I think Steamboat Gravel represents a very challenging reality in that our mountain town, like mountain towns across the country, like any small towns that are bumping up against the recreation and rural community, tensions are going through these changes, right?

It's just the nature of where tourism and population and growing interest and et cetera are going.

Hello and welcome once.

Again to the November 1, 2024 edition.

Of the Tridoc Podcast.

I'm your host Jeff Sankoff, the Tridoc an emergency physician, triathlon coach and multiple Ironman finisher coming to you as always from beautiful sunny Denver, Colorado.

It was just a week ago that we saw the men take on the classic course on the Big island of Kona to contest the Ironman World Championship and unsurprisingly, it did not disappoint.

Watching the race though, I came away with a lot of confirmations of beliefs that I have held about triathlon for a long time, as well as a few new insights.

First though, let's briefly recap the race if you're not already tired of hearing recaps.

The race began with an entertaining and kind of unusually feisty swim in Kailua Bay.

After a fairly typical start, once they made the turn around the boat for the return leg, defending champion Sam Laidlaw of France made a huge surge and quickly established himself as a leader and in the process shattered the field into a few packs and established a gap to some of the pre race favorites.

Laidlaw exited the water in 4706among a group of athletes that surprisingly included Patrick Lang, who's not generally renowned for the swim, but many others were well off as they started the bike.

Laidlaw's strategy was clearly similar to what he had done in 2022 when he had dominated on the bike, and he did so again last Saturday, decimating the field en route to a new course record of 3:57:22 and this gave him a five minute lead over much of the field and set most of the known fast runners well back.

Although he started well, Laidlaw was clearly losing ground almost right from the start of the run.

After finishing in 13th place off the bike, Patrick Laing was rapidly making his way through the field and gaining almost half a minute per mile on the leader and just looked so much fresher in his stride than Sam.

Once on the Queen K, it was readily apparent that Laidlaw was done and it was kind of excruciating to watch him go through what so many of us as age groupers have suffered knowing that the mind and the body have become completely disconnected and that one is simply unable to do what the other is demanding of it.

At one point I was kind of hoping that Leda would be pulled from the course for his own safety as he staggered from one aid station to the next.

But to his credit, he seemed to seemingly recovered and he soldiered on and managed to even finish 17th.

But Laidlaw wasn't alone in his suffering.

Many other pros clearly were hurting and likely in response to trying to keep up with the punishing pace that Laidlaw had put on the bike.

And this included the Norwegian former world champions Gustav Iden and Christian Blumenfeld.

Iden, who pulled out at mile nine of the run, and Blumenfeld who somehow managed to finish despite obviously struggling with his nutrition and hydration.

While on the bike, many of the top pros managed very pedestrian sounding marathon time in the three and a half hour range.

Now don't get me wrong, I would be thrilled to run three and a half hours in Kona, but for pros, let's face it, that's pretty pedestrian sounding.

Even Steve McKenna, normally one of the fastest runners in the bunch, he finished with a four and a half hour run that I took as a testament to his courage to finish and also a reflection of the kind of day that it was for many of the pros out there.

Through it all, Patrick Lang of course, shone brighter than anyone else.

He started the marathon, as I mentioned, in 13th place, but he powered through with a remarkable 23734 split, averaging less than six minutes per mile, overtaking his fellow competitors one by one en route to a victory.

The incredible run allowed Lang to cross the finish line in 7:35, 53 and broke the Kona course record by nearly five minutes.

And his emotion at the finish was not to be contained.

And honestly, as a spectator, it was really a joy to see.

Magnus did live.

The Dane, meanwhile, he overcame a slower swim to earn second place and showcased endurance and tenacity.

While American Rudy von Berg had a real breakthrough performance and secured third place, marking a personal and national triumph on the Kona podium.

So what did I take away from this incredible day?

Well, yet again, I think we all saw how an ironman is just not one on the swim, but can definitely be lost there.

Coming out of the water with a large deficit is simply not the way to secure a podium spot when those fast swimmers are also incredible cyclists and runners.

Second to win in Kona.

It's really all about being able to run in Kona.

The bike course in Hawaii has kind of lost a lot of its challenge with climate change and the disappearance of the once ferocious winds that used to be such a disruptor of the event.

Now it's all about managing your energy expenditure and especially your body temperature so that you can run a marathon on the challenging and brutally hot and humid course.

Laidlaw's gamble to put away the competition with his ferocious swim and bike was a noble attempt, but kind of doomed for failure.

When you look at how well those behind manage their day, one wonders if Sam had backed off a little bit on the bike, could he have mustered a bit more for the run?

Unfortunately, we'll never know.

The last thing I learned from this race is a novel cooling strategy that apparently is only really available to the pros.

As Lang and Ditlev and some of the other men in the lead went through aid stations, they frequently grabbed completely full 4 gallon jugs of water intended to be used to fill the cups for age groupers who would be passing along later in the day.

These jugs were then carried along by the pros and summarily emptied over their head to great effect, I would imagine, in terms of cooling them down if if only briefly.

I can only wonder how this then later impacted hydration for athletes who were passing along in the evening to come.

All in all though, it was another phenomenal chapter in the Ironman World Championship story and a reminder of how Nice and Kona are so different and yet at the same time so very compelling courses in their own way.

On the show today, Juliette Hockman and I answer a listener question in the Medical Mailbag about a fancy new device that leverages technology that I have discussed on the program once before.

According to their website, the Firefly is a revolutionary device that speeds up the body's natural healing by increasing whole body blood flow.

It reduces recovery time and boosts performance.

Now I know what you're thinking.

It sounds pretty awesome, but is it true?

Well, we're going to take a look at the evidence and that's coming up in just a couple of minutes.

Later I'm joined by the Community Relations Director for the SBT Gravel, Greer Van Dyke.

You've heard me speak of the Steamboat Gravel Race on this program several times, both because of my deep love for the event and because of my dismay over how it is being co opted and really undermined by anti cycling voices in the Steamboat area.

Well, there have been a lot of changes announced for next year's event and I dare say not all of them are so wonderful from a cyclist's perspective.

So I asked Greer to come and chat with me about all of it.

And she graciously agreed, and our conversation is coming up in just a little while later.

Before we get to all of that, I want to take a moment to thank all of my Patreon supporters once again who have decided that for about the price of a cup of coffee per month, they could sign up to support this program and in doing so get access to bonus interviews and other segments that come out about every month or so.

The most recent of those bonus episodes came out a couple of weeks ago and featured a detailed medical segment on some new research that shows how muscle efficiency in cycling is unaffected by aging.

This is a surprising finding and has some important implications for all of us as we train and race in our older age groups.

And that bonus episode and others like it are available on a private feed for all of my subscribers.

Plus for North American subscribers who have signed up at the ten dollar per month level of support, they receive a special thank you gift in the form of this pretty cool BOCO Tridoc podcast hat that I am showing on the YouTube channel.

If you are watching in video, if you are just listening to the podc, you can imagine it.

It's very attractive and those of you who have already signed up at that level, you are wearing it proudly.

For any of you who are going to be at the World Championships in New Zealand in Taupo or Taupa, remember we have a couple different ways of pronouncing that I'm going to be bringing with me a few of these hats.

So if you contact me while you are there in New Zealand, I'll be happy to bestow upon you one of these hats just for seeking me out in New Zealand.

But for those of you who would like to get a hold of one by becoming a Patreon supporter would be eternally grateful.

You could do so by signing up at the $10 per month level.

So visit my Patreon site today at patreon.com tridocpodcast and become a supporter so that you can get access to all of the bonus episodes that are up there and maybe this cool gift as well.

As always of course I thank you in advance.

Just for consider.

If you're watching on YouTube then you can see that I have been joined by Juliet Hockman.

If you're listening to the podcast, I'm here to let you know that Juliet Hockman has joined me.

Which means that it is time for the Medical Mailbag, that segment of the program when we answer listener submitted questions.

Juliet how are you today?

I'm great.

How are you?

I'm doing really well, thank you.

As you can see, I have instituted a new background here.

I can see that my wife watched.

The YouTube video last week and was appalled that I would show my cluttered desk.

And so she insisted that I rearranged it.

Maybe that should be something we do going forward.

That every week we have a different.

Both of us have a different background.

It must get a little competitive.

Yeah, I probably won't get that done.

It's a good thought.

Juliet, before we get to the medical mailbag, I do want to just make a brief announcement on behalf of both of us.

Last episode, of course, we had a really fascinating discussion along with Alex Larson about how body composition impacts performance and the very kind of fraught discussions coaches and athletes may often have in how we approach that.

And so I wanted to bring to everybody's attention the fact that life sport athletes get access to these, what we call chalk talks throughout the year.

And the next one is coming up on November 13th.

That will be given by yours truly, myself, the Tridoc that's going to be given on November 13th and is going to be open to all.

Juliet, do you want to just let everybody know what the subject's going to be and how it relates to what we talked about last time working or.

Building upon our discussion about body composition, possible benefits, endurance sports, we will be talking a little bit in a little more focused sense about what we can do to think about and to consider and to weigh all pun intended body composition as we work through the holidays.

And of course the holidays is a very difficult time for a lot of people in terms of their diet or nutri choices.

There's also true for nutrition for endurance athletes because of course we're coming off a season and we're taking many people are taking a bit of a so how approach nutrition throughout the holidays while keeping body composition in mind but not being super stressed about staying anywhere close to race weight.

So it'll be an interesting discussion.

Jeff will be leading.

Everybody is welcome to come.

It is a benefit to life sport athletes.

But we also open these chalk talks up to everybody.

So please come along.

And I think you're posting the zoom.

Link in your bio, right?

Yes.

So if you go to the my Instagram account which is try coaching, it's all one word and you will go if you go to my bio, you will find a link to the chalk talk.

That link is for a zoom that will obviously only be open on the 13th and that's going to be at 6pm Mountain, and if you're interested, I hope that you'll come along and attend.

It'd be great to see you.

And there will be breakout rooms where we can interact and take individual questions.

So again, that chalk talk is going to be on the importance of adhering to race weight around off season and whether or not we should be striving for that.

And that's November 13th.

And again, the link will be in my Instagram bio.

Try coaching.

All right, let's move on to today's medical mailbag.

Juliette, we have a question that comes actually by way of you.

So what's the question we're going to be answering?

Yeah, so at LifeSport, which is the coaching company that Jeff and I are both affiliated with, we have a women's only WhatsApp feed.

And all kinds of topics and conversations come up on that, from supporting each other at races to questions about nutrition, apparel, bike fit, menopause, pictures of children's puppies, children and puppies, the whole thing.

And one of the questions that came up recently was the use and efficacy of collagen.

We've all read about how taking in the collagen or collagen supplements can help with anti aging, can help with the elasticity of skin as we age, can help with joint health, possibly even have.

Some anti inflammatory effects.

And a lot of us on the feed are or were taking collagen in our coffee or in our tea in the morning.

And so I wondered actually if this had any proven effects or if we like many other aspects, becoming victims of really good marketing in terms of being told that it was very beneficial.

So I'll be really curious to hear what you and your team discovered on this.

Yeah, it's a question that I hadn't really pondered very much.

I've peripherally heard about collagen being promoted specifically as an anti aging thing.

And it seems to be pretty heavily promoted to women because of its implied benefits on skin, especially as we age.

As we get older, the layering of collagen underneath our skin tends to decrease and that is what leads to wrinkles.

That's what leads to what we call crepe paper of our skin underneath our chin.

And collagen is essentially the elastic component of our skin.

It is also the very dense component of connective tissue that forms our tendons.

And it also has a role in forming things like cartilage, lubricates and cushions or joints.

So a very important anatomic structure, something that we don't really Understand why collagen synthesis seems to slow as we age.

But there has been a burgeoning supplement industry suggesting that if you take collagen protein, that you can somehow improve collagen deposition in the skin, in the bones, and the joints, and in the tendons, and that this will somehow lead to improved resistance to injury, improved recovery from injury.

And as we found when we did our research, there are several papers out there looking at the implications of taking collagen in terms of its ability to improve performance in sport.

So I want to thank Cosette Rhodes, who was the intern assigned to this subject, and she did a great job in coming up with some research.

She found a couple of really good systematic reviews.

And systematic reviews differ from meta analyses.

We've talked about meta analyses a lot.

Meta analyses are when you take a bunch of papers that are all looking at the same subject, and basically each of the papers is themselves a little bit small in terms of the number of people that were studied.

And so what they do in a meta analysis is they pool all of the results, pool all of the data points in order to get a larger set of values, in order to try and make bigger conclusions.

And there are problems when you do that because you never can control what happened in each individual study.

So any errors made in one study are going to basically pollute the entirety of the dataset.

The other thing is that some studies may use very robust methods, other studies may not.

And if you combine them, you're not necessarily going to get a true answer.

So meta analyses are powerful, but they do have weaknesses.

A systematic review is very different than a meta analysis.

A systematic review basically goes over all of the literature and tries to summarize the findings that have previously been published and does so in a hierarchical fashion.

So it basically looks at each study and gives a score to how strong the results were based on the methodology of the paper, based on where the paper was published and how big the paper, how big the population studied was, things like that.

So systematic review is another kind of research paper that lends credibility to research that has been done before it.

If the systematic review can pull together all of the papers that are out there, and if the papers that it's based on are strong in themselves.

One of the big problems with the systematic review is that it can only pull together the papers that have been published.

And we know that in medical research and in all research, there is a bias towards only publishing positive papers.

What I mean by that is, if there was a hundred studies done on collagen and 50 of them found no benefit.

It is very likely that most of those 50 negative studies, the studies that don't show benefit, they don't get published.

They don't get published.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because a lot of authors feel like I didn't show any benefit.

And people don't want to read about no benefit.

They want to read about something that shows a benefit.

And so negative studies often just don't get published.

So when you do a systematic review and you pull all this literature, you tend to be pulling only the published studies, which inevitably favors the benefits.

So that is one sort of thing we have to keep in the back of our mind.

With that being said, this particular systematic review was titled the Effects of Collagen Peptide Supplementation on Body Composition, Collagen Synthesis and Recovery from Joint Injury and Exercise.

A systematic review.

It's a very broad topic that they talk about.

That's all the things.

That's all the things, yep.

And despite that, they were only able to find 15 papers in these four areas, which I found interesting given how popular collagen seems to be.

There hasn't been a ton of research in this.

The first subject they taught, they covered was joint pain and recovery from joint injuries, and they found that there seems to be some support for the use of collagen in this area.

However, as often seems to come up, when I looked at collagen studies, a lot of these benefits were in people who had osteoarthritis or osteoporosis.

So it's hard to apply this to athletes who get an injury and then take collagen to know if that's going to be the same, because you're not really comparing apples to apples.

In that case, you're talking about somebody with a diseased joint and comparing it to someone who's just got a mildly injured joint.

So it's not really clear to me that this is the same population.

Do you think that taking it proactively can prevent arthritis?

That's.

Oh, that's never been done.

Nobody's looked at that study.

Yeah, nobody's looked at it as a preventative measure.

They've only looked at it as whether or not it can help.

Already established.

Got it.

Osteoarthritis.

And in that scenario there, the authors of this particular study had, like, something interesting to say, which I didn't really know how to put it all together, but I'm just going to find this paper here.

This is from the systematic review, and they made the comment that talking specifically about bone and joint health and regulating tendon and bone turnover.

They said that the findings from two major studies done on collagen supplementation were equivocal.

But there is compelling evidence that collagen inhibits bone collagen breakdown and alleviates painful symptoms associated with degenerative joint conditions.

And I'm not really sure how you put those two things in one sentence.

In the same sentence.

If the evidence is equivocal, which means that we're not seeing a major benefit, then how do you say there's compelling evidence?

So I wasn't really sure what to make of that.

But this comes up, unfortunately, this comes up over and over again when we talk about collagen.

The results tend to be underwhelming, but then they are spun by the authors of the paper to be significantly.

Possible.

Possible.

Exactly.

And I think the reason for this is because almost every single paper, in fact every single paper that I found on collagen, and this goes for any use of collagen, is funded by.

Supported by.

Conducted by the manufacturers of collagen supplements.

Right.

And that brings to bear a significant source of bias.

If the maker of the supplement is supporting or conducting the research, it's not really hard to imagine that if the results are a little bit underwhelming, they're going to spin them to sound a little bit more positive than they are, because they have something to gain from doing that.

So it makes it a little bit hard to know what to take away from this.

All that said this.

Yep.

Go ahead.

I'd also say that all of the studies, almost all the studies, compared collagen to placebo.

Yeah.

So that's another big problem.

So when you look at research, you want to be careful about what collagen's being compared to.

If collagen's being compared to nothing, and you see a small benefit with collagen, great.

But what you really want to know is if collagen is compared to the other thing that's being used.

So in this case, collagen versus just regular protein powder.

And that comes up a little bit later on when we talk about some of these other things.

So we talk.

The first area that collagen is being looked at was joint pain and recovery from joint injuries.

And here subjectively.

And what I mean by that is there are no objective measures.

Nobody was able to show, oh, if I gave collagen to somebody who has a joint problem, they're able to go run 5k faster than they were before.

Nobody has done that.

Instead, all they do is they say, here Write down your pain level based on the scale today, take collagen for six weeks and then come back and write down your pain level in six weeks.

Again, the evidence is not overwhelming that taking collagen dramatically decreases pain.

But the collagen makers would have you believe that, oh yes, this non significant or barely significant level is super interesting to us.

And we think you should take collagen.

So hard to know what to make of that.

Body composition was the next area.

Remember, I'm going to be talking about four areas that this systematic review looked at.

The second area was body composition.

What we talked about in our last podcast.

And here this was really important about whether or not you're talking about supplementing with collagen versus supplementing with just regular protein powder.

Because we know that if you take protein supplementation, it inhibits appetite, causes you to take in less overall calories, less fat, and therefore you're going to see changes in body composition.

And the authors of these studies did find that taking collagen supplementation was related somewhat with improving body composition when it was paired with an exercise regimen.

You couldn't just take collagen alone and not be doing exercise.

You had to be taking collagen in conjunction with doing some kind of exercise.

Generally a resistance program in these studies.

But when one or two of the studies compared to just traditional protein supplements in the form of whey protein or vegan proteins, they found no benefit of collagen.

So.

Okay, can we just pause here for a second because I know we're going to talk about inverses protein powder a little bit more as we go through this.

Can you explain to us the difference?

What is missing from collagen that is in protein powder and vice versa?

What is in protein powder?

There's missing collagen.

So what, how do you compare those two products?

So why collagen has received some interest is because as we mentioned, it is a foundational component of connective tissue, cartilage, tendons, the skin, it's the elastic component.

And the main makeup of cartilage are three amino acids, glycine, proline and hydroxyproline.

Those three amino acids are found in very high concentrations in collagen and not necessarily in other proteins.

So for example, whey protein is very high in the branch chain amino acids, which includes things like leucine and valine and a couple of the other ones.

But it doesn't have very high amounts of proline, hydroxyproline or glycine.

Got it.

Our body now, proline, hydroxyproline, and glycine are not essential amino acids.

What that means is our body can actually do some biochemical processes to create these amino acids from other amino acids.

The branched chain amino acids are essential amino acids.

We have to get those from our diet.

There is some ability of the body to change one amino acid to another.

And glycine and proline are ones that can be synthesized.

But there is some evidence to suggest that if you give the body more proline, if you give the body more hydroxyproline, if you give the body more glycine, then you are essentially feeding the furnace that produces collagen.

And so giving the body more of those collagen precursors can increase collagen production.

You don't have to get the collagen precursors from collagen proper.

You can get it just by taking protein powders that are supplemented with those proteins.

Like, for example, I take a vegan supplement, and that vegan supplement is itself supplemented with glycine, hydroxyproline and proline.

And proline.

So I am getting the same thing as if I was taking collagen, but without having to take the animal products.

And probably also in.

And probably also in lower dosages in your protein powder.

If you just took protein powder.

Yeah, if you just took a regular protein powder, you tend to get lower amounts of glycine, proline, proline, and hydroxyproline.

That's been the reason that collagen has become more popular, because the idea that if you're giving these precursors for our own collagen formation, that you're going to make more collagen.

Now, the problem is we don't actually know that this is happening.

There's no great evidence.

There's.

I did look at some of.

I didn't want to make the focus of this segment on the anti aging, but I did look briefly just to see what the results are for anti aging.

And when we think about anti aging, the three kind of areas that are looked at for anti aging are joint health, skin health, and muscle mass.

And in those three areas, there is some evidence that taking collagen supplements seems to improve subjectively.

Again, there's no objective measures, but subjectively seems to improve skin health.

There is no evidence that it or what the evidence that I mentioned about joint health.

Joint health is only applicable to people with osteoarthritis or osteoporosis.

And it does not.

It's not completely clear that there's any objective outcomes.

It all seems to be subjective.

And in terms of muscle retention, collagen alone will not do it.

You have to be doing resistance exercise as well.

And there's no benefit of collagen over traditional like whey protein or any other protein supplement.

Collagen is just as good as any many of the other ones and all of those studies on anti aging, again, all of them produced by the collagen supplement makers with an inherent bias in there.

But if you're looking for some of those skin benefits, I can't say that they don't exist.

I didn't spend enough time looking at that research.

I can just say that there's some subjective evidence that there may be benefit to skin health as you age by taking collagen.

But I just don't know how big that benefit is or whether or not that is done in really high quality studies or not.

The other two areas here that I want to talk about briefly in this sub, in this review were muscle soreness and recovery from exercise.

There were two studies of the 15 that looked at this seemed to suggest that muscle soreness was slightly benefited by taking collagen supplements.

But these studies were not blinded and they were compared to placebo.

And we know that taking other kinds of protein supplements, especially if they're augmented by carbohydrates, carbohydrate, also improve muscle soreness.

Doms.

So no benefit, I think collagen over regular protein and carbohydrate.

And then the last thing was muscle protein synthesis and collagen synthesis.

Various studies that seem to suggest that taking collagen improved protein synthesis if you were doing resistance training.

But here the papers were compared to other protein and there was no suggestion that collagen was better.

And in fact, it was how much you were taking rather than which you were taking.

Okay.

The other question that you had asked me before we started was this idea of the collagen peptides and the cursor.

Yeah.

So one of the things we talked about was that the body may be better able to absorb collagen precursors better than collagen.

And my question to you is, what's a collagen precursor?

And is it available commercially if it's more effective?

Yeah.

So collagen precursors can come in one of two forms.

There are the actual amino acids themselves, the proline, the hydroxyproline and the glycine, which you can get supplemented in various protein powders or you can get.

So collagen itself is a very long protein.

And when you take your collagen powder, if you're taking like marine collagen or Bovine or whatever collagen you're taking most of.

If it's just pure collagen, as soon as you swallow it, it has to be broken down into much, much smaller pieces so that it can be absorbed, because the collagen protein itself is just too big to be absorbed.

And then once it gets into the body, it has to be further metabolized so that it gets broken down into its component parts, so that can then be resynthesized into collagen.

What some of the companies have done is they have already done some of that digestive work for you.

And rather than providing collagen in a powder format, they're providing collagen peptides.

And that's just basically much shorter pieces of the collagen powder of the collagen proteins.

And it's been shown, we found a study, the effects of collagen peptides as dietary supplements.

And basically we found that the shorter the collagen peptides, the more bioavailable it was.

So if you take 100 grams of collagen, you're only going to absorb maybe 20 grams of that, whereas if you take 100 grams of the collagen peptide, you tend to absorb a much higher percentage of the free protein.

And we'll make use of it.

I see.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

That makes a lot of sense because on the product that I have here on my desk, it does talk about collagen peptides.

It's like you have to take 3 tablespoons per serving, and of that there are 20 grams of apparently available collagen peptides.

That makes sense to me now.

Okay, the last thing I want to touch on came from two studies done by the same research group.

And basically it was the effects of specific bioactive collagen peptides in combination with concurrent training on running performance and indicators of endurance capacity.

One of the studies was in men alone.

The other one was in women alone.

They were both randomized controlled trials.

Very good methodology.

Their analysis was a little bit weird and I think skewed by the fact that again, these were industry sponsored studies.

They found that taking collagen seemed to have a small benefit on a running time trial in men, but not in women, and that women seem to show some performance indices in terms of their cardiopulmonary performances seem to have some benefit, but the same benefits were not seen in men.

We know that supplementing with protein improves muscle strength, improves muscle endurance, and so I'm not that surprised to see that taking collagen might have resulted in a benefit to the men in this study.

I'm not entirely sure why it wouldn't help women.

It doesn't really make a.

We often see differences across the sexes that we can't totally explain.

And that doesn't mean that some of those sort of metrics of cardio performance don't have an impact or don't matter, but they weren't measurable in terms of performance in running.

Why a protein would have any impact on things like lactate threshold, heart rate, I can't fathom.

But that's something that they found, again, they didn't find, like, overwhelmingly impressive results here, but that's what they show.

Right.

So what it.

What are we to do with this?

What do we take away from this?

I mean, so it seems like.

You'Re.

Not going to get hurt taking collagen.

It might hit your bank book a little bit, but it's not that expensive.

So you're not.

There's no harm in taking it.

It might have.

It has some benefits if you're not taking protein powder.

Additionally, tell me if I'm wrong here.

From what I'm getting from this is, are we suggesting to athletes, hey, might help here, might help if you're not taking protein powder regularly, this could be a benefit.

Like, what are we taking away from this?

I think that what I take away from it is that supplementing with protein powder is probably not a bad idea as you get older, mostly because most of us take in far less protein than we should and that we know that protein supplementation helps with muscle mass retention, it helps with strength, and it does seem to have some marginal impact around the edges in terms of body composition and things like that.

So I think supplementing with protein is not a bad idea, whether or not you choose to do that in the form of a traditional protein or in collagen.

I think that's a personal choice.

Personally, I'm not going to use collagen because it's sourced from animals.

And I have made the decision that I am not comfortable with doing that.

I can find lots of different vegan or vegetarian protein supplements that will include the precursors to collagen.

So I feel like I'm covered in that respect.

And to people who want, who don't have a problem with consuming animal products, that's totally fine.

That's your choice.

And if you want to use collagen versus protein powders, that's totally okay as well.

I have reviewed branch chain amino acids in the past.

There have for some time been this whole idea that, oh, you need branch chain amino acids for performance.

So we debunked that at the time that I reviewed it.

So using or supplementing with branched chain amino acids doesn't necessarily do anything all that great for you, but neither does taking collagen.

So it's one of these things where you just have to make a choice.

I don't think there's necessarily a overwhelming benefit of one versus the other.

And I definitely don't think there's any harm to supplementing with one versus the other.

Just know that you're making a trade off.

If you take collagen, you're missing those branched chain amino acids.

If you take regular proteins, you're getting lots of branched chain amino acids.

You're missing out on some of these collagen precursors.

Unless you specifically look for a product that is fortified with those three amino acids.

Glycine, propylene and hydroxy.

Sorry, proline and hydroxyproline.

This is.

I think this is one of these things where I don't see any real major compelling evidence to add collagen to your regular routine if you're not taking it.

But if you are taking it, I don't see any evidence that suggests that you should stop unless there's a price difference.

I haven't researched this.

How much is.

Yeah, we get it on subscription from Amazon, to be honest.

And so it just comes every month.

And my husband and I both put it in our coffee in the morning because flavor.

This is one of those things that's so easy to test.

What does it cost?

I think it's about 35 to 40 bucks a month.

I'd have to.

So it's similar.

It's pretty similar because you can get protein powders for about that cost too.

It just depends on how much.

Right.

If you want higher protein content, you're going to end up paying more.

If you want like the one I just bought recently, they.

It's.

I've seen different protein powders.

Like you can get them supplemented with greens and in the various adaptogens and then you can.

I just found one that's actually supplemented with tart cherry juice powder.

So.

Couldn't resist that.

There you go.

Yeah, so it's 40.

I just looked it up.

It's $44 a month.

So it's not.

Yeah, it's not exorbitant and pretty similar.

So I think there's really no significant cost difference between the two.

Yeah, I can't say that I feel any reason to make a compelling recommendation.

One way or the other.

They Both obviously have what we want as athletes, but I think anybody who believes that taking collagen is somehow going to be some kind of miracle supplement that is, again, that's just marketing run amok.

I think that's overstating.

Overstating?

Yeah.

You and I talk about this offline all the time.

I think as athletes, particularly as we age, and it's easier to be injured more often or to be sore more often.

We're still doing all the work, but we're just looking for whatever can to.

I started taking collagen after Achilles tendonitis last year or tendinopathy last year, and just thinking, gosh, if this even just helped a little bit, it's totally worth it because I just want to get back to running.

We look for those little pieces around the edge that maybe they'll help because we just want to stay in the game.

Yeah.

And I think that's a perfectly reasonable approach because as I've said many times, the research that we talk about here is population research.

But I can never predict what's going to happen to any one individual.

Sure.

And as long as the cost of the particular thing is not exorbitant, as long as there's no significant risk of downside, then there's often no harm to just giving it a try and see what happens.

And this is one example where, like the studies on Achilles tendinopathy have not been particularly impressive with collagen.

But that doesn't mean it's not going to help you, Juliet Hockman, with your issue.

And honestly, even if it didn't help you, but you perceive that it help you 100%.

I was a fact.

That is worth it.

Yeah, that's worth it.

You just have to be careful.

And I say this all the time, just because something is helping you.

Right.

You cannot then go forward and proselytize.

This is going to be the same miracle for everybody else unless there's compelling evidence that suggests that's true.

And here there just isn't.

Yeah, got it.

But that was a great review.

Thank you.

I will spread the knowledge back to the Women's Feed at LifeSport and have them all come listen to this.

All right, that's going to conclude yet another medical mailbag segment.

We have several listener questions coming up up in the next few episodes, but if you have one that you'd like to add to the queue, I hope that you'll send it in.

You can email me@tridocloud.com or you could submit it on the Facebook group that is a private Facebook group.

Facebook group for the Tridoc Podcast.

Search for Tridoc Podcast on that platform answers these three very easy questions.

I will grant you admittance.

You can join the conversation there and ask your questions for a future medical mailbag segment.

Until the next time we chat, Juliet, I'll wish you well.

And thanks for the conversation.

Thank you, Jeff.

My gift today on the podcast is the community relations director of the SBT Gravel Race, Greer Van Dyke.

Greer was born in Georgia, but was built for the mountains.

And at the age of 20, she hit the road from Athens, Georgia and made her way to Boulder, Colorado.

At the beginning of 2020, she started her own business providing leadership development trainings and coaching for organizations.

Community engagement and riding bikes are also two of her greatest passions, and she loves how her work with SPT gravel combines the two.

So naturally, outside of work, she loves to trail run, mountain bike and gravel ride in the warmer months and backcountry ski through the winter.

She lives in Steamboat Springs, Colorado with her husband and two pups.

And I got to meet her when I was doing the SPT gravel this past summer.

And I'm so happy that she's here to talk about the SBT gravel and the trials and tribulations that are facing it as we head into 2025.

Greer, thank you so much for joining me on the Tridark podcast.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Good to see you again.

Yes, exactly.

So tell me a little bit.

What is the history of the SBT Gravel?

Yeah, so Steamboat Gravel started in 2019 by three local community members.

So the race has.

The race and event have been in operation for a handful of years now.

Obviously 2020 did what it did and SBT turn a virtual event for the years of 2020.

And yeah, now we're heading into 2025.

Always been in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

We're excited after some changes from the 2024 event into the 2025 event to see what's possible.

There been a lot of change and.

There'S affiliated rides elsewhere.

I know of the one in Finland and I believe there's another one.

Tell me about those.

Yes, there's Finland Gravel in Lahti, Finland, and then there is Rattle Gravel, which is in Australia.

My work primarily focuses on sbt, just manage community relations for Steamboat.

And so there are other entities to manage those for the other two events.

Are those two events, are those two events owned by SPT or are they just affiliated somehow?

No, they're owned by the same entity, same working party.

Got it.

Now you're in community relations.

So maybe you can give us some insight as to when did the friction with the community begin to cut an issue.

I have been to the SBT Gravel since its inception.

I thought it was a fantastic event in 2019.

I did the virtual event in 20.

I unfortunately was not able to be there in 21, but I've been there throughout all the other events.

So I noticed the friction this year.

It was the first time I really noticed it.

But obviously it was a problem before then.

So when did it really begin to become an issue?

I do believe my understanding is that there has been tension for a while just with regards to recreation and agriculture.

So I'll back up just a little bit.

I will get to your to answering your question.

Steamboat Springs is a heavy ranching and heavy agriculture community.

Hundreds and hundreds of gravel roads are made possible by our, yeah, heavy ranching and agriculture presence.

We were really made aware of the tension that was felt from the ranching community after the 2023 event.

I will say that prior to that, we did not understand like the magnitude that the frustrations and tensions were there.

After the 2023 event, we became very aware of kind of some frustration and anger just with regards to what I would say is change.

I don't think.

I think Steamboat Gravel represents a very challenging reality in that our mountain town, like mountain towns across the country, like any small towns that are bumping up against the recreation and rural community tensions are going through these changes.

Right.

It's just the nature of where tourism and population and growing interest and et cetera are going.

So after the 2023 event, we heard, we listened loud and clear.

We held multiple listening sessions for our ranching and agriculture community.

We learned a lot about the sources of the tension and we made a lot of changes to our 2024 event.

We eliminated nine of our 11 Shakeout rides, as I'm sure you felt and noticed, which up until that point, the shakeout rides were a huge activation for our sponsors and our partners.

And we also really amped up our communication between our event and the community at large.

Not only to the community at large, but our riders as well.

So we honed in big time on our Respect the Route campaign.

We live in Rout County.

R O U T T was play on words for what it looks like for people to respect the places in which they play.

So we made a lot of changes to the 2024 event and as I'm sure there there are many changes that are going to be in place for the 2025 event as well.

So those, So I would say yeah.

Those changes were felt.

My son, he's a very avid rider, doesn't get to ride on the roads that much because I feel like that's not really the safest place for him.

But we do a lot of gravel riding together and one of the things that he looked forward to the most in the SBT Gravel weekend were some of those shakeout rides.

And when we went there this year and he saw the schedule and he was, where are all the rides?

Where are all the warmup rides?

And he, he's 15 and for him that was a big part of his weekend was do a couple of those rides.

So I, I guess what, there's a lot of listening on behalf of the SBT Gravel and the riders.

Is there any speaking?

Because at the end of the day these are public roads.

The ranchers don't own those roads.

And I felt a lot of hostility as I was riding on those roads, seeing signs telling us we weren't welcome, despite the fact that we were bringing in a huge economic boom to the town and the county, paying overtime for the police who have now decided, as I'll get to in a moment, that they don't want to support this event.

I just, I'm having a hard time.

This goes back to, as you said, the resistance to change.

I have a little bit of a low tolerance for things like this.

Cyclists are constantly being told that they are the enemy.

And this seemed like one more example where we are coming in and really not doing anything except availing ourselves of public roads one weekend a year.

And this is somehow a major burden on a community.

And I fail to understand why SBT Gravel is the one who has to capitulate over and over again.

I'll speak to a few things.

I what became very clear to us from the 2023 event, as I mentioned, that's when a lot of the feedback became very ever present.

Steamboat Gravel from the experience from a lot of these ranchings community members that it was no longer a weekend event, that it was a week long event.

People were coming in Monday and they were staying till the following Monday.

And that was.

And we heard that and we really felt, here's what I'd say.

We're working very hard to change with the changing needs of our community.

We're finding and figuring out ways of how can everyone work to meet.

But you know, in somewhere in the middle can we attempt to figure out what that's like?

I completely respect where you're coming from.

And trust me, we've had a lot of those conversations about the positive economic impact that SBT has on the community.

That is now information that the city and county has that they didn't have to the extent prior.

We weren't as vocal about those things, and we're being much more vocal about them now to really give our community the full picture of how economically, financially, socially important this experience is for Steamboat.

It puts Steamboat on the map internationally in a way that our community would not otherwise be.

We are allowing.

Sorry.

Individuals who probably would not be coming to Steamboat are coming to Steamboat by way of SBT Gravel.

Now.

We feel like, yeah, from a social perspective, there's so much beauty and value to that.

So trust me, I completely understand where you're coming from.

And as event organizers, we have really had to balance our approach of what actually will it take?

What are the conversations that we need to have to keep the heart and soul of our event here and work within whatever confines or constraints that Steamboat has?

They're real.

And what I would say is that we've worked very hard to find a compromise, and we feel like we have found a compromise.

But I get everything you're saying.

Trust me.

The changes that we've made have not been beautifully embraced by everyone, and we understand that.

We understand that change is hard regardless.

So I want to be clear.

I'm on your side in that I'm a very passionate cyclist.

I will not be coming back to the event this year, nor will any of my friends that I've spoken with.

And I am voicing their frustrations as well as my own.

So I apologize if I'm coming across in any way as adversarial, because it's not my intent.

Because we feel very sad that when I spoke with you, when I spoke with you in the summer, you said to me that this is a small number of people with an outsized voice and that you felt that in the end, the larger community would win.

And I am reading this as that has not what has happened.

And so I'm just going to read a brief quote here from the Steamboat Pilot and Today, which is a local news site in Steamboat.

Quote rout.

County commissioners determined earlier this month they would only permit future SBT gravel events if participation numbers are capped at 1800 riders and no prize money is involved.

Since its inception in 2019, SBT Gravel has grown from 2000 riders to 2500 and most recently, 3000.

That's what you want in an event.

This is me adding to the quote.

You want Growth.

The SBT gravel organizing team is concerned that the shrinking numbers in the future will lower the economic benefits for local small businesses on race weekend.

Rout County Sheriff Doug Schirrar and I apologize if I'm mispronouncing that and Colorado State Patrol Captain Ryan Parker, however, told commissioners that 3,000 riders, their participation level in the 2024 event would not be workable for their officers in the future, despite applauding event organizers for improving rider behavior in the most recent edition of the race.

End quote.

What's the problem here?

The police don't like the overtime they're getting.

It changes nothing if they're doing 1800 on two days versus 3000 on one day.

I honestly, I can't understand why the SBT Gravel organizers don't just pick up and move somewhere else because I'm sure there's a community out there that would be more than happy to embrace the economic benefits that we bring to their public roads.

Yeah, I hear you and I acknowledge the frustration.

I and thank you for saying I don't take this as adversarial.

I think that these really honest conversations are important.

What I would say is this event has started in Steamboat.

A lot of the values that we uphold are born and bred in Steamboat.

So we have fought hard to keep this event here.

So there's that component to it.

What I will say to you is we actually do feel like the larger community did win.

It would have been very possible for us to have not received a permit for the 2025 event.

We have gotten permitted an event that no other gravel events across the world are doing.

We feel like we're trailblazing an opportunity here with regards to having an 1800 person ride on one day, a criterium style elite race on Sunday, giving our all of our participants the chance to cross pollinate and be a participant in the entirety of the weekend experience.

We absolutely see this as a win.

And we are finding now that over time, the more and more we're engaging in conversations, the more and more we are able to find this middle ground.

Yes.

Would it be easier in other communities?

Probably.

And what's really interesting is that a lot of the race and event organizers that we talk to are going through similar challenges.

It's just the nature of what's happening right now because this recreation and agriculture or recreation and rural community tensions are very consistent across the country.

I hear your frustration.

Trust me.

Our team has been knee deep in this conversation for the past two years.

So we understand it and we're trying To.

We're trying to find a way for us to, again, as I said, maintain the integrity of what our event represents and stay in Steamboat.

That's what we're attempting to do.

And yes, the number of people who are very opposed to this event is a small number.

And yes, they have.

There's a tendency for that number to be loud.

And we feel like how our 2025 permit application experience went shows that the larger community is very interested in having this event.

Now, what I'll say from the law enforcement perspective, rural community law enforcement, is.

Well, when those statements were made, which now, like many other statements, have been released since then.

So that's a little bit of a.

I don't mean this at you, but it's a little bit more of a dated statement because we have now been able to talk more extensively with Captain Parker and Sheriff Sharer about this, that those comments were made in a public forum.

So that was the first we had heard of that as well.

That was news to us.

And so since then, we've been able to work with them.

And we're also exploring what is the personnel that we need to bring in so that this event is run safely.

So, again, trust me.

Are we always completely excited about how some of these lessons are learned?

No, but the lessons are getting learned and what's coming after that is what we feel is really important, productive dialogue.

So we also understand that pr, publicity, newspapers, things are put out there that create a very specific picture of what's actually happening.

And what I'll tell you from the community relations perspective is that the conversations that we are having with our community at large are very positive and very productive.

And yeah, we're not having as many conversations with that small pocket of people who are just very opposed to the event.

But it is a small pocket of people.

It's.

And I truly respect wanting to be in a place where you feel welcomed and you feel appreciated and you feel valued to be there.

It doesn't feel awesome that we probably heard from half a dozen people an experience similar to yours.

Trust me, that was very hard to hear from us.

We didn't like it.

And frankly, our county commissioners made it very publicly known that they didn't appreciate that either.

So I just want you to know that the conversations that came after the event really allowed that small pocket of people to understand that's actually also not the way to do business.

Yeah.

So I don't mean that to sway you.

I completely understand why you and your friends have elected to not come back.

We respect everyone's decision, but we're also.

But we have other choices right there.

Fortunately, there are a lot of other gravel activities across Colorado.

SPT gravel was a big one on the calendar for a lot of people here.

It became harder to get into because of its success.

It's now going to be even harder with smaller numbers, but it's going to be less popular, I think, because of the change in date and also the change in the architecture of the event.

I think about Ironman, which is something that I do more.

I do triathlon primarily, and I look at Ironman events, they generally sign contracts with cities for three years, and if they find that the community is not supportive, they decamp.

And what ends up happening is when the community realizes, holy crap, we were getting a lot of money from these affluent athletes coming in.

And, yeah, one week a year was really inconvenient, but, gosh, one week out of 52 to get that kind of money, I think we can live with that.

And in the end, they would beg, plead, cajole, pay lots of money to Ironman to get the event back.

And I just can't help but wonder what would happen if SBT gravels went to Salida for a year, just for a year, and said to Steamboat, you know what?

You don't like us here for a week?

I bet there's another place out there where a lot of cyclists would love to go ride, and they'll come and there'll be no complaints because those places are much harder off economically than Steamboat is.

And I'll tell you, if anybody from Steamboat ever listens to this, I'm not gonna go ski in Steamboat.

And that's my.

They don't want me there as a cyclist.

They don't need me there as a skier.

And maybe they just don't care.

Probably they don't, but whatever.

I'm one person, but I represent many.

I could promise you I represent many.

And to all the people who own, like, vrbos there who are going to be losing money now, they're the ones who should be speaking out and being just as vociferous as this small number of ranchers are, because, I'm sorry, but this is not, you know, because I look at what you guys have done, and all I can think about is, okay, 20, 25 comes and goes.

Those people are not going to be happy because they're only going to be happy when the event leaves.

So they'll go back to the county commissioners.

They'll whine and complain just as much.

They saw that you capitulated this year.

You had no choice.

So what's going to happen after 25?

They're just going to.

They're going to.

Sorry, but they're going to bitch and moan ever louder about something else.

All of their complaints up to this point, I'm sorry, but the stuff that they were.

Were putting out in the press.

It's laughable.

Some of these.

Oh, our cows were scared and they broke the fence.

I'm like, come on, Cyclists riding by your pastor scared your.

I've ridden by many pastors.

The cows just sit there and stare.

You're telling me that a bunch of cyclists riding by is worse than a train of pickup trucks or F150 diesel engines pulling their trailers?

Give me a break.

So it's laughable, their complaints.

And while I sympathize that change can sometimes be difficult change for one week out of a year to get these kinds of benefits, I don't know.

I'm willing to meet people and have a beer and discuss their woes, but this is a little bit.

This is just putting your stake in the sand and saying, we're not going to accept this.

Which is basically what they've done.

So I just feel like you guys do have leverage here.

I think it's time that this is me humbly suggesting it be exerted.

Oh, you're suggesting we leave Steamboat decamp.

For a year, see what happens.

Go somewhere you're wanted and see what happens.

Because I would not be surprised if they come back to you and say, gosh, that money actually looked pretty good.

Well, and see, that's what I think is actually quite a big misconception about our event is I think that the picture that has been painted is that the community doesn't want us.

And that's to me, a very interesting thing.

Just because Eine inside the bottle.

Even more reason to decamp for a year.

And then when they.

When they want you back, then you say, okay, we'll come back under these conditions.

Put yourselves in the driver's seat.

Because I gotta tell you, there are.

Colorado's gravel cycling community is huge.

And it.

They're affluent and they want to come to Steamboat and they want to do the event the way it was originally.

So what I'm saying is that the community does want us in Steamboat.

The picture that's being painted is that the community doesn't.

That's what.

That's more what I'm describing is that.

That'S what it looks like.

Well, that.

I understand that and I.

We have no control over the narrative that is being distributed out there.

It's resounding that our city and the fair majority of our county is stoked for this event.

Especially with this new format that we've got.

Our neighboring town of Hayden couldn't be more thrilled.

They are truly elated because this is going to put them on a map.

On the map in a new way.

But that's not really the picture that's being painted.

The city is elated about the $5 million in rider spend.

That number will only continue to increase.

So it's.

It is really interesting that the conversation becomes about how the community doesn't want us when it's just not the accurate narrative.

And so we actually do feel like we're in the driver's seat.

We got told that we could have an 1800 person event.

No race component, no prize money, no podium.

And what we permitted and applied for was, was an 18 person hundred community ride followed by a 750 person elite race with prizes.

And that all got accepted.

So we actually were told one thing.

We applied for something else and we got the thing that we wanted.

We absolutely put ourselves in the driver's seat by applying for what we applied for.

I'm happy to go into more detail on that, but in.

In no way do we feel like we're at the mercy of.

Of what this community is telling us we have to do.

And I hear you onye.

It's an interesting thing to strategize.

That's not that those aren't the decisions that I'm necessarily a part of.

Like I said, Steamboat is changing and evolving.

It is not the town that it was in 2019.

If you live here, you'd know that.

No, I'm not.

Sorry.

I'm not saying that to you.

But like when you live in a place like that, you're very present to those changes that are in your face.

Yeah, I have a home in Breckenridge, so I totally know.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I know what you mean.

Meant.

Yeah, I know what you meant.

Yeah.

Good.

Yeah.

That was not intended the way that it came out.

But so I.

I come at it from this point of view of I think everyone has an opportunity to have their voices heard.

I am always of the mindset that feedback and should be given with kindness.

I actually would challenge you that I felt like some of the ranching feedback that we did receive was very valid.

For example, from our 2023 to our 2024 event, we had bi directional cycling traffic that actually is considered unsafe but stereo can be dangerous, especially for cars coming in all kinds of directions.

So one of the biggest.

And we were very grateful for that bit of feedback because if you've got cars that are trying to move cattle and ranching equipment, et cetera, and you've got cyclists going in both directions, it can be scary for everybody.

So we eliminated bi directional cycling traffic.

And that was something that came directly from the ranching community.

And they said from the 2024 event, it felt so much safer.

Thank you so much for doing that.

The feedback after the 2024 event has been very positive from a lot of the people who were very opposed to the event.

So for anyone who experienced the 2024 event, what we're also very aware of is sometimes you have one year or two years where, yeah, it's a little bit darker because you had some work you needed to do and they wanted to see the work that you've done.

And now we've done it and we feel like the con.

The conversations that I have had with ranching community members after the 2024 event has been.

And it makes us very hopeful for the 2025 event.

I think that 2024 was a huge learning year for us.

And some people experienced it as whatever they experienced it as.

And again, that's why we respect.

You gotta go to whatever gravel events that you wanna go to, right?

We're always gonna be here welcoming you if and when you choose to come back.

We're stoked for that.

Greer, you are nothing.

You are nothing if not relentlessly optimistic.

And.

And I really like that.

I think that's great.

And I think to be in the position you're in, you have to be.

And I think that's wonderful.

And I hope that optimism is founded in.

I hope it's founded in reality on the ground.

Because I have to say from the outside, that's not what we're seeing.

That's not what we're hearing, that's not what we're feeling.

And that's.

We will.

I guess we'll have to judge based because I'm not, not going to come back this year.

I'm really sad about that because it's an event that I've enjoyed so much.

But I just.

The changes for me are not okay and they're not a good sign and I worry about the future.

But talking to you always makes me feel so much more positive.

You're a good person to have around when things are not looking good, Trust me.

I appreciate you saying that.

And I'm not a Inauthentic, optimistic person.

I feel like I base my tone on the feedback and the facts that I see.

And trust me, after the 2023 event, I was really nervous.

The feedback felt hard and scary and relentless and loud.

And between the 2023 and the 2024 event, I would say the same sentiment applied the 2024 event.

I think stakes felt very high from a lot of those ranching community members because they had not yet gotten to see the thing that they needed, which was like they needed to see something be different.

And then they had the 2024 event, and they got to see that things were different.

And what's been truly amazing is that since the 2024 event, the feedback has really changed and the tone has changed.

And so, trust me, I'm not.

I appreciate you saying that.

And my optimism seems founded based on what I am experiencing in real time.

And even as come as an observer, see what it's like, I'm not attached to it, but I think that there's an opportunity to stay in the pocket, even if it's not as a participant, to just see.

Yes.

How is this new format going to work?

We don't know.

We're hopeful.

We're putting a lot of measures in place to ensure that it's fun and competitive and fair.

Right.

And welcoming.

We're doing all of that.

Right.

We're like, very adamant about that.

So, yeah.

I'll finish with one last question, and that is comparison that I've made in the past to the unbound gravel, which is obviously an event that started small, became enormously successful, is now one of the major premier gravel events.

What can you learn from them to try and emulate their.

You've already.

You've.

As far as I'm concerned, you've outstripped their success.

But how do you emulate their ability to withstand the same kinds of pressures?

They're not under the same kinds of pressures.

That's what I said.

Why?

Like, why?

What have they done differently?

Well, they don't have nearly the amount of residents that live rurally.

They're in literally in the middle of nowhere.

The.

We live in a very, like, tight knit.

Like, let's just look at straight up geography.

The topography and the population density of Steamboat and Emporia are night and day.

It is not apples to apples.

The amount of structures that they have on course.

The amount of residences that they have on course.

Course.

The economic nature of Emporia with and without unbound are not apples to apples.

It's not even a conversation of how do we emulate.

They are up against completely different things.

No, it's fair.

That's fair.

Yeah.

It's not a, it's just not a similar conversation.

I would say that the and, and you're not the first one to ask that question, but I think it's an important answer to give in that the comparison just isn't an equal playing field at this point.

They lean on it.

Emporia leans on it.

Right.

In a way that Steamboat doesn't lean on it, if you get what I'm saying.

Yeah.

So anyway, I appreciate that.

And we talk a lot to those event organizers too, about what are you learning and how are you growing and what's new for this year.

We're always doing that with event organizers across the country, but that's how I would respond to that question.

Yeah.

Well, Greer, I thank you for your optimism.

I thank you for your involvement in this.

I thank you for keeping SPT Gravel going.

And I'm hopeful that 2025 will be successful and that we can look forward to, in my mind, a return to the event that we had previously.

Because to me, that was the event that I would love to come back to.

Greer Van Dyke is the community relations organizer for SVT Gravel and I got to meet her at this year's 2024 event.

Thank you so much for being here today.

I really appreciated the conversation.

Hi, my name is Rebecca Adamson and I am a proud Patreon supporter of the Tridoc Podcast.

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