Cycling Oklahoma
Ultra-Distance Cycling Adventures and Strategies with Dave Easley
Can cycling truly transform your life? Join us as we reconnect with Dave, an ultra cyclist whose awe-inspiring story of personal redemption through cycling continues to captivate. Dave shares his latest adventures in ultra-distance bikepacking and racing, offering insights and encouragement for anyone looking to undertake their own epic rides. From his strategic gear choices to overcoming grueling physical and environmental challenges, Dave’s journey is a testament to resilience and the unyielding spirit of adventure.
Ever wondered what it’s like to tackle ultra-distance events on a single-speed bike? Our guest, a college professor with a passion for single-speed cycling, reveals his fascinating approach to these demanding races. We explore the unique pros and cons of single-speed riding, from the forced rest intervals to the ease of maintenance. He takes us through his experiences on Oklahoma’s rolling gravel roads and Arkansas’s steep climbs, providing a colorful narrative of his cycling escapades and the lessons learned along the way.
Get ready to hear about the heart-pounding Kansas Cannonball 550 gravel race, where participants battle headwinds, scorching heat, and mental fatigue. We recount the grueling first day, the struggle with dehydration, and the mental fortitude required to push through. Our in-depth discussion also covers endurance racing strategies, recovery processes, and the unexpected challenges like dealing with ticks and trench foot. Whether you're a seasoned cyclist or new to the sport, this episode is packed with practical tips, humorous anecdotes, and plenty of inspiration to fuel your next adventure.
Instagram @dr.e.musictheory
@bikes.brews.bites.okc
Previous Episode - https://www.buzzsprout.com/1757465/8876815-bikes-brews-bites-okc-stephanie-dave.mp3?download=true
Can cycling truly transform your life? Join us as we reconnect with Dave, an ultra cyclist whose awe-inspiring story of personal redemption through cycling continues to captivate. Dave shares his latest adventures in ultra-distance bikepacking and racing, offering insights and encouragement for anyone looking to undertake their own epic rides. From his strategic gear choices to overcoming grueling physical and environmental challenges, Dave’s journey is a testament to resilience and the unyielding spirit of adventure.
Ever wondered what it’s like to tackle ultra-distance events on a single-speed bike? Our guest, a college professor with a passion for single-speed cycling, reveals his fascinating approach to these demanding races. We explore the unique pros and cons of single-speed riding, from the forced rest intervals to the ease of maintenance. He takes us through his experiences on Oklahoma’s rolling gravel roads and Arkansas’s steep climbs, providing a colorful narrative of his cycling escapades and the lessons learned along the way.
Get ready to hear about the heart-pounding Kansas Cannonball 550 gravel race, where participants battle headwinds, scorching heat, and mental fatigue. We recount the grueling first day, the struggle with dehydration, and the mental fortitude required to push through. Our in-depth discussion also covers endurance racing strategies, recovery processes, and the unexpected challenges like dealing with ticks and trench foot. Whether you're a seasoned cyclist or new to the sport, this episode is packed with practical tips, humorous anecdotes, and plenty of inspiration to fuel your next adventure.
Instagram @dr.e.musictheory
@bikes.brews.bites.okc
Previous Episode - https://www.buzzsprout.com/1757465/8876815-bikes-brews-bites-okc-stephanie-dave.mp3?download=true
What is up? Cycling Oklahoma and welcome back from a, I guess, a decent break. Uh just been doing lots of things lately and uh had to put something on the back burner and so we took a little bit of a early summer break from the podcast. But when I say we have several recorded, it has been an amazing, uh goodness two weeks of recording episodes. So we have four or five of them already in the bank ready to roll. So we won't be having any more breaks anytime soon.
Speaker 1:So I am so thankful for everyone who sat down with me over the past week or so to get these episodes recorded and set up to get everybody through the summer. So things are hot in Oklahoma right now and getting hotter, but I think people are starting to eyeball the fall and winter season of gravel and cyclocross and mountain bike and all the fun things that revolve around the dirt. Crit season is behind us at this point for the most part and, um, I think it was very successful and a great year for for most of the people in Oklahoma. I think, uh, tulsa tough went off without a hitch and a lot of the people in Oklahoma I think Tulsa Tough went off without a hitch and a lot of people shared amazing stories. So that was wonderful and it's so good to see that and see that cycling and racing in Oklahoma is alive and well. So, as you go through the summer travel schedule and vacations and long bike rides, thanks for taking us with you and if you have anybody that would like to be on here, please let me know. Or if you would like to be on here, please let me know. We have many, many more episodes to record and I would love to share your stories. So thanks again. So much for tuning in.
Speaker 1:This one does not disappoint. It's a little different than what we've done in the past. Normally we get to know somebody from scratch and from somebody we haven't talked to and we get their whole story. But this one is someone who we've had on the episode before. Dave has has been with us. He was one of my early episodes and I will put Dave's full episode in the show notes. So if you want to go back and listen to that, to get a little bit of history on Dave how we got into cycling and and what cycling means to him You'll hear in this episode he talks about how cycling saved his life. Um, and he gets into that a little bit more in our previous episode. So I highly recommend, if you have not listened to that, go back and listen to Dave's previous episode, because I think it'll give you a lot of understanding and light, uh enlightenment into his journey over these uh incredible adventures that he goes on.
Speaker 1:Dave's an ultra cyclist here in Oklahoma and man, he does some wild stuff and I've been following along and watching his races and events that he's been doing over the past year and a half, two years. I mean, I follow him all the time but recently he's done some wild ones. So I wanted him to get on here and talk about some ultra bike packing, some ultra racing that he's been doing, and just share his experiences and maybe spark something in us to get out and do some adventures or push ourself. So your adventure may be, you know, 50 miles at rule of three or a 50 mile t-shirt ride or a 25 mile t-shirt ride. I know we just had some uh the East side ride here in Oklahoma city and some people's epic adventure was the 36 mile route. So whatever your epic adventure looks like, get out and make it happen and uh, and let Dave inspire you to try something outside of your comfort zone and try something new and wild. Uh, this is such a fun episode. I really really enjoy my time with Dave. I enjoy following his adventures and talking to him. He's an absolute incredible guy and, uh, I hope you enjoy this episode.
Speaker 1:And this episode is brought to you by more overhead door. They are back as sponsors and have supported this podcast and what we're doing here for the past couple of years and I cannot think more overhead door enough. They are a great group of guys that, uh, that are cyclists and they are supporting cycling Oklahoma. They are supporting events around Oklahoma, uh, putting their money where their mouth is and they show up to races. So, if anything happens to your garage door, if you're doing any summer remodels, if you're building a new house, if these hailstorms came through and beat your door, your door to pieces, call more overhead door, let them help you, let them give you a quote.
Speaker 1:I know several listeners have used more overhead door and have reached out and told me but make sure you let me know, make sure you let them know where you heard this, and I cannot thank them enough for their support. We have some really cool things that I'm working on and I know I say that often and I don't know if these will ever come through but because it's a big shot in the dark and a big dream, but because of supporters and sponsorship dollars by more overhead door and other companies that have shown interest, we're able to push the envelope and hopefully push uh cycling in Oklahoma to be a little bit bigger and a little bit better, and I want to thank More Overhead Door so much for their support. They're located in Moore, oklahoma. Phone number is 405-799-9214. 405-799-9214. Look them up on the Googles.
Speaker 1:But thank you guys so much for supporting us and I won't hold you back from listening to Dave. Dave is the epitome of going and playing bikes. Go out with your friends, go out with uh and meet new people, but just go out and play bikes, enjoy life and I hope you enjoy this episode. Thanks for coming back, thanks for listening and enjoy. All right, dave, this is going to be good because we did an episode Gosh, it's been two or so years ago, maybe longer, I don't even know.
Speaker 2:I'll put it in the shots.
Speaker 1:It's been quite a while. So if people want to hear your whole story, I'll put that in there and then go listen to it of how you got into all this craziness. Yeah, but you've been doing a lot of craziness since we last talked and so I wanted to. We were going, I wanted to do one with you last year, but then we didn't make it happen. This year you stepped it up and made it even crazier recently and so we when I saw your last adventure, I'm like, dude, we got to talk. Yeah, we got to, we got to share these stories for sure. So for people that don't know you, let's give them a quick rundown of kind of what you do for a living, like you're from, you know, kind of where you're from, that kind of thing, and just kind of get rolling from there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, uh, my Easley, I teach. I'm a college professor at Oklahoma City University. I teach music theory musician by training for years and years and years. We moved here for my job from Florida 13 years ago after I finished my PhD, so we've been in Oklahoma City ever since. I didn't start riding bikes, though, until about five or six years ago, which is wild, and I kind of just jumped headfirst into it. It was really kind of a pivotal moment in my life, and bikes came along at just the right time. So, um yeah, and I live here with stephanie, my wife, and and she's musician in the music and musician as well, rides bikes, it's perfect, perfect match, yeah, yeah
Speaker 1:it's a great, great place to ride bikes too and I know where to start with all your crazy crap, because there's so much of it and you, so let's talk about first off. Um, we, you brought up kansas cannonball. I don't know anything about this one, so what you can remember, this was last year, right? And then we'll get into what you've done in the spring and summer so far this year. So go over can't. Because for anybody that doesn't know you, you do ultra stuff and you do it on single speed.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Only single speed.
Speaker 2:Single speed for races. Yeah, do you have a geared bike? I do, yeah, I have a Surly Midnight Special.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And so it's kind of like an all road bike. I call it my road bike because it's the one with gears.
Speaker 1:Do you ever ride it? I do.
Speaker 2:I commute with that one ride it a lot for training, because I can I can shift right so I can make it harder, easier, except finding like single speed is actually a little easier than riding with gears. Really, yeah, yeah totally.
Speaker 1:Why do you? Why do? Because the people that are into single speed, that that's. That's the thing there's not like. Oh, I ride it sometimes. If you're a single speed person, you're a single speed person. What draws you to that bike?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean, I think it's, I mean part of it's, like I ride single speed I mean anybody who says this, not that it's like, yeah, but I mean beyond that, though, like it really is, um, you get forced rest. So I mean, if it's a flat terrain, absolutely not, like I would hate being on single speed, which I've done before for like 200 miles, and it sucks like your ass is just because you did that at the katie trail was one of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and um, but like you, if you have like climbs and stuff, you get forced rest Cause I'm on the descent. You could pedal, but there's no point. So I find that actually on a geared bike I get tired more quickly. Like my body kind of. So I train with that a little bit more.
Speaker 2:Interesting so like single speed for me is a little bit. It's a way of um kind of tamping down on trying to go too hard, too quickly and it like has that forced rest, like I said, and also to just like maintenance. It's easy, I mean it's it's, it's so much easier than a geared bike. I mean this is me speaking from the outside, never racing on a gear bike but, I, imagine like, if I ever do a bike packing trip with gears like everything's going to break.
Speaker 1:Cables are going to break. That's going to go wrong. How long did it take you to learn? Because I think the the thing that I always see, especially with the mountain bike world, is the the knowledge that these guys have for gearing to terrain is. It's impressive and it's from the outside looking in it's. It seems simple, but it's not simple. So how much did you play with that? How long did it take you to learn and figure out, like what gearing setups you needed to have for certain things? Did you play with that? How long did it take you to learn and figure out, like what gearing?
Speaker 2:setups you needed to have for certain things. I don't really think that happened until maybe the last year or two where I really, where I really had enough experience changing up the gear ratio enough to say you know, I think actually you know this 18 tooth cog because I'm running 16 like 650bs, like I think that's going to be good, rather than you know 19 or whatever like just getting that experience with um different tires, there are different wheel sets and um different terrains and whatnot, cause I used to only just ride.
Speaker 2:You know, oklahoma, you know so Oklahoma gravel like it's rollers, right. But then the first time that I rode in, you know, like Arkansas, it was like I think I need to change this a little bit and then it was like a kick in the teeth, like, oh yeah, I gotta, I gotta figure this out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, um, yeah, it took a while and then figuring out what kind of riding style. So, like the past year or so, I've opted for a little bit of an easier gearing, because what I found was, over the course of a couple of days, like I could go with, like you know, 42, 18 for you know hundreds of miles. But how are my legs going to be, you know, on that, you know second day or third day. So what I opted for is this past year is going a little bit easier on the gearing, um, just to kind of save my legs and, um, I don't know, I mean really like the terrain too, like if you can tell you're going to be climbing a lot, then that'll definitely affect it. If it's flat, like when I talk about kansas, like my gearing choice there sucked, but there's no way I could have known that it was gonna not be good.
Speaker 1:Right, so you base it off of what the hard part, or what you're gonna be doing the most of.
Speaker 2:I think so yeah, yeah, so yeah, if there's a lot of pavement, I'm probably gonna have a gearing that's a little bit stiffer, just because Cause if there's pavement, I'm going to be able to pedal more. Usually Do you do?
Speaker 1:you have you typically run like a higher cadence when you ride, or is it pretty stereotypical in that like 85, 95 range?
Speaker 2:That's about it, and I didn't know that until um, on my geared bike, I actually got like it's kind of funny, I got a power meter.
Speaker 1:It's like. It's like electronic shifting like shout out.
Speaker 2:Capital co-op Evan. Thank you for doing that. It. Capital Co-op Evan, thank you for doing that. But it's like I didn't know what my cadence was. It was I just always thought, oh, this is pretty comfortable or this is not comfortable, and so, like what I find on that on riding that bike is like it's 85 to 90. And so I try to aim for that as much as possible. You said you do have a power meter.
Speaker 1:Man, I didn't know, Not on the single speed, but on my geared bike. I never thought I'd hear you say that. I know it's for this purist of all purists I'm a data nerd too, though like I'm a music theorist.
Speaker 1:Music theorists are usually like big in the data, so like I have a spreadsheet with with all your stuff, all the rides, yeah, it's interesting to see though, you know, but um well, I wasn't gonna do a uh like a yard sale with you, but we are now because I want to know some of that stuff. So whenever I'd ever even thought about changing out with the tires and all the gearing and all that stuff, I mean you have to like really I guess it goes into the data stuff Like you really got to like play around with a lot of things and figure it out.
Speaker 1:Like is that part of what lures you into it? Like you enjoy that piece of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, especially with bikepacking in general, it's kind of the prep work. Like I really enjoy being out there but all the prep going into, you know, like Ozark, gravel, doom or whatever, like it was so much prep because there were so many variables to it. You could have weather, you could have like access to water, resupplies and being closed, like I love that aspect of planning for that part of the route but then also for the technical, like the bike stuff too. Like you know, it's looking like it's not going to rain. Do I really need to have these like dry bags with me? You know, maybe I have one, you know, in case there's that random rain shower.
Speaker 2:So, like that planning, you know, extending into the bike too, you know what tire size is. Whether I'm going to ride with the like 650Bs or 700s, you know know, because my bike is like the bad, I ride a flannel or you'll have flannel, and the bad thing about the 700s is that you can't really fit much more than like a, like a 50 on it, but 650 b's you could fit up to like 2.25 up front, 2.1 and back comfortably. So just messing around with all of that and I never, you know, it's like the confidence gradually came as I tinkered around with bikes more and feeling like okay with, yeah, I'm just gonna try this new tire, we'll see if I can get it seated again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the I hate that crap, yeah so yeah, that part of it like I really like the, the prep work and the planning stages for sure.
Speaker 1:so do you. Well, we'll get into some of your events. But do you like doing solo adventures or like with you and tanner or something like that, where it's just like, hey, we made this route, we're going to go do it, we're going to spend a couple of days out and it's going to be chill? Or do you like doing like structured events better?
Speaker 2:I like events for new places because there's a certain level of comfort of, you know, there are other people out here around Oklahoma I feel pretty confident and maybe, like you know, texas and Kansas too, where I've ridden quite a bit Like I feel pretty good about I could go out and do a multi-day ride on my own, you know, not being too like scared or whatever. But yeah, I do like events, though. Because of that, like I mean also meeting other people too, because I'm you know, I'm not like necessarily an extrovert, so like meeting other people is something that doesn't happen very often.
Speaker 1:It's a lot easier when you're all there to suffer together. Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's like that shared sense of community too and it's, it's awesome.
Speaker 1:So I mean I'd say, like I probably do, like structured events, the same group of people at all these events, cause it's a, it's a specific group of people that are willing to take something like this on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you'll have a lot of the same names that you'll see, like the single speed riders around the Midwest, like Arkansas and stuff. It's like you kind of get to know their names. But I think that you know it's more like a bigger variety of people are being drawn to some of the events. I mean the first one I did was the East Texas Showdown. The first year they had it and it was like 40 of us. But first year they had it and it was like 40 of us right, but now he has that and it's like hundreds of people.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's at least like 200.
Speaker 2:I mean it's like so, but they have like several different routes and it's awesome because it's really approachable for that Like. So I think that really, maybe that first event kind of got me in the mindset of oh yeah, bikepacking like it's kind of kind of cool. I mean, you come back at all different times, right, like who's going to be there when you finish. And he made it like. Patrick made a really like like dedicated. He had a like dedicated to making sure there was some kind of finale to it all. Gotcha, which isn't always possible.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know it's not as quite like tour divide but right, yeah, um so, all right, so let's jump into the kansas race. Okay, um, you says 500, 550 miles, 550 miles yeah, where was it?
Speaker 2:out in kansas so it's out of emporia. It's called the cannonball 550.
Speaker 1:They have several time of year is that?
Speaker 2:it's usually september it's like the maybe the last weekend in september, second to last weekend, something like that the weather's usually September.
Speaker 1:It's like maybe the last weekend in September second to last weekend something like that, so the weather's pretty solid. It can be, yeah, should be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they've had varied weather and they change up the route too, so I did the southeast route of that one. So, leaving Emporia down into almost Missouri, went into Oklahoma for a brief time. Some of the roads I had ridden before as a part of the osage xl, um, but most of them, though, were, were new roads, so the weather is usually pretty good, um, not too hot, but it can get pretty hot there, um, what was the other thing I was gonna say out of it, it's free, it's so. It's like totally like just old school, just like here's a facebook page like, we're gonna have a grand apart.
Speaker 2:Like, and the grand apart was basically just like all right, it's 7 15, let's go.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, like as grassroots as it could be.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it was great, and that's what drew me to it I think it started with about like 20 to 25 and the kansas scene. Like there are definitely some characters that are like always there, like I can't, I can't remember like all their names, but there was one single speed guy named Andy and he he rides everything in Kansas and, um, so a lot of the people there were kind of the standard bearers of of that gravel scene and everything.
Speaker 1:Um. Is this an event that has been happening for a few years?
Speaker 2:It has, I think it's maybe it's sixth or seventh year, it's something half a dozen years and it may even be older than that. Yeah, it was cool, it was tough. Was it a lot of climbing? In that there's not a lot of climbing, I mean it's rollers, so it's kind of like Oklahoma in a lot of ways, but the big variable there was the wind and the heat. On the first day. First day I mean I had headwinds for probably like the first 200 miles or so when people are mad that they gotta ride around lake hefner and it's windy on the dam like.
Speaker 1:Remember that you didn't have to ride in the wind for 200 miles yeah, nothing is that bad now.
Speaker 2:I mean yeah, I mean I was walking my bike on like flat ground, oh my gosh. So my gearing choice, that, and that's why I brought like it's like the gearing for that. I rode like 40 I think I had 42, 18, maybe even 42, 17 on 650bs with like 47 millimeter panoracer, gravel, king, semi-slick tires and, um, it was just too much. It was too much. My legs got shot. I got behind on hydration because I had some like bad water. It wasn't like bad water, but it tasted kind of funky Like. I got it from a gas station too, just one of their little water fountain things, and so I yeah, it was a bad.
Speaker 1:It was a bad first day, for sure man were you able to keep food down and stuff like that? No, I couldn't even eat.
Speaker 2:So I went South real fast and, um, like, did you have any thoughts of quitting at that point? I did, actually I was the first time I thought about dropping out of a race. And um, so I was sitting at a gas station and I just said you know, I'm going to sit here, and of course it was a Casey's Cause, that's all you get in Kansas. And so I sat there for like two hours just drinking as much fluids as I could, gradually trying to eat some food. Um, cause I was pretty bad off. And then so I made it like I don't know 60 more miles and I found this cheap, like no tell, motel and slept for like three hours and then I said you know, I'm just going to have a start over.
Speaker 1:And cause. At this point you're completely by yourself in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 2:Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, I mean with that so few people too. Everybody was pretty spread out.
Speaker 1:So mentally that would be very challenging.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like being by my being by yourself feeling terrible.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, that, that part and you're just like the whole package of that just doesn't. That sounds tough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. That was a rough day.
Speaker 1:So how far did you make it on that first day with feeling like this?
Speaker 2:I think I feel like I made it like 150, 160 miles or so that's a long ways feeling like that yeah. I mean, it didn't really sink in until maybe like mile 80 or so and having to walk on flat ground. Yeah, yeah. So it was a bad first day, but I woke up after a couple hours and got like two huge breakfast burritos from the gas station next door and then I just like pushed through until I finished. So it was like maybe like a 36, 40-hour push. After that Straight through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I fell asleep for like 10 minutes on the side of a Casey's the next morning, jeez, so you rode for what Probably like 25 hours, 30 hours on that next push straight, or was that? I think it was closer to like 36 hours 30 hours.
Speaker 2:That on that next push straight, or was that? I think it was closer to like 36 hours you did 36 hours push.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not total, not counting the first day yeah, so 36 to 40 hour push?
Speaker 2:yeah, wow, because I think I finished in like 60 hours or something like that unbelievable.
Speaker 1:How many people did you catch and pass on that push because you would have seen people after that?
Speaker 2:I did catch a few people, mostly, um, the following morning, like overnight into the following morning, is when I really started to catch people, and I mean, of course, by that point like a lot of people had dropped because the weather was just it was really hot too, like it was, it was bad um, so a lot of people had dropped because of that and other various reasons mechanicals, whatnot um, so it ended up then it was like there was one guy in front of me and I just saw his lead like kept increasing, but then I was like he's on gears, whatever.
Speaker 1:So do they have like a dot watching system for that? Yeah, I think okay we were either on track leaders or on matt my product, like whatever, when you're out in an event like that, how, how often do you look at that?
Speaker 2:I don't do it as much anymore and now I try to not look at it at all, um, cause it really can get in your head very quickly. Um, but I was at that point cause I was trying to see. You know, am I going to be able to catch him? Cause at that point he caught the tailwind and he had gears so he could fly, and I mean I could fly faster but I'm still somewhat limited, right, yeah, wow, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, in that event, darren Darren, doing like a 36 hour because the divide just finished and I saw well, I didn't see my brother sent it to me the guy that won slept for like three hours.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:I saw the entire thing, I mean he crushed the record, yeah. Because he never stopped that's. He crushed the record. Yeah, Because he never stopped, that's and. And that could be incorrect. That is the text. I was getting ready to look and see what my find my text from my brother. But someone can verify that and look that up and tell me yeah, Guy that won the tour divide slept three hours since Monday night and he sent me this yesterday. So that would have been so. Yeah, he slept three hours in like four days.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to make that final push.
Speaker 2:To make that final push. Yeah, that's pretty, that's pretty rough.
Speaker 1:Wild. That's hard and so because Tendam his had actual faster, like riding speed, but he stopped and slept every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, whenever you're planning and doing an event like this and actually in a race, not in an event like this and actually in a race, not by yourself how do you make that decision and what is that decision like after you commit to like I'm going to push for the next 36?
Speaker 2:hours. Yeah, I think the main decision is can I know that my I found my limit? Um, it was our gravel doom, and so I know that. You know I could probably make it 40 hours, mostly safely, without sleep, maybe even a little bit beyond that depending on the terrain. So really, you know it's figuring out when to sleep is also important If you know that you're going to have two nights of riding, like what I thought of when my goal with gravel do.
Speaker 2:I knew I was going to have to sleep on the first night because I just I knew I was going to take two full nights. So what I did is I wanted to sleep that night and then make it one big push, because one big push mentally is like okay, I know that I'm here and I need to get here, so I've gotten the sleep out of the way and now I can concentrate on okay, I have 40 miles to the next resupply, I have like 80 miles until I can actually get real food or whatever, and then I don't have to think about like starting a day over in there. So it's kind of like mentally, that's what works for me is just kind of keeping the eye on those points along the route.
Speaker 1:And that's how you break it up. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Do you start having hallucinations or anything like that? Oh yeah, At what point does that start happening?
Speaker 2:I mean, that happened like the probably like the second night of like gravel doom out of the three nights I was out there, okay so, and that I had slept the night before too. So I think it depends on like physical exhaustion too. Um, but man, I had some real big. You know where we talk about that?
Speaker 1:yeah, we'll talk about that in a second.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those hallucinations were messed up so what was the?
Speaker 1:I'm sure you don't remember the first time, or maybe you do, but whenever, early, early on, when you you got into this world, when you made a big push for the first time, you started having hallucinations, or this first couple of times where you just like I knew this was coming and I'm I'm okay with it. Or was it like I'm kind of scared, like I'm a little freaked out right now Cause I've never been so depleted that I've had hallucinations and I kind of don't ever want to? I mean, I kind of do, but I kind of don't. I mainly don't kind of do that. That's probably.
Speaker 2:I get, I get that yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I remember the first time, but I like I know my. I think my reaction the first time was oh, that was weird. I think I just had a. The fact yeah, do they scare you anymore?
Speaker 2:or you just like know it's part of it, it's like it's just weird it's kind of like off-putting in a way, so like let's tell you, like the one, one of the hallucinations I had it was our gravel doom was like the rocks, like the light from my uh, from like the, the beam from my light, the way it was shining across the rocks in the road, like on descents. It made it look like a whole bunch of, bunch of like mice and rats under a sheet, like if you imagine like a sheet pulled really taut and like something's crawling underneath it, like, so I kept thinking I was like I didn't.
Speaker 2:I didn't think I knew I was hallucinating, but it was like oh my God.
Speaker 1:So you like knew it wasn't real, but you're like I think I'm running over a bunch of mice right now. It was really. It was weird. Were you trying to avoid them? Or just like oh, this is so weird, I can't believe I'm seeing this.
Speaker 2:No, at that point it was like this bike is rolling over everything.
Speaker 1:I'm not moving. Yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:So that was, that was weird. So usually I've never been scared of them, it's usually just been.
Speaker 1:So to finish up the Kansas story, you only slept once and that was because you were super sick and feeling terrible. Did you have? You had planned on a stop.
Speaker 2:I had planned to sleep, not in a hotel, like I plan to go a little bit further. There was like I think I had found like a baseball field with a dugout I was going to try to sleep on.
Speaker 1:You just did that in your recon beforehand. Look at that stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I found I always have again I do like a, like a spreadsheet with all of like stops, climbs, things like that and um.
Speaker 1:so I knew I had to upload that to your phone and have it on with you. Yeah, I just have, like google, like google sheets, like it's awesome.
Speaker 2:I'll take like a screenshot picture of it so I have the main stuff, okay, but, um, yeah, so I would always have like multiple places I could sleep. So that wasn't where I wanted to. I wanted to get, I think, maybe like 50 or 60 miles more so that I could have like three hours of sleep, sunrise go Cause. Having that like snap, like that, like okay, I'm on the new day now. Like I know mentally that that'd be really helpful for me, okay, and you ended up finishing second.
Speaker 1:I did yeah. After all that, you ended up finishing second.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Out of I think, six or seven people that finished.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, wow. Are you going to go back and do that event again? No, with these events are they like one and dones, like there's so many other things to see and do, or is there like, oh, that was fun, I want to go do this again.
Speaker 2:I think there's, like you know, it's a focus of new experiences each year and I think I want to explore that more. So I'm like right now I'm all about Arkansas, like I want to go do everything in Arkansas, because that riding is just like some of my. I never realized how much I would really enjoy riding there, and so it's not, like you know, I don't ever want to, don't ever want to go back to Kansas, don't ever want to go back to Kansas, don't ever want to go back to Texas.
Speaker 1:But it's like there are new things that I want to try. You want to keep doing new stuff, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I mean I will absolutely go and do Gravel Doom every single year, like physically, while I can, because that was such a cool, meaningful event, like it was awesome.
Speaker 1:So let's roll into that then. So, was Rule of Three first? No, doom was first, doom was first, yeah, and you wrote out there no, no, no, I wrote out to rule three. Okay, so when was doom?
Speaker 2:Doom was like. It was Easter weekend, which also complicates the resupply situation in rural Arkansas.
Speaker 1:For sure. Yeah, it's the Lord's weekend and everything is closed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was, that was. Yeah, I mean so logistically, so where? Logistically? So, yeah, where is it tell people what the event actually is? Yeah, so andrew onama um started this route. He, he reconned it and created it three, four years ago. He lived out in the ozark national forest, so now it starts out of the horseshoe canyon ranch. Do a lot of is that?
Speaker 1:I think that's where andy does his big.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, the climbing and everything, yeah and so that's where it was out of this year. It's been out of oark, arkansas in the past, so it's um. This year the route was kind of new um, it was 400 miles and 40 some odd thousand feet of climbing, but he included some single track in it too. Um, first of all, like right at the start, I only had to climb to get to it, so it people a little bit, but it was a downhill trail.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh.
Speaker 2:And then there was another 13-mile, 13 or 14-mile segment out east in the I think it was Buffalo Headwaters. Does that sound right? I don't know.
Speaker 1:Okay, I don't know that one, I don't want to say it wrong.
Speaker 2:Well, nobody else knows either, but yeah, yeah, so some single track in there as well, to kind of up the ante. Um, so it's the. The big thing about doom is that it's um, I mean, it's called doom for a reason, right, so you have that like kind of negative connotation. It just it's, it's hard and I think it takes like a certain kind of mindset to get into it, you know, and then a certain mindset to push through it and a certain mindset to finish it too, because the number of obstacles that you know I think can happen like that you can come across being prepared for those, was really challenging. But it was also kind of awesome too. That's like one of the things I really love about riding is like what can I learn from this ride and gravel doom? I learned so much and I just like can't thank Andrew enough for putting that route together and having that event, because it was how many people showed up to start this race?
Speaker 2:so that one it's it was bigger. I mean, one of this is the third year, I think that he's done it as a kind of a grand apart mass start thing and, um, I want to say it was probably around 100 people, if not a few more. Um, you know, at least like that was maybe what was registered, so I'd say probably like 40 on 30 to 40 on the the doom route, which is the 400 mile. He also had a shorter I mean it's like no easier called the despair route, which was like 200 miles and 23 000 feet of climbing or something. Oh my gosh, and that one I think had about like 40 people.
Speaker 1:Okay so it's for, uh, an hardcore long distance race. That's a pretty great turnout, yeah, yeah. As a side note, these events. Well, kansas was free. How much do these events cost?
Speaker 2:this one was less than a hundred dollars.
Speaker 1:It was like 80 bucks or something, and I think, I threw in some extra money like for andrew because he's like doing this like I mean not like out of the kindness of his heart, but I mean it's obviously he's not making a lot, he's no, no.
Speaker 2:So the effort that goes into making a route that's 400 miles yeah, and I mean like, yeah, putting that together and um, there's some stuff that like starting to end, I mean we got some awesome socks, we got our doom bells, like and it's unsupportive like take off and hopefully we see you again oh yeah, yeah, it's, that's wild. There's no way people could get to you in some of the spots. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:So what makes this event so difficult compared to other similar?
Speaker 2:style events. I think it's just the range of skills you have to have for it. So you have to have endurance skill. I mean you got to be able to ride your bike. I mean the climbs are super steep, the descents are super steep, the roads can get really sketchy. I mean we were on some pavement occasionally, but a lot of it was pretty. You know, chunky gravel you'd expect in like central arkansas or like like north northwest central arkansas and um the single track. Two added a complicating factor Did you ride a mountain bike? No, I rode my flannel. So it was like I mean no suspension other than my 2.25 front tire.
Speaker 1:That's top of 14 miles of single track. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:I walked a lot, yeah, no kidding. Yeah, so I think those parts like the riding aspect but then like the planning part, to be knowing how to get yourself out of potentially dangerous situations. Um, water is not an issue there. There's tons of access to water. You just got to make sure that you're like getting it?
Speaker 1:You're filtering it, or like you're just filtering out of streams?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and I mean so water is plentiful. They're, like I never worried about water, um, but like resupplies, like food thinking about are you going to make it to this burger truck by 7 pm when they close, because if I don't, tomorrow's Easter Sunday, I'm not going to have any access to any food until Monday morning, you know. So, trying to plan for that much and I don't do like gels or any of the like powders or anything like that, like I, just I eat real food, so it's. I mean so that part about planning and in knowing how long it could take you to get from point to point, because out there, what I found is that whatever I thought I could make it in, it was like double that it's like 30 miles isn't 30 miles no, it's not all created yeah, so I think like, think like those things and then but I mean, the coolest part about it, though, and maybe what also draws people, is like it is remote.
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 2:I was out there on my own and I loved it. I mean, there was like nobody around. The number of cars I passed were so few. Was it scary? I was never scared. I mean I could see some people being scared. I never had an encounter with any people that made me scared or anything. Well, there was one. There was this drunk guy overnight. Oh gosh, he had lost his dog and he was on one of those four-wheel off-road golf cart things. And so I was going through this really sketchy forest part down by a creek and I passed by him and he's trying to get his dog to stop barking at me. And, um, then he comes up later on. He's like I was like what, and he's drunk. He was so wasted and he was asking me if I had seen his dog that ran off. It was a different dog Different one Okay.
Speaker 2:And I said I haven't seen that. And then he kind of drove up a little bit and then he turned around he said now I'm getting real pissed off, and I was like I'm leaving now I gotta get out of here as quick as possible. That was the only kind of like weird situation. But I mean overall, people there were really curious. I mean I had a conversation outside of a gas station with this kid named elijah for like an hour oh my gosh. So I was so curious about my bike and everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean cause it's there was this weirdo out here in the middle of nowhere with all this stuff all over his bike. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:You know.
Speaker 1:So it's like I don't know the um so how so it's 400 ish miles? How long did it take you to do this?
Speaker 2:I did it in um three days and 12 hours. I finished on like I don't even remember what day I finished on. I think we started on a Friday and I started on a Sunday night.
Speaker 1:Okay. So how long did you go? Did you have your planned out when and where you were going to stop, or did you kind of have like a rough guesstimate and be like if I feel good, I'll stop here, if I feel bad, I'll stop here?
Speaker 2:I mean, how do you do that? Yeah, I had goals for each day. I finished on Monday, by the way, not Sunday. Sunday would have been awesome, but no, that didn't happen. Yeah, I always, I'll always like find, like, okay, here's a spot where I could sleep, here's a spot where I could sleep. I slept in none of the spots that I thought I would sleep, but yeah, so like going through the route really mile by mile, trying to use google maps as much as possible, because I knew water would be fine. Um, because you could see pretty clearly where creeks were.
Speaker 2:Just follow the elevation profile when it goes down, like there's probably a creek there in arkansas yeah, almost always uh so but yeah, like figuring out, like, um, here's a campground that I know I could camp at, here's um a baseball field. Here's, like you know, the or cafe. Like you know, the OR cafe, they have this pavilion with a whole bunch of like picnic tables. I could absolutely sleep on one of those. So mostly just like possibilities, and my goal with Doom was to try to get to the big section of Singletrack by the next day daylight.
Speaker 2:Cause I wanted to clear that in the daylight I didn't actually hit it until the next morning at dawn. Okay so, um, but yeah, the first day of doom to kind of like really got me.
Speaker 1:do you try to make a really big push on day one, when you're the most fresh, or do you plan and say I'm fresh, I don't want to like lose all this, and so I need to be conservative.
Speaker 2:Well, I think I've tried to push it and then I've tried to learn from that. Like Doom was kind of like that's the second time it happened. It wasn't like Cannonball, where I just like completely shut down, but like that first day of Doom was like, wow, this is taking a lot more time. Maybe tonight I need to do a reset. Slept a little bit earlier and not like as far as I had thought. Um, cause before my aim really was to try to push as hard as possible to get to my first goal and, um, you know, it didn't work out with cannonball and it didn't work out with doom. So it's like back to the drawing board.
Speaker 1:And what was it that went sideways at doom?
Speaker 2:I think that one was, um, well, first of all, like the whole morning was kind of stressful because my car, when we were driving to the Horseshoe Canyon Ranch, it got stuck in mud as I was going to park it and we were getting ready because Andrew passes out these gremlin bells and you have this whole ceremony beforehand where you walk around your bike like charging it up and everything, and I was like I'm not missing that, I'm not missing that, and so we get there and my car gets stuck and so like that, just like kind of like up to the anxiety quite a bit a lot of stress and burned energy before you even started.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then I went out and I didn't go out too hard, but I mean there's like a huge ground pavement, like descents, beautiful, awesome. And then you start this huge climb up to the Ponca downhill track and um, that climb is basically like I rode for 200 feet. Then I walked. I walked the next mile and a half and um that downhill trail too, there were just so many people and I'm not as confident on um single track so I mean I was on and off the bike quite a bit and I would let people pass me. So I think it was like it was really mentally taxing that first day to see such slow progress.
Speaker 2:I knew it was going to be slow, but it even it was even more than I thought it was going to be, so then that's the learning experience, though, so I know now how to gauge that time better. So, yeah, I think there was a lot of kind of just like mental taxing, like like being mentally taxed that day.
Speaker 1:Whenever you start an event, how, how much does your bike, how much your bike weigh, packed and unpacked? I've never weighed it. Oh really, no, interesting for a guy that's so into all the details, that's surprising it's gonna weigh what it weighs, okay because you're gonna take what.
Speaker 2:You're gonna take what you need yeah, yeah, I've also learned to, like you know, pare back a little bit on what I did.
Speaker 1:I was gonna say but have, but do you like, do everything you can to get the lightest and least amount of things possible yeah, for sure, for sure, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I've gotten better about it. I mean, I used to bring, I used to bring like a whole extra chain with me and on a hundred mile ride. Now you just bring a link and I bring a link.
Speaker 1:Now it's like there's so much I don't bring anymore because it's like what are some of the other things you don't bring anymore? Extra pedals, extra pedals. Did you have an experience where you lost pedals?
Speaker 2:no, I just like always like heard about, like, like you know, because something like single speed I mean, you really like put a lot of torque on there. So I was I thought, man, you know what if this is what, if this is the time those pedal breaks. So it's kind of like that balance of what are the things that could absolutely like destroy your ride and cease it. Um, but weighing that against what's likely to actually happen and I recognize, yeah, your pedals could probably break, it's really unlikely there's a lot of other things that are probably going to happen before that yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, try to get like as light as possible, and you know choosing so, like for Doom. I knew my sleep was going to be short and intermittent, so I just brought a bivy. I didn't even you know choosing so, like for doom. I knew my sleep was going to be short and intermittent, so I just brought a bivy. I didn't even bring a sleeping bag. Um, I just had a few extra layers like my leg warmers I could put on, and, um, my, uh, my raincoat and, um, I did have a sleeping bag liner with me for that one. So I got a little chilly, um for sure, on some of those nights. But, like getting rid of that, the bulk of the sleeping bag was kind of nice big saving.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, um. And then whenever you stop and get food, is it just you eat and just stuff your face as much as you possibly can and then take a bunch of stuff with you to go from that food place, or you kind of just do the minimum yeah, early on I try to take as much with me and I eat a little bit there.
Speaker 2:But later, later on, as it gets deeper into it, every stop, when I can find them, I'll eat like a thousand calories.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just as much as you can put in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because what I found is that eating all at once, I'm way better at eating off the bike and it tends to help like last longer, and I think it's because I like I fast still do a certain point, so having that one big meal is like the fuel for the next 30 miles or whatever. But I did start to get better eating on the bike though, too, because I think that was another thing. It's just still trying to dial in nutrition and all of that, especially on having such long days. It's still a learning process.
Speaker 1:So let's go stage by stage at Doom and wrap that one up. So first day how long did you ride?
Speaker 2:I think I rode for about 16 hours, okay, of moving time, moving time or total time, total time, okay, yeah, cause we started at like seven, I think it was probably like it may be like 14, 15 hours, okay, and then you slept for a few hours. I think I slept for like six hours that night.
Speaker 2:Cause I was also like getting over being sick still too, like I'd had a cold, so I was still working through that and I mean I actually thought I was enough to drop out, cause I was like I was worried like it was getting worse. But then I woke up the next morning and everything was good to go Then.
Speaker 1:then what was that push like on the next day?
Speaker 2:So then, I pushed all the way, I pushed all the way through to the end. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:I slept one big sleep.
Speaker 2:I slept the next night. Um, I rode through the night cause I really wanted to get to the um, the next single track section, at dawn, Um, I was trying to catch up with Tanner Tanner Frady, who I ride with all the time. Awesome guy, Tanner, I miss you.
Speaker 1:Um.
Speaker 2:Tanner, you're going to be on this podcast.
Speaker 1:You just don't know it yet.
Speaker 2:And, um, I was trying to catch up with him so that we could do the single track, like together or just like to meet up, because I hadn't seen anybody in so long and so he was. But I mean, he was, he was crushing it, and so I made it to this like it was like a school or something where you could charge your phones and maybe get some water and I ate my last hamburger that I'd saved from the day before and I drank my last Coke that I saved throughout the night and I slept for about 20 minutes there underneath a tree and then the next night I slept on the side of the road with David Quinn, another awesome local rider, a Tulsa rider.
Speaker 1:Is he the one that just did the divide? Yeah, he rode up to the start of it. He rode to the start of it From Tulsa to the start of the divide. I know man, to the start of the start, of the start of the wild. I just discovered him.
Speaker 2:He, you need to have him. I would love to. He's, he's, he's awesome, he's a good guy. Yeah, he's david's great. Um, and we rode together a little bit the next night and we that was when I hit my my wall. It was like 40 hours without real sleep, and so we set it like a timer, literally slept in the road, like on the road, because it was like there's nobody there and, um, I didn't even get out my bivy, I didn't even get out my bag, I just curled up and like literally I slept. We set like a timer for a half hour and then I, as soon as it went off, he said you just slammed that thing and turned it back on for another 30 minutes.
Speaker 1:Oh, really, so you got an hour.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I slept for like an hour and a half, okay, um, in that next big push, which was enough, um, but I definitely found the limit that night, like we were doing some some pretty sketchy descents in the night and there was one point I just said, man, I'm, I need to sleep, like you can keep going, and he was kind of at his limit too. So, yeah, so we slept and it was dawn just about a little bit after we woke up. So, yeah, that push was, I don't know 50 hours.
Speaker 2:I don't know like whatever the hours were. So I slept about like two and a half hours then Wow, so at the end of it I was gone. I don't even know if I was coherent after I got to that finish line.
Speaker 1:Okay so, a couple of questions on that. So when you're making a push like that and you're how much does your ability to push on the pedals, push power, how it's got to decrease greatly, you just, you're like, well, if I'm moving slow, I'm just it's faster than stopped, but at some point stopping for an hour and a half is faster.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Yeah, I think I haven't quite found like that good kind of line to to figure out those two at that point. It was definitely necessary for safety reasons too. Um, the other thing, like it was tough to judge in arkansas, because if I was getting tired pedaling it didn't really matter because I knew in another 100 feet I was gonna have to walk my bike again. Right, because it really is like up down, up down and you know single speed I was, I rode, I rode 42, 22 for that one. 42 22, yeah, 42 22 ratio and I mean so I mean I was walking a lot you know I could say you walked a lot out of 400 miles.
Speaker 1:How much did you walk?
Speaker 2:I wish I knew that. I wish I knew that it was. I mean, I would not be surprised if it was 20 miles oh wow, if not more.
Speaker 1:Do you take another different pair of shoes, or just?
Speaker 2:um, I wear the. I wear like, like mountain bike shoes.
Speaker 1:So they're um, these are and they're kind of like a commuter shoe kind of.
Speaker 2:So they have like a little bit softer sole yeah, I mean it's still um, like I think this one still has like carbon. Oh, really, it's got good power transfer. It's the 510 cross trail cross CLs. They're awesome though, like they're, so, like they're they're pretty comfy to walk in um as well. But that's definitely a choice, like I would consider the next time, if I do GM, of just using flat pedals, like, maybe, I don't know, I like the security of being clipped in on the descents too, though, right, but um, yeah, yeah, yeah, so it was a lot of, it was a lot of walking, but yeah, I think at a certain point though, yeah, it's, it's, it's better just to take take a rest. Yeah, right, and I did take rests. You know, I would like sit by. It's like, oh, this creek looks really nice. I'm just gonna sit here and eat, you know whatever and so not necessarily sleeping, but taking the breaks yeah, for sure how often to break?
Speaker 1:how, like? How long of a riding stretch do you do? Is it just like I'm just going to ride until I mean, is it going to be like a two or three hour ride that I'm taking breaks, or is it like, do you find that you have a rhythm like that, or is it like every hour hour and a half I'm going to get off bike for a minute stretch and eat.
Speaker 2:On the last day at Doom, it was like the most beautiful riding like I've ever done in my life, like it's awesome. Those last 50 miles of that route are just magical, so I really I think I may have stopped once there, just to kind of. I think I finally changed my socks, I took them off and it was like trench foot had started setting in. I had a tick on my toe Like I didn't think about that Did you get a lot of ticks out there. I only found one.
Speaker 1:That's wild. Do you spray everything down before you go? I mean, I don't I don't?
Speaker 2:it's horrible, and Stephanie is going to hate me for saying this, but I mean even like I abandoned, even like sunblock at a certain point like other than my face, because it's like it's just gonna sweat off you know, or like it's gonna, you know, a little wipe off. So but, like bug spray.
Speaker 1:I think the last time I actually consciously used bug spray I'm surprised you don't put the promethean or stuff on your kits, on your clothing. Wait, what is it? I never heard of this. Well, okay okay, okay okay, you need it.
Speaker 1:Okay, especially for what you're doing, because you can treat your clothes beforehand and then it'll last, for I think it's like six washes or eight washes, even through, like your cycles and so, but for what you're doing it would last the whole event and it'll keep everything off of you and it's on your clothing, not on your skin. Nice, it's like a military grade stuff. It's like, yeah, okay, you can use your order on Amazon, I'll send you the link. Okay, cool, okay, awesome, there we go, probably taken care of yeah Spray your shoes and socks, and then it'll be a big difference for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool, good deal. Yeah, yeah man, I didn't even think about being out there and having ticks and all that crap on you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It was I mean late March yeah, there was one big ass tick on my toe weird and I had to use my pliers to like pick it out. It's a really good photo of it. I think stephanie hall took a picture of that another like badass rider who was there so you finished in three and a half days?
Speaker 1:yeah, uh, something like that. What did the winner?
Speaker 2:finish in. Oh man, he was sick. It was like 43 hours or something like that. I mean it was it was it was.
Speaker 1:So that's like a one stop for just a little bit and never stopped. Probably did I mean, I don't he, he might not even have stopped at all. Yeah.
Speaker 2:He was. He crushed it. He was gone already by the time I got there. He had a flight he had to make. So maybe that, maybe that was his motivation. Didn't want to flight, no kidding, wow, okay, yeah, so like 40 some odd hours, were you the first single speeder? No, no, really, no, no, there were several more before me. The first place single speed, um cory cronster. I think his name is um. He won high country single speed this last year. Um, he's crushed it like yeah, so he, I think he finished in maybe 48 hours, a little bit over that. Wow, that's crazy. Something like that. Yeah, it was, um.
Speaker 1:There were some so did you have any other hallucinations besides all the mice and rats?
Speaker 2:no, that was the big one. That was the big one. Yeah, that was I mean the other. I mean, the night before it was just kind of like shadowy kind of things, yeah, how long does it take you to recover after an event like that, like mentally, mentally and physically?
Speaker 2:Man, I don't think like mentally it took a while. I usually know that I've recovered mentally once I have the cry. It's like always after an event. There's like with one point where everything kind of sinks in and just like break down and uncontrollable sobbing Cause it's not like in a bad way, but it's just like whoa.
Speaker 2:That was a lot just like complete fatigue and emotion yeah, yeah, pretty much so that one took a couple extra days to have. So maybe, like, maybe that's like the recovery time mentally, I think. Physically I was actually pretty good after cannonball. I had worse problems. I had some pretty severe nerve issues with my um my um uh thumb and my um index finger in um uh thumb and my um index finger in um on my right hand, and I think it's because the last like maybe 40 miles or so, like I was just in my like arrow bars, cause it was flatter, I was getting closer to Emporia and I was just trying to book it and get there as fast and I think like maybe something I was just like on a nerve for too long. That one, I mean, I only maybe two months ago got the feeling back in those fingers like fully. But after Doom, though, I didn't have any physical problems, like no knee issues, like.
Speaker 1:I was really thankful for that and muscularly like felt okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I probably rode my bike three days after Doom. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Do you ever have any like major like back or neck, discomfort or issues?
Speaker 2:I never have, thankfully, saddle sores. How do you deal with that? Yeah, man.
Speaker 1:I think the worst, because I asked Troy Cowan about it, cause when he did divide and I was like dude, he's like oh yeah, and I'm like he's like you get, he gave me graphic detail and and I was like what do you do? And he's like, well, you just get up the next morning and you sit on it and you almost throw up and you're just miserable. And then you just stand up until you can't, when you can't take it anymore, and you just do that for like an hour and then it's just, you basically killed the nerve and then you're there for the day and then you do it again the next morning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know if I've ever, ever or anything. You use traditional bibs. I do use bibs, yeah, and I think the biggest issue, the times that I've had trouble, are just when there's too much moisture and if there's silty dirt like sand, because that can kind of get in there too, and so I've had that problem before.
Speaker 1:More of just chafing than rawness.
Speaker 2:It's more of a chafing before, like more of like just chafing than it's more like a chafing, yeah, but I mean there is some. I mean there's definitely some like some sores that I've had where it's tough to sit down, but not not as extensive as what, troy, yeah it sounds like so.
Speaker 1:When you're out there, you just have to deal with it, right? I mean, just sit on it.
Speaker 2:It's uncomfortable yeah, I mean luckily single speed.
Speaker 1:I don't sit down too often, oh gosh you're really not telling me, so maybe that's also why I don't have sound sources because you're up and down so often yeah, yeah, oh, my god man, okay, I'm pulling up my notes here okay, so we rolled in, we did cannonball, we did doom. Um, oh yeah, you will go back to doom. Not so much on cannonball, because you've already done it, yeah.
Speaker 1:But then you decided to do another wild adventure before you guys went to italy, and so yeah, you rode you, rode you from Oklahoma city to rule of three, correct, yeah, how long did that take you, we split it up over three days, okay.
Speaker 2:So I rode with Tanner Frady and then our other friend McKinney and we were all in single speed. So we, yeah, I think we took like three days to get out there. So we had 200 mile plus days. And then the last day, getting into Bentonville was 40 or 50 miles or something like that. Was that a nice route? It was cool.
Speaker 2:The very first day was awesome getting to um. I don't even remember where we got to. Oh, it was right outside of um Tulsa. It's one of the the parks out there. Okay, um, I can't, it may be like even like further west of Sand Springs. That route was great. The going from there, like crossing Tulsa and then gradually getting closer to Arkansas, got a little less fun because the roads were a little busier. And then getting into Bentonville, just because Arkansas is, you know, like getting around Bentonville is growing so much there are some dirt roads you can take but like kind of the direct path is paved. But overall, yeah, the route was cool. It was like a good gradual, like acclimation to climbing again and walking uh-huh.
Speaker 2:So then you, you get to roll three and you decide to do you're doing the 200 mile yeah, uh-huh, yeah, like the first year they did, it's like 200 miles, it's like 30 miles, a single track did you have.
Speaker 1:So you got there on like friday and rode on saturday.
Speaker 2:We got there on um thursday and then rode on friday, yeah, and so it didn't start friday until like four o'clock in the afternoon we got like a tiny shed house airbnb. It was literally a shed in someone's backyard. Well, at least you had a shower.
Speaker 2:There was a shower and there was a bike wash stand too, because the day we got there we had like our bikes were just trash, like is it rained and everything so cleaning those off, trying to make sure everything was still workable for the next day. So how was the 200? It was cool, it was, um, I mean, I think, like it's the first year they've done that 200 mile route. There's some parts of of the route that like I wish had been a little bit different. I mean, obviously there's. You know, it's a rule of three, right, so you have gravel, you have tarmac and then you have, like single track and like some of the tarmac sections, like the road riding was like maybe a little it was pretty busy, especially like for a weekend, and I mean some of the parts are just like it, kind of sucked, like it was just like this is a really busy highway road, but I mean, luckily we weren't on it for too long, so I think they were mostly connectors, um. But the route itself though, man, it was brutal.
Speaker 1:I mean some of the single track was, I mean again, like I'm I heard some of it was like rob told me about said someone was like really bushwhacking kind of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah it was. There were some tough parts, and I mean I'm not the most confident on single track. I'm getting better, and that's been one thing I've tried to work on the past year. Um, but yeah it was. I mean it was cool, though Tanner and I rode together the entire time there. We just kind of ended up with the same speed and then at a certain point it was like I'm not going any faster and he's not going any faster, so um, but uh, yeah, the route itself, though, like, I would definitely go.
Speaker 2:I would. I don't know if I would definitely go back and ride it during an event, but I would probably go back and ride it sometime and try to piece together something. Cause that like figuring out how to set up a bike, for that too, cause it's 200 miles, right, and so I knew I could do that in one push, you know, by hook or by crook, right, and so I knew I could do that in one push, right, you know by hook or by quick, like whatever, um, and so like trying to figure out you know what I want to do for gearing, what I want to do for actual gear that I'm taking with me, and um, so that was like a whole different mindset that place is a tough place to do gearing for single speed for 200 miles yeah, I ended up with yeah, I did 42, 20 because I knew how much pavement there was and I was pretty happy with.
Speaker 2:I don't think like two teeth more really would have helped me out on any of those clients.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause they're so steep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I mean it's just not worth the effort. And give her legs a break. Yeah, exercise them in a different way. How long did it take you? I think we did it in. We finished just over 24 hours hours. Okay, maybe like 26 hours. Um, we started taking a lot of breaks, we kind of hung out.
Speaker 2:You know, we found some nice like um, like waterfalls to drench our heads underneath and just kind of enjoyed it yeah, yeah, and I mean also too like tanner's, tanner's awesome for a lot of reasons, but one reason is because he knew like I'm not as confident on single track. So you know he would like kind of go ahead at his own pace, but we'd always end up meeting again too, and if something was really sketchy, like you know, he'd kind of I feel like he kind of waited up for it to be sure I didn't die.
Speaker 1:That's nice. That's nice of him, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it was a cool course, though I mean, if you're, if you're into those three things and you want to try 200 miles of it, I think it's, it's achievable for sure, I mean did anybody.
Speaker 1:I guess some people took stuff and slept a little bit.
Speaker 2:I would think yeah there was one guy there was um, like some trail angels it like. I don't remember what mile it was, but we hit it in the middle of the night, like 3 am, and um, they had like their camper out there. They were making hot dogs oh, that's cool yeah, it was awesome. It was like just in time too like I needed something like that. And um, this guy came up after us and he started setting up like a hammock oh my gosh, he's like dude I'm he's like I need to sleep before I move on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good for him. He's really enjoying it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they did have a cutoff, though like a time cutoff I think the time cutoff was like 30 hours, yeah, six hours, something like that. 32 hours, yeah, so you couldn't jack around too much no, no, I mean you could, you could, you could do it comfortably within that time. Okay, yeah, I mean you could be comfortable, depending on your, you know um, like you could take breaks without worrying too much man, I just can't imagine riding basically for 24 hours yeah yeah, did you and you guys didn't take any naps.
Speaker 1:You basically just got off the bike to eat and stretch and go to the bathroom.
Speaker 2:That's pretty much it, yeah walk, oh my gosh crazy, um.
Speaker 1:But not only did you end your week of events there, didn't you go to stillwater and do yeah, yeah, so we're testing out a new route around stillwater, so so your, did your wife pick you up, somebody pick you up and after yeah, so stephanie came to rule of three because she had a school thing she couldn't.
Speaker 2:She couldn't be there when it started, um, or she, I think she got there actually when it started because her school had just just gotten out that day, so yeah. So then she was there, um, so we stayed on like the night after I finished and then the next day I was supposed to just go straight to still water and she was going to drop me off there with my bike and everything, but I decided just to go home.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm just like I want to sleep in my own bed for a night. And yeah, you didn't do the Stillwater loop thing that they were doing. Oh, I did, oh you did yeah.
Speaker 2:Then Tanner and McKinney and I drove up on Monday morning, okay, and we started.
Speaker 1:They want to give away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, like so it's like looking at kind of a bigger route for that. So we had actually started it and tried to complete it last November but we got rained out. I mean we had one of those horrible still water like peanut butter mud days. We made it five miles and you know six hours or something on day two.
Speaker 2:So we like we had to kind of call it quits then. So not everybody, but a lot of people got to go back this time and and to do it um fully and everything. So, yeah, it's pretty cool, it's like a good tour of um, you know still water and surrounding counties like.
Speaker 1:So in that week you did like 300, 500, like 800 miles almost yeah, it was something around that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's unbelievable. Yeah, it was fun, though how many?
Speaker 1:hours of riding was that for that week.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a lot of hours of riding, yeah, a wild amount of hours. Yeah, I mean, I think probably, at least, like I don't know, because you would, yeah, I mean, I don't even know.
Speaker 1:But so the 300 miler that you guys didn't still, how many days did that take you we?
Speaker 2:We did that one over two days Just camp one night, three days. No, we did three days on that. Not everybody started. On the Monday Some people joined us in Guthrie, so we made it to Guthrie the first day we stayed at Liberty Lake, camped out there, and then the next day we made it to Pawnee Lake and that was a 150 miles I think okay, and then we only had like 40 or whatever the next day okay so and it like shorter on the end of it was kind of nice that's kind of nice yeah so, yeah, that's a hell of a week.
Speaker 2:Yeah it was. Yeah it was good. Um, yeah, it was good. I mean, I was pretty tired by the end of it, but I didn't I wasn't like completely wrecked. That's what's wild, yeah. Yeah, it was a nice way to end like, just so nobody thinks I am employed actually. But I was on sabbatical. This semester, which is basically every six years, you get to propose a project and basically I was free of teaching obligations, so I've just been doing research at home.
Speaker 1:And so I rode my bike a lot.
Speaker 2:This is not going to happen, so I think that's one reason. Oh yeah, and that's where all this writing came from, and I was really thankful and grateful to OCU for letting me have that sabbatical so I could go and do these things.
Speaker 1:I mean, it wasn't a part of it. So you got a semester off of teaching, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I've just been doing a lot of research and things like that and writing some articles and then when.
Speaker 1:That's why fall is not as it's not going to be as fun back to being a big kid yeah, I can't play bicycles anymore. Yeah, I mean well, not as much not as much um, and then you guys just went to italy, yeah, and you rode yeah, I did the the sicily divide there um, so sicily there so is that an actual event, or was it like a route and you just did it on your own?
Speaker 2:it is an event and it's also an established route as well. I don't know how many years it's been around, but I think it's like a couple of years now, and so Sicily has had a huge kind of exodus of their younger population trying to move elsewhere for jobs because, like, economically it's very distressed in a lot of parts of Sicily, the towns in the middle do not get as much tourism as some of the ones on the coast. So, like some of the big towns on the coast, like palermo and catania, and then there are a whole bunch of other smaller cities, like messina, so, like a lot of sicily is a really interesting island because its history is is a mix of so many different cultures, so it has, like arab, norman, um, spanish, italian, interesting. So it's it's this really great melting pot. I mean, it's like if New Orleans was a country that's incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's awesome, but the middle of the country it's not benefiting from it. So they established this route in order to have you go through some of these smaller towns just to try to help out with some little bit more tourism, right? Because I mean you're going to go through the town, you, just to try to help out with some little bit more tourism, right? Because I mean you're going to go through the town, you're probably going to stay the night, you might go get some food and all that. So the route was mostly established, I think, for that, but they have had it as an event once or twice. I don't know if it's called a race or whatever. So they set it up in seven stages. It's about 300 miles and it's about a little over 30,000 feet of climbing and it's a lot of pavement, but it's a lot of really torn up pavement, but there's also some gravel.
Speaker 2:No single track, but I found some single track that I rode on because it looked fun, and basically most people go from west to east. So you start in Palermo and then end up in Catania. Started in Palermo and then end up in Catania, and, um, there was a new variant that they just like, I guess, put together, maybe, like this past spring of the final day, you can actually go up Mount Etna, which is an active volcano, um, and that's where I hit some, some single track there, and um, you're riding through these lava fields and you literally ride like all the way around the volcano and then descend. For, oh man, it was awesome, I descended for like 20 miles.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, how fun. What a great way to end it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. It was pretty cool but it was quite shocking to get back into like hustle and bustle of city life after being in the middle of a volcano. There was nobody around me.
Speaker 1:Wow. So they set you up like you have. So it's a stage rate sage event um.
Speaker 2:So each day is comfortable it's not like a big wild push or anything like that. You can do more or less. I followed their plan because originally stephanie and I were both supposed to ride it, but her hips had some issues, so she um, she ended up driving okay across sicily.
Speaker 1:So she would just meet you in the evening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we would meet in the evening and you know like I would sleep, I would eat as much food as possible and then the next morning I would leave and try to beat the heat. Yeah, yeah, um yeah, but the state it's, it would be like I think most of the stages were 40 to 50 miles. The climbing is tough there. I mean like it's like there are some very significant climbs um for sure. I mean, I think I had like my longest climb when I was there it was like 5,000 feet in 15 miles or something stupid like that.
Speaker 1:And um yeah, you had gears cause you rented a bike.
Speaker 2:I did. I rented a bike from, uh, from the Sicily divide folks, um, who are awesome, yeah. So I had this focus. I don't remember if it was 29 or though. So, um, flat bars, which I really enjoyed. I brought some some better grips and bar ends to put on it. Smart, smart and, um, yeah, it was great, though, Like I mean, I had to walk, maybe once, just because I had to walk, it was too steep, but otherwise, yeah, that I'm. I kind of see the light on gears for that kind of writing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, yeah, it was cool, though, yeah, it was so. Does this make you want to go back to europe to do other big things that are over there? Because it seems like and recently with the divide the guys from europe are crushing so it's got to be a. Maybe.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it's a bigger scene or an older scene there, but the euros seem to be crushing, yeah, right now yeah, I mean, I guess, I mean there are some pretty significant race I mean I don't know how old like silk mountain, right I mean you know and like um how it's atlas mountain right, like I mean they've had like that huge history of um, like I always get this thing like randonneuring like, like trans you're like whatever, like the transcontinental race basically like rule of three before there was rule three.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like the real rule of three yeah, and so I wonder if maybe like that history you know, but I mean I guess the us has that history too. So I don't know. But I mean the riding over there, I will say, is like it's probably. It's so much more compact, it's probably easy to find different types of terrain to train on.
Speaker 1:The mountains are never very far away, right yeah, do you want to go back over and do another event? Uh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, like you and I were talking about before, we recorded the Hellenic mountain race.
Speaker 1:Dude, just briefly tell these folks about this, and then we'll kind of get you back out of here so you can go ride before it's 185 outside.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah yeah, the Hellenic mountain race. So it's in Greece.
Speaker 1:And are you legitimately considering this race?
Speaker 2:I'm legitimately considering it, yeah, for this race. I'm legitimately considering it, yeah, for next year, cause we, you know, like we tried to, we don't have kids, we don't have like huge financial obligations. Thankfully, like you know, we save, and so, like we save to go out of the country every summer, and so I was looking at ones that are in the summer, so like the Hellenic mountain race is in Greece and it's in May, which is like the perfect time, um, but yeah, it's like 550 miles and like what is it like 92 000 feet of climbing.
Speaker 1:I just I can't even comprehend how stupid that is. I know like it's, so it's just laughable it is.
Speaker 2:I mean that's. It's like you know, if I'm laughing at it, maybe that makes it less scary.
Speaker 1:Let's see how good of a challenge I mean, at this point you're just like but but the thing is, it's like people do it every year. Yeah, and I mean it's doable yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think this one is one of the newer ones, I think maybe the first. I don't know the whole history of it, but I feel like maybe the first year it was so bad that like nobody could really finish it. I mean cause like rain and things like that too, like some severe flooding from what I remember. I might be wrong, yeah, but I'm interested in that's the one that's morocco. Whatever the one that's in morocco is like, I absolutely want to try that one someday.
Speaker 1:okay, but um, has your perception of hard changed?
Speaker 2:yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think like each time, because I try to go into every, every ride that I do, like, even like riding down here, you know, or like riding, you know doom or whatever. It's like what can I learn from this ride? Cause, like, once you're open to learning on a ride, you know if you make a mistake it helps it to make it a little easier. Like when I got like, um, you know just completely, like you know, sick to my stomach over the water that I drank in cannonball. It's like, okay, well, now I know you know it sucked. Like it know it sucked, like it was horrible at the moment. Like you take a filter, uh, I do.
Speaker 1:Well that was from a gas station though.
Speaker 2:So it was like a weird situation, but like things like that, it's like you know, I learned okay, I I need to like be a little bit more careful with water, like you know.
Speaker 2:Or you know, it was maybe the taste of it that I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't fathom. So I bring, like noon tablets now to help, like, make it taste a little better. So it's like going into each thing and what can I learn, it makes it seem less scary in those events that do seem like wow, this is really for real. It's like I get excited more about what can I learn on that one than really the fear of am I going to finish it, because I mean, if I don't finish it, at least I know I tried right and I probably learned like, okay, I didn't finish it because of this reason. So I think, like things do get easier in a sense, but in the moment they're really hard still, because I mean, in the moment, that's all you're thinking about, right, but going into it and with that mindset, though, it's made each time easier and easier.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I mean I have not done anything even remotely close to what you are tackling with some of these events, but I think after doing a hard event or something, now when somebody's like this is really hard, I'm like I I do understand what you're saying, but it's not hard relatively speaking. You know, I think my perception of that has changed a lot recently. Um, but I can't imagine with someone like you or like rob bell, who does a lot of these big hard adult, adult ultra things at a high level, um, the perception of hard has got to be so different yeah especially compared to what it was for you three or four years ago, when you were just getting going and all this stuff
Speaker 2:yeah, when somebody asked you was that hard, you got to be like I mean it was, but I've done a lot harder yeah, yeah, I think it's always like you know, I try to answer it like you know, like I can only answer for me, like you know, given my own history and everything, and I can, you know, say like these are the things that I found hard about it.
Speaker 2:And I'm sure there are other people out there that would find like those difficult too, and they're probably also people that would say, oh, that doesn't sound as bad, you know, because I've done this. So like I deal with this like teaching music students, because music students are always trying to compare themselves to one another. It's like I want to be at this level at this point, you know, and like I tell them, I say you know, you can't compare yourself coming in from you know, you had, you only had like a year of voice lessons before you started here. This other person has been taking lessons since they were like 10. So how do you expect, like you're both freshmen, how do you expect to be on that you?
Speaker 2:know the same at that point and it's like try to keep it within yourself and knowing yourself and sticking with that, you know, rather than if, like, what does somebody else say about something? I mean, of course, like if somebody says, yeah, this is really hard, like that kind of piques my interest now, and if they, you know, I don't know if that's really answering your question but how was doing these events and experiencing?
Speaker 1:experiencing extremely difficult situations, physically and mentally. How has it changed you on your day-to-day living or teaching?
Speaker 2:Yeah, teaching it's affected a lot.
Speaker 2:My whole sabbatical project was actually envisioning my whole discipline, like what I teach.
Speaker 2:If we burned it to the ground and started it over, what could it look like?
Speaker 2:And I think a lot of it is really informed by riding bikes, because there's so much that I don't know when you travel by bike. There's just so much that doesn't matter and there's so many things you can kind of like shake off, like like one other thing I've learned riding bikes is to not go straight to 10 in bad situations, whether it's like a driver that you know does something stupid, or like, if I do something stupid, like try not to go 10 on myself. And it's like I think that's really transferred to my understanding of where students are, because they're learning too right, like they're trying to. They're trying to learn this subject, but also they're just trying to learn life at the same time. And so I think like learning how, seeing how I've learned on the bike, has put me back in that position of what are the optimal circumstances for learning, and so I've tried to take like those lessons that I've learned and think about how could you actually use that in a teaching situation.
Speaker 2:So I think bikes not only like saved my life, but they also have like really helped to give more purpose and direction to my life, not just in riding bikes and, I think, with day-to-day life too. And I haven't really seen that until maybe this past year, like it took a while for me to see the connection between like bike riding kind of stuff, and um that I mean also a lot of years of therapy.
Speaker 1:It's just different kind of therapy, yeah, yeah, yeah, so um yeah, it's, it's cool, like do you? Do you feel like you need to continue to push the envelope on difficulty of event and or distance to get the same high, that you're kind of chasing with these events? Or could you go do a smaller, easier, significantly easier event and get something out of it as well?
Speaker 2:I think so yeah, yeah, I'm really looking forward to the um, the g3 races this year. Um, you know, 100k, 60 miles, um difficult, I mean some difficult conditions can come up from that, and so it's like a new opportunity to learn, like so I've been, I've been, you know, like a lot of these bikepacking trips you can't just go full out the whole, I mean, I can't go full out the whole time, so that you know it's like okay, let's learn and see like what can I do? And you know, can I do this in three hours?
Speaker 2:so I guess it is still pushing it, but it's in a different way in a different way and also it's just like I don't know, it's gonna be kind of nice to not have to pack very much on a bike, yeah, so yeah, I mean I think you could like I wrote like I guess I look at it now is like yeah, it's difficult and that kind of piques my interest in something. But it's really like this is a really good opportunity to learn something and like what could I learn out of this thing?
Speaker 2:so if I do tour divide, I'm gonna learn so much on that you know, um, if I go and I do, like the, the race in greece, like there's a lot of there's a lot I'm gonna learn on that yeah, for sure g3 this year.
Speaker 2:There's a lot that I'm gonna learn on those rides. So I think like that approach really helps me to kind of not just get obsessed with what's the next hardest thing I can do, but it's like what's the next thing that I can learn from and enjoy too. I mean, I always talked about is like suffering, right, but I enjoy like every single, not every single moment, but like looking back, you know. I don't think it's always like rose colored glasses.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you're not enjoying it in the moment, but overall it's finishing in in whatever way, however long, whatever it is, you know, for me it's like I always appreciate it. Yeah, yeah it's it's great to.
Speaker 1:It's awesome to to be finished with something I guess we're kind of in doing a yard sale right now with this, these rapid questions. So we'll just keep a couple coming before we get younger so what's your must-have piece of equipment that you take with you? Or like this, one or two things like has to be packed first.
Speaker 2:It's an, it's a non-negotiable yeah, even if I might not use it even if I might I mean well, like tire plugs, like like bacon strips, like I don't use like a dyna plug or anything, just like the traditional little bacon strips, like I will absolutely always have those on every ride.
Speaker 1:How often do do you have?
Speaker 2:mechanicals. I don't very often knock on Where's what.
Speaker 1:There's probably wood inside there, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I well I say that, but then my uh, like my hub started to fall out at rule of three.
Speaker 1:Oh geez, that's right. My whole cassette fell off at rule of three and I was like, well, just take my wheel off and look, and my whole cassette fell off, rolled down the hill, had to go find the spacers. I was uh and then trying to put a cassette back on with your fingers. I I only had a couple of gears for like the last 20 miles. Oh my god, yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I can imagine being out there for 400 miles yeah, the random crap that could happen yeah, I've, I've really been pretty lucky, yeah, but I would say, like that's the piece of gear like fix it kind of stuff, the other gear that I have, packing stuff too. Like I'm always going to try to have some kind of like a salty snack, because what I found like really like portable salty snacks are tough to find in convenience stores sometimes Like at least what I want like bag of chips is kind of hard to deal with. So like always having something. And then we found these like like those nature valley granola bars you can actually get like savory ones now. So something like that is maybe something like I've tried those are your go-to snacks.
Speaker 2:That was one of my questions I want to ask you yeah, like that and um, uh, I really like gummy bears like kind of stuff. Yeah, okay, interesting, italy's great for that. They have like so many versions of Haribo.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. But, uh, whenever you've been out on some of these long crazy things like what are like, the things that like, oh my God, I would have never eaten that or drank that, but it tasted so good.
Speaker 2:The first time I actually had chocolate milk and I trusted it, was the moment that I got it. I was like I get it, I get it, I get it and that. That. That was also the point that I figured out I can really eat anything like the water thing that I had the trouble with that was the taste of the water. It was something weird there, but the food though like man, that like the chocolate milk, was like good because it was chocolate milk, but also it was just eye-opening like I just drank that and I'm fine and so now I'll eat it. It's like that's that looks good, just all in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how much do you ride uh on a weekly basis?
Speaker 2:um, kind of depends. Um, probably like I try to go for hours more than anything. So, like leading up to doom, I was trying to ramp up to 18 to 20 hours a week and you would do that for how long I?
Speaker 2:did that, that for a couple of weeks before. So I gradually added hours. I mean, I you ride all the time. You should not trust my training plans at all. It was like 12 hours sounds good this week. How about 13 the next? How about 14 the next? Okay, now let's drop it back. Now let's move it up again.
Speaker 2:There's no rhyme or it's not a structured it's like just go ride bikes, you know, and I'm just awesome. Yeah, like I, just I love riding bikes, like, and so like I would say, like probably, like I'll ride 10 to 15 hours a week, including commutes, okay typically yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Uh, since you have a fancy power meter now, do you use it for what it's intended to be used for?
Speaker 2:what is it intended to be used?
Speaker 1:for for training. Like to know, like I do, for do you ever do set intervals? No, okay. So when you're out on a ride with your power meter, do you just like watch the numbers and play with it, or do you be like, hey, I'm gonna hold 200 watts for the next 15 minutes?
Speaker 2:or not even that. It's usually like oh, I'm gonna go right out east today, so there's gonna be some climbs, so I'm just gonna go as hard as I can for an hour, and that like so. So my interval is like I'm going to go ride for an hour and a half.
Speaker 1:And I'll cruise on the descents a little bit. What's the highest number you've ever seen on your power meter? Like the watts, what's the most watts you've ever had?
Speaker 2:I feel like it's like 700 or something like that. My, I mean, I know my FTP now, okay, oh yeah, so are you using that or you just know what it is? I know what it is, okay, like garmin tells me it, but I've never done like a ftp test.
Speaker 1:ftp test, no, no probably be much different than what that number says, either in a better way or a word like probably better, oh, you think probably. For one, you've never like really taper into something to see what it is. I've never tapered exactly, oh my gosh. And then always like and also, you're, it's probably taking your ftp off of like a 20 minute segment in a ride that you've done, probably, you probably. If you like, I'm gonna go all out for 20 minutes.
Speaker 1:You probably can make that number higher because it's going to be somewhere in the middle of a ride, somewhere on some random yeah maybe even a flat section, yeah, so if you just said I'm gonna go out and smash my self as hard as I can for 20 minutes, it would probably be higher than what that number is, unless that number came from like a race or something like that no, it probably just came from riding yeah, so it would probably be higher.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh cool. Yes, that would be my guess. Yeah, because you're always going to push harder, like in an event, and or if, if you're like you know that this is a set thing, then if you're just out riding, I'll have to do like the market to market ride or something. I'll figure it out real quick on that ride. That thing is a race for me, not for them, but for me, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would probably be dropped in the past couple of months, oh gosh.
Speaker 1:Um, oh gosh, um, okay. Well, we don't have anything planned big outside of like the fun local stuff in the uh in the fall. Yeah, um, you can, after greece you have to come back and do this again for another one. If greece happens, we'll see. Well, something's gonna happen next summer something's gonna happen next next spring.
Speaker 2:Yeah, spring, summer, we'll see cool is there anything else you want? To add no, just uh, go ride bikes go play bicycles.
Speaker 1:you don't need to know your power meters, no just whatever bike you have. Just go play.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, I love it.
Speaker 1:Thanks, dave, I appreciate it. Thank you.