My Food For Thought Concerning Nutrition

Everyone is different and has different needs for nutrition on the bike

I've been asked a few different times post-Gravel Worlds to write up a post about nutrition. This post was requested by folks wanting some direction and advice on what to eat, where to go for more advice, and what I do specifically. So, to begin with, I have to post the following disclaimer which I feel is really quite important to understand up front:

There is no "one way" in regard to nutrition on the bike for long distance efforts. Many folks have many needs, some of which may be commonly shared, but many which will not be. You will need to experiment to find what works best for your cycling nutritional needs. Finally- I am not an expert. I am not a nutritional guru, not a degree holder in this field, or even smart enough to know what I should be doing. Take anything I write here with a huge grain of salt. No........wait! Salt in huge grains is bad. I think....... Anyway.......

So, with that out of the way here are a few sundry thoughts on what I have observed and experienced in regard to nutrition for longer distance efforts on the bike.

• Convenience: First off, and this is something I find hugely important, you need to be able to eat whatever you choose without a ton of effort to get at it or to chew it up. This is something a lot of folks don't talk about or even consider. It is quite obvious though, and when you think about these things, they become "duh!" moments which you would think most folks would have covered. Ease of unwrapping/opening food items for consumption is one thing. I would say that anything you have on the bike that you are going to eat has to pass the "One Hand Test". If you cannot open, remove, and consume an item with one hand, it is not good for "on the bike" consumption. Secondly, if you cannot eat what you have without great effort, or without things gumming up your mouth, or without crumbs that get sucked down your windpipe, it isn't good "on the bike" food. 
• Compact Calories: Here's another thing you might think is obvious, but food and water can take up a ton of space. Especially with the way modern day packaging is. So, and this may help with the point above, you may want to consider repackaging food for on the bike consumption and storage to make it easier to get at, eat, and maybe most importantly, store so that it doesn't take up a lot of room in your feed bag or wherever it is that you stash your food. For instance, you may want to pre-open wrapped energy bars, or even cut them up into smaller bits. I have heard of guys even going so far as to crush potato chips into "dust" so it can be carted in a smaller container. I cut up the flattened bananas pictured here into strips and put them in a sandwich bag. Use your imagination. Anything to make it easier and/or more compact is game as long as it doesn't cause things to spoil. 
• Whatever You Do, Don't Eat_____: You'll hear a lot of advice that starts off with "Whatever you do, don't eat (fill in the blank)" Well, I am here to say that for every one of those you will find someone who lives off that for their long distance nutritional needs. For instance, I learned long ago that eating a hamburger during a long ride is the worst idea ever......for me. Conversely, I watched Ira Ryan gulp down two cheapo convenience store cheeseburgers and go on to win T.I.v3.  Casey's pizza? I know many a Trans Iowa finisher that credits the greasy convenience store offering for getting them across the line. Me? There is no way I am touching the stuff on a long ride. Pickles and pickle juice is a sworn by savior for many cramping riders, but I tried it once and it made my gut go South quicker than a Robin in Fall. 

Maybe a "King Kong" burger will make you go the distance or make you puke. Only one way to find out.

Testing: So, what I usually tell folks that are looking for advice or want to know what I do is that you need to do your own testing. There are some general rules of thumb that work for all human beings, for the most part. You'll need water. You will need to replenish electrolytes, and you will need to fuel your body with food of some sort. Again- those are very obvious things, but you would be surprised to find out how many of us ultra distance, "longer event ride" types don't remember to drink regularly, or eat regularly, all through an effort. Once you get behind on drinking and eating, it is very difficult to recover from it and make a decent finish for yourself. I actually had a regular eating and drinking regimen for the 2015 DK200 attempt which I doggedly stuck to and it made a big difference in my ride that day. When I forget and fall behind on drinking or eating it has a devastating effect on my ride.

I've tried the gels, drink mixes, bars, and little chews. Most of it makes me end up not wanting to eat or makes my gut shut down.That's me. Again, ya gotta try it for yourself. I know one very successful gravel rider that lives on Hammer Perpetuem.  Me? It makes me so gassy I feel like the Goodyear blimp.

Whatever you use, there is one piece of advice that Yuri Hauswald gave riders at the pre-race meeting at the DK200 in 2016. It is, once again, so obvious, but such a good piece of advice. He said something to the effect that the event was to be looked at as an eating and drinking contest, and as a bicycle race secondary to that. I like that because it brings focus to what you have to do to get to the end. Miss that and you won't get there. Like they say in NASCAR, "To finish first, first you must finish." Ya ain't gonna finish unless you look at the event as a game of eating and drinking at regular intervals.

Experiment, test, change things up. Make it easy to drink and eat. Always eat and fuel throughout a ride. That's my advice. Hopefully it helps get you on your way to a successful long ride someday.

My Food For Thought Concerning Nutrition

Everyone is different and has different needs for nutrition on the bike

I've been asked a few different times post-Gravel Worlds to write up a post about nutrition. This post was requested by folks wanting some direction and advice on what to eat, where to go for more advice, and what I do specifically. So, to begin with, I have to post the following disclaimer which I feel is really quite important to understand up front:

There is no "one way" in regard to nutrition on the bike for long distance efforts. Many folks have many needs, some of which may be commonly shared, but many which will not be. You will need to experiment to find what works best for your cycling nutritional needs. Finally- I am not an expert. I am not a nutritional guru, not a degree holder in this field, or even smart enough to know what I should be doing. Take anything I write here with a huge grain of salt. No........wait! Salt in huge grains is bad. I think....... Anyway.......

So, with that out of the way here are a few sundry thoughts on what I have observed and experienced in regard to nutrition for longer distance efforts on the bike.

• Convenience: First off, and this is something I find hugely important, you need to be able to eat whatever you choose without a ton of effort to get at it or to chew it up. This is something a lot of folks don't talk about or even consider. It is quite obvious though, and when you think about these things, they become "duh!" moments which you would think most folks would have covered. Ease of unwrapping/opening food items for consumption is one thing. I would say that anything you have on the bike that you are going to eat has to pass the "One Hand Test". If you cannot open, remove, and consume an item with one hand, it is not good for "on the bike" consumption. Secondly, if you cannot eat what you have without great effort, or without things gumming up your mouth, or without crumbs that get sucked down your windpipe, it isn't good "on the bike" food. 
• Compact Calories: Here's another thing you might think is obvious, but food and water can take up a ton of space. Especially with the way modern day packaging is. So, and this may help with the point above, you may want to consider repackaging food for on the bike consumption and storage to make it easier to get at, eat, and maybe most importantly, store so that it doesn't take up a lot of room in your feed bag or wherever it is that you stash your food. For instance, you may want to pre-open wrapped energy bars, or even cut them up into smaller bits. I have heard of guys even going so far as to crush potato chips into "dust" so it can be carted in a smaller container. I cut up the flattened bananas pictured here into strips and put them in a sandwich bag. Use your imagination. Anything to make it easier and/or more compact is game as long as it doesn't cause things to spoil. 
• Whatever You Do, Don't Eat_____: You'll hear a lot of advice that starts off with "Whatever you do, don't eat (fill in the blank)" Well, I am here to say that for every one of those you will find someone who lives off that for their long distance nutritional needs. For instance, I learned long ago that eating a hamburger during a long ride is the worst idea ever......for me. Conversely, I watched Ira Ryan gulp down two cheapo convenience store cheeseburgers and go on to win T.I.v3.  Casey's pizza? I know many a Trans Iowa finisher that credits the greasy convenience store offering for getting them across the line. Me? There is no way I am touching the stuff on a long ride. Pickles and pickle juice is a sworn by savior for many cramping riders, but I tried it once and it made my gut go South quicker than a Robin in Fall. 

Maybe a "King Kong" burger will make you go the distance or make you puke. Only one way to find out.

Testing: So, what I usually tell folks that are looking for advice or want to know what I do is that you need to do your own testing. There are some general rules of thumb that work for all human beings, for the most part. You'll need water. You will need to replenish electrolytes, and you will need to fuel your body with food of some sort. Again- those are very obvious things, but you would be surprised to find out how many of us ultra distance, "longer event ride" types don't remember to drink regularly, or eat regularly, all through an effort. Once you get behind on drinking and eating, it is very difficult to recover from it and make a decent finish for yourself. I actually had a regular eating and drinking regimen for the 2015 DK200 attempt which I doggedly stuck to and it made a big difference in my ride that day. When I forget and fall behind on drinking or eating it has a devastating effect on my ride.

I've tried the gels, drink mixes, bars, and little chews. Most of it makes me end up not wanting to eat or makes my gut shut down.That's me. Again, ya gotta try it for yourself. I know one very successful gravel rider that lives on Hammer Perpetuem.  Me? It makes me so gassy I feel like the Goodyear blimp.

Whatever you use, there is one piece of advice that Yuri Hauswald gave riders at the pre-race meeting at the DK200 in 2016. It is, once again, so obvious, but such a good piece of advice. He said something to the effect that the event was to be looked at as an eating and drinking contest, and as a bicycle race secondary to that. I like that because it brings focus to what you have to do to get to the end. Miss that and you won't get there. Like they say in NASCAR, "To finish first, first you must finish." Ya ain't gonna finish unless you look at the event as a game of eating and drinking at regular intervals.

Experiment, test, change things up. Make it easy to drink and eat. Always eat and fuel throughout a ride. That's my advice. Hopefully it helps get you on your way to a successful long ride someday.

Friday News And Views

Another look at the All City rig to be revealed full on 7/18/16

More On The All City Rig:

So, there ya go folks. Another peek at the upcoming All City rig to debut on July 18th, as far as I have seen on their Facebook page. (Image courtesy of said page belonging to said All City)

So, pretty obvious that it is a disc brake bike, right? Looks a heck of a lot like a Space Horse, with, you know..........disc brakes. Yeah.

Well, if that is all it is, that wouldn't be a very big surprise. Like I said last week in this space, almost anything saleable these days either has to have disc brakes or "plus" something or another in its name. Not that this is a bad thing, necessarily. But marketing gets on a roll and it seems that all of a sudden all you hear about is "disc brake road bike this" and "plus sized wheels" that. Interestingly, this could all be attributed to one phenomenon that occurred in the last decade.

Stated as briefly as possible, that would be 29"ers and the way the industry did their best to ignore a grassroots trend that just wouldn't go away. Then the industry wished they would've hopped on that "love train" sooner. Because, ya know.......the perception was that they lost out on making sales to some other early adopters. 

Anyway..... All City's something or another disc braked, drop barred bike will be revealed soon.

New JET-9 from Niner. Of course it is a "plus" bike, you ninny!

Speaking Of Plus Bikes......

Niner Bikes dropped their "plus" versions of the venerable JET-9 and RIP-9 models. All new, "modern" slack/long geometry with stubby stems/wide bars and lots of travel.

Some media outlets are making a big stink about these not being 29"ers. Whatever...... Click baiters all of 'em. Playing upon people's lack of understanding of tire sizing tradition to get them to read the same press release everyone else is regurgitating. Brilliant.

Anyway, I was just reading about Intense's new FS "plus" bike too. Nice looking rig, and Jeff Steber, the head honch over there, actually was expounding on something you don't hear many companies saying, and is something I was talking about here a while back. That being how it is difficult to get suspension which is intentional, designed to a certain goal, and obviously has damping to work with big, voluminous tires that have very little to no damping and can vary a great deal in how they "suspend" the bike and rider due to air pressure settings. Now that's smart thinking right there, and since Jeff was talking about that, I wonder how other companies approached that issue, or even if they did. To my way of thinking, it would be a critical component of the design for any plus FS trail bike  design.

So, yeah........more plus bike stuff! 

It's not bad, actually

With Bacon, How Could It Be Bad? 

Last year, I think it was, I was chatting with Yuri Hauswald at Gravel Worlds. He'd just won the Dirty Kanza 200 a couple of months prior and, amongst other chit-chat, he was telling me about this new flavor of GU gel called "Maple Bacon". Well, he wasn't so much telling me about it as he was raving about it. 

I like bacon, but in a gel packet? I was not convinced that this was anything other than Yuri being loyal to GU and spouting off as an ambassador of the brand. Which is cool. He should do that. I get that about marketing and it doesn't bother me one bit.

Fast forward to yesterday at the shop. A sales rep comes in that we are familiar with that reps for GU Energy. By the way, I happen to like and use their stuff. Roctane, Fizz tabs, and GU Chomps are amongst my favorite things they make. So, I was interested in what the rep had to say about GU products. He laid out some packets and they were, of course, the Maple Bacon flavor. So, I figured, what the heck! I tried one and.......

Dang it! It was really good! So, I was all wrong about that one, and Yuri was right. It is that good. Maybe you aren't into bacon because, ya know.....animals, vegetarianism, etc. Well, did you know that this and other GU gels are actually vegan and kosher? That's what the rep said. Weird. How could Maple Bacon taste so good and not have real bacon?

Never underestimate the Power of the Name "Bacon"! <==HA!

Studded. Tubeless. and yes.....in plus sizes!

 But Wait! There Is More Plus Tire Stuff To Talk About!!

Readers here may recall back in May I talked about this new tire company that isn't really new, but is "coming out" from behind the curtains to market under their own brand name, Arisun. I mentioned that they will have studded, tubeless tires. Well, I just got word yesterday what they are doing.

The line of tires Arisun is going to bring here are called "Sharktooth" and will consist of the following sizes: A 26" X 4.0" tire in wire bead, folding bead, and "TLR" (tubeless ready) with thread counts ranging from 30, 60, and 120. There will also be a 27.5+ configuration to come. But get this- they are doing a 29" X 2.8" Sharktooth in the same versions as the 26" X 4.0"ers! Did you catch that? A 2.8 inch wide, studded 29"er tire?

Sign me up! 

The tubeless version will be killer. And yes......I have a bike that will fit these. By the way, this is another thing I've heard a lot of rumblings about, and may be the next "evolution" of "plus" bikes. That being that 27.5+ and the attendant "Boost" wheel spacing that came along with that has now created a bunch of bikes that probably will fit 29" X 2.5"-2.8" tires, and the industry is going to start pumping out that size tire very soon, as we can see with this Arisun model. So, yeah.........more plus tire stuff!


Have a great weekend, y'all! 

Friday News And Views

Another look at the All City rig to be revealed full on 7/18/16

More On The All City Rig:

So, there ya go folks. Another peek at the upcoming All City rig to debut on July 18th, as far as I have seen on their Facebook page. (Image courtesy of said page belonging to said All City)

So, pretty obvious that it is a disc brake bike, right? Looks a heck of a lot like a Space Horse, with, you know..........disc brakes. Yeah.

Well, if that is all it is, that wouldn't be a very big surprise. Like I said last week in this space, almost anything saleable these days either has to have disc brakes or "plus" something or another in its name. Not that this is a bad thing, necessarily. But marketing gets on a roll and it seems that all of a sudden all you hear about is "disc brake road bike this" and "plus sized wheels" that. Interestingly, this could all be attributed to one phenomenon that occurred in the last decade.

Stated as briefly as possible, that would be 29"ers and the way the industry did their best to ignore a grassroots trend that just wouldn't go away. Then the industry wished they would've hopped on that "love train" sooner. Because, ya know.......the perception was that they lost out on making sales to some other early adopters. 

Anyway..... All City's something or another disc braked, drop barred bike will be revealed soon.

New JET-9 from Niner. Of course it is a "plus" bike, you ninny!

Speaking Of Plus Bikes......

Niner Bikes dropped their "plus" versions of the venerable JET-9 and RIP-9 models. All new, "modern" slack/long geometry with stubby stems/wide bars and lots of travel.

Some media outlets are making a big stink about these not being 29"ers. Whatever...... Click baiters all of 'em. Playing upon people's lack of understanding of tire sizing tradition to get them to read the same press release everyone else is regurgitating. Brilliant.

Anyway, I was just reading about Intense's new FS "plus" bike too. Nice looking rig, and Jeff Steber, the head honch over there, actually was expounding on something you don't hear many companies saying, and is something I was talking about here a while back. That being how it is difficult to get suspension which is intentional, designed to a certain goal, and obviously has damping to work with big, voluminous tires that have very little to no damping and can vary a great deal in how they "suspend" the bike and rider due to air pressure settings. Now that's smart thinking right there, and since Jeff was talking about that, I wonder how other companies approached that issue, or even if they did. To my way of thinking, it would be a critical component of the design for any plus FS trail bike  design.

So, yeah........more plus bike stuff! 

It's not bad, actually

With Bacon, How Could It Be Bad? 

Last year, I think it was, I was chatting with Yuri Hauswald at Gravel Worlds. He'd just won the Dirty Kanza 200 a couple of months prior and, amongst other chit-chat, he was telling me about this new flavor of GU gel called "Maple Bacon". Well, he wasn't so much telling me about it as he was raving about it. 

I like bacon, but in a gel packet? I was not convinced that this was anything other than Yuri being loyal to GU and spouting off as an ambassador of the brand. Which is cool. He should do that. I get that about marketing and it doesn't bother me one bit.

Fast forward to yesterday at the shop. A sales rep comes in that we are familiar with that reps for GU Energy. By the way, I happen to like and use their stuff. Roctane, Fizz tabs, and GU Chomps are amongst my favorite things they make. So, I was interested in what the rep had to say about GU products. He laid out some packets and they were, of course, the Maple Bacon flavor. So, I figured, what the heck! I tried one and.......

Dang it! It was really good! So, I was all wrong about that one, and Yuri was right. It is that good. Maybe you aren't into bacon because, ya know.....animals, vegetarianism, etc. Well, did you know that this and other GU gels are actually vegan and kosher? That's what the rep said. Weird. How could Maple Bacon taste so good and not have real bacon?

Never underestimate the Power of the Name "Bacon"! <==HA!

Studded. Tubeless. and yes.....in plus sizes!

 But Wait! There Is More Plus Tire Stuff To Talk About!!

Readers here may recall back in May I talked about this new tire company that isn't really new, but is "coming out" from behind the curtains to market under their own brand name, Arisun. I mentioned that they will have studded, tubeless tires. Well, I just got word yesterday what they are doing.

The line of tires Arisun is going to bring here are called "Sharktooth" and will consist of the following sizes: A 26" X 4.0" tire in wire bead, folding bead, and "TLR" (tubeless ready) with thread counts ranging from 30, 60, and 120. There will also be a 27.5+ configuration to come. But get this- they are doing a 29" X 2.8" Sharktooth in the same versions as the 26" X 4.0"ers! Did you catch that? A 2.8 inch wide, studded 29"er tire?

Sign me up! 

The tubeless version will be killer. And yes......I have a bike that will fit these. By the way, this is another thing I've heard a lot of rumblings about, and may be the next "evolution" of "plus" bikes. That being that 27.5+ and the attendant "Boost" wheel spacing that came along with that has now created a bunch of bikes that probably will fit 29" X 2.5"-2.8" tires, and the industry is going to start pumping out that size tire very soon, as we can see with this Arisun model. So, yeah.........more plus tire stuff!


Have a great weekend, y'all! 

Friday News And Views

Matt Wills cranks out a long grade at Odin's Revenge '13

Odin's Revenge is on tap for me this weekend and as you read this, I may already be on my way Westward riding shotgun in Tony's big Ford truck.

This is a fantastic event, small, homegrown, and it has really stunning scenery along with a brutally tough course. Fortunately the weather report looks less beastly than it could have been- low winds, lower to mid-80's for temps, but the roads may be a bit rough. It sounds like the weeks of heavy rain coming into the event have caused many ruts in the dirt road sections with some silt having been deposited in many places out on the roadways. No worries here- I have the Fat Fargo ready and I think it will prove to be a good bike for the rustic and primitive roads of West Central Nebraska.

Me? Well, I have been taking it easy this week. Since the DK200 I have gotten real sore in the hips and sometimes upper leg area after harder efforts, but I am where I am at. I have a nutritional plan and hydration plan based on my DK200 attempt. I am taking into account that it will be warmer, so I have modified things a tiny bit. Anyway, we'll see how it all goes after this weekend when I will be posting up the race report.

Beast of the East rises again.

Cannondale Does Fat, B+:

Cannondale has finally entered the fat bike market with a Lefty equipped, 4.0" tire sized rig that claims a "lower Q factor" than other fat bikes.

Yawn.......

What is really cool is that Cannondale has brought back a storied model name and look to have done it up correctly. That would be the new "Beast of the East" model. You younginz readin' this writin' may need a bit of a history lesson here. The Beast of the East was Cannondale's mtb hardtail that was fine tuned for Eastern USA "woods riding". Specifically, it had a very high bottom bracket, (the better to clean downed trees with, my dear), and short rear/long front center geometry with a fairly steep head angle. Fine tuned for "plunkin' and steep climbs", the Beast was unique and on an island all its own for years. Typically, the rig was sold as a totally rigid bike with the ginormous aluminum "Pepperoni" fork. This bike was an acquired taste for sure, but it was cool to see a company stick to its guns for as long as C'dale did. Of course, when the turn of the century came this bike had long been out of the line up.

Now it is back with what looks to be a short rear end and that head angle? Is it just me or does that look a tad steep compared to what we see with other trail bikes? It does have B+ wheels, so it's a mid-fat bike, which makes total sense given the heritage of this bike. This is a Cannondale for exploring, poking around deer trails, and general bushwhacking. This is the exciting bike here, not the fat bike. 

 Riding Gravel Radio Ranch Episode #10:

Fittingly, the tenth episode of the Riding Gravel Radio Ranch celebrates the winner overall of the tenth Dirty Kanza 200, Yuri Hauswald. You can click here for the page where the podcast can be accessed.  It's an hour and forty four minutes of good stuff. First, Ben Welnak and I give our race reports from the Badlands Gravel Battle, (Ben) and the Dirty Kanza 200, (me), which is followed up by over an hour with Yuri Hauswald. This might be our best interview so far. Yuri takes you through the ways he was drawn into the gravel scene, recounts his training, and then goes on to describe his race and thrilling sprint finish after 200 grueling miles. Yuri also gives us a gut wrenching account of his motivations and how he has been affected by the loss of his father to cancer and his wife's battle with cancer. Finally, he assesses the allure of the gravel road riding scene and gives an excellent set of reasons why this sort of riding is catching on.

Check it out by downloading it from the show page at the link above, or check out the Riding Gravel Radio Ranch on the aps for iPhone and Android on Mountain Bike Radio.

Hey, I gotta run. There's this crazy gravel road event I have to go to. See ya later! Keep the rubber side down, ya'all!

Friday News And Views

Matt Wills cranks out a long grade at Odin's Revenge '13

Odin's Revenge is on tap for me this weekend and as you read this, I may already be on my way Westward riding shotgun in Tony's big Ford truck.

This is a fantastic event, small, homegrown, and it has really stunning scenery along with a brutally tough course. Fortunately the weather report looks less beastly than it could have been- low winds, lower to mid-80's for temps, but the roads may be a bit rough. It sounds like the weeks of heavy rain coming into the event have caused many ruts in the dirt road sections with some silt having been deposited in many places out on the roadways. No worries here- I have the Fat Fargo ready and I think it will prove to be a good bike for the rustic and primitive roads of West Central Nebraska.

Me? Well, I have been taking it easy this week. Since the DK200 I have gotten real sore in the hips and sometimes upper leg area after harder efforts, but I am where I am at. I have a nutritional plan and hydration plan based on my DK200 attempt. I am taking into account that it will be warmer, so I have modified things a tiny bit. Anyway, we'll see how it all goes after this weekend when I will be posting up the race report.

Beast of the East rises again.

Cannondale Does Fat, B+:

Cannondale has finally entered the fat bike market with a Lefty equipped, 4.0" tire sized rig that claims a "lower Q factor" than other fat bikes.

Yawn.......

What is really cool is that Cannondale has brought back a storied model name and look to have done it up correctly. That would be the new "Beast of the East" model. You younginz readin' this writin' may need a bit of a history lesson here. The Beast of the East was Cannondale's mtb hardtail that was fine tuned for Eastern USA "woods riding". Specifically, it had a very high bottom bracket, (the better to clean downed trees with, my dear), and short rear/long front center geometry with a fairly steep head angle. Fine tuned for "plunkin' and steep climbs", the Beast was unique and on an island all its own for years. Typically, the rig was sold as a totally rigid bike with the ginormous aluminum "Pepperoni" fork. This bike was an acquired taste for sure, but it was cool to see a company stick to its guns for as long as C'dale did. Of course, when the turn of the century came this bike had long been out of the line up.

Now it is back with what looks to be a short rear end and that head angle? Is it just me or does that look a tad steep compared to what we see with other trail bikes? It does have B+ wheels, so it's a mid-fat bike, which makes total sense given the heritage of this bike. This is a Cannondale for exploring, poking around deer trails, and general bushwhacking. This is the exciting bike here, not the fat bike. 

 Riding Gravel Radio Ranch Episode #10:

Fittingly, the tenth episode of the Riding Gravel Radio Ranch celebrates the winner overall of the tenth Dirty Kanza 200, Yuri Hauswald. You can click here for the page where the podcast can be accessed.  It's an hour and forty four minutes of good stuff. First, Ben Welnak and I give our race reports from the Badlands Gravel Battle, (Ben) and the Dirty Kanza 200, (me), which is followed up by over an hour with Yuri Hauswald. This might be our best interview so far. Yuri takes you through the ways he was drawn into the gravel scene, recounts his training, and then goes on to describe his race and thrilling sprint finish after 200 grueling miles. Yuri also gives us a gut wrenching account of his motivations and how he has been affected by the loss of his father to cancer and his wife's battle with cancer. Finally, he assesses the allure of the gravel road riding scene and gives an excellent set of reasons why this sort of riding is catching on.

Check it out by downloading it from the show page at the link above, or check out the Riding Gravel Radio Ranch on the aps for iPhone and Android on Mountain Bike Radio.

Hey, I gotta run. There's this crazy gravel road event I have to go to. See ya later! Keep the rubber side down, ya'all!