Races – Page 2 – Rodeo Adventure Labs, LLC

Podcast: The Atlas Mountain Race with Ashley Carelock

The Atlas Mountain Race sets off for its third edition next week. In anticipation of the bike packing race, we brought in Ashley Carelock to look back at her Moroccan experiences in last year’s October edition of the race, while Stephen Fitzgerald dropped into the chat to add his own perspective from his outing to Africa in 2020.

If you are interested in following along to the 2023 Atlas Mountain Race, be sure to check out the race website, here. Additionally, back in the depth of the pandemic, Stephen penned this expansive write up about what that race was like. You can find that here. Lastly, Ashley eloquently wrote more about her race on her blog, which you can access here.

The Rodeo Podcast: A field recording with Bobby Wintle

and Drew at Rodeo Labs talks about launching the Show Pony

Part one of the podcast picks up with Logan Jones-Wilkins rambling through the middle of America. After leaving the muddy grass field at the Rule of Three in Bentonville, Arkansas, Logan was on his way to Emporia, Kansas to race Unbound Gravel. With time to spare and capitalizing on his proximity to Stillwater, Oklahoma, an idea was born– a Rodeo Labs Podcast field recording. The first field recording is a ride in Bobby Wintle’s 4-Runner. Logan experiences some of Bobby’s favorite roads, which didn’t even make this years course!

The Rodeo Podcast: Daniel Connell on the 2022 Tour Divide

When Daniel graduated from UC Santa Barbara, the Tour Divide was not on his radar. However, shortly after Daniel discovered a new passion– bicycle touring. His first bicycle tour was to Columbia, it was a crash course on touring and how to maintain a bike over a six month trip. Daniel has not stopped touring. When Daniel discovered the Tour Divide, he was hooked. The first foray was touring the divide, but the the following two years he has raced it. Now Daniel is patiently waiting for next year. On the podcast, Daniel recounts his experiences from the event. Rain was persistent throughout, start to finish. In between, there were awed moments with wildlife, mishaps with bear spray and quickly fostered friendships on the trail.

Adventure Flaanimal Tour Divide

The Trail That Was

The more I go to events in the gravel world, the more I realize how serpentine the paths are to the start lines. Nowhere is that more the case than the Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder. Or at least, nowhere is it more apparent, since you have five days of mingling to share your life with former and future strangers.

On the Trail, there were olympians, world champions, graphic designers, architecture students, chefs, and wind energy executives. There were tech bros, soccer moms, emergency room doctors, and inflatable hot tub owners. There were snowboarders, triathletes, moto drivers, photographers and vloggers. All waking up in tents every morning – or in the middle of the night to drops of wayward sprinklers – to drag their tired, half cleaned bodies across one of the most spectacular ranges in the country. It is glorious, it’s weird, it is Oregon.

Gravel Race Oregon Race Report

Spring Surfing: The Mid South and Croatan Buck-Fifty

By Logan Jones-Wilkins

The last couple weeks I have been surfing. You know, the proper radical stuff. You know, getting stoked.

“You just drop in, smack the lip… Waapah! Just drop down… Swoopah! And then after that, you just drop in, ride the barrel, and get pitted, so pitted.” – Surfer Guy, 2012

That’s it — that has been me. Minus the ocean, and the water, and the surfboard, and the crazy Californian energy. Nonetheless, there have been waves, I have been riding, and I have been getting pitted. So pitted.

Croatan Mid South

The Rodeo Podcast: Jay Petervary’s Tour Divide

Photo credit Eddie Clark.

As bike enthusiasts or even, dare I say, bike nerds, we obsess over bikes, gear, weight, suspension (or lack thereof), geometry, and tires. We can’t help but keep track of what are the the latest trends and tech. So when bikepacking.com releases their the famous list of participants bikes and photos tackling an event, we can’t help but ogle at the myriad of choices. We are giddy with excitement for what is to come; often untold hardship and profound moments for the participants. On the other side dot watchers are all over checking in at various points throughout the day only imaging the vast terrain that yields slow, but steady progress.

Bikepacking Tour Divide

Unbound to be Broken: My 200 miles of flint, hills and harmony

My dad, a lifelong educator, has a favorite saying whenever he takes a group of his students camping:

“There are two types of people in life, like in s’mores making, there are ‘Browners’ and there are ‘Burners.’ Burners play with the fire, while Browner’s have trust in their time.”

While that saying is predominantly about soft, goopy, pseudo plastic desserts, the debate applies perfectly to an event like Unbound. In a world full of Burners, it can pay to be a Browner.

But enough about marshmallows! Here is the story of my Unbound:

Rodeo Pro Gravel // Co2uT Race Report

If you had told me years ago that Rodeo would be sponsoring a gravel racing team in the future I would have laughed in your face. For a long time I was very anti sponsorship. I didn’t believe in “paying people to ride our bikes”. I also didn’t like the attitudes that I had seen in sponsored athletes in previous experiences I had had with some high level racing teams. I had seen a very offputting sense of entitlement on display in those teams and it bummed me out. More than once I’ve heard sponsored athletes telling me or a fan: “I don’t really like this product, I just get paid to ride it”. It made it seem like some racers had attitudes of entitlement, and few attitudes are a bigger turnoff for me.

Co2UT Colorado Desert Gravel Fruita Gravel bikes rodeo pro gravel team

The Atlas Mountain Race miniseries

Much like a release of any thrilling docuseries on Netflix, the opening episode sets the stage– a cast of characters introduced, various pathways illuminated, but not yet explored. Similarities to the Netflix model diverge immediately. Unfortunately this miniseries will not be binge-able until much, much later… We are building the ship while sailing it, we don’t know if there is a satisfying conclusion to this story, the only way to find out is to press on!

Atlas Mountain Race

UnPAved 2020: My Race of the Year

If life is, as Forrest Gump claims, like a box of chocolate, then 2020 is home to only the chocolate that nobody thinks they want. Yet, despite the funky, rancid, and downright rotten aspects of this year, this particular box of chocolates has some hidden gems. It may not have been the chocolate we had hoped for, but in some cases it has been chocolate I have truly cherished. Here are just a few of those chocolates:

Cover Photo Taken By Mark Yanagisawa

Bike racing? Never heard of her.

Cyclist far and wide have spent 2020 siting, wishing, watching, and waiting for racing. This new new landscape of cycling, one where intentions are crafted anew and every rider’s motivation have been tossed, churned and been spat out, has been a reckoning for many with competitive ambition. Some, who rode because of racing, found the year insufferable. Others, who in the past have raced to authorize the time to ride, have relished in the flexibility and creativity necessitated by the pandemic.