Dirty Chain Podcast Episode 34: Ted King - The King of Gravel

Professional cyclist, multiple DK200 winner, race director, and UnTapped cofounder, Ted King, sits down with the Dirty Chain Podcast to talk van life, gravel cycling, and work/life balance.

Trevor Gibney:

Speaking of racing...

Sheldon Little:

Let's talk to the King of Gravel racing.

Trevor Gibney:

Folks, if you are listening to our podcast, if you have listened to our podcast in the past, chances are, you know who Ted King is. If you don't know who Ted King is, I'm not quite sure why you listen to our podcast. Ted King...

Sheldon Little:

No, you literally just talked to my mom. She listens to the podcast, but she doesn't know who Ted King is.

Trevor Gibney:

Sometimes I wonder if it's just our parents listening to us.

Sheldon Little:

Yeah. It's like, "Man, that's a lot of hits on a lance."

Trevor Gibney:

Mr. Ted King, what more can we say? He is a multiple winner of DK200. He works hard to put gravel, the national gravel scene on the map and he is a...

Sheldon Little:

He's a great spokesman for the sport in the style of gravel riding.

Trevor Gibney:

We have been hoping to talk to him for a really long time and we just-

Sheldon Little:

We actually worked at it for quite a while.

Trevor Gibney:

Yeah, we did and and he's just been great to make this all work and now it finally happened. The stars aligned. We talked to Ted King. So why don't we just get right into our interview with the king of gravel, Mr. Ted King.

Ted King:

Nice to meet you, guys. Thanks for the patience. Are you guys in person together? Are you calling in separately or how does that work?

Sheldon Little:

Well, we started off the year when Michigan was in its deep quarantine, we were doing it separate. But things have kind of lifted a little bit here. So we're actually together in person now.

Trevor Gibney:

Yeah.

Ted King:

Nice.

Trevor Gibney:

Sheldon and I have decided that we'll be a part of each other's quarantine if you will and have been riding a little bit together and just keep doing some of these podcasts together. So it's been nice.

Ted King:

Very cool. Well, thank you for, again, being patient with me. This is cool. I appreciate it.

Trevor Gibney:

Well, I mean, no problem. It's great to be able to talk with you and even when you're amongst... or in the middle of a huge van trip or live in van life for you to find the time for us. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Ted King:

Pleasure.

Sheldon Little:

So you're doing the van life with a newborn. Whereabouts are you right now?

Ted King:

We jumped right in. I got to think where we are. We're in Flagstaff, Arizona. I say that the pandemic is basically the cause of the entire van experience. So we had our daughter Hazel in early March and basically two days later the world went into lockdown. I think like everybody else, we sort of thought it was going to last a few months and therefore by mid-summer things will be fine. But obviously, it shows no signs of slowing down.

Ted King:

Laura, my wife, her whole family is out in Seattle and so as summer sort of rolled around, we said we got to figure out a way to get out to Seattle to have Hazel be introduced to that whole side of the family. It's amazing how quickly a human being, a baby does grow up. I mean, she goes from largely just eating, sleeping, pooping to making eye contact and googling. There's so much interaction that I really didn't appreciate until I became a father.

Ted King:

So this is a really long-winded way of saying, Laura and I had talked about getting a van for a long time. Truth be told, there's probably a good chance we never would have gotten it were it not for COVID, Hazel not wanting to get on airplane, so on and so forth and so we've made the trip out west and now we're making a slow pilgrimage back east.

Sheldon Little:

Now, when you left the East Coast, did you just do a straight drive out or did you kind of do some vacationing on your way out?

Ted King:

Great question. We beelined it to basically to spearfish, South Dakota. So call that sort of smack in the middle of the country. We were in no hurry to embrace all that western, New York and Illinois and Chicago had to offer. I say that sort of in jest, but-

Sheldon Little:

Well, thank you for skipping Indiana because that's Trevor's home state and we like to say just skip Indiana.

Ted King:

All right. With COVID, I mean things are so closed down. So even if we wanted to do some sort of culture experience like go to a museum or go where traditionally people would go on vacation as they're driving across the country, we said, "No, let's beeline it to some western states." So that also being said, I've made it a really good way to not zigzag, but connect the dots across the country from visiting sponsors. So we spent an evening in Chicago and saw friends at SRAM. Went to Madison, saw friends at Saris. Cork is located in Spearfish. So [Rene Hare 00:19:21] is my tire sponsor out in Seattle.

Ted King:

We wanted to see the wild, wild west. Spearfish for just a day. That was super cool to do some great camping and then from there to Whitefish, Montana which is super cool place. Neither of us, Laura and I had been to Montana before. That was great. Then zip down to Ketchum, Idaho. Visited Rebecca Rush for a little bit. And then we made it to Seattle. Basically once we knew that we were going to allow Hazel to see her mother's side of the family then it became less of a rush to get to Seattle on a very short-term basis.

Trevor Gibney:

Sure. Is this like your first van life experience that you and Laura had done or you have done?

Ted King:

Yeah. Great, great question. Yep.

Trevor Gibney:

So you just felt why not wait until you have a newborn to do it, right?

Ted King:

Bingo. We said, let's jump into the deep end. Let's see what this whole van life is all about. It came together in a pretty fortuitous fashion. When we had the idea that we weren't going to get on a airplane, then we started to do a bit of research on vans and van life and my goodness that's a Pandora's Box there. We started dabbling in. It was daunting. So let's see what happened. I put the feelers out. I mean, a friend drove up to our house. He lives in Boston. So fairly close by to where we are in Vermont.

Ted King:

He has a completely tricked-out van and I was like, "Hey, Tom. Do you want to let us borrow your van?" He said, "Well, if it weren't for COVID and if it weren't for a summer of adventure, I probably would take it on a... I mean, I'd probably let you use it." Two days later, a very good friend of Tom's called us up. He said, "Hey, we don't have ours on the market yet, but we're going to be selling our van." So long story short, we bought this van from a friend. It's nice to buy a vehicle from a trusted friend instead of potentially buying a lemon.

Ted King:

He's a cyclist. He'd already tricked out a lot of the accoutrements. It had a bed. It had a fridge. It had the trays for the bikes. So this is all to say it would have been really nice to go on some shorter trips to a weekend trip, to a week-long trip instead of saying, "All right. Let's go basically minimum month and a half." But we're making the most of it and have probably not over packed nearly as badly as we potentially could have. This is our first go van life.

Sheldon Little:

What were some of the first shocks in the learning on the road of living out of a van for an extended period of time?

Ted King:

Laura would admit that she nearly called it quits the first night. So I've driven across the country... Oh, it beats me, a half dozen times or more. And I've always done it either alone or with my brother. There's a pace of doing things when you're alone or with your brother where it's like beeline it, survive on beef jerky and coffee, and you can make it from point A to point B.

Ted King:

What I have learned and what I would suggest to anybody with a newborn is a happy baby makes a happy wife and a happy wife makes for a happy life. It doesn't mean when you stop to get gas, that you're sprinting off to do Aaron's X, Y, and Z in order to jump back in the car and be ready to go. It means when you stop for gas, you should anticipate at least a half hour, sometimes an hour. Get re-situated, get Hazel happy. Of course, change your diaper, feed her, yada, yada so that you can put in another big strong leg during the next leg, but there's no sense in rushing in between legs.

Ted King:

The short backstory as to why Laura almost aborted on day one, we left late in the day and it was probably 4:00 in the afternoon. We were back in Vermont. We're like, "You know what, all right. We're finally packed up. Let's just hit it instead of waiting for tomorrow morning." We were under the impression that... So we made it to Syracuse, New York. I was under the impression that you can camp in any Walmart being that we are van life rookies. It turns out you can only camp in Walmarts that approve RV camping.

Ted King:

So first we roll into one. It's like 9:00 at night. We roll into one. It's clearly not the case. I fire up, Google Maps or whatever it is, and I find a Pilot truck stop. When you get to the west, basically anything west of Chicago, Pilot truck stop is that's a big well-known truck stop. I had never seen one on the East Coast and so I was very surprised to see one in Syracuse. We then drove across town to Pilot truck stop, which is, with all due respect to Syracuse, it is certainly the ghetto. There are cars on cinder blocks. There's all sorts of nefarious activity late in the evening. I was like, "Nope, not camping here."

Ted King:

What are we going to do. This was great. We got back on the highway and went to like a service stop, which is kind of the northeast equivalent of a truck stop. We have the echo of the highway literally 20 yards away, but we slept great. When you roll over out of bed and drink some coffee in the morning and you're able to hit the road and you're on the road, within 20 yards, it all works out. So little learning curves like that.

Trevor Gibney:

Good. So one more van life question and then we'll move on. How many bikes did you pack for this trip?

Ted King:

Terrific question again. We have four bikes.

Trevor Gibney:

That's what I thought. I thought it might be four.

Ted King:

Yeah. If I were doing the trip alone, I'd probably bring three bikes. So maybe six bikes a piece would be ideal. But then it's all about consolidation and yada, yada, yada. So we each have full suspension Cannondale Scalpel mountain bikes and then we each have our Cannondale SuperX gravel cyclocross bikes, but then we have six sets of wheels so you have your mountain bike wheels and then we have our gravel slicks and gravel knobbies.

Ted King:

So all said and done, it works remarkably well. It does get a little bit cozy when it's like, "Ah, shoot. I got to access the bike that's in the middle. I need to change the wheels. The wheels are located over here." But I mean I'm creating my own complaints here. We have a very sweet setup. So there's your answer.

Trevor Gibney:

Very cool.

Ted King:

Four bikes.

Trevor Gibney:

So before we get too much further and I'm hoping that most of our listeners would be aware of who you are, maybe follow, and know of your... Well, just your part in this gravel scene and in this United States gravel scene and all that, but could you just give us a quick, maybe a little bit of background to your cycling life and how that all started. Very quick. We don't have to get into big details.

Ted King:

Sure. Please cut me off if I get too long-winded. I got into cycling in college, studied econ at a small liberal arts school where basically your next step is to go to Wall Street and that did not interest me in the least. So I thought I'll see if I can have a go at this pro bike racing thing. The year was 2005, which is sort of the end of the heyday of domestic road racing. There were domestic pros getting paid six figures. It was a good time. Admittedly my first pro contract, I got paid zero dollars. So there's a big span in things. I don't think for our domestic pros these days that it was all glory days.

Ted King:

I raised three years domestically, made the leap to Europe. That final year in America, I was a top ranked American in the North American standings. Raced for Cervelo TestTeam for a couple years and then on to Liquigas, which became Cannondale Liquigas which became Cannondale Pro Cycling. And my final year was Cannondale Garmin which is the slipstream operation. I retired in 2015. I'd raced for 10 years, didn't know exactly what I was going to do, but I wanted to keep a thread of the bicycle in my life. I wanted to either be a mentor or a coach or just remain in the sport in some capacity, but I still thought at that point I'd ping that Middlebury network and say, "Hey, what can I do in finance?" Or try to use that degree.

Ted King:

Sponsors had reached out early in that final year that I was racing, beginning with Cannondale saying like, "Hey, you have a nice voice. You have a nice a platform. You have a good audience. Would you be interested in staying in the sport?" And at that point, I feel like even in 2015, the term ambassador would be very new. I feel like gravel was hardly a term there. Certainly gravel pro was not a term that anybody had ever uttered, and I wish no one would ever utter it ever again.

Ted King:

So that first year, 2016, the first year of retirement so to speak, it was a lot more product launches. It was a lot more R&D in working with companies purely on an ambassador side going to pop-up events. So sorry. As it relates to gravel, Rebecca Rush invited me early on in the year, said, "Hey, roadie. You got to come check out this gravel thing. Come to Dirty Kanza." I did and I had success there, and I won that race. I think gravel was going to boom with or without me, but I certainly won Dirty Kanza at a good time and it sort of just snowballed and grown since then.

Trevor Gibney:

You mentioned gravel pros and how you're not a big fan of that, but I see a kind of a little difference between... Correct me if I'm wrong, but your intro or your beginning into gravel versus someone like Stetina. Stetina's path seemed like a definite choice and I don't want to speak for him, but it seemed like he made a choice to ride and race gravel. Yours kind of came up and like...

Ted King:

It was organic.

Trevor Gibney:

Yeah. It was a little more organic, I guess.

Ted King:

Yeah. I wouldn't disagree with that assessment at all. Pete, most certainly, he made a conscious decision to step away from road racing and I have a podcast, King of the Ride Podcast and I had him on as a guest in 2019. He had just raced the Ardennes Classics and it was right before he won Belgian Waffle Ride. At that point, I feel like you could read it. I mean, he didn't say anything explicitly and maybe if things had gone differently in contract negotiations or this that or the other, he would still be racing. A little bit of a split schedule, but yes, he consciously said, "I'm going to stop racing on the road. I'm going to race this whole alternative thing.

Ted King:

My whole career was this evolution and unfolding, and basically doors opening and me stepping in and sort of jumping at an opportunity. I mean, I can go through my entire career that way. I got into cycling because my older brother got into cycling. I had success through collegiate cycling and got an invitation to go race on the national team in Europe. So I said, "Cool, that sounds like fun." Those contacts they made on the national team allowed me to get my first domestic pro contract. I had success there and like I said, winning the NRC opened up doors to Cervelo TestTeam that said, "Hey, we want to go to North America." So I was sort of a natural choice.

Ted King:

So come to retirement and beginning with Cannondale, and SRAM, and Zipp and all these sponsors saying, "Hey, can you stay in the sport? Are you interested in staying in the sport?" I'm like, "Yeah. That sounds like a really cool opportunity." It's been a characteristic of my whole career and it's served me well. So it's not something I'm going to fly in the face of anytime soon.

Sheldon Little:

So I find it really interesting especially you at the time that you came into gravel, getting into the gravel scene at the time that you did. When you won Dirty Kanza, it was not a household name. Now, you say Dirty Kanza in any bike household and people know it.

Trevor Gibney:

I'm not quite sure we're supposed to say Dirty Kanza actually.

Ted King:

Right. The race formerly known as.

Sheldon Little:

DK.

Trevor Gibney:

Or Kanza or I don't know.

Sheldon Little:

But then as you grew into this role in the gravel scene, I mean you not only took up the mantle of a cyclist, you also had to do kind of your own marketing coming in the world there's a little bit more media coverage. Can you kind of talk a little bit about how you kind of had to take on these multiple roles of managing yourself not just as an athlete?

Ted King:

Sure. Yeah. I feel like I was an unintentional early adopter of a lot of social media meaning if you go to a small liberal arts school in New England in the early 2000s, then Facebook is going to be on your radar when it was only... It started in Harvard and then I went to a small liberal arts school throughout New England, and then it went to high schools, and then it went to everybody. So being on board Facebook early was something. And I am by no means promoting Facebook because the Mark Zuckerberg juggernaut needs to be controlled.

Sheldon Little:

Well, you're going to get Zucked for that. There's 30 days right there of ban.

Ted King:

Good. He can ban my account. Strava started in New England and so I had New England cycling connection that got me connected there relatively early on. I was using Instagram. I look at back my early Instagram photos much like we all do and I was like man, I can't believe I had it that long ago. Thinking of it as the new recent hip thing. So my point is I was using it through my career a bit and you're completely tempered on what you're supposed to say.

Ted King:

There's not explicit schooling and what you're supposed to say and what you're not supposed to say when you're on a world tour team. But I mean there are things that you consciously know that you should and shouldn't say. Whereas now, in retirement... Not retirement. In career 2.0, I'm my own marketing voice and you hope that you're not in a silo or in a forest and a tree falls and no one's there to hear it.

Ted King:

You need to reverberate messages and you need to speak on behalf of sponsors, on behalf of the things that you stand by and create this voice. So there's that side of it for sure. I have an agent that I had through the second half of my world tour career, [inaudible 00:35:30] and he's a very good friend. He's a trusted confidant. He's a former pro. He's, I'd say the most connected person in the sport of cycling. If you want a dinner with Eddie Merckx, he's the person you'd call up and you'd figure out a way to do it.

Ted King:

I maintained a relationship with him and he still is my sponsor. Sorry, my sponsor. He's my agent now. You need to keep professionalism in the sport of gravel as well as gravel is just booming. It can't just be a fly-by-night shoot from the hip operation. So I'm really glad to have him in the contract negotiations. I mean, he just handles all that side so that I'm able to speak the positivity, speak the good things about the brands.

Ted King:

It is night and day of world tour racing to a world of professional... I don't even want to say it, ambassadorship. I mean, this is going to be a bit of a tangent, but gravel riding and ambassadorship is one big aspect of what I do, but towards the end of my career, I co-founded Untapped, the sports nutrition company. So that takes a huge portion of my time. I have a small coaching outfit. I coach between six and eight people at a time. So that takes a good deal of bandwidth. And then in the very short term, I have a child, and that takes an enormous amount of bandwidth as well.

Ted King:

I treat riding and racing as seriously as I can and as I want to, but it's really nice to have stepped away from the seriousness and the marginal gains that are professional cycling and now basically, you can't not say it, but drink the beer, drink that recovery beer instead of ever having a protein shake.

Trevor Gibney:

I kind of do want to ask about this, and all of these things you're talking about being an entrepreneur or a business owner, an ambassador for your sponsors, doing your social media, training, being a father, how are you balancing all of these different parts of your life?

Ted King:

I got another one for you, also event co-promoter. My wife and I started Rooted Vermont. It is a balance. I don't have a good answer. For one, it's the only thing I know and I know hustle and hard work, and bootstrapping things, and just sort of making things work with hard work. There are a handful of days, I'm like, "Man, it'd be really nice to just have a nine to five and be able to get your 401k and your pension and be able to check out at the end of the day."

Ted King:

So to answer the exact question, you start every day with a to-do list. You have it prioritized in some way. You go throughout the day trying to fit in everything you possibly can so that by the end of the day, the to-do list has somehow shortened. In some capacities, it has gotten bigger and longer in other places and then you go to bed and do it all again. I know that's incredibly vague, but that's also very accurate.

Ted King:

I know the things that are pressing whether it's for sponsors, whether it's for Untapped, whether it's for coaching. I know that there's a tripod of life and if any one leg is going to go out of balance, you can maintain that for a little while, but then you can't do that for an extended period of time. And for me that that tripod is work, which is basically everything we've just talked about.

Ted King:

Family and some sort of recreation, some sort of outlet, whether it's collecting stamps or riding bikes. So sort of coincidentally and conveniently, and it's not always sunshine and cinnamon, there is huge crossover in that and that my work is riding a bike, my recreation is riding a bike and my wife loves riding a bike and it's a huge part of her work-life balance as well. It's made me a better communicator with her. I think in a previous life, I just sort of do the dude thing of quieting down and go for a bike ride whereas now it's how can we fit things together, how can we be a team, how can be a team, a family.

Ted King:

We work together every day especially because we work from home all the more under a microscope amid COVID. But as I say this, I see her walking our daughter from 100 yards away through the forest and it really ain't that bad.

Trevor Gibney:

Have you actually found just in terms of this balance some real like benefits of the COVID lifestyle? I mean, you're on a huge van life trip right now. I mean, as you said that was kind of due to COVID. You're not racing or you're not doing other things. Is it in a weird way like a lot of people say like the slowing down the time with family is actually helping the life balance a little more.

Sheldon Little:

The dynamic.

Trevor Gibney:

Yeah.

Ted King:

I would say unequivocally, yes. It started with Hazel was born March 8th and I think March 10th was when Vermont went into lockdown. So having that time at home with her was just a tremendous blessing. If I weren't doing that, I might be rushing off to a particular race. Up until the very last minute, I was considering doing mid-south. Sorry. There was a neighbor about to drive down our sweet parking path here. Laura and I would be balancing things elsewhere and I'd be going to the Untapped office on not any sort of immediate regularity, but basically it allowed us to be a family unit so much more. So much more cohesive, so much more quickly, so much more just out of necessity. Or not necessity, I mean because everybody's locked down.

Ted King:

Especially because we don't know people who have been adversely affected in an enormous way, I mean we can look at this all from our two eyes, from our four eyes positively. There is tremendous suffering and rife in the world and whether it's economics or losing a loved one or dying, you can't help but consider yourself very blessed right now.

Ted King:

So that said, I was talking to my brother recently who's... He's a resident in psychiatry and I hear this more and more often. There is just sort of this depression that's going throughout the globe especially as there's no end to what we're looking at now with the pandemic. I mean, we thought it was going to be a couple of months. We thought maybe next year. I mean, people talk about now. Okay. So and so event, 2021. It's going to be on the calendar.

Ted King:

It's like, "Don't be so quick to guess that's going to be the case." And who knows? I am forever an optimist. I hope we're back to normal the next year. I think there is an element of being real with ourselves and I think opening up lines of communication is only going to help. So to a degree as many Zoom calls and Google Hangouts that are going on, yeah, that's going to make you call somebody that we weren't going to call another time, be it your mom or your cousin or your uncle or your best friend you haven't talked to in a decade. I think that's all for the better for our mental stability.

Sheldon Little:

Yeah. I mean, if it weren't for the pandemic, I mean originally we were kind of sticking to very local athletes, local companies.

Trevor Gibney:

Local events.

Sheldon Little:

Yeah. And as soon as the pandemic happened, we're like, "Well, we have to do things via Zoom." Then it was almost kind of this mutual... I think the thought kind of crossed our minds at the same time. It's like, "Well, if we're doing this over Zoom, we can reach out to anybody because we don't have to worry about sitting down to have a beer with somebody and say California.

Ted King:

Totally.

Sheldon Little:

Honestly, if it weren't for the pandemic, I think it would have been a very much slower growth to our podcast where all of a sudden it was just kind of this we can ask anybody.

Trevor Gibney:

And we've had some just great conversations with people because of it. I guess, you kind of have to find the positive in so much of the negative, and of course recognizing how negative COVID affects all of us, but also there are positive things that we can...

Sheldon Little:

We actually passed you on the Vasa Trail the day before Iceman. That evening at dinner, we were talking about, "Oh, it'd be so cool one day to talk to Ted King. Then earlier this year, we've talked with Katarina Nash and Alexey Vermeulen actually has turned out to be a pretty good friend of ours now.

Ted King:

Nice.

Sheldon Little:

I actually had to drive out and help him on the side of the road a couple weeks ago. He got a really bad flat and couldn't get his tubeless back on the rim. I work at a bike shop and he messages me. He's like, "Sheldon, are you in Lansing right now?" I was like, "Yeah." He shot me where he was. I was like, "Dude, you're a mile away from me." I went over there and got his tire back on.

Ted King:

It's hilarious.

Sheldon Little:

I mean, if it weren't for the podcast, all these conversations and friendships that we've kind of built kind of with all these different athletes and ambassadors to different brands, it's been a very interesting project that we kind of started over a couple beers last summer.

Trevor Gibney:

Yes.

Ted King:

Nice.

Trevor Gibney:

You mentioned Rooted Vermont. That's the event that you and your wife, Laura put on. Your inaugural year was last year, so this would have been your second year.

Ted King:

Correct.

Trevor Gibney:

You kind of mentioned this. It's tough to kind of talk in these hypotheticals of 2021 or 2022 or whatever. But let's do it anyways.

Ted King:

Sure. Jump right in.

Trevor Gibney:

I'm assuming if things are better, you are planning on holding it in 2021.

Ted King:

That would certainly be the plan.

Trevor Gibney:

Can you tell us a little bit about the-

Ted King:

And I say that-

Trevor Gibney:

Sorry. I interrupted you, but just a little bit about the course and the event itself.

Ted King:

Yeah, absolutely. There should be no reservation of anybody being excited and signing up and all that good stuff. We are anticipating a good year next year. In January of 2019, Laura and I had batted around the idea for a while of hosting an event. We'd moved to Vermont a year before. I'm going to forget if that's correct. I always forget what year we moved.

Ted King:

But we've been asked to create an event in a variety of places. We lived in the Bay Area in California before and that was a decently saturated market whereas... I mean Vermont has a ton of great gravel events. What we really appreciate about doing in Vermont is the community of people in Vermont, our neighbors, our friends, the people who came and literally helped us unpack, move furniture the day we drove into our driveway, that sense of community is something that we really wanted to show to the general global cycling community, just this really cool friendliness.

Ted King:

So year one, 550 people. Sold out in I think a couple weeks. It was just a party. We subscribed to and created the phrase Mullet Protocol so that we in the gravel world can appreciate that at the front of the race, it's going to be hard charging, but the race is about the party. It's about the party at the finish. It's about the cuisine. It's about the local food or beer or just hanging out and shooting the shit afterwards.

Ted King:

So we got super excited about 2020 and sold out 900 spots in I think 10 hours or less. We obviously had momentum and so it is a huge bummer that we were forced to cancel, but that's certainly the trend in this year of the pandemic. What do we got? We are in the heart of Vermont. It's literally two miles from where Laura and I call home. It is the former HQ of Untapped, the sports drink company that is based on maple syrup so riding all around the Vermont Maple trees.

Ted King:

I say former only because we outgrew that original space so we are now located down the road. We have a 40... I'm going to say this wrong, 48 mile and 82 mile option. We roll out in mass and we just highlight everything that's good about riding bikes. The gravel in Vermont, we've traveled all over the country, all over the world riding gravel and Vermont is unique. It's totally different than what you have in Michigan it's different than Mid-Atlantic. It's different than South Colorado, high Rockies, California.

Ted King:

It's a state that has more gravel roads than pave, so it's also kind of just a way of life back there. It's freaking awesome, rootedvermont.com. Check it out. I mean, the event is on a Sunday and so we roll out, a big roll out with everybody at the same time, Sunday morning. We want it to be a whole weekend party assuming that sure we have plenty of people who are local be it Vermont or New England or folks who drive out from New York City or Mid-Atlantic.

Ted King:

We had a huge draw. I want to say we had 40 plus states come last year. We want people to come for the entire weekend. There's a party on Friday night. There are a handful of roll out rides and an expo all day Saturday. It's hitting all the things that are needed in the sport. Put on your calendar for first weekend in August 2021.

Sheldon Little:

That sounds perfect, yeah. So in Vermont and the other East Coast states, are you seeing kind of... So I think last year was the first year that we had an actual organized gravel race series here in Michigan and this year, I think there was something like 14 races throughout the season just kind of pooled together. Our friend, Matt Acker rides. He and his wife just dove into it and got all these different races into an actual organized schedule. Are you seeing that pop up in other states such as out in Vermont.

Ted King:

The short answer, no. What's really nice is there's a huge sense of camaraderie among the event promoters. We do each other's events. We ride each other's events. We promote each other's events. We talk to each other with questions. You say, "Hey, I'm considering having a camp or whatever on this particular weekend. Is that going to interfere with anything?" There's no consolidation. There's no series. There's no points. I like Matt a lot and I hope he has nothing, but success.

Ted King:

The concept of points to me gets a little bit politicized. I mean, I think with that, you start going down the avenue of incredible seriousness and this thing that I don't really want to see in gravel.

Sheldon Little:

The, quote-unquote, roadie?

Ted King:

Yeah, exactly. I mean in short you don't want road racing, off-road. And that all sounds familiar. That said, I mean one event that I was going to do this year was the Gravel Cup up in Canada. That's Canada's first gravel series. It's out in... Oh my gosh. I'm embarrassed to say this, Ontario?

Sheldon Little:

Yeah.

Ted King:

I think it's in Ontario.

Sheldon Little:

Yeah, because I think one is over actually just on the other side of the bridge near Windsor [crosstalk 00:52:57] the Detroit area.

Ted King:

Yeah. And again, if it weren't for COVID, I would have been up there and there is an inevitability to it. So why not do it right and why not do it well. That's a long-winded answer. Do we see the point system in Vermont? Do we see consolidation? No, but for sure it's happening elsewhere.

Trevor Gibney:

I think that there is a point system. At least here in Michigan, there's a point system. I see it more of like motivation to go to all these different races and they're there and they have them and why don't we kind of put... Kind of connect them in some way to make sure that people are experiencing all these different... I see it more of just like promoting Michigan Gravel Racing.

Sheldon Little:

You do see a subset of people that do kind of carry over certain aspects of road racing, but I do agree that the [crosstalk 00:53:58].

Trevor Gibney:

I will say you have full-on teams coming too and treating it like a road race. So there is both sides of that. With all these races especially like popping up recently and Sheldon mentioned like... It seemed like here in Michigan at the beginning of this year in January, you were having trouble finding a free weekend starting in the spring, going all the way into the fall. I had kind of like a worry at that point of is the gravel bubble about to burst and is there like an over saturation of... I mean, you had a new event, after new event, after new event popping up.

Trevor Gibney:

Well, now, it has nothing to do with the gravel economy, it just has to do with everything that some of these, they may be correcting themselves. I don't know. But I mean do you have a sense of that? I know it's all kind of odd right now, but do you think there's more... Let me ask it this way. Does gravel still have room to grow?

Ted King:

I think so enormously. From what I understand, there's about 700 events coast to coast in North America gravel events. And you look at trends from USA cycling and bike races elsewhere, the trend of gravel continues to grow. At some point that'll reach its peak whether that's in 2020 or 2025 or who the heck knows. We're going to see that in hindsight.

Ted King:

I wouldn't be surprised if we were seeing a lot of rogue events pop up sort of in spite of COVID or because of COVID. I created this thing DIY Gravel where this is my event schedule and I'm going to ride the event distance on the event day and something like that has been enormously popular amid the virtual event world. And then you have other events that are canceled, but then people still get together including the event organizers and host sort of like a mini-event surrounding their own event if that makes any sense.

Ted King:

So I wouldn't be surprised if Dirty Kanza is what? 35, 3,600 people. It's limited basis the number of folks who can get in. Maybe you see a lot of events pop up on Dirty Kanza a day because maybe you're new to gravel and you live in Maine and you aren't going to go anyway and it costs a lot to get out there. Maybe in three or four more years, you're going to go, but let's do like a mini DK day in Maine. And I'm completely making up that little hypothetical, but I feel like it's more and more just sort of pop-up rogue events that were what created gravel in the first place.

Ted King:

The Grasshopper Adventure Series out in Northern California, they've been going on for like 22 or 23 years and they're what you'd call gravel now, but 23 years ago, you'd call them a small underground group ride. You're seeing this full, full circle taking place and I think there's still plenty of room to grow. The Oregon trail event, the Oregon trail race that happened in 2019, you don't see a lot of stage races like Rebecca's Private Idaho. Super cool stage race. I was going to go out there and race that over Labor Day.

Ted King:

That avenue has potential. Obviously, the Grinduro model is a really popular model of doing segmented parts within a day. So I make the comparison to microbrews a lot like you might have thought that we were in the the zenith of microbreweries five years ago and then people are still making really good beers in their basement. They're growing them and it's not until you try one out that you say, this is really good.

Trevor Gibney:

I think that's a good answer. That's the answer I hope to be the case. I think a lot of us were really concerned after we kept seeing event, after event, after event being canceled this year that what's this going to do to some of our favorite races, some of our favorite events that really hold together the Michigan cycling scene. You get kind of concerned about how that's all going to play out. But I mean some of them are big enough. I think they'll have some staying power.

Trevor Gibney:

Funny enough, now, we're actually seeing some of these smaller events that maybe don't have hundreds and hundreds of people. Maybe they only have less than 200 people so that they can actually get kind of creative in how they run the event itself and actually, we have had a couple races, and waves, and things like that where if it was Barry Roubaix or an Iceman that just so many people, there's no way they can be that creative.

Ted King:

Sure.

Trevor Gibney:

This time has also given us things like, exactly your DIY Gravel where it gives us all a chance to still, I don't know compete within ourselves or compete with others virtually or whatever, but maybe something that maybe an opportunity we never would have even thought of before and it kind of took this whole thing for us to see that as like a viable option of no, let's just go out and do the same distance and do the same elevation.

Trevor Gibney:

From our perspective, that whole DIY Gravel thing looked like it went over really well and it really motivated people. From your perspective, how did you feel that went for... I mean, it was really cool to see on that big of a level to try to rally the troops and say, "No, let's all go and keep riding and keep adventuring." So from your perspective, how did that all go.

Ted King:

It smashed my expectations. I thought from the very beginning, when I first put it out, if I had a dozen people sign up, I'd be happy. We had a few hundred in the first round. We've had a handful of... I forget, 3,000 folks sign up. Continually, new people signing up in every event. It's going through the year. I mean, the whole point was to do it as long as events are canceled. Wearing my Untapped hat, I handle a lot of events that come our way when they're looking for nutrition sponsorship.

Ted King:

The sad reality is we get note after note after note. Hey, our event is canceled. We're doing a virtual event. Hey, our event is canceled. We're trying to do a virtual challenge. So I feel like early on, I was just sort of, I don't want to say over. I was very aware of how many virtual events were going on and so I thought that would sort of kill the vibe and kill the enthusiasm, kill the motivation that people were going to have for these virtual events.

Ted King:

But I continue to get notes when people sign up for whatever the latest event DIY Gravel is, how positive they are about them and how the notes that say something the effect of, "Thank you, Ted so much." If it weren't for DIY Gravel, I wouldn't be riding my bike, I wouldn't be out of the house, I wouldn't be meeting up with my friends and going for a ride. Any one of those stories is enough to be like yep, that was worth it. That was awesome. I'm psyched. Somebody found that motivation. There are, at this point, hundreds of those notes.

Ted King:

It is really cool. We can't even begin to fathom and guess what the coming year is going to be and do. Yeah, you hit it on the head. There's a lot of, not DIY Gravel, but DIY event. How do we create some fun amid an unfun thing and be it waves racing or individual time trial racing. Obviously people are chomping at the bit to get back out in community because I think that has shown us sort of more than anything that we as a society are a social group.

Sheldon Little:

Well, I think you really hit that on the head with the comment of finding the fun. I mean, I think all of us can say going to a race is extremely fun and racing is extremely fun. But I think this entire situation is enabling us to kind of hit this reset button of kind of falling back in love with the bike. Trevor and I just recently have been talking about doing a bike packing trip and what would normally be kind of a packed portion of the season. I think we're going to kind of see it across the board. Obviously, there was that first, this huge wave of disappointment and then there's a wave of kind of boredom of in just watching things get canceled. But now I think it's kind of giving us a chance to turn off your Garmin per se and just go out and have fun on your bike.

Ted King:

I don't know the metrics of it. I imagine there are a lot more panniers being sold. A lot more...

Sheldon Little:

I work in a bike shop.

Ted King:

Okay. We all hope that people are using them. I think exploration is key and is king right now. That was my whole DIY Gravel Dirty Kanza where I rode the whole length through the state of Vermont.

Sheldon Little:

Oh my god.

Trevor Gibney:

It was solid pouring grain too. It wasn't like the majority...

Ted King:

Yeah. It was a tiny bit miserable. The irony is I delayed the trip 24 hours because on a forecast I was choosing the much drier day and it was supposed to rain for like a passing half hour shower and it rained on me for like six hours. And then I just rode into this storming headwind for the entire day. That was a test of my mental capacity as much as anything, but in hindsight it was freaking awesome.

Trevor Gibney:

That was the whole like the XL version too, right? I mean, it's like 300 and what 50?

Ted King:

Yeah. It ended up being 310 miles and then it was funny because I was doing it in conjunction with the help of the race formerly known as Dirty Kanza. But then they're like, "Well, you can't actually call it DKXL because it's not 350 miles. I'm like, "Whatever. I'll call it VTXL."

Trevor Gibney:

Well, perfect. Ted, this is fantastic. We appreciate it. I just wanted real quick thank you for... You threw around that term ambassador and I know ambassador gets thrown around a lot. It's easy to be an ambassador of something on Instagram if you promote it or whatever and there's ambassadorships here, ambassadorships here. But I think of the term ambassador and I think that you are the perfect ambassador for gravel. You're at the front of the race or you're at the back of the race doing things and having conversations, having beers with people motivating people with DIY Gravel, creating incredible content to get people motivated. So I appreciate what you're doing for everyone, and then I appreciate for giving us the time here to talk with you.

Sheldon Little:

Before we do go, one of our listeners back in November called in and this was around the time of Iceman just afterwards. Andy Richardson called in. So Payson, head of DNF. He's got a podcast. I think you had a DNF. You have a podcast. My single speed kept rolling and he said that we won the battle of the pods. So if you're ever back here in Michigan for a race, we would love to, after the event have a beer with you. But I just kind of want to throw Andy's little quote out there.

Ted King:

That was pretty good. I liked that. I was wondering where that was going. So correct me if I'm wrong. I believe Iceman has just recently had to cancel.

Sheldon Little:

They did.

Trevor Gibney:

Correct, yeah.

Sheldon Little:

They did.

Ted King:

Okay. That's heartbreaking. I did that event last year. That was awesome. Were it not for some unforeseen circumstances, I am confident I would have done very well there, which I realize those are big words and not backed up by any kind of result. But congratulations on taking the podcast podium. What you had said prior ambassador, that is the highest form of praise I've ever heard in terms of ambassador. So thank you very, very much.

Trevor Gibney:

You're welcome. And again, thank you. Hopefully, we will we'll see you at some sort of real life event, hopefully some time-

Sheldon Little:

Maybe 2021.

Trevor Gibney:

Maybe 2021. But before then, just I hope you guys enjoy the rest of your van life trip.

Ted King:

Thank you. Thank you both very much. We really appreciate it. And take care. See you around.

Trevor Gibney:

The Dirty Chain Podcast is a Michigan Midpack Media production in partnership with KOM Cycling, the source for your bike accessories and necessities.

Sheldon Little:

Connect with us on Instagram and Facebook at Dirty Chain Podcast. Email dirtychainpodcast@gmail.com or call our hotline at 616-522-2641.

Trevor Gibney:

If you are enjoying the podcast, please leave us a rating and review on whatever platform you use to listen.

Sheldon Little:

Audio editing and original music by Trevor Gibney.

Sheldon Little handles the social media, graphic design and of course, bad decisions. And of course, thank you to Mr. Ted King for taking time out of this vacation and van life to have a conversation and to be on our podcast. And as always, keep your chain clean...

Sheldon Little:

But get your chain dirty.

Trevor Gibney:

We'll see you in the Midpack.