Cycling Oklahoma
Cycling Oklahoma
Great Ideas Come from Beers and Buddies
We trade gossip for a plan to fix Oklahoma mountain biking: rally support for OMBA, align race calendars, simplify categories, and build real youth pathways. Sponsors get thanked, Arcadia’s new features get spotlighted, and we outline a statewide board to bring order to the chaos.
• OMBA’s role, funding gap, and 50-dollar membership drive
• Palo Duro Marathon’s low turnout and event promotion lessons
• Arcadia’s dual slalom, Outer Space build, and safety signage
• NICA’s growth, parent logistics, and youth progression paths
• Mass starts pros and cons based on field size and trail width
• Category bloat, sandbagging, and mandatory upgrade ideas
• Shorter Cat 1 vs Cat 2 parity, prologues, and course design
• Unified calendar with seasons for XC, endurance, short track, and cyclocross
• Forming a statewide board to coordinate dates and standards
• Practical ways shops, teams, and racers support the trails
Join OMBA at omba.org. “It’s $50 a year—please do that.” Also: “More very, very exciting news to come very soon. As soon as I can release it, I will release it.”
What is up, Cycling Oklahoma? Thank you so much for tuning in for another fun and drama-filled episode. Um, just uh four dudes drinking some beer, sitting around, talking all the gossip. But in this one, you are gonna learn some really awesome things about one of our main sponsors and OMBA. Uh, so you're gonna hear some details of how that works and all the good stuff. So, really high, you know, you're gonna get some education here outside of like listening to some old dudes ramble about all the things that we ramble about. So uh so thankful for OMBA and everything that they do in our state. Um, they they do amazing things across the entire state. They work so hard on our trails to keep our trails clear, uh, to build new trails. And there are so many opportunities for us to go out and help them build new trails and new features and things like that. So check out, follow them on on Facebook or check on omba.org for updates on that when you can go out and help build. But also, they're doing kind of a little one last push for uh membership drive. They give some stats on how much it's grown. So I think you're gonna enjoy that. But they need more, they need more in every single way. So if you can help, if you can join OMBA, it's$50 a year, please do that. Uh or go down, dedicate your time and uh your muscles to help build some more amazing trails here in Oklahoma. Uh the other one, of course, is more overhead door. They're phenomenal. I love them. I'm so appreciative of their support and everything that they do in cycling, as well as this podcast. So if you have any kind of garage door needs at all, please get a hold of more overhead door. They take care of us, let's take care of them. And again, thank you so much to More Overhead Door located here in our local community. Um, and they'll they'll help take care of any of your garage door needs that you have. So, this is a long episode. We ramble a lot, we get into a lot of good stuff, there's a lot of laughing. I hope you enjoy this. But the conversation continues about the drama in Oklahoma cycling. We do have some things in the works that will be helping resolve some of this drama. We will have more updates very, very, very soon. And I think everybody that we've talked to has great response to this, and we are making great headway with bringing the cycling community in Oklahoma together. And this is going to happen. The cycling community, the dirt cycling community is coming together. Um, and we are so thankful for all of the promoters and the race directors and the athletes who have reached out to us that are working together. All of these people spend so much of their time and so much of their hard-earned money to make no money, uh, just to give an amazing race experience here in Oklahoma. And we're so thankful for all these people that are uh working together and making these sacrifices together uh to give the best product possible to the racers, which is the most important thing. The racers are the most important thing. The experiences that racers have with their families and with their friends and pushing themselves is the most important thing, and nothing else is. So um thank you so much for all the people that we've spoken with and are working together um in all of the disciplines in cycling um to make Oklahoma a significantly better place to ride your bike and to race your bike. Um, we're very thankful for you. Enjoy this episode. More very, very exciting news to come very soon. As soon as I can release it, I will release it. Thanks for tuning in. Let's talk again soon. All right, we are officially recording and yeah, just go ahead and get it. Um I'm just gonna warn everybody up front about this episode. It's gonna be fun. For well, it's gonna be fun for us. It's probably gonna exact. It's probably gonna make some people upset, which is not the point, but collateral damage is what it is, and I think it will, you know, if you're not pissing, you know, when I talk talk to Joe whenever he was talking about his race and the ideas that he had for Arcadia this year. I told him I was like, Well, if you're not pissing anybody off, you're not pushing progression and you're not pushing things forward. So I think the last episode that me and Chris did probably upset people and probably it definitely started a conversation because I've never had so many messages after an episode that we did. I got a lot of text to me too. So yeah, you got a lot. I got a lot. We got a lot on Instagram. I think this episode negative. I did not have one negative, so we didn't hear from them. Right, exactly. If you do hate us and you think we're stupid, I want to hear those comments.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think a lot of a lot of this is a conversation, not agree with us or else. There is not a yeah, because no, we got to start the conversation. We're not gonna agree on everything, but there's some there's gotta be some middle ground that makes and makes it all better.
SPEAKER_02:Well, this isn't a us against them or right against left or any of that kind of stuff. It's uh yeah, not yet. So it's but it is a conversation starter and it's a how can we move our cycling community forward in Oklahoma? And I think this is a great round table and a great group to um to start that conversation. So let's we've never I don't think I've ever had four people at one time on that episode.
SPEAKER_03:Ryan was gonna stay and he's like, uh you don't think I think you did. We had one with uh team warm-up a long time ago.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, that's right. Oh, I was back in my shine. Yeah, and I think I only had like two mics. Yeah, you'd hear like a distant somebody would talk and then tell a whole story and like breathe people over at the mic. Yeah, it's a disaster. We've really upgraded. Yeah, yeah. Well, you have to put the mic to your face if you're gonna talk.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, there you go.
SPEAKER_02:Look at the mics we have. I know, we're writing mics. So let's uh introduce ourselves and then we'll kind of jump into a wide variety of topics.
SPEAKER_03:I'm Chris Drumman, and I don't know. Uh I mean I do a little bit of everything. Okay. Uh Joe Miller, I'm the uh Arcadia Lake Trail boss and um board member for Oklahoma Mountain Bike Association. And I uh recently handed the baton over to Ethan Hume for uh the fat tired team captain.
SPEAKER_02:Oh team captain now. Yeah, I'm Ethan Hume, team captain. It's a it's a big deal. Wait, okay, let me ask you this. Yeah, Joe, when you were the team captain, did you guys win? We did. Okay. Ethan when you were the team captain, did you guys win? Uh it catastrophically lost.
SPEAKER_01:Jones Albert. Going to whatever.
SPEAKER_02:Uh-huh. Okay, well, just we had some really fast guys this year, though. Sure, sure. Ethan, introduce yourself. Uh Ethan, you um, yeah, team captain Fat Tire here in Oklahoma City area. Razor, Racer, uh we did a podcast. We did a podcast. I think we've done podcasts with everybody in here. So we're gonna think so. Yeah. So if you want to know about these guys, then go back and listen and give us a new download. Yeah, I'm not sure what else would be. Yeah, I think that's one. Um, I think for jumping in here, we're gonna we're gonna cover a wide variety of topics, but we do want to cover um an amazing well, we want to talk about Paladero Burst? Sure. Let's do it. All right, so while we while we still have their attention, yeah, exactly. They haven't canceled us yet. So Paladero, if people that don't know, it's uh I don't know which marathon long distance endurance race that happens in West Texas. It's just south of Amarillo. Honestly, it's I mean, it might be my absolute favorite place that I ride on a regular basis. It's my favorite place I ride on a regular basis, and maybe my top two or three that I've ever ridden in my life. Um, and it's four hours away. It's phenomenal. I don't know why I haven't been there. I don't know what you think. Incredible camping, incredible camping. Can't be defused. You sit out there, you see the whole Milky Way, you see all the stars shooting. We walk sit out there and watch shooting stars all night. Like it was phenomenal. It's too close. That's a problem. It's too close. Yeah, maybe I'd like to drive a date.
SPEAKER_03:I think it's I think this event also gets confused with the 24 hour because they're both marathons. There's a 24-hour race in June, June, and yeah, which is also a really cool event.
SPEAKER_02:It's only 187 out there in June. If you do a team, you only got to go out every so often. I did not, and it was a bad idea.
SPEAKER_03:This marathon is much much more manageable distance. It was kind of long this weekend, but for sure.
SPEAKER_02:It's one lap, two lap, or three lap. Yeah. And so massive payout for the open class, which which makes it hard to believe more people aren't there. And I think I think what was the winner got? The winner got like eighteen hundred dollars. Yeah, well, and women, and I think they paid like 10 D. Yeah. Yeah. And this year there was so little people that there definitely was not 10 that 10 men that finished. Really? And there wasn't even 10 women that signed up in the open division. Yeah. I thought you went. I did go. I did not do the open division. I also did not do the three lap division. I also did not finish the two lap race. Yeah. So I didn't win any money. Let's say that.
SPEAKER_03:Anyways, something to put on the calendar, think about for next year.
SPEAKER_02:It's always the second or third weekend in November. Yeah. Always. If you want to camp, you have to get your spot like two, three months beforehand because they sell out. But man, it's gorgeous. Yeah, it's worth it. For sure.
SPEAKER_03:Why did they have such a low turnout this year? I think promotion. I mean, I would I I I know about it. I know the promoter. I see your stuff on Facebook. So I always I know it's coming up, of course, because I know of the event. It's been going on for years. Um, but yeah, I don't I don't know why. Uh I don't I don't think there's enough promotion for that event in this area. If you don't know the person or people that are going to be sharing it.
SPEAKER_02:Because I I have gone to I don't know how many years I've gone to it, so I look forward to it. It's like my race that I go to. And I had to search for it this year to see I couldn't find it. And they usually don't do the sign-up, and which is weird. They usually don't do sign up and have all the stuff posted to like I don't know, six weeks out. So it's not like they promote it like in June or July, August. They start promoting it like in October, maybe May, and it's just posted somewhere. I have to go search for it knowing it exactly.
SPEAKER_03:Because it posted on Facebook. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That's the problem with it. You got to put that mic close to your face. Can't hear it? Well, there you go. I get him a hand hand mic and he's like, well, this is much better, but then you have to use it. So Paladero, put it on your calendar. It's has it has an e-bike division, a one lap, two lap, a three lap, it has everything. So I can't recommend it enough.
SPEAKER_03:Is it on your calendar?
SPEAKER_02:It's always on my calendar.
SPEAKER_03:Not that calendar.
SPEAKER_02:Which calendar? The uh cycling homicide? Yes. Probably not. You're right. Might might be an opportunity. I think it's going to be an opportunity that we can do a lot of things with going forward with this group and this meeting and this talk and this progression that we're trying to make. I think that we can definitely make that happen. Because I I mean, exactly what we talked about. We had a whole podcast before we started recording.
SPEAKER_03:But I think the unrated version.
SPEAKER_02:The unrated. Yeah. The stuff that truly would get us canceled in every way. But I think there is something to that with race promotion. And you are a race director with race promotion. And I'm talking about how we can promote across the board in our not only in our town, but our state and our region to grow the entire sport.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's it's definitely tough because uh I I generally just use Facebook and word of mouth, and I'll throw up some flyers at the local bike shops, you know, mostly fat tire, because they're um helping to support and promote my races at Arcadia. Uh, but I don't know how you how you can reach more people. There's gotta be more than just you would also go around and and put them on people's windshields. And I think that actually I didn't do that this year. You didn't have just as many people turn out, so so maybe that was all wasted effort.
SPEAKER_02:Well, girl marketing is a real thing. Like, I mean, there's more about it, you know, like it works and exists. Yeah, but do you as a race promoter and as some and you guys are in the tour de dirt like scene? Um, and first off, I want to say thanks for coming and sitting and talking to us because and you both we reached out and said, Hey, let's talk. Um, do you see like a cross promotion with the within events of tour de dirt and a cross promotion within like the mountain bike scene in Oklahoma, much less with like you know, you're competing against gravel and you're competing against psycho-cross starting and all those kinds of things. Like, how is that as someone on the board of tour dirt and with being a race promoter? Is there any cross pollination at all?
SPEAKER_03:Not no, probably not enough.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:There's not. The what Ethan had talked about is last year, um, prior to the races I was hosting at Arcadia, I would print out these little like quarter page flyers and put at the end of the race, and I'm like sweating in my bibs and chafing and walking around a hundred cars and putting things under their windshield wipers. And I feel like that helped kind of get the endurance race going. And then because of the timing of the tour to dirt races last year, I didn't do it last year. I'm doing it this spring. Uh-huh. Um, I've had a bunch of people like, Oh, are you doing the zombie race? You're doing the zombie race. Uh so doing it. Well, well, it yes, we're doing it, but I'm dropping the zombie theme because the timing doesn't make sense to have it. Yeah, but you said it's gonna be closer to Valentine's Day, so Valentine's Valentine's. I like it. Okay. Okay. So I yeah, we'll have to think of a new um kind of theme to embrace. But yeah, yeah. Okay. Um, but yes, I think it helped to kind of get that off the ground, but I think once once you've established a base, then it's word of mouth. Oh, hey, you know, are you gonna do the race with me? I didn't know there was a race.
SPEAKER_02:And so well, with your promoting uh your event that you do, do you see basically the same numbers every year?
SPEAKER_03:Not this last race. This last race we had a lot of new people.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, so we had higher participation this year, uh or just different people.
SPEAKER_03:I don't know if this is record participation. I think maybe back in like you know, a few years ago in the Kevin Caldwell days when we promoted. I think we had a race that had around 200 people sign up. So it was right in par with that. We had 185. What does a race need to like break even your because I'm sure they're all different, but like yeah, they're all they're all gonna be different. I would say probably about a hundred and twenty.
SPEAKER_02:Because I'm gonna put that out there so people understand like race promoters are uh like this is not this money-making machine. 150 is a good target.
SPEAKER_03:And and that's where I say it depends. What are you doing? You know, like are you buying the cheapest trophies or are you buying expensive trophies to give out, you know, and like how much did you put into advertising? And I mean, I spent like$150 on signage for the race and you know, materials, and it's just like all those little things add up. So how much you have to put into it is gonna determine your break-even. Um, but I'm also lucky to be partnering with the city of Edmund. So I I go through um a sponsorship process with them, and I have to collect a bunch of metrics and try to promote uh some local hotels and you know eating establishments. Um but you know, if it wasn't for them, there probably is a higher risk of not even breaking even.
SPEAKER_02:So I think that's the that's this kind of stuff that I want people to understand is like the like takes so much work, time, money, and effort to put an event on that you show up and you get to pay like whatever 60, 70 dollars to race, and you're like, man, 200 people, man. This guy's doing the math.
SPEAKER_03:Here's here's a here's a skill and look at how these sponsors these guys buy a new bike on Monday. Here's a behind the scenes thing that I think even the average even the people that are part of the community don't even realize. Uh so I have had some really busy stuff at my day job, you know, because we all have day jobs outside of these other extracurricular activities we do. And I was like, you know, like just generally talking with Ethan, still trying to go on bike rides to not lose my sanity. And um, and Ethan's like, well, let me know what I can do to help. And I'm like, Well, I've got some of the race course marked, you know, if you want to go out and finish marking the rest. So I'll tell them about marking the race course.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so I go out and I'm like, all right, so I gotta think like people who've never ridden here before, where could they possibly go wrong? And that this probably take me, I don't know, two hours, right? A couple hours. Just every everything I came across, I would mark it, right? Like if there was a if there was a break in the uh I don't know, in the trail at all, even if it was like that's not even a trail, but it's just an opening of parking because it's like somebody somebody might just turn right here and end up in a pond, yeah, you know, like they're just following their GPS. And um, and so I was out there, I thought I was gonna be out there two hours. I was out there six almost like almost the entire roll of tape. Oh my gosh. And you when you and then when I was racing, you know, I was racing past it going, it just doesn't look like I did that.
SPEAKER_03:But it's that one thing you don't mark. But yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:Same goes off course and it's all going at past the road because you could I couldn't mark across the road, but people would come across the road at the top where the post light is, and then instead of going into the right, they would go left. Luckily, Ben was there. Luckily, Ben was the whole direct people. I I went came out and took a couple pictures, and I saw one woman significantly more times than I shouldn't feature. So I went out in deep space to start with. Like so I want to catch everybody coming around this like worm, is like the whole thing. I never saw her there, right? So then after I take pictures of the front guys that come through there, whatever. So I jump over to where they're gonna have that drop in. I don't know what you guys call that area. That's like um Super Bowl, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, dual slow. I was there after everybody else was. Oh, yeah, you were the one, yeah. Okay, so I was sitting there and I see her like right up, like she's still coming up the uphill, and I was like, okay, cool. But then I see her come down. I was like, Huh, well, she shouldn't be here because no, I just saw her go up. She's just five miles like seeing that same piece. But the best part is while I was there and I was only there a short amount of time, I saw her again come down again, and I'm how and I was like, I didn't see her go back up, so I don't even know how she got back up there. And the only reason I recognize her is because she was very distinct. I'm not gonna say it on here just in case. It was a very distinct person, like, there's no way you can miss her. So then after that, I just see her Strava. Oh, dude, it was it was there wasn't a lot of Strava there. Yeah, and so then I go over to like the Tucky part where you come downhill and it's like rocky, chunky, like they go off the rock drop. So I went over there. I saw her two or three times today. And I was like, and every time she came by, I would make a comment about why she was so distinct, and I was like, is she's just happy as gonna be happening. I'm like, I don't know if she's ridden like 50 miles today, or if she's only ridden like four in the same like half mile, but I saw her a lot, I saw her more than I saw anyone else.
SPEAKER_03:I think she knew you were taking pictures. Dude, it was convulsive.
SPEAKER_02:I got a lot of drop and air attack, exhausted like a loose. She did. So it did happen, and it happened more than once with her. And there were some places I put in like two rows of tapes. It's like, well, I want somebody to go under the tape, so I'm gonna make it really obvious. And it's the stuff of a race director and promoter that takes a ton of time.
SPEAKER_03:Ton of time, it does, yeah, and it's like and it's huge. And even though you know, no nobody's getting personally paid out of any of this, it's you know, usually going back at the trails or a break-even, or you know, like the two porta potties I got were$380 for two porta potties. Crazy. Uh, and everything, you know, is costing more, and they haven't raised the price of the races at all. We've been the same since I started racing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Um, so you know, probably don't be surprised if at some point in the future they're they go up a little bit because everything else is getting more expensive.
SPEAKER_02:But I mean, my day job's at a nonprofit, and we raise prices like every four or five years, and people are like, Well, I can't believe prices just keep going up. I'm like, Oh, have you raised prices in your business in the past five years? Like, things go up.
SPEAKER_03:If we can get more people at the races, the prices might not have to go up. Yeah, true. Good. Good point. So that's that's one thing that I I do for my races is I'll uh talk with Dave Weaver and I will give a discount code for Nica because I'm like, why should we make these kids pay full price? They're already doing their own race series. I want them to come to mind, so I love it. I offer them a small discount. I like that.
SPEAKER_02:And Nika is a topic that I I have on our list of things. Um let's talk Nica. Okay, let's just roll that direction. I think um I don't know anything about Nika. I don't know, I haven't followed. So we are the experts, because I also don't know. Well, I know I know a lot. I know a little bit. Okay, so I the thing is, I think it's it is it's clearly a phenomenal program. It's kind of come in and done its own thing, but on top of that, with GCXE doing its own thing, Tour de Dirk doing its own thing, Nyka doing its own thing, they've imploded each other, right? Kinda. And so, but I had someone reach out from our last episode. It was a dad who said, Well, my kid does Nica, and I can't go to any races. And I think back with Drummond family, like whose kids race, it's the dads or moms who have that race. Now they're kids like want to do it too. So the parent has to make a choice, right? And they're always gonna choose, well, they should choose the kid to do the race. So I think that's part of the organization of the thing. Yeah, we'll talk later.
SPEAKER_03:Leave parenting advice whenever I can get it.
SPEAKER_02:I'm I'm an expert, you should listen to me. Um Guru's a happy guy. Um, so but I think that's part of like where we need to get our race calendar together because now Nike's involved, which we've never had to consider in Oklahoma before, and now that's a hurdle for race promoters and taking it's taking part of our participants.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, right. Well, and it's it's costing the other race series, but what 45 kids you had, so 45 entries if Nike kids can't be at those races because they conflict. So both sides are losing.
SPEAKER_02:Right. But Kids Cup, I mean Kidscap was huge. Yeah, I mean it's always been had great participation. Yeah, and now I mean it's free. But yeah, and so but now kids maybe can't race Kids Cup for free because they have a Nike race somewhere else, you know, or whatever, because the if the dates conflict, yeah. So it's another reason. Yeah, so I think we need to be, I mean, just a blanket statement. I would say we just need to be more youth-centric. I mean, we're all middle-aged, 40-roll. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03:I'd say partnering where we can, where it makes sense, but one thing that I learned hosting a the Nica race officially now at Arcadia is they had to come in and um do some trail work, modify some of the trail. Uh, they can't, you know, they can't ride over like a bridge. Oh really, very like our boardwalk, they can't do that because there are points of it where it's over like two feet high without railings. Uh, do a bypass and go around it and put in a little bridge over a little ditch that we had dug for water. Okay. You know, I mean you have some kids in Nica that just started riding bikes. Like there's some kids, there's some really fast kids, but the kids that are are new are like they can barely get around the trail, so then then it has to be tamed down.
SPEAKER_02:Like Nike Nica trails are really it's a true grassroots like development system. Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_03:So like there's stuff that skip like that would be that they probably added, you know, like go around.
SPEAKER_02:Do we know anything about how their series went this year? Because this was year one in Oklahoma. I don't know. I don't know much about that. I don't either. Do you how many? I don't so the race that you had at Arcadia, how do you have any idea what was out there, like participation and stuff like that?
SPEAKER_03:I think uh for the Nike kids we had about 20.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Uh, and so you know, you gotta take into account that they had a race the day before. Wow. The day before. So like so now they're just not races on top of themselves. Well, what had happened was it was originally gonna be their race was the weekend before in Tulsa at Turkey Mountain. Um I don't know if it was actually at Turkey Mountain, but right you know that the little group in the trails there. And um they got rained out, and Dave Weaver called me and he said, Oh crap, you know, now I've got to push our race to the next weekend. We're gonna do it on Saturday, and yours is on Sunday. So I'm hoping we can still have a bunch of people still show up. And they did. Um, so I always try to coordinate with with Dave to make sure that work we can accommodate and not have conflict with the with the Nika crew. Um, and like you know, I'm I'm the same as with each. I mean, I've got I've got a 10-year-old and an eight-year-old, and they are going to be uh racing bikes in Nika at some point in their lives if I have any say in it. So I I want to make sure that I'm in embracing that. I'm doing what I can to, you know, resolve any conflicts and dates and make sure the trail has things that will accommodate them, but also will still be interesting to the rest of us. Right. Uh, and and Dave is always uh a very staunch supporter of Arcadia. And you know, he's hey, when when are you gonna do your endurance race? Because I'll my kids love it. They want to come down and do the three-hour team up for the six hour. Um, so I've been partnering with them a lot. Uh we had, like I said, 20, but I know that they had a couple people that went to regionals from from the uh the Oklahoma group.
SPEAKER_02:I think they had in a I'm probably getting the numbers wrong, but John Fro told me they had like 30 new kids joined just in the last like month or something.
SPEAKER_03:I mean in North India, like 30 kids show up for practice twice a week. Oh wow, yeah, yeah. That's phenomenal.
SPEAKER_02:It's typically really cool. Like it's turns into big numbers. Because you guys had a big group in Arkansas when you were there, right? I think Arkansas gets like six or eight hundred racers. It's awesome.
SPEAKER_03:That's amazing. That's cool. The way that they do their thing too is they like they pay for all the races at once. It's not like you pick and choose. You're like you're Nika, you're you're paying and doing the whole series. That's it.
SPEAKER_02:Cool idea for a race series to do. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. No, you get a note. Write that down. Season pass. Write that down. These were okay. Okay. So they're not they're not great, but they're okay. Okay, it's okay. Okay. We got variety. It's where we live. Let's listen. So um you're gonna hear many options before. Um okay, cool. I I didn't know any I don't really know anything about Nike as far as you type.
SPEAKER_03:I do think I do think there's uh like us talking about you know getting a calendar together. I think that's a major hurdle for because it's you said that the the NYCA kids the parents race, but actually the majority probably of what's racing in Oklahoma, the parents don't race. Do you think they uh I mean I don't know the numbers, I don't have any data on that. Um, but a lot of kids get into it through their schools. Oh so it's like, oh, I want to try this. The and the families know nothing about bike racing.
SPEAKER_02:Um, so but if you were a parent and you had a young kid, yeah, and you wanted them to start racing, would you send would you? I mean, I mean, what a great opportunity to get somebody recently racing three and and and and start racing.
SPEAKER_03:Kind of where I'm setting with that is there's you have you have families that know nothing, and then the kids like, well, I want to race more. Like, how do they where are they gonna look? They don't know about Torted Earth, they don't know about GCX. Yeah, so we're nothing's use that sanctions. So there's there's three possibilities there, but there's nowhere to find the events, unless the coaches are informing them, which most probably try, but having a unified place like Cyclones, Oklahoma or B R A O K used to exist where you have all the events on one website. Right. Yeah, where these kids because there's not a good in my opinion, there's not a good transition from Nica to anything else. It's they just don't know what to do after that. When is Nike and what age? Nica is 12.
SPEAKER_02:So it's six through twelve. So it's all the way through high school. Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_03:But there's uh and and you think about Tour de Durt, like they have race categories that start at like 13. Oh you know, so gotcha. They can do both and be competitive and if this is also a season, it's a spring or a fall. Uh and by at least when I was a Nike coach, by Nike rules, you can't the coaches can't have contact and cannot ride with the riders outside of season. So if you're a spring series, not the NCAA doesn't exist. Well, I think I think they do it so that kids don't burn out, don't burn there's kids that want to keep doing it, and they're kind of like they're just kind of on their own. So uh them knowing about these events is really important for them to because otherwise, if they don't, they're gonna do Nika and then they're gonna get out of cycling and move on. Right. Where there's this this perfect transition from Nika to collegiate cycling if they have you know, that they know about everything that's going on and continue to do that. And and I think for life too, there's not many sports that you can continue that you know, there's cycling, there's golf. I I'm still r but guess what I'm not doing. Pole vaulting.
SPEAKER_01:That's true.
SPEAKER_02:That's that's so. Listen to Ethan's episode if you want to hear that story.
SPEAKER_03:But I mean, it's just that's something you continue doing, right?
SPEAKER_02:Like you know, pretty much all most school or collegiate sports, right? I mean, so maybe you can play basketball, maybe you can play soccer, play basketball until you blow out your ASL in your 30s, and you're done.
SPEAKER_03:There's a there's a transition piece that you guys talked about that I kind of was uninformed before, but Dave helped me out with with the last races. He mentioned um, you know, uh, what's the CAD three course? You know, I want to see it specifically, and and I showed it to him, and he's like, Oh, that's great. You know, it's only nine miles. He's like, That's that's great, you know, that's like the top end of what they want to see. And and that so, like Chris was saying, it these parents who really don't know a whole lot about mountain biking, and you know, nine miles at skip is a lot different than nine miles at Keystone. Oh so you know, when that's where their head is at, they're like, Oh, they're thinking about it in like distance and and time and not necessarily how technical the course is or whatever, right? Uh, so that's a transition piece. If we want to make it accommodating to have them cross over into tour to dirt or GCX, it needs to be something that is palatable for their parents. The parents are the ones who are making the decision ultimately, right?
SPEAKER_02:And that's how it grows. I mean, when you think about, I mean, we didn't raise kids in this, and you did, but I remember going to all these races and tour to dirt kids, like you see them, and even the kids that are like good, and you see like all the races that are like in their early teens-ish kind of thing, and you're like, Oh, that kid's pretty good, he wins everything, or that kid has skills, you see them at their all day long because their parents race or whatever, very few of them end up ever racing with us, like which I get things change, they get their own hobbies and they grow up and all this stuff.
SPEAKER_03:But like out of the group with Rai Rai and Aubrey, like Aubrey was doing kids' cup, like how many of them are left that were racers within? There's not a single female that I can think of that you know kind of started in that time and continue to race bikes.
SPEAKER_02:Um but I think that's like a can really help grow our sport for sure long term. Yeah, and then we start getting like like you start getting kids like yours who have pro careers and have like really high-end ability because they started young. And you Oklahoma can start developing and growing like real racers and not just a bunch of 40-somethings who like paddle around in the trees. There's nothing wrong with that. It's fabulous, but we're not gonna be good. So it's nice to see like it's nice to see like a level come out of Oklahoma, and Nike is going to be that ability for us to grow the sport, not only in numbers, but in ability as well. So great idea. But that has to work with our other Zerus. Yeah, it can't work against them. You know what you should do?
SPEAKER_03:You should. What do you what do you is this a leveling you're I've had I've had laser eyes on you for like the last 30 seconds because it just clicked. I'm like, why the heck do you not invite Dave Weaver to come down and have a podcast?
SPEAKER_02:I don't know Dave Weaver, but Dave Weaver, I will go to Dave Weaver.
SPEAKER_03:Well, he's in Tulsa. Let's do it. All right, it gives me a reason to go ride the new draft. So he he is the the um catalyst that got Nica here in Oklahoma City, and he will answer all these questions and probably correct a lot of my bad statements around Nica.
SPEAKER_02:Dave Weaver, you're on the clock. Yep scenario. Let's do it. I will I will drive the call so that gives me a reason to write into the new turkey stuff and um make it happen. So all right, let's get off a Nike. Let's get to some other fun stuff, and then we'll start really pissing people off. Um let's talk about other good things first. OMBA, since they are a sponsor of the podcast, and yeah, we mentioned them. This is their sponsor club.
SPEAKER_03:Well, uh so a little pitch for OMBA here at Oklahoma Mountain Bike Association. Uh since we originally sponsored and you know had a membership drive last year, the numbers got up, you know, around 150, 160. I don't know exactly what they're at right now. What did you start at? We start at like 90.
SPEAKER_02:My goal was 10, 20 game, we got it.
SPEAKER_03:We we we met the goal, but it's it's been very stagnant for a long time. And that's what's kind of frustrating is um, and I'll I'll do a transition here in a minute. I'm not not there yet, but um in the amount of increased activity that we've had at Arcadia and putting up you know signs like these are built by OMBA, you know, if you like it, we encourage you to join, visit the website, whatever, and it's just not generating anything, and it's really frustrating. Uh, because as you all know, in the state of Oklahoma, we have thousands of mountain bike riders. I mean, thousands. And you know, when we think about how many people race, you know, a random race here or there, that's still thousands of people, you know, or at least a thousand between all the different races that we have. We have 150 members in OMBA, and it's like, you know, it's 50 bucks. Doesn't make sense. 50 bucks. And the fit the$50 that goes to OMBA is not going to a specific trail, it's covering the insurance, which you know, I'll talk a little bit about Arcadia and why it's important to have insurance. Um, but the uh yeah, the the membership drive that we have going on right now. Again, we've got a bike donated by L's bike shop. It's a truck pro caliber, it's uh actually a decent bike. Yeah, it's a decent bike, and um anybody who signs up will automatically be entered into that raffle. Cool. And uh I don't know exactly um when the raffle ends, but I know it's this year. Okay. I think it's in December. Okay. And uh Catherine Sharp is our board member, the vice president that's gonna be handling that. So uh in other news, Trosper is continuing to make progress. Uh Sean Coleman's the trail boss out there, and he's um they've had some hurdles they've had to work with Oklahoma City Parks, but they're getting past all of that now, it sounds like. Uh, there was a request to have a professional um plan put together, and you know, those are like 50 grand. And so we don't, you know, Oklahoma Mountain Bike Association, like 150 members ain't a few more members. So I think I I think you know, they they uh 10,000 members, yeah, putting some of their money where their mouth is, and they're coming together and meeting, and so Trosper's starting to make some forward motion, but it's that how much trail do they have out there at this point, do you know that's cost uh so they're still working on the three mile outer loop that's been really kind of slow moving. Um I know that there's an opportunity to do a cycle cross track out there too, which I think would be really cool. Yeah, we went and looked at it. The amount of work it was gonna take to make it doable, and then the amount of upkeep. It's just we probably aren't gonna do that. Um, unless we can get out there and get it cut, like in the winter. I waited until everything kind of bloomed and went and looked at it. Yeah, I'm just like, oh my god. Do you think once it's established and is incorporated as part of like the trail system that it might get enough traffic to be sustainable if we were on the calendar worked out and get people racing cyclocross, yeah, potentially. I think that'd be and the reason why I even bring that up during this OMBA piece is that we don't have a a cyclocross track and any of our OMBA courses. Yeah, none of them they don't exist, and I think is a big one of the big reasons cyclocross isn't popular because you can't go do it on your own. You can only do it if there's an event, really. Right. Or if you're gonna go imagine a course at a park, which I've done. That would lead to everyone. So I would love to have a permanent cyclocross um course somewhere. I just looked at that and and just kind of what that area was like, and I'm like, man, I wouldn't spend all my time keeping this writable and no time riding it. I think the people I looked at it with just I didn't I could see us getting it established, but then I'm like, man, what's the point of establishing it if we can't keep it maintained? Uh but I would be, yeah, I mean it'd be super cool. I think I think more people would do it. I even think mountain bikers would just enjoy riding a short track course. Like a short track race.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, short track, yeah. Put a pen in the pen. Uh let me like that idea.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, let me close out uh one last piece on the OMBA thing. So uh I had originally created some shirts and hats that were Arcadia focused, and the tiny little bit of profit that would come from those, we go back to the trails. Um and uh they've they've now expanded that. They have a OMBA version that on the back of the shirt, it's lists all the trails out. So those are for sale at uh a few of the fat tire shops. Uh, but also if you go on the website, they're gonna be um starting up a drop ship option. That'll be that'll be nice. People just need to spend 50 bucks and support a trail system. Like or or you know, if you don't want to, if you don't want to do the membership thing, whatever your reason is, I don't know what it would be, but you can also just go on the website and donate directly to the trail. Just donate 20 bucks.
SPEAKER_02:Like that's the thing, is we sell all of these things. Like you have your expense in your equipment, right? Yeah, and eat but even if you get like the cheapest, what's the cheapest brand new, like even if the hardtail cheap mountain bike six hundred seven hundred dollars is like the cheapest. So even if you have the cheapest mountain bike you can buy, you can spend fifty bucks to join to support to support the ride for free.
SPEAKER_03:And I don't have an answer a solution for this, but like we talked about with Paladuro, I think uh the the marketing, like people not knowing it's there is the biggest problem. And I don't know there's social media channels for OMBA. I just don't think they're utilized well enough to get the word out because there's I mean, you're right, there's there's thousands and thousands of mountain bikers people using these trails, and I bet like five percent probably actually know what OMBA is. I mean, way back like way back when it was OEF, I felt like everybody at a tour to dirt race knew the OEF and was probably a member of the OEF. They knew they knew it exists, there was signage for it at the races. And I mean, I feel like that's something that should be like cross-promotion. The the the series should be promoting that, the events, every event should be promoting that. And I just think people don't know about it. I think there's a lot of people that don't mind paying the 50 bucks, but they just don't know about it.
SPEAKER_02:Every race that's on an OMBA trail should either pay something into OMBA as a fee for that race, or really promote that, or like it's built into their race entry of two bucks per entry, five bucks per entry, and that goes to the OMBA the trail, something like that, and it's just a generator for who takes care of the trails. I think at every bike shop it should be on there, like you know how you give a tip, it should be like ten percent. That's yeah, ten percent goes to MB OMBA or ten percent on what you would sell your bike for. That's a cool idea. Uh, there you go. Just that there's your there's your mentorship, ideas and good ideas that we can do. But but that this is where we're getting ready to get into and pissing everybody off. We have to come together to support each other instead of grandpa gotta go gotta go peep. Yeah, yeah, just that uh but what happened to his foot? Let's talk in detail about that. I don't know what we should ask how happened to him.
SPEAKER_03:Two on the Instagram foot. Why'd your foot?
SPEAKER_02:The best thing is we were at Paladuro, and my brother's like, he listened to the episode first happened like four times this weekend, but he didn't. But first I can Brandon come Brandon Morris comes up. He's like, Oh man, what happened to your foot? He didn't know he wasn't one of that. He's like, Oh my god, that's awesome. But I think there are ways again, this is a true example of how the community that we have can work together and it just doesn't. And but we can start that conversation and start pushing these ideas of like, man, can you imagine if fat tires stood up or cat on put them on blast? I mean, not everybody, like I have no whatever, but if everybody and just said, hey, we're gonna start doing this in our shop, not just sell gear, but it's it's it's all promoting the community, and then so anything that promotes community benefits.
SPEAKER_03:There's more people racing, there's more people building trails, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And if you do it, if you volunteer to a trail day, I mean it's fun to then go out the next day and ride it and go like symbiotic relationship. It is. I still haven't done that yet. And at least my membership just went up. I mean such a loser. Um, I think my membership just came up, so I need to renew that.
SPEAKER_03:So one of the things that uh I'm trying to do, uh not trying to do, I am doing, is we just designed this really new, super sweet, uh, I think it's like six foot by three and a half foot uh trailhead science for Arcadia. And they have you know nice maps on them and QR codes that'll take you to Trail Forks and uh the website for OMBA, but it has this little verb about you know OMBA and how we take care of the trails. Uh so I mean as a segue, could I talk a little bit about some of the cool stuff going on in Arcadia?
SPEAKER_02:It's all about whatever.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, go ahead. Do you have a QR code directly to buy a membership? Because that would be a good addition. There, uh so we we were advised to be leery of QR codes because somebody can print on a sticker and put it over and create a fake website. So we we have the let's do that. That sells brought to you by OMBA so so it just it takes you to the website. Like I mean, it doesn't the QR code doesn't take you there's no QR code uh for OMBA, there is a website, a web address. Gotcha. Um I was just thinking less like whatever makes it easier, right? Yeah, yeah. That's that that's for sure. And I I've toyed around with the idea of like how could I offer a discount for people's race if they're a member or not? But I mean, as a promoter, anything that complicates it is like not worth it. Yeah, it's not worth it. If this was my full-time job and I was getting a payer check for it, then I'm like, let's figure this out, right? It's just it's not worth it. You can offer those fake QR codes if you can make full-time jobs.
SPEAKER_02:It is mine now. I think that's one thing that we talked about was making Twitter anyways, making it more affordable for people. And I think you you can offer it, and but like you said, you don't have to make it where it's an automatic thing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, like something that way offered. If you could get it to where you know you did a a one prize for the whole series and you get a discount for OMBA, that would be simpler for the promoters.
SPEAKER_02:But in all honesty, sitting now that we're talking about this and thinking through some of these ideas, I don't think it's a bad idea for any race that's held on OMBA trail that they have to pay like two dollars per racer. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, and it's not that much money. No, no, it could add up a little bit of the race, right? Yeah, it would add up any ton over the course of like in the next five, 10 years. Like that's a lot of free extra money that goes into maintaining our trail system. And I think or five dollars or whatever the number is, but like it's such a built-in thing that no one would ever notice, no one would ever see, but it would make a significant difference. Yep. So yeah, there's an idea done came from tonight. Man, beer is good for ideas. Um, all right. So I guess just this again, it's about you. So we want to talk about Arcadia and race, it's cradles. This is a Joe podcast. This is not why the rest of us came. I should have just given you a model later.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Well, it's it's actually the Arcadia podcast, it's not the Joe. It's also Arcadia.
SPEAKER_02:Uh so it's good for people to understand what really exists in race and the series.
SPEAKER_03:Well, right, and and all the you know, the effort that goes into trying to make trails that people are interested in coming to. My wife just texts me it was eight hours, not six hours.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, it's got an eight hour. Got it.
SPEAKER_03:Um so yeah, and uh Arcadia uh you know, originally it started out with uh trails that had existed for a lot of years, and they were just you know, I would say probably 50-50 hiking and biking trails. And then we started to develop the dam trails, which is everything east of the dam. And that's kind of when I took over um the trail boss from Tony Sykes. And we've you know added a ton of mileage, but now the I wouldn't say the mileage is maxed out. There's still opportunity to add more, but it's kind of like why? Because now uh we're focusing on where do we add in like some man-made you know trail features? That's what Oklahoma is missing.
SPEAKER_02:That's what's so fun when you go to Benville isn't that when you have you can like test your skill as you're getting better or do fun stuff if you are a good rider, or you just bypass it and like stay on the ground and not kill yourself.
SPEAKER_03:And so that's that's where and I've done a lot of races and uh sponsorship drives uh and raise money to do things. I mean, we got this little you know, tiny mini excavator, and we got our OMBA um insurance to cover that. Uh and you know, all that stuff costs extra money, and that's why it's you know it's important. But now people are starting to see the fruits of our labor. So, like now we have this. We have I I think it might be the may is there another one in the state, a dual slalom? I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:May uh still water used to have one. Still water had one, but I don't know. I don't know it. Maybe I was there a year ago, and it was pretty, it was pretty rough. Yeah, that's the only one I remember.
SPEAKER_03:Maybe Punk City. I don't know if that trail is still. But I'll tell you the question. So it is an absolute blast. And I included in in the race, and I was kind of like, I don't know if I should because there's there's like a two and a half foot drop. Uh, you know, it's it's equal on the dual. Uh before the race, but honestly, none during or after the race. Weird. Yeah. Uh huh. Okay. All of all of the morning, guys. They were at the hospital. They can't talk at any time. Yeah. But uh, I mean, it's it's a really it's a really fun experience if you're doing it with somebody dual slaloming, because in the race I was behind a couple of people. It's funny, I was behind two guys, and I'm like, ooh, here comes a dual slalom. So, like, you know, I'm completely cooked at this point, anyways. But uh, I'm like, all right, I'm gonna give it everything I've got. And I passed both of them, and I was like, Yes, this is so cool, you know, to like use this thing for what it's worth. And I was actually on the slower line of the two. There's one that you come out like three or four bike likes ahead, just by the nature of the way the trail's set up. Uh, and I I came out ahead and then you know, I got into the grass and they both passed me then. But it was so cool at the time.
SPEAKER_02:Don't touch me wish lines faster, but I want you to tell me so whenever somebody go out and I'll just have me.
SPEAKER_03:We will always wish line to but uh yeah, so we added this dual slalom line that's getting a lot of great buzz, and we've got some more, I guess, features that we're gonna add to it in the future. But it has a 30-foot rock garden, it's got drops, it's got party pal party. It's kind of easy. I think you dropped that when I said drops.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think so. Cut off. Just at least when we did it, it wasn't our fault. This one is just rookie mistake. Don't use clocks on the floor. Just hey, go get shot.
SPEAKER_03:Go get your shamia from much door over there, and yeah, that'll absorb it.
SPEAKER_02:I got a boot over here that you can use. Didn't should I skip New Jersey? There's uh paper towels. He then dropped his beer. He's I does everyone else remember when the first time they had a beer? Is that his third or fourth? I think that could be the problem. Who who's driving? Clearly, just run my bike. So stop your film, and it's fine.
SPEAKER_03:And then okay, so then we built this dual slalom line, and then um I'd been working with the Army Corps of Engineers, and I got additional permission to build more trail uh south of the damn road, and that is the most amazing trail. The hour space, yeah, all this stuff. Yeah, it's funny you have, but uh you can kill yourself over there. There's yeah, there's some there's some big um I mean they're not probably all Bentonville type berms, uh, but they're they're big as far as berms that we have in our area.
SPEAKER_02:It's fun over there, but there's a couple of things. Where whatever, I don't know the terminology for the downhill guys where it's like where you pre-ride a trail and then you do it again and then you send it. Yeah. Outer space, you need to ride it two or three times before you like full send. Yeah, because yeah, you'll you'll shoot yourself into a bind.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. And it's not, I mean, it's not like if you were scary. No, it's just things come in. And it's not true downhill. It's not like if you go to Tulsa and ride the downhills there with the gap jumps and stuff that down stuff. It's just technical single drag.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and it's just like some narrow spots and some like ups and downs that you just and and totally appropriate for dirty. I agree. Some others may not, but off-cambered stuff.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, I've got uh you know this this the outer loop of it I call deep space, and it's actually named deep space now. Do you name the trails? I do. Well, not all of them. Oh, okay. So we have like we have a trail crew, believe it or not. It's not just me that maintains all the trails out there. I have a trail crew and all um it and honestly, like when you get all the cooks in the kitchen, it can be frustrating.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, because what what what does it take for us to get to name a trail?
SPEAKER_03:Let's let's do a trail and name it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'm excited about this. I don't know what the name's gonna be, but I like it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, uh yeah, and I uh when I when we did the post trails, we were just calling the post trails, and then we're like, oh let's stick with the post theme. So yeah, post mortem and okay, yeah, postmastered. So that's where it like Paul, you know, poster child, they all have a theme. And so I'm like, I want outer space. And the reason why I want outer space is the trail hasn't even been built yet, and I know exactly where the trail goes. It's right on the lake shore. There's giant boulders, it's gonna be like the sticks and stones feature where it has the wood going up to the giant sandstone boulders. The trail's name is Uranus.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I get a lot of stories about that. What?
SPEAKER_03:Where'd you break your arm? That's all right.
SPEAKER_02:That'd be rough.
SPEAKER_03:So um so anyway, it's and it's gonna be a technical trail, but that's where that's why I uh adopted the outer space theme. But anyways, deep space is this outer loop out there, which I think uh there's nothing like it in the OKC area, it's kind of like backcountry almost. There's a lot of trials, period. Yeah, it's just it's really neat.
SPEAKER_02:So um it's really taken over what Thunderbird used to be.
SPEAKER_03:So but a little bit more rugged in a good way. And I have to button have to be able to ride your bike to ride around it. It's not I mean talked about building things, but I think so many, so many trail systems now are trying to mimic what what Northwest Arkansas is doing, and it's like I don't I don't want every trail to have burrs and that's machine. I want to have to I want to have to be able to ride my bike to ride this trail. I agree. And uh I mean there's a good mix of it. Yeah, I mean there's a great mix of it. You if you know how to you know carry momentum and and flow through things and find lines that aren't totally obvious, like that when they're super super chunk, like rock and drops and bumps and all the things like off-camera stuff, like you talked about.
SPEAKER_02:That's phenomenal. That's what makes it fun, I think, is you have to think about it. You can't just blast it. Paladuro is so amazing. Yeah, so yeah, I don't I don't I don't want everything to be predictable.
SPEAKER_03:No, and that's sometimes what you get on the machine of you're just expecting it, you're just expecting it to be smooth or if you can it's fine because there's no obstacles and I mean very worried that that's what Thunderbird might turn out to be.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah, for sure that's what it's gonna be. Yeah, which is fine.
SPEAKER_03:It's cool to have that, it'll be fun because we have Arcadia, we have options to ride other things. 100% every trail is you know five feet wide with worms in every corner. It's like, yeah, it's kind of fun to ride, but you also like nobody's gonna have any bike skill because you don't have to really develop it to ride it.
SPEAKER_02:I agree. I think you have to have all the things, and the only way to become a better rider is doing all the things. Yeah. Like, so I think Oklahoma City at this point kind of has like all the things. Where I used to, it didn't, you know. Between, I mean, bluff has gotten significantly, they've tamed down a lot of the stuff that I went out there on when I was started riding. I was like, oh my god, this is the crit. How does anyone ride this? That race course made bluff fun for me.
SPEAKER_03:I I used to free. Yeah, I used to hate bluff. Uh huh. I'm like, I've just been like nauseated by the amount of these like switchback turns for no reason. And then that, and then that race, and I'm like, that was good.
SPEAKER_02:The race was good. That was really fun. But it cut out a lot of a lot of the stuff you're talking about. And I saw Chris for a good three minutes. You were there that long? Yeah. I mean, it switched back before and after the race. I saw you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:But the one thing I will mention, you know, it kind of closes out the arcadia piece, is um with the new trails that we have there. And uh, you know, Ethan and I went on a bike ride last we went on street bike rides last weekend. The last one that we were at, the parking lot was like full. And I was I told him I was like that I'm gonna be mad someday when I show up and there's no place for me to park. Yeah. Uh-huh. And we also have code to get past the gate, and I don't know. But but I it's getting so busy. Um, we've had EMS out there multiple times, and that's uh from a trail boss perspective, that's kind of scary. And I'm not, you know, and like people need to know their limits, and you know, stupid people are gonna be stupid, and there's nothing you can do about that, but it honestly has me concerned. But the thing is insurance, a liability standpoint, and mountain biking is inherently dangerous.
SPEAKER_02:It's a dangerous sport, yeah. And even on the tamest, simplest trail in Oklahoma City is skip. Oh, and bad things can happen, you know. And so skip is the scariest but it's place to me because you're going so fast.
SPEAKER_03:It doesn't matter what's so fast in front of you. Like you're gonna you're gonna get hurt. Everyone's everyone's gonna crash a mountain bike at some point. So I think like, yeah, the more users you're getting, the more people are gonna get hurt just right by numbers. So I mean, there's you can take it down, yeah, people are still gonna get hurt. People are gonna hit a tree, like you can you can't take all the trees out. So I mean, I think it's I mean, you can't control if people ride within their limits or not.
SPEAKER_02:Like there's not a lot you can do about that. Then if you have a dangerous section, you just mark it, you give uh a bailout, you sign it, and you just move on. I mean, the signage is about as good as it gets. So, what more can you do? I think Arcadia's phenomenal, it's the best trail. I mean, there's stuff in northwest Arkansas that you could kill yourself on, and there's no signs. No, true. Launch off the left.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I mean, it's it's an outdoor, like kind of a rugged outdoor activity.
SPEAKER_02:That's here's that also going on that like you're an adult. If you if you can't like make a decision in what you're doing, like it can, it's not participation sport, you know, like in that situation where like America like puts up signs and rails everywhere, like you know what, like you're an adult, don't be stupid. And if you do are stupid and you hurt yourself, well, you know what, you won't do it again. So I understand as a trail boss and like building trails, and you don't want to see anyone get hurt. You feel responsible kind of because you built it, but they're an adult. Don't be done. Um, so okay, I think where do we jump in with we have tour to dirt updates? Is there anything since Ethan uh is the spokesperson for tour to dirt and um the maybe I don't know. I might get trouble. I don't know. I'm just saying, is there anything you want to add that you want to say before we start pissing anybody off because we're a long time to this ramp into it? We haven't pissed anyone off yet, I don't think, but I want to start doing that. No, I mean I think I'll maybe I'll start with some gratitude, right? Like I, you know, I'm not from Oklahoma. I came in here, it's been a great community, grateful for the race scene and to kind of give some uh I don't know, something for me to to to do as a as an adult. Thank you. Oh, closer. All right, there we are. Yeah. But I think uh has wheels on it too. Don't roll the scary's got a wet carpet. Um I think you know, for the goals for true to dirt, um like would just be continue to increase numbers. Um I think making it easier and more approachable for any racers. I think that it can be intimidating. I think sometimes people think like I know for me, it was like I don't know if I if I can race, right? And I I think it'd be great if we can think of ideas on how to and Joe's got some ideas on this on the citizens.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, citizens idea. I went to a race a year ago in Wisconsin and they had kind of the same setup that Tour de Durant does. They called it like, you know, competitive or sport competitive and like elite or something like that, you know, like cat three, cat two, and cat one. But then they also had this citizens. And and it was basically like, you know, you can come out and race, and it's not like you're not with the people who are like taking this series seriously. Just go ride your bike. There was 200 people. Oh my god. Just the citizens class alone. Jeez. They were just like go ride the trail. No, they were race. It was a race and they still got a podium and everything. But it's like that level. Their race course was easier. Joe won. I wanted to say that one. So let me that's that's a true statement. So let me explain. Yeah, no, I don't think there's any insane. It was tram all over. We're there in vacation. I was on last day there, and the timing of the citizen race was at nine o'clock. And the race I would have done, which would have been the cat too, was too late in the day. So me and my brother and signed up for the citizens, and we both won our category. I still have the con for that course.
SPEAKER_02:What do you think about it? Hey, we have a we have a conversation that we need to get into that goes along with this citizen thing. Save that. No, no, no.
SPEAKER_03:This isn't about okay. Let's my background's motocross, and and the motocross races would have like a first timers race. But you only get to do it once. Okay. So you show up, no one no one in this class has ever raced. You get to try it out. But then that's it. I mean, because I don't I don't see like the citizens citizens class like someone doing the whole series. Right. It's like, all right, race. If you're into it, then you're a cat through. Yeah. And that that would let people be like, all right, we're all here for the first time. And so you people like Joe sandbagging it. And we can almost I don't want to do this.
SPEAKER_02:There'll be like 10 minutes. But you could almost do a first timers race with a like ten dollar entry. Yeah. It's just free. It could just be free. It could even be the day before. You know, these are just thoughts. Yeah, I agree. I think that would be awesome. Because I think it's it's intimidating for me. I agree. When I had scared qualifying because when I started riding with Joe, and then I started riding with some other people, and they were like fat way faster than me. And it turns out Rob Bell's pretty fast. Ethan will let you race it one time. One time once you're trying to get to yeah, rumor is Rob knows how to run a bike. Yeah, as I've heard. All the mics all all the bikes. Um, so I think that's one of the goals. Um, and then I think making a place for everyone to have a competitive experience. I think that's still Chris and I can get in a fist fight. Oh, I'm gonna write that down because I have thoughts on that. Because I think they're you know that that that's a tough one.
SPEAKER_03:You're not gonna again make everybody happy, but I think this is why Ethan and I had to come so we were we weren't outnumbered. I wasn't outnumbered, he wasn't outnumbered. Yeah, it's like I like it.
SPEAKER_02:And then I think I think the main thing would be becoming more youth focused, you know, with with Nica coming in, and again, not knowing a whole lot about it, but just looking around and like, geez, we we need to we need to bring the youth, we need some youth leadership in our space.
SPEAKER_03:I think that should be the focus regardless of Nica. Nike is good with those numbers. Um but I but also I think Nica in ways doesn't give you realistic expectations of if you if you do night to races only and then you go somewhere and race a cross-country race, it's so different.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So I mean, yeah, education on the on the youth side should should be the main focus. I feel like for everybody, no matter what we're doing, I mean, there's get the kids into it, get more people into it. There's no downside to to focusing on like how can we make it a better experience for for kids.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and I think going into what Chris said with so many kids better and I could I didn't realize they did it in school programs, because I remember going or doing a podcast with Alyssa on uh with the bike club. And she said so many of the kids, you know, they're inner city schools and stuff like that, but the kids get their bike, and then the parents end up being like, Well, I want to go around my kids. I don't own a bicycle, and so now the whole family ends up getting bicycles, and now they all end up going outside, and now that becomes a family activity because this kid got a bike through bike club, but it could be the same through Nica and through our GCXE and Tour to Dirt and stuff like that, and growing the sport internally, but also you get a kid in there that is doing the sport, and now mom and dad are like, Well, a kid does a sport, and you I'm out here sitting and watching Nica while they're riding their bike, I might as well go do something too, even if they're like walking the trails or playing in the fields that are around the trails or something, or maybe they get a bike and go ride with their kid on the trails. Like it's a way to for families to come together in the trees, which is yeah, well, we there's not many things that check this many boxes, right? Where you guilty agree. You you can exercise, which is good for you, you know, you're you're outdoors, which is good for you. There's community, which is good, you know, is is there's nothing for you.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, spend a bunch of money, spend spoiled classes, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. Um and and it's just it's such a great sport. Nothing, there's no bad.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Well, to your point, too, you could turn essentially turn one racer into three or four and not even sat into it.
SPEAKER_02:So quadrupling your numbers for the community race and yeah, set the other the downside parking lot too, though. Yeah, the full time. Yeah. Sounds like Travossi has put in more. Uh so I think spectator friendly and then community party feel. Uh I only had one of those. So I think one of the things I, you know, coming through pretty he has cat three and then cat two, and then now uh I'm not sure what I'm technically I line up with Chris, but that doesn't really you're not the same. Not the same. I mean, I don't want to break into you. You don't have to break and say, hey, right now you might be the same. Right right now we are. Yeah. He's got one foot. Yeah, so yeah, one good foot. I like your odds.
SPEAKER_03:What happened to your foot?
SPEAKER_02:I'll tell you later.
SPEAKER_03:In in detail. Can you use can you use medical price? Right. I'm sitting in I'm sitting in the tech season this weekend for Paladoro for Ryan. And the only other guy over there at the time was the one guy I really, really didn't want to talk to. He was like, he was way too into it. And I was like, I don't want to get conversation. And you come through and Ryan's like, what happened to your on the way three?
SPEAKER_01:Like, if this fucking guy he looked over, but he didn't think no ahead.
SPEAKER_02:Sorry. Yeah, that that that's it. I think I mean we can all agree Tudor has been amazing for all of us. It's been amazing for our cycling community, all the stuff. And I think every race series, I mean, GCXE is brand new, and I'm sure they have they're after their first year, I'm sure they have ideas of things like man, that did not go the way that we wanted it to. We need to make changes, we need to make tweaks, this was great, whatever. And every race series has that. Um, and we're not picking on tour to dirt, we're not picking on GCXE. This is just the series that we have available. I think every series can get better. And here's the thing I don't put on a race. Joe, you do, Chris, you don't, you know, Ethan, you don't. So, like, it's just words for us. And you know, any feedback that I got from anybody after our last episode, I was like, okay, you say, Oh, yeah, this is still the same shit show it was 20 years ago when I raced back then, or yeah, things need to change. I'm like, okay, give me a tangible thing. Don't just say I don't like it. Like, what is a suggestion that you want to see? Like, you can't just say I don't like it.
SPEAKER_03:There's some there are some things though that I I would say are kind of 50-50. If you were to take 100 people, 50 of them would say, you know, what and a great example is I know GCXE is doing the mass starts. I am, I know you're a fan of the past starts. I am not. That's why I broke my shoulder last year. Well, you're on. So so if you don't, you know, if you depending on how it's set up, um the one that we did at Bales, great. I had no problem. It was like a 20-foot wide, yes, or not 20 foot wide, 20 rider-wide mass start. It was great. Uh, Turkey last year, cold turkey, it was terrible. I didn't know it was like eight people wide, 60 people deep. I'm somewhere towards the back half. I'm you know, I'm not, I'm not by any means Ethan or Chris, but I'm a faster rider for the group that I'm riding. Thank you for saying our name in the same sentence. And and we start different. We move up like 20 feet. Uh Daryl gets pushed into me by some guy. We both put our foot down, and like I'm now in the back, and I've got to make up all this ground. And I have like an opportunity to podium in this race from you know, I was I was frustrated, and so I did some stupid stuff trying to pass, broke my shoulder. Oh shit. It was all my all my fault, like my stupid move. But that and just some other experiences with the mass start, I don't like it. Okay. So I think that's what's great about the conversation. Yeah, but I I don't care if it's mass start or not. I just want to raise people, but I think the mass start came about because the numbers were so low. It makes sense to start two people, and then you get a race that has a big turnout, and then it it could be a problem.
SPEAKER_02:I think I think it should be I think it should be category and size field size dependent because I look at the first I did the hell's bells and it was a lined up, and I'm like, oh my god, this is going to be chaos. But there was enough room, there was plenty of room. It all worked out, it was perfectly fine. But then I also see it, I don't race cat one, but I also see it whenever you have the 39 and under and two or to der and there's four people, and then you have the next group, you know, there's like seven people, and they're two different waves. We started all cat together. Yeah, most of the cat ones started all together. That that helps, but it needs to be race dependent, you know, cat field dependent. And so, because exactly of your your story and your your issue, but I think that is something that races need to take into consideration. I'd say I think some max and minimums would be helpful, you know, where it's like here's the minimum, like we're just gonna here's the groups that we're gonna all you're all gonna go at the same time, and then if it's over this amount, we're gonna start separating.
SPEAKER_03:Like it'd be great if we had flexible. I mean, it's gonna alpha your start time by like 30 seconds, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's not like you have to plan differently, and each course be different because of what the trail allows. Yeah, and that's fair, and that's fine. Because it was fun this year because like I was able to race other people this I mean, Chris and I we were so close at the start, right? Right. I was really close to it. And um, and then you pedal, but then I raced some other people and that was fun. Uh-huh. Well, yeah, like Hell's Bells. Like the that was so I was so worried about that and scared about it. But then it was great because you always had somebody to chase, and you always were trying to stay away from somebody. It was great. So you you were just always racing. You start start with four or five people, it might just be over from the start. Yeah, like separates and uh that's the usually the way it is. Yeah, yeah. Usually you're riding by yourself, yeah, or kind of, you know. So yeah, I think that I think that would be a great tweak for every race series. Yeah, I think if they could, you know, even if we can't come to agreement on what the categories are, if we could somehow make it where it's they're they're squished together based on the numbers that day, so that people had people to race except because then is because it is hard when when you don't have because you're going to a race, and if you show up and there's two of you, that's not really a race, that's just a ride. Yeah, yeah. Uh yeah. So I I think we we need to somehow solve that, whatever that looks like. Go ahead, Joe.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you mentioned the keyword categories. Oh there seems to be a lot of those. Um so as a race, as a race promoter, you can even just race as a citizen. As a as a race promoter, yeah. I have for a for a regular tour to dirt race, I have to put together 26 sets of trophies. Sets of trophies.
SPEAKER_02:No.
SPEAKER_03:And and then this last tour to dirt race, we had probably the best turnout. Holy crap, who is driving you home? You're on the bike. Uh um but at the last tour to dirt race, I think we had the best turnout that we've had across broad categories. There were still some zero participation categories. And they were like, you know, it was it was some women categories and it was some like youth categories, like you know, 13 to 15 or something like that. And there was nobody that signed up, but even if there was, it'd have been one or two, like, why not just create like an under 23?
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_03:And why not have like a 23 to 45 and a 45 to 60 and a 60 to 99, and just like let's make this simpler.
SPEAKER_02:I think GCXE has nailed it with the categories. I think I think their categories, I was a little at and I understand it's uh there's such big categories at some point. You're gonna be the old guy in the category or old woman in the category that can't compete with the young people. Like, I get it, but it's only gonna be a handful of years, and then you're the young person for the next like seven years because I see it. We talked about triokc beforehand. I see some of our stuff going that direction, and you go to Triok C race, and basically it's a participation situation. Like, like clearly, everybody in a multi-sport race gets a finisher medal, and that's the whole thing, and it like promotes the sport. Like, I get all that, but then you wait for awards, they have so many categories. Basically, everyone gets on a podium, almost always, because there's such low participation in so many categories, and now they're running into that in in our mountain bike series. But I think GCXE nails it when it comes to the categories because it's very broad categories, but I never thought about it from the promoter side, where like, oh man, now my costs go way down.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, I've heard the same thing from Ray telling me how how many trophies or awards he has to have or have made, yeah, and then half of them just sit in his I learned after my first two years, it took me two years to learn this to stop putting dates on them. Oh, and just do the same thing. But like I don't even repurpose them all the time.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but yeah, I mean, there's just so many like tiny things that can be adjusted that make a huge difference in the revenue that the race generates and in the raceability of the event, you know. And I think another thing that just goes into that, I mean it's like totally off topic, but like having a quick turnaround for podiums. Like nobody wants to get in racing and sit there for an hour waiting for and earlier start times.
SPEAKER_03:We talked about that a little before. Just get the get the whole event over earlier in the day so you can kind of you want to hang out and talk to people.
SPEAKER_02:Let's jump into that because I think this all goes along with how you stir the pot with your changes in yeah, your and I should we talk about the changes? Yeah, well, I yeah, because I want to see these two fight. All right. Well, what if I needed to go in the bathroom like Kristen? Well, you need to go now.
SPEAKER_03:All right, so I'll go now and then we'll be ready for five. Traditionally, um the and it's it's I would say it's it's just the way that it always ended up. I don't know if it was always intentional or not, but like your cat three would do one lap, cat two would do two, and cat three or cat one might do three laps, or you know, however many laps it took, it was always like double double double.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And I'm like, you know, the the feedback that I've gotten from a lot of racers that are excelling in cat two that want to cat up, and they say, I don't want to train that much to cat up, like it's borderline endurance. And in a lot of cases, uh I think two years, three years ago, we did it, it was three years ago. The Arcadia Cat One race was like probably two hours and 20 minutes. Oh my gosh. The the one that they just did at Turkey, the fastest time, like it was two hours and one minute. Three miles. Yeah, two hours and one minute for cat one race. That's that's perfect. That's a long that's long. That's a long time.
SPEAKER_02:The winner, that means the that means somebody who finished like seventh or eighth.
SPEAKER_03:Was like way close to three hours.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, should have rode harder.
SPEAKER_03:That's what it sounds like to me. So, anyways, I'm like, hey, you know what? You know what? Like, I'm just gonna like go to the other, like, you know what I you if you're gonna make a change, you may as well piss some people off, right? Right. So uh so what I said is I'm like, why don't we just do cat two and cat one the same, and then the people who are faster, more skilled riders will just be in the cat one category, and maybe we'll promote some more people to cat up and and see what happens. Um so it was the exact same course, exact same number of laps, same distance. It was 20 miles, it was a tough 20 miles, it was not easy. Um but people were finishing in an hour and a half, right? You know, cat two and cat one were were finishing in an hour and a half, and I didn't have any real negative feedback from that perspective. Do I think there could be an opportunity to do something to differentiate cat two and cat one course-wise? Sure. If you've got something to be technical, or if you want to do like a prologue or something to add a little bit of distance, sure, why not? But I think traditionally the cat one stuff was just borderline endurance, and that's I'll throw that off. Let's now fight. Let's let these fight and then I'll ask my opinion. I won't fight about it. I mean, it's like said about a lot of this stuff. I mean, I've got my opinions, and that doesn't mean they're everyone's opinions, but so what's your opinion on that?
SPEAKER_02:I mean, I think the winning cat one time should be around two hours. But why do you think that?
SPEAKER_03:Just I mean, what then what's what's the difference?
SPEAKER_02:But what is an XC race distance supposed to be? Under three hours. That's like turn words.
SPEAKER_03:UCI World Cup is we're not doing UCI. We're talking about no country. The best riders in the world are only to ride an hour and a half to two hours. But UCI is a complete UCI went to that hour and a half format for to make it spectator friendly. What do you think is gonna TV package? What do you think is gonna generate more participation? Three hours or two hours? Well, I don't like I won't argue about this. But I'm just saying by USAC rules, like what what is categorized as cross country is sub three hour. Okay, okay, and then marathon is over three hour.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So US So Paladuro this weekend, my two laps. Yeah. Someone was in shape and could finish the race, um, it would have been sub-three hours. So that would be an XC race. I mean, yeah, because the full mare the full marathon was what? It was over three hours. But you would consider a two-lap race at Paladuro an XC race.
SPEAKER_03:I would consider if the fastest rider is doing around two hours, it could be it could be hour 45, could be two ten.
SPEAKER_02:Do you base it off the winner, or do you base it off the average, or do you base it off like the podium? I mean, if you're basing off the slowest cat one. Well, that's different. Like you don't you have some people in cat one out there for days, days, right? So but but that's what I'm saying. Like, do you base it off the fastest person that shows up? Do you base it off the podium? Do you base it off like the the average finisher in that group? Like, but that's because that's where that that's where it gets hard when you don't know you don't know who's showing up.
SPEAKER_03:But I would say this but it sure is easy if cat two and cat one go the same distance to figure out what that fastest time is. As a promoter setting up race courses, it's like if I just do these the same, I so what I was able to do at Arcadia is I started cat one, sent off the e-bikes, and immediately with no delay, started all of my cat two folks. And it was it worked out perfect. If it was a shorter course, it could have been a conflict, it could have been a challenge, but it I don't think we had a single like complaint about people being on top of each other, you know, in different categories. I can see where well, actually, I take that back. There was still, I think maybe in the future, just starting e-bike first, just go and you'll pass a few slow e-bikes, but you'll never see them again.
SPEAKER_01:Podcast but I can see the e-bikes.
SPEAKER_02:Uh but but I can see where I mean, and they can go back to Paladuro where usually the course is the same, and then when they go out for their third lap, it's like a half lap with different features or a different, but that's trail dependent, right? And so, like yours, they go out for two laps, and then the third lap, maybe it's just the up and back, they don't go to outer space and do all that stuff, but it adds a little like a five-mile loop or something. So I could see something like that, but I also think that creates a lot of confusion.
SPEAKER_03:I feel like if that happens, no one like Thunderbird was like that before the start, everyone's like, What's the first lap? What's this our loop? Okay, yeah, absolutely. I think if you have multiple options for what your lap is and expect people to process that while racing, it's just usually a look for an issue.
SPEAKER_02:I I push back on that because as a race happens, you should know the course that's set up for you. That's your responsibility. But if it's just one lap, you don't have to know anything, you just follow it.
SPEAKER_03:Like you could have a cat three, and then you could have a cat one, two. That makes sense to me. Because you just maybe move some tape, courses are set up. So we but when it's like, all right, this lap you go this way, but you have to turn here, next lap you don't turn there, and next lap you're you got raised brain, and it's like where do I turn again? And you don't know, and you go the wrong way, and then you're pissed at the proposal. I think so.
SPEAKER_02:I think getting back to I I think the issue is in at least in Twitter Dirt and probably GCX that they're trying to figure out is there's a lot of people who are in cat two who don't want to go up to cat one, and there's two reasons. One is they don't want to race against the really fast people and lose. And so that's one reason. The other the other reason is it does take a lot, it does take more training to go that extra lap. That's why I would narrow down because I disagree. I think it takes the right training, it doesn't take more. Okay, it takes a lot more, it takes the right training.
SPEAKER_03:I've done both a lot, and I just know no, I know it takes the right training.
SPEAKER_02:So I have the most experience here. That's right. From top to bottom. You have the most uh natural ability, but and no, and and training and skill.
SPEAKER_03:I agree. And I don't think I think a cat two racer can race a cat one distance if they did the right training. If they go out and do the roll training and lose, right and finish it. That's fine. If if you shorten the race, the fast guys are still gonna be faster. Exactly. So I think I think that that is the point. So I think if there's so they don't know because they don't want to get beat by the fast guys, they're still gonna get beat by the fast guys, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:But that's what I'm saying. I think if we eliminate one of the two, I'd rather still have it be if people are not catting up, it's because they don't want to race against people, and that's just a that's a that's a mame excuse. I don't agree with that. I so I sold cat out. Let me hold on. So so when I won cat too, when I won cat tour to dirt, I don't call it state championship, it's a tour d'air series that I won. And out of respect for a real state championship. So but I did not cat up and I had no interest in cutting up. And if I would have been a mandatory cat out, I would have set out that next year because it had nothing to do with like getting beaten, because I don't have that ego situation. Some do, some don't. Like that I just did not want to go out and because I knew I would be riding by myself for the for the cat one race because I just couldn't keep up with anybody. Okay, so me paying the same money and going to do the same courses, I did not want to go ride by myself for three hours instead of two hours. Nothing about that sounds fun. If I'm gonna do that, I'll just go ride that trail for three hours by myself. Right, it's a challenge in and of itself, but it's not anything to raise, it's not a race, it's not a race. If there's nobody around you, it's not really a race.
SPEAKER_03:So let me get my gas can real quick and for some so if whatever the series is, if they are actually truly enforcing podium, you know, placements and forcing cat ups, that would be amazing. And the the well not for doing it, but it'd be amazing. But if the if the change is is no different, you're just racing with faster people, or if it's very minor in like the technical nature of the course, or just a little bit of extra distance, then now you've you've you're starting to have a feeder pool come into the cat one, and it there have been many uh cat one races where there's one person standing, you know, holding their trophy up at the end of the race, and it's like, hey, I won. And it's like you won against yourself, but there is going with that topic.
SPEAKER_02:If it was mandatory cat up, I wouldn't have been by myself.
SPEAKER_03:Exactly. You'd have been on the third place in the podium.
SPEAKER_02:No, I would have been third from last, but I'd the other two bums that finished second or third and the cat two that year would have been with me, and now we would have had our race, right? But that's part of the problem and part of the standards and all the stuff that we've talked about.
SPEAKER_03:That if I don't know if there are standards, I've seen people bouncing around from cat two to cat one back to cat two, like we've got that coming up later.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we've been talking for an hour and 20 minutes, and now's the time. So Ethan has almost drank all of our beer. Yeah, I didn't know that Joe's beers are but he spilled he spilled one. But that's but that goes into the whole topic. If everybody was a mandatory cat, I wouldn't be by myself. But if the winner, if I was like, Oh, I wanted to share, well, you're uh you're not by yourself, but you're a perfect example. You're like, hey, I was good enough in cat too. I need to let someone else who deserves cat too have a chance of winning. Because the year before, I remember me and you having a conversation. Well, it was me saying something to you, you were too nice. And I was like, Man, you should be winning cat too. It's the guys that are ahead of you should not be in cat too. And then whenever you got to that spot, you're like, Yeah, it's time for me to move on so someone else can have a cat a chance to race their bike, not ride in an event.
SPEAKER_03:Ethan has two different things enough morals to say, Hey, you know what? This is where I need to be. So I'm here, even though I know I'm not going to be the series winner.
SPEAKER_02:There's a difference riding your bike event and racing. I have brought this up to other individuals who have authority in certain series, and they're like, Well, then you just need to figure out how and why you want to do things. And I'm like, And I'm like, Well, I want to go race my bike. I'm not paying money to go ride my bike. You're if you do the right thing, like I need to move up, and no one else does. Then you're screwed, and then you're by yourself again. And then if you cat up, and then the next year you're like, Well, I'm gonna cat back down, then everybody's like, Oh, look at this guy, you know, then you're the asshole. So what are these standards?
SPEAKER_03:One thing that you brought up, Chris, in the last series or the last podcast was that creating opportunities for people to go and you know do something more, right? So if we're not if we're not aligned with uh USA cycling, then you don't create that opportunity. Um, I don't disagree with that, but I also think that 99% of the people who are racing are just competitive by nature and having fun, like gonna go and do anything regional or anything beyond and and so to be able to kind of promote the and foster the environment to have people that are still willing to you know take it up to the next level without doing anything significantly more than they were doing before. And my my my example for this and why I I started to kind of really dial into it more was Clay Hasty. So Clay rode cat too, absolutely destroyed it if you and is on your team, so I mean you've gonna he's not anymore. No, but he was, so it's not like you're speaking sideways. He absolutely like destroyed cat too, and he was getting up at four in the morning and and putting in the hours and like you know, posting pictures with a bike light uh on in the trails. And I'm like, how do you go train that fast in four in the morning on the trails, clearing spider webs? Like crazy. So a lot of respect. For him, and then he came out the next year and and dominated e-bike. And I'm like, why wouldn't you cat up? And he's like, I don't have the time to put in the extra training to do the extra distance to be competitive in cat one. And I'm like, Well, that kind of makes sense. So that's when I started to think about it more. And then I'm like, well, if we're only having like a total of maybe 10 people out of 150, 100 and you know, whatever show up at a race, and they're that's the cat one crowd, then something's not right.
SPEAKER_02:You know, I gotta figure out I don't have the physical gifts in my body to be a competitive cat one person, and that's totally fine. I cram, I don't care how much I train, I probably cramp up right and then that's okay. I I'm not like me and Drummond are never gonna go head to head in a race, like it's never going to happen for the first 30 seconds, right? And that's in total, not even 30 seconds, not even 30 seconds. No, we go play on that list and we can figure that out, but not in I want to see I want to see you guys do the dual slalom and like let's just see what that looks like. And we do like we just yeah, and so maybe that'll be a video, maybe that'll be a YouTube or uh uh Instagram post. But the thing is, I don't have the things that to make that happen, and I'm okay with that. There is no problem with that. But I also don't want to go finish last and ride by myself for three hours, right? But if I can race in the middle with people, that's cool, that's fine. I don't have to be on the podium, and I think there's a lot of people that feel that way. There's a lot of people that don't feel that way. They're like, Well, I can't win, I'm not doing it, you know. Yeah, I'm gonna stay back here and win by like five minutes in an hour race, and because I get to win, that's a bitch move too. So I think there's a happy medium, but the the race series needs to the people that want a sandbag, the race series has an obligation to the other people that are spending money to show up to that race to say we're going to make this a fair competitive field. And if it's if you don't, if you don't like that, then maybe you sit out and don't cut. Yeah, because if I had a set, like if I had to go up and I was like, man, I'm not training, I don't want to go ride for three hours by myself. Well, you know what? You're a big boy, don't show up. Or you can race and just not, you don't, you don't get to count your points.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, that's it. Which would still change the dynamic of the race. It does change the dynamic. So I know there should be like, I mean, I don't know if it's top three, top five that you finished last year, which is kind of tough too, because you have people that don't do every race, but I guess that doesn't matter if they're not at every race.
SPEAKER_02:But yeah, if you're not at a podium, you should have to go up a certain amount of times. No, if you're in the podium for the series. Oh, for the series, absolutely.
SPEAKER_03:I was thinking like out of six races, if you finished three, that's not a podium either. Because you can't have someone really fast that only does one race.
SPEAKER_02:Perfect example. Yeah, I love this guy. He is great, he's so nice. Michael, Michael Gathers, he's a cat too. He crushes me no matter what shape I am. That dude, and he is the nicest man, and he always races cat too. I will I mean I'll put him out there, but he is a very, very fast cat too. He shows up for like two or three races a year, he wins every single one of them. At some point, you gotta move up. Yeah. So, but so but that comes back to it's not on him, it's on the race series. So they're like, hey, we have a pattern here, let's have a conversation with him. And so, man, like you need to move up. And if he doesn't want to do that, like, okay, well, you just if you sign up, we're putting you in the cat ones. Or we're gonna get an angry text. That's fine. So you can send it to me. But also, I think there's gonna be people in the cat threes that are the same way because like we have such massive fields and tour to dirt in the cat threes, and then they don't show up in the cat twos, and then the cat twos don't show up in the cat ones. So why are we not growing the sport? And I talked to people in the cat threes, and they're like, Well, I mean, I finished like fifth and sixth in the cat threes, but the top three beat me by like 10 minutes, it shouldn't be in mind. Well, I I think that's I mean, it's it's every series, it's every it is, but I love the idea of like the like Premier League. If you watch the Premier League, like you know, or the way that's the English soccer league works, absolutely not. I don't watch that crappy score, but yeah, I've heard of it. Well, it's it's so you play with your people anyways. We could explain explain later. Um but but I love the idea of if you you know you're in the top percentage and however that's figured, like you've got to move up. Yes, and then and then you you get to compete with that group. And then if you're in the bottom, you get to move down. You have the option of moving down. So I don't think it because I think sometimes it feels like a permanent thing where it's like you if you move up, you can't move back down, which I think it used to be that way, where it was like you had to like write a letter. And here's the thing to not talking like a thousand people we have to keep track of. There's like twelve that the series needs to keep track of. This is not a like a process that can't be done, like to nine.
SPEAKER_03:Especially if you it could we could figure it out. It could be done before the seasons if you minimize the categories too, yeah, sure. Agree, and that creates more competitiveness as well.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so Chris, do you want to add to any of this? Oh you do want to add to this. You do want to add this.
SPEAKER_03:It does, but it's outnumbered.
SPEAKER_02:No, not with the not with the other person, because it kind of goes into this where people are bitching about people showing up and saying he shouldn't be in this race because there's two sides to the coin.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_02:Because I've kind of been on that side because I remember when I was trying to like chase points and stuff, and somebody was like, um, because there was, I mean, he used to be a cat one, he's be uber uber fast. And I was like, man, this guy just is crushing me. Well, he was like technically better. So we had like a wide open trail here. He was from Tulsa. We had a wide open trail here. I could be him andor compete with him, even if I couldn't be him. We go race like Keystone, he would crush my soul, and then I'm like talking to people like, oh yeah, he was like legit cat one. Last time I saw him, I'm like, that asshole. But it was a skill set that he had, not his fitness at the time, because that was like years before I get that being a cat two person, but I also if somebody's a if somebody's a cat one on the road, cat two on the road, and then they jump into I don't I don't want to throw out a name, but if if they're a cat one or two on the road and they show up to a mountain bike series, what series what category should they join? I'm asking this. What Ethan, I ask you first. If you're a cat one, two on the road and you ride mountain bikes, maybe here or there a few times a year, and you show up to a race, what category should they? I think your first race, you should do cat three. I honestly do your cat one, two on the road, but yeah, because there's so I I think it's different. I mean, I see a lot of people crashing in on bike races because it's just princess chicken. What would you say, Joe?
SPEAKER_03:I well, well, um, I was gonna say cat two. Okay. That's what I was gonna say.
SPEAKER_02:And then go from there. Yeah. If so, if they are a cat one, two on the road, then they come in, they do cat two, they win the race, or finish on the podium. What should they do?
SPEAKER_03:So this is interesting because uh Ethan and I have had conversations on the bike while we're like riding about this. And I have over the years come to the realization that I'm like, oh, you know, I'm a decent technical rider. I'm by no means like great, but I'm a decent technical rider, and I'm like, that's my advantage. But on our courses, there's not enough tech, and the cat to rider or the uh the road riders are going to dominate people in cat too. Because there's just I mean, they could literally get off the bike and then just crush me on a hill. Like hills are my nemesis, and it seems like hills are like nothing. It's just like, I don't know, you should just create into the wind.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, no, I agree. Well, what do you say, Drummond? I think cat two is fair. Yeah. I mean, and if they win that race or in the podium, you think they should stay there or indoor cat up?
SPEAKER_03:I mean, depends on if there's any rules in place. They can do whatever they want. If there's no rules, I think if they if they win by a small margin, yeah, then it's like what trail is it on? What's their skill set? Because they could go to the next race and lose by a large margin.
SPEAKER_02:Uh so there's a lot of variable there, but a cat too. Who should have that conversation with?
SPEAKER_03:I mean, I I don't know. Like in that scenario, it's tough because, like you said, someone could go race skin, win. They could go to Turkey and get you know last. Right. So, but but there needs to be I mean, I feel like that's where we're at. The individual takes more pride in winning, whether it's you know, they should be in that category or not, then competing. Shit. And I don't think shit. I and when I said cat three, I just think it should be an option for everybody.
SPEAKER_02:If it's your first mountain bike race, then you should have the option. You should have the option to start in cat three because there is a techno like cool, like you can. I think for some of the cat two and cat one courses, if you're going all out and you're redlining, the it can never work. And you've never really and and you're used to racing on a road bike, it's varied.
SPEAKER_03:It's very not being an option. Yeah. There is a there's a real world example that happened. Um I'm not gonna name names, you're probably going just figure this out and just doing you know, some some reasoning and um some research. But at the um at the bluff race, there was a cat three individual who won and did great. You might as well say the name at this point, and did great. And then, and then you know, they they raced other races and they did great in cat three, right? And they're traditionally a road rider. And then they came to Arcadia and they're like, I'm going to cat up. Was it cat three or cat two? But anyways, he was out pre-riding on the cat three course, fell, had severe injuries, broken, broken body parts, and didn't get to race at all. So, I mean, that's kind of an example of what we're talking about as somebody who is a I don't know about a cat one or two road rider, but it's a seriously super strong road rider.
SPEAKER_02:And I think I agree with all of you on this. I think this is where the series director, whatever that person is, needs to have the balls and or the ability to go up to that person and be like, look, you came into this, I'm not stupid. I can I know you're a cat too. You just race skip and you won by like five minutes. Next race that you signed up for, you have yeah, and because that was because on that was on our series, it's too simple.
SPEAKER_03:Like several years ago in cat three, they're like winning by five and ten minutes. He's like, Oh, Ben beat me by three minutes, but I beat the next guy by two, and like guys probably shouldn't be in cat three anymore, and you didn't, you cat it up.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, that's how you guys fat tire one. That's another conversation.
SPEAKER_03:But well, it's all a great strategy of a uh cat. Right. Well, it's a strategy because it's allowed.
SPEAKER_02:It's more safe, yeah. It's allowed, it's allowed, but that's where most encouraged. 100% encouraged, but that's where the race series needs to take ownership in growing the sport, and the race series needs to take ownership in like the like I don't know what the word is, like in the sanctity of the sport and the like integrity, integrity is the word, integrity of the other racers to say you're you're doing everything by the rules that's legal. Maybe it's not ethically on the line and you should move up. And if you want to sign up for the next the next race is super technical, so we're gonna let you still do the cat too race next one because it's super technical, and let's just see what happens. You won that race, you have to. If you're gonna race anymore, you have to. But the race direct the race series needs to take ownership and say, Agreed, we are going to navigate where people can race the conversation, at least have a conversation. Teams can help that too.
SPEAKER_03:So fat fat tire teams are never gonna do that. Well, no, they do they do. Fat tire only allows cat three riders to ride one year of cat three, and then you lose any benefits, but you can continue to ride cat three with a fat tire kit on, but you don't lose but you allow it for the full year, which should never happen.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That should never happen.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, I think with team I agree with that. Team count that if you see your cat three win by five minutes, you should be like, All right, we want the points. But I mean it's a catch. Yeah, I mean the team team challenge. I don't know if it's still a big deal, but it what it seems to be a big deal, and then was encouraged and almost forced by teams. Yes, I mean riders that wanted to upgrade, and they're like, Well, my team won't let me. And I'm like, come on. But that's where the race series And that's the race are wanting to better themselves. You know what's kind of funny? So I was at the beginning of this year, I was still the team captain, and uh there's a there's a guy on our team who raced cat three and did the five-minute wins, right? And he's like, I want to cat up. And I'm like, you know, like, well, I mean, it's up to you, but you know, if you cat up, there's a chance that you might jeopardize your placement in the series. I wasn't thinking about the team, I was thinking about like, hey, if you want to win the series, well, he catted off and he completely dominated cat too, and then he even like did great in cat one races. So, yeah, so he, I mean, he's gonna be the person to beat next year. Um, we have a couple of them on our team, yeah. Just like I yeah, Jason Canary is one.
SPEAKER_02:He's should move up throughout the season.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I don't know if Torre has a rule, but like you can carry some points with you. You can't carry some points. Yes, okay, yeah, but you can also game the system too, which isn't cool. So you can there's always gotta be a loophole, yeah. Right. Like you know, you could ride um the majority of your race is cat two and then cat up into cat one, and you've got no competition, and now you won cat one. Oh yeah, same distance, it doesn't matter. No matter it's not right now, dud. But in the future it will be, hopefully. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:At my races it will be. I I I think for for most people, I mean, for my my goal has always been just to show up to the races. Like that's that's the main goal. Show up, race, keep riding. And I think for most people that I don't know, that should be the goal, maybe I mean should be, but I mean it's all fun. We're all a bunch of old dudes in spandex wearing helmets playing in the trees. Like, let's get real with it, right? Like, but the competitive nature outfits with your with your buddies. Like if you if you really break it down, no, don't break it down. But okay, so we're drinking beer after. Uh-huh. So um sure. Um so like with this, like, and we kind of wrap it up because we are getting long at this point because we probably will have another session with this group. So what would you what in an ideal world, Drummond, in the next 12 months, what would be a change that could happen in not the overall series, but in like in the and not in the cycling scene, but in the mountain bike scene, what's something that you would love to see be tweaked and or like a big change, like one or the other?
SPEAKER_03:Definitely a short track. I think I think getting I mean one series, so people are picking and choosing. So we're getting that back together, a schedule that's manageable. And I mean, if we're if we're keeping it out of mountain biking, then that would be about it. But if we're keeping it to racing as a whole, a schedule for schedule seasons for disciplines like we talked about in the last one. I mean, it's not that hard to do. Yeah, it does keep people from did you say it's not that hard to do? It's not hard to do. This is not hard to do. It's not hard to do. You know why? Because it used to exist and now it doesn't. So I know it's not hard. It's hard to get everyone to have the conversation and agree. That's what's hard. Yeah. Having seasons and a schedule, I can't see how that's difficult in any way. The process is easy, the the execution is hard. Huh? Why? It shouldn't be hard. Well, it's just well, okay. So the timing of it, I think, is one thing. I've already said, hey, um, tour de dirt, I need to get my races uh on the books now. So I've got in late February, I I don't know the date off the top of my head without looking at my calendar, I've got my endurance race. And then um I've got short track races, which is a new addition that we're gonna be adding to Tour de Dirt, and they're gonna be in the in between the spring and the fall in the summer months when it's the hottest, because that's when you want to do 20 to 30 minute hall world races, right? Um, so we're gonna have two of those short track races, and then we're gonna also be the last race, you know, the exclamation point on the end of the series again next year. Okay, so why is that hard?
SPEAKER_02:Why can't every series follow that? Endurance races in the winter.
SPEAKER_03:No, no, no. I I agree with that, but now like I've got a I've got a date for my endurance race in late February, and now um somebody else is could step on that. I coordinated with Nica because me and Dave or how was talking about these things, but I have no idea what G60 is gonna do. Okay, but that's that's why it's not hard if if we talk with them, if we talked with G3, if we talked with Tanner with Cyclopes, this wouldn't be hard. We needed a chairman of the calendar, and I think that could be Ryan. I think he could be like you probably wouldn't have these scheduling issues already if everyone would have come to this meeting that we tried to get together. I'm not blaming you, but last year, about this time, we tried to get all these promoters so that so that 2025 would be the year that we worked through it, and it's like, all right, everyone's got their dick. Yeah, 26, it's dialed. But now you already have 26 dates. I do, and other people are well, so what? So we we we're almost potentially in 27 years.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's 27. And Twitter dirt, I think I mean just yeah, not I think they're going to at least at this time will be three in the spring, three in the fall. It's it's kind of the schedule. So doing fewer races because we two less. Two less. Yeah, yeah, too less.
SPEAKER_03:Um, so that will free up some, but it still is probably gonna summer and the fall has been short tracks, but like okay, but to the next day, yeah. It's gonna be on Friday.
SPEAKER_02:So Friday, I think. I'm just throwing this out. Why can't endurance races be November December through February? I'm just this is totally random. I I mean we haven't.
SPEAKER_03:And why can't we have an endurance series, Chris? Why can't we? Why can't we? Yeah, we can add if we have some more season for promoters. I could I'll do all three of them at Arcadia.
SPEAKER_02:Okay if we want to let's do them. Yeah, I mean that I don't that's the thing, is like there's other air most other states have a calendar, yeah, for I I was actually talking to Carrie at Palladuro during registration.
SPEAKER_03:I was like, what's what's the distance? Because it's a little different than the flyer. She's like, Well, I ran it by the timber board, and they said it was okay. So she had to ask, is it okay for me to go this little bit extra distance that's awesome to a board that runs all the mountain biking in the state?
SPEAKER_02:We just decided that to do okay, asking you guys this one who's on a board at Tour to Dirt and one who's a race promoter. If we just said, Hey, we're gonna get together seven people, I'm just making up a number. If we got these seven people together that have an interest in the GCX, the Tour de Dirt series, yeah, and outsiders, right? We have seven to ten people, and we have this board, and that would be amazing. Yeah, that would honestly be amazing. But as a race promoter, if this board came and said your race isn't gonna work, you gotta do it in the fall or a spring. Honestly, I don't know, like screw up. No, I well, I I tour endured would be okay with that. I don't know if GCX would be okay.
SPEAKER_03:So I would I would always prefer to have my Arcadia race in the fall because the chances of it getting rained out are less.
SPEAKER_02:But if they're like you need to do in the spring, I'm like, all right, give me a rain or but that fall fall number or date could be because if we had it like endurance races, true winter, right? Endurance races, and then you had um like XC races spring up to early summer.
SPEAKER_03:If you want to do a short track season in the summer, and then the fall, you start rolling into gravel and cross, like yeah, that's a full year calendar, and everybody has their season, have as many races in that and because they don't overlap back to what we very first talked about, you're gonna promote the gravel race, the cross race, the cross race is gonna promote the mountain bike because no one, oh yeah, no one is like, Well, I don't want to promote that because I guarantee this happens. First, I don't want to promote that because my race is the next weekend. So people do that, they won't come to mind. So you have pretty much every event in the state competing with every other event in the state because we don't have seasons and a calendar.
SPEAKER_02:I had somebody on our team, she did the she did all the GCX and all the Torted Dirt. Oh my god. She did seven races on a row. Yeah, and we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna reimburse her. And then if you throw in a lot of hook for it, yeah, yeah, exactly. But then if you throw in like because in the fall, or in this yeah, in the fall, you start running into you have random gravel races and g3 races and all that stuff happening on like a Saturday, and then you have an XC race. Or did you on NYCA? NYCA. I didn't need the Oklahoma board, but I think you also have to factor into some of the things in Bentonville, like rule of three is it's it's such a huge surrounding space.
SPEAKER_03:I think if there's the calendars, you know, you know what those dates are. Right. I mean, roughly you know when they're gonna fall. I would it would be very smart to schedule around events over there, right? People are going to be able to do that. If you have if you have seasons, then you eliminate some of the like conflicts that are gonna happen between the and some things they're just gonna happen. Yeah, but there's only so many dates. That's what you said. Like somebody's gonna have to give up a date they don't want to give up, and that's where the that's where the friction comes, but that's where the board comes in. And it's like you try to accommodate everybody, but someone's gonna have to, you know, people are gonna have to give a little bit.
SPEAKER_02:If someone came to you and said you can't have your race left all, it has to be in the spring, what would you say?
SPEAKER_03:In all honesty, would you be like, uh no? I mean, we we would do it. We used to we we did them in the spring. It was supposed to be in the spring, and it got rained on this year, right?
SPEAKER_02:We then like if the train all is like three feet underwater. Okay, right. I don't like Twitter's opposed to that. I mean, just as a I'm not sure if I'm speaking as the board or just me, but speaking out of term, but I'll yeah, but I'll just say I don't think that's the fourth beer talking. The fourth or the third is it is not the yeah, but I mean, what but do you think this is something that uh because we would have to speak with GCXE. Do you think this is something that chore to dirt? The group could be like we can have a conversation and and we can have this conversation, and maybe in because 26 is not gonna happen, but maybe in 27. Yeah, I think 27 would be a great it needs to start happening now. Yeah, it needs to start end up. I mean 26 could happen, it could, it could, it'd be a rush. I mean, some some people might not be happy, but it would be tough, it could happen, it could, but it'd be difficult.
SPEAKER_03:I mean 27's really like you've got a couple days, but is anything so set in stone right now that you can't change? And no, it's just are people willing to change?
SPEAKER_02:No, they're not, and that's why we are where we are, right? Okay, so what okay, we'll talk about this offline, but yes, I I would love to see that happen. Yeah, I would love to see that as a as a person in very like so what if we made it a podcast like we do this planning live on I don't know about that. I would love that. I'm gonna tell you a lot of people would not love that until you're right now, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:It might keep it might keep people honest, you know. I mean, for you temperature, yes lived here forever, but there was an organization. This this used to be a thing, B-R-A-O-K. And I don't I wasn't a part of it as well, but I don't know how the meetings went, they probably weren't always fun, but there was uh there was a website for it, which now could just be social media, but and there was a calendar, and it kind of provided information, it showed you know, if riders got upgrades, it showed upgrades on there, just kind of showed info about racing in Oklahoma. And it's it was kind of the board that you know directed all the racing in the state. So it's not a it's not a new thing, it's just something that needs to come back. It does.
SPEAKER_02:And I'm willing to do some of the hard work for that.
SPEAKER_03:Well, so Vanessa and I both agree you'd be good president. You're you're neutral enough on everything, like you see all angles, but you're not you don't lean one way or the other hard enough that I think that you would be good.
SPEAKER_02:That's a comment of like you piss everyone off equally, and so you should just continue to do that.
SPEAKER_03:No, I mean, like you disagree with me, you disagree with him, but you agree with stuff. I think that's so good. So honestly, like 10% of the people that are stakeholders in this conversation are in this room right now. I would agree with this. So we're we're already 10% there. Let's just, you know, let's go. I don't know. Dave, Dave would be all about, you know, this for Nika's sake, because he's always trying to make sure that we're not having conflicts. Okay. I think it's awesome.
SPEAKER_02:So we'll scrap up with this because we I think we could well, we can't drink beer anymore because Ethan only has one left.
SPEAKER_03:Oh my god. You just piled them up in front of me again.
SPEAKER_02:Um we'll take pictures. But I think um, I think this is the start of the conversation, and I think this is something we can like just say we are going to make happen. And if you don't want to be involved, we're just gonna call you out and say you're not involved, and this is why you're not involved. I have no problem with pissing people off, and I have no problem with like giving praise to the people who are trying to do things to grow our community. I mean, if you don't want to be involved, then what do you want to do and in them races?
SPEAKER_03:That's function. Just go to your own thing. Yeah, I mean if you if you want quality, like everybody's gonna benefit from this. It's not because quantity. Yeah, I mean, if you're gonna get all the racers are gonna be going to the same place instead of several different ways.
SPEAKER_02:Because we had a lot of racers agree uh agree with the topics that we've all talked about.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Arcadia is the quality over place.
SPEAKER_02:Uh-huh. I think I think go back on that, go back and read your Facebook post about that. But I think I think it's quality over quantity. And I think right now we have quantity over quality for sure. In every in every discipline, not mountain biking, but in every discipline in Oklahoma. And I think we see the results of that. Every race struggles to get numbers and to hold on to people. So anything that you would like to wrap up with.
SPEAKER_03:No, we we got too far in for my rant. So I I don't add don't forget to uh sign up for Oklahoma Long Bike Association. Yeah, 50 bucks. That's it. I like it. Ethan.
SPEAKER_02:I'm being glad to say anything anymore. No, no, that's not. No, no, I think I I would just say that uh I think that it's it's just what Oklahoma has to offer to those who are outdoor-minded. So I think we really should be good stewards of it and just be open to how do we make it better for everybody. I think we're gonna hold on to uh Drummond's rant because I don't think that uh that rant is like timeless. And then there there will be a perfect time to let that one out. Um that when it happens, you'll know. Because I think we all agree. It's really good. So uh thanks for listening. And uh please chime in and tell us why you hate us for doing this episode and why you agree with us. Or if you want to be on the board. Oh, yeah, this is a call for board members. Yeah. Uh-huh. Wow. And then I think these four can calendar managers. Yeah, these four can determine who's going to be on that hook.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, yeah, there's all kinds of stuff we would need. If you want to be a part of it, let's do it.
SPEAKER_02:Step up. I agree. And if you hate us, step up and tell us why you hate us.
SPEAKER_03:None of us are getting paid for this. We're not only losing money. Yeah.