The Gravel Ride. A cycling podcast

This week we sit down with cycling travel industry veteran, Brad Sauber to discuss the new Alaskan Gravel Expedition trip from Raid Cycling. This point to point trip brings gravel cyclists to some of the most remote terrain in the United States for an incredibly memorable ride. Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (use promo code: TheGravelRide for free HRM) Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show. We welcome Brad. Sobber from raid cycling to the broadcast. Brad is a veteran of the cycling industry. Having worked for a number of cycling travel businesses over the last few decades. Raid cycling focuses on putting together the most memorable trips to the most memorable destinations. You can imagine. When we get into this Alaskan gravel expedition that we're talking about on today's episode, I encourage you to augment your listening by visiting the raid cycling.cc website. To see some of the pictures as most of us can imagine, Alaska is a vast, vast wilderness. At a scale. That's really hard to describe. In an audio podcast. So I encourage you to, to take a look at the pictures, listen to the description of this particular trip, because it's absolutely amazing. Nice. Dais point to point in the Alaskan wilderness. Culminating with a prop plane trip back to your original starting point, the trip sounds absolutely spectacular. And I think you'll see from Brad's description, his whole emo in this cycling travel world has been to create once in a lifetime bucket list trips for his clients. I'm super excited to introduce you to red cycling in this broadcast today. I'm super excited to introduce you to Brad and raid cycling today. Before we jump in, I need to thank this week. Sponsor hammerhead and the hammerhead crew to bicycle computer. As I've become accustomed to hammerhead just recently sent another update to my career, to computer. They do this, I think every two weeks so they can keep you. In the latest and greatest technology that their minds over there can come up with. I noted in this week's edition, they're adding e-bike battery monitoring to one of the screens that optional screen for you. I've got an E gravel bike, supposedly on the way for testing. So I'm excited to integrate that directly into my hammer, head, head unit. So I will know when the battery is about to die. As you guys probably know hammerhead crew too, is the most advanced GPS cycling computer available today. It's got industry leading mapping navigation and routing capabilities. That set it apart from other GPS options, it's got free global maps and points of interest included like cafes and campsites. So you can explore with confidence with on the go flexibility. I recall in my recent trip to Jarana Spain, that before I left, I downloaded the maps of Spain and I was able to use the computer. Just as if it was in my local terrain here in California. I recently ran into a cycling neighbor of mine who was telling me about a new route that he had developed. That was a mixed terrain route through some local trails that I hadn't. Really explored that much. So I went over to Strava, found the route on his profile, downloaded it and saved it. I'm going to put that directly onto my career too, so I can go out there and ride with confidence. You know, if you're like me, anytime you actually have to navigate, when think about the navigation, it really slows down the overall route. So having those cues preloaded into my career too, is going to make that ride a lot more enjoyable. Right now our listeners can get a free heart rate monitor with purchase of a hammerhead crew to just visit hammerhead.io right now and use the promo code, the gravel ride. At checkout today, this is an exclusive offer for our listeners. So don't forget the promo code, the gravel ride. You'll get that free heart rate monitor with purchase of your career. To go to hammerhead IO today, add both items to your cart and use that promo code. Without business behind us. Let's jump right into that conversation with Brad, from raid cycling. [00:04:26] Craig Dalton: Brad, welcome to the show. [00:04:27] Brad Sauber: Hey, thanks Craig. It's great. Uh, great to be here. Looking forward to the [00:04:30] Craig Dalton: chat. Yeah, good to see you again. I appreciate you reaching out and uh, I love what I'm seeing on this Alaska gravel trip. So, we'll, we'll get into that in a minute, but we always start out with learning a little bit about your

What are the stories and motivations behind our local bike shops and those who run them? In this first of a series of conversations we'll be having on this topic, Katya Morzhueva joins Randall to share how she went from growing up in Siberia, to traveling the world (including an eventful stint in China), to founding Cool Cat Cycles and leading group rides in her chosen home of Katy, Texas. Katya's is a story of curiousity, compassion, resiliency, and service to others, and is exemplary of transformative energy that the best shops bring to their local communities. Visit Katya and Cool Cat Cycles at 22010 Westheimer Pkwy in Katy, TX. Episode Sponsor: Dynamic Cyclist (code THEGRAVELRIDE for 15% off) Web: www.coolcatcycles.com Instagram: @coolcatcycles Facebook: @coolcatcycles Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the broadcast, I'm going to hand the microphone over to my co-host Randall Jacobs. Who's got Katia Morris waver from cool cat cycles in Katy, Texas on the show to talk about the community she's building around the shop and leading group rides in her hometown. Before we jump in, I need to thank this week. Sponsor, dynamic cyclist. As you know, I've been working with a dynamic cyclist stretching routines for a couple of months now working on increasing my mobility and support of strengthening my lower back. Dynamic cyclist has hundreds of cycling, specific stretching routines for you to work through, including some very specific injury prevention routines. I myself am working on the low back injury prevention routine right now. The team at dynamic cyclists has a free trial for all their programs. So head on over to dynamic cyclists.com and check out what they have to offer. Additionally for podcast listeners using the code, the gravel ride. You'll get 15% off all programs. They have both a monthly membership model as well as an inexpensive annual model to cover all your stretching. And strength training needs again, that's dynamic cyclists.com and the coupon code, the gravel ride. Would that business behind us? Let's hand the microphone off to my co-host Randall Jacobs. [00:01:52] Randall: What are the stories behind our local bike shops and those who run them. In the first of a series of conversations we'll be having on this topic, Katia Morzhueva joins me to share how she went from growing up in Siberia, to traveling the world, including an eventful stint in China that we'll get into in a moment, to founding Cool Cat Cycles and leading group rides in your chosen home of Katy, Texas. Katia is a story of curiosity, compassion, resiliency, and service to others, and is exemplary of the transformative energy that the best shops bring to their local communities. We dive right in here. So I hope you enjoyed the conversation. And now we bring to you Katia Morzhueva. [00:02:28] Randall: Do you have like a meditation practice [00:02:30] katya: uh, you know, we can talk about this a little bit more if we start talking about my injury in China. Cuz when you are alone with a broken back, nobody to talk to because you don't speak the language. All you can do is meditate. You know, I, in a, in a irony, like black humor sort of way, a good way to lose weight and become a Buddhist is break a back in a foreign country. [00:03:00] Randall: I'm fortunate in that I had a somewhat parallel experience of breaking my neck in China, I was a bike touring through Hine Island in the South China Sea, but I had zero dislocation. I just ripped a process off a C3 through C five and I was in a neck brace, for a few days and then I saw a specialist and they're like, yeah, you're probably more likely to injure yourself due to muscle atrophy than, to aggravate the injury. And so I was back on my bike in two weeks, which is a very different thing. [00:03:29] katya: Yes, [00:03:29] Randall: so I had version of that Yeah. I'm seeing you shared this picture of your spine with a bunch of rods and pins holding what looks like some of your upper lumbar, [00:03:42] katya: Five vertebrae. Yeah, it's T 12 to T nine. [00:03:47] Randall: Yeah [00:03:48] katya: right. Um, yeah, so I have two plates and 10 screws they're holding five vertu bread together, but it's only one that shattered. So one, actually, the piece fell off and they went in to connect T 12 to 10 and to nine, but then, um, a T 11 to 10. But then the, he was not happy with the result of the surgery, my surgeon. he came back and he said, you want

This week we sit down with Patrick Engleman founder of the Lu Lacko Wyco Hundo gravel event in Pennsylvania. In its 10th running this year, LLWH is a staple of the Pennsylvania gravel scene. Episode sponsor: Athletic Greens Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. [00:00:28] Craig Dalton: This week on the show. We welcome Patrick angle. Then from Lou LACO Waco. Hundo. It's a real tongue twister of an event. Out in Pennsylvania. That's been going on for 11 years. This is the 10th edition as Patrick will describe another one of those great events. That's been flying a little bit under the radar. Unless you lived in that Pennsylvania and mid Atlantic area where it's on everybody's to do list. I wanted to get you guys to know this event because it's another one of those great events. That's started by someone who just loves the community that they ride in. And wanted to highlight it and bring friends. Patrick's done a great job of growing the event and talk to anybody in that region. And they'll definitely reference some of the memorable experiences. They've had over the years with this event. Before we jump in, I need to thank this week. Sponsor athletic greens. Athletic greens and their product. AIG one has pioneered the category of functional health. Agg one replaces key health products. All in one simple scoop. As I've mentioned before, my daily routine is mixing a scoop of ag one with some ice. Shaking it up and taking it down. What I love about this product is is it replaces key health products with one simple scoop AIG one combines nine health products working together as one, replacing your multivitamin multimineral pre and probiotics immunity support and more, this means AIG one does more for your body, saves you time and money and confusion compared to taking multiple unique products. I've admitted it before and I'll admit it again. I'm not the best at covering my nutritional basis, which is why AIG one has been part of my routine for five plus years. At this point. With the highest quality ingredients aIG one is made up of 75 high quality vitamins minerals, and whole food source, nutrients, and manufactured with the strictest quality standards. Okay. It's even N S F certified for sport. A robust certification process that involves ingredient and finish batch testing of AGU 180 1 tastes great and feels even better. I know for me, it's just that nutritional guarantee. 81 tastes great and makes me feel even better. If you're interested in checking ag one out, go check out athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. They're going to give podcasts listeners a free one-year supply of vitamin D. As well as five free travel packs with your purchase. Remember that URL is athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. . Would that important business out of the way, let's jump right into my conversation with Patrick. [00:03:14] Craig Dalton: Patrick, welcome to the show. Oh, thanks for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation. I'm gonna make my attempt at pronouncing the event name first, and I'm just gonna take my best guess. Okay. Try it. Lulac Waco [00:03:28] Patrick Engleman: Hyundai. That's kill, you're killing it for, especially for a west coaster. Uh, that was perfect. [00:03:32] Craig Dalton: Um, I don't think I could do it fast. It took me, I like trained myself several times prior to hitting record to say that [00:03:39] Patrick Engleman: it's all part of the. Right is how many times you have to repeat it to say it. And also it has been shortened to lulac, uh, just because it's much easier for folks. But it's the lulac, uh, it's the Luzerne, Lakana and Wyoming counties and it's a hundred miles. Uh, so that's kind of where it started was the three counties that we ride through and I just kind of pulled from there. And started the name, and actually I started the, I got the name if you wanna know this a little bit. Um, I was resting at the top of a long climb and there happened to be carvings of Native Americans, like wood carvings of Native Americans on, I guess someone's driveway. And there were three of them. And part of the genesis of this was I, I looked out of the over the valley and said, what would they have? Of what I'm seeing right now and, and kind of thought about them as three separate people and them thinking about their account, like represented at that time and you know, all these other stuff. So that's kind of where the name came from and, you know, my little inspiration p

This week we have gravel racer, Ian Lopez de San Roman in the studio to talk about his upcoming season. At 19 years old, Ian will be the youngest competitor in the Life Time Grand Prix. With early season results in the Grasshopper series and Rockcobbler, Ian is certainly an athlete to watch. Episode Sponsor: Logos Components Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show. I want to introduce you to ian Lopez de Santa Ramon. A 19 year old from Sonoma county here in Northern California, who got accepted to participate as a professional athlete in the lifetime grand Prix series in 2023. As you'll see this young athlete found his way to the bike. Not super early and didn't see remarkable results as a junior in his own words. But yet over the last few years, he's really found his stride cutting his teeth, both on the grasshopper series. Here in Northern California, as well as impressing Michael Marks when participating in the Belgian waffle ride series. As we enter the 2023 grand Prix. I thought we'd take a chance and get to know Ian. I managed to catch the Inn on his way, home from a bike fit and Monterey. And so how did over in the studio for quick conversation? Before we jump in, I need to thank this week. Sponsor logos components. You may recall my episode with my co-host Randall Jacobs around the launch of logos components and the three new sets of carbon wheels that they're bringing to market. At the end of 2020. They're 29 or wheelset received . Bike packing dot comes gear of the year award, which is pretty amazing. We've talked about the many details you need to look through and think about when purchasing a carbon wheel set. And I encourage you to reference that episode, whether you're looking at the logos wheel sets or something else. Randall does an excellent job of breaking down from the rim to the hub, to the spokes, all the things you should be considering and looking at. As you match. Which wheel set is going to be right for the type of writing you do. If you're considering getting a new carbon wheelset this year, I encourage you to go check out logos components.com. I'll put that link in the show notes. Logos offers three different wheel sizes, 700 C six 50 B and 20 Niner. I personally am rocking the six 50 bees out of my garage. It's got an internal width of 28 millimeters. So you get that nice kind of C shape. When you're running larger volume tires. Again, check them out at logos components. Dot com when you have a second. With that said let's dive right into my conversation with Ian. [00:02:48] Craig Dalton: Ian, welcome to the studio. [00:02:50] Ian Lopez de San Roman: Thanks for making it happen. It was a little last minute. [00:02:53] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Studio is a euphemism for the shed office in my backyard, but I appreciate you coming over and it was actually pretty cool to see your bikes getting out of the car. [00:03:03] Ian Lopez de San Roman: Yeah. You got a, you got a sweet set up here. [00:03:05] Craig Dalton: It was a shed that held the bikes and then we hired a contractor to drywall and put it all together. So it's kind of a covid investment, so I could have an [00:03:12] Ian Lopez de San Roman: office at home. Nice. It looks, it looks legit. It looks well made, [00:03:16] Craig Dalton: and I got my bikes on the wall, so That's all right. [00:03:19] Ian Lopez de San Roman: Something to look at. [00:03:19] Craig Dalton: So, you're actually just coming off competing at low gap, right? In one of the grasshoppers. Yep. How'd that go yesterday? [00:03:27] Ian Lopez de San Roman: I made a lot of mistakes. Yeah, let's talk about it a little bit. Yeah. So I went into the race and I was like, , I kind of really wanna win this race. It's kind of like my home race and I know Pete's on good form and everybody there is like really fast. So I just decided like I, I'm not usually not nervous for races, but I was actually nervous for low gap, which is weird. So I slept kind of weird. Started the race, , it was like super hot on the first climb. And then I, I was thinking about what I did the night before the race. Mid race for some reason. And then I was like, dude, I didn't charge my shifting. And then I look back and I see the blinking red light on the axis and I'm like, dude, really? You forgot to charge your shifting. And so I think it was like halfway through the race I roll up to the aid station. So the shifting died on this like cement climb and th

This week we sit down with Carlos Perez, founder of Bike Monkey to discuss the upcoming 2023 Truckee Tahoe Gravel event. We dig into why Truckee Tahoe is such an amazing area for gravel riding and Carlos' definition of influencers. Truckee Tahoe Gravel Episode Sponsor: Dynamic Cyclist (Code: TheGravelRide 15% off) Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show, I'm thrilled to have Carlos Perez talking about Truckee Tahoe, gravel. Carlos is the founder of bike monkey. If you live in California or maybe in the surrounding area, undoubtedly, you've done a bike monkey event. Carlos and his team have produced Levi's Gran Fondo bogs fish rock hammer road, rally. Wente the list goes on and on of the events that Carlos has had a hand in producing. I've had a number of friends that have done the Truckee Tahoe gravel event in the past and had a great time. So I'm finally got around to pinning Carlos down and getting him on the podcast to talk about this year's event. They've made a couple changes to the event, which I wanted to have an opportunity for him to highlight, but all in all, it's just one of those events here in Northern California, that is well-regarded from an athlete's perspective. It's certainly taking place in a beautiful area. We'll get into why Tahoe is so special for cyclists and why it's a region that you can bring the whole family to. On that point, we did also dig into when Carlos and his team create events. They think about influencers, but not influencers. In terms of someone on Tik, TOK or Instagram, they think about influencers from the perspective of the family that might be joining you, whether it's your husband or your wife, joining you while you go out and ride, it's always great to have a location where the whole family can enjoy the event and have an event organizer. Who's thinking about that broader community. Versus just simply the athletes themselves. So I'm excited for you to hear about the Truckee Tahoe gravel event. But before we jump in, I want to thank this week sponsor. Dynamic cyclist. If you scroll back your feed to episode 1 54, you can hear my interview with Sarah from dynamic cyclist. Dynamic cyclist is a video based mobility, strength and injury prevention program designed specifically for cyclists. I am probably about 30, 35 episodes into my stretching routine and my low back injury prevention routine. My low back has been a big issue for me the last couple years, and probably the most gating feature of my body in terms of how long and how hard I can ride. So this winter, I was definitely determined to do the thing we all should be doing, which is stretching. I've struggled, even though I've known the stretches that I need to do. I frankly, struggled to fit it in and having dynamic cyclist in my life and the 15 to 20 minute long routines available for me each night. Has gotten me focused on something easy. That I can do. And I found it really easy to follow, and I've been impressed in terms of the different tweaks and orientations that they've encouraged me to do throughout the routines to get to different parts of my muscles. And I'm very excited about this being part of my daily routine, because I think we all know that stretching. Is the number one way in which we can prevent injuries and make sure we're taking care of our bodies. But anyway, I encourage you to check out dynamic cyclists. They have a seven day free trial. If it looks like a fit for you, use the code, the gravel ride, and you're going to get 15% off the already affordable rates. To check it out, just head on over to dynamics, cyclists.com. With that said, let's jump right into my interview with Carlos. [00:04:10] Craig Dalton: Carlos, welcome to the show. [00:04:12] Carlos Perez: Thanks, Craig. Happy to [00:04:13] Craig Dalton: Good. Yeah, good to see you. It took us a little while to get this scheduled, but I'm stoked to finally have you and, and get you on to talk about the Truckee Tahoe Gravel event. [00:04:22] Carlos Perez: Yeah, it can be a little hard to pin me down sometimes, so I'm glad that we made it work. [00:04:27] Craig Dalton: It sounds like it's especially hard to pin you down in the spring and summer months cuz with Bike Monkey you're producing events all over California and also outside of the. [00:04:38] Carlos Perez: Yeah. Yeah, our spring's very busy. [00:04:41] Craig Dalton: Let's take a step back before we kind of jump into Bike Monkey and i

This week, Randall connects with Anne-Marije Rook, North American Editor at Cycling Weekly with an exploration of how she got into cycling and from there into cycling journalism, with fun tangents into competitive cycling, exploding e-bikes, and a bit of gear nerdy. Episdoe Sponsor: Athletic Greens Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the broadcast, I'm handing the microphone off over to my co-host Randall Jacobs. Who's got an Mariah Rook on the broadcast. She's the north American editor at cycling weekly randall will take us on an exploration on how she got into cycling. And from there into cycling journalism, with fun tangents, into competitive cycling. Exploring e-bikes and a bit of the gear nerdery that Randall is famous for. Before we jump in and hand that microphone off to Randall. I do need to thank this week. Sponsor athletic greens. Athletic greens and AIG. One is a comprehensive daily nutrition made from simple, powerful ingredients. It's made up of 75 high quality, whole food sourced ingredients. Carefully curated to nourish all the body's systems holistically. As many of you know, I've been an athletic greens user for many, many years, predating the podcast. So I've been super stoked that athletic greens has been a big partner for what I do The key to ag one is that it replaces key health products in one simple scoop. AIG one combines nine health products working together as one, replacing your multivitamin. Multimineral. Pre and probiotics. Immunity support and more, that means ag one does more for your body and saves you time, money and confusion compared to taking multiple unique products. And that is a hundred percent key for me. I do one scoop in the morning, mixed up with a little bit of ice, and I feel like I've got some of my nutritional basis started before I've even begun the day. If you're interested in learning more about athletic greens, go to www.athleticgreens.com/the gravel ride. For podcast listeners, our friends at athletic greens have given us a free year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs. If you ordered today. Simply visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride to get your age. The one on the way today. With that said i'm going to hand over the microphone to my co-host randall jacobs [00:02:35] Randall R. Jacobs: Let's talk about how you got into this particular field. How did you end up as a cycling journalist? [00:02:42] Anne-Marije Rook: Sure. Yeah. So I was actually, uh, a real journalist before, um, not that second journalist aren't real journalists, but, uh, I did a lot heavier topics, um, you know, worked at newspapers, just straight up outta college, became a newspaper journalist, and then, , uh, at some point, I think I was 22, I started racing bikes myself, and when I did, I, I was looking for content and I realized there wasn't a lot of women's seconding content coming out of the us. So I started kind of dabbling with that on the side. And, uh, then started riding for some different publications and eventually seconding tips reached out and were like, Let's do something. So we founded Ella Cycling Tips, which was the, the women's side of Cycling Tips. And then, um, yeah, just stayed in the field. I quit my day job and started doing cycling journalism while still racing, and I've been doing it ever since, going on 10, 11 years now. [00:03:39] Randall R. Jacobs: and was your educational background in writing in journalism specifically? [00:03:44] Anne-Marije Rook: Yeah, I did, uh, journalism, German and French. So interestingly enough I get to use all of that nowadays [00:03:51] Randall R. Jacobs: Are you native in any of those other languages? [00:03:53] Anne-Marije Rook: In Dutch. So I was born and raised in the Nets, the, the biking country, and then, uh, lived in Germany for three years and then ended up in the US uh, when I was almost 16. [00:04:04] Randall R. Jacobs: That's quite a skill to have, and makes me think of a joke about Americans. What do you call someone who's speaks three languages trilingual, two languages bilingual and one language. We have US Americans. [00:04:13] Anne-Marije Rook: I think a lot of people actually do, you know, they dabble in Spanish and some other languages. I think, uh, you shouldn't sell yourself so short. [00:04:22] Randall R. Jacobs: True, maybe I'm projecting a little bit. In my personal case, I studied six years of Spanish in middle school and high school and was able to g

This week we sit down with Sarah Wallensteen from Dynamic Cyclist to learn more about stretching and injury prevention. Dynamic Cyclist offers a comprehensive video based stretching program designed specifically for cyclists by cyclists. Each session is designed to be completed in under 20 minutes to easily fit into our lives. Dynamic Cyclist (THEGRAVELRIDE for 15% off) Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show, we're welcoming Sarah Wallenstein from dynamic cyclist, from British Columbia to talk to us about stretching and strength training and how important it is for us as gravel cyclist. Dynamic cyclist has been around for five years, providing a video based stretching and strength training program for cyclists. It was developed specifically because the founders. Saw the need in their lives for stretching and strength training. To support their cycling endeavors. I had a super fun conversation with sarah and i can't wait to get into it Hey, Sarah, welcome to the show. Hi. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to dig into all things stretching. I feel like every winter period I start thinking about stretching and then forget about it in the summer period, but it's super poignant for me every winter as I'm like, What can I do to really make sure I'm gonna have a fun and productive cycling season? [00:01:31] Sarah Wallensteen: Yeah, that's funny how that works though. As soon as we're back on our bike, we, uh, we let it go. [00:01:37] Craig Dalton: and everybody else, everybody I've spoken to in terms of recovery, PT, performance, like they always say stretching or yoga, like it has to be part of your program and mm-hmm. , I've certainly been hung up on this as a, an aging. Just of how to keep my performances high, and it is so often not about riding my bike more or, you know, doing intervals or anything like that. It's just about creating a, a body that can, you know, just be, have the flexibility and have the resilience. To handle gravel cycling. [00:02:17] Sarah Wallensteen: Absolutely. Yeah. [00:02:18] Craig Dalton: Yeah. We all start off by the show by learning a little bit more about you. So Sarah, can you tell us where, where you're located, um, and maybe just a little bit about your background as a cyclist and maybe something you're excited for this cycling season. [00:02:32] Sarah Wallensteen: Sure. Um, my name is Sarah Wallenstein and, um, I live in Cologna, bc so beautiful cycling here. Pretty much any kind. I have, you know, the classic road gravel mountain bike shed. Um, I grew up cycling. It's very much a part of my family's culture. Um, my parents for their honeymoon rode across both islands in New Zealand. Um, my aunt and uncle toured most of Europe. Um, so it's just, it's something that has always been a part of our family. And then as we grew up kind of seeing that, uh, in the adults in our lives, it was just natural that we would also hop on bikes and go places, and um, uh, explore that way. So it's, yeah. Biking has always been such an important part of my. [00:03:20] Craig Dalton: Amazing. And was it, um, when did gravel cycling come into your cycling worldview and what's the gravel cycling near you like? Yeah, [00:03:29] Sarah Wallensteen: it definitely, it came in last. Um, so I started off on road, um, and doing triathlon when I was, I did my first triathlon when I was 12. And then I morphed into mountain biking cuz that was the fun adrenaline while I was a teenager and I raced, um, cross country, mountain biking all through high school. Uh, gravel has definitely been, it's within the last couple years. I mean, it's exploded in popularity within the last couple years. Um, and just as roads have become more and more busy, I still love my road bike, but I love the quiet that you can, can, you can get on gravel and just go. you know, for six hours and not see anyone else. . I love, I love that part of it. Um, cause I also come from, I did some ultra running as well and I've loved that. Just getting lost in the woods and you can achieve that on a gravel. Um, and in the Okanagan we are so blessed. We have the K V R, which is just such a nice intro to grapple of riding. Cause you can go, um, You can go for days and you're just on railroad grade, uh, cuz it's the old railroad, uh, track. So it's no more than 2% incline . So it's just an amazing way to explore our valley. So that's the main, um, the main kind of route that I do a lot on my gravel riding

This week we sit down with Bruce Dunn of All Sports Productions. Bruce is the event organizer of the Highlands Gravel Classic, the only UCI World Gravel Championship Qualifier in the United States for 2023 in Fayetteville, AR. Highland Gravel Classic Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the broadcast. We welcome Bruce Dunn from all sports productions out of Fayetteville, Arkansas, Bruce and his company had been around the cycling production business for many decades. But recently have come into frame, putting on several gravel events in the Fayetteville area. Specifically, I invited Bruce on the show to talk about the Highlands gravel classic. While it's well, trod territory that fant veil in Bentonville and Arkansas in general have great gravel riding opportunities. What's interesting about the Highlands gravel classic. Is that it's the only United States world qualifier for the UCI gravel worlds. They held this similar position last year, and many in the gravel community were scratching their heads about what's UCI doing in gravel. Why the hell are they putting the world championships? Over in Italy. But one thing's for sure. The UCI world gravel championships offer opportunity. Not only for the professional athletes we follow. But also for age group athletes. And that was a super interesting part of the discussion was Bruce. It was just as an age group athlete. What does it look like? What's the experience for going to a world championships? And why should it be on your radar? I found the conversation. Super interesting. . I think it's worth exploring and having a conversation about this there's room for all styles of racing. In gravel? So I'm hopeful will come out of this conversation, understanding a little bit more about the Highlands, gravel classic, and what kind of experience you can have that day, but also what that journey looks like to the UCI world gravel championships and what that might mean for you as an age group athlete. In addition to what the professional athletes might experience this year. Would that said let's jump right into my conversation with bruce Bruce, welcome to the show. Oh, it's great to [00:02:27] Bruce Dunn: be here and thanks for [00:02:27] Craig Dalton: having me. Yeah, I'm excited to have this conversation about the Highlands Gravel Classic, but we always like to start off by getting a little bit about your background, and I think it's so interesting. Why don't you let us know sort of where you're located in the US and then we have to jump in and talk about just your your company and the productions you've been doing for the last couple decades. So let's dive right. [00:02:51] Bruce Dunn: Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, all sports productions, uh, we just celebrated 20 years and at the end of 2022, uh, started in the road scene. Joe Martin, stage race, uh, it's actually the oldest, uh, road stage race in the country, uh, 45 years last year. So some big enterprise countries and and so yeah, we do, we promote triathlons, running events, uh, gravel events, grand Fondo road rides. and we're, we're a little all over the place. Cycling certainly is personally at my heart. I've been on a bike most of my life. It's been really unique ride, no pun intended. And we're excited about 2023, getting on the back, getting on this side of the pandemic. . And seeing again what we're talking about today where the Highlands Gravel Classic takes us, which, you know, I, I think is a kind of a new, uh, a new statement in the gravel world. [00:03:46] Craig Dalton: I thought you, you told me an interesting story offline about the Joe Martin stage race and really how you got into production. Do you wanna kind of relay, cause I think it just underscores kind of your passion to just roll up your sleeves and get out there and do something for the. Yeah. [00:03:59] Bruce Dunn: I had a great job at the University of Arkansas doing fundraising raising millions of dollars for one of the colleges, and it was a, and it was an amazing couple years there. But I've, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I, I self-employed before that, and I'd been promoting the Joe Martin stage race as president of one of the local cycling teams and. Anyway, flew out to U S A cycling, uh, I'm not sure I even scheduled an appointment. I just flew out and said I wanna put the Joe Martin on the national race calendar. I believe they said, where's Arkansas? By the way, you a

This week we sit down with Amy Davison from Trek Travel to discuss the explosion of gravel travel trips in the 2023 line up. With three North American trips (Bentonville, Vermont and Virginia) and three European trips (Girona, Tuscany and Swiss Alps), Trek Travel has some amazing gravel trips planned using the local knowledge of their experienced guides. Trek Travel Website Episode Sponsor: Athletic Greens Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the broadcast. We welcome Amy Davison from track travel. Trek travel is literally having an explosion of gravel trips for 2023. They've been in the gravel game for a few years with their gerona gravel trip, which I took at the end of 22, but they're back for 23 with an expanded roster of six trips, three in north America and three in Europe. I'm excited to sit down with Amy and go over all the details. Before we jump in i need to thank this week sponsor athletic. athletic greens I feel like everybody's been talking about athletic greens recently. I was just listening to Ted King's podcast and he was talking about his daily athletic greens routine. Like me, he takes athletic greens every day. My personal routine is mix it with a cup of ice. I love it. Cold. guess the big question is why, why do I take athletic greens? As you may recall, I've been taking athletic greens for going on five years. I was looking for something that would replace my desire to have a multivitamin in my life. I knew I wasn't getting all the nutrients I needed in any given day in a simple powdered format. Athletic greens contains 75 vitamins minerals and whole food sourced ingredients, including a multivitamin. Multi-mineral probiotic green superfood blend and more, it all works together to fill those nutritional gaps in my diet, it helps increase energy and focus aids with digestion and supports a healthy immune system. All without the need for a counter full of pills. Let's start your 2023 with a simple, sustainable nutritional habit. So, whether you're looking for peak performance, better health, we're just covering your bases. Athletic green makes it easy to invest in your energy immunity and gut health. Every day in a simple fashion, simply visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride and join health experts, athletes, and health conscious go getters around the world who make a daily commitment to their health. Athletic green to the special offer for podcast listeners, simply visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. And you'll get a free year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs today. Again, that's athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. Without business behind us let's jump right in to my interview with Amy Davison from Trek travel Amy, welcome to the show. [00:02:52] Amy Davison: Thank you for having me. [00:02:55] Craig Dalton: I'm excited. I just learned about the massive expansion of gravel travel trips the Trek is gonna be offering in 2023. After my wonderful experience in Gerona, I had to get you on the line and talk about everything that's going on before we dig into some of those trips. Let's just start by, uh, let the listener know where you're from, who you work for, how long you've been working at Track Travel. [00:03:20] Amy Davison: Sure. I live in Spearfish, South Dakota at the North Edge of the, the Black Hills, the great place to ride. I work for Trek Travel and I I'm a trip designer for trip travel, but I started back in 2005 as a. So, had a couple different roles here. I absolutely love working in the cycling industry, so it's, uh, led to [00:03:44] Craig Dalton: a long career. Yeah. I imagine all that time guiding yourself has left you with a pretty good sense of what it takes to design a trip. As a trip designer, what does that really mean? [00:03:58] Amy Davison: Hmm. Well, trip designers are the ones who build the structure. We book the hotels, we design the routes and build the routes in the software and book all the restaurants and basically just put the shell together. And then we convey it. We're sort of the, the hub of the wheel. We convey it to every team within trick travel. Explain it to sales. And then we hand it over to the guides when it's time to run. And when they're running the trip, it's really their baby. And then we work very closely with them to sort of tweak it and modify it. But we then sort of take it back at the end of the season and massage out anything we wanna change and then get it ready for the n

This week we sit down with Michigan based, professional gravel racer, Paige Onweller. Paige, a former runner, had her ups and downs throughout the 2022 season, but ended it with a bang with a victory at Big Sugar Gravel in October. She is looking forward to doubling down on her efforts for the 2023 season. Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the broadcast. We welcome page on Weller. Uh, gravel racer from grand rapids, Michigan. Paige participated in the inaugural lifetime grand Prix in 2022. And has been selected for the grand Prix. Again in 2023, she finished the season with a big victory at big sugar gravel in Bentonville, Arkansas this year, and is really excited to be able to dedicate more time to the sport. Pages and other one of those amazing female athletes who discovered the sport after a career, as a runner. Only a few years ago, she was riding a trainer and figuring out how to ride a bike outdoors. Pedro we'll get into how she got into the sport of cycling, what our journey's been over the last couple of years. And what our experience has been joining the lifetime grand Prix and racing throughout the year with all the best female athletes in the gravel cycling world. With that said let's jump right into my conversation with Paige. Paige, welcome to the show. [00:01:26] Paige Onweller: Thanks, Craig. Glad I'm here [00:01:28] Craig Dalton: Good to see you. Yeah, it sounded like you had a busy day in the er, so I'm pleased you're making time for us this evening, [00:01:34] Paige Onweller: Yeah. Yeah. I was a little, a little late to this meeting, so thank you for being flexible. The ER is a little busy these days. [00:01:40] Craig Dalton: Yeah, no, of course. My pleasure. Hey, I always love to start off Paige by getting to know you a little bit about your background, like where did you grow up? [00:01:48] Paige Onweller: So I grew up in kind of a smaller town called Lapeer. Uh, it's in Michigan, kind of in the thumb area. Uh, maybe like an hour north of Ann Arbor, uh, if people know that as a reference point. Um, yeah. And then I went to undergrad at Fair State University up in Big Rapids, also in Michigan, and then, uh, grad school in Grand Rapids. And I've been settled in Grand Rapids for the last, about 10. [00:02:11] Craig Dalton: Got it. And were you a, were you a sporty young lady? [00:02:14] Paige Onweller: Uh, kind of, my parents kind of made us get into sports. Like I think they wanted to keep us out of trouble and keep us busy. And so, um, yeah, I did like, uh, swimming and diving and softball, volleyball track, cross country. Um, I was a big runner. Uh, I actually got a scholarship to, to run at Ferris and that's, you know, cross country and track. So I did running. Many years of my life and was a very dedicated runner, even after college on some post collegiate elite teams. Um, that's kind of where most of my athletic background was. [00:02:46] Craig Dalton: what was that journey like as a, as a runner would, did you sort of materialize in high school that you had a good endurance endurance engine or. Wear of a sprinter at that point. [00:02:55] Paige Onweller: I was more middle distance. To be honest. I never really, I kind of wasn't all around her. Like I, I definitely wasn't a sprinter, but I kind of excelled at. 400 meters and anything up to two mile, uh, at least in high school. Uh, but more focused on like the mile and 800. And then in college was similar. I was more middle distance, uh, 1500 meter, um, was kind of my specialty in, in track. And then in cross country it's just a six K for uh, ncaa. Um, so that was kind of my specialty overall. Um, but I got injured a lot and. , I think, you know, I could have done much better, like in the 10 K or 5k, I think would've suited me more. Um, but I think I was just always injured that we kind of kept doing the middle distance, shorter volume, you know, or, or less volume. Uh, but then after college is kind of when I started to hit my stride a bit in the endurance events, um, like I did at Ultra-Marathon in Grand Canyon. and that was like 55 miles, um, like rim to rim, to rim it's called. Um, and started doing like more half marathons and those longer distance events. And that's when I, like, I was beating all of my college times and just really excelling. So I think after college, once I was healthy and not getting injured as much, I was able to kind of, you know, consistency really helps with endu

This week we sit down with event organizer, Ben Brainard to discuss the Shasta Gravel Hugger. Founded in 2020, this March event in Northern California has proven to be a great season opener for many gravel cyclists. Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show. We welcome Ben Bernard, the founder of the Shasta gravel hugger event in Northern California taking place in March each year for the last four years. It's become a real great early season option. For those of you looking to test your metal in the early parts of the year and not able to go out to some of the Midwest gravel races, like the mid south. Ben has a real interesting approach to the race. He's got a great area to play with around Mount Shasta. If you've never been there before, it's a real amazing. Landmark. In the region, if you're driving, say from San Francisco up to Oregon, you pass through the town of Mount Shasta and then around on the north side of the mountain and the views are absolutely spectacular. I've got a number of friends from Marin county who love this event and have been up on a number of occasions. As Ben will describe the weather sometimes plays a factor in the event and really dramatically affects your choice of equipment for this early season race. Before we jump in i need to thank this week sponsor hammerhead and the hammerhead caru to computer this ad read for my friends at hammerhead is very timely. As I literally just got in my inbox, my email for my latest. Software update. The hammerhead crew. Two's the most advanced GPS cycling computer available today. With industry leading mapping navigation and routing capabilities. That set us apart from other GPS options. So you can explore with confidence and on the go flexibility. That keeps getting underscored every single time I get one of these software updates, because I know the team at hammerhead are a listening. And be working and pushing out responses. So I love that about the crew to the crew too. If you don't know, it's got a touch screen display that's intuitive and responsive and full color. So your navigation experience is more like a smartphone than that, of a typical GPS device. You can see your data more clearly than ever. While also withstanding rugged conditions since it's water and scratch resistance. I've talked about the hammerheads climber feature with predictive path technology before. It allows you to visualize and prepare for upcoming gradient changes in real time. With or without the root loaded. I love this when going to gravel events, because I'm someone who just, I like to know if I'm going to sit in and grind or whether I should try to power over something. Because it's a short climb. This is all available in real time on the crew too. That's why I trust it as my head unit this year and I will do so again, next year. Hammerhead has been previously named bicycling magazines, editor choice, award. In the GPS cycling category. So you don't need to take my word for it. For a limited time, our listeners can get a free heart rate monitor strap with the purchase of a hammerhead crew to simply visit hammerhead.io right now. And use the promo code, the gravel ride at checkout. Someone in the ridership mentioned to me that the way to get the e-commerce system work is go ahead and put the hammerhead crew two in your cart first. And then add the heart rate monitor, and that coupon code, the gravel ride. After the fact to make sure you don't run into any hiccups. And hopefully. You can get a new hammerhead to computer in front of you for your next year's riding endeavors. With all that said let's jump right into my conversation with ben [00:04:04] Craig: Ben. Welcome to the gravel ride podcast. Cast [00:04:07] Ben: Thanks for having me. It's, it's an honor. [00:04:09] Craig: I'm excited. I, you know, Shasta being not dramatically far away from my, from where I live and certainly a place that I've been before, ever since I started seeing the Shasta gravel hugger on the calendar. I've been excited to talk to you cuz it's a beautiful area and I wanna learn, learn more about the event. [00:04:27] Ben: Excellent. You got it. It is a beautiful area. I've just loved going, riding my bike down there, especially in the winter, as I've said before this time of year it is, it is perfect. We got great smooth roads and the weather is usually pretty stinking good except for on race day. Yeah. I

In this week's episode, cycling journalist and former CyclingTips Editor-in-Chief Caley Fretz joins Randall to discuss cycling's changing media landscape, the economic headwinds facing professional journalists, emerging models for supporting quality reporting and story-telling, and how the meaning of cycling changes as one pedals through life. Also: press-fit bottom brackets, hookless road rims, and too-stiff components and frames. Episode sponsors: Thesis Bike and Logos Components Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Links to Caley's work: The Road to Nairo's House: https://cyclingtips.com/2018/01/the-road-to-nairos-house/ The Teaching Toe Strap: https://www.velonews.com/news/road/the-toe-strap/ Tales From The Tour: The Rest Day Pose: https://cyclingtips.com/2018/07/tales-from-the-tour-the-rest-day-pose/ Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the show, I'm handing the microphone off to my co-host Randall Jacobs. Who's got veteran cycling journalists, Kaylee frets on the pod. To discuss some of the challenges and opportunities facing cycling journalism. You may know Kaylee from his work as editor in chief, over at cycling tips. And prior to that over at Velo news, both publications have undergone some downsizing of late. The economic headwinds facing professional journalists. Our strong, particularly in the cycling world. If we want to have quality reporting and storytelling. A new model needs to emerge. I don't know where this is all gonna end up, but I was super excited that Kaylee agreed to join Randall on the podcast. To just get his perspective and to get into some good old fashioned by geekery. Before we jump in we need to thank this week sponsors from thesis and logos components As many of you know, I'm a long time it's thesis. OB one rider for a limited time thesis is offering $500 off a thesis, OB one with access custom wireless shifting, and your choice of high-end carbon wheels. It's a bike that I can personally attest, stands up to every other carbon bike out there on the market at a really great price. One of the things that I've always appreciated about thesis is that they allow. A unique level of customization. So if you want size appropriate cranks down to, I think 160 or 165 millimeters, you can do that. You can get your stem size, you can customize everything. Based on a free one-on-one consult. So go check out thesis.bike, or contact. Hello at thesis stoplight to get started. I also want to give a shout out to logos components. Logos just receive huge recognition from bike packing.com and was awarded the gear of the year award for the wheelset category in 2022. You might recall an episode. We did a while back on how to choose a gravel wheel set, where Randall went through detail by detail on the design considerations When constructing a carbon wheelset I encourage you to listen to that as it provided a lot of riders with reflection on what they were looking for and what all the different things were, all logos wheels are built on proven open standards with non-proprietary components and with a manufacturing precision. That rivals anybody in the industry, the wheels are backed by Logus is five-year warranty, lifetime at-cost incident protection. And a US-based warehouse and support team to keep you rolling for many years to come. So head on over to logos components.com and use the code community free shipping all one word to take advantage of a free shipping offer. With that business behind us I'm going to pass the microphone back over to randall and his conversation with kaylee frets [00:03:06] Randall R. Jacobs: It's been quite a bit. I think I last saw you at Sea Otter. How have you been? What's going on in your world? [00:03:11] Caley Fretz: Well, I'm unemployed as of November 15th. I mean, yeah, let's just, we can get that one right outta the way. Right. I was part of the layoffs at Outside Inc. To be somewhat differentiated from Outside Magazine for anybody out there. I mean, outside Inc. Does own outside magazine, but it also owns lots and lots of other things. Yeah, myself the editor-in-Chief of Venu as well and two of the CT staff, two really core CT staff. Matt, our managing editor, and Dave Rome, one of our tech editors and, and kinda a legend in space. We're all let go on the same day on November 15th. So I am currently super fun employed and I think after we chat today, I'm probably gonna go skiing cuz it's snowing up in the mountains right now. And so I'm, I'm somewhat enjoying myself. But, you know, fun employment brings with it some level of stress as well, . So that's, that's how I'm doing right now. Yeah. [00:03:59] Randall R. Jacobs: Well, and I appreciate you sharing. I think last we rode together. You were still living in Boulder and you've since moved to beautiful Durango. When was that move? [00:04:07] Caley Fretz: That was shortly after we had

This week Randall and Craig have a long overdue catch up session about their Fall gravel travel trips. Covering Bentonville, Girona, Boulder, Austin, Reno and SF, between the two a lot of dirt was covered. Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: In the Dirt [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to in the dirt from the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host, Craig Dalton. I'm going to be joined shortly by my cohost Randall Jacobs. It's been a while since we've been able to catch up on the microphone, as we both been traveling and doing our own things. I've been super busy this last quarter. So it was great to catch up with my buddy Randall. And just dig into what we've both been up to. Before we jump in, I need to thank this week, sponsor the hammer head and the hammer head crew two computer hammer heads been a sponsor throughout the year. So I very much appreciate their support. I can't recall if I've ever mentioned this on the show, but. In my early twenties, I worked for a bicycle computer company called Avocet. And at the time Avocet introduced a product called the vertex. Which provided for the first time an elevation tracking device for bicycle, it was quite game changing, particularly at that time in the world of mountain biking, because it was so difficult to compare one ride to the other. I still to this day, find vertical feet climbed or the vertical feet of a particular course or an event that I'm riding to be the most important fact. That I need to have in my head in terms of preparing. So if you're going out to a race or an event that has 8,000 feet of climbing, I know I need to put in the work across my training schedule. I find myself often thinking back to that, as I enjoy the hammerhead crew too, I really very much enjoy the climber feature as anytime I update a course or even now it's got the maps added in there in real time. I can see when I approach a climb exactly what is ahead of me, how long the climb is going to be in terms of miles. But most importantly, how much elevation am I gaining? It comes into play in a number of different ways. One. I know if it's a longer climb, I need to settle in. I need to climb patiently and just stay within myself or in the case of my recent experience at big sugar, gravel, as I was seeing that these climbs were shorter in nature, I knew exactly sort of how many candles I could burn as I was attacking them. Attacking them being a generous term for any of my performance. In any event I do these days. Anyway, it was super valuable to know what kind of verb was in front of me. And that climber feature is just always been something I've taken to. The other big thing that I really enjoy has been the navigation features. I mean, it is something that the crew too has always offered in spades, above and beyond anything else out there in the marketplace. Based on an Android operating system. It kind of has the same kind of mapping capabilities that you see on your phone. So very visual, very easy to see trails and roads and where they lead to pinch and zoom and everything you'd expect. From a phone you get there right there on the screen. It also has a super cool feature I've mentioned before, which is sort of a find my way home feature. Whereas if you're kind of mucking around and a little bit lost, you can just kind of press this button returned to start, and it's going to navigate you directly to your home or the place where you started the ride. The other thing I just saw pushed to me in a latest software update. Was a choice of preferred terrain. So now layering on top. Oh, Hey, I want a ride home on gravel versus pavement is going to give you different results. So I thought that was super cool. And it's another feature that I've always loved from the team in hammerhead is just the idea that you have software updates. Every two weeks. I feel like I'm getting something pushed to the device. That's adding a new feature and I get an email describing it. And some of them. You know, background, improvements or something that's maybe only applicable if you have a power meter. But other ones super applicable, like this choice of terrain. I always like to be able to tell my computer that if you're routing me somewhere, take me on the dirt because that's what I'm all about. So anyway, as we approach this holiday season, if you're looking for a new cycling GPS computer, I highly recommend checking out hammerhead [email protected] for gravel ride podcast listeners, they're throwing in a free heart rate, monitor strap. So just make sure to put. Put it in your cart and add the code. The gravel ride to any of your hammerhead purchases for that crew to computer. Without business behind us let's jump right into my conversation with randall Randall. [00:04:28] Craig Dalton: Randall. Good to see you, my friend. [00:04:30] Randall R. Jacobs: Good to see you, Craig. It's been a bit, we've b

This week I recount my recent trip to Girona, Spain with Trek Travel. Our knowledgeable guides took us on a 5 day adventure throughout the region exposing us to Girona's plentiful and diverse gravel. As a bonus, we were able to connect with a number of local cycling brands contributing to Girona's reputation as the hub of European cycling. Trek Travel Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Girona Gravel Live [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show, I'm releasing some recordings I did during the tractor on a gravel tour. I participated in, in November. It was a great trip. I encourage you to check it out on Trek's website and I appreciate Trek's support in getting the over there to have this wonderful experience. With my friend. Was able to sit down with our guides as well as some other members of the Jarana cycling community. To give you a flavor for this wonderful cycling city. I hope you enjoy and let's dive right in Day 1 [00:00:56] Craig Dalton: Right here we are, day one, Trek Gerona Gravel tour here in Gerona, Spain here in the hotel. Nord got set up on my Trek demo bike. Not the one you'd expect for these gravel trips, but it turns out the gravel roads here in Gerona are pretty smooth and you don't need the big wide tires that I typically ride at home. So we're riding a 35 C Pirelli tire on these Damani bikes. The great thing was, Sent them over. My fit measurements had everything dialed, so it was just some quick adjustments Right before the ride. Today we did about 25 miles today as a shakeout ride. Riding along, essentially along the river, out and back on either side of the river, which a lot of fun. We got into some single track. Super smooth. Not a lot of elevation today. That's gonna come tomorrow where I'm excited that we're riding off to the Mediterranean. So great first day. Great intro. The guides. Rafa and Mickey are awesome. Mickey's a local here in Jerron and Rafa's from London. Bringing a little bit of international flavor to the trip. We've got a group of about six of us, so it's pretty easy to keep people together. I've got two friends from San Francisco along for the ride, so that is a joy and a pleasure. More later in the week, and I'll get some commentary, a little bit more specifics about the writing from Mickey Rafa along the way to to give you an idea about what to expect. It's a five day experience here in the Jonah Gravel tour. They've got some other options I think, coming online next year, but super excited for the days to come as the mileage is gonna creep up, and I'm told the technicality is gonna creep up as well. So super excited for that. We'll see how these 35 C tires on the demos go, but I'm confident we've got the right equipment for the job. Day 2 [00:02:50] Craig Dalton: Okay, so on day two of the Trek Gerona gravel tour today, we did about 60 miles of gravel, about 1800 feet of climbing on our way to the Mediterranean beach, the Mediterranean Ocean. We started in Gerona and followed the prominent river all the way to the east. Surprisingly, the whole ride, we were on gravel roads, beautiful gravel. Started out getting outta town on some small paths right next to the river. Some real fun single track to wake you up and then onto some amazing roads through forests. There's a lot of forests here. We were told that the trees that were being planted there were for the paper industry. They were super beautiful tall trees and lined in rows, and we just weaved throughout them until 29 kilometers later. We met the van, the Trek travel van, and our second guide Mickey, who had water refills and food and everything we needed for the second half of our ride out there to the coast where we went through orchards, basically this incredibly smooth gravel road. Very, very little car traffic. I think maybe we saw a few, maybe three vehicles out there the whole day, but super pleasant ride. Relatively flat for 60 miles, only 1800 feet of climbing. We got to the ocean to meet Mickey in the van again. Had an amazing lunch and a few of us decided we were gonna jump into the. It wasn't exactly warm, but it wasn't unpleasant. It was so fun to kind of get off the gravel bike in the middle of your ride and go for a swim and play around. And one of the riders, James, my friend from San Francisco, took a nap on the beach while we were in the water and we had to rouse him to get him back on the bike for our 45 kilometer return home. Adding up to, as I said, 60 miles and no idea why I'

This week we sit down with Matt Conte, Co-Founder of Outbound Lighting. Matt discusses the origin story of the business and details the benefits of Outbound's approach to lighting (hint: it has its origins in the automotive world). Outbound Lighting Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Outbound Lighting [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show, we welcome Matt Conti, one of the founders of outbound lighting. You may remember outbound from a number of years ago when they originally launched the company via Kickstarter project. I, for one, pay a lot of attention to Kickstarter cycling projects. For some reason, I'm a sucker for them, and I was sort of curious, you know, with so many industry stalwarts in the lighting business, how this company was gonna make a mark. Well, they successfully funded the campaign and have successfully built a. Manufacturing in the United States, which is absolutely amazing. But what was equally amazing was Matt's description of the technology that he applied to the bicycle lighting industry. He came from automotive lighting and had a lot of, advanced engineering skills specific to how to light the world in front of you at night. And it was fascinating to just hear his take on the existing bicycle light in. Further how he evolved the very specific lighting options that outbound uses and offers customers. Today I've been using their helmet mounted light as well as their bar mounted light and definitely appreciate a number of things about the design that Matt will get into you for you during this episode. So I hope you enjoy it. And just a quick note, I apologize. A little bit of sporadic release of episodes these days. I've been traveling and had a ton on my plate, and it's been a real struggle to get to the editing and everything else involved in the podcast, so I appreciate your patience. There certainly will be another couple weeks towards the end of the year where I take off just to decompress, but look forward to getting many, many more great episodes out the door to you in the coming year. With that said, let's jump right into my conversation with Matt. Matt, welcome to the show. [00:02:16] Matt Conte: Hey, glad pleasure to be here. I'm [00:02:19] Craig Dalton: excited to dig in and learn a little bit more about outbound lighting. Why don't we start by just letting the listeners know where you are in the world, and then let's talk about what led to you starting outbound light lighting in the first place. [00:02:32] Matt Conte: Yeah, so we are located in just north of Chicago, Illinois in Skokie, just kind of a middle suburb and stuff. And then we got Tom, my co-owner. He's out in Olympia, Washington. Kind of the Mecca Mountain biking out there for him. Couldn't convince him to move to the city, unfortunately, but yeah, so we are, we got our headquarters here. It's where we design, assemble, ship, every bike light that we make. And yeah, I guess from like far as what got us to start this company like you sort of mentions that kind of interestingly, like I'm not that kind of guy who. Hardcore biker who saw an opportunity to make something. I came from the automotive lighting ex world. Used to design l e d headlights, off road lights stuff like that, like Baja trucks and things like that. And I was really into rally car racing where you're on gravel roads, slinging cars, and a hundred miles an hour at night through the woods to blast. But at the time I was kind of looking to how. Basically branch out and take my experience from developing lighting products to something else. I just kind of wanted to do my own thing. And so I looked at experimental aircraft. I looked at exterior architectural lighting and all that kind of stuff. And wasn't until a friend of mine posted on Facebook basically a selfie of him writing at night Asia being like, Oh yeah, I heard night riding. And I was like, Huh, that's. You got a couple headlights on your bike, like what is that? Like, what are you using? And oh, I got the night rider, 1800 pros, the best light out there, all that kind of stuff. And I looked it up and it was like 350 bucks and I was like, it's a flashlight. And talked to him for a bit, kind of like, Hey, can I come over and check this thing out? Kind of seems like this is possibly an opportunity to take what we, what I've done in the automotive space and bring it to bikes. And so yeah, he took me out on a ride and I enjoyed it. Had a lot of fun and kind of was like, Yeah, I co

This week we sit down with Lizard Skin founder, Brian Fruit to learn the original story of the brand founded in 1993. From cycling bar tape and accessories now to baseball, hockey and lacrosse, the brand has had an interesting journey making its products in the United States. Lizard Skins Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (code: TheGravelRide for free HRM strap) Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Lizard Skins [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show. We welcome Brian fruit, the founder of lizard skins. Was there a skin spin part of the cycling industry since 1993. It's been quite an incredible journey for the company. Y'all know how much I love the business side stories behind the brands we know and love. So I was super excited to get into it with Brian and just learn more about the journey. With respect to their bar tape. What I find is interesting is that the material they have is definitely. Sort of on the gummy air side and you'll hear Brian, describe a bit about that product. But also it's worth noting. They offer four different sizes of kind of the diameter. Of the bar tape, which really changes the feel you can go from super thin. I E a lot of bar feel all the way out to kind of pair Ruby style, super cush. Which I think is an interesting option that you don't see across the board. A lot of times when you go into your local bike shop, You see only one diameter tape that's available. So it's an interesting thing to play around with and something I've enjoyed while testing out some of the lizard skin tape. Just before we jump in, I need to thank this week sponsor the hammerhead crew to. I am literally in Spain as you're listening to this, I'm recording this intro just before I'm boarding my flight and definitely thinking about all the adventures I'm going to have on the roads of Jarana. I thought about borrowing a computer from the group that I'm going with, but it was from another brand that I had a little bit of a bad experience with back way back when. I've come to love many things about my hammerhead computer. And I am convinced it's the most advanced GPS cycling computer available today. It's got industry leading mapping navigation and routing capabilities that set it apart from other GPS options. Free global maps with points of interest included like cafes and campsites. Mean that my riding in Gerona. I won't be without information. I'll have everything at my fingertips. As I'm saying all this, I'm literally reminding myself that I should go download the country maps. So I've got everything on hand. In my hammerhead crew to device. Hammerhead gives bi-weekly software updates. So the features are always up to date. And they're always listening. You can provide feedback to the team in hammerhead and potentially it's going to end up in a software update. You're not locked to a particular software package because they're always upgrading it. I really look for the climber feature. That's one of my favorite features these days. It was particularly poignant for me when I was riding in, uh, Bentonville Arkansas, a few weeks back at the big sugar gravel event, all those punchy climbs. I was really on the limit. I'm much more of a sit and grind on the coastal range here in California. So this punchy climbs or something I wasn't used to. So understanding exactly how far I was to the top and how many candles I could burn staying with the groups I was desperate to stay with really came in handy. So very much recommend the hammerhead crew to it's my exclusive computer. For gosh, probably over a year now. I'm not the only one singing its praises. It was named bicycling magazines, editors choice in GPS, cycling computers. For the past two years. Take a look on their websites for a limited time offer our listeners can get a free heart rate monitor with the purchase of a hammerhead crew to just visit hammerhead IO right now, and use the promo code, the gravel ride at checkout to get yours today. Remember it's an exclusive limited time offer for our podcast listeners. So don't forget that promo code, the gravel ride for that free heart rate monitor strap. Would that business behind us, let's jump right into my conversation with Brian. Hey Brian, welcome to the show. [00:04:27] Brian Fruit: Awesome. Super glad to be beyond today. [00:04:30] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I'm excited to dig into Lizard Skins a little bit, but I'd love to start out, as we always do, by a little bit about your history and how you ulti

This week we sit down with Protect our Winters ambassador and gravel athlete, Matt Lieto to talk about the importance of voting in relation to protecting the environment we love to ride in. Protect our Winters Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Matt Lieto [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show. I welcome Matt. Lieto from bend Oregon onto the show matzoh, former triathletes. We'll get into that a little bit. And a gravel racer been doing it out of bend for a number of years has been involved in organizing some of the great events up there in Oregon. But more importantly for today's show, Matt's been involved with protect our winters, a nonprofit organization founded by snowboarder Jeremy Jones back in 2007. But the basic premise that he was seeing the world that he calls home out there in the big mountains. Getting destroyed by climate change. He wasn't seeing the same kind of snowpack. He was observing change and decided to make some change. He decided that athletes outdoor enthusiasts of all kinds, we have a voice in the political process and he set about to create an organization to help passionate outdoor people, productive places, and lifestyle. They love. From climate change. We're sitting here in the first week in November next week's the midterm elections. There's still time to get out there and vote. Do your civic duty. I'm a little bit on a soap box with Matt during this conversation, but I think it's important. Head on over to protect your winters.org. You can find out everything you need to know about the voting process. In your local community, there's still time in many states to get registered and absolutely there's time to prepare your ballot and get it submitted for the midterm elections. Without said. Let's jump right into my conversation with Hey, Matt, welcome to the show. [00:01:59] Matt Lieto: Thanks, man. Appreciate you having me Excited. [00:02:01] Craig Dalton: I am looking forward to getting into gravel, your background, but I'm most excited to talk about p and we'll get into that later. [00:02:09] Matt Lieto: Yeah, it's, it's okay if you if you prioritize climate and the world in, in, in front of getting to know me, that's fine. I'll let it go. [00:02:16] Craig Dalton: Wow. Very modest ego. I like it. So Matt, we always start out just by getting a little bit of background about you, how you got into the sport, and how you got into gravel. We gotta talk a little bit about your, your, your skinny bike background and that arrow position you used to have, but not too much. I don't wanna scare the listeners off. [00:02:33] Matt Lieto: I can't ignore it. I know there's a, you know, no matter what the, the triathletes do and the time trialists do, they're always gonna have, they're gonna have their, their work cut out for 'em for sure. But the reason I've like always got along with Mount biker's, cyclists, and why I'm one myself as I don't mind making fun of myself. Self deprecation is my, my biggest strength slash weakness. So let's go [00:02:55] Craig Dalton: It's important. It's important that the regular listener will know that I have admitted to my Ironman triathlon past. I don't wear it like a badge, but I, I'm not afraid to say that I did that. [00:03:06] Matt Lieto: So you literally, like you don't have a tattoo or anything. [00:03:10] Craig Dalton: No, no, I would, if I could aim the camera down there, I would show you my calf. There's [00:03:15] Matt Lieto: don't move your, [00:03:16] Craig Dalton: down there, [00:03:17] Matt Lieto: I don't wanna see you. Move your canvas south, man. Keep it up. [00:03:21] Craig Dalton: So how did you, you're up in, you're up in Bend these days. Is that where you kind of found the bike and found triathlon originally? [00:03:28] Matt Lieto: No, actually I had started doing try when I lived in Northern California. So like, 98 maybe. And kind of the cheesy story is my brother actually was a, a great professional triathlete, was second at Kona and another world championships a couple times. And I watched him race a race in Hawaii and at the time I was like 260 pounds. And I was like, Wow, these guys are, have more fun than me. And Losts a bunch of weight. Went home and started training for triathlon, trying to get it across the finish line on one of those things. And turned out I. Decent at it and was training with my brother, had a good guide and you know, just kind of kept plugging away. Became a professional triathlete after maybe thr

This week we come to you with recordings live from the Big Sugar Gravel event in Bentonville, AR. Conversations with Litespeed, Obed, Kuat, BMC, HED, ROTOR, Allied, and more. Support the Podcast Join The Ridership

In this week's episode, Randall has Josh Poertner on to talk aerodynamics. In a wide-ranging conversation, the two touch upon Josh's time as Technical Director at Zipp, involvement in the development of computational models for rotating wheels, early collaboration with Cervelo founders Phil White and Gerard Vroomen, founding and leadership of the product brand Silca and The Marginal Gains Podcast, and ongoing consulting work with elite athletes and teams. Silca Website Marginal Gains Podcast Episode Sponsor: Logos Components Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Silca - Josh Poertner [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show, I'm handing the microphone back to my co-host Randall Jacobs. Who's got Josh Portner, the CEO of Silka on the shout out a wide range in conversation about the sport and high performance. Many of you may be familiar with the storied Silka brand. It's been around for close to a hundred years. But josh took over back in 2013 with a mission of merging the highest quality materials and craftsmanship with cutting edge design and manufacturing When you visit the Silca website, you notice a tagline, the pursuit of perfection, never settling, always improving. And I think that embodies how Josh approaches the sport. . So I'm excited to pass you over to Randall to dig into this conversation. Before we jump in i want to thank this week sponsor logos components Yeah, I've been itching to get back on a set of six 50 B wheels, and I've been waiting for my logo's components, wheels to arrive. They literally just arrived last night and I'm super stoked. But yet disappointed because I have to go away for the weekend and I won't be able to actually ride them until sometime next week. I chose the Atara six 50 B model. As you know, I'm sort of big on the big tires, big fun philosophy. So I've been eager on my unicorn, which I've been riding on a 700 SEASET for a while now. To get into the six 50 bees again and see what a six 50 by 50 combined with that rock shock fork is going to yield for me on the trails here in Marin. You guys may remember. Me sitting down with Randall, talking about what makes a great gravel wheel set and everything that went into these logos component wheels. I encourage you to go back to that conversation because whether or not the logo's wheel set is for you or not. I think Randall does an excellent job of teasing out. All the various considerations. You should be having when considering buying a gravel wheelset, It is no small expense when getting into a carbon wheel set, but the team at logos has endeavored with their direct consumer model. Uh, to make it as affordable as possible and make them as durable and high performing as anything out there on the market. I written wheels designed by Randall for the last three years. So I'm super excited. To see his latest vision come to fruition. With these new wheels and I'll have them underneath me soon enough. I encourage you to check them [email protected]. Randall's also an active member of the ridership community. So if you have questions for him, feel free to join us over there at the ridership and connect with other riders. I seen people paying that their wheels have arrived so you can get some real, real people answering your questions. About whether they're enjoying the wheelset and how they perform, et cetera. And I'll have more on this in future additions. At this point. I'm going to hand the microphone over to Randall. And i hope you enjoy this conversation with josh [00:03:30] Randall: Josh Portner, thank you for joining us on the podcast. This is a conversation I've been looking forward to for quite some time. Some deep bike nerdy is probably about to ensue, so, uh, let's dive, let's hope. Dive right into it. [00:03:43] Josh: Well, thank you for having me. Always, always up for some deep bike. Nerdy. I like that. [00:03:49] Randall: So a number of our listeners will already know who you are, but just give folks a high level summary of what you do now. [00:03:55] Josh: Oh gosh. So I own Silca, um, or I own Arrow Mind, which, uh, owns the Silca brand and trademark, um, and, and all that that entails. And then we also have a, uh, we own Marginal Gains, which is a podcast and a YouTube channel. And, um, Yeah, our goal is to, a mind works with a lot of pro riders, pro teams, world tour teams. Um, you know, we do everything, Excuse me. We do everything from, you know, performance consulting, uh, modeling, uh, you know,

This week we sit down with professional gravel cyclist, Alexey Vermeulen. Alexey is currently ranked 2nd in the Life Time Grand Prix going into the series finale at Big Sugar. 2022 has been a breakout season for this rising star with a big win at BWR San Diego. In addition to his racing exploits, Alexey is one of the founders of the From The Ground Up Project and the excluse ride partner for the 'fastest known dog', Willie the weiner. Alexey's website Episode Sponsor: AG1 by Athletic Greens Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Alexey Vermeulen [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show. We welcome Alexi Vermilion. Alexi is a professional off-road cyclists competing in the lifetime grand Prix series this year. With only one event left big sugar in Bentonville, Arkansas coming up this month. He is sitting in second in that competition it was a great time to check in with Alexi. Alexia is not only a great athlete, but also a great ambassador for the sport. He always seems to be around, to share a smile or a laugh after some of these big events. If you don't know him for his professional cycling career. You may have also seen him with a dog on his back, riding a bike. Yeah. We'll get into his relationship with Willie. And what type of terrain Willie likes to ride? I'll give you a hint. It's the off-road kind. Before we jump in, I need to thank this week. Sponsor athletic greens and I've been using athletic greens for many years now. And I like to refer to it as my nutritional insurance. I don't always have the best diet and it just gives me a baseline of some of the nutrients and minerals that I need throughout the day. One tasty scoop of athletic greens contains 75 vitamins minerals and whole food sourced ingredients. Including a multivitamin multimineral probiotic, green superfood blend. And more, all that work together to fill those nutritional gaps in your diet. Increase energy and focus. Uh, aid with digestion and support a healthy immune system. All without the need to take multiple products or pills. This is what I think I really love. It's simply every morning I have a routine. I get a scoop of the powder, put it over ice and water. Shake it up. Get some hydration and get all those nutrients and vitamins in me in one fell swoop again on days where I go deep on the bike, sometimes I'll do a second class. I know for me, I start to feel sort of just run down and drained and I don't have the luxury of sitting back with my feet up after a ride. I often have to jump right into enjoying my son and caring for him. So I love just being able to top off and make sure I've got my recovery. Athletic greens is offering a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs to all my listeners with their first Simply visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. And join health experts, athletes, and health conscious go getters around the world who are making a daily commitment to their health. Again, simply visit athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. And get your free year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs today. Would that business behind us let's jump into my conversation with Alexi. Alex, welcome to the show. [00:03:06] Alexey Vermeulen: Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. [00:03:07] Craig Dalton: I feel like this is a long time coming, like Cody [00:03:10] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah. Since what, two years almost now? [00:03:12] Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. I remember when we met at Rodeo, I had asked Neil Shirley about, you know, just who was gonna be there and who I might talk to, and he's like, Here's Alex. He's the fastest guy in gravel you don't know about yet. [00:03:26] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah. I think Neil believed in me maybe before I believed in myself. But I think that was my rodeo. Strava kms were the beginning of my success. [00:03:33] Craig Dalton: Put you on the radar, but you'd been on the radar for a long time. So I, I always start off the podcast with just getting a little bit about your background. So why don't you tell me, tell us where you're from and how you got into cycling, and then ultimately let's talk about that journey into gravel and MTV territory. [00:03:49] Alexey Vermeulen: Yeah. I'll try to keep this somewhat short. If we start at the beginning, I probably, I started in like kids triathlons. My mom was doing em. As with any cycles, I feel like hated this swimming portion. You just like get to the, get to the run and bike and they're like, Okay, let's go. This is f

This week we sit down with Matt Hawkins, organizer of North Carolina's Croatan Buck Fifty and founder of Ridge Supply. The special origin story of Ridge Supply and ultimately the Croatan Buck Fifty have lead Matt to create an amazing early season event. Episode sponsor: Bike Index Ridge Supply Croatan Buck Fifty Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Croatan Buck Fifty [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the podcast, we've got Matt Hawkins. Matt is the founder of Ridge supply, as well as the creator of the CRO 10 buck, 50. Oh, super well-regarded gravel race out in North Carolina. I've been wanting to get Matt on the show for a few years after meeting him at sea Otter. And I'm excited to have you get to know the Crow 10 buck 50. I believe there's still some spots available for the 2023 edition. It's one of those early season races. So a great way to get tuned up for a fantastic 2023. Before we jump in. I want to thank this week. Sponsor, bike index. Bike index is a bicycle registry and stolen bike recovery platform. No one likes to think about getting their bikes stolen. I unfortunately have had two stolen over the course One was a BMX bike when I was a kid. And I feel like that scarred me. I've always been super careful about how I lock my bike up, which is probably a good thing, but ultimately, a garage that housed my bikes in San Francisco got broken into and I lost a track mountain bike. Neither one of them were ever recovered. Bike index is really the only game in town that focuses on stolen bike recovery. They've built a platform to blast your bike out to local social media channels. And they can provide you all the best advice on how to increase the chances of success in getting your bicycle recovered it's a nonprofit. All the services are free. All you need to do is get your serial number and add your make model and color to the platform. And there you go. It's like insurance. That didn't cost you anything. Simply visit www.bike index.org and get your bike registered today. With that said let's jump right into my conversation with matt [00:02:10] Craig: Hey, Matt, welcome to the show. [00:02:12] Matt: Hey, Hey Craig, [00:02:14] Craig: I'm excited to get into the Croatan buck. 50. Am I saying it? Correct? [00:02:18] Matt: you are, you are a lot of people say Croatian but 50, but I think they do that just to make me mad. [00:02:24] Craig: Yeah, and we'll get into it. We'll get into it. Cuz I think people are gonna need to get out a map and you're gonna tell us where it is in the country. I, I had to do that myself. I knew it was in North Carolina, but I didn't know exactly where and it's actually pretty interesting part of the state, but we'll table that question for the moment, cuz I was like just starting out by. Just a little bit about your backstory, where you grew up, how you got into riding. And I think we should talk about your company Ridge supply, because I think it will filter into why you created the event and you know, the vibe behind it. [00:02:53] Matt: Sure, [00:02:55] Craig: Yeah. So let's start with that question. [00:02:57] Matt: wanna know? [00:02:58] Craig: Yeah. So, where'd you grow up and when did you start riding and when did you decide, when did you discover drop bar gravel riding. [00:03:04] Matt: Well, I, I my wife and I both are from central Virginia. So up near the Charlottesville area born and raised there. My family's been there a long time, many generations. And I, I grew up in a real rural kind of county, a lot of farming communities there, but we just happen to have a race. That started back when the tour Deon and the tour to Trump rode, they came through our town. And we had a, we had a local race called the tour to Madison, and I did that with a buddy of mine on some, some Huffies. And we started racing and riding when I was really young. I've literally been riding bikes for, for almost 40 years. And yeah, so that's, that's kind of how I started. I, I of course I, I crashed on my first race and and loved it, loved doing it, but I was a swimmer by trade and I swam my whole life and swam through college. So I really picked up cycling after college sort of as my primary. And I've been doing that, you know, every, every chance I get as my soul sport really, since I got outta college, [00:04:18] Craig: Were you, were you more excited about the roadside or did you start off road riding as well back? [00:04:22] Matt: You know, actually I did a whole lot of mountain biking

This week Randall and Craig open up the floor to questions from The Ridership. Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: In the Dirt 32 [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. I'm going to be joined Really By my co-host randall jacobs for another episode of in the dirt [00:00:34] Craig: randall, how you doing today? [00:00:36] Randall: I'm doing well, Craig, good to see you, bud. [00:00:39] Craig: Yeah. Great to see you too. I mean, I've been looking forward this just a, a little bit of reprieve from everything else that's going on in life. It's just nice to connect with you and just purely have a half hour an hour conversation about bikes. [00:00:51] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. I know you've been going had a lot going on with your mom and so on. So, you know, definitely sending a lot of love and good vibes to you and your family going through some challenging times. [00:01:01] Craig: Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, we it's the conversations we've had on the podcast and certainly within the ridership community, just about the value of this pursuit of gravel cycling and just kinda getting outta your head. I I've always loved it in that, like when you're on a, a gravel trail, particularly a technical gravel trail, like I ride you can't really think about anything else, but what's in front of you. And it's just so, so helpful for me to just sort of think about the bike and performance and riding. Rather than thinking about everything else going on all the time. [00:01:32] Randall: Yeah. Yeah, I can, I can relate. I've been processing some heavy things in my own life these days. And at the same time returning to the bike, I've been doing a lot more walking, hiking trail running lately as well as like canoeing and kayaking the canoes great with the kids. But there's. There's that flow state that you can get into on the bicycle that is, you know, people talk about runners high. I've never really had that. I don't think I can run long enough to get to that head space, but on the bicycle, there's just a place where everything is just in sync and the it's. I just feel very connected to everything, but not overwhelmed by it. If that makes sense. [00:02:13] Craig: yeah. You know, I was up in lake Tahoe last weekend and did a bunch of standup paddle boarding. I got some good recommendations from people on the ridership as to where I should explore to ride. And I had a bike, but honestly I just left it on the patio because I, it was just enjoying the lake so much. And to your point, like with standup paddle boarding, I found, you know, I just have to focus on the balance piece. So I, I, it sort. Took me to that same place. I just got in the rhythm of stroking on either side of the standup paddle board and, and being focused on the physicality of it. And, and the moment that I was experiencing, which, which I also really enjoyed. [00:02:49] Randall: Yeah, standup paddleboards are great. I actually like them. I use them occasionally standing up, but having them as like your own little floating island in the middle of a lake or a pond you know, you can have two adults. I've had, you know, another adult and a, a toddler on one. And so one adult is in the water swimming and the toddler is kind of jumping on and off and, and it's, it's just so much fun. Yeah, [00:03:12] Craig: but you've got, you've got something coming up. That's kind of probably forcing you a little bit to get back on the bike. Right. [00:03:17] Randall: Well, so, well, one I'm wanting to start coordinating more group rides. We've talked about this quite a bit and just life has gotten in the way you know, the logo launch and some things in, in my personal life and so on. So there's that the O positive festival. In Kingston, New York is coming up. That's the seventh through the 9th of October and community member, Joe conk in the ridership. He is the founder of that festival. And once again, we're gonna be coordinating a gravel ride. Together with a road ride and a a mural tour ride, which will be through the, the city of Kingston and is very family friendly. As part of that weekend, I believe it's gonna be on the eighth. So we'll be posting more information about that in the ridership and would love to have people come out and join. [00:04:00] Craig: That's super cool. I remember you talking about the festival last year and some of the riding that you've done with Joe up there. So that sounds awesome. So for anybody on the east coast, that's within range of that, we're able to tra

This week we sit down with author and adventurer, Markus Stitz to discuss his new book, Great British Gravel Rides. Markus explores gravel cycling in Great Britain through the eyes of local gravel cyclists to discover amazing routes throughout the region. Markus Stitz Website Episode Sponsor: Trek Travel - Come join us on the Girona Gravel Tour November 6th, 2022. Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Great British Gravel Rides [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: This week on the podcast. We welcome Marcus. Stets the author of great British gravel rides, a book of 25 routes throughout England, Wales and Scotland. . That brings us through the varied terrain in great Britain, through the eyes of community members throughout the aisle each route was designed by a gravel cyclists from that region. In an attempt to get the best. Gravel routes across England, Scotland and Wales. I enjoyed the conversation a lot and i enjoyed the approach to the book and i hope you will too Before we get started. I need to thank this week. Sponsor truck travel and the Girona gravel bike tour. Trek has been offering the Girona gravel bike tour for a number of years. And you may remember an episode I recorded with them about Yorona and what a gem it is for cycling in general, but more specifically gravel. I've been hoping and wanting to go over there myself for a number of years. And I'm excited to say that I'm going to be joining the November 6th trip. And I'd like you to join me. Yeah, I'm not kidding. Take a step back. You can do this. Come join me and ride gravel bikes in Girona trucks. Got everything organized for us from an, a wonderful hotel, right in the center of Girona as well as access to track bicycles to explore the countryside, we've got local guides that have designed amazing routes for us. So we're going to sample everything the region has to offer in this trip. I can't wait to get over there in November and I'm hoping you'll be able to join me too. It'll be so good to paddle with some of you listeners and members of the ridership community. I know we've got a handful of people signed up already and I would love to fill the hotel with people we know and love. As a special bonus, truck's going to give anybody who registers via the podcast or the ridership or free handlebar bag with their trip. So make sure when you go visit Trek, travel.com search Jarana gravel bike tour and mentioned the podcast during your registration process. There's a number of dates this year remaining, but I will be on the November 6th trip. So I'm hoping we can shape the demand and drive you to that trip. We'll have a great time. And I look forward to seeing you there. Remember that's www.trektravel.com. Search Girona gravel bike tour. With that said let's jump right into my conversation with marcus about the great british gravel rides Marcus welcome to the show. [00:02:28] Markus: Hello. [00:02:30] Craig Dalton: It's good to connect with you. I was super excited when I caught wind of this great, great Britain, gravel rides book that you penned and excited to learn a little bit more about your background as a cyclist, and what led to your passion to take on this project and do a great job kind of going throughout Britain and laying out some amazing roots for people. [00:02:51] Markus: Yeah. It's like, it's been an amazing project to work on and especially like, cuz I guess people who live in Britain have, you know, have a better idea of the country. But if you, if you're outside the country, it's such a diverse place. Like it's, it's, you know, from north to south, I think I've been to many countries in the world and it's like, it's, it's difficult to find a country, which is, which is gotten so many different places too, right. In terms of the conditions, but also the people. So my idea was really to kind of look at the community. With all the different shapes and forms it comes and, and, and do a book about it and, and recommend roots to people. Pretty much as an inspiration. [00:03:35] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think that was a super interesting approach and look forward to getting into it with. Before we get started. Why don't we give the listener just a little bit about an idea about your background as a cyclist. [00:03:46] Markus: Yeah. So I, I think I generally came to cycling. I, I started cycling as a child. I grew up in Germany and you kind of know I'm cycling as default, I think. And I I'd never been in any cycling clubs and I wouldn't call myself like a keen cyclist when I was a child. And then pretty much picked up a mountain bike in, in my years at the university, cuz I lived in a place which had like pretty extensive for is a bit like what you possibly. Which comes really close to north American travel or the idea what we have, like big metal roads and, you know, loads of pine fors and all pretty straightforward. So it was a quite great location to, to be based and then do that. And then I fin

This week we sit down with Mr. Tutti (AKA Kelly) from the Tutti Gravel Inn. Inspired by the Canadian landscape, Kelly set off on a journey to create a gravel cycling vacation inn in Clinton, BC Canada. Episode Sponsor: Logos Components Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Tutti Gravel Inn [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show. We welcome Kelly Servin ski. From a duty gravel in up in Clinton, Canada. The Inn opened up in 2019. Just in time for the pandemic to make it start a little more stunted than it would have liked, but I became aware of the end and began talking to Kelly about a year ago. And I was keen to explore, you know, what would it look like to create a gravel in many of you may know that over in Europe, Bike hotels are quite prevalent anywhere. There's a bike hotspot. You can find a hotel that will cater to your needs. With little touches, like having a pump or an area to clean your bike, but just the general friendliness to guess rumbling through the door. Dirty and in their Lycra. Kelly gives us an overview of what his vision was and what inspired him to start to the two D gravel in, in Clinton, Canada. Before we jump in, I need to thank this week sponsor. Logos components. Logos Components is introducing their new omnium lineup of wheels. Logos comes from the mind of Randall Jacobs and the team at Thesis bike. The regular listener knows randall well as the co-host of in the dirt on this podcast but also increasingly a number of individual episodes where randall's taking his deep technical knowledge and interviewing guests for the podcast we recently recorded episode 136 about what makes a great gravel wheel set. Where Randall broke down from the hubs to the spokes, to the rims, all the things you should be considering when purchasing a gravel wheel set. As it turns out the Logus omnium collection is the manifestation. Of all those criteria Randall has meticulously gone through and specked each component for what he believes makes the best wheel set out there. I encourage you to listen to that episode 136, to get an understanding about what these wheel sets have to offer. The team has launched the wheel set at an introductory price of $999. And has wheels available in 650, 700 C and 29er. So I encourage you to go check them out at www.logoscomponents.com. I've personally spent a lot of time on wheels designed by Randall And most recently spent time on the 700 C version of the logos wheels. And I can attest they're completely bomber and on par with the best wheels I've ever written. So go check them out at www.logoscomponents.com. If you have any questions after listening to that episode, 136. Feel free to jump into the ridership and talk to randall directly And or other riders that may have experience on the product With that said let's jump right over to my interview with kelly from d gravel In. Kelly welcome to the show. [00:03:16] Kelly: Thanks for having me. [00:03:17] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I'm excited to get into the conversation and learn a little bit more about the 2d gravel in am. I pronouncing it? [00:03:24] Kelly: Yeah. It's pronounced Tuti. So Tuti in Italian means everyone or all. So that's a nice word. It's cute, but it's also the spirit of our business. Everyone's welcome here to come gravel ride. [00:03:37] Craig Dalton: Amazing. Well, let's start off by getting a little bit about your background as a cyclist, and then we'll transition to how you discovered Clinton and, and why creating this, this gravel specific in was in your, in your vision. [00:03:51] Kelly: Yeah, I mean, pretty random for me with my sort of foray into cycling I loved motorcycles to begin with as a kid. I had a BMX bike, but primarily it was dirt bikes. Grew up in the prairies of Canada, I would say north of Montana. So the province of Saskatchewan. So. Farm country, that kind of thing. Yeah, cut to the chase. I was out dirt biking with a friend and adventurous, young guys were 15 and we saw a couple of dirt bikers professionals in a, in a magazine high fiving in the air as they jumped and then. You know, we just thought, Hey, we can do that. and yeah, it didn't go so well. So, yeah, you know, big crash totaled the bike off broke my right femur. My right, pinky finger, my wrist and my elbow in the crash. So, Yeah, my buddy got away a little less worse for wear. He broke his toe, but anyhow, just yeah, long story short bone specialist suggested getting into something other than BMX riding for rehab o

This week we take a virtual trip to the Canadian rockies with rider accounts from the TransRockies Gravel Royal. We hear from eventual winners, Rob Britton and Rach McBride among others to explore this 4 day gravel stage race. Episode sponsor: Trek Travel -- Come join me in Girona on Nov 6th. Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: TransRockies Gravel Royale [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the podcast, I'm bringing you coverage directly from the trans Rockies gravel Royale. You might've heard me mentioned trans Rockies, gravel rail a few times over the years. It's one of those unfortunate events with regards to COVID timing. That got scheduled right at the beginning of the pandemic and had to get postponed on a couple of occasions. But they finally got it off the ground this year. And it is such a great event. Trans Rockies organization has been producing races for over 20 years. I actually participated in a mountain bike stage race a seven day race. That they put on, gosh, probably about 10 years ago. And it was really quite an amazing experience. There's something to be said for being out there in the wilderness. traversing some amazing terrain. And then camping with everybody who just did the same thing as you that day, they do great highlight reel videos. Every night, they've got sort of a. Dining tent, and they prepare all the meals. It's an all exclusive experience. So when I heard they were doing a gravel version, I was super excited to go ultimately and do it, unfortunately that wasn't in the cards for me this year. But I did have my friend Marissa from Verde brand communications up there. Doing some interviews with some of the athletes as they were crossing the line. We were fortunate to talk to many of the stage winners and both of the ultimate winners of the event. So you'll see, during this episode, we'll go through each stage to give you a little bit of a flavor. For what transpired during the race, I'll give you a bit of an overview and then we've got a couple of just general commentaries from participants at the end of the podcast. So I hope you enjoy learning a little bit more about the trans Rockies. And with that i do need to stop and thank this week sponsor. This week we're once again, sponsored by our friends over at Trek travel and the discover Girona gravel trip. That I personally am going to be participating in on November 6th through 10th this year. And I encourage you to join me. You may recall. We did an entire episode on Jarana gravel last year. And learned a lot about this historic city. And what has become. A hub for professional cycling in Girona across the road and gravel spectrums. The city is surrounded by amazing gravel routes. And the Trek infrastructure in Girona is just top notch. It's a location of one of their service courses. So they've got a number of bikes and included in this trip. Is a bicycle rental from track. So you don't even have to travel with your bikes. As we talked about in the intro, I love the idea of multi-day gravel experiences. So whether it was the trans Rockies, gravel Royale. Or even better. A trip like this, where you can design your own experience. If you want to ride your bike from dusk till Dawn, the team attract travel can create routes for you. Or if you want to have more of a city experience and do shorter rides. And enjoy the cafes and the historic surroundings of the community of Girona. You can do that too. I am looking forward to bathing in it all, frankly, I've been dreaming about this trip for a few years, ever since I first found out about it from the group of Trek travel, and I want you to join me. So if you can. The. Trip I'll be participating in and starts on November 6th. If you register for the trip by visiting Trek, travel.com and search for that. Girona gravel bike tour. If you mentioned the podcast or the ridership, they're going to throw in a free handlebar bag. For your trip there and something you can take home with you it will be a small Momento of the time we'll share together. So I hope you'll join me there again. Simply visit Trek, travel.com and search Jarana gravel bike tour. And you'll see that November six. Trip amongst the other dates that they have available this year. And remember to mention the gravel ride podcast during your booking process. Without behind us, let's jump right into the overview of the trans Rockies gravel Royale. And hear from a number of the participants. All right. Stage one, the trans

This week Randall sits down with Enduro Bearings co-founder, Matt Harvey. Randall and Matt go deep on the origin story of Enduro Bearings (circe 1996), bearing science and myth, and how this often overlooked component enables the ride experience. Episode Sponsor: Athletic Greens Enduro Bearings Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Enduro Bearings [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show, I'm handing the microphone back to my co-host Randall Jacobs. Who's got Matt Harvey. Founder of Enduro bearings on the show. You might've heard us talk about Inderal bearings a few times in the, in the dirt episodes, as I was deciding and debating what bottom bracket to run on my new custom bike. Well, I decided on the Enduro stainless steel bottom bracket. And I couldn't be happier with the performance thus far. I was happy that Randall volunteered to take a deep dive into bearing technology. With Matt, as I think he's got better perspective on the technical elements. And certainly there's no one better to talk about this product than Matt himself. Before we jump in i need to thank this week sponsor athletic greens Athletic greens is literally a product that I take every day. I discovered athletic greens many years ago, as I was recovering from my treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma. I was looking for something that had the vitamins, minerals and probiotics that I needed to kind of just give me baseline support. After I was through that difficult period of my life. I realized that this was sort of a baseline thing I needed for all my athletic endeavors as well. With one scoop of athletic greens, you're absorbing 75 high quality vitamins minerals, whole food source, superfoods. Probiotics and APTA gins. To help you start your day, right? It's a special blend of ingredients to support your gut health. Your nervous system, your immune system, your energy, your recovery, your focus and aging. All the things. I encourage you to check it out, to see if it's something that might fit for you to make it easy. Athletic greens is going to give you a free one year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is that the athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. Again, that's athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. To take ownership of your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. With that said, I'm going to hand the microphone over to Randall. For his interview with matt harvey from enduro bearings [00:02:37] Randall Jacobs: So I cut you off last time we spoke because there are just too many things that I was interested in diving into. And there's the obvious technical aspects of what goes into making a bearing? Of the myths about bearings that we might debunk and things like this. But before we dive in, just tell us a little bit about yourself. [00:02:57] Matt Harvey: well, I've always been in bicycles ever since I can remember. So I started out as a BMX rat, you know, when I was like 13, 12 or 13, and I started working at a bike shop when I was 13. So I immediately into the mechanical, well, spraying, WD 40 on POJO drive, tra is an exactly super high end mechanical things, but that's how it started. So, you know, and you know, through there, I worked in bike shops, my business partner. Now I met in a bike shop when I was 17. We worked in the same bike shop. I ended up working at Fisher mountain bikes. I got an engineering degree, ended up working at Fisher mountain bikes, wide industries Bianchi bicycles, starting out in warranty. Became a product manager, went to Italy, did their mountain bike wine designed a bunch of road bikes and mountain bikes full suspension road bike that got written in Perry RBA. and that was kind of like when I was looking at bearings because everybody was using plane bearings or bushings at the time. And the Fisher RS one with Mert Lawwell work. That was his design. And one of the first full suspension bikes, I think. Well, not first, but you know what I mean? Like current more modern production type, full suspension bike, I should say. Cuz suspension, bikes go back. You know, turn of the last century. So, so that's when I was starting to look at bearings and rolling elements and that's when they were getting popular. And that guy I worked with at a bike shop when I was 17, he was in the forklift business by then. And he was starting to make bearings for old forklifts. And you know, we hadn't lost touch and we were talking a

In this episode, Craig has Randall back in the guest chair to explore wheel design and development along with the philosophy and design principles behind Lōgōs and its new Omnium wheel collection. From engagement systems and materials to profile design and assembly and everything in between, this episode will leave you with a broad understanding of the wheel landscape and equip you with the knowledge necessary to make an informed decision about your next set of wheels regardless of brand. Episode sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (use promo code: thegravelride for a free heart rate monitor) Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Logos Components [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. Today on the podcast. I'm welcoming Randall Jacobs to the show for an interview. You may very well know him for his efforts in the, in the dirt episodes, as my technical sidekick, as well as an increasing number of standalone interview episodes that he's handling on behalf of the podcast. I very much appreciate his technical orientation and his passion about the gravel cycling community. But today I wanted to get him on the show to talk about his new efforts with his company logos components. He's introducing three new wheels this month to the gravel cycling community. We wanted to do an episode obviously touching on the new company, but also as something that's standalone for anybody who's interested in upgrading their wheels or purchasing a wheel set for their gravel or mountain bike. I think there's a lot of nuance in the hubs, spokes, and rims that you can learn from this show that you can take across any decision you're making with any of the. RI and wheel manufacturers out there in the world. So with that, before we jump in, I need to thank this week's sponsor hammerhead and the hammerhead car two bicycle computer. The hammerhead car two is the most advanced GPS cycling computer available today with industry leading mapping navigation and routing capabilities that set it apart from other GPS options, free global maps with points of interest included like cafes and campsite means you can explore with confidence and on the go flexibility, I've talked about how I've been appreciating the hammerhead and how increasingly I've taken the time. To customize each screen. My latest way of geeking out was with rival access componentry. You can actually track the number of shift. In any given ride, obviously not mission critical information, but I just thought it was kind of interesting because as you think about it, uh, you know, you do shift more or less depending on the ation of the terrain out there. I very much appreciate. Hammerheads biweekly software updates. I always look forward to it. Sometimes it's things that are like no brainers. Like they've been improving their points of interest along the way. And other times it's deep tech that, you know, I perhaps don't have a need for today, but I very much appreciate the fact that they update it constantly because it's just something that gives me confidence that I've always got the most up to date. Technology on my bicycle computer recently, I think I mentioned I've been doing some exploring in my hometown. I love and appreciate that return to home feature. I was out on a route, um, actually when I was traveling and I wasn't exactly sure how I was gonna get home and I was pretty beat and I just navigated to return to start. And it gave me the most bike appropriate route home, which was very much appreciated as I was cracking in the heavy Tucson heat. For a limited time, our listeners can get a free heart rate monitor with the purchase of a hammerhead Cari, simply visit hammerhead.io right now, and use the promo code, the gravel ride at checkout to get yours today. This is an exclusive limited time offer for a podcast listener. So don't forget to use the promo code, the gravel ride. Add that free heart rate monitor into your cart. And when you purchase the car two, you'll get that heart rate monitor for. Go to hammerhead.io, add both carts and the promo code, the gravel ride with that said, let's jump right into my conversation with Randall. [00:03:56] Craig: Randall welcome to the show. [00:03:58] Randall: Great to be back on Craig, been looking forward to this conversation. [00:04:01] Craig: I feel like I owed you a more specific welcome because unlike our, in the dirt episodes, this one's a little different, we're gonna go deeper. And I think it's important. Many people who listen to in the dirt a

This week on the podcast, Randall sits down with Kathryn Taylor, co-host of the Girls Gone Gravel Podcast and Chief of Staff at Feisty Media. Looking at inclusion in the sport of gravel cycling and how Feisty Media is looking to build a brand centered around helping active, performance-minded women find the resources they need to do the things they love. Episode Sponsor: Bike Index, a free, non-profit bicycle registry and stolen bike recovery platform. Girls Gone Gravel Podcast Fiesty Media Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Girls Gone Gravel [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the podcast, my co-host Randall Jacobs is gonna take the reins. Randall did an interview with Catherine Taylor of feisty media and a co-host of the girls gone gravel podcast, Catherine. And the team at feisty media are helping active performance minded women find the resources they need to do the things they love. Many of you may be familiar with Catherine's work with Christie Mon on the girls gone gravel podcast. Christie is also a former guest of this podcast, and you can refer to that episode. We did about the big sugar gravel event. If you scroll back a little while in your feed, before we jump into the conversation I wanted to thank this week's sponsor bike index bike index is a nonprofit bicycle registry and stolen bike recovery platform. In fact, take a moment, hit pause, and go register your bike. It takes five to 10 minutes. The hardest part is locating your serial number, but once it's in the system, it's a free resource. Bike index has no business talking to you. They're hoping to just sit there in the background as a utility, but God forbid your bike goes missing and gets stolen. Bike indexes. One of the only resources you're gonna find online to help coordinate the efforts of recovering your bicycle. They're a nonprofit. Everything they do. Any donation you make is tax deductible. Registration is free, so you really don't have any excuse other than time to register your bikes. Go on, hit up bike index.org and get your bike registered with that said, let's jump on over to Randall's conversation with Katherine. [00:02:05] Randall: Katherine, thank you for coming on the gravel ride podcast. It's great to have this conversation. It seems like we have a lot of alignment in terms of the types of community building projects that we're most interested in and obviously our shared love of this particular sport. So, would just love to start with what's. What's your background with the sport? How did you end up doing a podcast called girls gone gravel . [00:02:26] Kathryn: Well, it's funny. I'm as many of the guests that we've actually had in our podcast, I've learned there's a lot of burnt out triathletes that end up in gravel. And that was definitely me. So I was really involved in triathlon for about 10 years. I raced coached. I even worked at a triathlon store. That was one of the top triathlon online retailers in the company. And I got really burned out from it because it's all about checking your power and your wants and. A lot of training all the time. And a friend of mine that was in the tri club was doing this race at the time called dirty cancer. And sh because she had heard this woman named Alison Terick on a podcast and she had never rid her bike more than 20 miles, but she signed up for the 200 mile event and was training through the company that I coached with. So I wasn't her coach, but one of my coworkers was her coach. And so I just heard all about this journey to this crazy gravel. Race. And I was like, oh, this sounds kind of fun. I think I'm gonna get a gravel bike instead of a traveling bike. And so I got a gravel bike and I would go out, she would go be doing like five laps of this local 20 mile loop. And I would go out and do one lap with her and just started to love it and love the adventure. And then started hosting some rides on the weekends for local community women. And Got into that. And then it's actually a funny story. So I was working at a bike shop at the time. And when I bought the bike, the bike shop owner was like, well, I don't think you're gonna like gravel because it's hard. And that made me really mad yeah. [00:04:00] Randall: oh [00:04:01] Kathryn: yeah. And so I had way too much wine one night and I woke up at two in the morning and I was like, I'm gonna start an Instagram account. It was when Instagram was. Starting to grow. And I was like, girl's gonna gravel, that's it. So I got the

This week we sit down with Nick Marzano to explore his experience during the 2022 Tour Divide. The 2022 Tour Divide began with over 200 riders following the 2,745-mile Great Divide Mountain Bike Route from north to south starting in Banff, Alberta, Canada and finishing at the US/Mexico border in Antelope Wells, New Mexico. Episode Sponsor: Trek Travel - come join The Gravel Ride Podcast crew on the November 6th trip. Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Nick Marzano [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show, we've got Nick Marzano from Philadelphia. Here to talk to us about the tour divide. Nick recently finished the tour divide routes during the grand depart from Banff, Canada, and made it all the way to the edge of the border of Mexico. If you don't know about the tour divide, it's roughly follows a route called the great divide mountain bike route, and it's recognized as one of the most important off pavement cycling routes in the United States of America. If not the world, the root criss crosses the continental divide from north to south, starting in Banff, Alberta, Canada, and finishing at the U S Mexico border in antelope Wells, New Mexico. I've been following the tour divide for many years. In fact, in some small part, I credit it with getting me excited. About making the transition from mountain bike, riding to gravel riding. It's an amazing accomplishment. To have achieved this event. It's 2,745 miles, and God knows how much climbing along the way. When Nick picked his head up in the ridership forum and mentioned to the community that he was doing it, I was super stoked to not only follow along. is.as he completed the route, but hear his stories along the way. It's amazing to get a firsthand account of what the tour divide experience looks like. . It varies every year, as you can imagine, with 2,745 miles. Across the United States. You've got all kinds of things to contend with. This year, there were some late season snow up in Canada. Which wreaked havoc. On the race and ended a lot of people's tour divides efforts before they even began. As you'll hear Nick persevered and had an amazing experience out there. It was a real pleasure talking to them. Before we jump into that conversation i need to thank this week sponsor trek travel You may recall last year when we had Trek on talking about the Jarana gravel bike tour, I was super excited. What you don't know is I've been talking about going on this trip since that moment in time. I'm super excited to go to Jarana this year in November, and I'm inviting you to join me. I'm going on the November 6th trip. From Trek travel just you're on a bike tour. You know, Jarana is a cycling gym. There's a reason why all the pros call it home with butter, smooth, tarmac, and perfect weather. But the road riding is just the beginning. And after that conversation with you, and I've looked at a number of routes out of Jarana and I'm super excited to get over there and experience the amazing gravel, the quiet mountain passes and the little villages of Spain. I feel like I've had this trip in my mind for. The entirety of the pandemic, and we're finally pulling it off. Trek wanted me to invite you to join me on this trip. Any of our listeners are going to get a free handlebar bag and a free pair of socks when they joined the trip. You simply head on over to Trek, travel.com and search for the Jerone gravel bike tour. It's a five day four night trip. The team over a, truck's going to handle all the logistics from the hotel to the routes. They're going to have guides on hand. It's actually one of the Trek travel service course locations. So they're gonna have a lot of beautiful track. Demani SL disc brake bikes available for us. As well as the option to bring your own, I'm super excited to get over there myself. We've got a small crew that's already signed up for this trip, but I want to invite you the listener. How amazing would it be for us to finally get together? And in Jarana of all places. I'm certainly looking forward to finally getting some dirt under my wheels in Europe, on a gravel bike. Simply visit truck travel.com. Find that you're on a gravel bike tour and make sure during booking that you mentioned, you're a gravel ride podcast listener, or a member of the ridership to get that free handlebar bag. With that said let's dive right into my conversation with nick Nick welcome to the show. [00:04:42] Nick Marzano: Hey, thanks for having me, Craig. [00:04

This week Randall sits down with Robert Duran from Encinitas, CA. Robert's inspiring story fighting pancreatic cancer while never losing his community and cycling spirit is lesson to us all to continue pedaling forward in life. Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (promo code: thegravelride) Robert's Links: https://pancan.org https://robertduranduran.com https://www.pancan.org/stories/not-just-a-patient-a-survivor/https://youtu.be/fS9Q1BT8Za0 Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Robert Duran [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week, I'm handing the microphone off to my co-host Randall Jacobs for an interview with Robert Duran Robert's of four times stage four, metastatic pancreatic cancer survivor. And the cyclist. I think his story is going to be an inspiration to anyone listening. Robert's been through the ringer, but never lets it get him down. He's out there every week, riding his bike, regardless of whether he's getting chemotherapy treatments. Or some experimental drug he's pioneering for the benefit of all those who suffer from pancreatic cancer. As a cancer survivor myself, I really enjoyed hearing about Robert's journey. I certainly drew some parallels to my own experience many years ago. I've included some links in the show notes for how you can learn more about Robert's journey. And a fundraising link for his pan can purple stride campaign. He was the number one individual fundraiser and his teams have garnered over $31,000 in donations for pancreatic cancer research. I hope you'll take a moment after learning Robert's story and donates to his fundraising campaign. Before we jump into rental's conversation with robert i need to thank this week sponsor hammerhead and the hammerhead Karu to computer The hammerhead crew too, is the most advanced GPS cycling computer available today with industry leading mapping navigation and route capabilities that set it apart from other GPS options. Free global maps with points of interest, include things like cafes and campsite means you can explore with confidence and flexibility on the go. I've had a bit of a funky schedule the last few weeks and only had about an hour or so to ride when I've been heading out. And I've really wanted to do something new here in mill valley I've been exploring some of the lesser known fire roads and how they connect to the various paved road neighborhoods in the hillsides, across from my house. And I've been using the crew two's mapping feature, which I've always appreciated having that color screen and the ability to kind of pinch and zoom and move around. Has been instrumental in me unlocking a few new pathways through mill valley, which has been a lot of fun. I remember at one point in my first ride thinking about exploring and I was about to pull out my phone to use that big screen, to find the road in the trail and how they connected. And I remembered the hammerheads got that same kind of screen resolution as a mobile phone. So I was able to kind of pinch in, find the trail where it was going to connect and navigate through this neighborhood. I've never been in, it was a lot of fun. And while it wasn't the purest of pure gravel rides, it was a real fun adventure for me when I only had a small amount of time. As I've said before. Hammerheads mapping functionality is really where one of the areas where it shines big time for me, I remember in the original device, that was what blew me away. And now that they've reduced the footprint in the size of the device. It's spot on exactly what you need. You know, you can customize it as much as you want in terms of what's on the screen. You can set up as many different swipeable screens as you like. It also has the buttons on the side. So if you've got a glove that doesn't have any capacitive touch to it, You can still navigate. Through your hammerhead. I encourage you to give the hammer head to look. It was Nanda, bicycling magazines. Editor's choice award for GPS cycling computers the last two years, and continues to collect accolades from many more people beyond myself. For a limited time, our listeners can get a free heart rate monitor with the purchase of our hammer. Head to computer, simply visit hammerhead.io right now and use the code, the gravel ride at checkout to get yours today. This is an exclusive limited time offer only for my podcast listeners. So don't forget to use that promo code, the gravel ride, and that's a free heart rate monitor with the purchase of the hammerhead c

This week Randall and Craig work through the details of Craig's custom Unicorn Cycles titanium frame and how he has decided to build it up. Episode Sponsor: Bike Index Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Custom Build Parts of note: Unicorn Cycles Ti Frame Enduro Bearings Wolf Tooth Rock Shox Rudy Ultimate XPLR Fork SRAM Groupo

This week we sit down with bicycle industry veteran Brad DeVaney. Brad has been with Litespeed Titanium and most recently OBED Bicycles since the early 1990's. Brad has an infectious passion for cycling that shines through in this conversation. Episode Sponsor: Trek Travel - Join me in Girona Nov 6-10, 2022 Litespeed Website OBED Website Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Litespeed/OBED [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the podcast. We welcome Brad Davine from Lightspeed and obit bicycles. If you've been around bicycles for a while, you're probably familiar with the Lightspeed titanium brand. They've been building bikes out of Tennessee since the late 1980s. Brad joined the team as a young man in the early 1990s. And has been following his passion within the titanium frame building industry. For many, many years since he's worked with the likes of Greg Lamond and the LA Sheriff's cycling team, he's worked on projects for NASA and done a ton of exciting things for the industry. You won't meet someone who's more friendly and passionate about the sport of cycling. So we were happy to hear when they turned their attention to gravel cycling. A handful of years ago. In addition to the Lightspeed brand. The company also owns the obit brand. Obit is a direct consumer carbon brand that has been making inroads for the last few years. I've really been impressed by. Both the refinement of the design in the obit frame set its modern day gravel bike. But equally impressed with the amount of customization that the team has been able to build into your process. You can customize the paint and decal logos on the obit models before they're delivered to your door directly. I encourage you to check both brands out and give a listen to this conversation. I think you'll get a lot out of Brad's experience and how he contextualizes. The different performance between titanium frames and carbon frames. Before we dive in i need to thank a new sponsor this week our friends over at trek travel. Those avid listeners may recall. I had you in Shepard from truck travel on the show. Back in episode 98 and September of 2021. To talk about the Jarana. On a gravel experience. Since that time I've been eyeing a trip with our friends at Trek travel. I was so excited. Jarana comes up so often. In both road and gravel cycling as a place you have to discover. Certainly after that conversation with UN I was completely committed ultimately to getting over there. It took a while COVID got in the way, but I'm now settled in, on a trip on November 6th through 10th. This year in 2022, and I wanted to invite you to join me. I figured it'd be a great opportunity. I know it's not easy to get over to Europe. There's both the expense and the time you'll need to take. But I couldn't be more thrilled to commit to this trip with Trek travel and to explore the fabulous trails around Gerona. We'll be staying right in the heart of Gerona at the hotel. Nord. To experience everything the city has to offer. The track team is going to design some gravel rides around the undulating and rolling Hills around your Rona to make sure that we experience everything we can. During that week in Spain. I know I'm going to train my butt off to try to be fit because I want to ride. Everything that's possible to ride in the area. I know this trip gives a lot of flexibility for riders to explore and ride as much, or as little as they want. During the week. So there'll be options for everybody. I know it's going to be a killer experience and I'm hoping and optimistic that some of you will be able to join me. I'll put a link in the show notes for the Jarana gravel bike tour, where you can simply visit Trek, travel.com and search Jarana gravel bike tour. I'll be working with the Trek travel team to put together a little something special for any gravel ride podcasts guests that joined us on that trip. I very much, I'm looking forward to seeing some of you November six through November 10th in Spain. With all that said let's jump right into my conversation with brad davine from lightspeed and obit bicycles [00:04:19] Craig Dalton: hey, Brad, welcome to the show. [00:04:21] Brad DeVaney: Oh, it's great to be with you, Craig. [00:04:23] Craig Dalton: I'm excited to continue our conversations. We've interacted a couple times over the years, but it's great to kind of have you on the podcast and just learn a little bit more about you. [00:04:32] Brad DeVaney: Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah, th

This week I'm releasing my conversation with David Toledo of Crow Bicycles. I first interviewed David early in the pandemic, but with the dramatic supply chain issues that were going on at the time, Crow decided to push the launch of their e-gravel bike back. They are now in-market with an extended line up of e-bikes so I'm excited to get our conversation out there. Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (use promo code: THEGRAVELRIDE for free HRM with purchase) Crow Bicycles Website Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Crow Bicycles [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the podcast, we've got David Toledo from Crow, bicycles from Madrid, Spain. I actually recorded this episode early on in the pandemic and was excited to learn more about the CRO brand. As it turned out as many of, you know, The disastrous supply chain affected many, many brands and it actually affected crow's planned launch schedule. We put the episode on ice, but I'm happy to say Crow is ready to go. With bikes, ready to ship. CHRO bicycles as you'll learn shortly is an E bicycle company. With a gravel model that is their flagship offering, but they also offer commuting bikes, a flat bar, gravel bikes, and a bunch of options. If you're looking to enter the e-bike market. I've always been fascinated by e-bikes. I first got an e-bike for a cargo bike and it was a no-brainer to schlep my son around. But increasingly I've learned to appreciate the place that e-bikes have in the market. Whether it's for commuting or pleasure. I do think if you open your mind, E-bikes makes sense for a number of types of riders. I often think about some of the riders I see up on Mount Tam, which is a bit of a hefty climb. As they're getting older, maybe they don't have the ability to get up the hill or maybe they're trying to ride with younger friends and I see multi-generational rides. Happening with fathers and sons and the father might be on the e-bike or a son might be on the e-bike. So it's been fascinating to see. So I'm excited to see where these will fit in. And I know crow's execution is very slick. You'll hear David talk about the type of drive train they've implemented and the sort of Swiss army knife approach they've taken. With the bike with the type of motor and battery pack removable from the bike entirely. Making it a perfectly. Acceptable standard bike, maybe with a slight weight penalty. But perfectly acceptable to ride. So I think it's an interesting option. Encourage you to enter this episode with an open. Heart about what e-bikes could be and learn a little from david and go check out the cro bicycles lineup. Before we jump in. I want to thank this week. Sponsor, hammerhead and the crew to computer. Do you want to get more out of your rides this summer? Any old device can track distance, time and pace, but how about the ability to see upcoming Hills and points of interest along the route? The hammer had crew to helps you find your path forward and unlock your full potential on every ride. I've talked about how I've been using the crew twos climb feature and how much I've enjoyed seeing upcoming climbs. I'm excited. I'm going somewhere new this next week for the 4th of July. And it's going to be interesting to see what those rides hold in front of me. I love seeing those data points. I've been continually tweaking my display on the crew to, to put the things that I think are going to be most important to me. You can set up a couple of different profiles. So kind of ways in which the computer screens. Are set up, which I find is super cool, because I might think about things differently for one of my mountain bike rides or a road ride. Versus my gravel rides. So it's great to have that flexibility. The crew too has been simple to use and data can be uploaded to all your favorite platforms like Strava and commute and more. One of the things I've also been thinking about as I've found myself a little bit out of shape. I don't have a power meter, although you could connect that to the crew too, but I do have a heart rate monitor. And what you guys might not know is that hammerhead actually has their own heart rate monitor while it works with any ad plus system, they also have their own technology. That you can get. And for a limited time offer our listeners can get a free heart rate monitor strap with the purchase of our hammerhead kuru two. You just visit hammerhead.io right now and use the promo code. The gravel ride at checkout to get yours tod

This week we sit down with Doug Roeder to discuss the 2022 UNBOUND 200. The draw of this event came at Doug from many directions and he has now set an audacious goal to join the 1000 mile club. Episode Sponsor: Athletic Greens Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Doug Roeder [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. [00:00:28] Craig Dalton: This week on the show, we've got Doug rotor. Doug. And I actually know each other, gosh, for a couple decades. Now we met through mutual friends and recently reconnected over the sport of gravel cycling a few years back. Doug reached out knowing that I did this podcast and mentioned that. He was heading out to Unbound. I knew he was also heading back here in 2022. So I thought it'd be interesting to get them on the podcast and just talk through his journey with Unbound. Talk about this year's event. Talk about how he's managing to fit it all in as a professional with a family here in the bay area. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you do too. Before we jump in i need to thank this week sponsor our friend at athletic greens. A G one by athletic greens is a product I use literally every day. It's got 75 high quality vitamins minerals, whole food source, superfoods, probiotics, and antigens. To help you start your day. Right. This special blend of ingredients supports your gut health, your nervous system, your immune system. Your energy recovery, focus and aging. All the things. I think what I've keyed in on, on athletic greens. And I remember I've been a gosh, I've been a subscriber for many, many years now. Predating the podcast. I love that it's an all in one supplement. It's quite easy in the morning for me to take a scoop and a cup of water with ice And know that it's got the multivitamins, I need it's lifestyle friendly. So whether you eat keto, paleo vegan dairy-free or gluten-free. It's all good in ag one. It contains less than one gram of sugar no gmos no nasty chemicals artificial anything while still tasting good. Let's be honest as gravel, cyclists. We often go deep into the pain cave and just need a little bit of extra attention. To our nutrition and diet just to make sure we're recovering well athletic greens and has over 7,005 star reviews and is recommended by professional athletes and trusted by leading health experts such as tim Ferris and michael Right now it's time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition, especially heading into the gravel race season. It's just one scoop in a cup of water every day. That's it? No need for a million different pills or supplements. To look out for your health. To make it easy. Athletic greens is going to give you a free, one of your supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is is it athletic greens.com/the gravel ride? Again, that's athleticgreens.com/the gravel ride to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Would that business behind us? Let's jump right in to my conversation with doug rotor Doug welcome to the show. [00:03:24] Doug Roeder: Hey, Greg. Thanks a lot. Great to be here [00:03:26] Craig Dalton: I appreciate you taking the time to join me after Unbound 200. I'm glad you got to the finish line. I can't wait to dig into your adventure out there. [00:03:34] Doug Roeder: and adventure. It was and yeah, happy to talk. Great to see you. Great to be with you. Can't wait to get out with you sometime live on a bike. This will have to suffice for now, though. [00:03:43] Craig Dalton: Indeed. So for the listener, Doug and I met each other, gosh, I don't wanna date us too much, but it's probably 20, 25 years ago. [00:03:50] Doug Roeder: Long time ago. Yeah. Team and training up in the city, [00:03:53] Craig Dalton: And through mutual [00:03:54] Doug Roeder: And mutual friends. [00:03:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. So to set the stage, Doug, are you, or are you not a professional athlete? [00:04:01] Doug Roeder: No, absolutely not. No, not even anywhere close. [00:04:04] Craig Dalton: So, so Doug's an endurance athlete, like most of us and, and not an unaccomplished one you've you've achieved multiple Ironmans. If I'm, if I'm remembering correctly and always been fit. [00:04:16] Doug Roeder: Yeah. So well, yeah. I, I guess right around the time we met, I was very unfit. I had kinda worked 80 hour weeks all through my twenties and didn't. It finally got to a place in my

This week we sit down with Mark Allen from Wichita, Kansas to learn of his experience in the UNBOUND 100 in 2022. Mark started cycling three years ago on an undersized Walmart bike. He was overweight and dealing with some health issues that convinced him he needed to make some changes. An UNBOUND poster on the wall of a friend changed everything and started him on a journey that led to completing this years 100 mile route. Episode sponsor: Bike Index, non-profit bicycle registry and stolen bike recovery platform Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Mark Allen - UNBOUND 100 [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show, we're talking to Mark Allen from Wichita, Kansas, and talking to mark about his journey from being a non cyclist three years ago, to finishing the Unbound 100 this year. I very much enjoyed this conversation with mark and I hope you do too. I think it just goes to show all of us that regardless of the challenge. What's important is putting one foot in front of the other one pedal stroke in front of the other, and just keep moving forward. Before we jump in. I want to thank this week. Sponsor, bike index. Bike index is a nonprofit bicycle registry and stolen bike recovery platform. The platform has helped recovered. Over $18 million in stolen bicycles. And you know what? The one thing they all have in common is they freely registered their bikes on bike index. So head on over to bike index.org, register your bike. All you need is the serial number, make, model, and color of your bicycle. You'll get it in the system and hopefully you never need to use their services. If you do, they've built out of robust, stolen bike recovery platform. With tools that you can use to freely share your stolen bike on social media channels. As well as ways of actually advertising against your stolen bike. To your fellow cyclists in your area, it dramatically increases your chances of recovering a stolen bicycle. So please take a [email protected]. With that said let's dive right into my conversation with Mark Allen. Hey, mark. Welcome to the show. [00:02:01] Mark Allen: Thank you very much for having me. [00:02:03] Craig Dalton: I'm excited to dig into your story as the listener knows. I always like to start just by getting a little bit about your background. So why don't you tell us where you're from, where you're living and originally how you found the bike, and then we'll get into how you got the courage to sign up for the Unbound 100 this year. [00:02:20] Mark Allen: Yes. I grew up in Wichita, Kansas did not know hardly anything about gravel cycling at all, which is amazing when you know, Unbound is basically in the backyard of Wichita. So. About three years ago, I decided I needed to get my health in check and was probably about 60 pounds overweight struggled with some thyroid issues that created me to gain an immense amount of weight. And I went to Walmart and bought a bike that just, I just decided to go ride a bike and [00:02:57] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Did you just get tipped off that cycling was a good activity, easy on the joints and [00:03:02] Mark Allen: I read yes, easy on the joints trying to not hurt my knees any further than they've been over 53 years of using them. So I jumped on this bike. That was way too small and I wrote it and I wrote it and I wrote it. And. Started losing weight. Started fixing my nutrition started fixing the proper medicines with my doctor. I mean, you put the three together and it, I really started having great results, great health results, great mental results. I mean, it was just a, you know, all on. Little itty bitty mongoose bike that I bought in Walmart. I'm six, five and 280 pounds at that time. And I'm now six, five, and kind of bounced between two 30 and two 40. But so I'm not literal at all. [00:03:52] Craig Dalton: Was was the environment in Wichita conducive to cycling? Was it, were you seeing people out there on the roads that made you say like, oh, like I see people are really passionate about this sport. [00:04:03] Mark Allen: Oh, say it all the time. It's amazing amount. You know, we don't have the greatest cycling infrastructure for the level of cycling that gets done in Wichita. Really surprised at that, but the amount of people that are. Riding bikes. I mean, everything from recreational bikes to folks on road and folks on gravel is amazing. So the, it is very popular here. It's very popular here and and. It's again, it's just amazing to see the amount

This week we have the pleasure of speaking with Anne Hed, CEO of HED Cycling. HED has been a pioneer in carbon wheels and aerodynamic carbon components for as long as I can remember. It was amazing to hear about how long HED has been thinking (and producing wheels) for the gravel market. Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (promo code: TheGravelRide) HED Cycling Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Anne Hed [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the podcast. We welcome Anne head CEO of head cycling out of Minnesota. If you've been around the cycling industry for a while I'm sure you've seen head wheels. They've been around for many, many decades and have been pioneering the use of carbon to go fast for that entire time. Anne's late husband. Steve had an, an founded the company. Out of a bike shop in Minnesota and built wheels to support triathletes in the early days. But have evolved to support all high performing athletes, including gravel, cyclists. We'll get into a little bit about the history of the company. The wheels they produce for the gravel market. And the history of gravel in minnesota. I was particularly amused by one story about Steve head and Gerard from open cycles and how the open cycle up, which has been a pioneering frame set and bicycle in our sport. Might not have come to existence. If it wasn't for a little event out in Minnesota. Before we jump into the conversation. I need to thank this week. Sponsor hammerhead. And the hammer had kuru to computer. The hammerhead crew too, is the most advanced GPS cycling computer available today. With industry leading mapping navigation and routing capabilities that set it apart from other GPS options. So you can explore with confidence and on the go flexibility. I've mentioned previously hammerheads biweekly software updates. They release new features that are unmatched by the competition. I was just reviewing the latest email from hammerhead about my software update about an auto lap by location feature. This is the kind of thing that I just find is super clever. So if you're doing laps around your local terrain, It'll automatically create a lap timer for you. So if you're like me, I've got a lunch loop that I continuously do. And sometimes I'll do a couple laps on it. If I need to kind of keep my ride in a controlled area. This will automatically create a lap. There's hundreds of little items like that, that hammer had is always introducing into the equation. So I really feel like this computer and the software is alive. I finally got around to doing some fine tuning of my main screen. Moved a few things around. As I've started to get a sense of got all these options. As to what I can put on the screen and I'm pinning down exactly what I want and putting them in the right location. So while I was happy before. I'm super happy now that I'm getting it dialed. So if you're in the market for a new GPS computer, I encourage you to check out the hammerhead crew too. For a limited time, our listeners can get a free custom color kit and an exclusive premium water bottle with the purchase of the hammer, head to computer. Visit hammerhead.io right now. And use the promo code. The gravel ride at checkout to get yours today. This is an exclusive limited time offer only for our podcast listeners. So don't forget to use that promo code, the gravel ride after adding a custom color kit and premium water bottle into your cart with the purchase of her career to. That's hammerhead.io. Would that business behind us let's jump right into my interview with Anne head And welcome to the shelf. [00:03:41] Anne Hed: Oh, boy. I'm so happy to tell everybody this story of head and I'm getting ready to head off to Emporia next week. So it's like perfect timing for this podcast. [00:03:52] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's so exciting. When I got introduced to you, obviously I'd been around been familiar with the head brand for my entire cycling career. And to hear some of the backstory that I know we'll get into in this podcast about. How early on you've been riding bikes off road. I think it's just exciting to have this conversation and make sure everybody in the gravel cycling communities, aware of the products that you have had in the market and the products that you're continuing to unveil in the model. [00:04:18] Anne Hed: Yes. I'm excited to tell the story. [00:04:21] Craig Dalton: So let's, let's start at sort of the beginning. Just, I know you've been around cycling your whole

This week we sit down with the author of Gravel Rides Scotland, Ed Shoote to learn about the history of gravel cycling in Scotland and why it should be on top of your list of gravel travel destinations. Gravel Ride Scotland Book Episode sponsor: Athletic Greens Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Gravel Rides Scotland [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the podcast. We welcome ed chute. He's the author of gravel ride Scotland. Many of you frequent listeners of the podcast will know I'm a big fan of the idea of gravel travel. So when this book came across my desk, I was super excited to dig in. I hadn't thought much about riding in Scotland and after seeing some of the pictures and reading some of the descriptions of these rides, it's definitely on my list of places to go. We dig in a little bit about the history of gravel roads in Scotland, how ed came to the sport of gravel cycling and what inspired him to write this great resource guide for all of us, I'll put a link to the book in the show notes. Everybody knows how to find it. And I hope you enjoy the conversation with ed. Before we jump in i need to thank this week sponsor our friends at athletic greens. Athletic greens is literally a product that I take every day. I discovered athletic greens many years ago, as I was recovering from my treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma. I was looking for something that had the vitamins, minerals and probiotics that I needed to kind of just give me baseline support. After I was through that difficult period of my life. I realized that this was sort of a baseline thing I needed for all my athletic endeavors as well. With one scoop of athletic greens, you're absorbing 75 high quality vitamins minerals, whole food source, superfoods. Probiotics and APTA gins. To help you start your day, right? It's a special blend of ingredients to support your gut health. Your nervous system, your immune system, your energy, your recovery, your focus and aging. All the things. I went out on a wet ride with my friend, Jason. On Sunday of this week, we got caught out there on our gravel bikes and relate to a little bit of a punishing day. From a weather perspective. I was pretty drained and I actually, when that happens to me, I come back and I take a second. Cup full of athletic greens, just figuring I'm going to just top it off. When my energy is depleted, it's something that I mixed with ice and shakeups. So it's pretty simple. It's something I travel with in little packets. It's pretty easy to get into a routine. And for me, I've just always felt comfortable that again, I'm covering my nutritional basis . I encourage you to check it out, to see if it's something that might fit for you to make it easy. Athletic greens is going to give you a free one year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is that the athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. Again, that's athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. To take ownership of your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Would that business from our friends out of the way, let's jump right into my interview with ed. Hey ed, welcome to the show. [00:03:28] Ed Shoote: Alright, thanks for having me on, [00:03:30] Craig Dalton: Cheers. Where are you located today? [00:03:31] Ed Shoote: So I'm just south of Edinburgh in Scotland. So a little town called peoples it's a. [00:03:37] Craig Dalton: for the listener. This is all gonna come together. Why it's important that he's in Scotland and what we're going to be talking about today. As I mentioned in the intro. We always like to start off ed, just by getting a. little bit about your background and maybe how you discovered cycling and when off-road cycling became a passion of yours. [00:03:55] Ed Shoote: Yeah. So, for those you who know accents I've not got a Scottish accent. So actually I grew up in the Southeast of England in this. Which is pretty flat. So I didn't really get into kind of mountain biking. Off-road riding hugely until I was probably about 17 or 18. I just grew up riding road bikes and time trials and then realized that was quite good base, I guess, to do a mountain bike. And so I started doing cross country racing in the late nineties, early two thousands, I guess. And then just got the puck for off-road riding. So, so as all good cyclists. University of college based on where the best biking was. And that's kind of what, w what took off for me, I

This week we sit down with Jess Cerra and Sam Boardman to discuss the Last Best Ride in Montana. Held in Whitefish, MT in August, Last Best Ride boasts not only an amazing route, but also an amazing community. Episode Sponsor: The Feed Last Best Ride Website Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Last Best Ride [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the podcast. We welcome Jess, Sarah and Sam Boardman onto the show to talk about Montana's last best ride. Many of you will probably recognize justice name as a gravel cyclist, often at the front end of the pack of these gravel races. She's also the founder of Jo J bar and currently as vice president of product and community development at both Joe, Jay and salt stick. She's also a member of the Pinarello Scuderia project. And a long time envy athlete. Sam Boardman, not as well known on the gravel cycling scene, but certainly a crusher out there on the road. He's a member of the powerful Legion squad and riding very well. Having one stage three of the Joe Martin stage race. Recently. The two partners have come together to create last best ride as a showcase for the love of their home in Whitefish, Montana. I hope you enjoy learning more about this event. It certainly sounds from all accounts that it's a great community event. And a spectacular ride. Before we jump in i need to thank this week sponsored the feed. For those of you who aren't familiar with the feed, the feed is the largest online marketplace for your sports nutrition, offering brands, you know, and love from scratch labs to cliff bar, to Martine plus their athlete customized supplements called feed formulas It's those feed formulas that I wanted to talk to you about and make sure you're familiar with feed formulas are personalized supplements for athletes developed in part with Dr. Kevin Sprouse from the EDF pro cycling team. Following the same protocols, the top athletes use. These are best in class, branded supplements, never generic. You get personalized recommendations based on your needs as an athlete. They're all packaged in a convenient daily pouch. So no more messy bottles keeping organized on the counter. You just grab a single pouch and it's got your fully customized order. Right. In one place, you can go on the [email protected] slash the gravel ride and save 50% off your first order today. On that website for feed formula, you can walk through what are the individual supplements that you need. They've got a base formula, then they have multiple different add on packs based on your age, whether you're recovering, whether you're peaking for something. So it's a really great way to make sure you've got all the supplements you need and in an incredible easy way to consume them each day. You're not going to forget anything in a bottle somewhere on the other shelf. Everything's in those. Personalized formula packages in their daily pouch. You can get 50% off your first order, simply visit the feed.com/the gravel ride. Would that business behind us let's jump right in to my interview with just sarah and sam boardman Hey, Jess, Sam, welcome to the show. [00:03:18] Jess and Sam: Hey, Craig. Thanks for having us, Craig. It's good to be here. [00:03:22] Craig Dalton: Where am I speaking to you at right now? [00:03:25] Jess and Sam: We're in a beautiful and snowy, Whitefish, Montana. [00:03:30] Craig Dalton: It's hard to believe. I literally just had a pool party for my son this past weekend in California. And you're still getting snow over there. [00:03:37] Jess and Sam: Yeah, we little bit embarrassing, but Rose Grant is a professional mountain biker who also lives here. And we tried to do a ride on Friday and we had to get rescued and we know what we're doing. We failed the pool parties. [00:03:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah, not this time of year anyway, was the listener knows. We always like to start off the show by learning a little bit more about your background and how you came to gravel cycling. And then I'm excited to talk to both of you about last best ride and the big gravel events you've got coming up this summer. So just why don't we start off with you and just talk a little bit about your journey to cycling and how you found yourself riding off road. [00:04:16] Jess and Sam: Yeah. Well, I'm actually from Whitefish, Montana, which is something not a lot of people can say. And I growing up here. You have an affinity for the outdoors? No matter what I think most people who move here and raise

During this week's edition of In the Dirt, Randall and Craig have a long over due catch up post Sea Otter and take a look at a few new products including the new Felt Breed. Episode sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2. Use promo code THEGRAVELRIDE to get a free custom color kit and premium water bottle. Support the Podcast Join The Ridership

This past weekend in Texas, Moriah Wilson was killed by gunshot. Moriah was a rising star of the gravel community and an amazing person. In tribute, I'm reposting my interview with Mo from earlier in the year. My heart is broken for Mo's family and everyone she touched.

This week we sit down with Greg Williams from the Lost and Found Gravel Festival and Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship to hear about this years festival and the work SBTS does in the Lost Sierra. Episode Sponsor: The Feed Lost and Found Gravel Festival Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Lost and Found [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. Yeah. This week on the podcast, we have Greg Williams from the lost and found gravel festival and Sierra Buttes trail stewardship organization. Talking about the lost and found gravel event coming up this June in California. And all the great work that his nonprofit does to make the trails in the Los Sierra, an amazing place to visit. Before we jump in we need to thank this Week's sponsor the feed. The feed is the largest online marketplace for sports nutrition. They've got all your favorite sports, nutrition brands in one place. If you've developed an affinity like I have for certain brands. You can hop on over to the feed and mix and match. So you get everything you need in one delivery. If you're a frequent listener, you've probably heard me talk about the feed formula. The feed formula is a customizable nutritional supplement package. Available only from the feed. Feed formulas were developed in conjunction with Dr. Kevin Sprouse. Of the EDF pro cycling team. And uses the same techniques he uses with top athletes. Ensuring they have all their nutritional needs covered. You can customize each packet from a base formula. And add on specific formulas for recovery, for aging, a bunch of different things. If you're not already taking a supplement in your daily routine to support your gravel cycling career. I encourage you to take a look at these. They provide a convenient way in individually wrapped pouches to remember to take all the supplements you need to keep your body operating in tip top shape. Podcast listeners can get 50% off their first order of feed formula by visiting the feed.com/the gravel ride. Remember that's 50% off your first order of the feed formula, simply visit. The feed. Dot com slash the gravel ride. Would that business behind us let's jump right into this week's episode with greg williams Hey, Greg, welcome to the show. [00:02:26] Greg Williams: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited. [00:02:28] Craig Dalton: I am T a man. , we're going to talk about the lost and found gravel grinder a little bit later in the broadcast. And it's a, it's an event that I've wanted to talk about for a couple of years now, actually probably four years, maybe because everybody who ever came back from it was like, this is an amazing event. Let's table that for a minute, because I really want to just start with you and just get a little bit about your background and how you ended up in the region. And then let's talk about the nonprofit, because I think everything you do up there is so intertwined with the gravel event and why it's so special that I think it's important to start. [00:03:02] Greg Williams: Yeah. A little bit of my background. My heritage is Milwaukee Indian up in the Northern Sierra and Nevada city region. And my, my tribe, was displaced almost overnight and my grand great grandfather went he ended up in Downieville actually during the gold rush and. Met this family called the Shaughnessy's, who had, they were opening a supply shop. So shovels and food in town. And my grandfather started building trails and Downieville and running pack meals to the minds. And growing up, it was always, the story that my dad would tell me about Downieville and and it didn't really matter until I got into mountain biking as a teenager and started riding Downieville and I was like, okay, this is it, man. This is my spot. This is, this is what I want to do. And as a teenager, I started guiding a mountain bikes, up in the region and then started running shuttles as well. I opened a bike shop in town 1991, and then started an event that was called the coyote classic in 1995. And now that's the Downieville classic. Downieville has been, a part of my heritage, part of my. My personal economy, part of my survival story. And the town was really starting to transition. I would say, it was a mining town primarily when I got there a lot of dredging on the rivers. And then when that became illegal in California, a lot of the miners in the family started to leave. And about that same time, a lot of the loggers were starting to leave as well. Recreation working with th

This week we sit down with professional gravel racer, podcaster and adventurer, Payson McElveen. We learn about his path to the sport, his drive for adventure and his plans for the Life Time Grand Prix and the rest of the races on his calendar. Episode sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (promo code: THEGRAVELRIDE) Payson McElveen Web / Instagram Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Payson McElveen [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the podcast. We welcome pacing. McKelvin pacing. As you may know, is a gravel racer, a mountain bike racer. A podcaster, a red bull athlete. And in all around adventurer. I've wanted to have pacing on the podcast for quite some time. I'm an avid listener of his podcast, but moreover, I'm a fan. And that probably comes through in this episode. I'm a fan of pace. And as he's every bit as approachable in real life, as he comes across in social media, He not only races at the front end of the gravel races on the calendar. But even more importantly, I feel like he's out there in the community and he's always after some great adventures. You can see him crisscrossing the country of Iceland. You can see him setting FK teas. You can see them getting brutalized on the Colorado trail and one of his first bike packing expeditions, he's just a hell of a lot of fun and a hell of a great guy. So I look forward to listening to this episode. Of the gravel ride podcast. Before we jump in, we need to thank this week. Sponsor the hammerhead crew to computer. The hammerhead crew to is actually the computer that pacing uses. So you may hear them talk about it, both on his podcast and in social media. His experiences are quite similar to mine. The Karoo two is a revolutionary GPS device that offers the rider. A whole bunch of customizability that really translates to giving you the information you need. When you need it in the format that you need it. I've mentioned before. A few of the things that I really love about the career too, are one, the climber feature. I've become addicted to the climber feature. It's quite amazing. Every time you approach a climb. The crew too, is going to display in graphical format in color coded format. The gradient. The length to the top and the amount of elevation you need to gain. I find that really useful in terms of pacing and it's fascinating. I've always been fascinated by grade. So seeing that great in front of me on the computer, I've started to really understand where my sweet spot is. I know that I'm quite good in the six to say 12% range, but north of 12%, I start to suffer. So it's quite interesting looking at that. The second thing I wanted to highlight is hammerheads bi-weekly software updates with new feature releases. That are unmatched by the competition. So unlike other head units, your crew to continues to evolve and improve. With each ride being better than the last you can seamlessly import routes from Strava commute and more. Route and reroute and create pin drop rooting on the fly. All available with turn by turn. Directions and upcoming elevation changes. The crew two's touchscreen displays, intuitive, responsive, and in full color. So your navigation experience is more like a smartphone than a GPS. You'll see your data more clearly than ever while also withstanding rugged conditions since it's water and scratch resistant. Tens of thousands of cyclists have chosen the crew to you as their trusted riding companion. Including this week's guest pace and mckelvin and another fan favorite amanda naaman. For a limited time, our listeners can get a free custom color kit and an exclusive premium water bottle with the purchase of a hammerhead crew to. Simply visit hammerhead dot. I owe right now and use the promo code, the gravel ride at checkout to get yours today. This is an exclusive limited time offer only for our podcast listeners. So don't forget that promo code, the gravel ride. After you put a custom color kit and premium water bottle in your cart. The code will be applied Would that business out of the way, let's dive right into my interview with pace and McKellen. Payson. Welcome to the show. [00:04:11] Payson McElveen: Thank you happy to be here. [00:04:13] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's good to finally get you on. I feel like I've been wanting to get you on since back in 2019 and the mid south gravel race. [00:04:21] Payson McElveen: Yeah. Yeah, that was that wasn't my first foray into gravel, but one of the first [00:04:28] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And I

This week Randall Jacobs sits down with Fort Bragg, CA Sculptor and trail builder Nick Taylor to discuss the intersection of cycling and art. Episode Sponsor: The Feed Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Nick Taylor [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week, I'm going to kick it back over to my co-host Randall Jacobs for a little something different for ya. Randall's interviewing sculptor trail builder and Mendocino cycling stalwart, Nick Taylor in an exploration on how the bike became interwoven in one artist's life Before I pass the mic over to Randall. I need to thank this. Week's sponsor the feed. The feed is the largest online marketplace for sports nutrition. They've got all your favorite sports, nutrition brands in one place. If you've developed an affinity like I have for certain brands. You can hop on over to the feed and mix and match. So you get everything you need in one delivery. I was just visiting the feed.com before recording this intro and I remembered in addition to all the nutritional brands that they carry, they also carry a wide variety of training gear. You might remember a couple episodes back when we were focusing on recovery. We talked about foam rollers. We talked about Sarah guns. We talked about pneumatic leg compression tools. I think we talked about the power dot, actually all these things are [email protected]. So in addition to getting your nutrition handled, You can work on your recovery. Like I've been doing. And finally I wanted to mention again, the feed formulas. The feed formulas are the world's first daily supplement pouch for athletes created in conjunction with Dr. Kevin Sprouse from the ETF pro cycling team. They feature best in class, branded supplements, never generics. You get personalized recommendation based on your needs as an athlete, and they're all delivered in a convenient daily pouch. We've got a limited time special offer of 50% off on your first order of the feed formula by simply going to the feed.com/the gravel ride. Remember that's the feed.com/the gravel ride With that said, I'm going to hand it over to my co-host Randall Jacobs and his interview with Nick Taylor. [00:02:26] Randall: Nick, I've been looking forward to this conversation for some time welcome to the podcast. [00:02:31] Nick: Well, thank you. Thanks for having me on Randall. [00:02:34] Randall: So before we dive in, let's give listeners a bit of background. Who are you, where are you from? What matters to you? [00:02:40] Nick: My name's Nick Taylor. I'm up here in Fort Bragg, California. That's about 180 miles north of San Francisco along the coast, fairly remote area. I'm a sculptor and a big bike bicycle advocate, as well as running a trail crew building trails out here in the Mendocino coast. [00:03:00] Randall: Yeah. And as somebody who has been to your workshop, I can say well, one, the area is quite beautiful and to the space in which you create some of the things that we'll be talking about and linking to in the notes. So it's a pretty special place. So tell us a bit about your, relationship to the bicycle. How did it get started? How has it evolved over time? [00:03:20] Nick: Well, you know, I think we all probably started riding Pikes when we were kids. And I certainly did that on a gravel road and in rural Ohio. So I had some experience as a kid and there was a big lapse and it wasn't until I was in my early twenties that I picked the bicycle back up and started to use it again. And that was a. I had, I don't know what really, what the impetus was for getting back on a bike, but I wanted to do some exploring and I guess that just seemed like a good way to go about it. And I bought myself a an old Schwinn Latour for 80 bucks and a. I was staying with my grandmother at that point up in Ohio. And I started doing some riding in the rides, you know, slowly became longer and longer. And I, I decided, well, you know what, I want to go do some tour. And so that led to a bit, a little, a little bit of touring on that the tour prior to graduate school, back in the early eighties. [00:04:15] Randall: So tell us about some of the early tours. What was that like? [00:04:18] Nick: Well, it was prepping to go to graduate school and really wanted to get out in between visiting one school and another, and I bought a gray ham pass. It was good for 30 days and pulled the map of the U S out and closed my eyes. And. Put my finger down on wherever it game. And, and the first place was I got out in

Recorded live at the Life Time Sea Otter Classic, we sit down with Michelle Duffy to discuss the 2022 Life Time Grand Prix. One race down, five to go in this season long series across XC MTB Races and Gravel Races. It will be exciting to see how it unfolds. Episode Sponsor: The Feed (50% off your first order of The Feed Formula) Life Time Grand Prix Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Michelle Duffy Lifetime [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the podcast. We're once again, live at the lifetime seawater classic. We're joined by Michelle Duffy. Who's the director of events, brand and content strategy at lifetime, and has been intimately involved in the lifetime grand Prix series. The grand Prix is a season long event series comprising of six lifetime events. Equally spread between mountain and gravel events that allow professional gravel athletes to battle it out over the year in a unique point series. I think it's going to be a lot of fun to watch and i wanted to make sure that we got michelle on just to talk about the ins and outs of the series and what she's excited about Before we jump in, we need to thank this week. Sponsor the feed. The feed is the largest online marketplace for your sports nutrition, offering the brands, you know, and love from scratch labs, Clif bar to Martine. Plus their athlete, customized supplements called the feed formula. Feed formulas. As I mentioned before, it's a daily formula individually wrapped that you have in a little box. She'd take out every day. And it gives you kind of the supplements you need as an athlete. The feed formulas are personalized supplements for athletes developed in part with Dr. Kevin Sprouse from EDF pro cycling team. He's the team doctor over there and it's following the same protocols that top athletes use. What I love about it is if you go over to the feed.com/the gravel ride, you can customize the individual supplements in your pill pack every day. So if you're needing a little extra recovery, or if you're an aging athlete, you can customize these for your needs in any given month. Right now gravel ride podcast listeners can get 50% off your first feed formula order. Just visit the feed.com/the gravel ride. These are best in class. Branded supplements, never generics. You get personalized recommendations based on your needs as an athlete. And it's all put together in a convenient daily pouch. So no more messy bottles on the counter. You can just grab a bag and go every morning. So I recommend you take a look at the feed. It's become my go-to source for all my hydration and gel needs. It's nice to have a single marketplace. That's really focused. On sports, nutrition. I often find myself in places where I'm just not really getting that focused offering. So I'm super comfortable recommending the feed.com for all your nutritional needs. Would that message behind us? Let's dive right into my interview with Michelle Duffy . At the lifetime seattle classic Michelle welcome back to the show. [00:03:07] Michelle Duffy: thank you, Craig. It's been a while. Yeah. [00:03:08] Craig Dalton: It's great to see you here at the sea Otter classic [00:03:11] Michelle Duffy: as well. And the flash is [00:03:13] Craig Dalton: this the kickoff to the lifetime sort of, I know it's the kickoff to the lifetime grand Prix. Is that your first event [00:03:18] Michelle Duffy: of the year? We've had a few road running events, but this is the first cycling event off-road event of [00:03:23] Craig Dalton: the season. And it's so exciting. Is this the biggest event in the calendar in terms of participation? [00:03:29] Michelle Duffy: Definitely. Yes. You know, we have. Sorry. We have road running events that are 15,000 athletes, but in terms of scale, 74,000 attendees here, 500 exhibitors, there's nothing compares to that. What year of [00:03:44] Craig Dalton: this yacht or classic is [00:03:45] Michelle Duffy: this? It started in 1991. So, [00:03:48] Craig Dalton: so I, I remember doing some of the races here, back in the mid nineties, on my [00:03:53] Michelle Duffy: mountain bike. Oh, I've heard some fascinating stories in those [00:03:57] Craig Dalton: days. Now the festival, I mean, Just this fascinating intersection of all the disciplines of cycling. It's hard to describe. I mean, if you, you name it, if it's on a bike, it's probably has an event here. [00:04:11] Michelle Duffy: Absolutely. I mean anything from e-bikes to gravel cross-country mountain bike, dual slal

We spent the last weekend at Life Time's Sea Otter Classic in Monterey, CA catching up with industry friends and athletes from around the world. We captured a dozen mini-interviews to give you a feel of the event. Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (code TheGravelRide) Episode includes: Fox, Classified, WolfTooth/Otso, Blackheard, Finishline, Fat Chance, Vitus, Kav Helmets, Surley, Enduro Bearings, Redshift, Transrockies Gravel Royale and Corvus. Support the Podcast Join The Ridership

This week Craig and Randall continue the discussion on the considerations for Craig's custom gravel frame build. We dig into the history of Reach and Stack, the meaning of BB drop and how different materials afford different options and considerations for construction. Episode sponsor: Therabody RecoveryAir JetBoots Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: In the Dirt #29 [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to in the dirt from the gravel ride podcast. My name's Craig Dalton. I'm your host. And I'm going to be joined shortly by my cohost Randall Jacobs. In the, in the dirt episodes, Randall and I take an opportunity catch up on everything going on in gravel, cycling. Uh, Everything you need to know in between our long form interviews on the gravel ride podcast This week's broadcast is brought to you by thera body. You may remember thera body from the thera gun massage gun that really revolutionized recovery for gravel cyclists. But this week, we're here to talk to you about something completely next level. We're talking about their body's revolutionary new recovery air jet boots. If you're like me over the years, you've seen these pneumatic compression boots. Underneath pro cyclists after stages of the tour de france or big gravel events and i've always been curious what that experience would be like But every time I looked into them, they seemed not only expensive, but incredibly. Overbuilt, they're attached to sort of something that looked like a car battery. You had wires everywhere. It just seemed overly complicated. As you know, on the podcast, we've been talking about recovery quite a bit lately, and it's driven by my own personal need. I found as, as I get older as an athlete, I just can't recover as quickly. And I need to basically do everything I can to make sure my body's in tip top shape and able to get back out on the bike. So it was super curious when therapy body came out with the recovery air jet boots. It's quite a bit more affordable than the original pneumatic compression boots that were out on the market And in a form factor that can't be beat. Recovery, our jet boots of the world's most advanced pneumatic compression system ever created. For years runners and gravel, cyclists, and everyone who spends hours on their feet. Have had to suffer through leg pains and aches after a hard day. Clinically proven treatments like the compression boots per athletes have always been using, have always been out of reach. Recovery era is a groundbreaking pressure massage system for everybody. Anywhere. With their body's exclusive fast flush technology, recovery air flushes out metabolic waste more fully, and brings back fresh blood to your legs. Three times faster than the speed of competition. Faster cycles means faster recovery. So you don't have to wait for the legs to feel great. There are bodies. Recovery are jet boots are first of its kind. They're truly wireless for anywhere on the go recovery boosting circulation and radically reducing muscle soreness. And thanks to recovery are super intuitive, easy to use one touch controls. Recovering faster as .a breeze. I had a couple of recovery sessions with the jet boots already. And I'm trying to figure out what's the right way to describe it to the listener. You've got an individual boot on each leg that goes all the way up to your upper thigh. As the pneumatic air moves through each boot, you feel your leg kind of compressed tightly, like a nice massage. As it rolls through a process you can set through multiple time sessions, how long you want to be in the product, how long you have for recovery. But I got out of it after a 20 minute session and the legs felt good. So I'm looking forward to doing more punishing rides coming back and getting these jet boots on my body. To find out more, just visit thera body.com/the gravel ride. You can get thera body recovery air today starting at just $699. Or as low as $59 a month with a firm. Plus with recovery, our 60 day money back guarantee and free shipping. There's absolutely no risk to giving it a try at home. Again, that's their body.com/the gravel ride. Would that business out of the way, let's jump into this week's episode [00:03:46] Craig: Hey Randall, how you doing? [00:03:49] Randall: Well, a little bit under the weather here in Boston, but hopefully we'll be recovered before I head out your way in a couple of days. Are you? [00:03:57] Craig: to see you got to get over this cold. [00:03:59] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually hoping to see a lot of or at least a few of our listeners as well. We got Seattle coming up. [00:04:07] Craig: Yeah, that's a good place to start. Yeah, so we're, we're getting we're both of us are going to be at Seattle this year, which is exciting. I think we did sea Otter together two years ago. That's on, [00:04:16] Randall: Two or three years ago. Yeah. Whenever you know, and that, that, that innocent pre COVID era [00

This week we sit down with Board Certified Orthopedic Specialist, Kurt Roeser from Ability Physical Therapy in Colorado to discuss recovery strategies for gravel cyclists. We dig into the things we can be doing at home to recovery faster along with the various products that have recently been developed to aid recovery. Episode Sponsor: The Feed Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Kurt Roeser - Recovery [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. So as we start out this week, let me ask you a question when you're done with a ride. What's next? Do you just hang up the cleats, put the bike away and go onto the next thing, Or do you take a moment for self care? If you're like me, it's often onto the next thing with Naria thought for what? I just put my body through. This week's guest is Kurt. Roser. A board certified orthopedic specialist and physical therapist at ability physical therapy . Kurt is an experienced distance runner and cyclist. And brings a wealth of experience to the field of recovery. Before we jump into this week, shall I need to say a big thank you to this week, sponsor the feed. The feed is the largest online marketplace for your sports nutrition, Offering the brands, you know, and love from scratch lab to cliff. Plus their athlete customized supplements called feed formulas. I can say, what I appreciate about the feed is that they've got all the brands that I've come to count on as a gravel cyclist. I can't tell you how many times I go to the grocery store and try to pick up something, but it never does the trick. I'm just not getting the diversity of brands that are cycling specific and that's where the feed comes in. I can get whatever I want whenever I want. I talked a little bit about the feed formulas last week, but I want to drill into it a little bit more. As I've been consuming them on a daily basis. Feed formulas are personalized supplements for athletes developed in part with Dr. Kevin Sprouse. Dr. Sprouse is probably best known in cycling circles for his work, with the EDF pro cycling team as team doctor, he follows the same protocols he uses for top pro athletes to develop the feed formulas. And the feed has made them customizable and available to you. You can [email protected] slash the gravel ride and save 50% off your first order. When you visit the feed.com, you can get personalized recommendation based on your needs as an athlete. The feed formula comes into convenient daily pouch. So no more Massey bottles on the counter. Everything you need is in a simple packet for you to consume every day. Remember simply visit the feed.com/the gravel ride and get 50% off your first order of the feed formula With that said let's dive right into this week show. [00:02:42] Craig: Hey, Kurt, welcome to the show. [00:02:45] Kurt: Hey, Craig, how's it going? Thanks for having me, [00:02:47] Craig: Yeah, it's going great. I'm excited to dig into this conversation about recovery. I feel like half these podcasts are guided by my own personal interests. So I just hope the the listener likes to join me on this journey. [00:02:59] Kurt: for sure. Yeah. So it is all about learning, learning for yourself and helping some, some other folks at the same time. [00:03:05] Craig: Yeah, exactly. I'm appreciate you giving me the time to pick your brain. Let's start off with a little bit about just your background and how you got into your profession. And then we'll, we'll dig into some questions. [00:03:15] Kurt: Yeah, definitely. So I kind of grew up being a, being a distance runner. I ran college it in track at the university of Florida. And then like a lot of runners, I got injured a lot. So, I w me to want to be a PT. And then when I was in PT school, I got into cycling a lot and some triathlons. And so, yeah, kind of developed a, just broader enjoyment for endurance sports in general. Yeah, so now I, I am a physical therapist working in an outpatient setting and work a lot with runners and other endurance folks whether it's cyclists or, or skiers all, all sorts of fun stuff, just kind of helping people get back out there. And then, yeah, I still like to run like competitively. So, my marathon vest is a two 17, so I got to run in the. USAA marathon trials a couple of years ago. So hoping to get a couple more good marathons and in me, and then just a transition to more, just fun, fun diverse stuff more biking and, and all that good stuff. So, [00:04:13] Craig: Nice. I imagine being in Colorado, you've got no shortage of p

This week we sit down with Gravel Locos founder Fabian Serralta to unpack the road to developing a stand out event. New for this year, Gravel Locos will be adding an event in Peublo, CO in addition to the original event in Hico, TX. Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead. Use coupon code 'TheGravelRide' for a free custom color kit and premium water bottle. Gravel Locos Website Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Gravel Locos [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. [00:00:26] Craig Dalton: Have you ever thought about organizing a gravel event? I certainly have this week's guest Fabion. Serralta took that passion and idea to create an event. And created gravel Locos. The original event in Heico Texas is joined this year by a new event in Pueblo, Colorado. I sat down with Fabi and to learn about his inspiration for gravel Locos, the charitable component of what he does and the general theme of all gravel Locos events. Before we jump into the conversation. I need to thank this week. Sponsor hammerhead. The hammerhead kuru to you as raised the bar for cycling computers. You can get advanced GPS, navigation, and intuitive software right on your handlebars. In a way you never thought possible. I spent this past weekend down in Tucson, Arizona. After speaking with John from the mountain lemon, gravel grinder, a few years back, I've been itching to get out on the course. So I simply downloaded the GPS file from their website, uploaded it to my kuru to and felt super confident going out there in the back country. I've got a ton of stories about some of the snafoos. I had mechanically speaking while I was out there, but from a navigational perspective, it was spot on what I really appreciate about the crew too. And I've talked about the responsive touchscreen display before. Is that in the navigation? Once you've loaded a route in there, you get a little icon, no matter what screen you're on. saying when the next turn is coming up. It's those little touches and details that I think really setting the hammerhead crew to a part beyond that, I really got to dive into the climber feature, which is something unique and special about hammerhead. The climber feature allows you to visualize and prepare for upcoming gradient changes in real time. So, what does that mean? Basically it translates to a nice graph. On the climber screen on your crew to computer that shows you in color-coded fashion. The length to the top of the climb, both in miles, as well as elevation, and then gradient by gradient profile looks that map exactly to what you're experiencing when you're out on an adventure loop that you've never been on before. It was super useful to see, okay, this is going to be a punchy. Mile mile and a half climb. Versus at the end i discovered as it turned a corner that i was in front of a six mile climb but fortunately the gradient was pretty chill. This all translates to knowledge is power. And with the hammerhead crew too, you can get all the information available out of your GPX files. You can customize it to the nth degree. I still have a ways to go and customizing mine, but you can see the power of organizing your data right there on your computer screen. For a limited time, our listeners can get a free custom color kit and exclusive premium water bottle with the purchase of a hammerhead crew to visit hammerhead.io right now and use the promo code, the gravel ride. At checkout to get yours today, that's a free custom color kit. And a premium water bottle with the purchase of a career to. Go to hammerhead.io at all three items to your cart and use the promo code. The gravel ride. With that said let's jump right into my interview with Fabienne from gravel Locos. [00:03:40] CraigDalton.: Fabian , welcome to the show. [00:03:41] FabianSerralta: Hey, Craig. Thank you. [00:03:43] CraigDalton.: It's good to talk to you again. [00:03:44] FabianSerralta: Same here. Thank you. [00:03:46] CraigDalton.: I'm excited to learn all the things about gravel locus and, but would love to learn a little bit about your background first, just kinda what drew you into the sport originally, and then what led you to take on the huge challenge of creating an event? [00:04:01] FabianSerralta: Well, I, I would definitely say I was probably what led me to the sport was purely accidental. I I purchased a, a ranch in Oklahoma in 2012, and I remember the first time driving out there to see this ranch with the R I was following a realtor and wearing this perfectly smooth coun

This week we sit down with rising gravel racing star, Brennan Wertz from the Pinarello Scuderia team. Brennan has been tearing up the Northern California gravel scene in early 2022 with wins at the Grasshopper and Shasta Gravel Hugger. Episode sponsor: The Feed Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Brennan Wertz - Pinarello [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. Let me start this week with a question. Did you come to gravel, cycling from another sport? This week's guest certainly did. Brendan worked, spent his high school and collegiate years at the front end of another pack. The USA rowing pack. Brendan road for the national team, as well as Stanford university. But injury led him back to cycling a sport. He discovered in his youth here in the town of mill valley, California. We're going to dive into his background and what's led this pro to be at the front end of the field in 2022. Before we jump into this week, shall I wanted to extend a big, thank you. And welcome to the feed. A new sponsor here on the gravel ride podcast. I've been enjoying getting to know the team over in colorado from the feed and have been really impressed by their commitment to bring together not only products but education around this idea of human performance. Today. I wanted to talk to you in particular about one category of product, their feed formula. As you know, on the podcast, I've been kind of investigating through my own lens. The idea of nutrition and performance and what I need as I've aged as an athlete. The team at the feed has been working with Dr. Kevin Sprouse. Who's the head of medicine for ETF education for cycling team. In their athlete, daily formula, they've designed a supplement. That's the right combination of micronutrients that can offset decline in energy production. Help avoid burnout and speed up next day recovery. What I found super cool about the product that in addition to the base product, you can have optional ad-ons. So, if you're looking for additional immunity or more joint support, you can add those into the packets. Regardless of what you add into the package. We're not talking about a hundred bottles sitting on yourselves. The feed formula is delivered in customizable. Many sleeves. So each morning you pick one of them out. You rip it open and it's got all the supplements organized for you in one simple place [00:02:27] Craig Dalton: The feed is running a special offer on the feed formula. Right now, you can get your first order at 50% off. By simply visiting the feed.com/the gravel ride. Again that's the feed.com/the gravel ride for special 50% off your first order of feed formula. With that business behind us, let's jump right in to this week's interview. brennan, welcome to the show. Thank you so much [00:02:53] Brennan Wertz: for having me. It's good to be [00:02:54] Craig Dalton: here. It's a rare instance that I've got someone in my home in mill valley. So I'm stoked to have this conversation face to face. [00:03:00] Brennan Wertz: Yeah, me too. No, it's a, it's a real pleasure. [00:03:02] Craig Dalton: We always jump into the conversation by learning a little bit about your background. So growing up in mill valley, when did you discover the bike and where did it go to from the. [00:03:12] Brennan Wertz: Uh, really early on, it was a vehicle that I use to get to. And from school, just down the road here, I went to tan valley elementary school. And I would ride with my parents when I was first getting started and, you know, kindergarten or the early days ride to and from school. And then later on in elementary school, it just became more of a fun toy, something that I could go out and explore with and go with my friends out in the Headlands. You know, rip around Mount Tam on our mountain bikes. So, uh, pretty quickly I got into mountain biking, more descent oriented, I would say I would go and do Downieville with some friends every once in a while, and even went and did some of the downhill. Shuttle access riding at north star one. [00:03:49] Craig Dalton: Nice. Did they have the Tam high school mountain bike program at that [00:03:52] Brennan Wertz: point? They did. Once I got into high school, it was when I was I kind of got swept into rowing and that required my full-time focus. [00:03:59] Craig Dalton: How did that happen? I'm super curious to dig into your rowing career, because I think as I mentioned to you before I've met so many rowers that came into cycling and with this huge engine. So I'm

This week we sit down with BMC's Joan Hanscom to look at the URS LT suspension gravel bike. With 20mm of HiRide powered front suspension paired with a Micro Travel Technology (MTT) Rear stay, the URS LT is up for any adventure. Episode sponsor: Athletic Greens BMC URS LT Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Joan - BMC [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton This week on the podcast. We've got John Hanscom from BMC here to talk about the BMC ERs, L T you might remember re mentoring this bike. Back in the, in the dirt episode, a couple of months back when it first came out and a quick interview we did down at If you recall, the ERs has been in market for a few years, but the LT version actually has a front suspension on it. So as you can imagine, I was eager to talk about it. Before we jump into the show. I need to thank this week sponsor. AIG one by athletic greens. I'm always happy to shout out our friends at AIG one, simply because I've been using the product for many, many years. It started really, when I realized post-chemotherapy that I had a suboptimal immune system. I was getting sick easier, and I really just hated taking vitamins and pills every day. And I wanted something that I could drink each morning that would cover my nutritional basis. I discovered athletic greens originally through another podcast. So it's poignant that it's coming full circle and athletic greens is now supporting this episode. So what's athletic greens all about it's a green drink. It's got 75 high quality vitamins minerals, whole food source, superfoods. Probiotics and APTA gins. Packed in there to help you start your day. Right? It's a special blend of ingredients that support your gut health, your nervous system, your immune system, your energy recovery, focus and aging. All the things Athletic grants was created when the founder experience a ton of gut health issues and ended up on a complicated supplement routine to recover, it cost him a hundred dollars a day. He created athletic greens after experiencing how difficult it was to create an optimum nutrition routine on your own. Athletic greens will cost you less than $3 a day. And has over 7,005 star reviews. It's recommended by professional athletes and certainly trusted and endorsed by yours. Truly. Right now it's time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with a convenient daily nutrition and all solution. Especially heading into cold and flu season. It's just one scoop and a cup of water every day. That's it? No need for a million different pills and supplements to look out for your health to make it easy. Athletic greens is going to give you a free one-year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is is it athletic greens.com/the gravel ride? Again, that's athletic greens.com/the gravel ride. To take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. With that business out of the way, let's dive right into my interview with John from BMC. Joan, welcome to the show. [00:02:52] Joan Hanscom : Hi, thanks for having me. [00:02:54] Craig Dalton: I'm excited to have this conversation with you. I've been eager to talk to someone about this BMC or is LT for awhile. It's a bike I've known about prior to the LT model, but something I've always been excited about. So why don't we start off with just a little bit of your background and how you found your way to BMC, and then let's talk about the BMC. [00:03:14] Joan Hanscom : Yeah, right on. And it's not a terrible thing to talk about breaks on a Friday afternoon, right? So the most fun topic we can have going into a weekend. Oh. So. My background. I started racing a long time ago and I really, really loved I started as a multi-sport athlete and was a terrible runner. And so find myself racing bikes and loving racing bikes and At the same time I was experiencing some, I don't know, career stress we'll call it. I was working for AOL and they merged for AOL time Warner. And it went from being like the super awesome place to work. And be too sort of stressful and political. And I asked myself, what do I love? I love bike racing. So I reached out to some guys in Philly, Dave, Shawna, and Jerry castle, and said, gosh, you should hire me to work for you. And. Dave and Jerry we're producing the biggest road events in the country at the time, the Philly week, San Francisco, grand Prix. And I just threw a hail Mary and said, you should hire me. And they lo and behold they did. And so I've been working in bike racing ever since. So that was probably 2002, a long time ago. So I've been, been around bike racing for a good long time. And I would describe myself as an enthusiast, a bike racer who has more. Passion, then talent will go with that. But, but yeah, so I've been kicking around in the bike industry for a long tim