At the end of the year, most publications and their writers come out with the four or five favorite products they used in the past year. Most of these things are the cutting edge of their categories or a niche product that fits a specific need. These stories are great because they often allow journalists to write about their favorite things and are often useful to a wide range of people.

This year we here at Rodeo Labs wanted to get in on the fun, but to stay true to our roots we did things a bit differently. So, we got together our host and resident bike journalist Logan Jones-Wilkins, CEO and Head Intern Stephen Fitzgerald, engineer and fourth finisher at the Tour Divide Cade Reichenberger, and director of product development/master tinkerer Drew Van Kampen for a podcast. Specifically, a podcast discussing our four favorite things from four different categories.

We didn’t limit ourselves in this discussion to new products like most end-of-year lists do – some of our products are much older, while others are still to hit the shelves – but we did do all non-Rodeo products to ensure our recommendations stay true to things we have simply enjoyed and would like to put on your radar. Most importantly, we also didn’t limit ourselves to a set clock. For this pod, we lingered a bit to cover all the ground we needed to and we found some pretty interesting rabbit holes along the way.

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

Conor lives in Northern Virginia, amongst the historic gravel roads of Loudoun County, and is a pilot for a . 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.

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. 

It is 2023 and we have a little New Year’s resolution. With more folks on Rodeo bikes than ever and the possibilities of the adventure cycling world growing all the time, we felt like it was time to make a concerted effort to tell more of our story — beyond the Instagram-able moments that are not going anywhere — on the platforms of the journal and the podcast. The goal is to both look internal and external, with more Rodeo rider features, more connectivity with the events and adventures, and journalistic storytelling of the world around us.