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In the Dirt 31 - Custom Build Jul 19, 2022

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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.

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Custom Build Parts of note:

Unicorn Cycles Ti Frame

Enduro Bearings

Wolf Tooth

Rock Shox Rudy Ultimate XPLR Fork

SRAM Groupo

Brad DeVaney - Litespeed and OBED Bicycles Jul 14, 2022

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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, there's a lot of history, right? I mean, the and, and the topic at hand, you know, the, the gravel category it's It's that it's that common meeting spot where you all seem to be finding these days with with old friends and. [00:04:46] Craig Dalton: I feel like this is a double header episode, cuz we get to talk to you about both the light speed titanium brand and also the Obi carbon brand. And just get your unfiltered opinions on what bikes are good for what types of riders? I think that's gonna be a really valuable part of the conversation for the listener. [00:05:03] Brad DeVaney: Oh, good. Good. Yeah, that's that? That's what fires me up the most, you know, we're we're, we're really open to multiple materials. And building what we love. So, yeah. [00:05:15] Craig Dalton: Let's set the stage a little bit just by getting a little bit about your background, how, how you came to be passionate cyclist and ultimately get into the business side of the sport. [00:05:25] Brad DeVaney: Yeah. Man, I, I don't enjoy talking about myself, but you know, just a, a, a kid that grew up racing bicycles BMX road, mountain. And was really fortunate to have sponsorship when I was super young and, and you know, bikes being provided and traveling and, and living you know, a kid's dream, life racing, bicycles, and you know, everything stayed super competitive through those years. And, and [00:05:52] Craig Dalton: part of the country did you grow up in Brad? [00:05:54] Brad DeVaney: I grew up in the Southeast here in Tennessee, and you know, lot of not, not a lot of national events happened here in Tennessee. And so my, my base was Atlanta, Georgia, where you know, where Schwinn bicycle company was a, was a big deal back then. And they had a, a major distribution center there that, that our team was stocked out of. And we would go up Chicago to headquarters. Very infrequently in the three years that that I raced with the team there. And, but there was the cool thing was I was the perfect demographic within the team. I was the perfect age that they were looking to develop new products. And so, the bikes that I was riding were typically the prototypes and where the rest of the team were all on production bikes. I was getting some bikes rotated. From beneath me and, and that really lit a fire. I didn't, I didn't realize that fire would turn into a career. [00:06:47] Craig Dalton: Did you find yourself at that age, having that ability to be very discerning about, oh, this frame feels this certain different way. Even if the changes were fairly. [00:06:57] Brad DeVaney: yeah, it, it, it came to realize Sometime later, my dad was he's to this day he is, he's a Motorhead he's, he's always tuning something. It's not always race inspired, but he, he built some pretty crafty two wheeled and four wheeled race machines through the years. And growing up in a, you know, where in our garage, we. Cutting welding modifying strip it down, machine it, modify it, you know, sort of mindset. He taught me how to take caged ball bearings and Polish them and, and use valve grinding compounds, and then clean 'em and what levels of grease. And so as an 11 year old kid, I went on the road with, with a manager and teammates. And had the ability to release a wheel. And my choice of wheel at that point in time was Aniah seven B the, the seven X was the hot rim out and it was It wasn't a full double wall, but it, it had some channels within the extrusion that were, I felt were unnecessary. And the lighter seven B was just that it was lighter. It was faster. It was more fragile of course, but I had Campon Yolo track hubs with Ari seven B rims you know, spec spokes and spec nipples. I was really, really particular as an 11 year old kid, but to use that particular rim. I had to be able to lace wheels. I, I didn't have that luxury even at home. I didn't have that luxury. So when I egg shaped or, or, you know, flat spotted a rim, I could change them out. And it was, was pretty adept at it. So my, we would be at a motel, you know, somewhere in Florida or Texas or New York or wherever we were racing on any given weekend. And it wasn't uncommon on a Saturday night between, you know, Saturday and Sunday races. that, you know, there would be a, a group of dads sitting around drinking beer, watching the 11 year old monkey lace of wheel, because that was kind of a funny thing. So, yeah. Sorry for the story, but [00:09:03] Craig Dalton: No, I love [00:09:04] Brad DeVaney: it out of me. Yeah. Yeah. So, yes. To answer your question. Yes. [00:09:09] Craig Dalton: So that was back in your BMX days. And sounds like later, you kind of transitioned to road riding and, and mountain bike racing. [00:09:15] Brad DeVaney: Yeah. Yeah. The road bike came around first. You know, I was, I was almost 16 working at a local motorcycle shop before I could drive and, you know, a good form of transportation was bikes. And you know, I ultimately wanted a really good road bike and, and Made that happen. And then through my high school years really loved, loved the road bike and was racing locally off to college with that. And then during college, I was I was fortunate to have gotten some attention through the local shop and, and got some sponsorship and, and ended up on a Raleigh. Mountain bike. We were selling rallies. The local rep, you know, saw what I was doing. I was really trying to rep the brand because that's what we were selling. And, and we sold GT Raleigh and, you know, a few others, but that was, that was the aggressive rep of the day. And, and he was he was good to try to find a way to reward me and for what I was trying to do in the shop. And, and that got me my first mountain bike and, you know, off, we went always, it, it was fun. Great [00:10:17] Craig Dalton: Yeah, back those early days of mountain biking were a lot of fun. And I remember there was always, the shop teams were such an important part of the movement back then, I feel like, and you would, you would get your, you know, the brand that you sold in the shop and they would agree to give everybody a pro deal or something on the frames. And it was a really great time to be part of the sport. [00:10:36] Brad DeVaney: yeah. You know, and coming from BMX, the Raleigh thing was kind of cool. Tomak was doing his magic and. He you know, I, I couldn't call him an old friend. He was somebody that I looked up to certainly you know, BMX and, and you know, I, I was fortunate to, you know, compete at a, at a good level. It was all age group based. I was never old enough to to compete as a pro. And as he, you know, Kind of broached that he moved into mountain bikes and, and wow. What a, what a legend he game. But and that, that was sort of the pattern that I followed in my equipment choices and, and paid really, really close attention to what was happening on the world cup level of those days. And that was a driver for. [00:11:18] Craig Dalton: so after you hung up your, your sort of racing cleats, so to speak, was it immediately obvious that you wanted to go into the bike business? [00:11:26] Brad DeVaney: No, I was, I was still racing. I was still racing, working retail going to school. And that's when you know, the guys at light speed were, were a local business in the area that I was in. So. I was building outside of work. I was building in my own little shop at home where I did overhauls and rebuilds and paint jobs, and a lot of things you know, side jobs I'd do pretty much anything that involved a bicycle. But I, I was building show bikes for those guys and you know, when you're a resource and, and you turn things around as quickly as you can. You know, it turned into a job eventually to be honest. And they, they didn't really care what I was that I was studying engineering or, you know, they just needed extra help. And, and so I worked in the shop a lot. I, you know, minored tube SETSS and a aligned bikes and, you know, a lot of things within our operation. But when it came time you know, I was always ready to to design as well. And. That fell in pretty naturally. So that's, and, and I was still competitive at that point in time road and offroad was was really my focus. [00:12:35] Craig Dalton: And did you, presumably you started riding titanium bikes around that time. [00:12:39] Brad DeVaney: Yeah, it was tough. I I'd actually broken. I'd actually broken my Sera. I had a, a Hammi down seven 11 team bike. It was one of Ron keels bike. He had, he had won the, we kind of got a little bit of history. I was racing for a team that through true temper sponsorship here in Tennessee, our team acquired or was able to acquire several of the motor or not motor seven 11 true temper CADA built team bikes. They were labeled as Huffies And so Bob roll and Andy Hamson and RA Alola and you know, some of those guys at that day and age but Ron keel was the guy that was closest to my size, and I was able to get one of his bikes out of this batch, that true temper owned and, and got for us. So I'd been racing that bike for a couple of seasons working here at light speed part and full time. And when I snapped that bike I was able to you know, jump onto a loaner bike for a few weeks and then finally worked it out so that I could have my own. So, and that was, it was out of necessity. You know, I, I came onto titanium out of necessity and, and that's when I really started going bananas on design elements because I, you know, I was looking for, I came from top level steel had been working with selling. Doing, you know, Sera we had a fit cycle and used the fit kit and so forth at the retailer that I'd worked with. So I was pretty passionate about all that. And you know, when I'm, when I'm out of that environment into a manufacturing environment, I'm still working those tasks. And with that mindset out of my own home shop and Yeah, I wanna jumped onto titanium. I wanted to tune things. I wanted to change it. I wanted to get more of a, not a Columbus SL or SLX tube set. I was looking further ahead to like Columbus max [00:14:32] Craig Dalton: And I think, you know, to contextualize it a little bit for the listener, you know, this was the era where you really had, you had steel bikes and maybe some early aluminum bikes from someone like Cannondale at the time and titanium was that next level. Next generation material that I think at that point was very much a premium product in terms of how much it costs. So it felt very exotic at the time. [00:14:55] Brad DeVaney: It was, and, and, and the tube sets I knew could be advanced. That was, that was one of the things i…

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Crow Bicycles - David Toledo Jul 05, 2022

Show notes

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 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, and that's a free heart rate monitor with the purchase of a career to just go to hammerhead.io. At both items to your cart and use the promo code, a gravel ride. Thanks so much to hammerhead for supporting the show this week. And with that, let's jump right into my interview with David. , David, welcome to the [00:05:04] David Toledo: show. Thank you, Craig. Thank you for your time and thank you for your interest in crop bicycles. Yeah. I'm excited [00:05:10] Craig Dalton: to get into it because the e-bike category is obviously. Hitting all elements of the sport from commuter to mountain to gravel. Mm-hmm, , it's gonna be interesting to dig into the technology and what you are working on, but before we go there, David, why don't you tell the listener a little bit about your background and the inspiration behind founding Crow, bicycles, to say [00:05:35] David Toledo: that maybe in the us, you were early adopt in the digital trains and, and eCommerce, but in Spain specifically when I'm located. Came a little bit later than that, but I, I started very early in the early, in the first, uh, stages of the digital world in, in Spain, early 2000 in 2001, I funded my first, my first company. And it was a consultancy to help on the digital transformation to the, to the small companies in Spain. But it was really hard time doing that because it, it was, I, I felt I was talking in Chinese to the people. It was like, oh, they, they didn't understand what I'm trying to explain them and the opportunities of the digital world. And so that, but I started there on that time in 2001 with the, my first steps on the digital world. And then I, I, I run, uh, my own digital, uh, advertising agency, uh, for, uh, many years. And on parallel, I started a new business. Was raped with cycling industry with a few, with a few colleagues. And we started in 2000, uh, six with cannon bicycles. Uh, cannon bicycles was really interesting because it was the, probably one of the first direct to consumer brands in the market. And in 2006, it was here in Spain. It was just a few small retailers or super big online stores, like, uh, chain re and cycles. And that, that kind of stores or gems in USA, some people was buying to Jenson USA, even in Spain, but there was no real. Digital brands in the cycle industry. And Kenon was, I was coming to the market to change the things. And it was at the beginning, it was really tough because the people didn't trust you very much. They didn't trust on your project, on the brand that they didn't know it. And it was hard. But the, when with, with a lot of work from always side, this, the brands start to have a lot of, yeah. Awareness in the market and, and the people started to trust on us and it was, yeah. Then everything came. It was like explosion and everything wanted to all industry wanted to copy somehow cannon bicycles on that after few years, and now everything has changed. And, and I can say that the digital industry or the digital business are here for good. And it's something that, uh, even the, the big players. Figuring out how to interact with the digital world and to keep their, the traditional business models that trying to do some kind of blending between both words. But it is very interesting. And, but my background definitely is digital. Absolutely digital. [00:08:06] Craig Dalton: Interesting. So after all that time with canyon bicycles, did that spark an inspiration that you saw an opportunity in the market that led you to Crow bicycles? [00:08:17] David Toledo: Yeah. I had clear since the very beginning that the digital business and especially the direct to consumer business, it's the, in my eyes at least is the way to go. Because you have as a brand, you have direct and close contact with the customers. Sometimes the people say, Hey, yeah, but you don't have a physical place. I cannot reach you. I cannot see you face to face. But the thing is that is double side. The customers contact directly with the brands and the brands are interacting with the customers. And this is something wonderful because the, the customer can express their feelings, their, uh, fears or, uh, their needs. And the brand has all this input from, from firsthand. And this is part of the magic of the direct to consumer model. And you can react really quickly to the problems and yeah, somehow all these things made me to, to, to, to shape. In my head, if I, sometime I, I will have a, my own bike brand that was sold with my dream that definitely this, this will be the way to, to do it. But also there was a lot of things to improve because there was after 14 years working with cannon bicycles, I saw all the aspects of the brand, the good things. And sometimes even not the so good things, because it was always how you see it in English, Chinese and shadows or something like this. It's, uh, it's like, Things that it was not so nice. And this is the kind of things I want to improve. I want to change a little bit, and also from, uh, my experience and my learnings during my Eli years, there is also new ways to do business. And this is the part that I'm definitely going to disrupt in conversation with other brands. And even with Kenya bicycles in the coming months, we want to work in a project that is going to change the way the customers. Use the bike we could say. Yeah, but I cannot say too much about that because it's just an ongoing [00:10:03] Craig Dalton: project. Interesting. Great. And then to pull the company together, were you drawing on other teammates that you had worked with previously at canyon to design the bicycles, et cetera? [00:10:15] David Toledo: Yeah, I mainly the design of the bicycle was my work for the last, yeah, probably eight to 10 months or something like this, or previously since 2008, late 2019 until mid 20, 20, or a little bit more. I was working, just focus onto the cycling bicycles portfolio and design and components and trying to develop concept and a range that has Sims. And then I contacted my, one of my colleagues in. Ex or former C in Kenya USA. And he was working in another industry and I conducted him to. To tell, Hey, I'm gonna launch that this, this is something that sounds interesting to you. And of course he was interested since the very beginning and, uh, we start working and he helped me to also to shave the bikes in terms of adapting them to the, uh, us market and to the us, uh, consumer needs. And, and together we did a lot of, uh, things. Yeah. But it was, it was really interesting to have like both sides, right? The, the European point of view, uh, of the cycling and the American point of view, because. Even if, if it's, uh, gravel and even if it's cycling, uh, sometimes they're pretty different, uh, from market to market. Yeah, [00:11:27] Craig Dalton: absolutely. There definitely seems to be globally different perceptions around e-bikes particularly in the offroad world that we see in Europe versus the us stepping back for the listener. So Crow bicycles is introducing a range. E-bikes E gravel bikes to the world. David, why don't you get into just some of the basic idea behind the bike, the type of. Engine that I don't know, even know if engine is the right word in e-bike so you'll have to correct me but, but I'm super curious. I've been very, yeah. [00:12:00] David Toledo: Motor yeah. Motor maybe is the right way to, to yeah. But motor or system or just, yeah, it's maybe motor is the right [00:12:08] Craig Dalton: one. Thank you. Yeah. It's, it's been interesting for me. I probably started out originally seeing e-bikes offroad and being frustrated and maybe being a little bit of a naysay. I started to see them commuting into San Francisco. And I started to have a realization from a commuting perspective. There were absolutely days that I didn't wanna ride the hour to an office downtown in San Francisco, but I certainly didn't wanna get into a car and having an E commuting bike made sense. Then I started to talk to more and more athletes who were riding them off road. And I started to appreciate a lot of the nuances. In the e-bike market and how it creates accessibility for athletes who might not be able otherwise to get up the big Hills around here, but it also opened up new performance elements, new ways of riding, because you could discount certain things that may take up a lot of your time in any given bike ride. So I've become very pro eBike actually. And I'm curious to talk about E gravel bike because I haven't quite. Made that fit into my mental model yet. [00:13:19] David Toledo: yeah. The thing is that there's sometimes it's hard because there's so many kind of likes and this is interacting with customers. It's really, as I said, it is really interesting because you get a lot of feedback. Sometimes this feedbacks are saying, Hey, this is a mope. Or this is buy a motorcycle instead of an e-bike. Why, why do you buy an e-bike? You can buy a motorcycle or something like this, and this is not real bicycle. And so many feedbacks like this. And the thing is that most of these feedbacks are coming from people that never before tested a, an e-bike. Yes. And they don't have an experience with e-bike and, and I will definitely recommend them to test it because it's, it can change your whole perception of like concept of this thing. But the it's gonna start with saying. Somehow I have to give them a part of, of the, the ride because yeah, there's some e-bikes in the market that definitely, they are a concept that I'm not really, uh, friend of it's those super. High speedy bikes, uh, super powerfully bikes that they're somehow, they're like a moment with pedals and I'm not really comfort with that kind of, of concept. Or I respect this is in the market. I am of course agree that this needs somehow to be like regulated because they can be even dangerous sometimes because they have a throttle and then you, you can use it as a. Motorcycle, but there's another can of EBIS that this is, uh, more like, uh, a bicycle with some systems. And in this group, this, this is in some states in the us, this is called like the class one and they are limited up to 20 miles per hour. And at least in Europe, they have a limited a limitation on even on the power, the power, the motor cannot give you more than 250 Watts of power. Okay. . Yeah. And this is, this is another concept, absolutely different to the super powerful, super heavy e-bike. And…

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Doug Roeder - 2022 UNBOUND 200 Finisher Jun 28, 2022

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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. 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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 career in my late twenties, where I had a little bit more predictability on my schedule. And so started joined team in training and did one and only one Ironman with team in training. But in training for that had did a half Ironman and some other events and really kind of felt like, triathlon was a, a great way to kind of get out in the bay area and, and try different things. And so I would never say I was a triathlete. I'd do one or two a year wildflower in particular, the long course there. But cycling kind of became part of my life at that point. I met my wife on a blind date, bike ride. I started spending time up in Santa Rosa for work every other month. And a gentleman up there took me on a lot of road rides, your pine flat east side, west side, Sweetwater Springs. Always told me that if I ever had a chance to ride king Ridge, I should. So when Levi started his ride, I started doing that. And so it was kinda I'd pick one or two big things a year to do and train for those. And that was kinda my, my. [00:05:11] Craig Dalton: That makes sense. And then at what point along the way, did you discover gravel cycling? [00:05:16] Doug Roeder: So, yeah, I kind of just for a decade plus kind of kept doing the same couple of things over and over cycling with something I would do with work colleagues. I commuted from the city down to the peninsula once a week. Once I had little kids just to get along one long ride in a week. And then it was 2018, I think. Was the last year that wildflower happened and I was kind of poking around for something new to do. And a buddy on the east coast who I'd ridden quite a bit with and remembered that I was from Kansas said, Hey, you wanna check out this thing? In Kansas, there's this big race, this big bike ride. It's a gravel ride it's called it was called it's on dirty Kansas. I said that's Ryan that's. That's ridiculous. Why would I, I go to Kansas to ride a bike. Like I go there to go to a chief's game or go see family and friends. That's that's insane. And plus the roads in Kansas, like why would you do that? Why would I ride dirt roads in Kansas and just promptly about it? Dismiss it outright. No joke. A week later, I'm talking to my father who lives, he's retired in central Kansas. He's got 30 cattle. He's kind of a hobby rancher. And he had been staying with a. At a little town outside, Amoria called Opie. This was in may. And when he was there, he drove around the Flint Hills. He's telling me how beautiful the Flint Hills were in the spring. The Emerald green, after the ranchers burn off all the grass, it comes back this beautiful green and to someone from Kansas. I mean the Flint Hills, I I'm from Western Kansas central Kansas went to high school and Eastern Kansas. So I'm kind of from all over Kansas, the Flint Hills are just something you drive past on your. Somewhere else. There's really no, there, there there's, it's too Rocky to farm. There's no major population centers. It's pretty, you see it from the highway, but there's really no reason to go there. So my father lived his entire life in Kansas had never spent any time in the Flint Hills. And so he, he was there with this old friend toured around the Flint Hills and he's telling me about it and he's like, oh, and there's this big bike race. Have you heard of it? And I'm like, yeah, a buddy just told me about it. I can't believe thousands of people travel. To Emporia, Kansas, which again, to native Kansas, Emporia's kind of the middle of nowhere. It's like for a bike race. And my father tells me that his friend, they they're looking to, they wanted to rent their house out to some racers, but they didn't wanna rent a stranger. So he said, if, if you ever wanna come to Kansas and do this bike race, you know, you got a place to stay, you can rent this house outside just outside of town. So I'm like, yeah, no, that's why I'm not. That's ridiculous. Why would I do that? And then a few weeks later, this was like the third, the straw that broke the camels back. Right. We have a friend staying with us, a friend of my wife's it's an ER doc in Philly. And he had come out to do escape from Alcatraz, big multi-sport athlete CYC lacrosse racer, and he was staying with us at our house. And were we my wife and I had signed, but do escape that. And we're talking to, to Dr. Lambert and he said, Hey, you're Doug, you're from Kansas. Have you heard of this big bike race in Kansas? My coach. And I really want to do it. And I'm like, you're the third person who's mentioned this thing to me in the last, like 10 days now. I'm, I'm kind of intrigued. And he had a plot to, to kind of hack the lottery at the time. Yeah, they were promoting and I'll just keep talking, you cut me off, whatever, but I figure you can edit a lot of this. So he his, his idea was his coach was a woman and there was a, they were trying to get more women to ride. The race, then 200 for 200 was the promotion 200 women ride 200 miles. Remember that. And Dr. Lambert's coach Amelia woman really wanted to come and do the race as well. And at the time you could, I think you still can, you could register as a group. So it was an all or nothing kind of thing, or up to four people could register for the lottery together. And he said, well, make Amelia our, our, you know, team captain quote unquote, and she'll get in. Then the rest of us will draft off of that. And I was like, you know, I have this high school buddy. That I've run a couple of ultras with in Kansas. He's just the kind of guy, cause they also gave preference to locals. I was like, we'll sign him too. I'll give him call. And so the four of us signed up and we got in that way on the lottery. And I don't know if our, our hacks helped or not, but one way, you know, we got in. So now it's January of 2019. And I'm, I've been accepted to Unbound, wildflower had been canceled. So, you know, now I've got a new thing to train for. And I had to go get a gravel bike and try and figure out what the heck gravel biking was all about. And I had taken an old road bike and put the fattest tires I could on it and kind of started exploring some, some non paved roads down here. And it seemed like a not insane thing to do. So I went up to my local bike. And they're a specialized dealer. So I ended up with a diverge and set it up tubus and started training. [00:09:41] Craig Dalton: Great. You know, that's amazing. It, it sounds like you were going to be haunted by Unbound until you did it with all [00:09:48] Doug Roeder: That's kind of, [00:09:49] Craig Dalton: you [00:09:49] Doug Roeder: it was kind of, yeah, that was everybody was coming at me about it. And I then a, a great guy wanted to actually travel to the middle of Kansas. And I think this is a good point to state it's. It's hard to overstate. How preposterous, the notion of Unbound gravel sounds to like a native cans who, who wasn't a cyclist as a kid, but learned to cycle in the bay area. I mean, the notion that thousands of people from all over the country, or even all over the world would travel to Emporia, Kansas to ride hundreds of miles of the crappies roads. You can imagine in the middle of tornado season. It's just it's ridiculous, but yeah, you're right. I was kind of being haunted by it and there, I was at a point where I needed, I kind of wanted to try something new and so I signed up. [00:10:35] Craig Dalton: And you sign up directly for the [00:10:36] Doug Roeder: Yeah. And there was some debate around that. My, my buddy in Kansas who had, who had never, you know, he'd done some writing. He'd never, I don't think he'd ever run ridden a century before. He's like, you sure we should do the 200, maybe we should do the hundred. And I mentioned that to our, our friends from Philly and they're like, no, if we're gonna travel all the way to Kansas, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna get our money's worth. And I was like, yeah, no, it's kind of 200 or nothing fell. And I kind of felt the same way actually. So yeah, we went straight for the 200. [00:11:01] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I feel like back in 2019 and, and earlier, like the 200, the, the 100 felt different when you were signing up for it. Not that I've done it, but these days I feel like it's got equal promotion. Certainly the two hundreds, the marquee part of the event, but also that they realized like a hundred is pretty good as well. [00:11:18] Doug Roeder: Oh, and a lot of fast riders. So yeah, no, it's the a hundred has definitely become a thing and yeah, even the shorter distances are, are filling up with people now, too. So. [00:11:28] Craig Dalton: And so 2019, that was pre pandemic. Right? So the race actually went off at that point. [00:11:33] Doug Roeder: The race went off. It was hot and humid and we, it was the north course. It was the first year they had switched back to the north course, which I guess they'd done it a few times. And we had a nice, strong south wind out of the gates. So we flew 60 miles with a tail. made the turn and on that north course, most of the climbing is kind of in the middle section. So right around the time of day when it gets hot you start putting in some, a lot of kinda steep climbs on rough roads. And our two C cross buddies took off at that point. And I was sticking with my high school buddy. And I think the, the, you know, growing up. Growing up cycling wise here in the bay area, climbing's comes pretty easy. You get, you can't really ride 10 miles without climbing a thousand feet around here. So, I was having a decent time. The heat's a little tough to deal with. But my friend kind of got pummeled and we emerged from those Hills into the headwind. We got to council Grove and he was suffering from heat exhaustion at that point. And so I ended up riding, riding it in myself, late in the race and finished after midnight. And that was that. [00:12:34] Craig Dalton: to get to the finish line in your first one. I think that's pretty amazing. Did you. I know I want to talk about this year's version, but I feel like talking about your first experience is also equally valuable because going, going in there naive about what you were to experience, how did you prepare for it? Obviously, you you'd done Ironman triathlons. You'd done these long distance events that might have taken you north of 10, 12 hours. How did you get, what was the mindset going…

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Mark Allen - From an undersized Walmart bike to the finish of UNBOUND 100 Jun 21, 2022

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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 look@bikeindex.org. 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 of people doing it and really the amount of people not doing it. And I've been really spreading the wor word on cycling, trying to get other folks you know, involved in it because I've, I had such great benefits from it. I [00:04:46] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, a couple things I wanna drill into there, but, but first off, you know, cycling, I think can be a, a cost prohibitive sport. It can be kind of confusing and intimidating. You just jumped right in and got, got yourself a bike and started riding. Were you riding just on the, the streets and trails of Wichita at that, at that first instance? [00:05:06] Mark Allen: get up every morning, about 4:00 AM and I would ride through my neighborhood and then I would go outta my neighborhood. Down to an intersection across the street up all the way down to the next inter street intersection, cross the street and come back through the neighborhood. And I kept doing laps very early in the morning. I was a little self-conscious. I was very didn't want any traffic. Didn't just, just needed to ride at my pace. And, and. Just build upon, build upon that. So, didn't venture far, just a lot of repetitive lap [00:05:40] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, it's great that you sort of knew that about yourself and said that like you just need to get started and everything else that we'll talk about that came from that start started with you just being willing to get up early and ride around the block a few times. [00:05:54] Mark Allen: is absolutely correct. [00:05:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah. The other thing I wanted to ask you about that you mentioned, obviously you started to see some health benefits. I think anybody movement is just so important for all of us and you, it was clear, you were gonna see some health benefits right away, but you also mentioned, you know, you felt mental benefits from riding a bike. So I'd love to just kind of hear a little bit about your thoughts about that and the benefits you were getting for just getting out there and riding. [00:06:20] Mark Allen: Solitude it it's, it's amazing. Just writing by myself and having time to just think I own my own business. I have 30 some employees. I have, I'm married, have seven children. I have five children that are out the house now. And two home. Very demanding. So, a lot of responsibility, a lot of working with a lot of people and just finding time for myself, just tiny, you know, sorting things out in my head and trying to find, you know, self care time to really meditate on things. Think about things, talk to yourself you know, just even positive feedback from yourself. You know, if I set a goal for the day and I accomplish it, That feeling was phenomenal. I mean, it was it just, and it was, there were little goals, you know, there were little goals at first three laps, four laps, five laps, you know, and that self feedback loop of wow, I did it was, was immense. So I get up in the morning. I do these rides. I set my daily goals. I meet my daily goals and my entire day. Starts out different. I'm not waking up with the, the weight of the world of my family or my work on my shoulders. I'm waking up and accomplishing a goal immediately. And it just sets the tone from the day, from there on out, just absolutely sets the tone. [00:07:43] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I completely agree with you. I got out this morning for an hour before anybody was at the breakfast table, got home. And honestly, anything I achieved throughout the rest of the day is, is inconsequential because I've really, I've spent that time with myself. I got a little bit of exercise in and just enjoyed, you know, the environment that I'm able to ride. [00:08:03] Mark Allen: Yes. And, and I want everybody to understand. It's just little things, right? It's little things, just getting out and doing little things to begin with. And, and, you know, my story has this. Incredible ending which is another beginning, which I'm sure we'll talk about soon, but it's just little things. I mean, it's a lap around your street. It's that simple of a, a start, you know, the, the start's the hard part. But it, it isn't you know, it isn't hours at a time, which, you know, is just a little bit, so, you know, I tell everybody don't be afraid, just start, you know, pick something easy and go. Yeah. And, and it's amazing how the rest of the day just comes together. [00:08:43] Craig Dalton: Yeah. So tell me about, so, you know, you're running laps in the neighborhood and you're building up your mileage. Was there a certain point where something clicked and you said, well, gosh, maybe I should set a target. Maybe I should try to ride. 15 miles or 20 miles. And it kind of got you a little bit outta that neighborhood routine and made you [00:09:00] Mark Allen: I started reading about single track and I was like, wow, this is pretty cool. And watched some videos. And I went and bought a specialized doubled XL rock hopper. It's a huge bike, which fit me, which was great. So that's really the first bike that. Fit me to where, you know, I wasn't scrunched up. I wasn't hurting or anything like that. And I left I Prairie, sunset trail is about five miles from my house. It's a trail that runs about 20 miles on the west side of Wichita. And I left I left the, the confines of my neighborhood and I rode that trail. It's flat. It has, it has no elevation on it at all. So it's just flat and you'll find everybody, people walking, walking their dogs, you know, riding gravel, cyclists. I mean, everybody's on that trail. And so I was first able to overcome. People seeing me on a bike. I finally had a bike that fit me, so it didn't look terribly crazy. And I started riding that trail and you know, at first, the first time I did 10 miles on that trail, I was beside myself. I was just like, this is the greatest thing ever. I did 10 miles and that's five out and five back to where I parked. So, you know, five out with a break and five back with a, you know, when I parked. And so I started doing. I did a little bit of the air cap Memorial trail, which is there too. And then I had a pretty good wreck on it as anybody that does single track. You know, I had a really good wreck. I hit a tree with my left shoulder, went over the handle bars. I'm too old. I'm too big to be going over handle bars And I was like, okay, this is, this has kind of scared me. And At that time I had met Nathan Wadsworth, who is in charge of elite training. My son had been going to him doing some personal fitness with him, and Nathan is a phenomenal gravel cyclist. So him and I had just been talking back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And he's the one that steered me that, and the tree steered me away from single track and towards gravel cycling. [00:11:03] Craig Dalton: Okay. And were you able with, we, were you able to find gravel cycling roads out of Wichita that you could start to enjoy at that point? [00:11:11] Mark Allen: Oh, all over. They're all over. There's a 45th street is I, I would say a mile from my house and I can do a 20 mile out and back on the same street with some decent elevation with a. Boat marina at the end of the first 20 miles. So if you need to use the restroom or get something to drink, you can refill and, and head back in the gravel roads around Wichita on the west side of town are great, not a ton of elevation training wise but they are they're, they're incredible. And very rideable and they were really designed to help me, you know, learn how to ride a gravel bike. [00:11:47] Craig Dalton: Okay. And did you end up swapping the, the specialized mountain bike for a drop bar bike? Or were you still on the specialized. [00:11:54] Mark Allen: I rode that J until I could find one. My problem was, this was right pre COVID. And as COVID was hitting, every American went out and bought a bike. And and given my size there's only a few manufacturers that make a bike large enough for me anyways. So what Nathan did was steer to a, a specialized 64 carbon sport diverge. And I spent months looking for that. So I was stuck on. Rock hopper, riding gravel roads, like a gravel cyclist looking months on, in for a gravel bike that the specific 64. And I found it over the internet in North Carolina. So it was and it was at a shop that couldn't ship it to me due to specialized franchise territory rules and all that. But it was in a town that I have a friend, it was in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I called my friend and I said, Hey, they have this bike that I've been looking for for months. Could you pick it up for me and ship it to me? And, and my friend Chuck was like, absolutely. And I said, it's at all star at in quail corners, right outside of Raleigh. And he. That's the bike shop I use. And I was like, holy Mac, we we've got my bike and it's in Chuck's neighborhood and I'm gonna have this bike here in three days. And I did, it was just, it was a miracle. I mean, it was, you know, just, it was cool. It [00:13:17] Craig Dalton: That's amazing. Yeah. I'm glad you were able to get something relatively efficiently. Cause I've heard tons of stories about people trying to find a bike. And in your particular case, as you describe it, when you've only got a model or a couple models that are gonna work for you, you probably have an even li more limited opportunity to grab a hold of a gravel bike. [00:13:36] Mark Allen: Yes. Yeah. There's just not for my size. There's not, and that's something I'm hoping in the future that the gravel industry will look at, cuz there's a lot of guys, my size that would do this. If there was, I think more availability you know, of, of, of bikes, of size. [00:13:53] Craig Dalton: So you'd been riding maybe about a, a year. Did I get the timeline right? When you got that gravel bike [00:13:58] Mark Allen: Yes. It was a, it was about a year, [00:14:00] Craig Dalton: was when you first sort of stepped over the gravel bike and started riding with dropped handle bars. How did you, how did that feel? Was that a, a rough transition from a straight bar mountain bike, which is a little bit maybe easier to ride. I'd argue [00:14:15] Mark Allen: Scared me to death I had never, I mean, I had never written any written, anything. Like that. And so just the basics of trying to master a bike that is beyond your technical skill and also way beyond your physical skills. So the, the, the bike was way out ahead of my abilities and just having a thumb shifter. I mean, literally I I'd never, I'm lik…

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Anne Hed - CEO HED Cycling Jun 14, 2022

Show notes

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 life and did a lot of events in the triathlon world. So why don't we get a little bit about your backstory, where you're from, because I think it all leads into the head brand and your journey with your late husband. [00:04:37] Anne Hed: Yeah. So I am a resident of Minnesota born and raised here. And I grew up in Duluth where. It was incredibly challenging on a bike. So my first job was a lifeguard. So I came from a swimming background and I had to bike just to get to work. And then I kind of picked up running along the way. And when I was in my early twenties, I saw of course the Hawaiian Ironman. And I thought, well, you know, I'm signed up for college, I've done some classes, but I, I have this dream to go do. So I qualified for Kona in a, in a triathlon, but AI had no money. And I had a, really a heavy bike and a friend said, there's this guy named Steve head. He owns a bike shop called grand performance. I think you should go see if he'll help you. So I literally just walked into a shop and there he was. And I'll never forget it. Like shirtless, grease all over permed, magenta hair. This was in the eighties. Okay. And so, he handed me a hundred dollar check, which didn't bounce for the entry of the Hawaiian Ironman in 1983. So, he also gave me a bike. So I, I headed over there and I, and I was racing and I, I was on a professional team to Mizuno. I, I wasn't winning a bunch of races, but while I was racing, Steve San Francisco Mosher set the hour record on disc wheels, double disc wheels and Steven's background besides owning a bike shop. And having a history lit degree and not an engineering degree he had made skateboards and water skis kind of like in his garage. So he went into a garage with a friend and made a solid disc wheel [00:06:33] Craig Dalton: and what was he making? What kind of a material was he using to make that we all in a garage? [00:06:37] Anne Hed: It was basically fiberglass and foam and he got a friend to machine, some. Hubs or he tore apart a hub and he found an aluminum rim and he glued it together and, and it, it didn't fall apart. He gave it to me and I did some races on it [00:06:57] Craig Dalton: Literally that first wheel. [00:06:59] Anne Hed: It was actually the second, well, the first one went to another friend that helped him. Right. So. So I started writing it and people were just stopping me at races and saying, you know, what is that? And can I have one? And so we made, we made a few more and all of a sudden we're like this, this could actually be a business. So, he, he was able to. Get some more raw materials, but it wasn't enough to do very many. So I saw that there was a triathlon and the first prize was a car. So I went to Brattleboro Vermont in 1984 and lo and behold, I won a car. So I came back to Minnesota and. Went and imagined this is a 21 year old girl that knew nothing about business or anything, walking to banks, asking for some money. And one baker said, what do you have? And I said, I have a car and I have a, I have a bike. Well here, if you give me the title of the car, I'll give you $14,000. That was, that was a lot of money was still is a lot of money. So. Got the money and I gave it to Steve and, you know, we were kind of dating. So, so between, you know, his amazing creative brain and my earnings of that car, that's how head cycling started [00:08:28] Craig Dalton: Amazing. And was it, did Steve always and yourself, did you have an orientation around building products around speed? I know you said he was inspired by seeing saying Moser's world record with full, full disc wheels. Was that the orientation, like let's make a fast aerodynamic wheel. [00:08:49] Anne Hed: oh yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, Steven just. Italian products to and racing. And it was Francisco Mosher and, and he was just a fan of all types of cycling. But it think from the infancy, it's always been how to make an affordable product that is fast and aerodynamic that, that a lot of people can use. And so that's really still the. The premises of why we make certain products is we want them and everybody to just enjoy cycling and have the experience of speed and, and have it still affordable. [00:09:28] Craig Dalton: And when you started out with the disc wheel, did you then move to a spoke to. [00:09:32] Anne Hed: Yeah. Cause of course, you know, you can't use a solid disc wheel on the front. So, he again sat together with a few folks and, and designed the toroidal air shaped front wheel that is still patented to this day. So we had an extension to the patent, but it's, it's, it's predominantly what you see. All lot of the other wheel companies making it's a 60 millimeter carbon air, full shaped wheel. And like I said, we were pretty much first to the market on that. And we were able to figure out how to continue to make a product super fast. So that was in 1992. [00:10:18] Craig Dalton: Okay. [00:10:19] Anne Hed: I'm sorry, 1990. We had hoped to get more of the aerodynamic aspect ratios from our patent, but the three spoke wheel that DuPont had invented back then got some in and we eventually then did buy that wheel in that patent because we knew how fast it was [00:10:39] Craig Dalton: And have you been continuing to manufacture the wheels in Minnesota throughout that whole. [00:10:44] Anne Hed: Yeah. I mean, you know, once, once in 84, 85, when we started having more phone calls and people calling off from all over the world, and I don't, you know, depending on how some of the listeners there was fax machines that a lot of the orders had to come through. So we actually found a house in 1987 that allowed us to live there and work in a group. Next to it. And the, the wheels just kept evolving and they were made in, in a garage, in, in white bear. Obviously we've moved since a few times since then, but it was, it was a pretty funny story. I mean, north wind would come through and we used to heat it with a wood-burning stove. And if the wind was too strong, we had to, we had to stop making wheels that day. I mean, this is, this is in the eighties. So it's been a long time. [00:11:34] Craig Dalton: Yeah, no. And it's, I mean, it's real business talk there it's, you know, when you're actually manufacturing things and I think this gets lost on a lot of people, just the sheer complexity of manufacturing, anything let alone something like a bicycle wheel that needs a tremendous amount of precision in order to deliver what it's supposed to deliver. [00:11:53] Anne Hed: Yeah. So we S you know, we introduced that 60 millimeter We'll and then we continued throughout the years adding, you know, your, your 40 millimeter. If it was windy, then we added the 90 millimeter on the front and rear. So the product has evolved throughout the history of head, but you know, it has always been made here in Minnesota. All the carbon products are made here in Minnesota and still are. [00:12:21] Craig Dalton: And at a certain point you expanded to Aero handlebars. If I'm not mistaken and other products like that, that supported the triathlete market. [00:12:29] Anne Hed: Yeah. I mean, we would work with professional cycling teams pretty much from all over the world. And obviously with my background in triathlons, I did continue to do a few iron mans. And then I decided that, you know, Steven, I should eventually get married and, you know, have children and, and but throughout the. Evolution of head, you know, the, the arrow bars were introduced primarily because we saw a need for speed up there. You know, the Scott handlebars that Boone Lennon invented also in the eighties, you know, weren't, weren't carbon, you know, they were aluminum kind of . So we signed need to add aerodynamic handlebars to our product. All. [00:13:14] Craig Dalton: And it seems just again from the outside and a fan of the sport that your husband then became sort of the aerodynamics guru for a lot of professional cyclists at some point. [00:13:27] Anne Hed: Yeah, it was, it was amazing because I still look back at those days and we, we were pretty much the pioneers of the, the testing in wind tunnels. So we went back to Texas AMN in the, in the nineties and then on to San Diego to LA they're low speed wind tunnel. We've been in pretty many, several wind tunnels throughout the U S but it is. What is amazing about that part with Steve is it was just the pure desire to help athletes go faster. You know, it was working with a lot of professional cycling. And just individual athletes. And he would come to races with me and Hey, who doesn't want their bike fixed at a racer, you know, some help with your bike. Cause sometimes we'd show up at races and products would be broken because of, you know, flying from across the world. And Steven just always had a toolbox there and a measurement and he would work with, you know, all, all different athletes from all different sports of, of cycling. [00:14:31] Craig Dalton: And so fast forward it a little bit to sort of, to the 2010 era living in Minnesota. All kinds of gravel roads have probably always been a part of your training life. And I think it's fascinating going back to those really early days of let's call it pre the modern gravel bike market, what you were experiencing. Can you just talk about sort of that era and how as bikes evolved and, and events evolved, particularly in Minnesota, some of those events you started thinking about off-road cycling as part of where the, where the brand would ultimately. [00:15:07] Anne Hed: So, where we live is, is in a wooded area that has, oh gosh, maybe 30 miles of gravel, just pretty much or trails out our back door, but Steven's parents actually. I lived on a farm in Canby, Minnesota. And so Steven talked about the dream he used to have of just riding the gravel roads back when he was a younger kid or just experiencing gravel in general. And, you know, I. Would ride hours with Steve and he'd always be, well, let's say it this way. I was worried that he was going to tip or fall or run into something because I knew when he was dreaming or thinking about the next product or, or he was on his bike and he was thinking about, okay, what else. What else would I want to be riding? So I think, you know, it was in his blood. I mean, you know, when you, when you're a farm, your families are farmers from, you know, Minnesota and, and you pretty much live on those roads. It just is part of your life. So. I had to go back into my archives. And we introduced in 2007, what we called the C2 gram, which is a 21 millimeter rim, which, wh…

Full show notes at the publisher

Gravel Rides Scotland with author Ed Shoote Jun 07, 2022

Show notes

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 guess my mountain biking kind of passion. [00:04:32] Craig Dalton: where you staying in the UK for university. [00:04:35] Ed Shoote: Yeah. So I just went to the north of England. It tackled York which is great. Yes. Great spot to stop actually visiting. Cause it's got loads of history, but it's also surrounded by Hills. Really nice mountain biking terrain as well. Yeah, the course was, is a small consideration, but yet it was just the perfect spot for the analyst to select in ready. [00:04:52] Craig Dalton: And the UK obviously has got such a rich history of cycling across all disciplines, including mountain biking. [00:04:59] Ed Shoote: yeah. Yeah. You kind of get pockets, I guess, of real passion for road riding and mountain bike and where I am now in Scotland is it's huge amounts of biking. We have a lot of injury world series. Now bike is based here and. Right. Is coming up through the youth ranks as well. So it's a real buzz here and I guess yeah, like Edinburgh just north has got a really good road scene. So yeah, it's always a pocket of psych dinner, some chronic scenes wherever you are in the country, which is, yeah, it's great. It's great to see [00:05:25] Craig Dalton: And at university, were you studying? Writing as a discipline. [00:05:30] Ed Shoote: No, I studied mountain biking indirectly, actually. So. It's all fenced together. No, I was doing kind of a pied economics, which was focusing on environmental issues and mountain biking kind of fit it into that food forestry management. So it's again boring probably, but yeah, so I actually ended up doing a dissertation on mountain biking and the impact of mountain biking, which is, yeah, this is great. It was great. [00:05:52] Craig Dalton: Yeah, Amazing. And then from, I understand you spent some time abroad at some point after that. [00:05:58] Ed Shoote: Yeah, so that, that was kind of the last time I lived in England thought. Yeah, pretty much. That's how I sit in England actually thinking about it. Yeah, so I left from university, went traveling and then I got to work in DC to Canada. So I went to Southeast Asia then worked in British Columbia and Canada in mountain biking in the summer. One of the ski resorts south of bike park in the summer, which is really cool. So I've got a lot of writing out there. You actually loved it and stayed out there for a bit and then just got kind of a ski bug as well. So we ended up doing ski seasons in New Zealand and then in Europe as well. So I got that. And then, yeah, the passion for cycling, I guess, came back again when I moved back to Scotland from France. And yeah, that's kind of where I really got stuck into cycling. Yeah. [00:06:38] Craig Dalton: And at what point did gravel cycling, intersect with your passion for cycling? [00:06:43] Ed Shoote: I'd always been into mountain biking. And I think what kind of took me that next kind of level of backwards towards kind of gravel riding for mountain biking was contouring and long distance riding. So I got into doing these massive trips. So I had this amazing job, which was eight months of the year, so four months off. So I spent those four months basically doing big tours. So I cycled to estimate. [00:07:02] Craig Dalton: No. [00:07:03] Ed Shoote: It's a three consecutive years. I think it was in a row across Europe. And then in the second year I carried on writing and I was just trying to do that more and more on gravel probable right, routes and gravel tracks. So I could get away from the roads really and get into some more remote places. And it just seemed a great way to explore it. And that was kind of at the same point that manufacturers were getting into this idea of gravel bikes as a thing, and an adventure bikes. And I worked with a UK bike manufacturer. Support them developing one of these kind of gravel adventure bikes as they were at the time. And it just went hand in hand and as I got that bike, it then got me more and more doing these tours pretty much all on gravel roads, gravel tracks in central Asia. A lot of the time as well. I did have about four trips to central Asia. I'm getting kind of stuck into gravel, riding Kurdistan and and places like that. So that's yeah, that's where I got the gravel. But from. [00:07:50] Craig Dalton: Wow. What would that type of touring terrain were you, what type of setup where you creating on your bike? You said you worked with a manufacturer. What was your dream setup for the type of riding that you were doing at that point? [00:08:01] Ed Shoote: well, just before I did that, I was in Canada and I saw the tour divide races and they would just don't use bike back bags and they send a saddle packs and BARR bags which now we see everywhere, but at the time were really caught my eye and I was like, wow that's a solution to kind of the tour. And I'm doing. Ditching the pantyhose, which always break the racks come loose. They wobble, they bounce us. You know, I was looking for something else and I approached 'em to come up with after dura in the UK. I would just kind of design in these bags. One of the first ones was only over here to be doing it. And yeah just seeing the solution to what I was doing. And it means you have to reduce your kid. Cause you've got a saddlebag framed bag and a ball bag. I'm trying to get into some pretty remote places. And as we know now, it can be done about at the time. Head-scratching how you could get your kit. This is almost 10 years ago now Peggy that your get into the small bags and I was kind of looking at different tents and all the sounds that we now take for granted a bit to get it in there. And yeah, it just works so well. And I think that's why it's taken off so much in the kind of 10 years since really. [00:08:58] Craig Dalton: Yeah, a hundred percent. We've had the team at Afra on the podcast before. And. the evolution of bags from when we were kids in terms of pen, years down to what is now on the bikes today is just incredible. The bikes can be so rideable and so much fun with that, with those bags on versus once you put a pannier on back in the day, the bike felt like a different type of beast, and maybe it was good for riding in a straight line, but if you wanted to go off road with it, it became a little bit less. [00:09:28] Ed Shoote: Yeah. I remember the first tour, big tour we did was north to south of New Zealand, which is always good place to start touring as well as a really good country to do. And then I, that cell from Oakland and the bike was so back heavy with the panniers. I couldn't get the front wheel down. It was just wheeling almost down the street. And I was just scratching my head, how I'm going to get this bike around New Zealand. So just that kind of everyone does, I guess when they do the first tour, they have way too much stuff and it was all packed house. Yeah. And that was quite a long time ago. So yeah, each trip you kind of evolved, I guess, in your learning and equipment and set up as well. [00:09:59] Craig Dalton: Yeah, absolutely. And obviously like the equipment with the dyspraxia and the wider tires has really just made the overall experience so much better. [00:10:09] Ed Shoote: yeah, for me, I'm pretty tall. So I'm six or four. So I, I know when there's a headwind as well. It's fair to say. So given the drop bars on the gravel bike, Huge difference for me to get that kind of tuck in. And then you kind of tucking in behind the bar bag and the Saddleback everything's in line and yeah, it's one of those central Asian trips. We've had ridiculous headwinds and it feels like with pioneers of the first trips we did, it kind of felt like it was literally pushing it backwards. You weren't making progress. So having these drop bars, these bags and me kind of like getting in an arrow, tuck in, cut in the middle of nowhere, it was such a better way. [00:10:42] Craig Dalton: right. Right. And when did you ultimately end up settling in Scotland? [00:10:48] Ed Shoote: Yeah, so I did a quite few of these trips. Like I said, I was working, it was actually out France in the end. When the UK was part of the EU and we could work in France easily get into that. And then I moved back to Scotland to get a job in another job, actually. No, I think that to Scotland. Get a bit homesick, I guess I've been in the UK. So we came back and set up where I am now in the tables in the south of Scotland, because it's like, it's really good here. Yeah just stuff that we needed to kind of change and to come back. And my wife was looking for a different job as well, to be honest. So, so we got here in the, yeah. And then we've just kind of loved Scotland and the writing we can do here. [00:11:23] Craig Dalton: And were you starting to see the rise of, in terms of the number of gravel, cyclists in Scotland? [00:11:30] Ed Shoote: Yeah, I think so. I'm trying to think of when we moved back in about 20, 20, 15. And I could go out and I wouldn't see a soul on these riots and I ended up, I was quite sick coming back, so I trained for kind of 24 hour racing and stuff like that. So I was doing a lot of miles and I would rarely see anyone. And it was a novelty to see type. And definitely over the next kind of five years, I've gone from feeling like I'm the only one doing this, to see entire tracks to meet you too, you know, meeting people now. And everyone's on gravel bikes pretty much on these as well. And yeah, it's just been great to see. And the the opportunities I guess, has gotten as well. Like I had a year where I did a different link from my door pretty much every day, same trails, possibly, but in different variations with different variations of them. And I just kind of. Change, I guess in like variation, I don't like riding the same route. And I think having that here is what's attracted me. And obviously that's attracting loads of writers as well to come and come at school. This is tracks that weren't really being used. I guess. [00:12:27] Craig Dalton: Yeah. From looking at your book, grab a ride, Scotland. The terrain just looks amazing. There's a lot of great photography in there. What inspired you to write this book? And why is it important to you? [00:12:43] Ed Shoote: I like to have some great story about it. I just don't say no to stuff generally when someone asks me to do it and I said yeah, why not? I'll write a book on gravel riding. I know a lot of good routes. So, so I went for an yeah, that's kind of where I am now, but it didn't take much because I've been doing so much writing. It kind of came naturally as to where I though…

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Last Best Ride with Jess Cerra and Sam Boardman May 31, 2022

Show notes

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 website@thefeed.com 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 families live here because they want to spend time outside. With that said cycling, wasn't a huge part of growing up here. I pretty much found cycling in grad school. I. I went to the university of Montana for my undergrad, studied exercise physiology, and then moved to San Diego to pursue my master's in the same field. And it was when I was studying elite athletes in the lab and actually bringing cyclists into our exercise physiology lab. That my curiosity was peaked and I ended up randomly doing a VO two max test on a lab bike and finding that I had the engine, I just needed a bike and all the things that go with it. So one of my professors was I'm on a mountain bike team and she helped me get started. And I started on that team and I raced Xterra off-road triathlon and mountain bikes for a long time. And then I. Professional road racing career after that. And instead of officially retiring, I say that I evolved into gravel cycling because I think gravel is that area where you, you can be a pro without having to only be competitive, you can bring value to the sport in other ways. [00:05:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah, absolutely. So unpacking that, I'll just a tiny bit first off for the uninitiated. Explain exactly where Whitefish is located in, in Montana. [00:06:04] Jess and Sam: So it's up in the Northwestern corner. It's tucked by Flathead lake in glacier national park, which is a big draw to the area. We're about 30 minutes away from glacier. What like nine 90 minutes on the bike. If I'm drafting behind Sam. [00:06:20] Craig Dalton: and then it's pretty close to the Canadian border. Is that right? [00:06:24] Jess and Sam: Yeah. like an hour from the Canadian border. [00:06:27] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Amazing. And when you were growing up, were you doing other endurance athletics, like running or skiing? [00:06:33] Jess and Sam: Yeah. So we, you know, and we'll touch on this. When we talk about the mission for the last best ride I grew up in, you know, a pretty humble family, pretty low income. So access to. A lot of sports like cycling or skiing? It was a little tricky for us. There's a ton of community support here. There's actually grants for kids to participate. So I was able to do some Nordic skiing that way. We have an outdoor figure skating rink, and I did some figure skating with some of those grants. But it's funny because looking back, I was always drawn to endurance. I just didn't have an example of what endurance as a sport or as a career would be like something like professional cycling. And you think that I would, and in Montana that, that I wouldn't have that, but it just really wasn't something that was part of our daily life. You know, my parents were focused on working and I grew up with a single mom, so. That was challenging, but she did her best to get us outside. We did a lot of hiking and exploring here. But Yeah. [00:07:41] Craig Dalton: Amazing. And then, so when you went to college and you discovered the bike for the first time, as you started to become involved in. That the team aspects of road racing, was it immediately apparent that you had an engine that was better suited for the longer, more endurance stuff versus sprint site? Tough. [00:07:58] Jess and Sam: Yes. It's funny how you, you learn that. I actually was a really strong climber and I think that I began goes back to. The VO two max and lung capacity, but definitely I like to suffer for a really long time, rather than compacting that all into five seconds. So those were the systems that I trained. [00:08:22] Craig Dalton: yeah, that makes sense. And then Sam, how about you? Where, where did you grow up and what was your journey to the bike? Like. [00:08:28] Jess and Sam: Well, I'll tell you that, but first I want to add something to justice story that she did not add, which I think is the funniest part, the random aspect of her introduction to cycling. Wasn't so random. It was. Part of the protocol for her research was taking the temperatures of the athletes, who she was studying. And to do that back in the day when she was doing it, the only way to do that was through a rectal thermometer. [00:08:56] Craig Dalton: I thought that's where we're going. [00:08:57] Jess and Sam: So the people who were doing the studies, they were always super jilted because they would always come in according to way adjust all that. And they would say, well, have you done the test? And eventually she just wanted to say like, but yes, I've done the past. And that's how she actually took the test and how she was discovered by her superior supervisors as a very gifted endurance athletes. So people should know it was not so much random. Low grade bullying and yeah, [00:09:27] Craig Dalton: I love it. [00:09:28] Jess and Sam: it's I don't know. I just, I liked that because it's, it's similar to this rumor and legend. I heard about Alex House where as an endurance athlete, everyone who he talked to, who he told I'm a professional cyclist and he would tell them like ever in the tour de France and stuff like that, they'd be like, yeah. Cool, cool, cool. Have you run a marathon? He always was just saying, no, I've never run a marathon. And then apparently, and this is what legend has at one day. You just woke up and was like, gosh, darn it. I just need to run a marathon so that when people ask me that from now on, I can say, yes, we did. And he like broke all his toes or something like that. And just bloody wind speed. But point is, it's an important detail. [00:10:08] Craig Dalton: yeah. Now he's a reasonable athlete, according to the best people out there. [00:10:12] Jess and Sam: yeah. With a rectal thermometer. No, [00:10:17] Craig Dalton: Well, you never know. [00:10:19] Jess and Sam: my my introduction to the bike was a lot less invasive, I guess you could say. It w it was brought on mostly as a way to fill the void that I had in my life when I left running. And I say left running as if it was like something that I chose to retire from it wasn't, it was just my life in high school. And when I, when I discovered it freshman year, I, you know, fell in love with it. And it just was everything that I wanted to do. And when it came time to apply to college, I realized like the only schools that I wanted to go to having come from very small private school and wanting to broaden my horizons, as far as my educational experience goes, were large state schools with very, very competitive running programs where, I mean, they had these kinds of schools were pumping out national champions left and right. And if I wanted to be part of, you know, the, a squad, the division one squad, I would either have. Scrap my way onto the team so that I could just race be races or I would have to run at the club level and doing either of those didn't really fit in my competitive zeal that I accrued during my high school life and running. And I knew that it would also probably destroy the love that I had for the sport, because it would probably just Jade me to the point where I didn't want to do it anymore. So I decided to just try something new, find something. In the meantime, the summer between my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college, which having gone to UCLA who were on the quarter system and they notoriously start very late. I had five months off between when I ended my senior year and when I started college and it wasn't because I took a semester off or anything, it's just, that's how the calendar works. So I had a lot of free time to figure out what I wanted to do. In the meantime, I was working as a janitor in my high school, and my parents had gotten me a fixed gear bike to commute, to work with. And I just fell in love with scooting around in the city. And just finding the bike scene in Washington, DC, where I grew up and discovering the bike and that kind of communal aspect. And then finally come August. Of 2014. I decided I wanted to get a road bike because as is the natural progression for most people that I've talked to in cycling, you wanted to be able to go further and go faster and actually be able to change gears and not blow your knees out of their sockets. So I use the money that I've gotten working as a janitor and bought my first road bike, went to California, found the club team and just became obsessed. Race the club scene for three years when I was in college, until I got onto a domestically amateur team and then started branching out into more competitive national events. And then I signed my first pro contract in 29. [00:13:14] Craig Dalton: Amazing and shout out to rock Creek park in DC for a little road riding. [00:13:20] Jess and Sam: I grew up. Yeah. Rock Creek park. It's I mean, it's funny. It's like I go back there very frequently and I basically rediscover or discover for the first time, in some cases, parts of the cycling scene, which is super exciting to me because having grown up there. You know, you think, oh, I know everything about it, but it's actually really cool to be able to go to your hometown and find something absolutely new to it in the sphere of what you love to do. And that it's actually robbery park is one of my favorite places to ride it's right by my house. [00:13:52] Craig Dalton: Yeah, quick aside. I, I went to school at American university in Washington, DC and discovered mountain biking and amazing. So I discovered a mountain biking in DC, which is very sort of counterintuitive, right? Like where would you find green space to mountain bike in DC? But as you probably know, there's all these sort of interconnected green spaces in Washington, DC, that once you sorta tipped off to them, you sort of do a little section. They're all short of obviously. You're a little section, then you go around next to some apartment buildings you find another section to do, and you can do these neat hour long loops in the city. [00:14:25] Jess and Sam: Oh, my gosh. I mean, I. So much credit I have to give to my high school running coach to who instilled in me the kind of sense of adventure. And you could call it, I call it organic navigation, but most people know that as being bad at directions where it's basically kind of just, you know, where to go when the road looks a certain way, or you kind of just decide, you're going to feel out your route. And he was the one who introduced me to just looping together. Different routes. So, I mean, like you're saying, we would start in Tenleytown, we'd go download the Archibald trail through Georgetown we'd loop through all these little random back trails…

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In the Dirt 30 May 24, 2022

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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.

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Moriah Wilson - Rest in Peace May 17, 2022

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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.

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