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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 country road. And I was just thinking, this is great. I'm gonna have my road bike out here. And and as soon as we get to the one road leads to the ranch, it was this. Awful road with rocks and gravel and dirt. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. I'm not gonna be able to ride my road, bike out here. And then we're on this road. And this lady is just like flying on this road and just dusting, dirt everywhere. And then we're just flying on their road and, and it was like a 15 mile drive from on this. Awful gravel dirt road to the driveway of this ranch that I had just purchased and or I was about to purchase. And then the driveway from this road to the ranch was another mile and a half. And when we get to the ranch property in the house, I said to her. This is terrible. I'm not gonna be able to ride my bike when I'm out here. She's like, well, what do you mean? I said, I'll get a flat tire by the time I get to, to the to the main road. And she's like, well, you can just drive your bike in your car and, and go out there and just park out there. I'm like, where am I gonna park? That's like somebody else's property out there. So this is 2012. And I, so I buy this property and probably from 20 12, 20 13 until about 2015. I didn't get to ride my road bike every time that I went out there. [00:05:41] CraigDalton.: yeah. I was gonna say there wasn't a lot of options [00:05:43] FabianSerralta: Yeah. [00:05:44] CraigDalton.: of gravel bikes at that point in time. [00:05:45] FabianSerralta: Yeah. But then in 2015, I'm visiting my son in Denver. He was gonna school at the university of Denver and I just happened to go to a, a bike store. It was a, I believe it was a specialized bike store and I walk in there and there's. White and red bike Witham, and it looked like a road bike and it had these Nobby tires on it and zip wheels. And I'm like, what in the world is this thing? And the sales guy comes up to me and I'm like, what is this thing? You know? And he's looking at me like, he's like, where are you from? I'm like, well, I'm from Cuba. And he's probably thinking this guy just fell off of open a Palm or something. Cause likes a, and I'm like, what's a, you, I had idea what a. He's like, you don't know what a cross bike is. I was like, I don't know, but I want that bike. He's like, well, you gonna Doy lacrosse. I'm like, no, I bought this ranch and it has these horrible roads that are rocks. And he's like, oh, so you want a gravel bike? I'm like a gravel bike. I said, no, I want that bike. And I need you to ship it to Texas. And the guy is just like, looking me, like I'm nuts. But it was like, It looked like a road bike and it had, you know, what looked like to be mountain bike tires. And I'm like, this is it. So I purchased a bike and it happened to be on my size, a 54 centimeter. They ship it to to Texas to my local bike shop and gets over there. They had 700 by 33 C tires. I start writing it in Oklahoma and I thought was the greatest thing ever. And I was running 90 PSI on the tires, which I thought at the time was perfect. As you know, on my tubular road tires, I was running 120 PSI. And so I thought this thing was just as smooth as can be on these gravel roads. And I signed up for my first gravel event, October 1st, 2016. And I thought, Hey, you know, it was 15 miles, no big deal. I showed up at the time, I think I had 95 P assigned a rear and 90 in the front. And I thought it was gonna be very much like a road rally where you have, you know, rest stops every so many miles. And so I think I had two water bottles and, or maybe a one snack or whatever, and man, it was a nightmare. [00:07:55] CraigDalton.: Was was that in Oklahoma, the event that you signed [00:07:58] FabianSerralta: it was Texas. It was a really hilly area monster, Texas. And you know, I paid my registration fee, which I think it was, I don't know, 85, $90. And I was expecting it to be just like many of the road rallies I had done. And. You know, grass stops with bananas and oranges and cookies and pickle, juices, and Gatorade. And there was nothing. all they had was a water table. with warm water, no food. And by the end of the 50 miles, I thought I was gonna die. And with that tire pressure on those 33 sea tires. I was so beat up. I swear, I'll never do this again. I remember getting to the finish and calling some buddies. I'm like, I am never doing this again. This is horrible. Why would anybody ever do this? You know, [00:08:43] CraigDalton.: Yeah. It's, it's funny. What a difference the evolution of the equipment has made in the enjoyment of the sport. I'm with you. I, I got my first gravel bike a little bit later than the, I think back in 2016, but it was a. 2014 model year bike, 32 C tires. Fortunately it, it did have tubeless on it, but it still, like, I just felt like it wasn't that much better than Ayro bike. I had five or six years earlier, which I had pretty much quit riding because I would either flat or get the crap beat outta me every time I rode it. [00:09:15] FabianSerralta: Yeah, this, this, I mean, it was, it was ay, it was a cycle cross bike. It was specialized crux. I mean, it had great, I mean, it had zip three or threes. I was running tubes. Which was, you know, a big difference from running tubers on my other bikes road bikes. And they had ceramic red, I couldn't complain it was a great bike, but I was just running to run tire pressure, the wrong tire size. And I really didn't have any, any knowledge of, of gravel, but, you know, I did see other people running big, your tires and all that. And it, it was just this learning curve. But that first experience was horrible. And I really, I swear I never did this again. And it took a while and then I, I started learning from others like, Hey, yeah, you can't be out there running tire pressure like that. And you can't, you, you gotta run bigger tires than that. And you gotta run, you know, tube, you know, tubeless. And and you know, I, it probably took me a few, a couple of months before I even wrote again. But as I, I started getting more and more advice from others that were doing it. But it was so early on. But it was that experience that really led me to wanna have eventually at one day have a gravel event. That was a lot like a road rally, but that it was also, you know, it, it had the, it was at the time it was, you know, the dirty cancer event, the DK 200. So I wanted to have a, a DK 200 event with the pro component, but yet. Beginner friendly. So have all the support that you would need for beginners like myself or, or people just really interested in gravel. So having all the bunch of rest stops and having portable bathrooms at rest stops for the women and having sag vehicles all over the place, but yet having a ton of pros. So having, you know, an event that was a DK 200 packed with pros, but yet packed with. All the support and all the things that you are accustomed to experiencing and having at a, you know, family road, rally type event. [00:11:15] CraigDalton.: Interesting. So it sounds like, I mean, if we fast forward a few years from that original event, it sounds like you competed in a handful of events every year to try to, you know, obviously continue your enjoyment of the sport. The, the equipment had continued to evolve and, and you'd had a number of experiences at other events where you're like, I like part of what this event has done, but part of what that event has done. And you thought, well, like what if I did this on my own? [00:11:41] FabianSerralta: Yeah, look so it, the events continue. I con I would go to every gravel event that I could go to, but it just, it was, you know, you pay your 75, 85, a hundred something dollars, but. You're lucky you got a water table and it was, everything was always self support, self support, self supported, and you're paying all this money, but you're not really getting a whole lot in return. And to me, it really excluded a lot of beginners. It excluded people that didn't have a lot of bike skills or, or bike mechanic knowledge because, you know, I always say what, what makes riding gravel so great is that you're out in the middle of nowhere. , but what that's also, what makes it kind of dangerous and also kind of keeps a lot of people out of it because you know, you're out in the middle of nowhere. You don't have cell reception, you don't have convenience stores. Oftentimes you don't have many houses or you don't see a vehicle or cars don't even go come by half the time. So yeah, you're out there in the middle of nowhere, but then you don't help of neighbors and you don't have convenience stores and you don't have others to reach out to in case of an emergency or a mechanical. And I feel that that deters a lot of people from venturing and, and experiencing gravel. And as a result, you know, a lot of people miss out on experiencing gravel. So how do you bring in all those people? And for me, Is the way to do that is by bringing in all the support, the sag vehicles, aid stations, every so many miles. So for example, in gravel Locos, you have, you know, six aid stations you have 20 something sag vehicles for the women. We have portable bathrooms at all the aid stations where there is in HaCo or in Pueblo, Colorado . And that's how we take out that, that fear of, you know, Being out there in the middle of nowhere. So, but yet we still have, you know, 20 something, 30 pros out there participating just like you, we did, you know, at events like dirty cans, 200 or, you know, what was land run, you know? And I referred to them by those names because that's what I was modeling. Then. [00:13:42] CraigDalton.: I'm glad we unearthed that because I think it's important to kind of think about people's orientations as event organizers in terms of how they're gonna set up the overall experience. You know, it's one thing when you've got a, a top level pro who's decided they want to get into the event business. And oftentimes they do design events that are driven from the front. They're really a professional experience that does trickle down to the rest of us. But it's you know, it's pretty refreshing to hear you talk about. Wanting the last person in the event to have the best time possible as well as, as the first. So stepping back for a second, you, you live in Arlington, Texas, you've got property in Oklahoma. You'd experience the gravel community for a number of years. You decided, Hey, there's something missing. I'd love to highlight…
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