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

Rose Grant’s pockets are stuffed with pal mares, a five-time U.S. Mountain Bike Marathon National Champion, two-time Leadville 100 Champion and so much more. In 2022 she was among 30 elite athletes chosen to compete in the six-race Lifetime Grand Prix. All on dirt, racing began in April at the Sea Otter Classic and concluded in October with the Big Sugar 100-mile gravel race in NW Arkansas. Other...

Matt Gardiner spent his high school years playing XBOX, becoming a master of Call of Duty and Halo. In college, he discovered that exercise could help relieve the stress of studying for the CPA. Then, with the CPA Certificate in hand, he took to triathlon, competing at the half-Ironman-length distance events. While training for his first marathon, a bike accident landed him in the OR to repair his...

Chris Namba was one of the four founders of the creatively painted and high performance bicycle brand known as Squid Bikes. Built and painted in the U.S.A., Namba and his partners founded the brand as an idea to help fund a season of racing and build a creatively painted line of bikes. Nearly a decade later Squid Bikes offer dozens of options for gravel, cyclocross, road and mountain bikes, each i...

Cassidy Hickey has more than 20 national championships to her name, and she's just getting started! Whether representing the U.S. at multiple World Championships, racing a summer season on the road, fall in cyclocross or racing with her college teammates at Colorado Mesa University, Hickey strives for the top. Currently traveling throughout the U.S. and Europe chasing UCI points in cyclocross, her...

core4 Is a unique cycling event which includes gravel, dirt, single track and pavement all in one grand circuit - whether 100 miles, 50 miles or even 25. Modeled after the Rule of Three event in Bentonville, Arkansas, core4 is Iowa City, Iowa’s new premier cycling experience, a celebration of community, opportunity, recreation and engagement. core4 will leave no surface untouched on August, 19, 20...

Marisa Boaz has had an incredible first year with the Mazda Lauf Factory Cycling Team as well as the Lux Cycling Development Team. She’s been racing in some of the biggest gravel and road races in the U.S. and even abroad, finishing in the top ten, on the podium and even a victory or two! She was my guest on Episode 12 where we talked about her recent victory in the winter gravel classic CIRREM, b...

Fayetteville Arkansas hosts the second stop of the 2022-2023 UCI Cyclocross World Cup series. Dive deep inside a weekend experiencing all that a weekend of racing and riding at the top of Millsap Mountain in Centennial Park. In addition to rider interviews and race highlights, you'll get to explore some of the mountain bike trails with Dave and his friends Doug and Nathan. Featuring: Curtis White,...

Lance Haidet juggles racing on the road, gravel mountain bike and cyclocross at the highest level while studying mechanical engineering at Cal Poly. As the 2019 U23 U.S. National Road Race Champion he caught the eye of Justin and Cory Williams and the Legion of LA race team and joined for 2o20. Legion of LA has allowed him to explore the world of gravel as well continue in cyclocross and mountain...

Hannah Shell is a professional gravel privateer, powered by Vantage Racing and fueled by The Feed! She's racing the biggest gravel races in the U.S. as well as the Lifetime Grand Prix. She sparked my interest when she posted a strong opinion regarding the structure of the elite women's race at the recent UCI Gravel World Championships (NOT the Pirate Cycling League's Gravel Worlds in Nebraska!). I...

Wanting to keep up with her older brothers, Savilia Blunk started mountain biking in the small California town of Inverness when she was young and shortly joined her NICA League high school cycling team where she learned about racing. College took her to Durango, Colorado where she not only sharpened the saw on the bike, but she developed a relationship with Cole Patten, also a professional mounta...

Well - we did it - an on the bike interview! Matt Zimmer, a pro roadie riding with the Project Echelon Team, lives in Des Moines - and is a super good dude -he’s great to have in the local group rides - from the break legs off Tuesday night world championships to the friendlier (but not slow) Saturday morning rides - so a few weeks ago I asked if he’d like to join me on a ride and do an interview...

When I started this little weekly audio adventure - one of the things that I was excited about was sharing some old stuff that lives on my hard drive - I’ve been covering the U.S. Cyclocross World Cup races since 2017 and I’ve got some old interviews and such just collecting dust - and I was excited to bring them out and give them new life - I’ve already shared a few, like my 2017 interview with K...

Sparkling streams, hills and hollows, shady rivers, mountain views, waterfalls, swimming holes, historic sites, bustling cities – the Arkansas High Country Route has it all. According to local route designer Chuck Campbell, “That route don’t go no where — It just runs around everywhere!” Indeed, this route is designed to connect many of the interesting places in west-central and northwest Arkansas...

Maeghan Easler found cycling, like many others, as rehab for a running injury. After some time as a successful triathlete, she decided to focus on the bike, but only for a short time, as she decided to continue with school in pursuit of further education in Oregon. The challenges of COVID led her back her home in Iowa where another running injury led her back to the bike, where she found herself p...

Caleb Swartz, while only just 23 years old now, has been a part of the national cycling scene for more than a decade, traveling the country and world, with his family, In 2021 he ventured off on his own, creating his own program as a privateer, giving him the freedom to race mountain bikes, gravel and cross across North America, and jump over to Europe when it was beneficial. His efforts were rewa...

Single Speed USA is more about mountain biking with friends, new and old, having fun and enjoying some local brews than it is about going fast on high tech 11-speed full suspension race bikes. Held in a different location each year, locations earned by competing in some crazy cooked up contest, this year it migrated to Deborah, Iowa, a small college town in north east Iowa surrounded by limestone...

Like many of us, Sunny Gilbert found her way to cycling through running. A mid-distance runner at Mizzou, Gilbert stood atop a great number of podiums, including at the NCAA National Championships. After completing her undergrad work she continued her studies in Boulder, CO, where she discovered triathlon (and a number of other sports, like mountain biking and snowshoe racing). She eventually disc...

Starting at 10,600- feet, the Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race is considered one of the highest and most challenging mountain bike races in the world. In 2004 Dee and Dave Mable pushed off at E. Sixth and Harrison for a 12-hour, 100-mile race over six long climbs on their tandem bicycle. That first year the pair earned their buckles by a scant four-and-a-half minutes. In their three attempts...

Daniel Hurd, or Lt. Dan, was in a dark place in 2017. Overweight, no money and no hope led him to try to end his life not once, but three times. Thankfully he was unsuccessful - and a persistent friend finally convinced him to ride a bike on which he learned to just take it “one pedal at a time.” In the five years since his last suicide attempt, he’s ridden in all of the Lower 48 states, started a...

In it’s 49 years rolling across Iowa, The Register’s Annual Bike Ride Across Iowa, or RAGBRAI, has become a rolling parade of 20,000-plus stories. It’s my role to uncover some of them and share them with the world, so in 2022, my family and I packed our bikes, sleeping bags, tent (sans fly) and my microphone and set off for Sargent Bluff to roll for the next week across Iowa. 

I hope you enjoy th...

Jeffery Bock began building custom bicycles in 1975 and hasn't stopped.. His frames are products of his education and love of art and his passion for bicycles. He and Dave talk about how he got his start and what goes into a custom frame. If you love bicycles, please click this link to enjoy an example of his work - taken by photographer Christopher Maharry. Click here: Bock Beauty To see the proc...

The Dream Team has helped hundreds of youth from around central Iowa prepare for and participate in the annual Registers Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, or RAGBRAI for more than 25 years! Current Executive Director, and lont-time Dream Team volunteer Brian O'Leary joins Dave for a special July RAGBRAI-themed episode to talk about the Dream Team history and share some great stories from this...

The LUX Cycling Development Team, one of the premier development teams in the U.S. came home from the U.S. Road Race Championships with seven Stars and Stripes jerseys, after a month=long stint in Europe. Dave talks with Director Sportif Chris Daggs about the European campaign and the depth of results at U.S. Nationals. Check out the roster, schedule and results at www.luxcycling.com . Chris has a...

The Garmin Gravel Worlds attracts more than 2,500 riders from around the world, and this year will welcome more than 1,000 women cyclists and volunteers. Jason Strohbehn and the rest of the Gravel Worlds team worked hard on this ambitious goal and are exited to host them and the rest of the Gravel Worlds community on August 19-20, 2022 in Lincoln, Nebraska. Gravel Worlds registration and informati...

Velorosa is a women's cycling clothing company started by two women passionate about cycling and in search of good looking and comfortable cycling kits: Kim Hopkins and Lisa Carponelli. Rather than be content with black shorts with a huge stiff chamois, and baggy jerseys with boxy shoulders, they decided to put their heads together to design and distribute their own - and the Velorosa Cycling Clot...