome and super fun and joy inducing has made the sport very different. So you know, riding, when I started riding road we wrote on 19 millimeter tires and eventually went to 20 ones and 2325 I, my standard now is 30 and every time I ride my bike I'm on the dirt. I just, I, I guess after so many years of writing the same roads over and over and over again, you're just looking for something new and different and challenging and intellectually challenging as well.
Yeah, I think that's pretty common, particularly in the Bay area because we've got great road riding. It's such a fun community to be a part of, but every road you ride on, you start to see these dirt paths and trails and little cut throughs that you could be riding if you had a little bit wider tire and a little bit more of a spirit of adventure. I would agree. Yes. So you obviously are more fun. Yeah, I mean that's,
You know, you go out and you hammer for four hours on the road bike and you go out on the gravel bike and it's an all day adventure and you bring a sandwich and you can have a handlebar bag and it's all fun and cool and, and it's a very different culture. It's Rudy's, I always joke that Rudy's, we'll have a beer at the end of the season and a mountain biker, we'll have the beer at the end of the race and cyclocross or we'll have a beer during the race. It's very, the dirt culture is very different. And I think it's interesting now that we're seeing a lot of, of road riders and road racers making that transition into the more fun events and they can still be competitive.
Yup. Yeah. It's almost like gravel has given road athletes permission to have a little bit of fun. Well, and what you talked about earlier, I think, you know, on a road ride, once the separation happens in a group ride and you're off the back or in the middle or trailing or chasing, you know, it stops being as fun. But I find gravel has some similarities to the mountain bike in that, you know, once you complete a section you kind of stop and wait for that high five and you kind of laugh about how you skidded out or Bumble the particular section. And it really, it just gives people the opportunity to talk more during the rides, which tends to lead to a lot of fun.
Right. And I think in racing the same is true. And you, and the other interesting aspect I think is, and road riding, a lot of it is about fitness and leanness. And especially here in Northern California where you can't go out of your driveway without a Hill. So there is huge fitness split, gender split and age split when we ride on the road versus gravel, you may find that you have somebody who really good fitness and they have no skills to descend. So yeah, they're the first up the Hill and they're the last down and, and now it makes up every time. There's that transition point and so it becomes a much more social interactive group versus the road ride, which you know, tends to be kind of stuffy and serious and we're just going to go hammer. And if you're not with the group, it's over. And that was one of the interesting challenges in road racing. I think especially years ago when the women's field was, are larger, if you weren't in the group, it was over. And if, you know, once you've done that for a number of years, why keep doing it? And with gravel and with cross and mountain bike because of the type of courses that we're riding, it allows people to still be in the game. And to ride their own ride or race their own race, which is a little different than the road racing world.
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, five years ago, according your timeline, you started riding a little bit more gravel and as you started to present yourself to this large community of female athletes through Vela girls that you were doing this new segment of the sport, what were women starting to ask you about
How to do it? And it seemed at the time a lot of women felt, wow, that's for other people. That's not for me. And especially because we, well, we refer to it as gravel and I think more accurately, we should probably refer to it as mixed terrain because a lot of gravel events have a hundred percent gravel or 90% gravel, but there are a lot of gravel events that have 50% gravel or 25% gravel. You go and do the grasshoppers and maybe it's 50 50 or maybe you've got an event that's you know, 80% road, but there's this one little fun dirt stretch. So it's going to challenge you as far as your equipment choice and your tire choice. And so I think for women it's the question of how do I get started and is this actually do. And what I found is if I convince people, I feel like the pied Piper many times, right? If I convince people to just come try it and make it fun, then they're going to keep doing it.
But it takes, it definitely takes an evangelist to encourage people to get out there and do it. And the same was true in every aspect of the sport. When I decided to race cross, I ended up with 25 women from below girls who were racing cross with me because I made it sound fun. And I think we have some public figures that do that. You know, you look at the Ali Tetrick and Ahmedi and stormy and this whole crew of women who are so inspirational. But at the same time, when I look at them as a mere mortal, I'm like, okay, there's a separation there. And for me, I'm cool with it cause I work with these women. But for someone who's just a recreational rider and they're like, Oh, I could never do Belgium waffle ride because you know, people like Ellie Tetrick are doing it.
So it's the idea that we have to get someone out, give them a positive experience. And I think promoters are starting to learn a little more about that. You know, how do we, how do we create events that are not just for the pro women and all the dudes? And that's what I always think about, right? So when we look at the longer versions of events and many of these events, when they started including the low key series like grasshopper, they had one distance, one race mass start and a late master, you know, dress up or start at 10:00 AM. And it's like, okay, well this is great. But if you have the women who are not the pros and maybe they're, you know, not even as fast as the recreational gentlemen, then they're going to be out there longer. They're going to be, you know, rest ups or are cleared out of cookies.
There's no more cookies. The rest app has gone, the finish line has gone. So we have to make people feel like, okay, this is an event for you too. And I've spent a lot of time talking to promoters about that. How do we do that? How do we retain women? Well, maybe do a staggered start and make it voluntary. So if you feel that you're on the slower end but you want to do the longer routes, you're, they're going to do an official start an hour earlier for those writers. And it's not just women. I mean there's lots of dudes who are hanging out out there for hours and hours and hours offering multiple distance options. And I think that's a real key. Just like with a century, once you've done a century or a dozen or a hundred or whatever, you're like, Ugh, whatever, it's a hundred miles.
I could get just as much fun out of the metric. How did the 60 and a lot of folks will opt for that? And then you'll get the other folks who are like, no, whatever event I do, I'm going to do the longest, hardest version. But from a timing and a logistics point of view, it doesn't always work. If I'm there with my male partner and he finishes two hours before me, he has to sit around and wait. That doesn't do a lot for our relationship. So so creating multiple options and it's not dumbing down the event, it's just opening up the events and my opinion, they're still hard and they're still fun and you still get that experience, but you don't feel like, wow, the event is really not for me. It's just for the fast riders. It's for everybody.
Yeah. And I think, I think it's, you know, intelligent course design leads itself to having multiple different options. And I think we have been fortunate and gravel that we've had a lot of strong women in leadership positions at these top events that have made inclusion and parody a big part of their messaging, which I hope is sort of just sending that invitation out to women to say, come join us. We're, we're thinking about everyone. We're not just thinking about the hammerheads. You want to ride 200 miles
And other pieces of that play into that, you know, have age group awards and sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. And sometimes that age group starts at 35 which is very interesting cause you have a lot of women who start riding a bike later. You have a lot of women from the pro level who are still racing at 35 so 35 is not necessarily a good split for masters. Maybe have a 35 and a 45 or a 35 and a 55 and so you can acknowledge the effort of the other athletes as well. Having a women's t-shirt, I know that sounds silly, but when you have an event shirt and you only offer it in what they call a unisex shirt, it's really a men's shirt. Have happily one shirt. Yeah. Maybe it costs a little more. Probably it doesn't when you're doing that volume, but have something to acknowledge that we're there too.
Yeah. I imagine when you see a unisex shirt, you're, it's reading does not fit women well at all.
Right. I won't take them. I'm, I'm one of those people. I'm like, yeah, I don't want them to insure. Thank you. I won't wear it. You keep it and it's too bad because sometimes I really want, sure.
Well it sounds like, you know, you've sort of been through a little bit of this journey before as someone who's sort of founded a largely road oriented program and then started mountain biking and inviting women to the mountain bike side of things. Now as you're inviting women and giving them permission to join us in gravel cycling or mixed terrain cycling, what are the sort of fundamental skills that you begin to teach as you're trying to get someone comfortable with what they might encounter on a grasshopper route or something similar?
Right. It's, it's not unlike road in general in that most people on the road don't know how to ride their bike. I'll be honest with you, they don't understand the physics of how to ride a bike and what makes it stay up. Right. What makes it go forward and how not to fall down. I basically teach people not to fall down. And so what are we looking at? We're looking at balance and weight distribution. Weight distribution is huge on gravel. If you don't have the right weight distribution on the bike, you're not going to get up the short sheet stuff. You're going to slide out. You won't have traction on the downhills and on the corners. And so really understanding and even the technical aspects of you take a roadie and you put them on a gravel bike and teaching them that it's okay to have 15 PSI, that your bike is going to handle better and you're going to be faster and you're not going to fall down.
Because again, that roadie mentality of Oh my God, I have to pump to 110 PSI and we're starting to learn, I think in the road world we're starting to have a little better education about that all around. But, but it's interesting, a lot of shops are still teaching people things that I feel are not correct. So what do I want to teach someone I need to teach them? Like I said, balance and weight distribution, how to move around on the bike. A lot of roadies feel like, okay, this is my throne and I'm never going to move my position at all. The saddle is my seat. Versus being a balanced point. How to properly use your brakes. I think that's huge. Understanding that breaking eliminates traction and so how and why and how can I use my brace to help me and how can I not overuse my brakes? And those are all things that we do on the road as well. But I'm the dirt. You can't fake it. I think that's the biggest difference is we get away with a lot on the road until we don't, until you have that day when you crash, but on the dirt, if you make a mistake, you're going to go down.
Yeah. I feel like on the, on the road there's, there was a lot of room for error. So obviously you can lean a road bike really, really deep, much deeper than, than most people would think you can. And your tires are still gonna hold so you don't get people kind of tripping that error potential. But as you, as you sort of alluded to in gravel, you know, if you brake too hard in a loose corner, your wheel is going to slide out.
Right. And, and I think it's very interesting. So I, so I've been fitting bikes since 2001 and I've always had someone else fit my road bikes for me. Whenever I get one just cause I like to learn, I like to have someone who is not biased look at me and my bike and I've had a number of interesting injuries over the years that have impacted my ability to ride. And when I got my, my thesis graveled like I decided I wasn't going to have anyone fit it and I was going to go through this iterative process, which I think fits on gravel is much more iterative than road and road. We have a position that is ideal for us based on our morphology and our strengths, our fitness, our weaknesses and all of that. But on gravel, your fit really has a lot to do with how your bike handles.
And so I went through a process on my own bike of dialing in the fit but then riding and tweaking and sometimes you change your fit based on the terrain even. And that's where, I mean droppers are awesome, although I think women don't need them as much as men cause our bodies are a little different and our weight distribution is different. But yeah, so looking at STEM links and rise and, and where is the ideal position that's going to be comfortable and is going to be powerful and efficient but still allow me to ride in a technical way. And that's the, I think greatest challenge is the technical aspects. You have to find the hardest part of the course and make sure that you can ride that.
Yeah, that's an interesting point you're bringing up there. In terms of sort of building your equipment or your position around the most difficult or most challenging to you, part of the course. Are you sort of advising women to kind of tweak their setup to help them in the areas where they feel like they might be deficient or less skilled?
I don't typically advise anybody to tweak their own setup. And the reason for that, I mean, in my case I'm a professional, so doing it was in a very educated way and I was taking notes and I was comparing times and that kind of thing. But I do encourage people to consider the terrain they're going to ride before they're fit and spend some time thinking about what's the hardest thing and be honest with your fitter. I mean a good fit is going to be a conversation that really is based on the rider and Hey, I'm riding mountain town and I feel great except I can't get up the short steep stuff. So then we have to figure out, is that a gearing issue? Is it a fitness issue? Is it a weight distribution issue? And many times it is weight distribution. Hopefully they've purchased the right bike and they have the good fitness.
Right? So w where it's going to be very different. And I, I'll share a couple of examples. So I raced last year in North Carolina at the Croatan buck 50 and it was a course that the version I did was the a hundred mile version. It had 500 feet of climbing. That was it. And in many places in the country, these gravel races are pretty flat. So that was super flat, which had, which had its own unique challenge. Let me tell you, when you're pounding, the pedal was four hours of stopping flat pavement. There is no break. Your, your saddle better be really good and your Shammy better be really good. Yeah. But then you contrast that with you know, in California we have old growth. Classic was phenomenal. It's total reverse of that, right? 50 miles, 8,000 feet of climbing. Interestingly enough, the only podiums I got last year in gravel were my first race proton, but 50. I got this and then I raised old-growth classic and I got fifth. Then I was like, Oh, this is great. I bookend with two races. That couldn't be any more different, but they worked for me I guess. You know. And then I raced in Oregon where we were looking at stage racing. So you're racing day after day after day, which has its own unique challenges too. But Oregon was, I don't know how much you've spent talking to the folks about their race or did you do the risk?
I did not do that, but I had Chad, Chad Sperry on talking about the event. Oh yeah, yeah
It was. It was Epic. And of course I'm the kind of woman that goes in and I say, Oh yeah, I've got great fitness and I'm going to go do the longest versions of because offered a longer and a shorter, a more Epic and a less Epic. And after the first day, and I was one of the last writers to make the time cut off on the long route. I was like, what was I thinking? That was when I made the decision that, you know, the long routes maybe really are for the pro women and all the dudes and maybe I should be doing, because it was super varied. For one thing. You're in the mountains, there was tons of sand, tons of technical stuff and just a ton of climbing as well. So it was definitely a really hard event and it was a first year event and they were definitely working out some challenges with promoting and organizing and you know, how do we manage rest stops and how do we manage the timing and the location of our steps so they make sense on the course and they're at the right points.
And so yeah, so back to fit for gravel, whether it's a man or a woman, we definitely have to look at our course and what is the predominant terrain we're riding here in Northern California because most people aren't traveling too much. But then if I'm looking at a different type of race, what's going to help me there from a gearing point of view, from a handling point of view. And my assumption to that would be okay, if there's something really tricky and it's a very small percentage of the course or a small percentage of the type of writing you're doing. Yeah, maybe I want address that. If it would have a detriment to how I would fit for something else.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think a common theme we've had on the podcast and you know, we've got listeners all over the world, you really do need to have an eye towards your local terrain because as you noted, you know, being here in the Bay area, we've got a lot of steep terrain that many people in many parts of the country may call mountain biking. Whereas whereas whereas gravel in in the Southeast, you know, as you said, you did a 500 foot climbing ride over 80 or a hundred miles, which is just insane when you know, you know, in your neck of the woods down a little bit South of me, you probably can't do an hour long lunch ride without hitting, you know, 800 to a thousand feet of climbing.
Correct. Correct. And it's, the technical aspects are different too. We know this from the mountain bike world. I mean, and the East coast you have roots and rocks and ruts and swaps. I mean the race I did in North Carolina had a three mile long section of swamp called Savage road. And you have to navigate through this very wet swamp, which is something we don't see here in Northern California very often. You know, we have water crossing in, it's a puddle and we're all excited about that. We're like, Ooh, mud. No, you know, and it's also unique and other things and it's like cyclocross, we have a hot dry cyclocross season versus everyone else has snow and rain and ice and mud. So it's definitely, we have to look at, there is not one size fits all. And I think that's super important in gearing as well.
When we look at what the manufacturers are providing for us having all of our options, which the smaller bike builders are allowing you to do it, being able to spec out my bike in advance of purchasing it is super important. I think, and I'll use an example, I bought a cyclocross like from a big manufacturer who happens to be in Morgan Hill and I knew buying this bike that I would have to change the bar with STEM, the seat post, the saddle, the tires, the crank and the cassette and the rear trailer. So what did I buy? I bought a frame basically and I had it basically changed everything else. So that's just, it's a waste of money. It's consumerism is why we are not able to spec out our bikes and I think that's why brands like open and thesis and allied who are allowing you to pre fit, pre spec are following a model that makes a lot more sense.
Yeah. Yeah. One of the things you touched on sort of brought me back to the journey I had as a mountain biker and later as a gravel rider, when you're riding off road, the first time you see a Rocky section or the first time you see a Sandy section or the first time you see a muddy section, these are all learning curves that we can't really teach you in advance. How your bike's going to feel, how it's going to move. Right? When you, when you advise people on how to ride sand the first time they do it, they may ignore you and put all their weight on the front handlebar and get stopped immediately. So I think it's important to note, and I'd be curious, since you've coached many athletes and advised many athletes, you know, how do you kind of encourage them that it's okay that we're all scared the first time we do do something. And then once you have it in your, your physical, visible, visible, and physical memory, the next time you see sand you're like, Oh, that's sand. I understand how this works.
And, and it may not be the next time. And the same is true on the road. And I'll, I'll share the analogy that I use, which is everything that we do the first time is awkward and oftentimes we're resistant, especially here in Silicon Valley where everyone is so darn intelligent telling someone that they don't know how to ride a bike is a real challenge. And we all rode bikes as kids. So, of course we know, but we don't know in an intellectual sense, we just did. So now we're trying to teach people to know, know how the bike works, the physics of the bike. And so the analogy I typically use in my clinics is but everything is awkward, including things like your first kiss. But somehow you decided or society decided that it was okay that this was worth it. We're going to try again until we perfect it.
And usually people just giggle it, that which is great and it breaks the ice and people realize it's okay. I don't have to be perfect. And I think an important point too, and another analogy I used, I was a keynote speaker at the first women's coaching conferences at USA cycling at the Olympic training center. And my topic was how to develop a women's program. And when I started, I really had this idea that I had to have everything perfected before I even started. I built this huge website by myself and I had created all of these resources and routes and made it look like a finished product before we had even begun. And my analogy for that was you don't have to give birth to an 18 year old. You can allow yourself as an organization. Oh good. I got to laugh to go through that process.
Right. And, and I think that's super important. Allowing yourself to have, and this is a very yoga philosophy, but have a beginner's mind. I think that's super important to go into something new and be open and know that you don't have to be perfect. I'll share that. I started running five months ago and part of it was I was starting to feel burnt out on writing. And another part of it was I'm involved with an organization called the mermaid series, which is a women series of primarily running events. Although they do one triathlon and duathlon, which is how I've always been involved with them. And I felt like at 54 years old, I felt like I wasn't happy with my fitness. I wasn't happy with my weight, I felt stuck and I felt kind of bored. So I was like, wonder what would happen if I just trained to run?
Because every year I do this to ask on, I never trained to run for whatever reason I intend to. And then I don't. And I go out and I have the fastest bike split of the day and pretty much the slowest run, split it a day and it's miserable. And then I can't walk for a week. And so I decided I was going to run and I bought a training plan and I have been following this training plan to the T for the last five months and now I can bust out a half marathon with like no thought. It's crazy to think, Oh, I'm going to go run 10 miles. And what's been really fun for me and stimulating is the fact that it is all new. I'm training with power, which is what we do on the bikes. And so I'm using that expertise to learn a new application of it.
I'm learning all about nutrition and fueling and painting and how it's so different than the bike and then just still drawing on this, you know, 20 year aerobic base that I have, which has allowed me to be pretty okay at running just as a beginner. And I think if we could all go into cycling and gravel in particular that way and say, yeah, I've been riding a road bike for 10 years, but I'm a beginner at this and it's okay. I don't have to be perfect. I don't have to win. I don't have to even be really good at it yet. I have the, the ability to learn and to go through this process. And I think there's a lot of growth that happens when we allow ourselves to be a beginner.
Yeah, there's lot, there's a lot to be said for that. And I think gravel slash adventure riding, whether it's your own route or an event that someone's put on, there's always going to be new things thrown at you. And you could, it could be the same ride, the same course, but the nature of the earth, the nature of dirt, it's going to change the nature of weather. Everything is going to be thrown at you. And I think the more you try to control it and, and sort of manage it, the less fun you're going to have because you have to accept that it's ever changing. And I love that sort of approaching it with the beginner's mind.
Right. And I think that, and it's interesting, I'll use the example of Allie Tetricks since everyone knows her and I've known her since she started road racing and one year she came out and she raised cyclocross. Now she was a pro at the time racing internationally and came out and raised the seas at Kennedy point. I remember that. And I was like, why should she be racing in the siege? She, you know, and I remember the same thing when Lance came out to golden gate park Chris corner corner came out to golden gate park. You know, I'm here they are with these huge engines, pro racers and falling all over themselves. And I was like, okay, I guess it is okay. They really are a beginner. But then if you start winning everything, you can't be a beginner anymore. And I think I've watched Aly also make that transition and to get gravel the same way with this idea. This was fun and I'm going to find my niche and I may not be perfect. I may not win everything. And once in a while I'm going to win. And that's awesome. And she's built this great community around herself and build some longevity in the sport, which I think is super important. She's been a really great ambassador for a lot of women. She's very personable, she's very humble and I think a lot of women are drawn to that
Definitely. And I think we're, we're sort of in a heyday of great women to model the gravel lifestyle after which is, which is awesome. I think to your point, many of the top, top female athletes, they just have this sense of irreverence, irreverence and humility in their public personas. Where they show themselves falling down. They, you know, they're just showing what we all experience when we choose a challenge like riding off road.
Right. And I think the sad reality of it is women have to work harder in the sport to gain sponsorship to encourage each other. They have to, in addition to their day job and their sporting job, they have to do social media. They have, and the men don't have to do that. I mean, some of them do, some of them hustle, but women have to hustle more. And I think the smart promoters and the smart companies have learned that you know, this specific female athlete can be the sweetheart of America in this sport and we need to support her. And that's a good thing. So whether they're doing it for philanthropic reasons or for smart marketing reasons, they're doing it. And I think that's important.
Yeah. I personally find it more enjoyable to kind of watch that part of the sport because the male side of the sport, you're going to start to get a faster flood of former pro road athletes jumping into the sport. And I kind of worry about what that means. But every great woman athlete that I've seen, the join the sport has been really super additive to the sort of fun elements of the community that I love so much.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I would absolutely agree. And granted there are some men who are doing the same thing. I mean, URI and Ted King, and I mean even so Gaiman with all of his social media stuff and the cookie challenge and you know, going through the KLM. Yeah. We're learning how to use social media to endure for a longer period of time. I mean, in the past road, raters would retire and they were done and they maybe would go on to be a DS or a coach or maybe they'd leave the sport altogether. But we're transitioning. And I think that's important. It's one of the things I've always loved about the bicycle is I can ride the bike in a lot of different ways. And I have, I've toured all over the world. I piloted a tandem for the Paralympics, for the blind writer.
I've raced every discipline except BMX and downhill. I have commuted. I've done all these different things and they're already on a bicycle and they're all beautiful to me. And sometimes I have one bike that hangs in the garage and collect stuff for awhile and then I come back to it and come back to that part of the sport. So it will always be there. And when folks stress about where they are with their fitness or, wow, my life is so busy right now, my kids go going to college and I can't get a manage my time. I always tell them the bike will still be there for you. Whenever you're ready, you can come back. It's an easy sport to come back to and try not to stress. It shouldn't be stress inducing. I mean racing can be stress-inducing but the rest of the sport shouldn't.
Yeah, absolutely. So as we're winding down our time, if there's some women out there listening who are thinking about getting into gravel, what would you say to them?
Well, I would say don't hesitate and I would find a mentor or a group mentor. You don't even have to start with a fancy expensive bike. And I'll throw some wider tires on your road bike if you can. Or hop on your mountain bike if you have it or your cross bike. And just when you see that dirt road turn down it and see where it goes, you're not going to get lost. We all have the ability to not get lost these days with smartphones and navigation and don't feel that you have to be perfect right away. I think that's super important. Like keep it fun and go exploring because I think there's nothing more like being a child and hopping on your bike and riding down the road that you don't know where it goes.
Absolutely. And are there any, keeps us young and healthy for sure. And are there any resources that you'd point people to, any of your web properties that women can get information about the sport or how to approach it?
Okay, that's a really good question. We have offered a number of gravel clinics in the past who've done some lectures. We've and one of the things that I'm putting together for this year is dirt skills for the roadie. Because I think what we're finding is a lot of people who are road riders, they look at the bike and they're like, Oh, it looks just like road bike. It should bride like a road bike. And what they don't realize is differences the terrain. And so if we can pick out those key skills to help a roadie like jumpstart into hopping on the dirt and not falling down and breaking things whether it's bikes or body parts. So I would say definitely look to your local bike shops. Many of them are offering group rides, especially at gravel roads right now because it's so popular and this new segment of bikes has been introduced to the market. They're trying to sell them. So they're out there, they're doing demo rides, they're offering group rides on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis. Don't feel that you don't belong. I think that's really important. We, the bike industry wants women to ride bikes and it may not feel that way, but insert yourself into this segment of the market and look for groups that are offering rides. And there's a couple of really good podcasts, including one by my friend Craig Dalton, where you can get all kinds of gravel information.
Thanks for that Laurie. Well, I enjoyed the conversation it gave me, it gave me some good perspective on the women's market and kudos to you for kind of back in 2002 starting Velo girls and, and sort of given women that permission and the space to enjoy cycling, highlighting the things that make them excited to go do sports. So it's awesome. I appreciate all the work that you've done over the years and it was great talking to you and learning a bit more.
Well, thank you for having me on.
This week on the podcast we talk with Coach, Frank Overton of FasCat Coaching about gravel training and racing. FasCat supports both elite and recreational athletics in achieving goals both big and small. Remember #FTP.
Sponsored by: Cycle Oregon
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Automated Transcript, please excuse the errors.
Frank, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Craig. Pleasure to be here.
Right on. We always start off by learning a little bit more about the cycling background of our guests and how they first came to riding, drop our bikes off road. So how'd you get started?
In 1995, I graduated in college and I got a job within three weeks of graduating. I came home from work the first day, five o'clock, and I sat on the couch and like ate chips and watch TV, woke up the next day, said I'm not doing that again. And I played tennis in high school and college and you know, like NCAA, all that and you need two people to play tennis. So when I got to a new town, a new job came home that second day and I didn't have anyone or know anyone to play tennis with. So I had a mountain bike that I use for commuting and I wrote it around the neighborhood and the neighborhood rods. I started to go a little bit further away, a little bit further away and it was all on pavement. And I actually was riding on the sidewalk until someone yelled at me.
And then I started riding on the road and you know, 30 minutes turned into 45 turned into 60. And then I rode over to a bike shop and said, where are the trails? And cause it was a mountain bike. And lo and behold, one of the guys that I went to college with own the bike shop and he, he took me under his wing a little bit enough to like say, Hey man, you need to get a helmet and here you need to get these, these shoes. But anyway, this is in Winston Salem, North Carolina. And I started riding in the woods after work and loved it and that, that, that's how I got started. I E. The other way I got started, sorry to be long winded right off the bat is when I was 11 and 12, I would come home from school and my parents, you know, I would go out in the neighborhood and play, this is before phones and everything.
I was a free range kid and I had friends from school that lived in different neighborhoods and I had a lot of friends in my neighborhood that we would all play. And I had this like, I don't know, like a Sears 10 speed bike that my parents had bought me and I started riding that to neighborhoods other than my own afterschool to go play like basketball and, and, and like, you know, pick up flag football. And my parents would always let me go wherever I wanted to on, they didn't even know how far I was going. So the bike was a lot, a lot of freedom for me to go rod to different neighborhoods to, you know, do other sports.
So that slippery and love of just peddling around the neighborhood ultimately led you to racing mountain bikes and road bikes, right?
I guess so. Yeah. Yeah. I mean yeah. You know, because you've done it as a kid and then you start doing it for exercise after, you know, in your adult life. I got started in mountain biking later in life. You know, I didn't do it in high school. This is before Nika and that, and I didn't do it in college. So back to the woods and Winston Salem and my friend did that bike shop, you know, it went back like the second time and he's like, Hey, you know, you should come and race with us. And you know, it's like, yeah, let's do it. And he was an expert mountain biker and I was a beginner and he said, okay, you can, you can rod with us, you can get a ride with us. And I wasn't gonna go to the race by myself cause I didn't even know where to go or what to do. But he was leaving at 8:00 AM for the like Cunningham expert race and he's like, well, you got to do this one if you go with us, cause like my race, the beginner race was like later in the day, but I wasn't cold by myself. So I kind of like just dove right in and you know, trial by fire and I was hooked. I loved it. And, you know, I kept doing it and it just kinda yeah, blew up from there.
And then ultimately you raced semi-pro on the mountain bike and cat one on the road.
That's right. Yeah. Fast forward, whatever, six to seven years. Raced for the Schwind homegrown grassroots team. Raced for specialized Nantucket nectars for a year. And and then the Richie grassroots Mount bike team in 2002 and I broke my hand at the Northern national and Alpine Valley. It's the same place where Stevie Ray barn's helicopter crashed. And I like, I was like pre-writing the course. I was like in the best shape of my life. I was going to use that race to get my pro upgrade. And lo and behold, you know, just stupid crash riding in the woods in a, put my hand, right on a baby head rock and just folded over the metacarpals and you know, so I couldn't race, but I mean, like really good shape. And I, I use this expression with my athletes, you know, my legs were not broken and got on the trainer and you know, this is like right around, you know, I'd always done road racing and crits, you know, for training in between the, the mountain bike races, the Northern national circuit and like the courts now bike series in, in Colorado, the cross country series.
And this is also right around during the Lance wave when road racing was cool. Kind of like the way gravel is now. I mean it was the thing to do. It's like what all the mountain bikers are getting into. Cause it was just, you know, awesome. And there was a lot of opportunities. So I went to super week that year at with a broken hand because I could put my, my phone around the ski lever and I can still race. I mean I was like in really good shape. I couldn't wrap my hand around the bar, but I could, you know, pulled the right STI lever with my thumb. So I go to super weak, you know, race from two weeks in a row. Love it, come back home. And then I just drove myself out to the cascade bicycle race in Oregon. Loved it. And you know, I didn't really do that well, but I, and I can hold my own in the pro one, two field.
So in 2002, the Mount bike sponsorship dried up and prior to that it was like gravy train. I mean, you know, they were giving people like me cash money and two bikes and you know, all the equipment we needed, but after nine 11 and the.com boom. And the combination of the Lance wave there wasn't as many opportunities. I really didn't have a team for 2003, so I decided to race on the road. I mean, it's the same thing that gravel racers are doing now, just different disciplines. So I I turned to race and on the road in 2003, you know, did a, you know, a lot of the NRC counter events, Redlands and Salono, central Valley classic he LA cascade obviously super week. Oh, it was called dairy, dairy land all those races. And it was during that time. What else?
Oh, in 2002 also because of the.com boom. And nine 11, I lost my job is in biotechnology. Biotechnology was incredibly volatile back then and most of the companies that I worked for were startups. I was like employee number 12. It's the longest running company I worked at. But the market tanked and funding dried up and layoffs happened. And one thing I realized in biotech is every time you go to a new company, it takes about six months to learn new technology. And the other thing I learned was there's two types of people in biotechnology, those with their PhD and those without, and I was without, because I had chosen to ride my bike a lot more in life than to spend time in the lab, in the, in the library. And so I realized I needed to do something different. And I decided, I I was, that's when I got into coaching in 2002 I was in between biotechnology jobs. I was training full time to be a road racer, try to be a professional level road racer. And yeah, that's when I got the help of a friend. I built a website, wrote some training tips, came up with the logo and the name and yeah, that's when it all got, yeah, that's when fast cat coaching got started.
And had you gotten some coaching previously in any of the sort of semi-pro and pro racing you were doing?
Oh yeah, absolutely. I was coached by a fellow by the name of Dave Morris. Hi day. Shout out Dave was a exercise physiologist. He worked on project 96 for any of the old timers out there. Project 96 was the title of the project given to basically the team charged with winning gold medals at the Atlanta 1996 Olympic games. And he worked down in Colorado Springs in the human performance lavatory and he, you know, day was one of the first coaches. He's a peer of Chris Carmichael and Dean Golich from, from that air. And he had written a book, I think the name of it was like racers ready anyway, Gaye was coaching some people in, in, in 98. I, I like trained as hard as I could and I didn't really get any better at the end of that season. I was like, I gotta hire a coach and man I had to like call around.
I mean this is like I called Dean Crandall who put me in touch with Dean Golis. She said he was too busy and that was back when in coaching where you had to like, you had to like be good enough to be coached for a coach to take you on. And I was like a no name but Dave was trying to make some money and he had an affordable coaching and I was coached by day for like four years and went from a sport class, Mount biker, you know, all the way up to like count one, you know, borderline professional mountain bike level.
Yeah, it's interesting you hear that story a lot when people just have the raw talent and get it organized by a coach to kind of progress to that next level. So that's an interesting tale of how you came to founding fast cat. I should note, as I mentioned in the intro that you guys have been producing a really great podcast. How long has it been a couple of years on that.
Oh thanks. It has been 84 episodes and may of 2018 so little over. Let's see. Hey, we're coming up on two years here. This may.
That's awesome. I think you know what's, what's interesting to me is you guys put out such depth of information on your site and the, it's sort of a lot of, it's freely available, lot of great plans out there and obviously you guys offer customized coaching. A couple of the episodes that really kind of grabbed hold of me and I got a ton of questions for you about a variety of subjects, but there, there was the concept of winning in the supermarket and winning in the kitchen. That really resonated with me as someone who feels like he consistently fails in those departments. Can you talk about just a touch on, on that philosophy and where you guys are coming from with that?
Absolutely. Well and when I hired Dave is my coach, you know, we did a one season 98, 99 completely didn't even pay attention to nutrition. In fact, I was losing in the grocery store. I was losing in the, in the kitchen and you know, one day in 1999, you know, Dave introduced the concept of power to weight ratio to me. And then, you know, I talked to some of my teammates and I, and I looked around and you know, it turns out power to weight ratios, one of the greatest determinants of performance in the type of racing that I was doing, which was now biking, which was a lot of climbing. And to you know, go up these Hills faster, you had to weigh less. And you know, so I started paying attention to my nutrition and, and in October of I guess that was like 2000, I started you know, eat more salads, more vegetables.
You know, I still had no clue what I was doing. You know, this is 20 years ago. But I, but back then I was, you know, you're young you know, you're, you produce, you know, your endocrine system is still, you know, you know, firing away and it's really easy to lose weight as like, you know, a 28, 30 year old compared to when you're 48 or, you know, in your fifties when your Intercom system has slowed down tremendously. And so you know, I got really skinny and got really fast and that's how I upgraded up to, you know, be in a semi-pro and a cat one. And I really didn't make that much more power. I mean, I got more powerful, but really the biggest, the, you know, the huge leap that I took was from losing weight. And so that's the impetus behind winning in the kitchen.
It's super important and really just comes down to a lot of guys think they can just ride more and eat less and that's what you can do in your 20s. But that is not the path to longterm sustainable success. You know, when you're a masters athlete, you in your thirties, maybe you can kind of get away from it or again, account and blend the two. But you know, for many years it was the Eddie Murks rod more eat less. But really 80% of weight loss comes from healthy food choices that emanate from the kitchen that's winning in the kitchen. And really 20% of weight loss is you know, just from riding more like, you know, rotting a ton of hours, like when you can do when you're in your 20s. So it really just comes down to eating more vegetables, eating more fruits you know, staying away from added sugar partially hydrogenated fat, saturated fat, you know, it's really simple.
One of my teammates from back in the day, the Richie team, he had a term that I adopted. He said there's two types of foods. There's the go fast Khan and there's the go slow con. And I guarantee you everyone listening right now can put a label on either. And so really it's just paying attention to the go fast foods and you know, going to the grocery store, choosing those foods and you know, trying to wait in the kitchen and it's a healthy lifestyle. And I can go on and on and on about that cause we do in our podcast.
Yeah. No I encourage people to go back and listen to those episodes of your podcast cause I found it interesting. I think it's pretty easy for us as kind of middle-aged athletes, masters athletes to look around and think about what we're eating and realize the percentage of go slow foods to go fast foods is highly skewed in the go slow category. And you know, you know, clearly I think we need to acknowledge that, you know, most of, most of the gravel athletes that are listening to this, I suspect are out there for the adventure. They're taxing their bodies, they're going for these big events like dirty Kanza. But at the same token, you know, they're not trying to be a skeleton, Chris Froome type athlete. It's just not important to them. It's important for them to get to the finish line. So there's, you know, there's clearly some balance there of, of enjoying life, but also, you know, making those choices that all enable you to be more efficient on the bike and have more success at these long distance events.
That's right. And success at the event comes from the second part of the winning and the kitchen philosophy and approach is you got to fuel your workouts and fuel your, your long distance rides. And you know, back then I would, you know, put five you know, gels in my pocket and you know, suck those down every 30 minutes. But nowadays, you know, we'd talk about gels, blocks, bars, every 30 minutes we'd talk about making rice cakes from scratch, lads and Dr. Allen Lim. You know, we talk about you know, just eating well proportion meals before and after and, and, and all that in everyone that does these races, these long races, you know, where they can all, they probably want to lose five or 10 pounds. They may not want to get down to you know, 7% body fat. But you know, as you age, your, your body just instance, natural tendency to put on more, more fat and store fat and, and you know, you'd neglect that for a few years and then you're, you know, that's when you got the spare tire and when you do decide to choose more go fast foods and try to win in the kitchen is that's where this can come in.
Cause we don't advocate like dieting and like, you know, restricting calories. We just advocate eating more, really just eating more fruits and vegetables and greens and, and, and making those go fast food choices.
Yeah. And I think that's where I am as an athlete. It's really, I just would like to start making better choices. At the beginning of 2019 I became a vegetarian, which has helped. But I found that just being a vegetarian doesn't necessarily mean you, you make good food choices. So 2020s about kind of combining that with a little bit better choices. And you know, one of the things I struggle with, and I wanted to kind of get your opinion as as a coach is you know, as a, as a family man, as someone who works for a living, my time windows are off often outside of my control. So you know, I think about getting on a training program but then I think to myself, okay, in any given week or any given month, my long ride window may open up serendipitously. So it may be on the program that I'm supposed to be resting this week, but all of a sudden I have a five hour block of time because my wife has decided to take my son somewhere. How do you kind of work with athletes who are grappling with the challenges of time, opportunity versus training schedules?
Well, I mean, the first thing that we try to do is teach and not tell. And that I would tell you as a contradict myself, I would teach you to just go for it. When you have that five hour window of opportunity, first of all go for it because that's what you, you know, need and want to do and then just figure out everything you know, downstream as far as the training plan goes. So it's, you're the type of athlete that would benefit from like a coaching relationship to be taught that. And, and, and a lot of, we, a lot of athletes are like, well, I'm not ready for that. And then so we have these training plans and in these training plans we obviously you have the long rod and we have a, a private athlete forum where we have figured out a way to kind of teach athletes if they do want have questions, just like for the, you know, the conundrum that you just presented.
And it's like, how do I follow the plan but still, you know, adopt to these. And it's just really just asking the question. And, and in training peaks, you know, moving your workouts around is this simple left click, drag and drop and the software and you move like your longer OD to like a Friday instead of a Saturday or a Sunday instead of Saturday. And then you just, you know, you just work, work your way through the plant. We teach consistency. You know, we do have the hashtag FTF P which is follows up bleep in plan, which is a derivation of the velum Menotti rule number five and HTF view. We joke about that but we also use that as an opportunity to teach people good training habits and to be flexible with themselves. So like you may be coming from the, the angle, I've got to follow this plan just right. Maybe you're like a perfectionist, but really what you want to do is be flexible with yourself and just go for it and then, you know, kind of adjust your rest days around that opportunity.
Right. The other thing I have is, you know, I often work in San Francisco four days a week and I commute in from mill Valley. So I've got this sort of hour long, not certainly not junk miles because I'm enjoying going through Sausalito and over the golden gate bridge, but it's not pure training. And then I have the opportunity to ride home in the evening. So, you know, there's the potential for me to be riding two hours in any one of those days. But to date it's just sort of been plot along, you know, not put any more effort in or less effort than just required by the terrain in front of me.
Okay. So I have an athlete that lives in mill Valley and he works in San Francisco. So we worked that into his, his training plan. He's in di, I wouldn't say he's a die hard commuter, he just enjoys it. I mean, why don't we, do you want to, you know, sit in traffic across the golden gate bridge when you can rot across it. Super good weather. It's pleasurable. I mean, I've written across the golden gate bridge. It was scary as heck with the tourist oncoming and the cross winds. But other than that, it's a great view and a lovely way to maybe, you know, commute to and from work. What I would say to you, and this is the teaching moment is, and this, this is, I think we were corresponding by email about this. It's like what are you training for? Identified the demands and the requirements for performance in that event and then back that up to what you should be doing in your training and say you are training for like a dirty Kanza or any other gravel event out there.
You gotta have a really good aerobic and endurance. You need to ride your bike a lot. You know, like the Omni podcast that we just recorded with her. She rides her bike a lot. Therefore that's why she is good at riding 200 miles and you don't have to ride your bike a lot on just one day. You just need to ride your bike a lot over time, six months. And so getting back to your commute, riding two hours a day, four to five times a week, totally fits in with trying to ride a lot over the course of six, six months in preparation from any gravel event. I mean during that time, at the very least you spend time in zone two, that's a robotic endurance increase your mitochondrial density. Yeah, that's the foundation of all gravel racing. And then I think there is a client and I don't know the name of it, but as you kind of head South from Sausalito and mill Valley and start to go up to the bridge, you can get in a like good eight to 10 minutes of like you can do tempo, you can do sweet spot, you do threshold, you can do like five minute work, a park Hill, you know, before you cross the bridge.
Yeah, I mean, I mean you might just need to take like a 20 minute detour. But I did that. The athletes that I worked with, his name is Sean. We were, we were always coming up with these like custom workouts. Like, okay, you'll do like threshold work on the way to, on the way to work. But then rod zone two on the way home and then the next day run zone two to work. But on the way back, let's do this tempo. So it's just kind of getting creative. But I would say overall I'm staying consistent and trying to ride your bike a lot in a flexible manner is going to net new greater gains than, than you know, trying to do like a six hour ride. You know, once one day a week, consistency is King and I would just encourage you to commute as much as possible.
Yeah. We've also got the luxury here. We can head into Tennessee Valley and actually ride the gravel pretty much all the way to the golden gate bridge and there's plenty of add on opportunities. So there's a number of people who do what's referred to around here as the dirty commute where we head off road, which is pretty, it's pretty incredible to kind of have that experience and then drop into the golden gate bridge and be downtown in the financial district for work an hour later.
Makes me want to move to the Bay.
I know you've enjoyed it out here, the riding, so it's not lost on me that we're blessed, but as are you in Boulder? I spent a number of years out there and I love it. There's so much fun.
We are, we live in gray places.
The other thing that I grapple with is and this kinda goes on with opportunism around my time windows is I, you know, I often get last minute opportunities to ride events, whether it's locally or you know, even traveling a little bit. So I struggle with kind of choosing an a event. And for me like the concept of a events is a, is almost irrelevant at the end of the day. I want to experience new gravel. I want to enjoy the gravel community wherever I am. So I was trying to think back as to in, in last year I think I did maybe four or five kind of 60 to a hundred mile events around the country and there wasn't much rhyme or reason to them. And, and to your earlier point, I did feel like all my commuting miles enabled me any structure whatsoever to kind of get to the finish line and enjoy those long events. But any, any further advice in that category of like someone who is opportunistically taking these, these event opportunities and isn't really focused on anyone in particular?
Yeah, I have two answers for you that kind of parallel with each other. The first thing is I would encourage you to choose an M and a event and you may want to like, like we did a whole podcast on this a couple of years ago in the fall about choosing your a event and cause we were introducing the term a event B event, the event to our, to our listeners. And, you know, really, I think everyone knows what we were talking about, like in a event is your dirty cans and 200 or your lost and found or your crusher and the Tuscher BWR you know, mid South, you know, Steamboat, gravel, that, that sort of thing. Those are the races that you dream about, that when you are on a long run and you're wondering what you're doing in life, you, you fall back to remembering what you're training for.
They're, they're the races that, that motivate you and they're fun and, and for years the crusher and the Tuscher was my a race and that's what motivated me prior to the crusher and the Tuscher. The big bear Norbert national was that those, the first mountain bike race of the year that kicked off the notice season. And that's what got me through the winter. You know, when I was, you know, lifting heavy in the gym, doing intervals, rod long, you know, that's your reason. I think Rebecca Rush calls that. What's your, why? You know, that that's, that that's the a race. But then for your B race is in kind of your spontaneous you know, nature. Well, yeah. You know, definitely go for him and, you know, participate. They, so I would call those your B race races. And the the other thing I would say, you may be like, well, I don't have any race or, you know, life doesn't really fit in with that.
And then that's okay. You know, keep going you know, through your journey in gravel racing and one of these days of life or open up, you know, not be as busy. And you'd be like, Oh, I'm getting, this is my goal. I'm gonna go for it. And it may be like a, like, like last year I had an athlete do the dirty cans and 200, and he, he completed that. And then this year the rift in Iceland is his big, big goal. And that's what he lives in Pennsylvania. And he, you know, it's not the greatest weather, but you know, the, the idea of being his best in, in Iceland, you know, keeps him, keeps him going. And maybe that's for you and it's not something that I can tell you as your goal. It's something that you're going to just come up with one day or think about and, or decide upon. Am I answering your question?
You are, and I mean it has posed some sort of questions for me and I, I'd been a bit hurt with a back problem throughout the winter, so it kind of had put my 2020 plans in question as to what I was excited about and what I really wanted to do. I, I'm, I'm thinking for me, Rebecca's private Idaho might be my, my sort of a race for the year and build the season around that.
So now that you have an a race, someone like me, I mean, I can go to town. I mean, now we have a timeframe ripping, you know, that's labor day. That's where we have March, April, may, June, July, August at six months away, 24 weeks, you know, now, now from someone like me, it's like, okay, we should do this, this and this. To prepare you have the opportunity to build your base. Like we, you know, from commuting here, you don't want to neglect interval training, you know, threshold, you know, there is a 20 minute climb that starts off, Rebecca is private auto course. And after that climb, there's a big selection. It's a bunch of chunky gravel after that. So your power to weight ratios is big and important and you want to work on your threshold power to get over that climb in the best possible group and selection and time. And so, you know, being in mill Valley you have awesome 20 minute climb. So then you can structure your training going up and down Mount Tam and the Alpine dam and yeah, so then, but it also helps you peer dyes, your motivation. And we always say, you know, training for these races is kinda like a crescendo and, and piano and you know, you start off small and gradually get louder and louder and louder as you get you know, towards the Rebecca's date.
Yeah. And I think that's a good schedule for me this year. Just because sort of coming off this back injury, I want to make sure I'm healthy before I'm really firing and working too hard. What I appreciated on your site in addition to all the great video and podcast content was that you did have specific training plans that people can purchase for specific events. I thought that that was really cool when someone's getting into the plan and let's say for example, they, they don't actually have power on their bike. How do, how do you begin that process of setting whatever kind of measurement or milestone you need to set at the beginning of the process?
Yeah, so we get this question a lot. I do I need a power meter to follow your plan? The answer is no. All of our plans are zone based. So zone two, you can do a zone two training a by feel a rate of perceived exertion. You can do it by heart rate using a heart rate monitor and that's relatively affordable. I think you can get like a wahoo ticker for $50 and that's like the top of the line. And so hurray based training is tremendous. It's very, very good. And then of course there's the power meter and you can get a power meter for $350. I think stages has some nice affordable options there. One of their slogans is the power meter for every day. The everyday cyclist, not necessarily, you know, world tour level, but anyway, so you have zones and the training plan teaches you how to use the zones.
On the second day of a lot of our training plans, we'll have you perform a very simple and extremely effective task. We call it a field test. You do it out in the field. You don't need a lab, you don't need, you know, lactate or [inaudible] and, and you can do it with zero technology, which some of our athletes do. I learned this from Alan Lamb when he was working with some of the world tour and guys. But basically you go to a Hill and you go up at as fast as you can for 20 minutes, and when the clock strikes 20 minutes, you'd like put an X down on the pavement or the client put a rock or you notice which mailbox you're next to or treat. And then you go off and you do some training. You went in the kitchen, you weigh less, you, you know, you get more powerful and you increase your numerator and decrease your denominator.
Power to weight ratio is, is better. And then you go back to that same client and you go up it just as hard and then you measure how much further you got past that log or X or mailbox and you got on a previous time. And so that's like the super low tech way. And we teach athletes, you know, how to, how to do zone based training and, and really, you know, suites by very good. With power meter or heart rate zone two, you can do it. Rate of perceived exertion. VO two max threshold zone six. Really, that's just as hard as you can. You don't need a power meter or a heart monitor to do that style of training. It sure is nice to, to measure it and look at it afterwards. The analysis that, that piece,
The main attraction for a power meter from me would be just kind of getting that satisfaction is seeing some numbers move. The other thing I see referenced a lot in your plans and conversations is this concept of sweet spot. What, what exactly you're referring to there.
That's so sweet. Spot is a it's a zone. It's a style of training. It is a percentage of your functional threshold power, which is another fancy pocket protector term for your threshold, which is why I was just describing you find in a, in a 20 minute field test, it's technically it's 84 to 97% of your FTP and it is the place in your physiology where the stress is at a sweet spot in relation to the, the, the strain. And I think I misspoke on that. It's where the benefits of that work physiologically are in proportion with the, the physiological costs, like the, you know, like when you go do a hard hard ride, you get benefits from it, but then you're like, you know, you're tired, your muscles are sore, you know, and you can't really ride that fast for a couple of days afterwards. That's the strain and the benefit is what you happened, you know, during that hard ride.
But sweet-spot training is asking athletes to not go as hard as they can and to be able to do a lot of that training for a less physiological amount of stress. And that enables them to get what we've, you know, kind of like, I guess like the slogan of sweet spot, more bang for your buck. And so it's, you get more physiological benefits than by rotting in zone two. But you, and then you benefit more than doing full-on threshold training. So that, that's what she means by training is I developed sweet-spot training in 2003 to 2005 with a group of coaches and sports scientists. People like dr Andy Coggin Hunter Allen, who I listened to your podcast, that was really good. And it, you know, just like some other coaches like John virtual, Adam Meyerson Olympic silver medalist Brian Walton was in this group and you know, this is before all this that was our empower based technology and was unknown.
There was no technology or sports science behind it. And we figured it out. And one of the things that came out of that was sweet-spot training. We were using sweet-spot training to build big aerobic engines to help us go fast. We were all using our own data and developing our own training methods to validate this performance manager chart that is a big piece of the training peak software now. And yeah, so I wrote about it in 2005 on a website called Pez cycling news, introduced it to the world. And I started prescribing sweet-spot trained to all the athletes that I coached, guys like Tom Zirbel and Alison powers. Ted King did a lot of sweet spot training. I coached him back then. You know, Frank Pitt, you know, a lot, a lot, a lot of athletes and they got really fast from it. And that's kind of how I made a name for myself when I was coming up in the coaching world.
Awesome. Awesome. Well, you know, for the listener, again, I encourage you to check out Frank's podcast and check out his website cause there's a ton of backstory to everything we've been talking about today. I know you've given me a lot to think about for 2020 and I think this would be a really good year for me to kind of buckle down and just try to add some structure to my gravel cycling as I kind of enter maybe my third or fourth year doing the gravel thing. So Frank, thanks so much for all the great content you're putting out and for the time today. I appreciate it.
Oh, you're quite welcome. And I would say if you have any further questions, feel free to ask me. I love helping people. I mean that's kinda like our mission. That's one of the joys of being in the coaching realm as we get to help people with something that they're passionate about, just like us, which is cycling and nowadays a lot of gravel and long distance riding. So yeah. It's a dream dream come true to be able to do this for a living.
Yeah, I bet. And I think it's, again, this great takeaways from this podcast, anybody listening is if you're tackling your first gravel event or maybe your first kind of ultra distance event like DK 200, I think there's a lot of these gains that can maybe be made very simply, if you can kind of step back and think about it because they are super taxing these events in a way that just kind of jumping into a local 45 minute long crit never taxes the body.
That's right. I mean, crits, you can fake, but I'm a gravel race. You cannot. And being prepared for these gravel races is just so fun. And, and having, you know, six months of work culminate and having a great ride, that's, that's a rewarding experience. And, and I also know this from experience, personal experience, you know, doing a a hundred mile or challenging gravel event under-prepared. That's not fun. And we're doing this for fun. And you know, what we always say is as a fast is funner.
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks again, Frank.
You're welcome, Craig. Thank you again for having me on.
This week we speak with Dean Stanton from Canada's Triple Crown of Gravel, three great events across British Columbia.
Triple Crown of Gravel Instagram
Triple Crown of Gravel Website
This week's episode is brought to you by Cycle Oregon. Please mention 'TGR' during any registration for a special item.
Automated transcription, please forgive typos.
Dean, welcome to the show.
Great. Thanks. Good to be here.
Yeah. Well I'm really excited to have you on the show. I know you producing three events at least up there this year in the gravel community, but first we always like to get started by learning a little bit more about your background as a cyclist and how ultimately you got into the arduous task of event production.
Well it's a weird and twisted past for that. I started off mainly in triathlons in high school and became an elite professional from 87 to 99. And before I sort of quit racing, I got into coaching at about 97 and then about 2004 I thought, you know, Hey, I've done all these races and helped out and done all this. I'll put on a triathlon and I had no idea what I was doing and to be honest, it shouldn't have been putting one on but did it and sorta went through that and did a bunch of bike races or sorry, no triathlons and then some running races. And then I've always really wanted to put on a bike race and some bike races. And then, you know, at that time around 2009, 2010 the gravel and sorry the grand fondos were sort of taking off.
And then when I looked at the costs of production and everything, I was just like no, this isn't gonna work. So 2013 I was looking at you know, what was going on down in the States and already, you know, dirty Kanza was on the radar and I was like, that's pretty cool. So I went down and did one in the rate race in the States on a, on a cross bike and started writing more gravel at year anyways and then said, you know what, I'm going to put on the kettle medal. And we did. And like 80 people showed up or something. It wasn't very good. And you know, in terms of numbers, but you know, it was great and everybody really enjoyed it. And I am myself ride gravel a lot cause I really enjoy not having the cars and being more in nature. It's kind of a hybrid between say road riding and mountain biking. Cause I think you need some of the mountain bike skills that helps. But it's just, you know, but it's a little bit more easier than mountain biking in some respects in terms of the descending and the assets aren't nearly as steep usually. But anyways, I really enjoy it. I, it's something I've really do more and more of.
Nice. And was that first cuddle metal, was that back in 2014 then? Correct. Yeah. I'm curious, you made mention, and I, I like to have takeaways for other event organizers. You made mention that you thought the cost of production of a grand Fondo on the road was more expensive than a gravel event. Was that from some sort of practical perspective like road closures and things like that?
Well I don't, I'm not sure how things work in the States, but in Canada they seem to love, you know, having everything done to the nth degree. So, you know, yeah, it's traffic management plans, police you know, traffic control people. It's, it's, it's prohibitively expensive to degree to shut any roads down and it gets very, very expensive, very fast. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah. So that's sort of why I was like, ah, no, not doing it. Yeah.
So you're there in the heart bed of mountain biking up in British Columbia. So that first event was the kettle medal. And I know at this point you've expanded to having three gravel events on the calendar, is that right?
Correct. I sort of that and that's funny cause that sort of grew organically as well as that. I did kettle metal for a couple of years and then I looked on the Island and I was over there anyways. I'm think of Island, which is pretty big Island. And I just was like, I'm going to go and check out some gravel rides. And I just, I realized that there was a real old railway line there as well. And then just worked into a an event over there as well. And that's, we're going now into our fourth year for, I'm the couch and crusher, which is out of Lake Cowichan, which is, it's phenomenal. Some of the riding on the islands as I think some of the best writing in terms of gravel on NBC. I mean, unfortunately most of it seems to be on private property. But yeah, it's, it's really good writing over there
And you, are you able to get permission for the event day to get on that private property?
Yeah, it's just, yeah, it's just a few more steps to go through, but yeah, no, it's, it's, it's really good stuff over there. It's really, it's really nice. I mean, one of the challenges in BC, and I'm not sure you have this in California other places, is a lot of the terrain is very steep, so it's very difficult at times to find a sort of circular route on gravel. A lot of them are sort of like a roots of trees in that there's a main road and then it'll go off and branch up a super steep room and it'll be dead end. And then you get to come back down and, and get to go. So the nice thing about Vancouver Island is it's a lot less steep terrain. So there's a lot more sort of rows that all link up. Whereas other places like Squamish, it's a little bit more difficult than again, most of the roads are all built for logging and logging access. So their forest service roads.
Yeah. No, I think that's common for any coastal areas. Certainly my neck of the woods. You can't, you can't go 10 miles without going a thousand feet of climbing and you've got to pick your roots wisely.
Yeah. So it, you know, and I'm, I'm, I mean I've done some of the rides and I'm just amazed at how these trucks were getting up and down these Hills with logs, bro. You know, like a load of log. I'm just like, no, blows me away cause I'm like, this is so steep. Yeah.
And then the third event is called what?
Well, the third event we did for two years was the cow. So the golden ears, gravel Fondo, which was a bit challenging in that one of the cool areas about pit Meadows is sort of called near to the Tri-City area of lower mainland of Vancouver, greater Vancouver. And it has all these dikes in a, technically a lot of that area is underwater, like under sea level, but they have all these dikes that you kind of link up. It just, it became very difficult to train, you know, go through the permitting process on that because I had either nine or 10 jurisdictions I had to go through, you know, and then I'm doing Squamish and I have four or three. It's, it's so much easier. So, so I just kind of went, you know it's good writing and good training, but trying to put on an event on there was really challenging. And so over the last year, year and a half, I was going up to Squamish to do some gravel rides and I said, you know what, we're just gonna move it next year. And that's what we're doing right now. And the numbers are pretty strong and we're pretty excited about it, so yeah.
Great. And that one's called the sea to sky, is that right?
Yeah, the, the, yeah, so in the, I got that name from basically the sea to sky highway, but that's called the sea to sky corridor. It's kind of like, it's pretty steep terrain and I'm not really sure even how they made that road way back in the 50s from Vancouver to school. And we still Whistler and wish there's Whistler's like a world-class resort. It was skiing, but it's also a major mountain biking downhilling in the summer. But that road is just like, I'm trying to remember the name. There's that marathon on the Pacific coast of California that goes through the redwoods and all that stuff. And it's kind of similar to that is very steep terrain. So
On the way to Whistler previous times, and actually up on some fire roads in Squamish, but I was up in a van with a full suspension bike and a full face helmet ready to go downhill.
Yeah. So very different. Yeah. Yeah.
I want to get into some of the details in terms of elevation and the type of terrain for the three different events. But one of the things that jumped out at me on the website was you actually have divisions for two and four person teams, which I haven't seen in a lot of gravel events. Can you talk about, you know, how that works from a practical perspective and you know, what your intention was in, in adding those event categories.
Well I, I kind of really liked the team atmosphere and then I also thought it would be interesting for people to bring out other buddies and friends to do their event with them instead of just all doing it singly. So I thought it'd be really cool to sort of do a team of two or team before, you know, mixed or whatever. And then you give them a slight discount so that, you know, you're encouraging more teams and you know, we, we give out, you know, prizes to the top team, to top team of Ford and we also have a triple crown prizing for all three events. The end of the season at the end last event and I, I I just really liked the idea of it. Yeah, I mean it's funny that I sort of did that second or third year and we've been doing it ever since and yeah, I guess now that you mentioned it, I haven't seen this in a lot of other events.
Yeah, I think it's, I mean I think it's a very interesting dynamic, both from a, from a race organizer perspective, obviously it encourages people very specifically to bring a buddy with them, but also from a racing perspective, having done team events in the past and myself both single day and multi day, it does add a different dynamic because you're trying to get your teammate across as fast as you can and you're going to have different skillsets. I imagine in a gravel event, you know, you may have someone who's a good roller on the flat terrain really coming to the front and dragging their teammate along, whereas you know, their teammate may have other skillsets. It does, I think, create some interesting mentality during the race, which is probably quite fun to race as a team.
Yeah, I mean that's just what we're trying to encourage is just more people to come out, more people to do it as a team, you know, it's combined times. So it's like two people, it'd be the two times together and that that's so thus it, it doesn't make sense for one person to be super fast and the other person it takes longer, you know, because he has, you're adding the times together anyways for the results. So you might as well just try and like you said, both write together and cheer each other on and push each other for, you know, better finish.
And you mentioned it casually that you've kind of cast the three events under this [inaudible] of the triple crown of gravel and you're actually tracking results across three events and providing, you know, accolades or awards at the end of all three events, right?
Yep, that's correct. Yep.
Yeah. Pretty cool. So let's get into some of the, some of the terrain in each of the three events and curious to kind of get your perspective, if you would expect given unlimited resources, if people would change bikes or tires or, or different things about the bikes between the three events or if it's, if it's similar enough that, you know, it's kinda run the same tires in each event.
In terms of the terrain, it's quite different. As I said before, I mean Squamish is somewhat flat. It's got some Hills in it, but nothing major over the long course of the full Fondo, which we were in Columbia is up here. It's about a hundred kilometers also because it's an April 25th and I don't think people are hoping to do 150, 200 kilometers fairly early in the season. So I'm trying to make sure it's not too long for people. It's challenging but not over challenging. But there's definitely some climbs as you get closer to the turnaround area. And the gravel is mostly fairly hard pack. Yeah, in similar to the Island, but a kettle metal has a couple of sections where it's a bit Sandy or softer. So I would suggest going with a slightly wider tire with lower pressures for that one. Although I mean it really depends, right?
I mean it depends how big you are, how much you weigh, what kind of bike you're riding. You know, it's interesting, we, we, we started tracking with our registration, what people are doing, what their bikes they're riding, what size tires they're writing. These are all questions we ask at registration and sort of attract that last year and have a lot of interesting stats on. When we first started this seven years ago, I didn't have the stats, but you know, through seeing what people were doing, the vast majority were on mountain bikes. And then there was a few on cross bikes and you know, seven years ago there wasn't even gravel bikes. So it was mostly that. And now the vast majority are 700. See bikes split between, you know, gravel and cyclocross, and then there's six 50 B gravel bikes. But they're not, there's not as many. Like I would say on our stats, over 75% are gravel or 700 see in less than 25% or six 50 [inaudible]. And then one of the other interesting things about mountain biking is we thought there'd be a lot more people in 20 Niners and there's hardly any, it's only like four and a half, 5% of the 27% that are mountain bikes, the vast majority are 26 inch or six 50 [inaudible].
And are you tracking the tire width the people are proposing they're going to ride on? Yeah.
Yeah, we, we ask them, you know, is it 26 inch, six 50 [inaudible] 29 incher and then hybrid bikes, we just assume that 700 seen road bikes. So we have about 4% rode bikes to try and attempt it on that. Even though on a lot of them you're very limited on what size you can go. And then hybrid bikes, you know, you can usually get a bitF , you know, wider. Most of the people in hydro bikes and mountain bikes are usually doing the 50K or the medio size fondos in is the longer distances. Most of them were on cross bikes and ugravel bikes. And then there is some people, a few on mountain bikes.
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if your proportions of 700 C versus six 50 B being 75 25% are pretty common around the country. I find that six 50 it's a little bit out of the norm. It's certainly not the majority, majority of what I see as well. So that's, that's not too surprising over there.
And the other thing is, is, you know, I've noticed that it seemed like there's a tendency for people to try to go with one buy instead of to buy. But I've, I've noticed that most of the people in our long course on gravel or on to buy instead of one by, and it seems like more six 50 [inaudible] have of one buy in most of the 700 seat or two by, but I mean it's sort of open on that.
Yeah, no, I think you're probably right. I think this six 50 [inaudible] wheel set probably is attractive to someone who has experienced mountain biking. Therefore they probably have experience running one by Sarah. It kind of tracks and correlates together, I would imagine.
Yeah. I mean the thing that I've noticed riding my gravel bike as opposed to my mountain bike in which is, is just that if you're on a one by, I feel like you're going to run out of gears a bit in certain places in some of our courses cause you're not going to have those tighter steps, but also the ability to go into a big chain ring and just go a bit faster and some of the downhills if that's what you want to do. But it just seems a bit limiting to me. But
Yeah, it's all, it's all a personal choice here in the gravel world for sure. Yeah. So Dean, can you let us know what the dates are for each event and when registration's open.
Okay. well registration is all open for all of them. As of right now, they've all been open as of early December kettle met and sorry for start off, the first one, sea to sky gravel. Fondo is on Saturday, April 25th and it's in a Squamish Valley. And the next one is the couch and crusher on June 7th on thanker Island in Lake chin. And the third one of the triple crown is the kettle medal on September 26th Penticton to Colona. You have the logistics on that one is a bit interesting in terms of all my other events that sort of same start, finish that one. To be honest, the first year or two was a bit of a logistical nightmare trying to figure out how to have a start and finish in two different locations that are, you know, 180 kilometers, a hundred kilometers apart and having to bus people in, truck people in a truck, all the bicycles and yeah, that, that, that was a bit challenging, but we've kind of got it pretty small sorted now.
But yeah, that was trying to figure out, Nick people have to check in on the Friday to load their bikes into the, you know, semi trailer to, to drive it down Friday night so that we unload Saturday morning so they can start the race. Cause we didn't want to load and unload in the morning. It just is too, too much time consuming. So it's easier to just unload, get people, get on their bikes. And then we shuttle people from Penticton, this start to the people doing the media to shoot Lake. And then from shoot Lake they ride down. And that, that, I don't know if you've ever been to Penticton or Colona the interior, but it's kind of an interesting area and that you think of BC and you think of monster trees and all that kind of stuff. But it's very different. It's kind of like Napa Valley North in a way. It's, but more in different because it's got really big lakes and like huge lakes. It's got you know, very dry, warm terrain. There's orchards, there's wineries, there's this old train. So it's, it's very scenic. Very beautiful. And it's yeah, it's interesting.
Yeah. Penticton is gorgeous. I have been up there for iron man many years ago and it's certainly a place where, you know, you could bring your family up for a vacation and everybody in the household going to find something to do. It's, it's great. There's, I just as you said that the lakes are amazing and the mountains have a slightly different character than other parts of BC, so I'm not surprised it's a popular event for you.
Yeah, and I mean I, that was our inception, you know, first event, but I just, I feel like it's, it's just a really awesome way to tee in this season for us, for our triple crown. And you know, it's just, Oh, we get a lot of people in from Alberta because there's sort of, it gets colder there earlier than Vancouver and BC and they're sort of ending, their season is September eight, late September. So it's kind of a good sort of end to finish for us.
Yeah, that's awesome. Well, I'll make sure to put a link in the show notes to the registration site and make sure people take a look at that. And I wish you the best of luck this season. I can't wait to hear more about it at the end of the year.
Great. Okay. Thank you.
Dirty Kanza 2020 has be rescheduled to September 10-13, 2020. We take a moment to catch up with founder, Jim Cummins about the new date and check in with a handful of athletes to learn how this will affect their fall schedules.
Dirty Kanza Website
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EMPORIA, Kans., April 7, 2020—Life Time, the nation’s premier healthy lifestyle brand which owns and produces the Garmin Dirty Kanza, today announced that the event, notably known as the “World Series of Gravel”, will be rescheduled from May 29-31 to September 10-13 in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic and in an effort to provide a safe event experience for all.
Sponsored by Cycle Oregon. Look for multiple great events this fall.
This week we take another look at Gravel Bike 101 in a conversation with Randall Jacobs from Thesis Bike with the goal of breaking down some of the considerations when purchasing a gravel bike.
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Randall Jacobs @ Thesis Bike
Automated Transcript (please forgive the typos).
Good day everyone and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host, Craig Dalton. This week's episode of the podcast is brought to you by our friends at Cycle Oregon. I introduced you to them last week talking about their exciting gravel weekend they had planted in may and wouldn't you know it. Boom pandemic. The guys up at Cycle Oregon are super bummed, but they're delaying this event until October, which is definitely the right thing to do. I know all event organizers all over the world, they're struggling with what to do and where to get some time slots. Fortunately as you guys know, Oregon is such a great place to ride in the fall. October is going to be a real neat time there in the Ti Valley and I'm looking forward to the event. So go check out www.CycleOregon.com and if you're interested in information, make sure to put TGR in your registration.
I believe there's a team field or otherwise and note field where you can put TGR just to let them know that you heard about it first here at the gravel ride and definitely support them and all the other event organizers who are rejiggering their calendar to make sure that when it's safe to go out, when it's safe to congregate in groups. We have awesome events to go look forward to. I don't know about you guys, but this pandemic has forced me to really think about what my calendar is going to look like. A lot of great events in the first half of the year have been postponed and perhaps they'll come back later in the year, but it's definitely gonna be a fun filled fall. I'm super optimistic and looking forward to it. I know like me, everybody's struggling through this hard time, so let's just band together.
Let's do what we can. Let's be kind to one another. Let's reach out to each other online. Let's keep those solo rides going so we can stay fit and you know, we'll be back. Everybody's going to be back. So keep in mind that I record these podcasts maybe a couple of months in advance, so if any of the content seems to be inappropriate like me calling for a group ride or anything like that, just keep in mind that the intros are more present, but the body of the recording is done typically a month or so in arrears, so again, forgive any gaps from that perspective. I'm super stoked on this episode it has with most episodes. I really wanted to revisit our gravel bike one Oh one episode we did early on in the podcast because I think it's just a great starting point for a new riders as well as riders who have been around for a while and are thinking about their equipment in different ways as they've learned how to ride and chosen the terrain that they fallen in love with.
I've asked my friend Randall, cofounder of thesis bikes out of San Francisco to join the podcasts and he actually had me over again. This was before the, so I was over at thesis world headquarters over there in San Francisco and just enjoyed the conversation. It was a lot of fun to catch up with a buddy that I've been riding with now for for a year. Plus. The thesis bike is available at thesis' dot bike. They've got some deals going over there right now, so hop on over and check out what they're doing and said Randall and the team and note they definitely like to interact with the community. So feel free to reach out with any questions about their bike and anything that's come up in relation to this podcast and the gravel bike or one-on-one. I'm here for you as always. But I'm sure Randall would be game to answer any questions over social media or directly over email. So apologies for the long intro. Thanks again to our sponsor cycle Oregon for stepping up for this episode and a few others. We look forward to seeing you in the fall with some of your great events. And with that, let's dive right in to gravel bike one Oh one all right, Randall. Okay.
Come to the show. Thank you very much. It's nice to be back. I appreciate you having me in your home and where you work a lot for thesis. It's a joy to be here.
This is a global headquarters yet virtual company.
Yeah, exactly. So for awhile, I know on our bike rides I've been talking to you about my desire to kind of take a step back and do another gravel bike one Oh one episode. I did one back in 2018 with the goal of, you know, if you were thinking about getting into the sport, what do you need to think about? And I realized I was in a bike shop. We kind of probably stepped head of where we should have even started because a lot of people will stumble upon this podcast and just be asking themselves the question is gravel cycling for me? So I thought it'd be great to just have a conversation about that today.
Sure. And, and I think the answer to that question really depends on where you're coming from. Right? So some of us are coming, you know, I was a former mountain biker, you know, racer. I did, you know, it trained a lot on the road. So I'm already kind of a dyed in the wool cyclist. You know, this is, this is my, what I do, it's my tribe. But then you have other people who are like getting into this. Maybe this is like their first serious bike, right? They, maybe they had a bike in college, maybe they have like a, you know, a, a commuter or something like that and they see their friends having fun. And so I think in terms of like how to think about a gravel bike, well for the people who already have a stable, maybe they're thinking about this as their and as an Mplus plus one machine.
And by that I mean like the optimal bikes for S for cyclist is often said to be N plus one, I need one more. I'm not an adherent to that philosophy but, but it's the idea of like having a dedicated machine for going out on these long rambling rides on a mix of road and dirt and, and so on, being able to get lost and have adventures. The other philosophy, which is kind of my, my jam is, you know, N minus one or maybe even N minus two or in minus three, if you have that stable. So think of a bike and gravel riding is like, you have a bike that can do all the things right? It's a, it's a really good say, endurance road bike. If you put some slicks on it you put some fat six 50 B's, it's a borderline mountain bike.
You put a dropper and a flair bar on there. Like you're, you're, you have a better mountain bike then, you know, the people who invented mountain biking, not, not far from here. So you know, this idea of like having a machine where you can go out on a ride and on the road and be like, huh, I wonder where that trail goes. And then just dive into it and explore or somebody is, is hosting, you know, a mixed terrain ride and you just, you have the right machine for a variety of different experiences. The last one being like adventure. It was like, like travel, bike packing, touring these bikes generally have, you know, oftentimes have accommodations for, you know, you put bag systems on and things like this and you can really get out there.
So I'm going to take a step back from my sister who's constantly asking me like, what the heck is this that you do? She knows mountain bikes and she knows the tour de France. And so what I've said to her is it's a, a drop handlebars bike that you can ride off road. So it kind of looks like a road bike to many people, but it's actually capable and has a lot of design features that we can get into later that allow it to go anywhere on road or off road.
It can. Yeah. And there's kind of, there's a spectrum, right? You have machines that are, you know, almost like cross bikes in terms of like more limited tire clearance. And maybe the, the geo is, is a little bit more aggressive or something. And then you have others that are essentially drop our mountain bikes. Right? And so the former is not going to be as capable on dirt. The the ladder is going to be kind of a pig on the road. And it's, it the, the steering will be a bit slower and they're great for that dedicated purpose. But yeah, in terms of like being able to go out and have this wide variety of adventures, you know, you want to be kind of mindful of, of getting a machine that'll cover, cover all the bases. And I think that that's a gravel bike at its best is one that can do all the things.
Yeah. And I mean I think that's an interesting part of this exploding sector of the cycling industry is that people are trying to figure out, well what's my entry point? Is it a bike that can do all these things? Or is it a bike that does one end of spectrum better than others? And you know, I often talk about road plus bikes as being sort of the basic entry part. If you have, you know, if you're on the roadie side of the market, you're like, okay, now I can run a 30 to see tire in addition to my 25 or my 28 when I'm on the road and when I'm running that 32, see, I can go on a dirt road and feel comfortable.
Well, this really gets down to like, you know, let's get down to the brass tacks of like, what is, what is the difference between all these different bikes? You have like rode bikes and you have, you know, climbing road bikes and arrow road bikes and endurance road bikes. You have cross bikes and you have gravel bikes, you have a, you know, a bike packing and touring rigs and so on. And you know, there's this idea that like, every one of these is kind of purpose built for that experience. But we've had some key enabling technologies of late one of which being like tubeless tires, right? Run on wide rims. Another being, you know, dropper posts you know, the trend towards slightly flared bars and then materials like carbon fiber. Make it so that you can have a machine that's lightweight.
You can have a machine that is, you know, very capable off road cause Oh the last one being disc brakes of course. You know, you can swap between wheel sets to have like a road or a dirt experience if you want to go to the extremes. And then with something like a dropper, you know, you, you're getting into mountain bike territory with our suspension because you're, you're able to shift your weight back and keep your front wheel light, let it roll and kind of sail over train and your, your butts off the back and the bikes dancing out, you know, underneath you as your legs are acting as suspension, like the capability of something like that is well into cross country territory.
Yeah. Yeah. So let me, I'm going to, I'm going to step back from my sister's benefit again and say, why do we have tubeless tires? Okay. We used to have tubes and tires and we still do on plenty of bikes, but tubes required us to run higher air pressure to avoid pinch flats. Yep. And probably many other reasons that I won't drill into. And now we have just the tire with some sealant inside that we pump up and we can run lower type or higher pressure, which gives us, we can talk about what it will do off road, but at, at, at sort of a simple level, it allows us to have a more comfortably comfortable riding tire,
Even better rolling resistance and similar or potentially even slightly lighter system weight. It's actually benefits all around. The, you know, there's so tubeless tires you get, one of the big risks that you have, especially as you go off road is pinch flats. So basically, you know, you hit a bump, pinches the two between the ground and the rim and you get a little sneak bike, sneak bait sort of a pattern on the tube. That goes away with tubeless. The, you know, the manufacturing tolerances available within the bike industry have improved significantly and you know, tire construction, all that stuff that makes it so that you can get the tight tolerances needed for a tubeless system. The advent of like sealants. And so on, make it so that not only do you like seal the casing properly, but if you get a little puncture, there's a good chance it's going to hold up.
And so there's just, it's all benefit. Like the only downside may be road, some people will say like, Oh, like tubeless road, it's, it's a pain in the buck. It's it, you know, the industry hasn't properly settled on standards and so on. That is actually mostly a problem with narrow rims and tires. And if you run wide rims and a 28 plus road tire, your pressures are low enough where a lot of the problems associated with high pressure systems goes away. So if you're thinking tubeless, like tubeless is an essential enabling technology of these experiences go tubeless, you'll, you won't look back. And that, that's all.
And when you walk into the bike shop or you're shopping online, it's not going to look any different. It's just a wheel with a tire on it. If you're in the, I'm buying my first bike or my first gravel bikes, I don't stress about that. But when someone says tubeless, two thumbs up from everybody here, it's super important to your enjoyment for a lot of different reasons. The second thing you mentioned that may be different looking than somebody's previous shopping experience with bikes are these disc brakes. And the only thing really you need to know about this brakes is they stop a hell of a lot better than caliper brakes or anything that proceeded it. And they're really a must have for going off road.
Yeah. And, and of course like people often as you cited there will cite the power of a disc brake as the primary benefit, a good caliber brake and the dry has plenty of braking force. Right. but it's the, the consistency of breaking like in the wet, in the dirt and so on. You know, grinding down your rims, the rims are going to hold up. It changes rim construction as well, so you can have the lighter, stiffer, stronger and not have to dissipate heat. But then also modulation. So like the little like, especially on dirt, you know, the difference between breaking traction and not breaking traction can be a tiny amount of forest at the lever. And so being able to like trends, you know, at the end of the day, like a human on a bike is a cyborg, right? And you're trying to create this, this melding of, of human and machine such that, you know, it's an extension of, of, of the animal on, on the machine.
And so like that, that modulation I think is, is actually arguably one of the greatest benefits. The last one being, and this one's quite critical for gravel, is you're no longer dependent on your rim and tie tire combo like your room and tire combo don't affect your your brake caliper clearance cause you're not squeezing at the rim, you're doing it at, at the rotor. And so you can swap wheels, you can have, you know, a road set with, with a skinny tire, skinny, slick, and you can have a big fat mountain bike tire on your other set and it's gonna grab at the same point. And so that, that is where you see like six 50 bees come in. You're not gonna find a caliber that breaks well at the rim that can fit around a 40 mil tire anyways. Like, you know, cross bikes and notoriously they squeal and so on. So that that other component of like being able to fit a variety of different wheel tire packages too is kind of another key component that I think was essential in this big shift. Right? Yup.
Yeah, exactly. So when you go in the bike shop, you're going to see something drop handlebars a little bit, Navi your tire, then potentially you've seen on our bike, in your past shopping experience, you're also going to see a wide variety of frame materials. So anybody who's shopping for a bike, like every other sector of the sport, you've got steel bikes, you've got aluminum bikes, you've got titanium bikes. And you've got carbon fiber bikes and we don't need to drill into the minutia around these different materials cause that's probably another podcast. Don't want to go deep nerd on this. Don't want to go deep on it, but let's just put it out there that these, you know, in general camps, these materials are going to have different fields, different weights in different attributes. Right? Yeah. Is that, it's interesting. I actually just did a whole project researching
You know, titanium and got deep in the weeds. And you know, I was at specialized when they are doing smart well with the aluminum. There's some ideas, there's some misconceptions around say aluminum being really stiff. That was the case back in the day when I'm probably going in. The weeds aren't I think of it this way if as far as a material that gives you really impressive stiffness to weight that's highly tuneable for, you know, damping and various other characteristics that you want on the bike. You just can't be carbon. Like it is just a superior material. And I know that, you know Ty and, and steel had their acolytes and I think that those bikes are beautiful. They have their merits. It's great for custom because you can just MITRE tubes and, and, and take them together pretty easily. But as far as like if you are, if you're in the kind of like three K plus range you know, a carbon frame has a lot of benefits, especially for this experience where, you know, the you, you otherwise might end well, there's like it's kinda, maybe we cut this part out because I'm kind of going into the weeds already.
Yeah, no, that's okay. Randall, you know, we're, we're gonna, I think we're gonna we're going to go in the weeds and we're going to pull back, I think at a high level. Again, if you're a new athlete shopping for a bike, if this is your, your sort of first proper adventure bicycle, you're going to have some sort of basic things that you're going to get in front of.
So, so here's maybe a good way to frame this. If you're on a budget, right, and you know, your budgets like 1500 bucks, if there's a $1,500 gravel bike out there, it probably is not going to have the best components because a lot of the money went into the frame and you can think while it's upgradable and so on. Well, by the time you upgrade all those components, it's like turn, you know, getting a civic and boosting it, and then you fix the suspension and you've all of a sudden spent Porsche money, but you still have a civic. But if you, if you, if you're just getting into it, you're on a budget, steel and aluminum, really hard to beat. You can find really well thought out steel and aluminum frames and chassies that will perform well and kind of get you into the sport. And some of the better aluminum ones in particular at a rather high level. Again, using like, you know, the Cannondale aluminum road bikes and the specialized you know, smart well bikes as an example of aluminum that performs like carbon but at, at the top of the heap carbon for sure.
Yeah. And I know we'll get some emails and some texts about titanium, which I'm a big fan of. I love the material. It's a different ballpark and I think when you're ready for titanium, you will have gone through that thought process if it's ultimately the material that makes sense for you.
Well, what it comes down to is titanium specifically. You just can't accomplish the bottom bracket stiffness with titanium that you can with carbon fiber or even aluminum. Just because of the way the, the limitations on tube shaping and you know, how much space you have to weld things at the bottom bracket, juncture and so on. So that's probably the biggest compromise that you have with titanium is that bottom bracket stiffness. But otherwise, like, yeah, they're beautiful and you can, you can have a beautiful machine with that material.
The other thing that I learned personally was that, you know, it's hard to make the right choice right when you get into this sport. So I, I was riding a Niner aluminum Niner, which was my first gravel bike, which is fully capable, but it had cable actually weighted breaks and I think it could max out at about a 36 or 38 and it turned out for me, you know, how I ride, like it just wasn't matching the aggression, if you, if you will, of my, my descending that I wanted to explore with the gravel bike. And I think that's, that is, you know, one of those things that I do encourage people to really think about is what tires will your bicycle run because it can be limiting and you need to think about what your strengths are, what your concerns are as you're coming into the sport. I think our group ride this last weekend was illustrative cause I was talking to some women from the Santa Rosa area who were incredible athletes, great climbers and a lot of fun to ride with. But when we got on the hairball descents, you know, they had the narrower tires and I feel like it was holding them back a little bit. Although to their credit, they powered through every section we threw at them.
Oh, they were crushing it. Yeah. but yeah, it's, I mean, there's really no reason at this point if you're buying a new bike to buy something that doesn't take six 50 B's. Like, I just think that's if you, even if you're thinking that you're going to be riding it more kind of endurance road or more, say like a, a Belgium waffle ride, people show up on, you know, 32 mil slicks. Right? Even if that's going to be more your jam, you're going to reach your point where you want to hit something a little bit gnarlier and you're going to be tire limited. And you know, I've written 700 by 40. There are people who say like 700 by forties, you know, faster or 700 season going to be faster. They're thinking about, you know, TuneIn or mountain and so on. But inevitably you have compromises with that.
Well, one, it's not necessarily faster because if the train is undulating and you have lots of bumps and so on, that's all you know horizontal energy that you put in by pedaling, that's getting tr dissipated as vertical energy. Basically you're getting bounced around on the bike and so a big fat tire will address that. But then also like you, you just have so much more ability to go in. Like, you know, I wonder if I can ride that right. Big fat tire you're gonna have a much better chance of riding it and you're going to have less issues with, you know, cracking rims and things like this cause you get, you know, you're under biked on terrain that really demands a, a more capable machine.
Yeah. I'm a broken record, obviously [inaudible] six 50 being wide tires, but that's my jam. I think I could be wrong, but I suspect that most bikes out there get specked with 700 seat wheels. What's your sense on that?
I think it's, I think it's great to have a 700 set so that you can put your road slicks on them. And as long as the frame fits six 50 B, you'll still be able to go out and have properly rowdy fund.
But don't you, don't you get the sense that most shops you see, most bikes you see in a bike shop are advertised start with 700 see as a starting a lot of them. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's just a sense. I haven't, and to your point, like you know, we've both written 700 C wheels, plenty around here and Miranda and I do spend a fair amount of time on 700 by 40 but I remember going out to SBT gravel this year and the guys at Panorai sir, were like, Oh, you should ride it like a 32 and I was like, Oh my God, I can't even imagine putting that on my gravel bike. That said, for that particular course, it would have been fine for me. But with the forties I did find as usual, I was just rolling by people on the dissents. Having the wider tire and even on the small road sections on that course, the actual paved road sections, I didn't really feel like 40 was holding me back in any way.
Well, the, so, so my take on this is that, you know, the folks who are trying to like run the minimal tire on the course, you know, if we're talking racers that whole mindset is going to go the way of, you know, the 700 by 23 roadie, you know, mindset where it's like, I need a tire that feels, you know, that's as hard as possible. I'm going to, I'm going to do 700 by 23 I'm going to run into a 120 PSI and I'm gonna feel everything and that's gonna make me feel fast. And that probably means I'm actually going faster. Well, no, you're, the rolling resistance is higher. There's no aerodynamic benefit. Obviously it's, the tire shape is the same. You're literally just wasting energy and beating the hell out of your body. So I think that the gravel scene is going to migrate much more towards fat, six 50 bees. Unless you're doing like hard packed dirt fire roads you know, the fatter six 50 bees are the way to go. And you can just, you know, again, you're out on that dirt fire road. Where does that single track go that that is a wonderful part of this experience.
Yeah. And I know we won't probably won't drill too far into the notion of suspension and the many ways in which that gets into a bike, but tire volume is suspension. Don't get it wrong, don't get it twisted people.
Well, and it's, it's suspension that is extremely efficient, right? It's not sapping energy. And if you, you know, what's beautiful too is like, you know, let's say you're a Trailhead is an hour away. Like I ride up, you know, from San Francisco to Fairfax and do Tamar Rancho, right? And it's probably mountain bike trail. Well, I'll run a few, few PSA higher PSI higher on the way there and then drop it a little bit. And then you know, getting shredded on the single track and it's a great time,
Highly tuneable suspension, one knob tuning, right, right from your tire bow. Okay. So there's, I mean there's a few things for people to think about. We're getting people stoked on gravel. We encourage you to kind of look at whatever your bike budget is, look at a bike that can run both 706 50 B wheelsets if you have the option of starting out with six 50 [inaudible], I think it gives you this one all the benefits we've just been talking about, but then a margin of safety as a newer rider and a margin of comfort that you're not going to get in 700 sea wheel sets. That, that said, you know, if you fall in love with a 700 w C wheelset bike, go for it. Like hopefully it can go at least out to a 40, as Randall said, I think the evidence is clear that tire manufacturers are going bigger and bigger even on the 700 seat size at the end of the day.
But these are, you know, those are a couple things to think about around these bikes. The other big thing to think about I think is just where you live. And you know, my bias always comes through being someone who rides what are considered more mountain bikey type terrain with my bike. So my set up tens that way, but I always tried to take a step back and think, well, people in the Midwest or on the East coast, they're talking about plenty of different terrain and the mountain States, again, different terrain that's gonna play a role in what bike's gonna make sense for you?
Well, I would say to a degree I think it actually has more to do with like what re wheel tire package makes the most sense for your specific terrain. But in terms of the bike itself the basic principle of like, make sure it fits six 50 B's so that you always have that ability. I, I don't, there's really no downside to that. Doesn't affect geometry. There's no negative aspect of accommodating that tire. And you know, I've written all over the country. I'm from the Boston area. And you know, if with my setup like the tires, you know, I get a byway way in the front and adventure in the rear, so like a file, a semi slick in the rear. And in a file tread up front, I'm efficient on the road on Boston. Like I would road ride to a local mountain bike group ride and it was fast on the road and then I could ride with those, those folks. And you know, I was a little bit underbite I had a great time and then I can ride back and, and you know, this really like the rolling efficiency is there with these tires in the tire construction and so on. So I still think like getting a machine that is more capable than you think you need it to be. Because you'll be bummed out when there are rides that you can't do cause your machine is just not up to it.
Yeah. I've been surprised with my gravel bikes. Just the, the idea that as you said, you can roll up to a group ride on the road and hang in there in a way that you maybe wouldn't think. You're like, I've got this sort of burly machine. But the reality is it's not. These are, these are kissing cousins from the road bikes. They're not that far off.
Well, let's, let's talk about the actual differences. Right? So I mean, with the advent of hydraulic disc brakes for drop our bikes, right? So the breaking, you know, breaking systems are the same. You know, the geometries you can have, there are some gravel bikes that are, you know, really long and they're and, and more biased towards stability. Some of them are even borderline drop our mountain bikes, but you can get a gravel bike that has an endurance road geo. Like there's this overlapping point between, you know, endurance road and cyclocross and, you know, shrady gravel riding. There's that sweet spot where you have a machine that depending on the tires you put on it and how you, you know, maybe maybe how aggressively you set up your handlebar, you can have different experiences.
Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's the beauty of these things. I mean, we've talked online on a number of us are offline on a number of occasions just about how put the road wheel set on this. Things that are road sled, you can kit the group ride. It's all good. Put a sort of tire setup that you just described. You can ride 20 miles of pavement, go hit a mountain bike trail system and ride home, get a NABI or set up. You can get pretty extreme with these bikes, strap some bags on. All of a sudden it's this overnight rig. And I think that's, it's incredible. The versatility of these bikes. Well,
It's essentially, so my, my thinking is like, you know, if we could have one bike that really does everything, that would be the ideal. I think given the current state of the art, you know, a gravel bike with two wheel sets or a road, and then like a six 50 P dirt covers everything from performance road riding to bore, you know, borderline cross country bike packing like touring and so on cyclocross. And then if you, if you're into like, hardcore trails, get a dual suspension, tread sled, like that is a different experience. These bikes are not going to be the most fun when it gets properly Chandry and you're doing, you know, 20% gradients and, and, and what have you. But honestly, I used to be a mountain biker. I don't have the time. I don't own a car. You know, I, I don't want to like load up a big machine and drive out to the trails. I want to ride the trails that I have out my door. And you know, fortunately here we have some really good ones. And the truth is like, most people have some good trails, trails near where they live. They know where to look, especially if you can connect them with all these little road sections that are still fun to ride because your, your bike is still fun on, on those roads.
Yeah. I think for us, you know, in, in Marin do to kind of trail access issues, we've got to get a bunch further North before you get into some real fun mountain biking. So these types of bikes, like if you're living in San Francisco, being able to ride across the golden gate bridge efficiently, then hit the dirt and the headlines. Yeah, it's just really nice. I mean, I did that for years on a hardtail 20 Niner, which was fine, but it really wasn't scratching the mountain bike itch. You know, cause I would just wasn't getting into the technical terrain. Then all of a sudden I started riding drop bars and some of those fire road dissents are really fun because you can sort of push the limits of technology and technique to try to ride them fast as if you're on a mountain bike, but without the sort of safety net of a suspension fork.
So, so should should we get on a soapbox about dropper posts? I, I'm always game to get on that soapbox. I think I occupy, my name's on it next years. Yeah. So so for the listener, so a dropper post is simply, it's a telescoping seatpost that can be actuated by a lever. It can sink down and get out of the way. So if you've, if you're a road cyclist, you've never probably experienced this to this date, you're, you sort of set up your saddle height at your ideal peddling sort of leg length and, and you're good to go with a dropper post. You've got any number of different adjustments you can make from totally slammed out of the way to your perfect peddling position.
Well, and here's, you know, there's this, this is actually, I believe you know, after disc brakes and tubeless tires on wide rims, like this is an essential enabling technology. And I think that dropper posts will be pretty ubiquitous before too long on this type of bike. You add, you know, 0.7 pounds, right? You know, Ooh, the weight we need in the group in the crowd might not like that. But here's what you get. You now is set up your saddle at the optimum position for power output, right? Because you don't have to compromise it to be able to scoot your butt off the back. And then when you get your butt off the back, your, your saddle is dropped down. So you really have like a lot of travel in your legs. The bike can be dancing underneath you going up and down and side to side and using all this body English to, to navigate the terrain. And, and you know, the bike is, is doing all this stuff in your body is taking a relatively smooth line through space. And so you can think of this as like, it's suspension without the slop, right? It's not, you don't get this big lumbering beast on the road where you know, it's bobbing underneath you. But when you want it, like it's there and, and as you develop the skill around it, it just radically extends the capability of machine.
Yeah. And for him. It's interesting, you know it, I think it's often occupied the space of like, Oh a more advanced or experienced athlete comes to getting a dropper posts. But the reality is it's so good for beginner riders, for even riding on the road for God's sake. It's a good, it's a good thing because when you get up on those steeps, the last, particularly with the drop bar bikes, you, you sort of, when you're steeply descending, you just feel like you're getting thrown over the handlebars cause you are, because that seat is pitching you over the bars. But with the dropper posts, the saddle sinks right out of the way. You can, you have such a large pocket underneath your under carriage to kind of maneuver the bike around. So if, if you're going over a little over a little rock or something and there's a little bit of a drop off, you just have that room.
Yeah. I think, and this is actually worth diving into. So cause this, this is really where like we get into cross country territory. So essentially the dropper with the dropper, you can shift your hips back. So you kind of like exaggeratedly you know point your by your, your butt off the back of the bike saddle ends up somewhere like around your, your tummy there. You're in the drops up front, which are more accessible because your, your body's lower right and those drops give you more leverage, especially if they're flared. You're because you have more mass over the rear, you can use your rear for speed control cause you have way more braking force cause the mass is there. And then you know, your front wheel is not being asked to both steer and brake and so it can just roll.
You can keep it light. Your upper body stays nice and lightened the front just kind of rolls over stuff and the bike is kinda rocking back and forth, going over rough terrain. Your legs are absorbing it. And you know, if, if you, if you come up to a rudder, you come up to like something sketchy, you're not going to pitch over the front because your center of mass is so far back and you're, you don't, you're not breaking so much with the front that just the physics of it are such that you're, you're not going to be lawn darting, you're not going to be hot, you know, high siding over the front of the bike. Worst case scenario, your rear slides, that's controllable. In fact, when you start really becoming one with the bike, that's fun. You drift it. Like that's part of the technique.
Yeah. I feel like, I feel like it's exponentially enhancing the safety and performance experience. And I see it time and time again. I ride with people who have the same sort of relative skill level as I do, but I can see they're constrained by being pitched up and over whenever we hit anything technical.
Well, and, and another component of this is like you mentioned on the road, this being a game changer. There's something really delightful about being in like a bullet tuck with a dropper down with six 50 B's all covered in mud and ripping past somebody peddling down on a road bike or on a narrow road bike. But another element is a mobility actually. So you have, you know, we I talked to a lot of riders cause we do like our bikes are all custom and it's like, you know, I have trouble getting on and off the bike, like a dropper post makes it easier to get on and off the bike. And you know, that that is significance. That is, that is a meaningful improvement in accessibility.
I think a lot of people like w when they think about a dropper, it's like, Oh, it's either high or low. But the interesting thing is once you get used to it, it's infinite. So I, you know, I was, I was riding with, with someone who was out on a demo ride on one of your bikes the other weekend. And I was like, Oh, you did, did you drop your posts? You know, a centimeter or an inch for this little traverse we were doing. He's like, no, I didn't, didn't think about it. I was like, well, you should because look what happens. Like I can now corner with a little bit more ease because I just, I have the ability to throw the bike around. We're not, we're not in a max power peddling situation, so it's not required that I have it at that perfect height. So I might as well have that room so I can throw the bike around and make it more playful.
I mean, the, the way we, that this used to be done in the past and you know, the battle days before mountain, before a dropper posts is you know, we used to drop the saddle on our mountain bikes, three quarters of an inch so that we'd have a little bit more maneuverability. Now you can just, you know, do a little micro adjust and then when you hit the flat section, you hit the road, you pop it back up and you're in pure power production mode. So absolutely.
I'm going to be sharing with some listeners my age a little bit here by saying like, I actually rocked the height right back in the day, which was this spring system that attached to your your seatpost. So you could throw your quick-release, slam it down and then theoretically it would pop back up. The problem with that is it never popped back up straight. Like today's dropper posts, which your saddle is always going to remain in the exact right position for you.
We live in a golden age of, of equipment. The fact that you can go out and ride like we did the other day and stuff just works and it fun on all the different terrain. Like that's magical. So,
Yeah. Yeah. No, I hope, I hope our shared enthusiasm for the sport is coming through in this podcast because anybody listening like these bikes for me, they have just given me the ability to, to ride wherever and whenever I want. I still do have that full suspension sled that gets written. Rarely if I'm, you know, doing a trip to Thai or someplace where I'm going to hit some real nice mountain bike terrain, which I still completely love. But having a gravel bike in my life has just been reinvigorating for my passion and love of the sport.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean this gets down to, you know, let's get philosophical for a moment. Like why do we do this? Like what, what is the purpose? We are adults, right? Spending money on this equipment so we can go out and ride in a giant circle. And you know, like what is the point of this activity? And, and for me it comes down to like connection, right? You're on, you know, on a machine, you're connecting with the machine. You're connecting with your body, right? You know that, that sinking of your, your breathing, your heart rate, your cadence, like you, you get in, you can get into a flow state, you can you know, you can focus, you connect with yourself, you connect with the environments, you connect with community. Like you, we had, you know, how many people come out the other day and they were just stoked to be there and, and to meet each other and go on and have this experience.
And like there were some writers who were really strong and there are some writers who it was their first big gravel group ride. And everybody got what they wanted out of that experience. And I think that that's something that's quite powerful about this particular type of writing. And, and if we take a bigger step back, like this is, this is not just, this isn't just about cycling, this is about like a life well lived, right? For me that this is the reason why I personally and so resonant with this experience and why I care so much and why I try to share it is because there's just so much there. In terms of like you know, having an outlet for adults to play, like children to interact without all the hierarchies and all the way, all the things that we have you know, to kind of all the identities that we have off the bike. What matters on the bike is that you're on the bike and you're friendly and you know, maybe if you're strong, you get a little bit of credit. Really. Generally people don't care that much. It's about having an adventure.
Yeah. But I mean, that resonates with me. I've found over the course of my life, I've got this sort of adventure bucket, and if I'm not filling it on a weekly basis, I tend to get depressed. Yeah. And you know, I found that as much as I love cycling and as many great road riding experiences that I've had, it's a smaller part of those road rides that filled my adventure bucket. But when I get off road particularly, I mean, we're so blessed here in the Bay area that we can go out of our door and we can see no one we can get on these trails. Even though there's a huge population around here, you can have days and mornings where you do a loop and you see virtually no one.
I mean if you live in New York city, you can find this. It's harder, but you can find that section of park at the right time of day that, that, you know, you get your, your peace, you get your tranquility.
Yeah. Same in Washington DC where I started started my cycling back there. We just had these neighborhood trails that you have to know where the next entrance was, but you could just get out there amongst, you know, the traffic was just there around the corner, but all of a sudden you found this pocket of adventure. And another thing you were talking about that I think is, is unique to gravel riding that is maybe shared with our mountain bike brother. And it's just this idea of like riding a section and then grouping up afterwards and wanting to high five people. Yeah. It's just, it's fun as a grown ass man, grown ass woman to giggle and high five your friends.
Yeah. Well I think that there, the fact that this is not the norm that like day to day joy and connection is not something that we've built into our now. We're now we're getting way into the philosophical realm. But like what is the point of all of this stuff that we're doing, right? We, you know, are we our jobs, are we our families? Are we our, our, our gender or race or something or we like something greater than that. And is there more to life than I mean of course like there is the struggle and we are in a a privileged position to have the time and the resources to buy a machine like this and to be able to steal away. I would like to see those types of experiences be accessible to more people because it really is like there's, there's there's being, there's living and then there's like being alive and that's where I think that these experiences come in.
Yeah, it's important to remember. Yeah. So circling back off our philosophical bandwagon, but I mean, I think we, it, this should resonate with listeners. Anybody who's written off road, I think when they really think about it, they're going to think and remember like it is really filling something inside them. So I guess going back to where we started with gravel bike one Oh one one get a gravel bike, it's going to be great for you when you're looking for a gravel bike. Obviously price points are gonna be a concern. Get into the sport where you can afford it. Go out there and ride it. We're not, we're not sitting here saying go buy expensive equipment. It's the only way to ride gravel by no means. And I think gravel of any sector of the sport has shown that. It's like welcome all comers. If you want to go out ride trails, have a good time, smile, everybody's welcome in this sport.
And we've, we've covered a lot of kind of the, you know, what to look for in equipment. One other one I think it's important to, to throw out there is gearing. I'm a huge fan of one by drive trains and I'm a big fan of having way more low end than you think you need. So like a big old pie plate in the rear so that, you know, when you hit that steep pitch you're going to be able to get up or when you get in over your head and you do that 60 mile group ride and you're completely kicked and you have that last pitch to get up, you can spin up it. Yeah. So for the listener. So,
And let's talk about you've, you've generally got an option of two chain rings upfront and a cassette in the back or one chain ring up front and the cassette in the back. And I grappled with this with my, my first two gravel bikes. And ultimately I originally decided on a two I set up because I was sort of swayed with this idea that Oh, on the road I wasn't gonna have the nuances and the subtleties between the gears. But after spending a couple of years in the sport, I was lusting after one buy and I'm my present thesis, I'm on a one by setup and I couldn't be happier because I don't, I don't personally miss any of those subtleties that were purported to exist.
Yeah. And you want like, you know just to throw out some numbers, like a 10 42 in the rear, 1146 in the rear and you can get all the range that you get with the two by with that big old cassette people will talk about the jumps, which is what you were alluding to and yeah, the jumps are bigger. I mean, that's just math, but the fact is like a two by 11 is really like a 14 speed, right? A lot of the gears overlap. And so a one by 11 is not going to be twice as big of a jump. The second thing is that if you're fit properly to the bike with the right crank length proportional to your inseam and like you're able to spin smoothly because you're dialed to the machine you, you're going to be fine at, you know, you know, in one gear in the other in terms of changing the cadence.
And then the last thing is on gravel. The terrain is changing so much that you generally be grabbing two or three gears anyways. And so you know, it actually makes that easier. But the last thing here is just, there's nothing to think about, right? If you think about like the experience that you want, the bike is not the center of the action. Like it's, it's, you want the bike to disappear. And so if you're thinking about cross chaining, you're thinking about chain drops and this other stuff this is going to get in the way of you. You, you know, flowing in the environment.
Yeah. I think I was dabbling with one by demo bikes. What I found right away was that it was just quieter, you know, with the clutch rear derailer, no sh no Chainer no. A derailer up front. The chain can be tighter. Everything seemed to just be quieter and, and felt more together.
Yeah. The, I mean you, there are good to buy drive trains now with clutches fortunately. And if you go electronic, it takes away some of the cross chain and you can have it auto change the front and so on. But still like don't complicate things. Like one buy is super simple. It just works. It's cheaper upfront, cheaper to maintain. It's easier to meet. Like just get a one buy. And if you, if it's not the right gearing, you change the chain ring. Like, you know, 50 bucks. You can always dial it to what you need.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I think this is all good stuff. Are there any kind of key takeaways that you would leave the listener with? Thinking, thinking from the mentality of, okay, someone considering jumping in the sport, they've learned a little bit from us today. What are the things you want them to walk away with?
I would say that I would, I would target this, this response to the people who are really like, they're really interested in, in not just adding gravel to their repertoire. They're already cyclists. Cause you know, those of us who are already cyclists, we're already getting you know, our group rides or are our on the mountain bike or whatever. But you know, especially for, for the newbie like this is, this is an experience that's accessible. Find people in your community who are organizing group rides, who can give you some guidance on, on now, where to ride and, and equipment choices and so on. And, you know, don't be intimidated by you know, some of the train you go on, go out and have adventures, push yourself connect with people. And you will find as I have, and I think a lot of us have had that this is really an experience that's part of a life well lived.
You know, everything from, from of course the, the basics of like just being fit and, and feeling healthy, but more importantly, just mental health, right? You talk about, you know, being depressed when you don't ride. This is therapy. Like this is, this is a way of, of, of self care. So, you know, find the people who have, who've you know, learned how to get the most out of this and get their, their guidance on, on how to join because it's a very accessible style of cycling you get into. Yeah, I think those are all great. Great.
Parting thoughts and I would just add sort of, don't be afraid of gravel. We're not talking about bringing you to crank works up at Whistler and send you off, sending you off a a 40 foot jump. Dirt roads have been written since the Dawn of the bicycle time and, and it's, you know, it's the simplest incarnation. You don't need anything special. You can ride a, a tiny road bike tire off road and be enjoying gravel. As we've talked about earlier as, as you sort of make the right equipment choices and you'd develop the skills you can go explore further and further. One of the things that I've personally enjoyed around here, and I sort of encouraged newer athletes is ride uphill off road and ride downhill on the road. You don't have to do it all. You can, you can sort of go where your comfort level lies and you will get some of those rewards in the Bay area. That strategy is useful because descending, even at a casual pace, you're going faster than most of the cars. And you sort of forgive yourself, needing to know a lot of the sort of technical skills to go down Hill that you'll learn over time.
Well, and the thing is by simple virtue of having what we're calling a gravel bike, this marketing term of gravel bike, these all purpose machines just write it how you want to ride it. Like that is, that is exactly the point. Like you can do all the things and you know, get the bike, do some exploring, find out what your jam is and then do more of that. And you know that that's a, like, that's what's beautiful about this is you can find, you can find your, your terrain, the stuff that you enjoy and in the community around that type of writing that you can join up, which is arguably one of the, one of the best parts about this is the, the people you meet alone.
Yeah. And that's, you know, I've obviously talked to a lot of event organizers on the podcast and I think almost uniformly they are looking at creating distances and you know, different categories of events so that you can do a 25 miles starter gravel event. Because these experiences as Randal alluded to in terms of the community, it just, it's great to travel to do these things because they're just fun days out. Whether you're doing the 25 mile version or the a hundred mile version, you're all going to coalesce afterwards with a little bit of dirt on your bike and your body and you're going to enjoy a shared meal and maybe a beer together. And it's just great to get out there and do,
It's a th there's a term is a term that's been coined in the Bay area. I th I think it's attributable to Murphy Mac of the super pro series, but the idea of like a, a mullet ride, it's like business in the front party in the back. So like show up, you start, everyone starts together. It's a, it's a, it's a festival atmosphere. It's a party atmosphere. And if you want to go out and race, go throw down. If you just want to like go and you know, slog through, you know, 60 miles and feel that sense of accomplishment and meet people along the way, that experience is there too. And that's kind of the general vibe around this. It's not like, you know, winter take all crit racing on the weekends or something. This is like, let's go have an adventure together and enjoy each other's company.
Yeah, no, that's perfect. I think those are great closing thoughts Randall, so I appreciate you having me over. I appreciate the conversation. I hope everybody listening is getting a little bit out of it and at minimum of guarantee they're getting your enthusiasm and my enthusiasm for the sport.
Yeah. Hopefully if anyone is in the Bay area, I'll come join us for a ride and I'll be around the country later this year. We'd love to a ride with some of you folks. Right on. Right.
So thanks again to Randall from thesis for the time and the conversation. As I mentioned in the intro, obviously calling out group rides and things like that is not something we're condoning at this point, but definitely Randall and I love to get groups of people together here in the Bay area as I'm sure many of do you do around the country, so let's keep looking forward to better times and getting together soon. In the meantime, I forgot to mention all the great feedback I got about bringing on board a sponsor and advertisers to the podcast. I really appreciated the kind words and the thumbs up you guys were giving me to say, Hey, it's okay if you want to offset some of your costs. We know you're a volunteer effectively in doing this, so thanks so much. I also did set up a buy me a coffee account@buymeacoffee.com slash the gravel ride where you can simply buy me a cup of Joe if you like what I'm doing. So anyway guys, stay safe, stay healthy during this pandemic. As always, I appreciate your feedback. Feel free to shoot me a note at Craig at the gravel ride dock, bike, or hit me up on Facebook or Instagram until next time, here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
Evil Bikes, best known as an MTB company, bursts onto the gravel scene at the end of 2019 with the Chamois Hager model. With an aggressive geometry and dropper post, the bike immediately turned heads. We talk with Evil Bikes COO, Jason Moeschler about the design philosophy and intention
Evil Bikes Website
Evil Bikes Instagram
Automated transcription (please excuse the typos).
Good day everyone and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host, Craig Dalton. I needed to take a minute this week and talk to you about the podcast. I've been doing it for two years now, having produced over 50 episodes. I very much appreciated the time you dedicate to listening every month and how you've shared the podcast with friends. The community has really grown, which has been super exciting and I'm super privileged to be part of that journey. As you guys explore and continue to be passionate about gravel cycling, one of the things I've been grappling with is the cost structure of producing the podcast. You may recognize that this isn't a full time job for me, but I am incurring costs on a monthly basis. Every time I put out episodes from hosting to editing to transcription and my time in general and I've been grappling with what to do about those expenses as we sort of pass into our second year.
I thought about putting some of the content behind a pay wall or putting some episodes behind a pay wall, but that really just didn't make sense. At the end of the day, I want to provide information and audio content to those of you who are interested in finding out about events, race organizers, and hearing from athletes that are participating in the sport. So I came back to the idea that I'm going to need to start offering some advertising slots into the podcast and I'll try to keep them short and I'll try to keep them up front and not interrupt the content too much, but I wanted to just get out in front of it and let you guys know that I'm just doing this really to offset the costs and to be able to invest a little bit more into the podcast, into distribution, and into all the great things that I hope we're providing to the world.
So as with everything I do, I definitely want your feedback, so feel free to shoot me a note of, Hey, that you're doing the right thing or BU this is really disappointing me. I'm always open to feedback and looking forward to hearing from you guys. So with all that said, I did want to tell you about our first sponsor cycle Oregon. I've spoken about the state of Oregon a couple of times on the podcast and we've certainly had guests from that area. I love the state for riding. I've spent time on the Oregon timber trail, mountain biking at fat tire Fest and bend riding in hood river. And I think my very first gravel event was actually up in Oregon, so I was super stoked in connecting with the team up at cycle Oregon. They're a nonprofit organization that has been transforming individuals and communities through cycling.
So why are they here on the gravel ride podcast? Well, it's not too big a leap to understand that cycle Oregon who's been putting on events for I think a couple of decades, they are going to be highlighting some of the amazing gravel roads around the Thai Valley. Yeah, it's Ty like titanium, but not spelled that way. They've got a great two day event, which I think is kind of a cool format. They're camping overnight. So you'll be camping with all the, all the different riders and they're organizing two back to back gravel adventure days out of that Valley. So for those of you looking for ways of spending an entire weekend doing an event rather than kind of just a one day hit at a race, this cycle, Oregon gravel events, which is coming up here in may is a great alternative. I can't tell you how cool that area looks.
It's kind of nestled below a hood river and above bend in the state of Oregon. So check that out on the map and definitely go to cycle oregon.com because they've got some video about the event that they're producing. You can register right there for the event and if you put the promo code T G R in your registration, the team up there as promised, a little special treat for our listeners. So go check them out. They're investing in gravel, they're investing in adventure for our community. So it's another great way to spend a weekend. This may again, that's cycle oregon.com for more information. So speaking of sweet adventures, I've got a rad episode for you coming up. We were fortunate to sit down with Jason Moseler from evil bikes talking about the Shammy Hagar. This bike burst onto the scene in November last year and really sent shockwaves through a lot of the gravel press as they were taking what was seen as a radical approach to gravel frame construction and geometry. I'm not going to say too much more because I want Jason to explain the concept to you in his own words, but suffice it to say what I thought going into the conversation is not what came out of it. Jason and the team up there at eval have a real clear vision on why this approach is great for gravel cyclists and believe they've created a really amazing platform for people to go out there and explore. So with that said, let's dive right in.
Jason, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Right on. Jason, could you start by telling the listener a little bit about your background and a little bit about the company history?
Yeah. personally I race mountain bikes professionally for 22 years. The whole time I race, I worked also so 11 years at a bike shop 10 years with wilderness trail bikes, a little bit of home-building sprinkled in between there and and now I've been at eval for two and a half years. Evil was founded in 2008 and really didn't start selling bikes until 2014 with the launch of the following, the 120 millimeter full suspension, 20 Niner. And at that point the whole mountain bike industry was the, the, the whole industry. The ship had turned to 27.5 inch wheels and then all of the sudden eval lands this super aggressive, super playful, long, low and flack 29 or bike in it. It just like stopped the industry in its tracks. And from that point forward, evil has, has been looked at as this, this kind of game changer of a design and geometry company.
Yeah. I encourage the listener to go out and check out the website and check out some of the history of evil. Cause I do remember that time period and it was like boom, here is a bad ass mountain bike coming to market. That's kind of a little bit different and a bit different in all the right ways. So it's an exciting time
For sure. And you know, the, the fact that it was a 20 Niner and the fact that it had a really never before themed geometry was one thing. But then you had evils design language in the frame, the actual industrial design and it looked like nothing anyone had ever seen before. And that that same design language has plopped forward to the bike we're going to talk about today, the Shammy Hagar gravel bike.
Yeah, I think it's interesting and you know, some people may be scratching their heads, why are we talking about full suspension mountain bikes for the first few minutes of this podcast. But as we've often talked about, you know, the gravel bike market, there's a, there's a spectrum. There's, there's starting with a road bike and adding a little bit of tire clearance and we've kind of talked about that as being called the road plus category. And then there's the other end of the spectrum. And I think we, one of the things that comes up time and time again is depending on what terrain is out in your backyard, your idea of a gravel bike can be radically different. So in December, you know, just a, just a couple of months back when you guys introduced the Shammy Hagar, it was like boom. It was another one of those moments where someone was saying to the industry and to the consumers, Hey, here's a different perspective. We're thinking about a rider that's maybe coming from a different geography and has a different idea about what writing is, looks like it's not, you know, simple, pleasant gravel roads that people were riding on 28 see tires. This is a different kind of animal. So can you just talk a little bit about the Shammy Hagar at a high level and then we'll get into some of those details that make it a different performing bike.
For sure. Yeah. So when the Hagar was designed, we really didn't want to exclude people from the road side. We, we didn't want to make this a mountain bike and there's some key features in the bike that every rider that likes to peddle will appreciate. The first thing is that the seat angle on, on the Shami it's at the forward edge of the UCI C2 bangle position. What that means is that your pedal position is there in relation to the bottom bracket. It's not some, you know, crazy steep mountain bike seat tube angle that, you know, the full suspensions are using to, you know, take advantage of all the kinematics and everything. It's really a, a road huddling position. When you look at the bike from the side, it looks really long and it is really long. But what we've done to accommodate for that length in the peddling position is that we've flapped a really short handlebar STEM on there.
We're, we're shipping the bikes out with a 40 millimeter to 60 millimeter STEM. And so what that short STEM has done is put the rider essentially in the same pedaling position that they're used to on their road bike. So we have essentially given a road rider, if you will, the optimal peddling position, a handlebar and handlebar position that they would really appreciate so that they're not excluded. But then on the extreme side, we link them the wheel base. We dropped the top two way down. We don't sell this bike without a drop or post. So all of the sudden you have a bike that can get your center of gravity really low, allow you to get your weight back and descend really comfortably.
Yeah, I think that, you know, those are some of the things, if, if you're not driving or listening to this while you're riding, check out an image of the bike because it is striking some of these things. But as you're describing it, Jason, I know you've guys have put a lot of effort into making it feel as if you're in a sort of traditional gravel bike position. Ultimately, however, the angles are going to play out quite differently in terms of how the bike's gonna perform. Particularly descending, I imagine.
Exactly, exactly. When you look at the overall schematic of a Shammy Hagar versus when we look at when Eagle looks at other gravel bikes there, to us, they're all very similar. And in general, the Shammy, Hagar, the wheelbase is about a hundred millimeters longer maybe even a little bit more. And what has happened to the rider position in relation to the front rear axle? Is that in relation to the axle? The rider, sorry, the wheel axles, the rider has moved back and down a little bit, but again, like I said, that pedal position is is maintained. Now a lot of people look at the Shami and they're like, Oh man, there's no way that thing is gonna turn. It's, it's gonna feel floppy. What they don't realize is that the bike has a very custom fork, very custom actual, the crown measurement, custom offset which was developed by Dave Weigle. Day wiggle comes from the mountain bike side. People probably know about him, but if there's one person that knows how to make a bike handle good, it is Dave Weigle. And so he's got his paintbrush all over this bike. And so what you'll discover is that he's, he's adjusted this thing to where it doesn't have any steering disadvantages. It doesn't have any cornering disadvantages. In fact, you end up, you know, the faster you go cornering the, the more you realize, wow, this thing, it's, you just keep finding more potential with it.
Yeah. If I'm understanding you correctly, if you're sort of shifting your body weight back a little bit because they've got the shorter STEM, how does that translate to cornering performance off road?
Well so when you look at the Shami, the top tube is dropped way down and it also has the dropper posts. So if you drop that seat posts, all of the sudden that seat isn't in your way. And so you can get your weight down way down. Like nothing you've ever felt before on a regular gravel bike. And what that does is it allows you to get your center of gravity down which allows you to keep the wheels more planted on the ground. It just, it like being down and low. Is, is what allows you to get your weight low and get more traction to the tire and also not feel like you're top heavy. And like, you know, if you hit an obstacle, you're gonna buck yourself over the bars or something. So that, that sloping top tube really along with the dropper post really lets the rider get their weight down and low.
And then the other part of that equation, and you've probably seen this with a lot of, with a lot of your listeners, is that most gravel writers these days, and I, and I hear this from a lot of my colleagues, they say, you know, I don't use the drops anymore. I just use the top of the hood. And that's my comfortable position. But in our opinion, the top of the hoods is a very scary place to hold on to. When you're trying to negotiate something technical, when you're going really fast, we also feel that the drops are very uncomfortable. For the same reason you get your front, your front end weight is just disproportionate when you're in your drops on a standard gravel or road set up. If your front wheel hits an obstacle, your your way wants to be thrown forward with the Shammy, you drop your seat post and all of a sudden because your body is lower, your angle of attack going into the drop bars is much better.
So all of the sudden you've got this amazing position to use your drops. They actually feel good to be in the drops. Not only that, but your angle of attack towards your brake levers and your shift gears in the drops is like nothing you've ever felt on a, on a standard gravel bike. Typically it's very hard to, to strike a good balance of good hood position when you're holding to the top and good hood position. When you're in the drops and reaching for the brake lever, how's your, you can get your, your weight low on the rear of the Shammy. With the feet dropped, all of the sudden there's this whole new world of accessibility using the drop bars.
Yeah, I have to say those are some really important takeaways and as listeners know, I'm a big fan of the dropper post and I can see in the design of the Shammy Hagar how you really get down low. And it's interesting that you mentioned kind of that the hoods versus drops because I was, it was riding yesterday and descending here in mill Valley and, and just thinking about how better the position was with my saddle really dropped with the dropper post, kind of my hands felt very comfortable and planted and my weight was was low. So when it got steep I didn't feel like I was getting flipped over the bars. And I think your point about, you know, a lot of riders descending on the hoods is absolutely spot on. It's crazy. And I, I see people, mostly people in my rear view mirror that I'm passing who are descending on the hoods because there's just no way you can keep the control with just really effectively your, your thumb part of your hand being the only thing that's effectively gripping and holding you onto the bike.
Exactly. Exactly. And now the other thing to consider with the Shammy Hagar versus a typical gravel bike. Sure you can throw a dropper post on a typical gravel bike, but the typical gravel bikes, the triangles are bigger. A lot of the bikes out there, they're their road bikes that are trying to be gravel bikes or they're gravel bikes that are trying to be cyclocross bikes. But the common theme is that the triangle's pretty big, so you can't fit a very long dropper on there. And so the cause of that, you just can't get as low as you could get on the Shami because the frame is organically, way lower. So you can just get yourself way, way lower. And that gets you way more wheel traction. It gets you the ability to lean way further back when you are going really fast. But that dropper posts and not compact frame, that's only part of the equation.
When you take a typical gravel bike and you put a dropper post on, you're still dealing with the, the how do you, how do you say it? The, the road bike style front end. What I mean by that is you typically have tow overlap. You typically have a very short amount of trail. You typically have very steep head two bangles. And so those three things combined, they still make for a really sketchy descending experience. Compare that to the Shami where you essentially have a following MB mountain bike front end on this thing to scare with. It wants to attack aggressive stuff and that's what you get with the riding position of the Shami is you, you've essentially been given, we've, we sprinkled in all the benefits of mountain bike geometry to help descending feel more comfortable and safe on, on our gravel bike.
And then have you designed it around a specific wheel size?
Yeah. We, so this bike holds a 700 by 50 tire. So effectively a 29 by 2.0 and that's what we spec it with. And we've had a lot of questions of, well, Hey, why, why don't you, you know, promote like a, a road plus like a six 50 by 47. And our answer is well, cause you can use a 700 by 47. It to us it's just like a mountain bike. The bigger wheel is better. And so that's kind of where we're trying to scare people. I actually worked at WTB when the road plus tires were created and what we were doing there was working with consumers and bike brands that had road bikes that had some extra width and the chains days where they could take this road plus wheelset throw it on their road bike and you know, have a bike that goes off road much better and still does on road pretty good. The height of that six 50 by 47, the tire is essentially the same as a 700 by 30 road tire. So, you know, tired of feet tube, your clearance is good. You just need that chain stay with. But again, that's, that's taking a road bike and trying to make it you know, go off road better the evil Shammy Hagar, we, we're not trying to be a road bike. We're not trying to be a cyclocross bike. We're, we're trying to be the best gravel bike possible.
So do you, we talk a lot and we've talked a lot about sort of descending and cornering. How, how do things play out when we're climbing?
So again the climbing position, the peddling position is exactly what a rider would want. It's, it's exactly comparable to their road bike or their current gravel bike. So feed angle saddle for AFT, all that adjustability is, is just like what the rider is used to. Same as a bar position. So measuring center of the seat posts to center, the handlebar handlebar height below the saddle height. All of, all of those measurements that riders appreciate are achievable. Say you're a very traditional road rider who when measuring from the ground you'd like your handlebars to be about seven centimeters below your saddle height when also measured from the ground, you know, like a very aggressive kind of pro road position. You can actually do that with a Shammy Hagar. You can achieve that position. But here's the awesome thing. When you start going downhill, you're not stuck in that position.
You can get the seat way down and all of the sudden you've turned yourself into a rider who had like, you know, a pro road position and now all of a sudden you can go downhill with the seat post down and you're in like the most Aero position you could ever, you could ever obtain because you're so low. And you know what you see with the pro road riders as they you know, their seats are up and they, they get their weight or they get their body in front of the saddle and then they drop themselves down on the top tube. Like this super dangerous riding position. Well, imagine just slamming the seat all the way down to the seat color and you can actually keep your weight back a little bit into a safe zone. I'm pretty much positive that this bike will out descend any road bike. I have all these dreams of Peter Saigon riding this thing and you know, he already smokes people, but I can't even imagine what that guy could do on this bike.
No, I hear you. I, it was funny, as you're starting your description, I was imagining like the, the Chris Froome sitting on the top tube dissent position and how that just doesn't work for gravel, but you can effectively get there if you've got a long dropper, you can just be sitting comfortably on the saddle. Totally in control and totally low.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I'm, I'm curious, you know, if we will, we will see these dropper posts on the, in the pro Peloton for exactly the reasons you're talking about. Now that I've been hooked on our dropper post, if I go back to Europe and I'm descending off of Alpe d'Huez or some classic climb, I would definitely want to drop her post on my bike.
Totally. There are some technology that has taken time to break into the let's say those of us and I'm, and I'm one of us that appreciate lightweight. We appreciate efficiency. We appreciate you know, the ability to go from point a to point B quickly go uphill quickly. You know, disc brakes is one of those things. For cross country, mountain biking, dropper posts. I mean, they're, they're just starting to break in there. And for gravel, I think you know, bellow news just did a podcast not too long ago where they were, they were saying dropper post isn't appropriate for gravel. It's just not needed. We really hope that this bike shows people that it actually, it's not just a needed, it's, it's incredibly beneficial.
Yeah. I think that's what's really exciting about people taking bold stabs at what gravel bikes should look like. Whether it's what you guys are doing or some of the forays into suspending mountain bikes. I think it's opening people's eyes that the things we're trying to do on these bikes are different and fresh perspective, whether it's coming from the mountain bike world or outside. The industry is very much warranted in this moment in time. And it's giving people a lot to think about and shaking up the establishment in a big way.
For sure. And there's other, there's other stabs the devil took as well. For instance, the short STEM mountain bikers is known now for 10 years, that long STEM are not beneficial. So we didn't go halfway. We went all the way down to mountain bikes STEM. And we did that because day wiggle knows how to correct the geometry to make the bike steer correctly. So there's, there's no reason to leave STEM length on there. It's, it's silly. The other thing is we, we just, we used 160 millimeter rotors on this bike. The, the main reason being is while you've effectively got a a mountain bike geometry for going downhill, so you're going to catch yourself going faster. So you need better stopper. So one 60 rotor standard across the board. And then another thing that some people scratch their head over is that we used a 30.9 feet post diameter.
The reason we did that because you use 30.9, you can get any option of feet post that the entire world of dropper posts is your oyster. If you use 27.2, your, your weight loss is minimal. And all of the sudden you're heavily, heavily restricted over, you know, your seat post choices. Another big question we've gotten is front derailer compatibility and we left that on there. We left it on the Shammy. We want the customer to have all the options. For some people this bike might need almost mountain bike Gehring. And at the same time they might want, you know, a really high gear similar to a road to a road bike. So, you know, this bike could effectively be both of those bikes in the same ride. And so we wanted to really keep things open for the rider.
Yeah. I think one of the things that struck me when I first saw the design of the bike was, you know, people often were in the early days of gravel biking, we're saying, Oh, we're just going back to a 1990s hard tail mountain bike geometry. And obviously over the decades the mountain bike geometry has shifted and all the ways that you've discussed the slacker head angles, the shorter stems, and my, my first gut reaction was, Hey, maybe these guys are just cut through that journey because of the mountain bike experience and put us at our ultimate end goal. And all gravel bikes are gonna look like this in 10 years. I don't know the answer to that, but it's certainly interesting to kind of think about it in that, that framework.
Yeah. You're, yeah, you really bring up a good point. This bike is not compatible with a front a front suspension fork. And there's some thought behind that. Had we made it compatible with the suspension fork, you would essentially have a hard tail mountain bike with drop bars and a suspension fork. But we weren't trying to go there. We wanted to make the lightest, most felt best ascending gravel bike we could. We're, we're not trying to make a mountain bike here. We're, we're really trying to make like a tried and true gravel bike. That, you know, is just, just that it's, it's great for riding these dirt roads. It, of course, that'll handle, you know, it'll handle single track good too. But make no mistake, it's not a mountain bike on a single track, on smooth single track. You're good. But you know, if you're riding rough stuff like ride your mountain bike for sure.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's definitely one of those those lines that I'm sure you guys were super conscious of. It seems like you've, you've built the bike also to be ready for adventure. I noticed a lot of islets to, to Mount bags and whatnot to add. Can you talk a little bit about that angle?
Yeah. We we didn't want any limitations on this thing. As far as being bike packable. So we gave it every amount that it could have. Fender mounts. Without heavy modification to the fender, you can fit 700 by 40 a tire with a fender on the bike with heavy modification of offenders in the rear. If you actually cut the fenders around the chain, stay a little bit. You can actually run the fenders with the full size 700 by 50 tire. We have employees that are using this bike as a commuter bike. Their daily driver, they've got a bike rack mounted to the back. You can, you buy an optional fee caller that allows the top brackets of the bike rack to Mount to the seat color. The bike has one, two, three, four, five, six water bottle cage mounts on a medium through extra large and five on small.
And then it has, it has the ability to hold pretty much any bag that you want. So one of our ambassadors free ride legend led Brown sheet just returned from a bike packing trip in Thailand. And she's kind of our, our first test. We all have like, how heavy can you load this thing down? And as it turns out, I mean, it, it, it's as good of a bike packing bike as it is a gravel bike, you know, the, the roads really crossed there. And there was no disadvantage for us to add all of those mounts. You know, there's, there's not a huge weight penalty or anything, so it's just great. It, it makes the bike a lot more universal I think for, for the end consumer.
Interesting. And I had heard on some earlier interviews you did that there was some resistance internally to bring a gravel bike from such a strong mountain bike company. Can you talk a little bit about that journey and where the rest of the team is that with the Shammy Hagar at this point?
Yeah. so you know, evil really is focused on making really awesome mountain bikes. That's, that is everyone that works here, that is their passion. And so, you know, some, so much so that it doesn't seem like there's room to enter another category, but there is, there is a whole other section of our that is focused on making just the coolest bikes possible and it's not, it's not relegated to mountain bikes. And there was definitely some fear within the staff that evil might shoot ourselves in the foot for launching a gravel bike when launching a gravel bike instead of a mountain bike because, you know, people are always looking for what is the next mountain bike coming from evil. Our, our primary owner, Kevin Walsh, he's our design director. He's our branding director. You know, he was very stable footed through this whole thing and you know, never wavered.
He was very confident that this was really going to be a category changing, maybe category creating bike that it, that it truly had benefits that really needed to get out there. The, the market needed this, the end user, we believe needs this bike. So now that it's launched, now that the staff has gotten to ride a lot of the tests and wheels and everything you know, the, everybody gets it and everybody is universally excited about this bike and, and excited to ride it. And a lot of what was there was the, the, the negativity was the thought of, Oh, we don't want to make a gravel bike. Those things stink. Like I, we've written those and they're, they're not good. They, they didn't get the full concept of what the evil gravel bike was going to be. And so we've really, we've changed our employees thinking of what a gravel bike is.
Yeah. I'm optimistic that this is a category expanding bike. You know, I've long held the belief that, you know, a lot of the gravel market growth has been from road riders who are discovering the value of being off road, which is something as mountain bikers we've known for decades, right. That there's just joy of being away from the cars and having this sense of adventure. So you're getting a lot of road athletes who are just dipping their toe in gravel. I feel like this bike may be one of those bikes that a mountain biker could look at and say, Hey, I've been hearing about gravel. I like the idea of maybe going a little farther or doing a different style of riding. Maybe I'll dip my toe in the water and grab this new Shammy Hagar bike. And ultimately, you know, you're going to draw athletes from both sides. I've seen plenty of my road friends who ended up starting with a sort of very gentle road plus bike and now are up to, you know, 47 millimeter tires on their, on their next generation gravel bikes. So it's really fascinating to me. And, and, and I, I love the idea of bringing more people into the market and getting some mountain bikers to join us in the gravel parade.
For sure. For sure. And that's what we really wanted to try to pay attention to with this bike is we weren't making it for just Mount biker and we weren't making it for just road rider. We gave road riders all of the, the handling that maybe they don't know they need. But this bike is, it's just so much safer to ride when you're off road with no negativity related to pedaling position. It's also light. So there's, it also, it also holds, you know, 700 by 40 tires, just fine. Heck, we even, we ride this bike with road tires. You can actually slap 700 by 30 like the WTB exposure tire 700 by 30 road tires on this thing. And man, it is, it is so fast it, and you've never felt a bike, so good going downhill on road corner.
It's incredible. So yeah, like for me personally, I keep a second wheel set on hand with, with road tires for if I am going to go out on a road ride. And again, you've got that road position. And then for the mountain bikers they've got this super lightweight rig. You know, it's, it's, it's way lighter than, than what you can get with a mountain bike. And they've got that, that familiarity that, that feeling of home with the geometry of the bike. So yeah, basically they can get they can just go faster. You know, on the open road. They've got the benefit of the multiple hand positions on the drop bar. And then they've got their drop receipt posts, which you know, 10 years ago mountain bikers didn't think they wanted. But you know, now it's like it's uncommon to see a mountain bike without it.
Yeah, exactly. Well, I appreciate the deep overview. I feel like this is one of those bikes that you want to hear from the designer. You want to hear from the company, you want to hear other riders perceptions of it. And I know you guys have done a good job of getting it out there underneath some people who can document what they're feeling and validate what you're talking about because a, it's a really interesting model. Definitely everybody's listening. Go check it out on the web, check out some of the videos to get a sense for all the things that Jason's has been describing because they've really put together a, an interesting model. So Jason, thanks again for the time.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It was my pleasure.
Okay.
What a fun conversation with Jason. I love talking about the Shammy Hagar. It's such an interesting design. As someone who comes from a mountain bike background. I was kind of really drawn to a lot of the things he was talking about and I can't wait to spend a little time on the Shammy Hagar here in mill Valley dropping off Mount Tam. I think it's going to be an exceptionally fast bike for me in this neighborhood this week on can't let it go. I want to talk about my experience with the post carry company travel bag. It's one of those bags where you pull the fork off the bike in addition to the handlebars and you can get it in a really compact portable setup and here's the thing, you can travel with it on the airlines and likely avoid any airline travel fees. I used the bag maybe three times last year and not once did I get dinged for it.
It kind of looks like an oversized massage table and that's my company line should anybody ask. But this post carry bag has just been a joy to avoid those $150 fees. You get on a lot of airlines, so check out their websites. I know there's some other competing bags in that genre as well. I definitely recommend it. If you're going to travel more than two to three times a year, it really makes sense financially to grab one of these bags. So that's it for this week. If you have any feedback, please shoot me a note@craigatthegravelride.bike or hit me up on social media channels. Happy to hear from you. As always, ratings and reviews are appreciated. You'd be surprised how the algorithms out there on the podcasting web will share the pod and get us in front of new listeners with that. Until next time, here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
A discussion with Redshift Sports co-founder, Stephen Ahnert about the Shockstop gravel suspension stems and other products.
Redshift Sports Instagram
Redshift Sports Website
Automated Transcription, Please excuse the typos.
Hello everyone and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast I've invited Stephen Ahnert from Redshift sports on to talk about the shockstop STEM and their forthcoming suspension seatpost. I've been riding the STEM for about a month now and the results have been unexpected, so I can't wait to have the conversation with Stephen about some of the design and performance principles behind the STEM. Additionally, I've been intrigued by the notion of how reducing fatigue in long rides can affect performance. If you're going to be out there for 1214 hours in event like dirty Kanza or some of the other long distance gravel events, how does making your body feel better affect your ability to ride harder and longer? I think it's really fascinating when we talk about suspension in that light and particularly a suspension STEM as it's something that you can throw on and off quite easily to adapt your bicycle to a particular ride. So with that, let's jump right in. Stephen, welcome to the show.
Thanks. It's great to be here.
Right on. Could we start off by talking a little bit more about your background and since we're going to be digging into your company and your product, in addition to kind of your cycling background and how you found gravel, let's talk a little bit about your professional background.
Yeah, so I'm a mechanical engineer by training. And so are the two other cofounders of Redshift, Scott Poff and Eric Debrune. Eric and I actually met in college studying mechanical engineering. And we did our kind of senior thesis project together. We built a pool playing robots that would kind of move around a pool table and had pool shots. So that was pretty cool. And then Eric actually knew Scott from high school and they kind of linked up after, after college. And then Eric Scott and I co founded a small company doing mechanical engineering consulting work for other companies. So we were doing product development analysis, mechanical and electrical engineering for other companies, helping them develop products. And during that time, sort of the whole time throughout college and afterwards we'd always talked about different product ideas that we had for, you know, improving products and coming up with new products.
I think it's something that a lot of people do. You know, you kind of idly talk about, Hey, wouldn't it be great if, if we could do this or that, you know, improve this thing that I have an issue with. And then in 2012, we finally kinda decided to do something about it. So I had been doing a lot of writing. And specifically I was training for some, some triathlons. I was in triathlons, a kind of on the dark side there. And then I was riding my road bike. And like a lot of people do when they get into triathlons, they, you know, see people going faster than them with arrow bars and they say, Hey, you know, I want to put arrow bars on my bike. So, you know, I knew enough about bike fit to understand that you couldn't just slap arrow bars on a bike.
You also had to change your riding position. And so I ended up Frankensteining my road bike to make it a better kind of triathlon bike that, but it kinda made it a terrible road bike. So our first product which was the switch arrow system, which was these two very, very niche products or designed to let you ride a road bike in a narrow position but still keep your road bike set up. So we kinda decided, Hey, this is, this is something that I really want. You know, the other guys were on board and we developed this system. We developed a C post and the arrow bars and we decided to launch it on Kickstarter in 2013. And got enough of a response that we, you know, decided to make kind of a go at, at growing Redshift. And so gradually over the six years since then, we've grown Redshift.
And then a few years ago, we finally tapered the consulting side of our business down enough that we were, you know, full time on Redshift. And so in the interim between then and now, we've introduced a couple products. The shock stops, suspension STEM was in 2015 and then the seatpost was last year and we did those again via Kickstarter, which was an awesome way for, for us as a small company to, you know raise funds and, and kind of prove our market prove that people would actually, you know, get out their credit card and buy these products that we had thought people would like but didn't really know.
Yeah, it's interesting, I think for the uninitiated to think about product design and development, it takes a lot to get that first product off the production line and having that validation of a certain number of units at least gives you the sort of financial comfort to know part of the run can be paid for before it's even begun.
Yeah. The finances are obviously a huge issue because a lot of people don't really realize what goes in. You know, obviously there's tooling costs, there's the production order, all of these things that are going to kind of hit up front that you have to pay for. But I think the really big thing for us was, was kind of this proof of market. You know, you can sit around and do focus groups, talk to your friends, you know, but you really never know is somebody going to you know, pony up and pay for something if you know, if, if it's a real product they're going to buy.
Yeah, absolutely. So when did the, the STEM actually start shipping into market?
So it started shipping at the beginning of 2016. So it's been shipping for, you know, almost almost four years at this point.
During that period of time was obviously a period of time in which the gravel sector started to really emerge as a, as one of the bigger and faster growing segments of cycling. Did you start to see riders from that sector immediately gravitate over to the product or has it been a kind of a slower roll?
Yeah, the, the growth of the gravel kind of area. And biking has been huge for the growth of this STEM as well. I mean it's such a natural fit. And ironically, when we first designed the product, it was designed more with a road market in mind. That's what we set out to do. But sort of during the development process, gravel was growing. It was becoming more of a more of a thing. And we, we were I think really lucky to be in the right time at the right place with the right product to be able to offer something to gravel riders that would kind of take the edge off. You know, there were other brands at the time that were kind of doing similar things, but in general they were kind of proprietary to, you know, a particular frame or particular manufacturer. So you can think about things like, you know, Trex ISIS, bead a system or the future shock on specialized.
So for us it was awesome that those things also existed because it, it kind of helps cement, I think in, in writers' minds that compliance in a bike is, is something that you actually want. Because I think for so long, the bike industry has just, you know, beaten this message of like stiffer, later, faster, you know, and stiffness is kind of this, this ultimate metric that, that the, the frame is measured by when in reality, especially as you get to rougher terrain, compliance can, can not only be obviously more comfortable, but it can also help you go faster because you're just not absorbing all of this vibration. It's not a, you know, going into your body, you don't have to float your body over all of it and you saved more energy to pedal.
Yeah. Yeah. No, those are good points. Let's take a step back and tell the listener exactly what this STEM is and what it does.
Yeah. So the shock stop STEM is pretty straight forward and concept. It's a single pivot suspension, STEM. So a lot of your listeners might remember the old suspension stems of your of the eighties and nineties kinda like the F of Gervin flex STEM, the soft ride. So similar in spirit to those kinds of forebearers, but, but totally different in execution. So it's a single pivot, a STEM that has some internal elastomers that are swappable basically to tune the stiffness of the suspension for your body weight. And we're targeting kind of a small amount of suspension, so 10 to 20 millimeters of, of total travel depending on if you're at the, you know on the flats or out at the hoods. And it's really just designed to take the edge off of vibrations and small bumps that you encounter. You know, as you're riding on gravel and other, you know we call them road surfaces. So this isn't designed for necessarily like a mountain bike. It's not going to replace the suspension fork and we don't intend it to. So that's kind of the, the gist of, of the product.
Yeah. You know, and I've, you know, as I mentioned to you offline, I've been writing it for three weeks now and I think one of the biggest compliments I can give you is that in many instances it completely diff disappears. It is a very elegant design from a aesthetic perspective. I find myself almost missing that it is a suspension STEM. But now that I've had it on my bike long enough, I've, I've actually seen other riders out on the trails with it. So very unobtrusive design and in, in many instances the, the movement is very subtle. As you mentioned. My personal experience was obviously when I was the farthest point away from the fulcrum point out on the hoods, I could feel the the most emotion and I felt that motion most kind of when I was riding on the road because my experience off-road was that there was often so much going on in terms of feedback through the bike that it was almost disappearing. The fact that I was getting additional compliance in the handlebar and the STEM part of the bike.
Yeah. So again, you know, you mentioned a couple of things. Having the, having the STEM blend in aesthetically with the rest of the bike was a major design goal during the development process. We, we knew just not only from a market standpoint, but just some what we wanted on our bikes. We did not want some sort of weird contraption, you know, bolted onto the front of the bike. We wanted it to blend in to be more or less invisible and be something you wouldn't notice if you weren't looking for it. So that was a, that was a huge goal. And then, yeah, absolutely it was, it was something where this is a pretty common refrain is people will put it on their bike and then notice it for the first, you know, a few minutes of a ride or maybe the first ride and then, and essentially forget about it.
And ironically enough, we've had enough number of customers contact us and say, Hey, you know, I, I, I don't think my STEM is working anymore. And what we encourage people to do is say, Hey, okay, cool. Swap the STEM out for, for, you know, your old STEM. And see what the differences and feel. And it's funny, you get used to the difference in feel very quickly and then when you go back to our rigid STEM, the differences is night and day. It's, it's a really sort of amazing experience to go back from, you know, having that compliance to go back to a rigid STEM and to feel the difference. But yeah, you're absolutely right. It's, it's not meant to, it's not meant to make the trail, you know, completely disappear under you. It's not going to do that. But what it is going to do is just take the edge off of all of those, those impacts that are normally gonna sort of jar you and you know, vibrate through your arms, through your wrists, hands and in your shoulders and neck.
Yeah, it's probably important to note and add that the STEM ships with a series of elastomer bumpers and a pretty straight forward guide as to how to tune them to your particular rider weight and obviously like suspension forks and other suspension products. If you feel a desire to have a stiffer setup or a softer setup, you can make those adjustments based on your body weight guide.
Yeah, exactly. So the, the SEM is designed to, to run with a little bit of sag just to make it as active as possible. But there are some people who prefer more traditional feel and so they set it up a little bit stiffer such that there's really no deflection under normal in their normal riding position. And that it would only, you know, deflect when they hit a bigger bomb or a bigger impact, something like that. So you can, you can tune it in. You know, there's quite a, quite a few levels of, of stiffness that you can choose to let you tune it in. And body weight is kind of the main guidance that we give because that's the most obvious one. But other things like writing position and the type of terrain that you're writing on are also going to have a pretty big impact on that. So if you're writing kind of a more upright position or slacker geometry on your bike, you may need a slightly softer setup just cause you're not going to have as much weight, you know, on your hands and vice versa.
Yeah. And I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier for the listener to think about when you think about the total package of your bike, the frame, the rigidity and stiffness of your frame, your tire set up, all that kind of stuff. There's certainly bikes that fall in a wide variety of categories. Like I, I spent a lot of time on an open up, which was a very stiff race oriented carbon frame. In fact, moving from my road bike attract Medona to the open. I felt very little loss in performance, but it was an incredibly stiff bike off road. And you know, my solution to that was riding six 50 B 1.9 tires to get that right match of. But not all gravel bikes have that ability to go that wide in a tire. So I think it's really interesting as a solution to understand as a, as a listener and as a bike owner, as to what an option may be to add additional compliance. If, say you were stuck at a, you know, a 700 by 38 as the, as the widest tire you could go for on a, a very stiff carbon frame.
Yeah. The, the comparison that we make, and obviously there are other reasons why you might choose wider tires besides just, you know, ride quality or comfort, you know, traction and handling and things like that are, may drive you in, in that direction anyway. But the comparison that we make is basically to get the same amount of compliance out of your tire that you would get out of this, the STEM, you'd have to increase your tire, you'd have to increase your tire with from like a 38 or something like that, you know, to a 50 or a 55 or something. Really, really dramatic. Because when you think about the amount of deflection that you're going to get out of a tire you know, it's literally like adding 15 to 20 millimeters to the height of your tire. So it's, it's a, it's a much bigger change than, for example, just going from a, you know, a 35 to a 45 or something like that.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, as, as we look at events on the calendar throughout the year and some of the longer distance, more grueling events, it's pretty clear to me that as a kind of mid pack cyclist, you need to be as concerned with how your body's going to survive a long day. Like, like dirty Kanza as much as how fast you're going to go. So it's all well and good to say, I'm gonna, you know, have an incredibly stiff bike and I'm going to run narrow tires. But your bite, your body may not survive that, you know, in a, in a 10, 12, 14 hour day.
Yeah. I think when you look at not only, you know, mid pack writers but, but front of pack writers and really long endurance events like that the event is as much about sort of their, their fitness and their ability to produce power as it is about their ability to kind of maintain, maintain a positive mindset during those events. And I think that goes throughout throughout the, the tiers, you know, all the way from the people who are going to win the event, you know, to the people who are gonna be right in front of the sag wagon. Your fitness is going to be a huge aspect of that. But your ability to maintain your, your mental mindset and and be positive is going to have such a huge impact on your performance. And kind of, you know, as anybody written on gravel, on rough roads for a long period of time, it just kind of builds and builds and builds.
And that fatigue of just sort of dealing with all of this vibration and impacts like, you know, after you've been riding for six hours, your hands, your shoulders, you know, your rear end and everything is just, you know, if it's not, if it's not numb, it's, it's, you know, none might be the best thing that it could be at that point. You know, so it makes, it makes a huge difference, you know, in your, in your ability to enjoy the ride, have a positive mental mindset going into it. And then the other thing is that it just, it saves you energy over, over the ride. You know, you don't have to lift as much body weight off of the saddle and the, the handlebars when you're riding. And I should mention that, you know, I'm talking about lifting off the saddle. We also make a complimentary product called the chalk stop suspension. Seatpost that's just launching that, that does the same thing kind of for the rear end of the bike. So that energy savings, you know, of not having to float your body over rough terrain and instead just be able to, you know, sit down, relax, relax your upper body, relax your lower body and pedal through that, you know, the accumulated energy savings over especially along event like that are huge. So it's difficult to overstate how much that that contributes.
Yeah, I think that's what's very interesting and elegant about the STEM as the solution because you may, in your, your daily rides not require that, but swapping the STEM out for an altar distance event is quite easy to do. And that's not to say that this STEM doesn't work well as a daily rider cause I've been riding it every day, both on the road and off the road. But for those people maybe who are [inaudible] and concerned about the, the, you know, modest additional weight penalty, being able to throw it on for a specific event, I think is a really viable way to see if it's a good product for you.
Yeah. and like you said, you know, it's, it's an easy swap. It installs and removes exactly like a normal STEM does. So you don't have to it fits a bike, you know, pretty much the same way, the stack height on this deer tube and you know, if it's 31.8 millimeter bars. So something that's very easy to try out. And just as a, you know, a pitch a sales pitch here, if, if any writers are interested in testing it out, we offer a 30 day risk-free, you know, ride trial. So you get free shipping, free return shipping if you don't like it and you can ride it for 30 days and return it, no questions ask if it doesn't work out for you. So we're pretty confident that once they try it, they really love it. And so we want to give people the opportunity to, to test it out, see if it works for them and hopefully it does.
Right on. Well, let's dig in. You mentioned that the, the product, the new forthcoming seat posts that you guys are going to be shipping, what's the sort of vision behind that product and how does it actually perform? Obviously, you know, the, the sort of concern that will jump up in the listeners mind right away is that, you know, my pedaling cadence and fluidity and sort of just that sense of being directly connected to the motion of the crank and the distance of my crank arms is going to be affected by any suspension. Can you dig in a little bit on that product?
Yeah, yeah. So this was sort of a natural follow on to the shock stop STEM. We, we always knew that we wanted to make a C post, but it took us a while to figure out exactly what we wanted to do and how we wanted to improve on, you know, the products that were already on the market. The STEM was a little bit different in that, you know, at the time we launched the STEM, there were really no other bolt-ons, sort of front suspension options for, for gravel or drop bar bikes. Whereas with the C post, you know, there are things on the market like thawed, Buster body float and then a variety of sort of, you know, inexpensive telescoping suspension seatpost options that you could buy. And that's not to mention kind of what I'll call pseudo suspension C posts, things like the specialized CGR where they're relying on sort of carbon flexing or something like that to, to provide a little bit of additional compliance.
So, you know, we wrote a bunch of those C posts, tested them out, like the lot of them disliked some of them and kind of crystallize exactly what we were looking for in a sea post. And, and it kinda boils down to a couple things. One, as I mentioned previously, we wanted to make sure that the, the aesthetics of the post, you know, blended in well with modern bikes. We didn't want it to be something where you're sort of like, look at the bike and all you can see is this giant contraption at the top of the, you know, the seatpost. And then we wanted the suspension travel to be meaningful. And when I say meaningful, something that is not just going to mute, you know, small vibration or buzz, but it's actually going to absorb impacts, you know, rocks, roots expansion, joints on the road, things like that, that kind of like a, a specialized CGR or just a compliant carbon post is not really going to handle.
And then we basically wanted the, the travel and the response of the CBOs to be really responsive because, you know, in a situation like a gravel ride, you know, you're dealing with a lot of high frequency impacts or oscillations. So the post needed to be responsive enough to deal with that. And the direction that there were, those impacts are coming from. So we took all of that, spent a long time, you know, refining and prototyping and testing different designs and finally arrived at the design of the shock stops. He posts that, that we have now. And we believe that it provides a, you know, a super compliant responsive ride that is going to absorb all of those impacts but still blend in with the aesthetic of your bike. To answer kind of the, the second part of your question regarding how does it feel, how does it feel?
Do you lose a connection to, to the bottom racket or lose your ability to smoothly generate power? I mean, I can only speak for myself and the answer for me and for the people that I know that have tested it is no that basically there's enough damping in the post that your, your pedal stroke is not going to cause bobbing. And so again, it's sort of it's going to actuate when you ride over something. And then the other thing is that the, the motion of the seatpost is unlike a telescoping post where the distance between the bottom racket and the saddle would just be decreasing linear league with travel linkage based posts like ours or you know, similar to something like a thought Buster has the advantage that the motion of this saddle is sort of back and down a little bit towards the rear wheel.
And so that motion, the tra the suspension travel doesn't course correlate to such a large change in the bottom bracket to saddle distance. And at the end of the day, this is sort of a little bit difficult to explain, but it's just not something that you notice because again, you have to compare that the, you know, the bottom bracket to saddle distance is changing slightly as the, as the CBOs moves through his travel. But that's because you're riding over a bump. And normally what would happen if you rode over a bump that caused that sort of deflection is you would either bounce up off of the saddle or you would be off of the saddle to begin with. To, you know, suspend yourself as you wrote over that bump. So it's kinda funny because you know, you think of this as something that's compliance, but you can really sit down and battle through things that you might otherwise stand up and coast through. Because there's just enough travel there to, to kind of mute out all of those vibrations. Yeah. I suppose as a user of the STEM, I can visualize exactly what you're talking about, like you know, happening,
But there's the feedback that you'd normally be getting from riding through that bumpy section. You're just getting it in a different way. And perhaps by being able to sit, stay seated through that experience, you retain more control and potentially a faster ability to put power back into the pedals.
Yeah. And, and you notice this, you can really notice this, you know, for example, descending it's something where on a, you know, on a bike that's not equipped with a, with a dropper seat post for example. When you're descending in a lot of situations, it's much easier to control the bike if you have some weight on the saddle. But if you don't have a suspension seatpost you run the risk of hitting something and sort of getting bucked or bounced off the saddle. If you, you know, if you hit a bump that you don't notice. That's one place where I noticed it the most is where at the end of long dissents where I would often find that my legs were quite tired because I was standing up the whole way down the descent basically that, you know, I can strategically pick places where I can sit down and just, you know, ride and relax my legs. And so it's that kind of energy savings that, you know, beyond sort of the comfort aspect there. There's a real energy savings associated with, with being able to, with not having to stand up and suspend your body with your legs, you know, as much.
Yeah. I, I definitely have personal experience with a dropper posts both on road and off road that mimics that experience. I really do enjoy being able to drop it a little bit and remain seated and just kind of take that as recovery time and have the additional control of having weighed on the, on the rear of the bike, like you said. Yeah. Fascinating stuff. You know, it's interesting to me, I think, you know, I've said this before on the podcast that many new or gravel cyclists are coming to the sport from a road background and there's heavily steeped traditions and mentalities around road riding, around stiffness, lack of suspension, all these biases that we're bringing to the table that this year and next year in the gravel market. I see those biases being challenged dramatically by products like this and different compliant frame designs and even suspended frames that are gonna prove themselves out as being faster, more comfortable, just generally better, more fun bicycles. And I think it's a really exciting time to be exploring that. And I think you guys are in a great spot for that exploration.
Yeah, it's, it's really, it's really I think a fun time to be, you know, just in the bike industry, but, but to be a consumer, to, to be shopping for bikes because more and more you can find whatever bike you know you want to ride. And I think that's super interesting. If you're, if you're, you know, a roadie who occasionally ventures off road, you can find a great bike for that. If you're a mountain biker who wants, you know, a, a drop bar monster cross mountain bike with two and a half inch knobby tires on it, like you can find the bike for that too. But totally agree. I think that much like, you know, much like we saw in, in sort of cross country mountain biking where the, there was resistance to the adoption of, of full suspension bikes certainly at the highest racing levels in gravel.
I think there's a little bit of resistance there just because people are accustomed to sort of the, the purity and, and the aesthetics of of unsuspended bikes. But it definitely seems, you know, I, I would put money on the fact that full suspension, gravel bikes are, are going to be something that are pretty common in the future as people, as people realize, you know? Yeah. They're, they're faster, they're more comfortable. They're more enjoyable to ride. So yeah, it's gonna be fascinating to see kind of where everybody drives to and what the different what the different options are for people. But I think regardless of what, regardless of what people, you know, think they're going to be able to find a bike that, that works well for them. And I think that's the thing to me that's so exciting about gravel is, yeah, maybe, maybe not serious cyclists, but you know, they're asking or they're interested in buying a bike and it's just a no brainer. Now, you know, it's like, yeah, if you're going to buy a bike, you should buy a gravel bike. You shouldn't, you shouldn't even think twice about it. Like, that's the bike that you should buy. So I think that that's, that's pretty, pretty awesome.
Yeah. And mean as we've covered before. And as the, the the listener most likely knows the beauty of these gravel bikes, that they're like chameleons, right? You can have two sets of wheels, you can have a shock stop STEM, you can have a suspension seat posts and you can swap them in and out depending on what you're doing. And the net net is you end up with a bike that can take you everywhere from bike packing to cyclocross racing. And that's, it's really exciting and certainly a great value for your money as a cyclist to be able to have one bike that can sort of wear many dresses.
Yeah. And as a recovering, you know, and plus one, a bike, alcoholic. I currently probably have seven bikes in my garage, so I'm trying to try and get rid of them. But you know, the idea of having one, you know,
One great bike that you can really sort of do everything with is, is super attractive. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Steven, thank you so much for, for sharing your thoughts on the company and the products. And the time I've really enjoyed riding the product thus far and I'm really curious to kind of explore it as something that can help reduce fatigue and increased performance over my rides. Yeah, thanks so much Craig. Really appreciate it. It was great talking to you and hopefully we can get together for a ride sometime soon. Right on.
Thanks again to Steven for joining the pod this week. Since recording, I've actually spent another couple of months on the shock stops STEM due to some back issues and I remain impressed every time I get that thing off road. I am happy to have a little bit of cush in these days where my body could use a little break. So kudos for them for an interesting design and something to consider if you're finding off road riding a little too jolting to your body in this week's can't let it go. Segment, I want to talk about lights. I've been using a night sun Lumia light and it's been shocking to me how compact this lighting system is compared to the wattage that it's putting out. It's made my night rides home commuting super comfortable and safe. I remember back in the day when you used to have to Mount a battery in your water bottle cage and how heavy and obnoxious those setups were.
Whereas today you can get something that mounts simply on your handlebar plug in. Charger is all good to go and you can be completely safe out there. So as we're concluding winter, I hope everybody's invested in some good safety lighting to keep them safe and hopefully even get out there and explore off road. So that's it for this week. I appreciate all the support. If you have any feedback, shoot me a note@craigatthegravelride.bike or hit me up on any of the social media platforms. As always, if you're enjoying what we do, please leave a rating or review those few minutes of efforts, really help us reach a broader audience, which is important with that. Until next time, here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
Tim Kremer from the Gravel Epic race series talks to us about events in Marrakesh, Slovenia, Girona and Mt. Etna. Each event capturing the local flavor and best routes designed by local gravel athletes.
Gravel Epic Website.
Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
Good day everyone, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast we've got Tim Kramer from the gravel Epic series over in Europe. Big thanks to Jason over at the gravel cyclist for making this connection for me. I first read about the gravel Epic series on the gravelcyclist.com. Get your passports ready and start saving those dollars because when you hear about the gravel Epic series, I think you're going to be like me and want to jump on the next plane over to Europe. Tim and his team have created four events, one in Marrakesh, Morocco, the second in Slovenia, the third in Mount Etna in Italy, and the fourth in Gerona. They've worked with local athletes in all these areas to find the best terrain, most representative of the area, and they're combining that with rich cultural experiences so you can immerse yourself in the local culture. So with all that said, let's jump right in.
Tim, welcome to the shelf. Hey Greg, thanks for having me.
Ever since Jason at the gravel cycle of shared your events series with me, I've been super excited to get you on the phone and learn more about it. It sounds amazing. But before we get started as is customary on the podcast, I'd love to just learn a little bit more about your background and how you got into gravel cycling.
The background graph cycling is very easily explained. I don't remember exactly how many years ago it was, but I read an article on the dirty Kanza and the New York times. That was when I was sitting in my living room in Hong Kong on a weekend and I read this and I thought, bloody hell, that sounds like an event I'd like to do or so I, Mike, my calendar when registration is opened, I think it was sometime in January and I was lucky enough to get in. That was a few years ago, so it was a little bit easier than now. It's still a lottery. And we got in. So my friend of mine and I, and shortly afterwards we bought our first gravel bike. A simple cyclocross from focus. It was, I think back then and you know, started training, which in Hong Kong was pretty hard cause we have no gravel roads. So we basically just cycled on the road. And the first time ever on gravel was when we were hit the roads in Kansas.
That's amazing. I mean we often explore how gravel cycling differs in different parts of the country and how unique Kansas is. But I can't imagine getting on a plane from having only written around Hong Kong on your bike to the Flint Hills of Kansas and tackling that huge event.
It was a yes, very different experience. For one, eh, I had the wrong shoes. I wrote with most shoes, which was almost constant, completely wrong thing to do. So the first river crossing when I walked through my puddles couldn't clip in anymore and I still have a, the road with a stick trying to clean the pedals, I can continue cycling. But beyond, beyond that, it was an amazing experience. And we've been seeking out travel events ever since. We wrote at a year later, we did a small event in Texas and 200 miners. So it was lucky that I'm self employed and we were able to combine the business trips with revel races or other bike races.
That's great. And you know, as someone who, it sounds like shares residency between Hong Kong and Spain, were you particularly in Europe I guess were you simply just not seeing the type of events that you were falling in love with in the U S anywhere on the continent?
Well the Spain thing for us is relatively recent, so my family only relocated here a year ago. I still kind of go back and forth. We, we saw the races in the U S and thought it was something really exciting because gravel is slowly taking off in Europe and continental Europe and the UK. It's a little bit better known in that. Tons of races. But they are mostly local. Except for two or three races that are now over two or three years have grown a little bit more. I wouldn't say international, but more national. And when we thought about this, we thought this would be something really, that we enjoy, that our friends enjoy going to interesting places and, and taking them off the road. Not the typical grand Fondo but on the, you know, was me, we call it the sort of the, the gravitates to where the roads end, so to beautiful places. And that's what we try to do and look for locations. And first four locations we found in Marrakesh and Slovenia bled in UNG Alona and which is, you know, it was only about an hour away from, we are now in Barcelona and Mount Edna are completely different in their environment and completely different in the kind of rioting on gravel that our participants will experience.
That's amazing. So let's step back for a minute. I mentioned it in the opening, but you got a gravel. Epic is listed as the first gravel series in Europe, in North Africa. What an incredibly audacious goal to put on four amazing events. What was the vision behind what you were creating and why did you look to do the four events rather than starting with just one?
I'm audacious. Yes. And we're finding out my, the workload that really it is a lot more than we expected. We're not from the event or, or a sports event business. We come from very different backgrounds, but we thought that the amount of marketing needed it's much better to have it amortized over four events and also to keep us across the year and you know, more involved in not to some one event decided to start with four. We're lucky that we of course don't organize everything by ourselves. We have local partners who are based there. We'll know the region. We could not find the same gravel roads and that the people that do so in that regards were happy that we don't have to do everything. But there's still a lot of work to be done.
Yeah, I can only imagine and that makes a lot of sense. Economically speaking, I know I talked to a number of race organizers. It's one thing to create a small event in your local community and keep it manageable, but the moment it becomes successful, you realize that the infrastructure and skillset of the team members required is often difficult, difficult to cobble together when you're only talking about focusing that energy on a single event each year.
Yeah, and I mean we intentionally, you know, really want to get a very international group to our races. And from what we've seen now in Marrakech where registrations haven't been open for that long, we already have people from 10 or 11 nationalities coming. You know, we have from as far as Los Angeles, I'm a cyclist and then from Hong Kong, from the other side of the world we get inquiries from India. We are always surprised to where people come and how they find us because it's not really an area where we advertise.
Yeah. I'm sure that's only going to grow as the registration period opens longer and longer. Certainly, you know, seeing the types of events and locations, particularly for North American writers and writers, you know, in Asia, it's a heavy decision to make a decision to attend one of these events in Europe. And obviously it takes a lot of planning to get there.
Yes, it does. You know, and it's, that's what we try to combine them with a lot of touristy activities and we also offer you know, for people from the U S and want to come over for more than a week, not just the race, but you can take a three, five or eight day gravel tour in the area and then finish with a race or start after the race.
That's the super exciting plan. I love that. I also like to hear that you enlisted the help of local riders who know the community and trails better to kind of craft the race courses. How did you identify the four locations in the first place?
If I could only remember exactly all the discussion that went in. I mean, we looked obviously at the map at something that was interesting for us where we would want it to go. Myra cash was right on top of our list because a, it's very easily reachable and it's completely different from by where we are in terms of cultural experience and the writing as well. So that was a fairly easy choice. We originally also had looked at places in Germany and Holland. But decided then that wasn't so exciting and pick Slovenia because of the mountain bike scene that was there. A friend of ours has been riding there and highly recommended it. So we went over there for a long weekend and came back very, very impressed by the area and the three glove national park by the Julian Alps. And we're lucky enough to find a good partner.
And when we went back, they already had stitched a probably 60, 70% of what now is the race cost together for us to explore. Mon Aetna, the same thing. We were looking for something that is again different in terms of writing cause we wanted to give people who want to enjoy the forum experience something very different. Every single event and riding on an active volcano is again very different than the surface is different cause it's lava rock. And the amazing part in Aetna is you can ride the beautiful forest and suddenly the forest is cut open by where the lava poured and cut down the forest and you have 500 meters or a kilometer writing to laugh Robin rocks and suddenly the forest closes again and you're, you're again in a very confined space. It's a very unique experience.
Amazing. So let's go through a little bit more specifically the events and the locations and maybe gives the listener a little bit of an understanding as to the type of gravel riding experience they'll have. You touched a little bit on it just now about Mount Etna and you also mentioned how in your opinion different each experience was going to be, let's take them in order and make sure that each one gets the lip service it deserves because they all are clearly amazing locations.
Well starting in Marrakesh, which is the first race in our theories and March next year, which is we start in the desert, so it's fairly flat. The gravel is very hard packed. It doesn't rain much there. There's only a few eliminated rain in the winter months. And lucky from when we start the race, it should have just finished. So we can see still the snow capped mountains and the Atlas in the background and it, we still have tons of green around. But the desert itself, eh, not much green, but you will see a lot of green as you ride along the course. But the, the gravel is very, very hard packed. It's not quite as sharp as young people know. And we talk about dirty Kansas our size. So we have never, none of us had a flat ball riding there, but it's quite a hard pack road.
The climbs are very long. Not short times. The main climb out of the Agatha desert into the Atlas mountains. I forgot how many kilometers or miles, but it's, I think it's somewhere around six to 10, six miles, 10 kilometers long. And then you ride along the Ridge and you descend into valleys where again, it gets green, you see plantations right to bourbon villages. It's a very, very unique different experience as you ride along because the scenery constantly change us. And then finally you ride back through the RFA desert too. They can probably start and for many it'll be a race against the sunset trying to make it before the sunsets. If we then go to the next races and Aetna, which a completely different environment. For one it's Italy, which the food, the ambiance, the noise in the street, everything is quite different experience when we get to the race course, which starts just outside of the national park.
And a small town called Milo. The initial, no, I don't have the data and dragged in front of me, but I think the first 20 kilometers we climb close to 2000 meters or 30 kilometers. So it's a constant up, up, up until you reach sort of the plateau level. And when you start riding around the area, we're not riding fully around Aetna, that's much, much too long, but our course kind of goes up to it and then goes down again, goes back up again. And it's a nice combination of off-road and on-road. The riding is a bit more technical because the rocks, the lava can be quite sharp. Eh, or in later in the season or if there wasn't a lot rain, a lot of rain. The lava is very soft. So it's definitely a course that requires much more technical skills than any of the other three courses that we have.
But the amazing thing there is really to ride and you can see Monadnock in the back, which is always covered with some clouds. It always looks like it's smoking. And sometimes, and sometimes you can even hear it rumble. So it's a very nice experience. And course we have, I find very interesting because it goes through forest, which the road is much smoother. And sun, you had that lava patch where again, you really have to go on your chores and make sure you don't crash. And then after that we go to Slovenia with the race starts in blood, which is very, very well known for the church in the middle of the Lake and the cost that overlooks the leg. Very, very small town, roughly only 8,000 people. And there, the course is longer and more climate and everything else, all the other courses that we have, but the roads are Forrest routes.
So it's, it's really not technical. We expect people to be much, much faster which is why the causes longer. And we have over 4,000 meters of climates. That's over 12,000 meters of climbing, over 180 kilometers, I think it was. So bring your climbing legs for that course. But again, it's not technical. The descends are not too difficult. You know that the tire choices there are very definitely, what do you need an Edna after your ride? Possibly widest tie. You can fit on your bike. With knobby tires, with Slovenia, you probably put a 35 on, I wouldn't say slicks, but really you don't need much in terms of treads. And then we finished the race. He was in Geovanna, which people know is very well known for cycling. There's tons of pro cyclists, ex pros living there. There is a ton also already off slaw, smaller. I'm grabbing races in the area. I'm always, it's longer than that. The local races, we're going up to 180 kilometers. The course is at times technical. But most of the time, you know, the climbing is nice and long and gradual and it's a beautiful area. And part of the [inaudible] North Catalonia,
My gosh, the hardest thing is just deciding which one sounds the best out of those.
Yeah, it's a difficult choice. You know, for me, Marrakesh was always the first choice simply because it's more exotic and it's an area that I'm really not familiar with. But I'm equally blown away by bled and by that, because again, it's completely different to the writing that I have here in Barcelona. So it's very hard to say what people expect and where they come from, what their preference is.
Yeah. And I noted each of the courses, the expected medium finish median finish time is 10 hours. So it sounds like that's the goal. Yeah. Common theme across the events.
And basically what we've done is we write the course. If I, it takes me about 11 hours, I think that the normal cycle should take about 10 cause we, I mean we, you know, we stopped for P, we stopped a bit more and we look at it and says, yeah, roughly 10 hours. And we expect the fast people. I'm always depending on conditions to come in at seven and a half to eight hours. And the cutoff depending on the cause where we are and what we can do with low closures will be 14, 15 hours or everybody should be able to finish the course.
Yeah. And as people group up, obviously in the event the pace gets a little bit hotter and the course can get covered a little faster.
Correct. Correct. For a Marrakesh we already have a couple of very, very good cyclists signed up. So we'll definitely see some action up the front, I think.
Interesting. And then also a common theme, a pretty healthy chunk of climbing looks like between, you know, minimum 3,300 meters of climbing to over 4,000 in one of the [inaudible].
Yes. Yes. I think that's just driven by the destinations that we picked. The all mountain is areas. We like to be in somewhere more remote areas, which often that also leads to be in more mountainous areas. And you know, I personally like climbing. I think it makes a writing interesting if it's just on the flats and it's not for me.
Yeah. Well, some of the descriptions you were providing on the courses are only possible to get this type of views and changes in terrain and changes in the ambiance of where you're riding through by having those large elevation gains.
Yes, that's correct. And again, Marrakesh, you know, it's the end of winter so that the lower regions that'll be quite nice and warm. But when you get up to close to 2000, it'll be fresh. People will have to pack extra clothes.
Interesting. So it'd be a real adventure.
Yes. It'd be different experience from the, from the desert up into the mountains in, in terms of temperature. In terms of views and writing, it'll be completely different.
And it looks like for each event correct me if I'm wrong, you've got two distances.
Correct? We have what we call the exploration course. Not that it's easy by any means. But for those who are new to long distance gravel riding we wanted to offer something more manageable. We make it very easy if people feel that the training went well, they can easily change to the larger course. But of course, a hundred miles on gravel is something very different than a hundred miles on the road.
And how are you thinking about the race in terms of it being a race versus a ride?
[Inaudible]
I think just based on the distance for 80% of the people, it'll be a ride, which is the challenging itself. We made it a race so that people more have a record of how long it took them, but not in the sense that we expect people to go out and really race one another. It's more a race against yourself, I think. And against the clock or whatever goal you've set yourself. And maybe a rate is against a friend, but I don't expect this to be a race like you would find on their own and on a road race or so. No.
But do you imagine that over time, you know, writers will start to think of thinking of the events as they do a dirty cancer and SBT gravel where the professional athletes have it on their calendar because it's, it's notable to, to win.
Yeah. Yeah, that'd be nice. It'd be interesting. I mean, as I said before, we have a couple of writers that, you know, when I signed up with like, okay, so they're clearly the more modern than say professional, but very, very, very good amateurs and no one did the scene who don't does, right. They, they, they will go and race this thing. But for most of us it'll be a challenging ride. That allows you to set goals. We also have a time section on every race that we call our coms. It's one long climb, but people can, if they don't want to race the whole race, but put it in over the next you know, 10 K on one climb or so and see how they fare against the best riders. So there's a little bit for everyone.
Yeah, that's neat. I always appreciate this time segments just because it's, it's novel. It gives you a little bit of something to focus on during a long event.
Yeah.
Yeah. And especially in the climbs are hard enough. But if you know that you can see yourself, see how you did ever against everybody, I think it makes a bit of take that at least I need when I'm attempting one of these long clients.
Yeah, it's interesting with all these events something is inevitably going to go wrong during your day. That's just sort of the nature of gravel and adventure riding. They're having those times segments. It's just a reminder of like, Oh, I can come back and try to tackle that the overall time as well as the segment time again in the future.
Yeah, correct. I mean, you know, gravel, rough roads. The bikes are good, but things do go wrong.
Yeah, absolutely. I do.
I had, I had one carbon when go bust on me and Aetna, I think I must have had a rock really badly. And you know, that was the end of my ride. So that has happened.
Yeah. Yeah. I do imagine, you know, as the sport continues to grow from a, from a retail perspective over in Europe, that the bike brands are gonna want their brand ambassadors to be traveling to these locations and sort of putting a flag in the ground that their equipment was a, you know, on the ground in Sylvania or, or AmeriCash.
Yeah, it would be very nice. We haven't really signed up any sponsors because we're so new. We don't really have any history. But hopefully in a year from now we can approach the bike brands and they'll be interesting in working with us. I know just because it's, it's a category that is very, very interesting now in Europe, as I said, it's growing. You can see everybody, we are releasing components about it. We have even seen special Graebel shoes. Not, I am not, I haven't been able to figure out what they are, but all kinds of special Graebel equipment is coming to the market now.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean that's obviously something we explore pretty extensively here on the podcast. And there's, I think just little tweaks that are starting to arrive over time where people are saying, to your point, like, you know, what is a gravel shoe? It's not, it's maybe not as soft as a mountain bike shoe, but maybe it's not as stiff as a road racing shoe and there's just sort of a blend in the middle there that that meets the kind of day you're going to have out of the bike as a gravel cyclist.
Correct. I mean, you know, we're, luckily we don't push as often as maybe some more difficult mountain bike races or so or, or some bike packing events where you have to carry all that luggage up the Hill. But you know, some sexual, I mean, I know that some people will have to walk on certain seconds on all of course because it's difficult in a technically or too steep.
Yeah. So you mentioned the UK being a little bit of a hotbed. Are there other pockets in Europe that you've identified where you feel there are a lot of gravel cyclists emerging?
And while we can see by the Facebook groups that there are very large groups in Italy and France for example, there's a Facebook group in France that has 9,000 writers now, are they all pure gravel cyclists? Probably not. A lot of them own a gravel bike and they use it for commuting. But you know, that's what grabs the writing is if not just grab a beer in Europe is often all road riding. It's a bike that allows you to go everywhere. Some people use it for their commute instead of the normal city bike maybe that they had before instead of a cyclocross bike.
Yup, absolutely.
But it's certainly that big. It's coming. And he, in Spain, in our circle of friends within the last 12 months, I think 30% of our cycling group bought a gravel bike. And even also of Barcelona, we still have tons and tons of good roads that allow us to go out there. And it's very nice to explore an area that we've written through many, many times and starting to be able to turn off the road and ride 20, 30 kilometers on gravel in an area that we've not seen before. Even though we've written that area for many times,
I think that's exactly it and exactly why this massive light bulb goes off the moment you get one of these bikes, it's easy to sort of sit on the sideline when you live in a place where there's amazing road riding like you and I both do. But the ability to take that left turn and hit a section of gravel just opens up this world of possibility. And all of a sudden, I know speaking from my own experience, I find myself writing just the best sections of road that I'm familiar with and then getting off road or amazing sections that'll connect pieces of, of tarmac that are otherwise and connectable in a reasonable amount of time.
I fully agree. I mean, we were on a ride here in an area, a park wash, which we've written in many times on the road bike. And for the first time somebody put a rotor that was 90% gravel and I think for six hours all of us were smiling because it was such a new and great experience that we didn't expect.
Yeah. I think particularly for people in the area. Yeah, and I think particularly for athletes that are coming from the road side, which is my suspicion is we're drawing a lot of athletes from that side of the sport versus the mountain bike side. As a mountain biker, we've all written those sections where you just sort of, something happens, you skid out but you survive and you get to the bottom of it and you, you want to high five, your friends did that. You don't often get that on the road, but you, you, you often and frequently get that in gravel and particularly in events that are, that are long or Epic in the terrain, you know, you're going to have mishaps and that's part of the fun. And when we all get to the finish line, it's part of the reason why the gravel community can be so tight from the first place finisher to the last place finisher because we're all going to have those experiences throughout the day.
I fully agree and you know, we try to have at the end of our events, always a big party and not the normal finish a party. We're trying to put something together where people really sit together and share the stories of what happened to them during the day and then how they enjoy the ride or what they didn't enjoy. And you know, we're, we'll hopefully get lot of tons of feedback how to make it better the following year. But we really would like to people to connect to these events. And that's why said it's, it's a race, but we really, for most of us, I think it's more of a timed event and I think it's fantastic if people sit together later on and make friends.
Yeah. The other thing I think that's fantastic about what you've laid out here is, you know, obviously all of these destinations are, are tourist worthy. And you know, it's not like writers should plan on popping in and out just for race day or 48 hours around the event. I know you're thinking about that and thinking about how to make a trip out of it, particularly for athletes from North America. We're not going to come over, you know, for less than a week to do something like this. So are you laying out other events around the actual race day to help riders who are coming in early explore the terrain and make the most out of their trips?
Yeah, absolutely. We have for example, in Marrakesh we have a six day gravel tour, which can be easily made into three or if people want even more because there's so many relatives, we can connect them all different ways so that people can come over and explore the area before the event, if that one for three, four days or not a part of Morocco, because we have a tour that starts close to Marrakesh and you can ride just at the tip of the Sahara desert. In I'd say, you know, we, we say six days, I think people who have a little bit more stronger legs can easily do it in five days, maybe even four, if you want to push yourself. So there's tons of stuff to do around in terms of probably writing, but obviously also for the family.
A Morocco, Marrakesh is a tourist destination for the a trip, no matter whether you bring the bike or not, it's especially for North Americans, such a different world to walk through the souks in Marrakesh. It's fantastic. I really enjoyed it. For me. Two days is enough, but my wife was very happy to hang around longer and buy more stuff. But it's, it's more the a trip and you can get on the car or a motorcycle and take a trip into the Berber villages and explore the life of the villages they have, which again is very different from what you see in the city.
And these additional add on gravel events. Are they events that you're, you're paying to participate in? Are you, are you arranging these?
Yes. I mean that paid events. I mean for some we can just, if somebody does once a day trip, we can happy to give them a GPS data around the village. But the other things, because they need to be organized. You need to have a van, we need to book the hotels. The transfer when the right finishes, cause it's not a loop. Back to Marrakesh or Casa Blanca or wherever the people want to go at the end of the ride. So yes, they are, they're paid trips.
Okay. So you'll actually arrange sort of a little journey for us around the country.
Yes, we are very flexible. We want people to have a good time. We know it's a long way to go and to make it worthwhile. We happy, you know, we work with local partners who then help us to put these things from simple things like a one hour camel ride around the desert to a six day bike trip on gravel bike or for some, you know, if the partner comes along when they are e-bikes as well.
Amazing. Well I have to say, you know, you cannot visit [inaudible] gravel, epic.com and not be inspired and excited by the imagery that you guys have put forth in the videos around the various locations. I definitely encourage all the listeners to go check the event out. It's very inspirational to kind of look at these locations and I'm excited to have had this conversation with you, Tim, and learn more about what your goals are for the event and I wish you the best of luck.
Thank you very much for having me. Hopefully can work in many of the listeners at one of our events. You know, if you have any questions, always shoot us an email. We hope to give you all the answers you need.
Awesome. Thanks Tim. All right. Thanks so much Greg.
Wow, big thanks to Tim. I feel like I've already packed my bag and signed up for a couple of those events. I've always wanted to ride in Morocco and heard amazing things about the terrain over there, so that one's definitely on my bucket list in this week's can't let it go. I've been thinking about dropper posts. We've talked about it a bunch of times on the podcast, but I always have fun slamming my post. It's one of those subtle things and maybe not necessarily the most obvious thing to get on a gravel bike, but give one a try. I think you'll like it. And if you're orientating your spec around fun, I can't recommend dropper posts enough. Thanks for spending a little time with us this week. As always, a welcome your feedback via social media channels or craig@thegravelride.bike. If you have a moment, please share this episode with some of your friends. We'd love to get more listeners and ratings and reviews are always deeply appreciated. So until next time, here's to finding some dirt under your wheel.
This week we speak with @cyclingtips, Chief Gravel Correspondent / Man in a Van / Gravel racer, Marshall Opel about his 2019 gravel tour and take-aways from the numerous great gravel events he attended over the year.
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos.
Good day everyone, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the pod we've got Marshall Opal, he's the chief gravel correspondent for cycling tips and last summer he went on a journey all around the United States racing gravel races out of a van. He was affectionately known as the man in the van. What's awesome about Marshall's experience last year was that not only did he get to experience all these phenomenal races that we'll get into in the podcast, but because he was camping out in his van, he really got a sense of the community in these events, which is something I think we all look at when choosing gravel events. We want to go somewhere that the racing is going to be fun, the terrain's going to be awesome, but the community's there. That's really the big draw. That's why it's so worth traveling outside your comfort zone and outside your local area to get into one of these races.
Because the community, it's just fun to hang out and meet people. And what better way to do it then spending your time in the van and driving between races and just taking advantage of everything the local community has to offer. Marshall's a talented racer in his own right. So he got to experience some of the front end excitement in the race, but also that deep level of community across the country. So I was super stoked to meet Marshall down in Bentonville at the end of the year at the big sugar gravel reveal and talk to him about his opinions on where gravel's going, where it's been, how do we keep it fun and awesome. So I really looked forward to recording this interview with Marshall and I hope you enjoy it. So with that, let's dive right in. And Marshall, welcome to the show.
Craig. Thanks for having me. I am stoked to talk about the endless summer of gravel you had in 2019. But before we get started, let's explain to the listener a little bit about your background and how you came to riding bikes off road. I grew up in Montana, so a lot of our riding is off road in the first place. But yeah, we used to have a, a road race called the Rocky mountain route Bay and that had a gravel section on a circuit. And I remember it being, you know, Oh, it's a off road race. I'm gonna put 20 fives on. And so it was very much riding road bikes on, on dirt and gravel. And it's only been pretty recently that I have gotten in this, the new wave gravel. I would say I did Belgium Walsall rod in 2016 and I did the way for that year and that was, I would say that was when I really started to see the, the new gravel movement. And you'd spent a couple of pretty intense
Years in as a junior and later as an older, a rider racing on the road. Right?
Yeah. I was determined to be a European professional road cyclist from the time I was like 12. I was like, Oh, this is definitely going to happen. And I'm, I chase that pretty hard. Dropped out of college and lived in a campground in Brittany France and raced for a French team and spent some time with the U S you train three national team and you know, looking back it was cool that I chased, chased the dream to that level, but I also, it was, it was an opportunity where I kind of realized that I needed to make adjustments for for myself that that wasn't going to be for me to be a full time pro cyclist. And I never really left the bike world though. I became a bike tour guide and then I got a job at Rafa. And now I'm sort of in the cycling journalism world and so bikes have never left. But the racing is, has evolved quite a bit.
That makes sense. And the equipment has as well. So your, your role at at cycling tips puts you basically on the road, I would say beyond the summertime. It looks like you started out in April last year when all the way through October on this this gravel journey where you were living in a van part of the time and traveling around to some of the country's biggest and most diverse gravel events just to name a few Belgian waffle ride, dirty Kanza, the moots ranch rally crusher in the Tuscher, Steamboat gravel grinder row. You were really all over the place. And one of the things we're always exploring in this podcast is just sort of the, the regional nature of the feel of riding on gravel. And I thought when I met you, who better to co kind of comment about that than someone who's been across all these events all across the country this year?
Yeah. You know, I did gravel events in small event in Northern California. I was riding gravel out in Northern Vermont and the Midwest dirty Kansas. So I definitely got a good perspective on the state of gravel in the U S in 2019 and yeah, stoked to share some thoughts.
So when you were traveling, were you, were you modifying your equipment based on what was in front of you in any given course?
I think that's one of the fun things about gravel is that there is like a, a conversation about what's the best equipment for, for an event. And I don't think you necessarily have that in traditional road cycling. But yeah, it was fun. I worked with Donnelley tires. It was fun to always be wondering what tire to use and I didn't really have to do too much with, I wrote a, a Niner gravel bike and you know, it was, it was a great bike all year. And so the only real adjustment I was making was my tires.
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, there is a, obviously a plethora of equipment choices out there and I always want to be the first to say, ride what you got. It's going to work in most of these events and then it's fine tuning from there. I think if you're in the front end of this sphere, you have to sort of think about, you know, do I want to go a narrower, faster tire? But usually for most people it's stick with what you got, get some nice, comfortable to you, rubber on there and just hit it.
That's, so I definitely, it took me this season to learn, you know, like I said, when I was first road racing, when I was seriously road racing, I was on 21 tubulars like pinner little tires and I brought a lot of that sort of road mentality into gravel. Like, you know what, I was riding 32 [inaudible] at Steamboat gravel, which was nuts. I, you know, it took me the year though to realize every time I went with a bigger tire, I never once regretted it. And I think for anyone listening for almost everyone in gravel events, I just so wholeheartedly recommend, bigger is better when it comes to tires. I think there's probably a limit there, but if you're trying to optimize for gravel event and thinking about going with a smaller tire, I just, I don't see that being a smart choice for almost beyond the, like you said, the very pointy end of a race. Even those guys. Ted King was, was never on smaller than I think 36. And so yeah, those,
Ted had mentioned that in my conversation with him as well. He's like, I've never regretted going fatter on the tires and it, I mean, it makes sense. I think there's, there probably is an edge to that as you said. I mean, if you're racing a salsa cutthroat 29 to four, you're probably a little bit got a bigger weapon than you needed for Steamboat gravel for example. But stick in that, you know, the 700 by 40 category and you're pretty good, you're still still fast. But you know, if you're a middle of the pack rider, you can still plow through plenty of stuff comfortably.
Exactly. I think between 35 and 42 is sort of the sweet spot.
Yeah. Yeah. And then depending on where you live, I mean, I, I'm a broken record on my six 50 B 40 sevens here in Marin County, but that's just what I have in front of me.
Well, that's sort of my next step is I just I was in a revolve wheel launch this fall and it was actually the first time that I rode six fifties on gravel. And so I'm a new to that world and I liked I was on I think a 46 or 48. And yeah, it was great. And like, so every time I've stepped up to a little bigger tire, I'm like, Nope, this is even better. So I think next year I might be messing around with six 50 and even bigger tires.
Yeah, you think about it, you and I, you and I met up in Bentonville this year pre-writing, the big sugar gravel course, and I brought 700 by forties with me thinking, Oh, this is going to be sort of more Midwest ms Midwestern style, rolling Hills and gravel and I won't need something big. And I left thinking that when I come back in 2020 probably ride six 50 B just so I just don't have to think about it on those chunky Rocky gravel roads they have in Arkansas.
I've heard people say that six 50 B, we'll soon, it's in a couple of years it'll be this standard for gravel. So I think that's interesting to note where we are now and I'm in a couple of years. It might even be just that. That's, that's the norm.
Yeah. And hopefully that'll push course design a little bit as well. So shifting to that, you know, as you sort of traveled across the country that you've obviously participated in a wide variety of events from, you know, like a Belgian waffle ride, which really demands a big road skillset to stay at that front of that race with a majority from a mileage perspective being on road, obviously the off road portion often dictates who's going to win or lose. You've got that, you've got crusher in the Tuscher, which is very road off-road, mixed terrain. And then you've got something like Kanza and I dunno, maybe Steamboat gravel, which is majority dirt. How do you think about those different courses and what were your experiences, you know, sort of in the front end of those races?
Well, I don't know that I was always in the front end. I was in, I was lucky enough to be up there sometimes. I like the mixture of road off road. It feels so cool to get on pavement after you've been on a big section of, of gnarly gravel. It's like, you know, tarmacs never felt so good. And so that's a fun experience. But you know, something that I questioned with that is just these gravel events all of them that I've done have been on open roads. And when you get big groups of riders on open paved roads I just worry about that. Especially when there's a competitive nature to the, the ride. So I would prefer that these events stay as rural as possible and away from as many cars as possible. So usually that means majority dirt. And so I, I think the, as the sport evolves, I think it will just stay more and more gravel.
Did you see, you know, on the events that had a mix of road and, but a mix literally mixed into the mileage. So my understanding of Belgian waffle ride is it's a lot of road up front and then the bigger off-road sections. But I'm curious like how the tactics evolve when you hit road sections in the middle of the course, if people tend to group up and that becomes a big differentiator between you're either in a pack or you're not in a pack. Yeah,
I mean at a ride like Belgian waffle, if you're alone and you hit the road, if there's a group within sight you know, that's, you have to make an important decision there to either buckle down and try to close that gap. Or what I actually recommend is taking a break, you know, get off your bike and take a pee, grab some food and get in the next group. I think people, you know, these rides are so long. I think you'd be, I'd be surprised if you regretted that decision. And that's what I did a lot this year. If I was, even if I was in a group that, that I was, it was too hard for me. There were a lot of times where I'd, I'd eat food, take a stretch. And then, you know, in traditional road racing, when you get dropped from the group you're in, your sort of, your only goal is to get back in that group. But in gravel it's like you, there's just another, you just hop right in this next group and it's a whole new group of people to chat with. And I was one of my favorite aspects of gravel. So
I'm remembering a moment of great regret and grind Duro where a riding buddy of mine was futsing with something right before the road section and a big group rode by us and we clearly didn't leave in time to join it. And he's like, no, no, no, let's chase. And I agreed and it was a horrible mistake and we just chased the entire road section where, and then when we stopped at the lunch stop, we realized there was a group of 40 that came in about a minute later that we could have [inaudible].
Yeah, totally. Yeah. It's I think that's one of the most interesting aspects of gravel. I think it shouldn't be overlooked that, you know, I spent a lot of time as a road racer getting dropped. I think a lot of road racers experience that and you, you're dropped from the group and it's like your day is over and that's just not the case in gravel. And you, you had these really nice chance to reset and rejoin a group and I think that's the best.
Yeah. And I think you can even generalize that point even further for the listener who maybe hasn't signed, ever signed up for a gravel event. You literally can start with the top pros that are racing this sport and all your friends and lots of people you've never met and you toe the line with them and you're going to drop back. It's going to separate it, but it's rare you're ever riding by yourself and you always will have an adventure in these well-designed events and it's going to be a great day out. And you don't really, I find personally like I have no concept of where I am in the race. I just have a concept that I'm enjoying myself.
Well that's because where you are, the race is pretty irrelevant. The relevant thought is yeah, how am I doing? How am I, have I been eating? Am I looking around? Am I enjoying this? Am I chatting with people? Like you could, that's totally you. You hit it spot on that there is no single narrative of the race. I mean, people will talk about the winners, but with an all day experience, it's so individual. There just, there isn't a a need to compare yourself versus a group that's an hour in front of you or three hours behind you or whatever. You're just all out there on the bike.
Yeah, and I think there's a, there's an interesting parallel for me too. My experience is mountain biking where you know, you go to a place like bend, Oregon and you, you ride there awesome trail systems and you finish a section and you just want a high five and hug the person next to you even if you don't know him. And gravel has those elements. And you know, that's one of the things that I, I hope course designers always keep in mind. I don't want it to be just as a straight up a contest of who has the most horsepower. We want skill to be involved and we want the writers to push themselves out of their comfort zone. So for some it may be, you know, riding a, a steep paved or sorry. Yeah, you know, off road fire, road climb, that may be, it's a pure test of skill. But for others that may be a Rocky single track section that they, they've never experienced anything like on a drop bar bike.
Yeah, clear the line. It was fun at grind dura this year, you know, the, the final climb was just a beast and people were off walking. But then if you were able to ride it, everyone was cheering you on. And I love that. It's like we're all just out here playing bikes and I'm celebrating the effort
From your, your 2019 calendar. Are there a couple events that really stood out as being awesome and can't miss?
I would spit. A lot of people have asked me that question and I keep going back to the Oregon trail gravel stage race outside of bend. That was a five day point-to-point race and I would really I'm excited to see more events of that style where you're out for multiple days. Something changes within the individual. And I think within the group when you're a few days into it's like, it's the feeling that you have at the end of a gravel ride where people are high five in and smiles and hugs and laughter, but then you just get to do it again the next day and it just, it grew and, and by the end it felt like there's like a little family and I didn't want to say goodbye to people. It was so fun. So that was definitely a major highlight. And I think I'm surprised that there aren't more events already like that.
I thought, I thought you might say that. And we did interview Chad Sperry earlier on about the Oregon trail gravel grinder before the event had actually happened. And I hear ya. I have done a couple you know, week long mountain bike stage races where they were moving tents every night and there's a sense of community and really this sense of adventure that's unlocked in a way that a single day race can't touch.
Absolutely. Yeah. If there's something special about it, it's the same feeling you'd get if you do a river trip or those multi-day, you sort of feel almost like, I think it may be taps into something primal for us. And we're like these nomadic creatures moving along. It's just a very it's a fun way to spend a few days with, with other great people. I highly recommend it for anyone considering their calendar of 2020 for a stage race.
Absolutely. And I mean similar, I'd similarly recommend just the concept of bike packing, whether it's going hotel to hotel or carrying your own stuff. Just the idea of pointing your bike in a direction and going is so good for the soul.
Yup. Yeah. And this is like this bike packing. Totally. There's something special too about, you know, having your, just your stuff for the day and your bike. It's really nice to ride without gear. Your bike just handles so much better. You, you F you can climb better. And so the, the experience is just, it's such a delight. I guess. It's a treat to not have to carry all your stuff and just makes the riding that much more special.
Yeah, exactly. And then you get a course like the Oregon trail gravel grinder that is taking you into real wilderness. You get so much deeper in than you ever could have in a one day race obviously. And you get this just this massive adventure all under the guise of racing your gravel bike
With a bunch of other people. And that's the real, you know, anyone can go out and ride the Oregon trail route for free whenever they want and they should. That's, people should be doing these events with friends on non-event day. But I think something that's so special is the people that you end up meeting at these events is really what makes it, you do it because everyone else is there.
Yeah. And you, there's this unique thing where you might show up with your friends to start a race like that, but at the end of the day, the, each terrain and your individual ability levels are going to dictate where you sit. And it's this great opportunity that you find other people at your exact talent level that you just sort of randomly run into every day and they become your riding buddies even though you'd never met them before. It's such a cool thing when I guess the combination of when you find someone that you ride with well and then you also find out that you can jam conversationally. It's, that's one of the best things. It's like there's something magic there. It's it's very special, no doubt about it. So you've been involved in the gravel scene for a number of years, both as an athlete and a journalist. The last few years we've seen a lot of professional road athletes start to either dip their toe or embrace fully these quote unquote alternative calendars. What do you think about the influence of these new pros, perhaps big name pros from the roadside of sport jumping in? Is it, is it a risk of changing gravel? Is it a, is it a net positive?
Actually, it's great. I think no one at the New York city marathon is bummed that the fastest runners in the world are up front. Trying to break world records. And I think that that atmosphere at big running marathons is it helpful for it? It's just like these are the best athletes in the world doing their, their craft at a level that's, that's truly remarkable and I think that it serves to inspire the rest of the field. So I, I'm full favor of having pros at these gravel events.
So, you know, obviously there's such great mass participation numbers emerging with gravel and you have these events that are selling out lickety split. I wonder how the sponsorship model is going to change because I think it would be a shame to sort of imagine the team in iOS of gravel coming in with a massive war chest of money and hiring, you know, literally the, you know, the best 10 athletes and gravel and sort of dominating the scene. What do you think, how do you think the sort of sponsorship dollars are gonna flow and what would be a sustainable model for gravel to kind of envision? Well I hope
That that doesn't happen. And if it does almost sort of feel like we've been down that road with other aspects of cycling that have grown and then receded. I think gravel is just fundamentally a different game. And I think success in large tr in like a, on a macro level for, for gravel comes from focusing on the everyday rider. The person that invests in a gravel bike and goes out with their buddies and does some rides, maybe does a backpacking trip, enters an, I think that's the focus. And if we start seeing gravel teams and tactics, and I mean, maybe that will happen, but I don't think that to me is nearly as interesting as, you know, when we saw, what was it, 16,000 people trying to sign up for big sugar. That's, that's where we're, that's the interesting part of gravel these days.
Yeah, I think, you know, it's interesting as someone who sort of tries to put it two or three big events on the calendar, for me that means it keeps me honest in my training and you know, I have to stay focused to stay fit and healthy to get to the start line. Yeah, it's, it's, it's great for the industry because it gets me out on my bike. It's not like, you know, I had a year of doing crits for example. I didn't really think too much about it. I could just show up to a crit and do it and my sort of weekly fitness was, was fine. But with these gravel events, you really just need to put your equipment through the tests, through your body, through the test, and that leads to more purchasing decisions. You're going to go through tires, maybe you're going to think about things differently in terms of your equipment set up. So it does have all these positive elements for the bike industry as a whole.
Sure. And there's been so much great innovation in the bike industry around the gravel world. And I think that's only gonna continue. And so it's fun as a consumer. I think the bike industry loves it. It's yeah, I wonder, I guess how far can we innovate at the end of the day? These are just, it's a bike going across a, a rough road. I guess the next big question with the bike industry is E bikes in these gravel events.
Yeah. And I, I, I want to say I've witnessed one or two sort of sitting in there that that could be a warm hole that we may or may not want to go down.
Yeah. Well it's a, it's a wormhole for the future cause I think it's not going to go away. It's e-bikes are, you know, they're not, they're everywhere in Europe. They're coming to the U S they're coming to gravel line and you're going to see an E an E category in each. I think each main frame that these big manufacturers are going to have a, they're going to have a regular, what do people call them? Analog bikes and an e-bike version of, of every bike they make.
Yeah, I suspect you're right. And I, you know, I'm certainly one that I don't begrudge people who need help to get out there and experience the wilderness to get the help they need. Hm. Yeah. I will stay away from the rabbit hole. Yeah. I wonder if there's other, other sort of mass participation models that the industry needs to be looking towards. Like marathoning you mentioned earlier to kind of see the, of
How we can continue to grow and have it so that, you know, of the 16,000 people that were trying to register for that race and how do we actually get more of them to safely participate in these races so they can have the experiences? Yeah. Well, I think part of it is celebrating the effort and you know, gravel is these, these events are long and difficult and there's nothing like having that beer at the end of a, of a long, hard day on the bike. There's something so rewarding about it. And I think to try to think that gravel is just for fun and just it's like you have to continue to, I guess celebrate that it's difficult and that, you know, running a marathon is difficult and that's why people are there. And instead of, I guess making that seems to Epic, it's like you can just embrace that, Hey, this is gonna be physically challenging and and yeah, I signed up for it and here I am.
And that's just accepting that that's part of the experience. And it's actually part of what makes it feel so rewarding at the end. Yeah, absolutely. And that's something that all event organizers need to kind of be conscious of. You know, you, you want to embrace someone who wants to ride a short route. But I do think, you know, the marquee level events should all all be long enough that it's a day long test of your fortitude and adventure and strength. It's really interesting actually. Yeah. As these, you know, a lot of these bigger events have a 30 or a 50 mile, which I'm not here to say that we shouldn't be trying to get as many new people in the sport, and maybe that means doing, you know, a shorter event, but you don't see that at a marathon. Yeah, that's a big marathon.
They don't have the little or aK category, or at least I don't think they do. Yeah, that's a good point. I hadn't thought about that. You do see it in the ultra marathon scene where you might have, you know, a 10 K at 20 K and a 50K and a hundred K on the same course. Yes. Umut it is, it is interesting to think about. I, I think someone mentioned to me, like, for them it was great because their partner could come and show up and do an event that met their ability level and it meant they could come on that trip versus being excluded from a trip. You know, one thing that I think is important, so here's, here's my take. These shorter distance events are rad. Umnd they're important in getting new people in the door. I don't think that they should have awards and podiums and metals and that just shouldn't. To me, this is again, my opinion. Umhat's not the focus. I don't even think that should be the focus in the, in the, in the long events.
But especially getting people interested. I just, I dunno, I th I think it, it leads us down a road. We've already traveled in the road racing sphere mountain bike racing just traditional racing and focusing on podiums and results in awards, I think isn't how we stoke this fire the best going forward. Yeah, I'm certainly hoping we do not evolve to having short track gravel racing. Some might call that cyclocross, right? That is, that is actually just another word for cyclocross. But I could see, you know, what if they had a, a fun night race before the event that was on a, on a short, you know, like there, there could be a, you know, gravel's gonna continue a format. It doesn't have gravel, doesn't have to be this hundred, 150, 200 mile all day. Schlog it's gonna evolve and there's going to be little niche events and all sorts of different styles. So I think we'll see that actually coming from going forward. It'll be interesting. I remember sort of racing mountain bikes back, back at Mount snow and they had sort of even random community driven events during the Norman national weekend where they, they, they even had a naked parking lot. Correct.
Yeah. I, yeah, I think those, those style of riots are fun and just keeping them low key, keeping it about connection, celebrating the bike, just there it is. It's, it's fun first with those and then you can have sort of the all day suffer fast where the fun is in just accomplishing this, this big, this big goal and you know, overcoming the day. But I think those less Epic events matter as well. Yeah. I think Jeremiah Bishop said something that I think is t-shirt worthy, which is keep gravel weird. Yeah, totally. That's something worthwhile. So you're, you're actually, you've got another big year ahead of you in 2020. What are your plans and what are you most excited to do? You know, it's funny, I going into 20, 20, I was thinking I would really like to do more low key small events. Last year I was at kind of all these main events. And I, it looks now there's just, there's so many big successful, well-run events that I can't not go to them and it art, it almost just filled up my whole calendar. So I think, I think maybe if and when this endless gravel is no longer endless, I'll look forward to doing some smaller, more local events. But yeah, I'll be at sort of all the main gravel events of the season. Starting off.
Yeah. Yeah. Are you looking to sort of follow a similar path where you're, you're spending a lot of time in the van
Between events? I'll be out in the van and it's actually, I'm really looking forward to being, I missed the van already and yeah, I'm looking forward to being back
Back out there. Fun. Well, hopefully you'll have to find some smaller events in between point a and point B that you can hit to kind of break up the drive and fill your quotient. [inaudible]
Yeah. And I really think that's where you find that weirdos of gravel is that small events and sort of off beaten places. That's where there's the soul of gravel is still very much intact and you don't see, you know, big sponsor expos and fancy finish line presentations. It's just a bunch of people out riding bikes and maybe drink a beer afterwards. So are you saying,
Can I have a finish line without a pump up banner and big flags? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Well, right on Marshall. Thanks. I appreciate spending the time talking to me and I, you know, I appreciate your perspective on gravel in the future and am looking forward to following your journey across the States this summer.
Yeah. Craig, thank you. And thanks for what you're doing. I think it's important to keep these conversations about gravel going and I think answering questions, helping people. I think all of us that are in the gravel community right now that are fired up and stoked and have gravel bikes and gear, it's our duty to spread this to people that might be, that are on the verge of, of interest and to say, Hey, this could be for you. Invite people out for a ride, invite people to sign up for an event. This is how we grow the sport. And I think it, it's, it's everyone that's already in it that already understands how cool it is. I'm saying, Hey, this is, this is for more people to do it. So I'm excited to keep doing that. I think you're doing that and to all the listeners out there I hope that it's the same. So let's stoke the fire
Right on. I think that's a great takeaway. Thanks, Marshall.
Yeah, great. Thank you.
Thanks again to Marshall for joining the pod this week. What an awesome journey he had in 2019. And what an exciting year he's got planned in 2020. Definitely check out his musings, his writings. He's a great writer and it's got great contacts in the sport, so I encourage you to follow him on social media channels and check out his work over at cycling tips in this week's can't let it go. I wanted to talk a little bit about good rain gear. It's been a wet winter here in Northern California and I was really fortunate to have invested in some great rain gear. In many ways this goes hand in hand with a previous, can't let it go about gravel bags because when she have a bag on your bike you can just shove rain gear in and have it there. In case of an emergency. I've been riding in some Gore gear, which has been phenomenal.
I can't believe how compressible these jackets are. You can get it into a pocket or into one of these small bags pretty easily and they double up nicely as an extra layer coming off the mountain. So what I've found is I've just been leaving it in my frame bag and anytime I get to the top of a climb, I'm just pulling on that jacket, whether it's raining or shining. Just keeping that extra warm thin, which has been awesome. But in the rain, you know, these shake dry jackets have been phenomenal in that you literally can stay dry in a downpour, which has been amazing and super useful, at least in my commuting lifestyle. So whether it's this year or next year, definitely put that on your list of gear that you want to get. I can't recommend having a nice lightweight rain jacket in your arsenal of gravel gear. As always, I appreciate you listening. If you're wondering what you can do to help support the podcast rating and reviews are incredibly helpful in discovery. It doesn't take much time and five-star reviews really go a long way in spreading the word. So I'd love it if you could take a moment and do that for me this week. As always, I welcome your feedback. Hit me up on social media channels or directly craig@thegravelride.bike.
Until next time, here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
The Salsa Cutthroat has been THE gravel bike for the bikepacking set. If you look at the sport on a spectrum from 'road +' to 'bikepacking', the 2020 model is squarely on the 'bikepacking' side of the spectrum. In this episode, we hear from Salsa engineer and product manager's, Peter Hall and Joe Meiser about everything that went into the Cutthroat.
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Automated transcription (please excuses the errors).
Good day everyone and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast I've got two guests from salsa cycles and QBP talking about the 2020 salsa cutthroat. We've got Peter Hall and Joe Meiser from the team that have been intimately involved in the design and manufacturing of the salsa cutthroat. It's a really interesting bike for this podcast as we've sort of tended towards middle of the road gravel bikes. In terms of tire width, we've touched on some gravel plus, excuse me, some road plus bikes, but we've never really danced on the other end of this category, which is where the salsa cutthroat clearly occupies with 29 inch wheels, 2.4 tire inch tire capabilities. It's a pretty massive departure from sort of the more road oriented gravel bikes. So I was really excited to talk to them about this bike and the intention behind the design. It was really heavily influenced by the 2,700 mile tore divide route and those ultra distance events that we've talked about a little bit on this podcast. So with that, let's jump right in. Gentlemen, welcome to the show.
Thank you. Thank you for having us.
Absolutely. It's always a good place for us to get started. To learn a little bit more about your backgrounds as cyclist and since we're going to be talking about a very specific product, maybe you guys can also talk about what your roles are over there at salsa professionally.
Sure. Yeah. So I'm Pete hall. I'm one of the design engineers here at salsa. Ah, I, I think the best way to describe what kind of cyclists dimes I'm at. At my core, I'm a mountain biker. Certainly don't discriminate against the like gravel or pavement and absolutely love them. Love both, especially gravel. But you know, I think single track will for me always be the best. I don't know how many years I've been in the bike industry now have, I've never held drop outside the bike industry. I know that like shops [inaudible]
Yeah. So my name is Joe Meiser. I'm the senior product manager here at salsa cycles. I was a lead product manager on the new 20, 20 cutthroat. You know, I've been at QBP for 15 years. I've held roles as an industrial designer. I've led product development across our brands and I've led product in salsa full time for the last four years. I came into the brand at the time when the first Cutthroat was being launched and had the opportunity to work on the second generation, which has been pretty cool. My background as a cyclist is pretty wide ranging. Like P I would say I'm a mountain biker with a drop bar problem and I think that's probably reflected in a lot of our drop bar bikes. I started racing gravel in two and seven. The first gravel race I ever did was the trans Iowa and it sorta quickly Korean from there.
You know, the vernacular here is gravel roads and rural roads. And so I was racing events like Ragnar rock 100 in Redwing in the Driftless region in Minnesota. I was racing the on Monzo in 2008 and about that time and decided that I would go out and do the tour divide and we as a brand team had kind of started to see this niche of gravel and started designing bikes, kind of led that direction with big tire fit, just breaks, so on. And so I actually raised the tour divide in 2009 and was able to do that on the Fargo, which was really the predecessor to the cutthroat. And and then got to be part of the team when we launched the first gen cutthroat and now this one.
That's awesome. That's awesome. I'm actually really excited to talk to you guys because as I mentioned offline, I think on this podcast, you know, we've certainly covered road plus bikes and then bikes that are sort of in the sort of sweet spot of gravel of 700 by 40 or six four, six 50 by 47. And the cutthroat and salsa as a brand has always kind of occupied this more extreme and pending towards bike packing and ultra distance events. And you're really the first company that we've had on board to talk about that. When we think about the design of the cutthroat, can you go through some of those key elements that make it sort of more closely related potentially to a mountain bike than a road bike?
Yeah, sure. I think the really the biggest place to start there is it actually uses mountain bike tires. You know, it fits up to a 29 by two four inch tire designed around a hundred mil suspension fork as well. The geometry is definitely more influenced on the 2020 cutthroat from mountain bikes. Slacker head tube angles, a little bit to deeper seat tubes. You know, we slacked this one out to 69 degrees for more of that stability of for mountain biking. When you're careening down a single track or you know, if two are divided, you've got a lot of gravel roads, nasty gravel roads, two tracks, mountain passes, that kind of stuff. So the stability is really prized there. I think part where this thing of the cutthroat is influenced by more of the roadside then would be obviously the drop bars. But the big one I would say would be the drive train we put on this. It's a boost mountain bike spacing, but we worked with a race facing Easton to put chain rings on it so you can get road gravel chain rings like a 46 thirties, what we spec it with. So you have a two by road your drive train. I'm on a mountain bike platform, so you can really get a really wide range of daring for the really wide range of experiences of the cutthroat can do.
Interesting. And how, you know, you sort of referenced the kind of tore divide type writing that has really kind of infused the design philosophy or this bike. What are the elements of that particular ride that kind of demand this type of bike versus kind of a narrow retired gravel bike?
You know, for us, this goes back to the original Fargo and designing that bike. You know, when, when I started to plan for the tour divide one of the things that I really recognized was that the biggest issue that writers were having was hand and wrist issues and they're almost all riding XC mountain bikes at the time with flat bars. Some riders had started to put arrow bars on for different positioning, some comfort and maybe a little bit of an Aero advantage. And I looked at that event and I looked at the information that was out at the time in 2005, six, seven, just as blogs were starting to kind of bow out. And I thought, you know, this is really ultimately just the longest gravel race in the world and the road that it's on while it's billed as a mountain bike route.
It's rural gravel roads and it's stuff that we're riding these bikes on today. And so we as a team built that Fargo around a dirt drop, right experience. I mean, in a sense influencer, I would say absolutely influenced by, you know, bikes like some of the Cunninghams from, you know, the early nineties and late eighties. I've got pictures of, of Cunningham's on my, still on my board at my desk from that time frame. And so we looked at it, we said give riders multiple hand positions, give them option to be more comfortable and give them that choice. And that's where Fargo came from. And that's ultimately where cut throat comes from, is looking at that experience and designing for that experience.
Then on the tour divide route, are you getting into technical single track that sort of puts it a drop bar bike rider in a more challenging position than a straight bar.
You know, there, there are I think roughly 30 to 40 miles of single track on that route. Coming off the backside of the pass after you come out of Breckenridge, there's an option. And then as you get down into a silver city, New Mexico and you're in the healing mountains North of there, there's a section of the continental divide trail that's open to bikes. It's used and you know, it is technical, single track. But if you look at the overall mileage, you know, roughly 30 to 40 miles of 2,750 miles is single track. And so the bike is fully capable of riding single track and there are a few die hard there dropped single track riders that they use it that way. But really it's about riding those rockier rougher mountain passes where you know, you're just sending through rocks that are, you know, the size of softballs and basketballs and that sort of situation versus you know, the really buff single or a buff gravel that we experienced and gravel races on rural farm roads.
Yeah, I've got to imagine also the volume of the tires that you selected for this model play an important role when you're adding a lot of weight in terms of bags and gear you're needing for a multi day event.
Ultimately that's the case. You know, you're riding those big roads and you might be able to get away with less tire, but less tire means, you know, less load support. It leans a little bit less comfort. It means you got to pay a little bit more attention to tire pressures. You know, you may be more prone to flat on high-speed descents when you're coming across a water guard or a cattle guard at the descent bottom until most people just tend to trend towards the 2.1 2.2 on that tour divides specific experience.
Yeah, I was getting that feedback. A colleague of mine who actually see it shares the same bike as I do was riding the trans Northern California on six 50 B by 47 and he said to me, you know, nothing I encountered challenged that tire width but the weight on the bike had me laying around with air pressure so much that when it was comfortable I was bottoming out and flatting and if I was pumping it up too hard, it was just super uncomfortable. So it left me thinking like the bike I have, but is by no means really what I'd want for something like the tour divide for exactly the reasons you just described.
I think that's fair to say
Is speaking of handling, you know, you obviously guys have spent a lot of times thinking about the types of loads and even built features in to help the port bags and different caring configurations that you might have in some of these long distance events. And you talk about some of those elements of the frame and fork design.
Yeah, of course. I think we, you know, we've, we consider probably your best place to carry most of your gear is in the frame bag. It's down low, it's secure. It's in line with the center plan of the bike. It's really stable there. You obviously have your seat bag for a lot of stuff, but most of your weight really should be kept down low for handling and stability. So on the 2020 cutthroat, they actually increased the front triangle space and designed a new bag that has a little thumbscrews that mounted onto them. So there's a whole bunch of [inaudible] rib nuts on the inside of that front triangle. So it's, it's a really clean frame bag integration on not a bunch of Velcro straps to wear at your paint and that kind of stuff. And then on the fork, on both sides of the fork, we have three pack mounts that can take a water bottle or something like or anything. KJ HD and bag she can carry up to, I believe it's eight pounds per side in the anything cage. The handling was it's better to put extra weight, let small extra weight on your fork really helps to slow down the steering. And the mechanical trail we designed the bike around really plays nicely with that extra weight on your handlebars from a say like in anything cradle and then the anything cage having things on your fork.
Okay. So your thought about sort of slowing down the steering by the fact that, you know, it's likely there might be some weight put on there. Yeah. Interesting. And I think I read that the bike is also suspension adjusted so you can put a suspension fork on there as well if that's your jam.
Yeah, it certainly is. Yeah. We can fit up to like a 29 inch, 29 inch wield a hundred mil travel fork. You know, we see that you lose a mounting point, but you gain a lot of comfort for particularly rough, particularly rugged routes then.
Yeah. Did you find Joe on your own tour divide experience that that comfort was a challenge? Were you on a rigid fork? I assume?
I, I, when I wrote I was on a field bike and you know, the steel bike really did help damp vibration on the route. And I think that's, you know, something we really saw an opportunity to do with the first gen cutthroat. We added that class five feature into the back end of our frame. So we have that technology in all of our carbon, all road bikes, and that's really building an inherent damping into the frame as well as tuning the layup of each frame to handle vibration coming the road and really isolate the rider. You know, and that's not uncommon with, you know, after market accessories now and seed posts and stems and that sort of thing. As well as what other brands are doing. And we did that on a new bike as well with with its fork, we added a feature similar to class five where we added some for AFT flex to that frame and engineered that fork to compliment the frame while you're riding it.
Now from my perspective, I really like a suspension fork on the cutthroat. I, my current cutthroat bill, my favorite build now is a RockShox RS one on the front of it and a dropper post on that bike. And it's a lot of fun to ride that way and I hope to see more gravel bikes kind of come in to the ability to handle a suspension and suspension product for gravel in a lot of ways I would say for, you know, shorter events. I had the opportunity to go do grander O Japan as a launch of that. That set up was amazing. It was super fun to ride that course in Japan on the cutthroat for events like the tour divide. I wouldn't say I'd throw it out, but I would certainly do a lot more evaluation to make sure that my fork was going to hold up to that distance. So it's, you know, it's a weight factor, but it's also a performance, you know, is that forking I need service. Am I going to have bushing issues or seal issues during the event? And there are some recorded examples of time during the tour divide where forks have needed to be rebuilt in Steamboat or silver city before hitting the finish line because of seal issues and heat buildup and that sort of thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I gotta imagine with the extra weight on the front of your bike, the suspension is taking a little bit more abuse than it might do under your average body weight size.
Certainly that, and I think the higher speeds and the smaller vibration that suspension forks see during that type of activity versus off-road mountain biking where we, we tend to have higher impact
Is speaking of, of, of tuning the carbon. Since you're, you've got a bike that's potentially used in its home environment with just the rider weight, but you've also clearly built a bike that's going to carry load around it. Are you, are you having to kind of up the stiffness of it thinking that, you know, an average 170 pound rider on a 56 centimeter frame is actually going to be 200 pounds with the additional weight they may be carrying?
We do a little bit the rider gear is a percentage wise, quite as quite a small amount compared to the actual rider weight. So we do tune the stiffness of the bike to be a little stiffer than like say if this was designed specifically to be an unloaded like a single long day, kind of like a Warbird. This is definitely stiffer and pedaling and torsion in the handling for the front end. But honestly about the same, we tuned the VRS to be about the same. The chain stays and and fork flexibility to be pretty close because they undergo relatively similar loads. The weight is generally further forward in the frame and not really affecting say how the seat stays or flexing. If we had one to two specifically designed weight to be used on a rear pannier that something that's designed to, to bolt around that rear end, then we would definitely need to consider that more. But honestly the, the, the Rider-Waite makes such a larger difference than the gear you're carrying unless you're carrying like led spoons or something.
Yeah, I imagine so. It's interesting to me, you know, as the sport on the racing side of the sport, you've obviously got a spectrum of events from the, you know, the ultra distance stuff like tour divide and, and multi-day events, you know, across the Midwest and, and Iowa and different places. But you also have things like dirty Kanza with the DK 200 and I can't help but think, you know, for the average rider having a little bit of suspension via the bigger tires or even pure suspension on the bike starts to yield a lot of, a lot of benefits. You have the tradeoff of the weight, but you know, being able to stay comfortable all day long I think is going to help a lot of average writers get across those big finish lines.
Absolutely. I mean, we've
Talked about this a lot as the tour divide bike, right? So we're talking about a bike that salsa designed for an event that annually roughly 150 riders start
For some perspective. And that's, you know, that's something that we chose to do as a brand because we thought it was important, but that product wouldn't be around if only 150 riders annually purchased it. But you certainly see it as the primary bicycle at the start of the tour divide. Annually. We very quickly found that riders in gravel events, particularly dirty Kanza did want a bike like the cutthroat and we saw it quickly spill over into those spaces. You talked earlier about the big sugar gravel event that the founders of dirty Kanza and lifetime are starting in Arkansas. Well, Jim commons, a good friend of ours, someone who we've been involved with for a number of years with dirty Kanza, he rides a cutthroat in the gravel in Kansas and that
Surface down there, that base chert rock that they have, how rough those roads are. When you get out onto the open range, he really appreciates the big volume tires. And he talks about how he's been on group rides with other riders in Emporia and they're on graveling and having to hold that, that line of the two track, and he'll ride up on the Ridge between the two track because he's got two on tires and a bike that's really incredibly stable. So it's much more capable in that environment. And then the other part is the fit of it. It's a much more upright bike naturally because of the longer the axle, the crown on the fork, because it is suspension corrected. Your front ends a little bit higher. And so writers who want to be a little bit more upright have that comfort level writers that want those bigger tires for the rough roads, Creek crossings want that.
And so we quickly realized that the bike was seeing that secondary use case. And that was part of our intentionality with this. This current agenda has just launched to the market, particularly around the drive train, the P hall talked to earlier. I've worked at booths at dirty Kanza for a number of years during the expo. And I can pretty much tell you that on the hour I'm going to have a cutthroat rider come by from a version one cut throat and say, how do I get more gears on this? Can I put to buy on this? How do I make this bike more capable of gravel? And that's where that partnership with race, face Easton comes in to play it for salsa and new drive train options like GRX from Shimano. Make it much easier for us to design this bike with big volume tires, 29 inch wheels, and to buy a drive train. And I think that's pretty fantastic that we're able to get all that to work together to create a really awesome experience. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, if I can add on that, I [inaudible]
Personally, I used my Warbird at dirty Kanza this year, but the year I picked
A cutthroat from Michigan's coast to coast gravel race purely because of the comfort of the bike. And then Michigan is just the Sandy place. So those larger volume tires help you float through it. Whereas in Kansas, you're floating through gravel and chunky gravel. In Michigan, you're floating through just the sand. The cutthroat while you, you get more comfort out of it, comfort often equals speed for a lot of people. Especially if you maybe aren't at the pointy end of the race. Trying to win being more comfortable over a 10, 14 plus hour a day makes a big, big difference.
Yeah, absolutely. Could you describe the Warbird a little bit for us?
So Warbird is salsa is gravel race bike. A Warbird was the first gravel race bike to exist in the industry. We started that product from around, I think we had to nail it down. I think we'd say we launched the first one right around 2014. It seems like forever ago for us, but it's actually, it's not that long ago. And it's now on its fourth generation. We launched that last year in 2019 and you'll see a lot of the same features shared between control and Warbird. And so you'll see a bike that's designed for up to a 700 by 45 tire or six 50 by 47, but you'll see that the shorter axle, the crown, you'll see to see that lower stack, that ability to get into that more, you know, road or gravel race position.
Okay. So at a, at a simple level, like we're talking different wheel size and different tire with capabilities up to the cutthroat being sort of maxing out at one 89 by 2.4.
Correct? That's absolutely correct, yes.
Yeah. Got ya. I, you know, I think it's interesting in the conversations I have and just anecdotally with the writers I interact with, you know, there's loads of gravel athletes who are coming from the road side. They're, the jump to the cutthroat just seems absolutely massive to them when they're just thinking, Oh, I'm riding a road bike off road. But I do think, and I have seen over the last or years or so that people are embracing more and more mountain bike style bikes and mountain bike technologies on the gravel scene because they're, they're just seeing, they can simply go faster and be more comfortable.
Absolutely.
I think you guys are ahead of the curve there actually,
And appreciate that. You know, I'm not, I'll take a second to, you know, we recognize that you talked about road racers road riders coming off of a more traditional road bike where it's, it's quick, it's snappy, it's death. For salsa, we see an opportunity to really meet riders with how they're coming into the sport and make a product for them wherever they may be at. So, you know, cut. One of the jokes for us in the cutthroat is it's the mountain bikers gravel bike, right? It's not a big leap for someone who's been riding mountain bikes to go, well, this, sure. Big fat tires. Why wouldn't I want to do that? Warbirds really kind of that more dead center gravel race bike you know, there's a lot of competition in that space over the last several years with other brands coming into gravel.
And then on the other end of the spectrum, we have our war road, which is our endurance road bike. But even as a road bike, it's fits up to a 700 by 35 or six 50 by 47. And that bike, if you look at it in the purest form and the geometry and tire fit and handling switch pretty closely into the endurance road space, but with some additional capability to haul gear, hallowed do an occasional gravel race that's not incredibly aggressive. And so if you have that rider that is coming off the road and they're like, man, all these gravel bikes are really kind of slow and they're really long and I want something snappy, or that war road is kind of that choice for them. And so we have three performance carbon gravel bike for riders across the board.
Yeah, I think that's super important to note. And I, I'm a, I'm a big fan of a gravel bike and a couple of different sets of wheels and riding that on the road. So I love one, it sounds like in your, in your, in your suite it would probably be the, the Warbird where it would fit my fancy super off-road capable, but slap of a select set of road wheels on there and you're not really feeling like you're missing a beat.
Yeah, I would tend to agree with that. It's that you know, best all around her ultimately for a rider who's gonna have their gravel bike.
Yeah. And in talking to you guys, I mean listeners know here in Marin County, I feel like I'm squarely in in mountain bike territory in terms of what I consider a gravel riding and I like something aggressive with a big volume tire. I feel like I'm probably a pretty good cut throat customer and maybe even as I think Joe was mentioning, a suspended cut throat would be a hell of a lot of fun here in Marin County.
I think that's the case. You know, maybe in a lot of places where, and Marines, this kind of place where you have a lot of of back roads. But then you have like those single track cut throughs and that sort of thing. And I think that's one of the things that make cut, makes cutthroat fun as you can, you know, pop along the Creek for us or pop along the river and ride some single track pop back out, you know, hit the pavement, hit a alley, cut through whatever the case might be. And in a variety of situations. Have a good time.
Yeah.
Joseph is driving his commute home right there, pretty much.
I love it. I love it. Well, yeah, I know it's an exciting time to be in the industry and an exciting time to be a consumer. I think one of the drivers for me starting this podcast was really my personal journey to figuring out what bike is right for me and every day I don't think I'm actually getting any closer to it because there's just so many. And the key is to just find a bike that has the level of versatility that you're looking for and figure out the right wheelhouse you're in. So if you're, you know, a big off-road rider, rabbit cutthroat, it'll still work fine on the road, but it's not going to be the fastest thing on your group ride. If being the fastest on your group rides your jam, then it sounds like the Warbird road and get some knobbies to take you on, on gentle off-road trails. Might be the way to go
For sure. I think that's a good understanding.
Yeah. Well I appreciate the time you guys, I know it's a Friday afternoon and it sounds like Joe's got an enviable commute on the way home, so I don't want to keep you any, any longer. Anything else you want to reveal about 2020 for salsa and where you see this market going?
That's a big question. I certainly have a crystal ball of where I think the market is going. You know, I think to echo your statement, there's a myriad of awesome options available to riders out there. And you know, for salsa we wanna like I said, meet that rider where they're at and how they're coming into gravel because there are a huge number of riders still coming into gravel as a discipline and as a, as a sport. I think we'll see a lot more technical advance advancements along the way here without giving too much away. Like I said, I think suspension is going to be interesting and see if we see, you know, forks like the Fox really kind of take off and come into the sport and influence it more so full suspension, gravel bikes, you know, we're starting to see little things like that. There's that intersection of mountain and road going on that's interesting and exciting and it's fun for us to be a part of it as well.
Definitely. I think it's interesting to see as what will happen in the next couple of years in the gravel scene as American domestic road racing. The traditional road racing, you know, starts to die out unfortunately. And more and more of that, that group goes to gravel to see how that changes gravel. Look cause I think it's mostly been a lot of influence from mountain bike so far. But it'll be interesting to see how gravel evolves in the next couple of years. You know, world tour pros, retiring to win DK.
Yeah, I definitely agree with you on that. I think it's going to be fascinating to see how gravel race organizers are able to keep it dirty, if you will. Meaning keep it weird, keep it fun. I think evidence has shown that a great world tour pro cannot just know the line and expect to win any one of these races. The terrain dictates a lot of how they're going to be successful or whether their traditional road tactics will have any advantages whatsoever. I also think it's going to be interesting as the prize purses and the sponsorship dollars continue to increase in gravel. Will we see some of road pros adopt some of this suspension technology or other things that we've already seen the light bulbs come on about because it's purely gonna make them go faster. To your point about Bentonville, you know there's only certain number of lines that you can go down comfortably on some of those roads and being able to peek out and slam through some river beds and bigger sized rocks. It could be an advantage in some of these races that have those technical elements in the terrain.
Yeah, definitely.
As a gentleman, I really appreciate the time. I love learning more about the cut throat. It's a a category of bike that's always intrigued me and I'm a huge fan of the tour divide so I appreciate you guys supporting those athletes and giving that perspective in addition to the other elements of the sport that you guys have been focused on.
Well thank you. We appreciate your time as well and the ability to kind of share our story and our product.
Big thanks to Peter and Joe for joining the podcast this week. It was fun for me geeking out around the tour divide and this type of bike. I don't know about you guys, but every June I am a. Dot watcher. I love watching the tour divide. I love looking at all the rigs, and it was interesting talking to them about the different kind of performance requirements of riding a bike that distance. I have to say, you walk away from a conversation like that. Really thinking about the fun factor of riding these drop our bikes and the cutthroat with those large tires would likely be a hell of a lot of fun, particularly here in Marin County and quite versatile. When you think about the type of off-road adventures you can do with it, fully loaded kind of expedition style out there in the woods. So that's it for this week's podcast. As always, I welcome your feedback. You can hit me craig@thegravelride.bike or on Instagram or Facebook. As always, it's a big help if you can rate or review and definitely share this podcast with friends. Helping with discovery is one of our biggest challenges here at the gravel ride. Until next time, here's defining some dirt under your wheels.
Former World Tour Pro, Peter Stetina joins the podcast this week to discuss his decision to leave the World Tour to race gravel in 2020.
Peter Stetina Instagram
Automated Transcript (please excuse all typos)
Greetings everybody and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast we've got professional cyclists, Peter Stetina. If you're a fan of professional road cycling, you'll probably recognize Peter's name from his time in the pro Peloton, most recently with the Trek SegraFreddo team, and if you follow the gravel cycling scene closely in November of last year, Peter dropped. What dare I say is a bit of a bombshell. He decided to forego a future in the European Peloton, which was available to him and take a crack at being a gravel privateer. Peter's contract in 2019 allowed him to dabble in a few gravel events and his impact was immediately felt at the front end of the race, having one Belgian raw full ride come second at dirty Kanza and put in a pretty stellar performance in the Leadville 100 mountain bike race. It was great to learn a little bit more about pizza process and making this decision. What is 2020 calendar is looking like and how he plans on modifying his training as a gravel athlete versus his time in the pro Peloton. With that, let's jump right in. Pete, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Well, I usually start off by asking my guests to talk a little bit about your background. I think you've been in the press enough lately that I'll do a little summary in the show notes that people can look into. But suffice it to say your announcement in November of 2019 sent shockwaves through the gravel community when you decided to not continue pursuing your prayer road career over in Europe, which was definitely an option for you and sort of embrace this alternative calendar. Let's start by talking about 2019. Obviously you put your foot in the water and gravel racing and winning BWR and racing and DK and getting second there. What was going through your mind in 2019 as you were doing double duty and what led to the decision for what you're going to be doing in 2020?
Yeah. You know, it was, um, it, it started even back in my mind at the end of, uh, 2018 last year. Um, I had had some health problems. I was actually suffering with, um, Epstein BARR virus, which is the precursor to mono all season. And it was undiagnosed and the, the road results weren't clicking, my body wasn't firing. And I was, I was struggling to get the, the contract renewal and you know, I've been doing this a decade. I felt like I had a place in, in the world tour, but it was, you know, just things weren't clicking. And I was second guessing myself and my body and the longevity in the sport. And, um, I kind of saw these races, you know, starting to gain traction. And, you know, I, I started thinking, you know, I wanna I want to experience these. And, um, and then, you know, Trek came back to me and they said like, yeah, you had a good to season, you represent the USA at the world's, like you had some good Italian classics, like, let's jam again.
You, you know, we trust you. And so I, you know, I was gonna I was able to sign on again with Trek, but I kind of said, you know, Hey, like some of these events are big in the U S and they make sense and I want to try him. And this is actually totally independent to what the guys over at ETF were doing. I had no idea they were planning this even though Alex houses one of my best buds. Um, you know, he's one of my groomsmen in my wedding. He didn't tell me that was going down. And, uh, um, so it was kinda funny how I, I went to Trek and I said, Hey, I want to do these. And the road team, you know, it's, it's Italian run more or less over in Europe. Uh, they went to Trek marketing in Wisconsin and they just were like, Hey, you know, Pete is kind of putting his foot down.
Like he's, he's really adamant about doing this. And Trek Wisconsin said, hell yeah, that makes sense. Like, these races are legit here. Um, and that same week, funnily, funny enough, um, ETF announced their alternative program so it looked like it was, you know, kinda together, but it definitely wasn't at all. Um, it was just circumstance. And, um, and so then, yeah, this year I basically, I, I raced a full world tour calendar. I think I had 82 race days in the world tour plus, um, a handful of alternative events, which was, uh, the Belgian waffle ride, the dirty Kanza Leadville 100 plus. Um, just a couple of local events. A couple of grasshoppers as you guys in North Cal know, and also some bike monkey events like fish rock. Was that difficult with your, sort of, the team management over in Italy to make space for you in the calendar to come back and do that many events?
Um, yeah. You know, they, we had it in the contract and they, they had to let me do them. Um, and they supported it 100%. You know, Trek was great about it. Um, it was definitely, it was hard to mentally convince the European management that this makes sense to do because it's just, it's, it's a very unique U S scene right now and Europe world tour road racing is still fine and healthy. You don't have races like the Torah, California folding and all that. So it's, they didn't, they didn't quite understand it, but at the same time they heard, they knew from Trek and I saw that there was this movement going on and they said, yeah, why not? Um, you know, there, I was protected by having it in my contract. You know, cause we did run into a couple issues, uh, later in the year. For example, suddenly a couple guys got sick and crashed and they wanted me at tour Roman D but I already had Belgian waffle ride in my contract. And I kinda, you know, it was like, no guys, like I'm here in California at Belgian waffle ride before California. Like I can't come back to Europe again for the Roman Dee. And they fully respected that and let me race and I think they were happy when I want it, but at the same time they were kind of like, well, Stan is not doing his duty at the world tour too.
Right. It's not, not exactly putting points in the team's coffers.
Well, you know, it was just, it was a, it was a line to touch him to toe, but at the end of the day, like they really supported it. I mean they gave me the custom bikes for dirty Kanza and all the equipment I needed and I then they admitted they saw the marketing boost come out of these alternative races was, it was huge.
Yeah. It's quite, it's quite disproportionate, I think to the actual success or failure of your efforts.
Yeah. Yeah. So, um, no, it was, it was great. It was a great season and I got to kind of, you know, just tow the waters a little bit, a bit of a soft entry to see if this gravel thing really made sense and if there was this possibility there and then, you know, towards after Leadville and well are dirty cans, I started thinking, you know, like this is phenomenal. Like this scene in the outreach and during Torah California people would be yelling at me on the climbs about Belgian waffle winner. You know, it was actually, it surprised me how excited people were on that. And then, um, I did an interview for Eurosport about riding gravel cause they're like, what the heck is this? Why is a road pro playing around in the dirt? And, and so it started to gain traction and dirty Kanza I, it just expanded on that.
And then led Villa was again and it, it was, I, I just, I realized this is where I really enjoy racing. Like I said this in a print interview, but I had more butterflies in my stomach before dirty Kanza than I did before the, you know, the start of the Welter. And that said something to me deep down and, and my wife was able to point it out. Um, and uh, and so eventually I had to make the decision, you know, where, where I want to go. And you know, that was, that was a hard decision. It was, you know, the tried and true path that I've done for a decade. And, you know, there's a setup, uh, there's, there's, um, guarantees in it and there's a stability in it, um, as stable as cycling can be, I guess. But you know, there's, there's a pipeline.
Great. So you've put in, you know, you're putting your solid season on off road with these marquee events in 2019. You've been thinking about it for awhile. As you just kind of mentioned the economic decision, much like any professional, you've kind of got trade-offs, you've got security versus the unknown. You've got a big maybe infrastructure that you're involved in at the pro tour level versus making decision to essentially create your own small infrastructure to go out and pursue these things you're excited about. So I think all the listeners can kind of grapple and understand what you must have been thinking at that point. And it's a huge leap of faith to kind of come in and, um, take the private tier approach. What was that like, kind of creating a program that would meet your sort of family economic needs as well as your passion to pursue the types of events you wanted to go after?
Yeah, that, you know, that was, that was the big question Mark in my mind is, you know, is this going to be viable? I mean, I, this is where I will be happiest racing my bike. But you know, world tour pays well and it's, it's, it's a job as well as a passion. And you know, I have a family, I have two mortgages with Santa Rosa and Tahoe. Um, you know, and I have to make ends meet and, and I also, you know, to, to do myself and my sponsors, right. And to be able to fully focus and give my all as a bike racer and a brand ambassador and an athlete, it's, you know, I didn't want to be working in a cafe on the side. Like I really, you know, could I make this financially viable? Um, and I kinda had to test the waters again a little bit.
You know, I, I kinda, I softly reached out to a few companies and I got, you know, some, some big commitments early from guys that, you know, they have a, um, a reputation in the cycling industry. And I think once you have a few names on board that was able to validate my decision to others. Um, and, uh, you know, I'm lucky enough to say now that I will be able to, uh, make this thing happen. Like I'll, I'll be able to pay my mortgage and race my bike still. But eventually, you know, all my life is in California and my family and my happiness and my friends. So, you know, I, I didn't want to continue to live in Europe for the next decade. Um, so if anything, and if I can keep racing grapple for longer cause I still love racing, I'm 32, I'm at the prime of my career physically.
Like maybe it will be the right move in the long run. Um, but uh, I mean yeah, it was, it was a very calculated move and it's um, it's going to be a lot more sweat equity. It's a lot more of the hustle. It's, but it's also a lot more validating. You know, I'm able to work with sponsors that I have direct relationships with. I can text the president of the company and, and give feedback and, and you know, promote brands that I actually truly care about and believe in instead of, you know, the, the old pro model of, you know, here's a sponsor that we signed. Now you have to tweet about them. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. No, I think what was really interesting about your announcement was just, you know, clearly you could have continued on over in Europe and you made this decision, which I think is, uh, in a very unique moment in time and gravel where you can come and do that. Obviously we've had big name X pros who have retired and then joined the gravel cycling scene. But you made a very conscious effort to say, I'm not retiring, I'm, there's continuity in my professional cycling life. I'm just switching disciplines and creating my own program, which I think is going to be something that a lot of other athletes that may be in a similar position to you in the pro Peloton will start looking at you and thinking about that since, jeez, Peter was able to do this successfully and now instead of being on the road racing, you know, 90 days a year, he does, you know, 15 great events and he gets to spend a ton more time with his family.
Yeah. You know, well, it's going to be a lot more than 15 events, I'll tell you that. But, um, no, it's true. And it was, it was very strategic and the messaging had to be right. You know, I, I can, I could see the Twitter trolls already lining up, you know, saying, Oh, Stenton is over the Hill. He's just the lengthening the career. But that wasn't the case. You know, I had the backup of having a great 2019 season my age, my last world tour race, I was 15th GC in China and, you know, got a ton of points for, for Trek Sager Fredo like, I mean, if you look at the stats, I'm not over the Hill and [inaudible], but it was just about showing that like, I mean, I'm still competitive as hell and I want to race my bike. This isn't a retirement tour. And, and I had that one chance with that Velo news article to really set the tone.
And, and luckily enough, I did that and I, I gotta say my 2 cents. Um, and, uh, then it's, I mean, that the outpouring was, it was really validating. You know, it was, I think it was probably at least 98% positive. There were very, very few Twitter trolls. And I think of the few that I saw, I was like, someone would just chime in and being like, have you ever dreamed of being your own boss, man, and following your dream? Like kind of just shut them up. So, um, no, it was, yeah, it's great. And, and I gravel's inclusive and I hope this is a blueprint for other guys. You know, I don't want to be the only guy doing it this way, you know, I think there's, there's room for more guys. I mean the, the, the fan base and the industry is behind this and gravel's legit and, and I hope and I think there's a lot of eyes on me next year and to see if this is a worthwhile effort. Um, and, and if so, I think you may see more guys jumping this way. Um, and, and to those guys, I can just say, hell yeah, come join. Like there's, there's more room around the campfire, so.
Yeah, absolutely. So what is your 2020 calendar look like? Have you, have you scoped it out specifically yet?
Yeah, I know. I'm still finalizing things on, on here and there, but it's, uh, it's, it's all encompassing. It's, um, and it's going to be all the biggest gravel races, especially state side, which is where gravel's big right now. Um, I'm gonna start out early season with just some, some local stuff. The grasshoppers in Norco, the bike monkey, fish, rock. Um, and then, uh, my first national caliber race is going to be the land run 100 in March. Um, you're going to see me at Belgian waffle ride, dirty Kanza, the lead boat challenge, both Steamboat and Leadville. Um, grind, Duro, grind, Duro UK, Iceland, wrist. So I'll have some, uh, European trips. Um, even going to see me in Japan. I got some Japanese sponsors that are stoked and I guess, uh, gravel and cycling's, you know, it's, it's big over there. Um, and uh, I'm gonna even do a, there's a, a gravel stage race called the Oregon trail that I, uh, will be fully in. And I mean that's right up my alley cause that's, it's a full on stage race, which is my bread and butter. That's, that's all I've done for the last decade. And now it's, it's a gravel stage race, which is rad. Um, and uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's all the big dogs.
Exciting. And how, how are you going to personally define your success in 2020? What does a a good year look like for you?
Um, you know, it's, there's more that's, that's a very loaded question. I mean, yeah, there's gotta be race and winds and there's gotta be podiums and those are Uber important at the end of the day for, for your persona, for your sponsors to show you're not on a retirement tour, you know, you gotta I've talked the talk, now I have to walk the walk. Like I got to start getting these big rides in. And um, but also, you know, the, the idea of being a whole encompassing athlete and something that I, I started to say earlier is just to, you know, a a more gratifying experience, you know, and, and just having this direct relationship with sponsors and hoping that they see the value that I can represent them well and be a voice for them. I mean, a big part of what I'll do is, is uh, R and D and, and some content creation.
You know, I'm not mr YouTube channel or anything, like I'm still just focused on riding my bike fast, but, you know, just, just representing my, my partners in, in a a wholesome light and you know, and showing that this is, you know, I'm not just some wa robot who cares about winning races, but you know, it's about kicking back and having a beer with everyone and the community of gravel, which is what sold me in this whole movement in the first place. Um, and uh, yeah, just to, just a very gratifying love of two wheels across all aspects.
Right. On, you mentioned this a little bit in your, your enthusiasm around the Oregon trail, gravel grinder, a stage race, but are there particular types of courses that you feel well suited to,
uh, go climbing? You know, I'm, I've made my, my career as a pure climber. So, um, you know, the more vert there is, the better. The harder courses. I was always better. Even in world tour races in, in the attrition races, the ones that are just on all day. I, I don't, I don't break. That's my actual, that's my strongest suit in cycling, so.
Okay. Yeah. Well that was certainly evident in your performance that at DK this year.
Yup.
So I imagine that your, your training's going to take a slightly different form at the least through the winter and into the year. Can you talk about how you're going to modify what you're doing from what you may have done in the past for your road training?
Uh, yeah. You know, I, I've actually had got this question a lot and, and my answer's always the same. It's like, I mean, we should talk again at the end of the year. I, it says it's, it's a step into the unknown. I mean this year I had good success in gravel, basically moonlighting in these races and off of residual world tore fitness, which is the best fitness you can get. Um, you know, now I'm going to have to train a lot more. I'm not going to be stage racing anymore. I'm not going to be pushed to that limit in races the same. Um, however, you know, it's, I'll be able to train more specifically for the requirements. I'm guessing it's going to be a lot less day after day blocks. Um, a lot more long, long rides. I mean all these gravel races are between six to 10 hours more or less. Um, whereas world war training is more like four or five hours day after day after day. You know, I'm thinking I'll maybe do one or two days, but like big long Epic adventures and then recover a bit more. Um, I'm also guessing I have to put on a bit of upper body weight, you know, for more power, raw power and torque.
And how are you on the technical stuff off road?
I can hold my own. I mean, uh, you know, I grew up racing a mountain bike in Colorado. Um, I always got loose in, in dirt corners playing around out there and I'm not the best bike handler, but I'm better than your average roadie I would say. I mean, I won VWR on a road bike on 28th, so I was able to pick my way through those sections quick enough.
Yeah, that's certainly says something. So I know you're pulling together your kind of own private tier program. What are the companies that are going to be supporting you in sponsoring you in that effort and what equipment are you really excited to get on this year?
Um, yeah, you know, it's, it's cool. Well, it's, it's, it's about finding companies that align with you and your values as a person and you really have to think more about, it's, it's such a different mindset than just I pedal bike fast, I go fast, like, and I focus on going winning races, you know, which was the world tour. It's, it's who, who is Peter Stena as an, as an athlete and a, and a representative. And you know, for me that was long energy, sustainable, uh, breaking away from the mold. And you know, there's a bunch of like little key words that you could make sound real pretty. But you know, that was, that was the gist of it. You know, I'm not a flashy rock star by any means. And so you start like looking at different companies and how they promote themselves. And, and you know, a big one that kind of instigated this whole thing was cliff bar and you know, Gary Erickson is a personal friend of mine and, and hit the whole story of cliff bar and how he, you know, walked away from a sure thing to follow his dream.
Um, you know, get, he, he 100% was behind this from the beginning, you know, and that's, that's, you know, so cliff bar will be a big part of my thing. Um, Canyon bicycles, um, they're like myself, multi-disciplined. You can, they have Uber competitive road, gravel, mountain bike frames, um, always kind of cutting edge on technology. Um, real progressive mindset. Um, Sporkful clothing. I mean, that's one of my oldest relationships in the sport and they are quite technologically advanced and they're their family. Um, Ooh, who else? IRC tire. They're going to be a fun one. Um, and tire selection is so important in, in gravel, maybe the most important. I mean, if you flat, that's, yeah. Your fish a dead fish in the water. Um, and, uh, there's, uh, yeah, there's a Oh, and a Shimano. That's a big one. Um, they're, uh, they're the best.
Yeah, it's Shimano and Shimano family. You know, I'll be, um, tip to tail Shimano. So I'm talking not only the group sets, but also the, uh, the pro, uh, bars and saddles. Um, the saddlebags, the, and the Shimano shoes, uh, sunglasses and helmet, which is laser sport that Shimano owns. So I can really, um, highlight the entire Shimano family range. Um, and I'm keeping it under 10 sponsors. You know, I don't want my, my race Jersey looking like a, uh, like a 10 K running event tee shirt. You know, I want it to look professional and clean and, and fast and sexy and, you know, so I'm, I'm trying to focus on, on less than 10 sponsors where I can really support them and, and give them my all to, to make sure it's a two way street. Um, and I'm now talking with, uh, there's a couple more to be announced and I'm talking with a couple of non-endemic guys to, to really, you know, cause gravel's a lifestyle.
Yeah. That's awesome. It certainly sounds like from equipment perspective, you're going to have everything you need in your quiver to tackle things ranging from, you know, Leadville to BWR which is [inaudible].
The cool thing about gravel is it's every race is a different setup. I mean there's always a different tire gearing combo so you can really highlight an entire range and, and, and everyone's curious, you know, what, what are a, what are the best guys running and to, cause they are these the, the age groupers doing these, like they're nervous about finishing this thing. I mean, how are you going to complete dirty cancer without getting a million flats, you know, what are you going to run pressure wise, tire tread wise, all of it gearing wise. Um, and you know, so I can really, you know, speak to that. And, and also it's the, there's always a different, yeah, there's always a different combination. It's, it's really fun on the tech side.
Yeah, that was really one of the Genesis behind me starting this podcast was just my exploration of what was going to be the right gravel bike for me. And inevitably the first one I set up was not right at all when I actually got it out on the terrain in my backyard here. It really kind of evolved over time and having these conversations with athletes, product designers and event organizers has just helped crystallize how fun and interesting and how much information the average athlete needs to know and learn about gravel in order to figure out how to get the right setup. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it will be interesting to kind of revisit this conversation at the end of the year to see how you reflect on your choices around training, the types of racing you did. So I'm excited to have had this conversation early in the year and get you on board. I wish you a ton of luck this season. We'll definitely run into each other and some of their upcoming rides in North Cal before you set off on your your world tour.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Right on. All right. Thanks Pete.
Big thanks to Pete for joining the show this week and best of luck to him in the 2020 season. I can't wait to see how this all pans out with all these new talented athletes coming to the front end of these races. Before we go this week, I wanted to introduce a little bit of a new segment. I'm calling it can't let it go and what I can't let go of this week. Our bags for gravel bikes throughout the winter I've been using my or not handlebar bag, a frame bag from revelation and I can't underscore the utility these bags in the winter months. It's been great just having an extra layer when I get to the top of Mount Tam particularly rain gear, just being able to put it in there just in case is making me a lot happier. It's funny. As a road cyclist, I'd never would have dawned on me to put a lot of bags on my bike.
I would always in fact avoid it and my friends around the area will constantly make fun of me if I show up to a road ride with my gravel bags on them. But I have to say it's well worth the flack you're going to take when you pull out that extra set of gloves or a jacket for a big descent. It just makes sense. So I encourage you to give them a try. There's a lot of bags and a lot of options out there, but like I said, I've been pretty happy with both sizes of the or not bar bag and I'm also a big fan of the revel. Eight bags better known for their bike packing gear, but super awesome when you need extra carrying capacity. So with that, I wish you a happy new year. As a reminder, if you have any feedback, feel free to shoot me a craig@thegravelride.bike or leave a comment on one of our social media platform channels. As always, we appreciate ratings and reviews. It really helps with our discovery and feel free to share this episode with friends that ride until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under wheels.
Thank you from Craig at the Gravel Ride Podcast. Best of luck in your 2020 season.
This week we tackle training plans, gravel camps and the oldest gravel in America with Hunter Allen, founder of Peaks Coaching Group.
Peaks Coaching website
Peaks Coaching Instagram
Automated Transcript, please excuse any typos:
Good day everyone and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton as we're in the middle of winter 2019 2020 I thought it'd be a good opportunity to talk to a coach, so this week I've invited Hunter Allen from peak coaching group onto the podcast. Hunter's got a background in professional road cycling as well as experience coaching thousands of athletes. At this point, we wanted to dig into some of the different elements when preparing for gravel events. Looking at your 2020 calendar, I was curious not only to explore structure and power workouts, but also the notion of grit and overcoming adversity because I think you simply can't Excel in gravel cycling if you're not prepared to have a left hook thrown at you at any point during the event, whether it's loose gravel, technical terrain or anything's going to take you out of your zone. You've got to be both physiologically prepared for these type of events, but also psychologically prepared to attack whatever's thrown at you. It was a great conversation with Hunter. He's based out in Bedford, Virginia, and is also producing a gravel camp in 2020. So let's jump right in with Hunter Hunter, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me on
For sure. As is customary on the gravel ride podcast. Let's start by learning a little bit more about how you came to gravel cycling. And maybe just for the listeners perspective a little bit more about your background as a cyclist in general.
All right, excellent. Yeah, so I mean, I live here in a really beautiful place in Virginia with lots of beautiful mountains and small roads and you know, it's we've got all these incredible paved roads, but then we've got these amazing gravel roads too, which you know, just for years, ever since you know, I've been riding on the road, just kinda did, right. I mean, it was just, they were little connectors between other paved roads and such. And then all of a sudden, like gravel riding thing became a thing and it's like, wait, Oh wow, I can get a bike that's more specific to this and actually seek out these roads now and go have a lot of fun. So that was, that's kind of this the way that I discovered him.
And did it start to take over more of your interests and mileage?
You know, it's probably evened like a, I still love the speed of pavement and in our little country roads that we have here. And but it's probably even now, I mean for me, I can jump off a jump out both, you know, my office where my house and jump on a gravel road within two or three miles of, of either place. So it's kinda like, well, what's the mood? What am I, what am I in the mood for? To be honest. We're really fortunate that way.
Yeah, you're lucky to have that option. And people should look at where Bedford, Virginia is just to get a sense of the type of roads and terrain that a Hunter's got in his backyard.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, just a little of my background, you know, I came from a, I started racing BMX when I was a kid, so race, BMX all the way till I was 18, so have lots of that kind of a, you know, jumps and you know, background from, from thrashing on a BMX bike and then a race mountain bikes in college and rode bikes in college and was fortunate enough to get a pro contract in the middle nineties with the navigators team and raise for them for a few years. And, and I had a lot of fun and after that started the whole coaching thing. So it was a, it's been quite an evolution, but at the same time it's a, you know, cycling is the thread that has woven itself throughout all of my life, which I'm very fortunate and thankful for.
So in your coaching career, obviously with a professional road background, I imagine your earliest clients probably came from a road background or had intention of writing and performing well on the road. Did you start also training mountain bike athletes back in those early days? Yeah, for sure.
I mean, and actually my very first client ever in 1995 while I was still a pro and not on navigators, was a mountain bike or a local guy. And Chad Davis is his name and he came to me and said, Hey, you know, I really want to be a pro cyclist, a pro mountain biker, what do I, you know, would you take me under your wing and teach me and coach me? And I was like, yeah, sure, I'll do my best. And so I started coaching him and training him and, and you know, he went from like male sport all the way to, you know, basically pro in a couple of years. So, and then he started telling all of his buddies and everything. And so it was like, Oh, wow. You know I actually might have a future in the coaching world,
Right. On and back then, given the sort of tools that were available to you, was it more about structuring workouts and intervals and less so about technology? I imagine?
Yeah, for sure. I mean, and that was back in the day of the fax machine of course. And you know, it's like okay, type out a workout and then fax it to him because nobody had email. Then of course so that was, that was the way it was and, and you know, and then, then there was no such thing as workout libraries where you created, you know, libraries of different workouts that you can reuse and stuff. It was, it was okay, well I'll just type it all out here in a word document and keep building it from this. So it was very labor intensive and at the same time, very, very personal because it was like, Oh, wow, if I'm going to write a training plan, this is going to, I'm going to sit down here and take, you know, a couple of hours to make this thing happen. So thankfully we have some tools now that make it a lot less labor intensive.
Yeah. How has that evolved
Over the last decade? Say, how are you working with athletes today? Obviously the power of email and the internet and a lot of great programs and software that's available is making, sharing whatever a lot easier. Right. Well, I mean, that's been, I mean, I've been very fortunate in that I was one of the founders of training peak software. I, myself and a guy named Kevin Williams created cycling peak software, which is the desktop analysis software to analyze power data. And then we merged that company with a company that Joe Friel, Dirk Friel and a Gary Fisher founded called training bible.com after Joe Friel, the cyclists training Bible. So training Bible and cycling peaks became training peaks. And I was one of the, one of the founders there and one of the owners for many, many years. And that was a lot of fun and had had a hand in developing a lot of the tools that allowed us to, to create calendars and drag and drop features and here's different collections of workouts that we called, you know, a library where, okay, well here's all my anaerobic capacity workouts, or here are all my FTP workouts and and then build on top of that.
So and then of course all of the power training stuff that came along with that training, stress score, FTP, performance manager charts, you know, so, so all of those, those, you know, cutting edge pieces you know, I've had a little hand in some of them. I've had a little tiny pinky finger in some of them. And it's been fun. I've been really very blessed.
And how do you find that as translated to your relationships with your athletes and what you're able to kind of work with them to achieve?
You know, it's been really interesting. It's a great question. Actually. Nobody's ever asked me that question. So bonus points for you. That's always fun to get a question you ever gotten for the, so one of the ways that it's changed is before there was a lot of, a lot of my coaching time, right? Because when you hire a coach, you're essentially hiring their time as a coach. You only have two things to sell, right? You only got two things to sell if your knowledge and you have the access to your knowledge and that's it. Like that's all I have to sell. And so a lot of that time that I spent was spent writing the training plan instead of you know, doing the analysis of what happened afterwards and then also really spending time showing the athlete what their data means.
And then thirdly, really getting to how they feel. Right? Because before, you know, when we had all these, before we had all these tools, it was, didn't really have a way to understand the data, right? There was no quantitative way to see if one was the athlete doing what I asked them to do to, they were responding. And so you spent a lot of time writing this plan and then you talk on the phone and you hope that through conversation you got out of them what you needed to adjust the plan for the next one. And now it's like, well, I got all this data. And so I know exactly what they did. I know exactly how they responded. I know if they're fatigued or not. And so I can show the athlete that data and I can show them, okay, here's where you are.
You know, and sometimes you got to convince people to take a rest. Sometimes you've got to convince people to train harder. And, and sometimes you got to convince people like, okay, you just need to maintain right now. But the other thing that I would say that's been interesting is because you have that data, like that's a known, right? That's a known, the unknown is, again, kind of back to what we did a long time ago. How do you feel? So those are the things that you know, that conversation is always there, right? That conversation is always there and now I have a chance to spend a little more time in that conversation and get better feedback from the athlete about how they're feeling or their muscles sore, how are they sleeping? And we've got some other tools that help us too. But you know, it's been a change across all of these different spectrums. So to speak.
Yeah, it's interesting. I, in my cycling career went through a period where when HeartWare rate was the sort of big metric, we were always looking out before power meters that I got really burnt out on the data and felt like the joy of writing was getting sucked away from me and I wasn't a competitive athlete at that point. So I realized, you know, for me, backing away and riding for the joy of riding was going to get me out more and help me enjoy it. But everything I've read and friends who are riding power meters, it's clear that those data points are useful in many ways. And I like how you're describing that. You also have to layer on that how you feel. And I think any good coach athlete relationship, there's going to be some give and take. And it'd be, I'd be curious to know, you know, I imagine you train athletes from young ones who are coming up and really aspiring to be professional athletes to older masters athletes who are just looking to get the best out of their own personal performance. I imagine in that latter category, you've got people who may come in with certain, you know expressed expectations about what they're going to be able to achieve, but the data, their life and what they're mimicking back to you and your conversation really shows that, Hey, we gotta dial this program back and we need to fit into what you can achieve in your life.
Yes, yes, I agree. And, and that's not always easy, but that's probably the one of the key parts of creating the right plan for the right person. Because one, you've got to match up three different things. One, you've got to figure out what the athlete's good at, right? What are your natural strengths and weaknesses and what are those strengths and weaknesses that are developed? You've been riding for a long time. Then you really develop those strengths and weaknesses, you know, and, and we know, okay, you are a sprinter or your phenotype is a time trial list, climber, stage racer or endurance person. And then we've got to take what we know about you, so your unique physiology and then match that up with your goals. So once we say, okay, well, you know, what are your roles? Well, male, my goal is to do the, the DK 200 next year.
Okay, well does that actually fit with what you can do? And well this year your longest ride was 60 miles. And why was it 60 miles? Well, because you have this stressful job that you worked 50 hours a week, you got three kids, you know, you travel on planes and you know, the maximum you can train per week is seven hours. And that's like a really good week. And so all of a sudden it's like, ah, you know, I don't really think that even though you have the, the phenotype or the strengths and weaknesses to actually achieve this goal realistically in your life, you're not going to be able to achieve this unless something changes. Right. Unless we, we, we completely re re rejigger your, your life. And so we try, I'm always trying to match up those three things and say, okay, goals have to equal, we have to be realistic. You know, they have to equal what you can actually do in your life.
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a fool's errand to try to say you can train 15 hours a week when realistically you're going to max out at seven. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So with the rise of gravel, was there a moment in time you started seeing gravel specific athletes come to you for training advice?
You know, I think that, I mean, that's just started, I would say in the last year. So that's been something that's just happened in the last year. I mean, we've had people come to us and talk about all this, you know, and, and say, Hey, what do we need to do? What, is there something specific we need to make happen? Is there anything that goes from that perspective? All of those things are, are really the new wave of, of gravel riding. And then also thinking about it from a physiology perspective. Is there something different physiologically we need to do?
Yeah, I'm curious to explore that in a bit. As I was, I've been thinking about coaching. It's, you know, it's winter time around the country here in North America and looking at 20, 20, it's a great to be thinking about your 2020 calendar. And for me, oftentimes, you know, the, I might put one big aspirational event on the calendar, unlike maybe a period of time when I was mountain bike racing or the brief period of time I was road racing where you're looking to race, you know, 30 times a year we gravel, you know, it may only be these tent pole events that you end up participating in. So I gotta imagine that the journey to get there, like to a DK 200 or, or one of these other big events is, is quite a monumental feat in many ways.
Yeah, no, I, I completely agree. I think that's a, and that is a big event and that I think that a lot of these goals are you know, you just have to be realistic and make sure this is a reachable thing, right? This is something that I can do. And, and you know, it is I love gravel riding, not because there are these big APIC events. I think that's, that's the, those are aspirational events. And I like your idea of having one big goal and I call them you know, my big hairy goal for the year, right? My big hairy goal has to you know, have four components. One, it has to be travel, right? Cause I like traveling and I have to be going somewhere, right? Cause this, you know, I've got a time commitment involved. It has to be money, right?
I have to outlay some money and I'm like, Oh crap, I'm going to spend a bunch of money on this. And then it has to be an event that's hard enough for me that I can't just, you know, do it right. I can't just like, Oh well my current fitness will be fine and I can do it. Just kind of maintaining, right. I have to train hard for it and I can train out of my norm and do something more. And then the fourth thing, you know, it has to be something that, that truly motivates me. You know, like, wow, I really want to see this part of the world, or man, I so want to go and do this dry Bianchi and Italy and be in Italy and see the pros do it and ride on that road and eat Italian food. You know? And just like, you know, that has to be something that's, that's, that's like a really exciting and motivating for me. So if I can accomplish that and my big hairy goal with those four things, then that's my one for the year. Then I have to break them down into four into three other quarterly goals that are also have start to have all of those four components but need to have two or three of those components that are also inspirational for me to keep me motivated to get to the fourth one, if that makes sense.
Absolutely. Yeah, spot on. That's sort of my mentality to a T I need something that encourages me to get off the couch, right a little bit longer than maybe it's easy to fit in my schedule and have enough of a fear factor of failure that I'm going to get out there and put the time in and for sure I love travel as well. I think that's one of the things we explore on this podcast a lot is just how many great events in different parts of the country there are and how unique those experiences can be and how embracing the cycling and particularly the gravel community in those destinations can be. And if you put one of those on your calendar, you're rarely going to be disappointed.
Yeah, totally agree. Totally agree. That's great.
So let's talk about some of the things. I mean, you know, as a coach of a road cyclist, you've probably got these very fundamental things based on power that you can explore with a rider. And if it's a hilly course, you can figure out how they're going to perform. But gravel has a, has a tendency to throw left hooks at you all the time. And you know, whether it's your wheels spinning out on a steep climb because the gravel's too thick or it's too, it's technical and you're going a lot slower and you've got a really balanced power with skill. How have you evolved your discussion with the athletes to really make sure they're prepared to Excel?
Yeah. no, great question. So I think that the, there's a couple of things. One, you always have to consider. I mean, number one you know, the, the principles of exercise physiology are the same, right? There's nothing that's changed internally in the body. Whether I'm coaching you as a mountain biker, a triathlete, a road cyclist, or a gravel rider, those principles are all going to apply. And so that's important to always keep that in mind. Now the second thing that you have to keep in mind is the evolution of this. And we learn this when we first started training with the power meters is how you create power is different. Okay? So remember, you know, power is just how fast you peddle your RPM multiplied by how hard you pedal. Okay? So I can produce a thousand Watts and my 53, 12 at 40 RPM pushing our really big gear that really slow or I can produce a thousand Watts in my, you know, 32, 28 pedaling really, really fast, but really easily on the pedals.
Not a lot of force on the pedals. So how you create power is really important and gravel racing. Cause like you said, right? If you're creating too much force on the pedals, you're just going to spin out, right? And if you're pedaling too quickly, then that may not actually be able to get you where you need to go in a efficient manner or that may cause you to also spin out. So there is this balance that occurs in gravel cycling that we see a touch of in mountain biking. We see a touch, not so much in road biking, we don't really see it in, in a, in triathlon. We also see it in cyclocross racing. So it has this blend of, okay, I'm on this bicycle that's a very fast bicycle. It's made to go fast. Now I'm on a lessen ideal surface for that fast bicycle, even though I've got these nice cushy knobby tires that, that are, that are helped me in there.
But I also need to find that place of balance more than I normally think about balance. Where on the seat should I be aligned and keep my center of gravity? How does your hand position make a difference in terms of just cornering or steering, right? Cause the difference between cornering is that's where the bike angles and goes around and turns steering is where you steer it like you're steering your car. And then you also have to consider you know, will, will, how, what are the demands of that actual event because and, and this is kind of somewhat a retrospective look, right? Sometimes you just have to go and do the event and then you look back at the data and you see, Oh wow, in order to do that climb, I had to do X. I had to have this certain power at this certain cadence. So I did that climb and it didn't spin out or whatever. And then all of a sudden you're like, Oh, well I need to train that. Right? I need to be there. I need to train in what we call the, the, in the quadrant analysis plot. What different quadrant of power and cadence relationship, those long winded, sorry.
Yeah, no worries. No worries. I mean it's, you know, it's, it must be fascinating to kind of look at the science and physiology within your athletes, but I also got to imagine that the psychology and the grit of the athlete comes into play in these events in a, in a rather unique way. Yup. Yup,
Yup, yup. Absolutely. Absolutely. And and I think that that's where when we analyze the data from it, it is very interesting because there are a couple things that jump out and how that's different from road and mountain biking. Number one, the, the power that you produce is lower, right? You, you're, you're just, you know, if your FTP is 300 Watts on the road and you can crack out 300 while it's going up, your favorite climber on the, in a time trial or whatever you're not going to be able to do that on a gravel road. Because traction is a factor. You know, turns, rots, rocks, all these things are a factor. So the power that produce on a gravel road is going to be lower. And you know, it could be anywhere from 20 to 30 Watts.
Lower is what I've been seeing. So that changes a little bit of how you think about the training, right? That you need to do for it. Like if I'm going to go and I'm going to ride on a gravel road and I'm going to do tr, I'm going to train, I'll just go and ride. I'm going to go do some intervals and go fast and work on everything, you know, not only just cornering, but I want to get some FTP and arose out of that. I'm not going to strive to try and not hit 300 Watts because I, that's impossible. But if I can do two 70 to 80 and get to that same place, then I know that I'm training my FTP and doing my best that I can, I can do in the given situation. So that's, that's another way that it kind of changes a little bit.
Yeah. I noticed that you've introduced a gravel camp and I'm curious to learn more about that camp, but also curious if, you know, if you're just coaching a, an athlete remotely, I gotta imagine you're seeing them on the gravel and seeing their skillset is gotta be super illuminating in your ability to really customize a program for them?
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, and I think that that's you know, it's not easy. You know, it's, it's one of these things that you have to learn the athlete, right? And, and then, I mean, everybody is different, right? I mean, and everybody responds differently, so it's not like I have a magic wand and be, you know, Oh, I've seen this a hundred times. I know exactly what it is. Well, sometimes maybe it is, but that's just experience, right? That's just from coaching thousands of athletes. Then it appears that you have some magic wand and it's like, well, not really. This is just the experience of doing it over, over and over and knowing what you're looking at. Just like when you walk in the doctor's office, the guy can, you know, you give him the symptoms, he's like, Hey, you got this right. Well how do you know that? Well, I'm saying it a hundred times, you know, I know exactly what it is. So I, I think that's where for me to, to, to capture that person, like all of the pictures, all the pieces of the puzzle and that takes time. Like, you know, I mean for me it, it takes a season to really get an athlete dialed in and then that second season is like, man, we are killing it. You know, now we are really humming. So that's, I think that's pretty normal.
Yeah. As we were talking about offline, gravel means so such a different thing to athletes depending on where you are. And with this notion of traveling to a destination to experience a big gravel event, it could be dramatically different than your home gravel. And that's where sort of the raw just off road skill set and your bag of tricks come into play. I see it time and time again, as, as road athletes kind of go off road, men and women who can way have way more power than I do on a climb just simply fall apart when there's obstacles in the way. And imagine like over your conversations with athletes over the years, you start to develop that understanding of like, okay, got it. You're, you're, you're going to be great at altitude, at an event like Steamboat gravel. But if we throw you in respite suits up in Vermont where they're throwing everything with the kitchen sink at you, you may have some troubles and that's probably good to know as you evolve. And those events that they pick for the subsequent year are in different parts of the country.
Yeah. You know, and, and that's great. That brings up a great point, right? One of the key principles in in, in coaching and in training an athlete for any event is to define the demands of the event, right? So we define the demands of the event first. And, and if you have an event, right, that is you know, got all kinds of really crazy gravel roads that go from big, thick gravel to, to, you know, almost flat pavement, you know, super smooth going 27 miles an hour kind of stuff with rocks and roots and, and like you said, everything, and then in the, in the kitchen sink, then you need to seek that out and training, right? I mean, don't think that you're going to get good at that stuff by riding the smoothest, easiest, fun gravel in town and then show up at a race that's going to have all these other factors in there.
You've got to seek that out. You've got to go find that that gravel, that terrain and figure out those demands so then you can train for them. I mean, it seems kind of crazy, you know, to think w that somebody wouldn't even think about that, but we don't do it so much within the sport of cycling. But you know, if he put it in another analogy and say, okay, well Hey, you know, I'm going to go train volleyball and I'm going to crush that gravel race. It's like, well, no, you're not training the demands of the event. You're going to get really good at volleyball, but not good at gravel bike racing or riding or doing an event or whatever. So it's the same thing where, and I think that's, to me, one of the, you know, Craig, one of the greatest things about cycling is that we have this amazing diversity within the sport. You know, it's just like, wow, this is really cool. I'm learning something new.
Yeah, no, I'm excited. As event organizers explore the different possibilities of the terrain in their necks of the woods, and I'm excited that courses evolve naturally based on the terrain in their locale. And I think you're going to start to see from a professional side of the sport that you're, some are going to be, some athletes are going to be good at one thing and others are going to be good at another. I personally love the events that make, make, force you to have a wide skillset because I think it keeps gravel interesting. I don't like the notion that, you know, professional roadies can come over and, and not be challenged by the terrain. And fortunately most of the quote unquote monuments of gravel, I think have enough curve balls in them that just because you're super fit and can push a big gear is far from a conclusion that you're going to win any of these events.
Yeah, no, I, I think that's great. I, I agree 100% as well. And I think that's where you know, it does make it a unique discipline in and of itself. And I think that's what that again, continues to make it fun, exciting and and, and refresh your energy for it. Right? I mean, it's just like, wow, this is great. I mean when riding bicycles for 40 plus years and all of a sudden it's like, man, you know, I haven't been this excited about getting a new bike as I was getting about my, my gravel bike as I have been in 10 years. I mean I've gotten some pretty cool bikes in the last 10 years. But man, Oh man, I wa I had been really, really, I was really excited. I was like, man, this is awesome. I got this whole new group sad, I got this whole new bike, this is gonna open up all these great new places for me to ride. And I kinda like examine that a little self examination. Like wow, you know, I haven't been as excited in a really long time about a new bike cause I have about this gravel bike. So pretty cool.
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like it just sort of, the light bulb goes off the moment you have a proper gravel bike. And as you were saying earlier, the idea that you can ride some of your favorite roads, but take that detour onto a dirt road. It really just makes your home area new again. And that's, that's brilliant for anybody who needs extra motivation and kind of get out there and enjoy the sport.
Yeah, no, I totally agree. Now I have a question for you. Because I've been looking at all these things and, and thinking about handlebars, what do you think about all these different handlebars? Do you think we need specific gravel handlebars or can road handlebars work or we do need more like mustache bars? What's your, what's your opinion?
That's a great question. And actually just recently on the podcast, we had the guys from the wave handlebar on the podcast.
I saw that. Yeah. I didn't, haven't listened to it yet, but I saw that and I was like, huh, interesting. And, and I think what it,
That conversation in earlier conversations with them, with the notion that, you know, why hasn't the bar evolved more? And I understand that there was different things that were more gating for gravel to explode than the handlebar. But at this point we are starting to see, you know, across the board from wheels to saddles to everything kind of customized for the demands of the sport. So to specifically answer your question, you know, I have been a fan of the flared out bar. I find that when I'm descending in the drops, it gives me more security. I feel more comfortable that I can go faster and faster with it. I think it stands to reason that as we are riding on the hoods and on the tops of the bar that different shapes are going to come to bear and provide benefit when you're getting jostled around. And I remember back when pros were modifying their bikes for a Perry Renee by double wrapping the bars. It's little tweaks like that that can save your body from a fatigue level. I'm beginning to believe that in these long events that you've got to consider that.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. All right. Excellent.
That's excellent. I appreciate you throwing a question back at me and that's fine.
Well, you know, I've been, you know, I'm on my bike right now. I just have normal road handlebars, you know, and, and I've been contemplating mail making a change and just, you know, it was kinda thinking about, well, what, what is, what's, what's the best one out there to make a change for? And you know, would it, would it make a big difference? You know, so yeah.
Yeah. I remember seeing a, you know, the guys from envy and, and talking to Dave Zabriskie who obviously spent a career on the road and learning about his love for the flared bar. And that left me thinking, gosh, if, if he's been holding onto the handlebars on the road as long as he has, and he's a fan of the flared bar, there's something there for sure.
Your point. That's a good point.
Yeah. Well, Hunter, this was a great and timely conversation. Again, as people are going into the winter here in North America, I think these are all super things to think about. I'll put a link to your coaching services and the gravel camp and a link to Bedford, Virginia in the notes because I think it's cool for people to look at that. And look at Appalachia as just a different cool place that they should put on their, their agenda to go hit.
Absolutely. You know, and we're, we're advertising our gravel campus, rotting the oldest gravel in America. You know, so you will be on some of the original gravel roads that were put down here in the 16 hundreds. Now, I don't know if the gravel is going to be flat, the roads will have been around since the 16 hundreds. Or maybe even earlier when you know, when, when this wonderful country of ours was created. So a incredible history here from, from you know, just all the settlers cause everybody, you know, when they came across from England, they settled here in Virginia predominantly. And and so we've got some pretty cool roads that we're going to be on a gravel camp.
Yeah, it's a fascinating state. A lot of fun. As I mentioned earlier, I've done some mountain biking in Virginia. I went to school in Washington, D C so I definitely recommend it for people who haven't been to that part of the East. There's great riding and I've, I've no doubt in your neck of the woods. It's Epic gravel.
Cool. Awesome, man. Can't wait. Thanks so much for having me on your podcast.
Yeah, thank you. Big thanks to Hunter for spending some time with us this week. I hope you walked away with a little bit of knowledge that you can put into your body and your mind for 2020 as you approach whatever the big event, the big hairy event on your calendar tends to be. As always, I welcome your feedback. You can hit me at craigatthegravelride.bike or on our social media channels, particularly Instagram at the gravel ride underscore podcast. As always, we welcome ratings and reviews and feedback. It really helps us grow the podcast. So if you have a minute, click through on your phone to your favorite podcast app and drop us a rating. We'd love to see it. Until next time, here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
Crusher in the Tushar founder, Burke Swindlehurst talks about his 10 year journey around this unique Utah event. We talk about his journey and reveal his new partnership with Life Time and what it means for the future of the event.
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Automated Transcription.
Craig: 00:00 Burke, welcome to the show.
Burke: 00:01 Hey, thanks, Craig.
Craig: 00:02 As is customary, always like to start off by learning a little bit more about you as an athlete. Obviously you had a professional road career, but when did you start riding drop bar bikes off-road?
Burke: 00:17 I would say probably the first time that I really delved into it was in 1996. I was preparing for the Tour of the Gila and I wanted to get some really big climbs in at high altitudes, and at the time I was living up in Logan, Utah. The training up in Logan is actually phenomenal, but they just didn't have those like massive clients that I knew I was going to be facing at Gila. And so I decided to take a trip with my buddy and we actually just packed credit cards and a change of clothes and just started riding from Logan to ... The ultimate destination being Beaver, Utah, which is where I grew up, and knowing that we were going to be climbing some big mountains on the way and also taking in some gravel roads.
Burke: 01:03 But it's funny because, I mean, that essentially was where the Crusher was born because our final day, we rode up out of the Paiute Valley, which is on the backside of what is the Crusher course now and we actually rode up what is now called the Col de Crush, the big, defining climb of the race. That's when things started to click in my mind about how cool and how much fun it is to basically ride a road bike on gravel. Primarily, you know, not just the experience of what it takes to actually ride a road bike on gravel, the skills and all that stuff, but mostly the places that it takes you. It's off the beaten path and that really spoke to me.
Craig: 01:51 Yeah. I think there's something amazing about when you put together your first mixed terrain ride, about the sense of adventure you felt. You may end up from point A to point B in a radically different fashion than you ever did on the road.
Burke: 02:06 Yeah. And nine times out of 10, there's going to be some sort of calamity in there too. And that's part of the fun is you get a flat tire or you go off course, whatever it happens to be. Like you said, there's a sense of adventure involved that arises from taking those roads less traveled.
Craig: 02:27 Yeah. I got to imagine that that's been a big driver for the industry as individual athletes discover those things about the types of riding they can do and the thrill you have at the end of it all.
Burke: 02:38 Yeah.
Craig: 02:40 In 2010 I guess, it was you and your wife founded the race known as Crusher in the Tushar. Can you talk about why you started the race and what the original vision was?
Burke: 02:52 2010 was the end of the final year of my professional cycling career, and I was 37 years old. Honestly, I'd been thinking about retiring from cycling for a while just because physically it was just becoming a tall ask by that age. But I found a way to extend it and started to actually have a lot of fun with it. But I knew by the middle of the 2010 season, I'm like, "This is it. I can only hit the ground so many times, and I'm not getting up the same way that I used to." It was one of those, "Oh, shit," moments. It's like, what's next? At the time I'd been working with the Tour of Utah and I'd been volunteering with them for probably five years up to that point. I think I started in 2005 with them, and had been doing course design and I was like the athlete and team liaison.
Burke: 03:51 It eventually evolved to the point where the race director asked if I would like to come on and be the assistant director for 2011. I'm like, "Yeah, that sounds awesome. Here we go." How perfect is that? You get to transition from being a bike racer straight into something that you know, and a world that you've occupied; just you're kind of on the other side of the barriers to a certain extent. And so, that was the plan. As things evolved, in the off season, my last race was the Tour of Utah. That was my last finish line up there at Snowbird. Crossed the finish line and it's like, "All right, I guess I'm the assistant director now." So, start working on that.
Burke: 04:35 As we started traveling down that path, there was talk like, "Hey, we want to take Tour of Utah to the next level. That would be a UCI event." And we started going down that path and we realized pretty quickly that, "Well, we're going to need to ..." It's all about scaling up and bringing in the resources it takes to be able to do that sort of thing. And I realized, "Well, I don't have a whole lot of experience in that arena." Putting on an NRC event was certainly something that I'd gotten a feel for over the years working with them, but doing the UCI thing was a whole nother level, and it started to become pretty apparent to me that there were going to need to be some other people brought in that had a lot more experience than I did.
Burke: 05:21 Eventually, we were able to get medalists to come on board and I just started thinking, "Well, this isn't really panning out for me in terms of what I had envisioned for working with the event." I was super happy for the Tour of Utah because when I was racing in it and doing that, that was always my ultimate vision for the race was for it to be a UCI event. And so, it was with a little bit of sadness that I realized, "Hey, I'm going to have to step away from this and make room for people that have a lot more experience in this than I do." That's when I started going back to that bike ride in 1996 when I was thinking, "Man, how cool would it be to have a bike race that was free of constraints from the terrain or the surface or even a sanctioning to a certain extent?" And the Crusher just started to rapidly evolve. I mean, I'm talking in the course of a week, I went from having it be this idea that had been just floating around in my mind to, "All right, I'm hitting the throttle and doing this."
Craig: 06:25 That's an amazing story. I hadn't heard that part of your background before. To have the knowledge that your own personal limitations at the time may have not been the appropriate resource for the Tour of Utah is pretty amazing, actually, that you understood that and you sent them on their way and you turned it into something new with the Crusher in the Tushar.
Burke: 06:47 Yeah. I mean, I guess now that you put it like that, for me, it felt ... I don't know, I guess one of my greatest strengths and weaknesses is the fact that I never want to let anybody down. I felt like I was going to be putting myself in a position to let people down. And that really scared me because when I sign up for something, I'm all in and I want to be there start to finish. I realized pretty quickly that I had a lot to learn and I just didn't want to put myself in that position. I never want to let anybody down. That's something that to this day still drives pretty much every decision I make in my personal and professional life.
Craig: 07:28 With the original Crusher course, has it changed over the years or has it remained the same every year?
Burke: 07:35 We've had the same course for each of our nine edition so far. 2011 was the first year and it's been the same course. Funny enough, though, I actually had a different course in mind when I originally started working on it. The course would have been 85 miles long and had 12 and a half thousand feet of climbing, which at the time having come off my professional career, I thought, "Yeah, that's awesome. That's going to be a hard race and it's going to take in all this cool terrain and it's going to be the most challenging thing ever." But in retrospect, that might've been a little bit too much and as luck would have it, in the winter of 2010 into the spring of 2011, we had a record-breaking snow year. Two weeks out from the event, I realized there's still five feet of snow on that course, and I had ... I mean, that was my first real test. The first big hurdle is straight out of the blocks, right? It's like, "Oh, you're two weeks away from this event and you're having to come up with a new course."
Burke: 08:45 Luckily there was another route that I had ridden in training many times. It was like I had my mind as a backup course in a worst case scenario, and suddenly the worst case scenario is happening. So I was able to implement that course. And as it turns out, I think the course that we now have and has been the course for every edition of the event is a fantastic course. It's more than challenging enough. When people heard that I had to cancel the original course, as we've come to call it, there were a lot of people that were super bummed. And then after the year's first race, they came up to me and said, "Oh, I'm so glad. I'm so glad you had to cancel that course. This is hard enough. Trust me."
Craig: 09:28 I want to take the listener back and I'm asking everyone to think about the bikes you had in your garage in 2011, because I think this is really fascinating, and Crusher in the Tushar has come up in a number of conversations on the podcast before with Nate King, with Neil Shirley, and they always sort of remarked to me about the sheer diversity of bikes that showed up in those early years. Can you talk about that? I mean, obviously the equipment was nowhere near evolved to what it has today.
Burke: 09:56 Right. Yeah, I think that first year we had ... I would say it was a pretty even split between people on mountain bikes, whether that's rigid mountain bikes or full suspension mountain bikes, and cyclocross bikes. And then the cool thing was there were quite a few what I called Frankenbikes back then, which is where people were taking, say, a 29-inch mountain bike, putting drop bars on it and just tweaking the gearing and doing all that stuff. And that was something that I really enjoy doing myself. I mean, I'd had so many Frankenbikes over the years trying to find this perfect bike for mixed surface riding that that's one of those things that really floated my boat from the geeking outside of things, trying to figure out the perfect bike to tackle any surface. And so, there were quite a few people on those bikes. And then of course now, we actually have a gravel segment and those kind of conundrums are not nearly what they used to be, but we do still get quite a few people that show up to the race on mountain bikes. And I do still see people with their Frankenbikes too. So, it's kind of neat.
Craig: 11:09 Well, let's talk through the course. If someone listening is thinking about doing Crusher next year, what elements of the course dictate that more road-style bike or a full-on mountain bike might be warranted?
Burke: 11:24 I always get this question from people like, "What bike should I ride?" Especially years ago when it wasn't quite as apparent or seemingly apparent as it is now. But I always tell them, "Ride the bike you're most comfortable on. If you're a mountain biker, you're going to feel comfortable on a mountain bike, on flat bars and maybe narrow up your tires or whatever. And if you come from a road background, you're probably going to be a lot more comfortable on a modern gravel bike." You know, I think it really does all just come down to what you're most comfortable on. And of course a lot of people are now adopting gravel bikes and adding those to their growing quiver of bikes. I've got three myself.
PART 1 OF 3 ENDS [00:12:04]
Burke: 12:03 The growing quiver of bikes. I've got three myself and of course in addition to mountain bikes and fat bikes and road bikes, although honestly I don't ride the road bike that much anymore, the gravel bikes replaced that for me, but-
Craig: 12:15 There's something definitely to be said for riding a bike you're comfortable on, particularly on an event that's going to take you all day. As a more amateur athlete, you really got to be concerned with just overall body fatigue and comfort and safety.
Burke: 12:28 Yeah and I think a lot of times if I had to pinpoint a couple of things that are critical to success at Crusher, tires of course and gearing. I mean, those are probably the two most critical components. Everything else is a distant second and third, but having tires that are going to stand up to the course and provide comfort and stability and of course having the gearing to tackle some of those climbs and it's funny when people look at the course profile, it really doesn't look that intimidating on paper. I don't know how many times I've heard people say that, "Oh, this is so much harder than it looked like on the website," and you get up the cold to crush. It's not the steepest or the longest climb in the world, but it's not far off either and it's all travel and when you've got 45, 50 miles in the legs and you've already got 5,000 feet of climbing and you hit that thing, it takes on a whole new dimension.
Craig: 13:32 Yeah. I think what's stark in the course profile is you've just got these two big climbs and that's it. That's the day.
Burke: 13:40 Yeah. I always say it's up hill both ways.
Craig: 13:43 And then unlike some of the more 100% gravel events, this event is more mixed, right? In terms of pavement versus gravel.
Burke: 13:52 Yeah. I mean, you hop on and off pavement and gravel throughout the event, which is, for me, one of the fun parts about the event. I always enjoy that. I've done a lot of events that are just strictly gravel and of course I've done my share of road racing, but to be able to intersperse the two, you're suddenly going from thinking about keeping it upright, coming down a washboard gravel descent to all of a sudden you're in a super tuck on a road portion and then you're having to think about group riding dynamics to make sure that you're in a group on a flat, windy section. Then suddenly you're back on the gravel again.
Craig: 14:29 Yeah. I got to imagine the rollout on the road becomes quite spirited.
Burke: 14:33 You know, it's funny because from year to year, I think the very first year when nobody knew what they were signing up for, it was extremely spirited. I mean, people were just going for it and now that the reputation of the race precedes it, there are definitely people that still like to get after it right from the gun, but I think the words gotten out like, "Hey, this race is one on the backside of the course and if you're smart, you're going to save some matches for that."
Craig: 15:02 We talked a little bit offline about how I think about course design and event production almost as an entrepreneurial journey. What does it take on the day of the event and leading up to the event? I got to imagine as the race has grown, it's taken an enormous amount of your time and energy and effort to just produce this thing every year.
Burke: 15:21 Yeah, it does and I should say, fortunately I had no idea what I was getting myself into because if I'd been able to look into a crystal ball and seeing the amount of time, energy and work that goes into it, I may have looked at something else to do, which I'm glad I didn't. I really love this. It's just become my child, but yeah, it is an enormous amount of energy, work and passion goes into it. So much so that it's not uncommon for me like when I raced professionally, my race weight was 146 pounds every year. When I step on the scale the day after the crusher's over and it's not uncommon for me to see 134 to 135 pounds because I basically don't eat or sleep.
Burke: 16:06 I just get so stressed out that it's like my wife comes home from work and she's like, "What have you eaten today?" And I'll look over at her and be like, "Uh, okay." So, it's definitely been exhausting and honestly it does get tougher over the years too. I started when I was in my 30s and now I'm on the wrong side of 40 and it definitely... It's a whole different animal 10 years on because the workload hasn't reduced, but I'm 10 years older.
Craig: 16:42 Yeah and in many ways I imagine the expectations are even higher each year as riders come back to the event.
Burke: 16:48 They are and those expectations I place on myself too. Every year the event sells out a little quicker and people are like, "That's so cool," and me, I'm thinking again, it's like I don't want to let anybody down. The quicker it sells out, the more expectations I feel. So, every year I just feel like a little bit more pressure to perform and make sure that everybody has a good time, whether it's the racers, the volunteers, all my friends and family that pitch in to help out. Just I feel this responsibility to all of them to make sure that the events and me personally, that I live up to their expectations.
Craig: 17:26 From talking to a bunch of athletes who have participated in the event, you've delivered year after year, the course, the experience, it's one of those events that it sells out fast because it's fun. It's great. People want to go back and do it time and time again. So, I mean that's a huge accomplishment to you and your team.
Burke: 17:45 Well, thank you.
Craig: 17:45 We're here today for two reasons. One, I've always wanted to talk to you about the event and learn the ins and outs, but two, this year and the end of after last season, it sounds like you came to a crossroads about what the future of the event was going to look like. Can you talk about where your head was at and where we're going?
Burke: 18:04 Yeah. Actually I was thinking about this today, reflecting on it and trying to figure out when that moment was and I want to say in 20... It was 2017, was a year that we experienced a lot of just crazy weather. It was the first year when there was literally a 60 degree temperature swing out on the course. There were parts of the course that were people's garments said they were registering over 107 degrees and then those same people that were dealing with heat exhaustion, they get up to the 10,000 foot mark near the finish line and suddenly there's hail and rain and even some people said snow, I didn't see the snow myself, but I've heard people swear it was snowing on them and I was a total wreck at the finish line because I've got my people, the search and rescue on their computers saying, "Hey, we've got lightning strikes hitting all around here," and we're talking about our contingency plans for keeping everybody safe.
Burke: 19:07 That day was just such an emotional roller coaster for me and the funny thing was is that I was so worried that people were going to be critical of something that I have no control over. Obviously the weather and I'm getting people coming across the line and I'm expecting them to wanting to just get up and get out of town and they're like, "That was the most epic one ever." I mean, they were super excited and I was like, "Awesome," and it's funny because I have to take myself and put myself back in the position of an athlete and how I would've felt and I probably would've had the exact same reaction after putting myself through that. Just the sense of accomplishment, but from a personal level, I remember we cleaned up the course and it's about 7:00 PM and I'm finally getting off the mountain and we're due to... I'm supposed to meet up with all of my crew for dinner in Beaver and I literally drive to the restaurant when I see everybody's cars there and I see my crews in there, there's riders in there and I'm just like, "I can't do this right now."
Burke: 20:12 I'm just so emotionally and physically tapped out, I couldn't do it and I remember getting the car, I drove 15 miles west of Beaver to, there's a cool reservoir out there I like to fish on sometimes and I went out to this reservoir and I sat down and watched the sun go down and I cried for, I don't know how long, it was just this catharsis and I didn't know why I was crying. I just knew that I was at my emotional limit and I remember thinking, "Okay, year 10. You can make it to year 10. Get 10 years in, you can do this," and suddenly my focus was on year 10 and then I couldn't imagine going past year 10 and even getting to that was like, "You can do it, just make year 10," and so, it's been this thing where last year I started having a conversation with some colleagues and opening up to them and saying, "Hey, 2020 is probably going to be it," and everybody's like, "Why?"
Burke: 21:15 And I'm like, "I can't keep doing it," and I'm also not the person to go out like you and I were discussing offline, building up a big crew with employees and again, all those expectations are just too much for me to get my head around and so, I was discussing this with my colleague and he's like, "Well, hey, have you ever considered selling your event?" And I'm like, "No, I haven't," and we started that discussion.
Craig: 21:47 Thank you for being so honest about the journey because I think the listener, the athlete and other event organizers really need to know that that's truth. That's what really happens. I know you put so much energy in creating this event and it snowballed into this amazing thing on the calendar every year that riders look forward to and I can only imagine you felt a tremendous sense of responsibility to create this thing every year in Utah that athletes can return to like summer camp.
Burke: 22:20 Yeah, totally.
Craig: 22:21 So, you're there, you want the event to have a future, but you're just unsure that you can't do it in the same infrastructure. So, where are we at today? What is the future for Crusher look like?
Burke: 22:34 Well, like I said, I had these discussions and I've leaned so hard on friends and family over the years and I knew that there's a limit to how much they can put in too. I have my best friend, his name's Jason Binem, he's been my right hand man for years and years and we had this discussion in the car last year and I said, "Hey, what's it going to take for you to slow down if we want to keep doing this?" I'm like, "Basically, what's it going to take for me to know that you're still going to be here and helping me every year?" And he's recently had his first child and he looked at me, he's like, "Man, you can't put a price on me being away from my daughter for a week," and I thought, "That's true."
Burke: 23:21 I mean, I totally get it and I totally respect it and so, that got me going down the road of thinking about, "Okay, what would it look like to hand the reins over to somebody else?" And again, going back to this colleague, he said, "I can put you in touch with some people," and so, I started tentatively dipping my toe into talking to some other organizations that had expressed interest in becoming involved in partnering with Crusher. One of those people that he suggested I reach out to was Chemo Seymour at Lifetime Fitness and so, I got on a phone call with Chemo in May and we just started talking about what that might look like.
PART 2 OF 3 ENDS [00:24:04]
Burke: 24:03 Kind of just started talking about what that might look like, and I certainly wasn't ready to just say, "All right, let's do this thing." Like I said, this is the closest thing to a child I'm probably ever going to have, and the thought of handing that over to somebody is daunting. But through the course of this process, I realize it's kind of almost like a graduation. It's like raising a child and then it hits 18, and it's like, "All right, it's time to go to college. It's time to scale up and grow up, and I'm going to open the door and let somebody else have a hand in your growth." And that's been interesting for sure.
Craig: 24:44 Today, you're essentially announcing a new partnership with Lifetime Fitness.
Burke: 24:50 That's correct. Yeah. I'm super excited about it. Kimo, we talked off and on for a couple months and then he came out to Crusher, and Jim Cummings, I'd actually been speaking with him a bit too. Even prior to all of this, I've reached out to Jim in the past, Jim at Dirty Kanza. And we've talked about just kind of things over the years regarding gravel and the evolution and growth of it, and also I kind of see him as like a... He's a great sounding board, and so when I've run up against some problems, he's kind of one of the people that I'll call and say, "Hey, I've got this going on. What's your opinion?" Anyway, yeah, Jim was supposed to come out. Unfortunately he wasn't able to make it, but Kimo came out, and I had Kimo hop in the car with me and we spent the day together at Crusher, and kind of got to know each other a little better person-to-person.
Burke: 25:47 And he said, "Hey, why don't you come out to Leadville? Come out and see how we do things, and we can kind of go from there." And he's like, "If you want to, you can ride it." I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to ride it." I've always wanted to ride Leadville, and so now I've got this opportunity to go out and kind of see how Lifetime does things at their events and also participate in the event. For me, that was a game changer. Actually getting out to Leadville and seeing how they do things, and also just seeing how much of the authenticity that remains from the founders, Ken and Merilee. They're there. They're still front and center, and realizing that that's kind of how Lifetime wants to do things. They want to maintain and keep in place the founders of the events, and make sure that authenticity and kind of what made the event what it was in the first place is never diminished or taken away.
Craig: 26:48 Yeah. I think that's really special, and I've seen it too with all the sort of race organizers that I've met that have been involved in the Lifetime family. They're able to sort of supercharge their vision, and in many ways ensure a future for their original vision that isn't as all-encompassing in their personal lives as you just described.
Burke: 27:11 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was really cool. The other great thing about Leadville... I went there. I was determined not to drink the Koolaid, so to speak. I'm like, "I've got my skeptics glasses on, and I'm going to pick apart everything that I don't like about how they do things," and that's just naturally how I am. I kind of operate off worst case scenario. And so I got there determined to kind of find things not to like, and after... Well, first off, I met Bahram Akradi. He is the founder of Lifetime Fitness. I met him at Leadville and realized, "Oh hey, this guy, he's here. This'll be his 10th Leadville." He's not just a businessman, and he didn't just start Lifetime Fitness. This guy is a bike rider, a legit bike rider. He's going after his big buckle, which they give for people that have finished 10 years.
Burke: 28:14 And then of course I find out the next day Kimo's lined up, and I find that Kimo actually holds the record for most number of consecutive finishes under eight hours, I believe. And so I soon came to realize these aren't just businessmen. These are people that have a true passion for the sport and for these events, and for me that was a game changer once I realized that these people get it. They live and breathe this. And then kind of the final... The thing that clinched it for me was the next day they have the big awards in Leadville afterwards, where everybody gets their buckles and all that kind of cool stuff. And Bahram got up and gave a speech, and I can't tell you exactly what he said. All I remember is that I just remember thinking this guy is like the real deal. He's a genuine human who's out trying to do good things for people. I don't know. It's really hard to explain.
Burke: 29:17 I'm sure anybody that was there and actually heard the speech would know exactly what I'm talking about, but I came away convinced The Crusher is going to be in good hands with these people. And of course one of their conditions was, " Hey, we're not interested in The Crusher unless you're going to be around." And for me that was very important to hear, because I'm definitely not to the point where I'm just going to hand the keys and walk away. This thing is still my baby and I love it. If that was an expectation on anybody's part, that was going to be a deal breaker for me, and so to hear that was quite the opposite was good.
Craig: 29:55 Really exciting to have a partner who can kind of eliminate the things about running the race that you didn't like, and allow you to focus on the things that you do like.
Burke: 30:04 Yeah, yeah. That's going to be huge. I've always wanted to have a big expo and all that kind of stuff, but I also realize, "Hey, an expo is an event in and of itself." I've got enough on my plate, let alone trying to get this other event off the ground. And so now there's going to be people there that are going to be like, "The expo's your thing. Cool." You know? And honestly, I'm just really looking forward to having enough taken off my plate that when I do get to be around the race and people come up and talk to me, that I can look them in the eye and really listen to what they're saying, and share their excitement instead of thinking about all the other things that are on my mind like, "Oh, did we get enough zip ties? Oh, I wonder if those signs migrated overnight."
Burke: 30:52 There's just all those little things that add up in your mind that, for me, made it so that I wasn't able to be completely present in the moment with those people. And that's something that I've always really wanted to do is just be able to enjoy some of the fun atmosphere that I've helped to create, actually be a part of that and enjoy it instead of be a total nervous wreck. And who knows? I mean, it's probably just my nature. I'll probably be a nervous wreck no matter what, even if it comes down to the day 25 years from now when I'm just going there and shaking hands. But I think this is a step in the right direction towards sustainability for not only for the event, but for me personally.
Craig: 31:32 For 2020, Burke, when's the event and when does registration open?
Burke: 31:39 The event, we've always put it on the second Saturday in July, and so this year that falls on July 11. And we haven't announced the registration date yet, because this has kind of been evolving and I wanted to make sure that all of our I's were dotted and T's are crossed before we announced the registration. We'll be coming forward with that here pretty quickly.
Craig: 32:01 We're going to retain the same course in the same sort of experience as years past?
Burke: 32:06 The experience is not going to change. The course, that's still up in the air. If there are any changes to the course, it's going to be, I assure you, they're going to be for the better and it's still going to be The Crusher no matter what. The [cul de crush 00:08:22] is always going to be there, but if there are ways that we can enhance the overall experience, not just for the writers but for the spectators... I mean, that's one thing I've always struggled with over the years was wanting to make sure that the people who accompany the riders to the race are also having a good time, so we're looking at ways to maybe improve that experience for everybody across the board, and that may include changing up the course a little bit. I don't know.
Burke: 32:51 But the cool thing is, is now that I do have people like the Lifetime crew here to help out, I can start thinking about that sort of stuff instead of just kind of being stuck in Groundhog Day mode because I don't have the bandwidth to really think about much else. For me, this feels like kind of unclipping my wings a bit and being able to get back to dreaming about doing some cool things, and kind of seeing the event evolve as gravel is evolving itself.
Craig: 33:22 That's super exciting. I mean, to imagine to have additional resources to kind of continue the vision forward and continue to explore that area of Utah, which for somebody who hasn't been there, it is a gorgeous area. I've been through Beaver a few times, and I can only imagine how much fun it is to ride those mountains around there.
Burke: 33:43 Yeah. Well, you need to come out and experience it yourself.
Craig: 33:44 Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. After looking at that course profile, I realize I'm going to have to climb a bunch of hills to get prepared.
Burke: 33:50 Yes.
Craig: 33:52 Thank you so much for the time today. I think it's been super enlightening for me and for the listener, and for any other person who started an event, is in the midstream of doing a multi-year event, just to kind of think about the journey that you take. And you know, I say it time and time again when we talk to event directors. I have so much admiration for you for just taking the ball and running with it, and creating an event that is now part of a lot of people's summers. Hats off to you for everything you've done and what you're continuing to do with Crusher, and congratulations on what the future holds.
Burke: 34:29 Oh, thank you, man. I really appreciate that, Craig. That means a lot.
PART 3 OF 3 ENDS [00:34:32]
This week we speak with experienced gravel athlete, journalist, podcaster and author, Selene Yeager who recently published the quintessential guide to gravel. It is appropriately named, Gravel! The book is a must-read for anyone trying to navigate the world of gravel equipment and events.
Selene Yeager Website
Selene Instagram
Automated transcription (please excuse the typos)
Selene, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me.
Absolutely. I'm stoked to talk about your latest book, Gravel!.
I am very happy to talk about it too. These things are always I, I will confess that I always have a lot of anxiety before. One of the, one of my books goes out into the world. It's just, it's just kind of in my DNA. I'm that I'm that kind of personality, but you invest, you know, a lot. I invest a lot of myself into it anyway, so I'm always so happy when people receive it. The way I had hoped they would.
Yeah, I mean, it's clear there's a ton of research went into it and all your personal experience. It really is a soup to nuts guide that can benefit a rookie athlete as well as an expert athlete because there's just so much in here and it's, one of the things I always have really loved about gravel is there's just a lot to unpack. There's a lot to unpack about the bikes, the courses, and how they're different in different parts of the country. Let's set the stage a little bit for the listener and just talk about how you got into gravel riding. I know you've got a rich background in both mountain biking and road biking, but where did gravel start to come into play for you?
Well, it's funny, it's like a, I imagine it's like a lot of people. I live in a fairly rural area, so, you know, we, we were riding a lot of, you know, we didn't actually call them gravel roads necessarily. They're just unpaved roads, you know, the dirt roads. So we would ride a lot of dirt and gravel just naturally on our rides. And then I really liked it. Like I thought it was just kind of adventurous and fun and those roads always went by pretty places, you know, cause I really off the beaten path. But it wasn't, you know, the fun is always a bit limited by flat tires, you know, by your caliper or your brake calipers when with rim brakes sort of packing up. So didn't do it as much as I probably wanted to, but then I got involved in on the East coast here, there's a series a by crew, messy sport, but like hell of hundred in and it's all based off the spring classics, right?
So they have us a certain amount of gravel sectors that you ride. And you know, we just did it on a road bikes. I had a Trek Medan with 23 is, you know, and I just would pump up to a hundred and pray to get through the day. But it was, but I really liked it. So when gravel per se came along, I was like, whatever. I mean honestly, I was just like, yes, sure. Whatever. A new segment. And it honestly is, I talk about in the intro to the book, it wasn't until I did a Jodie cancer for the first time that I was like, Oh huh, gravel is a different thing. You know, like, this is my Medona would not make it 12 yards and on this gravel. So I really started to understand what it was all about when I did that. And then I did a ton of events and you know, I've always felt like the iron cross is too, but I did those across bikes.
It was a little different. So that was just sort of a natural evolution into it. And then as it grew, I, and the came along, this is one of the things where I think that the bikes actually knocked down the door. Like once they put a disc brakes on road bikes and the game just changed, you know? And I, and I feel like that's a huge part of what we're, what we're seeing. And it's so much more fun. I mean, I do all the same events here that I did a decade ago, but I'm having so much more fun doing them cause I'm not worried about my tires. I'm, I have tons of clearance. It's just the bike is better. I'm not pinballing all over the road. Yeah. So that's my experience with it.
Yeah, exactly. I think you're right in that, you know, the bikes really just there was this step change with disc brakes and tubeless tires that enabled you to go out and not flat on your cross bike all the time.
Well, it's just, I mean really it's not that fun, right? Like it's, it's when you sit in there all day fixing flats, it's just the, your fun is a little limited.
So when you went out to your first DK and then you returned home, did you find that your eyes were open to a different style or duration of riding in your home territory after seeing what they were doing in Kansas? What do you mean exactly by that? We started, were we riding further exploring further? It seems like in the Midwest and Kansas, there's a lot of athletes that just have a Explorer mentality, which is, it's a little bit of a shift when you're maybe used to doing the same road or mountain loops.
Yeah, yeah. No, no, I totally get what you're saying. And you know, I'll qualify that by saying, you know, as a, as a woman riding alone, I would not do a lot of that myself for obvious reasons that are unfortunate but real. But I do have some friends who I ride with frequently who are, and I'll have always been, even before quote unquote, again, gravel took off. They've always been like that. They will, they're the kind of guys that would like be riding along and see a dirt road and be like, huh, I wonder where that goes. Where, honestly, my mentality was not always that. So I did glean, I embraced that a whole lot more and just the whole idea of just getting lost and exploring with them and you know, like, okay, this day might be four hours, it might be six hours, we're not really sure. But yeah, I mean to answer that question, I, I did really get into that and, and, and enjoyed it much more than I probably did previously.
That sounds like you and I are similar. I mean, I used to sort of, I'd know the loop I was going to do was four or five hours, I'd go do it and come back and could do the same thing every weekend. Just enjoying the comradery of being out on the road. But with the gravel bike now I find myself throwing a bar bag on or something that can carry a little bit extra gear. So if I do take that detour, it's not a big deal. Yep.
And I find myself, you know, what it's really done too, is you know, even for lunch rides, my lunch rides have gotten more adventurous, which is really fun. So I can take my gravel bike and I can be like, okay, what do I feel like doing today? And I can do it on some tame. We don't have a lot of teams single track, but I have enough that's not crazy crazy that I can take my gravel bike on it. So it just opens up that too. Right. I can lay like, okay, I'm going to take this same bike and I'm going to do a little bit of myself mountain single track and then I'm going to go down to the Parkway, which is like cinder trails and then I'm going to take the road over to this other park and it you can do it all on the same bike and I have infinite possibilities and it's, I really enjoy that.
Definitely. And I also think there's a little bit of the, when you're riding with friends and you ride a particularly technical section on a gravel bike, it's similar to mountain biking where you just kind of want to stop and high five each other for surviving or having fun. Which I always thought it was missing from the road side of my cycling career.
Yeah, no, I could see that. And it is, it does feel much
More like play. Yeah. And I think that that is part of that, you know, gravel state of mind that you start talking about in the book. Yeah, totally. So what motivated you to write the book in the first place?
What motivated me honestly, was a couple of exchanges that I had with people on, on gravel, at Graebel events and, and on the road I one in particular, I was at an event called Keystone gravel, which is more of a grind, Duro kind of event. It's in central Pennsylvania and it's got like eight different segments. Some of them are ridiculous climbs and some of them are ridiculous, like single track to sense, you know, stuff that you would definitely be more at home on a mountain bike with you know, and I was that back at the end of the day and we were all hanging out and having a beer. And sky came up to me who I know quite well and he said, so is that gravel? You know, cause he had heard all about gravel and he had done unpaved, which is another event here, which is 100% different from that.
It's all, some of the unpaved roads of that event are better than the tarmac. Right. So there was this real giant disconnect between his expectations and what he, what he got. And he just didn't have fun. I mean he just, he wasn't, he was over his head. That wasn't, it just wasn't his, it was his riding expectation or ability. And I was like, wow. And then I went out to Rebecca's private Idaho to do a stage race. You know, I've done the her main event and then she has that stage race and she had 16 miles a single track on that first day. And a woman came up to me and she was like, that wasn't so fun for me. Like she's like, I don't know how to ride that. And I just thought there's like kind of a need here to just talk about like as we talked about gravel that it's just not one thing.
You know, it's, it's a lot of things and it can look a lot of different ways and the bikes are very much reflecting that you have everything from, you know, a diverge like a, a more road bike to, you know, that specialized that specialized, the salsa cutthroat, which is a slacked out almost a drop our mountain bike. You know, like you can see that there's, the category is broad and I just felt like there was probably a need and a and a want at this point to to make things a little more clear for people to, especially if they're just getting into it.
Yeah, you're definitely speaking my language. I think that's of the motivations for this podcast was just that recognition about how different the sport can be for different people when they see the words gravel cycling. Right. Totally. Yeah, and I, you know, you on your podcast, the pace line, you've mentioned Neil Shirley's grading system, which I think is interesting, although it's almost difficult to say that one grade covers a lot of these courses beginning to end.
I would agree with that. I had a, I wrestled with that a lot and there's still like, I look at that book still and that's my one regret. There's a couple, I'm like, ah, I don't think that's the right category. I don't know how much I wrestled with that back and forth because I added categories because this was actually a little bit old and it was very West coast centric because he's California. So you know, when I talked to him I'm like, I'd like to use this and I'd like to adapt it. He was like, go for it. So I added like East coast events and other events that have cropped up in the meantime, but it was, it was very difficult and you know, those events are also going to change. So it's real important to read your course descriptions. Always cause it, it might be different from one year to the next. Even honestly,
I saw the team at SPT gravel added four miles of what they're calling double track and single track.
Totally. And I'm like, well that blows my rating out of the, you know, it is what it is. Yeah.
It's interesting when you talk to athletes like Jeremiah Bishop or paisan, you know, those guys who come from a super strong mountain bike background, they'll often lament the kind of more dirt roadie type courses, which potentially could favor people with a road background more and never really exploit their weaknesses in the technical single track.
I think that's okay though. And I talk about that in the book. I do believe that there is room for everybody, right? Like if you're not comfortable on a mountain bike and single track and all that, I believe that there should be events for you and if the, if you are, I believe there should be events for you to, you know, and, and there are events as you mentioned, that cover all those ends of the spectrum, you know, like give a little bit of taste for everybody's strength. But yeah, I mean it's horses for courses. I think that that's true in gravel too.
Yeah. It'll be interesting to see as the quote unquote monuments of gravel start to emerge, these big iconic races that, you know, make or break a professional athletes calendar, I suppose. And imagine that they're, they're going to take all shapes and flavors, right? You're going to have some that are just the sheer horsepower race and other ones that are going to require technical skills to be on the pointy end of the spear.
Well, and I think you know, you and I was just at that Bentonville event. And I think, and for people who don't know, it's, we're talking about, it's a big sugar, which was the, it's lifetime's new gravel event in Bentonville, Arkansas area and in to them they were all kind of gleeful that this event will not favor road tactics. And you can, I'm sure you agree that Vivette will not favor tactics that then is going to be very much a test of self. It's punchy. It's difficult. It's not, there's not a lot of drafting or any of that kind of stuff that can go on. So yeah, I, I, it's going to be interesting to watch because they all, they all are different. And as, as people do bring the road to gravel, I think you're going to see more gravel events just either cater to that or be like, mm, let's change that up.
Yeah, it seems like, I mean to me it seems like you've got the longer distance events, which become sort of a battle of attrition and [inaudible] and nutrition, maybe a good point. And then you've got ones that are going to have technical elements to it that are gonna, you know, make or break your ride your day. Yeah, totally. I would agree with that. It'll be interesting to see how it evolves and I think one of the, we're just starting,
Don't you think? Like we are. I think it's, it's going to be, we're just starting to watch this evolution. This whiz wave is still [inaudible]
Christine. Yeah. And I think there's, there's very much an art to course design to kind of pull the various levers and obviously you're going to be, you're going to go with what you have access to. So in Kansas it's going to be one thing, and Utah, it's going to be another, in Bentonville, it's going to be another. And, and that's the beauty of it. I personally love putting something on the calendar for next year in an area that I've never been before, to just see what they can throw at me.
Well and everything is different. I mean, that's what I, I, that's why I love when people come out to unpaved, which is, you know, the event that my husband cope produces is that it's 100% different from, you know, anything that even you would encounter in the mountain States or in the Midwest. So the dirt is different. Yeah, the trees are different like that. Like the, everything about it is different. So it's really cool to, to go, like you're saying, to go to places because it's not just the, the course, but it's literally the dirt that you're riding on. You know, land run is 100% different from crusher and the Tuscher, which is different from any of the grasshoppers. So it's just like, it's cool. It's a good way to experience a place.
Yeah, absolutely. It's really cool. One of the things you touch on and you're very much an expert in is nutrition. And I think for gravel events, what may not, what may sort of get lost in signing up for an event. So you sign up for a 50 mile event and your framework is around the room, you know, it's, it's going to be longer, it's going to be harder on your body. So how should athletes be looking at nutrition differently for these types of events?
I think that that's, I love that you put 50 miles out there cause that's a, that's a great it's a great distance because people, especially if they're coming from the road, not so much if they're coming from the mountain, but if you're from the road you're like, okay, whatever. Right? Like 50 miles, I can do 50 miles. But 50 miles could take you five hours. Like it could take you a long time. Depending on the terrain, depending on gravel is so different because I think that was one of my really, really big eye opening things when I went out to Kansas is like, I don't think I've ever coasted. And this whole 13 hours I've been out here and I did it was maybe for 15 seconds. You're just working so much harder. And even, even in the best of conditions, you're still working just a little bit harder because of the surface.
It's there, there's more rolling resistance. Your tires are bigger, it's generally harder going and that adds up. You know that that really does that up to how much energy you're expanding. You're using more of your muscles, you're using more upper body and it's often harder to eat. It's a so you can get into a hole really quickly without realizing that you're getting in a hole. So I, I, I try to encourage people to make their food as accessible as possible. I'm a big fan of the little top two bento boxes because reaching into your pockets is harder than you think it's going to be. I, I've, I have done this myself. I'm like, ah, I don't, I did it for Steamboat gravel. I'm like, I don't think I need that thing. And I was so, so many times I kicked myself all day long. I'm like, why didn't you just put that on your bike?
It would've made your food so much easier to get. You know, but you also, it's visual then too. You can think about it. You can look at your computer and be like, Oh, it's, you know, a half hour in, it's an hour in, I should eat something. And it's right there. But you have to make it more of a conscious effort to stay on top of it because if you don't, you can get in a hole much, much easier than you could on the road, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. It's funny, I, I hesitate to admit this on air, but I learned those lessons doing iron man triathlons. Oh yeah, me too. I've been there. Yeah. All right. So we're both secret former triathletes at this point. And yeah, you learn, you know, I remember talking to a coach and I was talking about my hydration strategy and how I'd go for a 70 mile ride and drink two water bottles and he was just like, that is not enough at all.
And in triathlon maybe it is for your training ride, but it's going to kill you at your race. Yeah, right, exactly. And that's, you have to practice that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Because you've got to, it's not about in triathlon, it's not about just finishing the bike. You're going to exactly one as well. And I think there's some parallels there with, with gravel in that you just need to keep yourself topped up. Cause if you get behind the eight ball, you ain't coming back totally. And you really do really do need to practice it. I preach that so, so much. One of the things that I am really glad that I did before Kanza is I did a real dress rehearsal, shakedown ride, where I put everything on my bike the way I planned it. Because it's so easy when you, if you're going to do a super, super, super long training ride, a lot of people will just plan stores and stuff, right. But they're not carrying it the same way that they're going to be carrying it at the event. And it's really important that you do that because, and find the train that matches it as best you can. So I like took my gravel bike on some really chunky, no Whitner maintenance Rocky road. And my bottle's objected immediately and my bag was like going sideways. I was like, okay, all right, this is not going to work. You know? It's just good to like not discover that
On race day. Yeah. Even I think Yuri Haswell had mentioned it when he was on the podcast. Even the idea of putting the same things in the same location. Yes. On your bags or body, wherever you're going to store the stuff. So, you know, you don't have to think about it at all. Yeah. Especially with something like Kanza that's, that's more important than you think. Cause you lose the ability to reason and think and remember. Yeah. It's so true. I call it, for me, I call it getting stuck on stupid where I can't, I just cannot, I cannot make a simple decision about my nutrition or hydration at that point in the day. Yup. Yup. Which brings me to another point, which I think was interesting that you dedicated a chapter to it, which was the notion of grit. Yup. I actually almost, I originally, the working title for the whole book was grit, but they they wanted it to be a little more clear. But yeah, I always call it the book itself. Grit. Yeah. Can you, can you dive into that chapter a little bit and talk about why people need to think about grit when it comes to gravel cycling?
I'm sure because it is, I think and again, a lot of this is drawn from my own personal experience as well as, you know, athletes I've worked with and people that I've, I know is that often that we have this mental picture, something like I did that coast to coast race across Michigan a couple of years ago and you know, my mental picture of it was like, Oh, I'm just going to ride my bike across Michigan on the sand roads and it's going to be wonderful. And you know, I like, I don't know that this is why I keep doing things because I have a memory of a goldfish, but you know, but then 165 miles into it, it was not sunshine and roses, right. I went into the tunnel, the dark place that you go into and I think it's really important to train that part because when all things are equal and you've done your work and you're prepared and you have your nutrition, you can do it.
It's your brain that's going to shut you down. It's your little central governor in your head that is going to be like, no, not today. Or yes, you can get through this. And I, it's important enough. I mean, you could write a whole book about it and people have, but I thought that especially gravel where it is hard, you know, I mean I think that's one of the things that people get so caught up in like, Oh the fun because it's fun, but a lot of times it's type two fun, you know, where you're out, you're kind of suffering for a while and you know, almost all these events throw some sort of pretty challenging stuff at you. Like, well, you're just in this interminable, false flat into a headwind for really long time and it ceases to be kind of real fun. Right. And then, then there's has to be something else that's going to get you through. And that's great.
Yeah. I think, you know, even if I think back at what I would deem a relatively nontechnical course of SBT gravel, there were a couple of sand sand sections. And when you're feeling a little bit fatigued and you keep coming off because you're, you know, not handling the sand correctly, it feels like you're making no forward progress or you're never going to get to the end and you know, you still have 30 40 miles to go. You do go into that dark place and it's a question of how do you come out of it? How do you remind yourself that it's just temporary?
Yeah, and that's why in the book I talk about it being a tunnel and not a cave because I've always thought like everyone talks about the pain cave and the cave implies that you're going into a dark place where bears are asleep, right? Like it's just not, it does. There's no end to that. And if you think of it more like a tunnel, then there's light on the other side. You just have to
Find it. That's a great way of thinking about it. And I think gravel maybe more so than the road and maybe less so than mountain biking really lends itself to that. Because if you're doing it right, you're going to hit a section where you just have a shit eating grin on your face and you're having the time of your life and that can come just moments after being stuck in that sand and feeling like the world is going to end
And vice versa. You know? I mean, I remember in Michigan I was like, literally, I'm like, woo, this is fun. And then not 30 minutes later I'm like, Oh, I'm dying. This is terrible. I mean, it can, it can happen like the flick of a switch, you know? And you have to just learn how to talk to yourself, learn how to take care of yourself and you can totally get it.
Yeah. There's a lot of life lessons there as well, I think. Oh, I agree. Yeah. Transcends bicycling. I love that about gravel in that, you know, you'd go out with friends or in a race and everybody's going to have those moments and you can kind of just share and revel in pushing through them.
Yup. Yeah, I mean that's, those are all the stories that you gather as you're out there.
The, the book concludes with some really great information about cross training and ultimately actually a training plan for, for DK 200. Let's talk a little bit as we're approaching the end of the year, what should we be encouraging the listeners to do with their bodies other than cycling
Strength train? I can say it enough. I mean if you look at the Kate Courtney's and the Peter Saigon's and you know, Taylor Finney before he retired, like pretty much everybody right now. Cyclists now know even at the highest level, that strength training is a really important compliment for our sport. It it builds, it not only like gives you more Watts because it builds efficiency and power and strength. And if you lift heavy, it's not for hypertrophy. It's for strength and power, you know, so you're not going to look like a bodybuilder. But it just also takes, it makes you more injury proof, which is important, you know, and it lets you push that bigger gear that you need to push on gravel cause you need to push bigger gears on gravel to make progress. It helps support your whole core. You know, core is overused, but you use a lot of your core muscles to support yourself on choppy terrain. You know, your traps won't get, sorry, your shoulders won't get sorry. Your triceps won't get sore. It's, I, I cannot, I've been preaching strength training for a long, long time and I'm so happy that cyclists are finally catching onto it. But definitely this time of year is the perfect time to give yourself a break off the bike. You need to give yourself a break off the bike so you can
Like come back to it fresh and you know, with these muscles that you've been taking care of and other ways and you're more balanced. Yeah. I've, when you mentioned Kate Courtney's name, it reminded me of like her Instagram feed right now is filled with her strength training as much as it as it is riding a bike. Did you see her Jo like single, her single hopping up that flight of steps? Was that her? I think it was, I just, I, I,
I follow a few people and I hope, I hope I'm not talking about someone else's amazing feat, but somebody like was doing a lot of these great plyometrics and one of it was like single hopping up this long
By the stairs. I'm like, that is amazing. Yeah. And I think it's, you know, it's important for the listeners, and maybe even, I'm preaching to myself when I say this, that we're not professional cyclists. We're all normal human beings in the aging process. And getting into the gym is just something we all need to do for our own health. Not only cycling performance.
Oh, 100% true. I mean you're, you, I mean all of, all of the, all of the metabolic things that happen over time, you know, you tend to naturally lose some muscle, naturally become more predisposed to put on fat, you know, body composition changes, bone density, all of that stuff. Strength training is, is the solution to stemming it for sure.
And in, in the book, I noticed a lot of exercises around strength that look like they can be done in the home. Was that intentional or are you sort of an advocate of getting, getting actually underneath some heavy weights? I'm a huge advocate of getting underneath some heavy ways. Absolutely.
So I'm a realist and I also believe that you can do an awful lot at home. So, you know, you can, I'm, I don't go to the gym really more than twice a week, maybe three times. But I do lots of maintenance work at, in the house and it's amazing what some pushups, air squats, you know, that kind of stuff can do. It's, it's, it works very well and it leaves you with very little excuse because you know, you can do them pretty much anywhere.
And on those gym days at home, are you, are you riding as well on those days or those sure. Dedicated athletics for the day.
I usually ride too. I, you know, I ride not just for riding but for, because I love riding for mental health and for being outside, you know, which, which the gym doesn't necessarily do. So it is, it can be a little bit of a juggling act. You know, if I'm doing a heavy strength training day, sometimes I like to compliment it right after and just spin it out on my bike. You know, like that's, that's a nice way. I like to remind my, it sounds kind of strange to talk about this, but I like to remind my muscles why I'm doing what I'm doing and sometimes I feel like that's a great way to do it. I ride to the gym and I do my thing and I go for a short spin afterwards. And I'm still doing some interval work for sure over the winter time just to stay, just to keep that little bit of top end.
And the, the book concludes with this DK 200 training plan and I was excited to see that as someone who often on contemplates going to Cannes and myself to do that event. I listened to your cohost from the pace line, Patrick, talk about his journey to cancer this past year, which I don't know if it put me more in wanting to do it or less than willing to do it. Reasonable. When you, when you were putting together that a training plan, is that an off the couch training plan or is it assuming someone has a decent amount of fitness underneath them to begin with?
It's and recreational rider, which I kind of define as somebody who rides regularly and has for a few years. And by regularly, I mean, you know, two to three, maybe four days a week, you know, the long ride on the weekend, you should definitely be able to put in a couple hours on your bike easily, comfortably. So not straight off the couch per se, but also not, you don't need to have a, a pro card or a license, you know, you don't need to wind up for any other events. And I very, very purposely made it manageable and I purposely also made it harder than some other plans that I've seen because because the do not finish rate is so high there. And I think it's because people don't take themselves quite as far as sometimes as they really need to. You know, being on your bike for five or six hours is one thing.
Once you push over eight hours, it's a whole different animal. And if you've never been there, you just, you, you don't know how you're going to, your stomach's going to respond to food. You don't know all that stuff that happens, how, you know, if you're going to get hot spots on your feet, like a lot of that stuff doesn't materialize until you cross that really long endurance time. So I, I, you know, if I felt it really important that you don't need to do a ton of those rides, but I felt like it was super important to take people into that territory.
How many of those did you have in the program where you were going? Pretty deep and long. [inaudible] Not
More than maybe two, three. I mean, not really. I tried to keep it reasonable. So you still have a life, you know, I don't believe that this needs to be your whole life, but I do believe like, I'm like training for a marathon. Right? Like you people recreationally, training for marathon, don't do a ton of 20 plus mile rides or runs. Some don't do any. And I don't believe that either. I, when I trained for marathons, I'm like, you have to go into that 20. You have to just psychologically because if you've never, that's a quarter of your race. If you've never been there, it's scary. That's the worst part. You know, so I, I really didn't feel like the same. I treated like a lot like marathon training in that way.
Yeah. And I remember, I remember getting coached and having a particularly difficult long, long workout and my coach just reminding me like, you got through it. That's in the bank. No one has to take that away from you. And when you're having a hard time at the event, just remember that you've banked everything. You've been on this program, you can do this.
It makes a huge difference. I interviewed Chrissie Wellington one time and pro world-class triathlete for people who don't know. And she wants said some workouts are stars and some workouts are stone, but they're both rock and you build with them. And that has, that has been in my head for a long time.
That's awesome. And that's, those are probably good words to conclude with. You've created a really great guide to gravel cycling soup to nuts. As I said, I think for anybody this is a good read, an interesting read it for, for those who've been around the sport for a while it explores things like drop reposts suspension, different types of things you, you may be considering as you've been around the sport longer. And if you're a beginning athlete, it just sort of brings you right from what you should expect across the board list some amazing events across the country that you might look to put on your 2020 calendar. So Celine, thanks so much for the time and I encourage everybody to go out and order this book.
Thanks, Craig. It's been great.
A conversation with John Kirlin from Wyoming's The Dead Swede Hundo gravel cycling event.
The Dead Swede Website
The Dead Swede Instagram
Automated Transcript (please excuse the typos).
John, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Awesome. I'm excited to learn about the dead Swede hundo. It definitely, I think captures my imagination as the most clever race name I've heard of in recent memory. But first let's start off by telling us where you're located and how you got into creating the event in the first place.
Great. So yeah, located in, shared in Wyoming and kinda started looking around that, just the terrain. There are not a lot of folks that live in Wyoming. There are about half a million people in the entire state, but we're the 10th largest land mass in the United States. So we've got a lot of great terrain and a lot of big mountains and a lot of great gravel. And so riding gravel is just kind of an obvious choice for us out here. I moved to Sheridan from Casper, Wyoming and started just looking over the maps and just kinda seeing what roads were available, ride and started going into a local bike shop sharing bicycle company and chatting with who's now my business partner in the race. Jordan with Duke and looking at, you know, what the gravel scene lawns out here who's riding what, what's, what's big, what's Epic, how can I, what's a a hundred mile a loop that I could maybe sync up and everything started pointing towards the big horn mountains and cause we, we had the beauty of the big horn mountains that are just right in our backyard.
And so it just started looking at potential ways we could loop up a a hundred mile loop and started looking on the map and everything drew me to kind of this grow that's kind of famous around here called red grade road. And it's just basically an old Jeep road almost that just goes straight up the mountain. You climb about three, 4,000 feet in a matter of seven miles. So it, it gets up and going, but we just started thinking, well maybe I'll put together a ride, maybe a group ride. And then I said, well, if I'm going to just formalize this thing and make it a real thing, how about we just put on an event and see if we can get some people more than just a handful of locals. The cheaper we can get some other people from around the state and the region to come out. And we at first year anticipated about 50 riders. We had about 150 show up for our first event and we just had our third year this year in June and that 580 riders show up.
That's great. When you, when you moved to Sheridan, John, were you already writing a drop bar gravel bike or did you come from a mountain bike or road background?
Yeah, I was riding a drop bar, gravel bike or cyclocross bike really. I'd actually yet to switch to a real specific gravel geometry. I'm currently on a, you know, a five year old specialized crops. Then just kind of retrofitted it. And I came from ride racing side cross and I raised mountain bikes and rode in college and I actually grew up as a cross country skier. And so that's where my real racing background came from.
Great. And then you, you had mentioned, and I'm sure in people's imagination, the state of Wyoming, it just sort of screams that it probably has a lot of gravel roads. And you alluded to that. For those of us who haven't been to Wyoming, or at least in my case I've been through, but I haven't peddled in Wyoming at all. You know, what, what, what is the terrain and what are the roads like?
I mean we have just all sorts of different regions over here. Anything from kind of where we're at on the Eastern side of the state is more high grassland. And so like Sheridan for example, is kind of rolling Hills with ranches and farm land and the kind of the open grassy lands. And then we've bought up to the big horn mountains. And so then we get into more like 9,000 vertical feet and mountain roads to track single track and rough feel, us forest service type riding. And then the opposite side, the Western side of the mountain is kinda high desert basin that is very similar to like the Fruita and grand junction area and Moab area. And so there's Wyoming really has a whole lot of different regions and it's kind of fun.
So it sounds like there's a combination of, of roads, dirt roads, which would be automobile accessible to S to stuff that cars couldn't get over and it's just for off road bikes and, and offered vehicles presumably.
Yes.
Access to that terrain. How did that kind of shape what type of event you wanted to put together?
Yeah, so I, I just looked at, as we were talking more and more about an event, we wanted to do something that would start and finish in town versus just somewhere out in the boonies. My wife actually helped me realize the value in that. She says, you know, it's, it's great for the racer out there, but what about the spouse that not raising, what are they going to do? And so we, we kinda cater to that and the families. And so having it start and finish in town and providing them with where to lodge, what are the fun things to do in town while you're significant others out suffering for 10 hours. So at the time I was working at one of the breweries, black dude brewing company in town. And so we partnered with them saying, well, let's just start and finish at the brewery. What's better than finishing arrived in finishing at a brewery? And that worked great for the first two years. But as this last year, we grew in size, the, the street out in front of the brewery was just not adequate for what our raisers wanted and sides. And after riding for, you know, 10 hours in the sun, then trying to stand around on hot black pavement, we've decided to move it to our city park in town, which was just, you know, half a mile away from the brewery.
Okay. Yeah, I think it's, you know, it's one of those great opportunities that is unique to gravel that you can start in town and it's easy enough with these bicycles to, you know, cover five or 10 miles to get out of town and get into the wilderness. And then all of a sudden, as your wife astutely noted, and as the event has progressed over the last couple of years, you end up with this great economic opportunity for the community, a great opportunity to showcase the small town or if their city that you live in. And I think you see that time and time again with gravel races around the country, that they're really just creating these great weekend events that even the towns, folk who aren't interested in cycling can appreciate that. It just brings some, some energy and economic vitalization to the community over the weekend.
Absolutely. I mean, that's a big part of it. And even just myself as a writer, I anymore more, I like to just go, well, there's a new place and they've gotten any bet and I plan my vacation and my, my weekend around that event. Like, yeah, we'll go hang out with some friends, meet some new people and do some riding, check out the country and its place that we normally wouldn't probably see if we were just driving through.
Yeah, that's right. Know you said something, something I loved over email. To me that said, I love throwing challenges at riders, giving them a glimmer of hope with some recovery sections and then throwing more at them again. Can you tell us how that plays out over the long course for the, for the dead Swede?
Absolutely. So some people might say I'm a bit of a masochist and I'm climbing that, but I also love to descend and when mapping out the course, I really looked at where are going to be a good challenges and if I've got a really big long climb, what's my recovery all look like afterwards and where can I really capitalize on getting recovery? And so as riders go out the course, they'll get few miles of pavement, then they start the, hit the gravel and do some rolling Hills and break up into their groups. And then they hit this, the base of the mountains and they climb and climb and climb and climb up just this steep road. And a lot of people end up walking it because you're going about three miles an hour climbing this thing. There's sections of it that are of, you know, 16 to 22 degree angle our percent.
But in the middle of one of these climbs, we had a little section of single track. And so I thought, you know, that'd be a fun way to break it up. So they're still gonna get the elevation but get a little bit more distance, aunts and single track. And so they do about a mile seeing the track in the middle of this climb and kind of mentally it's a reprieve there before they then hit the steep grades of the red grade road. And then once you get up on top, that's where the, the views really open up and you can see into what's cloud peak wilderness and these 13,000 foot peaks with snow on top of them still as you ride through the forest. And we've got some punchy rolly Hills in there, but then do some loops and get some descents. And then I, okay, it feels fun. And then I'll throw just a big gut punch of a, a hike, a bike section in the middle after crossing the stream. And we kinda have a sign that I always like to put out on the course. Kind of to poke fun at my riders, give them a little bit of sarcasm. But the sign I say, can we still be friends?
[Inaudible]
Then I'll put it in various, I'll put in a different section each year. Just cause it is one of those where you think you're done climbing and then you realize it's a, it's a false summit and you turn and you got another thousand vertical feet to go and it just kind of deflates your balloon right there. Yeah. And so I, I asked them, can we still be friends? And, and I'll always have writers that come in that after the finish they're like, well, I saw that sign and I really wanted to punch you.
My answer was no at the moment.
Yes, absolutely. But yeah, I really like to strategically place our, our Clines and technical sections if it's going to be super rough and technical, then afterwards put it, you know, section and on just buff gravel or even a little section of pavement in there if the course allows it.
And as the course remained consistent over the three years or have you made changes?
Every year for the long course has been different because of the timing of our race. It snow conditions are a big factor. We had the first, the actual inception of the course was supposed to be a 100 mile loop and that then rolled through the, the entire forest and came back down. But as we got closer and closer, I realized we're not going to be able to get through this section as snow. It goes up too high and there's about a five mile section that doesn't get plowed or maintained and that would've just been a five miles off hike a bike through postholing snow. And I just didn't want to put our riders through that,
Which is funny as a coastal person because your events in June, the idea to think that you're, you know, you're going to be tapped out because of the snow line in June is pretty funny from my perspective.
Yeah. Because yeah, we're, we're up high in the high elevation mountains. So there it's, it's funny, last year we had a late, we had a late and wet spring and snow fall and so we had to do a reroute of our course last year. We weren't even able to go all the way up top and we actually ended up doing kind of two loops of our lower course last year, which made for some really fast times. But yeah, just the snow is, is a factor for us.
Yeah. I got to imagine it makes the stream crossings a little chilly as well.
Absolutely. And so we don't have many of them, but there where you do cross, it's, you're, you're going through glacier melt.
I like what you've described with the course because I think it's, for me, when a course becomes just a battle of attrition along fire roads, it becomes less interesting. And I think less apropos for where I want to see gravel go. I, you know, I want cyclists always to be challenged across the full range of disciplines. They're not only Watson horsepower, but handling skills you name it. I think that that makes a great event that it sounds like you've pieced together a day that depending on the conditions, not depending on the conditions, it's always going to be a day that the rider remembers.
Absolutely. That's what I like with cycling is just going out and getting a little bit of everything. And I come from just, you know, not just a road background or not just a mountain background or gravel background, but I really kind of want to do them all in one ride. And so that's kind of the idea behind this course is to bring people that come from multiple backgrounds and they're going to feel comfortable and confident in sections and they're going to feel, you know, vulnerable and uncomfortable in other sections. But that's the best part of the cycling is that when you get into that vulnerability stage and it only makes you a better rider when you get through it.
Yeah. And I think that it makes it really interesting when you're riding with others and you see their skillsets versus yours in different areas. And it gives you an opportunity if you're more technically inclined to kind of catch up on those single tracks sections a while the, you know, the people with the great engines are climbing away from you on the fire roads.
Absolutely. I mean we definitely see that in our results. We have people that they just, they know they're not a climber and so they hang out for a little while in the back. But then what we do is after that climb, they do Wally pop up top and then they come back and descend all that road. And so some of these good climbers that unite not be a great descenders or they might blow up, they might not have the legs to get through the rest of the course because they spent it on the climb.
Yeah, yeah. Have you seen other events start to crop up in your region?
Yeah, we have. It's been, so there was for a little while, we kind of pieced together this Wyoming gravels series and there's a erasing Casper that we always kind of hit. And that's in the central part of the state. It's the rattlesnake rally and they've got 120 mile as their long course and then like a 60 mile in a 30 mile as well. Here's a ride out of Lander, the WYO one 31, which hits a big section of gravel and that's a, that's a lot more self supported of a ride and, but they've got a big 131 mile course one over in Gillette right next to the black Hills. And then the black Hills has a big following the folks that do the Dakota Fibo, which is a big mountain bike race over there and Spearfish Perry Jua is the ratio organizer over there.
He puts on the gold rush and it's a 200 miles through big group. And so it's starting to pop up all over the region. And we actually reached out to some folks on the other side of the mountain and did our inaugural or we call the bad medicine ride this September and partnered with some people over there and kind of the same thing, one of those mixed bag rides where you're, you're gonna climb a lot and it's like the long course is a, a 96 mile loop with 10,000, 200 vertical feet in elevation. And the probably the best bike for that would be like the salsa cut throat or you know, something with a big dual inch drop bar, mountain bike almost just because of some of the, the technicality up top. But then there's also a 17 mile paved descent through this Canyon.
So one of those rides where no one bike is the best. But yeah, there's, it's, it's been interesting watching the gravel, seeing rural out here because it's just, it is a great way to get off the pavement and when we don't have roads that are paved all that well anyways, and a lot of vehicle traffic going 70 miles an hour next year, it's not that fun. But, and so a lot of people I know are selling the road bikes and just kinda the gravel bike or they just picked up their first $500 entry level hard tail and looking for something to ride. And so they're not a technical writer, so is a huge appeal to them.
Yeah, no, it's, I mean, as you've described Wyoming and at my own personal experience there, I mean you've got, I think you've got a great training ground for all levels of gravel. Like you said, you can have a basic bike with 30 to see tires and ride miles and miles and miles of just gravel roads that undulate for, for long distances. And then you can start layering in some of the double track and ultimately the single track and then combine these crazy adventures like you were talking to the other side of the mountain. It really does sound like an ideal area for gravel riding.
Absolutely. We love it over here and all of our rides we put on are just, they're meant to be super encouraging. I, I joke about the masochism but I also I like to make sure that we have support out there and so that anyone can really come out and feel safe and comfortable with it and just kind of take some of that, that level of risk and the unknown out of there. So like all of our rides will like, between the dead suite as well as the bad medicine, we'll put an aid station approximately every 10 miles that'll have food, nutrition, minimal bikes support like at pump and some patch kit if someone runs it, just to allow that little bit level of comfort for these people that they just bought their first bike and they're, they're looking for something to do and they're loving it. And signing up for 120 miles. Self-Supported just doesn't sound that fun to them yet.
And you've, you've you've done three different routes at this point, right? For the different distances?
Yeah. It's for the, for the dead sweet. For the, the a hundred miler. We've done three different routes and we have what we plan on being our, our standard route. But it has to, if weather's on our side, we'll continue that standard group. Otherwise we did come up with a, a good alternative to lap course down-low.
Great. And then I can't let you go without understanding. Where did the dead Swede name come from?
So it's funny, there's a campground not bond off of what was originally going to be the, the main loop called the dead sweet camp ground. And so when I moved to the area and I saw it on a map, I was like, what is this all about? And there's, there's three grave sites right there at this campground and it used to be up on top of the big horns. They had a big logging operation and logging camps and this tie flume. And so they would send these railroad ties down a, you know, a 30 mile handbill water slide down the mountain into town for the railroad and kind of legend Hagit is this for men. And a couple of other guys are doing some mining for and gold panning and silver and just trying to find some minerals and get rich. And apparently maybe they found it and between the three of them they got a quarrel and guilt each other over this. And so yeah, this kind of that, that true Western mystery of the high mountain panhandler.
Yeah. Fascinating story. Well, John, thanks for telling us a little bit more about the event and sharing about the region over there in Wyoming. The event is in June of 2020, is that right?
Correct. And June six of 2020 it falls same day as dirty Kanza and that is one of those things that we couldn't get around just cause of all the other events in our region. But you know, if you don't get into dirty Kanza come see us at our event.
Yeah, it sounds good. I will put a the link to the dead sweet Hondo website in the show notes and post about it on social media so people can start thinking about it for their 2020 calendar.
Absolutely.
Right on. Well, thanks John. I appreciate the time.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
A conversation with Kristi Mohn (marketing manager) and Lelan Dains (Events Manager) from the Dirty Kanza team introducing Big Sugar Gravel in Bentonville, AR. Registration opens November 15th, 2019.
Big Sugar Gravel Website
Big Sugar Gravel Instagram
Craig : 00:00 Welcome everyone to this week's Gravel Ride podcast. We are podcasting today from a basement in Bentonville, Arkansas. And I've actually got a couple of guests on the podcast today, who I'm going to ask to introduce themselves because it's a little bit of a surprise. And we'll talk about why we're here in a few minutes.
Kristi: 00:18 Oh, ladies first?
Craig : 00:20 Of course, always.
Kristi: 00:21 I'm Kristi Mohn. I'm with the Lifetime and Dirty Kanza. What do you want to know about me? I'm from Emporia Kansas, home of Dirty Kanza.
Craig : 00:30 And you've been working on Dirty Kanza since the beginning, right?
Kristi: 00:33 Yeah, pretty much. I officially joined Jim and Joel at the time after the 2009 event. So Dirty Kanza started in 2006. Was the first race.
Craig : 00:45 And was Emporia your hometown?
Kristi: 00:46 Yeah, Emporia is my hometown.
Craig : 00:48 Were you a cyclist?
Kristi: 00:50 Yeah, I was a cyclist. I'd mostly been a runner, but had been graduating or transitioning to cycling more, so was a cyclist.
Craig : 00:59 And when we were talking offline, you told me you saw it as just this big opportunity for a rural community, to have an event that everybody could get behind.
Kristi: 01:09 Yeah, that it really that's kind of what it was. Is after the first year, I thought this event could be something really cool. You could take your kids to the checkpoints. We had two young kids at the time, twins that were, I think they were four or five when it started. And just really looking for a way to be a family and participate in an event like that. Because Tim would go to mountain bike races and it wasn't as conducive to having kids at mountain bike races. And the gravel scene really allowed that.
Craig : 01:39 What kind of friction did you experience with the town? Did everybody say, "Oh, this sounds like a great idea"? Or they-
Kristi: 01:44 Well, no, they thought it was crazy. You want to do what? And I'm like, "We're going to have this bike race downtown Emporia and have 200 people. Or people ride 200 miles on gravel in one day. And they're just like, "Nobody's going to come and do that." And it turned out not to be the case, luckily.
Craig : 02:04 Did it take a while for people to start coming?
Kristi: 02:06 To start coming to the event?
Craig : 02:08 Yeah.
Kristi: 02:08 I mean, we'd gotten to where it was at least regionally, it was fairly known. When we moved it downtown, we really wanted people to come and celebrate the cyclists finishing that distance. And so the finish line party and our finish line atmosphere, which our local Main Street helps us with that finish line party, you'll have 10 to 12,000 people down there to greet riders coming in, after riding 200 miles. And I think it really celebrates the average, everyday athlete. And I love that about it. And Emporians love watching these people cross the finish line.
Craig : 02:43 Yeah. It's so amazing from a community perspective to just bring that kind of weekend traffic into a town. And have people recognize that, as someone who's not a cyclist, there's some hassles involved. But the benefit to the community is so huge. It sounds like everybody just runs with it at this point.
Kristi: 03:02 Well, it's referred to as our Christmas, our downtown merchants called. It's their Christmas weekend is Dirty Kanza week, because people are there, and it's an exciting time. And people are spending money and making cash registers ring. It's an economic boom for Emporia, Kansas for sure.
Craig : 03:21 Yeah, no doubt. Lelan, I want to invite you into the conversation. Can you talk about your role?
Lelan: 03:25 Yeah. My name is Lelan Danes. I'm the race director for Dirty Kanza now. I'm a native Emporian as well, despite my repeated attempts to get away, I felt pulled back at various times. And for the last and what I think was final time, I think I'm stuck in Emporia for the better, for the remainder of my days. I came back about seven years ago, left Carmichael Training Systems to join Jim and Kristy and Tim on this Dirty Kanza venture.
Lelan: 03:53 At that time DK was at a point where it was a jump on board or abandoned ship. Meaning that they had all been operating this in their spare time, in their free hours, on evenings and weekends. And it was at a stage where it needed full time help. And so Jim and I made that commitment. We left our careers, and came back to make that happen.
Lelan: 04:16 And that was another one of those crucial turning points in DK. It had already moved downtown, the year or two prior. And it was gaining steam, and it needed full time attention. And so I was really fortunate to be able to come back home. It's kind of one of those coming of age deals where when you're 18 and graduating high school, you can think of nothing but getting out of there. And then as I matured a little bit, realized how wonderful Emporia was, and that there was an opportunity in my hometown to do what I love doing, which was bikes. It was just a no brainer.
Craig : 04:49 So you came in and it sounds like around the time where it started to be, if you don't register for DK, the moment the registration goes up, you're not getting in.
Kristi: 04:58 Yeah, I mean we were getting to our registration was filling very quickly. Yeah.
Craig : 05:02 And opening up new course distances, I'm sure, made it even more popular to try to get in.
Kristi: 05:08 Yeah, and we added the 25 mile mount distance fairly early on. And then added a 50. And then eventually, I think we added the 50 at the same time we moved. The 100 had been a relay at one point, so it was 200 miles but by two people. And then we eventually turned that into just its own 100 mile distance.
Craig : 05:29 Can we talk a little bit about the course?
Kristi: 05:31 The Dirty Kanza course?
Craig : 05:32 Yeah.
Lelan: 05:34 Yeah, of course. Well, for those that haven't been to DK, they've probably likely heard the stories of the flats. And the way I like to tell people is DK is not one knockout punch. It's death by a thousand cuts. And that comes from a variety of things. I'm not literally just talking about the Flint rock that will cut your tires. I'm talking about the literal thousand hills, the endless wind, the exposure to the sun. You just feel like nick after nick after nick, this thing's beating you up. And the gravel itself is amongst the roughest and toughest in the country.
Lelan: 06:09 And that's one of those things that maybe we had an idea how special it was, but maybe didn't fully understand what we had in the Flint Hills. But it's just one of those rare landscapes that it has remained untouched because it's so rugged. There's one thing you can do on that land, and that's graze cattle. You can't farm it, you can't plow it. You can't do anything because it is rock. And it's sharp, sharp rock. So that's what that course is like, and it's pretty relentless.
Craig : 06:37 I haven't been on it myself, so when you're riding it, is the type of rock that is shifting the wheel around underneath your body?
Lelan: 06:45 Yeah, you're going to get a variety. And depending on the time and the situation, if the graders come through or not, you might have a stretch where there's some pretty clear double track, and you're humming along and it feels pretty smooth and fast. But those sections are far and few between. The vast majority of what you're going to get on, is what you'd described. It's not a solid rock base. It's not a solid surface. It's shifting rock, and its fist size. We're not talking crushed limestone gravel. We're certainly not talking pea gravel that you find on a bike path. We're talking fist size chunks of rock that they didn't bother to take the time to break down. They just dumped it on the road and said, here you go.
Kristi: 07:23 And the rock was used to make arrowheads and...
Lelan: 07:26 Axes.
Kristi: 07:27 Axes, and so it serves that purpose on your tires. And [inaudible 00:07:31], sidewall protection are key.
Craig : 07:35 Yeah, I can imagine some of the pack riding that happens. There's obviously the benefit of riding in the pack, but the detriment of not seeing your line.
Lelan: 07:43 Well this is a conversation that with the World Tour pros that came, people asked me repeatedly, this was talked about publicly on forums and such. It was, what is this gravels just to become road racing? Well, that can't happen at Dirty Kanza. It physically can't because you can't actual on across the road in a crosswind. You can't follow a wheel sometimes. It's more like mountain biking in a sense that you have to ride your own line, you have to ride your own race. And you're not going to get a huge benefit from the draft, because you can't physically stay where you want to stay or choose where you want to be, based on where the wind's coming and so.
Lelan: 08:20 And we saw that. What did we see at 2019 DK? Non world pro, World Tour pro Collins Strickland rode away at mile 100 basically, and solo the rest of the way, because no one behind him could organize, or had the strength to even bring him back in.
Craig : 08:36 Yeah. Now I love that about the race because I'm definitely one that I think Jeremiah Bishop said it best to me. He said, let's keep gravel weird. And regardless of what the terrain looks like, I do want those parts of it to require a full bag of tricks.
Kristi: 08:57 Well and that, your comment there is interesting to me because a lot of times we hear that, I think of gravel as being super inclusive. And I stand by that. And people say, "They're going to ruin gravel." I'm like, "They're not going to ruin gravel because we're not going to let them." Gravel is just that. And it's about what we want to make it. And I think the one thing that's special about Dirty Kanza in my mind is that we celebrate every person that comes across that finish line. We stay out there until 3:00 AM. And so yeah, it's exciting when a pro crushes it in under 10 hours. But we shake Collins Strickland's hand, and move him through the line, and are waiting there for the next person because it's just about celebrating those people, those journeyman athletes that are stepping up and trying something outside of their comfort zone.
Craig : 09:47 Yeah. It gives me goosebumps to think about it. I love, it's arguably harder for someone to do it in 15 hours than it is-
Kristi: 09:55 Yes, 100%.
Craig : 09:56 And probably they're digging deeper, they're certainly doing it for longer. And it's a huge accomplishment for those athletes who just suck it up and get through that day.
Kristi: 10:05 And we do not lose sight of that in our event. Any critic that wants to say that about us, they're just wrong.
Craig : 10:15 Yeah.
Kristi: 10:17 We're passionate about what we're doing for people and changing their lives, so.
Craig : 10:21 Yeah, well I think the reports of the event always say that exact same thing. It's celebrating no matter where you're finishing, and finishing is the big deal.
Kristi: 10:31 Yeah.
Craig : 10:32 One last question on DK. How did the 200 miles come about originally? It's a heck of a distance.
Lelan: 10:38 Well, Jim Cummins who isn't joining us here on this, he's one of the original two co-founders of the event. They got the idea by actually going to other gravel events, that were much longer. And Jim will tell you, as he's told us many times, that they settled on 200 because they didn't want to go any further than that.
Lelan: 11:01 They thought that it was far enough. They knew 100 wasn't enough. They wanted a challenge, a very hard challenge. But one that most people could grasp is achievable. And 200 seem to be the right number.
Craig : 11:12 Yeah. Yeah it's fascinating to me because I think on the West coast we don't see events of those distances. And I think it's probably because you end up with elevation gains that happen more quickly. So you're doing 1000 feet per 10 miles. So it's just not really feasible to have people out doing 200 mile events. So I sort of look in awe and reverence to the athletes that crossed the DK 200 finish lines.
Kristi: 11:38 It's an incredible finish line to cross.
Craig : 11:40 Yeah. So we're in Bentonville, Arkansas, and not in Emporia.
Lelan: 11:45 We are not.
Craig : 11:46 And you guys just announced something very special that I think my listeners are going to be keen to hear about. So you guys can Roshambo for who gets to talk about it first. Let's talk about why we're in Bentonville.
Kristi: 11:59 Oh, you want to go?
Lelan: 12:00 Yeah of course. Well it has been a long time conversation for Jim Christy and myself around the DK office. We knew that there was gravel beyond the Flint Hills. Even as gravel has gone into its probably adolescents, is that where we're at?
Kristi: 12:17 Probably.
Lelan: 12:18 Yeah, reaching maturity in adulthood yeah. But there's events popping up everywhere, and they're popping up in iconic locations. And there are events who have been going in decades strong. And have fantastic events. But we've still known all along that there are other locations that are ripe for a gravel event, and for a number of reasons. There's great people all across the United States. There's a great geography. And Bentonville is one of those places. Most people are probably recognizing it as a mountain bike Mecca, a cycling destination for single track trail. There's over a hundred miles of single track, all accessible from downtown Bentonville. There's great roads to ride. There'll be hosting the Cyclo-cross World Championships coming up in a few years. But no one was talking about gravel in the NWA, Northwest Arkansas.
Lelan: 13:07 And Kristi and I had been in this area before. We have friends down here, not name you Ross. And just came up that gravel needs to happen here. And through our trips, we agreed. And as we scouted this stuff out and spent more time in this community, we were feeling at home. And so all the things were in place to say, let's go forward and let's create an event. And that's what we've got.
Craig : 13:31 All right. So what is the event? And when is it?
Kristi: 13:36 It's a new event called the Big Sugar. And we've got two distances. The Big Sugar, which is about 107 miles. And then we have the Little Sugar, which is about 50 miles. And there's some significant elevation and lots of hills and hollows, highs and hollows, right? That's what they call them. So we're really excited. It goes through some absolutely beautiful scenery, some amazing roads. We're really excited about the time of year, because the leaves will be in full color, change mode. And it's just a beautiful course.
Kristi: 14:09 So, I think we've put together what I think is just a five-star course. So we're really excited about that.
Craig : 14:17 Now coming from your wealth of experience in Emporia, what were you looking for as far as the terrain goes here in Bentonville?
Kristi: 14:27 I think we wanted it to be challenging but achievable. We wanted some climbing. We wanted some rough roads. Dirty Kanza-ish, so to speak. But also really celebrating the personality of the community is also important when you're putting together a good course. And I think we've nailed it with this course.
Craig : 14:48 So I touched on a few gravel roads today, and I'll do a bunch more tomorrow. In fact on the course. In your opinion, what are the roads like? I know what my sense was of the 20 odd miles I rode today.
Lelan: 15:03 Well, listen, guys, gals at home listeners, if you have not been to Bentonville and rid some of these gravel roads, it is far more akin to mountain biking than it is even gravel riding in Kansas and around Emporia in the Flint Hills. These are proper climbs. This is not a death by a thousand cuts like DK is. A DK, a typical hill will be a quarter mile, short but punchy. And just one after another.
Lelan: 15:31 But at Kanza you've got your periods of flat stretches where you can recover and lock it in a gear and go. You don't have that here. For one, the surface is just about as gnarly as at DK. Kristi and I were just talking, it's firmly category three gravel. If you're familiar with Neil Shirley's scale, which means it's pretty rough. It's big rock. It's gravel, it's proper gravel. And the climbs are big. They are anywhere from one to two and a half miles in length, and that means you get a corresponding descent to follow.
Lelan: 16:01 And I think this course, of any of the gravel events I've been on, this could be an equalizer for the more mountain bike crowd that does the gravel. And we were talking about that inclusivity. It's one of the amazing things about gravel is you've got roadies, you've got mountain bikers, you've got triathletes. You've got people who have only gotten into the sport of cycling through gravel, and they're only gravel riders. And they're all coming together out there. And there's different courses all across the United States that have their different flavors. Some are a little bit hard pack and faster. This Bentonville course is definitely a little bit chunkier up and down and gnarly.
Craig : 16:39 Yeah, I was surprised, even the 20 miles I rode today. It really was a lot chunkier than I thought it was. My listeners know, I'm typically riding 650 B's, 47, 50 millimeter tires, but I specifically grabbed a 700 C wheel set thinking, I'm coming to a more mellow place, where we were just going to be rolling on dirt roads. And that was not the case whatsoever.
Lelan: 17:04 No.
Craig : 17:04 So how much climbing does it add up to in the 170 miles?
Lelan: 17:07 Well that's always debatable, isn't it? Depending on what program you use and what device you're using. But I think firmly... Well, I don't think we've mentioned the distance. It's right about 108 miles in length for the Big Sugar distance. Right around 50 for our Little Sugar, half distance. And in that Big Sugar distance, it just over 100 miles, you're going to approach 10,000 feet elevation, anywhere from nine to 10,000 feet, depending on the device a person is using.
Craig : 17:32 You're going to feel it.
Lelan: 17:33 You're going to feel that. That's a lot for a hondo. You're going to be hard pressed to find that elevation, especially throughout the South or Midwest in 100 miles.
Craig : 17:42 Do you have a sense of what a pro would ride that distance in, and the range that you might be expecting for athletes?
Lelan: 17:50 Well, we had some folks riding this past weekend, and Ted King, Paisan, McElveen, Ali Tetrick were out here. Uri Haswall of course. And I know Payson and Ted were jabbing each other, making claims of six and a half. But it's going to be tough, and it's going to be interesting to see in an actual race setting how fast the front of the pack goes. And what those back in the packers are going to complete it in.
Craig : 18:20 Yeah, I think it's going to be, tire choice and wheel choice is going to be important.
Kristi: 18:26 Oh yeah.
Craig : 18:26 And how hard you're going to be willing to take those descents, given what's going to be in front of you.
Lelan: 18:30 Well, and I'll tell everyone this. This will not be the easiest hondo that you do. It's simply won't. This'll be one of the more challenging 100 mile distance on gravel.
Kristi: 18:37 Well we even talked about that with the 50. We like to have those tier steps to get into the event, but at the same time, this 50 is going to be a tougher 50. It's not going to be a cake walk.
Craig : 18:51 Yeah, it doesn't seem like anything around here would be a cake walk. So that's exciting. So the date was October when?
Kristi: 19:00 October 24th, 2020.
Craig : 19:02 Okay. And registration?
Kristi: 19:04 Yeah. Registration, November 15.
Craig : 19:05 Okay. November 15th everyone. This is opening up. And is there a hard cap on the number of riders that course can allow at the time?
Lelan: 19:13 Yep. We're aiming for 750 to start.
Craig : 19:16 Okay.
Lelan: 19:17 For the first year. Looking forward to welcoming that many people to town.
Kristi: 19:22 What's our website? Big sugar gravel.com yeah.
Craig : 19:24 Okay.
Kristi: 19:25 Yeah.
Craig : 19:26 And DK allows how many athletes at this point?
Lelan: 19:29 Well in 2020, we're looking to register 3,000 riders, across six different distances. And of course that ranges from the 350 mile XL, down to 200, 100, 50, 25, and then our high school distance. And the DK has just grown and grown. And so when we talk about it, most people recognize the 200, which is the feature distance. But we have all those different places for people to have their journey and their adventure. And Big Sugar will be the same. This is called Big Sugar, but you'll have the Little Sugar that you can participate in. And then there'll also be a 20 mile introductory level, more of a familial ride, a beginner ride type of opportunity. So you'll still be able to get out of town on gravel. That's another great thing about Bentonville, is a mile and a half to two miles, and you're out on gravel. Bentonville is not this big metropolis. It's still has a small town vibe, a small town feel. And it's very easy to get around.
Craig : 20:25 Yeah. I think that's going to be the fun thing for families and kids to come in and support the athletes. Husbands supporting wives who are out there riding and vice versa. And you've got this beautiful community that I'm seeing for the first time this weekend. And it's a great little town.
Kristi: 20:40 It's great, isn't it? It's a cool little town.
Craig : 20:41 Yeah. And I've been hearing about the mountain biking progressively over the last few years, but it's no surprise looking at a topographic map that there'll be a gravel ride-
Kristi: 20:50 That's why we picked the weekend we picked. It's out-a-bike weekend.
Craig : 20:54 Oh it is? Okay.
Kristi: 20:54 In Bentonville. And we're synergizing with them a bit. So you can come down for a weekend and buy a demo pass for the out-a-bike, and test out their awesome trails that are here. And then hop on your bike and do a gravel race, and then come back and check out some more trails on Sunday. So it's a full weekend of cycling. And then to top that off, the activities that are here for families in Bentonville alone are great. So it really lends itself to it being a family affair weekend.
Craig : 21:28 Yeah. I mean that must be comforting to you guys to know that there's a town infrastructure to accommodate all these people coming in.
Kristi: 21:35 Yeah, it's great.
Craig : 21:36 Yeah. And do they have similarly sized events that go on in the community already?
Kristi: 21:43 To this event?
Craig : 21:43 In Bentonville? Yeah.
Lelan: 21:44 Yeah. Oz Epic just took place a couple of weeks ago. And that was in its third or fourth running here in Bentonville. They've been out a few years. And I want to say that's around 750 mountain bikers on single track. And so we're starting out at 750, but gravel has the ability to grow a little bit larger in numbers just because of the road is wider. You can get more people out there. Single strap is a little tougher in that respect.
Lelan: 22:07 But Bentonville is no stranger to events. And I mentioned at the top of the podcast, they'll be hosting those Cyclo-cross World Championships in a few years. There's an event related to cycling probably every other weekend in this community? Yeah, whether it be just a group ride or an organization pulling people together. People for Bikes just had a big summit down here about a month ago or so. So there was always some type of activity related to cycling. And I think you're really going to see that increase.
Craig : 22:39 How were you thinking about the event differently? So Bentonville, different town, different terrain. Are you trying to create something that obviously has the same kernels as DK, but its own unique channel?
Kristi: 22:53 Well, I think that's part of the reason why we A, chose Bentonville, and B, are partnering or teaming up a little bit out-a-bike on that, from that perspective. Is that we think it's going to lend really to the flavor of the community. We're also really, I'm really excited about our race directors that we've got coming onboard. We've got Ned Ross who's a hall of fame mountain biker. And really stoked that he's joining us. And then we have Gaby Adams, which formerly Gabby Shelton, is a DK 200 single-speed champion. She's just a badass on the bike, and it's so fun to have a female, another female joining as a race director.
Kristi: 23:34 And she's really worked the course hard. Lelan and I-
Lelan: 23:38 This is her course.
Kristi: 23:39 Yeah, it's her course. Like Lelan and I came down and had given her some tips and some ideas of what we were looking for, and had scouted some roads and taken her with us. And then she put together the route. And it's awesome. To me, being an advocate for women in cycling, I'm really proud that we've got Gaby on our team.
Craig : 24:01 Yeah. And is it typically on county dirt and gravel roads? Or are we going into back country trails at all with the event?
Lelan: 24:11 No, they're all public access county roads. Although you might be questioning that at times based on the low maintenance [crosstalk 00:24:19] some of them. But so similar to DK in that sense, it's all public roads. There'll be slightly more pavement here, only out of necessity, than what you'd probably find in DK. But to be honest, I think you'll be relieved to have a mile of recovery every now and again. And again, it's 80, it's probably 90% gravel.
Kristi: 24:42 Oh yeah.
Lelan: 24:43 It's only a handful of miles that you'll be on pavement. And that's only to connect you to the next sweet ribbon of gravel.
Craig : 24:49 Yeah. And like you said, I do think it will be this welcome reprieve for people's bodies, to just soft pedal on some pavement for a few minutes.
Kristi: 24:56 Yep, 100%.
Craig : 24:58 Amazing. Well it's super exciting. It must be thrilling for you both to finally realize this part of the vision that you had at DK, to explore a new community and start something again. And I'm really excited for you guys to take that journey from inception to creating yet another great event on the calendar.
Kristi: 25:17 Well and I think that definitely has, like Lelan said, that's been a goal of ours. And then the acquisition of Lifetime, or Dirty Kanza being acquired by Lifetime, was really, that's been what's given us the ability to do this. And that to me is one of the things that's the most exciting about this, is that they're trusting what Dirty Kanza has done, and letting us lead this charge into some additional events.
Craig : 25:47 Yeah. Do you imagine that each event will stay in its own lane? Or is there a possibility that they might be linked together in some type of series in the future?
Lelan: 25:57 That's a great question. I'm glad you asked, because we haven't really touched on this. Our big picture vision is, as I talked about earlier, there's a lot of great places for gravels still in the US. And we certainly want to create a little family of events. And we are staying completely away from words like series and qualifiers, because that's not what this is. That's not what these events are. So they are a grouping, a family of like-minded events. It's still the DK team leading this and directing it. Working with amazing people who share our vision, and passion for celebrating all these individual achievements.
Lelan: 26:36 But there will be a connection, and there will be opportunities at these events. So at Big Sugar for example, any finisher who completes the course within the time cutoff, their allotment of time, if they so desire, they can drop a ticket into a bucket, and we will have some DK entry opportunities. But it is not a, how fast can you go and get on a podium and get an entry, not to receive that golden ticket. It is every finisher is qualified, and has an opportunity. If DK has something they want to try and want an extra helping hand beyond the lottery, because the demand is so high there, there will be opportunities like that.
Craig: 27:12 Yeah. Amazing.
Kristi: 27:14 Yeah, I think it'll be really cool.
Craig: 27:15 Anything else you guys would like to add about the event or the community?
Kristi: 27:18 Just make sure you go to Big Sugar gravel.com, and get signed up, so that you are in the know for when we dropped... When the registration opens.
Craig: 27:27 Okay.
Lelan: 27:27 This is an open registration, which is how DK used to be. Of course, DK is now a lottery. And I just want to reiterate what Kristi just said is, 750 maybe it sounds like a lot of people, but that's going to go fast. And we want you here. We want you to be on it, and be a part of it. So if this sounds like something that gets your goat, then get signed up and come join us.
Craig : 27:49 Yeah, I think, everybody put it on your calendar. So I'll put it in the show notes, so everybody has the link.
Kristi: 27:54 Awesome.
Craig : 27:54 Getting prepared. We'll get this out quickly. I want to share the news to everybody. And I'll give my feelings on social media about Bentonville, which has been great so far. So you guys, it's really been a pleasure talking to you guys. I've wanted to talk to the DK team for a long time, ever since I started this thing 18 months ago. So yeah, thank you. And thanks for everything you're doing for the sport.
Kristi: 28:16 Yeah, thanks for coming.
Lelan: 28:18 [crosstalk 00:28:18] take you to Bentonville to catch us.
Craig : 28:21 Right on. Thanks guys.
Kristi: 28:22 Thank you.
A conversation with bike industry veteran Rick Sutton and former Olympian Colby Pearce about fit for gravel cyclists and The Wave Handlebar.
The Wave Website
The Wave Instagram
Colby Pearce Website
Colby Pearce Instagram
Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos).
Rick, Colby, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you, Rick. I always like to start off guys by learning a little bit more about your background as a cyclist. Just contextualizing how you came to riding on gravel. And then I'm super excited to get into the wave handlebar and discussing sort of the innovation you're bringing to a part of the market that doesn't really see a lot of innovation.
Okay. This is Rick. Craig and I go back, Oh gosh, quite a few years, maybe double digits. We bumped into each other riding in the San Francisco peninsula. How did I get into gravel writing? What's my background? Well it, it, it hearkens way back to the fact that I advanced to become a professional motocross, sir. And as I got slower at that, I determined that I better become more physically fit. As I was aging. Somebody suggested I buy a bicycle and before you knew it, I was riding and racing mountain bikes as well as motocross bikes in the, in the mid to late eighties. That transition into my career transition from a marketing background into an event promoter, I cofounded the sea Otter classic. Brianne, the Northern national series may have run the very first mountain bike and Duro called Rocktober Fest in 1997 and served on the UCI mountain bike commission and assorted other things over the years. And always rode my road bike with 20 threes on it up in Skeggs point and charisma Canyon and Alpine road and whatnot, and destroyed a few road bikes riding off road. And when gravel bikes came along, while, ah, I was, I was happy as one could imagine to have more tire volume and relaxed geometry.
Okay. You were a rider waiting for a product.
Yeah, I certainly was.
So then, you know, how did the, the wave handlebar come about and take a step back for the listener who may not have even heard of the wave yet. Talk about what were the sort of pressures that the company was feeling that they thought there was an opportunity to innovate in the handlebar space?
Well, all credit goes to Don chef, the inventor. You know, I was brought on in the last three years to refine the product and, and created a business around the product. But let's, let's take a moment to cheer Don chef. And he was an elite runner and he is also in the medical industry and he started riding bikes as most elite runners do due to injury. And he just felt that a flat top bar was and uncomfortable especially in climbing situations. And you know, it sounds too simple or too good to be true, but he just began to ride uphill primarily with his wrists and hands at the angles that you now see with our production wave for in essence, resting lightly on the top of a flat bar for floating in air. And he says, wow, this is a more comfortable place to be.
This goes back about 10 years. And the first iterations were very heavy aluminum that were fabricated and an automotive machine shop. And that there's been lots of, that's happened over the years. I got involved in 2016 and we launched with a very, very well thought out carbon handlebar in April of this year. Can you help us visualize a little bit about how it sweeps and battens and some of the other features that I read about? I, I certainly can. And I think when, when Colby brings some comments and he'll, he'll talk about the science behind it. I'll just talk about what it looks like. So think about how drop bars have traditionally been designed. And a lot of this is due to the fact that there was an, until recently, recently being the a hundred or more year history of cycling until recently we had a Quill STEM that did not have a detachable base plate.
So everything was a common diameter and it was a very simplistic drop bar design because it had to be able to worm its way through a coil stand that did not have a faceplate on it. What we've done with the advent of a faceplate is some other manufacturers have done with aerodynamic shapes. We as, as you visualize a handlebar and you start in the center of the handlebar at the STEM Mount and then you go ahead and fix in space the handle bar drop all of the dimensions where it floats in space on a traditional top bar. We keep that more or less in the same place as well because people like Colby and other fitters have put the writer in a position that optimizes the location of the drops in the location of the great codes and brake levers relative to the center point of the STEM.
Now, well between the drops in the STEM, we actually rise slightly up and forward for the first 10% of that distance. And the reason we go forward is because then it takes a gentle bend downward and rearward towards to the drops and to meet with a very nice transitional curve into the drops. And again, Colby, you'll talk about the science of why, but what this does, and for your listeners, if they just told their hands out in front of them as if they're holding onto a the top of a, of a flat top bar and then just rotate your thumbs up slightly at about 15 to 20 degrees, you'll naturally feel your elbows falling against your side, the stress, the tension you feel in your shoulders, your hands subsides immediately. So in essence, all we've done is take what was a stick that got you to your drops and actually taking for the first time. We're the only company that's taken full advantage of the available space between the STEM and the drops to optimize ergonomics.
That's a really great description, Rick and I, as you were doing that, I was positioning my hand and my thumb and the way you described and it's really noticeable how the elbow drops and how it feels slightly more comfortable probably in a way as cyclists, given the bars that we've been on historically we never even thought was possible, which is fascinating. So Colby, I definitely want to get you into the conversation. And your background as a cyclist is very rich and your accolades are long. So I appreciate your perspective on this. You spent your career racing on the track and the road. I'm curious for our listeners, how did you define, how did you discover gravel and when did it start to become part of your repertoire?
Well I had my, my greatest successes were on the track really. But I've been racing mountain bikes and, and cross since the beginning. I'm, I'm pretty much just signed up as a full bike dorks since the age of 15. Started mowing lawns to buy bikes and went to my first cross race, I don't know, maybe a year later. And did my first mountain bike race on a bike with really narrow bars and no fork. Cause I thought I was gonna crush everybody on the climbs. And, and then of course I fell off on every descent. So that was a good learning curve. But you know, gravel just like I live in Boulder, Colorado, so on the front range here, just like in most places in the U S and in the world, the roads have gotten more crowded so people started sort of migrating to more off road riding and we're blessed with a really good network of gravel roads here.
So over the last, I would say probably 20 years, I started riding progressively and more dirt on my road bike and then you know, in and out of racing cyclocross over those years riding my cross bike in the winter cause it's just such a good winter tool here because you can ride, you know, the position's a little more conservative relative to my road bike position. And of course your, your speed is lower. So on days where it's borderline rideable in terms of temperature, when you've got less air speed then you can stay warmer for a little longer. So it offers those advantages. And then also riding around on roads. Sometimes we have icy roads here in the front range and many times the sun will come out and blast the, the asphalt and things melt pretty quickly. But we'll have a week or two here and there where it's, it's pretty icy.
And then when you've, when you've got 33 or 35 millimeter wide tires, you've got a safety margin. So it's a good shoulder season or in between your bike to ride. So gravel, you know, in the winter and in the spring has been very useful for us. It's gotta let a utility here, but then in the summer it affords the chance to climb. And you know, for those of you who've never been to the front range, like literally we, we look East and we've got, you can see to Kansas as pancake flat, you turn around and you're at the foot of the Rockies. So I can climb 3000 feet right out of my back door. So we go, I just go get lost in the Rockies and I end up on Jeep roads and dirt roads and lights, single track or sometimes not so light single track. And all those adventures are just perfect for a gravel bike because then I, you know, if I have to ride a Canyon for 20 miles on the payment, it's not, I'm not lugging around a full suspension, cross country bike.
And then it just makes the technical aspects of the Explorer scout mode a lot more challenging and fun. So that's kinda my, my playground. Yeah, that makes sense. From my time in Boulder, I could see how a gravel bike would be perfect for there. I always remember appreciating the flat, the fact that you could go East and it could be flat on those days when, you know you didn't have the legs to climb. And then obviously if you head up into the mountains and the canyons, you've got climbing for days. Yup. That's, that's it. So after you hung up your, your professional racing hat, you transitioned still in the sport to be coming a coach and a fitter, which I think is really relevant to this conversation. Can you talk about your work these days? Yeah. So I'm a I'm a category one USCC coach which they're, it's parallel to their racing systems.
So that's the highest level you can have. And I've been coaching since about 2005 formally. And then I trained with Steve hog in Sydney, Australia as a bike fitter. I was down there for almost a month. I just lived in Sydney and trained with him and that was a really eye opening and educational experience. Steve's a brilliant out of the box thinker. He, he used constantly looking for new ways to solve problems in new ways to think about things. So he's, he's very unconventional by a lot of fitter standards and I think that's what makes him brilliant and, and a, a really amazing problem solver. And his program was, was pass, fail, like there are fitters who have gone to train with him. And after a week or so, Steve said, look, I don't think this is working out. So I was, you know, honored and also humbled to train with him and make it through his program.
And that's been great. So now I, I work as a full time coach and a full time fitter. And I've also got a side project where I'm making track frames that's called 50.1 racing. And between all that and my studies with Paul Chek, I'm also on the Czech Academy currently, which is two more years of basically school to learn about Paul check's methods. He's a strength and conditioning and holistic lifestyle coach for those people who aren't familiar with him. I've got a pretty full plate. But I, I just always want to keep learning and growing my own envelope of knowledge or my own level of understanding so that I can pass that onto my clients in different forums. So. Awesome. Awesome. When it, when it comes to sort of the emergence of gravel over the last, say five years, where the industry has really caught up with what a lot of writers have been doing are ready, have you seen approaching Ryder fit differently than you did prior to this sort of new wave of equipment and new style of riding emerging?
I wouldn't say that the base philosophy has changed, which is always simply that from my perspective, at any rate, which this is not how all fitters approach things, but my, my sort of baseline philosophy is that you have to match. On the one hand you have the physiology of the rider. And on the other hand you have the demands of the event the rider is training for or conditioning for and gravel and cyclocross. There's obviously a lot of overlap, not 100% but crosses the sport that I've race myself and fit riders in for a number of years now. And, and so we, I've got the, that baseline understanding of how to fit a brighter for a sec cross event, of course, gravel now, especially with the expansion of much longer gravel duration, gravel races, you know, stuff like well you've got tweener events kind of like Belgium waffle ride, and then you've of course, you've got Kansas, kind of the, the big go to event.
In terms of the, the endurance gravel scene or ultra gravel scene, you can even call it almost that changes things slightly. But really the demands of those events are very similar. So not, not in terms of the date philosophy. In terms of some smaller innovations. We've had things obviously like the wave bar and we've had some made some smaller progress. Like for example, the new Shimano GRX Grupo came out and there have been small but noticeable improvements in their ergonomics of their levers in their lever positioning that have been advantageous. But yeah, not dramatically
Putting riders in a, if someone comes to you and said, Kansas, my jam, I'm looking for a 200 mile race. Are you putting riders, tell me about the sort of how you might adjust the position versus someone who's racing on the road. Shorter events.
Yeah, so, well, I mean, as a general statement across position's going to be slightly less aggressive. So that means a little bit less bar drop, potentially a little bit less cockpit reach close to the same saddle offset from the bottom bracket would be my take on it. And there are a bunch of reasons behind that that I'm happy to get into if you want, but it gets a bit technical. But that depends a little bit on how aggressive the writer's road position is because again, we're always balancing the physiology of the writer or the capabilities of the writer versus the demands of their events. So someone who's got good or excellent flexibility, someone who hinges well at the hip and can ride with an extended spine has good breathing mechanics, good core stability, you can put them in an aggressive road position most of the time.
Again, it depends a little bit on their physiology. That's not always the case because sometimes you have a writer who, for example, is very short and stocky not necessarily overweight, but just a stocky build with a barrel chest and that type of rider, you won't be able to get them as aggressive in their road position because when simply put, when you hinge them at the hip, they're gonna start hitting themselves in the chest with their own knees, especially if they've got big bulky thighs or muscly size. You can offset that by shorter crinkle length. But point being is that someone who has a very aggressive road position when we put them on a cross bike, we would, we would reduce their cockpit length normally and we would probably reduce their bars, sell the bar drop just a bit. That'd be a typical starting point. We would also normally, I would typically recommend that people consider sizing up one width in handlebar size. And there are several reasons for that that I'm happy to get into too. Which pertains specifically to the differences between handling on road and gravel. Is that something you would like to hear about?
Definitely liked to hear about that because that was my sort of gut reaction when I moved onto gravel was actually bumping out the, the width of the bar. And I think that came from my experience on the mountain bike where we just went wider and wider and it seemed to get better and better. I'm also, I'm in Marine County right now and our gravel scene here are not the sort of long flowy gravel roads. It's, it's you know, double track. It's up and down. There's a lot of fast descending off road, which definitely has created my bike in a way that would be way different than I would have if I was in Kansas for example.
Right, right. So thinking about the difference between road and mountain handling or or we'll say road and off-road, it's kinda the difference between MotoGP and motorcross. Right. And Rick can comment had been on this too, but the basics are that in motocross or in cyclocross or mountain biking, we all set up bikes handling wise for a front wheel bias, meaning we have far more weight on the front wheel. And the reason for that is pretty simple. If you're riding, let's say you're riding your cross or or hardtail 29 or down a Jeep road, that's pretty fast, so we're going 25 miles an hour. So if you lose your rear wheel, meaning the rear wheel traction breaks loose. If you're a good handler, most of the time that's not a problem. But if your front wheel breaks loose, there's a higher probability that you're going to have problems staying upright.
Now a really good handler can handle the both, but for the bell curve, the rear wheel breaking freeze, okay, the front wheel breaking free, not so happy. Now compare that to a road dissent where you're going 45 miles an hour Gianna's sweeping turn. If you're on your road bike at that speed, it doesn't matter if your rear wheel breaks fee or your front wheel breaks free. Either way, you're pretty much screwed. So there's a big difference in how we handle those bikes off road versus road, and some of that has to do with suspension forks, but not always in a cross bike or gravel situation. It's those rules still pretty much remain the same. The other big difference between road and off road handling is a very high percentage of your road cornering is done by leaning the bike. So very little turning of the bars.
Really you're initiating a corner, a corner by leaning and that's because most roads cornering is happening at a higher speed and medium or high speed. Even during a a downhill switch back, you're still carrying speed of 12 1418 miles an hour. So whereas on a mountain bike you have much lower speed corners. In a cyclocross race, you've got corners where you're perhaps doing, sorry, I'll switch our relevant units six kilometers an hour, eight kilometers an hour, so that means you're going to be doing more turning and a combination of turning and leaning and so whenever you want more turning ability, that wider bar gives you simply put a wider lever arm to Le to put more leverage over the front wheel and lean and turn the wheel with less effort. The other part about mountain bike handling in particular is most crashes are at least start or happen because the wheel pretty much flicks out of control from the rider's hands.
That can be over a rock art and it can be over a big drop. It could be over a muddy stretch or maybe a wet root. And when the wheel turns too abruptly, too Fastly relative to your own inertia, that's when you to be blunt, go ass over tea kettle, right? So a simple way to offset that is to make change the length of two lever arms. One you make the STEM length shorter and to you make the bar with wider. And there is a relationship between those. So what I'm saying is if you make the bar with wider given to a relative to a baseline, frequently you want to make the STEM link shorter at the same time, some of that can be offset. Why is that? That's when we think about a traditional bar. Think about a traditional mountain bike bar being a T-shaped, meaning a zero zero degree sweep coming back, right?
Which there are bars that exist like that. But almost no one uses them. So as you take your hand, if you were to put your hands next to this STEM on the center of that bar and give, and then that gives you a a given reach from the saddle. Now if you move your hands all the way to the outside of that bar, pretend it's really wide, say 800 millimeters wide or 80 centimeters. If that bar is straight with zero sweep, you've increased your reach, not only because you've made your hands wider, but because the bar is getting farther away from you, I. E. it's not on the circumference of a circle. And the center of the circle would be the center point of the circle would be in the middle of your shoulder. So your diameter or your radius really is getting longer. So we offset that, that increase in reach by making a bar with sweep.
And really what we've discovered is on road bikes, road, traditional road bars have zero sweep. So even though you're not that far from this STEM, as your hands get further up from this STEM, there's no sweep there. And that's one of the problems with it. And that's why mountain bike bars have developed some sweep. Although I would argue even the trip, typical cross country bar that has eight or nine degrees of sweep is not enough. And to get to the point of the design of the wave bar and why bars should have some sweep as Rick was describing if you stand up and simply put your hands at your sides with we'll say neutral posture, right? So neutral posture would mean the shoulders are slightly externally rotated in the sockets, which means simply put, your shoulders are down and back now and your hands at your size right by your hip.
If you take your hand and put it out in front of you, raising the shoulder and the elbow, and now look at the position of your hand without changing anything. And you'll notice that the first knuckle or the pointer finger knuckle is higher in space than the fourth knuckle and that, and you'll also notice that the fifth knuckle is further away from your body. Then the fourth knuckle is both of those factors are what make a traditional bar that comes straight out from the STEM, kind of not ergonomic and we want the shoulders in there most powerful and stable position. We want a slight external rotation to the shoulders. That's what gives us a good ergonomic position, allows us to pull on the bars gently with the lats and also gives us the best chance for shoulder stability and the best breathing mechanics.
Interesting. And that was a really great overview and I think a lot of my listeners are gonna appreciate that coming from the road and just sort of understanding how these subtle changes make a big difference when you get into the technical stuff that we get into on our gravel bikes. So yeah, talking further about the handlebar, and I know it's a product that you've spent a lot of time on, sort of how does that translate all these things? Is it just addressing all those minor issues where you can derive benefit from this, a better breathing position and more optimal kind of position to handle unexpected jolts to your front end?
Yeah. It's also about even on a more basic level than that, it's about relaxation of the central nervous system. I mean, think about cycling as what is cycling, especially bike racing. Something like Kansas, Kansas, it's a massive load to the nervous system system in a sympathetic state, right? It's a giant sympathetic stressor. It's just, it's a bike race. It's really long and it's really hard. So there's a lot of, a lot of people have looked at the science behind how that impacts the body and all the different levels. And fundamentally that's a giant load on the nervous system. So we want to, we want to set up the bike in a way that's gonna minimize the unnecessary load on the nervous system. And this is something Paul Chek talks about extensively in his strength and conditioning classes. And specifically when you're doing strength training in the gym, think about an a pull down or a pull up, either one.
And you can have three types of grip, three orientations of grip in these types of exercises you want. You can have a prone grip. This is the same grip, we would use more grabbing the tops on a bike. A prone grip means that when you go to the pull up bar, your Palm is facing away from the body, right? A reverse grip would be you flip your hands around one 80 so that your palms are facing towards the body, right? And your pinkies are facing towards the midline. Your Psalms are out and a neutral grip. The third option would be as though you are grabbing the bike with Barrons, so the thumb is facing away from the body and the and the pinkies oriented towards your elbow. That makes sense. So 90 degrees to the first two, and there aren't many gyms that have a pull up bar system like that, but you can find them.
And Paul's teachings are that the most challenging grip neurologically is the prone grip. That's the one that challenges the nervous system the most. The second most challenging is the reverse grip and the third is the neutral grip. So what are we doing when we ride a bike all the time with a prone grip, especially when we have no sweep or slope to the grip and it's a straight bar situation. We're channel, we're giving this the nurse system a minor challenge all day. Now it's not that you can't ride your bike like that. You can, but clearly someone who signs up for Canada and pays, I don't know, however much it is, $300 for the entry and drives to Kansas and transport or it all year. You're there to race your bike. You want to do as well as you can. You don't want to just ride your bike, you want to optimize things.
So this is where this plays in, you know, 180 miles into the ride. You go down a little gully, things get a rowdy you almost fly your hands almost fly off the hoods, then you've got it yet another climb. You know, the, I've never done Kanza, but up here there's just endless rollers basically. So you're on your 99th roller of the day. That's going to be 45 seconds long. And you go to the tops and things get rowdy and your hands don't fly off the bar or you're able to just put a little more effort into the pedals or breathing instead of stacking up the demands throughout the system because the nervous system is very fundamental. When the body has high chance in the nervous system, it's going to cascade up the up the priority on until things get sideways. Yeah. I think that you see a lot of companies starting to address that notion that combating fatigue in any way possible for these log long events is an important component to success.
Mm. Well you know, Rick and I were talking about this yesterday. This is a really interesting thing about cycling. I mean cycling is such a beautiful sport and it's got such a long sort of dogmatic and iconic history in so many ways and there's so many things about bikes that have just been done a certain way forever. I mean look how long it took us to get over or actual standards, you know, and, and you know, not to go down the rabbit hole of how the bike industry can agree on anything. But I think we can agree through axles are an improvement over quick releases in many ways. Right. And disc brakes are clearly an improvement over rim brakes. I mean the technology is inarguably superior. Yeah, there are pros and cons to both, but come on. So one of those, this is, this is something Rick and I were talking about yesterday is that an interesting kind of carry over from a lot of cycling is this sort of very old school Sean Kelly perspective on things, which is, you know, starting December 1st or January 1st depending on what climate we were in.
And when you're racing season began, you got back on the bike after your break and you just started to endure and what you endured was all kinds of pain and discomfort and this pain and discomfort was to an end, which was to make you tough. Now, the old school model didn't separate certain types of pain and discomfort, meaning at the end of a hundred mile ride or your first hundred mile ride of the season, which was maybe, you know, whatever, January 1st first or something, your legs hurt because you pedaled on her miles and your lungs hurt because you were on the bike all day, but also your neck hurt and your balls were numb, or your lady parts and your hands and shoulders were numb and your feet hurt and your knees hurt a little bit. Right? And this is because there were no foot beds. Shoes were leather, and you got a new pair at the begin of the year and you broke them in over several thousand kilometers.
Were you breaking in the shoe or your foot? Well, nobody really knew the difference. You just did it. And you know, if you sit on a fence post or a screwdriver long enough, essentially it won't feel that bad, right? But does that, does that mean we should be sitting on a screwdriver wall? Of course not. Like so now we've learned, right? We figured out, we've made the huge advances in bite fitting and we've got saddles with channels and cutouts in the proper curve that actually match the shape of the bony issue. I'm not go against it and don't support all your torso weight on your soft tissue, your parent, IAM doesn't matter if you're a guy or a gal. We should not be carrying the weight of our torso on our soft tissue. Right? And we're starting to figure out making little changes and things like the ergonomics of birth, big levers, and making big changes in things like the shapes of the bars we're using so that we actually match the ergonomic demands of the human body instead of simply having a carry over.
Like Rick said, you know, handlebars, the function of handlebar shape was basically like, well, let's make something someone can grab onto and not fall off of, but also let's do it within the parameters of a to bender. And that can get through a Quill STEM and bars have largely remained unchanged from that basic formula for decades and decades and decades. And we finally looked at it and gone, you know, this doesn't really make that much sense. We can do a lot better than this. What, what, how would we design apart today? Now knowing what we know about the human body. And one more point, sorry if I'm rambling here, but there are a lot of carryovers from really old school bike fitting that are just absolute mechanical and anatomical disasters. And now fitters are starting to figure that out because everything's becoming sort of a a Kobe beef sushi roll, so to speak.
We're getting, and we're taking bits and pieces from different industries and starting to integrate them. I mean I've actually heard bike fitters coach, we want your knees to be as close to the top to you as possible. And if you squat in a gym like that, any trainer who knows what they're doing, even remotely will immediately run up to you and say, do you want to have knee surgeries? Stop school fighting like that. So there are a lot of, there are a lot of ancillary benefits. We're beginning to integrate from other modalities of exercise strength and conditioning that we're taking into the world of cycling and are paying off in terms of superior anatomical positioning.
Yeah, yeah. Now I think it's interesting and I'd gone back to your point about sort of the, the Sean Kelly approach to cycling and cycle training. I think gravel has, has just begun over the last maybe 18 months to kind of break free a little bit of, it's sort of road history and it's really exciting and creating these opportunities for new products like the wave. Rick, maybe you can talk to some of the sort of the market friction that you see from a sales perspective and just getting people to try something new. And what are some of the approaches you're taking to kind of free people's minds to think about their, their, their components differently?
Well, it's, it certainly is a challenge, but I would say that you know, the, the advantages to the gravel rider using the wave are no different than the advantages to the road rider. But when you, when you, the reason I think we were finding earlier adoption and adoption, it's not easy. We're still crossing the chasm of acceptability. But gravel writers are less fashion conscious and there's, there's this desire and the road community, the look, the asked at the coffee shop and, and our bar doesn't look fast, were in fact it is much faster than a flat top, you know, wing shaped bar. Why? Because it the shape of the top actually reduces the rider's frontal mass versus what a flat top are. So although handlebar to handlebar and a glass showcase, our bar doesn't look as aerodynamic, it puts the body in a more aerodynamic position now that when you go to the gravel guys and gals, they just want to get through the day, have a good time, and not have a sore elbow or hand so they can hoist a beer at the end of the ride.
So if the, if I, if I talk to a gravel rider that I know, I simply say, you ride this far, you're happier, you're more comfortable and it's easier to drink a beer after the ride. And that seems to be the sales technique that works best in gravel. I also talk about the thumb notch on the drops and how that provides an added level of security because you can just lock into the bar and a very familiar place as you move around on the bike and prepare for technical descents washboards things of that nature. We also, because everybody's to a certain degree of weight weaning, we talk about the exceedingly lightweight of our handlebar of 42 is under 200 grams. And we also talk about the rigorous of testing we've put the bar through to make sure that the writer understands that [inaudible] our mechanical engineers, our testing protocols, our manufacturing protocols are equal to the best bars in the market.
You know, that we're not just coming at this as a shade tree mechanics, you know, build in bars in our basement. Those are all things that help bring the rider to a point where they're comfortable trying the bar. And I think mostly you know, whether it's to a bike shop and we do protect manufacturing suggested retail prices or to our website to buy direct we offer free shipping and a 100% money back guarantee within 45 days of purchase. If you just don't like the bar, of course there's a longterm gigger guarantee. If you have any other structural issues with the bar, but try it doesn't cost you any shipping to get it, put it on your bike. And I will say with the with the hundreds of bars we've shipped out, we've not ever had one bar return.
So for your listeners, between Colby science and category and the fact that we've never had a bar returned, I think that's pretty much speaks for itself. Yeah, it says a lot. Reckon I think you've done your best to what you can do to eliminate the friction. And I think judging from the site and the testimonials about the bar and listening to Colby speak, people just need to give it a try. It's something that's interesting. It's going to add, it's going to add to your enjoyment of gravel and people need to shake free of the old stereotypes of what the bike needs to look like at the coffee shop and really start moving towards things that are gonna increase their enjoyment of the ride across the board. So gentlemen, I appreciate the comments, Colby. This was really great to hear the science behind fit and some of the philosophies behind how a change in position in gravel really can add to your performance. That was really insightful. I appreciate that. And Rick and Rick, as always, I appreciate talking to you and getting your long insight into the, the history of the sport and and the future really with this new great product. Thanks, Greg has been great. Hi, Colby by Colby. Thank you, Craig for the opportunity to be on the podcast. I'll look forward to, to when it comes out. I'll be sure not blessed all my channels. So, right it.
A conversation with John McCarrell, founder of the upcoming Mt. Lemmon Gravel Grinder in Tucson, Arizona. This event will test riders' equipment choice, skills and climbing legs as they tackle the backside of the formidable Mt. Lemmon.
Episode Links:
Mt. Lemmon Gravel Grinder Website
Mt. Lemmon Gravel Grinder Instagram
Automated Transcription (please forgive the errors):
John, welcome to the show.
Well, thanks. It's a pleasure to be here.
As is the tradition. I'd like to start off by asking a little bit just about your background as a cyclist, how you got into the sport and how you eventually found yourself in the gravel sector.
Well yeah, so I moved to Tucson in 2002 and started working at, , , right after college and started working at a destination resort here and my folks were living here as they retired and, , got my first taste of mountain biking actually. So that was my intro into cycling, was mountain biking here in the Tucson area with so much great terrain here. So I, I progressed, , into actually becoming a mountain bike guide. So I have a outdoor adventure, cross functional hospitality background at the resorts, , where I started my eight year career basically, and outdoor adventure. So mountain biking was the first part of that. , and then, , through, , friends got onto the road side was very, always was interested on the road side. , as a kid growing up, , riding my bike around our neighborhood and so on and loved the speed and the freedom.
So, , but the problem I had was I didn't have a road bike. And so through some friends, great friends actually, , I inherited a road bike and, , did my first El tour to Tucson, , about a month later and I was hooked on the road side as well. So I was bouncing back and forth between, , mountain biking, , somewhat professionally as a guide and also a on my own, but, , also loved the road bike as well. So a lot of, a lot of folks around here in Tucson go back and forth because there's a lot of great roads and great mountain bike trail. So that was, that was through, , through that time period of the early to mid two thousands for me. , and then, , sort of moved away for a couple of years from Tucson, came back, , married and looking to grow a family and, and got back into both of those things. And, , and then just sort of, , fell into the gravel side of things I suppose because, , you know, also I just love riding my bike on dirt roads. So I was just doing that with my mountain bike. , and then as things evolved in the gravel world, , you know, I now was able to get a gravel bike and , and start hitting some of the, , terrain around Arizona.
Yeah. It seems pretty natural. As someone who's got a, a knowledge of Tucson through my family down there, I've seen so many dirt roads, , and obviously the mountain biking's great down there. So I can imagine kind of the combination of a drop bar bike that enables you to go off road and combine some of the great road riding there just opened up a whole new type of riding for you and types of destinations that you might head out to on the bike.
Yeah, absolutely. And, and you know, some folks who are familiar with Tucson over the years. We're also, we have a lot of great writing, but we also have a lot of horrible roads getting better, much, much better than the recent, , last two or three years. But a lot of rough chip steel and, and, , in monsoon season always brings the gravel and the sand, you know, onto the road surfaces. So I think some, some of the pure roadies felt like they were doing gravel already. , and so going wider, Tyler, you know, for that reason, and then going to bliss for that reason and then saying, Hey, I can, I can now take this thing down my gravel driveway. You know, a lot of folks here still have gravel driveways and such. And then, and then of course, just the freedom of, I can pretty much take this bike anywhere. , and then, you know, as you mentioned, things evolve in the tire. The tires now have knobbies and there's more clearance and , you see a lot more, , certainly a lot more gravel bikes around the Tucson area on all surfaces because of that reason. So it's pretty fantastic.
Yeah. And the handful of times I've done the El torta Tucson perimeter ride, there's that river crossing, which inevitably caused flat tires back in the day for people running, you know, 23 see tubed road tires.
Yeah, absolutely. So a couple of those crossings and that's what makes that event, , , pretty famous for that reason is, , some folks, , can, can certainly handle a bike in that terrain and get through it and others have to hike a bike, those sections. But, , yeah, absolutely. Right.
That's so true. That's so true. So we've got you on today to talk about an event you created the Mount lemon gravel grinder. How did that come to be originally? What was the first year that you ran it?
So, , the first year we ran, it was in, , 2016. So, , we're in our fourth year this year, so we've had three years under our belt. , really interesting story. How that came about, came to be. , I actually, , nets, , Susan Frank and her husband, , who produced the old Pueblo grand Prix, which was, , produced in 2011 through 2014 and that was a downtown criterium race, , in downtown Tucson. And at the time was, , sort of getting out of helping some friends of mine, , put on, , or trying to put on the Mount Lemmon grand Fondo, which is a cycling event up the famous Catalina highway on Mount linen. Most people refer to that as Mount lemon highway, but check the technical name for that is Catalina highway, , in the Santa Catalina mountains, Mount lemon being the summit of that. So we were looking at, , putting on the Matlin and grand Fondo on the heels of the Matlin and marathon, which was an uphill marathon and they had just completed their fourth and final year of that event.
So, , anyway, I was on the peripheral of that, helping some friends out. , , became a stay at home dad. So I had some time, I wasn't, you know, working full time and, and they decided that wasn't something they wanted to do and they had full time jobs and they were fam, young families and so on. So they, we stopped pursuing the Mount lemon Gran Fondo. But when I had met Susan, it had been two years post old Pueblo grand Prix and she was thinking about bringing that back and possibly tying in the mountain and grand Fondo. And so we sorta headed in this direction for a little while, , almost the year. And we were really in the early stages of exploring those two events and how they could work together and so on. , and, , oddly enough, I guess, or more, I guess it's not oddly, I would say probably more natural for me with my background.
As I mentioned before, an outdoor adventure, , at the resort I was working at, I already have this unique relationship with the forest service, , on Mount linen, , with permitting, with putting on events, , with, , logistics, with organizing, , volunteers and a staff of people. I kind of already had this background that I didn't really know I had that could apply to, , you know, special events. And that's when that opened up for me. I really, , embraced it. So when I was just, , discussing this idea with the community of Summerhaven, which is the community on the top of Mount lemon. So folks who ride Catalina highway love to go to the cookie cabin or go to, , the ski area up there. And, and so I talked to the community up there and they said, why don't you do something on the backside, , with the marathon event on the front side, on the paved road at the time that it was not a very well received experience by that community and a lot of other challenges there.
And so I said, okay, well that's not what we're looking to do, but you know, that sounds nice. And , but that kept coming up over and over. , and the mountain and grand Fondo idea B, , continued to become more and more difficult to try to produce. And so, , I also am very familiar with Oracle, again through my guiding experience of guiding hikes on the Arizona trail through through the Oracle community there and some and some mountain biking. But I had also attended a, a mountain bike event back there put on by Epic ride called the soul ride. And they had produced a 100 mile mountain bike event in that area. And the last event there was an Oh five. So, you know, the community was sort of used to that. , there've been some changes there as well. And, , you know, long story short, more and more we were getting pulled towards the Oracle community and towards putting on an event on gravel, , and not on a page. And so, , it just became the direction we ended up going in. , and, , the pieces sort of started coming together rather quickly and within a three month period, , we partnered with Arizona zip line adventures. We partnered with the Arizona trail association and we put on the first mountain, , gravel grinder in 2016 in about 90 days.
And have you retained the same course over the years?
So [inaudible] for the most part, yeah. So we've gone through just like any event, , you know, especially putting on that quickly, , we certainly went through some growing pains, but for the most part, the course has remained the same. So the course is concentrated on a 40 mile loop. Okay. So it, it starts on an outlet and highway, which, , that's why I mentioned the Catalina Highland mountain and highway. It actually starts on Kat mountain and highway, , also known as the Oracle control road, which I can talk about here in a minute. , but it takes the, the control road up the backside of Mount linen. And so on the first year, , you know, we wanted to be conservative with the chorus. We wanted to be conservative with, , you know, the, the riders and volunteers and everyone who was coming together to produce a quality event.
And we wanted to be conservative. So we decided let's concentrate on this 40 mile loop. And then the control road continues all the way up to smer Haven to the mountain and fires in there. We actually decided to just do, , an out and back, , another three miles to a reasonable turnaround point and come back down and then complete the 40 mile loops. So the first year we had two distances, we had the 40 mile and the 50 mile. , and we had 112 riders the year. So we were, we were really happy with that. , we had a solid medical team with a lot of, , event experience, , a communications team again with a lot of back country of inexperience, , really, really solid stuff, learned a lot, , learned a lot about, , just, you know, all, all the production in general.
, learned a lot of things, got great feedback from the community and from the writers who absolutely loved the event and wanted to see it grow and improve. So we got a lot of constructive feedback, which is really important. , and I have to remind myself as a participant, you really take those surveys to really communicate with the organizers to, to help them if we don't communicate and hold those things in both, both constructive and both things, we absolutely love. , you know, we could possibly lose those events. So, , so yeah, that was our first year. ,
yeah, it's interesting when I look at the course profile on your website, it's Spartan interesting having that out in back section. And I can see, obviously, you know, it changes the physical demands of the loop quite dramatically from the 40 mile event, which is sort of touches that climb up to the smer Haven to the 60 mile loop that if I'm looking correctly, it's about a 3000 foot climb they're encountering on that out and back to get all the way up to smer Haven.
Yeah, no, you're app, you're definitely, , correct on that. So, , we, I've never done the Leadville 100. , it's actually happening tomorrow. , but there is a solid Tucson contingent of riders that have done, done the lead though 100 and a couple of them have referred. They've compared the two of the, the climb up Columbine and the climb up the backside in terms of the, the width of the trail, if you will. , it is an out and back. The, the, the elevation gain as you mentioned, 3000 feet. , one of the differences is that we're not above 10,000 feet. So the start of the event in Oracle's at 4,500, , for those that don't know Tucson proper is at 25 or 2,700. So it is a nice gain in elevation in the fall just to get a little bit higher. , and then from there, , as you saw the profile, it undulates up and down.
And then when you get to the first aid station, which is where the 40 miles turns to complete the loop, , that is around 5,000 feet. So it undulates, you know, from 4,500 up and down, up and down to 5,000. And then you start your descent from there and then you go up to the 50 mile turn around, which is , exactly a thousand feet of in three and a half mile, and then you do the, the next 2000 feet of climbing in the next five miles after that. , so yeah, not only, not only is it the climbing that you have to contend with, but then you've got to descend all that back down. So,
yeah. It's funny you mentioned Leadville 100. Cause I was thinking the same thing I've done Leadville and I was thinking that did remind me of that where you just have this massive climb you get up and it is very interesting and fun to see the athletes who are head of you coming down the other way and hopefully you're ahead of someone and you're seeing them come up. I remember from my personal experience at Leadville, love him or hate him. Lance Armstrong was racing that year and it was really fun seeing him bombed down as I was climbing up that big climb.
Yeah. And that's something that, , the writers who are doing, , especially, , especially in the 60 mile where, you know, that's, they've mentioned that, , you know, even the, you know, Kyle Trudeau is a professional rider from Tucson. He rides for CZ, , racing, , on a mountain bike team. And he's in, he's in Colorado this this weekend, or he's been there for the last month. You know, he's my go to guy for, , just feedback, , rider experience. , he's also spoke here in Tucson about riding the backside, really sharing a lot of knowledge about the course, about his, his setup, , things, things of that nature. And, and just talking to him about, , you know, he's a really good descender, , with just good all around rider, but he's a really good to send her and just how every now and again, somebody who kind of creeps over the, the virtual yellow line, if you will.
And you know, , constantly reminding folks who, who aren't used to that format that, Hey, this is an Outback and your lane is over here. You know, whether, whether you like the line that you're on at the moment, you kind of need to take that line. And, , but yeah, and then in the other hand, , so, you know, on the front end of the things, yeah, definitely. , you know, last year, , you know, pile was not the first one to the top. So he was able to sort of gauge his effort and where he was at by writers coming down and, and so, and the other writers as well, really, you know, when they start to see other writers coming down and they look at their garden and I'm like, Oh wow, I've got two and a half miles still to climb and they're already on their way down. It's , you know, but it breaks up the suffering a little bit. Right? You can kind of see like, Hey, I, I'm going to get that joy here, you know, when I hit the turn around. So.
Yeah, exactly. So let's talk a little bit more about the terrain specifically. I think you very succinctly answered the question on the website as to what bike I should bring with the answer. Yes, pretty much saying any, any bike you bring is probably okay. Obviously within a range. And as with any gravel event, I think you've, you've, you point out the fact that probably gonna love your bike in some sections. And Hayden and others depending on which end of the gravel spectrum you chose. But let's drill into this. The type of terrain we're on, obviously like on the flatter lands, my, my imagination and my experience in that area would be, Hey, these are just nice dirt roads. Maybe with some stutter bps on them, but fairly easy riding. But I can imagine as you get up the mountain it starts to change. So talk, talk a little bit about the terrain that one's going to experience and what types of bikes you've written on that terrain and what you might recommend.
Yeah not women itself is, is a very unique notion in this in this region. , Mount lemon is considered a sky Island. We have several islands in this region. One of the neat things about the sky islands is that, , , you can experience the five different ecosystems as you move up the mountain and elevation. So, you know, we're in the Sonoran desert, so we have, you know, the desert floor and then as you move up, you get into the swirls and then into the scrub Oaks. And then you get into, , the junipers and then Ponderosa Pines all the way up into some Aspen groves on that lemon. And so you pass through all of these, whether you're driving up the mountain, you're riding your bike on the front side or the backside. So, , it's really neat in that sense.
And not when it is not really a or the Santa Catalina, this not really a huge, like a range like the Rockies. It's, it's really this Island all sort of, you know, you can circumnavigate it, , around the base. So, , pretty neat as far as that terrain goes. the wa like the floor of the font, if you will, that you're going to see and the views that you're going to experience on the back side is the Galleo's and the San Pedro river Valley. , and so you again, starting at 4,500 feet, you sort of RSI desert grasslands and then you move up into elevation and , it get to experience all, all of those, all five of those ecosystems. So that's really neat. , the, the Oracle control road. So that road actually is almost a hundred years old. So it was established in 1920, , and it was the first access to the top of Mount linen actually.
So, , Catalina highway wasn't established. This is the case side on the front. It wasn't established for another 30 years or so after that. , so in the mid 1950s, so, , again, it was established in 1920. This is the, what they call the Oracle control road. And so from the community of watercolor to the community at Summerhaven, the ranchers and the miners actually petition the forest service, the U S government to put in a row so they could have easier access. And so the road that we're on is, is that very road and it is very, , it's not maintained consistently. So actually this past, I would say may in June before the monsoons hit, the forest service was maintaining it for the first time in 14 years. So it's actually in much better shape now than it has been in the previous melon and gravel grinders events in the past three events.
So, , but it is a forest service, , road. The reason why they called it a control road is because it is very windy and it's very narrow in certain places, and there's only enough room for one car to travel up or down the road at a time. There's no room for passing. So the control road was controlling the time of day that they would allow traffic up the mountain and then allow traffic down the mountain. So that's where the word control road comes into. And, and folks just refer to it as the control road, , , these days. So when they say the control road, that's what they're speaking about. So, , it, it goes back and forth between, , rough and smooth sections. , there is a lot of, , granite, , rock where the, , the bed of the road, , is almost like cobblestones in certain places.
, and so it can be very rough in that sense. , there's a lot of, , loose rock, loose gravel, , especially because it's up and down. Like you mentioned the course profile. It's, , it's, I would consider it a technical road. , you know, it's when folks ask about, you know, do I need a mountain bike? Is there a single track? You know, there's, there's no single track, but, but if you're not a good bike handler or you're just getting, , you haven't eroded the course or anything, I highly recommend a hardtail 20 Niner, , is perfect, , running that tubeless. , and that will really help you on, on the fastest sense. And also give you some good climbing gears because it is, , just undulating. But all of these are rough sections that I'm mentioning. I say all of, , there are some rough directions.
They're not miles and miles loft. Actually, you know, they may be a hundred yards at the LA at the furthest, most of them are just shorter sections, but there's also a smooth sections in between that maybe are only a mile or less in between in certain places. So the console road is, is, , there's the control road, which is the main climb up the back side. There's the haul road, which I'll talk about. And then there's the paved section of the course, which all comes towards the end. So you get this mix of all three and they sort of come in a sequential order, , which is, which is interesting. So you know, it's kind of flat loads the ride when you're going up and down the control road, whether you decide to do the 40, 50 or 60, , you know, it's sort of all that decision making, sort of speak as all on the controller.
And then you as you go further up the mountain on the control row, there's about three major sections that are, , very Rocky. Like again, the, the rock bed, if I'm saying that correctly, the actual road itself is just solid rock. , and the forest service has been on that to grind that back down to to grade a, if you will. So, , it's more palatable now by a passenger car even where before it was always four wheel drive. But, , but I am always impressed with the folks that, , are, you know, taking full rigid bikes on their drop bar road, bike season. , but just a single speed, you know, all kinds of bikes just to challenge themselves against the terrain. You know, not, not out there to, to podi or anything like that, but just to see like, Hey, I can get this done under my own tower on this rig.
, and the, one of the biggest topics of conversation here locally is, is not so much where you're going to do gravel or your cross bike or your mountain bike, but what modifications are you doing to the bike that you have or what are you building? And that's always been neat to hear people talk about that. You know, , gear ratios, tires, , you know, clearance suspension, not suspension, full rigid. , it's, it's truly is the gamut. , and it requires, you know, the easy answer for me is to say, you know, when in doubt you can do a hard sell 29, or if you're not sure. And you know, cause I definitely want people to have a great experience and they're gonna show up site on scene. But those who have ventured out there time and time again, the neat thing about it is they're pre-writing on different setups every time. It's not just taking your, your road bike and your pre-writing different parts of a road. Right. And it's the same bike. Like it's your pre-writing to view the course, not to, you know, change anything about your bike. But people are pre-writing because they're also wanting to know if they should change something about their ride and as you mentioned, where do I want my suffering to be here, here, here or here or here, you know, which would I rather tolerate and then I'll modify.
Yeah. I think that's, that's the constant interesting conundr about all these events and I think it's one of those things that makes it interesting to go back to events year after year as you kind of tweak your set off, set up as you use sort of assing you're not in that location. You don't have the luxury of going and climbing mountain lemon at your leisure and testing different things. Going back and changing things up. I think someone I was speaking to articulated it in the following way in terms of the tire width is you're getting, if you're expecting it to be a very long day for yourself as an athlete, then having wider tires or if you think it's going to be challenging, having the wire tires on your setup will just give you more comfort. And the, the sort of downside of maybe not having the, the fastest setup for the road section or smoother section is far outweighed by the upside of when you're bombing down Mount lemon, you're comfortable, you feel safe and secure and you're having a good time. So it's certainly not unique to the Mount lemon gravel grinder. This conundrum of what's the best set up. And I think the best advice always is a, just get out there and do it. Don't over analyze things. It's, these events really are about having fun and you'll learn a lot along the way. And then second, optimize around what's gonna make you the most comfortable and make sure you're going to have a fun, safe outing.
Yeah, absolutely. Just, you know, think about being happy, you know yeah, absolutely. And w what's evolved, , over the three years, , is the, you know, we're growing. So we had 112 writers. The first year we had a 188 riders the second year and we had 300 riders last year. , and more and more gravel bikes started coming, you know, into the event than previous, previous it was more mountain bikes. , again, most people have mountain bikes in the Tucson area to go off road. So that's mostly what we were seeing. And then last year was a lot more noticeable, , where the gravel bikes were coming in, , even more so. , and most of those gravel bikes are either doing the 40 or the 50. , and there's, , more mountain bikes doing the 60, as I mentioned with the climbing and the descending.
But the on the racing side, if you're, if you're listening and you're on the racing side, , there was a lot of racing going on in the 40 and the 50, and those who are, who are wanting to go on podi spots, , we're doing that on gravel bikes and, , and just couldn't believe that 40 miles of gravel, right. Most people are thinking, you know, a hundred miles or 150 miles, but the 40 miles of this course, they just couldn't believe how, , how punishing it was. I guess because of the, there's nothing flat about it. You know, you're either going up or you're going down. And so there's some significant, , there was a rough stuff as I mentioned on the dirt side, there's some really fast, you know, 35 plus mile gravel, the sense which can be very nerve racking and white knuckle. So you gotta be a good handle on that.
, but also the page climb, we have a, I call it the S and this web road, , Webb road is a six and a half mile paved climb. That's just relentless that a, at about a 6% grade that comes towards the end of all this. So you get off this rougher stuff, you get off the gravel a little bit, and then you're on a basically a smooth road and all of a sudden your body goes into shock. Like its not used to. It's used to kind of bouncing around a little bit and then your body is just on this absolute smoothness. , and then you just gotta tap out this tempo to get up this climb, , at the end. And so your body just goes through some different changes there throughout the course. , and some advice I'll, I'll, I give folks, the way our course is set up is if you're thinking about the 40 mile loop, the first 20 miles is, is, is the dirt in the last 20 miles is, is hard packed, , gravel, dirt road.
But, , about 13 miles of that is pavement, including this climb. So the advice I gave, , , I get of actually anybody is, you know, what, you know, set up your tires, what have you, for comfort, all that on the, on the, on the dirt stuff. But we have an aid station, right as the dirt transitions to that pavement. And a lot of people, , had pre loaded CO2 cartridges, , one, you know, one for each tire plus their backup. So they added more CO2. And I said, you're going to need water bottles anyway, grab something to eat, but just air up your tires as hard as you can and just ride that road because you've got that Cline. , and people just absolutely love that advice and had, , a great experience, you know, in that transition there, , coming up that climb. So. Right.
That makes some sense. So at the end of the day, are, are people hanging out afterwards? Are you doing a kind of party at the, at the finish line for folks?
Yeah, absolutely. So, , you know, amongst some of the changes that we've experienced, we've also, we're also, , changing venues. So, so the first two years that we had the event at Arizona zip line adventures, and last year, , we outgrew that space actually. , and we were shuttling people, , from a satellite parking location. So we moved to the Y YMCA, , a mile and a half, , away from the zip line, , so still on Mount Limon highway and, , and really grew into that space, , nicely. , and, , unfortunately though, , we had a nice little after party, but unfortunately the [inaudible] is a dry campus. And so, , they hadn't, , lifted their deed restriction to allow us to, you know, have a nice frosty beverage. , but we were, we were growing and so I knew, geez, I don't know how long we're going to be able to stay here at this.
Then you, , and, and the YMC was certainly well received because there was no shuttling or, you know, it really, , achieved what we needed it to achieve. , but in the last three years of this three, sea ranch, , became, , under new ownership and became completely revamped and they revamped it to become a special event venue. And so it's this beautiful place. And they started talking to us about a year ago about, Hey, you know, consider bringing the grinder, you know, basically back up the road, past the zip line, a half a mile, the other way it's still on, on the highway, , to the three ranch. And so, , it's, we're really excited about it this year. And, , we, , Barrio brewing company is the beer sponsor. We've got a huge beer garden over two and a half acres. , we're, we're still solidifying several bike manufacturers that are going to be coming in and doing demos, , on.
We're kicking this event off on Friday this year. , we have plenty of room for camping, but right near pepper sauce, camp ground as well. , we're literally within walking distance. A two minute walk. Next door is a RV park with full hookups. , and then the zip line is a half mile and they have camping. So it's, it's becoming a weekend long event. , and the after party this year, , we're , having a live concert, so from three to seven, we've got two local bands from Oracle that are going to be playing on the main stage. , we'll have, , food vendors, coffee vendors, , just, , it'll, it'll be the largest event, , so far that we've done. , the community is really excited, , to come out and be a part of the event. We already got some great volunteer organizations coming in. , as I mentioned, local bane and, , local food vendors, , local arts and crafts, which is going to be a nice flavor, , in terms of just industry folks. We're going to have some local folks there as well. , and so it's going to be a nice community feel and we're really excited about it.
Great. Well, it sounds like a great event, John. I appreciate you spending the time giving us an overview of it. I hope to make it, if not this year, in future years. Yeah.
Thank you. Thanks for having me. And, , yeah. I hope you hope you can make it out.
This week we speak with Jon Cariveau from Moots while touring their factory in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. We explore the benefits of titanium, the value of in-house manufacturing and the evolution of the brand.
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Tech Corner sponsored by Thesis.
A bottom bracket, or BB, should allow your cranks to spin smoothly and silently under the intense stresses of pedalling for a long time. Unfortunately, the pursuit of weight and cost savings has led to a proliferation of flawed and often proprietary designs that can bind, creak, or even damage your frame.
So what are the hallmarks of a reliable BB?
Look for large, premium cartridge bearings with hardened stainless steel races and weathertight seals.
Check that they’re spaced as widely apart as possible to distribute the load.
Make sure they’re pressed into metal cups that are themselves separate from the frame for serviceability but then part of a rigid and tightly-toleranced metal assembly for proper alignment and support.
And finally, check that it’s built to common open standards so that it’s easy to source parts or upgrade.
There are only three bottom bracket standards that come close to meeting these criteria:
First there’s BSA, a legacy standard optimized for metal frames and 24mm spindles. Under this standard, each bearing is pressed into a metal cup that is then threaded into the frame itself.
Next there’s T47, which is essentially BSA updated to work with modern 30mm spindles.
Finally there’s BB386EVO. This is my go-to because it is a common and open standard, it utilizes large bearings pushed widely apart for stiffness and durability, it doesn’t require metal to be bonded into carbon frames in a way that invites galvanic corrosion, and it is compatible with the widest range of crank options available. Note that not all bottom brackets using this standard are created equal. To prevent binding and creaking, bearings must be pressed directly into a one or two piece metal shell, and in the latter case the two cups must thread together to create a properly aligned and supportive assembly.
So the next time you buy a bike, take a moment to make sure it includes a bottom bracket that will spin in silence for years to come.
And with that, back to Craig and this week’s guest.
Moots Interview -- automatic transcription (please excuse the typos).
All right, everyone. I'm actually in steamboat springs this week. I'm talking to John from Moots and I just got a tour of the Moots factory, which was absolutely fascinating. I love seeing how everything was built from the raw tube set across the board. So John, first off, thanks for that tour. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for coming on, uh, being here with us. So just, I always like to give a little bit of context about you as an athlete to get your perspective. So how did you sort of arrive at gravel? What's your background as a cyclist? I know you've been in this sport a long time. Yeah,
I think, um, you know, my, my background is mainly coming from a cyclocross, the my, I mean, as a kid I was a BMX rat and racer through college on the mountain bikes and then a road bike. And then, you know, around here in steamboat, uh, I just got really into cyclocross and was competitive and traveling and doing quite a bit of that. And you know, you don't go out and train on a cyclocross course. You go out and you ride some miles. And this bike that could take a bigger tire than a road bike all of a sudden became really useful, um, to explore these roads that are around here. And, uh, that's, that's kind of how me, myself personally got into it. Um, and uh, you know, I s I was not the first person in the valley to have a cyclocross bike, but kinda one of the first, and I found myself loaning that bike out to friends that wanted to check it out and they were like, Oh man, this is incredible. I can turn off this paved road and I can go down this junkie dirt field Rockfield road and explore and have a good time and get away from the traffic.
Nice. Well we'll definitely get into some of the roads around here cause we're out here for steamboat gravel on it. I understand we've got a lot of great miles ahead of us, but for those of the listeners who haven't heard of Moots, can you tell us a little bit about the history of Moots?
We're located here in steamboat springs. We always have been here. We were founded in this town in 1981 and the first 10 years of our business we built out of steel. And that was the material of the time. And in 1991, we had a pivotal moment with the company based on our why BB soft tail that we had been building that out of steel. And it was prestige to mean at the time and the fatigue resistance of steel is not nearly what titanium is. So when we made the switch, the YGB was kind of the driver, uh, with the fatigue, resistance and longevity that titanium offered. And we made that switch in 91 and haven't deviated from that path since it's our material of choice and it's what we're, uh, experts at. And if we tried another material, it would only be us kind of faking it. So that's, that's kind of our take on it. It's for us, it's the material that rides so nicely under the rider. It can be customized, it can be tuned to a heavier or lighter rider. And the durability is just kind of second to none out there.
Yeah. I imagine as gravel started to pick up titanium as a material is a pretty natural choice given the sort of suppleness that can be built into the frame when you're going off road on stutter bumps and what have you.
Yeah. You know, people always ask us, you know, why, why would I ride a tie bike? And um, many of them have been on steel bikes over the years. And I think the best analogy is a tie bike rides a lot like a really nicely made steel bike and ride quality smoothness, but it has this, um, a little bit more backbone to it, so to speak. And it's lighter, it doesn't corrode and it doesn't fatigue like steel will over time. You know, when you get a tie bike on day number one, it will ride the same in year number three. So it really, the ride quality doesn't degrade over time like other materials can.
Right. And then for someone who's considering a carbon bike in the market, how do you talk about the differences in feel from boots, titanium frame versus a, you know, a nice carbon frame in the market?
Yeah, it's, you know, we, we get that question a lot too. And it's a, it's a great comparison and, and you know, carbon is definitely the, the material of choice out there in, in most of the cycling world. But we, uh, we always talk about our bikes and what we can offer as a ride quality, um, compared to carbon and [inaudible], you know, carbon, um, when it first came out, you know, people wanted to step as possible and now they've really kind of backed down from that a little bit. And actually they're doing a really good job of providing different layups and different tube diameters that really affect the ride quality. And so, you know, it just really depends on what the, the rider is looking for. I think there's somebody that, um, gravitates towards titanium because it Kinda has this, a bit of soulfulness to it in some ways where it's like, man, I feel connected to the ground, but I'm not feeling every little jarring crack in the, in the road or, or stutter bump on the gravel road.
So I think it's, um, yeah, I don't know. We're, we're never going to build our moods bikes as light as you could get a carbon bike. That's always kinda like the first thing is how light is it. And, uh, we will never have fake that. If you build a titanium bike that is large light as a carbon bike, it's going to ride horribly and it's, it just gets too light. It's not stiff enough. And so we, we don't lead with that. We lead with, it's a, a ride quality that you just can't find elsewhere. And you know, weight is third or fourth on the list for us. Really.
Yeah. And as you said, I mean, when you buy a tie frame, you expect that the ride quality is going to remain the same for years and it's just simply not going to degrade.
Yeah. And it's, you know, it's a lot of people come at it like, Oh man, this is going to be my last bike, my lifetime bike. And, and that's, and, and titanium's a great material for that. But as you know, the, you know, standards change and, you know, through axles come along and different fittings come along. And, and we, we really try to evolve with the good standards that do evolve out in the industry. Um, for a good purpose. You know, through axles. Um, it's the perfect made up with disc brakes. You get no rotor rub, you get no flex between the frame and the wheel. And so that was a good one for sure. Yeah, it has a positive outcome on the ride quality of the bike for sure. When you lean on a, on a through axle bike, it goes where you put it. You know, on the older quick release bikes, there's a little wiggle room in there. Yeah.
Speaking of evolution, obviously this sport of gravel kind of was birthed out of opportunity and desire. So opportunity was dyspraxia, tubeless, tires, all these things that made it. So if you wrote a drop bar bike with narrow tires off road, you weren't flatting all the time and opportunity obviously like as traffic becomes more and more of a problem, people just want to get off road for that adventure. In my mind, you know, Moots having such a long history, obviously I was familiar with you on the road and on the mountain and I started to see what I categorize it as adventure bikes come out. I started to see people doing the tour divide on Moots bikes, moods designed bikes, which was really interesting. But then I started to see you guys move into the sweet spot of the great quote unquote gravel market at this point. What was the first model that was sort of that pure gravel bike that you, you made? Yeah,
it's a great question. So the first model we made, we actually took one of our older cross bikes and it was called the Cyclo ax. And the first year that we really moved towards like a true gravel geometry of lower bottom bracket, little longer chain stays in the cross bike, more tire clearance and maybe a little more relaxed angles. Um, we changed the geometry, but we didn't change the name. And in hindsight we were, we've all, all of us have said to each other like, what were we thinking? Um, we didn't rename it and people always kept thinking it was the Cyclo x, uh, cyclocross bike. And so that was actually put out as a product. Um, gosh, it was
probably about 2013 maybe something like that over six years ago. And it was an instant hit. And what, what kind of drove that was our own riding around steamboat, like everybody up Moots rides in some form or another. And we started using cross bikes as that and then we were like, you know, we can tweak this to be better for the purpose. And we had several shops ordering our cross bikes as customs and tweaking the geometry themselves to lower bottom brackets, the longer chain stays. And there was one in one shop in particular. Um, in Northern Illinois, uh, that Toby DePaul, a very good friend of ours was involved with and he kept ordering this bike with this same geometry. And we're like, what are you doing? He's like, it's for these big heavy gravel roads out here. And they called it the minute tar in their shop.
It was like their own name for one of our bikes and a Toby's super nice guys. He's really involved in the industry and development of tires now and things like that. But that was the start of it. And, um, the following year, you know, we finally, uh, realize, hey, we need to change the name of this. And, uh, that's where the route name, uh, came in and the, the, the history of their route. R O u t t is actually the county that we live in, uh, here in steamboat. It's called Routt County, Colorado. And we thought it was a clever play on words, you know, hey, I'm going to go out and do a route or this route or that route. And we were like, yeah, that should be our gravel bike name. And so that first bike went from cyclo acts the first year with the gravel geometry and then it was renamed the second year to the route.
Okay. Yeah. And then the line has expanded from there at this point. Yeah, it, it really has. And, and you know, as the evolution of great bike components like really started happening, um, tires got better, rims got better. And so the need to expand our, our tire sizes, uh, accessibility was there. So, uh, shortly after that, um, we developed the route 45 and that is named, there's a couple of reasons. His name, route 45 is, there's a county road out here called Cow Creek. And on the map it's actually county road 45 and it is in the steamboat gravel race this year. It's got some of the bigger, chunkier stuff in the county. And so with that we expanded the tire clearance to a 45 millimeter on that bike. And we also, we had to bump the chain, stays out to a 45 centimeter chain stay for the clearance.
Yeah. And one of the things we were talking about offline, which I think is interesting as it comes up often on the podcast, is just the notion of 700 c versus six 50 and a lot of bike brands are offering the ability to run both. But you guys have have said sort of, unless it's custom, we're squarely in the 700 c route. Um, can you talk a little bit about that decision and that sort of ramifications on design and performance that you see? Yeah, and
you know, I think, um, for Moots we really, when we talk to our customers, our dealers out there as well, it's really about the best ride quality we can give them. And when it comes down to bike frame switching in between 700 c and six 50 B on the same bike frame, it, it can be done. But in some ways you're, you're kind of, uh, settling for like maybe not the best performance with each one of those setups. It's kind of the middle ground. Um, and with titanium we run into a pretty big issue of manipulating the curves of the chain stays to accommodate that tire size. So we, we really feel, you know, when we come out with our, our line, which now includes the route RSL, which is the racier gravel bike, the route 45 and then the route y BB, we really design from the onset around 700.
See it's optimized to perform best with that wheel set and that's anywhere from a 35 millimeter to a 45 millimeter tire. And for us, when you go to the six 50 [inaudible], um, it drops our bottom bracket height too much and we're really afraid that we're going to give a customer out there a ride experience that is not optimal. They're going to be hitting cranks on trail debris and rocks and stuff like that because the bottom bracket changes, the height is different. Um, and so we haven't got there yet. Um, we'll see what the future holds for us. I'm not, not saying that we have one in the works or anything, but we definitely understand the need for the six 50. That's, it's really a very regional in, in a lot of places, you know, where it's steep trails and, and we've kind of migrated back to riding our mountain bike trails, um, on drop bar bikes now and gravel bikes. So there is that, um, you know, the coastal California stuff where it's really steep and rocky and, and it's the old school mountain bike trails. Um, we, we definitely understand the need for that.
And then the, on the outer end of your lineup, you do have the Baxter, which would you describe it as a drop bar? Mountain bike? Yeah, exactly. It's, you
know, drop bar mountain bike or monster cross. But it really, that bike is specifically made, um, you know, for 2.1 to 2.2 tires, um, in a 29 format. And geometry is adept adjusted for drop bar reach versus a flat bar reach. And that's, that's our, you know, our super adventure, you know, ha, super heavy gravel, light trail, even heavy trail. And then loaded, uh, bike packing on drop bars for sure.
And then if you run a narrower tire on that bike, what are the shortcomings like if you, if you chose that as the model of choice for you, but you wrote it on the road as well, where, where are you seeing the shortcomings?
Well, it's, it's kind of a, a Mutt of a bike. So it's primarily basically designed around a mountain bike drive, train. And so if you were to put real small tires on it and go out and hit the road, you would pretty soon find out that your gearing was not where you wanted to be. And that's, you know, again, you've got to kind of got to straddle the fence a little bit of trying to, um, you know, design a bike that we see that as primarily being written on single track and double track and stuff like that. And you're going to suffer a little bit on a smooth paved section to get to the next dirt.
Yeah, it's interesting. I think that's been sort of a challenge as, as a consumer in the gravel market. And really the reason I started podcasting was I went on this journey of soul searching as to what bike did I really need for the type of riding that was going to give me the most pleasure. And I optimized around that and you know, it wasn't optimized around the road side of things, but I'll still ride that bike on the road. So I think it's, it's something that consumers have to contend with. You know, you have to make that, that choice at some point. Yeah.
There's always a little bit of sacrifice, like unless it's a very specific area, um, there's going to be some, some, uh, sacrifice of a how it's not going to perform the best right in this setting, but for 80% of my riding it is, and then you kind of suffer through the 20% a little bit here and there.
Yeah. Yeah. Talking about sort of choices consumers have to make, there seems to be a growing trend towards looking at adding more and more suppleness to these gravel bikes. And it was exciting to see at sea otter this year, the release of your YTB based gravel bike. You mentioned earlier that the technology obviously was created many years ago on the mountain bike and was responsible for a lot of Moots growth during that time period. Can you talk about the why BB specifically and maybe distill some of that, that concern someone might have about a non pivot point suspension on gravel bikes.
Like I said earlier, the y BB made it with the titanium material. So you've got this material that has a fatigue resistance that um, with our, uh, testing that we've, we've sent our products off too and had them cycle tested. They just very rarely if ever fail. And so basically what we're relying on is the flex of the chain stay true to provide travel at the axle. And with the new, the route y BB gravel bike, we are, we're mapping out just a little over 20 millimeters of travel at the axle. And so we use that modest a, a piece that conceals a steel spring. And on the last summer core, very simple set up. There's no air. There's no, uh, compressed air or compressed oil to leak. It's greased, has a wiper seal on it, just like your, a suspension fork does it serviceable by the consumer, very easy.
Um, and it's only really needed to be serviced every two to three years. And so what that provides us is this ability to take the edge off of all the little tiny frequency hits that are out there on the gravel road. So washboard, potholes, bigger rocks, things like that. And it allows the, the rider of the bike to stay seated in the saddle instead of having to lift their weight out and activate their thigh muscles or their back muscles. And you can kinda stay seated and pedal right through a lot of stuff. And in the end, you know, like on a a hundred mile day that like on a tomorrow for the, the gravel race, you're going to feel fresher. Um, you're not going to be taking it in the lower back all day long. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's kinda where we see things going.
Um, and it's, it's been with us, like we were talking earlier since the late eighties in a steel mountain bike and then on into our, our regular mountain bikes. So we really know our tech, that technology and um, it's, it's pretty simple stuff. Do you tune it based on the rider weight? Yes, as the frame. Uh, as that model goes up through the sizes, um, it's stiffened up towards the bigger bikes and then it's softened up towards the smaller bikes and it all kind of operates on kind of an average rider weight for the given size. And if we, if we get a customer that's maybe on the light side for 56, say, uh, we can soften it up a little bit. If they're on the heavy side for 56, we can add a little bit of stiffness to it. Um, but really it's, you're not trying to control a ton of travel, so there's a very limited amount of tuning that can actually be felt or, or notice.
But there is a little bit. So if you're, if you're a consumer kind of thinking about that model, or is it typically going to be someone who's writing primarily off road and not using that as a, as a road bike? Um, we get, we have, um, but heavy on the off road use for sure. Um, you can still put a, a set of, uh, you know, slick 35 millimeter tires in that bike and go and enjoy a, a paved road ride. And it's interesting about the Y BBI. People get on it and they ride it for a couple of weeks when they, when they buy it and they're like, yeah, I, I kinda understand it. I kind of feel it. Um, and then you say, okay, we'll put that bike away in the garage and then get back on your old bike and go for a ride. And then they come back and they go, oh, now I get it.
Yeah. I think that's probably the best thing if they can only just kind of feel it. Yeah. And then they'll start to learn, like the fatigue factor is minimized by having that kind of design element.
Yep, absolutely. Yeah, it's, it is, it's, you know, short distances, long distance. It's just a great feeling bike. And, um, many years ago we used to build, um, our road bike with a y BB unit in it, kind of like a Perry ru bay style bike. And there weren't many of those out there in the world, but those that have them absolutely swear by them, even on the pavement all day long. Yeah. Um, with Frost heaves and, you know, the state of most paved roads that we have around our or is not very good.
Yeah, absolutely. I jokingly say that in Sonoma there's a big series called the grasshopper series, and I find that Rhodes to be more dangerous than the trails we're on. Right, exactly. Uh, yeah. Well, it's, I mean, it's, I think it's really fascinating, as I said before, that there's the notion of suspension coming to gravel bikes and how it's gonna fit into people's lives and, um, it's going to be really interesting, I think over the next couple of years just to see where, you know, where it ends up falling. Is everybody attracted to that or is there a little bit of resistance and I mean that's the beauty of gravel to each their own right. Get the bike that works for you. Yeah,
I think there, there is a definitely a writer that is like, that is absolutely what I'm looking for. And then there's some that'll stick with the, you know, the RSL or the route 45 in the hard tail. Um, that, you know, they'll get their suspension from high volume tires and low pressures and um, but I think, you know, as we kind of see people riding for many years during their lifetime, you know, they want to continue riding into their, you know, golden years, so to speak. It's definitely going to be a factor of a, this is more comfortable. I can ride longer and I'm not as stiff afterwards.
Yeah. Since we're out here for SBT gravel and you're a local, I'd love to get your take on the course as I'm sure it's inspired many of the models we've just talked about.
Yeah. It is a, it's so awesome. It's, you know, we host our own little event here in June every year, which is called the ranch rally. And it uses, uh, uh, some of the same courses and areas there'll be on tomorrow. But, um, yeah, it's uh, my take on it is, uh, [inaudible]
I think the fast people are going to go through this course pretty fast. It's going to be, um, it's, it'll be a fast pace. Is it conducive to riding in groups? Um, there most of the course, yeah, the roads are fairly wide and we have, um, our, uh, road and bridge, which is county road maintenance around here. They do a treatment to the roads called MAG chloride. And so in June, after the rains hopefully stop in the spring, they grade them and then they seal them with this mag chloride that makes them, in some cases almost like pavement. Um, but in August, right now you get to the point where the roads are starting to fall apart a bit. Uh, the dirt roads and the gravel. So we'll see. I think it's going to be conducive to a pack racing. So there'll be really important. On some of the longer, more dirt road versus gravel road sections to be with somebody or a group of people yeah.
To conserve some energy in and get a little free ride here and there. But uh, it's gonna be tough. It's, uh, you know, I look at this course and it's kind of our three most favorite gravel loops tied into one big day. Okay. And that's exciting because the folks that are racing it, you're gonna get an unbelievable tour of Routt county. Um, and you're going to probably want to come back and do some more writing. And for the, as, for the climbing, or is it mostly on sort of those same type of roads that the big climbs occur on? Or do we get a little bit on some quieter trails? Um, there's no real trail out there, but the, the climbs that you're going to be hitting, in my opinion, the, the steeper one will be up around steamboat lake. Uh, it goes up around the back and that's dirt and there's, there's a few switchbacks in there.
It's kind of gets to that point where it's that steep and then, you know, it's mainly five, six, maybe 7% Colorado grade where they can't really build the roads too steep around here. Even the gravel roads because they still have to use them during the winter. And if they're built super steep, that presents a problem with our amount of snow that we get. Yeah. And around here, but now I think it's going to be amazing. You're going to get views of north route up around the lake and then as you head south on the south end of the course, you're gonna get some views of the flat top mountains that are, you're going to get lost in your own head. It's going to be very scenic. Nice. Or sure. I, for one athlete, we'll probably need to get [inaudible]
lost a little bit to that. Forget about how much of my lungs are pounding and my legs are pounding. Yeah, yeah. The altitude. It'll be okay.
Interesting. It's, I think probably one of the grom longest gravel races at altitude. Um, that's around. Yeah. You know,
we're base base elevation. A Steamboat's about 6,700 feet and I think you'll get close to almost 9,000 feet out on the course.
Yeah, I think you're right about, I hadn't thought about that. But you know, if you think about as a professional athlete that the types of races they're racing is, there's a lot of sea level staff up there out in the calendar.
Yeah. I mean we, we were out at the DK and June and uh, that's, that's down to sea level for us. It felt like we were absolutely drinking oxygen, um, up here. That'll be a challenge. You know, the, the longer day and the vertical climbed coupled with the altitude, it'll be, it'll be a tough day. Nice. For sure.
Well, thank you so much again for the tour. It was great to kind of look around moods I've, I've known about the brand for decades and decades and all this admired what you do and looking at the detail work that you've been able to achieve with the etching and the organization and bringing everything pretty much in house in Colorado. You can tell the output is so much in your control and the brand and the quality is so elevated that I encourage everybody to kind of look at the [inaudible] website, check out the imagery, find a local dealer to take a test drive on one of these bikes. I've done a little bit of time on a moot to myself and it was a pleasure. So John, thanks for having us look forward to seeing you out on the course tomorrow. Yeah, probably from behind at some point.
Well, thanks for coming in. Uh, yeah. Anytime you're in steamboat, come and look us up.
Conversations with Sam Ames, producer of SoCal's RockCobbler and El Gravelero and Tim Farrar, producer of Canada's Paris to Ancaster.
Rockcobbler Website
Paris to Ancaster Website
Thesis Website
Tech Corner sponsored by Thesis:
Today we’re going to talk about one of the most fundamental yet overlooked aspects of getting the perfect bike: fit. Put simply, a bike that’s fit to your unique body and biomechanics will reduce risk of injury, improve comfort, power, and efficiency, and ultimately make you a faster, happier rider.
Here are the components to focus on:
- First, frame. Everyone starts with frame size, but unfortunately many get it wrong and few go any further.
- Second, crank. Getting the length right will enable a smoother pedal stroke throughout a wider range of cadences. I’m 5’11” and perform best on 170mm cranks. My cofounder Alice is 5’2” and needs 155s to get a similarly dialed fit. Few companies offer cranks this short, so if you’re a smaller rider or have flexibility issues, pay special attention here.
- Third, handlebar. You want the width at the tops to be roughly equal to that of your shoulders, and for gravel I recommend some degree of flare for increased control in the drops.
- Forth, stem length. This determines where your handlebar can be positioned in space, which in turn affects effective reach, hip angle, mass distribution, handling, and aerodynamics.
Of course, the right parts are just a starting point. To truly become one with your machine, you need to calibrate it to your body. This is why I always recommend working with a professional fitter. Whether you’re dealing with pain or discomfort, or looking for a performance edge, a professional fit as the single best bang-for-buck investment you can make in your cycling.
And with that, back to Craig and this week’s guest.
Automated Transcript (forgive the typos):
Sam Ames -- Rockcobbler + El Gravelero
Sam, welcome to the show.
Well, thanks for having me.
Yeah, I'm excited to talk to Sam. I always like to start off by learning a little bit more about you and what your background is as a cyclist and then how you came to event promotion.
Yeah, happy to share. , I got into road cycling during the summer of 1985, early 85. Uh, actually I picked it back 1984. , I had seen a, uh, bike race on TV, which at the time was Paris Roubaix. Uh, and in those days we were getting to the John Tesh tour to files coverages and those sorts of things. So I just kinda got inspired sitting there watching very rubric and people sort of, you know, riding through the mud and, and you know, gnarly conditions. And so I'd worked all summer pulling a great boxes onto a truck. It's called there being a swamper here in the central valley as I was making a whopping $5 an hour. And I felt rich. So I immediately went to the bike shop and, uh, bought my first motor, a road bike for $235, and, uh, started riding in sneakers and just, uh, loved the sport.
So stayed after it and stayed on it. , did a little bit of racing in Europe when I was younger, uh, raised at the cat one level for a while, , and then really gravitated towards, , rotting into dirt more. So cyclocross became a big love for me and I had some good success, , on the cross, serve it as, as an elite for a little while, uh, way back in the day and then pick the sport back up after a hiatus, , with jobs and kids and their parents and life and a little bit of masters and using in and around southern California and other parts of California and really loved cross. So that sort of was the precursor to what everybody knows as gravel now. And, uh, that was something that I kind of felt like I've been doing forever and ever. , so yeah, there's the sports just been, uh, a huge, huge part of my life.
And from there we, , we really got into, uh, I had a business partner for a few years, uh, well for many years. We started in 2010 and we started sandbar and promotions. , and I dabbled in a few races here in Kern county, in Bakersfield for awhile, but then we started the promotion company and really wanted to, to share some of the venues that we had. We've pretty good with the course and pretty good area to do some cyclocross races and mountain bike races. So we did that for quite a while. And, , I think some of the emphasis was shifting that the stars are lining up differently and we really, , what having some of the successes Bakersville kind of in a funny location geographically, we're part of southern California, but we're really not and it's just sort of stuck in the middle. So it was difficult for us to get decent attendance. And, uh, so we kind of started slowly putting a few events on the show and, uh, and then we, uh, when we got into the cobbler and all the stuff we're doing now, so there's a, there's the brief history.
And when did the cobbler, the first Rockcobbler event come to be?
So the rock cobbler was created out of say, or, you know, what was your inspiration or what were you seeing? And it was, it was two falls and it was actually quite specific. We had gone, I had been riding, you know, rode bikes in the dirt and all screwed and glued to a few already bikes, you know, that I eventually broke several of those. And those were kind of the hot cycle cross bike back in that early 90, late eighties. , I was, you know, doing a ton of what I would call gravel or adventure riding. And so I never really thought much of it. I was really maybe one of only a handful of people that was doing that besides traditional mountain biking. And, uh, so we , went one year down to event that we had heard about, which was the Belgian waffle ride and a, of course mark, everybody has Michael Marks now.
And I did not know Michael. I knew of him and he had actually come to bigger scope for one of our cross races. So we went to, I think it was either the second or third VWR and wasn't a ton of people compared to what they're doing now. It started at spy headquarters. It was maybe 150 people. And when I heard more about it and kind of knew what the course was and there was going to be dirt sections on a road bike, I was like, oh, this is, this is going to be gray. So we have an awesome cha on. Often times we'd defended Michael and shared some, some fun stories with him and kind of hit it off. So the next year we came back and we kept talking about VWR and talking about all local trails and stuff we wanted to do. And so we just started pitching around names and this was in maybe November and a buddy of mine, we were, I know exactly where we're geographically, he's like, what about rock toddler?
We, I'll stop and look at each other and that's the name that's going to stick. So this will be our seventh year. , so we started with uh, the , the cobbler in 2012, I guess 2013. So, , yeah, it's just something that we, we kind of wanted to put our own spin on and , that's how I, that's kind of literally how it was born. So I went back and toasted beers and they were like, nobody's going to come to this. We'll have, you know, 15 people and sharing them. After we got a phone call from Neil Shirley and he said, hey, I heard about your ride. I think I'd really like to come, you know, doing some stuff that road bike action and that, that was really a failure on the hat for us from day one. He, he was a big fan and he hadn't even been here. And I could just tell by talking to him that I thought we really would enjoy the route and what we did. And uh, and he did. And the, you know, the successes, it's sort of grown very organically and, and very naturally since then.
And what was your intent with the original route? How far is it, what's the elevation gain and how has it evolved over the last seven years?
So the terrain that we have, if you, if you really kind of define, , gravel, I think, , dirty Kansas, some of the Midwest events and things that have been going on, you know, longer than astro or at least an equal amount of time. There's really kind of true traditional, , gravel starts on gravel, finishes on gravel, whether it's got a lot of elevation and it's flat, I think it doesn't necessarily matter. So the cobbler very similar to, to BWR and it's concept is not really a gravel ride or I mean you, we, we kind of say it's sort of a mixed bag of multi surface. , so we, we looked at it and we said, well, we don't really have the, the, you know, the, the true ingredients or the gravel race. So we're going to take the best of what we call our, our backyard special, the or out.
We'd have some private property that we were very fortunate to get early on orchards and vineyards and in various components. So we looked at the distances and we sort of settled on anywhere from 80 to a hundred. , and then the elevation would, we'd just kind of evolve, you know, we tried to find, you know, stupid trail that people didn't necessarily want to do that were too steep. And of course that led into our every year legendary, you know, Hika bikes that people can't believe, I'm gonna make them hike, uh, offend. Uh, so we're kinda known for that. So that was sort of the distance and then maybe five to 7,000 feet of climbing in total. So we try to really do a little bit of everything, single track, double track, gravel, road, asphalt, , you know, any, anything that we can find. And then we changed the route every year.
There, there were a few staple features, , a couple of canyons and goalies that we always try to use, , certain sections just because of how the route has to go. , generally stay the same. And then from there we just try to find new stuff and then add that into the mix. And, and obviously we're well known for keeping the, the Shenanigan meter high as well. So yeah, that's kind of our m o we, we, we, the little team of guys that I worked with on and we say, you know, we're not changing every year and doing stuff that other people aren't doing. We got to really look at it. So we just, we try to be different and they're very, , they're very Bakersfield where,
yeah, that's awesome. I think, you know, it's interesting, there's, there's something to be said for going back to the same course every year as an athlete. But for me it's super exciting. The prospect of going to an event that I know is well put together who spices up the course. So we have different things to think about every year.
Yeah, that's, you know, that was really a big element for me. And sometimes I think a lot, you know, male, female, doesn't matter. Friends and cyclists and people that are very, , very passionate, very energetic, very excited that to want to share, you know, we, we'd love, we're get so happy to bring people to Bakersfield or even for local people to kind of have that like, oh gosh, I wonder what they're going to do next. And I wonder if we're going to ride through his house again. Hey, I wonder if we're going to ride through a church. I wonder if we're going to do that trail. I mean, that for us really is the reward gets turned into a tiny little business and, and we're grateful for the support. But that's really the fun element for us is how can we keep tweaking it? And you know, after, after a couple of beers, everybody starts getting excited and they're like, hey, let's, let's hang bags taken off of sticks.
And I'm like, no, no, somebody's already done that. Let's, uh, let's put a water slide and nobody's done a water slide. We just, we just have so much fun trying to prove with respect to events that really don't change. And the first one that comes to mind, which is actually my favorite gravel event, is the, uh, texture crusher. So a Burke swindlehurst came to getting concerns with Neil and he's come to a couple of cobblers and, and I really hit it off with him as well. And, you know, he's got a route that's very traditional every year and he sells it out and in like lightning speed. And I've been three times and every time I go, I just love it, you know, so maybe it's enough time as tab. It's got enough features for me that I really love how it all sort of comes together. So, you know, I think people dig the changes and that's sort of our emo. But the big part is, you know, we, we are all cyclists and we caught out. We have a mom culture that's, you know, quality events by writers, for writers. That's part of my San Blind, uh, you know, slogan. And, uh, and that's really true. Put on a great event, keeping me and have fun with it.
So as with the diversity of terrain that you put people through, what kind of advice are you giving people? As far as the type of equipment and tires they should be riding?
So because it does have elements that can be a little bit more dramatic, we've had a lot of people with great success on a mountain bike and by and large most people are bringing a gravel or cross style bike with 38 up to 42 millimeter tires. I mean we've, we've had a few people attempt and actually succeed with doing the a cop, a lot of road bike. , very difficult with some of the rocky sections and things that we have. So you know, I think like other events that are similar to ours that you, that have the multi-surface elements, you get a pretty wide variety. But if we were to align all the machines that, you know on the morning of rock harbor, we recommend to them, you know, minimum of 34 millimeter definitely, you know, file tread are more aggressive and uh, and that's sort of, you know what, we're after, you know, 34 by 36 I'm daring for, for somebody that needs a maybe a little bit lower, you can go lower.
It's always safer. So we're still kind of recommending that sort of gravel bike adventure setup. And usually when we're testing the course and we're trying to find the features, you know, you've got that varying degree of ability. But somebody will do on a mountain bike, I might be crazy enough to try out a road bike, but then there's somebody else who's going to be walking down, you know, a trail or whatnot. So we try to have fun without being too nutso. , but then you have another nature and you can't do anything about her. So sometimes things can get a little treacherous. So now, long story short, gravel, gravel bike was a slightly bigger tire and wheel veering we think is a great setup.
It going back to shenanigans, I'm not exactly sure how riders are going to understand how to plan for riding through a house on their gravel bike.
Yeah. Yeah. So the short story of that evolution was obviously what I previously discussed. We wanted to try to find, you know, you need crazy stuff. , so the riser, the house thing had come to me many years ago before we even did it the first time and I couldn't figure it out. Number one, whose house we were gonna use. Although we did use my house last year and it, it's sort of [inaudible], it's hard to have to turn people around and go down the street. He came in and whatnot. But we, we made it go. So the first year we did it, two years ago, I have a buddy who actually worked with and he lives not too far away just around the corner and you have a, a dirt field entrance to his backyard. Just luckily enough. And then a good street ran out in the front.
So we got the talk and I think we're getting ready to remodel. And his wife is just, she's such a game where she's kind of one of the guys and so we were drinking wine and sitting around and he says, I check you out. Let's do it. And we didn't really expect that response. So we worked pretty hard on how are we going to get across this road. It's recently busy. , and sort of hide the house. We didn't want anybody to see it or they got there and it, it really couldn't have gone better. Like they dropped in off this little trail with a bunch of tall grass that they couldn't see and it was like right into the fence and people were just, you know, his whole family and friends are over there. People were just going nuts. And some of the early, some of the video's still floating around.
You can, you can see the look on people's places. I mean, they're riding through a gate, they're going around a cooler and going through a sliding glass door and you know, out the front. I mean, it was just, it was just so ridiculous, , that it was just so good. So we accomplished the first year of riding through a house with a cobbler. And last year, you know, we all sort of look at each other and said, well, nobody's going to envision that. We're going to do this twice. Like we didn't breathe a word about it. People would ask, they can, I don't know what we're going to do that again. And I said, no, there's no way we're going to do a house fly if we can't do it. While, while the meantime, we were secretly plotting of whose house are we going to do and how are we going to do it?
So we ended up putting it all together and doing the best we could to make the route sort of script work. And it worked out just fine. And, uh, you know, it really did cost me a trip to the beach and a trip to the beauty salon. For my wife. She was like, I am out of here. She wasn't quite the game or that my buddy Randy's wife is and about writing through it, write it in that chesty and fantastic. We had red carpets, , that a local rental place had used. We'd had a lot of rain and they'd had supplied into a wedding. So he called me because he saw my need or the event was coming up and said, hey, I got all this red carpet that were thrown in the trash because it's ruined. And I said, I will take every bit we can.
So we cut up the red carpet and I think it's still the, the, the photo on my Facebook page with a caption that says, you know, why stop now? So we rolled out the red carpet and that went over as a big hit and rolled everybody down my front lawn. So you know where we go from there on, you know, a other thing I do, it's tough to call. We, we won't beach balls at 'em. We've, uh, had dark girl, Langley done some fun stuff and we do have a pretty good list of shenanigans so we'll, we'll certainly come up with something. So 2020.
Yeah, I have to say I have seen some of those videos and some of the images from riding through the house and it is just, it's, it's so funny to watch some of the expressions and everybody's having such a good time. I'll definitely put a link to some of those that I can find in the show notes for this event because I do think, you know, these shenanigans as you were saying earlier, such that they go viral and it makes people enthusiastic too. You know, I'm in northern California, maybe a four hour, five hour drive down to Baker's field, but it's like it's on my list of things to do because I want to go see what kind of shenanigans you're going to throw out next.
Yeah, no, the fun part is bigger. So at that time of year, you know, we always do bigger self help stuff. I founded my entire life and I have lived here my entire life. People asked if I'm from Bakersfield, I'm like, I wasn't born here. I was actually born overseas and I, my parents were both in the military, but my mom was on Bakersfield. And so yeah, I've lived here my entire life. So instead of [inaudible] things get quite green and usually the, the dirt is he wrote there and we just had amazing weather every year. Last year was the first year we had rains. And in some ways I'm really glad we did because it, it wreaked a little bit of havoc was , some course marking. I learned a couple of valuable lessons. We had a few people go the wrong way, but the funny part is not all, but almost all of those writers turned around and went back.
So they had already done this gnarly hike, a bike, and it was money. They ended up going back and finishing, you know, the whole course. And, and that's to kind of talk about shenanigans or people smiling and having fun. The rider base of what cobbler brains or a BWR brains. And, and we, we don't call the cobbler race. I mean it's definitely much more of an organized ride and you know, people can make it as competitive as they want, but having fun is just paramount. And for us, we've, you know, want to call it gravel on surface or adventure rides or whatever. That's really the name of the game. We, we get a large audience of people that, some of them I've known for some time in the cycling community that things very competitive and still are. But there's just a, I think there's really a desire for, for people that want to just go and have a great experience, you know, they want to have good party, they want to have a hard ride, they want to feel challenged. But you know, sending a number on and trying to be everybody. A ritual for use is really not that, not the name of the game for us. So we just, we really, really want to treat him like a customer.
I think that leans into everything that's great. A great bow, gravel, that kind of intention. Like there's plenty of opportunity to go fast and push yourself and try to be the first one across the line. But it's also about enjoying the day, making new friends, having a true adventure. , two rock cobbler was in February, so we missed it this year. But you've got a second event that is going through a name change. So can you tell us about how Grapes of Wrath has evolved to El Gravel Arrow
he'll grab aware of. So yes, we had, uh, one of our good supporters and riding buddies, , and family friends, uh, his family operated in those at a table grade company and kind of just out in Kern county, but just outside of Baker. So for a long time, like 80 or 85 years. And unfortunately they, they ended up kind of closing up shop and some family wanted to do something else, so it sort of went away. But we had an event called Grapes arap and it was another route that was probably more BWR. Like it didn't ha it doesn't have all the cobbler elements pretty straightforward on, on the gravel road. You know, there's no single track, there's not a lot of, you know, technical dirt descending was very, very straightforward, but it was an amazing route. Uh, so unfortunately when there great business, , folded, we lost the venue, we had a kind of a big dirt field in the vineyards and had these really big reservoirs.
We'd go swim in the reservoir. So it's just kind of like a camping weekend of some deer riding and some road riding and a ton of eating and drinking and campers and cause it was awesome and it was slowly starting to gain some traction. This last year, , Ryan steers came. We've had several other writers of note that are known that just like, man, here's a little nother little kid in gym that these guys as they're doing, so it's spaced out enough that it works. So we needed to retool the event with a new venue, which we have fortunate enough to go back to some private property that we use for the cobbler, which is real Bravo ranch here towards the mouth of the canyon that goes up to Lake Isabella. So we'll be positioning the venue and the food and our festivities and things that Real Bravo and we've retooled the route.
And in that process we came up with grab Alara, which is actually a trademark name that belongs to another cycling buddy. We just happen to love the name. I said, man, if there was anything that ever worked for, you know, the free spirit of adventure riding, it's these guys that called themselves the gravel Leros. And uh, so my buddy Alex, yeah, let's, you know, let's, , you can use it like near the name and we wrote out on a cocktail Napkin and, and here we are. So it's a shorter route. We've taken some of the climbing out, but we really think it's just another great combination of a little bit of everything. And this year we will have the opportunity to do quite a bit of dirt descending. So there's a very long road. It's actually almost a 34 mile climb. If you go from the bottom and it just runs this entire ridge of some of the southern Sierras and it's called furniturea.
So we're going to do the course clockwise instead of counterclockwise so it will still get all the farmland and oil fields and some of the funding preachers there. And then we've got a pretty gnarly three mile section of climbing, , averages 16% in 1500 feet in less than, less than like a mile and a half, two miles I think. So it's pretty, pretty nasty. But then you get this really cool sort of mentally challenging, physically challenging focus, challenging descent on a pretty chopping, uh, sections of ranch area. And then now we'll drop people right back into the end of the ranch where the venue is. So I think it's just going to work wonderfully. We've got a ton of traction already. People are excited and I'm so we're, we're very, very much looking forward to bringing that one into the fold and, and evolving it.
That's awesome. Well, I'm excited to see more about that later in the year in October. And I wanted to thank you, Sam, for joining us on the show today and thank you, especially for putting on such great events. , it's really important to the gravel community that we have events that are professionally produced and are stable and kick up these amazing experiences so that people want to keep coming back and keep talking about why having an adventure style bike or a gravel bike is so important and such a great opportunity. So thanks for making the time, Sam. I can't wait to hear about the events later in the year.
Well, thank you for having me. And, uh, we, you are welcome to out at our house anytime. So don't, don't be a stranger. Come, come down and play with us and we can experience it all firsthand.
Cheers.
Tim Farrar -- Paris to Ancaster
Tim, welcome to the show.
Well, it's great to be here.
I'm excited to learn about Paris to Ancaster. I've read a little bit about it. I've seen some pictures and for anybody listening, go online and check out pictures from this event because it seems like you have everything from tarmac to double track to fire roads, to county roads to a single track, a heap of mud. It looks like a hell of a lot of fun. And then to learn that 2020 is going to be the 27th edition of this race. I was pretty staggered and excited to have you on board. So Tim let, let's start off with just learning a little bit about your background as a cyclist and what got you to the point 27 years ago to organize this crazy event.
Well, my cycling background goes even deeper than they started cursing cast or I started a bike racing as a road racer when I was 13, 14. And got progressively more involved. A actually hit category one status on the road when I was uh, in my twenties. But more recently, I've just been, uh, a masters, masters Roadie and even more recently just a bike rider rode for a ride. So that's where I, uh, but when I came into organizing, I was a recently, uh, recently I graduated college student with a couple of buddies and that's where Paris and gastro started.
So it wasn't commonplace obviously for people that are putting on gravel events that the pure term as we think about it today wasn't even invented at that point. What made you decide to put an off road event that wasn't a mountain bike event at that time?
Well, at the time we had a, uh, same two buddies, uh, and the, I in college had a business doing, uh, photo timing and results for bicycle road races, you know, like, uh, stage races and stuff. And that grew out of our first event, which was a criteria in which grew to a road race, which could, was stage race. And we had some pretty, uh, big international years in the early or the mid eighties, late eighties. And, uh, we were looking for an event to basically get our season started. In nearly early spring. We had lots of work between May and October, but we didn't have much in the spring. So we, uh, basically put on a Perry Roo Bay tribute event as a closet mountain bike race.
And I believe you shared with me that you had 266 participants that year. What were they writing? What were they into interested in doing?
Well, the, the kind of interesting thing I think about race is that the, uh, they were the people, men, women, the one we're on cross bikes right away. And that was partially deliberate because I was pretty well tuned into the local, uh, road racing scene. So anybody that, uh, thought they needed a mountain bike, we sort of told them it was really more of a cyclocross race. And, uh, as it turned out, the guys, the men and women that won the first year were, you know, oh, actually one of them is from, uh, uh, northern California, Mark Halati. Uh, your listeners might know him in the, uh, group from the group ride community in north, in North San Francisco area. That's where he lives now. But he had a career as a division three pro, um, around the time that he won the race. And the first woman, the one was Krissy Retton who, uh, went on to represent Canada at the Olympics.
I think it was Sydney, I'm not sure which year off offhand. So the, the thing about our sanctioning body at the time was they had all these mountain bike races starting up in the, uh, early and mid nineties. And there were all kinds of crazy things, you know, like, uh, you know, bike stage races that had a hill climb, a, uh, a descent competition across country and trials stage. So they had no idea how to officiate all of this, uh, all this of, but they did have a category for a, a mountain bike citizen race. And according to the rules of mountain biking at the time, it only had to be like 60% on, uh, unpaved surfaces. So that's what we called it. But we told everybody it was a cyclocross race. And, uh, most of the, you know, a good portion of the distance was on, you know, Polish dirt roads. So it was fast, like a road race and that's how it took off.
And has that course changed over the years?
Well, quite, uh, quite a bit. Uh, but we do have one guy who's written every edition, so he's probably a better authority on it. Uh, but two of the, two of the largest sections of our race are on rail trails and they have been for the entirety of the event. But one of those rail trails in the first years was, you know, they just taken the rails up. It hadn't been regraded or you know, uh, a chip, uh, filing, you know, the, to pack it down. It was, you know, rough rail bed with the railway ties still in place. So it was more of a hike and bike section in some, uh, some areas. But, uh, other than that, there's been a few, um, a few roads that were gravel that have now been paved. And, uh, we've recruited more and more private landowners to let us daily on their property for, uh, a couple of hours on a Sunday morning in April.
Nice. So if I'm an athlete, considering it for 20, 20, walk me through the length of the event, the amount of climbing and what type of terrain I should be looking at.
Well, the [inaudible] of the race is basically, it's a two hour winning time from their back. It could be, you know, anything from, uh, well a couple of seconds to a couple of hours covering all the, uh, uh, all the age groups. But we started off in waves and the basic principle is the fastest guys go first. So people have qualified well from previous years, get into the elite wave, invited pros and stuff, get into the elite wave, and then the other wave is fill up, um, as after registration opens. So we think it's pretty egalitarian in that mean two hours. So if you're in the neighborhood of two hours, two and a half hours of your regular ride, the ride is within reach. Uh, as for the, uh, the elevation, there's really not a ton of climbing, but the climbing that there is this kind of rolling hills, uh, you start off on one or Riverside rail trail for 10 kilometers, that's, you know, virtually flat. Then there's some punchy little, a little climbs, but nothing, uh, sustain into the seven or eight minute range. You know, they're, uh, they're short. But at the finish line, you finish at the top of the gravel road that's got, well, it, they seemed like 25% pitches. They may, they may not be too, might as well be a lots of people walk, let's put it that way. The final pitch,
and it's, so over the years, how have you seen the equipment evolve from, you know, the winners to the participants? What are people riding? You said, you mentioned the sort of started with a, a cyclocross sort of skew and imagine that's where the bikes were at that time, but over the years, what have you seen show up at the start line?
Well, we've seen almost everything show up and, uh, but the, the bulk of the top 100, even since year one has been cyclocross oriented. And I don't differentiate in recent years between cyclocross oriented and gravel oriented cause it's, but, and you know, but right from the very first year the men's and women's women's winters were on cyclocross bikes ever steel with canteens. But you know, the pilots were good. Um, but in the meantime, we've also had, uh, mountain bikers with, you know, 26 year olds size wheels, uh, paired right down to one inch slicks on and, uh, they would be well in the mix. And one a few years, uh, we had a guy who went two years in a row, uh, first on a cyclocross bike with candies. And then next year on the, one of the, uh, newer, uh, 20 niners years. Never seen that before. And then, uh, recently it's been guy gravel bikes and cyclocross bikes. But we also had a year where a guy won on road bike. And, um, of course he later that season he was world junior time trial champion.
So you had a little bit of an engine and some good luck. Well, it certainly, it looks like you've created a interesting event. Uh, again, like looking at the pictures online and some of the videos people have shot over the years. It just looks like it. It's a great way to start your season in that part of the country and kind of push your limits across a bunch of different types of terrain. It looks like the event has grown quite substantially. Is there a rider cap next year?
Yes there is, but it's a, uh, uh, it by distance cap. So we do have a limit in the 70, uh, nominally 70 kilometer race and nominally 40 kilometer race. But the, we also have a 20 kilometer family ride, which we're nowhere near approaching a limit on. So, uh, yeah, there is a, uh, there is a limit, but the, uh, um, registration opens in November. Typically when we get all our stuff together, um, and, uh, it doesn't sell out right away, that's for sure.
Okay. And where can people find out more information about the event and if they wanted to register, where should they go?
Well, a, our website does lead you to a, uh, uh, address. It's a pair of thank after.com. Um, a lot of the questions that website will know likely most likely be somewhat out of date. That's why if this is been broadcast in real time, uh, but generally where the last weekend in April and a lot of the FAQ is, or no answered there. But uh, we'd certainly like to talk to anybody about the race it's been, you know,
yeah. Well, well yeah, hats off for, for completing 26 additions of the race so far and it continues to go on and on and on. So I'm excited. I appreciate it. On behalf of the community, always appreciate talking to event organizers because it's a lot of hard work. I know you've got a, a big volunteer base team that puts a lot of effort in every year and it's not inconsequential. Keeping the website up and doing all the logistics and making sure everybody's safe and having fun. So Tim, on behalf of the community, thanks for putting on the event. For everybody out there. Definitely do a Google search for some videos and images. There's lots that I found out there. It looks like a hell of a lot of fun if you can find yourself in that part of the country. Um, during the spring season, said, Tim, thanks for joining us.
Hey, that was cool.
A conversation with Omata founder, Julian Bleecker about why we ride and the Omata One bicycle computer.
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Tech Corner Sponsored by: Thesis
Tech Corner Transcript:
Mechanical Versus Electric Shifting
These days electronic shifting is receiving quite a bit of hype, but is it actually better?
To figure that out, let’s pretend that electronic shifting came first and a mechanical alternative was just invented. What benefits would the marketers be claiming?
A big one would be the lack of batteries to charge or have die in the middle of a ride. Another would be improved serviceability. Shift quality would remain similarly excellent assuming proper setup and cable routing, and this would especially be true for 1x setups. Weights would remain similar as well. And finally, all of these benefits would come at a radically lower cost.
In such a world, why might a rider choose electronic shifting? Well, with a motor doing the work of shifting gears, action at the lever can be near effortless. This can be helpful to those with small hands, or arthritis, or simply for those who prefer a lighter feel. For 2x drivetrains where the front derailleur tends to be the source of most problems, electronic systems can use software to prevent cross-chaining and automate the skill of shifting smoothly between chainrings, making that experience super easy.
As for me, for now at least, I’m sticking with 1x mechanical for its simplicity, reliability, and serviceability.
And with that, back to Craig and this week’s guest.
Automated Transcript (please excuse the typos)
Julian, welcome to the show.
Hey, thanks Craig.
I'm excited to have this conversation after meeting you down in LA and experiencing some of the gravel that you can ride to from Santa Monica. It sparked a lot of thoughts about what I'm interested in as a rider and why our ride, but as is tradition. Let's start off by just learning a little bit about you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself as a cyclist and how you came to gravel and then we'll talk a little bit about your background in product design.
Sure. So, um, it might be a bit of a surprise, uh, quite, um, a bit later in life. So, you know, as, as probably like most American kids. Um, I definitely was younger, but it was just, it was just a thing that you kind of, you probably remember pushing up the steeper hill and the neighborhood just so you to, you know, we could ride down and I have a Schwinn chopper with tassels and a speedometer. And remember, all the kids in the neighborhood, they bikes had one little special feature. One kid had a, had a bike that had three speeds, one had a five speed with like a stick shift, uh, on the, on the, um, on the crossbar. And then it was just kinda thing we were just kids, like kind of just having fun with Bateson, never really thought about cycling, um, much beyond that and not really much of a, um, sporting type.
So I never got into like team sports or anything like that. I was, I was a musician, um, kind of coming up, um, through junior high and high school and a bit into college. So that was kind of my main hobby and passion. Uh, and it wasn't until, I mean, Geez, 2009 now, so like 2014, um, a little bit before that I was exposed to cycling mostly cause some colleagues of mine, uh, where I worked at Nokia were, were super into cycling. And the, the studio, the Nokia Design Studio that, uh, I was part of was in this little kind of horse town called Calabasas, just on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains from where I was now, which is in Venice. And they used to always go for rides, uh, during, during lunch time. And it was always a slightly bizarre, um, Kinda, you know, thing. We were just like a bunch of sellers who go traipsing out with their bikes and go right and coming back like very sweaty and, and sort of, you know, I'll sign up for the shower, there's one shower in the studio and I'll just seems like a little bit Kinda strange.
But I, you know, I understood generally, but it was, it was just this kind of ritual that they went through. And I would, you know, good naturedly tease them and say like, Oh, you guys are getting into the costumes now you're putting off some place. Um, and it, it, it wasn't until I actually went to a cycling event with them. Uh, it was a 24 hour race in the desert, 25 mountain bike race cars, 4,000 year old Pueblo. And I went along, uh, I went along as a just cause friends were going. And, um, also, uh, when I'm, I'm a really, really into style, kind of cool, just as a, as a definition that you to do a little photography project. And so that's what I did. And I set up a little photo booth and I took photos of the, uh, everyone who's writing a solo, uh, so not on a team and try to get them each lab through the, through the timing 10. I was like a 16 in change mile, um, a lap route that went around the desert. Each lap, I'd catch them. And I just wanted to kind of capture this kind of general, you know, just slowly decaying humanity as they, as they rode throughout, throughout the night. Um, parenthetically, complete opposite happens. You can, can you point a camera at someone that they didn't, they pick up in there,
smile that she get this
smiling faces throughout the night. But that was fine. It was fine. And I actually did that for two years and I kind of got a sense of like what the whole vibe was there and it's just like, you know, it seemed like a fun kind of community entity and, and people definitely, um, uh, enjoying themselves. And that third year, which I guess would have been 2014 some reserves, um, I might have a yearbook
okay.
And sign up and mostly to myself in a way like, okay, so can you, can you learn to ride a bike? You learn to ride a mountain bike, you've learned to ride a mountain bike, kind of, you know, a, um, kind of ethic way and do and do it in mice, you know, roughly five months. And it would go from dogmatic and having a mountain biking and never, never might not even written one to, you know, go into this event and, and, you know, make a showing. And so my, my, my bar for success was like, just don't embarrass yourself. Um, but you know, just try and try to kind of get yourself in the condition that would be needed to do that. And so it was very much focused on the, um, on, um, kind of conditioning, just getting out of, you know, slightly doughy physical state, um, and not really even remembering what it is to sweat for, for physical exertion to be invited, you know, in the, in the summer from better in a better condition to go to this race.
And so, so I did that. So like I signed up to Raj Solo because I didn't wanna, I didn't wanna, you know, I didn't want to be necessarily a flooring went down. You maybe had a different kinds of ambitions that I did and I signed up single speed, which was, I knew at the time like, um, maybe not super well considered. Um, but there's something about the, about it just added something to the mix and it both added and took away. So it took away like complexity and a lot of decision making. Um, so that is obviously the extra requirement that, um, you know, you just learn how to ride and that's just the way that assemble speeds it forces you to ride.
That's pretty amazing. If you, if, if, if you think about it as a listener, that part of the sport of cycling that you entered into 24 hour racing plus single speed, the perspective for most athletes is that's really hard. So it's pretty amazing to hear that story and to think about you kind of starting out that way and setting that goal and riding that equipment. And I imagine it sort of has framed everything ever since to a degree.
Uh, it, it has for sure. And um, the, the, yeah, it was something about like the, the, the purity of that, that kind of constant construction, the purity of that, that, that set of parameters, um, that appealed to me. Even as you know, I reflect on it even as a, as a, as a other aspects of, you know, the, the hobbies that I nerd out on. So like, like particularly like photography, I prefer kind of stripped down equipment. I like working with, uh, with um, with uh, with a range finder. I like kind of reading the scene and not using a lot of automatic settings. Um, I like him without a lot of adornment and so there's something about that that appealed to me once I understood the, the, a bit of the philosophy behind it, like just kind of, you know, really biting into the challenge as opposed to Kinda, you know, do going a little bit soften and nothing about 24 hours and software like it just wanted to pair it back as much as possible.
And there was definitely a component of it that is, um, you know, everyone's got an ego and I've got one and then part of it's ego, Amelia was saying like, seeing if you can do it at this level that's even better and, and people look at you differently as opposed to going at it where you, you maybe, you know, you're, you're making it a little bit, you know, quote unquote easier for yourself. That was my kind of naive, like not really understanding cycling or cycling culture all that well. It just felt like, okay, if I do that and if I'm falling behind or if I'm slow a climb, people will know why. And there's something about that that almost start like that a little bit of a cushion for you. Even though it was, you know, even being able to complete fine without um, uh, you know, like the sort of, yeah.
Referred to as my, like my hygiene right around around here, which is, um, yeah, about, about 1200 foot climb. It's got pitches, but it's basically, you know, pretty much all the climbers, like I'm being able to do that on a single speed without, without stopping and learning how to not stop or learning how to go even slow without, you know, without obviously without changing views. Those are all things that I felt like I learned very quickly or are helping me develop a particular kind of skill technically. But then also, um, a like a mental skill that kind of feast chain, um, you know, some kind of adversity, however mild it might be. Persistence, like just keeping going, just keeping going, knowing that there's nothing that you can fall back on. It's just all dependent on you. And then I think coming to a really deep appreciation early on that it is just you, um, and you know, obviously riding solar, but it's [inaudible] your success in the completion of this task, uh, is, is you gotta you gotta dig deep to something down inside of you in order to overcome this particular hurdle. And that hurdle might just be getting to the end of this pitch of this particular climb and feeling that sense of accomplishment, satisfaction.
Yeah. It's interesting as a former single speed rider, myself, anybody written a single speed knows there's you face pitches where you have to turn yourself inside out to get to the top. But it can be amazingly satisfying when you do. And to add to that in the moments where you're in a state of flow on a single speed, I don't think it can be matched because there's that simplicity of the sound and the experience and the things you're thinking about that is just so pure when riding a single speed mountain bike.
Yeah, that's a really, that's a really nice way for you to put it. It's, it's um, yeah, it's just, it's just really, really nice and it's very, very satisfying. And then also just get, uh, realized that there's a limit. Like, okay, well this is now I'm going to change gears. And it's the push gear and that's okay.
So like I imagine many single speed riders, once you've been doing it for a while and particularly living where you live, there starts to be some limitations about how far you can go and where can you explore? I can only imagine that as the gravel bikes scenes started to materialize, there was some attraction to expanding where you could go and what you could do on a bike.
Yeah. So that is it. The whole, my whole world is just focused on, you know, the, the particular bike I was on and particularly the training rides I was doing and his race, that was all, that was like a laser focus. So I didn't even, I wasn't even thinking about possibly, you know, banding what cycling was to me. It was just a thing. And, um, during, during the race, uh, um, very early in the morning of the, you know, the know four o'clock the morning, um, I was, I was riding and I got to the top of this one to, to the climb and some people sort of stopped there and they kind of take in where they just kind of adjust to or that kind of thing. But it was pitch black out except for the string of lights in the, in the desert that you could really see from a place of this host string of lights.
And all that day I had been receiving this incredible encouragement from, uh, from folk, from folks on, on the course and see like, you know, I'm solo on single speed and, um, uh, B, I'm just kidding. I'm just kinda out there. And it was a kind of encouragement that I don't, there was, it was profound. So you'd have like, I don't know who it was, it was like Cannondale's protein and you could hear them, you know, a hundred meters back if someone's coming up on me. And at the same time it's just kind to try and negotiate this, this, the single track with cactuses on either side. And they came up, come up, really came up really quick and they were like, uh, just going to pass in your left whenever you're ready. So like, you know, they're very conscious in that, that, uh, caused any kind of May m and so I would just kind of nurse over and it's just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. This went by and the last guy last year, it was just like, where to go? Just said that to me. It was just like, it was like here, it was like, I felt like I was like a 12 year old kid and like, you know, basketball, uh, you know, want to be, and Michael Jordan came up and said like, you're looking good.
Okay.
It was just, it was just so silly. And so pro-family you know, just like physically kind of like doing okay, but kind of like, what am I doing out here is ridiculous. And it was that and that sense of fellowship and seeing everyone out there that, that at that moment, I just remember thinking in my head, it's like, I'll do, I'll ride a bike until the day I die. Like this is it. And it just, something switched and it was, it was shortly after that that I, I got a, I got a road bike, so okay, this is something different. It's something new, different kinds of rides and different places to go in there kind of thing. And it all made sense. But I was, I was still a little bit kind of sketched out about riding on road and you know, even like Pacific coast highway, which was one of the main thoroughfares to get you to other fun times around here.
So I wasn't really doing that. I was like, I was, so, I was still going on the same way as I was going. I've really taken my, my, my Cannondale synapse, you know, with dyspraxia and um, uh, quite wide tires had like, um, 20, 25 to 28 on it. And I was just taking on the same kind of buffed out, um, fire roads around here just cause I didn't, I didn't really know anybody. I mean, I knew a little bit, it's like, it doesn't quite make sense, but I saw someone go up here and I would buy, maybe it's okay. And it sort of was in a western. Um, so I didn't really have, you know, exceptional by skills. So I would go over a little bit. And at one point I was up in some, some, uh, some logging road and someone said like, Hey, so you know, there's this thing called the gravel bike and other gravel bike.
What's that? Sounds ready. And um, that just, I kind of was, you know, started looking into that into that world and ended up getting, uh, a gravel bike built up by US dinner framework's up in Santa Barbara, which is now my, my main Steve. Just love it cause it's like you said, it opens things up. You can now, you know, you can kind of knit together. The things that I was knitting together on my, on my, on my mountain bike, it was just taking me how long to get from a to B. So I literally ride from my house to the right to, to where I was riding on my single speed. And at some point it's like this is ridiculous. Like I'm basically, you know, you, you spend for like six or seven crying from him, you just kind of coast for a bit and then spend a little bit more. And that didn't make any sense. So getting the gravel by completely changed things up.
Yeah. Especially where you are, I think there's, you know, within 10 road miles there's some really interesting stuff that you can get into and tap into where, you know, if you were to ride up to Topanga on your single speed, you'd probably be quite frustrated by the time you actually got to the town of Topanga and sunburn. So you came to the sport late, but you came with the professional experience of a designer. Were there some elements of the sport that just caught your interest and you thought you might want to apply yourself professionally to it?
You know, that's a really good question. And um, in some regards there probably was. I would say though, initially, yes, in my background as a, as a, as a product designer and designer and engineer, it's very much technology focused. I mean, that's been my thing since whatever I saw my first episode of Star Trek, I was like, I want to be an astronaut. I want to make a can of technical things. I want to write software for computers and that kind of thing. So, um, the, there's, there's quite a gap currently, you know, the way cycling is now between the, the tech world and cycling itself. Um, I mean obviously there's like technical aspects to two bikes and bike accessories and that kind of thing. But initially it was more a sensibility about, uh, about the, I guess the essence of cycling as I came to learn it and understand it and know it.
Uh, there's something about particularly that I would feel when I was, um, when I was training just that calm that can come when you know that you just have to do, you know, today's training, college conversation, you need to ride your bike for eight hours. Uh, you know, what are you going to do, what do we ask him to go, what's your mind and [inaudible] and these kinds of things. And there was an experience I had when I was, I'm one of those longer training rides, um, where it was nothing, it was just about, it wasn't even by distance or anything like that. It was purely about you need to basically be in the saddle hours. Obviously, you know, taking breaks when today is about, you know, kind of getting yourself in the state of mind that you can be sitting and spinning for a long time.
And have you been drawn into using other tools like gps computers or you know, things that you are staring at while you were supposed to be out on these long training rides?
Yeah, I did because I'm like a, I'm like a, you know, engineer and kind of technology guy and data nerd. Like I wanted to somehow capture the experience, um, you know, in a, in an instrumental way, in a technical way, in order to be like, hey look, I did that and have that show up, you know, whatever looked on the gps map or as a set of statistics will say, actually, you know, this is how long you go, precisely how many feet of climbing you did, all those kinds of things. Uh, and, and one of these rides, you know, I had like a Garmin on my bars and it's like, it's, it's telling you that now you've got seven hours and 47 minute stuff to ride and that's just not helpful at all. Um, and so I just, I remember like loosening it and just turning it the other way.
I couldn't get, I couldn't, couldn't get it off. And so I just like left it on. I'm kind of pointing away from me. And that was, that was like maybe just like an early hint of that notion. At the same time you're more on the design side. I'd been working on some projects from the design studio that I was at that were very much focused on at the time. It seems like a little bit kind of old fashioned now, but at the time, uh, about uh, uh, about turning away from kind of screen-based interaction. Like, are there things that we can do that allow us sort of access and allow us to interact with the kind of, you know, the, the see the beneficial side of the information that you might find through an algorithm or on the Internet. But without forcing utilities, stare at a screen.
The project was called heads up cause we wanted to get people to have their head up more and all the kinds of things that we're seeing now. People still saw them, them just people sitting at dinner with the family and everyone's staring at a screen and all that kind of stuff. Um, it was, it was, uh, early days of people kind of recognizing that something's not quite right with these, um, new instruments that we're all kinda carrying around. And yeah, we were trying to figure out what we could do about it. And so that was very much, uh, on, uh, in the front of my mind about how do you create, uh, experiences at, particularly in contexts like riding a bike, which shouldn't be about staring down and just looking at the stream of data. It should be about having your head up, whether you're training them out or whether you're just out on a, on a, on a nice coffee ride or, um, finding a way in which you can enhance the experience of riding that is much more attached to the idea that I'm out here because it's good for not just for my, my legs and heart and lungs, but it's also good for my soul and my head.
The thoughts that I have. And one of the ways that, um, that, that it felt that this could come to be was to not have digital information sitting on your handlebars, not to have a digital display there. There's something about the calming influence. It's like analog, um, aside from the fact that it looks beautiful, it's, it's, I find it much more compelling than looking at a digital readout. Um, it hearkens back to, um, a kind of, um, mechanical motion. That's precisely what you're doing when you're on a bike. You know, things are turning, you're kind of cranking things over and, um, you're, you're moving bits and pieces and parts that are, that aren't digital, which is mechanical. And the most beautiful, simple way.
It's really interesting what you were saying and it really resonated me about you as a designer. You can't ignore the value of information and the desire that we have as humans as it's been now provided to us in these pocket devices. But at the same time finding ways to display, retain and use that information that are less invasive. Uh, it really fascinating Julian.
Yeah. And it's, it's, um, you know, it's, you visit other aspects to it. I think along those lines that is, uh, that is about, you're trying to find a way to kind of cut out the, um, or at least kind of dial back the digital influences on our life and our behaviors and our thoughts and our concerns. Um, this is like one particular way. There's also just like a basically like very emotional aspect to it. Aside from all that, which is just, um, making something that looks like it belongs on a bike. I'm making something that looks like it belongs in a data center, uh, is something that is highly motivating. Um, as well as I would say, um, just from a, from a pure kind of like instrumental mechanical product design, like making a thing like that that translates digital information into analog form isn't, isn't trivial. I'm not crowing about the accomplishment. I'm just saying like as a, as a product designer, that's a, that's a really exciting, exceptional challenge. Uh, how do you do that? Cause it hasn't been done before. Uh, and finding the way to do it in a particular form factor and particular circumstances that people find themselves in when they're riding, um, is, uh, is just as it is just pure fun as a, as a product design exercise and then just making something that looks beautiful.
So this would probably be a really good time to just take a step back and talk specifically. Some of the listeners may not even know what the Amato motto one is.
Sure. A good point.
So the, the Amada one is a, uh, it's a gps based bicycle computer that represents all the information that we feel matters most for particular kinds of rides in an analog form. So it looks very much like you might imagine a cockpit instrument in an airplane or a speedometer in a car looks like, except it shows four pieces of information and uh, and on the dial face. So it shows you your speed, it shows you your distance, it shows your, um, offense. So cumulative climbing and it shows your ride time. And then it also has the ability to record other bits from mason that come through on the, um, over and plus or ble. So for most people that's powered heart rate, maybe cadence. We just choose to show those four things and show them with actual mechanical hands moving. And then, you know, like most, uh, um, bicycle computers.
Um, of course we record that information so you can download it later and do all those other sharing rituals that people like to do or analysis, which was like to do with software and uploading into Strava and that kind of thing. We just choose to keep that information in the device during the ride. And some people don't even, they can't be bothered with strive for that kind of stuff. They just like the way it looks and the way it changes, the way in which they ride to have something in this form that's not showing them, um, information on digital display or not alerting them to the fact that maybe they got a phone call or a message or a tweet or something like that. Yeah. Having just spent one ride at this point on it, it was really fascinating to me to kind of watch the dials move.
So the way I think about it, it's like a beautiful coronagraph watch that I've got on my arm and things are just moving slowly as they do and are in, you know, a typical gravel ride. I'm not, I'm not cranking out high speed. So it was pretty fascinating and I think I had expressed to you during our ride, like I had some fear of the loss of data yet I was excited to lose it. And then what I discovered is I wasn't really losing anything. It was, as you articulated, the display was different, but the information was there. It was just perhaps presented in a, in a friendlier way that kept my mind away from thinking about going up a percentage faster or any of that at the ride just was what it was and it was going to unfold and the data was going to get captured. So I got to my office yesterday after riding in with it, um, hitting some trails and connected it through your app to Strava. And sure enough, I had nothing to be afraid of. Everything's there. So [inaudible] really fascinating experience for me actually.
Yeah. And I've heard from a lot of people, a lot of our customers are just some of our ambassadors and people, um, pros who I won't mention who are riding with it, who say that it just changes the way in which they ride it, it changes the experience of the ride. Um, and that, you know, probably many people have heard anecdotally, particularly some pros who once they, once they either off season or when they, uh, when they retire, just want to get back to the, to the reason they started riding in the first place. And the reason probably wasn't to have your ride analyzed by an algorithm at the end of it to tell you whether or not you actually had a good ride or not. You ride because you enjoy the, the, the exertion. You enjoy the conversation with friends or you enjoyed the thoughts you have, you might have if you're riding with friends or alone.
Um, and, and that's something that I felt that in a way the almond one kind of puts a stake in the ground to say this is about the purity of the ride. This is about what really matters when you're riding. Uh, it's not all the, it's not all the data. It's not all the connectivity to different kinds of analysis and that kind of thing. It's really about, um, you know, turning a crank over the feel of the wind in your, in your face, the, the sounds that you hear. All of a sudden your mind is able to focus on those things. You're not worried about what the representation of the ride is gonna be through data at the end of it. And I feel like, I honestly feel like your device does that. It's like a difference between wearing, you know, like a, like a mechanical wristwatch versus, you know, like, uh, an apple watch and I get their reasons why you might have one or the other and we're the almond the one, I'm not saying that this is, you know, throw out all your other kinds of technology that you might use for training saying for particular kinds of rides is that it delivers a very different kind of experience that very many people find.
Um, yeah, just, just pure and quite enjoyable.
Yeah. I remember at a couple of different points in my cycling career, I just had to give up on using computers because I found they, they just distracted me from the joy of writing. I was working for Avocet computer when they had brought out the Vertex altimeter watch and the avocet 50 altimeter computer. And I remember we would just sort of geek out on vertical feet climbed. And it was in the early days of mountain biking and that data was really exciting to see. But I found after several years in that space, it was just, it's, I stopped riding for the enjoyment of riding in many ways and it was very liberating to get rid of that computer. And I can certainly see today it's even worse. I mean you don't have to be an employee in the industry to have these computers with a vast amount of data being thrown at you and you know it, my mind tends to crack the moment I start thinking about Watson and things like that.
It's just not particularly for me. And I guess I would urge the listener to kind of consider that in the conversation we're having this idea of yeah, data is powerful and, and certainly if you're a competitive athlete, use the data to train, but also think about how it's good to turn that data off, capture it, retain it, still send it to Strava. Cause I know that's important to people, but shut it down and just ride to be with your friends, to hear the crunch of the dirt under your wheels. I think it's important for your soul.
Yeah. And you know, over obviously over the years, um, since the company started, definitely been thinking about the ways to Arctic, Oh, do you have find the analogies. And I think, you know, people come to it, hey me and maybe on their own but there, but there was definitely um, having a conversation with a, uh, with a cyclist who rode with one and he was asking us like, just what? Yeah, what do you tell people? What's the why? Why would they have this when they could have all this other extra data and all this information? They said this riding with that kind of computer, it'd be a bit like bringing your iPhone into church and like checking for messages.
Okay.
Oh, while you're there you have it.
Take Part in this experience that it's meant to be about a thoughtful contemplation as opposed to, you know, anything outside of those walls. And I P if I've heard people refer to cycling as church, and I think the analogy holds like this is a sacred time and particularly, you know, people have busy lives and busy schedules to be able to get out on an hour or two hour ride on the weekend. That might be all they get, you know, that let the rest of the week, which just might be to gen pack of fans, Emily and work and all those kinds of things like treat it like it, you know, as a, as a, as a sacred moment. And I, and part of me feels like, yeah, like bringing, bringing, bringing a whole digital complex of things into that experience, even if it's, you know, sitting on your bars is, um, just feels wrong in many regards.
Yeah, I feel like the product and the intention lends itself to the gravel market very specifically. I know a lot of road athletes who sort of just got burnt out of on the road riding experience and when they discovered gravel, they sort of marveled in the fact that they could go out on these epic hard rides. That kind of push those buttons in their lives that they were seeking, but they were getting away from cars and because of the variability of the terrain, they weren't necessarily as focused on being the first or beating any PR. Because you know, on a dirt trail PR can be different. On a muddy day, a windy day, a dusty day or rocky day, it just, it's just going to change over time. And being at peace with that I think is super liberating. Your legs still feel like you've been out there for a five hour day and you feel exactly the same way, but your soul is kinda filled up a little bit more from having been out there in the wilderness and just letting the day unfold a little bit more.
Yeah. Let's talk about legs for a second cause, um, that made me think of, you know, it's so I'm not, I'm not a, I'm not a super competitive guy. Like I, I, um, I enjoy riding and you're getting out there and I enjoy kind of like beating myself down. Um, but I am rare. Are they trying to get, you know, at the front of the group at all to, it depends, you know, I'm riding with that just some definitely write the other day like I was in the front of the group. It's just the nature of that particular ride in that particular day with those people. But there, there are, um, the experience of like, of just the feeling in your, in, in my legs or one's legs to feeling in your, in your chest, like listening to your breathing, like really doing it like deeply, like understanding that, that there's this set, there's something going on without any kind of data to tell you.
Like you should be feeling better because you're in the zone or whatever. Whatever the information that would normally be displayed. It's remarkable. I mean, just that level of attention that you can give that kind of like inward, um, uh, you know, I don't know. It is a mindfulness, like, you know, really focusing that your, your thoughts on those, those components of the experience is, is amazing. And it's something that I deliberately like, that's my train. Like I focus on learning how to feel my body. And part of it is because I know, you know, a couple of, you know, a couple of big races coming up, I'll be where I always am like in the happy metal, totally fine, that absolutely happy. Um, but I know that it's gonna push me and I know that I wanted, what I don't want to do is completely bond.
And I developed a sense of knowing where my body is at a particular point in the ride and knowing when I can like kind of die, I should dial things back. And knowing when I've got a little bit to push, um, is, is I, I'm just so excited to have develop this kind of the skill to understand my body and know it and intuit what's going on. And I liken it to, I mentioned that, you know, had a, had a, uh, an early modest, uh, amateur musician career when I was, when I was much, much younger and the musicians who I admired who, some of my peers as well as like, you know, superstar professionals who I just kind of looked up to and I would watch some player do, like they're feeling it. Like that's something that's remarkable to know someone who knows what to do with the music without having to look at the chart or just look around and other give us like, I know what's going to happen. That, and that's a kind of skill that I feel is, um, well it's, it's just, it's just joyous to watch. But it also something that I feel that, how'd you use a lot of instrumentation around us to tell us, are you sleeping well or is it time to eat or, uh, are you riding at your peak performance just takes away from the soulfulness of it. And it's, um, yeah, it's just, you know, like the difference between like a robot trying to play a song and a human. Just intuiting what should be played.
Yeah. I think our, our mountain bike brother and refer to this as the state of flow and you don't, it's not like, you know, it's not like you see downhill mountain bikers using computers or instrumentation on their downhill runs. What's important is that they're there one with the terrain there, one with there. They're connected to the bike in such a way that they can flow through the trails and concentrate on not breaking and going as fast as possible, which is different. Yeah. It's different than looking at a power meter on a climb and knowing, oh I should be going in. I should have a little bit more power coming out of my legs cause I know theoretically I can get there. It's pretty fascinating. I remember because your home is in southern California and I, I rode home by the beach afterwards. I couldn't help but think that there's an analogy between the soul surfer and what we do as gravel riders. You know, I've seen documentaries about professional surfers who have left the tour to just go surf, to just go express themselves in the water and let the compensation and sponsorship flow from their enjoyment of the world and the waves that they're riding. And I feel that way about gravel is that we're in, it's its purest incarnation. It's really about having an adventure. And it's not ever about getting from point a to point B quickly or efficiently. It's just about enjoying the ride.
That's right. I think, you know, it's, that's definitely that sensibility. It's definitely something that, uh, you know, we've tried to imbue in the [inaudible] of one, and it's, you know, it's the things you can probably appreciate. It's, it's obviously it's an instrument. It's a technical thing. It's sound like technology and stuff in it, and it's got gps and, and plus and Bluetooth and all those kinds of things. But yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of wrapped in this, um, this ethos, this philosophy that is very much about writing for the goodness of your soul, which is what I think that, uh, you know, soul surfers are looking for. They're just looking for that, that that's sense, that feeling of, of, of blessing and a connection to the environment, the sounds around them and to the feeling of water and the way in which the wage and moving. And I think it's really, that stuff is so important. It's, um, and I think something that it seems like at least there's like an image of a movement towards, towards that just generally, uh, particularly with the way in which we're, um, kind of
bombarded by algorithms expressing themselves in little screens that we carry around with ourselves. I had to do an errand like earlier and I got in the car and I realized I didn't have my phone with me. And there's like, there's like a slight Pang of like angst and I was like, you know what? It could be absolutely fine. I don't need that. I know exactly where I'm going. And if I, if I get, you know, I'm not going to get lost, but let's say even if I did get lost, it's like, well, you know, there was a time when getting lost was okay. It's part of the adventure.
Yeah, exactly. Jillian, thank you so much for joining us. I hope this conversation sparked some of those thoughts in the listener's mind about where to go with the sport and how to think about your time out there on the bike. It really is less about capturing data and more about enjoying the ride. So Julian, we'll be in touch again and have a great weekend and thanks for the time.
Pleasure, Craig. Thank you.
This mini-episode reviews my experience at the inaugural SBT GRVL event in Steamboat Springs, CO. We talk with a number of pros, expo vendors and event organizers about this fantastic first year event.
A conversation with Mike Kuhn and Gunner Bergey about Pennsylvania Gravel and the Unpaved and Ironcross events.
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Ironcross Website
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TECH CORNER sponsored by THESIS
Thanks, Craig.
In recent years, 1x drivetrains have taken over the mountain biking world. Today I’m going to argue why 1x should also be the default for most gravel riders.
1. With no front shifting, there’s less to go wrong, and less skill needed to dial things right.
2. With 1x, the user interface is vastly simplified. There’s no possibility of rubbing or cross-chaining, and you can just focus on the terrain ahead.
3. 1x drivetrains are cheaper to buy and generally cheaper to maintain.
4. In the case of some mechanical front shifters, you can modify them to activate a dropper post. This is actually super slick because it puts your dropper post at your fingertips at all times, whether you’re on the hoods or in the drops.
Now there are two primary objections that I hear. First is range. This one’s actually a non-issue. You can get the same or greater range these days, with consistent jumps between gears as well.
The second thing that often comes up is gear spacing. However, on dirt, the terrain is generally changing so frequently that you’re never at the same cadence for very long. Additionally, many riders, especially those of shorter stature, are running cranks that are too long for their inseam. Having a crank length that’s proportional to your inseam will allow you to spin at a wider range of cadences, which would in turn cancel out much of the perceived benefit of tight jumps.
So that’s why, for most gravel riders, I recommend a 1x drivetrain.
I’d love to get your feedback on this topic. In the meantime, back to Craig and this week’s guest.
FULL EPISODE:
Automated Transcript (please excuse the typos)
Mike, Welcome to the show.
Okay.
Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
Yeah. I'm excited to talk about unpaved, but before we dig in, how did you get into event organizing and what attracted you to being a gravel cyclist?
Uh, I, I know we don't have a whole lot of time so we'll try to keep it brief, but um, but many years ago and in Lewisburg where we based on pay from a, I went to school and I got involved in collegiate cycling at the time and we, we put on a couple of events and I put on my, my very first, uh, event production involvement was, was there, um, we did, we did road race weekend, we did a mountain bike event at Arby Winter State Park. And that over the years has blossomed into other things eventually. Uh, I was, I was part of that crew that brought an event called iron cross together, which, uh, is now 15 plus years in two years. Sort of a mixed, um, mixed surface type ride. Uh, and then the Transylvanian mountain bike epic was one that I did for almost a decade. And through those experiences in some bike racing experience too, we got to know the folks in Lewisburg and the tourism office there, the, um, Susquehanna river valley and, uh, have built a really wonderful relationship. That's why John Paved this point.
For those of our listeners who don't know exactly the region you're talking about, can you describe where it is in the state of Pennsylvania?
Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty central in Pennsylvania. So, um, you're, you know, a couple of hours from Philadelphia. You're a couple of hours from Pittsburgh and north of both, both of them, um, and, and pretty central in the state. It's into what we call the ridges and valleys, uh, portion of Pennsylvania at Lewisburg itself. That's sits on the Susko Hannah River, which is one of the, uh, made perhaps the main, um, you know, uh, body of water that flows into the Chesapeake Bay. So it's a pretty big river. And then, uh, we, uh, we ride west from there. We ride West from there into, uh, towards state college, Pennsylvania. I'm at Penn State University and through the ridges and valleys of Pennsylvania.
So what's your [inaudible] this is the second year of unpaved in the Susko Ohana Valley. Sounds like you've done a ton of event organizing in the mountain bike space and earlier in the road space. What drew you to this opportunity around creating a gravel event?
So the gravel, I know the gravel things. So first off being in that area in college, you know, I was exploring some of these roads. Um, even back then I think that even even before we had sort of the specialized equipment that we do today though, the gravel in Pennsylvania is really welcoming to a wide range of bicycles. And so, uh, even getting out there on some, some road bikes as, as possible, um, from just south of there and Pennsylvania and have, um, and had that experience too. And then, you know, really iron cross I think was sort of the first, um, venture into this world. Uh, iron cross is a hundred kilometers. It's mostly gravel. We mix it a little bit. We didn't purposely mix in as much pavement and a little bit of single track and to that event so that we can, uh, we, we really try to make it hard to figure out exactly how to set up your bike.
I mean that's really the purpose is like what, what is the, you know, how do you, how do you figure this thing out? But then within that, also as, as gravel grew, we, we started something that we called the a great gravel gathering, which was just a weekend, kind of in the same area in a little town called the Ohio. Um, that it, that, that on paved kind of reaches on its, its exploration of the Bald Eagle state forest. And, uh, and, and that once we figured out that, that a rail trail was being built because the rail trail that we use to get from Lewisburg, our starting location out to kind of the first section in the last section of the course did not exist. Um, until, and, and I'm going to get to, you know, I'm going to get the exact timeframe wrong, but I don't want to say until maybe eight years ago or so.
And once we figured out that that connection was there that we could get into the volleyball state forest and have sort of this gravel connection, um, from Lewisburg out there, that's when we really, you know, went back to our friends at Susquehanna river valley and said, hey, this is gravel stuff is looking pretty cool. Um, that's probably about six years ago that we did that. And let's, let's start exploring this. What's it gonna take? And have worked through that process over a couple of years with and [inaudible] and, uh, which is our department of Conservation and natural resources in Pennsylvania. And now working with, uh, with those two entities in a whole lot of others to, to kind of bring the city together.
Yeah, it's great when you can get those agencies involved because they can help open spaces that might not have otherwise been opened and really help show the athletes and the community how special those open spaces are.
It's, um, you know, Pennsylvania has thousands and thousands of miles of trails and, um, kind of millions of acres of property between, you know, between the state portion and something else we call the state game lands and the gravel roads. It stretched through all of this stuff. And once you get to, I mean gravels everywhere in Pa and then especially once you get to kind of to the Louisburg area and endorse in the state, I mean, you could ride for days if not weeks, um, and on gravel. So it's really, it's pretty spectacular. First state that's as old as we are and as developed as we are, we also have this really wonderful way to escape into the back country.
Yeah. Geographically speaking, as I mentioned when we were offline, Pennsylvania is so well located amongst a whole bunch of states. I, I gotta imagine you draw athletes from all over the place wanting to sample the trails you're talking about.
Yeah, we just, um, W I mentioned Transylvania, you know, we, we were drawing folks from around the world to continuing to as a, as an a just kind of been reborn this year, uh, under a new director and continuing to draw writers from around the world to that event. And, uh, it's, you know, the, the trails here are technical and, and rocky and challenging in a different way than what most people are used to. And then, like I said, the gravel, just amazing how many miles of Babel roads exist. Um, w what we typically refer to in the northern tier of the state, but even, even coming down through the central part, and, uh, you can just, you can just find it everywhere. Um, it's, uh, it is geographically really well located in the u s and has some great, you know, between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, couple of pretty big airports.
Harrisburg offers another, you know, travel option in, it's about an hour or 15,000 of the venue. Another good place to travel in and out of. Uh, and certainly from, you know, from a connect connectivity by a interstates man, there's all sorts of stuff. 80, 81, 76, um, which depends on what you turned by all of them. All right. Pretty close to where we are. So it's pretty easy to drive fly, uh, access land rovers there if you know, you feel like paddle and then you can probably make that work too. But yeah. Good spot to be for sure.
Absolutely. So speaking to you from the west coast and just sort of having an understanding of sort of the number of athletes we have here in northern California, in southern California over the last few years, have you been doing iron cross and last year with unpaved? How is the scene on the east coast? Is it growing as quickly as we see it in the West?
Yeah, good question. I have not had the pleasure of making it a trip out to your negative woods, but eh, I mean I, if it's not, if it's not growing as fast, um, holy macro must you guys be blown up and you know, and say at an insane rate. Cause it's, it's picking up really, really quickly over here. I mean, we've gone from zero to 1,002 years at on and we have, you know, our friends putting on events like keystone gravel, just selling out, you know, immediately a little lack of Waco Hondo, uh, sells out immediately. Those are, you know, relatively big events. Of course. Yeah. North of us. There's some, some great stuff happening, um, in the New England states like the Vermont overland, you know, ted King has his event coming on. Um, it's big, right? It's big and it seems like it's getting bigger.
Yeah. Well that's exciting to get that report from the east guest. I didn't doubt it. There's certainly a lot of effort and a lot of great events that have been going and are cropping up. When I look at the unpaved website, and I'll certainly put this in the, in the show notes so people can get to it, it's pretty easy to be attracted to the trails when I'm an athlete thinking about coming or signed, signed up already, what do I need to think about from an equipment perspective?
Yeah, good question. I feel like, you know, I end up feeling like that so personal, so much of the time, it's so much, it depends on the experience that you've, you know, that you have, that you bring with your equipment I suppose. But I'm going to think a general rule of thumb is you for the most part. Now I'm going to, there's a little caveat in here because on the really long day on the one 20, on our longest distance, we throw a wet long well draft people along. They'll draft a is, is it very sort of chunkier type experience. It's not a, it's not Pennsylvania single track, but digging in pretty decent size, embedded rocks on a, on a downhill grade. And uh, and that's kind of its own thing. And if you're headed out there, you really want to protect yourself and protect your, you know, your equipment and they lessen the chance of flats or you might, you know, a little bigger tire might be a good choice for you. But you know, the vast majority of this course, the gravel is, um, unless we happen to hit a time when decent art has just graded one of their roads and kind of kicked it up a little bit and turned it up a man really well packed, really well maintained. And I've done, I've done large portions of the course on, you know, on, on 28. Now I don't recommend that. That's not the most enjoyable way to do it, but it can be done. Um, so maybe, maybe that, does that help you figure it out?
It does. And when, when you talk about Pennsylvania fat tires, what, what kind of with are you talking about for that?
Yeah.
People who are experienced 40 ish really want to feel it. You know, if you're 40, 45, he really, he really want, like, if you're really like, mm, that's pretty, you know, I'm maybe really out here for the cruise and enjoy it. Just want to be, just want to be safe and happy or whatnot. You know, throwing something a little wider on there is not a, is not a bad idea. If you're taking on the one 20, I don't think I would say. I would say if you're not doing the one 20, there's a little section that gets pretty Chunky, um, early on in the course. But you know, you can really, I think most people are probably going to be pretty comfortable on that 40 45 sort of choice. Yeah.
Yeah. It was. I recently had Alison Tetrick on the podcast and we were sort of laughing because she tends towards, in my mind what's a narrower attire. I told her I routinely run fifty's here in Marin County and she sort of laughed and she laughed at me and said, well actually I think that's stuff that you ride down in Marin county's actually mountain biking, which is probably true.
Right.
So that is fun. I mean that's why and how that's all changed. Yeah. I don't, I, you know, despite having this podcast, I don't like to geek out or agonize too much over equipment choices. I am very much at, you know, ride what you got and there's going to be advantages and disadvantages. Certainly when that the group is, is hauling butt through some of this, the uh, the more paved sections, having an hour or tire and lightweight setups going to be great. But as you said long into the day, that little bit extra comfort, you really need to balance that. If you, you know, are you out there really to, to kind of win and go for it? Are you just out there to kind of have a smile on your face all day long?
Yeah, right. The last, right. You protect yourself a little bit, a little little, you pay a little penalty for, for carrying a little extra weight, but you don't have to stop, you know, you don't have to stop you on problems. There's, there's joy in that too, right? Like it just makes a day that much more fun potentially. So.
Yup. Yeah,
exactly. So you mentioned there's multiple distances for the event this year.
There are, and I'll tell you what man, we are, we are so excited and so grateful to say that we're essentially, we have, we have literally one spot laughed and our three longest distances. So we do a one 20, a 90 and a 55 as of this morning. There is one spot last, um, in across the distances and it's in the 55 90 category. We kind of combine those for the field by met. So we do have a, we do have a uh, a little shorter category. It's kind of a taste of gravel. It's a lot of rail trail, a little bit of pavement. It does, you know, it hits the rest of the rail brewing company, which is, which is pretty cool out there. And Muslim various one of our aid stations. And uh, that one's about a 30 mile, a little less than that, about 27 I guess this year. Um,
yeah, I saw that on your site and actually I was really excited to see that cause I think it's so important if you've got the terrain that you can make into a very enjoyable beginner experience. It's so important for the sport because obviously you're not going to sign up for a 121 miles with some steep technical terrain if you're a road rider that's never written off road. So I appreciate the efforts of inviting, you know, all categories to kind of join the event.
Yeah. And it's, you know, for us to, uh, again get this wonderful experience up there and let us Berg w with school and, and we've got these great partners, not just the, uh, since Wayne at river valley, but the Miller center as well as our start finish location downtown Lewisburg is rolling out the, you know, red carpets for riders with, with stuff going on all weekend and they're really leading the effort on that, which is really cool. And we want to, we really want to encourage the, the local community, Lewisburg, Williamsport, even Harrisburg is not that far. We would encourage that community to come out and try this and be part of this weekend. And you know, and, and, right. I mean, every, you get a taste of this, you get a taste of this fun. The people that are involved and then you're like, I just want to do more of this. And you know, hopefully we over time encourage them to try the longer distances as well. So that's definitely part of what we're thinking too.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you see, you see the events that have been around eight, 10, even longer number of years. And you've got kids who started their watching their parents who are all of a sudden now able to toe the line, which is, I mean obviously what the sport and what cycling needs. Absolutely. 100%. So when we look at the longer event, when I'm done with it, when I'm done with my one 21 miles, what are three sections that you think we're going to be talking about at the end of the day?
Okay.
Longwell draft, which we talked about, you go down long. Well, you're like, okay, I've had enough of that, but it's a good part of the courts, uh, and, and long, well, sort of that, that extra 30 mile loop is, is that meant that takes the 92, the one 20, uh, Dave, my coconspirator in this whole thing, day prior now calls out the difference in, um, it, you know, you feel that there's a lot of climate in Longmont wrapped in there. So, so long while that is, is, is a piece of that, I mean, there's, uh, Pine Creek, Raj, and we do roll out of town and it's relatively flat, a couple of rollers, then you hit, um, John's mountain road and John's mountain is, uh, the first climb of the day and it's one of the bigger clients of the day. I think that often sticks out in people's minds.
There's a wonderful vista just over the top of it. Um, kind of have to, you know, heads up to, to catch it. But man, what a, what a wonderful spot for pictures and, you know, taking an idea if you can spare a second. But then after that, it is just this wonderful slight downhill grade for 10, 12 miles. And, um, something that we don't see a lot of in Pennsylvania actually. And that is probably my favorite part of the course. I mean, you can just grow and roll and roll and Rovell uh, on this beautiful gravel section of the course. And I really love that one. Um, and then we have some rail trail in there and then that doesn't sound very exciting, but man is that beautiful along Pans Creek. He goes through a tunnel as you come out of Pope Patti State Park. Uh, and, uh, and to me that's one of the other kind of unique features and highlights of the course as well.
And then when we're all done, are you getting together for sort of a festival type atmosphere?
Yeah, I'll tell you what we are, we're throwing a party all weekend long. You know, I say we, I mean, all those partners, it's, it's far more than just, uh, just unpaved that's doing that. So starting even earlier, as early as Friday evening, uh, a little fun. Graveled we're going to get on garage raveled unraveled on graveled uh, oh on Friday night with some fun town's Saturdays Expo. We've got a bunch of wonderful partners coming in salsa as they are, stands as their, uh, I think Floyd's and Ergon are coming in and it looks like, you know, a Jira will be there and a number of others. Vargo which is, uh, which, which some of our folks know, maybe not everybody would bargo make some really cool equipment for bike packing in there, right in town. They're actually based out of Lewisburg, which is a really cool connection. They're going to be, you know, part of this, we got all this stuff and then there's a bunch of local artisans.
There's a wooly where and festival, which certainly appeals to me, but it's gonna appeal to my kids even more. Um, that's going on as part of this, uh, the wheeler center is working with us on daycare opportunities. So, you know, both parents want to come. Uh, maybe you can't, maybe there's not enough daycare for the full one 20, probably they may be for Alison Tetrick or somebody that fast. Maybe you can, you can blow through quickly enough, but from a mere mortals, you know, if you're going out for the 30, uh, one of the parents wants to do that and, and have the kids kind of engage in some super fun activities. That number center's got family friendly stuff going on. Uh, and then Monday even we've, you know, we have some rides happening conjunction with like at Buycott, Lewisburg, sort of local advocacy, um, folks there for, for cycling and pedestrian activities in those groups. So [inaudible] entire full weekend of fun, family friendliness, you know, Clyde peelings rep, they'll land reptile land is just up the road. That's a pretty fun stop for families while you're in town. So just tons and tons of stuff to do even in, you know, kind of small town Pennsylvania. But man, is it a beautiful spot on the Bucknell University and uh, and some good things that weekend.
That's awesome, Mike. I appreciate the overview. Certainly from all accounts. Last year's event was amazing, so I'm sure this one will be even better. I hope the weather holds for you guys and you get a big turnout. It sounds like there's only maybe one slot left for some lucky, lucky person online who hears this. Go over and grab it. Say I'm Mike. Thanks again for the time.
Hey, thank you very much for having us. Really appreciate it. I hope you can hope you can make it and, and you know, not this year decent. Our, we're hoping to work with us and we get this thing bigger and better. Next year or two, we're going to keep, keep a foot on the gas with it too.
Right on Mike, I appreciate that. Cheers.
PART 2:
Gunner. I want to welcome you to this all Pennsylvania edition of the gravel ride podcast.
It's great to be here. Craig, thanks for having me today. I'm really excited to help fill you in and get the listeners up to date on what's going on with iron cross.
Yeah, I'm stoked to continue the conversation about Pennsylvania riding cars. As I was mentioning to Mike, I've done a bit as a mountain biker when I was living in the mid Atlantic. I love the terrain and I can see how it totally lends itself to gravel riding. I'm excited to get into a little bit to the, into the history of iron cross, but let's start off by just learning a little bit about you. How do you come to the sport of cycling?
So I grew up, my dad got me into mountain biking when I was pretty young. Uh, I raced mountain bikes as a junior year and I eventually transitioned to focus on cyclocross. Um, I've raced with the national team over in Belgium. I went down to these McCray where I raced, uh, in college and was part of some teams that did pretty well national championships and uh, and just sort of grew from racing my bike to I got Lyme disease and it sort of took me off the racing side of things and that kind of opened up the door to help put on races. And I've been really enjoying being on the other side of the core state.
Interesting. In Pennsylvania, is there a big cyclocross contingent? Okay.
Yeah, the mid Atlantic has a pretty awesome series a, the mid Atlantic cross, they put on some really great events. They host a bunch GCI events. It was really helpful growing up as a junior to have such high quality events. Uh, you know, so close to where I grew up.
And you mentioned Mike was there one of the original founders of iron cross. What was the vision? What time of year did it sit in and what was the intention to contribute to the cyclocross racing community there?
So Mike definitely pushed that cross as a, when he started that race. This'll be at 17, 2019. We'll be at 17th year. So it was quite awhile ago when Mike got that off the ground and he was sort of doing something that no one else, no one else was offering. There weren't a whole sampling of gravel races back then. There were some minor cross claims to be the first one in North America and it was based off of, I believe it's called triple cross, that triple cross or triple peaks that was over in the UK. And that was sort of where he got his inspiration there and it was an old race where they would actually ride to the pills and then hike their bikes to the top and come back down and ride to the next step. So that was sort of what Mike used as says, um, idea and inspiration behind it. And it sort of grew from there. Um, it's interesting because it's, oftentimes it's with falling this year. It's on October 20th, 2019. And uh, it is in the middle of cross season and a lot of serious cross raisers have a hard time working into their schedule. You know, they're trading for short hour long efforts. So, you know, depending on how quickly you're going up, three to five hour effort on the bike doesn't really suit that sort of training. But people come out and they make adjustments to their schedule to make it because it's a, it's a pretty unique event.
Yeah. It's interesting that you mentioned the three peak cyclocross race in the UK. My cousin Tim had competed in it, shout out cousin Tim Tebow Dalton. Um, and I remember seeing some of the pictures and I remember talking to them about how friggen hard that race was and seeing him struggle over those peaks carrying his cyclocross bike on his shoulder, you know, going back a decade ago or so. So it's a pretty interesting model and I think like three peaks, it's clear that iron cross is put on the calendar as a big adventure, which is, I think it's really cool and exciting for someone who maybe specializes in cyclocross to kind of go out of their comfort zone and tackle a longer event and tackle the adventurous route that you guys have laid out for people.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's great. It's sort of pools, iron cross pools in a racers from road mountain and cross backgrounds. We've had people do it on road bikes with big tires. I wouldn't recommend it, but it is possible. Uh, and then you've got serious mountain bikers that are in the middle of their off season and then you've got serious cross racers in the middle of their, you know, racing season and they all sort of come out and they have a pretty good battle. It can neat to see a different groups that maybe don't get to race with each other the rest of the year. Um, sort of meet each other and, and meet people that maybe they do training rides with but don't, don't attend races but together cause they focus on different disciplines.
Yeah. And I imagine it's fascinating as you look at the different parts of the course where they favor one bike or another, how you see athletes in that specific discipline close gaps or create gaps depending on their skill and their equipment.
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, you've got, you know, sometimes there'll be road racers that know that their technical skills are lacking and are a lot for a mountain bike because they think that they can overcome, uh, the larger tire with and the drag on the road, uh, to be a most, maybe go faster on some of the offer sections and then they'll be the opposite people that are used to going downhill and used to navy riding, drop par bikes on some rough terrain that are worried about having to fitness to get up or some of the hills.
So if I'm lining up at the start line, can you walk the listener through what an iron cross races, like, what's, what's the terrain that they're tackling, how does it unfold? And we starting out with more technical terrain. Are we starting out on fire roads? Just give us a brief overview of the exciting sections of the course.
Yeah, absolutely. We can totally walk through the course here. Uh, so we start right outside of Williamsport in south Williamsport, uh, from the South Williamsport senior center. We go a neutral rollout through south Williamsport. And one of the cool parts about iron cross that we've been able to pull together in the past few years is it's neutral. And we have a replica cannon on the side of the hill and people always say, well, how will we know when the river starts? And I tell them that, well, the race starts from the cannon goes off and not everyone thinks I'm serious. And we have a full cannon that gets loaded with a, you know, gun powder in it. It makes a loud, loud blast. There is no confusion on when the race starts. So as soon as soon as the candidate goes off, they roll through the Williamsport. What authority property?
It's kind of a nice intro, some rougher double tracks, smoother double track, and that sort of just gets the blood flowing and let everyone know what they're going to be in for for the rest of the day. Um, after that, they've got a road climb and he kind of works through the tie dot and state forest. Uh, just some absolutely beautiful views. Uh, some great descents, great climbs. Um, then the, the main thing that everyone fits, stands out in everyone's mind is the hike a bike. So we've, we've got a pretty, pretty unique section of trail where it just goes up this, this rocky in bank men and, uh, there's photos of people and there's often, often times you've got three points of contact with the ground, both your feet in one of your hands because it is so steep that, uh, when you leave for not that far, your, your face is right off the rocks and everyone's carrying their bikes.
Some people put it on their shoulders, some people put it on their back, some people roll it up next to them. Um, and then about halfway up that climb is the unofficial aid station called Larry's tavern. And, uh, we often have someone there from SBDC and they're in the past, they've grilled bacon, they'd grilled a deer meat, venison. They've had all sorts of stuff on the grill there. They've had a, sometimes they have some, some special drinks. They're hanging out. And last year that the, uh, the winner of the overall winner of the race actually stopped. And, uh, took a Ciroc shot and kept going on afterwards. So it's a pretty cool spot to hang out.
The Syrup shop might not be that bad of an idea. I get a little sugar and yet at the end of that climb.
Yeah, absolutely. And after that you've got some more dre gravel and other descent and another climb and then the course finishes with a mountain top climb. Uh, and it's a pretty brutal, it's about two miles long, really nice double track. And uh, up at the top we normally have hot coffee cookies. And, uh, then it said, then you just take your time and roll back to your car, the race at the top of the hill. You've got a nice three, two mile descent back into town. And then, uh, that's sort of it.
And then what do they expect after the race back in town? Do you have some events going on afterwards for people to enjoy themselves?
Absolutely. We've partnered pretty closely with, uh, um, the brick yard restaurant and the stone house restaurant there. There are two restaurants that, uh, are operating under the same management open company. So laughter in everyone's ready to bag. They get a token for free beer and a burger or pizza for after the, um, after the events and they can come down and we do award ceremony in the courtyard and there's lots of lots of hanging out and people talking about the event and whether or not they had a good time and uh, there's been some, some really cool cool nights and it ends up people hanging out for a long time and really enjoying, enjoying what sport has to offer.
Awesome. I was looking at the GPX file for the, for the race. So it looks like it's, it's just shy of 60 miles and about 6,200 feet of climbing, is that right?
Yup. [inaudible]
and looking at the elevation, there's no break in this bad boy. It goes up and down and up and down. And I could see that, um, that last finishing climb is as big as anything else earlier in the day.
Yeah. The, the last line definitely. I mean when you're done, I don't care if you're the first finish or the last minister, you are happy to be done when you come across the line. The last time's pretty tough. It's a good one. Um, and it, it's when you get to the top and have that hot coffee and cookies, everyone's usually pretty excited to be wrapped up for the day.
I bet. I bet. Are All these trails open to riders other times of the year or is this any private property?
Uh, most of the courses open all the year. The glands. What, what our authority, uh, grants the event access. You're allowed to go there and ride. Um, and we, and uh, there's just, there's some rules there saw posted on a side but, but you are able to ride all the course all year round.
Awesome. Well I encourage everybody to go to the iron cross website because there's a video of that cannon going off. There's a course profile across the board and a lot of information about how cool this event is and about the history. Like when we were talking to Mike earlier, I think this region is just so cool for people to visit for riding. And I can see how gravel riding is just exploding in the mid Atlantic area for, for events like this, just sort of setting the stage for what that community can can do.
We'd love to have the hour, um, that there's a really, really great gravel community going on in PA. Uh, and then I think that you'd have fun at anything that's going on in the state. There's some really great stuff and we'd love to have,
well I appreciate you taking the mantle of continuing the history of the Iron Cross race and continuing to have it evolve as new opportunities arise. It's amazing when I think multiple people in the community dedicate themselves to putting on events and thinking about this cause it really helps. It really helps people visiting the area to know where to ride and find some great loops. And it's just amazing to have these things on the calendar year after year after year. So gunner, thanks for joining us. I know you've got a busy weekend racing ahead of you, so thanks for the time and we look forward to another great iron cross later this year.
Thanks for having me, Craig.
Alison Tetrick Instagram
Alison's Bike Packing trip on the Silk Road
Tech Corner - Sponsored by Thesis.
Thanks, Craig. Let’s talk about seven things to look for in a gravel wheelset.
1. Rims. I look for wide, tubeless, asymmetrical, and carbon. This is going to give higher volume tires a proper base of support so that when you run them at lower pressures, you’re not getting tire squirm. It also reduces the likelihood of pinch flats, improves rolling efficiency, and makes for a stronger, stiffer, more durable wheel.
2. Hubs. Hubs are often the first thing to fail on a wheel, so avoid cheap pall-based engagement systems and small bearings used to save weight and cost at the expense of durability. Instead, invest in hubs with a reputation for bombproof reliability.
3. Spokes. I like a minimum of 24, and ideally 28, lightweight wing-shaped spokes. This offers strength, stiffness, and durability while preventing spoke wind up that can accelerate fatigue and failure, all while maintaining a low weight.
4. Exposed brass nipples. Aluminum nipples split and fail while saving only a trivial amount of weight, and hidden nipples make it a nightmare to true your wheels while offering zero aero benefit.
5. Lacing patterns. I like two-cross patterns for their strength, lateral stiffness, and resistance to torsional loads, particularly when paired with an asymmetric rim.
6. Ignore aero. There are no lightbulb-shaped NACA airfoils for a reason. Unless you’re running tires of roughly identical width to your rim, you’re getting all of the side-wind buffeting with none of the aero benefit.
7. Last, great components can’t make a great wheel without proper spoke prep, strain relieving, spoke balancing, and other hidden details. Therefore, look for hand-built wheels from a brand that sweats the small stuff.
So that’s my take on wheels. Now, back to Craig and this week’s guest.
Main Episode: (automatic transcription please forgive any typos)
Alison, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Alison, as a fan of the sport, I know you as a woman who is usually at the front end of the field, but regardless of where you are, you always seem to be smiling, which is awesome.
Yeah, I mean, riding a bike is fun and I think, you know, if I'm not smiling and enjoying it, then why do it? So, yeah, you're right. Whether it's racing and going hard or cruising around to the bakery, I think, I think bikes make you smile.
Yeah, that's a good thing for everybody to remember. I always start out the show by asking our guests to talk a little bit about their background as a cyclist, kind of how you got into it, but most importantly like what drew you to gravel cycling because you didn't start as a gravel cyclist.
No, I um, I'm born and raised in California. I actually grew up at a, on a cattle ranch down in Santa Barbara County and then up in Redding. Uh, and I played tennis in college in Texas, so definitely didn't start cycling until I graduated college. And I got into running that turned into triathlon and it was my grandfather, um, who recently passed away, but at the time he was saying, Hey, I'll, you know, you should try out cycling. And I was like, old bike racing and Super Dorky, you know, like you're wearing those like rightly hued neon clothing and spandex. And I didn't really want to partake in that, but eventually I bought a bike and hop into some bike races and did quite well when I moved here to the bay area and I thought maybe I'll try this out. And I got invited to the Italian id camp with USA cycling and with Europe and race the national team.
So I actually had about a nine year professional cycling career that my grandpa would still just be like, I can't believe, you know, everything I said would happen, happened. And it was awesome. And I raced all over the world and pretty much reached a point in my career where I felt um, satisfied with what I had accomplished and was finding, searching to find more inspiration and what I was doing. I'd done all the big spring classics, I'd raced for the national team, I'd won races on those continents and I'm going, okay, I, I, I have that. And also, um, I found a lot of satisfaction with that, but also I'd had some pretty bad injuries in the sport. And so coming back to recover from a traumatic brain injury, broken bones, just the mental and emotional energy that costs me. At one point I remember exactly where I was in a bike race in Belgium and going into the last corner and I break, you know, and like, I just didn't want to take the risk anymore and I thought, okay, now's the time, you know, you need to, to, to choose a different path.
However, I really loved riding my bike and we talked about that at the beginning. Like it does bring a smile to my face. I think there's something so empowering about riding a bike, especially as you know, where we live here in the bay area, I think it's one of most beautiful places in the world to ride. So sense of freedom and adventure and allowing me to express myself made me want to keep in the sport, but figure out where do cry, find something inspiring and find that adventure. And um, you probably know Yuri Wall and Rebecca Rush, they keep like elbowing me thing same way like my grandpa did, hey, try, you know, try some bravo or anything. You'll really love that, you know? Right. And you'll be good at it. And, and so it was with their encouragement. I was like, alright. And I thought I'd done for dirty cans and asked my professional team at the time that they minded, you know, me doing dirty Kanza and they're going, oh, well, you know, you still better do and into California nationals and you don't get slow doing it. Yeah.
Okay.
I signed up and I was just completely hooked because, um, there's so many things I love about gravel racing and riding on, first of all, of course it's that sense of adventure. It's a little off the beaten path and you know, you're getting on roads you'd never seen before. Your meeting this entire community of people that just think the same way you do, which I think is awesome. And when you're racing a road race, you know, in the streets of Holland or wherever you are, it's awesome and the fans are great. But this way we all get a line up on the start line together at these gravel races. And so you're not operating on this platform. You get a calm and just ride with your friends and also do you have the day, you know, to side. It's just about having fun and finishing and I, and I like that about it a lot too. So long winded answer but there you go.
What was that? What was that like lining up for your first 30 cancer when you're lining up with all the women, all the men, all the participants. At one time. Had you ever done anything like that before?
Not in a race setting per se, but you know, we think about it, we do a lot of that at Gran Fondo then you know, even charity events that you do on a bike. So it's similar but not in a full blown race. Um, but I think it's, it is nerve wracking. You know, there's a lot of people, you know, you're, you have like a chasing stampede behind you when you do those large events. And I know that that often, you know, causes a little stress. But, you know, I think something, I love the all inclusiveness of it and I love everyone starting together. Um, and kind of starting and embarking on this day and, you know, I do get nervous, still are worried and then I have to just remember like I chose to do gravel racing to, you know, lower my tire pressure and lower and my like life pressure. And like we were saying like, you're not having fun. Why are you there? So make sure you're having fun and, and, and know that you just get a tears, your friends at the finish line with some beer and talk about your, your day. You know, we all have great stories after doing those events.
It's such an important part of the sport. I gotta imagine tactically it must feel a little bit different lining up with both the men and the women because obviously there's opportunities to get swept up in packs that will have both men and women in it. Has it, has it changed kind of how you think about racing when you're versus when you're racing in a women's only field?
Uh, yes it does. Um, and you know, tactics of gravel racing are constantly changing as some of these events are offering price versus, and you know, there's a certain amount of glory for certain events. So, you know, not only do you have to think tactically lining up with a massive group of people, but also like now we're seeing team tactics, which is interesting and not why I do it. So that's different. But, um, I think you still have to do your own race. And in a lot of these events, especially the longer ones when you're looking at these bravo racing, you know your speeds tend to be a little slower due to the, you know, higher rolling resistance and the terrain. So even a hundred mile event is going to take no longer than it would on a road bike and dirty Canva, you know, obviously much more extreme in the distance.
So yes you can, you know, you utilize other people's traffic and you can get caught up in pass. But also like for those endurance events, I think an important thing that we have to remind ourselves of is you have to race your own race and that means you have to stick to your plan because everyone feels like 1 million bucks at the start, eight hours in, you know, if you need to make sure you're fueling and hydrating and taking care of yourself properly for that beginning portion, which sometimes means letting groups go by you because their exertion is higher than would be appropriate for you to do so you can finish strong.
Yeah. I think that's, that's great advice for everybody listening cause we've all been there where a group comes by you and you're desperate to get into a draft, but you realize you're just going harder still than you could reasonably expect to finish the 200 mile race in [inaudible].
Yeah. And I, and I think, you know, I've had different tactics, um, approaching a race, like dirty candidate depending on where my fitness is or where my mental state was. And I know this year, um, I finished second there. Um, but it was to not panic at the start when I knew I needed to just for not only like my physical ability but also my mental energy. Like my mental state that day was like, oh, you know, you're going to something with intending do, you're going, okay, what, what can I do to, to a, make sure I'm having fun because I signed up for this, you know, like I registered myself for this event and I been, you know, thinking about this or that for six months. So here I am. So reminding myself, I find out for it, I chose to do this. No one forced me to.
So I better be having fun. And then when you're, you have that dark side in the back of your head where this isn't fun, this is hard, you know, her, I don't want her to sale or what if, and this I kept kept saying, you know, race your own race, do you, do you, you know, like believe in yourself that way and just don't panic, you know, like don't worry about some of those external influences that can cause you to panic because that wastes a lot of energy and you need to stay as positive as possible, especially as longer ones. You need to talk positively to yourself and you need to, you know, kind of get through that whole emotional journey that it takes to do a long um, endurance event.
Yeah, I think that's probably a great piece of advice for road cyclists who have, have only participated in road events because in gravel, certainly in the distance of dirty Kanza you're going to have dark, dark moments. And the truth is everybody is, and the question is how do you rebound from that mentally and physically? How do you kind of stockpile enough tricks in your back pocket to understand it's going to hurt, you're going to have to go deep. But what are the things you can do to bring you back into a more positive space?
Yeah, and that's the thing is I came from like one of my strengths, I don't know the road cyclists with a time trial is so, I mean I, I'd worked a lot on mental focus and preparation, um, which did help me in gravel racing because you know, your equipments dial your plan dials, but now you're taking a 20 minute time trial and making it 12 hours. So that's very different. But something I used in road cycling for time trialing, I'd say we, oh, no matter, you know, everyone loses focus, you know, and now it's just how quickly you can regain focus. But you're looking at it much, you know, fast forwarded version. And so I use that same thing and grab already seen. I'm like, okay, it's really dark right now. I feel horrible, but then how I just kind of have a Rolodex of whether it's mantra songs, you know, anything that can remind me to recenter, refocus, remember why I'm there, what I wanted to accomplish.
And then also like if I start taking myself too seriously, like it doesn't matter like how you do just enjoy the day or you know, like whatever it takes to get you out of that place. And then also a joy and I kind of enjoy those dark places you go because you learn really fascinating things about yourself when you're pushed to those extreme limits. And so same thing kind of absorb it. It's, it's like bike therapy, right? And so maybe even using that to get yourself out of it, I go, you know, are you moving forward and making forward progress checks? Are you taking care of yourself? Eating, drinking, talking nicely to yourself? Yes. Okay. And then you can go into this crazy therapy session where end the day the event was so cool, but you do really learn that every day. Training for that and writing like in preparing for it was also really worth it to be able to see what you're capable of.
Absolutely. And I think that's what those are. Those finish lines stories that get shared, whether you're Collin Strickland doing 10 hours or you're doing 16 hours, you had those same deep dark experiences along the way that make you want to come back and do it again.
Yeah, exactly. I mean maybe you asked somebody right after the event, they'll be like, oh, absolutely not. You know, I would never do this again. And then two days later you're kind of going, all right, well next year we're going to do this. So I mean it, it's fun because I think it is about the challenge and you know, succeeding and whether that's just finishing or conquering the adversity within, um, that's really important. And then it's just finding something I've been kind of watching lately with myself. It's finding goals that inspire me, like inspire me. Like it's not dirty cancer for you then that fine. Is that the local grasshopper series? Is it a grand fondo? I mean, what, what inspires you? Or maybe it's just like a bike packing trip across or something, which I did do last year. Um, so it's finding something that makes you want to ride your bike, enjoy it and finding the right people to surround yourself with and you know, doing a good thing on your bike.
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Are there things from an equipment perspective that you look at differently for dirty Kanza than you do for other shorter events?
Um, you know, obviously I, I ride the same setups. We're primarily most gravel events. I'm super comfortable on it. Um, I I ride for the specialized, so I ride a like an s works diverge. Um, I have the, Oh man, if I had the new strand EatApp force worn by on it with a, uh, a 44 front changing in a 10 50 in the back. So that was a super helpful and I just did that Oregon trail, gravel grinder accept all the gears for high speeds as well as really steep pitches. So I ran that exact set of for dirty Kanza. I'll run the set up, the same set up for fast you to Oregon trail gravel grinder because I do have all those years, the bike, I run the same tires ticker 38. Um, I know there's other options. I'm just super comfortable on that and I trust the equipment.
Um, but for something like Kansas and it's longer, I mean I'm carrying a lot more supplies in case all hell breaks loose. So, you know, I'm carrying two, uh, plugs. Um, camelback, of course I run a chase ass, you know, depending on the event, like how the eight stations works with the duration, like how many bottles are you carrying? Um, of course the camelbaks really helpful for that. And then, you know, how do you on those, um, full design makes this little like snack pack, top two bucks. So that's actually helpful too. So the bike definitely gets loaded down with a lot more necessities, but I think you're not worried about weight, you're worried about survival. So I, I would like to, I like to carry enough to survive and make sure I'm, you know, able to get myself out of a bind if something happens to the equipment worth, you know, care enough to carry extra nutrition to and you know, things like that.
Yeah. One of the tips that Yuri Haswell gave on an earlier episode or the podcast was always packing his camelbaks in the exact same way so that he knows what's in what pocket so he doesn't have to think about it. Is that something that you do as well?
Yes, I um, I have everything exactly the same and so it's really easy. And the camelback, the chase, best of Nice cause it does sit up higher so you can still have access to your pockets when you wear it. So that's nice too. So I know what pocket has what and then in the taste best as well. I know exactly where everything is and I like I said the same thing of how they keep my bikes in this, the bikes, the same setup as well just so I always knew I had like no surprises on my equipment and I'm a huge data dork and I like to be as prepared as possible. So I do, I like, I like structure there. So I agree with you. I think that's good advice.
Nice. Well you've just come off of a massive month of writing between dk 200 and the Oregon trail gravel grinder when you to the five day gravel grinder event. And we did have chat on the podcast as well. So I'm really curious to get your opinion on how the event went. Was it, how was it riding five days in a row? What was the competition element the same as a one day event or was it more of a just an adventure ride?
So, um, I go way back with Chad Sperry and he, I used to do a lot of those road races. He used to put on, so he's, you know, Mount Hood cycling classic and Cascade Cycling Classes. Um, so when he asked me to come out to this, of course, I said, heck yes, it sounds amazing. I'm going to feel awful after dk. Do I have to race it? He said, no, you don't. The race it, I'm like, sweet, I'm going to just ride this. And it was the most incredible adventure, um, coming from stage racing and road, like I'm used to that, which is also why I wanted to make it more of an adventure ride just because I know how hard roof like stage racing is and you're camping, so you're doing these points to the point you're camping. And I'm like, you know, I want to be, you know, sitting in the river, drinking beer with my friends after writing and not worrying about covering and going hard the next day.
So there was a point he part of the race of course, where people were racing it and then there was a huge portion where it was just an amazing like bike touring adventure. And I fully embraced that for the first few days just to enjoy it. I see them taking Instagram stories and it was so beautiful. I mean, you're doing these 20 some mile climbs up to 7,800 feet through the snow and you know, it's just crystal clear blue days and it was awesome. And also really loved the setup and the prep. Like the minute you got done with the ride, you know, your tub aware of your supplies is there your tent set up for you and you know, then they have food catered in. It was really re like ran spectacularly. And I think there is uh, a good place for the competitive part of the group.
But I think there's an awesome place for everything else in between, whether it's just finishing or kind of going slightly hard with your friends but still stop you the aid stations, you know, like not like racing and not enjoying the views. So I really kind of soaked that in the first few days. And then at the last day I was like, I'm going to think I'm just going to go hard today. So I raced the last day, which was at the best kind of fun, right? Like you could mix up what day you want to go hard and the next day you don't want to go hard, you just don't. And stopped at all the aid stations and you know, eat the chips and take photos. Um, but seriously phenomenal. I would put down on anybody's bucket list. It was like, you know, gravel summer camp in the cascades.
Yeah. I'm really excited about that. I'm really excited about that format. I just think it's a lot of fun, particularly for the recreational athlete who might take that as their vacation week for the year to just go out and have someone like Chad lay out what they think are the best gravel roads in their area and take care of all the logistics. I mean I'm like, sign me up.
Oh yeah. And I, I think that's what I was most impressed with. I mean I, I thought I was worried about it cause I know Chad always does a wonderful event, but I was just going, how is logistics spend a work? And it was seamless. You know, I mean rolled out every day at nine and you know, nine in the morning you'd finish your stuff would be there. You know, it was just really easy and you don't have to think about where to ride. And the course was marked perfectly a and you have eight stations that normally, you know, you'd have to pack a lot more water or food with you because you're out in the middle of nowhere with no town, no cell phone service. Um, and so I loved, I loved the way I did it because I got to stop and enjoy it and still go hard a couple of days so I can get maybe training in but also just like meet a ton of new people and go on roads. I never would have known connected that way.
Yeah. Yeah. The funny thing is, I mean, just like a stage race, people are going to have good days and bad days. So there's sort of an ebb and flow to one. People want to go hard even if they are trying to race on the front end of the race.
Yeah, exactly. And that was kind of fun too because you know you don't have to go for the overall, you can just go for one day, which I did, which was super fun.
That is fun. Yeah.
Yeah. It was just, yeah, different like, or he go hard on one climb, but then not pushing on descent and worry. You know about once again, as we talked about risk and things that I find important and for me, it's always that I want to be as safe as possible and I do operate at a high dose of fear, so I'm like, you know, it's really nice. Not that we have to raise this lunge, gravel, descent. It's nice to just to sit up and make sure I'm taking good lines and look at what could the view as I go down.
Yeah. Yeah. So transitioning a little bit, 2019 has been a big year for women in gravel, which is super exciting. There's been a lot of promoters who've been making a concerted effort to invite more women to participate in their events. What do you think is going to help draw more women into the sport? Or are there some elements of it that you think are creating a little bit of resistance for women to try?
No, I, I don't think this sport's offering any resistance for, um, more gender equality at all. If anything, it's um, really accepting. I am, you know, there's a lot of initiative. I know Christy at dirty cabs has done some huge initiatives for women at Canva rescue Tiesta which is an awesome, uh, gravel ration for Mohs. If anyone wants to go to that one, it's in the snow, but they, you know, really huge pushes as far and as well as Rebecca rest for her. Rebecca's private Idaho. Those are just three events I know that do some really big initiatives to get more women. And I think that way it starts also at the grassroots level and me, you know, it's, it's for you and I and, and everyone out there to be encouraging, like to have more people, in general, join the sport, male or female and not making it elitist and Oh, you need this equipment or you need to do this or you know, I always felt people do that in cycling sometimes as in life.
Like they act like what they're doing is so tough and hard that, you know, oh well you're gonna really have to train for that or know they make it kind of this kind of serious thing. And I think that there, it's, it's like our responsibility and my responsibility as a female cyclist too, you know, encourage more participation and also leaving that open and accessible because I would never have found gravel racing as quickly or you know, in the way I did. If it wasn't for a woman like Rebecca Rush or silly meager or you know, these people that reach out to me and be like, hey, come over, come over to the dirty side and like try it out. And instead of being threatened or kg, you know, just going, what information do you need? How can I get you to this event? Like here's your tactic. This is how we can do this, this is how it works. And these women are really powerful. And for them to be accepting and open and leading by example I think is really important too.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean I feel like here in the bay area we have so many ass women triathletes for example, that are these endurance machines that you know, once they get burnt out of triathlon, I think it would be a natural transition for them to get into the gravel scene because it will just key into those amazing endurance chops.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of correlation between travel and triathlon that way. That is like an endurance event that ends up, you end up being by yourself, you know, sometimes. So it's definitely endurance that way and it's kind of a long sustained effort. And also I, that's what I thought. The gravel does a lot like a triathlon where people are sitting at this finish line cheering on all the finishers regardless of where you know, there's still that party at the finish that more community feel versus you know, show up to local currently. Something I liked, I liked that sense of community a lot. I think, you know what just gets intimidating as people on the terrain, you know, they think, you know, gravel is mountain biking or scary or you know, and so I like to also show my fear and vulnerability on things and say, Hey, well this is, you know, don't push yourself past your limits but try it, you know, and just see what you think or like there was some things that challenge your skill levels is great and then also being safe and you know, pushing other limits is fine too.
Yeah. I think locally here in Marin county, the challenge for gravel is it does become technical pretty quickly. Particularly if you're riding out of the city or mill valley. You're hard-pressed to find just kind of a nice flowing gravel road, which can essentially seem like a road ride if you get yourself in the right mental state. I feel like here we're, we're throwing people in a little bit harder than they would normally kind of start at the beginning level of gravel, which is a bit unfortunate.
I agree. I call it mountain biking down there.
Yeah.
I mean, I ride on the, up here in San Omani. I ride pretty much road because we don't really have gravel like where I live on. And then I remember of the week before dirty Canva, the year I won, I, I went down and did two a gravel ride with all those guys, you know, out of the Java hut or whatever down there. And I went and did a ride. And uh, I mean I got so dropped, I like walk to the part of the coastal trails. I can't, I can't do this on my bike. And then they were like, you're really bad at gravel. And like, this is mountain biking. And then the next year, the next week I want cancer. They're like, oh, I'm like, no, but cancer was gravel. That was mountain biking. So I agree. Like we throw people off the deep end. So I don't ride with those guys anymore because I'm too scared
when when you're talking about your 38 millimeter tires, I'm like, Gosh Alison, I ride 50s.
Yeah, that's probably why I'm pressing up the coastal strip.
Yeah. I'm heading out, I'm heading out to steamboat gravel later this year and they keep telling me, oh no, ride 30 twos. And I just, I cannot get my head around it to be honest with you.
Well maybe 38. I don't know. I've never written that terrain. But yeah, I mean Oregon, I will tell you, I wish I had bigger, bigger tires that Oregon. It was um, at least 42 I think I would've been happy with. That's what I was laughing. Cause I just like to run the same setup and, and gravel's not like that. There's different conditions and, and you know, gravel, not gravel for everyone. Some dirt, some sand, some, you know, lava rocks. Um, yeah, exactly. What Rock, all gravel is not equal.
Totally. And I, I, that is very interesting to me about the gravel bike in general. Just the ability to really change the personality of it. I mean, if you think about how a bike feels using a 700 seat wheel and a 32 knobby tire gravel tire versus a six 50 [inaudible] by 50, it can handle way different terrain. It feels way different. And depending on what your intention is for that day or that ride or that event, you can make the bike more suitable or less suitable, frankly.
Yeah, yeah. And it's, um, yeah, there's, there are a plethora of different setups you can do, you know, w depending on, you know, conditions, the gravel and also like rain and mud. I mean, if it becomes pretty equipment intensive if you care enough. And then also when we were talking about bringing more people and the sport, it's also important to say you also can just ride a bike. Yeah. Like I can sit here and geek out on all my, all my techie wonderful equipment. And then also just suggest somebody to pick up a bike on craigslist and
yeah, get out on it.
Trails and ride cause it's always like, it's always better to ride than not ride. Right. So, you know, it just depends what your goals are.
Exactly. I've got a set of more mixed terrain tires that I've been meaning to put on because I want to ride some road and some dirt and some upcoming events and I just can't get around to it because I'm like, I just like to get on my bike and ride. And as you said, that's perfectly acceptable. The important thing is you just getting out there and you're having a smile on your face.
Exactly. I mean that's why we do it. I think it's just seriously think about sensory exploration, adventure, riding your bike and enjoyed it. You know, don't take yourself too seriously.
So Alison, I can't let you go without asking about your trip to Kurgestan because it's a country that I've researched and seen pictures of and it just looks so amazing. It's such a bucket list place for me to go. Can you tell me how the trip came about and but more importantly, what was your experience there?
Yeah, I, um, you know, as we talked about, erased, uh, or, and writers specialize and I got an email from one of my product managers there and she said, hey, do you want to go on a trip of a lifetime? And I'm like, um, please explain. I'm very suspicious. And she goes, well, we want you to go bike pack. You didn't Kurgestan and I will admit I did Google, Kurdistan. Um, and I looked at it and I was like, Whoa, that's very inland and remote and I'd like to click on a couple images. And I was like, yes, yes I do. And they're like, cool, you leave in four days. Like, alright. And I go, what do I need? And they said, I'm free. A spork a 10. And they're like, what do you have? And I go, I've never gone camping. And so they're like, well what do you, what do you need?
I'm like, everything. So I borrowed a sleeping bag, I bought everything cause I didn't have anything. Now look at me, I'm camping in Oregon. So it changed my life. Um, it was really, really, really freaking pretty. And I've written all over the world. I think it was by far the most spectacular and breathtakingly beautiful place I've ever been in. So remote, um, we basically rode point to point along the Silk Road, you know, um, started in on, uh, in Kurgastan and then finishing Catholic Sam. And we wrote through China a couple of times and protect the borders, um, for by tax on, you know, setting up my 10 each day and eating freeze dried food. I bought at Amazon, Thank Heavens for the 24 hour, you know, prime delivery before I left for that trip. Um, and we, we like it. It was like riding through every national park in the u s and like each day, like you would be on these like, Hi Grand Canyon looking red desert thing.
And then you'd go through like the Swiss Alps, you would go through Yosemite. I mean, it was just, it was insane. And we spent probably at least seven days above 10,000 feet. So, uh, it was above the tree line for most of it. Um, and just these like crazy glacier streams. Um, like you've heard of wild horses, like these Mongolian horses running alongside of you and we would see no cars for days, maybe a few nomadic, um, settlements, you know, maybe like a person or two a day. And other than that we were really remote and just soaking it all in. And it was, it was quite the journey. I will tell you.
That sounds amazing. Did the team put together the route for you or is this sort of a known, is it a known section of the Silk Road that would be suitable for a bike packing trip?
Um, we actually worked with, um, Cirque cycling, it's s e r k cycling and he does a bike touring company out of China and he came up with a route. And so I don't think it's a popular route per, I don't think it's been done very many times, but he came up with the logistics and the route which him and his team and it was that, that really helps of course, um, you know, for safety, for a organization. From that perspective, it works really well. So we'll, you could kind of just go with somebody and know like that's what we're peddling our bikes today and you know, cause there's a lot of opportunity to get lost or you know, you need specific things to get through protective borders with China and, and, and um, so yeah, to get through safely with a correct visa that you don't really need, but you need to be able to either bribe or, you know, make sure you can get from point a to point d safely. Um, but it was stunning. I couldn't believe like every day we would just go, you know, insert swear word here. This is like Effie Narnia. Like we're like, where are we? Like it's Narnia. Like it was, it was pretty incredible. Definitely bucket list, um, option there.
That's amazing. Is there, is there some place online where people can get more information about your trip and, and your experience there?
Yes. Um, I did write, um, a story for cycling tips as well as there's a video on there with, you can see the images and I can send you the link so you can put it on here. If you'd like, but I think if you Google out in touch with Kurdistan cycling tips, it would come up. But there's a cool video and then you could also hit a link to certain cycling and, and see also the images because the shots that they got out there were just mind blowing. I can't even, I can't describe.
That's awesome. Well I can't wait to watch that video and read more about your trip. It's just sounds amazing.
Yeah.
So Alison, thank you so much for the time today. I appreciate it. It was great getting your insights about the events you've been doing this year and about women's cycling in general. Um, I hope to run into you later in the year, maybe at SBT gravel. If you're heading out there.
I am going to be at gravel world then actually I'd like to support them.
Nice. Well that's all has been good. Yeah,
the same day, which is a bummer. But yeah, it's a cool, it's really cool of that and I want to make sure we're spreading the gravel love.
Yeah, absolutely. I hate when two great events fall on the same day. It just seems unfortunate given the, we could use more events, not less.
I know, I know, but I think, I think it'll both be able to be amazing events. Um, and I'm, I'm bumped in to steamboat cause that looks like it's going to be incredible. So, but 30 to 32 millimeter sound sounds small, but I don't know. I've never done that.
Between you and I, I can't see myself going down to 30 to 36 or 40 might be my limit. Well, awesome. Thanks Alison. Have a great weekend.
You too. Thank you.
A conversation with gravel guru, Yuri Hauswald of Gu Energy Lab looking at nutrition for big rides and gravel bike suspension. This week's tech corner sponsored by Thesis covers the range of suspension options for gravel bikes.
Yuri Hauswald Instagram
Tech Corner sponsored by Thesis
Automated transcription (please excuse the typos!)
Welcome everyone to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast we've got Yuri Hauswald from Gu Energy Lab. If you followed the gravel scene at all, you've probably seen Uris name come up from time to time. Yuri is a past dirty Kanza champion and you'll find them all over the world racing his gravel bike and advocating for people to get outside in his capacity working for Gu Energy labs. Yuri's got some great tips and tricks around nutrition and hydration that really came to bear in this year's dirty Kanza as well as some great insight into suspension for gravel bikes and when we're going to see them start to have some impact in the market. But first we've got this week sponsored tech corner with Randall from thesis bike. Thanks Craig. So today we're going to talk about suspension on gravel bikes.
Tech Corner with Randall from Thesis:
Today, we’re going to talk about suspension on gravel bikes.
A gravel bike, for me, is a bicycle that performs at a high level on everything from road with a set of road slicks to borderline cross-country riding with a set of knobby 650Bs. For gravel bike suspension, what we want is comfort and control while still maintaining the performance of the bike in all the conditions it’s going to be ridden.
So, in order, the first thing I’d be looking at is my wheel tire package. What I want is a high volume tire with a supple casing, set up tubeless on a rim that’s wide enough to support that tire at low pressures without the tire squirming around.
The next thing I’d be looking at is seatpost. A traditional seatpost can give you some flex, but it’s pretty limited, so from there you might look at a suspension seatpost. But really, if you’re adding that weight, you might as well add a dropper post. A dropper, again, is going to take your weight off the front wheel - which means off your hands - and put it more over the rear wheel, while at the same time giving you more distance between your butt and your saddle so that you can use your legs as suspension. That is going to make a considerable difference in the amount of shock absorption of your overall system.
Next up: touch points. Cushy bar tape and a slightly cushier saddle than you might run on a pure road bike are going to take a lot of the edge off, they add a trivial amount of weight, and they’re relatively inexpensive to add.
Now, at this point is where I would stop, but some people might want even more cushion. For them, I’d recommend a suspension stem. What I like about a suspension stem is that it doesn’t compromise your steerer tube or the front end of your bike, and it’s entirely non-proprietary, so you can swap it in and out of any bike.
If all of these things aren’t enough, what you might be looking for is a drop bar mountain bike. This means a suspension fork up front or even a rear suspension. However, keep in mind that while that sort of bike is fantastic on the dirt, it’s going to be a bit compromised on the road because it’s going to have some slop and extra weight in the system that are going to take away that snappy feel that you’re used to a road bike with road slicks.
What’s great about a gravel bike is the ability to ride at a high level on any sort of terrain, whether it be road or dirt. So my take is: start with your wheel tire package, add a dropper post, add some cushy touch points, and go have a fantastic ride.
Yuri, Welcome to the show
Well thanks for having me, Craig. I'm stoked to stoke to be on
right on. I've always wanted to ask you this question every time I've, I've seen you, but can you describe your background as a cyclist? Like how did you get into the sport and then what ultimately drew you to the gravel part of the market?
Yeah, that's, that's a good question cause I didn't, I don't have like sort of the traditional cyclists, uh, introduction into the sport. So, uh, I was a stick and ball kid growing up, you know, soccer, baseball, football and Lacrosse. And then I just, um, Lacrosse is the sport that took me to college. I played collegiate lacrosse a cow, um, and was the captain of the team and MVP and this and that. So that was like, that was my sport all through high school and college. Um, and so I had a good, like endurance engine from all the running we had to do. Uh, but I wasn't riding a bike and I actually didn't discover the bike until I went and taught at a prep school back east in Pennsylvania. This was 93, 94, 95. Uh, and some of the folks I taught with were avid mountain bikers and, um, they started taking me out on rides and I was on a borrowed gt like NASCAR in cutoff jeans and Chuck Taylor's, no joke, total hack.
Uh, but I loved it. I loved the adventure of it. I love the camaraderie of it, um, that, you know, exploring new places. We're riding out in like French Creek, uh, park out there like Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, places like that. Really, really technical stuff. So I was constantly wrecking and breaking parts. Uh, my first bike actually was a specialized stump jumper and I got it because one of my students worked in a bike shop and, uh, hooked me up with a little bit of a deal as his teacher, um, on a mountain bike. And then it just went from there. Um, I, I, I truly fell in love with the sport and the community around it. And, uh, when I moved back to California in 96, uh, is when I really started getting into the racing and, and starting to work my way up through the ranks.
And was that on the mountain bike primarily or did you drift into the road as well?
Uh, when I first got into riding, it was only mountain bike. I didn't touch a road bike. I think I got my first road bike. I know when I got my first road bike, it was a giant. Um, and it was in 96 and my first century was the Santa Fe century because I was working. Um, I had started my master's through St John's on in literature and, uh, I was living in Santa Fe. Uh, the friend had some dudes who just opened up a bike shop and then one thing led to another. And once I finished my summer of, towards my master's, I started working in the bike shop and became full mountain biker bag, uh, and gave up on my master's and started riding bikes and then started teaching elementary school actually. Um, so yeah, that's how I got into it.
And then on the mountain bike side, you started to get drawn to, to the, sort of the more endurance events. Is that right?
That's true. That took us, it took a number of years that probably took seven, eight, nine years before I realize that, uh, I wasn't, you know, that good of a cross country racer. I was decent, you know, I mean, I, I worked my way up all the way to Semipro, which is a category that doesn't exist anymore. Um, but that was sort of the stepping stone between expert and pro because that was such a huge gap back in the day to go from being an expert to pro. So they had a semipro category and I made it to that category, but I, there was no way in hell I was gonna ever get out of that category because I was just packed water. Uh, and um, it was actually in 2003 that I did my first 24 hour, um, event as part of a four man team.
Um, with mark, we're uh, another buddy of mine, Glen Fan, he's a shop owner up here in Santa Rosa and a gentleman named Kirk Desmond. We did the 24 hour four man national championships that were held at Laguna Seca and we did the geared category, but just as sort of our U to everybody, we did it on single speeds and we ended up winning. So we won the four man national championships in the geared category on single speeds that year. So that was my first introduction to like, you know, back to back hours of, of going hard for 24 hours. And then it wasn't until buddy dared me in 2006 to do my first, uh, 24 hours solo that I really sort of discovered that I have the ability to sort of be that diesel engine and just pedal at a relatively good pace for long periods of time. And, um, I did multiple years of Solo, uh, 24 hour racing and had some, some success with that. And that has actually what allowed me to turn pro. Uh, but you know, when I say that a lot of people think, you know, the, the endorsements and the big money checks started rolling in. Right. And I got to quit
my day job. Not True at all. I was
really, really nobody. Um, it was just three letters on my license that, um, meant a lot to me. Um, and I still was teaching and you know, traveling during the summers and living out of my car and following the normal circuit and racing as much as I can. But I think it was probably around 2007, 2008 that I started doing more of the eight hour, 12 hour, a hundred mile mountain bike kind of races and um, and kind of figuring out that that was more my jam than the short XC stuff.
Yeah, I imagine you see a lot of parallels between the type of community that was evolving around the 24 hour scene back in those years with what's going on in gravel today.
Oh, definitely. Yeah, definitely. The, the 24 hour scene was super familial and supportive and, uh, there was a tight knit group of us, uh, that we're, we're pretty close and that's one of the things that when I discovered dirty cans in 2013, that was the first year I went out there, uh, is what really attracted me to gravel was, you know, Midwestern hospitality, the grovel family. Um, the embrace of that family is warm, it's genuine, uh, and it makes you feel welcome. And, you know, it was, it was that and you know, had been obviously pushing your physical limits in, in new terrain and, and a new sort of discipline of racing that really, uh, attracted me to, to the gravel scene. And I've been, you know, an avid gravel fan ever since 2013.
Yeah. It seems like some of those early events, they really set the marker from sort of alter endurance perspective of gravel and subsequently many events have kind of rolled that back to make them a little more accessible. With your 24 hour background, obviously like going into a 200 mile event wasn't completely foreign, although I'm sure it was really hard that first year in 2013. Where do you, where do you think that mix in gravel events is gonna land? Do we have room for the ultra endurance side and the shorter events?
Uh, I do, you know, I mean, you see events, you know, offering up, you know, gravel events off, some offering up in, you know, multi distances to kind of appeal to a lot of different folks. Something like a Rebecca's private Idaho, which has, you know, three or four distances, the big one, which is, you know, a hundred miles. And then there's like a, I think a 25 mile, and then there's sort of a tweener distance of 60 miles. So, uh, you know, and then you saw that dirty Kanza two years ago, uh, offered, you know, the super me, uh, you know, the DKA Xcel, um, and, and also has multiple distances underneath the 200, the 100, the 50, and I think they now have a 25 a as well. So I think there's plenty of room. Um, so to offer a lot of different distances because gravel appeals to folks who are wanting to get off pavement, you know, and um, get onto this sort of the quiet back country where you don't see any cars for days kind of events. Um, so I, I think there's, there's definitely room for growth, for events to have multiple distances and that appeals to a lot of folks.
Yeah, it's been interesting to me as I personally got drawn into the sport. I was an observer from the side about events like the tour divide and these sort of long distance, multi-day bike packing style races. Um, and I never actually did one of those, but I got drawn into the sport just because it was aspirational to be out there having such an adventure. And in, in my life I tend towards more of the shorter events just because I don't have the time or the physique or the commitment to kind of train up to those 1214 hour events. I really prefer the six hour long events, but I totally get your point. I think there's room for it all. And in the lifetime of a gravel cyclists, hopefully we all get the opportunity to push ourselves to something like dk 200 because I think it's just this huge monumental life milestone that you can take away from having achieved something like that.
Oh, most definitely, man. I mean you, you talk about, you know, monumental like life achievements. I feel like my finish this year, while my slowest, possibly my worst finish ever, um, was the most rewarding. Um, because I got to earn the coveted gravel grail this year, which means I finished five, two hundreds of dirty cans. Uh, uh, I also struggled mightily with the heat this year and was showing signs of heat stroke at the last aid station at one 50. So, um, I was really pleased to get through this year and get that grail and, and not have to return again to do another 200 if I don't want to.
Well, you were certainly not alone from all accounts. I can hear that people were struggling with that heat and it's hard enough an event as it is. You probably had an experience that was similar to sort of many of the mid packers and the tail end experience every year.
Uh, possibly. Yeah. I mean, I, yeah, I passed so many people sitting under trees myself. I was under a tree at times fixing a couple of flats. Uh, so yeah, I mean the, it's funny Kansas, the weather always has a way of humbling folks and keeping you honest, whether it's, you know, the wind, whether it's the humidity, whether it's the heat, whether it's rain and mud. Um, mother nature always seems to have a, have a hand in how things shake out. Uh, out there in the Flint hills.
Yeah. I imagine you got to try to control the things you can and just accept the things you can't in an event like that.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I know how to sort of mitigate having had heat stroke a few times. I know how to, how to try to keep it at bay a little bit. So I had a, um, my pit was prepared for me when I came in at one 50 with ice and I was wearing sun sleeves, so we shoved ice bags onto my wrist cause that's one of the spots to bring your core temp down and know I saw my back and I had a frozen camelback, uh, waiting for me. And um, yeah. So they were able to sort of patch me up and push me along my way and I didn't lose too much time, you know, maybe three minutes or something like that. And that last pit, uh, but those last 50 miles were really, really difficult for me.
So did you roll out of that last pit with the ice bags kind of just strapped to your body wherever they can fit?
Yeah, so, uh, we put ice inside pantyhose and we tie them off so they make nice little porous ice bags that melt on you. And so we shoved two into the sleeves that I had on my arms right on my wrist. Uh, Maya camelback had a, a reservoir that had been frozen so the water would slowly melt and hopefully some of that cool heat would go through on my back then we had multiple cold towels and other ice bags shoved around my neck and down my jersey. And that was about it. A kick in the ass and get Outta here, let's, you know, knock out those last 50 miles. So that's, that's how I dealt with it. I over hydrated to be just because I knew that I needed to keep the fluids going in. Um, and I was using, um, our goos liquid rock cane drink mix because I have a hard time dealing with solids or gels in the heat. So I was going for liquid calories.
Yeah, yeah. I was going to ask you about, you know, in the things that you can control, nutrition is obviously one of them and it's an area where you have a lot of expertise from goo. Can you walk us through how you approach nutrition for a 200 miler on a hot day?
Yeah, totally. I'd be happy to do that. So I mean nutrition, your nutrition plan, I mean everyone's nutrition plan is going to be unique to their system. So I just want to put that disclaimer out there right now that what works for me, you know, may not work for everybody. And also, uh, since we're talking about disclaimers that, you know, I am a goo employee. I've worked for them for six years in the office and I've been at Goo athlete for 14 years. So, obviously I'm very biased, but, uh, I wouldn't be using their products if they didn't work for me. Um, so for me, uh, you know, obviously like the week leading up to an event and you want to be hydrating, sleeping well, mitigating your stress as much as possible, you know, having with meals just so you're topping up all of your glycogen stores and, uh, making sure you have those, those energy reserves ready to be tapped into you come race day, uh, with an event like 30 cans of that starts at six in the morning.
I don't typically eat breakfast cause that would mean I would have to get up at like three if I wanted to eat like a proper breakfast. So I think I got up at four 30 this year and had a half of a Bagel with a little bit of avocado on it and that was it. Um, my usual cup of coffee two just to, you know, get things rolling. Uh, and then as far as nutrition goes, I only had one, um, solid bit of food that would, could be considered, you know, normal food throughout the day. Um, and I relied on our rock cane gels, which have three times the branch chain amino acids are rock cane drink, uh, our electrolyte capsules to help with, um, the humidity and all the, you know, the potassium and sodium that I was losing. Um, and then our rock cane BCA capsules, which help with mental acuity and they buffer muscle fatigue.
So I sort of, um, shoot for, uh, 200 to 250 calories per hour. And that could be a combination of, you know, Gel and the rock cane drink in my bottles. Um, maybe some of our choose, which is a chewable form of Goo, but I think I only had one sleeve of those, um, throughout. So I basically for 13 hours was only using our rock tane drink, which is 250 calories per bottle. And our rock cane gels. Uh, and one bit of solid I had with that mile 68 station, I had a, um, a Hawaiian done PB and j little, you know, little square. Uh, but that was about all I could stomach solid, you know, solid food wise. Um, and then it was just tons of water trying to, you know, eat every 20 to 30 minutes. But it was hard for me to keep track of time because at mile 40, somebody wrecked me out and it snapped my Garmin off my bike and I had to put it in my pocket so I couldn't look at time, distance or the turn by turn directions.
So I was, I was riding blind actually for the whole day pretty much after mile 40, trying to stay in groups. And um, actually I tasked, uh, I don't know if you know Spencer Palisson who used to work for Velonews, but we're in a group for a long time and we've written a bunch together. So I asked him to tell me every 20 minutes, like 20 minutes has gone by and blessed Spencer's hard. He'd be like 20 minutes, dude. He would just shout that out when we were in the group. So I knew I could eat or drink. You see that 20 minutes theory. And so we did that for many miles out on the prairie. So I had a couple other little little curve balls thrown at me, um, during the day that sort of threw off my regular, uh, you know, fueling strategy. But I was all, all liquid calories and Gels, um, along with some castles. Um, and then like the old, I had low middle sip of flat coke at the one 58 station, but I was afraid that it was going to upset my stomach cause I was already dry even coming into that, coming in to that aid station. So I was worried about like too much sugar or anything like that, but it tasted really good. So I just a few sips of that to see if it could like, that'll may sound like a tad.
That's interesting. I don't usually think about the liquid calories, but it makes sense to kind of take a little bit in there and then supplement it or really supplement your, your, your good nutrition, um, the gels with the liquid as well each hour.
Yeah. I mean liquid calories are awesome, especially in the heat because they're super easy for your body to digest and process. Um, you're not getting, you know, like cotton mouth trying to chew on, you know, some form of solid food. Uh, I find it just works really, really well. I mean, case in point. So our raw cane drink was, I think I was one of the early testers of it, probably back in like 2009 or 10. Um, but our head of r and D who's a former Olympian, MAG DBU, she won western states, the big iconic a hundred mile run in 2015 she ran for 19 hours all on rock chain drinks. So 250 calories per hour. That was her plan. It was super hot that year and that got her through. So I know. And, and, and plus, like I said before, like I've, I've been using our products for, for, for over a decade.
And so my system is really used to that and, and I have a routine. Um, so for folks out there who are listening, you know, needs, they need to get, pick and choose, find what products work for them, train with it, race with it, and refine their nutrition plan for their, for what works for their system. Uh, but for me, like I said, it's a, it's our gels and our drink and some of our castles and maybe if it's not so hot bits and pieces of, of solid food, but when it was as hot as it was out in Kansas, like solid food just does not sound palatable to me. Um, and so I just stuck with in liquids and gels.
Yeah. I think one of the interesting things that writers need to sort of internalize is there is a hard cap as to the amount of calories your body can absorb in an hour.
Yeah.
So 350. Yeah. So you're going to sort of waiting an hour and a half to binge at an age station is really going to put you in the hurt locker pretty quickly.
Yeah. Because then all of your blood is going to go right to your stomach to try to process that. You've shocked your system because you've just overloaded it. So, um, I have a, have a phrase that I actually stole from my friend Rebecca Rush. I call it the sip, sip, nibble, nibble, plan, right. You're just constantly taking in little the drip drip of nutrition, right? Whether it's your fluids or your gels or whatever it is, but little bits of it, you know, every 20 minutes, um, is way better than like you said, just throwing a whole bunch down. Um, and hoping your body can process that.
Yeah.
Slow you down. You know what I mean? At the same time, because you know, when you throw all that, all those calories into your gut, your soul, your body's going to try to process that, which means blood's not going to your muscles, which you need to, you know, keep peddling your bike and things can spiral out of control. So I like to adhere to the sip, sip, nibble, nibble, nutrition explained.
Yeah. And to remind yourself, I think one of the tips that I employed when I was doing iron man was I just had an old Timex watch and I set an alarm for every 20 minutes to say just eat and drink. Remember that no matter what.
Yeah, totally. Uh, you could do that. Yeah, I do that on my Garmin sometimes, but I'm like, I've been doing this for so long, it's just like ingrained in me. I also typically shove a couple of gels right in the cuff of my shorts. So they're like, you know, right there on my quads. So I sort of see them when I'm peddling. Um, it also makes, makes the gels like more liquidy cause they get heated up on your leg and it's just that reminder that, oh yeah, I've got a gel sitting there. I better eat that now. And then you know, I reload it. So I just constantly have these gels sitting on my legs while I'm pedaling that remind me to eat. It sounds silly, but it is a good visual reminder that you need to eat.
Yeah, no, I think that's a great tip. And the other thing that I saw a lot of on bikes at dirty Kanza are the Bento style boxes.
For sure. Those are, those are, those are awesome. I haven't found a Bento box though. That doesn't rub my legs when I get out of the saddle sometimes, you know, I find that, um, when I get out of saddle, my legs will hit that. So I don't typically ride with the Bento box. But that's a great, that's a great tip too. You know, I wear a camel, that chase vest, which has stowage right on the front chest straps. So your food is right there on your chest too, which is a nice reminder to eat and you can segment it, you know? So like for me, I'm kind of Geeky or I have these little systems that just keep things square for me when I'm not thinking right. Like the right side of my chest is, is like all gels. The left side of my chest is like chews and maybe a bar, which I had bars in all of my chase vest, but I never touched a bar for 13 hours. Um, so there's just little things and like speaking of Geeky things, I do like aisle my rock cane bottle, which is it, which is my drink is always on the is is always on the cage. That's on my seat tube. So I don't even have to think. I know I reached down to the my seat tube cage that that is my calories waters on the down tube, you know, just little systems that I have in place that have worked for me that kind of keep things straight.
Yeah. I think they're so important. I mean, I failed to be able to do simple math eight hours into an event. So just sort of having everything where it needs to be, so I don't have to think getting, getting that reminder that it's time to eat and drink and knowing exactly where to grab. It's just one of those things that you can control, you can train for that's gonna make you more effective.
Yeah, exactly. And, and, and, and at the end of the day it's less thinking that you have to do because I kind of go into, I call it sort of robot mode where I turn off all my non essential functions with me and it's really like, I don't think about too much, I'm just paddling, focusing on my breathing, my eating and having, you know, my food where I know it exactly needs to be is one less thing I have to think about. I reach into this pocket, that Gel is going to come out, I reach into that pocket, you know, maybe something solids gonna come out. I grabbed that bottle. I know it has calories. Like just, yeah, it just makes it more, it's like, I dunno, simpler. Um, when like you say you're not thinking straight after eight, 10, 12, whatever hours.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, transitioning a little bit, I've, I've wanted to talk to you, I saw you down at seawater and I know you had the opportunity to ride the nine or full suspension bike down there and spend some time on it here in Marin county. I'm curious to, to sure. To just get your thoughts about suspension in general and where we're going to see it. Is it going to start having an effect in the racing? Will we start seeing pro's moved to suspension simply because it's faster. You spent a lot of time on a lot of different parts, different types of equipment. What are your thoughts about suspension in the gravel ravel game?
Um, well, so just a couple of disclaimers here. Just so you know, everybody's clear. I am sponsored by Laos, which is the Icelandic company that has pioneered, you know, the front suspension fork of sorts for gravel bikes. And they have, uh, they have, um, a bike also specifically designed for gravel. And yes, a niner, um, is about to release MCR, the magic carpet ride, which is a full suspension gravel bike, uh, with a fox front fork that has about 40 millimeters of Daphne and the rear is about 50. Um, so I've been a huge fan of, of the Laos front fork, um, since I got introduced to it probably about three years ago. It was a game changer, um, on many, many levels. I mean, probably the most beneficial one is that it dampens, you know, the impact that your hands, your shoulders, your upper body is taking.
Um, when you're rotting, you know, for 10, 12, 13 hours over the slinky hills in, in, in Kansas. So it keeps your upper body fresher, um, less fatigue. You're also able to corner descend better because you're not getting bounced around so much in the front end. You, you can track better with, with the front fork and not four cows, about 30 to 40 millimeters of dampening. Um, the biggest thing I noticed with riding the magic carpet ride is the descending, I mean, you can, you can rip the dissents on a, on a full set suspension, gravel bike for sure. Um, and then the dampening effects too, just as an aging endurance athlete, like anything that can take the edge off the terrain, that'll allow my body to be fresher over 200 miles or whatever the distance is, you know? Yes, please. I'll take that. Uh, you know, I don't need to get, you know, smashed by a really hard stiff light bike.
Um, at this point in my career. So I think you're gonna start seeing more, um, suspension bits, uh, enter into gravel. I think you're already starting to see it with some, you know, folks doing like envy doing specific gravel bars that maybe have a little bit of, I have those new g gravel bars that have a little bit of, you know, dampening in, in the way that they have done the carbon. We've, I think, uh, Louth has a similar bar, uh, the whole full suspension thing. I think nine are sort of on the front end of that. Um, we'll just have to see how well it goes. Um, I've been enjoying the magic carpet ride for sure. Uh, I noticed a huge difference like when you're trying to motor through really chunky stuff, it just, it just takes the edge off. You reminds me of when you see a Modo rider like ripping through like the woopty whoop sections and they're just like skimming across the top of all those bumps. I feel like, um, you hit a certain speed on the magic carpet ride and it does the same thing with chunky terrain. You can just really sort of blast through it at a nice high frequency and not get bounced around all over the place. And I had a few opportunities to sort of test that on some group rides and noticed a huge difference. Um, you know, for full disclosure, I've only probably put three to 400 miles on that bike. Uh, and so I'm looking forward to getting some more miles on it, um, later this summer.
Yeah. It'll be interesting choice for consumers to try to figure out like, am I really, is that the bike for me or am I looking for something that's more on road and off road that can do fairly capable off road but can also, you know, be my road touring bike or whatever.
True. Um, so then maybe, you know, a traditional bravo bike would just allow front fork is, is the option for them because that front fork will allow you to, you know, to get off road. Yeah. I think a lot of it will be dependent upon what people, you know, riding tendencies are on and what they're looking to do. But, uh, the magic carpet ride is awesome for just taken away a lot of the, the, the vibrations and the big hits that you take sometimes when riding on gravel roads for hundreds of miles.
Yeah. It was interesting when I interviewed Louth they were talking about riding it on the roads and I couldn't help but think about some of those roads in Sonoma county were having a little bit of front suspension might be helpful
for sure. Yeah, it makes a huge difference and you know, there's not a huge weight penalty. I think that what you gain in, you know, comfort and uh, speed and cornering and stuff like that outweighs any weight, this advantage that that fork might have.
Interesting. Well, I know you've got a busy calendar coming up and a bunch of great gravel events. One of the ones I want to highlight now, it was on a recent episode of the gravel ride podcast was the adventure ride revival ride and Marin, Tom boss mentioned your name and said, hey, if it wasn't for Uri, we really wouldn't have been thinking about this at this year. So I'm excited. What's going on with that ride.
Oh, that was so I'm blushing. That was so nice to Tom boss. Thank you, Tom. I've known Tom for a long time. That's awesome. Well, adventure arrival is a collaborative event between Moran County Bicycle Coalition and the nor cal high school league, which my wife is the EDF and both both programs have teen trail stewardship programs that they are, uh, promoting. And one of the best things about this ride is that the registration fees are going to go help support these, uh, team trail stewardship programs so that we're able to develop the next generation of stewards who are going to be maintaining, hopefully creating new trails. Particularly, you know, in a zone like Marin where, um, trail access trail creation is, um, kind of a contentious, you know, topic at times with folks. Um, and so we came together. A group of us, uh, is working closely with, uh, Matt Adams, one of the owners of Mike Spikes.
They're a huge supporter of this event. We put together really rad route that is, uh, incorporates a little bit of pavements and fire road, maybe a little bit of single track, um, that highlights some really cool zones in Marin. Uh, and it's going to be based out of Fairfax. It's September 7th. Uh, we'll have great food, beer, music, uh, but people can know that like their registration dollars are going to benefit, uh, you know, things that will help you know, our future as cyclists. Uh, as people who enjoy playing in the outdoors. And, you know, it's possibly, you know, creating, you know, like kids that might go work for, you know, the park system or you know, other groups that are all about trail advocacy. So I'm really excited to be a part of this event. So goo will be one of the nutrition sponsors, but it's super fun working with passionate folks like Tom and Mike and my wife and Dana and other folks, um, to, to, to bring an event like this to life. Cause it's the first of its kind in Mirena gravel, you know, ride kind of, I wouldn't call it a race per se. Um, but yeah, it's going to be a great day. September 7th, if you haven't signed up do it people.
Yeah, definitely. I'm excited about it being obviously here in mill valley and in Moran County. I'm really excited to get athletes from other parts of the bay area and hopefully other parts of the country to come in and sample what we have because I do think it's an amazing area and having covered the scene for, you know, as long as I have, I get jealous that other parts of the country have these marquee events and we've yet to kind of establish one in Marin county.
Yeah, it's true. You know, it's tough. I mean, we live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, but work that also sort of, um, you know, restricts what we can do too because there's so much private land and there's so many restrictions on who can use what trail and this and that. Whereas, you know, you look at somewhere like the Flint hills of Kansas and you have, you know, this grid network of thousands of miles, right, of, of empty gravel roads. You know, you look at Rebecca's private, Idaho's same sort of deal. Uh, so yeah, it is cool that we're finally able to pull something like this together, get all the right permits, the permission. That's where, you know, Tom's expertise comes in, you know, having worked for years with, with advocacy and other groups and stuff like that. So yeah. It's cool. Yeah. Hopefully we sell it out and it's an event that, um, continues to grow in, in years to come.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Tom was describing how he, I think he had to work with three different land ownership organizations to get the root knocked out this year, which I mean, for the average race promoter would probably be prohibitive to even pull it off
for sure. And then, you know, and then there's certain groups that get their noses bent, you know, that were doing this or they weren't involved. And it, yeah, you know, it can be complicated, but, uh, hopefully at the end of the day people see that this is all about the kids really, um, and our future and creating stewards that we'll want to protect in and, you know, expand the growth of, of trail access here in Marin and maybe that will ripple out into other parts of, of the country too. Um, so yeah, stoke for adventure revival on September 7th.
Yeah. Well thanks for all the time today. Your, I appreciate it. I appreciate your years of advocacy and participation in the gravel community. You've really been a, just sort of a good steward for the gravel brand, if you will.
Oh, thanks. Yeah, I was an accidental, uh, grappled, devote t I mean really like I said, 2013 I had no idea what I was getting into when I went out until my first 30 cans have no clue whatsoever. I went out there because we were [inaudible] as a sponsor, um, to check it out and I fell in love with it. So, um, yeah, I'm proud to be part of the crew that's helping push it here in California and you know, also seeing northern California athletes like Amedee, Rockwell, like Alison Tetrick a do really well at, you know, these iconic events like dirty cans and stuff like that. Makes me really proud. Let's, let's keep, let's keep singing. It's thanks and praises.
Yeah, absolutely. Well good luck and everything you've got upcoming and if I don't see you before I'll definitely see you in September at a venture or revival.
Awesome. Thanks Craig. Been great chatting with you.
Big thanks again to Yuri for coming on the podcast this week. Yuri has been an amazing advocate for the sport of gravel cycling and he's always been super approachable. So when you find them out there in an event, go up and give him a high five. I don't know about you, but I took away some really helpful tips from Yuri this week in terms of how to handle the nutrition for long events. The value of having a system for where you put things. So you just don't have to think and the value of having a timer to remind you to eat and drink and to know what you're going to eat and drink. I think all of these things add up and they're in the category of things you can control when preparing for a big event. So that's it for this week. Big thanks to our sponsor thesis spike for the Tech Corner, and another reminder to just hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app as we're doing a bit of planning for the upcoming year, and we'd like to know how many of you are out there listening. As always, feel free to hit me up on Instagram or Facebook or shoot me an email. craig@thegravelride.bike. We look forward to hearing from you. Until next time, here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
Carbon wheel curious? This week we feature a conversation about carbon wheels for gravel with Boyd Cycling founder, Boyd Johnson sponsored by Thesis Bike.
Links:
Boyd Cycling Website
Boyd Cycling Instagram
Welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week we've got Boyd Johnson from Boyd cycling out of Greenville, South Carolina on to talk about wheels. I don't know about you, but I've always thought about the carbon wheel upgrade for my bikes, but never actually pulled the trigger like many of you have. And part of the reason was I didn't really fully understand all the attributes of a carbon wheel and and what did we get me. The other thing I've been thinking about a lot has been rim width as it's come up in a number of conversations and the effect on tires and how they perform and how the tread spreads out. So how it will make a 47 maybe feel like a 50 with the different rim combination. These are all the kinds of things I asked Boyd about. He's been in the business for over a decade with the decade before that as a professional cyclist, so he's got a lot of wisdom on the subject.
Bring to bear before we get started this week. I've got a new segment. It's a sponsored segment from thesis bike. Randall. Jacob's one of the co-founders of Thesis and one of the guys that I go to in my local community when I have a deep technical question about gravel equipment. He's going to do a little teaser about some different bits of technology that you might want to think about when purchasing your next gravel bike. This week we're going to dig into dropper posts and Randall's going to talk about some of the different ways that you should be thinking about this product. We'd love your feedback on this new segment, so please feel free to shoot me a note craig@thegravelride.bike. If there's different areas you'd like our tech expert to drill into, just shoot me a note and let us know and I'll be sure to pass that along. So with that, here's Randall.
Thanks, Craig.
Today, I’m going to share with you why I think dropper posts are a game changer for gravel.
It starts with control.
Because a dropper post lets you drop your saddle out of the way, you’re able to shift your center-of-mass down and back over the rear wheel. This in turn lets your front wheel to roll and sail while your legs are acting as suspension, and your rear brake, not your front, is doing most of your speed control. Because you’re not asking your front wheel to brake so much, your front tire is less likely to wash out, and if you come into a corner to hot, you’ll be able to fully utilize both brakes to slow down without lawn-darting over your handlebars.
Tech Corner with Randall of Thesis Bike
Now, of course, if you have more control, you’re going to be faster through technical terrain. However, just as important when it comes to speed is the fact that you don’t have to compromise your saddle position to get that control. Instead, you can optimize your fully-extended position for pure power and efficiency, then drop your saddle as needed when things get rough.
Finally, a dropper significantly extends the capability of your bike. Especially if you’re just getting into gravel, a dropper is going to give you that extra bit of confidence and margin of safety that lets you really push your limits. And because you’re not introducing any suspension slop into the system, you’re still getting that snappy feel when you swap in a set of road slicks.
Now, the weight-weenies are going to worry that a dropper is going to add almost a pound relative to a standard post, and...yeah, sure. Keep in mind, though: that pound is just a fraction of a percent of the total weight of your body, bike, and gear. Whatever hypothetical impact it may have on the climbs is going to be more than made up for by the extra control, power, and capability you’re gaining everywhere on your ride, including on the climbs.
So that’s my take on dropper posts. I’d love to get your feedback and appreciate you listening. Now, back to Craig and this week’s guest.
Boyd, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah. Boyd, I'd love to learn a little bit more about your cycling background before we get into a deep dive into gravel cycling rooms and wheel technology.
Yeah. So I've pretty much been my whole life. I started riding my bike when I was 12 years old, uh, with my dad. And, uh, we used to do the MS bike rides together. Uh, soon after that started racing my bike. It was all on the road and was very fortunate to where I got to the point where I wrote full time on the road for about 10 years. Uh, and with that, you know, sponsored by a lot of different wheel companies. Saw what made stuff good, what, you know, med stuff not so good and what we could do bit better. Um, so, you know, the love of the wheel set was born just throughout decades of writing.
And were you cycling out of the East Coast at that point?
Yeah, most of our stuff was east coast based. Uh, we're fortunate enough on the east coast where a lot of the cities are close together. So driving to a lot of criteriums, uh, following the national calendar, um, got to race a little bit. And, uh, you know, the Caribbean Central America and a little bit in Europe, most of the stuff was east coast based.
Interesting. And were you, were you mountain biking as well during that period?
Not at all. Um, I didn't start mountain biking until, um, after I was, you know, I still call retired from bicycle racing. Uh, no longer racing full time.
Gotcha. And at what point did the gravel bug start hitting you?
Yeah,
uh, that would've been in 2008. Uh, we went and did the baton kill race. It was on the UCI calendar at that point and it was long before gravels riding was really a thing. And uh, it was a 200 kilometer bike race, upstate New York, lots of gravel roads on there and everybody showed up on their road bikes. I remember I was using 22 millimeter tubular tires pumped up to 110 psi because that's just what we did. And uh, after that it was, it was really cool finding the gravel roads. I'd been writing some around Greenville area in preparation for this race because I was so excited about it.
This is Greenville, have a lot of gravel road options.
Yeah. So a little bit north of town. We've got some great gravel roads. Um, so you know Joe Kasey, we've named the wheel set after tons of gravel riding in there. And the first time I ever rode in Joe Cassie was on my road bike, 25 millimeter tires. And uh, you know, I started riding there a lot more and you know, that's where the, that's where the inspiration for the Joe Kathy wheel came from because we started increasing our tire sizes. So I ended up getting a cyclocross bike and running 32 millimeter tires on that. And then I put 38 millimeter tires and 40 millimeter tires and every time I was increasing the tire size, the traction got better. But the bike geometry felt a little bit off. I felt super tall. I was getting tow overlap. Uh, Mike, your ratio is changing and that's where we were pretty early on saying we need to shrink down this wheel set and increased the tire size. So the Joe Cassy was born out of that and riding the six 50 be set up around those roads.
Why the fuck I want to drill into that, but let's take a step back. So at some point you decided that we'll building and selling wheels and designing wheels is going to be a professional opportunity for you. Did you have a manufacturing background or where you kind of learning on the fly and taking just your, you know, what you've learned as a professional cyclist and bringing it to a manufacturing position?
Okay.
So I made a lot of connections through my psych claim. Um, when it was time to launch the company. Um, I mean it was actually really good timing. I was just finishing up my last year as a pro cyclist. Uh, I had a job as a cycling coach and then I was also divided developing a cycling computer. And so life was already pretty busy, but I started making contacts with a lot of manufacturers and, and uh, in 2009 I called them my wife, uh, she was at the Interbike trade show and I said, you know what? It's time to start this company. I think we're going to do this. And uh, so I started contacting a bunch of the manufacturers when we first started. We were using open mode grams. Uh, we were very upfront about that and uh, but stuff that we had always, you know, test it out really well. We were building all the wheels in house. So the QC that happened was really well done. And uh, yeah, wheels were something that really started taking off for us.
And was that that original wheel set? Was that a aluminum wheel set?
We had a couple aluminum options and then a few carbon options.
Okay. One of the things I've always sort of been interested in having some on board talking about is, you know, as a writer, as you're thinking about making the choice between aluminum and carbon, what are the things you should be thinking about and what are the attributes of carbon that makes it such a special wheel set?
Yeah. And so, you know, a lot of people have that question, you know, should I get carbon or should I get aluminum? And both options are really good. I mean, you know, there's some really good alloy wheels out there. Obviously they're going to come in at a better price in the wheel set. So budget concerns is something that know we really take into consideration when recommending a wheel set with the carbon you're getting better impact resistance and better stiffness to weight ratio. So you can build up a stiffer wheel with better impact protection when you go carbon. And that's why I really like it for mountain biking and for gravel riding.
Yeah, it sounds like, you know, the investment is an investment in a wheel that is going to have the durability to take all the abuse you can throw at it.
Yeah. And you know, I've seen pictures of broken carbon parts and that is the downside. You know, when, when you damage it in aluminum product, it bends and it doesn't look as bad when you damage a carbon product, you know, it reaches a point of failure. And you know, that's where people like to show the pictures of broken carbon frames and wheels. But it takes so much more to get to that point compared to an aluminum aluminum. So, for example, like you have an aluminum wheel we'll set and you might dent that far before you would break your carbon wheel set.
I'm remembering Taco in a wheel back in my early mountain bike days. I guess Taco isn't really something to describe a broken carbon rim,
right? Yeah. I mean that's usually what you would find a, anytime you would break a carbon mountain bike grandmas, you know, somebody lands and if you're landing too hard, you're going to get stuff around the uh, uh, like the four o'clock and eight o'clock positions. Uh, that's where the rooms actually going to break. And it's from the compression of the rim.
Yeah. Is it typically from hitting a hard object, like a rock in the follower?
Uh, it's more so like you're really compressing that rim. So landing hard landing, you know, without grace will say rock strikes or something that, um, you know, obviously that can still do that with a mountain bike. You've got such a big air buffer with your tire that we don't see a lot of impacts on the hook of the rim.
Right. Again, budget, not withstanding the jump to carbon will typically get you not only a more durable wheel set, but also potentially a lighter. We all set,
it depends on what you're building at four. So like for example, on our mountain bike wheel sets, um, right now they're designed for that all mountain and Duro typewriting. And so that carbon layup has gotta be reinforced pretty good. Uh, we don't want to have the carbon wheels set that we have to tell people all the time they can't use it. And so we reinforced the carbon pretty well and the carbon wheel set actually comes in a little bit heavier than the aluminum wheel set.
Okay. And then in your, your gravel lineup, does it tend to be lighter than your aluminum wheels or heavier?
So one of the things we do with gravel is we realized a lot of these events are taking place where you're spending a lot of time above 18 miles per hour. Um, most of the events I do, they're going to be some on the road, some on the gravel, there's a mix of climbs, descends, speed is all over the place. And so we put an Arrow profile on all of our gravel carbon stuff, uh, about 36 millimeters deep. And so with that you do get some aero benefit and you know, we found that saving a couple of grams of weight when you already have a pretty heavy tire is not something that's going to be that beneficial.
Is that same profile, does it exist on your 700 CE will sets as well as your six?
Correct. Um, it's the same rim shape, uh, the width or a little bit different. And then of course the outside diameter is different.
Do you think about the wheels differently when you're thinking about creating a high performance 700 see wheel versus a six 50 be wheel?
Mainly it has to do with the tire shape. And so one of the things that we really look at is, you know, what size tire are people going to be running? So somebody who's running six 50 B, we designed that around a 47 millimeter tire with the 700 c more than likely on the gravel, they're using a 36 to a 40 millimeter tire. And so what we look at is what's the tire pressure going to be? What does that tire shape look like? How much is it going to deflect when you're riding and really trying to create a good contact patch and, uh, good shape between the tire and the rim.
As you've seen change over the years. Can you actually talk about how, why that's been occurring, why the wider rims have started to appear and what the benefits are?
Yeah, so the big benefits, I mean, you spread your tire out a little bit and you're not creating this big light bulb shape. Uh, so for example, for road tires, uh, back when the rims were 13 millimeters internal, um, people started riding 25 millimeter tires. Your rim, your tire would bend it back so far that you would almost have this light bulb shape to it. And with that, you're not having good handling your tires moving around a little bit. So with road tires especially, they started going wider rams and matching the tire profile. So, you know, taking a 25 millimeter tire onto a 20 millimeter internal rim. So there's aero benefits, there's handling benefits. You can run a bit lower pressure with that. So there's comfort benefits. Uh, when we start looking at, you know, mountain bike and gravel and your tire start getting larger, you do need them to bend back a little bit. You'd want some of the light bulb shape in there.
Well, you were just describing before we got disconnected. How with the gravel or mountain bike tire, you do want a little bit of that light bulb shape, uh, when you're looking at it, can you, can you dig into that a little bit and describe why you want that shape? Yeah,
yeah. So using the light bulb shape a little bit on your gravel tires and your mountain bike tires, um, you know, number one, a lot of times you've got hooked us beats on there. And so you want something where the tire Ben's back to fit into the ram. Uh, you're also running lower pressure. And so if you're tired, come out too far with that lower pressure, you're doing two things, you're creating more contact patch with the surface and you're also really exposing the sidewall of the tires. And so, you know, if you start running like a, uh, to point to a mountain bike tire on a 30 millimeter internal rem, your sidewalls are exposed so much that you turn and you're going to be doing rock strikes and cutting through your sidewall. The same thing holds up for gravel tires.
Okay. So that, that's sort of the pinching of the light bulb kind of protects the sidewall, which is really designed around hooking up with the rem rather than providing any traction or turning performance.
Yeah. And so it's, it's protection and it's also, you know, uh, just a better shape for those larger volume tires.
As you've seen the industry evolve to kind of accommodate that with particularly in gravel, have the tire designs changed with an understanding that, you know, the rim is now allowing for the tire to have, uh, a larger contact patch?
I mean, I think with especially gravel riding, what we're seeing is kind of, it's splitting into two segments. And so there's the racing segment, which is, you know, the tire tires for that are trying to be as light as possible. Sometimes you know, to, to light to where you know, you're really risking flatting. Um, and those don't have the sidewall protection. Uh, then we're seeing more of the adventure cyclists, the backpacker who flatting is something that's just out of the question for them. And so they don't care if their tires a little bit slower. So that's where we're seeing more of that edge to edge tire protection. And so, you know, looking at designing around the width for that, um, you know, you're seeing people using larger and larger tires and the racing gravel seen is using more of the 36, uh, even 32 millimeter tires on gravel and the bike paths, venture scene in force treads and sidewalls.
Right. Yeah. It's interesting, like as we, as I speak to event organizers and athletes in different regions around the country, tire selection definitely rears its head. And imagine rim selection would as well based on where you, where you're at. A lot of the courses out here in mile mind on the west coast kind of are trending towards a little bit bigger tire than a a 32 or 36. But I know from talking to friends riding East Coast gravel scene, they're definitely racing on those, you know, 32 and 36.
Yeah. And we've got a lot of, you know, more sandy streets here. I mean there's some chunky gravel that happens. Um, but for example, I did a gravel race a couple weeks ago and I actually used a gravel, tubular tires, um, very lightweight tubular tires on there and I was estimating, I probably saved 150 grams per wheel between my room setup and tire setup compared to a lot of other people.
Right. Yeah. And I guess that trade off works for you in that, in that instance, no flats, I assume
no flats, um, bonk like crazy. So, um, but, uh, that's definitely nothing to do with the tire selection.
Interesting. Why? Again, I think it's one of those equipment choices that I think you spend a lot of times thinking about and it evolves over time or whether you're going to be in the six 50 be really wide tire camp or sticking with the more sort of traditional red set up with the seminar at sea. We all sat in a little bit narrower tire.
Yeah. And that's one of the beauties of the gravel, uh, writing is, you know, it's not just a, you know, how you're, you know, performance. It's, it is equipment selection. It's knowing which equipment to use for the conditions. Um, you know, one of the questions we get asked the most is what tires should I use and what pressure should I run? And for road cycling, it's fairly easy to tell because we know people are riding on asphalt. And so we know the conditions for gravel. It's just one of those things where you've got to figure this out and you need to know what's going to work best for you and your writing style.
Yeah, I think as you alluded to earlier, you sort of need to pick where do you want to perform and what's important to you or is it all about speed or is it a a long event where having some comfort is going to be more important to you as an athlete then then going fast.
Yep. And even flat protection, you know, um, taking that risk of, you know, I may be a couple seconds slower, but if I don't flat I've saved minutes.
Yeah. It's interesting cause I think, you know, a lot of cyclists get drawn into the gravel seen from the road market more so from the mountain. So that progression to trying larger and larger tires and even going down to six 50 [inaudible] I think there's a lot of just personal hesitation to go there. But everybody I talked to you, it seems like who goes to six 50 be ultimately tends to appreciate the higher volume of the tires and the comfort that it provides for most rides.
Yeah. And it's, it's something where I don't think people realize how fast six 50 [inaudible] is even on pavement. Um, you know, you get some of the fast rolling tires like for example a WTB horizon or by way and you know, those roll on the pavement pretty well. Um, I just did our Tuesday night worlds. Uh, we average typically 26 to 27 miles per hour on a 35 mile road race course and I hung right in there on the six 50 by 47 millimeter tires.
Wow. Yeah, no, I think that is an important takeaway and it's come from a number of different sources that exact same sentiment that you know, a nice set of wheels, six 50 be with some, something like a byway that can take you from a a pack ride on the road into your favorite trails. It's super versatile and a lot of fun. And for me, I think in the bay area in Marin County, it opens up a world of possibilities because you can take some the best road riding around here and then take a right turn and head into the trail system whenever it strikes your fancy.
Yeah, I always get jealous whenever I fly into California, San Francisco airport. I fly over the mountains there and I just look down and see all the gravel roads available there. So
yeah, exactly. Well next time you're out I'll have to take you for a ride.
Definitely.
Well I appreciate the time and giving us a little bit of insight into rem technology and widths. The answer, a few questions that have been hanging around in my head for awhile and I'm going to continue my exploration of what tire sizes and what Rim wits, uh, are going to work best for me out here. And I've got a few events elsewhere in the country this year, so I'm going to have to go outside my comfort zone and I think try some narrower tires and 700 see wheels.
Yeah. And don't count out those gravel. Tubulars it's, it's amazing how well they felt. Uh, but the whole time just going through my head, I was like, don't flat dot flat, don't flat. Um, but it's something that, it feels really good even traction wise. Um, you know, going through the gravel. So.
Interesting. Oh boy. Thanks for the time. I'm going to put a link to your website on our show notes. I encourage everybody to go visit the Boyd website. There's some great videos about how the team over there hand builds the wheels and there's a little bit of on the blog. There's a great history of further how you started the company and what you've been doing the last decade, so thanks again. Have a good weekend and best of luck the rest of the year.
All right, thank you very much and look forward to seeing you at some of the events.
Big thanks to Boyd for coming on this week to talk all about gravel wheels and the things we should be considering when looking at carbon wheel sets. I learned a lot that had been a few nagging questions in my mind about all this stuff, so it was great to learn from one of the experts. Definitely check out the work that Boyd's doing. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode and if you haven't done so already, please hit subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform. We're doing some planning for the upcoming year, and it really helps us understand what type of hosting needs we're going to have in the upcoming year. As always, keep the feedback and suggestions coming. You can find me@craigatthegravelride.bike, also on Instagram, Facebook under the gravel ride. So until next time, here's to finding some dirt under your wheels.
A conversation with Tom Boss from the Marin County Bike Coalition announcing the Adventure Revival Event in September. Later we talk to Juan De La Roca about the concept of a gravel destination.
Adventure Revival Event Registration
Marin County Bicycle Coalition Website
Explore Las Animas Website (routes and more!)
Automated Transcription. Please forgive all errors.
TOM BOSS -- Marin County Bicycle Coalition:
All right. Tom, welcome to the show.
Yeah, thanks for having me, Craig.
Yeah, I always like to start off, Tom by learning a little bit more about your background as a cyclist and how you came to gravel riding.
Sure. Um, well at first let me start by saying, um, it's a real pleasure to be on your show. Um, I, yeah, I am generally an early adapter. Uh, when it comes to bikes. I was one of the first in my group together, a full suspension bike first to get a single speed first to go 29 or um, but I was a little late on the gravel, the gravel scene and um, I, I jumped on board, uh, at the end of last year, started to really get interested and I actually discovered your podcast serendipitously about the same time, listen to a lot of your older, I'm your archives and, and it was really nice. It was kind of a roadmap for me as I, as I jumped into gravel and I'm learning quite a bit. So just wanting to give you a shout out and thank you for, for the work you're doing.
Thank you. I appreciate the kind words.
Okay.
Yeah. So I grew up here in Moran and, uh, I was bombing down with my friends, uh, on Mount Tam on a 20 inch BMX bike. Um, when Gary and Joe and Otis, we're inventing mountain biking. We're a few years younger and so, uh, those bikes were too big for us. But, um, I've been pretty much riding Mount Tam on a, on some form of a bicycle since, uh, since the 70s. And I'm really lucked out in finding a job at the Greene County Bicycle Coalition, uh, heading up the off road program. Uh, I get to basically promote and, uh, expand bicycling here in Marin, uh, for myself and for everybody else who, who cherishes this, uh, this wonderful place that we live in and visit and enjoy. So
it sounds like an ideal job. You certainly, yeah. I consider a Marin county to be an ideal location to be an off road rider.
Yeah, we have, uh, as we point out in our, uh, uh, and many of our correspondence, we have 50% of marines land is open as Parkland open to the public, whether it's Mount Tam or China camp. We've got national parks, the CV shore, and lots of open space. And so it really, uh, provides almost, you know, almost everybody that lives in Moran is a few miles away from, you know, amazing trails and, uh, and beautiful scenery. And, uh, so yeah, it's just, it's part of our, uh, it's part of the quality of life here in Ryan for sure.
From your perspective at the Marin county bicycle coalition, when did you start seeing the influence of gravel athletes start take over the trails in Marin?
That's a, that's a good question. So we, seven, eight years ago we started another bike ride, the, um, or a bike ride, the MCPC dirt fondant, which is primarily a mountain bike ride from the Marin headlands to the top of Mount Tam and back. And, um, right from the start, um, you know, we get a few emails, hey, is this route, you know, are these trails singlespeed friendly or are these trails, uh, uh, cross bike friendly? So, um, so there's, I think the cross in particular, there's a lot of people coming out to our mountain bike events, riding cross bikes and uh, so you could see, um, you know, first you scratched your head, this doesn't make much sense, but then you saw the bikes, you know, get the, some of the wider spacing so they can put bigger tires. And then we saw from that kind of this, this evolution of gravel. And uh, so yeah, just seems like every, every year we have more and more people showing up on different styles of bikes. And last year on the dirt Fondo, you know, I'd say a third of the people where we're not on mountain bikes Ranita or gravel or across or, or a single speed bike. So,
yeah, I, for one, have found that some of the trails in southern Marin, they're just more exciting on the gravel bike because they're not, they weren't pushing the limits of mountain bike technology. Once you had a full suspension bike, you were really kind of overprepared for the headlines, if you will. When you're riding on a lot of fire road trails, all of a sudden you get on a drop bar bike and you know, descending a fire fast fire road in the headlands, uh, could give you a thrill again.
Okay.
Yeah, it really does. You know, without the suspension and what those skinny or tires you have to pay a little more attention and pick your lines again. I used to, you know, focus on lines and in the last 10 years I, with these, you know, big tires and full suspension bikes, uh, you just, I just kind of point and shoot and uh, and, and the gravel has really kind of, I rediscovered a lot of my favorite trails, um, kind of either remembering how it used to be or discovering a whole new, uh, way of traversing them.
Yeah, that's the exact same journey I've been on. Just things that I had written for the last 15, 20 years. All of a sudden felt, knew I'd always loved them and had an affinity for them, but now they're pushing my skills technically and made them new again.
Yeah, it's real fun. For sure.
I caught wind of this year's upcoming dirt Fondo, which is why I reached out to you originally and I was super excited when the team at Studio Vella mentioned that you hadn't announced it yet, but you guys had a big gravel event planned up your sleeve. So can you introduce that event Tom, and we'll start talking a little bit about it.
Yeah, so glinted La. It was actually kind of born a little bit out of, out of, from the dirt Fondo we had, um, Erie Oswald and Vanessa, his wife had been coming out to our dirt Fondo for, for years and a few years ago, um, Erie offered, he said, if you guys ever want to do and Gramble event, let me know, I'd be happy to help you plan one. And, uh, so this year we decided to take them up on the offer and we had a meeting with him and we learned that the nor cal league was also wanting to do and gravel events here in Marine County. And so, uh, it was just a no brainer that, hey, we should just join forces and work together and make one really great day on gravel here in Marin.
So what's it called? What's the date and what can we expect?
So it's called the adventure revival. And we did a lot of thinking about the name. We talked about calling it a gravel, this or that, and uh, but what we are, what we realized in, in thinking about the name and, and developing this ride that Moran has a little bit of a, uh, a history in, in this, in this style of writing. And it is a matter of fact that the guys that started mountain biking, uh, Joe Breeze and Carrie Fisher, notice guy and Tom Richey, uh, back in the 70s, these guys were actually, they started basically on the road and they discovered they found some early cyclocross tires and started taking those bikes on some of the fire roads back in the 70s. And then from there it really evolved, uh, into Ma, you know, then they found the fat tire bikes and, and, and, and started mountain biking.
But, um, so, but there's been kind of a history of gravel or, or adventure cycling, uh, more skinny tire drop were bar writing here in Moran for, for a long time. And in the, in the, in the northern California in general. Um, so we decided that we think of it more as adventure cycling. And so we call it the adventure revival to kind of a little tip of the hat to some of those early rides on Belinas Ridge, uh, and also Tom Richey and, uh, Yost brands. We're doing rides down on the Santa Cruz about the Santa Cruz, uh, up in the mountains above Santa Cruz, uh, back in the 70s. So the adventure revival is the name of our ride. It is on Saturday, September 7th, and it will be a journey, uh, from Fairfax, uh, out into the fire roads, trails and roads of last Moran, uh, before coming back to a big party in downtown Fairfax.
That's really exciting. I'm super excited about that. And it also, it's, there's a, there's a nice synergy between the dirt Fondo, which kind of predominantly is around the headlands and this side of Tam to starting something over in Fairfax. It's sort of the far end of my normal riding range. I'm really excited to explore with you guys that part of Marin. So are we starting in downtown Fairfax and where do we go from there?
Yeah, we'll be starting at the Fairfax pavilion, which is right, right downtown and we'll be heading west on, uh, Sir Francis Drake for a bit and then we'll be going into the marine county open space. Lands will be riding, uh, up on two. Um, Sandra on my red and, uh, two of the routes. We'll take people on to some of the new trails and the Giacomini open space preserve, which are really grapple, friendly and beautiful. You know, you're immersed in redwood forest. Um, and then, uh, then our, our journey, I'll continue west out towards point raise, uh, along Bolinas Ridge. Uh, one route we'll go down the Lima valley trail, which a lot of people don't know about is a, a beautiful trail in the and the point Reyes national seashore. A lot of, uh, interesting, uh, geography happening down there. And then we'll all join back up and, uh, come back, uh, on the Bolinas Fairfax road, uh, into town or we'll have a nice barbecue and festivities waiting for the writers.
No, as soon as it is it a mixture of, of double track fire roads and single track throughout the day.
Yeah, it's a pretty even mix. There's a single, you know, we start a little bit on the road, get some single track, uh, up up into the White Hill area, go past the Tamar Rancho trail system. Uh, then we're on fire road for awhile. Then like I mentioned, there's that new, some new trails down in the jockey mini preserve that we'll check out. Uh, we're on the Cross Maroon trail through the Samuel P. Taylor park up jewel trail, which is a really nice, uh, trail a lot of people don't check out. And then you're, then you're on that Bolinas Ridge where it's, it reminds me of the sound of music, those rolling green hills and the cows and the smallest band, the background, really a stunning, um, visually, uh, place to be riding. Um, then then a little bit of road down highway one to get to the five Brook's area and uh, and then on the Lima valley trail. So yeah, really it's, it's, I'd say it's a good mix of road, a fire road end and trail.
That's great. And that sounds like a fun mix. Terrain adventure. Did you also mentioned to me that you were able to get access to some pieces of property that are otherwise untouchable by riders? Yeah,
we're working on that. This is our first year and we're going to keep it all on public lands. But yes, but we're, we've, we've started some conversations with some of the ranchers out in West Marin and we're hopeful that in future years we'll be able to, uh, to provide some routes that will be a pretty special, uh, places, one in a once in a lifetime chance to check out some of the beautiful land. It's not part of the park system.
Nice. And are all the trails that are publicly available, are they available year round to cyclists who want to explore out there? Okay.
Yeah. So all of these trails that will be on our, uh, you can go out and check them out on your own. Yeah. Four. Well, at least, yeah. 365 days a year.
And it sounds like, let's talk in everybody's favorite subjects, tires, wheels. Um, it sounds like with a mixed terrain route, we may not need something super aggressive as a tire.
Yeah. There's there, there's enough, there's enough trail that would have roots and rocks and, uh, depending on the conditions, you know, might be a little slippery that I think, I think you're going to want to have a medium to two big tire, um, just to do avoid, you know, pinch flats or, or sidewall punctures. There's Bolinas Ridge has some, some, uh, big routes that you might hit. And, um, yeah, I know on the road, you know, there, there's, there's a, there are some roads sections, so, uh, but, but yeah, I would, I would recommend, you know, a 30, a 38 to 45 millimeter tire, uh, for this ride.
Okay. And Are you characterizing it as more of a sort of grand Fonda ride or is as they're racing element to this event?
This is more, it's more fondo style where we're, it's a social event. The, uh, the land managers Samarin don't, uh, embrace bike racing. Uh, so this is not a race. This is a ride. Um, but yeah, it's, it's, uh, personally I think travel is a very conductive of more, you know, it's a very social activity. People, uh, you know, can go at whatever pace they like. Um, they'll certainly be some climbs, like a tool and up brand, all that people might want to, you know, test their, their abilities on. Um, but in the most, for the most part, we're really promoting a very fun event. Have Fun Day, we'll have a lot of, uh, a lot of, uh, good, uh, support out on the station or out on the route with, with some really fun activities like we have. But there's this one very rocky section at the top of a white hill fire road where if you, there's gonna be people out there from, uh, one of our sponsors touched on climbing. If you make that section without dabbing, they're going to, they're going to give you a little prize for the effort. So we have a lot of little things like that plan to make it a fun, fun day for everybody.
Nice. And I think you mentioned there was a couple of different distances, is that right?
Yeah, we have three routes. Uh, we have, uh, what we call the spicy route, which is the big one. It's 48 miles was 6,000 feet of climbing. Uh, we have the medium route, which is 42 miles with 5,000 feet of climbing. And then for people new to a gravel riding, uh, we still have a punchy 23 miles of 2,500 feet of climate.
And on the, on the, uh, 23 mile route, is that something that is suitable for beginners in terms of the type of terrain
it is, it is suitable, but there, there's still, like I said, that one section I'd mentioned that rocky section at the, um, at the top of the wave hill fire road. Um, you know, you may have to walk that if you're, if you're new to this sport, but in general, uh, that route would be pretty beginner friendly. Yes.
Great. And I just have a general question about putting on an event in Marin county. Is it pretty complicated with the various public land holders to kind of organize a re a ride like this?
It is, uh, Craig, we, one of the challenges we have is unlike, you know, places like Lake Tahoe where maybe only have one or two land managers of the National Forest Service or, um, that's who usually is the land manager. Here we have four different entities and you never know whose land are crossing. So this ride we're having to permit, um, from we're permitting through open space, marine county open space. We're from writing from state parks or permitting from MWD the watershed, uh, and also the national parks. So that's all for land managers were having to get, uh, to work with to get the permitting for this, uh, event. And uh, they're all very supportive and uh, encourage bike, uh, bicycling in their parks. Um, but yeah, it does, uh, it is a little harder than it is in some places where maybe you're only dealing with one permit and, and the whole ride isn't one on one person's land.
Yeah. I think that's what's great about having them Marin county bicycle coalition involved because you have the integrity and longevity of the organization to bring to bear that these land owners can trust you, that you've got their best interests in mind
for sure. And we also give back, for example, this part of the, um, one of the things we offered with the permitting for the national park was that we would commit one day of volunteer work on a trail of their choice either before or after the ride. And, uh, and we also have our, our slow and say hello message that we give to all the writers who really remind them that when they're on our, I bet when they're participating in one to borrow against their ambassadors and bicycling and they really need to, uh, be models of a good, um, trail user and you know, be very courteous and obviously obey all the rules.
Yeah. Well, I think that's an important note in a important reminder just for everybody listening to support your local bicycle coalitions because they do a lot of work behind the scenes and it's great when you get to come in front of the scenes and create awesome new events for us to enjoy. Um, Tom, I appreciate you coming on the show and telling us about the event. I'm really excited to myself and explore that part of Marin. We will put information about registration up on the podcast notes, um, and we'll get this out as soon as possible, but if you're listening to this registrations already open for this event, there is a cap this year on the number of athletes that the event can hold. So definitely click the link quickly if you haven't already get your slot because Tom and his team are putting on an amazing event that I think is going to be around for a long time. So Tom, thanks for thanks again for joining us.
Yeah, well thank you for having me and I look forward to riding with you in September.
Juan De La Roca -- Gravel Destinations
Juan, welcome to the show.
Thank you Greg, really appreciate being here with you this afternoon.
So this is a little bit more of a, it's an interesting segment for us at the gravel ride podcasts. Cause one actually reached out over email with a simple question like many of you do and but it was what makes a gravel destination and are there gravel destinations out there in the world? And it struck a chord with me because I certainly in my life have had places I thought were mountain bike destinations like Moab or crested Butte or whistler up in Canada. And I've certainly had rode destinations like borders on in France at the base of Alp do as we're Tuscany in Italy or May. Orca. And all these things resonated with me. But when he asked the question I just had no idea. Like what is a legitimate gravel destination? So one, thank you for bringing that question up and I'd love to have a discussion with you because you live in a place where you think has the fundamental building blocks to become a gravel destination.
Yeah, absolutely. So I, I'm a little bit about my background. So I've been in Colorado now for 25 years within the Denver Boulder area, uh, left Denver in 2015. And, uh, actually thought I was going to be done living in Colorado was in that phase where everybody was kind of moving here. We saw a big jump of population and, and uh, we started to kind of pick my, I pick my head up and looked around and said, hey, maybe there might be another place. But, um, I ended up in Austin, Texas down in central Texas, which was actually a great learning lesson because in a lot of ways, you know, often experience with Denver has been experiencing over the last several years with an influx of population pushing people out more into rural areas. So while spending some time riding my bike in central Texas, I a within town outside of Boston called Fredericksburg.
And it got me kind of thinking about, you know, what would this kind of look like in Colorado as things start to, you know, take shape and form. And, uh, ended up coming through the town of Trinidad, which is three hours south of Denver, three hours north of Albuquerque. So it's essentially right between the two of them, uh, right on the [inaudible] a corridor and it's an interesting area of the state in that it was sort of the undiscovered forgotten, made fun of unheard of place to go spend time, uh, area of the state. And as I started to look around, I thought to myself, this might be a place that it's going to keep them some growth and activity moving forward as a state car to becomes more popular. And when I first got here, you know, I'm more of a mountain biker. I knew that the, the mountain biking was not going to be super strong because of just the history of the area, a lot of private property, but also too, there's just wasn't a much of a cycling culture.
But even a little bit of time that I've been able to spend here over the last two and a half years, I've been pleasantly surprised about the wealth of opportunities and areas to explore, especially on a bicycle. And a couple of years ago I had been doing some consulting work with the local parks and rec department and this idea of developing a product around gravel sites and really kind of jumped out at me just to kind of also take another step back. I, I come out of the advertising industry, consumer research insights trends. I'm really adept at looking at things that are happening and kind of understanding where things are gonna sort of go from there. And um, so I applied those, does that skillset to developing some cycling opportunities in this region. And, and uh, so recently in this, uh, beginning of this year in 2019, working with the Colorado tourism office with able to be in a position to create a second tourism and campaign for this region, specifically focused on the gravel category.
And had you started riding gravel bikes herself at that point?
You know, I, you know, I say yes because it's, it's funny, right? Cause the cycling industry, it's always been really good at coming up with new categories and products that, you know, say no, this is like the thing that you want to have or this is the direction you want to go sort of thing. So I feel like raffles and we've kind of been there, but at the same time it's never really had this sort of focus of a genre or a segment of cycling, um, like it has in the last several years. So I mean beyond my, my mouth, I can have a Tory by, uh, cyclecross bike and was, you know, just definitely somebody who likes to explore and in was open to, you know, just going out and riding dirt roads. So it was happening. It was sort of natural. But when I started to see, you know, that gravel was really starting to pick up speed and speed, uh, it was starting to get a lot of popularity and following, then that's when I started saying to myself, you know why? Like this is more than just something that you kind of just do because you just want to have fun and explore. It's actually becoming something a little more serious.
That's interesting that you took your sort of professional background, your ability to analyze trends and started to see like, hey, the type of terrain which maybe isn't super technical or accessible as a pure mountain biker in Trinidad combined with this trend of drop bar off road activity happening in the bike industry came together to create an opportunity that you might not otherwise have pursued.
Yeah, no, it is it interesting in Trinidad
because going back to the mountain biking piece, um, so it turned out it's an interesting place. It's, it's going on or a lot of transition right now. It's a rural town. You said a population of 10,000. It's the largest campus in the largest county in Colorado with a total of 15,000 people all together. Uh, so it really has a lot of open space and little crowd. So the cycling community is fairly small here to begin with. I and the mountain biking, it's going to take some time. We, we've actually had some really cool things happen here in the recent months. Uh, the state of Colorado, along with the city of Trinidad, the Nature Conservancy and the trust republic land. It's actually just purchased a 19,000 plus Acre ranch, three miles south of the town. It actually borders the, yeah, so we're really close to the New Mexico border and the border actually goes through the property itself.
And so that's something that's going to happen over the next several years, but it's just going to take a lot of work and resources because you know, building trail is a pretty labor intensive sort of scenario. However, uh, there is also a lot of dirt roads already existing on this property, so it's actually going to be something that's going to fold into the overall offering that the county has. Um, the interesting thing is this here is that we have 1500 miles of county road. Uh, when I looked at that number, I thought to myself, I'm like, you know, I know that that's not unique necessarily, but that I feel like that's pretty distinct. And that's a way of kind of talking about why you could be a destination. Because the reality is, is if there's going of your Rick graveled like destination and has to be in a world sort of setting because it, you know, the urban is constantly under the pressure of development.
Rose are being lost, can you subdivisions that are being brought in. And so this idea that, you know, the southeastern portion of the state could possibly become a destination to ride a gravel bike because of the fact of its rural setting and it's dirt roads you can't really appealing. And it was really great because at the same time it was infrastructure was already in place. You know, going back to the mountain biking, you know? Right. It costs money to build trust. You've got to get grants, you've got to get, you know, a local buying from your government and all these things that go along with it. But, uh, with gravel, it's really about using existing resources already in place. And, and southeast Colorado is a place where, I mean, it's remote, it's got back country. Uh, it's got the history, you've got scenery, has got culture.
It's got a very dynamic sort of, um, things on the plate and give it some substance and worthy of a meal for, for a cyclist, I get to say, right? Yeah. When I got your email and we had a couple of back and forth, I started thinking about, well what are the things in my mind that made a great cycling destination? And I came up with three things and I, the first one was the obvious, which is great writing, but information about the writing. So the available easy availability of roots. The second thing was a cycling, ambiance and a cycling infrastructure, right? I want to, I want to be able to go to a bike shop and get equipment that I need. I want there to be a vibe in town around cycling, even if it's subtle. And the third thing we're events and the reason why I listed events is cause I've, I felt like having events in the community gave people a taste of it and then would make them want to come back. So I'm curious as you, your vision for building out this community and this destination around Trinidad, of those three building blocks, where are you at with each of them? And do you agree with that at all?
No, I think you're absolutely right and, uh, in all of this because, uh, you know, we, we've seen it already happened with the mountain bike destination in the road bike destination and each of those stages is found there. Um, I think for me right now with Trinidad where I see it, I think three of those four already, uh, very strongly in place. The fourth is going to take a little bit more of a, um, bit of time. But I think what's interesting is going, cause, you know, you talk about information, you, the availability of information is so fast now. We are such a digitally forward a society that, uh, whereas you know, 15, even 15, 20 years ago, it took a little bit of time. You know, maybe you read it in a magazine or there was a war, you know, word of mouth has been around forever, but there wasn't this sort of critical mass sort of way of like finding information.
You're learning about new things. So, um, going back to the Colorado Tourism Office, uh, initiatives that we started at the start of the year. So the campaign is called explore last time dimensions, that dirt series. And, um, I was able to, to create a website, explore Las animas.com and then also start to populate it with content and, um, go out and, uh, get content that we'll be able to speak to people who may entice people to come here. So that would be through photography and video. Uh, right now I am working on film portions of this so that there isn't any films necessarily yet, but we've definitely gotten about three months worth of photography. Content is being pushed out through Instagram and the Facebook and your social media channels and giving people information, um, about where to go. And, and, and that's something I, I, uh, I really took the time to, to, to look at and figure out how I could, you know, best articulate what the writing opportunities look like and where you could go. And so, uh, I, I essentially created 26 different routes. They vary in length. He, there's a section, there would be 25 or less miles and then there's a 40 year last and then a 50 to 75, 75 plus 100 plus. And in the end I ended up with 16 over 1600 miles worth of routes and they're all now on ride with gps, Strava as well as ride spot that people for bikes.
Yeah. Well I thought that was awesome. I put a big check mark versus, uh, around information available with your project because the site is great. The, the roots are divided amongst different lengths and there's great information. So if you were to land in that area, you, you know, you have more miles than you can do in a week easily.
Yeah, exactly. You know what, it's funny too because I noticed that a little bit overwhelmed because so many people know little about Trinidad in general. It's, it's super interesting. The printed ad was probably one of the first, uh, communities, families in the state of Colorado. I believe it was 1862. Uh, it was where the Santa Fe trail came through. So we have, uh, uh, you know, this idea of traffic coming through here and then the railroad came through. And then of course the interstate though though we have this like traveler mentality, but it also had a lack of people over, especially over the last 15 years, who would actually get off the highway and look at what was here. And I think that that's what's the beauty of bicycles and how popular they are and, and, uh, how appealing they are to people. Just say it pushes people into places that they didn't think they would go into.
So, you know, the, the mindset from the, from the Gecko was this was all about discovery and exploring. And so could I added that is where the great writing comes out of, right? Because the people who, you know, go down that road, they tend to have experiences and those experiences become great memories and those great memories become the things that they talk about with other people. So, uh, that's why I think for great writing pieces that we have that it's just a lot of people don't know about it necessarily. But with that information, we're really going to highlight that and, and, uh, give people a chance to get out and experience it for themselves. And then lastly, you were dot. You were talking about events do it. I think, um, we've been fortunate in that there actually has been an event that's been going on here for about five years now.
It's called the Pony Express one 16. Uh, this year we actually had them, the largest field that takes place in mid May. Uh, it was started by a gentleman named Phyllis for, uh, Schweitzer, who he runs a copy off to be saddles. And then, uh, the interesting thing with him was that he was a longtime competitor in the Lego 100 as well as the Berkey Byner, uh, a cross country ski race here in Minnesota for a number of years. She's done a ton of events and he came down here on his own in 2012 and started scoping out the area and realize that he could, uh, create a, uh, a course that would be, you know, really in line with what was happening with gravel. So he's actually got a hundred mile force. It's about seven miles outside, starts an n seven miles outside of town. And uh, just last, uh, the last one, we had some really great feedback from people because it was for many of them who was their first time.
So I think you're really are spot on with the events because the events are what introduce people to an area. Is there anything, you know, sometimes it's just a, you know, a friendly note from a friend and be like, Hey, let's go to this place. Let's go check this out. You know, I've never there, but let's just go see what it's all about. And you know, they come and then all of a sudden it kind of spirals from there because they start talking to other people and then we go back to the social media police peace and critical mass starts to accumulate.
Yeah. Then I think that the hardest piece to kind of get to come together in a small rural community is that kind of cycling on Beyonce and infrastructure, but that, I think it comes with opportunity. Right? You know, you look at the stories around Emporia, Kansas who had dirty Kanza and how, you know, it's clear that in the bars in the, obviously in the bike shops, but the cafes, they've just started to embrace the fact that cycling is a big part of the identity of that community and it's developed this kind of world worldwide reputation for being a cycling hub. And I, and I think you know, business owners are not going to get there by themselves unless they happen to be a cyclist. But the sheer opportunity of meeting your customers where they're at, I think is where a rural community like Trinidad may see an opportunity and you'll start to see some of those cycling elements and fused in cafes and bars and different elements.
Yeah, absolutely. I need at this point, I, it feels like cycling general are essentially a key ingredient in the blueprint of the economic development, revitalization of town. You know, I, I, you know, it takes to start seeing bike lanes, you start seeing signage, you start seeing people on bikes and it really starts to dovetail into this activity that happens in a community that is both positive and economically beneficial. And so, uh, you know, right now the state of Colorado in general is, is very much focused on addressing the urban rural divide. And, uh, the cycling pieces is a big piece of it because it, it brings something fresh. It brings, you know, like I say, activity in a way where it inspires people to either get out on a bicycle or maybe start a business and, and, and cater to those people. So yeah, it's going to be interesting.
We do have one bike shop in town's been here for a really long time. It's called ultimate sports, uh, in nutrition. And um, you know, they're, they're the only shop here but this is definitely a tower you could virtually see, you know, several bike shops. I mean you can go to a little town like saliva, which is three hours, two and a half, three hours away from us. Uh, definitely more known for it's mountain biking, but you know, that's account or it's smaller than Trinidad, 6,000, but they have a seven bike shops. You know, that's pretty impressive. Yeah.
Well this is really interesting discussion. One I, I really truly appreciate you reaching out to me and kind of putting it in my mind cause I do think it's very interesting for our listeners to think about and for the listeners out there, let me know, Ping me if you think your neck of the woods is a gravel destination and let us know if kind of the criteria that we laid out make sense. So I'll put the link to the website in the show notes so everybody can check it out. It definitely sounds like a pretty exciting region. And like I said on the website, there's plenty of rides, just spoonfed Tisa if you're within driving distance, definitely put it on your summer tour. And if it's a flight away, maybe look at the pony express one 60 as an event to be the cornerstone of your trip. But get out there and check out Trinidad and let, uh, let one know what you think.
Yeah. I encourage everyone to come and check this place out because I think it's one of those places where right now everything that you wouldn't think it would be, but you want because you're on a bravo. It's got all the things that you want to, you know, find and, and see on a ride, you know, from wildlife to scenery, uh, to just, you know, history, you know, history is the big thing. I think that really distinctly puts us in a, in a different sort of place because a history, something that you know, uh, you see and you feel when you're, when you're around it. So that's the beauty of it.
Well, that's super exciting. Thanks for the timeline. Okay.
Thank you, Craig. I appreciate it.
A conversation with Chad Sperry, organizer of the 5-Day Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder (June 19-23, 2019).
Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder Website
Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder Instagram
Automagical transcription, please excuse all errors:
Chad, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Craig. Appreciate being here.
Let's start off by learning a little bit about your background as a cyclist and how you started thinking about gravel.
Yeah, you bet. Yes. I started cycling back in 91 92, um, came out of triathlon and uh, with triathlon my a strong fiscal, it was the bike and really love the, uh, kind of the strategy in the end, the game game and ship that happens in cycling compared to trapline is where I consider it the like the big grunt effort. You just kind of go from the start and, and peg your, uh, your lactic acid throughout the whole event. So it was really intriguing with me and I raced a competitively for 15 years on a, on the road traveling all over and, and doing a number of one day races as well as state races.
Awesome. And then how, when, when did gravel come into your life where you riding your road, bike off road and then the equipment just caught up to your interests? Or is it something newer than that?
No, gravel? That's a great question. Gravel Kinda was a, uh, an interesting thing, both from my professional life as a, as a race promoter, as well as my personal life. The area that I grew up in and a, and, and trained for those 15 years when I was competitively racing on the roads is a, a rural area that's east of the cascades, um, called the Dalles Oregon. And the, the area that we lived in there, the county that we lived in, Wasco County, uh, had the majority of the roads were actually gravel, like a 60 to 70% of the all roads in Wasco county. Our gravel, it's a high agricultural area with a, with wheat and a cherry orchards. And so what we, what we found, and this was back in the early nineties, is that if you, uh, if you wanted to do some really big cool loops and training rides, uh, the only way to do that would be to basically, uh, go, uh, from the pavement onto a, onto gravel for say, a five mile, 10 mile segment.
And then it would connect you into another paved road. There's a lot of being in the gorge, there's a lot of uh, drainage's and, and basically, uh, paved roads that would go up some canyon or some, some, uh, some creek and it would get in and gravel. But if you continue to on it, you could, uh, you could take the gravel road up and over the ridge line and into another drainage or creek basin and then connecting to a pavement. So out of boredom and out of a interest in trying to find something new, we, uh, we started actually going out and, um, and using our little 25 millimeters skinny tire caliper road bikes and actually ride in the gravel. And it also really taught you how to, how to be a, a great, uh, you know, um, technician because you've got such skinny tires and it's almost like you're kind of like riding on marbles per se.
Yeah, amazing. I think that's a common story with a lot of athletes who live in more rural areas where the, it just, it was a necessity that you started riding on gravel roads and it just became more and more fun. And, and obviously the terrain options became more varied once the bikes caught up with what you were doing already.
Absolutely. And then then on the professional side of things, you know, we'd been, um, when I, uh, we've got to the point where I was kind of aging out of the racing feed and had a family and a mortgage to cover and what not. I started, I took, I was, I came from an operations background professionally and so started to apply that, uh, and put on a different bike races starting back in 2001 up in around the northwest. And we build our filter company breakaway promotions, uh, to a very large one of the artists in the country actually running events like the cascade siding, classic Mt. Hood side, Classic tour of Utah as well as, uh, we put on a 20 plus national championship events for a, for USA cycling. And so, you know, we, we developed that on the road side of things, but I still love doing events in that little home town that I grew up in.
And so eight years ago we started thinking about, hey, what if the initial idea was to start it as a role based style race, meaning it wasn't like a full blown gravel race. It would be something where there's paved, uh, um, sections of paved as well as gravel sectors. Um, that we, uh, we have, um, but in between the different placements and so forth. Um, so we would pull that stuff together and it was more of a kind of a payroll bay. We actually call it the gorge Real Bay, and it was more of a, uh, uh, kind of, uh, uh, a play on Perry row bay kind of thing. So the gravel sections, we're generally, you know, anywhere from four to five to six miles, uh, per section. And then you'd have like 10 miles of pavement in between that and that, that, uh, that that took off. Like people were super excited about that format. And then within two years or about six years ago, um, we actually went to a full on gravel ride as people were asking for more and more of the gravel and less and less of the pavement.
Yeah, it's funny that first race you were describing was the first one that caught my eye here down in northern California and it just looked really exciting. I had just gotten the proper equipment. I got my first closet, I gravel bike and I was like, that looks like a hell of a lot of fun. And as I mentioned to you, it took me a few years after that before I actually got up there and did one of your events. But it was very telling and interesting to me. I had done three events that year and the course we wrote at the high desert gravel grinder was more pavement than dirt. And then I did a few others that were more dirt with pain vent. And it really set me down this thought process of thinking about how as a course designer you can really influence the choice of equipment and how good or bad a particular tire is going to perform throughout the day. Can you talk about how you sort of have evolved your thinking about how the courses should be laid out and how modern equipment influenced that?
Absolutely. And it has truly, uh, significantly changed, I would even say in the last three to four years, you know, that high desert, the course that you talked about, definitely a higher percentage of pavements and saved their gorge gravel grinder that we've been running up in the gorge for a number of years. And I'm, and I had a number of people come in and complained to me that there was too much, um, too much pavement on it. And I even had a few that questioned whether I knew what I was doing. And, and rightfully so, I, I, I took that, that information in that criticism. Um, and what I decided to do is basically just go full blown gravel, as much gravel as I could. At the same time, you know, three and four years ago is when we really saw that every bike manufacturer was now making it gravel specific bike.
Um, you know, the whole a disc brake movement was basically on everything. Tires were getting the standing and performance. So we've, so, so the technology as well as, you know, kind of the feedback from the riders. We all have our stuff now. We have a three race series a, we have a one day, a three day, uh, so one day with the gorge gravel grinder, a three day ride omnium one of the first omnium if not the first omnium in the country. Um, it's a three day event in bend called the cascade gravel grinder, which used to be the high desert, then morphed into the cascade ground writer. And then we have our big five day, a point to point, which again is a first in the country for gravel. I'm coming up in June, but, but I went and I looked and I wanted to basically do every course we had had to have at least 80% gravel, if not 90% gravel. Um, that the, that the writers are doing because the bike technology and the speeds that they're at, which they're writing now, we are so much faster and so much, um, so much better. And there's, which helps reduce the fatigue rate as well. So, you know, used to throw in some asphalt just so the people could get a little bit of a break and a reprieve. But now, um, the bike technology has allowed for a much more efficient a ride on gravel.
Yeah, I think you're right. That's a good point. I am super excited to talk to you about the Oregon trail and gravel grinder, the five day event because I think it is the first of its kind. Can you tell us a little bit about that? It's a big adventure.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I, I try to be a little bit cautious on, on how I described this because, um, our company break, wait promotions is actually been running the operations for Rebecca Russian and Rebecca's private Idaho. And she actually had an actual stage race, um, last year, a three day event there. So when I tell people it's going to be the first, uh, point to point overnight camping, uh, event of its kind on the gravel side. Mountain bike is, had it been going on with BC race and, and um, and Breck epic and a number of other super cool, uh, mountain bike stage racism. Then of course we got the road stage races. They typically don't have the camping element, um, but they're multi day. Um, and they can even be point to point, but, but nothing in the gravel sector has, uh, has come to fruition in this, uh, in this regard.
Um, I am based out of bend, Oregon and we have just an almost limitless supply of gravel roads. So, so it was the hardest part in developing this five day, uh, gravel event was to literally find the best roads that we could use. Not because there were scarce, but because there was such an, a massive inventory of roads. And so we took, it took us weeks of, uh, of going deep deep into the Deschutes national forest and we'll amet national forests, um, driving roads, spending, I can't believe how many hours on 'em and ride with gps and Google maps. So our eyes were crossed looking at routes and so forth. Um, and we've, we feel like we've developed one of the most amazing five day, uh, events that, that anybody will ever see it. And, and the, the other beauty of this event is that because you're in central Oregon and western Oregon, the diversity and change that you'll see each and every day is just mind blowing.
Like I can give you an example of day one. We started in what's considered, you know, the kind of the high desert area just north of bend out little community of sisters. And you start off and kind of more your sage brush in and um, and Ponderosa pine type of a seven Forrest. And then as you start to gain elevation, that turns into for, and then you go into an Alpine forest. And then when you cross over the, the true cascade mountain range at like 5,000, 6,000 feet of elevation, um, when you're doing it on day one, you're crossing, you're crossing the range on the old historic fan iam wagon trail road, that, that was an operation during the mid 18 hundreds to late 18 hundreds and that road been, connects you into the, over over the cascades into the western side and the Willamette national forest where you trade all the high desert elements into a moss covered trees.
We, we have some areas we found that they missed somehow they missed in their early logging operations with old growth forest stands and beautiful creeks. And, and uh, and, and that time of year, there's a lot of the Alpine flowers and Rhododendrons and that are in bloom. So it just has this unbelievable feel even in, in a, in a single day. Um, you'll change through several different climates in several different environments and vegetation when you're going from point a to point B. And it just keeps going like that for the next four days until you get back to a, we do one big loop and it takes you back to sisters, Oregon.
Amazing. You definitely have some incredible terrain. As you said, it's so diverse up there. I spent some time bike packing on the Oregon timber trail last year and it was just phenomenal. The changes that we went through when you went over a different ridge, how different the terrain felt, which is going to make it really exciting.
Absolutely. Absolutely. I, I, I really think that there's something for everybody as they, as they do this and it, our staff, you know, we, like I said, we come from a very strong operations background, having run so many major national and professional cycling events. And, uh, and so we've got, I've, I'm, I'm fortunate in that I have just an outstanding crew that we can put towards this event. You know, my, my uh, people like Brad Ross, uh, that ran for National Championships in Oh, in the cross crusade a soccer crosses is my right, right hand person for setting camps up and, and helping with support there. I've got my, uh, uh, good friend Jeff Lorenzen. It was technical director two or Utah and cascade side class. They can always pro events for the last 15 years. And I could just, I could name a whole list of people that have a decade plus of experience operating at the, at the highest level.
So, so what we look, we look to do is to provide all this amazing courses in scenery, but then make sure that everybody is completely taken care of every single day and maximize their experience along the way. Cause it's, it is truly going to be con. Absolutely. It's one of those, those events where you know, you have all those single day one day road races that you do and, and 10 years from now you forget it. This is one of those things that I truly believe for many will be a lifetime memory because of the diversity. And the challenge and, and the experience that they'll have.
It said to nail the point home just because many of my listeners are regardless. He quite familiar with one day racism, what that experience looks like. So you're out on the trail for five days. What are you doing at night? What's happening during the day from a logistics perspective?
Yeah, and that's a great uh, great question. So when a, you're just telling you a little snapshot of what riders can expect when they roll into camp and in each of the days that were camping, we've got beautiful, you know, forest one areas, you know, we're a mixture between city parks, community centers and um, and uh, um, and even some of the high schools, a little, little, little tiny high schools that are embedded out in the cascade mountain ranges in these remote areas. Um, they're just beautiful sceneries in quiet areas that were setting up camp. But as writers, Rollie, and the first thing they're going to do is we've got food for them to get snacks and food for them to kind of rehydrate, to kind of fuel up. Then we actually have a, we work with a caterer that we'll be doing the food service for the entire five days and it's not cheap, you know, um, you know, burgers and that kind of stuff if things like salmon and tri tip and, and a barbecue chicken and you know, we really want to make sure that this is a high level event.
So this catering companies thing catering at a port Lily's been working with for a number of years, um, delivers unbelievable, uh, meals and, and has experience working with large events like cycle Oregon and, and some of the larger events out there running events. We, they do a lot of our running events with 2000 plus runners coming through and doing a full catered high, high level a meal for them. So they'll be on, on, on point. And then when they're done with their meal and they've had their hot shower and so forth, we will have a nightly different game, competitions and tournaments, things like corn hole, a horse, you, um, we're going to be doing a, a poker night. Uh, we've got live music on, on three of the, the nights that we have the event, we're going to have a, a western movies playing. So it's, it's not that you're going to go there and you're going to basically hold up in your tent and you're just going to sleep and wait until the next day. We've got entertainment planned throughout the entire course of the evening. And um, and then again, when the morning, uh, morning comes, we'll be there with our staff to load up your equipment and gear and a and get you guys supported and, and saddened and ready to go for the next day's events.
So in the morning I grab some breakfast, I pack my bag up, get my bike ready, and then your team takes care of the logistics of moving all my gear from point to point.
Absolutely. So what we do is we have, um, we have a system where everybody is, is checked out at a massive, a a plastic tub. It'll have their, their big number printed on the side of it and that's their tub there travel case to use throughout the, uh, the course of the week. We use a hard shell tub. I know there's a number of, of, uh, of races. Where are they? You just basically bring your own duffle bag and um, and you throw it in there. We want to make sure that everybody's equipment stays protected and stays organized over the course of the entire week. So the tubs we give them or are pretty sure are really strong so they won't, you won't get stuff. You can throw stuff in there and doesn't get damaged. It's easy to keep everything contained. Um, it's easy for us to transport it from point a to point B.
So what we'll do is we'll, the writers will come, they'll grab their bikes though. They'll check their up, their tub and um, with all their equipment, each rider gets an extra set of wheels to take along with them and they'll check that in and then we'll actually take that and have it waiting for them when they arrive at the finish line at, uh, at that day stage. If, if a writer needs to abandoned for whatever reason, they're injured, they're sick. Um, they've got time constraints. They can only do three of the five days or four of the five days. We actually have a nightly shuttle setup, um, that will take them from the finish line on that days stage back to the start in sisters. And we were calling it effectually the shuttle of shame. And, um, and, and what, what, uh, as a little token or gesture, everybody that gets on the shuttle of shame and gets delivered back early, uh, gets a complimentary tee shirt, um, with, uh, with the old Oregon trail video game and the oxen and the, and the, the wagon cart is pulling on the front of the t shirt and then below it it says you've died of dysentery.
And, um, and then they'll get a, a little, uh, um, uh, credit towards next year hoping they'll come back to finish what they started on this epic journey.
Say a little benefit in your shame I guess.
Really.
Yeah. It's something worth noting to people who haven't done these type of stage races with camping before. There's something, there's something amazing about packing up that crate in the morning, passing it off and not having to do anything but ride your bike all day.
And that's truly an art focus. I mean, that's a great point Craig. It's uh, we just, we want you to not have to worry about anything with logistics. We want you to literally focus on your ride and your in, you know, we're finding this is the first year of the event and were just blown away at how wide of a reach in it's very first year. We are seeing people signed up from all over the country that are coming and uh, and flying in and traveling to a, to experience this event. And our goal is, is that your focus is 100% on, on pushing those pedals as well as just enjoying the moment. I mean, you're going to be cycling through truly some of the most beautiful and on spiring terrain you will find anywhere in this country. And it's, uh, it's important for us that you're not thinking about anything but, um, that event and your time on the bike and your experience there.
So, you know, we'll have incredibly stocked well-stocked aid stations. We have a very large medical team and mechanic team that we'll be rolling on motorbikes and a and four by four rigs along the course to make sure that anybody that has an issue is taken care of. And basically we just want you to focus on the ride, will take care of everything else, breakfast, lunch, dinner, uh, your, your, if you've got a bike issue we can fix it for you and, and just literally lets you experience in the moment this, uh, this tremendous, uh, adventure.
Yeah. Now as you mentioned earlier, prior to recording, there's just something really special about finishing the day at a camp site. Having a communal meal with everybody, gives you a great opportunity to meet people from all over the country or all over the world and just share war stories from the day.
It really is. And you know, it the thing that really fits well and I think that's why these of the, you know, the, the five day event is going to be something that I really think in a couple of years could, could take off and be very, very large is this is from my experience. Um, you know, years of experience working with gravel writers, they, they're a different mentality than what you would see on a mountain bike. Um, but especially what you'd see on a, on a road bike. You know, coming from a road background, it was all about the competition. You know, you didn't, you didn't lift your head, you didn't look around. You are watching your watch, you're watching your, your heart rate. You are, you are attacking you or you know, you, you, it was all about the race of travel. Writers are a fee for the most part are a very wide demographic.
We have folks coming in that are truly just wanting to finish the day and have a great ride with their friends, have a beer and a barbecue afterwards. And then we have those, there are literally some of the top pros in the country that are there to race it in and, and have a great time. But even I've noticed that the folks that come from road backgrounds, they, it's almost like they just take a deep breath and they just like, we're just out here to have a great time and have fun. There's not the pressure that you see on the, on the roadside for placings and competition and sprinting and that kind of stuff. And so that's something that's been a huge joy for my crew and I in, in operating this is it just more of a, a fun and party type atmosphere? There's definitely some competition involved. Um, but, but it, it, it brings in such a wide demographic and wide range of people and, and, and they're all there to just have a wonderful time and experience.
Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, obviously it plays out in the one day environment, but in the multiday environment when the pro athletes or camping just alongside everybody else even further enhances that opportunity to grab a beer or have a meal with a pro athlete that you were no where near during the day, but you all went through the same terrain. You did the river crossings, you hopped over down trees, whatever was in front of you, you did together and you had that shared experience. I think it's a, it's a huge opportunity on the multiday front.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, you see these, uh, these pro athletes, first off, the pro athletes we have coming are all just, they're just class a people. They're just great, wonderful personalities. They're great people. Um, and you know, you look on the, on the roadside or even to some extent the mountain bike side, when they're done with their thing and they're, they're, they're, they're finding their, their, uh, um, team manager and support staff and they're holed up in their team tent and then they all jump in their van and they go back to the hotel. We're here. There's all, there's going to be a tremendous access to these athletes who are going to be out there enjoying those games and fun with everybody else. It's going to be everybody together in this community type atmosphere for five days. And I, I think that's what I really enjoy, probably almost the most on this, on the side from the beautiful scenery that we get to work in.
Is it just the fact that we're, we're one community moving through these five days together and tackling these challenges and meeting up every night in camp to swap those stories that you talked about and uh, and, and, or even strategize for the next day. Hey, we're kind of tires, are you using, what's your plan? You know, where do you think you're going to go hard? And the one thing I do need to make sure that everybody, anybody that's considering this a realizes number one, we are there to support you. So if for some reason you're just having an off day and it is not in the cards for you, um, we have the support shuttles and crew to transport you, pick you up, off course transports you to the finish. And yes, you can start the next day. It's not like a road stage race where you're disqualified. You can start the next day.
Now granted you're not in the, in the results and you're not in the competition. But just being able to ride these courses is in my mind, the biggest benefit of doing this event. So we have the support in place. And, and so if you have a, you know, somebody who's like, oh, five days, I'm not sure I can do it. Well, you know what, if you can't make it one day, we'll get you shuttled to the finish or get you fed, we'll get you arrested and you can take a crack at the next day and, uh, and, and, and continue to finish your journey along the way. And so, so that's, that's the other element that I really am kind of enjoying on this is that there's, there's that pressure of I've got to, I got to finish, I got to finish in this time where I'll be cut is not there because it's a big investment for folks for time and money to come in and do this. But you know, we want to make sure that they go feeling that they got every dime was well worth it. Um, they spend it every minute and planning the logistics to get here was well worth it.
Yeah. I think that's one of the interesting things about this format. And as you mentioned earlier, the mountain bike world has had a history of these events to kind of have set the stage. I do think it's this huge opportunity because many athletes, you know, whether regardless of where they are in the country, look at Oregon and say, hey, that would be a great place to ride. And the fact that you guys have so meticulously chosen the roots and handled the logistics, you sign up for this for being a week long vacation and whatever that adventure may lead lead you to.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, it's one of the, we're fortunate where we're located in the courses that we were able to develop and I can't stress to people enough how deep into the forest and how remote these roads are. When we were scouting this, uh, these courses last year, we went out the exact same week. We're planning on running the event this year and drove him off. We wanted to see things like snow pack. Uh, we wanted to see what, uh, with the bug factor was what if, see what the road conditions work. Most importantly, we wanted to see what the traffic load was on these particular roads. We had no idea. And, um, and I know some people think, I probably exaggerate this, but this is, this is absolutely the truth in a, we, it took us two full days in the truck driving 12 hours per day.
So 24 hours of driving to cover all 350 miles of the course because it might pickup truck. There's a lot of times where I'm not going a lot faster than what the cyclists would be as I'm going in negotiating these super windy gravel roads and whatnot. And when we did that entire scouting over the course of 24 hours in two days time, we literally passed a total of six vehicles on the roads out there. Of those six vehicles, three of them were forest service rigs. And it's just so it's one of those things, it's very, very unique. You know, you in a world that's so busy and so congested, there are very few areas where you can truly, uh, get lost or get out there where you're like, I mean it was to the point where you're out there driving and you're writing and you see another vehicle and you're almost excited cause you're like, wow, somebody else's actually out here. You know, I wonder what they're doing, wonder where they're going kind of thing. Cause it's such an anomaly and unique experience. But for the cyclist, it makes it so that they're not having to concentrate on anything but the scenery and the beautiful roads and they don't have to worry about just constant traffic coming yet coming their way.
Yeah. So great from a writer's perspective to be able to go to a course that was designed by someone who was super passionate about their area and really just excited to expose the rider to something new and unexpected.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I really feel that, that confidence that this is this, this ride has something for everybody. And that's, I guess that's the other thing that I really enjoy about the gravel sector is, um, and I think, I think this is exactly what cycling needed is as we see a fairly hefty decline on, on the road side of things, especially the competitive road, um, in other areas of cycling. Um, I, I, I see, I see gravel for lack of a better term, um, almost kind of being the half marathon, 10 k of the cycling world. And what I mean by that and we, our company, half of our events are cycling events. We also own and operate a number of marathons, half marathons, running events as well. We try to be fairly diversified in our portfolio. But it's one of those things where again, you'll see everything from some of the fastest providers in the country down to people that are just literally wanting to finish their total weekend warriors.
They've got a, they've got, you know, responsibilities and families and kids and, and things like that. And that's the beauty of it is, is that it's such a diverse, um, group of people that come out to enjoy this. And I honestly think that that's what the sport of cycling needs is that diversity and that experience from a wide demographic. Cause that's, that's where you get the numbers and that's where you get the most interest from. The general population is feeding it through that. And maybe gravel is the gateway to, you know, things like mountain biking or to road or something else as they venture out into some, some other disciplines and so forth. But we're just seeing such a cool movement in gravel right now. And I, I expect to see it continue to build and grow for years to come just because of the, the nature of being able to find quiet, um, venues where there's not just cars whizzing by you at 55, 60 miles an hour left and right all day or all through your rides.
Yeah. One word in your comments that just jumped out at me. It was experience. And I think that's the hallmark of a great event, is that it's just this amazing experience from soup to nuts. And that may be something that's lacking in traditional road racing, right? If you get chucked off the back, it's just simply not fun. It's not all inspiring, but it doesn't typically matter where you are at the front end of the spear or the back and a gravel grinder because the experience is there for everybody.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And that is, you can't lose on these things. I mean, typically, typically fine with the gravel that you're there with a friend or you end up joining up with some buddies and you're not trying to drop them. You're, you're literally, you know, if you're not competitive, you're, you're towards the back of the field of the pack. You're finding other folks the ride and you're experiencing this together. You're not, you're not, you know, writing and then trying to drop the guy next to you just as quickly as you can and, and so it makes it fun. It makes it fun no matter what's going on, whether you're in the points competition or, or results or you're just trying to finish that day. There's something for everybody. And that, uh, that community and camaraderie, you know, that extends, extends not just each night, but then all the way through the ride as well.
Yeah. I feel like there's something, there's a phenomenon in mountain biking where you're riding with your friends and you'd do a section that's so much fun. You stop at the bottom and you just wait for everybody to give high fives and have a good laugh. And that may not be present in road athletes' lives. They may not have sort of really been familiar with something like that. And with gravel, I think there's a component of that as well. It's like, holy crap, I can't believe we just navigated that section and we all survived. You got a big smile on your face, you regroup and then you, you cruise along together as the terrain permits.
Yeah, absolutely. And I even see, you know, I never, the folks that aren't really in it for the race components are in it more for the adventure. There are so many crazy beautiful, uh, pullouts in vistas along the way. I'm, I'm talking here, you'll be riding through the forest, like the Willamette national forest on the west side of the cascades. You'll come around some quarter and all, it'll be open. And all of a sudden, like, there's the three sisters mountains, like, Eh, they're so close. You literally think you can reach out and touch them. I mean, they're right there. And so there's, there's so many elements like that where you just, you're so much more aware of your, of your surroundings and, and, uh, and uh, and the beauty of the scenery that you, it's encompassing around you that, that people are just gonna be blown away.
And I, again, it's just some of these roads. I, I just scratch my head that they, that, you know, back in the fifties and sixties, I guess that was kind of when lumber was king, even in the resources that they had to, to build these roads. I can remember on one particular scouting trip between two communities, um, Mckinsey and Oakridge, I've been driving for about three hours scouting and I'm thinking I've, I, I'd left Mckinsey that morning and uh, it was, was headed to Oak Ridge after about three hours of like, I've gotta be getting close to Oakridge. And I'd been on, I had not seen a soul out there for three hours, not a single car, none them are gravel roads that I come crest up over this ridge and come into a four way intersection. And it was one of the few times where there's actually a legitimate sign. They're showing, you know, directions and mileage to different points. And it said, uh, 35 miles back to Mckinsey, which I had just come and I still have 30 miles to go to get to Oak Ridge. And I'm like, where in the world am I? You know, I mean there's 30 plus miles to the nearest paved road or, or any kind of civilization is it just, it just boggles the mind that there are still areas out there that are that under undeveloped and just, uh, just wild and beautiful.
Yeah. Well, I am really excited for this event. I'm really appreciative that you've put it together. I think it's going to be a great sort of landmark event for others to copy in different parts of the country. I encourage everybody to go to the website and check out the both the terrain, the video, the elevation gain and loss. This is going to be a massive adventure that is going to be something that you talk about for years to come. So Chad, thanks for telling us all about the event. I hope it's a great success and I can't wait to get up there again one of these days.
Sounds good. Great. Thank you very much for the time this morning.
A conversation with former professional cyclist and current king of gravel, Ted King. We discuss gravel riding across the country, the great community, equipment choices and the inaugural Rooted Vermont event Ted and his wife have created.
Ted King Instagram
Automatic Transcription. Please excuse the typos
Welcome to the show.
Craig. Thank you very much for having me.
I appreciate your time. And I usually start out the show by asking for people's background as a cyclist, but in this case, since the con, the topic has been well covered both on your own podcast, king of the ride and in other ones. I want to start off a little later. You're later in your career and just talk about kind of your last year as a pro and as you were looking forward to ending your road cycling career, what attracted you to gravel and how did you really get into it?
Oh Man. Um, so my final year racing professional was 2015 and I was at a team camp in about January of that year. Um, that was my 10th year racing professionally. And the, the idea of crept in my mind in January that man, like this isn't the be all end all and I'm having a blast. But I, I, I was 32 at the time and I wanted to step away from the sports, still loving the sport. Um, I was seeing a lot of people, my colleagues and contemporaries being, um, you know, finishing their career, not on the terms they wanted. They were injured and not getting a contract or just not racing to their potential. I'm not going to get contract. And so, um, I was happy that was a contract a year for me. I still love the sport and I just thought maybe this is the time to step away.
So shared that idea with a couple of friends and family members. Um, yeah, 32 was relatively young to step away on your own accord, but uh, the timing was right. So fast forward till May and then we're racing tour California and I made the announcement right then, um, you know, race on home turf and figured that would be receptive to, especially in American audience. Um, and, and truly at this point, I didn't know what I was going to be doing moving forward. I have a degree in economics from, you know, reputable school, uh, that, that sends a lot of it's econ majors out to Wall Street. Um, but you know, 15 years removed from the world of finance, that's not the kind of thing you dip your toe into and in your early mid thirties. So, um, I didn't really, I knew cycling would be part of my life in some capacity. I was at that point beginning to coach a few people. Um, but I didn't have the relationships and doing what I'm doing now, which we can get into. It was never a part of the plan.
Yeah, there's certainly wasn't, there certainly wasn't a roadmap for you. There wasn't a lot of ex professional road cyclist who had carved out the type of career you've made over the last few years.
Yeah, very, very true. Um, so it took, we had this idea, I mean I worked with my agents rocker and said, you know, when we announced it, companies beginning with Cannondale and then ceram came forward and said, you know, we, this is sort of the beginning of the ambassador world saying we know we like what you present this sport and, and you know, you have a good voice and presence in the sport of cycling and sure it is a little bit young to be stepping away. Do you have an interest in sticking and staying involved? Um, and we didn't really realize what that capacity could be. It was like, are we opening a bike shop or we are we representing these brands in some other capacity? Um, so long story short, I mean even at that point, gravel isn't really on my radar. Um, I think it comes to my mind early the next year I met coincidentally south by southwest with scram dealing with, uh, one of these open the road events where you introduced customers and people to um, to new lines of products.
So Strand was introduced in the one by, in hydro disc brakes. And, and you know, 2016 this is EATAPP era early tap. And, um, I met Rebecca Rush for the first time, who at that point was the queen of pain. Uh, and she says, Hey, Roddy, he made, she started this, taking this older sister, uh, put, you know, putting her elbow and my side kind of kind of relationship rowdy. You got to come over and do dirty Kansas, this crazy event. It's uh, it's pretty cool and you'll love the community. So I think that was my first formal gravel race, so to speak. Um, but I, I dip my toe in a lot of these sports. Uh, I mean a lot of these of these avenues, otherwise, like I did in your neck of the woods, the grasshoppers, which in 2016 they've been going for I think almost 20 years at that point.
These mixed terrain, super fun mass start at 800 person rides. Um, so those sort of things are the doing the 200 and a 100, which is this ridiculous 200 mile ride in the entire length of Vermont from the northern Canadian border to the southern Massachusetts border. Um, which takes place entirely on one road, uh, route 100 given hence its name. Um, and just sort of dipping my toe into the, into riding my bike off road quite a bit, which at that point still, it wasn't what it is. Now. Had you done mountain biking earlier in your life? Yeah, I got into the sport. My older brother was a, uh, collegiate national champion, um, and he got me into cycling in general. Uh, I was on the competitive side getting into it in college. Um, I've obviously not, obviously I grew up riding a bike and banging around town and riding my friends' house and stuff as a kid, but through my teenage years, he just basically didn't ride a bike. Um, so I got into competitive cycling and, and immediately it was more gravitating towards mountain biking. So, uh, yeah, I mean a race mountain bikes in college and a tiny bit after that, but at a decent level, not by any means any sort of national level.
Rebecca convinces you to go to this crazy race called dirty Kanza. Yeah. Um, I, I think dk at that point lived in this world that was not centric with mine. It's this a massive ride in the middle of America that it's a sort of flyover state that that mysteriously is attracting thousands upon thousands of people, whatever. I'm not terribly interested. However, given Rebecca's nudging and, and uh, I had heard of a few other former pros who are doing it and Neil surely was doing it. Um, I said, yeah, they gotta check this thing out immediately. Fell in love immediately. Got It. And understood it and, and saw this vibe that that is being alluded on. The, uh, my background, the road racing side, um, I think there's something about the math starts. There's something incredibly cool about people finishing off throughout the day. Um, so that, you know, if you're a little bit on the faster side, you can come back, finish, grab a beer and then hang out downtown commercial street and watch people in this festival atmosphere cheering and going nuts all throughout the rest of the afternoons.
Um, so from there it's spawned a whole bunch of other events. I mean, I call them 30 cans, it's like the granddaddy of of gravel, but it's, it's so cool to see how many other events are coming up. Um, you know, steamboat, gravel, SBT, G RVL. Um, and probably even in 2016, there was the early subconscious part of my mind spinning that maybe this is something I want to create. Like I love the sense of community. So fast forward to the present. Um, my wife and I have our creating our first gravel event this summer called rooted Vermont.
That's amazing. You know, stepping back for a second, I think, you know, at that time in which you are entering the sport, which coincides roughly with, with my, my own entering into the gravel scene, you start to dig in and you discover things like dirty cancer. And you're like, holy crap, these things have been around for quite some time. And I think a number of them, like, like the grasshopper, I had Miguel the organizer on and to celebrate his 20th year. Yeah. And uh, you know, they've been proving it all along that you can ride what at the time when they started were straight up road bikes off road and just have that joy of exploration that I think many people in the cycling world are now discovering as you just described.
Yeah, exactly. It's awesome. The, the reception of the industry to it. You mean for the early years? Yeah. You take your road bike and you go off road and then you're sort of tinkering and creating these frank and bikes that are exactly designed to be the right tool for the job, but you get them to work for the, for the road or path you're working on. But then fast forward to the president and the entire industry is behind that and the bigger clearances and the gear ratios that are advantageous to go up. Ridiculous. Lee Steep hills or disc brakes, um, all of these things just make it so much more receptive, which is think is also another reason why it's booming so big.
Yeah. I think for the average cyclist who's not going to get any technical support, it's the sport has evolved so much that the equipment can withstand the type of abuse that you're, you're putting onto it. Whereas, whereas before, you know, you were just running through equipment because it just wasn't suited for the terrain.
Right, exactly.
Yeah. And I imagine it was also really interesting and it sounds like he expressed this, that however awarding it is to be part of, you know, a thousand person ride that you actually care to see the last people finish.
Yeah. I understand where my reception initially was. Uh, they were like, oh, here's this, you know, who's a roadie? Like, welcome to the pro tour of gravel. Uh, I never, I never received that, which is, is honestly heartwarming from the gravel community. Um, I mean, I think they, the, the receptionist that strong and people are always interested in talking before, during, and after. Like, what equipment am I running or how am I treating the training for this? Or how do I treat any particular event given a 10 year history in the sport and, and you know, the level of professionalism that I can bring to it. Truly, when I retired from bike racing, I mean 2015 like I stopped screaming. I still love riding my bike and I love doing coffee shop rise and doing basically taking advantage of all the things that I was missing as a, as a professional roadie. So I mean even down to group rides, sure. Group rides there are valuable to get some, some quick fitness, but I would largely skip them because my training was so rote and monotonous and, and interval heavy is that it wasn't able to dig into the social side of the sport. So yeah, it's been, it has been that community that, um, that has been so heartwarming throughout my time now in this, in this growing burgeoning, blooming world and gravel.
Have you seen your sort of personal choice of equipment evolve over the last few years? I think I remember you starting out with a a Cannondale slate at one point, which is a suspended front suspension bike.
Yeah, I mean it's cool to see these, these cycles and macro cycles within the sport. I mean that that bike in 2016 that was sort of early six 50 B. Um, we also conference, um, the, the inch of travel was a huge advantage in that first year of dk. I noticed it was myself and Brian Jensen who's a, he's a former pro from jelly belly, crazy strong guy. He, the two of us are duking it out at dk and I noticed that every descent that's a little bit gnarly that front suspension is like soaking up a few seconds of time. So I'm rolling away from every descent and you don't want to ride away from a guy so far from the finish. But that technology was really helpful. Um, I've segway to to 700 seat, just being a six foot two individual and figuring that bigger are going to be an advantage over the long haul.
But already in this mini cycle that I'm talking about, you see six 50 be making a big resurgence and with the ever wider tires. Um, I mean bikes that can fit two inch wide tires are more that are quote unquote gravel bikes. I think you're going to see at a large number of bikes going at six, six 50 be a direction. Um, tires have been a huge, huge change. I mean, even, you know, three years ago, 2016, the, the number of options for four tires was limited. The tubeless technology wasn't Stephens a fracture where it is today. So that disc brakes, I mean, all of these things are, are so, uh, welcoming as a, as a consumer. I mean just, it just, it makes the writing so that much more fun. Or You spicing up your tire selection based on the course these days. Um, spicing it up.
I'm working with a company called Renee hearse, um, formerly called compass and there they have yon. Hyde is the, uh, founder of the company and chief engineer. And he comes from the, uh, he's up in the Pacific northwest where they have, he does the huge random nay type of events. So you know, many, many, many, many hour events. Um, and he is really introduced the wider tire concept to me. So you know, I'm writing a often a 40 or 44 c with tire and he and his community are used to writing 50 or more, 50 more see width. And with that you can run lower pressures. You don't need as Nabi attire or any knob it off or for a huge amount of terrain. And so he is totally introduced this concept to me of running a slick, a wide slick. It really low pressure. Um, I did that at land run with, with huge success.
I mean the rolling resistance is so low. Um, and then they also do have an absolutely killer tired with, uh, with tire called this delicate Steilacoom, um, which looks, it looks very old school nature. Um, it's just these sort of big knobs, uh, pretty symmetrically throughout the tire, but it's genius is its simplicity and that again, it has really low rolling resistance until you need to really jam and like grabbing to to the terrain below you and it has awesome grip. So I mean the, what I love about tires, how is, is I have as many whips slick as I want or this one really fast rolling grippy knobby tire. And from there you can basically ride anything. Yeah, I think that's interesting cause it's totally counter intuitive that you can take, which is effectively a wide slick and ride it almost anywhere off road.
I've been on that journey myself and it's nice and been fascinated that you can do it and then it just makes mixed terrain riding all the faster. Sure. And you're, you're in mill valley, correct Morin. So we'd write I'm a dry day and tan or even, you know, super wet day. I realize that you're coming off a very damp winter. Like Tam is designed for these tires, uh, sharp rocks. But, but you know, the stuff that you do want to soak up a bit of a, the Chunder I'm underneath you. So yeah, run runner like fat 44 47 50 and you're like riding the couch down the road.
It actually is a perfect segway into, one of the things that as always most interested in me about gravel is that it changes so dramatically depending on what part of the country you're in. And I think you are personally uniquely qualified to help me explore this because you've lived in Mill Valley and you've done a lot of the iconic events across the country. So if we look across the country and maybe we start in, start with, uh, I think in Vermont there's raspy pizza. We look at that. We look at land run 100. We look at dirty Kanza, we look at riding at in steamboat gravel, and then we look at coastal trail and Diaz urge in mill valley. If you're coming to go flat out on those particular races or rides, are you changing your equipment as you cross the country?
Um, I think also with the go the gracious support of the industry, it allows the sport to be much more accessible to the average consumer or entry level consumer or experienced consumers. So it's a pain in the butt to change tubeless tires. It's a pain in the butt to work on, uh, you know, to, to get rid of road or rub on disc brakes. Um, you don't like to change cassettes and drive trains. So here's another comparison, you, you through these events out. I came out to California in January and rode the coast ride within Gumbo. We ride from San Francisco basically down highway one all the way to la. So we extended the day, throw in an extra hundred miles. It's basically four days, 500 miles. I wrote that entire thing on these stellar Coombs, so 44 slick tires, no problems. Fast Rolling, a little bit of gravel, but you know, 99% payments.
And then I wrote the exact same bike. Sorry. My point is I want to Cannondale super x. So it's a cross bike that's so freaking efficient, yet compliant and accepting of huge tires that it can handle this, this massive fast road group pride as much as it can handle. The next week I did the first grass off for the year. Um, that one was quite a bit Chenery. Uh, it was a pretty gnarly course. There's a brand new one called low gap that Miguel put together. And so all I did was switch the wheels. Um, I had different tires on this different set of wheels, but it was the same set of zip through or threes if you're the stellar curves, it has those knobs because we had, you know, some damp, super steep, gnarly climbs to do and a sense. So I think all of the, basically it's the width, the width of attire that you can take an a bikes these days even on a road bike. Um, my, my road bike, I can fit a slightly navi 30 to see tire. You can go off road with that. Like it's, it's absurd, but it's so cool that you can pull your bike in any direction.
Yes, I totally agree with your point. I guess what I'm trying to explore, just like you know, if you bought your bike in mill valley, what would you have set it up with versus if you bought your bike in Kansas?
Zilch. No different. Um, maybe a slightly different gear ratio, but even that is, is sort of a moot point. I mean if you're in mill valley, you've got some long climbs but he got plenty of short steep ones in Kansas. You don't have extended climbs but they certainly have short, punchy ones. So that's a small to negligible difference. Um, tire selection. I mean I think people are looking for the optimally size tire and, and I have largely been trying to convince people that simply go wider. Um, I mean we were coming from traditional road racing where a decade plus ago, well over a decade ago it was 23 see tires and 25 seat tires and 28 seat hires and then 30 see tires. Um, cyclocross had such a big influence too. Were you also talking to comply with UCI rules? Where I think you can only have like a 33 it's ridiculous. Like my road tire is wider than what's permitted in the cyclocross race and I get you don't want to ride a motorcycle with a, you know, 60 [inaudible] with tire where you can just burn every corner in a UCI cross race. But let's make the sport fund accessible. And I think with this is a huge aspect to that fun side of cycling.
Absolutely. You're preaching to the choir here. I tell everybody that the bigger, the better. The on the width as far as I'm concerned. I just haven't really, I haven't really experienced the downside to having a wider tire.
Zilch. I think people, they have the hesitation that that wider is more rubber is slower and I just, I can't, I can't get behind that. I mean, uh, you know, the, the 44 c slick that are on the coaster ride, 500 miles pour days, fast moving group, it slowed me down to zero, so yup, go wide, go big.
I think that's awesome. That's good information. I appreciate you dispelling some rumors for me. Right on pleasure. Well, let's talk about some of the events that you really love. I mean, the other thing, you know, I love having course designers, which now you are a course designer for the event you and your wife were putting on. What are the elements that you're trying to achieve in the course there in Vermont, and what is the, the vibe and the experience you want people to walk away with?
Yeah, so we've been, you know, Laura and I are very lucky to have experienced so many events, um, and really hit, I guess, you know, there's virtually none that I come away from thinking like, oh, that was not good. So we're taking an already elevated playing field of like exceptional events and then trying to draw on each one of these. Um, and one thing that we are really trying to hit home is purely that this is going to be a Vermont Summer Party. Um, we're calling it mile mullet protocol. So, you know, business up front and party in the rear, um, meaning it will be competitive. It's going to be hard. Um, I think there are, there's a misconception in Vermont that yeah, we have some craggy hills and it's the northern Appalachian mountains, but it's nothing like, you know, folks who were coming from Mill Valley for example, where you have tam or Hamilton or Diablo or the Rockies.
We don't have these extended climbs. No. But collectively over the, over the 45 or 85 mile routes, like it is, uh, a nonstop relenting unrelenting day in the saddle. Um, I went out with two friends yesterday. I'm pre-rolled a good portion of the course. Um, it is, it's absolutely spectacular when we want to showcase this state. I have a strange barn fetish wear. I just love the nostalgia of barns of all types and styles. New Barns are beautiful, old barns are beautiful. Um, so we go by dozens and dozens of bars throughout the day. Um, but then one thing that I, again, that party atmosphere, like I want people to be racing for the finish in order to hang out, in order to have the community in order to have, uh, you know, the absolutely exquisite Vermont Ipa is too great barbecue and fresh corn on the cob and just showcase what, what Vermont in the summer is all about.
Are we talking about mainly sort of dirt fire roads or are you on some narrow or terrain as well?
MMM, so Vermont is cool because it has literally more gravel roads than it does paved by mileage. Um, it's um, sort of making up this number now it's pro 70 or 80% or more, probably 80% gravel come August 4th. Um, it's the, it's super, well, we have a huge variety, but there are really fast rolling buffed, basically highway of gravel. Um, where, you know, a flat tire is something that's never going to happen. Um, high speeds are very easy to attain, very undulating, up and down basically nonstop. You're doing a thousand feet every 10 miles or tiny bit more. Um, and then we do go into what Vermont calls class for roads, uh, which are definitely, you know, enters a, uh, a little bit, much more. It taps into your bike dexterity. Um, it's not pure single track. It's not like you're taking your bike off and he'd just gnarly schools the jumps. But yeah, it'll, it'll challenge you in some short stints. So, um, yeah, we got, it's got the full Monte over here.
How much climbing, how many vertical feet? We'll the 85 mile ride take riders over.
Uh, it's looking like that thousand for every 10 miles, so 8,500 feet. Okay. Um, and then I think the longest time is 15, 20 minute range. Um, prewriting yesterday was a little bit deceptive because as the snow melts, right now we're in, in the spring mud season that Vermont is renowned for. Um, so certainly will not be the case come August, but the road is sort of this soppy soggy mud. So you're moving at a fraction of the speed that you'll be moving them in dry, buffed, out gravel.
Right, right. Well that sounds awesome. I mean it's, I mean, I was excited when I heard you announced it because I assumed you were going to take everything you've learned along the, you know, dozens of events you've participated in and try to make it, uh, set the bar that high and for you and Lord, I kind of crossed over that.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean we, we, we've just seen so much great community at these events. Uh, so maple syrup will be a theme. We'll have plenty of fun and surprises out on course. Yeah. We're, we're here to show people a good time.
What other events are you excited about this year and your season?
Um, we touched a little bit on land run 100. That was a mid March, March 16th. Uh, so that was my first time going out to race in Oklahoma and Bobby went to on his crew were put on a, an amazing event there. Um, it's, it's relatively young Bobby school because he has a connection to Kansas. He has a connection to the original 30 cans of folks. So with this greater community that is gravel cycling, the folks at Dk were very helpful and to Bobby and creating his event. So you know, there are only a handful of years in and then bringing in almost 2000 people to Stillwater, Oklahoma. I mean that's, that's incredible. Um, so I had a blast there. I'm excited to go out to one called the epic one 50, which is in Missouri and late, uh, late April, first time racing the Ozarks.
So that's going to be a hoot. Um, then probably or definitely go out to Belgian waffle ride in early May, which is probably the last big set up for dirty Kanza come June one. Um, so looking to defend the title at dirty Kanza, which is going to be the most competitive year by a landslide, given the pure number of current professionals and Prorodeo teams that are showing up. So that's going to be kind of fascinating. Um, SB TGR Vl steamboat gravels on this calendar. I'm really excited about that one in steamboat Colorado. Uh, they're doing a sort of a similar thing and that, you know, it's relatively distance, 140 miles, absolutely spectacular terrain. Uh, they're on the Rockies, like steamboat in the summer is heavenly. So really looking forward to that. Um, and the first time going to international and headed to race called the rift over in Iceland in, uh, late July. Nice. So no shortage. And then, yeah, definitely very excited about rooted Vermont. I'd be remiss if I didn't say rooted vermont.com. That is August. The event is August 4th. Uh, but we're doing a whole Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you know, festival prewrite group rides. So August two through four is the full Monte.
That's awesome. It sounds you've got a great season ahead of you. Yeah, it's busy. That's for darn sure. Yeah. It's going to be interesting as you've kind of trail blazed this path for professional road athletes to see who kind of comes out of the Peloton thinking, you know, maybe I will end my career a few years earlier and go actually have some fun rather than keep plugging away.
Yeah, no, it's goofy. I mean, Ian Boswell is a friend and neighbor here in Vermont. Um, you know, he's crushing it. He's, he's one of America's best racers, the races for Katyusha and he was chatting in there tonight on text and he's like, hey man, you're like, Gary Fisher here likes the original revolutionary putting your, your flag in this field that is gravel, which I got a complete nutter kickout of. Um, Gary Fisher is on a totally different playing field that is far supersedes where I am as I dabble in gravel. But it was a very flattering comments nonetheless.
Yeah, yeah. Well, you deserve it. I think you've done a lot of great work for the sport.
Very, very kind. Thank you.
It'll be fun at the end of dirty Kanza to see some of your former colleagues in the pro Peloton, you know, potentially a completed an hour after you that because of having the disasters that are inevitable in your first dk. Yeah. And to kind of see how they feel because they're going to come across the line and it's not, they're going to be, I think, rewarded for having participated. Just like everybody is the first guy and the first woman to the last guy in the last woman, they're going to come and they're going to have a beer and they're going to have some barbecue or whatever waiting for them at the end of dirty Kanza. And I suspect a lot of them might realize that their reward for completing that race may surpass, you know, coming in 100th in a one day classic over in Europe.
Yeah, it's a, it's a huge dichotomy. I mean, it's a tough balance because in order to achieve your best, then you, you do go long stints of certain things like oh 100% sobriety and maybe you're not drinking at all in the first place through the season. So, you know, it's hard to finish a race and say, oh, I'm going to have this massive plate of barbecue and a beer on top of that. Like road tactics are drilled into their minds. So there's certain things that they're accustomed to. One, certainly being a car behind you, which yes, they're aware that there's not going to be a car. Were you guys enough? But you know, I hope, my sincere hope is that they don't play by road tactic rules. I hope they don't have a road captain, whether it's, you know, my former colleagues are the guys who are racing on the domestic proceeds.
That gravel is a leveling playing field. So everybody's dealt a certain level of block over the course of the day. If you're going to do well, you know, you have to have luck on your side. What will bother me is if luck is thrown out the window, somebody has three flat tires, but he has a teammate next to him every single time and you can go boom, boom, boom. Here's a new wheel, here's new, we'll have new wheel. So we, this, like I said, 2019 is, is the year of teams that entering gravel. Uh, there was a little bit of team tactics at play it at, uh, Atlanta, Ron. So I can't predict the future. I'm just very optimistic that gravel continues to have the, the, the friendly, wild nature that, that it always happens.
Yeah. And I think that, you know, there's an opportunity in course design to always kind of affect the ability for team tactics to really play a role. You obviously can't eliminate it entirely, especially in the long stretches of road in those Midwest events. But I was like, when race organizers throw you on a little single track, or if you really push the limits of both your technical handling skills and your equipment in such a way that that kind of creates this natural breakup of any, any packer Peloton that starts to emerge.
Yes. Yeah, 100%. That's my, my optimism echoing that.
So I guess we'll see. I'm sure everybody is a fan of the sport will be keenly looking at dirty Kanza and just seeing how it feels. You know, I'm, I'm with you. I'm supportive of everybody in anybody entering the sport, whether they're a former professional road athlete or not, uh, because the more the merrier. But, uh, I'm also with you that I love the independence and the camaraderie and I hope that never changes despite the sport and the events becoming more professionalized.
Yup, exactly.
Well, ted, I really appreciate the insight. It was great to hear from you. I, like I said, I really was excited because I feel like you have the perspective of both living in, riding out of, out of my home town and having raced across the country and across the world. So it was really great to get your insights.
Pleasure. Yeah, it is a small cycling world, so, you know, I'm, I'm hopping all over the place and hope that we can cross paths out on the bike sometime soon.
Yeah, absolutely. If not in Mill Valley, I'm, I'll be out in steamboat, so I'll make sure to peddle it together there.
Oh, nice. Perfect. That sounds great.
A conversation with Tyson Hart, Founder Civilian Bicycle Company, Portland OR.
Civilian Bicycle Company Website
Civilian Bicycle Company Instagram
Automatic Transcription, Please Excuse the typos
Tyson, welcome to the show.
Hey, thanks. Good to be here.
Right on. So it was great meeting you at Nabs uh, you know, last month and I'd love to just let the audience know a little bit more about your background as a cyclist and then we'll get into the bikes you're building out of Portland.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, BMX was pretty big back then and I just really started riding BMX bike, probably bought at a box store before there was such thing as a box store and me and my little tramp cronies would just roll around the neighborhood. I grew up in southwest Portland where there's quite a bit of trail and hill, just a few miles from downtown and actually pretty close to Alvin rose dairy, which at the time had a BMX track home to one of the, the bigger cross races in Portland. So it's, it's Kinda cool to be riding cross every fall where I kind of grew up riding BMX bike on the track and things like that. Literally set my tent up where the, where the BMX course used to be, which is, is what it is. But it's, it's pretty fun to get over there. And oddly enough, I live back in southwest Portland. I've lived kind of all over the country, you know, during my tenure, but I'm back in my original zip code and not far from that dairy again. And it's, it's been great. I really enjoy live in live in where there's a little bit of nature and uh, and, and get out easily.
Nice. It just goes to show how pervasive, what a lifestyle and lifelong sports cycling can be, which is a lot of fun.
Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, you know, uh, we talked a little bit briefly before the podcast about my dirt first philosophy. I think that's where that was born. I really just enjoy least to build trails and the blackberry bushes, you know, forested areas around, around our neighborhood and just, you know, go out and hurt ourselves every, every weekend. And I still really enjoy just getting, getting in the dirt and riding mountain bikes mostly. Um, but yeah, I, I just continue to continue to really enjoy that style riding much more so than getting out on the long, the long road rides.
And then did you get caught by their racing bug?
I have. I really love cross and I think it goes back to that I'm just feeding into just getting and being able to play in the dirt as in the bud as a, as an adult and not feel weird about it. Um, in Portland has got such a huge crossing, uh, that it is, I've been racing crossword dozen years now or more and it's, it's just a blast. I mean there's, some of the races have, you know, a thousand plus racers, um, and 5,000 spectators or so and so it really feels like a bigger of that than a bunch of angry dads out there on know weekend warriors.
And then I also, you know, I do do some, there's a short track series in Portland, which I've been doing for the last few years, which is pretty fun if it's kind of like a glorified crossway. Um, but it's kind of like my adult softball league. I used to bend up, play softball, and just go up there on Monday nights during the summer. And there's a lot of bumps out there and it's, it's been a good time, but the communities are racing community here is, is awesome. There's just a bunch of really good people and everybody is, you know, mostly out there for fun. There's definitely some guys who get pretty serious about it, but, um, it's, it's fast and furious and it's just a, it's just a really good time. Um, you know, and it's kind of any kind of find anything you wanted to be a family man and you can get up there with your family and there's some kid races and things like that where if you're, uh, you know, young, single spear, you know, history, you can get out there and drink beer all day and uh, and you know, raise some hell. So it's, it really is a little bit of everything for everybody. It's a lot of fun.
Nice. It sounds like a great scene up there. Yeah, absolutely. So how did you get into bikes as a profession?
Well, uh, most or a lot of people know I'm a fairly long Manmohan bout six, seven. So finding a bike as an adult, it was always a challenge. You know, especially in geometry has gotten a lot better in the last, you know, senior years. But, uh, you know, coming up and wanting to ride bikes, you know, my dad's and kind of actually is a reality and so I would want to ride with him and trying to find a road bike that would fit well. You know, when things just went hot and wet longer and had to then, but didn't necessarily go longer in the top tube, just having a, a stand that look like a crank. It was, you know, however many, 130 millimeters stem and trying to push the seat as far back as I could. And um, you know, mountain biking, I just felt like an eighth just hanging over these 26 inch a wheel by except the time.
Um, so that's really what sparked my interest in it. I've always been a DIY person. And so trying to get a bike that fit, um, when I first started out, um, I really thought I would catered to kind of the ends of the bell curve. The tall on the small, um, as, as you know, most fabulous would probably tell you if the niche market. And so, um, I felt like that would just be a niche within a niche. And so I decided I was going to just make custom bikes, you know, for all really trying to focus and people who did have a hard time fitting but really just wanted to build a bikes for people that love to ride.
And how did you get the basic skill set for welding and framed building?
Um, I did take a class that ubi the, uh, I took the titanium class figuring that if I could build titanium, I think I really wanted to go into this field. Um, but I figured if I could, well if they paid him successfully, I could definitely do steal from everything. All my research that I did before that. Um, and so I took the titanium class many years ago down and Ashland, Oregon. Um, and I, you know, it's a great course and get you the basics as far as welding goes. It's, it really is just practice, practice, practice. Um, you do, if you pick up some tricks here and there. While I was at the class, it was taught by Jim Kish, Kish fabrications, who've, who build some of the most beautiful titanium bikes you've ever seen. Um, and he, I kind of just kept knocking on his door until he, he led me in to, uh, kind of apprentice with him, just kind of off and on. And it's like he taught me a few more tricks just off off the, off the clock I guess. Um, and I was in the same area we wanted at the time. And so we, the friended him and he was able to just give me a few more pointers and kind of get me set up in the right direction and he really, really helped me get started.
So when did you first start operating under the civilian brand?
Um, that was in 2005 at the time. I was, uh, I was working at Bob, uh, trailers slash strollers. Um, it's, it was time. It was called Bob trailers. Um, even though in trailers are about 1% of their business. And that's what drew me to their company because, you know, it's, it was the precursor to the bike packing. It was the bike, you know, uh, cargo trailer that they developed and it's pretty cool product. Um, yeah, they went heavy into strollers and that really drove their business and now they're owned by a bright tax much is a car seat manufacturer. So they, they've uh, they've definitely gone more down that road. But, um, I started with them and, uh, I was in Boise, Idaho and I started just kind of moonlighting, uh, building frames form, you know, myself and some friends during the 29 or 29 or single speed thing when that was really kind of taken off and the writing over there and he's real, real flowy and, and Kinda mellow as far as just right outside of town.
So a lot guys that was building four is just building a single speed rigid bikes that were just super bare bones. Um, really fun to ride and just, you know, get out there and just kind of crank up and down the up and down the foothills of Boise from there. Uh, you know, I, I, I dabbled in quite a bit of different things. I definitely built, I built a little bit of everything and building, you know, stuff through county bikes. Um, two more racy road bikes. Um, but I again, I gravitate towards there and, uh, so really mountain bikes and cross bikes is where I've really tried to tried to hang my hat and now, um, you know, that that gravel thing, uh, has taken off. And so, um, you know, tweaking my geometry and getting out in the gravel and understanding what that really means and being in that, being on the, on those roads for a long time has helped me develop, you know, my, my, my gravel bike,
the journey you've been on with civilian is not the typical small frame builder journey from 2005 to now. What, what went on in the middle there?
Not at all. Like I said, I was moonlighting, I guess they call it, the kids call it a side hustle now, um, at, at Bob and, and that was a great company to work for. Um, but I wanted to, I didn't, I didn't necessarily see a kind of, uh, a path for what I, my ambition and what I wanted to do there. So, um, I jumped ship and 2005, and I'm kind of hung my shingle and went for it. Uh, and you know, had a couple of good years. I was really getting out there. I was starting to starting to get a little bit of traction before the kind of financial, um, uh, the recession hit in 2008. So after that I struggled for a couple of years or a year and a half or so. I just wasn't quite, and getting the orders I needed to sustain myself and kind of started to look for other opportunities.
And having been above Bob, I've been overseas, I'd understood Asian production and what that looks like. And in fact, the owner of Bob came from the bike industry. Um, so I was in, I was doing a lot of factories that made components in different things for four bike industry and I that led me to applying for a job@thatcountry.com just kind of haphazardly. I was like, I ski too. So I was like, oh, they didn't park city. That sounds pretty cool. I applied for a buyer position with them and a recruiter called me up like the next day and was, uh, asked me if I'd be interested in a brand manager for private label, uh, bike division that they had. They had a parts and accessories brand under there, a house brands called cutter, which was mostly parts and accessories, but they did put their sticker on a fixie and brought in a, I dunno, a couple of hundred of them and they sold them out of there like $500 fixie bikes, a super bare bones.
So they, um, they really understood power of kind of house brand. And, uh, my manager at the time came from Rei. And so they out, you know, a huge house brands, private label business. And He, uh, he and I during the discussion or during the interviewing process beside it or talked about possibly bringing under civilian underneath the back country, um, banner as a house brand, we could tell the story of a frame builder who wants to, uh, wants to put more asses in the seats and um, you know, develop, develop a number of bikes. You know, we weren't price point bike, but we were certainly a competitively priced by, um, you know, I went after when, uh, bikes that I felt like, um, lending themselves to steal because of the brand heritage, willing to, to stick with steel. So we did some cross bikes, um, a couple of 29 and mountain bikes and then some support of the bikes because they had so much success with that. Uh, first urban bike.
It's such a unique story. I can't imagine, or I certainly haven't heard of any other frame builder who's gone through that same journey to take the brand in house somewhere and start producing it overseas at that point. Uh, it's really interesting.
Yeah. And it was, it was, uh, I think it's just because I had been over there. My manager at the time had the confidence that I could do it and I, and I did have some connections that I brought to the table. And so it was kind of a perfect storm of what I was doing at the time and the experience that I did gain at Bob, um, for, for product management and getting in and understanding what it really looks like to, um, to produce things in Asia. Um, that said, it was, uh, it was all, it's always a struggle. Um, you know, there's certain minimums you have to meet, there's certain, um, um, specs you have to, uh, work within some confines that you have to work within. And, and so I'm really proud of the bike that I've built while I was producing an Asia.
Um, but I also never was satisfied with them. Um, it was, it was a lot of, a lot of fun and a lot of work, but it was also just a lot of compromise. Um, and so again, I'm really proud of those, but I was always wanted to do more. Um, and you know, there was a lot of things that I was, you know, a lot of roads I was going down proposing to, to my boss about what, where I thought the brand could go or what I thought we could do. Um, and so ultimately, um, it was, it was a series of compromises, but again, very proud of what, uh, what I built over there.
How did the brand end up spinning out at the end?
So, uh, during that time, um, they had also, or right after I came on, they were in discussion with competitive cyclist, which was another online small, you know, that's definitely more high end online re Harvie Taylor I guess. And so they had bought competitive, um, again, they, they understood that um, their customers also ruined bikes. You know, at the time, back country was really, uh, a camping and skiing and outdoor brand or retailer. Right. And they have since gone into a lot more, uh, just, you know, bikes and, and fishing and things like that, this other, other disciplines within that space. Um, so they, they foresaw that there, there were also cyclists, so they wanted to get kind of, you know, try to get that year round, how summer. So they had bought, they had worked out to buy a competitive cyclist and bring that team on board.
And quite honestly, I think what happened was, again, steal bikes, um, you know, affordable, not cheap, but affordable steal bikes wasn't necessarily where they're, where they felt uncomfortable. They really were a lot more about, and like super high ends, you know, what I call speed in Spandex, you know, kind of bikes. So they just didn't, I don't, I just don't think it'd be end of the day they understood the brand and, and what I was trying to do that, and coupled with a couple other business decisions, um, that you know, happened at the executive level, they, uh, cut the whole private label, the pro program. So they cut my team and then they also cry my manager's team who was doing all the outdoor label stuff, so they were doing outerwear and gloves and puffy jackets and all that kind of stuff. So they ended up cutting both of our teams kind of, uh, of at once.
And I was able to buy the brand back mostly by just kind of giving up a little bit of my royalty package than I had negotiated a initially with them. And so they're going to get the brand back. Also a negotiated down buying another couple of containers of cross and mountain bikes. So that was the good news. I was able to, um, you know, have a couple pos to continue to address overseas. And I ended up continuing to work with by Taiwan, um, manufacturer and get a couple more shipments of bikes out. But at that point I was basically a one man wolf pack in it. Um, and trying to run this business, trying to, um, you know, order order containers, worth of bikes as well as build out a sales channel beyond back country. Not calm cause I just, I had a feeling that our relationship wasn't going to last. And, um, ultimately it took costs a lot of money to fill a container full of bikes.
Yeah. I can only imagine.
Yeah. I just couldn't quite get to a place where I was sustainable and it was starting to burn me out quite a bit. And again, the, uh, the quality of the bikes was never what I, what I want to be. So it got to a place where, you know, in my personal life it changed who I was married and um, you know, moving into different direction. And so, um, kind of started, you know, thinking about things like dental plans and health insurance and that kind of thing. Um, so I ended up, uh, after a little, a a good run, but, um, with another batch of, of, um, Taiwanese made by cause, uh, and I, and that was able to develop a small sales channel, but it just wasn't enough. I'm very passionate, small shops around the country. I was able to get into a handful of them and, um, but you know, they're, they're passionate cyclist and passionate cyclist aren't always the best, um, you know, business owners and business people. So, um, struggle to kind of keep them, uh, buying, uh, buying the bikes and being able to, to buy in early and that kind of thing. So, um, between that and then again, just happened to do the half a compromise so much. I just felt like it was a time for a break, take a little break,
kind of got your head strain, figured out what you wanted to do and be as a brand.
Yeah, it took a little break. Um, I, um, uh, you know, I was still building a bike here. They're just for myself or a friend or something. Um, but it would not welding on, on a regular basis. And so, you know, obviously we'll have that back country. I was, I was, you know, if that's jockey, um, I was managing the Burnham, both that brand and the cutter brand. I was, you know, more of like a product and a brand manager or even just like a general manager for, you know, depending on what you call it for, for the civilian and cut our brands underneath the back Pantry, um, umbrella and a after, you know, do it in, which was what I was kind of doing once I left there to the first few years. And then, um, again, just not being able to, you know, robbing Peter to pay Paul every month just made it, made it kind of a struggle.
So I ended up, yeah, I've just taken it down and thought I getting burned out on, on bikes too. Um, but like it was, I was not enjoying riding and not enjoying, you know, racing, riding, doing any of those things with the bikes. So I actually just took a break from the industry all together. Um, and I had a couple of jobs outside of the industry. Um, one was in the small startup in the outdoor space and one was in the industrial tooling space. Uh, and you know, both of them, especially the industrial tooling company, I just knew like the day I just knew it wasn't the right fit. And after a year, um, I think both parties knew it wasn't a right fit. And so a part of the way, um, with them, meanwhile, like that flavor and that and that fire for some writing and kind of started, started taking over again.
I started commuting while I was at that company and, and, uh, just getting out with friends a little bit more, again, being able to ride just for the fun of it. Um, and once I left that, that job, I started thinking about what it, what it would take to really make a, a US brand successful. And what, what, what it looks like to build something based on all the knowledge that I have of working overseas of, um, you know, working with us, manufacturing, Asian manufacturing, um, what the industry, uh, it looks like how much things have changed with the likes of have a back country, dotcom or other retailers, even Amazon, um, and uh, you know, where civilian could fit within that, within that world. Um, start having conversations with some folks in Portland about, um, you know, what the capacity is for building and kind of small band of builders, um, that are kind of on hold for building some small batch by X.
Right now I'm doing small batches of like two and three. When I, when I get an order, um, I might build, you know, I get an order for a cross bike, I'll, I'll build like, uh, you know, maybe another one in a popular size and try to have it kind of ready to go. So someone has to do is pick the parts and the paint and then, uh, and then, you know, it gets delivered pretty quickly if someone does want custom. Um, that's, that's an option and we'll do that as well. But just trying to right now you don't get offered just, uh, you know, a purpose bill, you know, what I called dirtt first bike that can, um, that's kind of ready to go and rip when you are. So, um, and you know, and also being able to control about the specs a little bit more and also add some of those details, um, that you just can't do in Asia. Um, really kind of excited me. Uh, so, uh, that's where I am now.
That was one of the things that kind of dirt first philosophy that was articulated on your website and then your booth at nab is one of the things that drew me in because I think the grapple market, you've got a lot of road plus markets, the road plus bikes, which are kind of just giving slightly wider tires and disc brakes and allowing people to go off road and it's very attractive to someone interested in, uh, you know, expanding their road riding loops. But the dirt first philosophy, I know you come it from a radically different perspective. You're, you're sort of talking about like, this bike is built to go off road, so can you talk about some of the attributes of your flying tramp model
can get out there? I just enjoy being away from the hustle and bustle of the city. So I wrote a cross bike as my main by quote unquote road bike for years, smaller, maybe a file and ride that is a commuter bike or just as my training bike and then swap it out to Nabis it and ride it for during the race season. So I've always been a writer. I've always wanted to get off and there's a off the main, the main road in doing that and getting out and ride a little bit more as this thing started to take, take hold in the last however many years I found myself on longer rides. You know, a lot of it was kind of to your point, like, oh, just take this little gravel roads connect to that other road. So, you know, having a found trends would, was a great way to do that.
But, um, you know, we have so many fire, uh, fire roads and forest service roads around here and has, um, groups started going out and I started joining them. I understood that, you know, uh, my aggressive kind of cyclocross geometry just wasn't a right bike for that, um, ride. And I also started paying attention as a, as a product guy, I started paying attention to what other people are writing and um, you know, not everybody could have equivalent bikes and so you'd see a lot of guys more and more showing up with them with a bike that could take a little more, uh, tire clearance or run to tire sizes like a 760, 50. And again, that has just kept getting wider and wider and you know, and then you'd see some of the monster cross things with the 2.2 or 2.0 tire on them.
So it was really interesting to just kind of watch that evolution and keep that. So, in doing so I, I, I tweaked the geometry, um, where, you know, I got the rider, I tried to get the rider upright a little bit more just for that long day in the saddle, a little bit slacker geometry to take up the bumps into, to be more comfortable for those, for those long days in the saddle. And then I also started working on figuring out the tire and the optimal tire size. Um, I wrote and I built up a crazy, uh, you know, Monster Cross bike and I rode out on a few a few rides and n I a n m. Dot. Light's still come, come into the, uh, into the fold someday. But I think what I built with the flying tramp, which is, you know, my gravel specific, a bike really tries to answer as many questions or you know, that writer might have when getting out on the road and really optimize the, it continued it kind of to what ever kind of riding they're going to if they have the, you know, the time and the tire selection to do so.
But it can take a pretty, a pretty large 2.0 50 tire and up to a 42, um, uh, 700 tire. So just kind of going down that road, I felt like that was again just kind of off, tried to optimize what I felt I saw out there with, um, with what people were doing
and what type of tube center using on that bike.
Generally I use Columbus' life, uh, you know, and if it's a bigger bike, I might have to tune that a little bit. Uh, I've worked a lot with Columbus and I really, I really like it. I like the, I like what they offer as a, as a selection of tubes and I feel like that life, uh, life families really optimizes the kind of compliance that you want, but also had, it's snappy enough to get up out of the saddle and crank up like a steep, steep grade if you needed to.
Gotcha. And when customers are ordering a bike from you, what are the choices they're making?
Um, like I said, right now I offer stock sizing. Um, but like I said, I can't do presto. You know, generally what I ended up doing it starting at a stock and then tweaking it from there unless their anatomy is really a really unique. And then there I have, uh, two different bills on my site. I have a standard and a prime and I tried again to offer like a, a very reasonably priced, custom built bike. Um, and then something a little bit nicer. Again, understanding that people aren't going to want whatever they're they want. And looking cups to custom bikes, I felt like this was a good place to start. So by all means, those, you know, bikes aren't set in stone and there's a few upgrades to those two models that you can, that you can add on.
And then do you have some difference, different finishing options as well?
Yeah. Getting to that. So then I'd have a kind of a standard color and you get to pick, um, our standard, uh, you know, color way and you can pick which, you know, three colors you want on there and it's, it's, um, and that's, uh, you know, with the painted to match as the fork on there. So you can kind of go, I generally will work with customer on, on colors, a lot of ideas and a lot of them will have maybe one pantone that they want a certain color and then, you know, I might work with them on some complimentary. But yeah, again, that's a three color, you know, painted to match for, um, you know, basic design. Obviously, again, custom bikes or custom bikes. So if you have some crazy color scheme you want, we can do that. And I work real closely with my, with my painter and he can do just about anything. So, um, you know that again, customers, if you want to customize everything, we customize everything.
Well, there's certainly some great examples of both the quality of the craftsmanship, more of your story and some of the great paint jobs. On your website, so I'll put a link to that in the show notes. If people want to get in touch with you, what's the best means for them to do that?
Yeah, just Tyson at Ryde, CV l. N. Dot.
Awesome. The Tyson. Thanks for the overview and thanks for continuing to plug away on the civilian brand. I really liked your work at nabs and a wish you the best of success.
Thanks. I appreciate your time.