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Hardline has always been one of the most intimidating races in mountain biking, but at Hardline Wales in 2025, Lou Ferguson delivered a full top-to-bottom race run that showed just how far the women's scene has progressed. But that run was only part of the story. Because Lou is also heading into a new chapter of her career, returning to Nukeproof bikes and RockShox for 2026, racing alongside teammate Millie Johnset and building towards what could be her biggest season yet. So today we're catching up with Lou to talk about that Hardline run, what it meant to her and to women's progression in the sport, how the Nukeproof move came together, and what the future might hold. So sit back, hit play and check out this episode with Lou Ferguson. You can also watch this episode on YouTube here. You can follow Lou on Instagram @fergyferg__. Podcast Stuff Sponsoring Partner This episode is sponsored by PNW Components. I’ve been riding their Loam Carbon Handlebar and have been impressed with the ride quality, maintaining a positive steering feel, while reducing the vibration you feel through the bar. Tested to the highest standards, shaped to give you all day comfort with modern bike geo and with a lifetime warranty. It’s no surprise that it’s fast become PNW’s best selling product. Check them out at pnwcomponents.com. Patreon I would love it if you were able to support the podcast via a regular Patreon donation. Donations start from as little as £3 per month. That's less than £1 per episode and less than the price of a take away coffee. Every little counts and these donations will really help me keep the podcast going and hopefully take it to the next level. To help out, head here. Merch If you want to support the podcast and represent, then my webstore is the place to head. All products are 100% organic, shipped without plastics, and made with a supply chain that's using renewable energy. We now also have local manufacture for most products in the US as well as the UK. So check it out now over at downtimepodcast.com/shop. Newsletter If you want a bit more Downtime in your life, then you can join my newsletter where I'll provide you with a bit of behind the scenes info on the podcast, interesting bits and pieces from around the mountain bike world, some mini-reviews of products that I've been using and like, partner offers and more. You can do that over at downtimepodcast.com/newsletter. Follow Us Give us a follow on Instagram @downtimepodcast or Facebook @downtimepodcast to keep up to date and chat in the comments. For everything video, including riding videos, bike checks and more, subscribe over at youtube.com/downtimemountainbikepodcast. Are you enjoying the podcast? If so, then don't forget to follow it. Episodes will get delivered to your device as soon as it's available and it's totally free. You'll find all the links you need at downtimepodcast.com/follow. You can find us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google and most of the podcast apps out there. Our back catalogue of amazing episodes is available at downtimepodcast.com/episodes Photo – Sven Martin
While I was out in New Zealand, I caught up with Amaury Pierron to unpack the highs and lows of the past couple of seasons. From those incredible wet-weather wins at the Val di Sole and Les Gets World Cups, to breaking his collarbone in La Thuile and then coming back to take the win in Lenzerheide later that season. Then we're joined by SRAM Race Tech Craig Miller and RockShox long-travel product manager Jason Blodgett to go deeper into how they work alongside Amaury and the Commencal Muc-Off Team to find World Cup-winning pace. We get into some of the latest RockShox tech and explore how a close athlete/engineer relationship not only benefits those at the top of the sport, but also us everyday riders. This is a rare insight into the relationship between athlete and engineer at the sharpest end of the sport. So sit back, hit play and check out this episode with Amaury Pierron, Craig Miller and Jason Blodgett. You can also watch this episode on YouTube here. You can follow Amaury on Instagram @amaurypierron4 and over on YouTube here. You can find RockShox on Instagram @rockshock and SRAM @srammtb and also over at sram.com. Podcast Stuff Sponsoring Partners This episode is a paid partnership with SRAM and RockShox, you can check out their new DH suspension and drivetrain, plus the updated Mavens over at sram.com. Patreon I would love it if you were able to support the podcast via a regular Patreon donation. Donations start from as little as £3 per month. That's less than £1 per episode and less than the price of a take away coffee. Every little counts and these donations will really help me keep the podcast going and hopefully take it to the next level. To help out, head here. Merch If you want to support the podcast and represent, then my webstore is the place to head. All products are 100% organic, shipped without plastics, and made with a supply chain that's using renewable energy. We now also have local manufacture for most products in the US as well as the UK. So check it out now over at downtimepodcast.com/shop. Newsletter If you want a bit more Downtime in your life, then you can join my newsletter where I'll provide you with a bit of behind the scenes info on the podcast, interesting bits and pieces from around the mountain bike world, some mini-reviews of products that I've been using and like, partner offers and more. You can do that over at downtimepodcast.com/newsletter. Follow Us Give us a follow on Instagram @downtimepodcast or Facebook @downtimepodcast to keep up to date and chat in the comments. For everything video, including riding videos, bike checks and more, subscribe over at youtube.com/downtimemountainbikepodcast. Are you enjoying the podcast? If so, then don't forget to follow it. Episodes will get delivered to your device as soon as it's available and it's totally free. You'll find all the links you need at downtimepodcast.com/follow. You can find us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google and most of the podcast apps out there. Our back catalogue of amazing episodes is available at downtimepodcast.com/episodes Photo – Sven Martin
Sua ligação com a bicicleta começou cedo em sua vida. Pedalava com os amigos pelas ruas do bairro e viveu a mania do BMX no Brasil. Na escola, jogou voleibol, mas destacou-se mesmo em matemática e física, desenvolvendo interesse por eletrônica e computação. Cursou Engenharia Naval na Escola Politécnica da USP e, nesse período, praticou mergulho livre e autônomo, além de ginástica olímpica recreativa. Iniciou a vida profissional estagiando e depois trabalhando no marketing de multinacionais, ao mesmo tempo em que passou a se aventurar no mountain bike, que dava seus primeiros passos no Brasil. A partir do início dos anos 1990, passou a se envolver de forma mais intensa com a bicicleta. Com Daniel Aliperti, um amigo de infância, fundou a loja Pedal Power, que logo se tornou referência no mercado. Algum tempo depois, deu início à importação de marcas icônicas do segmento, como Ritchey, Santa Cruz e Rocky Mountain. Profissionalmente e pessoalmente, sua ligação com a bicicleta só aumentava. Abriu uma loja em Campos do Jordão e aproveitou para explorar as oportunidades locais no mountain bike, trekking e aventuras ao ar livre. Em 1997, começou a participar de enduros a pé e das primeiras corridas de aventura realizadas no Brasil. No ano seguinte, ao lado da esposa, integrou a melhor equipe brasileira na primeira edição da Expedição Mata Atlântica e participou da lendária Southern Traverse, na Nova Zelândia. Ao longo dos anos seguintes, competiu em mais algumas corridas de aventura até se voltar novamente ao mountain bike, geralmente em dupla com sua esposa. Em 1999, sua importadora, a Proparts, passou a representar outras marcas fortes, como RockShox e SRAM. Nos anos seguintes, ao lado de Giancarlo Clini, idealizou o que viria a se tornar a Aliança Bike, associação que presidiu por dois mandatos consecutivos. Depois, conquistou a representação da Specialized e implantou a subsidiária da marca no Brasil. Quase uma década depois, conquistou a Mavic, a Zipp e, posteriormente, a gigante Garmin. Em 2018, decidiu então mudar-se com a família para o Canadá e, no ano seguinte, deixou a Pedal Power, focando exclusivamente no fortalecimento e crescimento das marcas que representa e em agregar novas marcas ao seu portfólio, como Vittoria, Shokz e Orbea. Conosco aqui, o engenheiro naval com pós-graduação em administração, empreendedor que tem um portfólio com 14 marcas representadas no Brasil, um dos melhores corredores de aventura brasileiros do final dos anos 1990, um amante do ciclismo e da vida ao ar livre, o paulistano Marcelo de Barros Dantas Maciel. Inspire-se! Um oferecimento @2peaksbikes A 2 Peaks Bikes é a importadora e distribuidora oficial no Brasil da Factor Bikes, Santa Cruz Bikes e de diversas outras marcas e conta com três lojas: Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo e Los Angeles. Lá, ninguém vende o que não conhece: todo produto é testado por quem realmente pedala. A 2 Peaks Bikes foi pensada e criada para resolver os desafios de quem leva o pedal a sério — seja no asfalto, na terra ou na trilha. Mas também acolhe o ciclista urbano, o iniciante e até a criança que está começando a brincar de pedalar. Para a 2 Peaks, todo ciclista é bem-vindo. Conheça a 2 Peaks Bikes, distribuidora oficial da Factor, da Santa Cruz e da Yeti no Brasil. @2peaksbikesla SIGA e COMPARTILHE o Endörfina no Youtube ou através do seu app preferido de podcasts. Contribua também com este projeto através do Apoia.se. SIGA e COMPARTILHE o Endörfina no Youtube ou através do seu app preferido de podcasts. Contribua também com este projeto através do Apoia.se.
Do you actually need a damper on a gravel bike? Logan Jones-Wilkins joins the show to discuss his massive suspension shootout comparing the Cane Creek Invert, RockShox Rudy, and Fox 32 TC. We break down the winners, the losers, and where the "upside-down" tech actually makes sense. Then, we tackle the controversy of the week: The Leadville Trail 100 MTB drop-bar ban. Josh digs into the archives to see if drop bars truly offer an advantage, or if this rule change is purely aesthetic. Finally, we ask if the new Pinarello Grevil MX is a legitimate race bike or just a way to move overstock frames.
This week on Geek Warning, Ronan Mc Laughlin and Dave Rome discuss why SRAM's battle with the UCI may also prove positive for Shimano.Ronan asks Dave what his workshop wish is, which leads to an unexpected tangent about bike washing. There's, of course, a PSA, which ends up being a conversation about how to align dropbar shifters. And the geeks summarise a bunch of the latest and biggest new tech.Lastly, Zach Edwards (Boulder Groupetto) joins the pod to answer some questions from members in the Ask a Wrench segment. As a reminder, only members of Escape Collective get access to this section of the podcast.Happy geeking!Time stamps:1:00 - A hypothetical question5:30 - SRAM taking the UCI to court, explained (plus a big rumour)10:15 - Waiting on an update to the UCI's handlebar ruling (now out of date since recording)13:00 - Ronan ponders Dave's dream workshop wish 25:00 - PSA that alignment markings on bars may be fictional plus an explainer on road shifter alignment38:00 - Rotor returns to the groupset game, sorta40:15 - Further update on SRAM's Transmission firmware update41:40 - Trek's CheckOut, a full suspension gravel bike43:15 - RockShox's matching Rudy XL45:00 - RLS helmet safety system and Canyon growing the full-service side of the business48:30 - Lezyne enters the rear Radar game50:00 - Ask a Wrench (Escape members only)52:30 - Shimano Di2 rear shifting woes58:30 - Adding shifters to SRAM AXS1:04:00 - Greasing posts and cleaning seat tubes
気になる機材の話をするHOT TECH
What up party people. Welcome back for another episode of the Bonk Bros podcast and I hope you're not sick of Leadville talk just yet because we've got plenty more of that packed in this week. There's crashes, there's course records, there's controversial DQs, and Dylan's giant bag of emotions, plus plenty more so stay tuned for it. Shout out to everyone we ran into this past weekend while out in Cloud City, it's always so fun and cool to mingle with the fans and hear about some of your favorite takes from the show. Speaking of running into people, DJ and I also got to meet Adam Barker, founder of Bolt Skin + Shave, for the first time in person at their expo booth and he was stoked about how many of y'all mentioned hearing him guest appear on the show last week and stop by the booth to check out their products after. So thank y'all for that. And if you did stop by then you know that we weren't joking about how heavy those razor handles are (in a good way) so hopefully you picked one up so you too can get level up your shave game. Another big shout out to the Silca folks, always good catching up with them at the events, and I was even lucky enough to bring home some new hardware in the form of their Ultimate shock pump. Now, if y'all have been listening to this show for a while then you'll know I'm a pretty die hard SRAM boy so I was a little hesitant at first to step away from my trust Rockshox shock pump but let me tell you, this Ultimate shock pump is just a thing of beauty. Head over to Silca.cc today and use the code "BonkBrosAug15" for 15% off! For updates on any and all of our supporting partners including the latest discount codes for y'all, check out the show notes each week so you can get access to some of our favorite items from partners like Silca and Bolt Skin+Shave, Bike Tires Direct, KetoneAid, or those amazing and intelligent lawyer folks over at Scarborough Bicycle Accident Law. Alright, enough business chat for now. If you have any questions or feedback you can always email us at bonkbrospodcast@gmail.com or hit us up on Instagram. Or you can sign up for Patreon. If you haven't made your way over to our sister show then what the hell are you waiting for but seriously, go check out the Bonk Babes Podcast who's killing it on their first few episode. SO yeah, go ahead and like and subscribe to their channel too so you can get double the BONK action each week. Alright, let's get this party started. FOR UPDATED DISCOUNT CODES CHECK THE LATEST EPISODE: Silca (10% discount code: "BonkBrosAug15"): https://silca.cc/?utm_source=Bonk+Bros&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=stripchip&utm_id=Bonk+Bros+Podcast Bike Tires Direct (10% discount code: bonkbros): https://www.biketiresdirect.com/?utm_source=bonkbros&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=bonkbros2025 Bolt Skin + Shave (BROS15): https://www.boltshave.com Scarborough Bicycle Accident Law: https://www.bicycleaccidentlaw.com KetoneAid: https://ketoneaid.com/?utm_source=BonkBros Dynamic Cyclist (10% discount code: BONKBROS): https://new.dynamiccyclist.com/a/43703/xkYViFV8 Patreon: http://patreon.com/patreon_bonkbros For more Dylan Johnson content: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIf1xvRN8pzyd_VfLgj_dow Listener Question Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1T37wGRLk6iYTCF6X_DQ9yfcaYtfAQceKpBJYR5W7DVA/edit?ts=642eb6d6 MERCH: T-SHIRTS ARE HERE! Get your Bonk Bros swag below. https://bb5a73-20.myshopify.com/ IGNITION: Hire a coach. Get faster. It's that simple. https://www.ignitioncoachco.com/ MATCHBOX PODCAST: Check out our more serious training focused podcast. https://www.ignitioncoachco.com/podcast The Following Was Generated Using AI And Should Not Be Held To The Higher Standards Of Sentient Beings - Riverside.: Summary This conversation explores various themes surrounding flight delays, race experiences, and the dynamics of gravel racing. The speakers share personal anecdotes about airline experiences, discuss the challenges of the Leadville race, and delve into the impact of media on racing narratives. They also address professionalism in gravel racing, safety concerns when amateurs and pros race together, and the crucial role amateurs play in the success of professional events. The discussion concludes with thoughts on the future of gravel racing events and potential changes to enhance safety and participant experience. In this conversation, the hosts delve into the emotional experiences of racing, particularly focusing on the Leadville race and its record-breaking performances. They discuss the controversy surrounding a disqualification in the women's race, exploring the ethics of calling out rule violations and the implications of such actions. The conversation also touches on the evolution of drop bars in racing, highlighting how they have become more mainstream and accepted over time. In this episode, the hosts delve into various topics surrounding cycling performance, particularly focusing on tire technology, race standings, and strategies for improvement. They discuss the recent performance of riders, the impact of tire choices on race outcomes, and engage with listener questions that highlight community insights and experiences. The conversation flows from technical discussions about tire performance to personal anecdotes and community engagement, creating a dynamic and informative episode for cycling enthusiasts. Chapters 00:00 Flight Delays and Travel Woes 05:31 Leadville Race Experience 08:29 The John Gaston Incident 11:21 Feed Zone Chaos and Professionalism in Gravel Racing 20:18 The Intersection of Pros and Amateurs in Gravel Racing 21:44 Safety Concerns in Mixed Racing Events 23:40 The Epic Rides Model: A Blueprint for Success 26:17 The Need for Change in Race Structures 29:07 The Ethos of Leadville and Its Evolution 29:58 Racing Perspectives: Insights from the Live Event 34:20 Emotional Connections to Racing Experiences 38:39 The Weight of Victory 39:15 Record Breakers and Race Highlights 39:58 Controversies in Competition 43:14 Intent and Integrity in Racing 45:48 The Aftermath of Disqualification 48:49 The Ethics of Calling Out Cheating 53:17 Comparative Penalties in Sports 56:42 Future of Athletes in Competitive Racing 01:00:00 Upcoming Races and Training Focus 01:02:01 Race Strategies and Performance Insights 01:04:53 The Evolution of Drop Bars in Racing 01:06:37 Tire Technology and Performance Discussion 01:12:48 Race Experiences and DNF Decisions 01:14:39 Listener Questions and Community Engagement 01:16:48 The Evolving Landscape of Gravel Racing 01:18:32 Tire Choices and Race Strategies 01:19:29 Listener Questions and Insights 01:21:16 The Impact of Social Media on Cyclists 01:22:57 Health and Performance: Personal Experiences 01:24:35 Aerodynamics and Racing at Altitude 01:26:23 Wrap-Up and Future Races
Mark Fitzsimmons has been shaping how mountain bikes ride for decades. From his early days in customer support to developing cutting-edge suspension at RockShox and FOX, he's worked with the world's fastest riders and the best teams in the business. In this episode, Mark shares hard-earned wisdom on suspension tuning, what really makes suspension work, why building trust with athletes matters, and the habits that lead to long-term success both on and off the bike. Whether you're chasing podiums or just trying to get your bike feeling dialled, this one's packed with gold. So it's time to sit back, hit play and listen to this episode with Mark Fitzsimmons. You can also watch this episode on YouTube here. You can follow Mark his tips on LinkedIn here. Podcast Stuff Supporting Partners Insta360 Insta360 have just launched their latest game-changer, the X5. It shoots full 360 video in 8K, with lenses that are more durable than ever, and comes with upgraded audio thanks to a new wind guard and smarter processing. It's waterproof to 15 metres and can film both a ready-to-share flat video and a fully re-frameable 360 video at the same time. They also have their Ace Pro 2 action camera which delivers incredible quality footage in a small and simple to use package. With a responsive flip-up touchscreen, amazing low light performance and game changing wind noise reduction, this thing delivers. Use the code DOWNTIME at the checkout on insta360.com and you'll get a free helmet chin guard with any X5 or Ace Pro 2 bundle order. That offer runs until the 30th July 2025 and is limited to just 30 free chin mounts, so don't hang around. Listener Offers Downtime listeners can now get 10% off of Stashed Space Rails. Stashed is the ultimate way to sort your bike storage. Their clever design means you can get way more bikes into the same space and easily access whichever one you want to ride that day. If you have 2 or more bikes in your garage, they are definitely worth checking out. Just head to stashedproducts.com/downtime and use the code DOWNTIME at the checkout for 10% off your entire order. And just so you know, we get 10% of the sale too, so it's a win win. Patreon I would love it if you were able to support the podcast via a regular Patreon donation. Donations start from as little as £3 per month. That's less than £1 per episode and less than the price of a take away coffee. Every little counts and these donations will really help me keep the podcast going and hopefully take it to the next level. To help out, head here. Merch If you want to support the podcast and represent, then my webstore is the place to head. All products are 100% organic, shipped without plastics, and made with a supply chain that's using renewable energy. We now also have local manufacture for most products in the US as well as the UK. So check it out now over at downtimepodcast.com/shop. Newsletter If you want a bit more Downtime in your life, then you can join my newsletter where I'll provide you with a bit of behind the scenes info on the podcast, interesting bits and pieces from around the mountain bike world, some mini-reviews of products that I've been using and like, partner offers and more. You can do that over at downtimepodcast.com/newsletter. Follow Us Give us a follow on Instagram @downtimepodcast or Facebook @downtimepodcast to keep up to date and chat in the comments. For everything video, including riding videos, bike checks and more, subscribe over at youtube.com/downtimemountainbikepodcast. Are you enjoying the podcast? If so, then don't forget to follow it. Episodes will get delivered to your device as soon as it's available and it's totally free. You'll find all the links you need at downtimepodcast.com/follow. You can find us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google and most of the podcast apps out there. Our back catalogue of amazing episodes is available at downtimepodcast.com/episodes
Esta semana tenemos mucho enduro con todos tipos de bici bastante diferentes pero a su vez creadas para lo mismo. Por un lado la Focus SAM2, una e-bike con cuadro de aluminio y sistema de asistencia Bosch Performance Line CX con baterías de 600 Wh y 800 Wh; por otro la Pivot Firebird, una enduro con cuadro de fibra de carbono, muchas posibilidades de personalización con varias configuraciones de la geometría y comportamiento del amortiguador trasero. Pero no terminamos ahí las novedades, FOX sigue presentando nuevos productos con sus amortiguadores “gravity” renovados, el X2 y el DHX2, que ahora cuentan con un diseño monotubo para mejorar su comportamiento; RockShox ha renovado su tija telescópica Reverb AXS, con un nuevo emplazamiento de la batería y más recorridos disponibles; Evoc nos ha presentado nuevas protecciones (coderas y rodilleras) con tecnología Liteshield Flex; ; tenemos una edición (MUY) especial de la Yeti ASR 40th aniversario... Y además dos noticias “diferentes” como el anuncio de un mito como Gary Fisher de que tiene unas e-bikes de carga rápida preparadas para ser presentadas, y la Ampler Nova, una e-bike que puedes cargar con un USB-C nos han dado pie a comentar los retos que tienen en muchos casos las e-bikes y la situación que se puede derivar de los famosos aranceles que está imponiendo el presidente americano. Aunque esto último lo hacemos simplemente como comentarios de lo que estamos viendo en el mundo de la bici y no como expertos en economía (que no somos). Tienes más información en los siguientes enlaces: Primeras Pedaladas Focus Sam2: https://www.mtbpro.es/afondo/primeras-pedaladas-con-la-nueva-focus-sam2 Primeras Pedaladas Pivot Firebird: https://www.mtbpro.es/afondo/primeras-pedaladas-nueva-pivot-firebird Nuevos amortiguadores FOX X2 y DHX2: https://www.mtbpro.es/actualidad/nuevos-amortiguadores-fox-x2-y-dhx2 Nueva tija RockShox Reverb AXS: https://www.mtbpro.es/actualidad/nueva-rockshox-reverb-axs-diseno-actualizado-mas-recorrido-y-menor-precio Nuevas protecciones de EVOC: https://www.mtbpro.es/actualidad/evoc-presenta-nuevas-protecciones-para-codos-y-rodillas-con-tecnologia-liteshield-flex Yeti ASR 40 th aniversario: https://www.mtbpro.es/actualidad/yeti-asr-40th-solo-200-unidades-numeradas-de-una-autentica-retro-dream-bike Gary Fisher y su marca de e-bikes de carga súper rápida: https://www.mtbpro.es/actualidad/uno-de-los-padres-del-mtb-lanza-una-nueva-marca-de-e-bikes-de-carga-super-rapida Con un cargador USB-C ya puedes cargar esta e-bike: https://www.maillotmag.com/actualidad/si-tienes-un-cargador-usb-c-ya-puedes-cargar-la-bateria-de-esta-e-bike
Los componentes de primera calidad están pasando a la activación inalámbrica y Fox parece ser el último en sumarse al juego. Un ojo atento captó esta tija telescópica revestida de Kashima con un dispositivo electrónico ubicado sobre el collar del asiento, una orientación diferente para cualquier componente del motor que la Reverb AXS de RockShox.
In this episode of the BikeRadar podcast, Jack Luke is joined by Alex Evans and Simon von Bromley to discuss some of the most interesting bike tech stories from recent weeks. First up, Alex takes us through the details on Specialized's updated Chisel – its high-performing full-suspension alloy MTB. Following that, Simon gives his take on Zwift's latest innovation – a (relatively) low-priced, modular smart bike called ‘Zwift Ride'. Alex, Jack and Simon then discuss the new RockShox forks and dampers, and ponder why we only see incremental upgrades to certain products nowadays. We finish on Specialized's new premium alloy gravel bike, the Crux DSW – claimed to be the lightest alloy gravel frame available. https://www.bikeradar.com/news/2024-zwift-ride https://www.bikeradar.com/news/rockshox-forks-shocks-2025 https://www.bikeradar.com/news/2024-specialized-crux-dsw Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In this episode, Craig Dalton and Justin Bowes reflect on the lead-up to the Unbound Gravel 200 race, sharing insights into the unique training approach adopted to prepare for the challenging event. They discuss the strategic training block, the importance of quality over quantity, utilizing power meters for training effectiveness, and the significance of recovery in a compressed time frame. The conversation dives into the pivotal four-day mini camp, highlighting the benefits of stacking workload and the nuances of balancing intervals and endurance rides. Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Key themes include strategically structuring training around time constraints, leveraging prior endurance experience, the impact of power meter training, optimizing recovery for peak performance, and the mental challenges faced leading up to a formidable gravel race like Unbound. Key Takeaways: Strategic training plans can be tailored effectively to accommodate time constraints and previous endurance experience. Balancing interval workouts with endurance rides is crucial for building strength and endurance for challenging events. Utilizing power meters can provide valuable insights into training progress and help optimize performance. Adequate recovery periods are essential for the body to absorb training load effectively, leading to improved performance. Mental preparation and breaking down the race into manageable segments can help athletes. Transcript: [00:00:00] - (): Craig Dalton: Justin, welcome back to the show, [00:00:02] - (): Justin Bowes: Craig. Thank you for having me. It's good to see you again. [00:00:05] - (): Craig Dalton: Post Unbound. We did it. [00:00:07] - (): Justin Bowes: That's right. You did it. Yeah, you did it a big way. [00:00:12] - (): Craig Dalton: I appreciate you coming on board and being my muse to help me tell my story. I feel like you were an integral part of my life for a while this year. **** - (): In our last episode, we talked about kind of what the run up to my non cycling related vacation looked like. And maybe we pick up the story post that vacation. [00:00:33] - (): Justin Bowes: Sure. Yeah, it was, we discussed on the, on the first pod that, we, we were having a little bit uncharacteristic buildup, um, not only because you had some, prior work, obligations with, as far as travel, but we were starting quite late, um, as well. **** - (): So we had to, be a little creative in how we wanted to, to approach your training. So, right when you were, uh, leaving, we had really built up your training load, um, because obviously we knew that you were going to be leaving and you're gonna have time off the bike. You weren't gonna be. **** - (): Completely immobile. I mean, you were, we're going to be able to, do some running and walking and some lifting and, and, um, a few stationary bike sessions in there and things like that, but it's not the most ideal unbound training, especially when you're training for the 200 and. We're only a couple months into it or, a couple of months out from it, I should say. **** - (): And so, uh, the thought behind, how I wanted to structure your training was to take advantage of the, the, the amount of time that you did not have to train. And so where a traditional buildup would have multiple big ride days on the weekends, um, not only that, but then also, during the week, You would have your meat and potato interval session, but also bookend it with some big endurance rides on the front and the back end of it, but you just didn't have that available to you. **** - (): So, um, I needed to make sure that we were going to take advantage of not only the lack of time that you had available to you, but also you're, you're no stranger to endurance, um, athletics. So you had a background that I could work with. And that makes all the difference. If you were just coming to me off the street and say, Hey, can you get me ready? **** - (): And less than four months, for a 200 mile gravel race, the hardest 200 mile gravel race in the world. It would, that would be a different story, but thankfully you, you had some background in endurance, so it wasn't. A foreign concept to your body. [00:02:48] - (): Craig Dalton: It was interesting in my training block leading up to Cuba because we really didn't do a lot of meaningfully long rides, but I also understood like, I'd never really done meaningful intervals before. **** - (): And clearly like the workouts you were prescribing to me that were one hour in duration. Pretty tired afterwards. Like I felt like I really gassed myself because now that we're looking at a power meter and we're really saying it's not like perceived level of exertion. It's like, here's the exertion you need to achieve. **** - (): Um, and it was really, I mean, frankly, it was like, I was burying myself on a lot of those workouts, which was very different than anything I'd been done doing in the, the decade before, to be honest. [00:03:32] - (): Justin Bowes: Right. Right. And I mean, it's, it's the old adage, quality over quantity. And again, I, I keep coming back to, the time crunch. **** - (): I mean, that's what we were up against. And so I really wanted to make sure that, the lead up to your trip to Cuba, but then also once you get back, we added enough low to you. to your training so that, um, the break was needed. And so your body would be able to absorb all of that load while you're gone because, yes, you would still be active, but you weren't training. **** - (): And so it allowed your body to recover from all that. And by the way, Um, Craig did an amazing job, um, of hitting all of his workouts. Like, I want to say there's less than a handful that were just kind of like, didn't nail them perfectly, but it wasn't for the lack of trying by any means. Um, and so, um, with that, and you brought up the point too, it's just like, you've never trained with power before, and so there was just, that was just another element to the training that we had to kind Yeah. implement. It wasn't like, Oh yeah, I've been training for years with power. So I know what my zones are and why and all of that. So kind of helping coach you through, the use of the power meters and, and the importance of that. **** - (): I think it gave us a really good detailed picture of where the training was going and you could see. Yeah. and ultimately feel, yourself getting stronger, after each week, things just got better and better and better. So once you got back into the country, then it was time to start, we'll continue on the interval workouts, but we're going to start introducing, the longer sessions as well. [00:05:21] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah. And I remember like I definitely felt tired when I left for that week off, um, and unfortunately not incredibly refreshed after my quote unquote vacation, because there's a lot of running around with the family, but coming back and looking at the training calendar, we had a couple of things up in the air, but we knew like that next six weeks was going to be a big build of long rides, endurance rides, and continuing on some of the interval work. [00:05:47] - (): Justin Bowes: Right, right. And so, had, had things been different as far as scheduling of the trip and things like that, we may have flipped the script a little bit and did all of your big rides be, on the front end, and then do all the more structured training, the higher, shorter, sharper stuff on the back end. **** - (): But I just felt like with your background and what we wanted to accomplish with Unbound, um, it was better for us to, to stack those. shorter, sharper workouts on the front end and then give yourself time to relax or, absorb. And then once you came back and we figured out, some pieces as far as like, Hey, when can we get out and do back to back big rides? **** - (): And I want to talk about that too, because I think it was really important, um, in the buildup, um, for the race, um, those, those four days of just, some really good rides, but it, it, it, It was working and from my standpoint, I could see, the fatigue building, but your recovery was also taking, it was, it was working as well, and so it was like, we'd stack the work on you. **** - (): But then the recovery days were structured so that, those. again, your body absorbs that work. And the cool thing with watching you is he can, you, Craig, he can handle a lot of work, so I'd be looking at your workouts, every day. And I'm like, he's, he's doing this, like he's actually absorbing all this workload. **** - (): And that's where it was really starting to fuel my confidence. And what you were going to be able to, um, accomplish at Unbound was, not only is he nailing all these workouts, but he's also recovering on the backside of it too. And that was just, again, it was fueling my confidence for you to egg you on to say, Craig, you can do this. **** - (): Like we're in a really good position. And I didn't want to get down into all the weeds with you as far as like what I was seeing, right? Right. Because ultimately it's just like, I just want Craig, you to understand you can do this. So it was really cool from my standpoint to see. [00:08:03] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's interesting. As you talk about, like, if, if we had given more time that you might've done the longer rides earlier and then that kind of high performance stuff later, right. **** - (): I kind of feel like I might've struggled with confidence With that approach, even though like, obviously I would've had massive workouts six weeks back. [00:08:24] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah, yeah. . But I [00:08:25] - (): Craig Dalton: kind of, I kind of like the, the idea that we were progressively testing me Yes. On these harder and harder weekends towards the end. **** - (): Right? [00:08:34] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. And I, and definitely by design , but at the same time it, it, it worked out, I think, better than I even. had hoped for because, again, in theory and on paper, I'm looking at what I want you to do, but ultimately it's what can your body and, now that we're getting deeper into it, what can your mind and your body do? **** - (): Handle. And so that's where, that's where, the coaching science and the coaching art kind of, blur the lines together of like, okay, this is what I expect him to be able to do, but this is what I'm seeing him, doing. And it's just, it's a really cool kind of blend of, the science and the art coming together. **** - (): And again, it just stokes my confidence. And hopefully that comes across in my communication with you is like, I'm really excited. I can see this happening. And this is why I believe that you're going to be able to, perform this, um, crazy, crazy event. So [00:09:39] - (): Craig Dalton: yeah, I think what was good for both of us was knowing that, and I'd said to you early on, knowing that I kind of put myself and you behind the eight ball starting late. **** - (): Yes. But that, I had this, I could make a four day. Kind of mini camp whenever we needed it in May as like this option to really kind of do some big volume. [00:10:01] - (): Justin Bowes: Right, right. And that was, that kind of gave me, that was kind of one of those moments of like, okay, good, at least. We, we, we've got it to where, it's in our back pocket. **** - (): I've got that card to play. Um, it's going to lend itself really well. And, fortunately it was, you were really flexible on, when that could actually happen. And that, that definitely makes a, a big impact because, within the month of an event like, the 200. **** - (): Like, we can't miss days. We can't, there's like no makeup days or anything. And each day is just that much more important for the next and the next and the next, and. Um, yeah, having you be able to go out and just knock out these four days of, big rides and, when we were talking about how we were going to do that, when a lot of, I don't want to say a lot, when, when most people have that kind of that opening of like, Hey, I'm going to do a, a mini camp, whether it's a long, four day weekend or in the middle of the week, however it works out, they're so excited to go and put in the big miles, they're, they've got free time. **** - (): They've got the, the hall pass to go and just train. That's awesome. That's great. But the biggest mistake made by most people that do that is. They go out and do a seven or eight hour ride, on day one, and they're not used to that. And on day two, day three, they're just like, yeah, two hours here, three hours there, whatever. **** - (): And if that, because they just completely blew themselves to the moon on day one and weren't ready for that. And so, so I prescribed to you that we'll just stair step ourself into the, into that block so that. We get the most bang for our buck out of that, that mini block of training. And. It worked. **** - (): It worked well. [00:12:03] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think that was definitely a critical weekend for me. I think I rode four hours kind of mixed terrain with a buddy of mine on Thursday, four, maybe five hours on Friday and then eight and a half or nine on Saturday and followed up by two or three on Sunday. [00:12:21] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah, that was, again, it was, it was a big, um, big chunk of time in the saddle. **** - (): Um, and it was a big, um, bite on your end. I mean, to take, to, to put in that much time, but again, it just, it, it just speaks to the training that we did leading into it helped. your body absorb those big days. And once you, once you came out of that, to me, like I didn't want to, I didn't want to like pile on just like the raw, raw cheerleader, like, Oh my God, he's going to do this sort of thing. **** - (): I, I was, I was, I internally, like on this side of the screen, I was like, hell yeah. Like this is, this is going to work. Like he, he's going to He's going to do okay at this. [00:13:12] - (): Craig Dalton: I think I got a hell yeah. In the comments and training peaks, [00:13:15] - (): Justin Bowes: you probably did. Yeah, [00:13:17] - (): Craig Dalton: that's sad. I think that for me, that Saturday ride was the one that I reflected on, on game day, because it was 10, 000 feet plus of climbing in. **** - (): Very, very challenging terrain. Like in fact, like I forgot, cause I don't go so far north as much like coming across pine mountain and up San Geronimo Ridge, things that the locals around here might understand, like it was just super rocky and this was like six, seven hours into the day that I hit just these trails that I just forgot how steep they are and how rocky they are. **** - (): So when I came home from that. And was able to get on the bike the next day. I was like, okay, like it was only 77 miles and I'm doing a 200 mile race, but I did the elevation and I can guarantee some of those miles were a lot harder to come by than what I'd experienced in Kansas. [00:14:13] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. Um, I mean, just quickly for the listeners, just kind of given, give them some numbers behind the, uh, that particular ride. **** - (): I'll, I'll preface this by saying, even the professionals in the 200, they're not going to be able to go out and mimic. an exact 200 mile, day. And so it's just, it's just, that's a big day for anybody. And so if you can get in, for you, we're, we're targeting, like, we had the kind of the, um, beat the sun, uh, goal. **** - (): Hey, I'd like to get in, under 15 hours, just a couple, just high level. This is kind of what I want to do. So when you were able to clock in at over eight and a half hours in the saddle with, over 10, 000 feet of climbing. And coming in with a TSS of over 400 in under 80 miles, that's a big day. **** - (): And you're right. It's it's it, of course it's not, a hundred miles or even 125 miles or anything like that. Like, most people will, who do the 200 who have serious training behind them. They're going to be pushing that 150 mile, training day on one of, on their last big. **** - (): Uh, training block, but you being able to get out there and produce the power that you did, the load that you were able to accumulate and the efficiency. I should note, the efficiency factor that you were able to, um, uh, complete this ride in again, it was just like, it's just pure gold in the bank, like, not even cash, like gold, like, it's solid, it's, it's, it's tangible, like, he's going to be able to reflect on this ride when things maybe get a little dark in Kansas and be able to say, I, Look what I did. **** - (): Like, I can do that. And so when you have a ride like that, Craig, it's, it's, it's really good. Um, and it's, it's hard to quantify from a coaching perspective to an athlete until they actually do it of like what that truly means, um, to the end goal. **** - (): Yeah, yeah, I think it's so important [00:16:24] - (): Craig Dalton: to have those just tough tough days to reflect back on and put in the bank and I feel like when I, when I got to Kansas, I had sort of maybe a 90 percent confidence interval on my ability to complete the event. I knew, as you said before, I knew that I had Done everything that was asked of me pretty put a pretty solid effort in, but there was always that little bit in my mind saying, like, I've never ridden in Kansas. **** - (): I don't know what the terrain's like, and I've certainly never ridden more than 130 miles. Right? [00:17:00] - (): Justin Bowes: Right. And that brings up an interesting, question that I don't know. I've, I don't think I've posed to you since to to unbound, but like, mentally. That week leading into it, where was your head at? Like you, you've touched on like, Hey, I've never ridden in Kansas. **** - (): I've never ridden the 200 miles, kind of speak to, mentally where, where you were at leading into the race that like that week of. [00:17:27] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. I think it was a little bit all over the place. Like I started seeing footage of the actual terrain and I started actually, let me step back for a second. **** - (): They talked about the North course being chunky. And when I think about chunky, I think about where I ride at home, but I realized in retrospect, it's chunky at home, but 15 percent grades [00:17:50] - (): Justin Bowes: and [00:17:50] - (): Craig Dalton: Kansas chunky is chunky, but 6 percent grade, so it felt a lot different. Um, so that's a point on the chunkiness. **** - (): And then second, I started to see some of the more, um, minimum a maintenance roads and they had these great dual tracks that. We're pretty hard pack. Yeah. And I was, I was definitely conscious that conditions could change and good God, if you were in the Facebook group, the, the amount of meteorologists that came out of the woodwork was pretty insane that week leading in, but there's definitely some rain on the calendar. **** - (): Right. Yeah. [00:18:23] - (): Justin Bowes: No, I just felt like I may have oversold, um, the northbound course as being as chunky and technical, um, but I think, I'd rather you go in. With a higher level of like, Oh, okay. **** - (): This could be pretty rough. Um, as opposed to, Oh yeah, the North course is fine. Yeah, it gets chunky in sections, overall it's fine. But then you get there and you're like, Whoa, I was, you did not warn me about this. You did not, my expectation was down here. And now it's like, what is happening? **** - (): I [00:18:55] - (): Craig Dalton: think what it left you with, Justin was just an awareness of. This could go wrong for my equipment if I'm not careful. And I'll get into a little bit once we start talking about the ride itself, like how I rode the race. [00:19:10] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. Um, [00:19:11] - (): Craig Dalton: but once I got to, I, I got out to Kansas on Wednesday night, got to Emporia on Thursday, did my first group shakeout ride for 15 miles on Thursday, actually in the rain. **** - (): Um, Start, it was nice to just get the bike on the dirt out there and start to get a sense for it. You start to understand, in any grid shaped race or race course, the 90 degree corners are what you have to be aware of because Right, while you may have good dual tracks when you're coming around a corner, it, it can be very much marbley, kind of gravel in the middle. **** - (): So it was good to sort of just. Test the cornering a little bit, so to speak. [00:19:53] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah, it's, yeah, a lot of gravel races. You just have that natural, flow of the course and, and everything, but yeah, out in Emporia, it truly is. a hard right, a hard left, and, and, if you get out of that line, um, or, you, you find yourself, drifting out of that corner or out of the race line and into the, the, the sides of the course. **** - (): Yeah. It can get, it can get pretty chunky and it's, and not only that or loose too, but not only that is just the amount of. Shrapnel being thrown up at you, with that, that many cyclists, on a course, um, yeah, it's, it's tough. [00:20:40] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. So then Friday I hooked up with the, my, my crew in the house. **** - (): I was staying with shout out to Doug Bucko and Phil. Uh, we did a little ride in the town we were staying in and then I went into the, um, the meat, mandatory media event. Yeah. That lifetime was holding, and it was interesting because I did glean some perspective there as well, because they talked about how they felt like the first 28 miles of this race was going to be incredibly fast and actually that turned out to be a useful tidbit. **** - (): Um, After the race started, so we can talk about that in a little bit, but I sort of, I did a little ride on Friday, felt good. The equipment felt dialed in retrospect. I sort of had tire size envy a little bit because it was weird because I normally ride like a 47 at home. And, um, we talked about this early on. **** - (): You're a big fan of the IRC Boken and the biggest they come in is a 42. And I was like, well, I'm riding my titanium unicorn. I've got a front suspension fork. Like I don't need all that volume. And it, it seemed interesting to me to kind of go to something a little bit faster rolling potentially. But the big tire guy in me, when all the pros were talking about running 50 started to get a little bit jealous. [00:21:55] - (): Justin Bowes: Right. Yeah, it's, it's, it's so personal. Like, um, yeah, I can give you my recommendations and, what I've seen work, for myself and other athletes and competitors and things like that, but it's, it's, yeah, it really comes down to your comfort level of, You know what you, what you, what you can ride and what feels good underneath you and, and things like that. **** - (): And I, yeah, I'm, I'm all about my IRC tires, but at the same time, yeah, I couldn't help but be a little like, [00:22:28] - (): Craig Dalton: Hmm, [00:22:28] - (): Justin Bowes: 50 would be pretty nice, and I did [00:22:30] - (): Craig Dalton: talk to the IRC guys and they said, Hey, the guys are from Japan are here. Yeah. And I'm making them listen to all these pros who are talking about fifties. [00:22:39] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. [00:22:42] - (): Craig Dalton: So I feel like, like Thursday, Friday was all going swimmingly. And then through like being part of a larger group, my dinner on Friday night, we didn't end up sitting down to like maybe seven 30 or eight. Yeah, which is later than we had all intended by a few hours, right? I had been drinking a bunch of electrolyte stuff that I had picked up in the the expo area and For whatever reason and I don't really think I wasn't really in my head about the race because I was very kind of just at peace with Where I was at and what was going to unfold was going to unfold Friday night. **** - (): I had a horrible night's sleep. I had a headache. I just kind of couldn't go down, which definitely rattled me, getting up at 4 30 AM to start eating on Saturday morning. [00:23:30] - (): Justin Bowes: Right, right. Yeah. It's, it's tough. Um, yeah, it's, especially when you're with a group of people at a big race like that and, Emporia, I mean, they do an amazing job trying to absorb. **** - (): Influx of what, uh, 12, 000 plus people with support staff and racers. And, but yeah, with dining options being as limited as they are, um, and then trying to, get a group to dinner or prepare dinner, whatever that case may be. Yeah. It's, it's, it's tough. And. I'm, I'm of the belief, I've always had this, in the school of thought of, it's not the night before, it's two nights before, um, as far as like your most important rest, um, and, recovery time and things like that, because even if, Craig, even if everything went perfect on Friday night, The enormity of what you're about to do on Saturday morning will keep you from having a restful night's sleep, it's just, yeah, maybe, maybe you fell asleep a little bit quicker, but, just knowing that, oh, my gosh, I got to get up at 430. **** - (): I've got to have, double check this triple check that. I've got to start eating like immediately. I got to, make sure, everything's functioning. And so it's even with the best laid plans, it's always going to be, um, um, a rough night. So, but, again, objectively looking at it. **** - (): And I think I shared with you on our call the other day was, if somebody just tossed this file in front of me. Um, and just said, Hey, tell me what you think, without any context or knowing who it was or anything like that. It's like, this guy had a great race and it was indicative of, um, again, I think just your confidence of, being prepared and knowing it is what it is at this point and yeah, you, strapped in and got to work. **** - (): So. [00:25:31] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean, I felt great about my equipment going in. I spent way more time thinking about hydration and nutrition than I ever had before, and I was, I was really jazzed with the way the First Endurance EPO Pro High Carb Drink worked for me. So to give some perspective, I used two 12 ounce bottles of the high carb drink, and then I had a use way backpack with water in it. **** - (): And my plan was at every opportunity to refill those bottles. I would refill with the. The first endurance high carb mix that kind of annoyed maybe my, my compatriots a little bit. Cause I was like, Oh, I got to dump this powder in. And by the way, for any product designers out there, I need a product that will encapsulate a serving of first endurance. **** - (): That's better than a plastic bag and faster to pour into [00:26:24] - (): Justin Bowes: a bottle. **** - (): So you felt like **** - (): the, **** - (): the first endurance high carb. That was. That was good for you. [00:26:31] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. So I was using that, uh, trying to goal was to drink a bottle an hour and do Right. A goo or something in addition to it. So Right. Aiming around, I think 85 to 90 carbs an hour. Mm-Hmm. . And I had, I had trained on that on every one of my long rides. **** - (): Exactly. [00:26:48] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. And some people will say, well that's on the low side now, but, um, and, and it. It is, but at the same time, if that's what you're training with and that's what your body's used to, and again, being able to get through all the training sessions the way you did, why, why change that, and, and try to like go all pro and be like, I'm getting 120, 130 grams, of carbs per hour. **** - (): And then all of a sudden, you're two hours in and your body's like, I. Don't know what this means, and just let's just shut down on you. Um, you were, you were talking about, um, you touched on it really quick on, um, your bike and everything. Talk a little bit more about like the equipment that you did, end up using, for the race. [00:27:33] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. So I was using, it's basically my standard setup at home with the exception of, I was running 700 by 42 tires as IRC Bokens. Uh, as we mentioned before, I did have the RockShox suspension fork on there as well as a dropper post. I considered taking the dropper post off, um, because I didn't think it was going to be warranted, but I'm glad I did not. **** - (): I'm glad I left it on. [00:27:58] - (): Justin Bowes: Interesting. [00:27:58] - (): Craig Dalton: Okay. Part of that rationale was nothing new on game day philosophy. Um, but I, I can go on and on and on about dropper posts and in the context of unbound. It certainly enabled a heightened level of comfort during any of the technical sections. So little Egypt and right. **** - (): Call reservation. And then oddly, like on the more, on the longer kind of just gentler downhills, it just allowed me to really get in sort of a chilled out yet arrow position. [00:28:33] - (): Justin Bowes: Okay. [00:28:34] - (): Craig Dalton: So it, it, it turned out really well. And. Obviously there's like a slight weight penalty, uh, with it, but it just provides me so much comfort when I go downhill and so much confidence that, I was like, I'm just going to leave it on. **** - (): And I'm totally glad I did. [00:28:51] - (): Justin Bowes: Nice. No, I, I don't think we talk much about droppers when it comes to, to unbound. I don't think that's like any, in any of the, like the hot topics it's, it's, it's all tires and and now that they've banned, arrow bars, from the pros and stuff. I mean, it's just like all the focuses, your, your number. **** - (): Uh, holder now, so you can keep it flat and arrow and all of that. Um, and then your tires and, and wheel choice. Um, but yeah, dropper, like I think it makes a lot of sense, especially, just from a positioning standpoint. of just giving you your body a different position for that long of a period, because if you think about how being in a static cycling position for, 13, 14, 15 hours, being able to mix it up and know that you can, like you said, just have a little confidence boost and just like a different position for those descents. **** - (): Taking some pressure off your lower back, off your hamstrings, the glutes, all of that. I mean, the little things like that really do add up, especially over that course of, that type of distance. [00:30:01] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I do feel like at this moment I should, I should make one admission to my, my training progress. **** - (): I will say like the one area, Justin, where I felt like I failed down and fell down when fortunately it didn't bite me in the ass is while I did do a ton of foam rolling, I wasn't as committed as I should have been to my foundation back exercises. Truth comes [00:30:27] - (): Justin Bowes: out. Um, it's funny because I, like I doubled down on my foundation, uh, back exercises, the, the month leading into unbound, um, I've, I've always had a really strong back, um, partly from, swim background and everything. **** - (): But, um, as we've gotten older, um, things are just a little bit, they make themselves a little bit more aware and a day like, unbound granted, I did the hundred, not the 200. Um, it's still, It adds up. And so I was just like, I'm doubling down on my, my foundation work. So instead of, a minimum of twice a week, I was doing it four plus times a week. **** - (): And, um, I, I, I definitely felt a difference. Um, Just finishing and standing in the finish corral with everybody. And it was like, wow, I can actually like stand straight up, normally, normally you have that pre or post race kind of like slouch and slump and you're like, and have to like come back up to, um, vertical, uh, slowly. **** - (): Um, but yeah, big time. So interesting that you mentioned that. Um, [00:31:42] - (): Craig Dalton: So yeah, a hundred percent. It was not a recommendation to not do those things to anybody listening to what [00:31:46] - (): Justin Bowes: Craig did on. [00:31:47] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, exactly. So talking about race day, I mean, so, we got, it was surprised, like it was very hassle free to kind of get to the start line. **** - (): Yeah. Probably got there maybe a few minutes later than probably could have gotten further up in the Peloton if you, if you will. [00:32:03] - (): Justin Bowes: Okay. [00:32:04] - (): Craig Dalton: If I got there a few minutes early, but we were there maybe 20 minutes early and we got right to the basically to the 14 hour flag, which is where we decided we were going to start. **** - (): Cause it was important to me. I know from, from past experience, it's important for me to kind of get swept up and make miles when miles are easy. And so I was pretty adamant with the career that I was with that, like, for me, this was like an imperative. Like I, I definitely wanted to start there and ride in a big pack for a while. [00:32:35] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. And, we, we, we did touch on this, um, a little bit that, while you, you definitely need to be with your people, and be with those people that are going to, you. get you through those first, couple hours. Um, but be cautious of not getting swept up in the moment, of, of what Unbound is. **** - (): And for, for anybody who's never been to Emporia on race day, um, I mean, it's a, it's a big deal and you, it's very easy to get caught up, even the days leading into the race of, Oh, we can go do another shakeout, right. Or let's spend five hours at the expo on our feet, because we're having so much fun and we're talking with everybody and things like that with, without much thought of like, Oh, by the way, the biggest race of your life is, two days away and you need to like, Chill and relax, but, um, I, I totally agree. **** - (): Like, you, when. You have to take advantage of those easy miles. Um, with, with, with the caveat that, Hey, I don't want to get swept up and do too much too soon. But I also want to, as you say, make, make hay while the sun is shining. Right. Um, and, and put it away. So when things start to turn south a little bit, no pun intended, um, it's. **** - (): It's you're further up and you're further along and you're feeling better than, had you been too conservative and held back. [00:34:07] - (): Craig Dalton: And maybe, I mean, maybe because we couldn't get farther up, it was actually kind of a, the pace felt very pedestrian. The first 28 miles to me, like, I never, I never had to really, put in any meaningful effort to cruise. **** - (): And I, I was watching some videos this last weekend about it. And a guy who had done it in 12 hours. And I saw the difference of what the 12 hour pace looked like in the 14 hour. And I was like, maybe if I'm like totally nitpicking my day out there, maybe I should have been up a little bit further, but there's something to be said for like, I definitely had a chill first 28 miles. **** - (): And then. We hit, we hit the first technical section and it was interesting. I was definitely conscious of my equipment because I had weirdly, like I'd seen flats like barely out of town. [00:34:59] - (): Justin Bowes: I was like, [00:35:00] - (): Craig Dalton: God, I don't, I don't want to have a flat, there, people are flatting all over the place. **** - (): We would hit these, the, uh, the technical descents and you'd sort of, You have to ride in one of the dual tracks. We're kind of the safest way there. And there was a little rocky kind of drop offs. Nothing too technical if you had a clean look at it, but as you were riding in a group, sometimes you're inevitably forced into a line that you wouldn't have opted into. **** - (): I think that's where you risk, flatting or crashing. [00:35:28] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. And I think that's where most people get in to the big trouble is, they try to, they try to switch those lanes. When they really shouldn't. Um, and that's, a couple of things, a lot of those dual track MMRs, we'll have like a, a big grass section down the center of it. **** - (): Yeah. And the grass looks inviting, but it hides a lot of stuff in there, whether it's, a rut or a. Bigger, nastier rock that's been kicked out of the track into, it's just laying there. And so that's where I think people really make the mistake of like, Oh, this line's going faster on the left. **** - (): So I'm going to hop from the right side to the left side or vice versa. And that's where the cuts happen. And the, even crashes just because they hit something that they weren't expecting and things like that. [00:36:18] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, that 100 percent started to be a necessity to do those cross lane jumps for me. **** - (): Like, as we came out of the other side of the, the first technical section, like, you would just see one group moving up and another. Kind of fading back on a climb. And I was definitely conscious of that middle section. Like this is when it could go all wrong, you feel the need to kind of keep joining groups with forward momentum. **** - (): And yes, I was very pleased that, um, my, my buddy Doug, Was right there with me. I had kind of no sense because I was just sort of focused on saying, with that group in the first 28 miles. And when we came through the technical section, it was great to see his enthusiastic face pull through. And I was like, this is awesome. **** - (): Like, cause I, we hadn't written together, but once or twice. So it was great to see that. We could potentially spend a bunch of time together. So from mile 30 to mile a hundred, we were riding together and riding with groups. Um, it's interesting and unbound cause the amateurs can use arrow bars. **** - (): So you would see these guys and girls who would kind of maybe go slower on the hills, but once you got on the downhill or a flat, they were happy to have a train of people behind them. And I was, I'm not ashamed to say I was taking advantage of that as much as possible. [00:37:35] - (): Justin Bowes: Heck yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. Real quick, before I forget, um, I think on the first pod that we did, um, you were asking me about the climbs. **** - (): Um, and, cause I had given you some description of like, punchy, um, death by a thousand cut because of just the, how many there were, succession and things like that now that you've done it, like what, what was your overall, um, Observation as far as like the climbing was concerned. [00:38:07] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. I mean, everything's so short relative to what I'm used to. And I knew that was going to be the case going in, but on the plus side, you can always, you can generally always see the top of them. So you kind of knew, and you could measure your, you could gauge your efforts. When I, I think about sort of towards mile a hundred, it started, we started to get to some that required a little bit more effort. **** - (): And actually this was, One of the, probably the darkest mental moment I had was I kind of, I lost Doug's wheel. He caught some good wheels. I was behind someone, uh, who was not moving as efficiently and we kind of separated. And I, I thought to myself, I don't feel like I want to make this effort over the top of the hill to bridge this gap. **** - (): But I was also staring down the barrel of like the one guy I know in this race is now riding away from me. Right. Um, there's a little bit of a dark moment there, but to your question about the hills, like, I was comforted that I could always see the top. I knew they were quite short relative to what I'm used to riding, and it was really a matter of, for me, there was maybe, I think, three times. **** - (): I ended up getting off on the last 25 percent of a climb or last 15%. Okay. Because I gauged that I could do it, but I felt like I was going to go into the red too much. And it felt prudent to just hop off real quick and walk. [00:39:32] - (): Justin Bowes: And that was, that was pretty late on though, right? [00:39:35] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. [00:39:36] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. It wasn't like mile 30 and you're like, okay, I'm going to start saving. **** - (): Yeah. [00:39:41] - (): Craig Dalton: Not at [00:39:41] - (): Justin Bowes: all. Not [00:39:42] - (): Craig Dalton: at [00:39:42] - (): Justin Bowes: all. Yeah. [00:39:43] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. So it was interesting. I was, I, there was a lot of mental gymnastics between mile 100 and one 48, which was the, the second checkpoint for us. Cause I had lost Doug. Um, it was starting to get hot. It was just. I talked to a few people and you probably mentioned the same thing to me. **** - (): Like you can't think of the totality of the 200 miles you have to do. You really just need to break it down into chunks. Yep. Right. So I started really thinking about, um, our crew chief, Phil, who was a godsend out there. He had such great. Support for us at the aid station. We had an easy up. He had everything imaginable. **** - (): I knew he had bottles on ice for me. So I jokingly referred to miles 100 to 1 48 as project Phil. [00:40:30] - (): Justin Bowes: Okay. [00:40:31] - (): Craig Dalton: And. Everything I did either was a positive effect towards Project Phil or a negative effect. So if I was, if I found a good wheel or I was riding well, I was like, okay, we're making progress, we're going to get to Phil. **** - (): And if I, fell off the pace or something, I was like, this is a serious blow to Project Phil. And I, it's funny. I started sort of naming a few of the characters that I would ride behind and, There is a guy, a guy I was calling the orange crush because he had an orange jersey. [00:40:59] - (): Justin Bowes: Okay. [00:41:00] - (): Craig Dalton: And every, he was like one of those arrow bar guys. **** - (): Right, right. Which was quite helpful. And then, at one point, um, at one point I got a really nice, um, Uh, I've started following a guy with a, with a beat the sun patch on his hip pack. [00:41:16] - (): Justin Bowes: Okay. [00:41:17] - (): Craig Dalton: And I was like, that's a good sign, actually. Like if this guy is, has clearly beat the sun in the past, this is probably a good sign. **** - (): So, got into a rhythm that mile 110. Or 112 water stop I'd forgotten about. And that was absolutely a godsend because, um, I need it. I just needed some relief and the volunteers there and everywhere were just phenomenal. So they poured a bunch of water over my head and just kind of cooled me down and filled me up and set me on my way. **** - (): And so I got to mile one 48 and my buddy Doug was sitting in the chair. With Phil and I was like, this is great. Like, I wasn't expecting to catch Doug again. Right. So it was, that was a nice sort of mental jump. And, he, he had run outta water, so he wasn't feeling that great, but he's like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna head, he'd been there a little bit, I don't know how long, but Phil had taken care of him, got his bike all tuned up, and um, he's like, I'm gonna head out, but I suspect you'll catch me. **** - (): And in my head, I didn't know whether that would be the case, but yeah, I ended up heading out of town and catching up with Doug, um, which was great to just know that I had someone to ride with. And he rebounded quite well for that last, um, the last 50 miles of the race. So we were very simpatico. [00:42:37] - (): Justin Bowes: Nice. Did, um, I didn't, I didn't ask you this, but, um, just talking about the aid stations. Did you have, did you give yourself like any treats, like something to look forward to in the aid stations or did you just keep it strictly business? I had a vision [00:42:51] - (): Craig Dalton: of a lot of treats. I asked, I asked, uh, Phil to get me some gummy bears. **** - (): Okay. Unfortunately, all the gummy bears melted in the sun and he, he did have everything. Like we had like sandwiches, he got a pizza from Casey's and I, I just, I felt like my nutrition was working. And so I was kind of like, besides some, um, Lay's potato chips, it's like, I'm just going to stick with the program. **** - (): I never rolled in feeling like super hungry or anything. So I was like, I'm doing something right. So why don't I just keep doing it? [00:43:28] - (): Justin Bowes: No, that's great. Yeah. I know, from other athletes that I've coached for the 200, they always, we'll have. I mean, yeah, the Casey's pizza is clutch. Like I think everybody knows, like if you're coming to the Midwest, um, you got to get a Casey's pizza in your aid station, um, or, a cheeseburger or, potato chips seem to be like, high on the list as well. **** - (): Yeah. That's, that tends to, uh, be a really fit, good favorite, just because, I mean, it's like the salt you want, the starch and the carbs and all of that goes down really easy. And then usually like a Mexican Coke to, to, to wash it down with. So how were your, um, timing wise, how long did you stop? [00:44:12] - (): Craig Dalton: Very little amount of time. I think my, my ride time was just under 13 hours, 30 and my total elapsed time was 14. [00:44:22] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. So two, two dedicated aid stations and two water. Yeah. And I stopped [00:44:28] - (): Craig Dalton: at both, I stopped at both aid stations. I honestly think at mile one 12 at that neutral aid station, when they were pouring water on me, that might've been longer than my checkpoint to stop [00:44:40] - (): Justin Bowes: looking at your file. **** - (): I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah. [00:44:44] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. So, yeah, it was a bit crazy. Like, I just didn't, I, like, I know myself, like I know I just need to keep going. So I didn't, I sat down for a minute and, Phil was great. He was like there with lots of stuff, but I was like, let's just swap the bottles out. He put some ice down my back, he put my pack in the cooler, like, to get ice water on it. **** - (): And, uh, after a few things, lubing up the chain, et cetera, making sure the bike was all right. Yeah. It just felt like it's time to go. [00:45:12] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah, no, that's good. I, that's, definitely, um, a word of caution to, athletes, especially new to the 200 of like, unless you're in a bad state, in a bad way, uh, you want to minimize the amount of time you hang around in the aid station, just because your legs start to. **** - (): revolt a little bit and they don't want to cooperate, and so the, the shorter time you can, uh, the quicker you can get in and get out, um, with giving yourself enough time to resupply and not forget anything is always going to be better than just, standing around for, 10 plus minutes, John, John with everybody and things like that. **** - (): Cause if you don't need to, man, Yeah. A hundred percent. Get back after it. So. [00:46:01] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, at that second aid station mile one 48, I think Doug was a lot more conscious of the idea that we could beat the sun than I was. I think the last, the last 50 miles had been a little bit mentally hard on me. **** - (): I was not in a dark place by any means, but I'd kind of was like, this is what it is. Like I gotta, I'll pedal as far as I can pedal and as fast as I can pedal and it is what it is. But. He, he had never beat the sun before. And I think he saw it as a really great opportunity. And as we had talked about as my kind of, my number one goal was to finish. **** - (): Second goal was to finish healthy. And third goal was to beat the sun. Right. It was great to know it was out there. And the funny thing was my, my Wahoo was, it had 54 climbs as the listed number of climbs. And I believe by aid station two, by checkpoint two, we've done 52 of 54 climbs. [00:47:00] - (): Justin Bowes: Right, right. Yeah. [00:47:02] - (): Craig Dalton: Which is pretty, it's pretty crazy. So we've done like, close to 10, 000 feet of climbing already. And I think they maybe have listed it as 11. Anyway, negligible amount of climbing over the next 50 miles. So I was like, well, that's, that, that feels good to know that most of it's behind me. And, and, and everybody had said this, like getting to checkpoint two Was really the hardest part, right? **** - (): And you just need to ride back to Emporia. [00:47:25] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's always there's always going to be, a Joker station or, segment. Um, generally, it's like the Kohola, uh, Lake climb. Yeah. Um, and, For those who don't know, um, or didn't follow the weather or anything like that, we had pretty optimal conditions all day. **** - (): I mean, we started, um, cloud cover, cool, nice, favorable breeze, um, all of that. And, for us in the 100, it wasn't until we really got closer to Kohola Lake, I mean, it was like. After the aid station, which, we shared, um, there in council groves, um, the, the clouds were starting to thin out and you could, you see a little bit more of a shadow underneath you and everything like that. **** - (): Um, but it, you guys were in it a little longer, the heat, the sun and everything like that, but it still wasn't like in 2021 where it was just essentially a hairdryer. on your face, the entire day. Um, and so with the Kohola climb, that can always be a spoiler. Um, and I think I mentioned this to you on our call the other day. **** - (): It was like a lot of people, as soon as they get over that climb, you're roughly, inside the last 25 miles basically to, to the finish and. Yeah, your climbing's essentially done too and people like, oh, this is great and just like get on the gas and in a 10 mile span They're completely shattered and on the side of the road because they just completely underestimated You know, whether it be the previous 70 miles or the previous, 180 that you just did are in your legs and Any extra efforts can really put a Put you in the box really quickly. **** - (): And a lot of people's wheels fall off after that Cahola climb. Um, because they're like, Oh, we're done. Yeah. Yeah. But you're not done. You still got some mileage ahead of you. Yeah, [00:49:27] - (): Craig Dalton: exactly. I think we were, we were looking over our right shoulders at the sun and looking at it kind of starting to go down and we're like, we do need to keep going pretty efficiently [00:49:41] - (): Justin Bowes: to [00:49:41] - (): Craig Dalton: make it. **** - (): And, you go, you continue riding the dirt roads and then you go under the highway. And then you're at the university and you've got that final paved climb before the finish line. Yep. Um, and we're like, we've, we're like, we're going to do this. We're going to do this. [00:49:57] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. [00:49:58] - (): Craig Dalton: And I think we ended up finishing like 15 minutes to spare before the sunset. [00:50:03] - (): Justin Bowes: No, it's, it's, it's awesome. And I think, uh, to, to put it in context, um, this is the first year. That a lot of people were nervous about it because The start time had been pushed back, uh, to accommodate the new, uh, starting protocol with the, the pro men. Then 15 minutes later, the pro women, and then essentially a half an hour behind them, you all started. **** - (): So I mean, taking away 30 minutes doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're up against the sun actually setting on you, it, it, it comes quickly. Like you said, I mean, you had 15 ish minutes to, in your pocket, um, that could have easily gone one way or the other, um, quickly. So, yeah, [00:50:53] - (): Craig Dalton: yeah, you, you could, you could see to your point earlier about the aid stations, like you could have very easily burned 15 minutes sitting around on your ass, having a pizza, [00:51:03] - (): Justin Bowes: totally. **** - (): And I mean, and not 15 minutes at one, you could do, Seven here, eight there. And in, in the grand scheme of things in a 14 hour raise, what's seven minutes. Right. Well, add that up and all of a sudden you're, you're finishing in the dark. [00:51:21] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. So a hundred percent. So, yeah, I mean, I haven't finished. **** - (): Crossing the finish line was, was great. I mean, riding down commercial street with, um, with Doug was just fantastic. That's so cool. Have us, yeah, have us both meet our goals and the crowd were great. And we've got our names announced and, uh, Yeah. It just like, it wasn't lost on me the entirety of the experience. **** - (): The town was wonderful. It's it's, it's obviously a grand spectacle of the gravel cycling community. Right. So I think coming down that I was, I was generally genuinely emotional, just felt very fulfilled with my day and effort to have it conclude before sunset and, come down that finishing line shoot. **** - (): It just. It felt great. [00:52:10] - (): Justin Bowes: Oh, I bet. I mean, I, I did share this with you, uh, the other day. Um, not only did I have you, have you, uh, competing, but I had, uh, one other in the 200 and another one in the a hundred and as a coach, even though I was racing, I still have like, you know, The best I could compare it to is, being a father of three, it's just like, it's like you're looking after your kids, right? **** - (): You're nervous for them. Yeah. And, um, and so after I got done and cleaned up and went about the rest of my day on, on, on Saturday and everything like that, now I turn my I turned my browser to the race results to see, how everybody's faring out there and projected times and, and things like that. **** - (): And when I, when I popped open my laptop and, and pulled up the results and you were still on a course, obviously, but, uh, just seeing your splits come in and everything, I was just like. Damn right, like, look at this guy go, like, he's, he's actually doing this and, um, we can talk about it all the time, as coaches of like, I know that I was giving you the proper training, and you were executing the training and things like that. **** - (): But you never, I mean, there's so many variables that can show up on race day and, Mechanically, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, you had a clean race mechanically, right? Yeah, [00:53:30] - (): Craig Dalton: totally clean. Yeah. [00:53:31] - (): Justin Bowes: And for that to happen just by itself is amazing. And then on top of that, you hit your nutrition and hydration and everything just, it worked, and so, um, with, with a race like unbound, You know that something's going to go wrong, somewhere, some way, something's going to happen. And it's, it's, it's such a rarity to have a clean run, especially on your first time, not knowing what to expect and, and all of that. Um, but for you to be so successful with that, um, And it was just, yeah, as your coach and now as your friend, um, I'm just super excited for you. **** - (): I was just, I was over the moon, um, excited to see your finishing time and, and, uh, to, to just hear, hear it in your voice and, and at first it was, it was just in text messages back and forth, but just, getting the tone of like, Your satisfaction with everything was just, it's, it's huge. And yeah, it was awesome to, to be a small part of that. [00:54:37] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, no, it means a lot. It's been, it's been a great journey working together. It's been very fun. I, I haven't had proper coaching in ages. Um, and I recommend it. I recommend you, I recommend fast cat. It was just, it was enjoyable to just Go through a process, see improvement, uh, along the way, build confidence to do something that I'd never done before. **** - (): And frankly, that I was, a bit scared of this whole journey started because I wanted to do something that scared me. Um, and, and to come out the other side of it, just, I'm very grateful for the entire experience, the last six months [00:55:18] - (): Justin Bowes: Oh man, Craig, it's, it, again, it's been a privilege and Just exciting to, to, to see how you developed and just your professionalism with, with regards to your training and, accepting some new guy that you've never met before, be like in charge of this craziness. **** - (): Um, and, um, yeah, it just, you, you didn't flinch. Um, I, I appreciate you being cautiously. Questioning about hate, why are we doing it this way? Why, where are we going? Um, why would you have me do this instead of that? Um, I mean that, it wasn't like I ever thought, Oh, he's questioning my ability or anything like that. **** - (): He just generally wants to know why we're doing the training that we're doing. And, um, and I appreciate that. Like I love, when, when, when my athletes are like engaged. To the point that they want to know, I mean, it's, it's nice to when you just blindly follow the plan, but, when, when you're so engaged and you're so invested in the outcome of this goal that you've set for yourself and you're like, Hey, I just want to know what's going on and. **** - (): It, it just, it tells me again, it's just another little, box to check, with, with my coaching hat on of like this, this athlete is he, he's invested, like he cares and he wants to do what needs to be done to, to, to succeed at this goal. And that makes a big difference on my end, um, because then I know, yeah, these are going to be hard workouts and they're going to put them in the box a couple times. **** - (): But because he wants it and he's, he's, he's wanting to follow the plan, um, and be consistent with it, he's going to do really well. And, um, yeah, it showed. So, um, one, one final question. If I can, um, and I, I touched on it on our call the other day is like on a scale one to 10, how would you rate this overall experience from training to the event to your, your overall experience with, with Unbound here? [00:57:34] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, I said it last week and I think I'll stick to it. It's a 10 out of 10 for me. Okay. And. Yeah, the only, I hesitated a second there, Justin, because I might've knocked it down to a 9. 5 because I, again, like I watched someone else's video and I was like, Maybe I could have pushed a little harder early on, but it's in the grand scheme of things, neither here nor there. **** - (): Like, I think again, like the, I learned a lot along the way. It was fascinating, working with a power meter, thanks to SRM, uh, using their power meter pedals. It was interesting to me going carb journey and trying to figure out, would that work for me? Along the way, everything was, great on the training. **** - (): Like we had to cram a little bit, but that was all good. The family was super supportive of it. And then, getting to Emporia and having that bluebird of a day, um, was something, that it couldn't have counted on at all in terms of the weather. The, the mileage came easy and fast. The technical elements of it were no issue for me whatsoever. **** - (): And I felt like I had the right bike to take a few hits harder than I might have wanted to, to keep the pace going, but never had any issues there. And then to, to ride with my buddy Doug and have the experience with the, the whole crew. We had a number of guys doing the hundred and one guy doing the three 50. **** - (): Great to make some new friends out there within the houses we were staying at. And the overall experience, yeah. 10 out of 10. [00:59:06] - (): Justin Bowes: Nice. Okay, good. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, yeah. When, when you shared that with me the other day, um, yeah, I got off our call and I was just like, Um, I was just like, all right, I, I, it just, it's, it's, it's so rewarding, um, to see an athlete just like check all those boxes and, feel good about, what they accomplished. **** - (): Um, because yeah, I can put together the plan for you. Um, but it's ultimately all on your shoulders to execute. Yeah. Take care of all this, the variables outside of the training plan that is, you know, recovering responsibly, being, diligent to, the consistency of, following the plan and all those little things that I can't, I can't even like begin to. **** - (): Yeah. Help you with, that's just your wife, and so, um, again, Greg. Congratulations. It's, it's so cool to, to see and, and have a time like that. Um, I'll, I'll give the listeners, a little, uh, number crunch here real quick. You're right. I mean, you were just in under, um, 1330 at 1327 for 203 miles. **** - (): Um, TSS, obviously off the charts with 645, um, that's, to be expected for sure. Um, average speed, I mean, just over 15 miles an hour for the 200 miles over that type of terrain is fantastic. Um, your normalized power, um, was so good. Um, Yeah, it was just the only thing that we didn't capture was heart rate. **** - (): Um, [01:00:48] - (): Craig Dalton: yeah, I failed to talk about that. I was so mad for so long that my strap wasn't working. [01:00:54] - (): Justin Bowes: It's the worst when it's on and there's just nothing you can do about it. I kept [01:00:59] - (): Craig Dalton: thinking like by the first aid station, I would take everything off and recover it, which I did. And then it still didn't work. Yeah. **** - (): And like halfway through. The next segment, I just like ripped it off my body and shoved it in my pocket. [01:01:12] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. I mean, just, I mean, that's, that's one like little nitpick on my end and sense of like, it would just been really interesting to see, um, the correlation between your power and the heart rate and where, I mean, it ultimately, it was always going to drop off and start to decouple, but you know where that was for you. **** - (): Um, because then, for me, I can go back to the training and say, okay, yeah, this is, this is white. We went as far as we did and, and all of that. So, oh yeah, yeah. I mean, so there's, there was one less than ideal thing, pop up out of here and it was stupid heart rate monitor. So. [01:01:51] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. **** - (): In the grand scheme of things. [01:01:53] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. [01:01:54] - (): Craig Dalton: Justin, thanks so much for coming back on board and helping me recount this, uh, this event or this experience that's going to be in my memory for a long time. [01:02:02] - (): Justin Bowes: With that, is there an Unbound in your future again or too soon? [01:02:07] - (): Craig Dalton: It's a little too soon. And I think I mentioned to you that last week, it's hard to imagine having a better day out there. **** - (): Then, then I had all things considered and with so many great events out there that I would love to do in time away from the family. I don't, I don't know if unbound would be it again. [01:02:26] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah, no, that's fair. That's fair. [01:02:27] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah, [01:02:28] - (): Justin Bowes: no, I mean, it's hard to go out. And, as, as good as you did. And like you said, I mean, uh, another experience would it, taint this one, and in the sense of like, next year is like, flats on flats on flats or, body shuts down or, whatever the case may be, or the worst weather ever. **** - (): I mean, so yeah, go, go out on top. [01:02:50] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. I'm going out on top, I think on the 200. For me, it's either like. Go shorter and actually like, see what it's like to race an event. Cause I don't, the 200 miler, like it's hard to consider it a race for me. It was really about managing my way across the finish line as efficiently as possible. **** - (): Or going the other way, which has always attracted me, which is like the bike packing. route and, trying some of the real long distance stuff longer than 200 miles. Sure. [01:03:18] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. The, the 350, the XL crew, that is, that's next level, man. Yeah. I, I, I always, I always like tease myself, like, that would be so cool just like to push your limits. **** - (): Um, And, and, and see what that's like, um, for that distance and everything. But then reality kind of sets in on me and like, you, you're not going to do that. So I'll stick with my hundred. I love my hundred distance. [01:03:44] - (): Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like there is like an overnight riding experience that I need to have as that next unchecked box. I've sure I've done like the team racing 24 hours, but I've never done. Sort of a self supported overnight. [01:03:59] - (): Justin Bowes: Yeah. Yeah. [01:03:59] - (): Craig Dalton: Straight through. So I am, I am curious about that. Why don't we leave it at that? **** - (): That'll be a mystery. And if, if, and when I decide to do something crazy like that, we'll chat more about it. [01:04:09] - (): Justin Bowes: Heck yeah. Love that. [01:04:12] - (): Craig Dalton: Good to talk to you, Justin. [01:04:13] - (): Justin Bowes: Craig, it was great seeing you and congrats again, man. It's awesome. [01:04:17] - (): Craig Dalton: Thank you.
Both forks will prove to be very popular, not least because one of them could likely feature on your next enduro bike. Which do we prefer most, and why?
After years of success, RockShox has updated its trail and gravity suspension lineup with some new internals for model year '25. The latest Charger 3.1 damper is now found across all fork models, while rear shocks gain an XL air can option and a high-flow main piston for Super Deluxe models. They have also re-introduced the Vivid Coil shock with some technology derived from the Vivid Air released last year. We sat down with Chris Mandell from SRAM and RockShox to help make sense of all the technical. We discussed the motivation behind the changes made, how they were achieved, and how they make an impact out on the trail.Learn more about everything discussed in this video - https://www.vitalmtb.com/news/press-release/rockshox-announces-charger-3-1-damper-vivid-coil-and-updates-super-deluxePlay Vital Downhill Fantasy - https://www.vitalmtb.com/fantasy
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Win Prizes from RockShox, SRAM, Troy Lee Designs, FSA & Maxxis! https://www.vitalmtb.com/fantasyEllie Hulsebosch of The Union is a first-year Junior on the World Cup Downhill circuit. She's been stacking up wins this off-season and is ready to slay Fort William this weekend.#MTB #DH #bike
In this jam-packed episode, James and Dave discuss a handful of new gravel and road bikes that caught their attention during the week. Trek enters the rear Radar game to compete with Garmin, yet James' early impressions of the CarBack raises more questions than answers.DT Swiss has just released a new mountain bike rear hub with a wholly new ratchet system, you can read about the new 240 DEG hub at escapecollective.com, and a bonus episode of Geek Warning with DT Swiss is also available, too. Meanwhile the coverage of new products from EVT, Fox, RockShox, and more continues at the end of the episode.On our mind and over the heads of the geek's families is the topic of gravel suspension. The geeks discuss who it's for (and who it's not), and why it's proving to be more than a gimmick.Plus there's a PSA, which is likely a repeat on something previously discussed, but that only makes it more important.Time stamps:3:00 - Kona's new gravel bike for mountain bikers6:30 - FiftyOne's new Sika road bike11:55 - Parlee's new and unexpectedly-European-made Ouray road bike15:40 - Trek enters the rear radar game with its CarBack23:15 - DT Swiss' 240 Ratchet DEG hub26:30 - Chatting all things gravel suspension (including Cane Creek's Inverted answer to the space)43:25 - PSA: Your dropper needs love47:50 - Classified adds Enve to its partners list49:25 - New RockShox things50:40 - Fox overhauls its Transfer dropper53:00 - EVT enters the portable repair stand game55:10 - OnGaurd's new RockSolid angle-grinder-resistant lock
In this jam-packed episode, James and Dave discuss a handful of new gravel and road bikes that caught their attention during the week. Trek enters the rear Radar game to compete with Garmin, yet James' early impressions of the CarBack raises more questions than answers.DT Swiss has just released a new mountain bike rear hub with a wholly new ratchet system, you can read about the new 240 DEG hub at escapecollective.com, and a bonus episode of Geek Warning with DT Swiss is also available, too. Meanwhile the coverage of new products from EVT, Fox, RockShox, and more continues at the end of the episode.On our mind and over the heads of the geek's families is the topic of gravel suspension. The geeks discuss who it's for (and who it's not), and why it's proving to be more than a gimmick.Plus there's a PSA, which is likely a repeat on something previously discussed, but that only makes it more important.Time stamps:3:00 - Kona's new gravel bike for mountain bikers6:30 - FiftyOne's new Sika road bike11:55 - Parlee's new and unexpectedly-European-made Ouray road bike15:40 - Trek enters the rear radar game with its CarBack23:15 - DT Swiss' 240 Ratchet DEG hub26:30 - Chatting all things gravel suspension (including Cane Creek's Inverted answer to the space)43:25 - PSA: Your dropper needs love47:50 - Classified adds Enve to its partners list49:25 - New RockShox things50:40 - Fox overhauls its Transfer dropper53:00 - EVT enters the portable repair stand game55:10 - OnGaurd's new RockSolid angle-grinder-resistant lock
So many new bikes to talk about this week! Giant's new TCR is a meaningful evolution of the previous one, but should it have been a revolution instead? Meanwhile, the new Liv Pique offers a preview of the next-generation Giant Anthem, and Specialized's new Epic and Epic Evo genuinely push the envelope of what XC bikes are supposed to be. And do electronics belong on bicycle suspension? Why does Trek offer seven colors in one model of Emonda? And what the heck does “Ari” mean? All of that and more in this week's episode of Geek Warning.Timestamps:3:04 – Giant's got a new TCR road racing bike, but is it all it could (or should) have been?14:04 – Liv's new Pique Advanced mountain offers a sneak preview of what's to come in the new Giant Anthem16:35 – The new Specialized Epic ticks an awful lot – maybe all? – of the boxes.26:33 – RockShox's Flight Attendant electronic terrain-sensing suspension finally comes to XC34:33 – Trek is “right-sizing” in a big, big way41:01 – US-based consumer-direct brand Fezzari finally addresses the elephant in the room46:24 – Not everyone wants to know how the sausage is made52:50 – The suckiest addition to any home workshop
So many new bikes to talk about this week! Giant's new TCR is a meaningful evolution of the previous one, but should it have been a revolution instead? Meanwhile, the new Liv Pique offers a preview of the next-generation Giant Anthem, and Specialized's new Epic and Epic Evo genuinely push the envelope of what XC bikes are supposed to be. And do electronics belong on bicycle suspension? Why does Trek offer seven colors in one model of Emonda? And what the heck does “Ari” mean? All of that and more in this week's episode of Geek Warning.Timestamps:3:04 – Giant's got a new TCR road racing bike, but is it all it could (or should) have been?14:04 – Liv's new Pique Advanced mountain offers a sneak preview of what's to come in the new Giant Anthem16:35 – The new Specialized Epic ticks an awful lot – maybe all? – of the boxes.26:33 – RockShox's Flight Attendant electronic terrain-sensing suspension finally comes to XC34:33 – Trek is “right-sizing” in a big, big way41:01 – US-based consumer-direct brand Fezzari finally addresses the elephant in the room46:24 – Not everyone wants to know how the sausage is made52:50 – The suckiest addition to any home workshop
Specialized's cross-country bike, the Epic 8, was launched with an updated RockShox Flight Attendant, updated to work seamlessly with XC race rigs. In this episode, Tom Marvin speaks to Brian Gordon, Specialized's product lead on all things XC, and Chris Mandell, North America PR man for SRAM. They discuss the new Specialized Epic 8 and Epic 8 EVO, as well as the latest wireless developments in suspension – Flight Attendant. Along the way, host Jack Luke quizzes Tom on his experience of both new bikes and RockShox's electronic equipment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Downhill mountain bike racing legend, Greg Minnaar, announced that he joined Norco Bicycles after 16 years with the Santa Cruz Syndicate. Minnaar has more Mountain Bike World Cup Downhill victories than any other Elite male racer. While 2023 was supposed to be his farewell season after two-and-a-half decades of racing, a flat tire at World Championships in Fort William left Greg with a poor result and a hunger to end his competitive career on a high note. When Santa Cruz decided to let Greg go, he found a new home at Norco. In this interview we talk with Greg about that change, the possible challenges of working with a new bike and team, as well as his expectations for the 2024 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup DH race season.Video Contents0:00 - Intro / Is He on FOX or RockShox?3:31 - Any Other Sponsor Changes?4:21 - Why Didn't He Retire in 2023?7:55 - Did He Try to Stay with Santa Cruz Syndicate?10:50 - Norco's Race Engineering Program13:09 - How Will He Adapt to the Norco Prototype DH Bike?16:17 - From VPP to High-Pivot to DH Bike20:20 - Does Suspension Platform Really Matter?22:30 - The Source - Norco Junior Development Team25:29 - What If He Doesn't Get Results or Gets an Injury?30:44 - 2024 Race Goals32:48 - Insight into 2024 World Cup DH Format36:06 - Would He Wear the Fox One-piece Suit like Christian Craig?36:58 - What Will He Miss Most about The Syndicate?Thanks to Maxxis Tires, FOX and Jenson USA for supporting Vital MTB's The Inside Line podcast.#MTB #mountainbike #downhill
If you're looking to take your cycling to the next level in 2024 – whether you're an amateur or pro, training for fitness or to reach a performance goal – getting a personal coach can help get you there. Daniel Matheny has been coaching athletes of all ages and abilities in a variety of sports (primarily cycling) for over two decades, from Juniors at USA Cycling to pros at CTS. Now through his Matheny Endurance, he offers athletes a range of services – from mapping out personalized custom plans to providing on-site race day support. Matheny is a top athlete himself and also the local go-to in Colorado Springs for setting up courses for some of our top area races – like the Pikes Peak APEX and Rampart Rager Gravel. We talk about his background, services, trainer tips and where he goes for inspiration, in this edition of Pedal the Springs. Host: Torie Giffin, Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort Owner Guest: Daniel Matheny, Matheny Endurance Links to show topics: Breck Epic https://breckepic.com/ Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort https://www.bicycleresort.com/ CTS & Chris Carmichael https://trainright.com/ CTS Trainright Podcast https://trainright.com/podcast/ Colorado Trail Race https://bikepacking.com/event/2023-colorado-trail-race/ EVOQ Cycling Podcast https://www.youtube.com/c/EVOQBIKE Leadville 100 MTB https://www.leadvilleraceseries.com/mtb/leadvilletrail100mtb/ MTB Marathon World Championships https://ridesnowshoehighlands.com/event/uci-2024/ Matheny Endurance icoachbadasses.com https://mathenyendurance.com/ Pikes Peak Apex by RockShox https://www.coloradospringssports.org/events/pikes-peak-apex/ Primal Wear https://www.primalwear.com/ Rampart Rager https://www.rampartrager.com/ National Strength and Conditioning Association NSEA https://www.nsca.com/ Professional Mountain Bike Instructors Association PMBIA https://pmbia.org/ Fast Talk Laboratories https://www.fasttalklabs.com/ SUPA Podcast Stand Up Pedal Action https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/supa-stand-up-pedal-action/id1578907633 Steamboat Gravel https://www.sbtgrvl.com/ Strava https://www.strava.com/ USA Cycling https://usacycling.org/about-us/ Pedal the Springs is produced by Studio809 Podcasts from our community podcast studio at the NextUs in Downtown Colorado Springs and presented by the Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort, the only bicycle-themed lodging and must-stay for cyclists coming to Colorado. Check us out at https://bicycleresort.com for more information. Explore all the community podcasts at https://studio809podcasts.com
Meu convidado de hoje descobriu o esporte na infância, através do futebol. Praticou as modalidades escolares, mas o futebol o acompanhou até a faculdade. Seguindo os passos do irmão mais velho, começou a praticar o surfe quando tinha acesso ao mar. Durante o curso de medicina, a bicicleta era o seu meio de transporte. Formou-se e escolheu trabalhar com os esportes. Ao mesmo tempo em que ia ampliando seu conhecimento, a medicina esportiva evoluiu e ele se aprofundava cada vez mais na profissão. Hoje, 22 anos depois, é referência no segmento e tem um currículo digno de alguns dos atletas que atende. Ele é médico metabologista, doutor em Nutrição Humana Aplicada, pós-graduado em Medicina Esportiva e Metabolismo, e tem muita experiência acumulada em diversas confederações esportivas como a de boxe, remo, surfe, desportes aquáticos e futebol. Conosco aqui o surfista, boleiro, ex-triatleta, médico do esporte e de diversas celebridades, influenciador do Instagram, um apaixonado pelos esportes tanto quanto pela sua profissão, o botucatuense Franz Homero Paganini Burini. Inspire-se! SIGA e COMPARTILHE o Endörfina através do seu app preferido de podcasts. Contribua também com este projeto através do Apoia.se. Você já deve ter ouvido falar da completamente nova SCOTT Scale. O mítico modelo, que é referência em termos de mountain bikes de cross country, está de quadro novo, cheio de novidades tecnológicas e, claro, com todo aquele DNA vitorioso que só marca suíça tem. Talvez o que você não saiba é na que linha existem também modelos com quadro em alumínio, como a fantástica Scale 965, uma excelente opção com roteamento dos cabos completamente integrado ao quadro, suspensão RockShox com a exclusiva trava RideLoc e grupo Shimano de 12 velocidades. Visite a revenda autorizada SCOTT mais perto de você e conheça a versão em alumínio da hardtail mais avançada do mercado. SCOTT. Inovação, tecnologia e design. Um oferecimento da @probioticaoficial. Desafios e conquistas fazem parte de uma jornada de quem ousa se superar a cada dia. A Jornada PRO continua e nossa próxima largada será no Mundial de Ironman. 10% das compras , com o cupom ALMATRI de 20% OFF no site da Probiótica, serão revertidos para um projeto social. Compre kits personalizados, inspirados na linha de produtos utilizados pela @pami_oliveira em sua jornada de preparação. O cupom dará, também, direito a participação em experiências exclusivas como treinões com a participação da atleta, transmissão ao vivo da prova. Junte-se a nós nessa Jornada!
In this episode of the podcast, Zach Walker from the shop joins Tani and Auk. They cover everything from his introduction to the bike industry, down to the nitty-gritty of the new RockShox Vivid. Plenty of viewer questions are answered before ending with Auk's new Giant 2024 Advanced Elite, custom-built by Zach himself.
Today on the MTB Podcast, we discuss a couple of new RockShox forks and Jeff's emergency adventure race training before jumping into a solid array of listener questions ranging from bike sizing to our stage names, enduro Everest preparation & everything in between. Tune in! Submit any and all questions to podcast@worldwidecyclery.com Italy Trip: https://allmountainrides.com/products/ultimate-dolomites-8-days Our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCxZoC1sIG-vVtLsJDSbeYyw Worldwide Cyclery Instagram: www.instagram.com/worldwidecyclery/ MTB Podcast Instagram: www.instagram.com/mtbpodcast/ MTB Podcast Website: https://www.mtbpodcast.com/
Legendary French wheel brand Mavic is rumored to be gearing up to come back to the US market – but is the US market ready for them to come back? The Geek Warning crew also had a mountain of new gear to discuss this week, including new bikes from Orbea, GT, and Polygon, stunning road wheels from Syncros, and updated cross-country suspension from RockShox. And what's up with this giant pile of new go-fast gear the UCI just revealed? Ronan did some digging.
Legendary French wheel brand Mavic is rumored to be gearing up to come back to the US market – but is the US market ready for them to come back?The Geek Warning crew also had a mountain of new gear to discuss this week, including new bikes from Orbea, GT, and Polygon, stunning road wheels from Syncros, and updated cross-country suspension from RockShox. And what's up with this giant pile of new go-fast gear the UCI just revealed? Ronan did some digging. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mike McAndrews is a true legend of the suspension world, getting his start for Fox's motocross team in the early moto days before moving on to factory Kawasaki as Jeff Ward's wrench, turning them one more time for Bob Hannah as he also started Factory Connection suspension. From there he made his way to Rockshox, then to Specialized, off to Fox shocks, and back to Specialized where he resides today above all suspension-related development and duties for the big S.
SRAM's new Apex redesign brings AXS wireless electronic shifting to the masses, but there's also a new mechanical version, and it's all 1x12 – and we've got all the details. Commencal has announced its first gravel bike that's “not just another gravel bike” (even though it mostly is), RockShox's Flight Attendant automatic electronic suspension is coming to XC, someone lost something in Lenzerheide, and Ronan outlines some of the tech decisions from his recent record-setting ride in Ireland. And finally, is UDH coming to road bikes now? (Hint: yes, it is).12:45 – New SRAM Apex!31:30 – Commencal gets into gravel37:33 – RockShox's updated SID spotted in the wild43:46 – A big oops on the start line in Lenzerheide48:17 – Ronan optimizes everything for his 15-hour time trial1:02:15 – SRAM's UDH is now coming for road bikes, too Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
What a trip its been! Tripp Bartlett came to town to shred some bikes and join us on the pod. We got the down and dirty on how Tripp ended up being SRAM's ultimate hype man. Tune in to hear how Tripp went from a dirty hiker on the AT (Tomahawk) to New England's field guide for SRAM.
Chris Mandell is the North American Public Relations Manager for SRAM where he's worked for the past 8 years. He currently lives and rides in Bellingham, Washington. Is mountain biking suspension harder to design than say suspension for cars or motorcycles? What's different? How much of RockShox testing is real world vs. lab based? Is shock heat management important for the average rider? What is the advantage of larger diameter fork stanchions? What's the idea behind the electronic suspension controls in SRAM Flight Attendant? Why aren't there more inverted fork designs? What are some common misunderstandings about mountain bike suspension? Are suspension designers as focused on reducing weight as they have been in the past? By loosening weight requirements, what improvements can be made? What's your method for setting up a new fork? Which suspension innovations are you most stoked about? A full, edited transcript is available at singletracks.com. The Singletracks podcast is brought to you by TPC -- The Pro's Closet. Spring is the perfect time to upgrade, and TPC has an industry-leading selection of new and Certified Pre-Owned bikes, plus frames, wheels and accessories. Each Certified, Pre-Owned bike is inspected, tested and serviced, and every bike includes thirty day returns. Visit tpc.bike/singletracks and enter code Singletracks40 to save forty dollars on every order over two hundred. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/singletracks/support
This we sit down with Andrew Juskatis from Giant Bicycles to discuss the Giant Revolt X gravel bike. With 50 years in the bicycle business, Giant brings massive engineering and manufacturing resources to the sport. The Revolt X model features front suspension matched with a compliant rear end and dropper post. Sounds like my kind of ride! Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the podcast. We welcome Andrew. from giant bicycles to the show. Andrew is a global product marketing manager. And had a hand in the launch of the new revolt acts, gravel bike. I have to say after I saw former Gaston friend, URI has walled. Old riding this new giant bicycle where the RockShox suspension fork on it. I couldn't resist reaching out to the team at giant to learn a little bit more. I'd been curious as to when we'd start to see larger manufacturers bring suspension forks into the gravel bike world. I know it is a topic. That many of you feel very passionately one way or the other about, but I thought it would be interesting to talk to Andrew about that decision and how they see the market evolving. Giant is a close to 50, maybe 50 plus year old company. That's been producing bikes for many, many other brands, as well as developing their own brand. Back in the eighties, they've got a huge amount of research and development and organizational strength in the engineering department. So it was exciting to talk to them about what they were seeing with this bicycle. Obviously they have models available. With, and without that rock shock, we talk about the revolt X model as well as one of the other models that shares a similar chassis, but not an identical chassis. And we'll get into why giant was uniquely capable of producing something specific. For running a suspension fork versus just slapping something on the same bike or the same frame that they had produced for the non suspension. Model. Anyway, I look forward to you listening to this conversation, Andrew and I are contemporary. So we share some stories about our early experience in the mountain bike market and the evolution of that market. And some of the parallels were. We're seeing in the gravel world. With that said, let's jump right into my conversation with Andrew. Andrew, welcome to the show. [00:02:29] Andrew Juskatis: Hey, thanks for having me, Craig. [00:02:31] Craig Dalton: It's good to, good to have you. I'm, I feel like I've been wanting to have someone on from Giant for a few years now, and I couldn't resist reaching out through my friend Yuri Oswald, who just started riding for Giant u s A. Uh, when I saw the new Revolt acts, it seemed like too, too much of a bike that was right up my alley not to get someone on the show to talk about. [00:02:53] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's, it's a new launch for us. It just came out this February. Um, so it's still new, it's still hot, and it's an interesting product from Giant. [00:03:02] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. Before we dig into that, let's just get a little bit about your history. Where, where did you grow up and how did you discover the bike, and ultimately, how did you end up working in the bike industry? [00:03:13] Andrew Juskatis: cow. That's a long story, but I will try and make it short for you so, I'm coming up on 50 years old. I've been riding and racing bikes, specifically mountain bikes since I was 14 years old. I grew up in Southern California. I started ri erasing and then riding, you know, around 87, 88. So I've, I've been through the f almost the full trajectory of mountain biking as, as a result of that, my love and for cycling has grown. So Southern California. Um, you know, went to college at University of Utah and just absolutely fell in love with the sport of mountain biking. But out of that, I took my first job, um, working for cycling publications. So over a period of nine years, I worked for five different magazines starting in 1996, working for Mountain Biking, mountain Biker Bike Magazine, bicycling, and then eventually finished off my tenure at Venu and throughout the entire. I was the tech editor for all those publications. I did a lot of product testing, um, and, and had a pretty good gig doing all that, but it was 2004 when I was an editor. I flew from Colorado out to Southern California to be a guest at Giant Bicycles when they were introducing their maestro suspension technology. And I remember specifically as an. Riding that product, meeting the people behind the product and saying, Hey, giant has something going on for it. Like this is legit. Not only is this technology legit, but the people behind it are serious about what they're doing, and it really put, honestly put Giant on my radar for what is going to be my next job. Lo and behold, position opened up in their marketing department in 2005. I took the job at Giant, and here I am, what, some 18 years later. On the other end of the stick here, talking to editors around the world. [00:04:58] Craig Dalton: Amazing. I love that we're in the same age range and went through sort of our coming up and mountain biking around the same time. I know we could probably share a lot of stories that might not be interesting to our gravel riding audience, but thanks for sharing that. And just for a little bit of context, can you just talk about the origins of the giant, uh, giant company and the giant. [00:05:19] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, for sure. And for, for those listeners who aren't aware, you know, we're ob. OB obviously a legacy brand. We just celebrated our 50th anniversary. And again, another really long story short, the reason why giant exists is way back in the seventies when Schwinn was having its bicycle boom, Schwinn was manufacturing the great majority of their product. You know, here in the United States. They realized that they needed to expand, they needed to bring prices down to some more affordability. So they sent off kind of their Lewis and Clark guys over to Asia to source out, uh, bicycle manufacturing over in Asia. And one of those guys ventured over to Taiwan, which at the time wasn't. Producing anything to do with bicycles and fortuitously stumbled across a fledgling little company, manufacturing company called Giant at the time. Um, at the time they were not making bicycles, but had the capability to do so well. Long story short. Giant became the main manufacturer of Schwinn bicycles kind of in the, in the late seventies there. And so they were pumping out the great majority of Schwinn bikes that maybe our parents grew up with, or we grew up as, grew up with as kids. That grew and grew and grew. The manufacturing business continued to improve. The factory got bigger and bigger. We got better at it. And then in the, um, early eighties, we started our own brand, and that's the brand that I worked for, which is Giant, that's the brand that most of your listeners are familiar with. So, early eighties on that, we started making our own product, unique product, own designed, um, manufactured and engineered by us. And that's the brand that we're talking about today. [00:06:55] Craig Dalton: I remember in the very late eighties selling a giant iguana or two on the mountain bike side. If I can name, drop that little bit of history to [00:07:04] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, that's still a running joke I get all the time. What do you feed the Johnny Iguana? I, I love oldie, but goodie. [00:07:11] Craig Dalton: And I also remember obviously like, you know, in addition to that Schwinn product line that they were producing for many years, they then expanded to a lot of product for a lot of different manufacturers. And I remember sort of learning that as I was working in a bike shop on the East coast and realizing that, you know, of the seven brands that we were selling, it was three or four of them were actually produced in the same factory, um, via Giant, which was kind of interesting at the. [00:07:38] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, for sure. So our manufacturing side of the business. Does produce bicycles for some other brands out there, but the great majority of of product that comes out of our factory is giant. And just to clarify, you know, anything that comes out of our factory is engineered and, and designed by that brand. So everything is unique. Like the giant brand is completely different than anything else that might come out of that factory. Um, but I'm here today to talk about, you know, giant product and the giant brand. So excited to get. [00:08:09] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And you know, as we trace back kind of the brand history as you've been there the last 18 years or so, obviously Giant is a full service brand, meaning they're doing everything from kids' bikes, Tor de France and you know, U C I downhill bikes across the product line. When you think about how the brand kind of approaches. Entire suite of product. Is it, does it, does it sort of come from the top down and you're trying to make the best product possible? Or is each, each kind of division kind of focused on like, oh, I'm trying to make an affordable bike, or commuter bike, or what have you, and really just trying to be best of class in the area that it's competing in. [00:08:49] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, first things first is we make sure that we have the right people leading the right categories. From that, every one of those category managers, their goal is to build the absolute best in class for that. Whether it be, uh, a youth bike, whether it be a road gravel or mountain bike, we always wanna shoot for the top. Only after we have all those, these pieces in place, do we start thinking about price points. How do we want to, you know, what price points do we want to hit? We look at, maybe sometimes we'll look at our competitors and see what they're doing and see how we can, you know, beat them. But for the great majority of time, because our factory, we are the factory. We have the greatest buying power in the entire cycling industry. If you think about it. I mean, we buy more D R X T rear derailers than any other brand on Earth. So normally we're, we're always gonna get the best pricing out of that. We don't normally focus on pricing. You know, your, your, your listeners can certainly do their own shopping and, and look at different brands and different prices, but that's certainly something where we differentiate our categories. Um, how do we break it down? And that's something we can talk about when we talk about Revolt X. What are, what are the prices here in the United. [00:09:54] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I'm curious and excited given your tenure at Giant, just when you started to see like a gravel bike first emerge in the lineup, and obviously the date you dropped to me earlier I think was 2013. The category barely existed at that point. So I'm curious if you recall, like why was that bike created originally? [00:10:14] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, that's a really good question. And I, I, I don't wanna say it was created by accident, but at the time, w. You know, the category managers, the marketing staff, we're in touch with the market. We ride a lot. It's our passion. So we're out there and seeing what, what people are doing. Gravel at the time from a mass production level really didn't exist. This is over a decade ago, like you just indicated. The consumers were, you know, maybe the, the elite that bleeding edge was kind of experimenting with, you know, taking a road bike and putting on the biggest tires possible and riding it in more aggressive terrain. I would say we caught onto that, that, that, that trend and it was, it was just a developing trend way back then. And we said, Hey, you know what, let's experiment. It seems like it makes sense. This might actually go somewhere. This, this might not be a fad. Like single speeding, right? Like that came and went for the most part. This actually has legs given the trends at the time of. Generally speaking, you know, road bike sales were just beginning to slump off. People might, might have started getting turned off a little bit about road riding just because of safety issues or just because of wanting to explore their terrain a little bit more than a traditional road bike could take them. Um, so it was kind of a culmination of a lot of a different events. Let us dip our toe in the water with the first Revolt series, and that was like over a decade ago. And looking back at the bike, looking at the geometry, looking at the max tire size, you know, I'm not gonna say it was wrong in every way, but it was an experiment, right? It was our first mass production toe dipped in the water, and we learned a tremendous amount from that first generation. So here we are today talking about our latest generation, which is the Revolt X, which as your listeners know, is a front suspension, gravel bike, and definitely happy to talk about that. [00:12:06] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's so interesting. I feel like back in that 20 13, 20 14, 20 15, like there was this pocket of riders that weren't necessarily, you know, riding gravel. They were just happened to be riding on dirt roads or wanted a more durable drop bar bike for commuting. And so there was like enough of a pocket in there despite like. People wanting to use the bike for many different things. That type of bike made a lot of sense. And then, you know, as we moved forward into 20 15, 20 16, you started to sort of see this very much more specialized gravel event happen and people like really leaning into a gravel bike as a replacement for a road bike potentially in certain scenarios. So talk a little bit, if you can, at, at sort of a broad level. How you saw the revolt model evolve over those early years into, you know, 20 16 20 17? [00:13:00] Andrew Juskatis: Right. And so just like you indicated, Craig, you know, the, the racing scene at that time was. Just starting to bubble up more local events, little kind of underground events, but we, when we a, anytime we create a new product, we do ask ourselves. Okay. Is this product going to be raced or is this product going to be ridden? Is this for the adventure rider or is this for the guy, you know, shaves his legs and has the liker, uh, one piece kit on and is going, going for the number plate thing? So at that time we said no on racing, cuz racing really didn't seem like it was that big a deal. So the original revolt was geared more towards a. Was more towards exploration, was riding those b and C level roads, or even some, you know, all all, maybe at the time very light single track kind of stuff. But it was not [00:13:47] Craig Dalton: it originally a, was it a carbon bike originally? [00:13:50] Andrew Juskatis: no, no, no. Again, I, I would use the term experimental at the time, and so first generation, I think we talked about this a little bit offline, but committing to composite cutting molds. Is an entirely different thing than building an aluminum bike. Aluminum bikes obviously take a lot of engineering. There is a lot of technology in it, but the commitment level to building an aluminum bike from a, from a mass production standpoint is. Significantly less than committing to composites. So, like I said, bit of an experiment. The first revolt, um, we want to dip our toe in the water. It was aluminum and so really easy if we needed to second generation, if we needed to change geometry. It's very, very easy to do that once you cut molds, and, and I know you and I know a lot of your listeners know this, but once you cut those molds for composite, there's no going. And you know, I think we talked about this offline, the commitment level to cutting molds for a composite bike can can be darn near a hundred thousand dollars per size. So you need to think about your return on investment when you're committing to composite. [00:14:56] Craig Dalton: Yeah, for sure, for sure. Amazing. Like I love taking this journey with you. And then, you know, as I mentioned to you offline, like I became super attracted, I think, to the revolt aesthetic and performance attributes in that like 2018 timeframe, maybe, maybe 2019. But found that it was sort of oriented towards a, a narrower tire size at that time. Does that kind of track with the, the sort of design and performance objectives at that time for that model? [00:15:26] Andrew Juskatis: for sure. At that time when we, you know, we're trying to look into our, our crystal ball of the future, just, you know, point of reference when we build, uh, or create a new range or series of bicycles, you know, we're looking at a three year lifespan. No more, absolutely no more than a five year lifespan before we're gonna come out with the next generation. So three years generally. But we need to look at our crystal ball because we need to see what trends are happening, what trends are, are, are growing. What trends are faltering At the time, we, um, wanted to kind of maximize tire size without going bonkers. And I know a lot of folks, including yourself, kept screaming for larger and larger tire size at that, like that second generation revolt. Um, we didn't feel it was necessary, but when we move into this next generation here, like especially with Revolt X, we can talk about larger tire. [00:16:14] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, let's get into it. Let's get into the revolt. Um, and, and maybe you can sort of break down. You've got one series that has the Rock Shock Suspension Fork and a Dropper Post, which I love the idea of. And then you've got the other, the other sort of, uh, standard rigid bike. [00:16:33] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, that, I mean, that's a, a great takeoff point. And, and kind of just for the record, let me, let me state our, our view of what you, just, what you just talked about. So, currently in our line, um, we launched this, uh, a little over a year ago was our Revolt Advanced Pro, and that's her composite, um, revolt bike. That's the bike you're gonna see our, um, professional racers on. Um, you're gonna. With most folks should probably pick that bike if they're gonna put a number plate on for most type of terrain. Um, and we certainly in our marketing materials and our communications, we talk about racing openly, freely, and, and proudly with that bike. No, it is not just a race bike. It's a very lightweight, it can be used for exploration or simply, you know, riding on ruffle roads. That's fine. But you will hear us talk about racing quite a bit with that, with that current model of revolt advance. The bike that we're focusing on today is the re, is the Revolt X Advance Pro. And so that has a suspension fork, just like you said. Just like you love, and it has the suspension seat post on it. It does have a little bit of suspension on it if you notice that in the spec, but the dropper as well, so. Not to say that's not a race bike, but we're not gonna be positioning it. Our professional racers probably won't be seen racing on that bike. It's a bit more for exploration really. Those all day adventure rides down rougher, rougher terrain, which there is certainly a trend for, but just to put it in perspective, um, in terms of sales numbers, You're gonna still see most people choosing the Revolt Advances Pro, that that composite line, um, for their everyday writing, this Revolt X is for a unique person like yourself or maybe some of your listeners who want and are asking for more. [00:18:15] Craig Dalton: Yeah, it's interesting, you know, as when rock shock and sh tram launched that fork, gosh, maybe a year ago, [00:18:21] Andrew Juskatis: Right? Mm-hmm. [00:18:23] Craig Dalton: like I realized that, you know, the early adopters of that fork were likely gonna have to either retrofit it and deal with the geometric changes that it's gonna apply to their bike or get a custom frame built because, The larger manufacturers just weren't ready to kind of jump on that trend. I think it made sense to like allow rock shock to put it out there in the world alongside, um, what Fox had been doing for some time earlier than that and just see where it was gonna sit. But I was sort of eagerly waiting for a larger brand like Giant to put one on a bike just to expose the world to the attributes of something that was purpose built and designed. Around that fork because to your point, not everybody's racing and it seems like there is a world and there are locations in the world where this type of suspended gravel bike, while it's still oriented around. Gravel riding, right? You're still gonna ride it on the road and mix train or whatever. But giving the rider an advantage, whether it's more comfort or stability, or safety or performance, with that suspension fork was gonna be something that is gonna appeal to yet these ever more refined niches of gravel that are emerging. [00:19:38] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, it, it, it's interesting, Craig, you know, you and I were talking offline before and I, I learned a, a bit about your history, um, certainly with mountain biking and, and we all remember way back in the day when, you know, the rock chalks RS one first came out, it seemed like a gimmick, maybe a novelty, and manufacturers, pretty much all of them simply took that suspension fork and threw it on an existing frame and frames back then were all steel, but, You know, that was one way to kind of dip their toe in the water to try out suspension and see if it's gonna stick and, and all of that. But they were taking a new product. That seriously altered the geometry and putting it on an existing frame, and that would've been the easy way for us to approach this. It certainly would've been the more economical way. Again, you know, we think about commitment to cutting molds is so expensive in order to open a new mold for composite frame. But we said, and we believe, you me, we argued about this a lot, um, within the company is do we fully commit if we're gonna put a suspension. On a revolt, do we fully commit to creating an entirely new series of molds? And the answer was, we either do it or we don't. And so we did it and we committed to a full size. Um, of new frames that are suspension, augmented, or suspension adjusted to accept a 40 millimeter fork. Um, it's a gamble. Uh, we will see about how sales are, um, universally again, um, it's, it's, it's definitely a risky move cuz we invested a lot into this frame to make sure that it, it handles correctly. We didn't want it to be, you know, a tugboat and really sluggish. If you put. A longer fork on an existing frame, it would slack out the front end so much so that it would, it would kill the characteristics of the bike. We didn't want to do that. [00:21:23] Craig Dalton: Yeah, I think that's a critical balance. And for the, for the listener who can kind of, can't visualize, like with the suspension fork, your head tube has to, there has to be a little bit more space, right? Cuz those forks are longer in order to add that 40 millimeters or whatnot of suspension in there. So there has to be an adjustment and if you just slap it on your average, It's gonna make it a little bit more relaxed, and maybe that is actually appropriate for how you're gonna ride, said bike, but is not the intended geometry that the designer put underneath you to begin with. So it is important to have someone thinking about those adjustments and designing them into the frame. Geometrically speaking, but also you mentioned to me that you, you also added a little bit more beef to the head tube in an understanding that the bike is gonna face different challenges and obstacles out there. [00:22:12] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, th That's exactly right, Craig. So if you think about this, so our existing revolt, advanced Pro, all size medium, has a head two length of about 150 millimeters in order to properly compensate for the kind of that axle to crown length of a suspension fork. The Revolt X Advanced Pro that we're talking about today is 115 millimeter head tube, so that head tube is significantly shorter in order to accommodate that longer lever arm of a suspension fork. And just like you indicated, um, in order to make sure that the bike would be safe, strong enough to handle that longer lever, lever arm, the engineering of the frame is a bit different In order to handle that, that suspension fork. [00:22:54] Craig Dalton: Now, I know you've got a ton of experience personally and passionately about mountain bikes in the mountain bike world. When it came to putting a dropper post on that bike, what were you thinking and how do you feel that, you know, the dropper post adds value in that particular bike? [00:23:09] Andrew Juskatis: For me it was easy because I am a mountain biker and it, within the company I was early adopter of, of a drop seat post and. I can't imagine riding a bike today without a drop seat post. It just has become part of the ride experience. And maybe I'm even more radical in thinking that pretty much every bicycle should have a drop seat post on it. And, and I know I'm joking about the roadside of things, but maybe I'm not joking about the roadside of things when it came to this product, especially considering its intent of being rid ridden over more rough terrain, vari. Yeah. I mean, that was a no-brainer. And so there is a, a dropper seat post on all of the models of the Revolt X. [00:23:52] Craig Dalton: Okay. Yeah. Well, you'll get no objection from me here. As everybody well knows, big fan, I considered an upgrade to any bicycle I have underneath me, but I will get off my soapbox or maybe not even mount it today because I've been on it many times before on the pod. [00:24:07] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah. [00:24:10] Craig Dalton: We've talked a little bit about the, the fork and the, the dropper post, but let's talk about the frame and some of the other attributes. I know that there's some shared attributes. The revolt, advance, and the Xs. In terms of like that flip chip, let's drill into what that means and let's talk about the tire size and capability of the bike. [00:24:26] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, for sure. So some of the similarities between the two, uh, ranges. So that's the, the Revolt Advanced Pro and this new Revolt X Advanced Pro is, and that's one of the features you just mentioned, is the flip chip dropout. Flip Chip dropout is simply a flippable chip that is located in the rear dropout of the frame. That dropout, whether it can be shifted from its low. Or to its high position, that's 10 millimeters of difference, what that 10 millimeters does for yourself and for your listeners, you do understand that that will elongate the wheel base, making it more stable ride. Um, I think more significantly than that even is that it allows for different tire size. So in its short position, when the flip chip is, is shifted forward, that allows for a 42 millimeter maximum tire size. If you really. [00:25:14] Craig Dalton: On the 700 Seari. [00:25:16] Andrew Juskatis: 700 C. Yeah. If you wanna flip to the, um, long position that allows for a 53 millimeter tire, um, in that long position, that's, [00:25:25] Craig Dalton: Yeah. [00:25:25] Andrew Juskatis: that's pretty meaty [00:25:27] Craig Dalton: What are the, what are the different lenses of the stays, if you recall? [00:25:31] Andrew Juskatis: off top of my head. I, I don't know, but it is a 10 millimeter difference from the short position to the long position for sure. All geometries are available on our website, so you can see. And that, that is size specific as well, that change. [00:25:44] Craig Dalton: Got it. And then on the, on the rigid fork, on the advance, is there a flip ship up front [00:25:49] Andrew Juskatis: No, no, we didn't see the need for a flip chip up front. Um, you can run, you know, a 53 millimeter tire. It doesn't matter. Um, there is no flip chip up front. That's, you know, we, we, we ask ourselves these questions when we're creating the product. That starts to get down the wormhole of how much is too much. You start adding, A lot of features to a product like this. Obviously that adds complication. That can add complexity and maintenance, and it can also add weight. So what is really gonna make a difference for the rider is something we always ask ourselves. [00:26:21] Craig Dalton: And when you design these bikes, are you designing strictly around a 700 sea wheel set, or are you also, you know, accommodating a six 50? [00:26:28] Andrew Juskatis: No, we, we think about 700 c I mean, the majority of of consumers who are gonna purchase this product are interested in purchasing this product. Certainly will ride a 700 C wheel. I know others, including yourself, might wanna run a different size wheel. Um, you're obviously free to do that as well, but are geometries listed. Don't get in, go down that, that rabbit hole of what if you use this size. [00:26:50] Craig Dalton: Yeah. It's interesting, you know, several years ago, I think just sort of the, the design constraints or the vision at that moment was. You needed to do six 50 B wheels in order to get that bigger tire size. And now that you and you, like many others, are able to run 700 by 50 tires without changing geometry. To me, who was a big proponent of six 50 b a number of years ago, I'm, I'm sort of more open to the idea that, you know, at 700 c you. you could need. If you can go up to 700 by, you know, in your case 53, like I don't see a need for, for much more than someone on the bike packing margins to ever want. More than that. And then to your point, like the bike, both aesthetically and performance-wise, you go down to a 700 by 40, which maybe is a sort of standardish race size. You can take that tighter, uh, rear end with that flip chip. And you've gotta have the supercharged race bike underneath. [00:27:50] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so it does have that, that variability in it, and we're just seeing, I don't, we are seeing less six 50 B out there in the market because again, um, we've been able to compensate very well for 700 C so we're, we're pretty satisfied with that decision. [00:28:06] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Any other attributes of the bike that you would typically point out? [00:28:12] Andrew Juskatis: Well, the, the neat thing about it is, you know, if you're a reader or if your, uh, listeners are familiar with the Revolt Advanced Pro, one of the, the core features on that is what we call our, our diffuse handlebar and diffuse seat post. Um, in general, you know, kind of taking a big step back with Giant, one thing we've always been really proud of is not promoting, not creating gim. Um, integrated suspension systems, you know, really, really complex things, unique to frames like that. We try and avoid doing that kind of stuff because we see a lot of our competitors making those decisions to add whatever their own integrated suspension system and, That's not our angle. That's not what we're pro we're proud of. So when we introduce the technology, we want it to be effective, but we want it to be simple as well. Diffuse is our kind of flexible handlebar and flexible seat post. It's a D shaped seat post. It's a D shaped handlebar. It offers a little bit of compliance. It's a little bit of compliance. No weight penalty, simplicity, you know, it's not gonna break. It doesn't require maintenance, and it's something that riders can feel. Now obviously the Revolt X that we're talking about today, um, doesn't have that diffuse seat post. It has a, a dropper seat post, which does have a little bit of suspension in it, about 20 mils of suspension. Um, But the point I'm trying to make here is that there are options for seatpost. If you don't wanna run a dropper, you can run a traditional round, uh, seatpost if you want, or you can run our defuse seatpost, which offers, I'll call it a 10 millimeters of four AF travel on it as well. So options for the, uh, for the rider, for the owner. [00:29:54] Craig Dalton: And for clarity, so that the diffuse C Post it, it's the, the frame accommodates a round C post, but the diffuse has a D shape somewhere in the. In the post. [00:30:06] Andrew Juskatis: No. Well, so the entire seatpost itself is D shaped. It's using a series of shims you can put in, um, that D shaped into our round seat tube, or you can use a different shim to put in a, you know, a round seat post. [00:30:19] Craig Dalton: Okay, [00:30:20] Andrew Juskatis: So options, the bottom line is options. [00:30:23] Craig Dalton: one of the hallmarks I always think visually of the giant design has been that sort of dropped seat stay. And I know it's not just an aesthetic decision. What's the kind of design philosophy behind that? [00:30:37] Andrew Juskatis: Rudimentary suspension. If you think about it, it kind of creates a pivot point for the seat tube. If you think about it, your listeners can visualize this. The actual flexing of the seat tube is kind of pivoted off that drop. Um, That drops stay. If you put the stay up in a old school traditional format, it would kind of negate that. So, long story short, it offers a tiny bit of overall seat tube suspension as the seat post, as your seat, as your weight. Kind of pivots off that pivot point. [00:31:09] Craig Dalton: that makes sense. And am, am I correct, does that technology also translator or maybe it originated on the road side of Giant's business? Are the road bikes kind of leaning into that compliance as [00:31:20] Andrew Juskatis: Started way back when everything we just talked about started from the Cyclecross side of things. Um, started with our Tcx Tcx featured a lot of what we're talking about today. That was our test bed for Diffuse. Um, that was our test bed for kind of the, the, the drop stays because it, and, and you know, we all know how the sport of cycle cross has gone. It, it's, it's kind of been superseded by, uh, by gravel. But everything we just talked about today was tried on our cyclecross bike first We proved it and it moved on to revolt. And then a little bit, we'll move on to, you know, endurance road bikes as well, and then to some degree onto high performance road racing as well. [00:32:06] Craig Dalton: Yeah, interesting. I just had this other giant model name pop into my head and I, I think it might have been officially my first proper road bike I bought as an adult was a giant kdx. [00:32:17] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, that's a really, uh, that's, that's a poignant topic you're bringing up. So KX was our first line of carbon fiber bicycles, you know, way back when, first one of the first mass produced, um, not the first, but one of the first mass produced carbon fiber bikes that consumers could buy, both road and mountain. That was innovative at the time, really complex to make, reasonably successful for us, but that went away. Um, today, the KX net name lives on in our extremely high performance range of componentry that is separate from giant. Um, those components can be found on many other brands as well, but that KX name lives on, um, moving into the. [00:33:03] Craig Dalton: I reme, I recall it being reintroduced, uh, as a brand for those components. And I, sorry, I can't help but jump on the way back train when I'm talking to you. [00:33:14] Andrew Juskatis: it, it's totally, it's totally appropriate. I, I, I love jumping on the way back machine and, and looking back because you know, the, the topic of. The conversation of the comments that certainly come up with Revolt X are, my gosh, you know, it looks like an old school mountain bike. And, and I, I'll be honest with you, Craig, I just hopped in the garage. I have a revolted Revolt X advanced Pro zero sitting in my garage. It's size extra large, and I just wanted to weigh it. Just, you know, this is actual production. This is the same bike you can buy again, size, extra large. I'm a pretty tall rider, but it was 20 pounds, 15 ounces, uh, without pedals. So, you know. That, that, that's fairly heavy. And you know, I think you could get a hard tail mountain bike somewhere down within that realm of range. But these are two totally different products that are geared towards two different riding experiences. So you can draw your similarities, but it's different. [00:34:08] Craig Dalton: yeah. You know, I get, I get drawn into those debates as well, and I, I, you know, living in the Bay Area and formally living in San Francisco itself, I had a hard tail mountain bike. And I can tell you that while I touch the same terrain that I, I did back in my hard tail mountain biking days, I definitely ride it differently and create different loops because of the drop bars and the gravel bike. It gets definitely like it. It exists and it's hard to describe potentially. It definitely exists in a different space in my mind and in my garage in terms of like where I'm gonna go when I get on a gravel bike versus a mountain. [00:34:43] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, for sure. I mean, uh, we're speaking of generalities here, but I'm sure as heck not going to ride my mountain bike 15, 20 miles on the road to get to some. Mixed conditions. You know, I'm not, I'm not gonna do that on my mountain bike. You can, but I, it's just not traditionally done. I would gladly do it on Revolt X, right? You pump up the tires and, and go for a 15, 20 mile, 30 mile road ride to get to those interesting BC roads or light, single track, different experience altogether. [00:35:14] Craig Dalton: Yeah, that's so true. Like you would consider that a failure of a mountain bike ride. If you had to ride for an hour, rode 30 minutes of dirt, and then rode an hour home on the road, that would not be a mountain bike ride. Whereas it's a perfectly fine gravel ride. [00:35:27] Andrew Juskatis: it's exactly what we intended when we created Revolt X. [00:35:31] Craig Dalton: Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. I will, uh, Andrew, I'll put uh, links in the show notes so everybody can find images of these bikes and find where to buy them from their local, giant dealer. And I very much appreciated you coming on the show and talking a little bit about your history and the history of Giant, because it's such a, A storied brand that many of us have been familiar with for obviously, you know, our entire cycling careers, that it's great to see it come full circle and for you guys to have such a, what I think is sort of a spot on spec for a modern gravel bike. [00:36:03] Andrew Juskatis: Well, great. Thanks for having me, Craig. I mean, I, I think it's a really interesting story, not only with this particular product, but kind of where it came from, what we were thinking and, and how Giant was able to make it unique in the marketplace. [00:36:14] Craig Dalton: Yeah, and I think it's also like, you know, the economics of the bike industry are important to consider and the, the sort of, uh, engineering and manufacturing might that a giant can put forth just kind of provides a lot of confidence, I think, for owners that, you know, the bike has been well engineered, well tested, and didn't come out before it was ready. [00:36:33] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for noticing that and that that really was, you know, a massive argument within the company. If we're gonna do it, let's do it right, and let's commit to a frame that is suspension adjusted. So thanks for noticing that. [00:36:46] Craig Dalton: Yeah, of course. It was a pleasure talking to Andrew. [00:36:48] Andrew Juskatis: Yeah, thanks Craig. [00:36:51] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big, thanks to Andrew for joining the show and talking a little bit about Giant's history and a lot about that. Interesting revolt acts, gravel bike. That is now available. In the United States. I look forward to seeing more front suspension, running gravel riders out there in the world to join me. I certainly enjoy it in my local terrain. If you're interested in connecting with me, please visit www.theridership.com. The ridership is a free global cycling community, where you can connect with athletes around the world to talk all things, gravel and gravel riding. There are two ways in which you can support the show. If you're able to ratings and reviews or sharing this podcast with another gravel rider are hugely appreciated. Ratings and reviews are aware. Podcasters get noticed. So reviews of the five-star variety, if that's your opinion are hugely helpful to what we do at the gravel ride podcast. Additionally, if you're able to financially support the show, you can visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride and contribute to our ongoing efforts to bring you coverage of the world of gravel cycling. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels.
We're back on the Zipp Speed Podcast; we're talking more gravel riding and gravel bike technology. In this episode, Zipp Product Manager Bastien Donze and RockShox Product Manager Jed Douglas. These two experts explain the key technologies behind the Zipp 101 XPLR and the RockShox Rudy XPLR suspension fork. Jed and Bastien then explain how the 101 wheelset and Rudy fork work to smooth the ride on gravel, saving the rider precious energy and preserving speed. This podcast is for you if you're into bike tech or gravel riding. This episode accompanies a tech blog published on SRAM.com of testing on the 101 and Rudy in SRAM's Indianapolis test lab. Please also check out Part 1 of this XPLR podcast series, where we talk with experience gravel riders Sarah Walter and Nico Deportago-Cabrera.
This episode of Zipp Speed Podcast is all about gravel. We talk with Sarah Walter of RockShox and Nico Deportago-Cabrera of Zipp about their experiences riding or racing gravel, especially when using the Zipp 101 XPLR wheelset and the Rudy XPLR fork for smoothing out the ride. This podcast is the first of two episodes taking a deep dive into two critical components of SRAM's XPLR gravel collection, the 101 and Rudy. Each works to help tame the many washboards, stones, and bumps of gravel riding. The 101 and Rudy, primarily when used together, make you faster through effective vibration damping to smooth out the ride and reduce fatigue. This podcast accompanies a tech blog you can find in our show notes or on SRAM.com under the RockShox Technology section. Also, watch for Part II of our XPLR gravel podcast, where we'll dive deeply into the 101 XPLR and Rudy with Zipp and RockShox product managers. But for now, we're joined by Sarah of RockShox and Nico and Dan from Zipp. It's time for the Zipp Speed Podcast!
We've been testing a ton of new bikes and gear (as always) and we've got updates on a bunch of it including the new Santa Cruz Tallboy and the RockShox Pike that came on it; the Intense Tracer 279; the Kavenz VHP 16; we chat about crank length and Hope's new super-short 155 mm option; we offer some updates on our upcoming brake shootout, and thoughts on brake selection in general; and a whole bunch more.TOPICS & TIMES:Intense Tracer 279 (2:21)Revel Rail 29 (15:27)Kavenz VHP 16 (18:36)Santa Cruz Tallboy (20:55)RockShox Pike (23:59)Continental Tires (32:39)Crank length & Hope 155s (42:14)Brake shootout (48:05)RELATED LINKS:Introducing: CRAFTEDIntroducing: Open MicBecome a Blister MemberBlister LabsThis Week's Gear GiveawayBlister Mountain Bike Buyer's GuideOUR OTHER PODCASTSOff The CouchGEAR:30Blister PodcastCRAFTED Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Today I'm joined by SRAM's VP of product development, Sander Rigney, to take us behind the scenes at RockShox. We'll be chatting about RockShox's history and finding out how the products have progressed over the last 25 years. Hear about their approach to R&D and the development of cutting edge technologies like Flight Attendant. Sander shares some insight into their BlackBox programme, the future of suspension and plenty more. So sit back, hit play and listen to this episode with Sander Rigney. You can checkout the entire RockShox range over at sram.com and find their YouTube channel here. Supporting Partners Sprung Suspension If you're looking to improve the way your bike rides and to give your suspension some love after a long summer of riding, look no further than Sprung Suspension. With knowledge from working at suspension companies, bike companies and world cup race teams, Sprung will be able to sort you out and have your suspension feeling better than it's ever felt before. As a Downtime listener, you can get 10% off service and tuning until the 15th November. All you need to do is to use the code 'downtime22' over at sprungsuspension.com. SRAM You can checkout the entire RockShox range over at sram.com and find their YouTube channel here. Podcast Stuff Downtime EP Downtime EP issue 2 is now available at downtimepodcast.com/ep. EP takes inspiration from the guests and topics of the podcast. It expands on them, and takes them into a stunning print-only format. EP is the perfect companion for some quiet time away from the distractions of modern life. Beautiful to have and hold, and a timeless piece of mountain bike history. Just head over to downtimepodcast.com/ep to save yourself £5 off of the cover price with an annual subscription for just £20 plus postage or you can purchase EP1, or EP2 on their own too. Merch If you want to support the podcast, and represent, then my webstore is the place to head. All products are 100% organic, shipped without plastics, and made with a supply chain that's using renewable energy. So check it out now over at downtimepodcast.com/shop. Follow Us Give us a follow on Instagram @downtimepodcast or Facebook @downtimepodcast to keep up to date and chat in the comments. For everything video, including riding videos, bike checks and more, subscribe over at youtube.com/downtimemountainbikepodcast. Are you enjoying the podcast? If so, then don't forget to subscribe. Each episode will get delivered to your device as soon as it's available and it's totally free. You'll find all the links you need at downtimepodcast.com/subscribe. You can find us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google and most of the podcast apps out there. While you're there, why not join our newsletter to get our Weekend Warm-Up email every Friday. Full of interesting bike-related stuff, competitions, product recommendations and more. Our back catalogue of amazing episodes is available at downtimepodcast.com/episodes
Welcome to The APEX podcast where we sit down for a special episode with host John Croom where he chats with Riley Amos, one of the best mountain bikers in the country right now! Riley is a U23 cyclist for the TREK Factory team who is bouncing back from an injury subdued in training leading into national championships roughly 6 weeks ago. After the injury it was a question if Riley would be able to compete at this years worlds but he was able to recover and seacure a top 10! Riley will be at The APEX looking to better his finish from 2021! Riley Socials: https://www.instagram.com/rj_amos/?hl=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y2ii4oTGYI The Pikes Peak APEX courses and stages: https://www.pikespeakapex.com/2022-course-information Subscribe to The APEX podcast & listen on your favorite platform Learn more about Pikes Peak APEX presented by RockShox https://www.pikespeakapex.com/ #PikesPeakAPEX
Welcome to The APEX podcast where we sit down for a special episode with host John Croom where he chats with two guest Daniel Matheny and Bryan Peck. Matheny is the course director for the 2022 Pikes Peak APEX and Bryan Peck is on our athletes who races the podcast and is coached by Matheny! Matheny & Peck sit down with Croom to give him and you the inside look on the new course for this years edition of The Pikes Peak APEX! Daniel Socials: https://mathenyendurance.com/ https://www.trainingpeaks.com/coach/matheny#about https://www.instagram.com/mathenyendurance/?hl=en The Pikes Peak APEX courses and stages: https://www.pikespeakapex.com/2022-course-information Subscribe to The APEX podcast & listen on your favorite platform Learn more about Pikes Peak APEX presented by RockShox https://www.pikespeakapex.com/ #PikesPeakAPEX
We took a swing at explaining suspension knobs, and what they do. In the end you might learn something, or you might be just a little dumber for tuning in?
The APEX podcast where host John Croom sits down for a chat with Russell Finsterwald and chats about his goal for coming back to his hometown race searching for the win. Russ also tells us about his recent adventures at Leadville and SBT gravel along with the Lifetime Grand Prix series he is apart of. Who iis read to find out what the hometown legend's favorite stage is. Russell Socials: https://www.instagram.com/finsty/?hl=en Subscribe to The APEX podcast & listen on your favorite platform Learn more about Pikes Peak APEX presented by RockShox https://www.pikespeakapex.com/ #PikesPeakAPEX
The APEX podcast where host John Croom sits down for a chat with Jamil Coury who is an Ultra Runner, Father, Business man, Family man, youtuber, and more! Jamil and his company Aravaipa Running are partnering with The APEX to bring the APEX their first running event! We sit down to see how the partnership came together as well as we get to know Jamil as a person and an athlete! Jamil Socials: https://runsteep.com/jamil-coury/ https://www.aravaiparunning.com/ https://www.instagram.com/jamilcoury/?hl=en Subscribe to The APEX podcast & listen on your favorite platform Learn more about Pikes Peak APEX presented by RockShox https://www.pikespeakapex.com/ #PikesPeakAPEX
The APEX podcast where host John Croom sits down for a chat with Nina Machnowski of Brevard College and Pivot Cycles to chat about how she is using Leadville to prep for the APEX. Nina is a college student at Brevard College in Brevard, NC where she not only studies but also races and trains! Currently, Nina is in Colorado prepping for the famous Leadville MTB 100! Nina Socials: https://www.instagram.com/nina.machina/?hl=en&__coig_restricted=1 Subscribe to The APEX podcast & listen on your favorite platform Learn more about Pikes Peak APEX presented by RockShox https://www.pikespeakapex.com/ #PikesPeakAPEX
This week, the crew kicks it off with talk about the Fooses Creek section of the Colorado trail. Kenny went motorcycling, and Andrea had a sucessful mule deer scouting trip in the high country. New Shit we Probably Hate: 3x3 Nine Internally Geared Hub Fox sues Rockshox over bleeder valves FSA updates their WE electronic road group to 12 speed Listener Questions: How hard is a SRAM road bleed? Is Apex 1 compatible with an old road bike? Is a 1/2 shell MTB helmet safer than a road helmet? Is 160mm/130mm front/rear too large of a full suspension difference? Plus- join Just Riding Along Patreon! and Affordable Trail Solutions clues us in on the Bad Jack's Trail Fest
The APEX podcast where host John Croom sits down for a chat with justin Martin of Colorado Springs! Justin Martin, also known as JMART - is a Colorado local with his roots being from Texas! JMART chats about how he became pro on the MTB, how he uses motocross for cross training and how he's chasing the dream by coming to the Olympic City USA of Colorado Springs, CO! JMART Socials: https://www.facebook.com/justin.martin.bikes/ https://www.instagram.com/jmart_bikes/?hl=en Subscribe to The APEX podcast & listen on your favorite platform Learn more about Pikes Peak APEX presented by RockShox https://www.pikespeakapex.com/ #PikesPeakAPEX
The APEX podcast where host John Croom sits down for a chat with Win Van Pelt one of the 60+ challengers of the APEX. John catches up with Win about his wild adventures, keying in on all the stories as well as chatting about 2022 goals and bucket list races! Check out Win at https://www.vanpeltgroup.com/win-van-pelt.aspx Subscribe to The APEX podcast & listen on your favorite platform Learn more about Pikes Peak APEX presented by RockShox https://www.pikespeakapex.com/ #PikesPeakAPEX
Watch the 6th episode of The APEX podcast where host John Croom sits down for a chat with Juliana/SRAM Pro Team XC racer Evelyn Dong. John catches up with Evelyn during a hectic week between Unbound Gravel and Missoula XC. They compare notes on all things gravel and MTB and talk about what led Evelyn to biking and what she's up to this season. Follow Evelyn Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evelynd11/ Juliana/SRAM team: https://www.julianabicycles.com/en-US/rider/evelyn-dong Support Evelyn in the 2021 Prescott Trails Challenge https://givebutter.com/PrescottTrailsChallenge/individuals-2/evelyndong Subscribe to The APEX podcast & listen on your favorite platform Learn more about Pikes Peak APEX presented by RockShox https://www.pikespeakapex.com/ #PikesPeakAPEX #UnboundGravel #MissoulaXC
We've been busy testing a whole lot of new suspension from RockShox, as well as bikes across the whole spectrum, from XC to Enduro, so Jonathan Ellsworth and David Golay sat down in Blister HQ to talk about all of it, including the new Santa Cruz Megatower V2, the Rocky Mountain Element, and a whole lot more.TOPICS & TIMES:RockShox Flight Attendant (4:48)RockShox's new 2023 lineup (12:38)YT Capra (17:33)Santa Cruz Megatower (19:30)Orbea Rallon (22:56)Antidote Carbonjack (25:02)Orbea Occam LT (28:36)Rocky Mountain Element (31:26)RELATED LINKS:Become a Blister MemberBlister LabsThis Week's Gear GiveawayBlister Mountain Bike Buyer's GuideOUR OTHER BLISTER PODCASTSOff The CouchGEAR:30Blister Podcast See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
SRAM and RockShox. Chances are you know these names because you've seen them on your bike. But SRAM, the parent company for brands like RockShox, Truvativ, Zipp, Quarq, Time and Hammerhead, is much more than a company that builds bike parts; they're community builders. Find out more about their efforts to build up the cycling community in Colorado Springs and around the world through their SRAM Field Guide program, in this conversation. Global bike part manufacturing company SRAM began in 1987 and was named after founders Scott King, Stan Ray Day & Sam Patterson. Their Vision Statement is “We believe in the power of bicycles in expanding the potential of cycling. We create manufactured components and inspire cyclists.” The position of SRAM Field Guide was created to provide community representatives to help them fulfill their mission and to make an impact for cycling in the communities where they reside. There are currently 13 of 31 of the SRAM Field Guide positions filled, with opportunities open in the midwest, northeast and across the globe. Host: Torie Giffin, owner of the Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort, ride leader and ambassador for cycling in Colorado Springs Guests: Chris Negrete, SRAM North American Field Guide Manager and mountain biker Molly Murrow, SRAM Southern Colorado Field Guide, hard core mountain biker Mentioned in This Episode: Aravaipa Running and Races https://www.aravaiparunning.com/ Ascent Cycling https://www.ascentcycling.net/ Bike to Work Day June 22 https://coloradosprings.gov/bikes/page/annual-biking-events Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort http://bicycleresort.com Colorado High School Cycling League https://coloradomtb.org/ Colorado Springs Cycling Club https://www.bikesprings.org/ Criterium Bicycles https://www.criterium.com/ Kids on Bikes Colorado Springs https://kidsonbikes.net/ The Pikes Peak APEX 4 Stage MTB Challenge sponsored by RockShox https://www.pikespeakapex.com/ Routes Outfitter https://routesoutfitter.com/ SRAM https://www.sram.com/en/sram SRAM Careers https://www.sram.com/en/company/careers Trails End Taproom Trailblazers https://www.trailsendtaproom.com/trailblazers Women's Mountain Biking Association of Colorado Springs (WMBA) https://www.wmbacos.org/ Special thanks to Studio 809 Podcasts Supporter and Community Partner, Springs Homes. And to supporter and partner, the MeadowGrass Music Festival 2022 Pedal the Springs is produced by the Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort, the only bicycle-themed lodging and must-stay for cyclists coming to Colorado. Check us out at https://www.bicycleresort.com for more information. Don't miss an episode. Follow on your favorite podcast app:
This week Craig and Randall continue the discussion on the considerations for Craig's custom gravel frame build. We dig into the history of Reach and Stack, the meaning of BB drop and how different materials afford different options and considerations for construction. Episode sponsor: Therabody RecoveryAir JetBoots Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: In the Dirt #29 [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to in the dirt from the gravel ride podcast. My name's Craig Dalton. I'm your host. And I'm going to be joined shortly by my cohost Randall Jacobs. In the, in the dirt episodes, Randall and I take an opportunity catch up on everything going on in gravel, cycling. Uh, Everything you need to know in between our long form interviews on the gravel ride podcast This week's broadcast is brought to you by thera body. You may remember thera body from the thera gun massage gun that really revolutionized recovery for gravel cyclists. But this week, we're here to talk to you about something completely next level. We're talking about their body's revolutionary new recovery air jet boots. If you're like me over the years, you've seen these pneumatic compression boots. Underneath pro cyclists after stages of the tour de france or big gravel events and i've always been curious what that experience would be like But every time I looked into them, they seemed not only expensive, but incredibly. Overbuilt, they're attached to sort of something that looked like a car battery. You had wires everywhere. It just seemed overly complicated. As you know, on the podcast, we've been talking about recovery quite a bit lately, and it's driven by my own personal need. I found as, as I get older as an athlete, I just can't recover as quickly. And I need to basically do everything I can to make sure my body's in tip top shape and able to get back out on the bike. So it was super curious when therapy body came out with the recovery air jet boots. It's quite a bit more affordable than the original pneumatic compression boots that were out on the market And in a form factor that can't be beat. Recovery, our jet boots of the world's most advanced pneumatic compression system ever created. For years runners and gravel, cyclists, and everyone who spends hours on their feet. Have had to suffer through leg pains and aches after a hard day. Clinically proven treatments like the compression boots per athletes have always been using, have always been out of reach. Recovery era is a groundbreaking pressure massage system for everybody. Anywhere. With their body's exclusive fast flush technology, recovery air flushes out metabolic waste more fully, and brings back fresh blood to your legs. Three times faster than the speed of competition. Faster cycles means faster recovery. So you don't have to wait for the legs to feel great. There are bodies. Recovery are jet boots are first of its kind. They're truly wireless for anywhere on the go recovery boosting circulation and radically reducing muscle soreness. And thanks to recovery are super intuitive, easy to use one touch controls. Recovering faster as .a breeze. I had a couple of recovery sessions with the jet boots already. And I'm trying to figure out what's the right way to describe it to the listener. You've got an individual boot on each leg that goes all the way up to your upper thigh. As the pneumatic air moves through each boot, you feel your leg kind of compressed tightly, like a nice massage. As it rolls through a process you can set through multiple time sessions, how long you want to be in the product, how long you have for recovery. But I got out of it after a 20 minute session and the legs felt good. So I'm looking forward to doing more punishing rides coming back and getting these jet boots on my body. To find out more, just visit thera body.com/the gravel ride. You can get thera body recovery air today starting at just $699. Or as low as $59 a month with a firm. Plus with recovery, our 60 day money back guarantee and free shipping. There's absolutely no risk to giving it a try at home. Again, that's their body.com/the gravel ride. Would that business out of the way, let's jump into this week's episode [00:03:46] Craig: Hey Randall, how you doing? [00:03:49] Randall: Well, a little bit under the weather here in Boston, but hopefully we'll be recovered before I head out your way in a couple of days. Are you? [00:03:57] Craig: to see you got to get over this cold. [00:03:59] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually hoping to see a lot of or at least a few of our listeners as well. We got Seattle coming up. [00:04:07] Craig: Yeah, that's a good place to start. Yeah, so we're, we're getting we're both of us are going to be at Seattle this year, which is exciting. I think we did sea Otter together two years ago. That's on, [00:04:16] Randall: Two or three years ago. Yeah. Whenever you know, and that, that, that innocent pre COVID era [00:04:23] Craig: That's [00:04:23] Randall: when I was still living in the bay area. [00:04:26] Craig: For the listener that may not be in the region or may not have heard of seawater. It's actually an event that's been going on in the Monterey bay peninsula area since 1991 mountain bike started out at because a mountain bike festival had added on road racing criteriums. They had a cyclocross race at one point observed trials. Like you name it. If it's done on two wheels, they've been doing it at the sea Otter classic for you. [00:04:53] Randall: it's also, become I believe the, the most important trade show in north America with the, you know, with the folding of the M oh, Interbike. Yeah. And in fact I've always felt that it was a much more enjoyable experience than Interbike because you have this kind of festival environment. So people are there. You have general audience general riders who were there to participate in the events and to, you know, meet up with each other and to walk around and see the booze and so much more you know, rider friendly and so on. So I'm excited to get out there. it's been a long time. [00:05:23] Craig: it's also really interesting to me to see the merging of all the different cycling cultures, because you've got a big downhill contingent and dual slalom contingent with their slam seats and 10 inch travel bikes and full face helmets. And then you've got like the Legion criterium squad rolling around doing the CRA you know, the circuit. [00:05:44] Randall: Yeah. and I, I'm not sure. I would imagine the, the UCI cross-country race is still going on there. That was the only time I ever lied up at a, at a UCI level race, which was a cool experience. So you get to see some of the international level pros. [00:05:58] Craig: Yep. Yeah. And it's it's right at the Laguna Saker Raceway. So it, some of the, I think a lot of the courses finish on the car racing, motorcycle racing track, which is kind of a cool. [00:06:09] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:06:10] Craig: Yeah. And this year they've added this is the kickoff of the lifetime grand Prix, which is a six or eight race series with a $250,000 prize. So I know a lot of professional athletes are sort of jazzed and keying in on this, and it's a, don't need to get into the series and I'll get someone from lifetime on to talk about it. If you haven't heard about it already. But what's interesting to me is they're doing mountain bike racing and gravel racing as part of the same series. So it's really, I, in my mind, ideally pushing athletes to have capabilities in both domains. [00:06:45] Randall: I mean, there does seem to be a very natural kind of merging of these two disciplines in that gravel bikes have gotten evermore capable. And cross-country bikes have actually gotten radically more capable to we've transitioned to down country. Cross country courses have gotten more technical. And so, you know, everything is kind of shifting a little bit. I certainly love the, the Mo the underbite mountain bike experience on the gravel bike. [00:07:07] Craig: they haven't made this rule, but I would kind of love it if they force the athletes to race one bike. So pick your poison, gravel bike on the CrossCountry courses, cross country bike on the gravel courses. You got to decide at the beginning of the season. [00:07:22] Randall: I mean, honestly, I remember I've done seawater twice and I remember one year they had the long course and on the long course, it was only one section that I recall. Even really requiring suspension. And so if I had had a gravel bike at the time, I probably would have crushed it. Everyone was riding flat bar, you know, suspended mountain bikes. And there was this one kind of breaking bump challengers section that I recall. And then the other year they had it such that it went through Laguna Saika like five or six times. They were trying to make it very spectator friendly. And in that case even more so, cause there's just, you know, you're spending so much time on the road that whatever time you lose on that, Slightly Chandra resection. You're more than making up for. [00:08:04] Craig: Yeah, that might've been my jam as well. Cause my Achilles heel was always climbing. I could never climb with the best of them. I'm a decent descender. So yeah, the gravel bike probably would have helped me stay closer to the front of those races. [00:08:16] Randall: so, and you're going to be doing the, the NV sponsored gravel ride on Saturday, right? [00:08:21] Craig: Yeah on Saturday. Yeah. So there's a couple for anybody in attendance. There's a few gravel like casual gravel rides, and there's also a gravel event on Sunday. So definitely bring your bike and enjoy some of that gravel. [00:08:36] Randall: So let's talk about the event that we're getting together. [00:08:39] Craig: Yeah. So we're excited. Yeah. We're going to get together the ridership community and the gravel ride podcast community and the thesis by community, along with our friends over at scratch. So scratch has got a booth and we'll get we'll. We're meeting up over there at 3:00 PM on Saturday, April 9th. [00:08:57] Randall: We'll probably be hanging out there for awhile. So if you can't get there right at three definitely stop by later the day, but we'll have some, some beverages, some music we'll have some special guests, a few athletes. The famed rice cake maker Allen Lim he was on the podcast before, [00:09:11] Craig: That's right. Dr. Alan Lamb, one of his threads of fame is rice cake cooker. [00:09:16] Randall: I think he also has been involved in training some, some elite athletes and he might've started scratch as well, but definitely rice cake makers probably is his biggest claim to fame there. And then we'll have a raffle and an exciting product line. Which I'll just leave it at that. At this point. Anyone who's in the ridership will probably know what I'm talking about here. Cause I've dropped a few hints there. But it'll be really excited to get the, do the first pre-launch reveal of this new line that we've been working on for some time. [00:09:42] Craig: Yeah, I'm excited for you to talk about that publicly as someone who's sort of been in the background, just hearing whispers of what you're doing, and then starting to hear more specifics from you directly. It's super exciting. And like, I appreciate how much you put into the space and how. I thought you put into these products that you bring to the world. [00:10:01] Randall: Thanks bud. Yeah. and I definitely feel grateful to have kind of the one, like the supportive a community. They provided an immense amount of very useful feedback in, in the development and validation process. And then also just really great team and business partners. And so on that we've been co-developing this with so more on this in future episodes. We'll do a one-on-one episode where we nerd out about how things are developed. But Yeah. come visit us at three o'clock on Saturday at the scratch labs with [00:10:29] Craig: Super excited to run into any listeners and ridership members out there really like it's I feel like it's been a long time coming for us to do a little get together and hopefully if trends continue, we can start doing some of the ridership group rides around the world. [00:10:44] Randall: Exactly. Yeah I'll be starting some in the new England area and I'm looking forward to flying out again to the bay area, to do a big event with you. Maybe sometime. [00:10:53] Craig: Yeah, that [00:10:53] Randall: Right around Mount mountain, where we used to ride together so much. [00:10:56] Craig: A hundred percent. So the last episode in the dirt, we were talking very specifically about a new custom bike project that I've been working on for the listener. Just to bring you up to speed. I got to fit in January and it's just started to highlight some of the things. Some of the challenges I've been having with my boss. In riding the bike, and this is not something new I've I sort of experienced this early on in my cycling career. And at one point I had a custom Brent Steelman road bike made for me. He's a pretty storied Northern California builder, probably best known for his cyclocross work. But anyway, I had the custom bike experience, but it was, it was kind of. At that time, the one thing that nagged me and I realize now that this is sort of not the right way to even be thinking about this particular problem, but every road bike I ever got in front of what's a 56, 56. So 56 CT of 56, top two. And the one thing that felt to me like it didn't fit well. Was that 56 top tube. So I said, Do whatever you want. I just want a 55 centimeter talked to, and it did solve the problem to a degree, but it wasn't really the solution to the problem, but it did feel amazing to get on that bike for the first time. [00:12:12] Randall: When you also kind of hearkening back to the days when, when we talked about, you know, seat tubes and top tubes as a primary you know, driver of, of frame fit, because they were always coming in at roughly the same angles versus nowadays they're coming in at all different sorts of angles with compact geos and so on. So, but the gist of like your bike was too long, you're, you're a pretty leggy guy. [00:12:34] Craig: So that's, that's really interesting. You say that. So was it not, not the fact that I'm a lucky guy and thanks for noticing that, but more about the sort of, are you saying the story of that geometry back in that era or where the tubes were coming in there just wasn't a lot of variability. So the concepts of stack and reach weren't necessarily in bike design for an Acular. [00:12:56] Randall: Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So you'd generally the top tube would be, you know, relatively. And then, you know, at some point you started seeing more compact geos where that top tube is sloped and that had various various benefits in terms of stand over height and you know, potentially, you know, frame stiffness and so on. But it also meant that, you know, your seat tube and your top tube were not really particularly good proxies for how the bike would fit. And so we need a new proxy and that's where stacking reach came into play. [00:13:22] Craig: Okay. Yeah. And I mean, you can imagine like, obviously like with mountain bikes, having super slipping top tubes and all kinds of things like that, but stacking reach, like you had to come up with some sort of measurement that people could hang their hat on. [00:13:35] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So with the bike that, where we've designed for you now, I mean, you have, remind me you're just 5, 9, 5, 10. [00:13:44] Craig: Yeah. Just five, nine and a half. [00:13:46] Randall: Five nine and a half, and I'm five 11 and you and I run the same satellite and I run a pretty high and forward satellite too. And so you were on the medium our, our medium, I ride our, our large OB one. And one of the things that you, that, you know, I always noticed with you is you always had your, your stem. As high as possible and flipped upward and so on. And so this new build is going to really address, you know, first and foremost is stack issues. You've won a higher bar for some time. [00:14:13] Craig: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that, that was the most sort of visceral. The thing I had after this fit. And it's something that was very, it was known to me and my body. Like I've, I've lost flexibility. I never had a ton of flexibility. And the fitter said, well, you've, you know, the position of your saddle height versus your bar height is that of a pro tour road cyclist. And I had this like, The eight millimeter drop or something, and he's like, we really want to get you more around four. So it was, it was interesting. And I encourage people to go back to episode 28, if you're interested. And I don't purport to believe that you care about my personal fit, but I'm trying to eat this out with Randall and both these two episodes, just to give the listener something to think about as they go forward in their cycling career, because there's, there's tons of things you can do around your existing bike to modify them. I came to some limitations because I'd already configured my thesis. I'd already cut the steer to buy the fork. I couldn't bring the bars up any further unless I had an obnoxious, jacked up stem. So I came to the conclusion. Hey, given this opportunity, why don't we, why don't I look at fabricating a bike specific to my needs? So we had episode 28, which is the last in the dirt episode, and we talked a little bit about bike geo calculator, and it was pretty easy. Like it's a great tool. And I saw lines where the new frame would be an and I looked at that, that stack height and the higher head tube, and I was like, great, this is going to fit. But then as we worked with the building, And got into CAD. There was all these things that have just taken a lot of time to muddle through. And part of it is fabricating with metal versus carbon. Part of it is like things that, all things aren't equal. You really have to think about what, what is your north star in the fit and work around that versus what is any particular tube length or dimension? [00:16:12] Randall: And then you have parts availability, right? So you want to achieve something, but the, you can't find a part that allows you to achieve it, even though it exists, it doesn't exist in the timeframe that you need it. [00:16:22] Craig: Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. So I mean, a couple of the areas we've been keying in on, I mentioned, I think in the last episode, like I had this desire to be able to accommodate as big attire as possible. But then when, when you talk about the practicality of welding, the rear end, all of a sudden, a bunch of things come into play because you can have a really long stay to accommodate that. But I didn't really want a really long stay. I've been pretty darn comfortable on my last two bikes with a 420 20 millimeter seat stay. And like the idea of going out to 4 45 or something like that, just didn't sit well with me. [00:17:01] Randall: Yeah. For 20 chains day and yeah, and it just makes it so that the, the front end doesn't want to come up as much. It, you know, it slows the handling. It's a longer wheel base. But you know, it's appropriate to go. It can be appropriate to go longer for more of a dirt focus machine versus a, a, a one bike that is also being asked to be a spirited road bike. That's kind of the direction that we went with this thing. [00:17:23] Craig: Yeah, I think that's a great point. Like there comes a decision point in any gravel cyclist's life when you're purchasing a new book. To just think about like, where do you fall on that spectrum? And when I look at the writing, when I look at what I was conceiving of with my thesis, it's like, I want something that's Zippy on the road and super capable off-road, but can kind of slot that ground between. But the reality is, you know, my writing is 95% off road. [00:17:52] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you already have a thesis that you're you've. So this isn't adding to your stable. [00:17:59] Craig: Exactly the thesis isn't going anywhere. So while this bike may, the new bike may rarely get road tires on it. The thesis will have both road. And I still think that thesis is an amazing, like race, bike, and it's been so good for me. It's so capable. I'm excited to have, I mean, it's just an absolute luxury to be able to have two bikes and like in the garage, [00:18:19] Randall: Yeah. but the, the added capability of this new machine is, is definitely going to be you know, meaningful like that extra tire clearance. So maybe we start there. So this tire clearance for like full tire clearance. So at least six millimeters all around for 60, 50 by two points. Front and rear, and you could probably squeeze something a little bit bigger upfront. We were fortunate in that we were able to find a fork that had the offset that we wanted specifically. We reached out to dry broom and over it open cycle and he had some U-turn forks kicking around. So that's a 50 mil offset and also a 3 95 axle, the crown. So just throwing numbers out there. What does this mean, Zack? So the CR offset is. Basically the distance from the axle from the, the line that goes through the steer tube. So it's going to be offset, you know, the axle is offset forward from that, and more offset is going to make the steering more responsive, but it's also going to increase your, your front center, the bottom bracket to the front axle to reduce risk of total. And that was, that was a concern, given that your you're wanting a shorter bike, that's fitting bigger 700 seat tires. [00:19:32] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. And it also, so that does wheelbase come into play with those dimensions as well? The overall wheel base. [00:19:38] Randall: Absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, the, the well, so with the offset, so we had the increased offset which. With the same head angle, as you increase offset, it's going to decrease trail and you know, the, the less trail you have, the snappier, the handling is that in turn allowed us to slack it out the head angle a little bit without radically slowing down the handling. So we went from a 72 degree head angle on your thesis, which is more of a, like an endurance road in a more kind of racy. Gravel front-end to a 71.2, which is still actually on the sportier side especially for this new class of gravel bikes that have seemingly gone towards, you know, even slacker even longer. And overall we got the, the front center up, you know, 18 millimeters. And so those. Taller 700 C tires that you might run are not going to be an, an issue for you in terms of tow overlap. You're also going with 2.5 millimeter shorter cranks, which helps as well. And that, that opened up another opportunity with the bottom bracket height. [00:20:42] Craig: Yeah. So before we get into BB height, you know, it was interesting. Really digging into the forks situation. Again, a lot of times you're bike. Well, all the time your bike comes with a fork and you don't really think about all these things, but once we were looking at, Hey, what fork partner can we bring into the mix? All of a sudden, a lot of variables came into play in terms of like the rake of the bike or the rank of the fork, like all of these different things. We started having to consider. And what was the effect on tau overlap? What was the effect on like what ties size tire are they designed on accommodating? So is it really like, I don't know, a sink of like a week to figure out a, what do we want? And B who actually manufacturers a fork that has those correct dementia. [00:21:29] Randall: And that we can get in a reasonable timeframe. [00:21:31] Craig: yeah. And then to, to further that, you know, everybody knows I'm suspension curious, I've got one bike in the garage right now with the front suspension fork on it, from my friends at RockShox. And I do imagine playing around with that, on this bike, but as we've spoken about previously, probably in an, in the dirt episode, and certainly when I dug into it with our friends at rock shock and Schramm, you know, if you put one of these suspension forks on the bike, it's going to bring the entire bike up because that 30 to 40 millimeters of travel has got to come from somewhere. So we had to think through, okay, if we have a 3 95 axle, the crown length of the rigid. What happens when that's four 20. [00:22:14] Randall: Yeah. Or 4 25 in the case of the RockShox fork. And then they have two different offsets. And what we came to is, well, You know, that 30 millimeter of difference means that your front end is going to come up. Right. And so to get the same exact position, you'd have to, you know, shift your saddle forward and you would have to, you know, adjust your stem height and so on. Or you could just make it so that you know, your, your position. In with the rigid fork is a little bit more aggressive. And then you're just, you know, allowing that, that slightly more you know, lean back position, slightly more upright position when you have the fork and in terms of the handling characteristics and so on, they actually change the position. Characteristics change in a way that is appropriate for a bike, with the added capability of a short travel suspension fork. And so it's, it's kind of, you know, not really a problem. And we ha we don't have a, an adjustable suspension, sorry. We don't have an adjustable geometry with that rigid fork, which is something I'm a big fan of, but we're getting adjustable geo with the swapping of the forks in your case. And we designed accordingly. [00:23:20] Craig: Yeah, it's super interesting. And going back to my conversation with Chris Mandel from SRE. He said the same thing. Like it was, it was really early on. They had literally just launched that FOC that fork. And I was able to spend some time on it before the launch. And he said, you know, I put this on a bike that wasn't specifically geo corrected, but I felt like it was okay. He's like I've spent months and months and months on this thing. And it just modified the geometry in a way that made sense for the new way that I was going to be riding the bike with a suspension for. [00:23:52] Randall: Yeah. And you know, you, it is useful if you're considering adding a suspension fork to your existing bike, to say, throw it, throw it in a tool like bike geo calc. So take your current geometry for your bike and put it into that, that tool and then set the settings so that the frame rotates when you change the axle, the crown and it'll tell you how the other parameters change and that can also inf not only inform you in terms of how. How the geo would change, but then also how the handling might change, which would help you decide, say what fork offset you want, because you know, RockShox offers two different offsets on those forks. [00:24:27] Craig: Yep. Yeah. And I'll have plenty of room on the steer tube, as well as the ability to flip my stem, to make adjustments accommodating that, to get the position. Right. And again, just make, make that, that Delta between 3 95 and 4 25. Feel the slider than it actually is. [00:24:48] Randall: Well, and it's, it's small enough where I do think that it's quite likely that you can get a slightly more aggressive, but still upright position with a rigid fork and then a slightly less aggressive, more upright position with the suspension fork that, you know, feels good in both of those different applications and feels appropriate for those. So I don't suspect that you're going it's. I don't think it's highly likely that you're going to need to move around much. And this actually gets into a conversation I'm looking forward to having with Lee McCormick at some point when we bring them on the podcast, which is, you know, talking about how, you know, we've talked about stack and reach and how these are really important measurements for determining fit. But it in turn in as a rider, like the big thing that matters is like the distance from your crank spindle to where your hand. And then you have an, you know, an anchor, so that high pot news between, you know, the, the stack figure to the grips and the reach figure to the grips, the high pot news is actually the, the, the pure number. And then the angle associated with that that high pot news. But that, that the length of that hypotony is actually shouldn't change from bike to bike. So whether it's a road bike or a mountain biker, so on, it should be consistent. And then it's the angle of that that. From bike to bike. And so if you think about, you know, the front end coming up well, that, that, that distance is staying the same. It's just the angle. That's increasing a little bit. [00:26:08] Craig: Right. Yep. Yeah. A hundred percent. You know, I love, I love most of my bikes are set up identically, so that basically, if I have my eyes closed, I know exactly where to fall and hit the bar. And it's so great that my like mountain bike and rode by can feel like that same position. [00:26:25] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. And even better, if you can get, say the same crank lengths on the bikes, the same, you know, pedal positioning, you know, stance in the, like on the bikes. [00:26:35] Craig: Yeah. I'm sure I'm a little bit a field from that, but this is the most bike geekery by the way that I've ever gone through. And it's, I mean, part of it's been driving me mad cause I really want to consummate this Ram and say the design's done. And I do think like if, if we're not at the finish line today, we're in the, we're in the final sprint, we've seen the and where we're coming to the finish line. Thank God. But a couple of other things I wanted to just quiz you on before we get to that point. So there was also the question about BB drop and it was another one that was like BB drop. I've never thought about that. Just allowed the frame of the production frame, builder to think about that. But now that we have to consider it and we could do whatever we wanted, let's talk about the movement on that. And what's the rationale and just, what's the takeaway for the listener at Ron BB drop. [00:27:28] Randall: Yeah. So Bebe, you can think of BB drop as you have the, the vertical distance between the height of the axles and the height of the bottom bracket. The center of the bottom bracket spindle. So the bottom bracket spindle is going to be below the two axles, right? And the greater the more below the two axles it is you know, ceteris paribus, the more stable the bike is going to be the more sitting into the bike. You're going to be. [00:27:54] Craig: to sort of visualize that if I'm, if I'm sort of the listener and I'm thinking about my bike, I've got my two axles on my wheels. And I'm thinking about how far below that axle line, the bottom bracket sits. [00:28:06] Randall: Exactly. Exactly. And So, with like old schools, cyclocross geometries, the bottom, the BB drop tended to be pretty high, you know, 65 versus a, you know, your thesis will be one to 73. And your OB one only accommodates up to a 700 by 40 tire, but it's really optimized around 700 by 30 and 60 50 by 47, which is like a 700 by 28. And so, you know, it's, there's, it's you get more stability, but there's greater risk of pedal strikes as you drop the baby. Now with your new bike, you know, we started with your, your thesis as like a starting point. Cause he really liked that geometry and we saw, well, you're going to be optimizing this bike for running with bigger and thus taller tires, a bigger radius from the center of the, the axle to the outside of the tire. And so you can you can drop the BB further and get that added stability without increasing risk of pedal strikes. And in fact we also went with a 2.5 millimeters shorter crank. And so you're actually going to have more clearance above the ground with those bigger tires, even though we dropped the BB down to improve stability. So you know, that that was kind of a very natural thing. And you see this trend in general on this newer slate of gravel bikes that are being optimized for higher volume 700 tires versus the more one bike type bikes like the thesis or the the Sabelo Sparrow. That are designed to be used effectively with road, you know, seven up to 700 by 30, which is, you know, a smaller radius [00:29:37] Craig: So, does it feel like you're sort of sitting more in the bike when you have more BB drop? [00:29:42] Randall: exactly. Versus on top of it. [00:29:44] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. And I, you were saying about cyclocross bikes having a 65 millimeter drop, presumably that's because they're doing a lot of things that require clearance, bunny hopping barriers and things like that. [00:29:57] Randall: Yeah. Concerns about, you know, pedal strikes, essentially as they're going over different obstacles though, even those bikes with the advent of gravel, you've seen those bottom brackets come down because there's no reason. I mean, I would argue there's no reason to have a dedicated cyclocross bike, unless you're, I mean, even if you're an elite cyclocross athlete, you can still ride on take this specialized crux as an example, that bike fits six 50 by 40. Right. So it's not constrained to the 700 by what, 33, that the UCI maxes out cyclocross tires for. So even that bike is, is, is really a gravel bike that, that people are, are using in that discipline. So it doesn't need a dedicated bike anymore. So those are the days of high bottom brackets is have thankfully gone away [00:30:45] Craig: Yeah, I think that makes sense. Yep. Certainly no reason for the average athlete to own a dedicated cyclocross bike. If you've got a gravel bike in the closet, [00:30:53] Randall: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. [00:30:55] Craig: the other thing we had to consider was just cable routing as well. And again, this is like, Maybe on a carbon bike, you make a couple ports and you know how to seal them pretty easily. And if you use them, you use them. If you don't, you don't. But when you're talking about a metal bike, all of a sudden you you've got okay, either I'm going to externally route everything, which I don't like the look of, and that seems old school, or I'm going to actually have to drill and sort of weld holes into various parts of the frame. And that was again, Another consideration. Well, what, what am I going to do? Am I going to commit to wireless? Which is like a very viable option these days? Or am I going to get, you know, have four different ports drilled into this frame? And I opted to go the wireless route. [00:31:44] Randall: Yeah. And I think that that was a smart way to go. The, you know, especially if you're already going the, you already kind of, unless you're going to do external cabling, internal cabling on say like a steel or titanium bike. Is going to be such that, like, you're going to have some sharp angles going through the frame, especially, you know, where that down tube is meeting the bottom bracket shell, you know, you don't have these big, these big tubes and these big open spaces, like you can mold into a carbon frame. And so there's going to be sharp angles. There's going to be sharp surfaces that need to be machined. It's just harder to do. It's really hard to do good, clean mechanical routing internally through a metal frame, unless it's say something like a specialized, smart weld aluminum frame where they're hydro-forming those, those tubes to get a more carbon shape. [00:32:35] Craig: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And when you consider adding in, which was a necessity for me, a dropper post yet another whole, yet more routing. So yeah, I'm committing to going full wireless, including the dropper. On this bike. So I'll, I'll just have the rear brake cable routed through the frame and that's it. [00:32:54] Randall: Yeah. I think too, that's going to, I mean, given that this is your adventure bike it's just that much less to deal with as well when you're taking the bike apart to throw in your case to bring on a plane. So I think that wireless can make sense. Just bring an extra battery. [00:33:09] Craig: Yeah, a hundred percent. My my contact at SRAM, I went riding with him on Tam gosh, probably four or five months ago at this point. And his battery ran out, but he keeps a spare in his seat bag. [00:33:23] Randall: Yeah. And if you're going with a one by set up too, like you have those two coin cells, which are very lightweight and the leavers. So if one of them dies, he still got the other one. You could swap it over. [00:33:32] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. The cool thing about their RockShox C posts is that you can steal the battery pack from there and use it in your derailer if you need to, because they're all, they're all changeable not to, not to have [00:33:44] Randall: they have to make, well, then you have to make the difficult decision of like, do I care about gearing or the dropper post more? I guess it depends on the terrain. There are some cases where I would, I would sacrifice the derail, your battery to keep the dropper post going. [00:33:57] Craig: Yeah. who knows if I was at the top of Tam, you know, if I was riding up, switch the battery to have gears on the way up and then switch it to the dropper on the way to. [00:34:06] Randall: Yeah. [00:34:09] Craig: I love it. You just made me think about, I literally just packed my thesis in my post carry bag for an air flight tomorrow. And there's always a little bit of Jenga with the cables to kind of move everything around and get it in their bag. So well-designed and fortunately with my these medium thesis, I can just slam the seat. I don't even have to take the seed out and get it all in that bag. Hopefully continue to allude all airline fee. [00:34:36] Randall: Excellent. I'm [00:34:38] Craig: you for walking me. Yeah, no, I think we've covered a good deal about the frame between this episode and the last episode. And again, I hope this conversation gives you a little bit of inside baseball about how frames are designed. If. Looking to get accustomed frame done. It's important to have a builder who's willing to work with you. And in my case, just being someone who's just not in the weeds on all these minute dimensions and angles, just someone who's patient and will walk you through what needs to be done. I'm lucky to have both the builder and Randall to help me out. [00:35:13] Randall: Yeah, it's it definitely you know, the value of working with a good bow builder in, in significant part comes on the front end and really trying to dial exactly what you want and, And you know, having that output down the other end. So. [00:35:28] Craig: as I, as I think about your journey with thesis and the idea of designing, was it five frame sizes? [00:35:35] Randall: Well, so in our case, we went with we went with an open, we went with an open mold frame and then made modifications from there. So we use the existing tooling. So we were fortunate to be able to find a frame with, you know, the vast majority of the features we wanted and the exact geometry we wanted. And then we added the features and reinforcements from there. So with the next gen frame beginning development of this is this is a ways out that'll be a full ground up exercise. [00:36:03] Craig: Yeah. it's just, I imagine it's so challenging to sort of figure out the sizes. Obviously you're matching what the market trends are in terms of how the bikes are performing and what they're intended for, but just like the basics around stack and reach to try to find those sweet spots, to make sure with the limited amount of customability customizability, I E you know, you're stem lab. The your stack above the head tube making that fit as many people as possible. It's just seems to be a challenge. [00:36:35] Randall: Yeah, And it's, it's even more so with a material like carbon where you're, you know, essentially you're, you're creating these molds that are quite expensive. And then that's set in stone. If you want to evolve your metal, a tube to tube constructed frames, geometry over time. You know that that's it. You just change the jig and you change the mitering specifications and you're good to go. Carbon it's a whole new tool, so you better get it right out the gate. [00:37:01] Craig: so true. Well, thanks for all the time, my friend, this coming weekend, hopefully I know I'll be seeing you and hopefully we'll be seeing a bunch of listeners over there at at [00:37:11] Randall: sea Otter three o'clock on Saturday at the scratch labs booth. [00:37:15] Craig: Yeah, we'll see you there. [00:37:17] Randall: All right. Hope to see some folks there. [00:37:19] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of in the dirt, from the gravel ride podcast. Thank you for spending a little bit of your week with us. If you're going to be at CR definitely come find us at the scratch labs booth at 3:00 PM on Saturday. Huge. Thanks to thera body for sponsoring this episode, please visit thera body.com/the gravel ride for that special offer around the recovery air.Jet boots. If you have any feedback for Randall or myself, feel free to visit us at the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. And if you're interested in supporting the podcast, please head over to buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels
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