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Show Sponsor: UCAN

UCAN created LIVSTEADY as an alternative to sugar based nutrition products. LIVSTEADY was purposefully designed to work with your body, delivering long-lasting energy you can feel. Whether UCAN Energy Powders, Bars or Gels, LIVSTEADY's unique time-release profile allows your body to access energy consistently throughout the day, unlocking your natural ability to finish stronger and recover more quickly! 

 

In Today's Show

  • Feature Interview - Gary Moore, Executive Director Colorado Mountain Bike association
  • Cycling News/Updates - Taylor Knibb wins women’s time trial at the U.S. road cycling championships; Time Trial at Chatfield this Fall
  • Triathlon News/Updates - Morgan Pearson and Leonie Periault win in Yokohama
  • Coaching Tip of the Week - OWS/Bike/Run

 

Feature Interview: Gary Moore, Colorado MTB Assoc.

COMBA got its start in 1991 when a group of mountain bikers decided to start repairing and improving the trails they rode nearly every day. From those simple roots COMBA has grown to provide a broad range of services touching all aspects of mountain biking, allowing us to support our partner land managers in building world-class MTB experiences.

 

Gary Moore brings years of outdoor recreation advocacy and trail building to his role as Executive Director of the Colorado Mountain Bike Association. Starting as a volunteer, he learned the art and science of trail design and construction through hands-on efforts.

 

Taking the helm for COMBA in 2016 brought Gary to Colorado with his wife and daughters where he brings his skills to bear to pursue world-class trails in the Front Range. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Communications from Stephen F. Austin State University and has a background in media production, operations management and information technology.

 

303Cycling News and Updates:

Olympic triathlete Taylor Knibb wins US cycling time trial to earn spot in Paris in a second sport

 

Fall Time Trial Series Considered at Chatfield

 

Recommended
Transcript

Introduction and Upcoming Events

00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome everybody to your 303 Endurance Podcast.
00:00:03
Speaker
Aloha everybody, get ready for your 303 Endurance Podcast.
00:00:09
Speaker
Woo!
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome to episode 439 of the 303 Endurance Podcast.
00:00:24
Speaker
We're your host, Coach Rich Soares, and 303 Chief Editor, Bill

Ironman Boulder 70.3 Volunteer Opportunities

00:00:27
Speaker
Plok.
00:00:27
Speaker
Thanks for joining us for another week of endurance news, coaching tips, and discussion.
00:00:32
Speaker
Bill, we've got another great interview this week.
00:00:33
Speaker
We've got Gary Moore, the Executive Director of Colorado Mountain Bike Association, and we've got a little bit of catching up to do.
00:00:40
Speaker
How are you doing, man?
00:00:41
Speaker
I am well.
00:00:42
Speaker
Doing good.
00:00:44
Speaker
Scott, all of a sudden it's summer out, isn't it?
00:00:46
Speaker
All of a sudden it's summer.
00:00:47
Speaker
Last weekend it was not summer.
00:00:49
Speaker
It was, I'll tell you about next weekend at Chatfield.
00:00:54
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:00:55
Speaker
Big news right now is you and me and this volunteer gig at Ironman Boulder 70.3.
00:01:01
Speaker
Looking forward to doing that with you, my friend.
00:01:03
Speaker
Yeah, I'm excited about that.
00:01:05
Speaker
I'm not sure it's big news, but big news for us.
00:01:08
Speaker
It's big news for us.
00:01:10
Speaker
Well, you know, I'm going to actually use this to kind of put a call out for anybody who thinks that they want to do this.
00:01:18
Speaker
So we've got a couple of things going on.
00:01:20
Speaker
Bill, you're doing the lead podcast.
00:01:23
Speaker
You're doing the bike lead for the pro runners.
00:01:27
Speaker
So you're going to either be with first place, second place, third place, male or female pro runners riding behind them.
00:01:34
Speaker
That's a pretty sweet gig right there at the front of the race.
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:38
Speaker
As we talked last week, it'll be interesting.
00:01:40
Speaker
I'm excited about it.
00:01:41
Speaker
I mean, at least we, at least we follow the pros so we don't have to be responsible for navigation, right?
00:01:47
Speaker
Clean your bike.
00:01:48
Speaker
You're going to be on Ironman live.
00:01:49
Speaker
I know, but I, so I don't know which bike to ride, frankly.
00:01:52
Speaker
Like, yeah.
00:01:54
Speaker
What are you writing?
00:01:55
Speaker
I would go, well, I'm not doing that.
00:01:57
Speaker
I'm only, I'm only getting volunteers for it.
00:01:59
Speaker
So that's my part in this conversation is if anybody is listening to this and wants to do a, do that gig, reach out, let us know.
00:02:09
Speaker
You and I are now co-captains on this.
00:02:10
Speaker
So you can reach out to either Bill or me and let me, let us know if you're interested in volunteering.
00:02:16
Speaker
I can recruit somebody.
00:02:17
Speaker
Totally.
00:02:18
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:02:18
Speaker
I thought it might be full.
00:02:19
Speaker
How many do you, how many do we have right

Episode Preview and Sponsor Highlight

00:02:21
Speaker
now?
00:02:21
Speaker
Do you know?
00:02:23
Speaker
Well, we've got you.
00:02:24
Speaker
That takes one of six.
00:02:27
Speaker
You don't think we have more than that?
00:02:29
Speaker
That have signed up?
00:02:30
Speaker
I really don't know.
00:02:31
Speaker
I don't think it's full.
00:02:31
Speaker
Okay.
00:02:32
Speaker
I doubt that it's full.
00:02:34
Speaker
I'll think about who else might want to do that.
00:02:36
Speaker
I just can't decide whether it's a mountain bike or my gravel bike.
00:02:38
Speaker
And I don't think, I mean, I can go plenty fast on either one.
00:02:43
Speaker
So I'm just wondering more from a handling standpoint.
00:02:48
Speaker
Right.
00:02:49
Speaker
Because I mean,
00:02:50
Speaker
You want to look around.
00:02:51
Speaker
You want to make sure everything's cool.
00:02:53
Speaker
And like my mountain bike's got flat pedals.
00:02:56
Speaker
I mean, I could put my flat pedals on my gravel bike, of course, because I feel like that just might make more sense.
00:03:03
Speaker
I mean, I can clip in really well, just like for mountain biking.
00:03:05
Speaker
So I'm not too worried.
00:03:06
Speaker
I'm not worried about it too much.
00:03:07
Speaker
But I may have to practice both and just kind of see.
00:03:10
Speaker
There you go.
00:03:12
Speaker
Do a couple of laps around the res.
00:03:13
Speaker
I might have a person or two that might be interested in doing that.
00:03:17
Speaker
Good.
00:03:17
Speaker
So there we go.
00:03:18
Speaker
Got a call out.
00:03:20
Speaker
a call to action for anybody who wants to volunteer either in transition.
00:03:24
Speaker
So you can be out there with us, helping other athletes getting ready, or you can be riding wraps around the, uh, laps around

Interview with Gary Moore: Personal Journey

00:03:31
Speaker
the res with Bill and the pros.
00:03:33
Speaker
Dude, let's jump into our show.
00:03:36
Speaker
We've got,
00:03:37
Speaker
Let's give a shout out to our show sponsor, Generation UCAN.
00:03:41
Speaker
UCAN created Live Steady as an alternative to sugar-based nutrition products.
00:03:45
Speaker
Live Steady was purposely designed to work with your body, delivering long-lasting energy that you can feel in your training and racing, whether it's UCAN energy powders, bars, or gels.
00:03:55
Speaker
Their unique time release profile allows your body to access energy consistently throughout your race, unlocking your natural ability to finish stronger and recover more quickly.
00:04:05
Speaker
In today's show, we've got our feature interview with Gary Moore, the Executive Director of Colorado Mountain Bike Association.
00:04:11
Speaker
We've got some really cool news in the cycling world.
00:04:15
Speaker
Taylor Nibb wins the Women's Time Trial at the U.S. Road Cycling Championship.
00:04:19
Speaker
We're going to talk about that.
00:04:21
Speaker
And I just took that survey bill, the potential time trial out at Chatfield this fall.
00:04:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:31
Speaker
It's kind of like, duh.
00:04:32
Speaker
But I know it's been hard for them to get that conversation even going.
00:04:36
Speaker
So it sounds like they've made some headway with whoever's in charge out there to make that happen.
00:04:41
Speaker
Yeah, I thought that would never happen.
00:04:43
Speaker
So I'm totally excited.
00:04:44
Speaker
I filled out the survey and said, if it happens, I'm there.
00:04:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's great.
00:04:50
Speaker
And then in the triathlon news, dude, Boulder-based Morgan Pearson.
00:04:56
Speaker
wins the World Triathlon Championship Series at Yokohama last weekend and secures a spot on the Olympics.
00:05:04
Speaker
I saw that.
00:05:04
Speaker
That's great.
00:05:05
Speaker
Frickin' crushed it.
00:05:06
Speaker
He's always been a super fast runner, but man, put it together.
00:05:10
Speaker
There was a crash on the bike that might have thinned the field a little bit, but outran Christian Blumenfeldt.
00:05:17
Speaker
I'd like to share a story after our interview about a local legend that you may or may not know that I happened to see last night on my bike.
00:05:26
Speaker
Scott Christopher used to work for Bicycle Colorado.
00:05:28
Speaker
His wife is Sue Lloyd with Inspired Training.
00:05:32
Speaker
So friend of the show.
00:05:34
Speaker
I don't think we've had her on, but they're all over the place with biking in Colorado.
00:05:38
Speaker
And I've got a great story to share about him.
00:05:42
Speaker
Dude, I would say roll into it.
00:05:45
Speaker
Let's just roll into it after the interview because I want to get to it.
00:05:48
Speaker
Yeah, let's get to Gary because I think this is a cool interview because I think a lot of us take trails for granted.
00:05:53
Speaker
We take
00:05:54
Speaker
you know, we think they should just be there and we're all, all users of trails, whether it's hiking, walking, riding bikes.
00:06:03
Speaker
If some of us might have horses, probably not many people listening to this show are equestrians, but you never know.
00:06:09
Speaker
But, but inevitably we've probably all found ourselves on some local trails here on the front range and Jeffco and Douglas County and Highlands Ranch, even in Denver County.
00:06:19
Speaker
Um, Comba has a lot to do with those trails and, um,
00:06:24
Speaker
I think people will find this interview very interesting in terms of what really happens to make those possible.
00:06:31
Speaker
I think that's a great intro.
00:06:32
Speaker
Let's just roll right into it.
00:06:34
Speaker
Let's get into our interview with Gary Moore right now.
00:06:40
Speaker
All right.
00:06:40
Speaker
As you heard in our lead up, we have the executive director of the Colorado Mountain Bike Association, Gary Moore, joining us today.
00:06:50
Speaker
Gary, welcome.
00:06:50
Speaker
We're glad that you're with us.
00:06:52
Speaker
Listen, we do this thing with all of our new guests where we play this game called Two Truths and a Lie.
00:06:57
Speaker
It's really straightforward.
00:06:59
Speaker
We ask you for three statements about yourself, two of which you know to be true, one you know to be a lie.
00:07:04
Speaker
And Bill and I will try to pick the lie out of the bunch.
00:07:07
Speaker
If you're a game, we are, and we're ready to roll.
00:07:10
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:07:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:12
Speaker
Hit me.
00:07:13
Speaker
You go.
00:07:14
Speaker
So three statements about yourself.
00:07:15
Speaker
It could be anything.
00:07:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:17
Speaker
Well, let's see.
00:07:19
Speaker
I've been married for almost 40 years.
00:07:24
Speaker
I've been riding bikes off road since 1973.
00:07:31
Speaker
And I graduated from high school in Orlando, Florida.
00:07:37
Speaker
I mean, it could be the marriage.
00:07:38
Speaker
It could be like 35.
00:07:39
Speaker
You're just playing with us with numbers.
00:07:41
Speaker
It could be I'm going to say you did not go to high school in Orlando, Florida.
00:07:46
Speaker
Rich, you have a guess.
00:07:47
Speaker
I'm going to say you've been riding mountain bikes since 1973.
00:07:49
Speaker
I'm going to say 73.
00:07:49
Speaker
I'm trying to say how old are you?
00:07:51
Speaker
I'm going to say 1973 is a lie on a technicality.
00:08:04
Speaker
Okay.
00:08:05
Speaker
I did not go to high school in Orlando, Florida.
00:08:08
Speaker
Where'd you go to high school?
00:08:10
Speaker
Kingwood, Texas.
00:08:11
Speaker
Texas.
00:08:12
Speaker
Okay.
00:08:13
Speaker
So is that where you grew up?
00:08:15
Speaker
I actually grew up in San Diego.
00:08:17
Speaker
That's where I started riding off-road.
00:08:19
Speaker
Back then we had 10 speeds on 27-inch frames and 700c tires, and we would just put BMX handlebars on them and go hit the motocross trails in the canyons.
00:08:30
Speaker
Oh, how cool.
00:08:30
Speaker
That was a big deal in San Diego.
00:08:31
Speaker
The dirt scene out there is pretty crazy, isn't it?
00:08:34
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sure it's gotten a lot better.
00:08:36
Speaker
I left in 1981 against my will.
00:08:39
Speaker
I was moved to Houston, Texas between ninth and 10th grade.
00:08:45
Speaker
Bit of a culture shock moving from San Diego to Houston at that time in your life.
00:08:49
Speaker
But it did lead to me meeting my wife there in Houston in 1985.
00:08:55
Speaker
So that backs up my other fact.
00:08:58
Speaker
Well, congratulations on 40 years.
00:09:00
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:09:01
Speaker
Thank you.
00:09:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's awesome.
00:09:03
Speaker
How many kids do you have?
00:09:05
Speaker
We have two girls.
00:09:06
Speaker
They're in their mid-20s now.
00:09:08
Speaker
Both live here in Denver with us.
00:09:09
Speaker
We were fortunate when we came to move to Denver here in 2016 to take this job with Comba.
00:09:15
Speaker
I'm our first full-time employee, and we were fortunate that it was a time when both our girls could come with us, and so we're really fortunate to have our whole family here.
00:09:27
Speaker
So that, to me...
00:09:30
Speaker
That was a pretty big risk you took.
00:09:32
Speaker
I mean, there was a fairly small budget when you started there.
00:09:34
Speaker
I remember meeting with you early on.
00:09:36
Speaker
It was extremely small.
00:09:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:38
Speaker
Not the kind of salary you move across the country for.
00:09:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:43
Speaker
What was it that really drew you to take on that job?
00:09:47
Speaker
You know, I had started, I got back into what I would call modern mountain biking in 2010.
00:09:53
Speaker
At that point, we were living outside of Atlanta in a little town called Woodstock, Georgia.
00:09:59
Speaker
And our daughters had gotten to an age where we were ready to branch back out and start doing things on our own again.
00:10:05
Speaker
And I had just finally given up playing basketball at that point.
00:10:10
Speaker
I was probably in my mid-40s and I was tired of chasing 20-year-olds around rec basketball courts.
00:10:17
Speaker
So we decided to, you know, I brought it up to my wife.
00:10:20
Speaker
I was surprised at her answer, but I was like, hey, what do you think about mountain biking?
00:10:24
Speaker
And she was like, I'm in, let's go.
00:10:26
Speaker
So in 2010, we went out and bought our first, you know, again, modern mountain bikes, things that were actually built as mountain bikes and started riding and instantly fell in love with it again and was amazed at how much things had changed in the time that I'd been, had stepped aside from cycling.
00:10:46
Speaker
Trails are better, bikes are better.
00:10:48
Speaker
And so I started volunteering, we both did, with the local EMBA chapter there.
00:10:54
Speaker
Sorba Woodstock in 2010.
00:10:57
Speaker
And so over the next six years, I just volunteered

Trail Building and Advocacy

00:11:00
Speaker
with them quite a bit.
00:11:02
Speaker
was on the board, was trails director, learned about the art and science of modern trail building and had the opportunity towards the end of that to take over one of our major new projects that gave me a chance to learn the advocacy and fundraising side and working with the county and city.
00:11:20
Speaker
You know, I became a regular fixture there in City Hall for the city of Woodstock.
00:11:26
Speaker
I was often the only person in the audience for a city planning meeting or something like that.
00:11:30
Speaker
But it was really just kind of a crash course.
00:11:33
Speaker
I'd stepped aside from about 10 years, 12 years of doing IT work, decided I was having a lot more fun being back out in the physical world, building trails, building bridges, building experiences for people.
00:11:46
Speaker
that were gonna be around for generations.
00:11:48
Speaker
Most IT work, unfortunately, has a shelf life that is quite a bit shorter than that.
00:11:54
Speaker
And just really fell in love.
00:11:55
Speaker
I hadn't really been a volunteer my whole life.
00:11:57
Speaker
And so that was a new experience.
00:12:00
Speaker
And after six years of doing that with them,
00:12:04
Speaker
I got a chance for my first executive director job there in Woodstock, working with a, an organization that was trying to raise money for concrete trails and paths.
00:12:14
Speaker
Um, we had a very, very, uh, uh, I guess, uh, aggressive or optimistic plan there for what we could get done.
00:12:22
Speaker
And, um,
00:12:24
Speaker
Yeah, so that gave me the chance to learn more about the nonprofit world and being an executive director and grants and fundraising and all that part of it.
00:12:33
Speaker
So it was two or three years there of almost like going back to school and just really learning this new industry.
00:12:41
Speaker
I had not been anywhere near nonprofits or advocacy.
00:12:45
Speaker
I had stayed away from sales and marketing intentionally.
00:12:48
Speaker
It was not something I had any interest in doing.
00:12:50
Speaker
So some irony there that that's a big part of what we do here now.
00:12:54
Speaker
But yeah, I had a buddy that moved out here from Atlanta about a year before I did, and he met the Comba folks.
00:13:00
Speaker
And right around the time, they were looking to hire a full-time executive director.
00:13:06
Speaker
And I don't know, somehow talked him into it from 2,000 miles away.
00:13:12
Speaker
That's incredible.
00:13:12
Speaker
And three weeks later, I was living in that buddy's basement in Highlands Ranch without my family for nine months.
00:13:19
Speaker
That was an interesting journey.
00:13:21
Speaker
But it just really gave me the chance to learn Denver, learn Comba, figure out where we wanted to put our home and those kinds of things.
00:13:29
Speaker
And so it was a tough transition.
00:13:32
Speaker
But ultimately, like I said, one daughter graduated college, the other one graduated high school, and they came out and joined me in summer of 2017.
00:13:39
Speaker
And we're stoked to be here.
00:13:43
Speaker
Go ahead, Rich.
00:13:45
Speaker
I was going to say, I kind of tuned into something here, which is you came from an IT background and all of the learning that you have done since, whether it's the arts and crafts of modern trail building or the nonprofit world.
00:14:01
Speaker
I'm actually kind of stuck on the arts and science of modern trail building.
00:14:05
Speaker
So I'd love to hear more about that.
00:14:09
Speaker
No, I mean, I think that's really what drew me in was, and I say this all the time, but humans have a sort of an innate understanding of what you do with a dirt trail.
00:14:18
Speaker
You know, you go where it goes.
00:14:20
Speaker
And I don't think most of us give much thought beyond that.
00:14:23
Speaker
Typically, especially if hiking or trail running has kind of been your way to interact with trails.
00:14:30
Speaker
And so when I saw...
00:14:32
Speaker
The variety, the things that we could do to create very different experiences from a hiking trail to a view shed to, you know, for mountain bikers, the tread is our experience.
00:14:44
Speaker
I refer to it as a roller coaster.
00:14:46
Speaker
You know, you.
00:14:47
Speaker
You've designed a roller coaster to create, you know, g-forces and light spots and you try to, you know, create speed and you work with all those dynamics in the physical world.
00:15:00
Speaker
And trails are exactly the same.
00:15:02
Speaker
We're doing the same thing.
00:15:03
Speaker
We're trying to create periods where you're just letting it rip and then there's areas where you're being more technical and more in control.
00:15:11
Speaker
So, you know, the variety of techniques used in trail design and maintenance and construction that create those experiences is a big part of it.
00:15:21
Speaker
But doing that in a way that works with the land, is sustainable, doesn't bifurcate habitat.
00:15:27
Speaker
You know, there's that whole other part of what we do in the planning.
00:15:31
Speaker
We rely really heavily on Colorado Parks and Wildlife and U.S. Forest Service and all of their what we call ologists.
00:15:39
Speaker
But the people that really understand those things, we also have to get to learn those things as well.
00:15:45
Speaker
There's quite a bit of understanding habitats and wildlife behaviors and interactions with humans that I and we have had to pick up here along the way to be good partners and to plan good projects.
00:15:59
Speaker
So, I mean, I could go on for a while about the art and the science of trail building, but I think that's kind of the basics is that there really is so much more to the creation of that trail and that experience than I think 95% of people would ever even stop to consider.
00:16:19
Speaker
I always take note when I'm out hiking or running, just, you know, when you see how rocks and other things are used to build steps and
00:16:28
Speaker
curved berms and there's a lot of there's a lot to put in that stuff in place i mean must be a lot of specialized equipment too to move some of those big rocks to be able to create the stairs or the features that you use yeah you know you'd be surprised a lot of it comes to good old hand tools and just sweat equity you know i mean just getting down there with your gloves and and a pry bar and and a chisel and and a shovel and and making it work we do
00:16:57
Speaker
We do quite a bit of mechanized trail building as well with mini Xs.
00:17:00
Speaker
And obviously a mini X with a bucket and a thumb can move much larger pieces of rock and get those set in place.
00:17:08
Speaker
And that's obviously our preference.
00:17:10
Speaker
But so much of what we're doing here in the front range is maintaining trails that have been here for quite a while.
00:17:18
Speaker
And so when we're going out and we're rock armoring a section or we're building

Balancing Trail Use and Conservation

00:17:22
Speaker
in a set of steps or something like that,
00:17:25
Speaker
That by and large is still done by hand with fairly ancient looking devices.
00:17:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:32
Speaker
It's nothing that looks modern at all.
00:17:34
Speaker
Well, how does your trail building coincide with bikes?
00:17:39
Speaker
In other words, bikes have gotten so technologically advanced in the last few years, travel, wheel size, all the different e-bikes and the weight of e-bikes.
00:17:48
Speaker
Sure.
00:17:49
Speaker
How is that affecting you when you look at it building a trail?
00:17:53
Speaker
You know, when we talk about something like e-bikes or the different kinds of bikes that are out there, there's not a lot that we're taking into account from that standpoint.
00:18:03
Speaker
It really is more about the experience that we're trying to create.
00:18:07
Speaker
Obviously, with bikes continuously getting better all the time, it does free us up in what we're building.
00:18:15
Speaker
And it's actually, in some ways, it's a challenge.
00:18:17
Speaker
You know, we moved away from...
00:18:20
Speaker
You know, rock armoring, for one thing, I was just talking with one of our trail builders, Dustin London, he's our field operations manager this year.
00:18:27
Speaker
Proud to actually have that as a full time position this year, managing all of our work parties, both for paid staff and for volunteers.
00:18:36
Speaker
But it's
00:18:39
Speaker
The temptation when you're doing rock armoring is to create a sidewalk or to create a patio.
00:18:45
Speaker
We have this mindset, I guess, just from other parts of your world where you want it to be nice.
00:18:51
Speaker
You want it to be perfect.
00:18:52
Speaker
You want everything to kind of sit in there and lay next to each other and be nice and flat and dovetail the jigsaw pieces together.
00:19:02
Speaker
And it was something that was probably in the Maryland Mountain Project in Blackhawk, summer of 20, where we really started trying to see if we could do rock armoring in a more natural fashion.
00:19:14
Speaker
Can we create uneven rock armoring?
00:19:17
Speaker
Can we...
00:19:17
Speaker
Can we deliberately put in edges and bumps and steps and drops and, and things that, you know, make a sustainable permanent surface, but isn't so smooth that it's boring.
00:19:29
Speaker
You know, if you're out there on a, you know, I think the average right now is probably a one 41 50 travel bike, you know, here in the front range.
00:19:38
Speaker
Let's put some intrigue in there.
00:19:39
Speaker
Let's, let's make the bike work a little bit.
00:19:41
Speaker
Let's make the rider work a little bit.
00:19:42
Speaker
Let's create an experience.
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:44
Speaker
you know, hopefully with some progression that allows people to get better, you know, ride something with small bumps and work your way up to big trumps and big drops and those kinds of things.
00:19:57
Speaker
So it has both allowed us to be more creative in our trail building, but at the same time, it's also been a challenge because that's something that our community is asking for.
00:20:09
Speaker
They want gnarlier, they want it more raw, they want it more rugged.
00:20:13
Speaker
Otherwise, you know, these big bikes just float over.
00:20:16
Speaker
It's 29ers, you know, with 150, 160 travel.
00:20:19
Speaker
They just float over everything like it's not there, and it numbs the experience a little bit to some extent.
00:20:25
Speaker
So, yeah, I think that's it kind of cuts both ways.
00:20:29
Speaker
Well, you've got to account for pedestrian use too, obviously, with
00:20:34
Speaker
multi-use trail.
00:20:36
Speaker
Yeah, like we were talking about the other day, that's, you know, it has been, it was probably close to 100% of the trails we built in 2017, 2018 were multi-use, bi-directional.
00:20:47
Speaker
You know, it's built for everybody going in every way.
00:20:50
Speaker
That really limits what you can do as a trail designer and a trail builder.
00:20:55
Speaker
You kind of have to, you know, make something that's as accommodating as possible for every user type and experience.
00:21:03
Speaker
What we've had so much great success with since opening the Sleuce in 2019, and then three more bike-only directional trails at Maryland Mountain, and we have, I can't even count the number of bike-only directional trails we're building right now in Idaho Springs.
00:21:20
Speaker
As a designer and a builder, that is so much fun to be able to say, we have one user group, they're going in one direction, and we're creating this one type of experience, and you can just lay into that.
00:21:34
Speaker
And so all of our projects, Floyd Hill, Maryland Mountain, Virginia Canyon, Trek Trails at Virginia Canyon Mountain Park, all of those we have tried to institute what we call kind of the modern management techniques, which is separation by speed, directional travel controls and designated use.
00:21:54
Speaker
And so we will create and we've done this most frequently.
00:21:58
Speaker
you know, sort of obviously in Idaho Springs with the Virginia Canyon project, where there's one trail that takes you from the very bottom to the very tippy top.
00:22:10
Speaker
And it's hiking both directions.
00:22:11
Speaker
It's four miles long.
00:22:12
Speaker
It climbs 1,300 feet, has a three to 5% average grade.
00:22:18
Speaker
And like I said, hikers can go both up and down on that trail, but bikes are only allowed to go uphill on that trail.
00:22:24
Speaker
Gotcha.
00:22:24
Speaker
And then we have separate trails for the bikes to come down because that's where we're so much faster.
00:22:29
Speaker
We all go uphill roughly the same speed.
00:22:33
Speaker
It's not uncommon for me to get passed by a trail runner going uphill.
00:22:36
Speaker
Right.
00:22:38
Speaker
But when we turn around and come downhill, we're going sometimes 10 times faster.
00:22:43
Speaker
And the experience that mountain bikers by and large are looking for is that.
00:22:47
Speaker
It's the turning and pointing downhill and letting her rip without concern for safety of other trail users.
00:22:55
Speaker
It really just makes everything work better.
00:22:57
Speaker
It allows us to put a lot more people on the same amount of trails with less conflicts and with greater safety.
00:23:05
Speaker
Let's let me maybe paint a big picture for folks.
00:23:09
Speaker
Comba, if I'm not mistaken, you guys work Jefferson County, Clear Creek County, Douglas County, some Park County.
00:23:18
Speaker
Gilpin County.
00:23:19
Speaker
Gilpin.
00:23:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:21
Speaker
Probably.
00:23:22
Speaker
You could probably throw a wrap a hoe and Adams in there.
00:23:25
Speaker
And Denver, I guess.
00:23:26
Speaker
Douglas.
00:23:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:28
Speaker
So you have a huge area.
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah, we have.
00:23:32
Speaker
probably more than a dozen land managers that we're working with, whether that's municipal, county open space, state or federal.
00:23:40
Speaker
A lot of relationships.
00:23:43
Speaker
Do you work with the Highlands Ranch Recreation Association for the backcountry trails or is your footprint in Douglas County further to the south?
00:23:55
Speaker
We have definitely worked with the HRCA down there.
00:23:59
Speaker
I will say, unfortunately, without much success in terms of changing the nature of those trail experiences.
00:24:06
Speaker
We've done a lot of work over the last few years trying to establish a bike park down there off of 85 on that side, kind of the southwest side of the Highlands Ranch area.
00:24:17
Speaker
They have a really nice parcel, but it also, you know, there's a lot of land managers involved in that from Douglas County to the development district to the HRCA and so forth.
00:24:31
Speaker
So we haven't unfortunately been able to find the way forward to shovel ready on that one yet, but.
00:24:39
Speaker
We do work with them.
00:24:40
Speaker
We've worked with the city of Castle Rock with the Ridgeline Trails, still have some projects down there that we'd like to see move forward.
00:24:49
Speaker
And ultimately, a lot of that just comes down to time and resources.
00:24:52
Speaker
We we have always tried to have.
00:24:56
Speaker
a lead within a volunteer lead within our trails team for each of these land managers, somebody that can really develop that relationship, get to know them, find out what's important, what the challenges are, what the opportunities are, and to actually lead the work parties, you know, in on their land.
00:25:14
Speaker
And we haven't always been able to keep that staffed, right?
00:25:17
Speaker
There's probably, we could use 10 or 12 of those volunteers.
00:25:20
Speaker
And I think right now we have about six, right?
00:25:22
Speaker
So a lot of times it just comes to capacity.
00:25:24
Speaker
We'll try to put some muscle behind a project like that.
00:25:29
Speaker
And ultimately, you know, we kind of have to go make hay where the sun is shining, if you will.
00:25:36
Speaker
For us lately, that has been Clear Creek County, City of Idaho Springs, City of Blackhawk and Gilpin County.
00:25:42
Speaker
And so when we get to a place where we know we can start building some trails or improving some trails, then we kind of go all in and get that done.
00:25:54
Speaker
What's your, like you mentioned all the land managers.
00:25:57
Speaker
How is that relationship typically?
00:25:59
Speaker
Is it you're reaching out to them to try to work on trails or have ideas for new trails or whatever?
00:26:06
Speaker
Are they reaching out to you equally to come help them with their maintenance and their trail building that they have
00:26:13
Speaker
identify themselves?
00:26:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's really both.
00:26:16
Speaker
You know, I think that we are a pretty proactive group and that we definitely will spin that plate back up if it gets a little slow.
00:26:27
Speaker
But ultimately, you know, I think the thing that people need to keep in mind is Comba doesn't own any land.

Volunteer Work in Trail Maintenance

00:26:36
Speaker
And so every opportunity that we're trying to create for any trail users,
00:26:42
Speaker
ultimately is a matter of getting permission from somebody who does own the land.
00:26:46
Speaker
So from that state, it just kind of naturally sets up that, you know, we're going to come knocking on your door and let you know that we have these resources.
00:26:55
Speaker
Comba, particularly over the last seven or eight years, we've developed a really broad set of skills and acumen in terms of being able to help soup to nuts on trails projects, whether it starts with simple maintenance or whether there's a new trail system or trail that can be planned.
00:27:14
Speaker
We are good at getting in and helping with the conceptual plans and creating those maps that help those conversations move forward.
00:27:22
Speaker
We ultimately work towards getting to approval of that master plan by working with planning commissions and city councils.
00:27:30
Speaker
and move on into designing the trail system, funding the construction of it.
00:27:37
Speaker
Like right now, we're acting as the construction and project managers in Idaho Springs to manage the probably three or four different teams that we have out there working on that construction.
00:27:48
Speaker
And then ultimately you move back into that maintenance phase.
00:27:51
Speaker
And we have our seasonal maintenance team.
00:27:53
Speaker
This will be our fourth year with what we affectionately call our Strikeforce.
00:27:59
Speaker
That's a team of five or six individuals that work from May to October full-time.
00:28:06
Speaker
And that's really had a big impact on what we've been able to do in this region.
00:28:10
Speaker
Again, with nearly 500 miles of trails in our area in Colorado soil, which is a challenge to keep trails kind of together.
00:28:21
Speaker
And so there's work, there's more work than we can get to as it is.
00:28:24
Speaker
But we've, you know, between our volunteers and our paid staff and our seasonal staff, we did over 11,000 hours of trail work last year, which was pretty incredible for us and a group our size.
00:28:38
Speaker
And we're looking to do better than that this year.
00:28:42
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:28:42
Speaker
I was trying to move that forward.
00:28:45
Speaker
That's incredible.
00:28:45
Speaker
I mean, do you have, I would imagine each land manager has its own challenges.
00:28:51
Speaker
Some like Jeffco open space, let's say my understanding from like Scott Waters, you and I talked, we both know him and he's the trail villain machine, but they're, they have a kind of a mentality from my understanding that they're there to protect the space first and foremost, not to recreate in the space.
00:29:10
Speaker
So they understand that people do recreate,
00:29:13
Speaker
But they want to really control that because they're there to really be stewards of the land.
00:29:18
Speaker
So how do you approach that mentality versus maybe in Gilpin County where they're more like, hey, we want people to come to our county and recreate?
00:29:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:26
Speaker
And really, you've hit the nail on the head there.
00:29:29
Speaker
I mean, that really is one of the main differences between land managers is
00:29:33
Speaker
Somebody like JCOS has, we said off the top, they have 7 million visitors a year, right?
00:29:38
Speaker
I mean, they have all the people they can handle and it's not an economic decision for them.
00:29:45
Speaker
Somebody like a Gilpin County, Blackhawk, Idaho Springs especially is a good example.
00:29:52
Speaker
They're very much, you know, those counties, those areas are looking to move from being reliant on an extraction economy, mining and drilling,
00:30:01
Speaker
to a green economy and outdoor recreation and outdoor recreation.
00:30:06
Speaker
I think just last year in Colorado became our largest economy.
00:30:10
Speaker
Our largest economic driver in Colorado is now outdoor recreation.
00:30:14
Speaker
We have finally surpassed oil and gas, um, and some of those other things.
00:30:19
Speaker
So, um,
00:30:20
Speaker
Yeah, there's a little more fertile ground there where they are looking to bring people into their community to spend money with their businesses to make their homes more valuable because they have trails nearby, which last time I checked was still the number one thing people look for when picking out a house.
00:30:38
Speaker
So, yeah, they've got, they're coming from a place of an extraction economy, which is obviously really hard on the land and the habitat.
00:30:46
Speaker
Whereas JCOS is more, they've got all the humans and they've got all those impacts and they're trying to, you know, limit additional damage, you know, slow the clock a little bit on the encroachment of humans in the habitats.
00:31:03
Speaker
And justifiably, I think preservation is something particularly along the front range that needs a
00:31:09
Speaker
needs bolstering.
00:31:11
Speaker
It needs a champion.
00:31:13
Speaker
And we work very closely with our preservation and conservation advocates that do what I do, but with a different focus.
00:31:20
Speaker
Each of our projects goes through anywhere from a year to three years of just land use, landscape level planning.
00:31:28
Speaker
Our Outside 285 program that we started in 2018 is now a regional partnership initiative.
00:31:35
Speaker
here within Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
00:31:37
Speaker
And we have 34 different stakeholder groups that get together regularly and all put our eyes on the same problems and opportunities and figure out what's the best way forward for Colorado.
00:31:49
Speaker
Do you get involved with facilities on land, like bathrooms or any other sort of facilities to help?
00:31:56
Speaker
You know, somewhat begrudgingly.
00:31:59
Speaker
It's not our expertise.
00:32:02
Speaker
I will say the number of times I've gotten drawn into trying to help solve human waste problems definitely outnumbers what I would have expected.
00:32:11
Speaker
But generally, no, that part of the infrastructure really is outside of our purview.
00:32:17
Speaker
We will certainly, on some projects, that's already been handled before we arrived.
00:32:22
Speaker
Blackhawk, for example, they built this wonderful multi-million dollar trailhead with bathrooms and a nice paved parking lot and all those kinds of amenities were baked in before we got out there and got on that project working on the trails.
00:32:37
Speaker
Idaho Springs is a little bit different in that there was nothing there and there's a lot of
00:32:43
Speaker
different development projects going on in Idaho Springs, including the Mighty Argo cable car, which has been a great partner for us.
00:32:51
Speaker
We're anxiously awaiting news of their beginning construction on that project.
00:32:57
Speaker
So there's a lot of infrastructure.
00:32:59
Speaker
There's a, like we're working with a graphic designer architect guy now that we're hoping actually gets more involved in this project.
00:33:09
Speaker
To help us with your basic trail signs all the way up to we want to do interpretive signage that talks about the history of the area.
00:33:19
Speaker
And then we also want to have, you know, help the city and the other business partners in the city work together to really make Virginia Canyon Mountain Park integrated within the city.
00:33:30
Speaker
so that there is a similar look and feel to the signage throughout the city that you'll see in the mountain park, right?
00:33:37
Speaker
So we're working with people that do branding and do wayfinding, and we're a lot more involved in that part of this project with Idaho Springs, partly because it's been a seven-year journey already, than necessarily than we were with Floyd Hill or maybe a one-off trail project like Rutabaga Ride, those kind of things.
00:33:57
Speaker
Did you have anything to do with the Castle Rock with the park down there with the zip line?
00:34:02
Speaker
Man, I was just at a mountain bike race down there.
00:34:04
Speaker
That is one amazing facility with all the trails and the fun stuff like the zip lines going right over the top of the mountain bikes.
00:34:13
Speaker
I mean, it's a little bit with what might be going on in Idaho Springs eventually.
00:34:19
Speaker
I don't know about zip lines.
00:34:21
Speaker
You know, I think right now the vision is primarily just the trail system and the gondola.
00:34:28
Speaker
The gondola project itself is pretty impressive.
00:34:31
Speaker
You should go check out their website as well.
00:34:34
Speaker
What they're envisioning and hopefully creating there for the top of the mountain will be a pretty special place for people to go and hang out, you know, before, during, and after recreating on the trail system.
00:34:46
Speaker
What's the website?
00:34:48
Speaker
I'm not familiar with what's going on up there at all.
00:34:52
Speaker
Mighty Argo Cable Car.
00:34:54
Speaker
Mighty Argo Cable Car.
00:34:55
Speaker
Okay.
00:34:56
Speaker
While we're talking, I'll get you an URL.
00:34:59
Speaker
Interesting.
00:35:01
Speaker
So do you... I don't know who it is.
00:35:02
Speaker
MightyArgo.com is the first place to start.
00:35:06
Speaker
MightyArgo.com.
00:35:07
Speaker
I'm fascinated by the number of stakeholder groups that you have to work with.
00:35:13
Speaker
34-ish, right?
00:35:14
Speaker
I think is what you said.
00:35:16
Speaker
Yeah, within outside 285, that's our panel.
00:35:19
Speaker
And that does include...
00:35:22
Speaker
You know, the Forest Service South Platte Ranger District and the South Park Ranger District, as well as Jefferson County and Douglas County.
00:35:31
Speaker
Right.
00:35:31
Speaker
But most of it is primarily advocates, whether it's Colorado Wildlife Federation, which is an amazing partner for us to Colorado Mountain Club, who has been there from the start as well.
00:35:44
Speaker
Right on through, you know, not everybody is as active and involved in every meeting, but certainly when it comes down to we're considering a project or we're looking for a solution, it goes out to everybody and they have the opportunity to weigh in and give us their their expertise and their viewpoint on the pros and cons of a particular action or non-action.
00:36:07
Speaker
But yeah, it gets it gets down to groups that I didn't know exist.
00:36:10
Speaker
And I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't know I existed either.
00:36:13
Speaker
But, you know, Wild Turkey Federation and Child Unlimited and, you know, some of these groups that, you know, all walks of life.
00:36:20
Speaker
Colorado is is an amazing playground.
00:36:23
Speaker
And what we want more than anything is to preserve that, you know, mountain bikers don't always get associated with conservation.
00:36:32
Speaker
But we do our best to communicate that because we do actually put quite a bit of time into working with people that understand the habitats and the impacts on animals as best we can.
00:36:45
Speaker
You know, a lot of that science is unsettled.
00:36:48
Speaker
I think that there is still an emerging science to understand, you know, the interactions between elk and humans or the interactions between any other species and humans.
00:37:00
Speaker
And what the humans are doing, right?
00:37:02
Speaker
I mean, the way they react to a hiker compared to a mountain biker can be very different depending on the species as well.
00:37:09
Speaker
Anecdotally, you know, the bigger game actually are more concerned by hikers, partly because they have dogs and partly because they're a little more likely to go off trail.

Getting Involved in Trail Projects

00:37:19
Speaker
And mountain bikers, we really like to stay on trail.
00:37:23
Speaker
That's where our experience is.
00:37:25
Speaker
And we're not looking to go, you know, get into the weeds and start breaking stuff up.
00:37:30
Speaker
Where is the, you know, cars versus road bikes, you know, a constant, you know, motorist versus cyclist out on the roads, right?
00:37:38
Speaker
But what about mountain bikers?
00:37:39
Speaker
Who's the, where's the most friction between mountain bikers and equestrian or between hikers or who's really pushing back the most on your world?
00:37:50
Speaker
You know, I think primarily that would be more the preservation or conservation groups, which often include sportsmen in those groups.
00:38:01
Speaker
A distinction that is a little bit fuzzy, you know, whether a sportsman is more consumptive or conservationist.
00:38:11
Speaker
That line gets blurred quite a bit, but those are the groups that primarily are looking to reduce, limit, prevent trails projects are those that want to use the land in a very, very different way.
00:38:27
Speaker
And that's certainly their prerogative, but we still work with them.
00:38:31
Speaker
I worked with backcountry hunters and anglers quite a bit.
00:38:34
Speaker
We even tried to submit a joint grant effort last year for Indian Creek.
00:38:40
Speaker
Unfortunately, we didn't get it because I was really kind of looking forward to having that experience of working with them on a larger project like that.
00:38:45
Speaker
But, you know, it's the big challenge and the conversation we have in Colorado so much is that conservation versus recreation.
00:38:57
Speaker
And, you know, in my mind, it really shouldn't be so much versus as and, you know, conservation and recreation.
00:39:05
Speaker
And how do we balance that?
00:39:06
Speaker
And how do we make sure that Colorado remains that place that we all want to be outdoors in?
00:39:12
Speaker
You know, mountain bikers are as interested in seeing elk and moose and all those things out there while we're riding as anybody else.
00:39:20
Speaker
And the last thing we want to do is create a trails project that, you know, makes it difficult for those herds to thrive and survive and to be a part of Colorado's landscape.
00:39:30
Speaker
So there's a lot to balance.
00:39:32
Speaker
You know, we just came through a year-long planning effort for Indian Creek Recreation Area, which is primarily on Forest Service land there just south of Roxborough State Park.
00:39:43
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:39:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:45
Speaker
a lot of historic social trail, non-sinction trails in that area, and just brought with it a lot of problems, both with where those legacy social trails had been
00:40:00
Speaker
which were primarily in riparian corridors where we always really try to stay out of.
00:40:05
Speaker
So, yeah, we had a really good conversation.
00:40:07
Speaker
There were probably 12 of us that were the primary folks in that conversation and working through how can we create a recreational experience here that
00:40:19
Speaker
Ultimately, at the end of the day, the plan was better for habitat.
00:40:23
Speaker
We were able to reduce some of the bifurcation of contiguous tracks of habitat and to create larger tracks that also included the riparian corridors where the social trails had previously been.
00:40:37
Speaker
I guess they're still there now.
00:40:38
Speaker
We're looking for the funding now to go actually put the plan into action, but we have the plan and we're finishing up the environmental plan.
00:40:46
Speaker
and cultural analysis now with the forest service on that.
00:40:49
Speaker
So these things are complicated.
00:40:51
Speaker
You know, I, I have trouble explaining to people a lot of times just exactly the, what we go through and we're happy to do so because it's the right way to do it, but it takes time.
00:41:03
Speaker
It takes money.
00:41:03
Speaker
It takes energy.
00:41:05
Speaker
And one of the chief things that, you know, Comba and our community of mountain bikers have,
00:41:12
Speaker
benefited from was moving to full-time paid staff.
00:41:17
Speaker
It's literally what we are doing nearly every day of the week.
00:41:22
Speaker
And it's the relationship building and maintaining.
00:41:25
Speaker
It's the learning and the listening.
00:41:28
Speaker
It's the getting people excited about what the possibilities are and finding the resources, primarily money, to put these things into action.
00:41:38
Speaker
So something like
00:41:40
Speaker
Something like Indian Creek was a year of planning.
00:41:43
Speaker
It'll probably be another two years before we've done all the construction and obliteration of the previous routes.
00:41:50
Speaker
Something like Idaho Springs, we're in year seven and we're finally building, we're opening some bike trails hopefully next month.
00:41:58
Speaker
Something like Blackhawk, they already had a lot of that done and we were building trails when we hit the ground.
00:42:04
Speaker
The whole park was built basically in three summers.
00:42:07
Speaker
Let's talk about your organization a little bit, maybe as we start to wind up the conversation.
00:42:12
Speaker
And, you know, it's amazing how much it's grown since you got there, right?
00:42:16
Speaker
I mean, now you have, you mentioned full-time staff, your budgets.
00:42:20
Speaker
I think you mentioned at the Comba meeting.
00:42:22
Speaker
Just about 20 fold or so.
00:42:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:24
Speaker
I mean, it's just blown up, but you always can use more.
00:42:28
Speaker
You need more volunteers.
00:42:29
Speaker
Always.
00:42:30
Speaker
You can, you can never have enough volunteers.
00:42:33
Speaker
Talk about,
00:42:34
Speaker
some of the, you know, what the needs are and how people can help the most?
00:42:39
Speaker
Well, we always say your money or your time, right?
00:42:42
Speaker
We're really good at putting either one of those into action.
00:42:46
Speaker
Money, we can support our advocacy efforts and our staff and hire specialists to do things like trail design, trail planning, the aforementioned environmental and cultural work.
00:43:00
Speaker
There's things like that that we just have to have cash to go do.
00:43:05
Speaker
There is a fair amount of volunteer work that we can do always.
00:43:11
Speaker
We're always happy to work with businesses that want to do community give back days or come out and do some team building.
00:43:19
Speaker
A good honest day of hard work on Colorado trails is a good way to get to know your fellow employees a little better.
00:43:28
Speaker
And then we have, you know, our outreach team, our street team that is deployed to, you know, do fundraising events and educate the public and talk more about what we do.
00:43:39
Speaker
We can always put more of either one of those in place.
00:43:42
Speaker
We easily right now, I could spend $2 million next week if it fell out of the sky on trails projects.
00:43:50
Speaker
And our list of things that are at some point in their evolution in the pipeline here is probably closer to $10 million.
00:43:58
Speaker
Wow.
00:43:59
Speaker
How, just give a quick overview on the types of volunteers or some of the skills people need to have.
00:44:05
Speaker
Cause I, you know, hopefully some people will hear this and say, yeah, I want to go out and get my hands dirty.
00:44:09
Speaker
And what, talk about the different levels of people that are you looking for?
00:44:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:13
Speaker
I mean, we, we've got some of that on our website.
00:44:15
Speaker
We do kind of lay out a couple of levels of volunteering and, and a progression for people.
00:44:22
Speaker
It really literally starts with doing work that is not too different from yard work.
00:44:28
Speaker
It's similar tools.
00:44:29
Speaker
It's, you know, similar goals.
00:44:30
Speaker
You're doing raking, shoveling, things that most people have some ability to pick up fairly quickly.
00:44:37
Speaker
And that's really what,
00:44:40
Speaker
Folks that are coming out for the first time or come out once a year with a team building effort or something like that, we do tend to keep them on the basic maintenance, opening drains.
00:44:50
Speaker
We have a tremendous amount of loose rock here in Colorado that always seems to find its way onto the tread.
00:44:56
Speaker
Doing a lot of just raking that stuff off and making the tread nice again and safer.
00:45:01
Speaker
Somebody that decides like I did 14 years ago, that this is pretty fun and I'm getting some soul food out of creating those experiences for people.
00:45:09
Speaker
Um, then we're happy to start teaching you some of, uh, you know, moving you up the ladder in terms of getting to know more of those principles that are the art and science of trail building and trail maintenance and, and learning how to shape a berm and, and,
00:45:24
Speaker
How to create a do rock armoring and developing those skills up to the point that, you know, ultimately what we're hoping each year is that we get a couple of new people that are interested in becoming crew leaders and go out and lead teams and show them how to do this work as well.
00:45:43
Speaker
So there really is a full spectrum.
00:45:45
Speaker
Like some people fall down that rabbit hole one day of clearing drains.
00:45:49
Speaker
And next thing you know, you're building a bridge or creating some sort of wood feature out there.
00:45:55
Speaker
It's really just what your...
00:45:58
Speaker
you know, primarily time and schedule allow for a lot of people.
00:46:02
Speaker
And then ultimately just, you know, are you up for the physical nature of that?
00:46:07
Speaker
Colorado, as we all know, the, the, the weather, the outdoors, if you're out there for six, eight, 10 hours, you're going to see a couple of seasons.
00:46:18
Speaker
And, and not, that's not just not for everybody.
00:46:20
Speaker
It's, it's fairly grueling work.
00:46:22
Speaker
The rock is heavy and, and the dirt is, is heavy and the sun is glaring and,
00:46:28
Speaker
You know, then you get a 40 mile an hour wind afternoon and you're dealing with that.
00:46:32
Speaker
So, again, it's not for everybody.
00:46:35
Speaker
The folks that do it, do it because they love it and because they enjoy creating experiences for other folks.
00:46:42
Speaker
And they also enjoy shaping their own experience and going out.
00:46:46
Speaker
There's nothing more rewarding than going out and riding a piece of trail or a new feature or a new bridge, you know, something like that, that you help build.
00:46:58
Speaker
It's there the next hundred times you go down that trail.
00:47:00
Speaker
You're like, yeah, I spent a whole day doing this part right here.
00:47:03
Speaker
It's still perfect.
00:47:05
Speaker
How many people do you need to do a private event?
00:47:11
Speaker
I was just looking at there's a private event coming up on the 15th.
00:47:13
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:47:15
Speaker
you know, volunteer group?
00:47:18
Speaker
We really try to keep our crews to around four or five.
00:47:22
Speaker
That's the most effective size.
00:47:25
Speaker
And the number of tools we have, we've gone to a method where we really just kind of have our tools stashed in places all over the front range.
00:47:33
Speaker
We have little caches that are under tarps that generally go unnoticed.
00:47:37
Speaker
And that way we're not carrying tools in and out all the time and it gets us started faster.
00:47:42
Speaker
The corporate, the business partners that we work with, you know, 10 to 15, as many as 20, depending on the nature of the work that we're doing and kind of what the
00:47:54
Speaker
what their partner is trying to accomplish.
00:47:56
Speaker
If it's important to them to get 15 or 20 or so people out together for a period of time, then we can certainly accommodate that.
00:48:07
Speaker
The more people you get, the harder it is to sort of supervise and teach and learn and quality control and the types of work that we can do tends to kind of come down the ladder to more simple maintenance stuff.
00:48:21
Speaker
When we've got a group of four or five and they're fit and they're ready to go do the thing, even if they don't know how to do rock armoring, we'll teach them and we'll all just get together and go lay hands on and go do that part of the project.
00:48:37
Speaker
So, yeah, you know, there's a there's a lot of factors there and a lot of things that we manage.
00:48:41
Speaker
But we've kind of we've definitely gotten away from a decade ago when we would do 50 and 75 person work parties to go, you know, build some trail someplace because, you know, you need at that point, you're looking for, you know, 10, 12 plus people that really know what they're doing and are good at leading people and teaching people and all those soft skills as well.
00:49:03
Speaker
So yeah, we're doing more smaller parties than we used to just sort of once a month do a big giant party kind of thing.

Reflections on Trail Building and Advocacy

00:49:12
Speaker
Well, Rich, maybe we can take the show on the road and go move some rocks someday and check it out.
00:49:17
Speaker
Oh, absolutely.
00:49:18
Speaker
That's exactly, I mean, I'm thinking, I know dozens of mountain bikers at my office and we do volunteer things.
00:49:26
Speaker
Yeah, come on.
00:49:27
Speaker
We're going to swing hammers for Habitat for Humanity next Friday, so yeah.
00:49:32
Speaker
What's swinging a shovel?
00:49:33
Speaker
What's swinging a pick, you know?
00:49:35
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:49:36
Speaker
I was just at Habitat's Breakfast a couple of weeks ago, and that's a great organization.
00:49:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:42
Speaker
Cool.
00:49:43
Speaker
Well, it's been really nice having you, Gary, and it's been really interesting to learn more and more.
00:49:49
Speaker
And, yeah, I really commend you and all the work that you've done and really built a great organization there.
00:49:54
Speaker
And it's really cool to see all the staff and the excitement and getting Gil on the staff.
00:50:00
Speaker
That was pretty cool.
00:50:02
Speaker
Gil's amazing.
00:50:03
Speaker
There is nobody that is more indefatigable than Gil.
00:50:06
Speaker
You know, slowing him down is a bigger challenge.
00:50:10
Speaker
But he's been doing this for so long.
00:50:12
Speaker
He's been such a key part of the trails community here for 20, 30 years.
00:50:18
Speaker
that we're really lucky to have him on board and helping me lead that whole part of what we do.
00:50:24
Speaker
Yeah, just for listeners' sake, Gil's family was the owner of Weeward Cyclery for 50 years or so.
00:50:35
Speaker
And then Gil was always big in advocacy of getting us.
00:50:38
Speaker
When I worked at the bike shop, he'd always get us out there and doing stuff and
00:50:41
Speaker
He's really good at that stuff.
00:50:43
Speaker
Yeah, he was involved with Bike Jeffco and a lot of the road bike-based efforts as well, as well as the climbing community and just about anything else he can find time to get involved in.
00:50:56
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for being on the show.
00:50:58
Speaker
I look forward to seeing you with a shovel in my hand and you teaching me how to move some rock.
00:51:03
Speaker
Let's do it.
00:51:05
Speaker
Anytime.
00:51:06
Speaker
We're always out there.
00:51:07
Speaker
Thanks, Gary.
00:51:07
Speaker
It's been awesome.
00:51:09
Speaker
Thank you.
00:51:09
Speaker
All right.
00:51:10
Speaker
Have a good weekend.
00:51:15
Speaker
Bill, that was pretty awesome.
00:51:17
Speaker
I got to tell you, I've really never really thought about seriously volunteering to go work on trails, but actually sounds like a pretty fun gig.
00:51:27
Speaker
I think it would be.
00:51:28
Speaker
It'd be a good workout, right?
00:51:30
Speaker
We could probably put it on Strava and make sure it happened.
00:51:35
Speaker
We've got plenty of mountain bikers at work.
00:51:37
Speaker
We do volunteer things all the time.
00:51:39
Speaker
We've got a volunteer thing we're doing today for Habitat for Humanity.
00:51:42
Speaker
Instead of swinging a hammer, I'd be glad to, you know, swing a pick.
00:51:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:47
Speaker
I've been looking at last few days is I've been hiking quite a bit.
00:51:51
Speaker
And every time I come along a feature on the trail, I think about conversations with Gary in terms of like, oh yeah, I bet they had to get this or get that.
00:52:01
Speaker
Or, you know, it's not automatic deal, right?
00:52:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:07
Speaker
No, for sure.
00:52:08
Speaker
Well, and it's, it took, I mean, like you said, I mean, it took, you know, this started by a group of mountain bikers that just decided to on their own volition, grassroots, just start maintaining their trails.
00:52:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:22
Speaker
And it's pretty cool.
00:52:24
Speaker
Well, and you can, you can kind of spread this conversation into anything, you
00:52:29
Speaker
in our world in some ways, like bike paths that aren't, you know, this stuff just doesn't happen.
00:52:34
Speaker
Advocacy really is important.
00:52:37
Speaker
You know, and they just signed the bill yesterday.
00:52:39
Speaker
I think it was yesterday or the day before for the hands-free, you know, law that just got passed and government police signed it.
00:52:46
Speaker
That took a lot of work.
00:52:47
Speaker
I mean, it took a lot of lobbying and, and it's not just bicycle people that wanted it, of course, but Bicycle Colorado spent a ton of energy and time on that.
00:52:58
Speaker
So this stuff, there's a lot of back channeling that happens to make even the easiest, the most simple trail that you think just, oh, I probably know under that ceremony.
00:53:07
Speaker
Well, duh.
00:53:08
Speaker
But no, it takes work.
00:53:10
Speaker
It takes work because we're a car oriented, preservation oriented world.
00:53:17
Speaker
you know, when it comes to the environment.
00:53:19
Speaker
So to disrupt that, either one takes work.
00:53:24
Speaker
And a lot of work.
00:53:25
Speaker
I couldn't believe the number of agencies that they have to work with.
00:53:29
Speaker
I mean, what do you say?
00:53:30
Speaker
Like 20, 34 or something.
00:53:34
Speaker
That's like 34 ways for that to go sideways.
00:53:38
Speaker
Right.
00:53:38
Speaker
Right.
00:53:39
Speaker
You know?
00:53:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I once had a conversation.
00:53:43
Speaker
I was down in the Black Canyon at the recreation area there, right?
00:53:47
Speaker
Because the concierge, whatever the name of that is, that butts up to the Black Canyon National Park, that's a national recreation area.
00:53:58
Speaker
And they were doing some trail maintenance in there.
00:54:00
Speaker
And I was talking to the ranger and I said, what's your philosophy versus the national park?
00:54:06
Speaker
They share a border.
00:54:08
Speaker
Same river.
00:54:09
Speaker
And the national recreation area's mission is to provide recreation.
00:54:15
Speaker
That's why I could camp free.
00:54:17
Speaker
That's why I could do things like in the national park, it's preservation.
00:54:22
Speaker
I mean, you can still recreate in the park, of course, but they're way more strict on using it.
00:54:28
Speaker
That's why now they're going to a reservation system, whereas the national recreation area, you can kind of
00:54:34
Speaker
do what you want.
00:54:35
Speaker
Got it.
00:54:37
Speaker
That makes sense.
00:54:38
Speaker
And I think Jeffco is more the preservation, but maybe Gilpin, as you talked about in the interview is more like, Hey, we want you to come play.
00:54:46
Speaker
Right.
00:54:48
Speaker
So anyway.
00:54:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:50
Speaker
Fascinating.
00:54:52
Speaker
Well, Gary, glad we got a chance to get you on the show and yeah.
00:54:58
Speaker
Hope to come out there with a pick and shovel one of these days.
00:55:02
Speaker
Yeah, sure.

Olympic Triathlete Highlights

00:55:04
Speaker
All right, my friend.
00:55:04
Speaker
Well, hey, let's dive into this news.
00:55:07
Speaker
Olympic triathlete Taylor Nibbs stunned even herself by winning the women's time trial at the U.S. Road Cycling Championship.
00:55:15
Speaker
Now she's got the opportunity to compete in two sports in the Paris Games, triathlon and cycling.
00:55:23
Speaker
She's amazing.
00:55:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:25
Speaker
And she just raced last weekend and came in third place in Yokohama.
00:55:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:32
Speaker
I mean, when did she do the qualifying for the bike?
00:55:36
Speaker
Wednesday.
00:55:37
Speaker
Wednesday.
00:55:38
Speaker
Where was that?
00:55:41
Speaker
Olympic course in the historic Pont Alexandre III Bridge.
00:55:45
Speaker
It must have been in Paris.
00:55:47
Speaker
Okay.
00:55:48
Speaker
So she went from Yokohama to Paris.
00:56:03
Speaker
Within three days of each other and then qualified for the time trial.
00:56:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:10
Speaker
That's exactly what it looks like.
00:56:11
Speaker
Wow.
00:56:12
Speaker
Nib and Chloe Dygert have now secured positions.
00:56:16
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:56:17
Speaker
That's interesting.
00:56:17
Speaker
So I haven't heard Chloe's name.
00:56:19
Speaker
So obviously she's recovered fully apparently, or at least mostly.
00:56:24
Speaker
That's pretty cool.
00:56:25
Speaker
But I'm just trying to think.
00:56:27
Speaker
I can't help but think of the logistics for Taylor Nib.
00:56:31
Speaker
So in Yokohama, she would have ridden a road bike, correct?
00:56:36
Speaker
Yes.
00:56:37
Speaker
So then she probably, I'm guessing, had her TT bike shipped separately to Paris way before she left for Yokohama.
00:56:47
Speaker
And then she caught up.
00:56:49
Speaker
Cause I guess it's with a team so they could have easily accommodated all that, but.
00:56:53
Speaker
Right.
00:56:54
Speaker
Wow.
00:56:55
Speaker
But that's pretty funny though.
00:56:56
Speaker
She's riding, bringing a road bike to a tri triathlon and a tri bike to a road road race.
00:57:04
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:57:05
Speaker
And winning.
00:57:07
Speaker
She was, but just, you know, I don't know about you, but traveling like that wears me out.
00:57:13
Speaker
I mean, I, last thing I'd want to do is go push myself.
00:57:17
Speaker
a day, I mean, she only had at least maybe one full day of recovery with not traveling.
00:57:25
Speaker
Right.
00:57:26
Speaker
And all of the gear and the, wow.
00:57:31
Speaker
Now, to be fair, I guess, a little bit, not fair, but to be realistic, it's an Olympic distance, right?
00:57:35
Speaker
So you should be able to recover fairly quickly.
00:57:39
Speaker
True.
00:57:40
Speaker
I mean, you're pushing it, of course.
00:57:42
Speaker
So she's going to be tired, but it's not like she did an Ironman.
00:57:45
Speaker
So I guess it's more possible.
00:57:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:49
Speaker
Well, and I'll talk a little bit more about the Yokohama race here in, well, I guess it's actually a pretty decent time to transition to it.
00:57:58
Speaker
But I did want to talk a little bit before we got into triathlon.
00:58:01
Speaker
I want to talk a little bit more about cycling and the, speaking of time trialing,
00:58:06
Speaker
Fall time trial series is a potential out at Chatfield.

Upcoming Time Trial Series

00:58:10
Speaker
So if you're here in the Denver area, the front range area, you might have another option for another time trial and it would be down here at Chatfield State Park.
00:58:19
Speaker
And I got to tell you, man, the conditions down here, these roads are in awesome shape.
00:58:24
Speaker
They've repaved those areas that had the freeze cracks on the south side of the res.
00:58:30
Speaker
It's in awesome shape.
00:58:32
Speaker
We were just out there last weekend and I would love to do a time trial there.
00:58:36
Speaker
Looks like this.
00:58:38
Speaker
Yeah, go ahead.
00:58:39
Speaker
I don't know.
00:58:41
Speaker
I'm not sure which direction it would go.
00:58:44
Speaker
I would assume it would finish going up the dam.
00:58:48
Speaker
It doesn't.
00:58:48
Speaker
It actually does a turn at the top of the dam.
00:58:52
Speaker
So you actually start
00:58:53
Speaker
over past the closer to the entrance on the Titan side, Titan Road side.
00:58:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:59
Speaker
Okay.
00:59:00
Speaker
And then you go out to the top of the dam right there where that parking lot is.
00:59:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:07
Speaker
And then you spin around and come back.
00:59:09
Speaker
That's how it looks if I open up this article.
00:59:12
Speaker
Okay.
00:59:13
Speaker
That makes sense.
00:59:15
Speaker
It's like five, a little over five miles per, per, it's like five miles from the top of Titan road or where Titan road is to the top of the dam.
00:59:22
Speaker
It's about five miles.
00:59:23
Speaker
If I remember right.
00:59:25
Speaker
No, it's more.
00:59:26
Speaker
It's actually five miles from the Kingfisher parking lot at the gravel pond to Titan road.
00:59:33
Speaker
And it's five miles from that parking lot at the gravel pond to the other end.
00:59:40
Speaker
So it's actually 20 miles end to end.
00:59:42
Speaker
Really?
00:59:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:43
Speaker
I do it all the time.
00:59:45
Speaker
Wow.
00:59:46
Speaker
Yep.
00:59:47
Speaker
20 miles round trip.
00:59:48
Speaker
Sorry.
00:59:49
Speaker
20 miles round trip.
00:59:50
Speaker
10 miles from one end to the other.
00:59:51
Speaker
Sorry.
00:59:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:52
Speaker
I didn't know it was that long.
00:59:53
Speaker
I thought it was shorter than that.
00:59:55
Speaker
That'd be a great, that'd be a heck of a time trial.
00:59:58
Speaker
I think it'd be a great time trial.
01:00:01
Speaker
Yeah, actually it starts, yeah, it starts, oh, I get it.
01:00:05
Speaker
It starts at the camp registration building.
01:00:09
Speaker
There's a parking lot there.
01:00:11
Speaker
Yep, yep.
01:00:12
Speaker
And then you come out and then you go out to the dam, you come back and then you go past that road and you finish on a straightaway.
01:00:22
Speaker
And that's 20 miles.
01:00:24
Speaker
Well-
01:00:25
Speaker
Roughly.
01:00:26
Speaker
That is probably 11.
01:00:27
Speaker
No, it's 11.2 because you don't go all the way past the dam.
01:00:31
Speaker
You don't go all the way to the end.
01:00:33
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:00:34
Speaker
Okay.
01:00:34
Speaker
No, I didn't think so.
01:00:35
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:36
Speaker
So it's 11.2 mile course, 366 feet of climbing, which is the dam.
01:00:42
Speaker
Right.
01:00:43
Speaker
That's great.
01:00:43
Speaker
That's a great route.
01:00:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:46
Speaker
That'd be fun.
01:00:47
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.

Triathlon Event Recap

01:00:49
Speaker
All right.
01:00:49
Speaker
All right.
01:00:50
Speaker
I'm going to shift now into triathlon and talk about, let's, I'm going to finish talking about the women's race here.
01:00:57
Speaker
Yes.
01:00:58
Speaker
We talked about Taylor.
01:00:59
Speaker
Oh, no.
01:00:59
Speaker
I said Taylor Nib came in third.
01:01:01
Speaker
She came in second.
01:01:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:04
Speaker
Taylor Spivey came in fourth.
01:01:06
Speaker
It was just heartbreaking.
01:01:07
Speaker
Just off the podium.
01:01:09
Speaker
I mean, she was coming on strong.
01:01:12
Speaker
I'm still hopeful that Taylor will make the Olympics.
01:01:16
Speaker
That was not an automatic qualifier for her, but it did show that
01:01:20
Speaker
And for she and Kirsten Kasper both showed immense grit and good potential for the Olympic team coming in fourth and fifth respectively.
01:01:32
Speaker
That's going to be an interesting Olympics, no doubt about it.
01:01:36
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
01:01:37
Speaker
And then, yeah, Morgan Pearson.
01:01:40
Speaker
you know, holding off pretty stiff competition.
01:01:43
Speaker
You know, there was that, there was that crash and it was like the six lap or something like that of the bike.
01:01:50
Speaker
But, and he didn't get caught up in that, but yeah, it says, oh, I was, hang on a second.
01:02:00
Speaker
I've got that.
01:02:00
Speaker
I opened up the article on my other screen here.
01:02:04
Speaker
I'll edit that.
01:02:05
Speaker
Yeah, Morgan Pierce in first place, Matt Hauser second, Luke William third.
01:02:11
Speaker
And then if I look down the list here, Vincent Louie ninth, Christian Blumenfeldt 10th.
01:02:18
Speaker
Really?
01:02:19
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:20
Speaker
That's interesting, isn't it?
01:02:22
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:22
Speaker
Now, you know, this is going anyway.
01:02:25
Speaker
He's going anyway.
01:02:26
Speaker
Right.
01:02:26
Speaker
So does he care?
01:02:28
Speaker
I don't know.
01:02:29
Speaker
Right.
01:02:29
Speaker
Maybe this is just a, you know, training event for him.
01:02:33
Speaker
You know, I'm sure that he knows what he's doing.
01:02:37
Speaker
And where's Gustav these days?
01:02:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:40
Speaker
Gustav Gustav race, but he wasn't in the top 10.
01:02:43
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:44
Speaker
I mean, that's why I haven't really heard much.
01:02:46
Speaker
I mean, he's, I would presume going to try to race from Norway, Norway in the Olympics.
01:02:51
Speaker
No.
01:02:52
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:53
Speaker
Maybe he's not.
01:02:53
Speaker
I would think.
01:02:54
Speaker
But he's also in the Ironman.
01:02:56
Speaker
Isn't he also in the Ironman Pro Series too?
01:03:01
Speaker
Probably.
01:03:02
Speaker
Maybe he's not trying for the Olympics.
01:03:04
Speaker
Yeah, maybe not.
01:03:06
Speaker
Anyway, but big shout out to Morgan Pearson.
01:03:09
Speaker
He's Boulder based.
01:03:10
Speaker
We should try to get him on the show.
01:03:12
Speaker
He's been on, right?
01:03:14
Speaker
It's been a while, I think.
01:03:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's been a while.
01:03:16
Speaker
Yeah, we should try to.
01:03:17
Speaker
Let me talk about Scott real quick.
01:03:19
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:03:20
Speaker
So Scott Christopher used to be the development director for Bicycle Colorado for a long time.
01:03:25
Speaker
His wife, Sue.
01:03:26
Speaker
His wife, Sue Lloyd, with Inspired Training.
01:03:29
Speaker
Scott, I was riding yesterday and I just pull up.
01:03:33
Speaker
I was passing this guy and I look over and I was like, Scott.
01:03:35
Speaker
I'm like, hey, Scott.
01:03:37
Speaker
Oh, hey, Bill.
01:03:38
Speaker
And we start talking.
01:03:41
Speaker
And he was doing a shakeout ride.
01:03:43
Speaker
And he said he's leaving tomorrow, which is today, to start a cross-country bike trip.
01:03:49
Speaker
to his high school graduation.
01:03:52
Speaker
It's his 50th high school graduation.
01:03:54
Speaker
He's from the Philadelphia area and he got the idea years and years ago.
01:03:59
Speaker
And I wished I'd remember this guy's name, but he was kind of a legend in cycling when Scott grew up basically here.
01:04:05
Speaker
I moved out here from the East Coast and he was in CU.
01:04:08
Speaker
And this guy, I forget his name, but he had this idea that he would go back to his high school graduation for his 50th.
01:04:15
Speaker
And he lived in Massachusetts.
01:04:17
Speaker
So that idea just festered in Scott for a long time.
01:04:20
Speaker
And when his 50th high school graduation came up, which is this year, he thought, I'm going to ride back to it.
01:04:27
Speaker
So he
01:04:28
Speaker
Yeah, so Sue can work from anywhere apparently, and they have a trailer or an RV or something, and they're going to pull it across the country for the SAG, and then Scott's going to ride across the country.
01:04:42
Speaker
He's leaving today, and he plans to be in Philadelphia around June 16th, I think he said, or 17th.
01:04:51
Speaker
So he doesn't have a lot of cushion.
01:04:54
Speaker
I mean, he's got to push it a little bit.

Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement

01:04:57
Speaker
And then it just so happens that Ram ends on June 21st or 22nd, something like that, in Atlantic City.
01:05:07
Speaker
So he's got a friend that has a condo at the finish line.
01:05:10
Speaker
So he's going to go down and hopefully see that.
01:05:12
Speaker
So
01:05:14
Speaker
But another coincidence, tonight he plans to stay at our friend of the show, Kim Welk's house out in Kiowa.
01:05:23
Speaker
No way.
01:05:24
Speaker
It's his first night out.
01:05:26
Speaker
So he's riding to Kiowa today.
01:05:29
Speaker
Hi, Kim, if you're listening, which hopefully you are.
01:05:31
Speaker
Awesome, Kim.
01:05:32
Speaker
That's great.
01:05:33
Speaker
He's going to stay with her and then he'll just keep going all across the country.
01:05:37
Speaker
That's really cool.
01:05:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:39
Speaker
That's amazing.
01:05:41
Speaker
If I rode to my high school reunion, I'd probably only have to go about 20 miles.
01:05:47
Speaker
It's not quite worth it.
01:05:49
Speaker
I did ride to mine.
01:05:50
Speaker
I rode to my 40th picnic portion of it, which was six miles away.
01:05:58
Speaker
I guess I just thought of that.
01:06:00
Speaker
I should have told him, well, I did mine too.
01:06:02
Speaker
Big deal, man.
01:06:04
Speaker
That's awesome.
01:06:06
Speaker
That's a cool story.
01:06:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:07
Speaker
That's awesome.
01:06:09
Speaker
Didn't realize Ram was here again already.
01:06:11
Speaker
That's yeah.
01:06:13
Speaker
So anyway, I know it's been a while.
01:06:15
Speaker
People have been having to listen a long time to hear that story, but hopefully those that are still with us, I hope you might be inspired.
01:06:22
Speaker
So, well, yeah, for sure.
01:06:25
Speaker
And Hey, just one last little quick wrap up.
01:06:28
Speaker
We had a great,
01:06:30
Speaker
A good turnout for the weather that we had last week out at Chatfield for an open water swim and our brick training that we did.
01:06:37
Speaker
We've got 10 people out there in 55 degree water.
01:06:42
Speaker
We actually gave the official water temperature to the ranger out there.
01:06:45
Speaker
We just kind of, you know, consensus was it was 54 degrees.
01:06:50
Speaker
I'm surprised.
01:06:50
Speaker
We had a good time.
01:06:51
Speaker
I can't believe it was that warm.
01:06:52
Speaker
I can't believe it was that warm, frankly.
01:06:54
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know.
01:06:55
Speaker
It was pretty cold.
01:06:56
Speaker
It was brisk.
01:06:58
Speaker
But, no, but man, it was successful.
01:07:00
Speaker
Everybody had a good time.
01:07:01
Speaker
Everybody was really, you know, it was mostly people that were pretty anxious about open water or swimming in cold water.
01:07:07
Speaker
We had like some people from Florida that were like, hey, you know, I'm not used to this cold water.
01:07:12
Speaker
I saw this opportunity, thought I would come check it out.
01:07:14
Speaker
And, you know.
01:07:15
Speaker
That's great.
01:07:16
Speaker
We'll do it again next, this weekend and next weekend.
01:07:20
Speaker
Recommend parking now because it's going to be a nice weekend by 730 and we'll get in the water by eight.
01:07:25
Speaker
So.
01:07:25
Speaker
Nice.
01:07:26
Speaker
So you do it tomorrow or Sunday?
01:07:28
Speaker
We're going to do it tomorrow on Saturday, this Saturday, the 18th and the following Saturday, the 25th.
01:07:38
Speaker
Okay.
01:07:39
Speaker
Cool.
01:07:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:41
Speaker
And then next weekend we've got another guest.
01:07:43
Speaker
We've got a Lance Panaguti joining us from without limits.
01:07:46
Speaker
That's right.
01:07:47
Speaker
And I'll be in Durango.
01:07:49
Speaker
Oh, cool.
01:07:49
Speaker
All right.
01:07:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:50
Speaker
I'm going to be handing out finisher medals at the iron horse classic in Silverton.
01:07:55
Speaker
Oh, nice.
01:07:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:58
Speaker
Seems like a good spot for you, my friend.
01:08:00
Speaker
It's a great spot.
01:08:01
Speaker
I love Sodorton.
01:08:03
Speaker
And I, you know, dual purpose, I go down there to start doing some work on the ride, so...
01:08:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:09
Speaker
Cool.
01:08:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:09
Speaker
And if, Oh, let's do this.
01:08:11
Speaker
Let's mention this too.
01:08:12
Speaker
If you have not registered for Colorado's ride and you're thinking about it, there's going to be a price increase June 1st.
01:08:17
Speaker
Is that right?
01:08:18
Speaker
Yep.
01:08:18
Speaker
A hundred bucks price increase.
01:08:19
Speaker
So get on it.
01:08:21
Speaker
Okay.
01:08:21
Speaker
Awesome.
01:08:22
Speaker
Folks.
01:08:22
Speaker
Thanks.
01:08:23
Speaker
Thanks for listening this week.
01:08:24
Speaker
Be sure to follow us at 303 endurance.
01:08:25
Speaker
And of course, go to iTunes, give us a rating and a comment.
01:08:28
Speaker
We appreciate that.
01:08:29
Speaker
Stay tuned, train informed and enjoy the endurance journey.
01:08:33
Speaker
For your 303 Endurance Podcast.
01:08:34
Speaker
It's your 303 Endurance Podcast.
01:08:35
Speaker
It's your 303 Endurance Podcast.
01:08:37
Speaker
It's your 303 Endurance Podcast.
01:09:11
Speaker
Endurance Podcast.