The GTDRI Stories: Training

Getting in the miles for a try at the Triple D fat bike event.

"The GTDRI Stories" is a series telling the history, untold tales, and showing the sights from the run of Guitar Ted Death Ride Invitationals. This series will run on Sundays. Thanks for reading!

In my last post in this series I detailed how my life and work were infringing upon my abilities to pack in planning for another GTDRI event in 2012. That was not all that was making fitting that in difficult! There were bicycling things that took my mind and time off doing the GTDRI aplenty as well. 

Foremost of those things, besides Trans Iowa, was getting ready for my first fat bike event in 2012 called "Triple D". It is a 65-ish mile fat bike event over farm fields, some Level B Maintenance, gravel, and a big chunk of the Heritage Trail bike trail from Dyersville, Iowa to Dubuque, Iowa. 

Fat biking had taken over my focus in 2011 and early 2012. I think a lot of cyclists in the Mid-West can also claim that as an issue for that time period. Fat bikes took off as a category and were one of the hottest commodities on the bike shop floor for about three years. I bought three fat bikes in the time period between 2011-2014. Four if you count the one I bought for my son at the time. Again, I wasn't the only one bitten by that bug.

From the Triple D course in 2012. Fat biking had caught the imagination of many at this time.

I think this all had an effect on how gravel events were pushing the industry to make tires, and eventually bicycles for gravel, back at that time. The bicycle industry is a funny thing- Unless "the numbers" add up, they don't make anything, but the numbers don't manifest themselves unless the industry commits to making stuff. Ironic as that may be, sometimes things come together to create a big spike in sales, and that;s what was happening in late 2011/early 2012 with fat bikes. Gravel would have to wait its turn.

The industry took a chance on fat bikes, and the market exploded. For two brief years it was pandemonium, then the fires started going out on those fat bikes. Meanwhile, gravel stuff was percolating under the radar, and that's where the story comes back to this series and gravel in general. 

January 1st, 2012 issue of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News featured an article I was involved in.

Late in 2011 I noted coverage of a bicycle trade show in Asia that was featuring in one of its news posts that Clement Tires was going to produce a big, wide tire for "road bikes" and gravel. This prompted a response from then "BRaIN" reporter, Matt Weibe, wondering why in the world any such tire should be made because no road/cross bikes would fit it. 

You can read about what happened next in this 2012 blog post. My motivation was from what I'd seen and experienced putting on events like Trans Iowa, the GTDRI, gravel group rides, and participating in Gravel Worlds and the DK200. Gravel as a segment was growing quickly at this point. It had much better chances to succeed than fat biking did, and that seemed far-fetched to industry folks at the time. Well, except for Donn Kellogg, who was the driving force behind Clement, (now Donnelly), at the time. He "got it" and was excited to push a tire forward. Of course, he also knew about what Salsa Cycles was up to, and that they were unleashing a gravel bike soon as well.

The significance here is that by my prompting this article to be published, every bike shop across the USA was now aware of gravel riding. This would have an effect on participation, awareness, and eventually what would happen with cycling in the years to come. 

From my perspective the seeds were sown now to possibly reap rewards in terms of gravel related parts, bicycles, and accessories. But what was most important to this story was that I was reinvigorated for another GTDRI. Somehow I was going to pull it off again. 

Later in January of 2012 I mentioned on the blog how I was already thinking about the next GTDRI. I hinted that I might just use the previous year's course again, which would have been an easy thing to do, and I suppose it would have worked out well for those attending. But my wires aren't laid that way. I really wanted to do a new course, and the solution lay around Poweshiek and Jasper Counties. 

Next: A look at what we used circa 2011/2012 as "Gravel™" was about to hit the scene as a category in cycling.