Cycling Oklahoma
We will talk about everything cycling in Oklahoma. We cover races, athletes, bike industry, local gossip and everything fun that has to do with 2 wheels.
Cycling Oklahoma
The Random Show w/ Alan White & Chris Drummond
What happens when you mix the chaotic adventures of a racing past with the current state of gravel and cyclocross racing? Join us as we reunite with Gravel Doc (Alan White) and the People's Champ (Chris Drummond) to not only share endless laughs but also delve into the exciting developments shaping the Oklahoma cycling community. If you are looking for laughs and several fools rambling about nonsense you have come to right place.
What is up? Cycling Oklahoma? Thank you so much for coming back for another week. This intro will be fairly short because the episode basically speaks for itself. Uh, myself, uh, gravel doc, uh, I guess, alan white. However, you want to refer to him, other things you want to refer to him, as probably can and probably will be said in this episode about him and the people's champ, chris Drummond. So the trio is back together and it will not disappoint If you get offended and or get your feelings hurt from this episode.
Speaker 1:Well, you listened, so it's on you, but it's a good one, it's funny, we have a great time. We are going to do more of these episodes on a regular basis because it's such a good time. And's funny, we have a great time. We are going to do more of these episodes, uh, on a regular basis because it's such a good time and people seem to like them and our viewer questions are always hilarious and great. So, uh, thank you guys so much for tuning in and I want to say thank you to those guys for taking time out of their busy lives to well, chris's busy life, alan doesn't do a lot, but the uh thanks for taking time out of their lives to come and sit down and hang out and chat. We had a good time and it's always a lot of laughs with those guys and I really, really enjoy, uh, every time we get together. So I hope you enjoy this one again.
Speaker 1:If you're offended or you get upset or your feelings hurt, well it is what it is. So, uh, thanks for listening. And again, like every episode and like everything that we are doing these days, it is brought to you by more overhead door. Thank you so much to these guys, uh and gals for helping out and sponsoring and taking care of the cycling community. They have some cool things that they're putting together actually in the cycling world and I think those things will be announced more officially coming soon. They are continuing to put their money and their time and their energy behind the cycling community, so we cannot think more overhead door enough for everything that they're doing in our community, not only for our houses, but for the cycling community.
Speaker 1:So if you have a garage door need or repair, or a new house that needs an update or anything like that, reach out to them. Or repair, or a new house that needs an update or anything like that, reach out to them. They take care of us, so let's take care of them. Moreoverheaddoorcom or 405-799-9214. Check them out if you need it. But also please go check out cyclingoklahomacom. We're continuing to grow assets there. More routes are added weekly as people send them to me. So if you have a favorite gravel route, please send it over to me at cycling Oklahoma at Gmail and I'll get those uploaded so we can continue to grow that. The blogs will continue to update and we have some really fun, cool things coming. It just takes money and uh.
Speaker 1:So if you have a business or just want to support the cause of what we're trying to do here, please reach out to me. Let's talk really trying to drive some marketing dollars to this, but I'm also trying to generate some really cool assets, uh, and I have some people on board to help me with that now, and I'm really excited about the team we're putting together at cycling Oklahoma to bring you know Oklahoma gravel and all the dirt activities to the masses and hopefully we can drive some tourism and some traffic to Oklahoma to ride our amazing roads and do our amazing events. So if you have an organization, if you have a company that wants to support what we're doing, if you personally want to support what we're doing, please let me know. Let's chat wants to support what we're doing. If you personally want to support what we're doing, please let me know. Let's chat, let's talk.
Speaker 1:Uh, if you have contacts at any of the tribes or Oklahoma tourism or any of those I have feelers out, I'm trying to set up some, some meetings with some of those people, um, or if you have a contact at a PR firm or advertising agency, please, uh, let me know. Those are the people that I need to talk to right now to share the vision and the ideas that we have to help generate some traffic and some some really cool assets for our cycling community. So we're working on it. Things are getting there. It's going to take time, but, uh, but the groundwork is being done and we're super, super excited about what's coming with cycling Oklahomacom and the really cool assets that we're bringing. So enjoy this episode and thank you so much for tuning in and hopefully more really fun and exciting and stupid stuff coming your way soon.
Speaker 2:Subject we didn't add. Oh, you did.
Speaker 3:I got shit Knobbing bikes with drop bars.
Speaker 2:Ooh, that's a good one.
Speaker 1:We're already recording.
Speaker 2:I'll take that out. I asked Taylor Ladinovita. He's very a purist.
Speaker 3:I think it's hilarious. He's a purist.
Speaker 1:I like it. Well, and that fool, he rides like, like he'll go for like a 20 mile ride. It'll be like 6 000 feet of climbing. I'm like, how are you finding those climbs like every ride he does is like way more climbing than miles he did. Yeah, it's impressive. Um, all right, so we're recording you guys ready to roll. Sure, wait, let me take a drink. Well, you're gonna get another. I got plenty of these green ones.
Speaker 3:Oh, green one we're gonna have to stay the night here even better, their beds here.
Speaker 1:Sure, this is gonna be the intro, by the way we can pull this shit off yeah, yeah, he doesn't office here anymore.
Speaker 2:We're good. Hey, it won't be the first time drummond snuggled me just saying so welcome to cycling.
Speaker 1:Oklahoma podcast um dumb dumber, wait, dumb, dumber and dumberer. That's a lot of urs.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm not dumberer the way you said that. Hmm, where's that put me? So let's get started. I've got a message from him that says you're the dumbest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's about right, so I don't even know what to talk about here or where we're going to go with this situation. I have Google Docs.
Speaker 2:Listen. Chris Drummond came back to me. He's back. How does it feel? Chris? Feels good See. It's natural, isn't it? Yeah, feels good see yeah, it's natural isn't it?
Speaker 3:yeah, it feels good, you're a little creepy, you're creeping me out a little bit, but if it's a little, it's better than we'll get used to it yeah, see, he's comfortable again.
Speaker 1:He is comfortable yeah, yeah, a little is a lot better than it used to be. Um, I don't even know. We didn't even talk about where we're going to start with this, um, and the questions clearly are something. I think it's on top, so it must be. I don't know which one of you two put it there, god. Um, we'll skip one of them. That's at the top. That I put on there because we don't need any uh any problem.
Speaker 1:We can't put that. No, I'm gonna go ahead and delete that one, but uh, I think the world of oklah would, or Oklahoma cycling, would like to know how the bromance started between the two of you. Oh God and FYI, I'm here just to stir the pot and watch the shit show. So yeah, so was it love at first sight? Or was this something that grew over time, where you just wore him down like Leonard did to Penny on Big Bang? Kind of yeah.
Speaker 2:More the latter than the former he admired from afar.
Speaker 3:Yeah, finally made his move. Yeah, creeped his way in. Yeah, he'll never admit it over time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, wow, that goes all the way back to wait. Were you were team phoenix, weren't?
Speaker 3:you. No, you were never refused. Oh, that's right, tommy tried really hard, but that's why.
Speaker 1:That's why the bike one team started, because I was like, ah, because team phoenix was out of bike one bike shop, yeah, and it was just. Was it just their mountain?
Speaker 3:bike team they did a little road because it was kind of like a big club, and most of them were just mountain bikers okay, because I only remember them as being about bikers.
Speaker 1:When I got into mountain biking there was a pretty big group of them, actually huge, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, tommy.
Speaker 3:Tommy cornered me a few times and tried to get me on the team and I was like I don't know yeah chris was too good for
Speaker 1:one still around I I know the one, I think he's sold, I think the one on northwest. It might still be there okay I know the one in norman's not here, but I didn't know about that.
Speaker 2:Okay, so then chris had this genius idea of starting uh but that's how I met alan.
Speaker 3:He was a team phoenix and I met him when I started working at like he's on bike. If he's on team phoenix, absolutely not I was like man, this sucker will buy anything I tell him to buy. I like this guy and nothing has changed. Yeah, every bike shop has like look at this new part, take it.
Speaker 1:It's fine If anybody's paying attention.
Speaker 2:Just wait, He'll sell it soon he just text me pictures and I think I thought man he must like me. Uh huh, and it blossomed from there.
Speaker 1:You didn't know. He's getting commissioned.
Speaker 3:Sometimes you just got to do what you got to do to make the sale. So how long have you two?
Speaker 2:been in this bromance situation. Oh, I started there in like 2011, I think, so met him shortly after.
Speaker 1:So at least 20 years, yeah. But you know, going back and looking at those pictures of the bike one race team, I'm super bummed that I did not get to that was the.
Speaker 3:That was all time. That was the best group I agree.
Speaker 1:I'm so sad that I did not get to play with that group, because that group is awesome.
Speaker 2:I can't believe the number of straight up con jobs that we did with that elite race team my best, worst memory of that team was when t-fab had the big trailer. Yep, and he's t-fab, tony, tony boster okay, uh-huh, we, we needed a, we needed an official like race trailer he had, like it was like a 20-foot trailer yeah, he just already owned, so he just put stickers on it.
Speaker 3:But he's like we were going to, uh, ardmore, to the tour de dirt race. We're going to camp in the trailer. He had like a, like an ac unit and there was like six or seven of us that were sleeping in that thing, like we. We started to get it set up.
Speaker 1:There's hammocks hanging in there like a little kid slumber party and then the generator, the muffler blew off, so it's like so loud yeah, and he goes out and he like rigs it up with like a presto valve, like he's a fabricator.
Speaker 3:So like I told you he'll fix it and he gets it going and we're like, all right, it's fixed. And then it blew off again. So then we had to like kill it and open the doors and the mosquitoes so bad. All you heard all night was slapping skin, like everyone was getting bit. Nobody slept all night long. We're covered in mosquito bites. It was super hot and uh, yeah, like we're like first thing in the morning the sun comes up, people are poking their head in. Is it registration? Yeah, like we're.
Speaker 1:We're trying to sleep the fuck out of here, but 15 years later, it's a great story. It is a great story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we took that trailer down to Austin to Mellow Johnny's, oh nice, and it was when Lance had the ranch down there and we pull in there and T5 pulls the thing right, and there's like the amateur teams were over to the right and the all the like top and pro teams were over to the left and I said, tony, let me just talk here because I've got an accent and the guy rolls the window down and I'm like, yeah, we're uh, we're a pro team and we're supposed to be going over there.
Speaker 2:and the guy goes, okay, and we got the best parking spot, literally right at the side of the trail, and all these people are flying past us going who the fuck are?
Speaker 3:they. That's the weekend that he tried to get the hotel as a doctor.
Speaker 1:That's where the doctor came from. Yeah, it was that weekend. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3:I've noticed that bike races like most of the time.
Speaker 1:If you just act like you pretend that'll just let you in anyway. Just act like you want to do what you know, what you're doing if you're in a van, it helps even more.
Speaker 3:I agree, I know, and that's what it's, what's funny?
Speaker 1:like me, and so whenever smoke was doing all this stuff at iron man events with bryce, me and branna were his, you know, pit crew. But we would do that. We'd oil boys, yes, literally we would be there and we'd be like come up and they'd be like you can't go over here. I'm like yo, no, we're with them, we're doing that blah blah. And they'd be like okay, like no, we're supposed to be over here, we're just going over here, I'm gonna do this. They're like no, no one can be in this area besides pros.
Speaker 3:I'm like okay, but I'm going to go over there and they're just like they're volunteers. They confidence.
Speaker 1:They just either they give in or they were like it's not worth the fight.
Speaker 2:I'm just trying to get out of here. You went either way. Yeah, you have a guy with a foreign accent. It's even easier.
Speaker 3:Cause they can't understand, nope.
Speaker 2:I don't know what he said, but okay, we feel sorry for him, just letting through.
Speaker 1:He's one of our special ones. Um, okay, let's see here what's our next topic.
Speaker 3:Well, let's talk gravel, because that's the first thing that's coming up.
Speaker 2:My favorite topic yeah, yeah, you are going.
Speaker 1:Chris's butt hurt because gravel still crosses vibe, I mean gravel, is the new cross and I think it's gonna come full circle again people are.
Speaker 3:People are realizing what I originally said was true Cross is dead. No, oh.
Speaker 2:No, no, you're going to get them really started.
Speaker 3:As gravel is like cyclocross, only it's not fun. Oh.
Speaker 1:No, that'll get a lot of comments If you take the fun out of cyclocross.
Speaker 3:I mean you have gravel, just riding your drop bar bike off-road in a straight line for a long time or, you know, riding on a fun course. You have people handing you things to drink and eat the whole time, people cheering for you, maybe a little mud if you like that that's fun.
Speaker 2:Everything comes full circle, man. I'm telling you, with all of the high-end pros, gravel events are becoming more and more pro-ified For sure.
Speaker 3:It's the new road racing.
Speaker 1:It's exactly what it is 100%.
Speaker 2:I'm too old now. I've seen it before. Just watch. Cross is going to start coming back because of the vibe is going to go over there, because it's going to go back to the, to the wait. You're giving me bacon and beer.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm in no bigger yeah, nobody's been giving that out lately, all right now that the drummond clan is back we're gonna see it.
Speaker 2:We could see it.
Speaker 1:Givers well, that's the problem. When people give, people will take, but nobody's been here to give. That's been the problem. So I'm excited for that. And but we do have. We have gravel questions. Well, we do have some gravel. We'll get to the viewer questions later I'm trying to pull up the g3 calendar so I get the dates right september, um, but I'm not having much luck here are you gonna race g3 you?
Speaker 3:have to. I don't know. We'll see no, you race the fondo with me, the fondo I've been doing some training rides with chad and more than an hour and it's it's made me want to quit riding my bike.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the last two thursdays he's.
Speaker 3:We've done this ride and I survived the first one. I quit last week and I'm not doing it tomorrow okay, did hodges hurt you and I? Was like if this is what it takes to race gravel yeah this is another reason I don't like it. I think you're gonna like bars. That's another reason I don't nobody rides.
Speaker 1:I could go on and on hey, arrow bars is where it's at.
Speaker 2:Let's just be honest didn't I tell you those are called hand positioning systems resting bars yeah, they're comfy bars.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, the uh God, I thought I saw Alan on this G3 side. I was like, oh, this place has gone downhill, but it wasn't. You probably did. Um, I do see the capital as a sponsor now. Mm, Mm Uh one of the sponsors of the team. Um, so G3 starts well, find it on their page, on their instagram, I'm not sure, so I know it starts september into september, right, yeah, 28.
Speaker 2:There's something like I believe the first one is well, I'll find it eventually. Yes, guthrie is the first, one medicine park is the second one, and then the third one is back up to a huska.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah I just don't have the date, so I can't find it. You guys figure it out. We've been drinking beer, so did you well?
Speaker 3:Well, no, you didn't do the Pavasco.
Speaker 1:I've never done a G3 series race.
Speaker 3:Dude, never it started after I left and I almost came back to do a couple and I never did.
Speaker 1:They are really fun yeah.
Speaker 3:They do look like they're.
Speaker 2:I mean 60 miles or whatever.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just pretend you'm on a cross why am I not going in circles?
Speaker 2:because it sucks.
Speaker 1:Nobody else does, yeah I mean just think but g3, the courses are always great, great views, they do a great job. Of course, design always have there's always some sort of like cross single track little segment in it which makes it fun and kind of breaks up the monotony and kind of adds like a cool vibe to it. So I would expect some of that. I know the roadies and or true gravel people hate that, but I think that's fun because it like it's what a grassroots race should be. It should be fun and different and weird and goofy.
Speaker 2:And last year at Paul Husker. I thought it was the best thing.
Speaker 1:I haven't, I didn't do.
Speaker 2:Paul Husker went through the uh, what's his name?
Speaker 3:the other drummond yeah, you're real drumming, your cousin yeah, yeah, I'm still trying to figure out how to get tapped into that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, where you're in there, I know we're related it went through their land but it was all like like root single track and sort of cut trail and stuff and it was really good and and we're ripping through there and the next thing I know, like I'm up with uh, uh, sarah bell and sean mcmichael and evan going this is awesome, I would never be here otherwise, yeah, and then as soon as we pop out onto the road, see ya, bye, bye, yeah yeah, I did that.
Speaker 3:I did the mid-south this year 100 mile you did. Yeah, oh, I mean that's how well I did. You don't even know that I went out of the and you didn't know.
Speaker 2:That's terrible.
Speaker 3:I did yeah, I had like a a month long. I did, you trained for it. I did washita. No, I did mid-south washita. And then a 12 race, 12 hour race, all in a month three weeks.
Speaker 1:I don't even know you anymore, who are you?
Speaker 3:and then I stopped riding but those all went mid-south, didn't go well. But my point was like we, you go through the single track at the end. Oh yeah, and I man, some people got really mad at me. I was just at mcmurtry, they were. They were like walking the bike and I was trying to, you know, just go around.
Speaker 3:That was like the funnest part of the race for me and yeah, I got yelled at. I got yelled at by a lady. I went off the trail to pass her, gave her tons of room, but yeah, people were kind of when were you at?
Speaker 1:What happened to you? That you were in a group of women walking single track in a 100-mile gravel race.
Speaker 2:See, he asked it that way. I was going to ask what was your finish time.
Speaker 3:Because I did the a hundred, we were catching the 50.
Speaker 1:Oh okay, okay, that makes a lot of sense. All right, I was a little confused.
Speaker 3:I was. It was you know, I wasn't going fast.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to act like I did great over five hours. So 50s I hadn't ridden 100 miles. Race 50 how many years? 50, 50s, a new 100, 50 is way better if there's, if they give options and it's anything more than 60. I take this the middle option or the shorter option because that's fun I was trying.
Speaker 3:I was trying new things uh, well done.
Speaker 1:How'd that go?
Speaker 3:I'm proud of you that one was the worst of the three.
Speaker 1:I won washita, oh which nice as the gravel or the mountain bike.
Speaker 3:Mountain bike I've been trying to do for a long time I'm gonna do that this year for the first time and I won the 12 hour.
Speaker 1:Oh nice so it's a new guy. I just see cross is dead.
Speaker 2:The endurance is here because he moved back here endurance is my base.
Speaker 3:That was my one month of base oh really, and I took four months off and then I'm gonna do cross base and then four months off.
Speaker 1:Good you're not coaching.
Speaker 2:I guess you're not coaching anymore.
Speaker 1:Okay, probably a good thing but gravel starts like in like two weeks because I do waka, which I've never done. I'm gonna do it this year. I'm super excited about it is like the first weekend of september. That's pretty rough. Yeah, I've heard, I've heard it's beautiful views and stuff. It's gorgeous country, but it's rough. I'm excited to do that one. Yeah, so that starts and then that's Jack Christian's world out there.
Speaker 2:You know, jack, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:He's doing that one and then so that's like September 6th or 8th or whatever. That weekend is that kind of kicks gravel off, and then we have the G3s rolling through. I'm trying to think if there's other gravels. Oh the Osage.
Speaker 2:Passage. Oh, and don't forget the Mega.
Speaker 1:Mid-South, the Mega Mid-South. Yep, that's it yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm like Bobby, what are you doing? I mean 300 miles.
Speaker 1:And starting it on.
Speaker 2:Wednesday In September.
Speaker 1:It's early September.
Speaker 2:It's early September, it's tempting, you should do it with it's not tempting.
Speaker 1:There is nothing tempting about that.
Speaker 3:I know there's people that like that, but these events are what's going to bring cross back, because the events are getting longer. Yes, also, everyone needs, feels the need. I think since rule of three, which started, it was a great idea, but, like, everyone needs to like one up that or try to match that, or they're trying to make their gravel harder, like nobody wants. No, I well, I say nobody. There's people that do. But like, why make the course like as chunky and rough and hard as possible?
Speaker 3:that doesn't win it like, yeah, people are gonna get sick of that shit and they're gonna be like, oh, cross is kind of fun because I don't do that.
Speaker 1:I don't do some of that really brutal stuff because I'm like it's not that's where I would do the 50 miler, because I'm like that's fun when it starts to suck. I'm done. Where I'm not, I just like I don't know six, seven, eight.
Speaker 3:I started to hate gravel. Like I tried really hard to like it in arkansas and just like it's just the gravel is really chunky over there and there's a lot of climbing. It's like for me it was.
Speaker 3:I just like to go fast on my bike not hard, so there's a big difference in going fast and going hard, like I like to race hard, but like over there it's, you know you're, you're going fast, you're going like 25, 30 and all of a sudden you hit a climb and you're going three or you're going 40 down the back side of that, yeah to a corner, yeah, with loose gravel, and it's like man, this, let's get in real bad a lot of people seem to like that.
Speaker 3:I don't, I don't like it. I don't like it here's.
Speaker 1:Here's the problem. Their ego tells them they, like it is.
Speaker 2:They might not yeah, um, they can't, they're afraid to say they don't like it and the the world of social media has romanticized these ultra distance events to where people that are entering them or starting them have no business entering them yeah. Like there's folks when we were at Arkansas High Country on the start line, you're going what? Who are these people?
Speaker 3:Yeah, even these hundred mile events. Yes, there's people that like I want to do that and it's like if have you ever done a hundred miles on the road? Like no, that's pretty. That's tough for a lot of people, yeah, it's hard. And then to do it on like a hard gravel course we can be out there for 12 or 13 hours it's like yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, and I love that they have those events for people to push themselves and strive and do these things, but we don't need more than it doesn't need to be longer than 100 miles. It doesn't like 60 miles on gravels, equal to like 100 mile or hotter than hell situation. And what is the longest race you've?
Speaker 2:ever done. Well, the 12 hour for sure. Oh, you've done the 24 at Palo Duro.
Speaker 1:Oh, I've done four or five.
Speaker 3:You did the Palo've done Old Pueblo three times. You've won that one in a couple different directions. I won it when we took the juniors over. I got second and a third when I did it with Malat and Troy Cowan and Lucas Marshall.
Speaker 2:And you podiumed on 24 Hours in the Canyon, thanks to me, I podiumed at 24 Hours in the Canyon.
Speaker 3:I won 24 Hours in the canyon solo.
Speaker 2:You did win solo, really, that's right.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:He was in a world of hurt.
Speaker 1:Is there anything you haven't won? Not you, alan, oh, drummond, oh, okay, yeah, let's not get us confused. He actually hasn't. Uh-huh yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't think I've won a gravel race.
Speaker 1:You guys have the same amount of wins in.
Speaker 3:G3.
Speaker 2:Yeah, technically, I've podiumed more gravel races than him. How bad is that, chris?
Speaker 3:Not a surprise. I was thinking about the first gravel race I did and it was in, I would say, like 2012 or 2013,. Maybe Celestial, put one on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was a great route out West.
Speaker 3:It was like a 50 miler and Troy just rode that and Saxby rode that just the other day. So I was like I'm going to try this, so I like. It ended up being me, barrett Davis and Rob Bell off the front.
Speaker 1:We're all racing.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't know what Rob was on Barrett front. No, we're all racing well, I don't know what rob was on barrett and I were on 33 millimeter tires because it's like cross.
Speaker 1:We just grabbed our crossbite. That's probably about the biggest they had back then and we just ended up off the front.
Speaker 3:It was like it was kind of fun and like we were attacking rob. At the end we were one, two in him and we were like we had him covered. And then barrett finally went and he had it one won, he was gone and Rob's like oh, I guess he was content to just ride with me and for some reason I attacked him like a mile out Oops, and he went by me, kept going and passed Barrett.
Speaker 1:Shut up and won the race. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:I was like I'm such an idiot. Rob finally decides that it's a race yeah, he's like oh, you want to race still can we agree that rob is the best endurance freak in oklahoma?
Speaker 1:yeah he's so naturally gifted in everything. Yeah, because we were talking I think I was talking with troy without the other day I was like you want to do an iron man? Well, next week he could do one somehow. And yeah, like compete in his age group, like be legit, not just a finisher and you're like oh, let's go do a 60 mile, 100k inline skate race.
Speaker 1:He's gonna be somewhat competitive in that. Then he's gonna go to a mountain bike race, which he never does, and he's gonna be competitive in that well, he won the six hours this in february exactly.
Speaker 2:I mean the dude is and he's such a nice guy. That's the.
Speaker 3:That's the disgusting part of it, I can't even get mad at him. No, that's the problem.
Speaker 1:You're like man. I want to hate you for being so great at everything You're always happy for him when he wins, You're like God damn it After he beats you.
Speaker 3:he's like you raised so well.
Speaker 1:Good job, buddy Stop being so nice, rob, I want to hate you. Stop it, all right. So let's say that cross is coming. Blah, blah, blah. What do you got planned? Because that was a question that we didn't get from the. What do you call them? I'm going to have a smart ass comment.
Speaker 3:It's Instagram.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to make the crowd a smart ass comment, but I forgot what it was. But go ahead.
Speaker 2:Wait, do you have any more of these green beers?
Speaker 1:I don't have any more green beers. God damn it. I know, and if I knew that was going to be a hit, I would have told you Are these Troy Boy recommendations. All of the weird IPAs there's no, diet Mountain Dews up here. All the cans that look like Diet Mountain Dews are Troy's. Troy Cowan is sponsoring the beverages for this evening because he bought me two random 12-packs, so we have a bunch of random IPAs. Yeah, so Cross is coming. What do you have coming?
Speaker 3:So we have, when we wrap up, Wheeler Crit we'll start, which is what are the dates?
Speaker 1:Do you?
Speaker 3:know when that finishes Next week.
Speaker 1:Which one of these do you want? Which?
Speaker 3:would be, maybe one another. One of these Maybe in a minute.
Speaker 2:When does Cross start?
Speaker 3:The last Wheeler Crit is uh, maybe in a minute.
Speaker 1:When does cross start um?
Speaker 3:the last wheeler crit's going to be on the 28th of august, okay, so no, on the 27th, sorry, okay. So on the third, what we're going to do, we're going to kind of skip a week of racing, okay, but we're going to do a clinic, oh, at the, at the venue which is close to co-op um, we'll have that info out soon, but kind of a clinic, just so everyone has like an intro. I know like those guys did a really good job kind of integrating cross into gravel last year. But do a clinic, whatever people want, just super informal. We'll go out there and ride and like just mess around and have a good time. But if people want to work on things or kind of know what they're getting into, I want to cover that Because I think one of the biggest drawbacks to people getting into cross is they don't know what they're doing. They got thrown into a race not knowing what they're doing and they hate it. We're like a little preparation. No one prepares for cross, but they try it and then don't like it.
Speaker 1:But they put months and months and months of preparation into anything else they try so cross is like this random thing that people just jump in and out of in the winter time and it's such a brutally hard discipline. It's like wait, wait, wait, but I think effort cross is hard. Yes, if you do it wrong cross is hard, no matter what does it that's.
Speaker 3:My point, though, is like nobody takes the time, and I understand why. But proper equipment. How do you do the things? How do you corner? How do you ride efficiently? Like there's a lot that goes to it Cross is not as hard as it's made out to be Like. It's not as abusive as people say it is, if you know how to do it.
Speaker 1:But nobody just randomly gets off the couch and jumps into the crits. But that's what they do with cross and they're like that was too hard. I don't want to ride like all winter.
Speaker 3:They train, they, train, they, they, they go out. You know they're fit when they go out and do a crit and then hopefully ask questions and learn week to week, which is kind of what we want to use the weeknight thing for. We'll pick it up after the clinic, but it's not going to be like who's the fastest cross racer. It's like go out here, have a good time, hopefully promote the OKGP series that Tanner does. Get people involved in that because it's super fun.
Speaker 1:It is fun.
Speaker 3:And it's the one discipline like. You could argue it if you want, but it will make you better at every other discipline. Agreed, it'll make you a better mountain biker. It'll make you better at every other discipline, I agree. It'll make you a better mountain biker and make you better road rider, better gravel rider. It teaches you how to handle your bike off road and kind of a safe environment. If you crash on the grass it's not that bad. Um, like who are the best racers in the world right now? Bidcock, then our Vanderpool, bogotas, a crosserer, like they're all all have cyclocross backgrounds and that's where they learn to ride their bikes. And if you don't have, you know, last night was a good example.
Speaker 1:It's even the same on the women's side too.
Speaker 3:Now that I think about it, yeah, and if you don't like, if you don't have, if you have a, an engine and no handling skills, you're gonna, you're gonna eat shit every time on a mountain bike and a road bike and a crit.
Speaker 2:Oh, here's a good question for him. Do you think over the years, bike handling skills have gotten less and less?
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would agree.
Speaker 3:And fitness has gone up.
Speaker 2:Power numbers, the ability to go fast go up Through the roof bike handling skills are shit yeah, so bad.
Speaker 3:And when I was in Tulsa I to like launch a skill. Like I wasn't doing workout plans, I was doing skills coaching and I had people that like I race and cross and I was coaching them and it's just like it, it just doesn't register. They don't understand the fact that, like I can go on a cross race with way less fitness than you and maybe even lap you yeah just because I know how to like carry momentum and like be in the right gear.
Speaker 3:It's all those like these little things that you should learn if you want to be a better bike racer. That cross will teach you. So all that to say like, yeah, it's a good training series race that we're going to do, but I'm going to be out there like available If anyone has has questions, if you want me to ride the course with you, ride the course with you and tell you what you should do here and there. It's like like I've done that with you and like when the light bulb goes off, you see like, oh yep, that's why he goes. You know this person or that person goes so fast and they can do it for so long because they're not you're not working that hard and the the timing of it couldn't be better for all of you sort of G3 gravel folks.
Speaker 2:You want to learn how to actually handle your bike and get a midweek sort of interval session in. Get out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it's great for roadies coming over to gravel. Yeah, because it's so funny, like you do, like Guthrie, it's super sandy. Yeah, right, like that course is going to be sandy. And you see, when you're riding, you see who rides mountain bikes and who only rides road, like you had a sand pile and it's just like the group explodes and you're like what? What just happened there?
Speaker 2:but, it's people that have never touched a surface that moves right, yeah, yeah, it didn't dawn on me um, until uh jen and I put on a gravel clinic. It's probably been it was after cove it's probably four years ago and we went out to that sand pit on pan and took a bunch of people out there and this idiot's the one who taught me how to ride sand a long time ago, don't?
Speaker 1:don't tell people he doesn't want he doesn't want that on his name but.
Speaker 2:But I didn't dawn on me because it's like okay, riding sand's easy, right, if you know how, and you can put out next to no effort going through sand. And and then we see these folks we took out there and they're just like they're falling over and like, okay, so there is something to actually handling your bike and it's fun like if you, if, if the gravel, I mean if the cross scene, truly comes back to oklahoma city.
Speaker 1:It's so fun because I don't know if anybody knows this, but I'm kind of a little bit of an asshole and what I know, rumors, rumors, it's rumors. But um, going to a cross race and you can and people getting heckled and just giving people a hard time, and then even the people off the back, like the riders that are still racing why do you look at me when you said that? Off the back yeah well, you wouldn't be off the back, you would have stopped by then oh, that's true, it's true, I've been drinking the beer yeah, you might not even show up if you show up, you might not even start.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hey, listen, he talked me into a cross race. Race at one of the parks up here. It was a cold winter day. He's like there'll be lots of people. It was a master's race. I show up at the start line. It's him, malat me, I think, barrett was there and Troy and I'm like what Ass beating? Yeah, not well, like, maybe two laps, like like the four fastest dudes and you but I will.
Speaker 3:I will add to our calendar before we get too off in the weeds.
Speaker 1:We're doing an ok gp race too really so we're doing a race, so when does cross races actually start?
Speaker 3:it's like october tanner put the schedule out. Today. If you go to oklahoma cyclocross on facebook, everyone you can follow the schedule. I today. If you go to Oklahoma Cyclocross on Facebook, everyone you can follow the schedule.
Speaker 1:I will put that in the show notes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean because that's where everything's at. I'll put it in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Let's see, Because that's the thing is like. So we are having one back in Oklahoma City, which will be great.
Speaker 3:October 27th will be the first OKGP race. Okay, and that whole schedule is on oklahoma cyclocross. Our race will be november 24th. Okay, um, it's a series. It's largely based in tulsa, because tanner's the one that has kept it going and the only one putting races on. But, um, that guy's a trooper here yeah, a true, I mean you have to have someone.
Speaker 3:That they have a good scene in tulsa though well, because, tanner, like you, gotta have someone that loves the sport and will put it on regardless and he's kept it alive there for sure he really has. My hope is to get people into it and enjoying it and maybe do some caravans up to Tulsa so that we are not just doing the race here.
Speaker 3:We go up there and participate and get to see it's not not cross, isn't just the one course you ride here. Nope, like every course is different, which is what I really like about it, I like. I like going to a course and trying to figure out how to go fast around a course that you know a mountain bike trail.
Speaker 3:You know that trail right even if it's not your local. You know, like, what you're getting. You kind of figure out where the lines are. You can go pre-ride it if you want cross you. You can't do that. It's like the day before the course is up and you have to go figure out how to go fast. And that's what makes that's the part of it that makes you a better bike rider. Like if you go to your local trail and memorize the lines, you can go fast. But it doesn't necessarily make you a good bike rider, because you have to learn to adapt, change lines. Like when it's muddy, muddy, you have to change lines. Mid-race, you know, when the grass gets torn up and it's loose, you got to change lines. So that's the things that make you like in a crit, when you know there's a crash and you got to change the directions in a split second to miss it.
Speaker 2:That's where that handling skill comes from, and not panicking in those situations, and that's what cross teaches you and that course can be the same one day and then the next day the weather can make it completely different, even pre-riding in the morning and then five races happen, and then it's your turn, and it's like totally different. There's a different line beaten in. Are you going to?
Speaker 1:race.
Speaker 2:I have my single speed cross bike from 2016.
Speaker 3:Done. Yes to me Sounds like a yes to me. You can do the masters.
Speaker 2:You can do the masters, you can do the single speed. Listen, can you create a single speed?
Speaker 3:irish person over 40. Hey, we're not handing out ribbons here. Damn it, get out there and earn it okay, or just get out there and quit sign up for one.
Speaker 1:You're not gonna finish it anyways and just go. I will be at the cross races. One thing I just note, like it totally clicked, since your other boyfriend has left, billy. Billy is not leaving and, by the way, we need to ban billy from cycling oklahoma instagram. He needs to get blocked from 87 questions he sent in. But howchen, oh yeah, since howchen left you, you have not been. The jorts have been parked for a while.
Speaker 2:Your wheeler days have been done. I'm a little sad about so. Maybe you can bring them back now that your other boyfriend moved back in town, not been the jorts have been parked for a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah, your wheeler days have been done I'm a little sad about, so maybe you can bring them back now that your other boyfriend moved back in town yeah, I don't have a crit bike anymore, damn it.
Speaker 2:I need to get a crit bike but I've got a cross bike.
Speaker 3:You got a cross bike, that's all that matters that's all we're talking about here he's been racing a cross bike in the crits has he really, yeah, works just fine.
Speaker 2:Do you still have a single speed? I can make one I will race you at single speed cross oh yeah, you'll line up with me can he beat you to a corner?
Speaker 3:can I lap alan more than once in a single speed race? That'll?
Speaker 1:be the. That's the pole we need to put. There we go. That's a good one, okay, yeah, once it's easy. For more than once I might have to train, okay, okay, that's the race. That's the race.
Speaker 2:Wait, how long is the race? 30 minutes or 45?, 40. Ah shit, it's going to be close yeah.
Speaker 3:And with this series it's set up pretty well. Like people that are interested, almost everyone can do two races in a day, so you can make the trip out of town and and I I'm pretty sure that's like a heavily discounted if you do a second race. So like you're not going to spend hundreds of dollars to do two races. Like you can do two races, which which is beneficial, cause, like you go do a race, you could talk to someone like me or someone that knows things and like hey, how do I do this or that? And the next race you can go try it. Like just just set goals to improve. I want to see people get into it because I think it's really good for you as a rider. I agree, and it's.
Speaker 1:It's a fun sport, especially for kids to get into well and it's one of those things like I mean, there's a lot of different angles with cross that make it good. If you wreck like I don't do crits because I'm I don't want to lose skin, I just don't want to do it and I don't want to tear my bikes but I would. That's why I did cross back in the day, because I was, I didn't want to do crits but I would do cross because if I wrecked I didn't care and it didn't hurt and that was the. That was the highest power numbers I've ever had in my life. A lot trained coach me and that year was the highest power numbers I've ever seen in my entire life was doing cross and like legit training for it and doing it.
Speaker 1:Um, had a blast and I raced like the cat fives or whatever cat fours I think is the highest they have. I raced the worst category. I never did good like podium situation, but that's the good part was like there be guys line up to me with mountain bikes. There's guys with like legit, really fancy cross bikes. Like I have a used cross bike. It's my trainer bike that I've had for I don't know 10 years. That's what I would ride like you can like. When you're in the upper categories, you can ride anything and everything, which is great, yeah, and nobody cares like it's really truly a fun, just party atmosphere and I think it just needs to be what cycling should be.
Speaker 3:I haven't I have an opinion on on why gravel is more popular too. That may be unpopular, but what's your I? Think it's true and this is this is kind of where I'm getting, as, like with cross, you need to set a goal and make that your goal. It doesn't need to be like oh, I got last, like yep, I think when you do a cross race and you're the slowest one and you get dropped, everybody's watching you yeah, and people you're on display what happens when you get dropped in a gravel race everybody cheers for you when you finish.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or if you're just in mid-pack, nobody no fucking knows, right, you're just out there and you finish, which is like is fine, but it's okay to be the slowest person at the cross race too, and just like all right. Well, I did this this week, like at the next race. How can I, how can I get better?
Speaker 2:cross cross does something that was always my complaint about mountain bike races and and it is part of my complaint about gravel is and and mountain bike races like you disappear off into the trees. Anybody who's out there spectating? They go and sit down for 30, 45 minutes until you reappear out of the trees. Gravel you, you leave a start line, you know, and you may be seen at different points in cross it's. You see everybody, the whole race, all the time, all the time, and that that's what was fun about it when we used to it's a little bit of an ego blow oh, it's absolutely, but also you can't hide, you can't hide, you cannot hide.
Speaker 1:But the other good part about that is after the race gets going, after after like 20 minutes. It's such a cluster and people have been lapped at that point and it's so spread out because it's not a peloton, no, it's so spread out that you just get to race whoever's around you. Right, that's what I always did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like it would be embarrassing and sad, because the problem is is, I know all the fast guys, all the fast dudes are my friends, so and I'm racing cat five and they're all like competitive in the you know top categories and I'm out there I'm like just sucking ass and just do my thing, but like halfway through I'm like, okay, well, me and this dude are just racing.
Speaker 3:It's just, this is who I'm racing against. And like people, people like me that I'm just happy you're out there. Like I just want my friends to go race bikes and have fun. I like I might talk shit to you, of course, but like if you get out there and do it, I'm happy but that's the whole point about cross.
Speaker 3:You're gonna get a lot of shit talking to and from, but that's what makes you get it when you're winning yeah, when you're winning the pro one race like people talk shit to you. That's what's fun. They find a way to talk shit to you still, and so it's like it doesn't change and the shot hand ups and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:that's the fun stuff that really makes cross like really, and it's really a good family atmosphere because you can come out and watch a race and see the whole race the whole time. You don't have to go anywhere and have a day of activity and it is good Even if you don't guys don't want to race. I really encourage people to come out, just go watch, go watch. Bring a cooler beer, bring your pizza or whatever you want to do.
Speaker 3:Bring the kids, let them ride their striders and hang out and just like just come watch because it is a really fun atmosphere and I have been really bummed that it hasn't been, uh, in the community for a couple years. So, and don't feel like you can't ask, like I think there's so much unknown. That's an intimidating part and people don't want to ask and they don't want to go look foolish. But it's like, go ask people like myself, like tanner, like people that have been in the scene, if you need advice on tires or bike setup or riding the course, like people are going to help you.
Speaker 1:I agree, and that's why I love the dirt scene and that's why I want to take cycling to Oklahoma as the dirt scene. That's where I've like gravitated toward, because it's a the dirt scene in any direction is always significantly more friendly and inclusive and happy and helpful and fun, like it doesn't matter if it's mountain bike gravel or cross.
Speaker 1:It is much more like bring your dog, bring your kids, let's drink beer, let's goof off, let's laugh at each other and like hang out where the crit scene, the road scene. This is more for whatever reason, more traditional and serious for whatever reason.
Speaker 2:But I, I will say cross is fun, yeah, and, like I said, I think things are going to come full circle again. Gravel isvel is just look at Steamboat this weekend, man. It is sort of. The pointy end is what has taken over that world. It's all about.
Speaker 3:Well, everyone went to gravel to escape road racing because it was too serious, right? And then it's become road racing Because they're all road racers. Yeah, and it's going to become more of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I think, think, and you see it locally with the tour de durst stuff, we talked about that, which is a good transition into the tour de durst stuff which is starting up next weekend, I believe, which should be the week before this comes out um, the yeah. I mean, like the tour de durst stuff has blown up, like our the group, the participation in the events in oklahoma in the past two years has been significantly higher than it has in the past, so with that is coming back into being popular.
Speaker 3:But this cross is a great thing for mountain bikers to transition to in the winter time, to work on their skills, to work on that really high intervals, that really high I, I mean I feel like that, like the mountain bikers, that just mountain bike, because that was me when I started riding and like I didn't really know a lot about training. So like when Tour de Dirt ended, that's all I did. Like I would have this downtime in the winter of like two and a half, three months because, like time would change, I couldn't really get out and ride. It was just a different world that I'm in now. But I would be like rebuilding fitness next year, like starting over.
Speaker 3:And that's like josh jewel introduced me to cyclocross and when I did finally did a season of that it's his fault. I, I, uh, I maintained that fitness into like late november, december, and so it extended that fitness like several months, and so the next year it was way less rebuilding. I was a lot faster in the spring on my mountain bike. So, yeah, good point, like tour de dirt, I mean, you can race cross on your mountain bike. So if you just want to like keep some intensity, keep some fitness, keep some racing, it's a good way to like. If you do that, okay, gp series, follow that series and just keep it going.
Speaker 1:I'm excited about that.
Speaker 3:We can get off cross now. Okay, you're going to do it. Uh, I, ryan's got a pretty packed cyclocross season. Yeah, he'll go like the East coast for four weeks. Yeah, so he's first year, you 23. So he'll be racing elite UCI this year, so it's it's kind of like a learning year for him where he's at.
Speaker 1:But are you guys beating him done completely? Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3:I keep kidding myself, but I can't.
Speaker 2:He texts me a picture the other day and it's a how old is Rye? Six Probably.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those pictures are great.
Speaker 2:Six year old Rye Rye in front of me at a tour de dirt it was a costume crit and he goes this is the first time he passed you. I'm like, yeah, I remember that well.
Speaker 1:Did it look like?
Speaker 2:It looked like I was getting ready to eat him. I was going to say, do you?
Speaker 1:remember, was it Zach Big Mac.
Speaker 2:Zach, yes.
Speaker 1:Big Mac Zach and that picture with that little girl at the crit that's exactly one of those was aubrey if anyone listening to this has the picture okay, well, this will get this picture I'll send that to you.
Speaker 3:Text it to me, because this is going to be the cover picture for this episode yeah alan's dressed up like elvis too, by the way, that's going gonna be the cover picture for this. I was I was legit dying there what's funny about those crits is ryan was on like a huffy, yeah 16 inch bike and I had to like when I would ride with him I'd yell at him and get off the course, because he really thought and he still has this mindset he thought he was as fast as everyone I saw it last night as everyone else.
Speaker 3:He's like. He's like why do I have to move out of the way? I'm like, because you're going like they're going three times as fast as you are yeah, and he didn't understand it. He's like I'm going fast and he was, you can't. You can never say he doesn't believe in himself.
Speaker 2:That's a true story, I would say but I passed alan, that's true, that doesn't I keep thinking like oh.
Speaker 3:I'm just in this lull Like I'll get fit again, and it's like I don't know. Every time it gets really hard I'm like, yeah, I think that's it, yeah, and I don't have nearly enough want to.
Speaker 1:That's the kicker. Yeah, that's the kicker. So are you going to do any?
Speaker 3:like Tanner's, helping a lot Oklahoma flyers with, like Ryan's travel schedule. So I don't have to be at every race, but I do have to be at some races and I do still. I want to do a decent cross season. So it'll be. You know, I'll travel for a couple of races and maybe do nationals. I would say are you going to do a big nationals? Or, if I can get fit, I don't.
Speaker 2:I don't have a lot of interest in just participating, anticipating but no, it's kind of hard when you're ready to win another natty, you let me know I got your uh motivation all covered.
Speaker 3:First natty won because of me telling you man, yeah, he likes to take credit for it okay, well, clearly you're gonna have to explain that, because I'm not really sure where I would sit and talk shit to him at cross races until he started winning.
Speaker 2:It's all because of me.
Speaker 1:Well, I've been thinking about doing some courses and some certifications in sports psychology.
Speaker 2:I can help you.
Speaker 1:I really have been thinking about doing some of that to kind of add it to the repertoire. So I just need to talk to you.
Speaker 2:You just need to talk to me. You got it, I'll send you a shit ton of money, thank you, yeah, I texted him the day before he won his national championship, very special text. He said you better win this asshole yeah.
Speaker 1:Worked. I don't know why you don't have. I should monetize that, damn it. You have someone on your shirt Valtry, yeah, valtry, my pal.
Speaker 2:He's a more success. Yeah, no lie. Yeah, that's a car problem, not a driver problem.
Speaker 1:Are you going to do any? You're on your comeback tour.
Speaker 2:I'm on my comeback tour. Yep, wait, are you racing Cat 2? Yeah, is Ben Matthews.
Speaker 1:He's Cat 1 now, oh yay.
Speaker 2:Finally Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, damn it, ben.
Speaker 1:Finally you caught it up, thank you, but then he hurt, like he's had like major issues yeah, like in like real injuries, there is a high likelihood I will race some tour de dirt this fall cool yep yeah, I was looking at a couple of them, but the ones that I was going to do I'm out of town and I just don't think I can make it happen so I don't, I would like to jump into one or two, but I just don't know if I'm going to have it in the schedule this year drop bar gravel bike.
Speaker 2:It's the way to do it.
Speaker 1:I think I'm going to be riding a drop bar gravel bike from now on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, on most mountain bike races it's called a hardtail. Some people call those hardtail mountain bikes. All I know is We'll get to that later. I don't know.
Speaker 1:So yeah, Tour de Dirt kicks off. Got a whole fall schedule. People check that out.
Speaker 3:They do a great job. Also great if you want to be a better bike rider and you're road or gravel like mountain bike cross isn't the only thing that makes you better riding your bike, I think. I think what makes you better at riding your bike or racing your bike, is doing everything and not saying like, and so many people are like well, I have good results here, I'm good at this, that at this, that's all I'm going to do. It's like well.
Speaker 3:I mean just like just go, just go take the beating and like no one gives a shit if you get beat, like just do everything, cause I mean you get more enjoyment out of writing and you become better at everything. You get into new groups of people, I don't know. I'm bothered by people that, just like I, do this one thing unless they really truly have tried the other things and don't enjoy them. But the people that won't even try it because they're afraid they won't be good at that thing.
Speaker 1:You're not going to be good. Yeah, just that's the fun part is learning a new talent or skill, or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:And the other thing that I like and I can kind of relate it to back to golf or anybody that's a golfer but like the piece of it that I see is like if I play my home course all the time and I can become the best guy at that course, I win the club championship every year. Nobody out there beats me. It's because I know that course. I don't ever go play another. If I go play another course I'm gonna get my ass beat. But like, do different trails, go to different trails? Like races on different trails, do cross, do all these different things. And that just makes you more well-rounded whenever you go somewhere else, because if you just get stuck in one place all the time, you're going to be good there and nowhere else.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, I think you see it in tour de dirt, like I remember when I was doing it a lot like when I lived here, you Tulsa, people wouldn't come like to Draper. Still the same there's too many corners. You're not good at cornering, yeah. And Oklahoma City people wouldn't go to Tulsa. It's too rocky. Oh, you're not good at riding rocks, right because you never ride it.
Speaker 3:So you just don't do it because you don't want to get beat. Just go learn Yep. I would go up there and race and Ray Hall and Chris Renshaw would kick the shit out of me. I would follow them as long as I could, and then I'd be like how in the hell are they going this fast?
Speaker 1:and rocks.
Speaker 3:And then when I moved there, I race still beat me, but I I started to figure it out and now I can ride rocks really good and, like you know, a funny like full circle moment for me. Like I won the short track national championship last year and I was writing that course, which it wasn't. It was a short track, it wasn't much, but like where was it? Pennsylvania, okay, but there was like a section. The section that I won the race in was a section of corners, essentially. Like that's where I kept opening my gap and it's because I learned how to ride berms really well because I lived in Bentonville and really well because I lived in bentonville. And like during the xc race, I was thinking like man, like there's these really rocky sections and I was really good at them because I lived in tulsa and I lived there and I went up to turkey like several times a week and just learned how to ride rocks really well, and like there was sections where there's a lot of corners and like I learned to mountain bike at draper.
Speaker 3:I started mountain biking there so it's like yeah, like everything, if you, if you branch out, there's gonna come a time where you're gonna be like. I was at that race thinking, man, those three places I lived taught me how to race this course fast and it's like, just because I took the time to like, except I wasn't good at it. Except there's people that are better. Watch them as long as I could ask them questions. People are gonna like there. Except there's people that are better. Watch them as long as I could Ask them questions. People are going to like. There's very few people that are going to just hold all their secrets and not want to help, for sure.
Speaker 1:Like, if you're like how did you write that? And if they are, they're such an asshole that you're not going to talk to them anyways.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just ask like how did you write that section? Like that, just explain, practice it, but I mean, that's how you get better.
Speaker 1:And just and that's the hard part of that and being completely transparent and honest. If people will, it's ego like ego drives so much in cycling that they're like I don't want to do that because I suck at it. I know if I go here, if I ride, if I'm a roadie and I want to do mountain bike, I'm going to do the skip race, I'm going to do maybe draper, because it's flat.
Speaker 3:The core of that is nobody wants to admit they're not good at something right, it's like I've tried to teach that when I work with juniors, like my kids, like there's stuff you're not good at and like everything that goes wrong is kind of your fault, yes, and like sit back and figure out why and then fix it. Yes, and that's how you get better. It's always your fault, it applies to your, your job. Like daily life, everything else, like, if you're not good at something, don't just not do it.
Speaker 1:No yeah, just practice it. A great book Ego is the Enemy. It's a totally different thing.
Speaker 2:Ryan Holiday, if you want to read Ego is the Enemy, it's the perfect book and it If you think back of 10, 15 years ago, when we'd go ride mountain bikes. We'd go out on a trail and we'd come across a section and we'd stop and we'd go hey, let's ride this. Let's ride this three or four times. It doesn't happen today. Folks are like I need to get the fastest I did that at Skip this morning I was riding a section.
Speaker 3:I'm like man, here's the main line, but it doesn't feel right.
Speaker 1:It's not the line.
Speaker 3:And there's gotta be a better way. Like there's three spots, I turned around and wrote them again. I'm like, yep, that's better, right. And it's like I was two or three feet off the main line. Everyone rides Yep, still stop and go. Practice. No sessions.
Speaker 1:No, because they don't want their strava to look not right. Great, yeah, yeah, it's ego. Yeah, yeah, that's. The thing is like there's a lot of times, especially last year, when I was like actually preparing for something and I would go to like a skip and I'm like, okay, today I'm just working on cornering, like, and today I'm just gonna do go slow, no breaks through corners, because I just want to work on cornering and it just, you know, some days'm just going to do go slow, no breaks the corners, because I just want to work on cornering and it just, you know, some days you just have to suck it up. Where I'd go? After I went and had my session with you in Bentonville, I come back, I would go to the pump track and I would spend time out there and then I go ride a little course around there and just work on skills, because that's what I needed to do Then, not worry about like that can be your.
Speaker 3:If you're like I'm training, like that can be your recovery day 100 your recovery day doesn't have to be like oh, I have to go right at this many watts or this heart rate, like just got new skills and trails are close enough.
Speaker 1:In oklahoma city you can go. You can go to the pump track and use that as your warm-up, jump in the car and 10 minutes later you're on a trail, either at skip or draper or arcadia or something else like, yeah, I, I agree people need to do more skills work. Um, okay, we're running long here and we have so many things on here.
Speaker 3:We're getting people are gonna listen. It's okay, there are gonna be at least five or seven.
Speaker 1:Yeah, listen, single digits, seeing tens of people there. There, we might get tens on this, one might get tens, I'm hoping. Um well, if our family listens, we'll get tens. Um well, one of the questions was did Alan ever beat Drummond in a race? And I think that was one of you two put up there.
Speaker 2:Officially no, officially no.
Speaker 1:So this must be a question that Alan put on there. I did make him quit a race Clearly.
Speaker 3:I was already going to quit that race.
Speaker 1:I just quit sooner T-Bird yeah.
Speaker 2:Six hour Going, yeah. Six hour Going up. Dammit Randy, the big climb, yeah. And he heard me coming up behind him. I heard him breathing.
Speaker 1:Because he sounds like a Sasquatch. Yeah, damn it, I had the same experience.
Speaker 2:That climb is awful. It's gone awful.
Speaker 3:We were going downhill. Oh, you and I yeah, I was in the mood to listen to Alan, so I got off the trail before he caught me.
Speaker 2:I was like no, I couldn't believe it. I look up and it's like holy shit, I'm catching him right now what is happening?
Speaker 1:Did your bike break or something?
Speaker 2:He blew himself up oh.
Speaker 1:Had he lapped you already.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, okay, that doesn't matter Okay.
Speaker 3:Well, because when I heard Squatch coming, I had a flat and I'm standing. I'm like what is that? I can hear it but I can't see it. And he comes by, it's like, it's like the forrest gump scene I was like, jeez, what's wrong with you?
Speaker 1:okay, yeah, you beat me there because, see, yeah, yeah wins a win, uh-huh, uh-huh. Okay, I, some of these are something bad. So, yeah, there's something which are exactly what we would expect from the Instagrams. All right, question number one and this person can guess where it came from and we're just going to read it how much shorter can Ryan Brantley's bib shorts get? Oh, wow, I don't know if anyone's seen them, but they are definitely. They're short, on trend with what young gentlemen are wearing these days. He's following the Lululemon trend, agree, so what do you think? What is the proper bib short length?
Speaker 3:I don't have an opinion.
Speaker 1:I'm looking at Drummond. I'm going to say they need to go close to the knee. They can't be mid-thigh For me. I mean, if you've got longer legs they go a little shorter.
Speaker 3:Yours, I'm going to say they need to go close to the knee. They can't be mid-thigh For me. If you've got longer legs, they go a little shorter. Yours are still closer to your knees.
Speaker 1:Yours are closer to your knees than mid-thigh.
Speaker 2:You're saying Listen, if you're a dude, you can't be doing booty shorts.
Speaker 1:You can't be mid-thighs.
Speaker 3:Fingertips the junior high rule.
Speaker 1:I like it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's about right, yeah, fingertips.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like it. All. Right, brantley, I don't know I don't know, is he? Him-em. What does he do? Why does Chris Drummond dislike turned-in hoods? Ooh, that's a good one. First off, I just recently tweaked some positions on RyRy's bike and we talked about his hoods and he's like my dad won't let me do that, He'll kill me. I was like your dad's not here, let's just do it.
Speaker 3:And if he notices, then just oh, he came and gave me this shit too. Yeah, oh I was like I was, like I just saw that at the shop today. Don't give me that.
Speaker 1:I agree, the massively turned in do look goofy A couple degrees.
Speaker 3:Mine are a couple degrees it hurts my wrist if they're straight.
Speaker 2:Now he's backing off his original stance.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, I'm not, I'm not.
Speaker 2:A couple degrees.
Speaker 3:I think at the shop I'm going to have a measurement for bar width and then like maximum turn in and everybody's getting them pushed out.
Speaker 2:Wait, wait, wait. Here's what we need to ask have you ever ridden flared?
Speaker 3:bars. No, I actually. I have a demo bike from the shop that had flared bars, and the first thing I did was took them off before I even wrote it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you, yeah, if you want wrist problems, ride flared bars. Whenever I would have when I was doing a bike fit and a bike would come in with flared bars. I'm like, oh, that's gonna be great because they're gonna think I'm a hero. I'm like they come in. We said I'm like, okay, let's go over. So do you have hand numbness? Like, oh man, so bad.
Speaker 1:I'm like, huh, interesting you also have flared bars yes, I would say slight flare of like a couple like where the tops measure like 38 and the flare and the drops are like 42s. I'm on board with that. That's too much because it gets. It does get the hoods and stuff out of the way, like when you're on your well, like these, these envy bars.
Speaker 3:And you and they say they're like a 12, they're like these are 42, but at the hood they're a, that's too much.
Speaker 1:They're tiny. Too much yeah. That's too much yeah, because for one, then if you line up the hoods and it looks even goofier, I think you lose the arrow advantage if you can't breathe because your chest is so closed off. I agree with that, yep.
Speaker 3:And you know we're not going fast enough to need that anyway.
Speaker 1:I think all hoods should be slightly turned in, slightly Like slightly like a couple of degrees.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just like my wrists do hurt if they're if they're straight, but like they should not be, they should be looking at each other.
Speaker 1:I agree too much. They should not be straight they should not be.
Speaker 3:They shouldn't be kissing yeah, if, if your bike comes in and I'm like, did you have a crash?
Speaker 1:it's too far, yeah, that's a good rule that's a good rule if I think you might have fallen, it's too far um was alan, the motivation for drummond's first national championship we've addressed that we've addressed that.
Speaker 2:That's clearly yes how many 90s do you have?
Speaker 3:no, just two yeah wait mechanics national champion. So three, oh damn it don't discount it they haven't, you know, they haven't actually had that event since I won it, so I'm still Raining. Yeah, I'm still, it was 2018. Do?
Speaker 1:you wear Stars and Bars. I should get one you should Mechanics jersey?
Speaker 3:That'd be awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll get you one. Okay, I think I'll work on that. What are the best gravel tires for Mid-South?
Speaker 3:Everyone knows that I'm a very loyal Vittoria guy, but I don't have good input for gravel tires.
Speaker 1:Do you have a width that you would say?
Speaker 3:All I've ever ridden are 40s, because I haven't had a bike that would take anything bigger.
Speaker 1:So I'll bow out of this one. My opinion would be for that race I would say 40 is more than enough because it's red dirt I rode 40s and when I did there's no gravel there the vittoria torino dry.
Speaker 3:I rode that. It was fine. I don't know. Like I haven't ridden anything with like 45s or 50s. Everyone thinks that's the way to go. Like I mean, the only bike I've ridden with that is like that Allied Test Mule you've seen around. Like I rode it with mountain bike tires and I rode it a couple miles on gravel, so I don't really have an opinion.
Speaker 1:The research shows it always depends on the terrain and the course and there's a lot of different sites out there that show the fastest tire for the fastest thing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, anything you want to look at. Just go to silica. He does the best job of anything, I think, out there for tire pressure and giving all that data and what's the one that does that compares, that you can pay for and get all the details for tires oh, the rolling resistance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a rolling resistance one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just type it in, you can find it. I remember what it is um.
Speaker 3:They have all the good data I will say there's people that look at like stuff like that, like yeah, that tire rolls the fastest, but can do you have the skill to ride that tire? Like there's a. You know, I wrote a blog for the website that we can we'll talk about soccer.
Speaker 1:That's a great one.
Speaker 3:There's so many factors that go into a tire, like there are tires that roll faster and there are tires that roll faster, there are tires that roll slower. But like you got to look at your skill level, what you're comfortable with this. This applies a lot more to mountain bike than gravel. But just because the tires are the fastest tire doesn't mean you're going to go the fastest riding that tire right because you don't have the skill to ride that tire like.
Speaker 3:There's tires that I ride for mountain bike that I wouldn't recommend for everyone Maybe a mix of what I ride but some people know and Ken Avery from Victoria. I rode with him in Bentonville and he put this the best. I was like I'm comfortable when the tire slides because I know what it's going to do. And he's like because you initiate the slide, he's like a controlled slide is not scary, an unexpected slide is not scary. An unexpected slide is. So there's people that have the skill to like you know I'm gonna. I know I'm gonna slide in this turn, so I'm just gonna get the bike sliding before I get there because I know where it's gonna end up. People like gravel's, the same like if you don't know that's gonna happen and you're uncomfortable with it, you might need a tire that has more knobs I'm gonna say 99 of the people out there need more knobs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I don't. I like the fastest tires of, like the vittoria, I think it's the mezcal that I have is the tan walls. I think it's what they have. That's, they're really fast tires. That torino, torino, no, on my mountain bike oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, this mezcal, yeah is that what it is super fast, great for oklahoma mountain bike trails.
Speaker 1:I would never ride them. I don't know if I would ride them in a race. I have them on my bike cause I have them and I just need to use them. To be honest with you, I definitely wouldn't take them outside of Oklahoma for my skillset I'm a mid pack cat to guy like whatever. But like I rode all last year um a Maxis like the uh ardent race and it looks like I mean it's got some like legit knob, I was so much faster on that tire with extra knob because I could trust it into every single corner because you weren't hitting the brakes, because never, yeah, you weren't gonna slide because I knew I was gonna have traction in a corner so I'm gonna be so much faster having a slower rolling resistant tire because I know it's gonna grip in a corner and I'm more comfortable with it in a corner and that's like the x factor that people don't consider when looking at tires, and I
Speaker 2:think that's the. What chris said is spot on right. I'll roll a slick these days, most of the time on gravel, because of where I'm riding and you're not hammering a corner, nope, and and I know those roads inside, I like a back of my hand and for the the most part, I can handle my bike and they're usually dirt where you're at. Yeah, and folks will come along and be like, oh, I need to ride. No, you need to ride with the right tire for your own bike handling skills.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and experiment, like again, the blog will explain a lot of it if you want to read the blog, if you're just like well, so-and-so said, to put this much air in and that's what I ride like, you are missing it so bad agree like you can run less faster tread because you're running less pressure and it has more grip. Um, my experience is a lot of people run more tire than needed because they won't experiment with tire pressure.
Speaker 1:So it's all. You should just get out there and play like, yeah, we should. Everybody should go play bikes. The same as that bike skill day.
Speaker 3:You need, you can do sessions right yeah, playing yeah go play and that's just one day of one day total.
Speaker 1:Like take a day to experiment with tire pressure and and like, if it's a mountain bike suspension, like just take a full riding day, that's your recovery day and go figure that well perfect example is before we went to cape, saxby went out on his own to skip, which is super untechnical, and he spent I don't remember how it was probably between an hour and two hours and he first handful of laps that he did in session he did was tire pressure started really high and just worked his way down until he found what he liked. And they did the exact same thing on a suspension and just worked his way down until he found what he liked, and they did the exact same thing on a suspension and just kind of played all day long, playing with all of his things to like, really dial it in. And that's what the day's workout was, was writing the value of that's far more than like doing a workout.
Speaker 3:Yes, and I will say I'll correct you there, it's technical, but it's not. It's not technical, it doesn't have rocks and roots, but to go fast at that it's technical. You have to know how to like get in. I just want to say that because people are like, well, it's not technical.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just, it's not scary technical.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like like when I lived in Tulsa, jake Las Lee, phenomenal bike racer, hated coming down to race like Thunderbird because he's like I don't know how you go around those corners to speed and miss the trees. He's like you've got to like turn your bike and then your head Like there's. Technical can mean a lot of things that everyone everyone just narrows it down to like Rocky or hard, but it's like technical can mean a lot of things, I agree.
Speaker 3:But it's like technical can mean a lot of things, I agree. And the cornering, like the skills you develop at skip, are like, if you can go fast there, then you're a good bike rider.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. For Mid-South I would say ride what tire you're comfortable with, but you don't need anything extra there.
Speaker 2:And it's mind-blowing to people.
Speaker 3:That was it two years ago, like it was pretty muddy and if you remember payson, payson ran the slicks, he, he ran a 35 millimeter slick and one yeah because you're gonna have track, no traction regardless, right, so you might as well something that doesn't pack clearance, uh-huh, yeah, I agree yeah, um that one's dumb uh breakfast food.
Speaker 1:That must have been a billy question um what do you eat pre-race?
Speaker 2:oh, are you still eating pop tarts?
Speaker 1:I eat pop tarts.
Speaker 3:I don't buy them during I can't have them in the house, I do eat them. If they're in the house, oh, I just eat them on rides yeah, yeah, uh, I'm not like soup, like if it's a, if it's like an important, like a race. I want to like. I'll usually do like oatmeal okay oatmeal, like I do eggos a lot, probably not good for you, but like if I'm gonna cheap if I'm gonna eat something and go ride within an hour.
Speaker 1:I just eat like three eggos and I go ride, you put butter on them syrup, yeah sugar, it's my system.
Speaker 3:I feel good, yep, and then I'm done.
Speaker 1:I'm the same, I do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or I'll do oatmeal Like those are kind of my two go-tos Oatmeal. I do some peanut butter in it, some brown sugar.
Speaker 2:Coffee.
Speaker 3:Always.
Speaker 1:Yeah, same.
Speaker 3:I mean that's perfect because you got a banana, like I think, like the good, the good plant-based option is put a banana in there. Or I've done like fried egg in my oatmeal, which is really good. I saw like a scratch, they made a post once and I was like I never thought of that it's really good though that is good like some salt on a fried egg that is good, yeah, I do, uh.
Speaker 1:Kodiak cakes with butter and syrup. Kodiak cakes they make?
Speaker 3:they make frozen waffles now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can buy them.
Speaker 3:They're not bad. I haven't seen those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I always do, tarjay, what's yours?
Speaker 3:Guinness no.
Speaker 2:I'll do the egg waffles.
Speaker 1:What's the blood thing that you guys do? Yeah, blood pudding, that's good shit, jesus.
Speaker 2:It really. I mean, I don't really. I don't I'm not a big breakfast eater. I like like Malat and I had this conversation, like I'm still one of those like I'll do coffee and like mix in good Kerrygold butter with it.
Speaker 1:You're like a bulletproof coffee guy.
Speaker 2:And that'll last me a while. Um and then you know, I in the bike, like I'll typically, just try and stick to real food. Yeah, I don't like sugary foods out on the bike because it's just I'll do you can't do real foods on the bike see I'll do sugars and it'll crash. What did you do 24 hours of old pueblo?
Speaker 3:well, that was different because, like I did a lap and stop, so you're right, we did a five person team. So now, when we did the four person teams with scratch, it was way different than what this five person times it was like four juniors and another adult than myself, or three, three juniors um. You had a lot more time so I could like I mean you still get to a point where you don't want to eat or you're like you need some energy, but I would do like a caffeine drink before I went out.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Um, try to like, like try to eat right when you get in, eat something or do a recovery drink and then go to sleep, get up more caffeine, more food.
Speaker 1:Um so let's do this. So race morning, how uh much. How far ahead of time do you eat A couple of hours Okay.
Speaker 3:I do too Like I think, the rules three, but if I do three, I I'm like I'm hungry. I get really hungry before the start.
Speaker 2:And then it gets in my head even if it's not affecting. I'm between two and three. Yeah, I can't do. There's folks that will go like they're eating 30 minutes before a race.
Speaker 1:I can't do that. I agree Can't do it. I would do like a banana at that point or something like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I usually do like two, and then I'll do a banana before I warm up, or I'll take a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because, like Tour de Dirt, races start at like 11 or 12.
Speaker 1:I'll eat my breakfast, normal, and I ready I'm taking some bites. I'll go warm up, come back, take some bites and then, yeah, I'm kind of on gone from there. Um, this is a good one and we can talk about the blog. So what can we do to help promote the new blog page or new website? Um, cycling gohoma, go to it, check it out we got a blog.
Speaker 2:I didn't mean to open a can of worms lord on facebook, by the way. Whenever I posted that and then everyone was like, hey, it's missing.
Speaker 1:All these rights, oh yeah, well, no shit, there's like a bazillion routes on the planet. So if you would send them to me, which has been great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I will upload them right so but people telling you on facebook ryan, you're missing all these, right? Yeah?
Speaker 1:yeah, shocking, I know well, because there's a gazillion routes in oklahoma and I posted I don't know, I think it, I can't remember I was like there's a lot on there. It was like thousands of miles of routes, so it will continue to grow. If you have a favorite route, send it to me, I'll upload it. Awesome. And then I got posts or comments about like well, you can't do that route because it's on private land. Like, okay, but it's a route that exists, I'm gonna upload it. It's a cool route, it's.
Speaker 3:It was an old race or something, and it's there for people to figure out. If you can't write, don't.
Speaker 1:Don't jump the fence to write it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, figure it out yourself you're an adult. In fact, your computer will write you're around, yes so, um, I would say, go to it.
Speaker 1:We do have some really fun, I think, cool blogs, posts that will be happening. We have some good people writing blogs and hopefully we'll have more come on board um as we go. Um, but just check it out, you have to join it with the way. So, currently the way that it is with, because I have to pay for ride with gps so I have to.
Speaker 1:They have different levels. It's a whole thing. It they cut me a break, thank goodness. So I pay for them. Yeah, I pay for them, and they allow the setup that we have for the route to pee he's peeing I think he's pregnant?
Speaker 1:I think he's pregnant. He's had a. He's had a almost a full beer, though he used to be able to hold his beer. He's old, yeah, yeah, so, um, but so you just have to join. It doesn cost you anything.
Speaker 1:But the cool thing is, if you have a free Ride With GPS account, it gives you because I pay for it on my end it gives you the benefits of a paid subscription. So you're going to get, and then, if you download anything off of that, you're going to get the benefits as if you were a paid person with Ride With GPS. So just get on there. You just have to click and say join. That's it. It's really simple. You can download it. If you have routes that you like, send them to me, I'll upload them.
Speaker 1:I have some things that we're trying to do with it going forward. It just takes money and I currently have meetings set up and phone calls set up with people hopefully trying to get some funding for it. Awesome, that's the goal. I have a really big picture like long-term thing that might take years to pull off, but for now, if people just go on and read the blogs, get some traction, which can help me. Show sponsors join the group which can help me show sponsors, anything like that just helps me show people that there's people coming there and then we can get money.
Speaker 2:And if we get money, then we can do a lot more cooler things, and the more we can direct folks to it because, like any of the sort of like okc, gravel grinder side people going, hey, any rights around?
Speaker 1:so yeah, and that's the, that's the goal.
Speaker 1:A million rights, that's the goal is that you just go down to western oklahoma and you're like, oh, I'm in western oklahoma, pull it up, western oklahoma, where are routes, eastern oklahoma, like whatever that's. That's the goal for it. To make it simple, it's going to stay dirt related. We can, you know, start putting more cross stuff on there, gravel stuff on their mountain bike stuff on there. I wanted to keep it dirt focused. Um, I would like to really create some really cool video content on there.
Speaker 1:Spoke with brantley today. We're going to get out and shoot some video stuff and in his booty shorts, hopefully for my benefit, um, so we're gonna do, uh, hopefully, some really cool videos and what, ideally, what I would really like to, if I can get the funding for it, is I would love to take some of these routes that have cool features. Go out, do a video about that route and tell the history of this small town. What, how did minko become what it is? There's a random cemetery that's out in the middle of nowhere. Tell the history about this cemetery, yeah, and tell like or do some stuff with some tribes and talk about the indian heritage or native heritage and do and just be an educational history piece of oklahoma. So when you're riding through this beautiful landscape. You know what you're riding through. Yeah, and we get more in tune with our land, which is super cool.
Speaker 2:It's like most folks don't know uh, pan over by us when you're riding north on there. If you look to the east, just north of charter oak, all of the rubble from the murrah building bombing right is actually just sitting out there because the guy that owns the land was like hey, the state had nowhere to put it. He's like just put it out of land, it's all out there. With the search and rescue market, it's like all of this history.
Speaker 1:If we could make a real I didn't know any of that If we could make a cool video about that, how great would that be. So when you go ride this route, because I need to get a 30-mile route in you go ride it and you're out there and you're like, okay, well, ride with gps when we travel.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I just need a route. Like I want to go ride for an hour and a half, yep. But like you don't really know, like, who created this route and what am I getting with?
Speaker 2:it. What's the story behind it?
Speaker 3:well, I mean yeah yeah, I mean also from like am I on the right bike? Like, did they actually? Yeah, upload this the right way, because I did a route, this a paved only route in the middle of arkansas, and I ended up on a 30 minute climb on my road bike on gravel, thinking like, all right, well, I'm going to hit road at some point, and I never did.
Speaker 3:I had to descend that thing, so it's like a route that's uploaded. Um, when I was in Arkansas there was a guy named uh Jorge that did a gravel routesnet and I just use that Cause, like I knew, he uploaded good routes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like if it's on there it's a good route, Like I know what I'm getting like.
Speaker 2:ride with GPS is great, but sometimes anybody can put a route up there, and it's not accurate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they can label it Well, it shows it's all paved and it's all gravel, right, and so that everything that's on like cycling Oklahoma will be gravel, everything mostly gravel. So that's that's the goal, and I would love to have a history component, an educational component. I would love people to go to the blog and learn something and keep coming back. I mean, right now we have mountain bike women's uh, bike packing uh, Marty's on there.
Speaker 1:Marty's is maintenance. Yeah, yeah, um. And then I have a guy that I'm trying to, that I'm doing a podcast with on Friday that hopefully he'll do some like strength and conditioning and mobility and stuff like that. So he hasn't committed to it.
Speaker 3:Yet Is there a way on that blog for people to engage like ask questions, like to whoever wrote it? That would be.
Speaker 1:I'll look into that and that would be something I can possibly add um as a feature. And again, that's going to come from funding, and right now I mean our only funding piece is my pocketbook and more overhead doors.
Speaker 3:We drove by there when we were like got into town and Ryan's like more overhead door Perfect.
Speaker 2:Like the sponsor, so I mean I may have some ways to help.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So anything like that is going to be great, cause it's just going back into the community and Vanessa's going to help with the Instagram Cause I suck at Instagram, so she's going to really take over that. So if we can have more beneficial stuff there, I would like somebody sent me a message and it was beautiful, like hey, it'd be awesome if there was a race calendar page to your website, so if I could come in there and I could see all the race stuff I asked hodges about that the other day because I was like looking at planning stuff and I'm like, is there, like in arkansas we had one and it was pretty accurate like there needs to be one central place where every event is, so that you know like people can either find an event or people that want to promote event are overlapping.
Speaker 1:Yes, which is also, and that's what I want I want it to just be a resource for our dirt community. Yep, that's it. And so if we can make that happen, let's make that happen. And if anybody has suggestions, like I'm winging this too, so like comment, like whatever you need, you're not going to hurt feelings and I will take all the help I can get. So we're just trying to get it going. Um, a couple more to wrap up. So we, because we are getting long here, um, let's see wheeler we got. Uh, is drummond's iq really 89 points higher than Alan's?
Speaker 2:Yes, okay At least Might be 90. Yeah, might be 90.
Speaker 3:My IQ? Yeah, that's 90. Yeah, that's where you're at.
Speaker 2:Mine's at zero.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this one. Clearly you can cover this one because you're free. How many push-ups does it take to get a tricep? What? Who do you think that came from? It's gotta be billy. Thank you more than billy can do. Let's just say that, um, he's not gonna find out and more than alan is done.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah um, let's see mom's getting in fight at races. Oh, that's a good. Yeah, I think we'll skip that one, but you know who you are and that's funny. I don't let that one simmer for a few. Yeah, we won't bring that one up today. Um, this is one I do want to talk about and this'll cause a hop Hot potato. Yeah, and we'll, we'll end with this, hopefully.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm. I don't do wheeler crits. I have nothing attached. So if you don't want to say anything, you're more than welcome to not say anything. We'll see. I'm an impartial bystander. That's why we can like bash, okay. So c race, oh, goes off. Uh-huh, it's at c race. Yeah, does this thing? Um, how do you feel about someone who doesn't belong in that race in that race? About someone who doesn't belong in that race, in that race, because they're warming up In quotes For their events? And or men Riding on the course during the women's event? During the women's race.
Speaker 2:So let's start.
Speaker 3:Controversial.
Speaker 1:I have opinions that I'm not afraid to share.
Speaker 3:This is really going to piss people off. Let's start with the women's race, because, okay, this is really going to piss people off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let's start with. Let's start with the women's race, Cause that'll be a fun one to piss people yeah.
Speaker 2:Don't, don't, don't be on the, don't be on the course when the women are racing. I agree Don't be a dick.
Speaker 1:A thousand percent, yeah, but if you go a while, we had like 10 to 15 women, yeah, in every race, which it's really sad, because now it's like three to four every race, which I don't know what happened.
Speaker 3:I don't think kind of the same three to four right every time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, every single time which sucks because really, truly, like two years ago, there was like 10 to 15 women every race, all at the same level, so it was fun. Yeah, it was a fun race. Well, that's how I met lindsey, because and she's got other shit going on, so she's not there, but that's how I met her, because she was there racing and um yeah, and so I would love to see a larger group of women come back out and start racing.
Speaker 2:I mean, jen used to race yeah, the women's community in oklahoma has not been stronger than it is right now no, and it really hit a big bump and that's kind of regressed a little bit. It is sort of dialed back a little bit, but it is still so strong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, stronger than ever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think, and again, we're three dudes with penises trying to talk about women's racing here, right Well?
Speaker 1:most of us. Two of us, yeah, two of you.
Speaker 2:He said two of you yeah, yeah, he's a two of you, um, but yeah, if, if there's a, if there's a women's race going on, don't be a dick and warm up during it.
Speaker 1:They don't warm up here in your race.
Speaker 3:I will, I will say there's this is just this is me walking the walking line here, but don't walk the line. It's a grassroots deal, like it's been. It's been okay to like get behind a race to just like ride and warm up, cause there's not a lot of room to warm up Right, you stay behind, you should not do is ever pass.
Speaker 1:No, anyone Nope.
Speaker 3:Now like last week and I don't hopefully I'm not the one that brought this on- Cause.
Speaker 1:The women requested no one warming up in their race, but I was riding with one of the little brick squad kids.
Speaker 3:I was like towing him around and, like me and Ryan, were, we're having fun with him and when, when the women came by, we got out of the way and he, you know, I was trying to tell him to get out of the way, but he was like red line.
Speaker 2:So he can see straight.
Speaker 3:Like I noticed in the B race last night, there was a racers at the front and that is that's what caused this, and I think this, this topic, is just purely. This is like the e-bike topic and now I'm like it's purely educational. If you're out there to warm up, you never pass a racer, and if you're, if you're off the back and racers are coming, get the hell out of the way. Like stop off, stop, yes. Don't like stay on the inside of the turn because that's where they're going right you get out of the way.
Speaker 3:You're warming up like it's I go. I go out there and warm up during the the b race, but I don't pass anyone and if I fall off the back of it because I don't want to go that fast, I'll like stop on the side and let them pass, because you're you're impeding someone else's race, which is shitty but that's the thing it's.
Speaker 1:I watched last night. I'm the one that put this on here, so I'll call myself out for it Because it happened last night.
Speaker 3:I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:I watched it in the B race and whoever listens, if they listen to this, which if they're one of the 10, then there was A racers at the front Of the B race, of the B race, for several laps. Sometimes they would go to the front, Sometimes they wouldn't, sometimes they would kind of almost go like kind of smidge off the front. Yeah, and I'm like it's not your race, bro, like it's total BS. Yeah, and I have no skin in the game, so I don't care.
Speaker 1:I do, but I want the education piece to be there because I want, I want people to be able to go out there and warm up like an. A racer should never be a front of the mid pack of a race, in front of the b?
Speaker 3:well vanessa and I had this talk last night because that happened. I'm like you should never pass anyone unless they're like pulling the plug and they drop off, yeah then that's fine, but like you, tail gun you tail gun the whole If you want to get an effort in drop off the back. I did that last night I dropped off the back and chased the group.
Speaker 1:Exactly Because I wanted to warm up. You should not be in the mix.
Speaker 3:You shouldn't be a factor in the race whatsoever.
Speaker 1:No 100%.
Speaker 2:The other thing there as well is you get folks with differing skill levels that are mixing together. There it's a recipe for disaster. Right Is folks who are, because typically your A racers, they know how to corner batter, everything's smoother, right. And now you so he's heard, yeah, so I've heard he's seen, yeah, I've watched TV. He's like that's not what I do. And when you get different skill levels mixed together, there can be no complaints when people go down yes, right, none whatsoever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not your race, no. Like you stay at the back, you warm up. Exactly what you said. If you want to do intervals, you bounce off, catch back up. Do those kinds of things you should never. It's not your race, right. And for it's not your race right. And for someone who that would be my race, it's not fair that you're in here like I'm trying. This is my.
Speaker 3:A race like this is my thing, this is my ability, this is my level, and let me now you're screwing up my stuff let me race folks with with my ability right and I think that's what makes wheeler so great is like you can just like jump in and warm up. It's really laid back, but like I also think the people doing this know better a hundred percent that was like the thing that I was like man well, I kind of disappointed.
Speaker 1:I watched it last night and it was everybody that was up where they shouldn't have been a hundred percent knew better. Yeah, when they were, I don't know why they were up there, and it happens every week too many people, I don't think, put their selves in that other person's shoes no it's like this is what I need right now.
Speaker 1:It's like well, genie, doesn't matter, it's not your race, it's not your race yeah, if you want to go hard and warm up, go down the river trail. It's a quarter mile away. You can put your efforts in down there all you want.
Speaker 2:Yes, it want, yes, it's not your race.
Speaker 1:I think people need to be more respectful to the categories that are racing, because that is their effort and that's their ability and it's not fair to them, right, it's being very entitled and just kind of overbearing, in my opinion, and that'll piss people off and that's fine. But yeah, I think, if it's not your race, stay out of the way, don't be a dick, don't be at, which is very difficult for racers and roadies, let's be honest Is that what we're in and on.
Speaker 2:I'm going to bring my e-bike next week.
Speaker 1:Bring your e-bike right on the front and attack.
Speaker 2:I was the big. He'll still throw up. Yeah, I will. And quit, yeah, Three laps when his battery runs out. The kickstand will be down at the side and I'll be parked there.
Speaker 3:God, that was hard. He's not going to clip a pedal, he's going to clip a kickstand.
Speaker 1:God, would that ever be beautiful. That would make for the best story of all time.
Speaker 2:Why is he lying at the side of the corner?
Speaker 1:Got his kickstand, kickstand fell down.
Speaker 2:God, that'd be amazing. Is there anything else you would like to cover Doctor what's?
Speaker 3:the hardest race you've ever done. It's a tough one, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Mentally hardest.
Speaker 3:That's a tough one too. I've had hour races that were mentally very hard.
Speaker 2:And I've had 24-hour races where you're like screw this.
Speaker 3:Those don't seem as bad to me because it's like the pace is slower, the intensity is down, like the 12-hour race I did this year. There's times I was just not feeling good and Vanessa would be like just go do another lap. All right, I'll go do another lap. And I just kept doing that where, like for me, like the mental side of a very intense race beforehand is harder for me because you're just like man, you know what you're about to put yourself through yeah and it's like just getting in the mindset to hurt yourself that bad at will.
Speaker 3:You can stop any time. That's where I'm getting at to this point in my life. It's a choice that was in the winning break last night there was me and Ry-Ry and McQuirk and we could have rolled it and I just looked at Ryan and I was like I'm done and physically I could have probably got another lap or two. I just like why? Yeah, because in another lap or two I'm going to be done.
Speaker 2:So I just stopped now.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 1:It hurts too much.
Speaker 3:I think I think it's more like it's more of that than anything but hardest race. I don't know. I've done some like I think I've tried to forget get yeah about the really bad ones, but what about you guys?
Speaker 2:yeah, what's the hardest race? Cape epic? Oh, not even a call not even a close question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that was the hardest. Physically, mentally, like the every single, like it was the end or like the very edge and like expose my mental and physical capacity. I think mentally I was still okay, I was still in it and I was still like, wanted it. Physically, like for a variety of reasons, it was it was going that hard every day.
Speaker 3:And then like getting up and like I gotta do that, like that's, like I gotta do that again today.
Speaker 1:Well, like the other day it was like 112 or something, heat index, and I'm like this is what we wrote in for, like there was three days that were that hot.
Speaker 1:I mean, there was a day that we were at the top and I was saxby had kind of left me and I was I was put walking my bike up this giant mountain and this guy next to me and I was like I was like dying. I'd walk like 10 steps and find shade and stop. Walk 10 steps, find shade and stop and look those guys, like it's so hot. He's like I just looked at my garment, it's 115 and I'm like what the hell? Like that? I mean physically, that was not even a question the hardest because it was, you know, it's minimum of five, minimum of five. Yeah, five and a half to seven and a half hours every single day.
Speaker 1:And then you, I, and then when I had the gut problems and so I couldn't eat and so I had no calories, and then you were not sleeping great, and then you're just like, yeah, it's just like it was the whole package. Yeah, it was the greatest experience of my life and the hardest experience of my life. Yeah, not even close. It legitimately changed trajectory of my life forever. Yeah, yeah in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3:Yeah, in a good, in a good way, but don't you always find like and I've done this hundreds of times and I know better now like, like maybe not you with that, but like you do a really hard race and you like have, like you don't win or whatever, and it's just like man. And then and then like two or three days later, that's my every race, chris, yeah.
Speaker 3:You don't finish. But what's funny to me is like the things. So this thing that I've experienced, like the kids now experience is like a few days later you're like man, I could have went harder that last lap. I could have won, and I've heard Ryan say it. I'm like no, you couldn't have, you couldn't have. You think now yeah, yeah. I could have, but there's a reason you didn't.
Speaker 2:You physically could not.
Speaker 1:That was the first time, but in your mind you're like I could have went harder because people like after it took some time for to settle in and I think it's finally settled in. But there was a couple times where people like when we were packing up and leaving, like after the race was over, you know, everybody's like talking to it. Everybody's like because you become a family, because you're there for a week, to get more than a week together and be like well, you guys coming back to just like give it another try. I'm like absolutely not, like no way, like this was no but you're thinking about it, no not even.
Speaker 1:It's not even a question. But I look at some of their other events and I'm like maybe just I don't, that's just. It took me to such a level that I'm like I don't know if I ever wanted like try that hard again. Yeah, because it was just because, if, say, the gut worked and everything was fine, I was able to eat. I still say that at my skill level I still would have been 50-50 of finishing the cutoffs in every single day and like making it, if my skill level on that terrain and that course, with that heat and that setup, like all the things, I would say I'm still 50-50 on finishing that event. So it was just, I found my limit and I'm okay with it. Yeah, I'm legitimately at this age in my life. You're good if I was 10 years ago, no way, but now I'm like yeah, I found my limit.
Speaker 3:I'm cool, I'm cool yeah and what like. What's funny is, like that kind of mindset is like the year, the year that I won cyclocross nationals, like that year I was like man, I'm putting everything into it. Diet training, I was dialed and the funny thing about that is I've never since then, I've never been able to train like that, because I don't know if it's I don't care, but I know how much it took for me to be at that level. Yeah, and I know exactly what to do to do it again.
Speaker 3:Yep but you don't just like don't think, I don't want to do it yeah like it was. It was like everything, every day, every minute was about being the best I could be all year.
Speaker 3:Yep, and I, I just like can't get back there like I've tried to get back there and I can't like I get to a point where like I'm like I need to push through this workout, like I don't really want to for a while, yeah, yeah, and it's like same and the weirdest thing about I mean that that was a pretty hard race, because, like that was a race, I was alone the whole race and I was racing on ice and it's like don't crash, yeah, like I have this one if I don't crash for like 45 minutes racing on ice. And it's like don't crash, yeah, like I have this one if I don't crash for like 45 minutes racing on ice and it's like you're so, so locked in.
Speaker 3:They're like, yeah, I don't even notice anything. But then, like like after the race was done, like I, I was done, and then vanessa and I walked over to see if I'd got like random selected for usada, and I felt exhausted, yeah, and it was like the whole year of like caught up and you know it's like. I know it's just like a master sting.
Speaker 1:It's not like yeah, the olympics, but it was for you.
Speaker 3:For me it was the biggest thing yeah and it was like the whole year of that energy of like focusing on that thing was like sucked out of me and it was like it was the weirdest feeling and like I still I remember it very clearly like completely wiped out and I I just never have been able to get back to that level of like commitment to sport. Want to yeah. It's like it's like, if I do it again, what does it matter?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I you know, some people like I'm not saying it doesn't cause it's like something I'm really proud of, but for me to do it again. I just can't put that much into doing that thing.
Speaker 1:Once you have done that, with it not maybe it's not winning. Maybe it's like you put that into running the Oklahoma city marathon or doing your first hundred mile.
Speaker 2:Yeah, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:Like, when you really like it, you come to it and you're just like man, like I. I did it, I accomplished it. I fulfilled that thing. I checked that box, I knew what it took, like the people that have the drive to get to the best in the world and stay there, that's you're different. You're different. It's not. It's not a choice, it's in you. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it gives like people like Nino Schurter. Yeah, like my respect for that guy to like he's done everything. He's nothing to prove Right and keeps coming back.
Speaker 1:Yes, because he just wants to getting to number one. It's not easy, but it's easy.
Speaker 3:Staying.
Speaker 1:And you have the money or the success or the praise or the glory, even if it's locally, getting to the top and staying there, even if it's like in your friend group, right, it takes a different mentality to continue it.
Speaker 2:What's yours? This one's crazy. So I've done both Leadvilles, the 100 and the 50. And Malat and I had this conversation that 50 is by far the hardest thing I've ever done because it was there was no. On the 100 you can kind of pace yourself and you know, okay, there's a lot of flats in this. I know what I'm doing, I know my times.
Speaker 3:On the 50, you're either going up or you're going down like a lot of fluff in the 100 where, like you, can recover you can recover in the 100.
Speaker 2:You can sit behind people on the 50. It is just a buckle. Uh, no, because I did it.
Speaker 1:Uh, sub, mine was like 12 and a half, was it like nine is for the fancy one and then sub 12 gets you the dude, the but psych, uh, was it uh? Trainer road did a podcast recently and talked about the power numbers that you have to put out to get the buckles, and those time my worst full circle back to my earlier question to him power numbers are going up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like those times at ladville, are dropping, yep, dropping and dropping yeah, it's a, because they have drop bars on their mountain bikes, right?
Speaker 1:true that. That's what it is yeah, I can't wait to ride my drop bar mountain bike at skip. It's gonna be so fast, it's gonna be awesome I hope you don't want me to build it so tomorrow he's got a job for you I'm gonna be dropping something off
Speaker 3:they're gonna be turned out.
Speaker 1:Yep, is there anything you guys want to plug? Chris, welcome back to Capital. We're glad to have you back in the community Capital.
Speaker 3:Co op. So I'm there wrenching on bikes and all that stuff you did miss me, Chris. You did come back to me Yep.
Speaker 1:Mr White, do you have anything you want to plug?
Speaker 2:I don't Gravel's about to, but kickoff tour de dirt. We're going to race some cyclocross this season.
Speaker 1:Jen's still doing fits at Wheeler Dealer.
Speaker 2:She is, it's by appointment, she's killing it, it's going good. Good Yep, all right. Yeah, but yeah, cross, we're going to race, chris, right. Sorry we're going to line up together.
Speaker 1:You're going to race, because now that it's posted, we're gonna have this race. Where how many times can he lap you in? An event has to be single speed, though you can't quit and you can't quit.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, because if you quit he laps, let's make it interesting. I'll go. It's uh. For every beer I drink during the race, I get a lap back no, no that's no, because you're gonna set the start, finish and just get hammered I've got
Speaker 3:six you'll beat me by the end. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Ooh, I might bring the e-bike out for the cross race.
Speaker 1:Still, I'm not sure you would win. Yeah, probably right actually. Hey, can you single speed the e-bike.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:He's got a kickstand, I'll still lap him yeah you will.
Speaker 1:actually. That would be a fun race If you did a single speed e-bike against Drummond.
Speaker 2:I'd have to have a detour around the barriers. That thing's 35 pounds.
Speaker 1:That's part of it. Maybe we could do that at a practice race, because that would be great. Yeah, I will bring the e-bike If you'll do that. That'll be fun and we can kind of put you in a, do some video content and make that funny.
Speaker 3:I'll just crash him out.
Speaker 2:Wouldn't be the first, oh BMX.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, we didn't even hit the BMX you want to make it quick, go ahead.
Speaker 1:This is y'all's thing. I don't know.
Speaker 2:This is many moons ago. Chris had the genius idea of us all getting the same BMX bike going out to the yukon track. This is the bike, one team, okay, after that, and having a fun little. Hey, let's race bmx in the cruiser class, oh, okay, and so, uh, we line up, but it's us and oh, y'all did it.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah yeah, like four of the bike one riders bought new bmx bikes. Yeah, and of course you know I was really just trying to sell bikes yeah, the minute you line up, it gets competitive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, right, and so we're just all flying and I think we all made it to the final. What's it called?
Speaker 2:I think, I think you and bernie were in the finals. Yeah and uh, bernie's a new zealand guy, oh yeah. And these you know these people are right there racing. That's what they do week in, week out and they're all nice to each other. And Bernie and I are ripping around this last corner and he comes up into me and I just throw my elbow out and he tumbles across the finish line, yelling and screaming and I got the best little trophy for winning that race.
Speaker 3:He ate shit pretty hard.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 3:I was doubled over laughing and all the track. People are like staring at me, like why is this guy laughing?
Speaker 2:because the guy crashed they're like did you bring these people? Like yeah, we did we did uh-huh and we never went back yeah, good thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's not a court track out there anymore, is there?
Speaker 3:I don't know if there is we need to go bm I think but the trosper bmx tracks coming back oh, it is trosper bmx is coming.
Speaker 1:Trosper trails are coming. Yep, I still have that bike. Oh, look out. I guess capital's gonna start selling bmx bikes. Get rid of skateboards I've already got one I'm not gonna sell them okay, well you think that, but he's already got all the other bikes and he keeps buying those. Um, all right, gentlemen, thank you, I appreciate it. Something tells me we're going to do this again. Yeah, later Awesome.