Bike Talk with Dave: All things bike! Bikepacking, cyclocross, gravel, mountain bike, road & events

The Driftless 100 is a 100-mile, 60-mile or 30-mile gravel ride through the beautiful hills of the Driftless region of Northeast Iowa. Starting and finishing in Elkader, Race Director Mat Fassbinder hosted an entire weekend of camping, food, fellowship and some very scenic gravel riding. Mat invited Bike Talk with Dave host Dave Mable to see the course and experience the long, steep climbs, incred...

Evan Hartig won the 2017 Collegiate National Criterium Championships and envisioned a life living in Europe racing bikes. In 2022 that dream faded as he was released from his team and was left to decide what to do with the rest of his life. While riding bikes are still an important part of his life, it's not where he earns his keep, Working part time in a bike shop and back at school, he openly di...

Carl Voss has been an advocate for bikes and trails for fifty years - a few of the things he’s left in his wake include the first mile of paved trail in central Iowa, a community bike-share program, a bike renovation and distribution program, he’s worked with area municipalities to ensure that they work with each other in planning trails and bike routes so they all connect, he’s promoted bike to w...

As a lifetime cyclist and longtime RAGBRAI rider, Matt Phippen was named RAGBRAI Director in January 2022. He's had a year to prepare for a milestone year - the 50th RAGBRAI ride! Started in 1973 by two Des Moines Register reporters; Donald Kaul and John Karras, RAGBRAI (Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa) has become the biggest, longest-running bike ride in the world. Matt was kind...

Bret Hanson founded Peace on Earth Pizza, on the shores of the Bering Sea, in December of 1996. Since then it has become a western Alaska hub for food, music and community. In this episode, recorded during the Iditarod of 2019, we go into the history of Peace on Earth, how the little pizza joint in western Alaska became the island of peace and joy in the remote village of Unalakleet. I’d like to t...

Leah Gruhn has ridden the northern Minnesota winter ultra Arrowhead 135 for more than a decade, as well as the Tuscobia 160 and the Iditarod Trail Invitational 350 . And in 2017 she and her husband jumped on their bikes in Banff Canada and rode south to the U.S. Mexico border in the Tour Divide . This winter she flew back to Alaska and rolled across Knik Lake and up the Iditarod Trail for the 1000...

The Rattlesnake Gravel Grind, held on March 24 - 26, 2023, in Sweetwater, TX was a weekend of gravel riding, music, food, camping and fun. We were invited down for some good ol' west Texas hospitality - and this is our experience! Dave and his wife Dee hauled their tandem down I-35, set up their tent in the Sweetwater Lake Campground and had a weekend filled with memories that will last a lifetime...

The drivetrain hasn't seen a really significant evolution since the advent of index shifting in the 1980's. IMHO. Well, maybe the brake/shift lever combo - but really, not since then. More gears, electronic movements but the things still basically attach and work the same as the old Nuevo Records that our dads rode, mechanically speaking. So I went to the SRAM Eagle XX premier party at Mellow John...

Hannah Shell and Jake Magee will be sharing their experiences of gravel riding and racing with participants in the first Gravel Worlds Gravel Camp , along with Gravel Hall of Famer Cory Cornbread Godfrey. The camp will be held on April 27-30, 2023 in Lincoln Nebraska and is open to all, but will emphasis skills, training and nutrition aimed at beginning gravel riders. Find out more at https://www....

Heather Poskevich, winner of the 900-mile Race Across the West, (listen on Episode 9) is now training for the 3,000-mile Race Across America or RAAM. Heather is also a wife, mom and an E.R. doctor - so we thought we’d talk with her about her decision to tackle RAAM, and how she juggles training with work and family - so go pour yourself a hot cup of Chain and Spoke coffee, and enjoy this conversat...

In 2019 Steve Cannon rolled across Knik Lake, an hour northwest of Anchorage Alaska, with more than a hundred others riding, skiing and on foot, down the Iditarod Trail. Leaving McGrath, more than 300-miles away, the 17 remaining would ride and walk deep into the unknown, pushing through fresh snow, across barren tundra, up melting rivers and across a frozen sea as they made their way the 1000-mil...

Chris Daggs, professional coach with USA Cycling, LUX Cycling Development Team and now Director Sportif with the Above + Beyond Cancer (ABC) Cycling Team, is hoping for a bit of a road racing revival - and willing to do the work to help make that happen. He has recently announced a summer or racing: Three one-day races tied together in a series - The Golden Dragon - a Stage Race in May and a serie...

Welcome to the first episode of Bike Talk Shorts! ( well, kinda... hey... it's my first short! I'll get better making the Shorts short! ) - We begin with Kathi Merchant, Co-Director of the 2019 Iditarod Trail Invitational as she dives into a bit of the history of the race, the trail as well as some of the competitors (from Iowa... it was for a news piece in Des Moines). It's all pure Bering Sea go...

In 2019 Steve Cannon embarked on a journey with a handful of other intrepid souls, to ride their bikes along the Iditarod Trai l from near Anchorage, across the Alaska Range to Nome, a thousand miles away on the Bering Sea. Bike Talk with Dave's Dave Mable followed along to film a documentary about the journey. Once the two had returned home, Cannon and Mable sat down to record Cannon's experience...

Yes, Jimmy Hendrix, but with a bike, not a guitar! David and Jimmy have crafted a 30, 60 & 100+ mile gravel race through the power-producing (wind and oil) west Texas hill country - and don't worry, the Rattlesnake Round-up is the week prior to this weekend-long celebration, so the likelyhood of seeing this race's namesake is very low! The Rattlesnake Gravel Grind is an entire weekend of activ...

Hannah Kern aka Hannah Happiness, has ridden her bike across Asia, Europe, Africa and now in Central and South America spreading happiness and joy through her Happiness Project. "I believe that everyone has the right to be happy and it is my mission to make happiness accessible and sustainable for everyone ." =Hannah Kern Traveling by bicycle, she spreads her happiness mission through social work,...

Mark West has been fixing bikes for nearly 20 years and has been working in the trenches for some of the best domestic cyclocross teams and riders: Raleigh/Clement, Donnely, Cannondale/Cyclocross World and in 2022/2023, the Steve Tilford Foundation Cyclocross Team. He's worked with some of the best in the nation and world: Ben Berden, Jamey Driscoll, Gage Hecht, Lance Haidet, Clara Honsinger, Lizz...

Gravel Locos: "The biggest race you've never heard of." Betsy Welch - VeloNews. Fabian Sarralta, who came to America from Cuba with his family when he was eight, started riding gravel events in 2016 and loved the challenge, camaraderie and acceptance of the sport so much he began hosting his own race only a few years later. His first event, in Hico, Texas, now attracts top pros from around the U.S...

Brendan Quirk has a long history of cycling and in the cycling industry, founding one of the first online bicycling retailers: Competitive Cyclist. Since selling it he's worked as the President of Rapha North America, CEO of the bike brand Allied, has worked with the Waltons on the planning and development of mountain bike trails in OZ (Northwest Arkansas) and just prior to being hired to replace...

Criag Dalton started the Gravel Ride Podcast where he, as he says in his podcast introduction, goes deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes who are pioneering the sport. Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and his co-host Randal Jacobs, a cycling industry insider, publish the Gravel Ride...

This week, I’ve put together a double episode - Episode 53, which you might have just listened to, is a recent conversation with a bike packing fat biker who crafts his purpuse-built bikes at the University of Iowa Bike Lab. 12 years ago he started the bike building curriculem that we'll hear about in detail in this episode. I met our guest, Steve McGuire, In 2019 as he was riding the Iditarod Tra...

As the Director of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa, wove his passion for long, challenging, cold bike rides together with the U of I curriculum. The result was a now world renown bike building set of classes known as Bike I and Bike II. Teaching a bike building class also allows him the opportunity to build bikes of his own design for his use in his favorite type of bike races: Winte...

Eria Sabiiti is passionate about riding gravel and equally as passionate about telling his story, in the hopes that he motivates or encourages others to hop on. bike and join in on the gravely fun - regardless of who they are, where they came from or what they're riding! His passion, which he shares with his wive Evonne, comes to life on his YouTube channel: the Iowa Gravel Gang. He opens up about...

This the winter edition of Bike Talk with Dave as I get to dive into the frigid world of Arctic travel with someone I met on the chairlift during a recent trip to Colorado. Annabelle Santerre . What caught my attention was when she used the words North Pole during her elevator speech about what she does. We connected on instagram, where I discovered her active life of extreme sports - skiing, arct...

Stephen Hyde charged to the front of the U.S. National Cyclocross Championship Race in 2017 and 2018. In October of 2018, he sat down with then Cyclocross Magazine Editor Zach Schuster for a chat about his three unique custom designed and painted Cannonade race bikes, as well as his road to the Stars and Stripes jersey. Subscribe to the CXHairs Bulletin Today! Support the show by rating and review...