Back for attempt #3

34?

18

34 per the web page.

what page?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I will be there!

Also doing BWR next month

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" I take my gear out of my car and put my bike together. Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafes. Non-racers. The emptiness of of their lives shocks me. "
(opening lines from Tim Krabbe's The Rider , 1978

In for the 200 (gulp).

34 is per the page here: https://dirtykanza.com/about/

oh. i thought you were telling me how many slowtwitchers were doing DK! yes. you're right. 34. i asked him how long it took to get to 800. he said something like 5 or 6 years. i asked him that question because i was lamenting the state of race organization nowadays, that i can't get RDs to put on gravel bike triathlons because they need 500, or 600, or 800, out the gate, year-one, or they won't put them on. few are willing to take a risk; to invest the time to see something grow.

these are the RDs who're going to ride their existing races down, 5 or 10 percent a year, until they're out of business and onto the next phases of their lives. it's guys like this, jim cummins, who'll succeed.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

At the same time there is a lot of local dislike here in KS about how the race has progressed with the lottery system. Our cat 1/2 road team was interested in racing but the lottery keeps us from being able to race as a team. Therefore, none of us have been interested in the race. I know a lot of guys who have raced in the past who no longer want anything to do with the race. Generally, the hype about the race over the last few years has dwindled locally. Time will tell how this race progresses and possibly this is his targeted demographic....the bucket list group.

can i present one possible other side?

is your cat 1/2 team attending as a team? socially? or is it racing as a team? tactically? because, if the latter, this is one of the outcomes of the success of this race and this platform that bothers people. it's antithetical to the vibe of gravel. they don't want pro or cat 1/2 teams swooping in to race with team tactics. they'd rather these teams stick with road. (what's left of it.)

as to the rest, it's what happens when you build a good product. you'll have to find (to start your own?) gravel race, or races, that aren't cultural phenomenons. lord knows, in michigan there are plenty. in calif, not nearly enough. so i'm starting my own. 2 of them. 1 standalone gravel, 1 a gravel tri.

meanwhile, back in emporia, this town had a 34 percent commercial vacancy rate the year the race started. now it's 8 percent. the reason why this race works is that the town feels it. and welcomes it, as far as i know. i wrote about this a couple of months ago. there are formulas for this. sort of like for marriage. there's formulas for marriage. best practices. skills. here are two: "i'm sorry"; and "you were right." there are formulas for putting on races. but RDs don't employ known best practices any better than husbands do.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Can’t grab the link, but homepage and then click “about”. Read down half way or so. Says 34 in 06 to can’t remember how many in 17.

race as a team. We have been doing more and more gravel races, they are good team training races and more big teams are racing gravel now. It is nice in that it is replacing some of the lost road races. There are still a lot of big road races and stage races and gravel provides a good training platform. There are some new gravel races that are appealing specifically to people seriously racing and they are fun and doing well. I guess DK has found its goal and others can go their own way.

No doubt, DK has changed radically over the past several years. There was no way to avoid that. After all, it didn't start out as an event. It started out as an informal group ride. Progressed to become a group ride to which outsiders were invited. As recently as 2013, I was looking for a group ride and called Jim up about 30 days before the race to ask about this crazy race I had heard about. I was welcomed to enter. They weren't anywhere close to bumping against any capacity constraints. Anyone who wanted to could have entered! At the 10 year point (just a couple years later), it was a big event with capacity constraints, but a big event with a uniquely Kansas flavor. People were seriously racing it by then, but people would have looked askance at people using aero bars or team tactics. It just wasn't part of the DK culture.

But as with anything that becomes a global "thing," the culture of the thing inevitably changes. DK is now an international event. It is vastly more polished than it used to be. It fits a homogenized cycling culture better than it used to. (Coastal people aren't all that tolerant of laid back Kansas culture.) And, at the pointy end, it's a lot less friendly than it used to be -- it's more about blood and sponsorship dollars now. I still love the event . . . but for a different reason. DK used to be a challenging gravel event made attractive (to me) by the people. The people of the Flint Hills made DK special. It's still a challenging gravel event. But it's Big Time now. (Nothing wrong with that. But it's different.)

I know you have mentioned it...but I dont read everything thread.. is there a timeframe and locale to this happening soon ?

thank,
J

my own races, which i will produce, won't happen until next may or so. both of them. we're pre-running the standalone gravel race, just to show a few folks the course, and a lot of ranch owners the riders, next month.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I'll be there. In for the 50 miler. My hometown (which we never had ANYTHING like this when I was growing up!)

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

On the other side of the coin, the town LOVES the race.

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

I get this sentiment on a local level; there's always a well-deserved sense of ownership from community for those there at beginning and helped build it into what it is. Here locally in Northern Cal we have the Grasshopper Adventure Series, which is been doing mixed-surface events for 25+ years well before anyone thought up the term gravel. I love the vibe, low key atmosphere (if you count lining up with Ted King, Pete Stetina, LtD, Meteor X guys, Payson McElveen, Kabush, etc) as such. You get what you want out of it from a race to social element without the entanglements of a huge production. That said, I view DK as something a little different. Probably because it's a circle-the-date destination race, more similar to an IM than Grasshopper with time & cost commitment. Personally I do agree that DK has changed & evolved, but not necessarily for the worse. IMHO, there's a place for both. But I get your POV all the same.

That said, I'm highly ambivalent about the team aspect and it heading in that direction. Last year I observed one of the guys on "big" not-to-be named gravel squads acting during race like it was the TdF. That type of mentality and behavior is one of the reasons I quit USAC stuff to begin with. Like escaping cars on mixed surface, one of DK/gravel's appeals was getting away from that mindset. But it's also quite obvious that with USAC's demise and pro cycling's broken model that the team participation is only going to build as sponsors look where the participants are. That's just how it is. I might not necessarily like it, but fully get it, too. So I'll turn DK into my own experience and not worry certain parts.

Anyhow, come out to Nor Cal and check out Grasshoppers!

First timer!

Starting a list:

Full DK
Carl Spackler
TriDevilDog
merlinkim
TJ56
cmscat50
jztelemark


50 miler
ironclm

slowman - you coming? And if so, you riding?

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

I'll be there.

200. Looking to ride with the big boys.

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24 Hour World TT Champs-American record holder
Fat Bike Worlds - Race Director
Insta: chris.s.apex

I'm signed up for the 200. Slightly worried as I haven't done many long rides this year.

well, shoot howdy. no i'm not coming. yet. this year. but you're going to be there, and that's more important. you oughta write us a before and after, and i mean emporia BDK, and ADK.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I am in for the 200.

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http://www.speedtheory.ca