157. Rob Britton: Slave to the road turned gravel supremo

0:00It kind of pains me to admit this as a cyclist, but I rather like cars. And I think I've just been driving around in the nicest car I will ever, ever drive. And that's the Maserati Gricali, which it turns out is what happens if an Italian supercar company designed an SUV for people like me, for cyclists. Now, the Gricali is fast, like 0-60 in 4.1 seconds fast, but it is also, it's just delightful to sit in. It has the legroom of a first-class flight to Singapore. or it's arguably more luxurious inside than my own house. And yet, I kind of can't believe I'm saying it because of what it is. It's a genuinely practical car.

0:36I could happily chuck a dirty bike in the back of it, then do the shopping, and then go and pick up the rest of the family. Now, I've been driving the electric Forgory version, which has the equivalent of a 557 brake horsepower dual electric motor with a 360-mile range, which sounds incredibly impressive, I know. But let's just put that in cycling terms, which we actually understand. That is the same power output as a thousand Tadej Pogacchas all racing Milan-San Remo at once and then racing back again. Now, as well as the electric version, there are multiple engine options too. Prices start from£59 ,990.

1:12Which, when you think about it, is something of a bargain, given Pogaccha's Tour de France winning Colnago from last year sold at auction for£143 ,000. You could have bought two brand new Maserati Gucalis for that. Now you can find out more and also find out where your local Maserati dealer is at maserati.com. Where else? So that's maserati.com and check out the Maserati Gricali. I reckon a while ago, the bike computer market looked all sewn up. There were two big players, end of. Kind of like how once upon a time group sets meant either Shimano or Campagnolo. So there's a wonderful synergy in the fact SRAM busted open the group set market back in 2006.

1:54and now SRAM's computer arm, Hammerhead, is blowing the doors off in the same way with the Hammerhead Karoo. My favourite thing about the Karoo is how much it's like a smartphone. So the touchscreen is really crisp and punchy, so data and mapping, which is way more like a phone's mapping than a classic bike GPS, by the way. Those things are super clear. But unlike a phone, battery life is a huge 35 hours with GPS on and your ride recording, plus it's also way smaller. it's up there with the smallest head units given what it does and it does loads from predicting gradients in real time to making routes on the fly to running apps like spotify and it will even tell you how fast you're going there's a whole lot more that we'll get into in other episodes but for anyone who just needs things now now now head over to cyclist.co.uk and search hammerhead crew 3 to read our in-depth review and find out why we gave it our cyclist recommended badge of honor.

2:49Then head to hammerhead.io and use the promo code cyclist to get a free heart rate monitor with every purchase of a karoo. Just make sure you put everything in the basket first before applying that promo code. Cyclist promo code hammerhead.io is where you can find all the gear.

3:12Welcome back to the Cyclist Magazine podcast. I have a cold and I'm also James Spender and joining me down the wire for the first time in quite a while actually is mr will strickson will how have you been where have you been why have you not been here it's an interesting question physically i have been here quite frequently yes but digitally yeah busy in that yeah i don't know what with really i feel like that kind of happens it's may i don't know i don't know how that happened either yeah i just i just forge a head on my own because we're all time pressed and i'm just like shit i need to get an introduction out for this next podcast as we bounce from podcast to podcast.

3:50But it's lovely to see your face and I have missed it. And I have missed someone to talk to about stuff because it gets a bit lonely on my own. Although we do have people out there who do like to occasionally get in touch. So it's not entirely one way traffic. What's our email address? It's James underscore Spender. I think you're a dot. I think it's a dot. That was the old one, wasn't it? Sorry, james.spender at metropolis.co.uk. Email me or email Will, william.strickson at metropolis.co.uk. We'd love to hear from you genuinely. But for now, I'll tell you who Rob is, if you are not familiar. Now, Rob was born in, easy for me to say, Sasquatchian.

4:30Is that how you say it in Canada? In 1984, he's an ex-road pro, turning pro in 2010 with American team at Bissell Pro Cycling. And then for the next 12 seasons, raced at continental level, where he arguably enjoyed his best years with rally cycling, which is not that rally, although he also confusingly did race for that rally in Britain 2013. During that time, he won the Tour of Utah, his second Tour of Gila in New Mexico and the Canadian National Time Trial title. so given such strong showings in such hot long multi-day races it's kind of little surprise that rob moved over and has done so well like a lot of his ex-colleagues in gravel so first rob was riding as a privateer you know sponsored with a bit of kit but essentially riding without a team and his first season he finished sixth in his first big gravel race at unbound which i think a lot of you guys have heard of takes place in canada takes place in america but yeah sorry i mean kansas Kansas, Canada, K, it's got a C, it's got a K sound.

5:29Maybe we'll leave that in, maybe we'll take it out, I don't know. Takes place in Kansas. Then the following year, Rob won Badlands, all 800 kilometres and 16 ,000 vertical metres of it. And then 2023 saw an incredible result at Tracker, where Rob finished second behind fellow ex-pro Pete Statina, who we've also had on the podcast. However, his best result, I think so far, came last year, where he beat none other than Lachlan Morton at Unbound XL, which is 578 kilometers, which he tackled at an astonishing 32.4 kilometers an hour, which smashed the course record by 12 minutes. Since then, obviously, Rob has attracted a lot of attention and sponsors.

6:10He now rides for the Overland Adventure Team, which has got backing from Eastern Cycling and Costelli, and also Factor Bikes, whose radical aero suspension gravel bike, the Sarana, I think it's called, Rob rode this year at Tracker 560. So it all comes around. That's Rob was at Tracker 560. Whatever bike Rob rides though, he does make long distance stuff look almost easy, but his journey in cycling has been anything but. So here he is to tell us all about that and more about gravel racing, about the US's dwindling race calendar, how that can be revived. And as I say, is kind of read on the current kind of cycling culture in North America as well.

6:50So let's welcome to the show, Rob Britton.

6:58I can already sort of tell by both the kind of the resonance of the room you're in and that little detail of plaster wall above a very tall door that you have to be in at least, if not Europe, like if not Italy, you're somewhere in Europe, surely you're not in Canada. doesn't look very canadian no i arrived in um into venice yesterday uh now we're kind of um it's about 30 minutes outside of venice near uh treviso so yeah it's very italian is that for racing are you in europe to race or to train at the moment uh racing yeah we're here for um we're well i'm here for the hills gravel race um a buddy of mine uh mattia demarchi kind of started an event last year and i mean i love italy it's not it's not a challenge yeah you're not twisting my arm to come here but um there's like other perks like obviously i'm excited about the race um i haven't raced in italy technically since uh tour of sicily in um or jagged gira de sicily in like 2000 and i want to say 19 but uh yeah we've come here on vacation a few times my wife and I and I'm pretty excited to come back because Costelli World Headquarters is like an hour away so that's like part of the trip too which is pretty exciting for me just I've like seen all the parts of behind the scenes of cycling more than just you know race lines and the like.

8:24Yeah well I mean friend of the show Steve Smith Costelli's head of global product you've probably been racing quite a lot of stuff that Steve and his team have designed over the years we could do brilliant product plug right now. You can tell me what's your best piece of Castelli kit? Honestly, the Unlanded Speed Suit is like it's, I wore it last year for Unbound XL. And that's probably where it had its biggest like, I don't know, showcasing. And like, I'm not usually a person to just like grab something out of the bag and back, I'm going to use this for a race. like most people myself included would always tell you it's like always try something before a race but I've been using you know Castelli products for the last five years I remember I put it on the day before I caught it the day before the event and I put it on that night and I was just like damn this thing is awesome I felt like Batman um this is like you know you got all the gadgets and stuff you know there's little pockets here and there and like a place for the hydration pack and I'm like, I'm 100 % wearing this for the race tomorrow.

9:33And like, I didn't even wash it. I just wore it fresh out of the bag. And I mean, it worked. It worked. Yeah. I mean, that is a big gamble. It's the classic thing. Never change your shoes the day before your first marathon. And I know from, you know, you all have loads of kit. All cyclists have got lots of kit. Occasionally, I'll just put something on. It'll feel great. And then there'll just be something in the stitching or some way that the label sits and it just kind of catches and you're just like i can't change i can't scratch this away as i'm riding i can't i'll have to take it off and kind of rejig it so that just in itself that is a big gamble right because how long were you on the bike for for unbound xl last year which by the way you won which is why the speed suit is so damn successful and you won record-breaking time of 12 minutes and i'm sure the speed suit probably at least accounted for a couple of those minutes surely i don't know but i bet you know obviously your legs the reasons why um but yeah how how how did that all sort of pan out at unbound yeah the kit was good obviously like it just that the fit and everything was dialed and the race itself was very fast from the gun like um i think the the big pre-race favorites were myself lachlan lawrence tendam uh ted king in a mix uh robin I'm always butcher pronouncing his last name but there's like some proper hitters in like the long distance world and I think with Lachlan being there that made it into a really important race obviously he'd won the 200 year before you don't have to say Lachlan Morton because just he's like Madonna right everybody knows you don't need the last name but it was a race that I kind of kept quiet about I remember talking to a sponsor from Schwab and I just messaged Sean and I was like hey would you be okay if I did the like the XL instead of the 200 and I think his response was effectively it's like hell yeah you could win it and I'm like all right sweet I'm doing it and like I was kind of over the 200 I get over it like slash was aware it'd be very hard for me to do I was fifth or sixth or something in like 2022 I think and had a decent, I had okay rides in a sense, but I was just, the race is getting very fast, very competitive and like very dangerous and all those things I'm just like, didn't excite me as much as the possibility of winning the 560.

12:06So I went in for that. I've had pretty good success in long distance stuff when I've done it and it just excited me and I'm racing my bike on time. That's what I want to do is races excite me, not so much that make me anxious or exciting in a bad way. Yeah, and the race itself just sort of played out how a 17-hour boxing match would. And just like, it got dark, and then you're just alone. And I remember when I first saw Ike, I went through one of the checkpoints, and I go, he's only like a minute ahead of you. I was just like, what? I've been riding around for seven hours by myself, okay? And then you see this little dot off in the distance, And I'm like, oh, wow, I think that's awesome.

12:52And it took forever, it seemed like, you know, time is funny, like when you've been on the bike for that long. And eventually we just like, we were together. It's just like, oh, wow, I never thought I'd come down to this. Yeah, this and that. And then I rode into the finish by myself. And it was like the craziest thing ever. Plus it was sick because we were so far ahead of schedule. they actually had to hold the start of the uh the 100 so i have like i slashed we've all finished close enough but they have um the ride to show him as well we got all these extra fans it was great so but yeah man it's crazy so just to flesh that out right so unbound gravel excel uh used to be dirty kansas so in kansas so it's kind of i'm just sort of imagining the kansas i've seen on tv and films right so long kind of prairies middle of nowhere god's country sort of thing probably pretty damn lonely very very isolated and it's 578 kilometers which is insanely long and you completed it in 32.4 kilometers an hour we do everything in euro here just because even though we're a new country canadian yeah i'm bilingual when it comes to uh yeah imperial metric but anyone else out there that's a shade over 20 miles per hour and i remember i think a few years ago when dirty can when unbound was still dirty cancer and i want to say colin strickland won the equivalent of 200 and did it in over 20 but he did it basically at 20 miles an hour and chatting to the guys at work and just being like that's mad like we ride gravel bikes that's so fast over such a long distance when you're riding off road and then there you are doing more than double that But how do you sort of keep that pace when, like you say, you're potentially, you're not even seeing this tiny twinkling light in the distance.

14:52You're just in this kind of ethereal nighttime state. You can just about see ahead of you on the road. And yeah, sure, I'm sure you can see your numbers. But how do you not just sort of drift and taper off? Like, how do you keep that momentum? But then conversely, how do you not get bored when you're on your own for so long, potentially? Yeah, I mean, well, one, it's like, I think the biggest thing is like, I just genuinely enjoy riding my bike. So it's fun to me. I really like riding in slash through the night. So that's, I think, part of it too. I like that and being in the hunt, whether that's chasing someone down or being hunted from behind.

15:32Either one of those is a motivating thing, right? With Lock on the head and Warren's just behind, you always just feel like they're nipping at your heels. or he's out there somewhere. And if I stay focused, like maybe I can get him. So, you know, you have those two, like pulling and pushing him. And then like I train less now, but, you know, I spent a big chunk of my career training like alone. So I'm not a person who needs to have someone like to train with. I just, I did hours and hours and hours like fully solo. So I think that combination of things is good. And I've had, I've had a good experience or a decent amount of experience doing these events that makes it easier to go through plus the night in summertime like maybe it's i think maybe eight hours or so like real darkness maybe less um it sucks when it's like we did uh the race in morocco here like last month and that was fucked it was like 13 hours in the dark and it's like because you're so deep in the mountains it's like you don't get like in kansas or other places i've ridden you know you get twilight you know a a long sunrise and a long sunset so it's like sure it's like sunsets at you know 10 p.m but it's dark it's not gonna be dark like dark until like maybe 11 or it's like sunrise is at six but really it's it starts to get bright you know and it makes a big difference she's that that might crack me at like 5 a.m or something that makes a big difference from like morocco it's like sunsets at 7 30 and it's like 731 and it is dark it's like sunrise at 8 you know 45 and at 8 30 it is still dark like that's a big big difference yeah no i bet and do you i mean do you ride with i don't know like headphones or anything like that is that sort of a deal or do other riders do that sort of thing just to pass the time listening to maybe even cycling podcasts i don't know or some tunes or Or was it literally just like...

17:27Oh no, I listen to music. You listen to music. What's your motivating tunes? I've got kind of like three playlists I'll go through. I have one that's like your usual all cycles, like hype mix, something you listen to before a race, or if you're doing a workout, so you have the blend of like, when you listen to this, your brain just knows to switch on to like, okay, we're working hard mode. Another one is like this country mix that I've dedicated to my wife, who hates country but it makes me kind of smile so it makes me happy which is like usually ride pretty good if I'm happy so and then uh if I'm doing like really long stuff like maybe not necessarily unbound um I have like this uh classic rock you know I grew up with parents that listened to like classic rock so I have you know from the 60s 70s and even 80s um kind of classic rock mix that I know all the words so it's like when you're here and you're out there for you You know, more than a day, usually you start to lose your mind.

18:25So you start to talk to yourself. So if you're singing, it seems like you're not maybe talking to yourself as much. Nice. All those coyotes prowling around the prairie. They can hear you singing along to a sweet child of mine or something. Exactly. But after all that time, just focusing on something like Unbound, where it comes down to you're riding, suddenly you're riding as a pair, having ridden a lot of that distance on your own. There's no peloton and you're not in a breakaway per se. then what happens? Do you chat to Lachlan and sort of say, okay, well, let's just keep this going to the line and then we're going to sprint?

19:00Or do you just sort of slowly try and stretch the gap and drift off? Like how, how does that work? Because often in road cycling, you see riders, maybe if they've got the time, slow down and possibly even have a chat and sort of like just decide what's going to happen so that they're not, they're not just, you know, there's an etiquette involved, isn't there, in finding two people at the front of a race? How does it work and gravel um i think when i finally caught up to him i just like i was trying to think of what i was gonna do when you've been racing for whatever it was 15 hours like one you're tired so there's not a lot of like bandwidth for like trying to do something crazy nor is there like physical ability to you know make a big effort right so i think i rode up to him and i was just like in my aero bars and kind of rope by and he's like yo and like you know we hadn't seen each other was he surprised he kind of was yeah he like i can't remember if he said he saw me coming up or not like when you're racing usually you might glance back but you're never like looking back right you're just you're pretty focused i had i think i just like talked about the sunrise because it's just incredible like lachlan and i've raced each other for my whole career his whole career i guess um since he was about 12 it seems but um yeah it was cool then we're just like honestly we just kind of rolled rolled together it was pretty close to the finish i mean i can't remember exactly maybe there's under 100k for sure maybe 50 or 60 and it's it's rolly like there's definitely some good rollers to it and yeah we just kind of went through some lefts and rights you know there's no established this or that and it's just i just turned around and he was wasn't there and then i just put my head down and wrote like harder or wasn't i was already kind of doing what i could do and uh yeah just then it was just crazy there's like you kind of get into this last bit of road that's um 10k or so maybe less like 7k that's the same for every unbound you kind of wind in through the university and then into the finish there's a little kicker through the university and all i could think about was just like don't cramp for the love of god don't cramp and have to walk up the climb he's probably close enough to catch you and then this climbs like maybe like 30 seconds long like riding slow you know it's like maybe 100 meters long and but it's like that's that was really like otherwise it's dead flat yeah so anyway got up that and then that was it but uh no there's no wasn't like there's like any real like okay we're gonna do this and then we'll do this at the end it's just like i think regardless of anybody would have caught it's just just play the cards you have yeah and you mentioned um earlier costelli is a sponsor you ride a factor at the moment, is that right?

21:36Yeah, exactly. And you've also got Schwalbe tires, and you've got Eastern Cycling. Is that Eastern as in Eastern as was, used to be making wheels, bars? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So they're obviously giving you a kit to use. Are they in any way, or any of your other sponsors, bankrolling you? And at that time when you cross the line and you've won Unbound, there's a prize purse. There isn't a prize purse. Nope. Is there not? I thought that, is it only, okay, well, maybe we can move into that in a sec then. Because I'm thinking like a question we often kind of mull over, as in us road cyclists kind of looking across at gravel, is like how do these guys afford it?

22:19Because you go all over the world, you're ostensibly a privateer, as in you're not affiliated to a team with a massive support network in the way that you would have been when you were riding for Rally or for Bissell. when you're riding on road. So, yeah, how does that life, because it's almost like a lifestyle as much as a job. How do you make all those ends meet? Because we all know that cycling takes up loads of time, as in it doesn't leave you much time to do anything else, and traveling is really expensive, and et cetera, et cetera. And now you've just enlightened me and said, you win one of the marquee, the calendar events, and there's no prize pot.

23:02So how does it all work? I think most gravel events have the opportunity to make a lot of money and that doesn't really get kicked back into prize money. I mean, Unbound is like in the lifetime organization is their own kind of thing. You have a thousand people showing up paying$500 a pop. You can do the math on that. Two thousand people, double it. right but uh it's only been in recent years that the elite category only like men's women's elite category in um so the 200 gets some prize money and it's not like you're talking about like fifty thousand dollars i don't know what it is uh keegan would definitely know uh he's good at finding the prize money um but no it's uh for the xl i won a wood trophy i think it's like wood from a tree in uh kansas right but uh you know there's no prize money i got it's and most gravel races i'd say they're getting more so now because they're they're becoming more professional and you're seeing the way they're raised it's more professional more so much a road um so there's just a lot of things that are crossing over but when i started in 2022 like coming from the road it was like comical like there's just no there's just no prize money and like you know you're looking at two three hundred dollar like u.s that's like somebody used like entry fees and there's just nothing like congratulations it's like you you know you want a beer and like a thing and it's good it's like whatever like it's that's what it was like because it started out as a fault like they started out and gravel started out as like a fondo series you know more of like an inclusion challenge and like thing than it was like a full-on bikers but uh yeah to answer your other question so yeah the privateer thing oh man we could do like an entire podcast cast just on that but uh I'll try to boil it down um so yes I left road cycling in 2021 and I knew how easy I had it but I really had no idea just how easy I had it I wasn't like world tour level so I didn't have like you know someone carrying me everywhere and doing literally everything for me but like compared to what I would be doing from 22 onward oh man it was crazy like thank god I was pretty good at work like I was pretty handy with my hands and like mechanically inclined because like that alone like if you don't know how to do that like you're just totally screwed in this world like that's how easy you'll see like these world tour guys and they'll come to grab one they're fast as hell but like if something happens to their bike they just look at it you know they've never used a tire plug before they don't know how to use co2s like let alone like you know a major mechanical issue where there's like you know you need to be pretty clever to fix it yeah but thankfully they go so fast that it's really a problem anyway you have to learn everything like you become that whole team so you're your own swan you're like you're finding food to cook every night and your airbnb that you rented that you booked on your flight that you paid for in your in your rental car that you booked from the airport at the race that you know you registered yourself for with equipment that you source through sponsors you've created effectively like your own entity and your own kind of like business to a degree so uh yeah you you know you learn pretty quick like just how to build these relationships and it was easier for me because I didn't just stop in 2021 and then decide January of 2022 it's like well I think I'll do gravel like I was already interested in 2020 but that was not a great year and then in 2021 that's when I decided I was going to step away from road I knew I was going to stop in April and May and that's when I started sending out messages to people that I knew in the other side of the sport like the Jeff Kabushes, the Ted Kings, even like Boswell.

26:44Triathletes are a perfect example, you know, that's kind of what they do. So I reached out to all of them and kind of like asked them how they do stuff. I didn't ask for their like, their sponsors, because that's like, even I even I knew that's an ignorant question to ask, like, but they were all actually super helpful just in how to engage with people. I had a decently successful road career that allowed me and I was chatty, I guess. So just like I was engaged with sponsors, which made a huge difference when it came to this. So yeah, I was able to get sponsors through East and Overland. That was a big one because I connected me with Castelli, Schwabe, East and Shimano.

27:18So that covered like the bikes, clothes and bike tires. That was the package was sort of there. My first year I went with Felt gravel bikes, which was a connection directly through Rally. I just like kept in contact with them and they wanted someone to gravel. So that was me, but they didn't have a mountain bike. So Roger Tellis kind of hooked it up through Factor. Yeah, exactly. And that's where the Factor partnership started. And then at the end of 2022, I went across, so in 2023, I went straight into Factor across everything, road, gravel, and mountain bike. And then I just had some nice successes kind of all on the way.

27:54But yeah, to answer the question about do I get paid? Yeah, I get paid from everybody you listed. So like Factor, Schwab, Easton, Castelli, these are all like, they pay me. So that's amazing. Yeah. You know, I'm fortunate like I don't live a crazy lifestyle. You know, I don't have like a Richard Mille watch that I wear in races. You mean you're not wearing something like that you could just basically bludgeon somebody to death with? Yeah. As well as a chronograph tie on your wrist when you're racing off-road. I've got a Garmin watch that I buy because they won't sponsor me, but I like their stuff.

28:34If anyone from Garmin is listening, who sponsored Unbound as well. Yeah, but no, it's been good. And I organized a small event at home that kicks me a little bit of stuff to do some biking. I like the joke that my wife is a physician, so really I don't have to work. It's just a choice. so but no it's it's um it's good it's getting harder and harder i think um i do think the days the privateer are limited at least the way that it is right now or the way it has been um is that because it's becoming more professional and it's not going to be possible to compete at the sharp end if it's just you or is it because it's just too expensive to do on your own it's just not lucrative enough so people will just stop doing it?

29:26I think probably a combination of both.

29:31Gravel, as it is right now, is you can have success as an individual. But I think as teams develop and because the argument right now is like, oh, it doesn't matter if you have a team or not, you need to be there when things get hard. But they will matter once you have a team of five or six and you can start playing around with different tactics and using breakaways to put pressure on people who aren't in the breakaways or don't have a teammate up there you know it's similar to road racing i think the dynamics of course are still different but it will i think as as numbers change i think just the way racing happens will change um cost is definitely part of it um both it will cost you lots of money to do these things but also um it'll be difficult to be at the front end without the support of um like that infrastructure even i know pete's had pete's deadna has had a hard time like in years past just like with people kind of being like oh he's got a swan here and it's mechanic guy and no one else has this like that's a huge it's a huge advantage but it is what it is like if you want one and it's like I would just get a sponsor pay for it like yeah Pete has a sponsor that like foots that bill like I would I wouldn't say no yeah um I don't know anybody that would so yeah it's it's all that stuff combined I think you're just gonna see see changes come to uh the sport and the driver tier plus sponsors just you know why because you could get a conglomerate of sponsors together to make a team like with multiple riders and then you're just gonna see stuff like road It's like, why sponsor an individual when you could sponsor a whole team for the cost-benefit kind of thing, right?

31:14Yeah, I totally get that. Is there a sort of divide amongst the riders where you've got people like yourself who have come from a professional career on the road? And then, you know, you just listed loads of people there as well that you write, you know, Lawrence Tendam, Nico Roach, Lachlan Morton. But he sort of crosses over in this weird way that we can chat about in a sec. like Pete Stettina, you know, people that big careers on the road. In the latter stages of what would be a road career, they shift into gravel. They've potentially made some more money than other folk in the background because they've been doing cycling in this professionalized way for longer.

31:49But more than that, they've had the opportunity to train and receive, you know, great support for a long time. And then you've got the people who kind of maybe come from somewhere else. Maybe they haven't come from anywhere. they've just moved into gravel and that's what they do and they're possibly a bit younger but they don't have the the road background the ex-pro background is there a suspicion between the two i you guys coming over here taking our jobs sort of thing oh yeah how does that how does that sort of play out because it does look if you look at your average you know start list it's a kind of half and half from where i'm sitting you know people that i've no offense to them but i've never not come across yet and then loads of names that i recognized from five ten years ago yeah it's uh i mean it's a combination right like i think it's tough because we have lots if you've done it right or at least in my opinion of doing it right you've made contacts and connections while you've been racing which is that's huge when it comes to the support side of things and you've just you've raced at a very very high level which puts you at a physiological advantage in addition to the support you're going to get so i think it's it's that said though it's funny right because you'll see guys who have raced at a much higher level than me that aren't as that it's not they're just like walking away in these gravel races yeah i think there's there's a degree of assumption i was gonna say arrogance but i think assumption that it's like oh just coming from i'm coming in front of a World Tour, I'll be able to just win this.

33:26And then they get smoked. And rightfully so, because these guys are super fit. I think one of the most impressive things I've ever seen is Keegan Sponson's race at Worlds in 2023. I think that was it. When it was in Italy. He started in the hundreds and finished fifth. Just losing a sprint to Valverde with a pretty significant crash in there as well. And every single one of the... Anybody with World Tour points that year, so any road racer effectively was started like front row the UCI still like they place UCI points ahead of any sort of gravel like Keegan had won Unbound that year I think arguably the best gravel cyclist on the planet and he was in the hundreds because he didn't have very many or any UCI points that's mad but it's like you have like Wout Van Aert and Wout's Wout obviously you know he'd done one gravel race and they're like yeah front row look at all the UCI points the guy has he's won like three stages in the tour this year and they're like Well, yeah, but I don't know if that's the same thing.

34:28And you get one year for free. I do think it's like if you come from road racing at like an elite European level and you come over to gravel, it's like you kind of get the first year, if not the first six months at least with like you don't really have to train that hard. Like you just have so much residual fitness. Even I had like that first year. I was like drinking beers like crazy. And I was on whatever gravel used to be. It's like this is great. I can have pizza and just like not really worry about diet. And like, as long as I focus on training like a little bit, I would be really good. And then it's like, I think I made it to like August and was like totally blown and just like trying to survive.

35:06And then I knew it's like in 2023, like I just have to get like right back to it and like double down, like train properly, find like, I always find a balance between training and like the reality I have now. um but yeah there's i feel bad for young kids because they want what we have and they see it like they just want to come in they want to get free bikes and paid for and all the clothes and things and stuff and like like i know it seems like this is just how it should happen but like we i've been doing this for 20 years that's why this happens like some of them it's like you've been doing this for 20 months like you you've won a local gravel race it's like you're not going to get stuff but like you start talking to people and it's really important to build those contacts and start growing like right from the get-go um but i don't think at the elite level at least from my perception i don't think that there's really animosity at like the top end where you know you see the the world tour guys coming in like you're like on one hand you're kind of like it is a bit of an eye roll and they just like walk in like boom get top dollar but it's like If they start with great results right off the bat, well, I guess you're worth it then.

36:17It's hard to argue. It is still bike racing, and it's more professionalized than ever across the board of all cycling right now. And performance is the language that everybody still understands. Yeah. It must be hard, though. I mean, this is absolute conjecture, but I imagine there is a much bigger incentive for Wout van Aerts sponsors for him to show up in a gravel race than there is for him personally to show up in a gravel race where his focus is road. There's a good chance, A, he's not going to perform, you know, he's not going to get a great result. He might, he might not. he also might you know he could jeopardize other things going on um in his season because he could crash but he's presumably i would guess there's a good incentive for him to be there because his sponsors go this is where a lot of media attention is placed so let's get you on the front line and then there's the double kind of bind of unfairness where the uci go oh well okay this one's a sanctioned race we get to choose how people line up you get to go on the front because stars, you know, inverted commas, you've got more UCI points, but doesn't it look good when we get the pictures at the start that we've got these big name riders on the front of the grid?

37:36So it does sort of seem unfair. I think if I was, you know, a younger rider trying to break into a cycling career of any sort, and I totally agree with you, you can't just expect to have the four or five top level sponsors sponsoring you initially when you've only been doing it for a couple of seasons you have to earn your chops but equally you must be like bloody hell like this is really unfair what are we you know you kind of wring your hands and go what are we supposed to do then um because there's there's in this in those instances anyway with particularly with uci sanction stuff why bother it's not designed for you it's not a showcase for you i don't to be honest like yeah That's my honest answer.

38:21It's like I don't do UCI races. I don't love the UCI in general. Just I think if you ask any road racer, you spend enough time in the sport, you kind of see it as like, you guys are in it for the safety, you're in it for the money. It kind of seems like maybe it's the latter. Which is fine. I got a hard job. But no, when I stopped racing on the road, it was to do something different and certainly 2022 and 2023 it was different for sure i remember i wanted to do worlds in italy in 23 i can't remember what happened while i couldn't do it i think i was just like oh yeah i was just like super burnt out and then i also hurt i kind of like injured myself i did like badlands that year um it's like my first real ultra gravel race and then my knee like afterwards like my body just failed me um like pretty epically uh so it's just like that ended my season which i was super bummed because i think that it that italian worlds would have been super cool um but since then it's like the courses have been arguably kind of silly like pretty road racy like people using road bikes or like um you know 35 mils like tires to do it which i don't really think is a gravel race um so yeah the the uci stuff like we don't really have a ton of options in north america either you know there's lots of i think european world cup type things and i think they're probably a safer event because it's ucis it's got to be they have certain checks and balances and i'm sure the courses are can be great it's just we don't have a lot of them in North America and I don't go out of my way to do the ones that we do have.

40:12I have no interest in doing gravel worlds ever. That's just, but I've been doing this a long time. So it's like, that's what I, yeah, when I stopped racing on the road, it's like I want to do fun new stuff and I don't want to just go back to doing like a knobby or tire version of road racing. Yeah. Which is, I guess, I don't know, like maybe this is something that you and other riders think about, maybe you don't, but Double Edged Sword because you're, or maybe you're not doing the UCI races but you're racing and you're breaking records and you're putting in exciting performances to watch and you're propelling the sport and unfortunately the bigger the sport gets the more seductive it looks to the UCI they're not going to put money into something that isn't getting a lot of attention but then their involvement is the very thing in a way that you don't really Rob doesn't really want to be particularly adjacent to or a part of I don't want to sort of outline and say you don't want anything to do with them at all because who knows in the future the future is unknown right but is that a funny position to fight does it do you ever look at it like that and think it's a funny position to find yourself in the more successful the thing you're doing the more corrupted it you know that is a very loaded term but potentially the more different it may become as it morphs into something commercial that's perhaps a software way of saying it no for sure it's uh yeah you have riders elevating the sport significantly at like just a white hot speed right it's you know gravel is just going becoming more like seemingly more popular and like just more professional every single year which is you know the uci was kind of dabbling in the interest of it i think in 2022 when i first started doing it now it's like they're firmly a hold of it um i don't know if there's i think what they have like as far as like tech restrictions it's just there's a lot of crossover from road but uh i mean we made something that's yeah the thing that we get paid well to do or the some people get paid very well to do it's definitely caught the eye of the uci and then i kind of they want a piece of that and what's interesting is that uh there's not a lot of road races that exist out there without some level of uci this or that right whether it's it's like well it's got to be insured or this a lot of gravel races are still very just like fully rogue like there's no uci like the majority of the races in north america are not uci affiliated like the lifetime series belgian wall for ride series um any of the local stuff that i do just all like renegade which i love like it's it's a different vibe and a different experience that i do enjoy that the more serious stuff gets and i know there's there's pros and cons and you know gives and takes like i think the uci races are probably safer i was kind of touching that briefly like but i haven't really done any of them so i'll just have to take their word for it i don't i yeah it's uh it's funny yeah the better we do the quicker the sport will change into something that I never wanted.

43:19But by the time it gets there, I think maybe my time in it necessarily will certainly not be at the level it is right now. I reckon a while ago, the bike computer market looked all sewn up. There were two big players, end of. Kind of like how once upon a time group sets meant either Shimano or Campagnolo. So there's a wonderful synergy in the fact SRAM busted open the group set market back in 2006, and now SRAM's computer arm, Hammerhead, is blowing the doors off in the same way with the Hammerhead Karoo. My favourite thing about the Karoo is how much it's like a smartphone. So the touchscreen is really crisp and punchy, so data and mapping, which is way more like a phone's mapping than a classic bike GPS, by the way.

44:04Those things are super clear. But unlike a phone, battery life is a huge 35 hours with GPS on and your ride recording, plus it's also way smaller. it's up there with the smallest head units given what it does and it does loads from predicting gradients in real time to making routes on the fly to running apps like spotify and it will even tell you how fast you're going there's a whole lot more that we'll get into in other episodes but for anyone who just needs things now now now head over to cyclist.co.uk and search hammerhead crew 3 to read our in-depth review and find out why we gave it our cyclist recommended badge of honor.

44:40Then head to hammerhead.io and use the promo code cyclist to get a free heart rate monitor with every purchase of a Karoo. Just make sure you put everything in the basket first before applying that promo code. Cyclist promo code hammerhead.io is where you can find all the gear.

45:01It kind of pains me to admit this as a cyclist but I rather like cars and I think I've just been driving around in the nicest car I will ever, ever drive. And that's the Maserati Gricali, which it turns out is what happens if an Italian supercar company designed an SUV for people like me, for cyclists. Now the Gricali is fast, like 0 to 60 in 4.1 seconds fast, but it is also, it's just delightful to sit in. It has the legroom of a first class flight to Singapore. It's arguably more luxurious inside than my own house. And yet I kind of can't believe I'm saying it because of what it is. It's a genuinely practical car.

45:37I could happily chuck a dirty bike in the back of it, then do the shopping and then go and pick up the rest of the family. Now, I've been driving the electric Fulgori version, which has the equivalent of a 557 brake horsepower dual electric motor with a 360 mile range, which sounds incredibly impressive, I know, but let's just put that in cycling terms, which we actually understand. That is the same power output as a thousand Tadej Pogacchas all racing Milan San Remo at once and then racing back again. Now as well as the electric version there are multiple engine options too and prices start from£59 ,990 which when you think about it is something of a bargain given Pogaccha's Tour de France winning Colnago from last year sold at auction for£143 ,000.

46:25You could have bought two brand new Maserati Gricalis for that. Now you can find out more and also find out where your local Maserati dealer is at maserati.com where else. So that's maserati.com and check out the Maserati Gricali.

46:45Sort of switching attention to road a little bit, looking at your palmares and your racing calendar from yeah 15 years as a road rider you've got a lot of things in there like european races catalonia tour the suisse voltairel garve but there's also uh you know it was a heavy american calendar at one point tour of utah tour of california usa pro cycling challenge uh the tour of the gila as well and you know got some really good results in there too But if you look through those races, none of those American races exist anymore. And I've heard it said that gravel is now where young American talent has to go because there's not a kind of grassroots and then slow kind of like step, step, step up to a pro level for road like there used to be.

47:38so it's a very long winded way of getting to a question of when you see someone like george hincapi starting modern adventure pro cycling which is his new kind of road it's a road outfit and i think i'll do some gravel stuff as well as almost like a way of getting america back into professional cycling having fallen out of love with it what do you make of it do you think we need more people like him it's it's there for the taking there's an appetite for america to fall back in to love with road again do you see it as maybe making reparations for previous misdemeanors because obviously hink happy was on armstrong's team and there's a good argument to say that armstrong's behavior um was the reason that america fell out of love with road cycling because once upon a time this guy's going out with cheryl cole and being pictured at the White House sort of thing.

48:36What do you make of all that? Is it a big question to unpack, but I think you're well positioned because you spam all these categories and you've got the experience head to kind of give a bit of an answer to that. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a different time than it was when I started racing. I'm acutely aware of it, but it's never more so than when I talk to younger riders because I can't articulate to them what it would look like to go through the sport right now because the sport that I went through doesn't exist. We have some of the small level races, like an amateur level, but there is no step two and step three.

49:16Or at least they're much smaller now. Redlands Classic still exists. That's still kind of a big one in the U.S. Tour Heal still exists and Tour of Boast still exists. So those are kind of like, those are the big ones to do. But like the marquee events like Utah, Colorado, California, you know, back in the day, Georgia, Missouri, those are all gone. And it's because we don't like, I don't think we have the sponsors in the U.S. like, and we don't have the teams. It's cool to see Hinn Cappie's team will be at races like Redlands and I think Bose, maybe Gila. In addition to their obviously very heavy European schedule, which they're having great success at for a first year team.

49:56It's been really impressive to see. It's way better than I. I joke because I know a bunch of guys on the program and I'm like, oh, Rally 2.0. And we just kind of chuckle. It's like, well, hopefully a little bit better. And it has been significantly better. They're executing very well. As in Rally, your team was trying to do something similar. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were the American team trying to like make it in Europe. Okay. Yeah. The Hinkabby team's already surpassed any successes. We have half right. do i think it's it's george's way of reparations i don't think i don't think george cares about that kind of stuff i mean like i think he just he likes being part of cycling um these guys don't need to do anything and i don't think there's like a sense of you know doing it in like an apologetic nature i think it's kind of he can do it like i think it's it's a way to be involved in the sport there's like i mean owning a team is like if you've ever known anybody to own any kind of sports team like there is some sort of ego to it which is awesome because it's like he's a competitive guy i mean lance is hyper competitive guy i don't know these guys but like you know it's got to be sweet for him to just go over there and like he's an american guy and then there's that kind of nature to it so they come back and like you know be in it again right um and And yeah, I think for whatever his reasons are, I do think that's going to build momentum.

51:29And hopefully, because then you're going to get another guy who's got even deeper pockets than the people behind Modern Adventure. They're going to be like, you know, screw these guys. Like, I'll show you what a team looks like. And it's like, hopefully, I kind of would love to see that start to build. And that's going to be how we start to build out, I think, a renaissance of North American cycling again. So there is that avenue to go. And I think very potentially you start to see gravel as a part of these teams. Yeah. Because you can, I think, recycle infrastructure through it, whether it be staff or vehicles.

52:06Most bike brands make a very good gravel bike now. So there's all these pieces that can go together. and you can sell sort of a nicer package to your sponsors. It's like, hey, we're going to do Volta Catalunia, but we're also going to be at Unbound and we're going to do Redlands. And then there's some use, like you kind of have this nice thing. And then those riders are very capable of going back and forth. So you don't necessarily need, like Four Invermesh is a perfect example, like Wins Grapple Worlds. And then also is like crushing it in classics and like key domestique for uh tatt a for like no on center and things like that so yeah i think it's it's an interesting time and modern adventure could kind of be as far as north american goes kind of that pioneer in like what the next phase of the sport looks like in north america because because he it needs to change in some way because it is otherwise it's just going to be dead yeah I mean, otherwise it's going to be dead.

53:07It's not dead yet. Far from it. If anything, it's on the rise again because of the things we talked about, particularly driven by gravel. But what was it that you think, when you were racing for predominantly American-based road teams, what was it that you felt was putting that race calendar, screwing it into the dust and putting North American cycling on its knees, where once upon a time it had been really popular? I think COVID was the big one. It was already fading before COVID, but for whatever reason, just right around there, just like that was a death sentence for her. I don't know if it's because all those organizations were running it so tight and their margins were so lean that missing one year just killed them.

53:58That could definitely be a big part of it. But I mean, you know, race organizers, they don't make millions of dollars, right? I mean, some do, but like most don't. And I think that was definitely a big part of it. The only World Tour race actually canceled before COVID, Tour of California. They just, the main sponsor pulled out and the race folded. So that was that. So yeah, and then team, I mean, we're just, it's kind of guilty for it too. you know our mandate with reality was to keep growing and you know be in the tour de france which was like you know never really a reality not a short-term reality for us at least and um in doing that you know or how are you gonna do that you go race in europe and well if you're if you start moving all your infrastructure over there you start having less and less interest in you know american racing north american racing and then there's less dollars going into that unless it really interests at all.

54:57And maybe if those races do exist or not, because it's not affecting us, we're not going to be there anyways. Actually, that just makes it easier for us. We can go over to Europe and focus even more over there. So it ironically was like teams pushing to be over in Europe more and more also, I think, affected the success of the North American scene. so it's i i think that's that all that just kind of happened in one kind of like big succession from like 29 the end of 2019 to say the end of 2022 when it was really just sort of like american cycling had just been fully succeeded because 23 and 24 it was kind of gone like there just wasn't really there weren't teams there weren't really big races it was just bad and i think you're sort of seeing like a bit of a heartbeat come back um so i mean hopefully it improves because yeah it is it's super hard now for like young riders how to move move up yeah it must be quite hard i think or i'd imagine yeah i imagine it'd be quite hard feeling like you can put everything into doing the thing that you're naturally predisposed to doing and loving and talented at training really hard working living like a monk getting the best results you can and then ultimately the success is just is not down to you it's down to will people put on an arena in which to compete will sponsors keep sponsoring a team so that there's a place to keep all of the bikes or a way of retaining the staff that work out how to get you from A to B and do the mechanic work and feed everybody.

56:42And because I just find it so perplexing about cycling, which is one of the oldest sort of competitive sports going, that so much of the power rests in the organisations. Whereas if you look at, from my UK perspective, football, soccer, so much of the power seems to rest with the players now. You know, if somebody says, I'm going to go and I want to go over here for this much money. Just their name has such cachet that they can call and their agents can call quite a lot of the shots. And maybe in cycling, someone like Tadej Pogacar or Ivanapol, these are modern racers coming through that might have more of that cachet and that power.

57:27But still it seems that cycling is this strange, sort of almost like bonded labour. Does it ever look like that to you? Once you're in it, you're at the behest of somebody else, and it's very difficult to kind of break it so that you're in charge of your own destiny, so that you're not just indebted to somebody to keep on doing the thing until they go, hey, we're putting the plug. Sorry, see you later. There's no more career anymore. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely the sport. Well, yeah, I've personally been fortunate to be in it for as long as I have. I mean, I'd head far from a smooth run. I've been very close to having a job quite a few times through my career, but kind of stuck through it and had successes that carried me onward.

58:07But yeah, the sport is very, very cutthroat. I think the biggest mistake riders can make is thinking they're in any way, like unless you are an absolute stud or like, you know, rock star, like male or female, like you, every single person other than the person who owns a team is replaceable. And that's a sport. That's cycling. And that's a very harsh reality a lot of people I don't think realize. I learned it early enough in my career to depreciate it. But as it is now, I've seen riders not get renewed or told they're not coming back because they just assumed they were going to be fine forever.

58:56And you realize very quickly, unless you've had good results, you can't get a job somewhere else on another team. Teams are always at or near capacity each year. So for you to come onto the team, that means either someone else is going to have to get, either they will have to find budget or someone else is going to have to get fired. So that just means you're just taking someone else's position. But that goes the same for every person in that organization. Directors, one years, mechanics. there's a hundred people lined up to do it for less than you yeah which is scary right um and it's tough to build loyalty in that as well like and it's not that different on like a privateer side of things you have a bit more control obviously because if it's just you you you don't have somebody else like trying to strike your job but at the same time if you know your sponsors they're always going to want the best value for their dollar and if they decide that there's a younger, faster version of you that they can pay the same or less, then I guess I just don't think in a lot of, even a lot of brands right now, there's still, it's business.

1:00:09Like, loyalty comes down to it a bit. And if you find a way to make yourself valuable, that's a big thing, but it's still business. And I don't know how to change that in this sport because we're so performance heavy. As long as someone's getting a result, they seemingly the most valuable person in the room so it's it's it's tough because it's it's a harsh sport and everybody at some point will fall victim to that yeah that one of the greatest i was pretty proud of my racing career because i think i achieved more than i ever i ever thought possible but one of the most proud moments was that i got to choose when i stopped racing on the road i wasn't pletly has to leave it's us very happy to like know when i was done and choose that point to walk away because it allowed me to just have a lot more.

1:01:00I do find it kind of perverse and sorry if you can hear some drilling in the background my neighbors just decided it was time to put us some shells. I do find it yeah kind of perverse or just sort of yeah just strange in a way. As you say there's not that much loyalty in cycling as a whole because of the business the shaky business that it is in a way it's just it's a victim of itself. But yet as a sport in the way it's conducted, people are really quite good to each other. You know, there's an etiquette. And yeah, sure, someone right now is listening to this being like doping. Yeah, right. There's loads of cheating and cycling.

1:01:38And maybe who knows how these things kind of like look now putting that to one side. If you see your average bike race, it doesn't look like a game of American football or soccer or basketball where you have people doing like deliberately fouling each other in a way to achieve success for their team i.e breaking the rules in that moment to do something in order to win most bike races are one in a kind of quite a gentlemanly they're fought in a gentlemanly way and they're done so with pride and and often humility i kind of find it mad how it's mismatched with the greater organization around it.

1:02:17Yeah, it is, I think. I think it's a beautiful sport in that sense. And like one that I've loved to have been a part of for as long as I have. And it's that mutual respect through, I think, kind of mutual suffering too. It's like, you just, you know, you know all of these riders. Like you're just, like, you know, Lachlan and I have been suffering together for like 15, 16 years now. Like you just, and I think, Kind of what you said there, there's this mutual respect for one another because of what you've been through. And if, you know, if they're at this point in the race or, you know, they survived in that front group or whatever it is, you know, they must have been putting in some hard work behind the scenes like, you know, you have.

1:03:02So there's, yeah, this respect there. And it's kind of, and tactics are tactics. It's similar to other racing type sports. it's not necessarily the strongest person wins the race, but a lot of the times the strongest person does win the race or they're quite good. But I always loved that about the sport. You could, or at least I could justify my happiness at the end if I felt I did everything right and you just got beaten by someone who was just clearly better than you. Not because I never wanted to give myself the excuse. and I want to say I was racing I mean like more so the road because I think there's lots of places to make improvements what I do now I'm just I'm tired um but in the road it's like I never wanted to have that excuse of just like if only I would have worked a little bit harder if I would have just sacrificed a little bit more I was already sacrificing so much it's like well I might as just sacrifice everything go all in and just do everything I possibly can because then if I lose and I get beat, well, it's just, they're just clearly more talented than I am.

1:04:13And that's what it boils down to. It doesn't boil down to like, oh, well, if only I would have like really dialed in the nutrition or it's like, I should have like, I should have paid a little bit more to have someone motor pace me for a couple more sessions. It's like, I should have ridden my time trial bike more. It's like, I did all of that stuff to the absolute best of my ability. So it's like, it's a neat sport in that sense, right? It's like, you can have respect for your other riders and yourself and everything. and there's just i mean in the same breath you can definitely disrespect a rider because they like maybe you don't respect what they do or you like there's people you raise over the years and it's like you just know they're clearly not like you know a clean rider like you know proper ethics and like those are always a bit more frustrating but it is what it is that's like get over it but i think i was lucky too in like the broad spectrum of like uh ethics and sport and kindness i'm sure those people that were cheating when I was racing but I was by and large pretty fortunate to not have to deal with that like I don't think I I know I never saw drugs being taken I never saw anybody like knew anybody who did them personally like during my racing career it's like you know I knew like Ryder Heschel or something like this it's like that's that but like when I was racing with him like I don't think any of that was happening when I was racing with other guys I never exposed to it ever and that's because the price that was paid just before my time which made it harder to get sponsors but it also meant that us as riders got to race in a much cleaner era yeah i mean i've you know i've i've heard that said before that last little bit not to excuse those riders who are involved at the time but there was a sort of they went down and other people kind of them there was a cleaner way ahead of them but that you know we're getting some pretty murky waters.

1:06:06I said at the top of the show, this isn't the sort of trying to get the scoops kind of podcast. This is a fun, lovely chat about cycling, which it has been. And so having dragged us right down, I'd like to leave on some more of a highs. Tell us what's coming up. You mentioned Italy at the top of the show, but what are your A races that you're looking towards this season? And where can we see you riding? Where are you going to If I watch one race with Rob Britton in the next couple of months, which one should I tune in for? Probably I'm excited for the Traca 560. The course is just really attractive, but I think that's the distance that suits me quite well.

1:06:51I've done the 200 twice, but yeah, just wanted to do the 560. And then obviously Undowned XL, try to repeat there. Those are probably the two big ones. between then I do the Hills Scrabble here in Italy this weekend and I'll do Sea Otter Classic in California which is kind of like my second home so yeah quite looking forward to that too nice and it must be pretty good to be where you are at the moment because you're from Regina Regina Regina how do you say in Canada and I think is it right now it's probably like minus 15 or something? So I grew up in Regina, but I live in Victoria, British Columbia.

1:07:31So yeah, I've been there for 20, more or less 20 years. I went to Calgary for a little bit while my wife went to med school there. But yeah, I don't know how cold it is in Regina. My folks still live there and they're always colder than wherever I am in the world. But yeah, man, it's still Canada back home, but I live in the nicest part of Canada. Brilliant. Nice. Well, Rob, thanks so much for joining us. And yeah, good luck with the rest of the season and hope to see Defending Crown at Unbound XL as well as, I mean, Tracker's another one. 560 kilometers. Man, that's, I can't even begin to get my head around that.

1:08:11My longest ride at the moment is probably about 50. No, I love doing it. So it's fun for me. Yeah, I enjoyed it a lot. So it's just an adventure. Rob Britton, ladies and gents. Again, thank you, Rob, for joining us on the show. And I didn't say at the beginning, but as you will have worked out, that was recorded long before Tracker in March, just before Rob was racing the Hills Gravel Race in Treviso in Italy. Since then, Rob completed the Tracker. We don't know where he came because for whatever reason, reasons known only to Tracker organisers, the Tracker 560 that Rob competed in, which he completed, doesn't have any race results.

1:08:53no mechanicals according to his Instagram which is good well that's good, great news for Factor's new bike well even better news the man who did win Victor Bussoni is also a Factor rider you can read an interview with him on cyclist.co.uk if you search for that dominating the gravel peloton is Factor, and also they had Roman Bardet who just, I don't know came fifth go Roman not bad, also been on the podcast also So, Harry Tanfield, check out our social media, because we use social media in that, cyclist underscore mag on Instagram, and there's some great little stories, because Ewan, our colleague, went and did Tracker, and managed to finish it, I believe, and also take some nice videos.

1:09:36One of them being of Harry Tanfield, friend of the show, Harry Tanfield, who had a really, do you see it? You saw that, Will? His weird, his homemade aaroness, or homemade gravel bike. He had two. aero on the forks, the little fairings. Yes. And he had some spongy bits on his bars as well. I did really love that. So he basically says like, last night I was kind of twiddling my thumbs, feeling creative and a bit bored. So he made himself some fairings on his suspension fork legs on his Ribble, which looked like they made out of kind of, I don't know, gaffer tape and some pipe lagging. And then went to a hardware store and for the extra comfort for putting your, resting your elbows on the bars because you can't have, can you have, I don't know, maybe you can have TT bars, but people don't because it's not a UCI sanctioned thing.

1:10:22Well, I don't think they necessarily want the TT bars, but you'd be able to have your hands on the hoods and rest your forearms on the tops. So he got like a kind of neoprene sleeve for, again, for some piping or something and cut it off and gaffered that onto his handlebars. And I thought that was very sweet because you don't see, you know, because that's the sort of thing that you or I would do. like a normal person would do. And that's what's kind of really charming about gravel. I think that's what the reaction for it was from the readers and stuff. This is the kind of thing that we like to see because it's just like a normal person.

1:11:01It's not like UCI-sanctioned events where it's all very, you know, this is exactly how it has to be. This is exactly how the sponsors want it and made it. This bicycle has to fit in this very specific box. Your hoods can no longer be any closer than 36 centimetres or whatever, all that stuff. No, it's very true. Where did Harry finish? Do you know? Yeah, I just looked it up. 49th, I believe. Let me just double check that before I wrong him. 49th in the track of 360, which is a very competitive race. Very competitive. Excellent. Well, go Harry. Go Ribble Outliers, who he was riding for. Check out that podcast with Harry, which was a couple of episodes ago, where he was probably talking about preparing for the tracker.

1:11:43I mean, what do you say now? Would you do the tracker? Could you do the track or well? I'll do it. Easy. Well, Ewan did the 200. I think he's a sneaky, strong bike rider, but it seemed like he had a good time. Did he finish without any problems? Well, he did have a couple of mechanicals. Were they of his own doing? Well, he said in maybe like 50k or so, the seat post clamp went. so he was riding very crouched for a little bit before before he got managed to get that fixed at the first at the feed stop by the Guava mechanics who's riding Guava bikes so they helped him Guava and then I think he had a puncture as well but apart from that I think he's alright what are you going to do about a puncture but yeah there we go well go Ewan and Will's just automatically signed himself up for the 200 next year so excellent we'll all be there I've got quite I've got an an intrigue at doing just one of the really long ones just because i never would ride something that distance and just feel like maybe like it kind of thing you'd like to try i definitely yeah particularly when uh rob was talking about unbound xl and riding like riding through the night that was something else harry also had on his bike which i loved he didn't have the proper light so he went to decathlon or some little sports shop and bought like yeah bought like a 20 euro light and gaffer tape that onto his bars where everyone else has got like super high-end machined aluminium exposure lights costing like hundreds and hundreds of pounds.

1:13:16But yeah, when Rob's talking about riding through the night and then seeing the sun come up, I mean, that's, yeah, something like that is, in of itself, that's the reason to do it. It's not to complete the distance, it's to have those experiences. Yeah, I've got no idea how I would fare in that kind of environment. And also, if you look at the track, obviously it starts, it's based around Toronto and the 560 then obviously will go to the Pyrenees. Yeah. So I think you get that reward of doing something like that as well compared to I feel like Unbound would probably just be pretty brutal. I think Unbound would be quite relentless, wouldn't it?

1:13:51Because it's just, from what I gather anyway, just flat, dusty prairies. Rolling. Featureless. Flat, not mountain. Yeah, not mountain, yeah, rolling. Featureless, rolling prairies. That's what it seems like. that's what it seems like I'm going to be to Kansas maybe I'll go one time but we should also shout if we're talking about Tracker 560 was won by Maddy Nut British rider so there are results for 560 well you know the winner just the winner you know the winner okay for everyone else it's just a bit of fun yeah I think so I think they even call it Tracker Adventure rather than 560 so it's all about you know it's all about the experience but she did win it and we're very patriotic about it good well smashed it well go britain go rob and go britain the country and on that note i'm going to bid you adieu and i'll see you in a couple of weeks time will for another podcast i think with matthias uh or i think i'm going to say matthias i'm going to look that up before i introduce him next time matthias wreck who is the little trek head coach which was another podcast will didn't do for various reasons but he will listen to and we will talk about and i can assure you is very good and also you'll be on with robin yeah i'm recording intro outro with robin for magdalene valiaire's world champion the french world champion canadian french canadian world champion i'm really you know kansas canada france she's probably quebecois all right i've got some yeah okay great there we go she speaks french so yes there we go it's the it's the cold i blame the cold i'm gonna go for a lie down right rob rob will that wasn't even a joke see you later See ya.