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Gregor von Medeazza - South Africa's The Munga and Namibia's Desert Dash Jan 05, 2021

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This week we travel across the globe to Africa with Gregor von Medeazza. In Part 1, Gregor tells tales of Namibia's Desert Dash and South Africa's The Munga (self-described as 'The Toughest Race on Earth'. Gregor's story should inspire anyone looking for a gravel adventure.

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Namibia's Desert Dash

South Africa's The Munga

Charity: Bicycling Empowerment Network Namibia

In the Dirt 14: The Boom and Bust of 2020 in gravel cycling Dec 30, 2020

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This week we conclude the year with a discussion of the 2020 gravel bike boom and bust looking at some of the challenges faced by the industry (and endured by consumers). We also look at some of the trends in 2020 that will continue to affect what we will be riding in 2021 and beyond.

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Randall's Path Less Pedaled discussion on fact and myths of bike manufacturing

UNBOUND GRAVEL 2021 with Kimo Seymour and LeLan Dains Dec 22, 2020

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Kimo Seymour (Life Time) and LeLan Dains (UNBOUND GRAVEL) take a look back at 2020 and forward to the 2021 gravel event season including UNBOUND GRAVEL. We take a close look at the COVID protocols the team has put in place to ensure a safe event. UNBOUND GRAVEL Instagram UNBOUND GRAVEL Covid Safety Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Episode Transcription: Craig: Gentlemen, welcome to the show. Kimo: Thanks for having us. LeLan: Yeah, thanks for having us, Craig. Craig: Yeah. So it'd be a good place start off since I've got two of you on the line today. Why don't we start off with Kimo, and then go on to LeLan? And just talk about your respective roles at Life Time. And maybe Kimo, prior to that, you could just tell the listener about Life Time in general. Kimo: Okay. So Life Time may be more nationally known as a leading health club company around the country. We operate 154 what I'll call destination health clubs around the country, and very nice, I'd consider pretty high end type health clubs, very family oriented company in 30 plus states. So Life Time's been around 20, I think we're coming up on 28, 29 years now. I'm fortunate enough to get to work on the events and partnership side of the business, so partnerships meaning most people think of it as sponsorships. We call them partnerships because it's an opportunity for us to share our partners with our audiences, and that happens to live both in events, which are outside of the walls of our clubs, as well as our members, which a couple million members, which attend our clubs. Craig: So how did Life Time start to see exterior events, events outside the club, as being an opportunity for a health club? Kimo: It's a great, great question. I think it was prior to my involvement. I've been with the company a little over nine years now. And my understanding was the idea was we kind of positioned ourselves as what we call a healthy way of life company. And I think the thought at the time, and continues to be our thought process that clubs and these destinations are an important component of a healthy way of life, but not necessarily the only component of a healthy way of life. To live healthy, you have to eat healthy. You have to have activity every single day. And clubs are an important component of that, but we also saw that to keep people in the ecosystem, it's important to engage them beyond the walls of the clubs, and events were an opportunity like that. Kimo: On top of it, events were a great brand. We found out that, gosh, you get a lot of really good exposure for your brand if you go create great experiences outside your clubs, a lot of media exposure. A lot of people start to learn about your ecosystem through these events, and so I think it was a combination of extending that lifestyle beyond the walls of the clubs, but also it was a marketing idea. It was a way to extend the brand, if you will. Craig: And were those first events things that Life Time conceived of themselves and created? Or did it start with sponsorships or partnerships? Kimo: To my understanding, I think there were a few sponsorships early on. But our CEO is, I'll say very protective of the brand. And the idea that we would put our brand on somebody else's experience and not control what that experience is like, he didn't like that idea. He liked the idea that we want to deliver a premium experience in everything that we do, therefore, we probably need to really do that effectively, we need to control that experience. So we get asked frequently if we would like to sponsor other events. We've chosen typically not to do that. We've found more success where we can kind of control and really engage with the consumer with our brand, that putting our name on somebody else's event hasn't been as effective for us. Craig: I remember the first time Life Time got on my radar was from the Leadville 100. And I think it was the year after I did it, the acquisition was announced, and it was really interesting because I know how much the founders of that event, how much passion and love they had for it, so it was very kind of curious when this outside entity came in and acquired that event. And then it was very heartening to see how much involvement the founding team has and still has in it, and how the character of the event didn't change. Kimo: Yeah. That's a great example of one where I think Life Time sponsored it for two or three years prior to the acquisition. I was actually, I came on shortly after that acquisition really, and that was my first job, was to make sure that we didn't "screw it up." And first and foremost to me, I thought it's really important to keep those founders because they're the ones that keep us engaged with the community. And they're the ones that know how to make sure that thing continues with the heart and soul that it had developed over the 25 years previous to our involvement, so yeah, I think that's an example of one where I like to think we've done an okay job of continuing that. And hearing you say that we've continued that experience, and like you say, the heart and soul of it is still there. And I think that's thanks to Ken and Merilee. And now Cole, who's Ken's son, has moved over to start helping us as Ken and Merilee reach a point of potentially retiring. We've got to have some of that continuity there in the Leadville community. Craig: Yeah. And obviously with mountain bike events and gravel events, any mountain event in these small communities, it's just so critical that you have the local team involved, because as you said, it's sort of the heart and soul of the event, and no one wants to lose that. Kimo: Right. Craig: LeLan, maybe that's a good time for you to introduce yourself as part of the team at the event formerly known as DK, now known as Unbound, which we'll get into later. Why don't you introduce yourself and what you do in the family? LeLan: Yeah. Well, I was one of those former owners of DK Promotions at the time. And we'd built up this DK event. And it was just a little over two years ago now that Life Time acquired us. Member of our team were getting on in the years, and we knew that there needed to be a strategy for a succession, if you will. And Kimo was one of the first people saying, "Hey, we want to make sure that you are part of this." In fact, I think it was we don't want to acquire this without you staying on board and helping us run it. So I now work for Life Time as the event director for the Unbound family of events, so that's our training camps in the spring, Unbound of course, first weekend after Memorial Day, our summertime lunar ride, and then that also led into the creation of Big Sugar down in Arkansas, which I help oversee. Craig: Yeah. That brings me back to a year ago in 2019. I had visited the Big Sugar preview ride in Bentonville, which was awesome in October. Life Time had announced its acquisition of Crusher in the Tushar. There was all these big things, and I think as one member of the community, I was so looking forward to 2020. I thought we had so many amazing things planned. I think you guys share that with me. At a strategic level, once COVID came into our lives in February, March, I think it really started kicking up. Obviously, Bobby Wintle's event, The Mid South, was probably the biggest event on the calendar that actually just managed to kick off. How did you guys see that and start thinking about it? It must've been incredibly challenging. LeLan: Yeah. I mean, there was so much unknown for everyone as we came into the start of 2020. Initially, to be honest, I personally didn't think it would affect our event, which was end of May, would've been end of May this year. And so you're there in January, February, and we're thinking, "Okay. If we all play by the rules and we kind of isolate ourselves for a few weeks, this ought to just go away," and boy, were we wrong. I was certainly wrong in that assumption. And so it didn't take long to go from, "Yeah, we're still having event this year," to, "We need to pick a postponement date." Then you get into the summer and you're like, "We're not having anything this year. And so it was, definitely didn't see that coming, for sure. Craig: Kimo, from a corporate level, obviously when this started coming down, it affected all of your events. What was that like on your end? And how did you kind of react corporately to the situation? Kimo: Well, yeah, at the corporate level obviously there was a lot of focus on the fact that we had to close down 154 clubs across the country. And boy, what a huge impact on our business. I'll say we're ... I preach this to our team a lot, I'm just incredibly thankful that in a time like this, we have a big company like Life Time behind us. There's a lot of people out there say, "Life Time, this big corporate giant coming in and gobbling up events and these things." And I think, "Well, these are the times where it's a pretty solid benefit to have that bigger company behind us." And I really feel for a lot of the smaller event producers that aren't getting any support from the government, kind of like restaurants. Right? I don't know how they're surviving. And I just feel terrible for them. You know? Kimo: And we're so fortunate that we were able to, I mean, obviously we canceled. I think we did two events in the beginning of the year. We've canceled the rest of our events for the year. Obviously, hard when you cancel 30 plus events, that's a big, big impact both to our business and to our parent company. So the irony was it didn't happen overnight. Right? This, as LeLan said, this thing evolved. Even in March, we thought, "We still got a chance. By beginning of June, we should be good. We'll come back out of this thing." Little did we know. We're talking about next June now. You know? And when we'll be able to get events back on next year, not this year. I think the hardest, the toughest decisions for me, nobody was going to fault us for canceling an event. People would fault us if we tried to put on an event. Right? Kimo: You'd have probably 50% of the people would be the ones bashing you for it, and 50% would be applauding you for it. We couldn't take that ... We couldn't risk exposing people like that, so the decision was not difficult to cancel. The hardest decision for me was what to do with the team, with the company. We furloughed close to 38,000 team members across the company. And unfortunately, some of those, we still haven't been able to bring back because of this. So we've been fairly fortunate in our business. We did lose a few people along the way, but we've been able to bring a number of people back, and those are probably the hardest decisions that we've had to make this year. Craig: Yeah. I can only imagine. I felt like at the time, there was a lot of sort of woe is me from individual riders who were seeing the one event they were aspiring to do for the year get canceled. But at the end of the day, like you said, whether you're a larger corporation or a small event producer, this hit hard. And being able to rebound back and be someone we can count on to create events in 2021 is super important. And I hope we didn't lose any events in all this, but I think inevitably we may have. Kimo: I think so. I think that's yet to be seen, Craig. I think unfortunately, there will be some of the smaller, maybe some of the bigger ones too, that just don't make it through because that's tough to go a year without your ... You got your operating expense that you kind of have to live with throughout the year. And then you've got all your revenue comes from a single day event, typically. Craig: Totally. Kimo: It's tough. Craig: And it's not like events are these huge revenue making machines, by any means, so the margins are quite small. And if you're required to give refunds to people, et cetera, there's a lot to it. On a brighter side, you gave a lot of riders the opportunity to donate their registration fees to charities, which I thought was a great way to kind of turn the tide on this. Do you want to talk about some of the success you had with that program? Kimo: Yeah. Really good question. We did. We selectively chose a number of events and gave people the option to donate to a variety of charities. In most situations, in most markets where we do events, we also through our Life Time Foundation, we support and are implementing school, kind of an improved school lunch program across the country, and doing what we call eliminating the harmful seven. And there's seven ingredients that we believe just children shouldn't be exposed to in school lunches. And so we've now extended that. We're impacting about two and a half million kids across the country through the Life Time Foundation. And those communities, our athletes are starting to recognize that it's pretty neat what we're able to do in those communities where we host events. And so Emporia, where LeLan lives, is a good example. We've entered into an agreement with the Emporia School District. And a number of our athletes for what was DK, now to be Unbound, chose to donate their entries. We gave them the ... We guaranteed people the opportunity to get back in this next year, but they donated this year's entry fee to support the lunch program in that school district. Kimo: And it evolved from not just eliminating the harmful seven in these school lunch programs, but it actually evolved into a COVID relief type lunch program in a lot of our school districts around the country that turned into not only a COVID lunch relief, but many, many districts, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, where there were really high unemployment rates and families that were really impacted. Leadville's a perfect example. I think in total we raised almost a quarter million dollars for that school district to support their COVID relief program throughout the summer and kept feeding not only kids, but their families, where they just didn't have access because they were unemployed. So really grateful for our athletes that jumped in to help out, and it was pretty impressive. Craig: Yeah. It's a great result, considering how much corporate level trauma, with all the employees you had to furlough, and all these sort of negative things going on, to at least be able to put something positive back into the world. Kimo: Yeah, I think so. We're really fortunate and appreciative of everybody that stepped up to help. Craig: So LeLan, I know last year, DK pivoted to a virtual event. And then there was also a virtual event for Big Sugar. I don't want to drill too much into the details of the virtual event. But is there anything that you guys learned running virtual events that might be useful going forward? LeLan: Yeah. I think the biggest lesson was learning that virtual events can be really good and really useful for a lot of people. Take our camp, for example. We had a virtual training camp, and that reached over 1000 people. And it really opened our eyes to the fact that our in person events can be rather limiting when you really think about it. DK, when it was owned by us had been a lottery long before Life Time acquired us because the demand was so high. We can only fit so many people in Emporia. Well, through the, I guess, forced use of virtual events this year, we realized that on top of taking people here in town, we potentially can create meaningful op…

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UNBOUND GRAVEL 2021 with Kimo Seymour and LeLan Dains Dec 22, 2020

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UNBOUND GRAVEL 2021 with Kimo Seymour and LeLan Dains Dec 22, 2020

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In the Dirt 13: 2020 - The year of gravel that was and wasn't Dec 15, 2020

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This week Randall and Craig discuss 2020: the year that was and the year that wasn't. While the pandemic canceled most of the gravel cycling events on the calendar, it did open up opportunities for adventure and community.

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Orange Seal - The ins and outs of tire sealant with John Vargus Dec 08, 2020

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This week we learn the ins and outs of gravel bike tire sealant with John Vargus of Orange Seal. John gets into some tips and tricks every cyclist should know and discusses his support of the Orange Seal Off Road Racing Team featuring Payson McElveen and Hannah Finchamp. Orange Seal Website Orange Seal Instagram Support the Podcast Bike Index Donations Automated Transcription (please excuse the typos) Orange Seal - The ins and outs of tire sealant with John Vargus 00:00:01 - 00:05:06 And welcome to the gravel ride. Podcast i'm your host dolts. This week's podcast is brought to you by our friends. At the nonprofit bike index bike index is a free bicycle registry and stolen bike recovery platform having recovered over thirteen million dollars in stolen bicycles. Bike index is really making a dent in crime by connects is currently. It's end of year fundraising campaign. Donations can be made at bike. Index dot org slash. Donate this week on the podcast. We've got john vargas from orange seal. John gets into a little bit of the history of the company and the ins and outs of tire sealant. Why it's beneficial to gravel riders some installation tips and some great maintenance advice on how to keep your ceiling topped off as an interesting side. Note the idea for this podcast actually came from the ridership forum. There was a community member who made a post about tire sealant going into winter and asserted thinking about. Who do i know who could answer all these great questions. So the real pleasure. Getting to talk to john with all that said. Let's dive right into this week's interview john. Welcome to the show morning. Thank you pleasure to be here. I'm excited to dig into the topic of sealant because United states matching tee off. I'm surprised that you know number. My listeners are still running tubes. And i think the advantages of sealant are so vast that i really wanna convey a lot of good information to them before we dig into the details. Can you just tell us a little bit about where you're located and how the company came about. Yeah no i'd love to So we started or unseal in twenty eleven. The the process started about two years ahead of that we had Started with the right across the parking lot. And we picked up a shard of glass or something and it was not see link so my partner Were my best friend at the time and now a partner said you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna make something. So he worked on it for about two and a half years and We finally got the formula where it was performing at or better than the sealants that were on the market at the time. We didn't want to just develop another mouse trap. We wanted to take the best. And the worst of all the sealants in the market and designed something different We looked at natural look at synthetically tech. Would latex we looked at other materials and what we came back to is latex Natural latex is best plugging material and so then we just had to refine our formula. So that We could actually adhere to the robber versus just creating a plug. And that's what makes our formulas different is at once we create a plug. It's a permanent plug in the did. Here's from the inside out. So it's like inserting Plug or Bay construct from the outside. But we do it from the inside out and we'd coat the inside of the tire. What most people don't realize is Today's tires especially today or getting lighter faster center and so there are a lot more porous. Rubber is very poorest by by default and so are latex actually goes in and seals up all of that prosperity and creates A sealed cavity. So that you can hold your pressures longer and what another area that people don't realize that there's major leakage is in the tire bead mating surface and we go in and seal up those imperfections in the tire bead mating surface and so When you feel up entire beat mating surface still up the city and you still up. Anything that comes in from the external You've got a pretty bulletproof system and as we all know not. One formula is going to fit every single environment and every type of terrain and such and climate so we have three finalists. We came up with a regular formula endurance formula and our sub zero formula Regular is really was our original formula designed to seal faster bigger holes while the enduring it was formulated to last longer And not feel as fast but still seals permanently and then we created the sub zero for really when the fat bites took off and riding and Extreme cold climates down to minus twenty was necessary. 00:05:06 - 00:10:05 Because don't wanna be changing a flat at minus twenty and so we've had huge success with the equivalent of did arrive Rebecca rush has run are several times in the fat bike. I did rod race and very successful. Jay I can't think of this last did very well So we have three formulas each geared towards climate and ceiling capability and We also have Versus which work into if you're on tube still you've got to look at a taping mechanism a toothless vowel system embassy which we can talk about more second. Yeah there's a ton. I wanna unpack their john Question for you about when you guys were originally working on the formula did did either of you have a sort of chemical engineering background or were you just so passionate about solving the problem that you did research over those two years and figured out what could work and what wouldn't work. Yeah so My partner does have a little bit of a chemical mad scientists background and he was just i think we all passionate there was a group of About ten of us and we're all passionate in cycling and we were tired of putting Tubes in tires and so Just became very passionate about solving the problem. Amazing yeah it's amazing what you can solve as an entrepreneur when you really dig into it whether your professional experience lead you to that point or you're just passionate about figuring something out we you set the stage a little bit but i really wanna make sure the listener whose unaccustomed to the idea. Sealant understands what we're talking about. Historically bicycle tubes have had an inner tube inside that you inflate pushes against the tire wall. Can you tell us about what how sealant works. And how it's different from that setup sure so traditionally Like you mentioned Tubes have come in and tires you inflate it keeps the tire into the be so that it doesn't fall off the room so to speak and it holds air on the inside because to bliss tires were even more porous and did not have a hook into the room as to bless tires involved. They've created a bead hook which allows the tire to stay on the rim and mounted securely even when hitting large rocks and jumps. And all that. Good stuff So the tube is it was. Multifunction is two purposes holding air in the tire and keeping the be attached Keeping the tire attached at the be. So if you remove that now you've got to You've got the possibility of spoke holes And you've got to cover that up with tape And then you will need to insert a tube less valve which is no longer connected to a vinyl tube. Butyl too yeah. I think that's an interesting visual so when you're looking at it too tired doesn't look any different because you still have the valve core coming out that you used to inflate the tire but when you have the tire off the rim what you'll see as a as an owner is that you've just got Tape around the rim to cover the nipples as you mentioned but then that valve sticking out when the tire gets on and you put the sealant into the tire. That's what creates the seal that you're able to inflate against right so i mean really a we. Just add a we seal off the imperfections in the be Tire mating surface. But really the air. That's why you When you go to to bless you have to have a initially a high volume of initial air to pop the bead our pop the tire into the channel For the rim. And so you either need to have air compressor or a high volume pump or a friend that can take a standard pump and just go Really high volume pumping that up. But there's some tips and tricks to to getting tired. Play did which we can cover in a little bit. Yeah absolutely. I remember it sort of the early days. I just had that one friend who had a tire compressor an air compressor. And i'd have to go there every single time. I wanted to change the tire. Because he was the only one who give me that burst of air. You're describing that sort of pops pops it against the rim and gets that steel seal started. 00:10:06 - 00:15:14 Yeah i mean every neighborhood. There's always one guy on the street that has an air compressor as as these. He's going to be your friend to seven tires to bliss but today's today's tires are are getting more They're more easily set into the be standard high pressure pumps and such. I mean alex while she recently just set up his tires with a standard palm Brand new tires and orange peel and to blitz vows in standard pump. and like. I said there's little tips that you can do to get. The tire started onto the shoulder. Which will set it into the beat which we can cover in more detail when we talk about setting up to plus. Yeah yes interesting. I had a set of tires a set of slicks this year. That were so porous that i could see. Every time i pump them up. I could see little bits of the white sealant coming through the actual rubber of the tire as really quite surprised by that. Yeah i mean they're just getting everybody today. Once lighter faster thinner And so it's like you know when you add the the materials kevlar strips. In their to stop punctures. The tire becomes very heavy. Nobody wants to ride on tractor tires When they're trying to go uphill or run through a rock garden So that's why downhill tires are. They're still pretty beefy. And exc- tires are very lightweight. I mean even my racers today and the orange off road team in hannah. Both are always want lighter faster tires but they don't punctures so they rely heavily upon ceiling and punctures are not just center of tread. They're going to be on the sidewalls as well. because riders are under tackling more features more exposure and just really pushing the limits of of what we used to do in the maybe twenty years ago. Y'all have to say the first time i got a puncture with sealant tire and it started spray out and eventually sealed. It was one of those eureka moments. Because you know darn well you would have been sitting on the side of the trail changing that tube and spending a lotta time and when the sealant can just do its job while you're still rolling and potentially even seal up before you lose a significant amount of air it such an amazing benefit. Oh yeah exactly. And we call it. The badge of honor When you Get a puncture and the spray is is seals up and three revolution so to speak and the person behind me is going Hey you're spraying me. Well three revolutions and done. I remember one time we route ride and i my wife's like hey. You're spraying back here and my tire was spewing then sealed up and we'd just kept on going. Yeah remember vividly this year. Just getting hit from behind with some spray and wondering what the heck is going on and then finally dawned on me like oh. It's not any water going on. It's a big hole in my tire and being sprayed with sealant. Yep yep it's Definitely a badge of honor. We considered a badge of honor. You mentioned some of the sort of setup tricks that you guys have explored figured out over the years. What are a couple of the top ones that our listeners should learn about. Sure so When mounting a tube wistar. let's just kinda take it from ada zero quicks First thing we always if it's a brand new connection or a brand new setup on a tire room specify A new setup on a new tire and room you definitely want wanna do it dry To make sure that you don't have any additional problems because a lot of first-time users they'll put the ceiling in an expected to just automatically seat and then they waist length they get frustrated. 'cause spills on the floor so i always recommend set the bead. I and so the way you do that is you. I know it's gonna try to visually explain what on visually walking through with my hands here. you definitely wanna start opposite of the vowel stem and pop the be the into the center of the channel On one side mounted all the way because the specifications between tire and wheel varies in the industry so there are certain tire will come. Buzzer gonna fit tighter than other will combos so you may have to really use one. Two three lever tire levers to get it on there So get in the center of the channel away from the vowel stem because of oust him creates additional depth That takes away from mounting. 00:15:14 - 00:20:01 Then once you get that one side on then you go back to your opposite your valve stem start putting it in the channel. Bring it around And pop it all the way on. Hopefully you don't need tire levers now If it's really loose If it's that tight let's go back to how tight it is. I if you have a really tight fitting one You may need a little lubricant to get the tire up on the shoulder so it can seat down in the bead and you can use a slight lubricant. I just put a little bit of ceiling in there Around the tire bead and just let it run all the way down and then hit with a blast of air now. You can leave a valve korean. But that does restrict airflow. So i would remove the vow cork and then injected with the air. Wait till you hear the pops but never never exceed. The tire manufacturers recommended Maximum air pressure for a mountain bike tires anywhere from forty to forty fifty psi. Don't ever exceed that. 'cause what's going to happen is you're going to blow the tire off the rim. And that's not going to be fun for anyone especially if you have ceiling in there. It's going to go all over the garage you hopefully. You're not doing it in the house on the persian rug. We've had people right in. Hey how do i get ceiling. How the persian brook. We don't recommend doing that in my house. Definitely keep it in the garage. Hey john one question for you. I had used a very light mixture of sort of dish soap and water historically to kind of make the rubber slide up against the side walls. More quickly when i'm popping it on is that advisable are making an error there I definitely don't recommend the dishwashing soap Definitely you're gonna get Creates a Bubbling effect inside if some does get in with the ceiling You don't wanna it will dilute the sealant. So like i say i would i try just sealant itself. It does have a little bit of a slipperiness to it And then there are some Tire manufacturers that make a special Applicator like swale bay. That has there's Tire mounting soap I would just use minimal as possible. And then i would also Self that's visits if it's really tight fitting another tricky can do. You can take your tire lever. You go down and grab it out of the center of the channel and pull it up onto the shoulder ride around the vowel stem and take it as far as you can and put it on the shoulder that will help immensely setting it into the be and then if you could do that. On both sides you can set it up with air pump. I imagine you guys have some videos of these techniques. Somewhere is that true We don't actually working on our video series. There will be some next year. Gotcha gotcha some of this as you said is a little bit hard to visualize but once you get in there and you try it for yourself you start to realize li…

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Nutrition for gravel cycling with Kristen Arnold Nov 24, 2020

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This week we talk nutrition with professional athlete, coach, and nutritionist, Kristen Arnold. We break down how to approach a big event day starting a week out and Kristen shares a few clever tricks on how to limit nutrition mistakes on the bike.

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In The Dirt 12: Announcing The Ridership, a free community and resource for the gravel cyclist Nov 17, 2020

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Announcing The Ridership, a new, free community resource for the gravel and adventure cyclist. After several months of soft launch, we are now inviting all listeners to join our experiment in community building. The goal is to build a global, searchable resource that will help cyclists of all experience levels explore the sport, discover new routes and make connections.

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UnPAved - Dave Pryor and COVID safe racing Nov 10, 2020

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This week we sit down with Dave Pryor from the Pennsylvania gravel event, UnPAved to discuss how the 2020 events was executed in a COVID safe fashion. We get into the changes in format that may be here to stay and how other race organizers can learn from his experiences to execute future events. Episode sponsor: Athletic Greens (click for special bonus). UnPAved Website Support the Podcast Automated Transcript (please excuse the typos) UnPAved -- Dave Pryor and COVID safe racing 00:00:00 - 00:05:00 Hello and welcome to The Gravel Ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. Today's podcast is brought to you by our friends at athletic greens. The all in one daily drink to support better health than peak performance even with a balanced diet. It's difficult to cover all your nutritional basis a three athletic greens will help their daily drink. Is like nutritional insurance for your body. That's delivered straight to your door. Athletic greens was developed from a complex blend of seventy five vitamins minerals and whole food sourced ingredients and has been scientifically engineered to help fill the nutritional gaps in your diet. So how does all this come into. Play for the gravel cyclist. If you're like me you definitely have gaps in your diet athletic. Greens has zinc which promotes better muscle recovery and better sleep magnesium for nervous system recovery and function as well as better sleep as well as red beets to improve and ginger to help reduce inflammation so daily athletic greens drinker at this point and on big ride days. I might even have two servings of athletic greens just to make sure that. I come back out of the hurt locker. I've inevitably put myself in in those big weekend rides so encourage you to give it a try whether you're looking to boost your energy level support your immune system or address gut health. Now's the perfect time to try athletic. Greens for yourself simply visit www.athleticgreens.com/thegravelride to claim my special offer today and get a free d three k. To wellness bundle with your first purchase. That's up to a one year supply of vitamin d added to your order. You'd be hard pressed to find a more comprehensive nutritional bundle elsewhere again that's athletic greens dot com slash. The gravel ride this week on the podcast. We're talking to dave. Prior from the gravel event unpaved out in Pennsylvania throughout twenty twenty. We've seen most of the major gravel events across the country be canceled due to the global pandemic when it started to hear rumblings that unpaved was going to continue in a modified format. At first. When i saw this i thought wow it's quite too early. But then after listening to dave and some of his partners speak about why they were proceeding with the event in what they were doing. I started to understand and be optimistic that they could pull off a successful event. They were following Pennsylvania guidelines in terms of how many people could get together and obviously modified the race quite substantially in order to make sure as as covid- safe as possible. After the event went off dave and i connected and i thought it was important for other race organizers and ride organizers to get a download from dave as to what they did the changes they made and how they felt the event went overall. I think there's a lot of lessons. Learned for event organizers and really things that as participants we should understand about what. Our event organizers go through undoubtedly twenty twenty one is not going to be like twenty nineteen. We're still going to have to leave in this post. Covert environment and as participants. We wanna feel safe. And as race organizers wanna feel motivated to put on all these events so my hope is can get a little bit out of this conversation and that we can get ourselves organized to have a great twenty twenty one. We've been having a little bit of this discussion in our new slack. Forum called the ridership user. Or you're curious. Were building a global resource for gravel ended venture cyclists. So please reach out to me for your invite today with all that said. Let's dive right into my conversation with dave dave. Welcome back to the show. Thanks greg great to be here. Thanks for longtime listener. It's this is cool. It's actually rare. That i say welcome back and you were on. We have thirty you episode thirty three when we were talking about. Would it have been the first or the second unpaved event that was i think epa first but that was my partner. My coon okay. You're right yeah can garner listener. I don't well then welcome to the show. I apologize for that. I feel like. I feel like i know you because i hear your name drops by selene. Oftentimes on her. Former podcast. And i hope our current podcast is going. Well it is going well. She's doing they're doing great stuff. They're churning out content right now as you know. Podcasting is a is a thing. It's really busy and so yeah. It's going pretty well. Yeah and from understanding correctly very female focus subject matter for her latest effort so for you women athletes out there. Selena got a great new podcast. That's really speaking to something. 00:05:00 - 00:10:00 i think. All women athletes go through obviously in their lives. So i encourage you to kind of check out what she's doing over there. Yep it's hit play not paused and so it's an works does work for everyone. The rebecca rush in particular was really great. But yet there's this large group of say over half our population that goes through all sorts of things. Yeah we should talk about it more. Yeah it's really interesting stuff so hats off to her for doing that. The dave i mean you guys had just put on a few weeks back. One of the few big gravel events that actually manage to go off in twenty twenty In this cove era. So i thought it would be really interesting for us to touch base and see how that event went before we dive into that once. You just give the listener. Who may not know about on unpaved a little bit about the event where it is and The history behind it sure so unpaid to the susquehanna river valley. This is our year started a few years ago. That's what three is but it feels like longer because we worked on for good three years before that to I went mike. And i could partner in this and going to his events longtime time. I started getting promotions back in two thousand thirteen with a single Across world championship. That's a fundraise to put on your first event. Ever his tienanment blinky junkyard cross to. We had a great weekend in philly and also the year i went to dirty kanza rebecca's private idaho and those were great times to are too few times. Just come back to mike talking him psychotic great to have on these giant gravel events that are starting to happen around the country like where we do this in pennsylvania and he said. I know exactly where we could do pennsylvania. He went to bucknell university. Which is in the borough lewisburg right dead center. They just put in a nine mile rail trail out of town. The took it to the foot of the foothills of the bald eagle state forest which had tons of perfect dirt and gravel roads. Just absolutely great with big hills which people seem to like those challenges So a lot of things kinda came together pretty quickly. We started working with the susquehanna river valley borough. They saw was happening with growl. Events bringing people into regions and we started working pretty hard on in two thousand now who is our first year. We had i think six eight hundred at that one. Last year we had a thousand in our big three distances and a couple of hundred in our three miler Land for this year was to go to twelve hundred but then this year happen so We kind of went along. Guy binds of pennsylvania's done a really job keeping covetous under control as possible. We certainly had giant spikes early on. We had a lot of mayhem. Everything shut down. But it's been really thorough responsible journey back in things move forward in that gets a little too far. The new scaleback Increasing really job as far as states go as keeping things as fighting the curve. I guess what we used to stay a while ago. I think it still applies So with that outdoor events they kept it in a maximum two hundred fifty people which basically plied to high school sports in college boards. And things like that. But you know we fall under that category. Because there's no real category that works for us as far as the state goes and goodness knows busy with a lot of other things. The dealing with Running races and things like that so we stuck with two fifty and made that two hundred people to register in the one hundred twenty mile long ways because we needed but forty people set aside for staff and volunteers marshalls and things like that. So that's what we put on. We not set in july and fill that up too long story. How did that process. But it worked pretty well because holy cow. This community is so generous. I wanna say that too but so accommodating so flexible in the as we kept throwing keep saying. The world's learnings occur balsa overthrow newsletter in beijing. And we had so many changes to win into the event and they all with us and it was really really well received. So that's great. I mean it was. It was definitely nice to see it. Go off and for the listener. Who's not familiar with unpaved. Definitely go check out the website. And i can put that in the show notes. You'll see a video that just shows how gorgeous the writing is in pennsylvania. And it's an area that i haven't been back to in a long time but i did spend a lot of time mountain biking in that area and it was just. It's there's so much to it. It's so gorgeous and when the event was announced three years ago. I remember thinking to myself. Well that's a no brainer. 00:10:00 - 00:15:06 This is definitely going to be a place where they can pull off an amazing event and there's such a great cycling community you know within ninety minutes drive of their any direction you you clearly are drawing from a lot of passionate east coast athletes and athletes the country to make the trip over there. There's no doubt and it goes on in the middle of october which is peacful and we had i think. Vp foliage day this year instagram's on pay pennsylvania in his. Just see of what. A fall like northeast. Good governance is just outstanding and beautiful thoughts on this great pitcher so then the the longest distance of the event remind me how long the long distance one is is one hundred and twenty miles an and how much is around. Ten thousand feet of climbing niche pending on your device yet we got seven quality peaks and that no people in colorado. I'll call the mountains but then people come here and climb the milk now the other mountains. It's it's nice that as far as pennsylvania goes they're not the steepest things around but they are pretty consistent. Throw but the lead to some of the best ascending. I've done on a bike. Yeah i mean that's the thing about that east coast area riding. It's like it's you don't have colorado utah style climbs. But they add up. Obviously ten thousand timing over one hundred. Twenty miles is is no joke. Whether you're from the mountains from from sea-level and especially when you count in eighteen of that israel trail so it's nine miles out nine miles back at the finish and so in between we throw them climbs edge so obviously when kovic started to be top of mind depending on who you are and where you are in the country certainly within the first quarter of the year. Everybody was knowing that this was a big deal. And you know we got the mid south off under our bell for pretty much everything after that was dropping like flies and everybody was canceling events. I imagine at that point earlier in the year. You guys were thinking well. Gosh were in october. At least we don't have to make a decision now and hopefully this will all pass through and we'll be able to go ahead as planned at. What point did you start thinking. Hey this might go knock off as planned Always until the wednesday before honestly. If you're right we. I put on another Similar but shorter in the valley called monkey knife fight and it was supposed to go off the first weekend of april and we were having in hong what to do with that and beside you know. Let's just cancel it And that night the nba. Shut down like okay. I guess we've called that bright After that is when everything's starting shutting down shutting down fortunately for unpaved we had not have been registration yet so we just pushed the opening of registration back to i may instead novus up yet. We'll see what's going to happen. Everyone has much bigger things to worry about them. Agreement so get back to may in. May things weren't any better said okay. Lips sweet till july. See things get any better and by july things at least a little dauphin pennsylvania pretty well in. There was no reason to cancel it yet. As far as state guidelines went know the two hundred person two hundred fifty max people was a huge limiter versus twelve hundred and we can talk about the business side of that but it became like a. We can do something it's different. It's not what we had in mind. It's not going to have a festival the day before. It's not going to have a post party. Probably if those things can happen later of the world changes in we got a vaccine would open that stuff back up but it really became. Here's what we can do so all right. We'll do that and if we can do more we'll do more but least we can do that in all along with all the registers like this can't be cancelled any minute. Here is the plan for refunds deferrals scheduled for that. You know three days out than it'd be like you have your money back for all to accept. I think up thirty days. It was full refunded referral two weeks executives. Thirty fifty percent. Off or deferral in africa Forget the numbers right now but attentive is like a week before it was like sorry folks. We're in this together. Yeah so it's interesting that you mentioned that. I think a lot of events that i was referring to earlier had the challenge of the fact that they had already accepted people's registration and and presumably in a lot of cases already spent that money on women. Or what have you. And i and i know tyrants exactly. I talked to a few other event organizers. That was the real conundrum they were in and they were looking at their registrants thinking. Well if i give you one hundred percent refund this event will go away and in its entirety. Because i will have lost ten thousand dollars. And i do this not necessarily as moneymaking adventure But more to put back something in the community and show a love for the trails. 00:15:06 - 00:20:07 I have outside my back door. So i do imagine it gave you a lot of freedom. At least that you hadn't accepted that money. And perhaps you could as you said you just sort of shifted the registration date back to a point. Where at least you knew okay. A two hundred person event you could then go back to the sponsors and how to negotiate. Wh what exactly does that mean because unpaved has the benefit of of great sponsor support. But i imagine you had to go back to those companies and say look. It's not going to be the same thing we still need your support. But how can we make it fair for everybody. I imagine those were really difficult conversations. They were in the weren't at the same time like it's the same sort of things like it's two h…

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