Ep #27: Off-Road to Unbound w/ Kait & Kurt

In this episode of All About Bikes, Kalen sits down with Kait Boyle & Kurt Refsnider to talk about their unforgettable 1,300 mile journey to Unbound and the epic race itself. You can check out the journal they wrote about the experience here: https://www.pivotcycles.com/en/off-road-to-unbound/

Chapters

• 0:00 Ultra-Endurance Cycling and Trail Advocacy
• 14:20 Gravel Riding Adventures
• 25:33 Race Preparation and Riding Companions
• 38:50 Farm Host Hospitality and Gear Swaps
• 51:52 Bikepacking Essentials and Sustainable Riding
• 55:22 Nutrition and Community Connections
• 1:01:44 Race Preparation and Restful Recovery
• 1:05:34 Gravel Race Pack Dynamics and Strategy
• 1:10:12 Strategic Learning for Ultra-Endurance Racing
• 1:17:45 Sierra Trail Advocacy and Downeyville Race
• 1:24:24 Bikepacking Roots and Backcountry Adventures

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Pivot Cycles All About Bikes podcast, where we talk about a variety of topics from the cycling world. I'm Kaelin, your host for this episode. Today, we'll be examining the topic of ultra -endurance cycling. Joining us today are two of the sport's most decorated riders on the Industry 9 Pivot Cycles Pro Backcountry Team, Kurt Refsnider and Kate Boyle. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having us. Thanks. Yeah, happy to be Cool, Kate, you describe yourself as a backcountry mountain biker, world champion, record holding ultra endurance athlete, trail advocate, and adventure educator. Is that pretty well described? Yeah, it makes me sound like I describe myself very flamboyantly. Yeah, those things are true. Those are facts. I'd say just very qualified. Kurt, you're a professional ultra endurance backcountry mountain biking athlete, founder of Ultra MTB LLC, co-founder and routes director at Bikepacking Roots, and you're the current record holder for multiple FKTs and finisher of a lot of the world's hardest routes. So, I mean, I'm just lucky to be a part of this conversation. So thank you guys for letting me be here. Yeah. Yeah, it's been a lot of I think I've been doing this for what 15 years now, so it's not like those things happen overnight It's been a long long. Yes, you should probably have accomplished all that this point Yeah, one thing a year and I get a pretty good lengthy resume, right? Yeah, what have you been doing? Otherwise? Well, I mean most of your guys events require so much time that you know You can only pack so many multi -day or month-long events into into a single season Totally true. And from a just a sustainability standpoint, doing that in the long term, having energy for life, not wearing out your body. Like, yeah, I've kind of come to a place of two of those a year in the two to four day range. That's good for me right now. And then a bunch of shorter stuff for fun. And now he's one of the older guys. It's working. It's true. Yeah. Can still do it after 15 years of it. Do you have old man speed now, old man power? I don't know. I can't tell. I think so. I you seem to keep like setting personal bests and things. Like it's slightly maddening because women are supposed to get faster as they get older, but men aren't. And you seem to be. I should be like over my peak, right? Yeah. You're still climbing. You're still climbing. Still figuring things But I think that is one of the cool things about ultra distance. I know this wasn't a question. It's not necessarily an interview. It's a conversation. Well, then I would add to maybe to Kurt's trajectory as he ages is just one of the really cool things about ultra endurance cycling. One of the things that I've found myself really drawn back to it after some hiatus is just how there is a fill. physical element, but so much of it and what leads to like a really smooth ride or like reaching a goal on an ultra has so much to do with your mental approach and your mindset and the strategy and the gear and the setup and all how you manage logistics and self care. like, even if Kurt and I, I mean, I'm my late thirties now, but like, even if our bodies aren't necessarily peaking anymore, There are all those other things you can continue to get better at. Even just bike handling, know, and just being a more efficient rider and that obviously like efficiency over long distance makes a huge difference. And so I think that's one of the cool things is that you can keep finding ways to improve. Yeah, strategy, like you said, self -care, having the right knowing what to eat. There's just there's so many aspects of it. Totally. So kind of a question off topic of riding, but you guys both have career and educational pursuits other than just riding bikes. So Kate, you've got a Wilderness First Responders certification. You've got a BA in Wilderness Leadership and Environmental Education and a Masters in Environmental Education. How do you intertwine that with your outdoor adventures and kind of combine that with environmental education? Yeah, I think for me, I mean, that's how I found bikes. Like I had a career in adventure education at Prescott College and Knolls and through that expeditionary skill set that I developed. That's how I ended up getting on a mountain bike and bike packing. And then I really think I still think that those skills are kind of what propelled me into being able to quickly like take on really big routes in different parts of the world and That's how Kurt and I met was teaching a geology through bikepacking course. And while I had at that point, just like a year or two of biking experience, the backcountry and education experience of gave me a skillset that I could go pretty big on the bike pretty quickly. And that led to teaching bikepacking at the college level. And then that also led to, I think while Kurt and I were traveling on a bikepacking trip, coming up with the concept for bikepacking routes as at the time, like the first national nonprofit dedicated to advocating for bikepackers and trying to help cultivate a bikepacking user group that had a seat at the table for land management decisions. And then also was a group of people who were informed about responsible recreation and the landscapes that they travel through. hopefully ultimately like develop this conservation or stewardship ethic and want to have a positive impact on the places that they ride through on their bikes. And so my role at Bikepacking Roots from the beginning and then as I moved away from a professional career in teaching has been to work on that education and advocacy side to bike packers and adventure cyclists connect to the places that they ride through and learn how and develop the skills to travel in a responsible way that has a positive impact. And so now these days, while my job is mostly shaped by being a professional athlete, I get to work on projects for bikepacking routes and then get invited, I think because of that, to give talks and workshops and write articles even on podcast just talk about that type of work that I get to do both on the bike and off of. Yeah. I mean, that's that's amazing. And bikepacking has opened up these trails that were normally kind of unused these backcountry routes that you guys are exploring and recommending to people. Now these trails are actually getting used instead of just the local networks close, close to town. Yeah, that was one of the other kind main goals we had with bikepacking routes from the beginning was there was kind of this hole in the trail advocacy world from a cycling standpoint of those backcountry trails and like IMBA used to do more work for those and they've shifted more to kind of front country type trail systems because that's where they're going to have the biggest impact on like the most number of people. So it makes sense. But they weren't doing as much for those backcountry trails and other organizations weren't really from a cycling perspective. And so it's been really fun to The bike packing user groups start to recognize the value of more of those trails and step up and have more of a role in conversations with land managers. And we've seen places now that those conversations have resulted directly in those trails being or continued to be open to bikes when that access was threatened for a variety of reasons. And there's one really cool example up in northern Montana right now where a trail is poised, kind of a long section of trail on the state line is poised to be open back up. mountain bikers because of the involvement of the local mountain bike trail group up there and bike packers both really being involved in those conversations. yeah it's been really it's a lot of work to be involved in all of those conversations and lots of meetings and just like email time and responding to forest planning process documents and things like that but it makes a difference and it's important to do so it's been been fun to be able to bring some of our experience and leadership skills to having an impact in that way. Kurt, you also hold a PhD in geological sciences. I do. And you guys had that. Kate, why are you laughing? Just, you know, a side note. Do Do you use that knowledge a lot while you're traveling, traveling along on these things? you? I feel like you've got a lot of dad jokes going through your head while you're writing forever and you see a rock formation. You've got to have some like fun. Come on, there's got to a good it's so interesting how it's like, it's not really anything that I learned directly in all my PhD studies or anything, but it's more just a way of like looking at the world around you and thinking about it envisioning how it's become that way. And that was like as a kid, that's what got me interested in geology to begin with was just understanding why where I lived in Minnesota had all these little hills and these big sandy places and these deep canyons that seemed really out of place in Minnesota. But if you were to go back 10 ,000 years when the glaciers were melting, there was a tremendous amount of melt water flowing through their carving thing. So it was like that kind of perspective that got me really into wanting to learn more about how just the landscapes around us evolve. And I think as a cyclist, that's a big part of my motivation for going out and exploring places. And like I have a big map of the Four Corners region on my wall next to my dining room table. And I just stare at that map. It's like this shaded relief map that's detailed enough you can pick out like little drainages and canyons. And I've planned out or not planned, but the ideas for a bunch of different trips I've done have come from just staring at that map. I like I've never been in this area. That's really interesting looking what's there like are there roads, are there trails and go onto other maps on my computer and start to map stuff out. And then that just turns into a really cool way to explore on a bike and learn more. so that's, you know, even when I'm on routes that other folks have designed or planning out like what altres do I want to do next, like a big part of deciding which ones are actually inspiring to me has to do with that landscape and the geology beneath it. So I don't know. I think a lot of the time I'm just enamored by that and not even thinking about jokes. Fair enough fair enough. I was surprised. I watched your bike check from the unbound and you know, you didn't have a Special bag for picking up rocks on your trip No, I didn't collect any in that race although I did When it was like a Month before unbound I think I was out in the East Coast for a bunch of stuff and Kate was out there for a little bit of that and then drove back through Ohio stopped and saw my little niece and She made a card for me because she was super stoked that I stopped and I opened it up. And on the one side, it was a very, you know, little kid's sketch of me riding a bike on a rocky trail with a little caption of me saying like, boy, the trail is bumpy today. Bump, bump, bump. And the other side was all these little pockets like paper pockets she had made in it and put little rocks in each one. So that made up for my not collecting Kansas rocks, think. Ohio rocks instead. Excellent. From the driveway? I don't know where she found that. They were really varied. Like, I think she had been finding them various places and planning that for a little while. It was really sweet. So you're both part of the Industry 9 Pivot Cycles backcountry team and describe yourselves as ultra endurance athletes. For those of our listeners who are unfamiliar with what constitutes an ultra endurance event, can you explain what makes something ultra endurance? Well, this is a very debated topic within cohort of people who call themselves ultra endurance cyclists. And which is understandable, you know, when like cross country races at the World Cup level are an hour and 20 minutes and marathon races are like three hours, three or four. Right. So everything after that needs a title. Right. And so I think that it is natural that people who race 100 mile races on the mountain bike and maybe racing like eight or 10 hours would call that ultra endurance cycling. And then there's also ultra endurance races like the Tour de Ville that happen. mean, people are still out there, actually. Most of them are. And have been for more than two weeks at this point. And so I think in the world of a lot of ultra endurance cyclists, the we don't want to kick anyone out of the category, but a lot of people consider it like to be 24 hours or longer. And so that would be like through a full day and beyond the day. But And that said, think having personally raced like Cocoa Valley Trail and a number of other distances that are in that like 12 to 15 hours. And now there are a lot of gravel races popping up in that distance. Like, think that's still ultra distance. If you compared it to running, know, like ultra marath, ultra ultra distance trail running is I think anything longer than a marathon. So that'd be like a 50K and all that. There's gray areas, we tend to think of it as like that full day or longer. I like that. I like that. That's a good way to describe it. You both spend a lot of time on single track. How much time do you guys typically spend writing your I that's pretty different for each of us. what I ride tends to be shaped by the seasons. Like I live in, don't know, on the western side of the Tetons and our mountain bike season is so short and it is my favorite way of riding a bike that I really ride trail from when it melts in May until it's under snow again in October and November. And so the vault for me is a huge training tool for the shoulder seasons, the spring and the fall. And then I do swing a leg over it in the summer, everyone's following it. Just the idea of not climbing thousands and and thousands of feet sounds really nice. There's also at the Teetowns, like all our trails are incredibly steep and go and climb a lot. And then our gravel riding is actually quite flat in the valley. It can be very nice. And then I ride a fat bike in the summer or in the winter, sorry. You don't touch your fat bike in summer. No, my bike hangs up for like seven or eight months, but it's a lot of use in the winter. How about yourself, Kurt? Yeah, my gravel bike. Yeah, I have a funny relationship with gravel. It's like Arizona gravel, I think, is the reason for that, that it's there's so much here that is like poised to be a really good gravel route, except for that, 15 miles of really chunky stuff that You're just way better off on, I mean, even a full suspension mountain bike to make those connections for some, bigger loops around here. And so I usually end up on the gravel bike a lot in kind of the winter months, for, you know, almost like base training, type just big miles. And when I spend time down in Southern Arizona, I ride a ton down there because there's so much really nice gravel scattered about. and then the rest of the year, I'm kind of similar to Kate that, trail is what I love riding the most and so sometimes I'll you know I'm usually somewhere else for the summer out of Arizona so sometimes I'll bring the vault along and hop on it when my body is just worn out from too much hard trail riding and sometimes I'll leave it at home and won't see it for a few months and then come back I'm like the vault I'm gonna go ride this that sounds that sounds fast right now and so it's yeah it's kind of for me what what I turn to when mountain biking either isn't the smartest thing to use for training, like base mile season, or when I just need a break from single track. There is something here for me about how the vault is like an instant way to cover twice as much ground or like go twice as fast. more than twice as much. Or three times as much. I think we're often going five or seven miles an hour here on trail. And so it's something like, whoa, I could go see the entire length of the Tetons in a morning. That's pretty cool. And stop and get a pastry on the way. That will draw me onto my gravel bike. So what piqued your interest in going to race the unbound XL? Kate can answer that one because it's her fault. I heard it was your idea also to ride all the way there. Is that true? Yeah. And our team is the two of us. And I tend to have these big ideas and then Kurt tends to be the person that actually helps make it happen. Which is good quality. Both are good qualities. The idea came from, was kind of, you know how sometimes the best ideas start as like all these little tiny ideas that don't seem quite related. For me with Unbound, it started partly just out of curiosity. Like we've been hearing about Unbound maybe 10 years, like since it was a grassroots Midwestern gravel challenge, you know, and like some of the other ultra endurance cyclists were like going and doing the 200 as like training for tour divide and things like that. And it's just grown and grown and grown. And now suddenly it's like the biggest gravel race in the world. And people are coming from all over the world for it. And not only is it the biggest in numbers, but it's also the one I'd say unbound and mid -south are the two gravel events that you just hear people just like bubbling with excitement about. as someone who's drawn to mountains and someone who's drawn to trail and not have, I haven't experienced an event like that ever. Like prior to Unbound, I had done two gravel races ever, both in Arizona. And so I just really didn't understand what all the hype was about. And I figured that I can't really make my own judgment about it. Like having not been to Eastern Kansas, having not done a ultra distance gravel race, having not been to Emporia, having not been to Umbel. Like I just had no reason to not like it or to think it was a bad idea. And I got, I think I finally, the curiosity got the best of me. I just wanted to see like, what is everyone love about it? what is drawing everyone to it because I think that for the size it is and for how much people love it, like it's more than just being a lifetime event. Like life, it's not a big race organization that's making it so successful, like so loved. Like it has to be the people, the landscape and the community of Emporia and all the people who come in race. And that's what I wanted to experience. And then there was this other element about Unbound for me where the XL is about 24 hour plus event depending on conditions and I hadn't had been able to finish a proper ultra anything longer than 13 hours since a car accident in 2018 and I just started to have this like gut feeling that I could but I didn't want to try something that I had done before or even something that I would be like expected to win like 24 hour worlds. or the Arizona trail, you know, like, because it's so easy to compare yourself to a past self. so choosing something that felt wildly different, like a gravel race in the planes, you know, or like, it would just be easy to be like, let's see if I can do it and not be too attached to the outcome. More just really committed to the experience. and so that was one of the more personal reasons for me wanting to race that event. And then, and then yeah, riding there was like, well, it's in May. There's, will undoubtedly be snowing here in May. I don't really have like, I could go just train specifically for Unbound, but like, if I make a big adventure out of getting there, then the whole event will be even bigger than like the start and finish line. And so the idea, and I've always loved riding from home. like having bike packed around the world. Some of the most impactful trips have always started from the front door and yeah. I really didn't, I didn't even look at the map to see where Emporia was when I decided that I should ride to, ride there. it's on the eastern side of Kansas, not the western side of Kansas. There was a moment where I was like, my God. After we had committed and told our sponsors we were doing this. And then I looked at the map and Emporia is on the far side of campus. That's awesome. what a great attitude and way to just, what's this all about? How, you know, why is everybody else doing this? I want to do this. That's, that's great. Did it live up to your, your expectations? you, are you pumped on it now too? I am like, I would totally go back. I had a great time. I, from the day we rolled into Emporia, which was about a week before the event. it's just like, yeah, this is really cool. This is a very, like charming and like full of character Midwestern town with a lot going on and a lot of energy around the event. And we just got to watch the town fill up all week too with cyclists and like we go, you know, we're trying to recover. So we'd like, walk around the neighborhood. like people out on their porches would like, are you here for the gravel race? We love this week. We would rent our house too, but we just want to watch it all. Like they're so psyched on it and like people put signs out welcoming the gravel cyclists. And it's really incredible. And the Flint Hills are absolutely beautiful. Like it's, especially after you ride across Western Kansas, Eastern Kansas does not feel flat at all. Yeah, yeah, we redefine flat. And but yeah, it's just like, at least in May, like the prairie is gorgeous. It's so green and so lush. And the cottonwood trees are beautiful and birds everywhere. And yeah, I mean, there's topography, too, and like flowing water. So it's quite lovely. Yeah. And I was really impressed by just the the attitudes of so many of the racers there. Like I've been I've been racing bikes since I was 14, 13, something like that. So getting close to 30 years now, amazingly. And I've been to so many races where it's just like the general aura of elitism or people that are so focused on their own, you know, what they're doing there, their ride, their prep, everything like that. That it's just not that fun of a experience. You the race might be fun, but just like being at the event isn't that fun. And this was like the other end of the spectrum, which is really impressive for a race that is like has so many really high caliber athletes at it. There's so much on the line for some people that are there. And then there's also the other end of the spectrum of people that are like never done anything like that before, never been at a gravel race or, you know, their whole goal is to finish, you know, whatever distance they're doing and do it in slightly faster time than they did before, or just finish it for the first time. Like everybody just seemed so supportive of everybody else out there, which is really, really cool to feel. That's awesome. So shifting gears back to your solo endeavors, getting out to this big, big event, you guys both started off riding from your homes and then met up in Colorado, spending a bunch of days on your own in the saddle and then meeting back up and then riding together. How does that change the experience? What do you guys like about riding by yourself and then being able to ride with your partner? How's that work out to have such a close friend that is familiar with this type of riding, riding with you? I mean, my ride from where I live in Arizona up to Colorado was mildly stressful. I really enjoyed it, but I left, I don't know, I left like a day. after I'd hoped to. Yeah, because I was waiting for something to show up in the mail at the last minute. So I left a day later than planned. And so that kind of got rid of a planned rest day I had along the way, which was also going to be like, if I get behind schedule, then that day I can like catch back up. And then had a bit of a setback just on the second day with a mechanical issue. It was something I should have dealt like just fixed, replaced before I left. And so I had to deal with that. So that took like half the day on day two. And so then I was like a day and a half behind and From then on, it was a lot of really challenging miles across Northeastern Arizona. And it was just, it took like all day to do a hundred miles and leave me pretty drained at the end, whether it was like chunky two track or long stretches of sandy roads on Navajo Nation or really rugged stuff that I, I'm glad I rode. Like a bunch of that, I knew what it was going to be like. And on a gravel bike, it's kind of the limit of what you want to potentially be riding on, especially loaded, but it was just a beautiful route. And then I got to Colorado and it was worked. And fortunately, Colorado, the roads are better, the terrain was easier. And so started to make up, make up some time. And, but every day it was just like, well, I guess I need to ride till dark. And was just constantly worried about like, am I going to be there in time or are we going to make Kate wait for a day? And then that like suddenly our whole trip timeline was based. Like we kind of worked backwards from wanting to get there, get to Emporia. a week or six days ahead of time so we had enough time to sort of recover before the race so we weren't completely worked for the race and we knew we wouldn't recover completely and be fresh but if we ended up falling behind schedule that would have been frustrating to just have to start the race considerably more tired than maybe we could have been otherwise. So then when we finally met up it was like a huge relief I got to the area where we were going to meet got down to like hung out by this little river And Kate rolled up like 15 minutes later, which was pretty amazing to be like that close to arriving at the spot at the exact same time. And so from then on, it just felt much more relaxed. We took a day off in Colorado Springs, like a day late, day and half later, which was I really needed that. Kate seemed really fresh after her ride down there. I seemed way more way more work than she did. And then from then, I think it was just fun to. be able to share stories from that whole first week and a half, 10 days of riding with someone else and then have company for the Great Plains, which are, I don't know. I don't want to say like anything negative about the riding on the Plains. Like it's just so different and takes so much longer for things to like pass by. And so you're just like seeing the same things for much longer and it doesn't change nearly as quickly and keep you quite as... engaged with the landscape around you necessarily as riding more rugged country does like what Arizona was like or what Colorado was like and so I mean I guess the best example of this was one road we had in the afternoon we had like a pretty strong headwind that day and riding across the Colorado border into Kansas we were on one little dirt road that we were going straight for I think it was 53 or 56 miles like no turns no bends There was one little downhill and uphill in one little drainage out there. Other than that, it was pancake flat. And I've never like I've never ridden 53 miles in a straight line before anywhere. And yeah, and this one you could see, you know, maybe six or eight miles ahead of you. And then, you know, the horizon line was there and you get up there and you see the exact same thing for another six or eight miles. So that I think you can if you're alone, you can definitely get stuck in challenging places in your head, but having someone else to just laugh about it with was good. And someone to draft off occasionally. Yeah, my solo ride was like pretty opposite. I mean, I do tend to overestimate things. And so when I first made my itinerary and I told my husband, I was like, I'm leaving on Tuesday. I'm riding like 120 miles a day. And then I'm meeting with Kurt and we'll go from there. And he's like, how about you leave two days early? why would you not? And I didn't have a good reason to not like not really wanting to leave home. maybe being a little nervous. And so I left two days earlier than I needed to, and which ended up being quite nice because I did have kind of extra time and I didn't, I wasn't planning on taking a day off, but more just kind of having the flexibility to ride day by day more based on the terrain and where I could respawn. then the main thing with my route is I left home on like May 12th. I got skiing two days before that. Like it was still actively wintering here and nothing was melting. And so when I first made my route, I was optimistic. They're like, yeah, if it was like a warmish spring, then I could probably ride quite a bit of dirt. maybe like not the highest passes, but I thought I'd ride, be able to ride some. And then really like the week before I, was time for me to leave. I was basically recreating my entire route to Colorado Springs because we had a very cold, wet. Spring in the Tetons and Wyoming and in the Rock Mountains in Colorado and so Just checking in with people who lived in different places. It like, wow There's like not gonna be really much dirt at all unless it's like in valleys and so I had to really ride quite a bit of pavement which At first I was a little bummed about and I was like, well, actually this is kind of nice. It's like Pretty predictable like as far as how fast you're go. It just kind of depends on the wind and I was lucky to have mostly ripping tailwinds across Wyoming, like 30 mile an hour winds, like steadily. Which any times that was not right at my back, was brutal, but mostly it was at my back. And so I was able to, my first week was, I just got into this flow of just riding I'd have like an 80 mile day and then 130 mile a day. And like I was averaging 100 miles the day, but I got some shorter days and like with the tailwind on mostly pavement or like high quality dirt road, you can do 80 miles like around lunchtime. And so I had a couple of days where I was done riding for the day by like noon. Yeah, I got it. I got a text from her. She called me one day and I was like, oh, what's up? She was like, oh, I just got to think Craig or somewhere and got a room in a motel. It's like, oh, huh. I've done 40 miles so far today. It was mostly sand. then I wake up the next day and I was like 140 and it was great. And I finished at like 6 p .m. or 7 p .m. But I never turned my lights on. Like I'm not even to read. I mean, also like very light in the northern part of the country. Yeah, had long So yeah, I think that's why I was pretty fresh. But and then I also didn't really know where we were meeting. And so I was just riding along this road along a river, the South Platte, I think. in Colorado and due to Kurt and I were planning on having dinner at this random, very random restaurant at a very random junction. Yeah, it's like the only building out in this whole area in the foothills. Yeah, that was like our meetup place. like evergreen lodge or something. Sprucewood Inn. Yeah, Sprucewood Inn. And I, but the... I wasn't there yet and I was riding along and I see this guy standing by the river and I was like, that guy has the same bike as me. yeah, well that's Kurt. He was just standing off by the river eating some sardines. It was like raining very gently. I guess that's the end of my alone time. But yeah, I would second that like just having a companion, like part of the plans too is It's so wide open, like you feel very exposed. And like the first day there is a really, this is actually kind of funny. I don't have any experience with storms on the plains, but you know, of course you like hear about tornadoes and everything. And Kurt, who like grew up in the Midwest and yeah, spent a lot of his life on the plains. It was like very... familiar with them. so we're like riding away from Colorado Springs, like away from the mountains. And there are clouds building and I'm like, so what's the deal with these? Like, is this a concern? He's like, no, definitely not. Like you, the cool, good thing about storms on the plains is that you can see them building and they take a really long time to travel because they're really far away. I'm like, okay, cool. And so then one notable difference between Kurt and I, our travel style is I like to ride and just go until it's time to be done, hence being done at one. mean, as Kurt likes to literally stop and pull the stove out and make coffee in the middle of the day or take pictures for a really long time or inspect things. Sit down, around. Yeah, sit down. I like sitting down. These clouds are building and we stop at this town that didn't have any services to eat lunch. And Kurt unpacks things. I was taking pictures of the post office. It was a great little post office building. It was very unique. Yeah, sure. But they're a cloud building. I've had my food, refilled my water, peed, looted my chain. I'm ready to go. And Kurt hasn't even opened his food yet. And so then we're just waiting patiently. I'm like, OK, well, he says that we're not worried about these clouds because apparently they're really far away. And then we get on our bikes and pretty much immediately doing like threshold to sweet spot efforts, like sprinting away from this oncoming storm that is slowly starting to rain on us. And then before I know it, we are in lightning position under like someone's awning in their garage. Because there's nowhere to like, there's no shelter, there's no trees, there's no low points, there's no, there's nothing. So like, We, yeah, just like, there was a residence and we just like pulled under this like roof thing and we're, and I was traumatized. Yeah, and then it, it wasn't that bad of a storm, like not severe, but just those thunderstorms out there are intense, even when they're just a, you know, regular old afternoon thunderstorm. And it hammered on us for like, I don't know, 45 minutes probably, and turned the roads that were like, we were able to cruise at like 15 miles an hour, not really working too hard to like, inch deep, sinky, sandy stuff. Like not mud, just you sink into it. And so you have to work hard to go like six miles an hour. And it's just like grinding your drivetrain and sounding pretty terrible. And like, yes, there's a beautiful rainbow ahead of us, but it's going to take us forever to get anywhere in this kind of situation. If you hadn't taken that little break with Kurt, would would you have been stuck out in the middle of nowhere with no shelter? Yeah, see, we would have been past that ranch and then there were no other ranches out there. Or I just would have already made it to the town. That's ambitious. Yeah, it's hard to know. But I think that was just a good like it was so. It's so it was so different riding across the plains just between the terrain and that it's all private land, you know, and so like figuring out where to camp is just takes a bit more creativity than, know, when riding in the western U .S. it's like pretty easy to identify what is public land and where you can camp and all that. Yep. And amazingly also there's almost no water out there. Like we the first flowing stream we saw after we left Colorado Springs was after three days. Yeah it was three full days of riding without flowing water on the surface. And so when the towns It's all the towns out there pretty much are just along the main highways. And we were our whole goal was to not ride on the main highways for all sorts of reasons. But that meant that we didn't have very many resupply options. And so we had there were a few stretches that were like a day and a half or a little more between towns. And some of those, like we didn't know of anywhere to get water in between because you're just on ranch land and no like no stockponds or no streams or anything out there. So it was, yeah, different, different kind challenge, like riding challenge, than we're accustomed to between that and it being entirely private. And then, yeah, these big storms you have to watch out for. Did you end up carrying more water than you thought you needed? Were you close to running out between resupplies or did it kind of work say it worked out. I think that we actually were able to find more water once out there than you would have been able to anticipate doing the research because like you'd go by a farm and there would just be like a spigot, know, and there's no way that that spigot is published on the internet anywhere, you know, but you'd be like, well, okay, with that, like, even if we filter this, like that is water, you know, and so. worked But I think, I mean, I definitely carried more than I was in Colorado and most of Wyoming. Yeah, well, way more. Yeah. Some of the like the farm co -ops would have spigots out at them, what they never know about. there's like no one you can call and ask ahead of time to know about that. So, yeah, there ends up ended up being plenty, plenty for us. And then had a fun, fun evening at a ranch that or farm. He called it a farm. was a guy that we'd passed his house out in right in pretty much the middle of Kansas. And he saw us go by there, few of them out in the yard doing something. And a few minutes later, and it was probably like 6 p .m. maybe, he chased us down in his truck. And I stopped to chat with him. He's like, where are you all heading? I never see bikes on this road. And tell him we're going to Emporia. He's like, oh, where are you camping tonight? He's like, oh, we don't really have a plan. He's just gonna duck in behind some trees. And it was like 7 p .m. already. It was 7 p .m.? Okay. And it was really windy. probably 30 mile an hour gusts. so anywhere exposed was just like you get blasted by that. And it's like, yeah, well, just usually figure out something when it's time to camp. He's like, well, you can just come back and camp in our yard. You can nestle in behind like on the downwind side of the house and be sheltered. So we're like, oh, sounds good. Thanks. Well, let's do that. So we turned around right back there and we were just kind of getting situated. I had a rough day. My stomach was really unhappy from something I'd eaten in Colorado Springs, I think. And so I was kind of struggling the second half of that day. And so I was just laying in the grass in a daze and he comes back out and he's like, need showers, need any ice? You got ice? Kept offering ice. He was very excited about ice. And then as I'm still laying there kind of in a daze, he's like, y 'all know how a farm works? It's like, well. Kate was like no. That was like, what kind of was clear there's only one answer. Like you're not gonna say, oh yeah I do. Sorry. Yep. Got that. Don't want to hear it. Don't want to hear it. Yeah I know a farm farm. He's like, want a tour? So then he gave us like an hour tour of like all his equipment. He had been farming there for... He was 80 years old. so 45 years or something like that. Been running this farm. And it was both cattle farm and wheat. And showing us all his equipment and talking about all the economics behind it and like never buy new stuff like it's way too expensive like just get this good old stuff and keep like take care of it you'll be way better off and then took us out to see some cows and then we thought we were done and got back to the farm he's like get in we got into well by the yeah going out to see the cows involved getting in his car yeah that's right and then driving out into the cow field and then on our way back He drove past the house and pulled out onto the road and we're like, my God, where are we going? But the tour was continuing. it was great. You to hear all sorts of things about what life is like out there and the challenges with it. you know, his kids, his kids were amazing. I think four kids that one of them was like lead aerodynamics person on some new bombing bomber project for the Air Force or for Boeing and like very high caliber kids with. very impressive jobs at this point. And we're like, who's going to take over the farm when you decide you're done? He's like, that's the big question out here on most farms is we don't know. Don't know who's going to take them over. And so just learning, you know, just what what the great things are about living out there, what what they're afraid of, that kind of thing was really fascinating. Well, I'm sure he was fascinated by you two riding bikes down a road like he's never seen somebody riding their bike by his house. He's like, Hey, what are they doing? Let me go and ride them over. Yeah, that's neat. Yeah, it was funny. He was very talkative, like very, very, very talkative. That's kind of the point really, like you don't really say anything, you just listen. And then finally, right as I was filling up my water a weeb in the morning, goes, yep, I used to be 350 pounds and I got a bike and I rode all these farm roads and I lost all this way. those rides, when you go out in the morning and you see the sunrise and... And it was amazing. was like, wow, Terry didn't know you were a cyclist. You got, was like, so you get it. Cause at one point he was like, well, why aren't you on the pavement? Well, these are quiet, beautiful roads. He's like, yeah, they are. Yeah. See you. You're also a gravel cyclist. Pretty cool. So you both have awesome videos on your YouTube channels going over your setups. the way you have your vault set up for this adventure that Terry probably didn't even understand the complexities of what you guys were doing. But just like with most biking, when you get really into it, there's kind of that N plus one mentality for bikes. You always need a specific one. You guys both used the same rig for this bike packing journey to the race and then race the same bike for it. Did you feel like you had to make very many compromises between your setup for this tour and the race? Or you guys were stoked on the way you had your vault set up for the whole experience? No, we hardly made any changes. I think once we were in Emporia, we each mailed a box, kind of a big box, your duffel bag to Emporia with all of our race clothes and some other race type stuff that we wanted and some parts to swap over on our bikes. And it only ended up taking part of an afternoon to wash all the dirt off our bikes from 1200, 1400 miles of riding and then change, like what do we change to Kate? We've switched chain ring sizes. Cause we have the GRX one by mechanical drive trains on there. And so I think I went from a 38 to a 42 chain ring. Is that what you did too, Kate? I think I just put a new one on. I think I kept, I just So you didn't even change size. Same size for both. I think so. And then - New chains. Yep. New chains. New tires. And I swapped tires. was running the Maxxis receptor, no, the reverse to get out there. I was on the reverse. And then we both put, somehow Kurt wore out a tire on his ride. didn't wear out any tires. But we both put new Ramblers on with a, and it was a 50 in the front and a 45 in the back. Yeah. And that's the same. specifically for unbound. But I didn't feel like I needed That was the same combination I rode from home out there. And yeah, I did wear out one rear tire. It wasn't brand new when I left home, but got a new one in Salida. And then for the race, we switched to the silk shield casings on them because the roads in the Flint Hills have so many sharp little rocks and everyone told us we're going to flat again and again and again and again. And we didn't get any flats. And then what else? mean, we, yeah, we both had, we both chose to run the Fox. TC fork, the little gravel suspension fork. And that was awesome. That's one that like if I was just bike packing to Kansas, I probably wouldn't have necessarily prioritized that. But I did enjoy having it just like having a heavy bike just because my route wasn't very rough. So it's not like I really needed suspension, but even just on like washboard. And it was amazing. And so I think that as far as like my body being really my bike being set up to promote recovery and reducing fatigue on the bike pack there to the race. Like it was really nice having a suspension fork. and I think one thing, I mean, this is very minor, but like, because I mostly ride on flat bars, like on a mountain bike, I set up my vault to be pretty similar to my position on a mountain bike. And so I had pretty wide bar as far as a drop bar goes. And I was super comfortable and I'm really glad I did that for knowing that like I've had a number of low back related things. And so my position is like pretty important to me. And having now done Unbound and understanding that aerodynamics are like really important. I think like if I were to go back just to race and be as like as competitive as possible, I would go with an arrow or a bar just for the aerodynamics of it. But like that's really the only thing. Karen has a really sweet seat post that I was envious Yeah, I've got the Ergon post that's like kind of a split design. And so if you look at it from the side, it looks like two two parallel pieces between the frame and the seat. And it has a really nice flex to it. And so on like it just completely takes the edge off washboard so you can just hammer across them seated and like, yeah, it's bumpy, but it's not abusive at all. And so that combined with the elastomer in the seat tube of the vault was just such a comfortable ride. And Yeah, it was a great setup for the ride there and for a race that's as bumpy and rough and rocky as the North course at Unbound. was impressive. You don't really need to change much on a bike. Yeah, it's really crazy because like other than just making sure their parts weren't worn out from riding there, it was really just like the luggage on the bikes that changed. Just take the rack off, take the bags off, put a different bag on. So getting ready for this podcast on Sunday, I was like, I want to get in the mindset of these guys and kind of spend, you know, kind of be a little more with it. So I went out for a 12 hour ride on Sunday just to, yeah, just to kind of like think about it. Because I haven't done a big, big type ride in a long time. And so while I was out there, I was just thinking about, you guys have to consider. on these events, especially when you're in the back country, some of the stuff you guys have done, you've got so many things to consider, mechanical issues, injuries, your mental status, physical status, your stomach, what you eat, where do you sleep, how do you recover. So you guys probably get a lot of people that see what you guys are doing and reach out to you for advice. Kurt, you do training and coaching as well. Where do you guys start with somebody that's never done this kind of thing to to kind of get them prepared? Because I mean, there's just so much to consider and if somebody's never done a ride more than a couple hours And then they want to jump into doing the continental divide You know, how do you set them up for success? Kate do you want to? I've got a few ideas things that come to mind immediately. Yeah, I think from Going from day ride, like the first step is to be comfortable with a day ride, you know, because once you have your kit for like what you need to be self -sufficient for the day, like the hours that you add on really the thing that changes is just the amount of water or the amount of food. what do you consider a day? Because Kurt said he had to ride all day. And so some people riding all day, that might 24 hours, but you guys, might be 24 hours, like your day might make a whole 24 hours. Yeah, I think like first that the first step is to be comfortable with the day that is like within daylight. Fair enough. Okay, so we're not talking about like lights or like wild temperature swings from the change of day to night. But I think to like first focus on the things that like what I would consider like the essentials for self sufficient ride where you can fix your mechanicals, you can take care of your body, including like bumps and bruises, maybe you can navigate your route. You can communicate, like call for help if you need it. And you can find slash care, like carry the amount of water you need or treat it and eat the amount of food to get keep yourself rolling. And so that would be like the foundation, like layer one to focus on the next would be to add in that like night element if you and like, if you want to ride at night and if you don't want to ride at night, just being prepared to with like having lights and whatnot. But then for the overnight, the step into bike packing, I think that what we've always done when teaching bike packing and what I've implemented in like bike packing education program through bike packing routes is starting with just an overnighter. that would be a route that you're already familiar with that maybe like, Kaylyn, if you just went and did a 12 hour ride, which one is a huge day ride, like that could be It was all in daylight. was all in daylight. solstice time of year. It's amazing. Yeah. And you probably still have time to like barbecue afterwards. like that long day ride and it doesn't even have to be 12 hour long, but that turned that into an overnight break it up into two days and it could be just leaving in the middle of the day, riding to somewhere that you can camp on it, camping, and then riding home. And what that does is that lets you focus on just the overnight element of it and the whole like big route, multiple days, multiple weeks, four in place, like all those uncertainties that come with bike packing later, like those are kind of put on the back burner and you can just focus on having that kit for being spending a night out dialed, cause inevitably like, I mean, really every trip you kind of tinker with your setup, but like that, those first couple of trips, just getting a feel for how packing your bags feels on your bike and where you want weight and what rattles her bounces and how to tighten it at all. figuring that out without the pressure of like a huge route in a different place with having already committed to your gear. I mean, the beautiful thing about the overnighter that's close to home or on a familiar route is like, doesn't work, then you can ride it all in one go. you can just like, yeah, problem solve. Like you will make it. Yeah, that's all. be the starting place. Fantastic advice. I think a lot of folks think that their first bikepacking trip or that bikepacking in general is just big days riding all day, which I think, I don't, I think that comes from the whole ultra endurance racing side of things and the influence that that kind of racing has had on the bikepacking community. But yeah, don't think that you need to plan a huge ambitious itinerary for bikepacking trips, like riding five hours a day and just relaxing and enjoying everything along the way. Not riding, that's a completely fantastic way to do it too. A few other things that I always recommend to folks is more of the like, just pacing and sustainability side of things like Don't ride hard. Like if you're out of breath or feel like you're riding hard, you're riding too hard for these like your kind of first foray into big rides. The reality in these long bikepacking races is like you're never riding hard unless it's for like eight pedal strokes to get up like a short steep little thing. And if we're riding harder than that for any long duration, like that just takes all your energy and by 3 p .m. you're feeling it. So. keep the pace really reasonable, especially if it's like your first day on a loaded bike. And then don't stop eating, which I think this is one of the biggest ones for people is that, I mean, so many folks, and I was like this for years and years and years as a cyclist, but I just never ate even close to how much I should be when I was out there. And when I finally did, it one felt like I was always eating, which in reality, that might be a snack every 20 minutes, but it feels like you're always eating if you're doing that all day. or for six hours or whatever. And the other amazing thing that happened was I stopped in the last few hours of a ride, stopped thinking about what I wanted to eat or what I was gonna devour when I got home or got to camp or something like that. And that not being hungry is where you wanna be the whole time. And as soon as you're feeling hunger, that means you're behind in calories. And so if you can keep eating enough and keep your pace really mellow, it's just going to be so much more of an enjoyable experience. the goal for most people out there on longer rides is not to struggle too much and not to suffer and not to be in that place that it's just like everything you can do to get to camp that night or close the 12 hour loop and get home. so I'd say that should be a goal for everyone. Yeah. And again, there's definitely don't know, seems like so many people when they share about their bike packing trips or whatever, like how ambitious the itinerary was and how epic it was in not necessarily the best way, but like how they turned just a big suffer fest. And it's like, that's not what it should be, in my opinion. Yeah, that's some great advice on how to pace. mean, that's huge. What to eat, how to enjoy it, you know, it's not a sprint. It's It's a marathon. It's more than a marathon. It's an ultra endurance. So with the like mental thing, you know, out there thinking you got a lot of time. My family's all cyclists. My dad does a lot of big rides. My grandma still rides at 93. And one of the things my dad did a loop all the way around the state of Idaho. on on back roads so he kinda did the same thing figure that out and you know he spent a lot of time out there just by himself in the middle of nowhere on these back roads and similar to kinda where you guys met terry he he came up with a theory that he called which stands for the theory of human intersectional coincidence and he found he found that when when you're approaching an intersection on a bicycle, the probability of another human trying to occupy the same space increases exponentially. So he'd be riding in the middle of nowhere, not see a car for hours. And then as soon as he'd hit an intersection, there'd be a car. And so they'd hit the intersection at the same time. you guys experienced thick in any of your rides in the middle of nowhere? I think so. And I think that, and I don't know how this fits into the acronym, but there's this additional layer for me where it's like, I mean, if you, if this were to happen in a car, you would just be like, figure out who has the right way or just, you know, figure it out and carry on and probably not interact other than maybe like flipping your finger up to say, Hey, from your steering wheel. But like, there's something about being on your bikes too, that then the people roll down their windows and maybe even get out of their car and start talking to you. And you'll like want to know where you're going and want to know where you're coming from and then have some story related to one of the words you said. you know, it's like might not have really anything to do with what you're doing, but and it's just fascinating. And half the time people seem to want to actually like really help and just see if there is anything that they can contribute to your experience, which is probably like where they live in that moment. Like they're probably from, they're often from there. Or they just like are psyched to chat and psyched to share stories. And I mean, I had this happen on my first full day away. Like I rode from the Tetons camped up by the upper Hoback. And then I left there and started riding into like, along the Green River. And the first person that I ran into was this woman who was just out at this fishing access. She wasn't fishing. And she I stopped to fill water and she drove over and with her Subaru running for probably about 25 minutes just talked to me about all her bike trips around the world on both bicycles and motorcycles. Something to do with her daughter. And then she wanted to know my itinerary was, like where I was going, and I told her, and then we got to a point in my route where she was like, I didn't know that that road went through. And I was like, well, I hope it does, it does have satellite, but like I made my route, so like who knows? And she drove off, and then hours later, she came up to me as I'm about to go onto this unknown road, she drives up and she's like, I just went and scouted that, that doesn't go. And she had just like, yeah, and she had just taken some hours of her day to drive this random dirt road route that I had described via verbally, like I didn't show her a map or anything. And she had even written me a note on this paper bag that she was going to tape to a sign that she thought I'd see. And she just happened to cross paths again, but to like, let me know that it doesn't work. It was amazing. And like, I think that's maybe this. Ties into things, but it's just like, you're on a bike and people wanna engage and help and yeah. Yeah, I mean cyclists, it's in your nature to wanna talk to other cyclists and see what they're doing. And then people that don't ride wonder what the heck you're doing in the middle of nowhere and how you got there. So yeah, it's interesting. So after riding thousands of miles, getting to Kansas, You're preparing for one of the toughest gravel races there is. You only had about a week of downtime. What did you guys focus on for those lay days, getting ready for the start? I've mostly ate. I was really hungry. You didn't eat enough. You didn't follow your own advice and eat. I thought I ate pretty well while I was riding. And then I just had such an appetite when we got there for like five days. Yeah, it was hilarious. We were staying with some friends and this guy, our friend Nick was like, wow. He just looks at me one day. He's like, wow, Kurt. really, really can eat. Yeah. He's like eating like family -sized boxes of cereal and like he made a whole like 9x13 pan of cobbler. Yeah, would say I mostly focused on first the first two days just really trying to relax like not try to have too much to do because I think for me the sometimes like all the things that you have to do to get ready to race, know, the and it's not like the bike stuff is easy, but like within Ultra, there's a lot of research and like figuring out how many miles and figuring out maybe how many hours in between water and food Like how many hours do your lights last? And so if you ride this fast, how many batteries do you need? And there's just like a lot of mental engagement to prepare. And so the first two days I was just trying to really like actually rest and try to get my whole body kind of a jumpstart on recovering. And then it turned into just like race prep and more and more people coming into town is of course like mean, Unbound has a huge expo and. Yeah, so then it was a challenge to like spend too much time at the expo and talking to friends and that sort of thing because that just that gets tiring and physically when you're standing all afternoon doing that sort of thing that's not very good race prep so yeah then it was just trying to limit how much time we were over there and continue trying to relax. That's got to be pretty tough when you guys are so active all the time to make yourselves take it easy is that is it pretty difficult or do you do you find yourself after riding 1200, 1400 miles that a day off feels nice or? I didn't really have any trouble taking it easy. That's awesome. Yeah, I went and found a book and so I got a book and I just committed myself to reading a book. Yeah, nice. What book? I got The Women. It's about the women in Vietnam by Kristin Hannah. Really good. It was at Walmart. Apparently, Walmart is the biggest book selection around. In Emporia. Did you guys find going from this bikepacking mentality on the way there to the race pace of the Unbound, was it hard to adjust your pacing and eating from like, you know, you've got your goal for how far you're going to go for the day and you're kind of on your own Now all of a sudden you got people sweating and grunting and elbows next to you and stuff. How did you guys adjust for that? I think it was only really the first few hours that needed much adjustment. The rest of it, you settle into a sustainable pace. And yeah, it's a little higher than the touring pace. And for me, it means I'm not stopping nearly as much as Kate alluded to earlier with my appreciation for. pausing along the way, which you can't really do that in a race, unfortunately. But that's part of the reason that I don't feel any reason to not do that all the time when I'm touring. Like there's that mindset. And then there's the other end of the spectrum during races where it's like, OK, I sit enough, stop enough on my normal rides. I don't need to here. I can just focus on pedaling. But yeah, the first few hours, the pace is just I mean, it's like a road race right from the edge of town in even in a 350 mile race. And so in that one, I mean, one, just trying to stay, keep yourself safe in the pack, which was mostly full of folks that were riding in a really reasonable way. But then you get like the guy that insists on being on his aero bars in the middle of a pack on a chunky gravel road where you can't see what's coming. And so he just kind of learning who to stay away from or learn to stay away from the like agro European guy that keeps pushing people out of his way, like with his hand to make space for himself. No way. Yeah, there were a couple of them. They both crashed. in the first few miles. In the pack. Yeah. So like there's that, you know, very different mindset of like when you're out there all alone or riding with someone else you never think about, you know, what do I need, where do I need to be in this group to be safe kind of thing. And then it's more just of like, is this pace too high for me right now? And our legs were both in a really interesting spot that like we'd just been riding for two plus weeks to get there and hadn't done any like top end training. in that time or the week before we left. So at that point, you're like a month out from having actually trained at intensity. And suddenly you're in there like doing threshold and the climbs and, you know, not that far below that on the flats in a group and trying to figure out like how long is it worth trying to stay with this group getting whisked along at like 20, 22 miles an hour. And then when do you back off a little bit and not dig yourself into a hole? And that's a really challenging thing to know. And also for both of us, it was kind of a very big unknown of just how our legs would be and what they're going to be capable of and how that fatigue is going to manifest itself on race day when you actually start asking a lot of your legs. Yeah, I would say that the way that I handled it was I blew up very quickly. Really, really blew up. And I think part of that was just that unknown piece of being like, I don't know what will be sustainable for me coming from this place. Like, I think I had like 96 hours of riding to get to Unbound and Kurt had maybe like 103 or something. And so there's that like new realm of just like no idea what how you feel after five days of recovery following six hours of riding. And then there's also the gravel like the new. That's also for me where the like newness to gravel racing is so different. Like I know exactly how I need to pace myself for a mountain bike ultra where pack dynamics don't really matter as much. Like it's more positioning yourself for a single track that matters. And I just kept hearing how you know, the pack matters and like you need to end up in a group that you can work with. And like that means starting fast. And so I was just like, all right, well, I guess I need to be in this group. And for me, that was like really surgy and like one trying to stay safe and then also trying to stay with people who then I would be able to work with once the pace slows down and also wanting to get to the more technical parts of the course in a good position because I knew that I would be able ride more efficiently through those. There's a hilarious photo from, I don't know, it's probably like 20 or 30 miles in of the front group of the race and Kate doing a really good job of staying safe. There's the group which was occupying like the right two thirds of the road and then there's Kate all by herself over on the left edge of the road and like four feet between her and the next rider to her side, not getting the impact. the positive impact of was a mud puddle. was avoiding a mud puddle. I didn't spend the whole time there, but it's a hilarious photo. It does kind of make me yeah, she clearly doesn't know what she's doing. But that, yeah, that ultimately just led to being, not really knowing what a good pace for me was. And, And then very like, that picture wasn't at mile 30 because by mile 30, I was going very quickly backwards. Um, and yeah, just by, I needed to take a very long time, like the rest of the day really to recover. Um, but that's actually, it turned out to be a really cool thing because the learning from it was that a reminder of how ultras really are a long game. you know, and everything doesn't have to go perfectly. Like you can actually blow up and you have plenty of time to fully recover if you just really focus on that and like let yourself let go of what everyone else is doing. Be okay getting passed by like 50 people and just eat and drink and eat and drink and just ride at a very comfortable pace. And then eventually like maybe the next day you'll feel better. And I ended up I don't know if it was properly negative splitting the race. think if you eliminated me with the first hour, it was probably a negative split in the second half of the race by then have be able to come around in that really deep endurance that we did have. And suddenly the like endurance pace that we've been riding for weeks turned out to be quite fast. And then I was able to move forward. So it was really cool learning, not necessarily the ideal race strategy or execution, Definitely something I'll come back to is being like, well, that was a thing to move through and to stick with. And it still got you on the podium. Yeah, that was a surprise. You both had top 10 finishes, so that's impressive for being in a completely different discipline than what you guys normally do. So obviously your mountain bike skills and your threshold for endurance held up. What do you think from your mountain biking skills, from those experiences of your ultra stuff, allowed you to just excel so well and finish so well in an event like this? I don't know how much of it was actual mountain bike skills necessarily. the technical sections on the North course were pretty short overall. It might be like half a mile or three quarters of a mile of fairly rocky or like slightly ledgey stuff. And then like 10 or 15 miles of less chunky roads. But I think it does, it definitely helped like looking around at some of the other riders around me that weren't, clearly weren't mountain bikers or spend as much time in mountain bikes. They just seemed much more tense more of the time. And I felt like I was able to stay quite relaxed after the first couple hours of craziness in the pack. And so that's, mean, that just helps so much because then you can, if you're relaxed, you can focus on thinking about what else you need to be doing to take care of yourself, like eating and drinking and not avoiding doing that because you're just like stressed about the section you're on and staying on your bike or not hitting rocks or not flatting. So I think that was really helpful. And then I think just the the years of just endurance, riding and racing and like Kate was saying about the long game in these, like knowing that, you what's going on this hour doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Like it might not be ideal, but things will get better if they're not good. And then same with the converse to that, that you might be feeling really good for an hour, but don't think that that's going to last necessarily and don't. pace yourself based on how good you feel in that hour because if you do, you're probably going to end up in a bit of a hole in two or three or four hours after that. And so I think it's really just having that just be steady mentality in there, not getting too stressed about details of any one moment in the race. Yeah, would completely agree with that. was especially thinking about the ability to recover just on throughout the terrain and by staying relaxed, like you're just also not getting as fatigued. And then the other thing I was thinking about was actually more in our bike setup. Like, I think we set up our bikes more like how mountain bikers would. Like we didn't have epically huge chain rings. We probably had some of the smallest chain rings out in the field. We also. probably had some of the knobbier, wider tires out there. mean, there were a couple of people on mountain bike tires, which works really well too. But I was really impressed by, for a course that is so notorious for flats, like how many people were running quite slick or quite narrow tires. And then our forks as well. And so I think that our bike setups are maybe a tiny bit heavier than some, mostly probably because of the fork, but then maybe also our tire choice. But we had for our first, both our first laps, so it was like 700 miles between the two of us, with zero mechanicals in a race that was like, is known for mechanicals. Like I was carrying three tubes. I've never carried three tubes on any bike ride. I haven't either. That was the first time. But Jay Peter already told me to carry three tubes, which I'm grateful he did, because I think there are years that people need them. But I think One, how we set up our bikes to be resilient on rugged terrain. And I think we can also pick good lines and ride lightly, you know, in this section. So I think that was one of the huge things. Like I didn't have to waste any time fixing my bike. And we didn't try to our bikes. And we didn't ride our bikes through the deep mud, the sticky mud section. was like one this year. We only had one, one really gnarly section of mud that was like two and a half miles of really sticky stuff. And you could see. where people would like ride until their bikes were completely clogged up. And like I caught one guy that had done that and was like standing there, like trying to scrape everything out to get rolling again. And I just like walked by him carrying my bike and walked away, went over the hill and I never saw him again. And there's another guy that I spent like, man, I rode with this guy for like probably 150 miles, just trading poles the whole time. And he was in road shoes, road pedals. And I was just, I was convinced that he was going to destroy his bike riding as much as he was trying to in the mud. Like it was like, he just did not want to walk on his road shoes. And so he would ride, clog the bike up, clean it up. I would like catch him. And then he'd ride away from me as I was walking, clog the bike up, clean it out. And eventually we got to the end of the muddy section at exactly the same time. It turned out he didn't have a paint stick or anything. So I gave him mine to really clean out his bike before he kept going again. And it just, I mean. his derailleur should have ended up in his spokes ripped off in that mud and somehow he made it through. But it's things like that that just experience knowing like how to take care of your bike and that it's not worth, you know, I walked that whole section in the time that he rode a bunch of it and risked destroying his bike. So not worth that risk. Yeah, good point. Don't clog your bike in the mud if you don't have to. No, there's no reason to. So after reflecting on your entire journey of riding to the Unbound, the race experience, and all that goes along with combining these different events, do you think you're going to plan another event like this? A ride to a race, or a race to a ride, or a Race ride race or what? do you guys think you'll combine some combine some other events? Well, we're kind of doing that next week. Which is like not intentional at all. I'm like, wow, this is really becoming a thing. Yeah, that'll be my third one. I did a marathon race out in western Arizona, like along the California border. And then not road to it. It was like a two day ride to get there and then raced and somehow managed to win and then got a ride home and then unbound and then now Downeyville out in California. Yeah, we're gonna we're not riding from home that did enough of that. It's also really hot out there now in Nevada, I would imagine. But we are going out to California for the Downeyville Classic. And one of the things that first you meet at that event, one, it being a really fun and unique format of there being a cross country race and then a downhill race and having to do to do the downhill race. You have to do the cross country race all on the same bike and same setup. And together see all mountain world championship, which of course, Katarina and Ash is like forever queen of. But really cool format. And even more importantly, like it's put on by the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship Trail nonprofit. And they have amazing like visionary project going on of connected communities of recognizing that like trails and the economy that follows trail development can really boost these old mining towns in northern California and the Los Cira. And so I went out last year and raced and like the race is all proceeds go to the connected communities project. And this year we're going out and we're just going to try to do a little ride before the race that is connecting some of the communities. we're on Monday, parking in Downeyville, getting a shuttle up to Quincy, doing a day ride in Quincy to like probably a big day ride to try to see as much trail as we can. And then we're going to bike back from Quincy over to Grey Eagle, stay in Grey Eagle and do a big day ride the third day. in Grey Eagle to see as much of the trails as we can from around there. And then on the fourth day, we'll bike back from Grey Eagle to Downingville, finishing on the Downingville downhill course as part of the race recon. Yeah. then, yeah, be in Downingville on Thursday. Race starts Friday, but the festival starts on Thursday. And yeah. Probably similarly to on down it might not be the best way to be ready to for like a two hour sprint But it's a gonna be a really cool way to get to experience more of that landscape and that whole trail network and we're doing this in a kind of different way of bike packing where we're at an inn in Quincy and then a friend of my husband's family cabin in Griegel and will like be town -based and so like one of the ideas this Connected Communities project is how trails bring people to the towns. And so we're like, we want to go be in the towns and see what those little communities are like and like eat there and spend our money there. Because I know that where I live, like a lot of our economy is driven off of people coming and visiting here. And so, yeah, I'm excited about that. And then it'll also be good training for me for a bigger thing later this summer. Yeah. But beyond that, I'm not planning on bikepacking to more races. Yeah, and this will be the style of bikepacking. I mean, it's more like credit card touring than bikepacking per se, because we don't need to carry camping gear. don't need to carry cooking gear. So it's just, you know, some clothes, repair stuff, food for the day, basically. And that's it. So that's, one of our favorite things about single track and doing longer trips on single track is trying to ride the single track the same way that we would on a bikepacking trip as we would unloaded. And so this is going to be kind of the perfect combination of a multi -day trip, but we will legitimately be pretty much unloaded for it. And it's a style that neither of us do very much of, but I'm excited for it. Well, it's hard to do in the US too. Totally. Yeah. So much space. Like in Europe, it's really easy to go hut to hut or town to town. And, you know, because there's little towns everywhere. And so that'll be a cool element of this whole trail network and being in the Northern California. Are you guys getting... puppy. Is that Hank? That's Hank. Hank, come here. Hi, Hank. Hank, say hi. Stop parking. So since you're driving out to that, is it hard to pack a car because you've got so much space? You're like, where do I put all this stuff? Now I can carry more than even three tubes. You're just overwhelmed by the amount of space. Well, Hank is coming, so there's Hank things. He's not going bike packing. Sorry for the parking. But yeah, I think, I mean, we'll have race stuff. I'm bringing two bikes. There's the bike packing bike and then the race bike. So that's a very different element of this is that because we're not bike packing to the race from home on the bike we'll race on. I'm going to bike pack in the Sierra on my Trail 429. Um, and then I'm going to race down in my Amok for Yep, and this will be the start of probably like two or three months on the road for me So I'll probably be feeling like I'm packing way too much, but who knows what you'll need in two months I don't even know where I'll end up so Just figured out probably our house Cool well I think that's probably a wrap for today you guys got to get ready for packing up for Downeyville and stuff could tell our listeners the best place to kind of follow along with you guys and see your results and your adventures and the advocacy you guys are doing. Yeah, I share on Instagram. I'm Kate, K -I -T dot foil. I have a YouTube channel that's new this year. just just getting it going. Open any feedback anyone has those. thought your bike check was fantastic. You did a great job. Thank you. Yeah. Those videos are really right now all like how to based like I'm really I'm trying to create. that to be a platform for one of my ways to use my educational background and share how I do things as a way of just sharing my experience and helping lower the barriers for other people. And then we are still involved in bikepacking routes. And even if we weren't, bikepacking routes is at this point a very robust national organization has a lot of community oriented events and programming and resources, a lot of free educational resources and a growing network of very well stewarded bikepacking routes. And that's bikepacking routes, which is r-o -o -t -s dot org. Yep. And then yeah, same Instagram I try to share a fair amount on when I have enthusiasm for social media. can find me there, curt .refsnider. And what our team website is backcountry-mtb .com. And that, try to share a little bit more about some of the things that we do, some of the resources we have, some of the educational stuff and articles we write are linked there, although I don't think recent ones are up on there. And then we have a section with links on Ride with GPS to a bunch of our favorite backcountry rides in different places. mostly in the Western US, but there's some in the East also. And so that's a place that folks want to go actually ride some of the places that we share about and see what they're like. All the resources are there to do that. Well, Kurt, Kate, thank you both so much for taking the time to be with us today. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, Kevin. It really fun. Yeah. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, check out our other episodes of the All About Bikes podcast. or subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.