This is the first installment of a podcast series that we are calling the Rodeo Rider Files where we will sit down with extended members of the Rodeo Labs community. First up is Conor Dancy.

Conor lives in Northern Virginia, amongst the historic gravel roads of Loudoun County, and is a pilot in his free time. He is a real matter-of-fact presence and someone who loves cycling, the little things, and Big Dumb Rides—all things we can get behind.

Host: Logan Jones-Wilkins

Guest: Conor Dancy

Producer: Logan Jones-Wilkins

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Cody Cirillo and Matthew Tufts approached us early this year with an inspiring pitch: They wanted to spend a couple of human-powered months riding the outer perimeter of Iceland on Rodeo Labs bikes, all the while carrying their skis, and peeling off to notch seemingly innumerable ski descents along the way. We get plenty of project pitches at Rodeo, but this one stood out because it combined a world that we know a lot about with a world that we know very little about, all in a land that we very much want to explore ourselves someday.

Sit back as our hosts Logan Jones-Wilkins and Steve The Intern discuss the adventure all the way from it's "why", to the preparations, the endless headwinds, the long days on the bike, the line between skier and cyclist, the impacts of adventure travel, and more.

Stay tuned for the cinematic release of this story in fall / winter 2025, and in select ski publications.

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We are back with another round table conversation, this time focusing on the 2024 Tour Divide and, in particular, the two Rodeo Lab-affiliated riders who took on the challenge this June. Both Cade and Edyn had a massively successful outing with Cade arriving in Antelope Wells as the fourth finisher and Edyn finishing a few days later as the youngest-ever finisher of the Tour at just 15 years old.

Nevertheless, on the Continental Divide success is still filled with many ups and downs that come with some of the highest, wildest terrain in the United States. Stephen and Logan dug into it all with the pair of intrepid athletes, recounting the run-ins with lightning, mud, wind, and technical choices that went into the effort.

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Carbs Fuel has come on the scene this year as a simple, cost-effective gel that delivers 50 grams of carbohydrates in a neat $2.00 package. Stephen and Logan have both felt a shift in their fueling ability and understanding of on the bike nutrition after adding these gels to their pockets for training and racing, so it seemed like an easy choice to have the creators of this new endurance elixir on the podcast. To learn more about the company we invited Gabe Multer, the founder and CEO of Carbs Fuel, and Laini Ritsch, the CFO of the brand, into the Lab's podcast studio for a wide-ranging conversation on starting the company and why Carbs Fuel gels are the way they are.

From the jump, we also would like to stress from the get go that neither Stephen, Logan, or this episode is sponsored by Carbs Fuel. We buy our gels at full price and we wanted to look at the company since there are aspects of the company that are unique in ways that fit what we are doing at the Lab.

Hosts: Logan Jones-Wilkins and Stephen Fitzgerald

Guests: Gabe Multer and Laini Ritsch

Producer: Logan Jones-Wilkins

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The Traka is the biggest gravel race in Europe and it offers a wide range of distances including 200km, 360km and 560km. The Rodeo Labs gang were set on the big one: 560km, or 348 miles, of Spanish gravel.

Nevertheless, the rain had other ideas, with torrential downpours causing the race organizers to cancel the 560km distance. The Rodeo crew were gutted, but are still determined to make the most of the trip and have set-off for their own version of the race, because that's Rodeo! That is what we do.

Here is our conversation from before the race when rain was still only a rumor. Come back later for a report from Spain, but for now let's delve into the Traka and the ins and outs of this type of bike race.

Host and producer: Logan Jones-Wilkins

Guests: Stephen Fitzgerald, Cade Reichenberger, Nick Gilroy and Luke Hall

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Welcome to the Rodeo Labs Race Director Round Up! Over the next few weeks, as the gravel race “season” gets underway, we have decided to take on a mini-series focusing on gravel racing through the collective eyes of gravel race directors from across the country. Race directors are both the tastemakers and the police of the nucleus concept of “the spirit of gravel.” While race directors have a fantastic platform to voice their perspective for their own races, that voice is often limited to those narrow confines.  The goal here is to use our podcast, as a small journalistically minded outlet with no skin in the game, to give them a collective platform to share their interpretations of the state of the sport. 

Part three is just two conversations, but they are with two folks who are undoubtedly two of the most influential promoters in gravel. First up is Michael Merckx (6:15) of the BWR series. Michael started BWR as an extra long cyclocross race over a decade ago in Southern California.  Since then, BWR has become an international brand, with events planned throughout North America for 2023. Then, Stephen joins me to interview Amy Charity of SBT GRVL and FNLD GRVL (46:00). Amy, and her GRVL brand, started in 2018 and immediately made an impression with the SBT GRVL event in Steamboat Springs. This year, Amy is bringing the GRVL brand international with FNLD GRVL in Finland. The race is a new venture for an American gravel brand and is supported by F1 star Vallteri Bottas. 

Both of these conversations are unabridged, with the only editing meant to boost sound quality and clarity. We found that the quality of the interviews was interesting enough to run in full, so excuse the length. We won’t blame you for splitting it up! If you do, we recommend taking the break at minute 46 when the conversations swap.

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Welcome to the Rodeo Labs Race Director Round Up! Over the next few weeks, as the gravel race “season” gets underway, we have decided to take on a mini-series focusing on gravel racing through the collective eyes of gravel race directors from across the country. Race directors are both the tastemakers and the police of the nucleus concept of “the spirit of gravel.” While race directors have a fantastic platform to voice their perspective for their own races, that voice is often limited to those narrow confines. The goal here is to use our podcast, as a small journalistically minded outlet with no skin in the game, to give them a collective platform to share their interpretations of the state of the sport. 

Part two of the Race Director round up focuses on the directors of the “mid majors” in gravel racing. These races are the bread and butter of the discipline. They are the independent heartbeat of dirt road racing. Often, the promoters are the heartbeat as well – investing so much of their time and money into the ventures that are never guaranteed to pay off. With this investment, and with those race promoters shaping their races from their own personality and geographies, the different races offer both comparisons and contrasts. This offers us at the Rodeo Labs Podcast a chance to get a little non-linear with our stories. 

In this episode the over five hours of recorded conversations with the race directors of these independent “mid major” races. Thank you to all who agreed to chat, and, for those interested, attached is a list of the race directors and their races. 

Rebecca Rusch — Rebecca’s Private Idaho 

Jess Cerra and Sam Boardman — The Last Best Ride

Andy Chasteen — Rule of Three

Fabian Serralta — Gravel Locos 

Whitney and Zack Allison — Foco Fondo

Gordon Wadsworth and Emily Hairfield — The Appalachian Journey 

Bobby Wintle — The Midsouth

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Welcome to the Rodeo Labs Race Director Round Up! Over the next few weeks, as the gravel race “season” gets underway, we have decided to take on a mini-series focusing on gravel racing through the collective eyes of gravel race directors from across the country. Race directors are both the tastemakers and the police of the nebulous concept of “the spirit of gravel.” While race directors have a fantastic platform to voice their perspective for their own races, that voice is often limited to those narrow confines. The goal here is to use our podcast, as a small journalistically minded outlet with no skin in the game, to give them a collective platform to share their interpretations of the state of the sport. 

In part one, Logan introduces the series through a field dispatch from the Gravel Worlds gravel race in Nebraska last summer and the dialogue that followed. The first conversation was with Andy Jones-Wilkins, who is not only Logan's father, but also an accomplished ultra-runner and pundit. Using the conversation with Andy as a framework, Logan sat down with Jason Strohbehn, the race director of Gravel Worlds and the co-host of the Gravel Family Podcast, to learn more about the race and start at the question that is guiding the whole series: what is the state of gravel bike racing? 

Thanks to Jason and Andy for the conversations and follow the Rodeo Labs Podcast on your favorite podcast player for the rest of the series! 

Thank you to Drew Van Kampen for the transition tunes and thank you to Pure Gravel for the cover photo!

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