Coach Tom (00:01.389)
All right, we're going here. Hey, Kenny. wait, Kenny's not here this time. So we're trying this a little bit. Kenny, Kenny had a little bit of a hiccup today. Couldn't make us, but we've got Shannon Burke here on the podcast. I'm going to give this attempt to do this solo. We're usually Kenny's here. He's doing fantastic. I'm doing fantastic because we really enjoy these conversations and we have a really good time doing this. So we have Shannon Burke on Tennessee gravel.com.

We're gonna talk to Shannon about all this great gravel stuff. And this was great for Kenny because Kenny has a brand new gravel bike. It's just getting into the gravel scene. So he's gonna have to listen very intently as we do this. So first little business, everybody appreciate all the comments and questions that come through. Make sure to subscribe, whether you're on our YouTube channel or if you're listening on your favorite audio podcast, Apple, Spotify, any of those good stuff, iHeartRadio.

Make sure you subscribe Give us five stars thumbs up all that good stuff because that gets us higher up in the algorithms people find us And we're trying to do a better job of getting the content out a little bit quicker We said we've had a little bit of a hiccup trying to get schedules coordinated and all that fun stuff, but we're back at it Having a good time with this. So welcome Shannon Burke. We welcome to the podcast. I really appreciate you joining us so we can talk

all things gravel because that seems to be the biggest thing happening right now to everyone that comes into my fit studio looking for new bikes. They're talking about whether they should buy a road bike or a gravel bike or what do they want to do? And a lot of people coming in looking for gravel bikes specifically or they've just bought a gravel bike and they're coming in. So let's get into the gravel thing, but first tell us about yourself. How did you get into this? What's your background? How'd you get started? How long have you been riding?

And how did the gravel bug get you, of all people, to get this Tennessee gravel.com going on, which is a great website. We'll have all of that in our information.

Shannon Burke (01:57.966)
That's a lot of questions.

Shannon Burke (02:05.55)
Thank you, I appreciate that. And thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm actually coming from a road background. So I got into cycling, I don't know, 2006 maybe, when I started dating my now wife.

Coach Tom (02:11.32)
Okay.

Shannon Burke (02:19.15)
She was a cyclist and she was like this is what I do on the weekends if you want to hang out you're gonna need to get a bike so I think at the time I had a little hybrid bike that I would ride to a swimming pool I was a swimmer and in Austin there's a place called Barton Springs is like a football field size swimming pool Spring-fed 68 degrees year-round. It's so awesome So I would swim five days a week or whatever and I'd ride my little hybrid bike over there and so I was like, oh, yeah, no problem She's like no, no, no, no, need a real bike and she was she was managing a gym

Coach Tom (02:25.711)
Ha ha ha.

Coach Tom (02:36.335)
Yeah.

Shannon Burke (02:49.104)
in Austin and the owner of the gym was Italian. He came from Italy, set up shop in Austin and so he was all about Pinarello, Campagnolo, Giordano, the Holy Trinity. And so my first bike was a Pinarello, my first road bike. yeah, so that kind of helped get me hooked on cycling and then hanging out with my wife and then she had friends who traveled and so we started taking tours with them. And so I was like, man, this is the way I want to roll.

Coach Tom (03:05.387)
nice.

Shannon Burke (03:19.054)
like this is how I want to the world. so I actually, I was a city planner at the time, actually quit my job in 2012 and started a bike tour company called VeloView Bike Tours. And so we were taking people to Colorado or Virginia or all over doing that.

Coach Tom (03:19.545)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (03:29.486)
Okay.

Shannon Burke (03:36.814)
So did that until 2016 and then moved up to Chattanooga. Both my wife and I have family here, so, and Austin was getting a little crowded and so I thought, well, I'll just continue running tours and I'll just have a different home base from Austin. But unlike Texas, Chattanooga and Tennessee is beautiful. Like really awesome cycling. Austin's a great place and Texas has its sweet spots, but.

When I was leaving Chattanooga to go drive out to Santa Fe or someplace to run a tour, you're going through some not so nice places and I'm like, why am I leaving God's country to go out west to run these tours? Why can't I run tours in Tennessee? So I tried to shift my model to running, rather than me meeting you somewhere, you come meet me in Chattanooga and I show you what a beautiful place I found here.

The problem is Tennessee's not really on the cycling map just yet. Not as much as it needs to be for the quality of cycling we have here. And we can get into that a little later in the podcast about the tourism stuff. that got me, I just like being here and seeing the amazing cycling that we have. It's just like, man, I want to explore this place. Like I want to know all there is to know about.

Coach Tom (04:34.159)
just yet. It's getting there.

Shannon Burke (04:58.03)
Southeast Tennessee cycling. And so when the pandemic hit 2020, all my bike tours were canceled. I just bought a gravel bike at the end of 2019. I was like, I'll see what this gravel thing is all about. And then I had no tours and I had lots of time. And so I just went out in the woods, you know, I just started riding. So we live about an hour from the Cherokee National Forest.

Coach Tom (05:14.18)
Yeah

Shannon Burke (05:22.028)
So if you're in Chattanooga and you go east about an hour, kind of between Chattanooga and Knoxville, there's the Cherokee National Forest, which is just south of the Smoky Mountains. So it's the same type of beautiful scenery, cascading waterfalls, all this kind of stuff. The difference is the Cherokee National Forest actually has these gravel forest service roads that the Smoky Mountains doesn't. Smoky Mountains is great for hiking, but you don't want to take your bike there. There's no place to ride. But in the Cherokee National Forest, can hundreds

Coach Tom (05:47.459)
Not for riding. Yeah. Yeah.

Shannon Burke (05:51.904)
of miles of gravel roads. I just started exploring and I was like, these are the roads that I've been looking for the whole time. know, like whenever I would go scout out a place for a bike tour for road, you know, the payment would always end and I'm like, I was just getting good. You know, it's like the, the paint was no longer on the asphalt. Like it was, you know, it's like, those are the, those are the roads you want. Gravel is like, yeah, that's all we got. It was nothing but that type of stuff. So,

Coach Tom (05:52.953)
Wow, okay.

Coach Tom (06:09.605)
Yeah, yeah.

Shannon Burke (06:20.054)
I got kind of obsessed and it was the pandemic. And so just created a website. I'm like, look at all these great routes we've got here. So I just started posting routes that people could download for free. And I met this lady, Kim Morrell, who was based out there and who knew all the back roads and she had these mega endurance route, things that you're kind of people like.

Coach Tom (06:40.517)
Yeah.

Shannon Burke (06:41.518)
And so we, know, like the people who want to go out and ride 130 miles and 15,000 feet of climbing and call that a day's ride as opposed to. Yeah, exactly. So we still close it up as a, an individual time trial challenge. So particularly during the pandemic, that was something that people were kind of like, I need to do something, but I'm scared to go to group rides or to events. And so we set up this ITT system where they could.

Coach Tom (06:49.239)
Yeah, that's a cafe ride.

Shannon Burke (07:08.492)
do the ride, send us their Strava, know, do a little verification form and then we post their time and then we do all three. We have a little triple crown. I'll give you a t-shirt and a hat. And, you know, it's just kind like a fun way to get people to ride in the woods and to have a different experience when they weren't able to go to races. So anyway, that's, that was a long story to get to where we are in terms of just like trying to find a way to.

Coach Tom (07:25.763)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (07:29.924)
Yeah.

Shannon Burke (07:33.868)
to make the woods accessible to people, to allow them to experience what...

What I think is just cycling, having it out there. And so we've, we've got a bunch of different ways of doing that with bike packing routes, with the ITTs, with just straight regular routes and all of it's posted on the website. It's all free and people seem to like it. I was surprised how it took off in terms of like, you know, checking the numbers of people who are actually using the site and then getting, meeting people in Chattanooga and it's like, you're the tennis travel guy. Thank you. I use that site all the time. So that's kind of cool.

Coach Tom (08:01.473)
You're the guy that did that. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. And I, don't think people realize that Tennessee is broken into three parts. So the state flag has three stars on it for Western, middle and Eastern Tennessee. And there are three distinct regions. They're very distinct from one another. and I think we're just learning more about Eastern Tennessee. Like I've been here for five years now. and I in middle Tennessee love it.

and we're discovering all sorts of roads. There's great road riding. There's fantastic roads out here all the time, but like you said, as you go further and further out, the roads end, well, the pavement ends, I should say. The roads keep going, but the pavement ends. I think like a combination of finding those roads as we try to get out further from the city and from the cars and enjoy the outdoors a little bit more and get separated from some people. Like the pandemic was,

in that sense, good in a way because it got us outdoors. As bad as bad things happen. It kind of forced us to rethink, like being outside and being outdoors and you know, the amount of people that bought bikes through COVID. I get them coming through the FITS Studio all the time. And they're like, said, so when did you get started? It was like 2020. Yeah, 2021. Yeah, right in that that zone is like, yeah, I bought a bike and

Shannon Burke (09:03.662)
Right.

Shannon Burke (09:17.39)
Yes, exactly.

Coach Tom (09:28.249)
this was the only one that was available at the bike shop and it happened to be a gravel bike. So I've just been riding this everywhere or, you know, whatever, but there's so many people that started at that point. So let's keep them riding and let's keep them going out there. And I think gravel is the not the next frontier, but it's certainly, you know, the next mode for us to challenge ourselves and go out there and have some fun on it. So,

Shannon Burke (09:52.514)
Yeah, it's not just, you're absolutely right in terms of exploring, like it allows you to go places you can't go on skinny tires. mean, that side of it is...

is fantastic in terms of what you can experience. But I think the other side of it is people are maybe a little more fearful of cars now. so the road riding has kind of faded a little bit just because it can be really dangerous if you don't know where to go. so then mountain biking is also really scary to people because it's technical and there's rocks and sometimes the tires leave the ground. And so gravel is that sweet spot in between. And I think that has a lot of appeal to people.

Coach Tom (10:26.095)
trees.

Yeah.

Yeah, you can find those fire roads. mean, people who spend so much time on their trainers, they're like, I think this helps their bike handling skills without having to worry about the cars because they spend so much time on their trainers that their bike handling skills aren't that good to begin with. And then they get out there and get freaked out by having cars anywhere near them, which takes a while to get used to. So now you can get to a point where you have to hone your skills a little bit better. The gravel is not the easiest to ride on.

It can be a little bumpy, can be a little slippery. You've got soft dirt, sand, some stuff, how the bike handles. You can teach yourself really good bike handling skills and then not worry about getting run over by a cyber truck or something running down the road. So that's always great. So what's on the website? Break us through the TennesseeGravel.com. The routes are there. You've got all the elevation.

Shannon Burke (11:15.714)
Yeah, exactly.

Coach Tom (11:29.615)
Can we download?

Shannon Burke (11:31.104)
Yeah, yeah, so it's all ride with GPS. yeah, just basically gives you like a very short summary of what the what the ride has. And then you just click on that goes to ride with GPS, download it, you're good to go.

Coach Tom (11:33.369)
Got it. Okay.

Shannon Burke (11:44.174)
One thing I should point out, and this is something like this needs to be a winter project of mine, because I need to correct all the gravel proportions because Ride with GPS at some point, maybe it was last year, they went and started adding road surface types, which is completely inaccurate. And I even emailed them, was like, guys, this is deceptive because you're showing, you know, a route that I know is 90 % gravel, you're showing it as maybe 40 % gravel. And so if somebody takes a road bike out there is something that could be surprised. And so you got to

take all that with a grain of salt. look at our numbers because I have the percentage of gravel on there as opposed to what Ride with GPS does. So anyway, we got the routes and I've got them divided up into, you know, different areas within the national forests and by mileage or by climbing amount. Not a whole lot of flat out there. Just when you talk about bike handling skills, the one thing you didn't mention was like switchbacks, like coming down a hill at speed and taking a really sharp turn. know, those are kind of like survival.

Coach Tom (12:20.313)
what they have.

Coach Tom (12:38.677)
yeah.

Shannon Burke (12:44.268)
skills that you learn, know, to handle that on gravel which is very different than mountain biking even because there's nothing tacky that a mountain bike can stick into dirt. You don't have that on gravel so you got to work your angles a little different. yeah, just know that when you look at those routes on TennesseeGravel.com that there's going to be a lot of climbing. That's just the price of admission for being in the forest and it's totally worth it. So get a bike with good gearing. That's the key.

Coach Tom (13:11.557)
Good gearing, that's absolutely key, yeah. And that's the other point of middle Tennessee and Eastern Tennessee. I don't know Western Tennessee quite as well, but there's no flat areas here. So if you're looking for flat, this is not the place to come. But if you're looking for good riding, I think it's just, there's fantastic riding in Tennessee. It doesn't get.

Shannon Burke (13:23.126)
No, no, didn't.

Shannon Burke (13:32.855)
Yeah, you want to find better scenery. mean, Middle Tennessee is great too.

We can talk about the tourism thing where I've explored the whole state, it's like southeast and East Tennessee. As long as you don't mind the climbing, the scenery like and I've been all over the country and ridden in Colorado and all that. We don't have the big vistas that you get in the Western states, but as far as like the waterfalls and the fun roads to ride on and just the deep woods forest, you can't beat it. It's so good. we got plenty of routes you can choose from there and we've got our individual time trial.

Coach Tom (14:01.413)
There's a lot of, yeah.

Shannon Burke (14:07.92)
series with those mega routes. There's three of them on there and we've got some videos like Pete Stettner came out and Heather Graham, they came out and did one of our ITTs and of course smoked it. But they were also a little smoke like they were surprised like how gnarly and how challenging it was. It was a lot of fun to get their feedback, you know, coming from the West Coast to like, hey, welcome east to the Mississippi. And I heard Pete on a podcast not too long ago. like one of the last questions the guys asking was like, you know, what are your favorite spots?

Coach Tom (14:15.215)
Nice.

Coach Tom (14:20.101)
guys.

Coach Tom (14:27.812)
Yeah.

Shannon Burke (14:37.84)
spots or what are some of hidden gems you've discovered? And he mentioned East Tennessee. I was so excited to hear it. Like, yeah, it stuck with him, you know, it's like this is something that that's different than Kansas and Nebraska and all that, you know, the places that get all the press. And I think we got something special. But if you want a big challenge, check out the ITTs. We have bikepacking challenges, too. So Kim, my partner in Tennessee gravel, she put together.

Coach Tom (14:42.181)
Nice. that's great. Yeah.

Coach Tom (15:00.142)
Okay.

Shannon Burke (15:04.589)
a 430 bikepacking, 430 mile bikepacking route, and then there's a 300 and think it's like 16 miles version. So there's two versions of those and that's, you know, she'll do a grand depart for those where, you know, a bunch of crazies will get together and they'll go out and race it. And you'll see people come about, you know, like a day and a half, you did 300 something miles and in the woods on it, you know, some of that hike a bike and just crazy stuff. So if you're into that kind of stuff, we've got that. We've also got a bikepacking route that's a little more civil.

Coach Tom (15:08.719)
Okay.

Coach Tom (15:12.398)
Okay.

Coach Tom (15:20.591)
Nice.

Coach Tom (15:25.146)
Wow.

Shannon Burke (15:34.544)
this gravel as opposed to mountain bike. It actually goes to campgrounds with flush toilets and things like that. So we have a couple of options for the bike packing stuff. And then I have a, I put on a gravel event so you can find out information about that. So the Reliance Deepwoods.

Coach Tom (15:38.776)
Yeah, yeah,

Coach Tom (15:43.267)
No, outstanding. Yeah.

Coach Tom (15:54.402)
Is that just one event that you put on or do you put on multiple events? Just one, that's the reliance.

Shannon Burke (15:57.666)
Just one, just, yeah, I mean, I put on a, I have a road event that I put on, actually it's coming up here real soon in about four weeks called Cycle Siquacci.

Coach Tom (16:02.437)
Mm-hmm.

Shannon Burke (16:08.366)
And that's west of Chattanooga, but that's primarily road. I have some mixed surface in there, but it's 80 % asphalt, maybe 20 % gravel. But the Reliance event that's on the Tennessee Gravel website, that's, pure gravel riding. And that's a full weekend. Like we take over a campground out there right on the Holasi River and Friday, Saturday, Sunday, a lot of fun. there's other conditions on there as well. That's last weekend in April.

Coach Tom (16:08.642)
okay.

Coach Tom (16:13.55)
Okay.

Okay.

Coach Tom (16:22.457)
Okay.

Coach Tom (16:26.455)
Okay. And when is when is that? When is that? What's the last weekend in April? Okay, so that's something to put on next year's calendar, everybody to come out and do that. Because that that sounds like fun. The Sequatchie one, I think we talked about you and I off when we met we met at the gravel revival, which Moab Bike Shop puts on out here in Hickman County.

which will both be out again because that's just a great event as well. But tell me more about the Sequatchie one. Is that something I could do on a road bike or do I need to have a gravel bike for that? Yeah.

Shannon Burke (17:02.702)
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I actually set that one up before I was into gravel like that. I discovered Sequatchie Valley pretty early on after I moved to Chattanooga in 2016. So I discovered the valley and I was like, man, this this is where you want to ride because it's it's just farm roads. You know, there's nobody out there and it's this perfect valley. It's like maybe 60 miles long and maybe six miles wide. So super narrow with these two big ridges on either side.

Coach Tom (17:08.088)
Okay.

Coach Tom (17:27.983)
wow, okay. Okay.

Shannon Burke (17:30.39)
And then there's a river that runs down the middle. It's like, what's a valley? Like if you drew it on a piece of paper, like the Abisakwachi Valley, it's just perfect. Just these ridges, the river, and then there's a little highway that runs down the middle, and that's where all the traffic is. So if you want to get anywhere in the valley, you ride on this highway, which means the roads on either side of the highway don't have any traffic at all. So it's just, you know, just local people.

Coach Tom (17:45.774)
Okay.

Coach Tom (17:50.725)
Perfect. Okay.

Shannon Burke (17:52.008)
So you just hop on these farm roads and then you just go north and south and then cut across east-west anytime you want to turn around. So you can make it as long or as short as you want.

Coach Tom (18:01.125)
Okay, okay.

Shannon Burke (18:01.814)
So it's perfect for like an event. So we set it up where we've got routes from 15 miles all the way to like 103 miles. So it's whatever you want. we have three hill climbs that are optional. So if you want to go up the ridges that form the valley, we have those. If you're into that kind of thing, like a three, four mile climb with double digit grades, and one of them goes up to a hang gliding launch. it's just,

Coach Tom (18:10.521)
Okay.

Coach Tom (18:19.383)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Coach Tom (18:27.301)
you

Wow.

Shannon Burke (18:30.382)
super scenic, but you know it's a five mile climb on a really sketchy road. So it's kind of like advanced cyclists only, but we have that for those folks. So if you need that kind of challenge and you want 8,000 feet of climbing on your day, we can deliver that. Or if you just want to stay in the valley and do the rolling roads and the far roads, you have that as well. And so it's been a lot of fun. This is our sixth year coming up and just having a blast with it. A lot of fun.

Coach Tom (18:46.533)
Okay.

Coach Tom (18:53.231)
Okay.

Okay, that's cool. I'll have to look and see if I can get that on my schedule this year. We talked about it last year and then I totally forgot about it with everything else that's been going on. It's been nuts. So someone getting into gravel, what are the five things that are the most important for them to figure out? Like they buy the gravel bike.

Shannon Burke (18:59.884)
Now you should totally come down.

Coach Tom (19:22.629)
and they want to come do one of these rises, they want to do the ITT, or they want to kind of get out there and explore a little bit. What are the tips that you would give them to get started?

Shannon Burke (19:33.198)
Well, really you want to start talking to them before they buy the bike. know, the number one tip would be like borrow a bike, rent a bike, you know, find a demo or something to get out there and ride a little bit so that you know what you're getting into and so that you know what kind of bike you want. So like when I bought my first gravel bike, so 2019, I bought from the local shop. It was a Salsa Warbird, which is a super nice carbon bike.

Coach Tom (19:37.059)
I'm, yes.

Coach Tom (19:43.396)
Yes.

Coach Tom (20:00.513)
yeah. Yeah.

Shannon Burke (20:02.421)
It's got a double in the front.

you know, in decent climbing gears. So I've rode that and you know, it came with 38 millimeter tires, took that in the woods for a little bit. And then I quickly realized that like I need fatter tires. I need to think about how to get rid of some of the vibration because it really depends on where you ride. And that's what I mean in terms of like get a bike and go ride where you think you're going to spend most of your time. And that's going to tell you what kind of bike you want. Because if I'm in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, these 38s in this Warbird are going to be perfect. Like the double makes total sense.

Coach Tom (20:33.113)
Yes.

Shannon Burke (20:34.256)
because I'm gonna want a big ring, because I'm gonna be hammering along, pace lining, the 38s are gonna be rolling fast. But where I'm at in Southeast Tennessee, when I'm looking at 5,000 feet of climbing and it's getting pretty chunky on the downhills and I'm getting a lot of vibration, it's like, number one, I don't need a double. One bi is plenty. I need a really good big fat pie plate in the back to get up the hill, so I need really good climbing gears.

And I need to think about tire size and maybe the dimensions on the bike. Like maybe I need it to be a little more slack. Like I don't need the race, you know, straight across top bar. Maybe it needs to look a little more like a mountain bike or maybe I need to figure out how to put a little suspension in or maybe one of those little cheater stems that has a little shock and absorption in it. Yeah, you know, so you just got to go out and kind of experience it and your body will start to tell you what kind of bike you need.

Coach Tom (21:23.939)
has a little shock absorber on them, yeah.

Coach Tom (21:32.419)
Yeah. Yeah.

Shannon Burke (21:32.566)
So, yeah, to me, that's the most important thing is like, rather than going out and just buying a gravel bike, because gravel has so many different meanings depending on where you are and how you want to do it. And the other thing is like, if you're not racing and you don't care about speed or weight, then you might think about like a hardtail or, you know, something in the mountain bike world where it's like, I don't care if I have a heavy bike. What I really want is comfort so I can spend all day in the woods and, you know, stop as often as I like and all that. so maybe

Coach Tom (21:59.771)
Yeah.

Shannon Burke (22:02.64)
Having the front fork and that suspension, even though it adds weight, totally worth the trade off because you get home and your traps and shoulders aren't destroyed. you know, it's like, yeah, because I mean, it does get, there's a lot of vibration and as a roadie, it's like.

Coach Tom (22:11.465)
destroy yeah yeah it's tons of vibration compared to the road and I mean you and I talked earlier just before we started the recording it was this like a mountain bike a cross-country mountain bike would work that you can lock the suspension out on which is what I'm doing works fine you can also throw drop bars on it you don't have to have the wide stretch right now we can throw drop bars on a mountain bike

Shannon Burke (22:38.316)
Did you see Leadville? mean, half the people were doing that in Leadville. So it's like the world of hybrid bikes has arrived or has come back, you know? It's like.

Coach Tom (22:44.165)
It's the Frankenbikes and I love it. I actually love it because I think they're playing around and experimenting with it. I look at, what's his name from EF, Team EF. Yeah, Lachlan. He's done some amazing stuff with it. There's a couple other guys that are experimenting and.

Shannon Burke (23:01.806)
Lachlan? Yeah.

Coach Tom (23:11.941)
Doing the science and the math and stuff on it. They've got these crazy stuff Kate that one Leadville she's put the blips down on the shock towers Did you see that just to get more arrow? She put the wire the SRAM wireless blips on the on the shock tower so that she can hold the shock towers on the straight flat roads and I'm like I was like if anyone has tried to hold the shock towers on a mountain bike while you're cruising along it is not easy

Shannon Burke (23:22.082)
Right. I was like, what is she holding onto?

Shannon Burke (23:41.559)
No.

Coach Tom (23:41.796)
Okay, that is not easy. She makes it look like it's nothing. And she's like, yeah, the blips you just glue on and you just put there and now you can shift while you're down there. And I'm like, it's, I love it. I think it's fantastic because it's like, well, we're just gonna use what works. We're not gonna go with this set. Like we don't have UCI regulations telling us that our sock height has to be just so right because of safety. know, there's.

Shannon Burke (23:45.325)
Yeah.

Shannon Burke (23:52.718)
Crazy. Yeah.

Shannon Burke (24:02.675)
Exactly.

Coach Tom (24:08.997)
you know, it's it's everyone's actually having a good time on that. So that's good to know. Like, yeah, there's so many different types of gravel riding, there's so many different types of mountain bike riding, but gravel riding is not just like, what is it? I mean, that's the different surfaces.

Shannon Burke (24:21.102)
Yeah, well, it's like, you know, it's cycle. So Kwan Chi versus reliance in terms of the audience that I'm dealing with. It's so fun to like see the people in the corral lining up to start the ride cycle. So Kwan Chi, they all look the same.

You know, they got the kits on, they got their carbon bikes and their nice wheels and you know, like this is the road world. And then you go to the gravel bike and they're lining up and it's like, who are these people? Cause you've got the kits and then you've got the guy in the jorts and then, know, you've got the big fat mountain bike and then you got this race gravel bike. It's like, it's such a mix, which I love. It's just, it's really interesting how, how people, how much diversity there is in that world. It's so different than the road world. mean, the road world is great too, but it's just like,

Coach Tom (24:46.434)
Yeah

Shannon Burke (25:05.14)
It's just a lot more diversity over there in the gravel side.

Coach Tom (25:08.035)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it's fun to watch because everybody gets along. It's just, it's fun to watch them come together and support one another in the same way and you would never expect it.

Shannon Burke (25:12.471)
Yeah, exactly.

Shannon Burke (25:17.806)
It's also interesting, know, like it's like a sequential, I set up packet, pick up the morning of the ride. I'm there at 6am trying to set up everything. I've got people there at 545, like ready to pick up their stuff. Gravel world, you know, it's like, yeah, exactly. Triathlete of the war. Well, I would be too, you know, it's like, but the gravel. Yeah, exactly. What can I do to help? It's like, out of my way. It's early in the morning.

Coach Tom (25:30.501)
Sorry, that's me, I'm there. I'd offer to help too. Yeah, can I help you out? What do we need?

Shannon Burke (25:44.514)
But yeah, Reliance, the race starts at eight and it's seven o'clock. I'm like, where is everybody? They're not even parked yet. And it's like, we've been doing packet pickup for an hour and the guys are going back to sleep. The volunteers are like, what are we doing here? 7.30, I'm trying to get in people fired. Like we gotta go, but very relaxed attitude.

Coach Tom (26:00.121)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (26:04.109)
Yeah, yeah. The gravel revival is perfect for that because we're, we're set up in the vendor area. We've got our tents set up. The start is right next to us. I've got my tent right next to my sleeping tent right next to my my vendor tent and I'm roll out in the morning. I've got my coffee. We're just chit chat and whatever I'm watching rides go off. I'm signed up for the 11 mile ride though, you know, the shortest one. And I

all of sudden realize that they're all leaving. And I'm still sitting here with my shorts and a hoodie and I'm not anywhere ready to go. And I'm like, huh, well, I guess I guess I'll catch up to everybody later. Because we're we're it was so relaxed. We're having such a good time. We show up on you show up on Friday. For this one, you show up on Friday.

Shannon Burke (26:45.742)
That's perfect.

Coach Tom (26:55.279)
They do a Friday night ride if you want to do it, but basically we just get set up and we're just chatting with people and you get up Saturday morning and everyone goes off and does their rides. And then there's music Friday night, Saturday night, you're hanging out, you're all camping. Sunday, there's another ride if you want to do a shorter ride to a winery for lunch and back, or everyone kind of gets up and is gone by noon or so. But it's so laid back. It's...

is coming from the endurance and triathlon world where everything is really hyper sensitive to stuff. That takes me more back to the grassroots of sprint Olympic distance triathlons that are local that are barely barely sign in signage, you know, you need to know the route because they didn't have enough volunteers to tell you where to turn. And it's kind of more mellow relaxed that way. It's kind of gets that vibe going for me. So

That's what draws me to it and get more and more interested in it, in it for sure. So, and it's bikes, right? You're on bikes, you're doing, and I think the Groundwork Revival also has runs. They've added like three or four different distance of trail runs. So if your significant other friend doesn't ride bikes, but wants to, or maybe they're a roadie, but they run as well, they can come run while you're out riding. And it makes a whole festival for us and the same thing. So.

Shannon Burke (27:53.132)
Yeah, it's grassroots, man. Absolutely.

Shannon Burke (28:00.908)
Yeah, that's right.

Coach Tom (28:17.305)
So we look at different services. So the first suggestion is like, yeah, figure out what style of riding you want to do, what type of service you want to be on. that before you plunk down the big coin on the bike, because there's plenty to, there's plenty to rent. You can get rents out there. You can even, you can even rent mountain bike and go out on a mountain bike and just try the different services and figure stuff out, right? Or borrow a bike as you say, right? Borrow somebody's bike and go out. I know the road bikes are pushing 33.

Shannon Burke (28:40.013)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (28:47.333)
millimeter tires just for the road. So I went out on a ride with RB Cycler on Tuesday night the other week and it was road surface, grass, a bit of gravel and I took my Giant Defy with the 33 millimeter tires on it. I was like, I was hanging on for dear life. That was the most off road that that bike has seen and it handled it. It did pretty good.

Shannon Burke (28:50.786)
Yeah.

Shannon Burke (29:13.538)
Right.

Coach Tom (29:16.483)
but I don't think my jaw is set right. My neck is not the same and we're jamming through them.

Shannon Burke (29:22.158)
Yeah, what was your PSI on those tires? That's the...

Coach Tom (29:26.053)
I was way too high. It was like 60. I wasn't prepared for the gravel part of it as much, as much, right? Jumping curbs and doing all that other stuff. So now that I have the mountain bike, I'd go out on the mountain bike with 17 PSI and go crush it. It's not a problem. yeah, so it is possible to do on the 33s.

Shannon Burke (29:42.466)
Right. Exactly.

Coach Tom (29:49.99)
38s or something like that, but certainly you'd probably want 48, 52, something a little bit bigger for the gravel stuff, depending on like, once again, the surface that you're going. So what's the next bit? They figure out what style of riding they like to do. They kind of zero in on a bike. You don't have to spend a ridiculous amount of money on the bike. You can get a good steel gravel bike, right? Titanium.

Shannon Burke (30:12.546)
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of good options and I ride a steel. Yeah, titanium is great. I ride steel. I love the way it feels. It absorbs a lot of the chatter just in the material itself. Super smooth. Yeah, so you don't have to go with your carbon. In fact, you may not want to spend a lot of money on a carbon bike because gravel, unlike mountain biking and unlike...

Coach Tom (30:22.413)
It does. People don't realize that. Yeah.

Shannon Burke (30:35.308)
road you're going to be throwing stuff up all the time because you're the gravel is going to get in your tires and it's going to be flipping up on your down tube and you know I started notice on that warbird I could see little spots where the chip the paint was getting chipped and you know even though they had a protective layer under there you know like a little laminate or whatever it doesn't I don't know just you just got to think long term at least I was thinking you know like

Coach Tom (30:38.255)
there.

Coach Tom (30:57.317)
It's gonna get little chewed up. Now you can get the 3M film to put on the outside of the bike, but it has to be super clean and it has to be before you start getting chips in it. Because once you get chips in it and you try to put that on top of it, it just doesn't work, it doesn't look right, it's not gonna do the job that it's supposed to. That will help a little bit. You can still get chips through that.

Shannon Burke (31:06.35)
Right.

Shannon Burke (31:10.027)
Right. Right.

Shannon Burke (31:18.318)
Yeah, just think about those kind of things because you don't I mean, because I used to ride a carbon mountain bike. And so when I got into gravel, I was like, well, if I can ride a carbon mountain bike and surely I can ride a carbon gravel bike and not worry about it. But it's different because you're throwing stuff up on the bike all the time with the gravel. know, another thing that that you'd want to tell someone to getting into gravel is, and you just mentioned it is, is, um, particularly if you're coming from the roadside, don't overinflate your tires like that. That sounds simple, but it's so hard, you know, because I,

Coach Tom (31:28.399)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shannon Burke (31:48.224)
When I got into cycling, was like 120 psi, you know, on a 21 or 23 millimeter tire. that's what your brain gets into that mindset of like, I will go faster if I max out this air pressure. So when I started riding that Warbird, one, I had tubes in it and I was pumping into like 50 psi and I was just getting beat up. I was like, this doesn't make any sense. So, know, then you go tubeless, but you're still pumping it up too much. And then you're just like, you don't have to do that because you're tubeless.

Coach Tom (32:10.787)
Yeah.

Shannon Burke (32:18.158)
pump up with a tube is because you don't want to have a pinch flat. So you need to have a certain amount of air pressure so when you hit that bomb, it doesn't pinch. But if you don't have a tube in there, then you don't need to worry about it quite as much, you know, so you can really let it go. And so that's just kind of like a mental thing more than anything else. It's like, just let that go and go ahead and drop that air pressure as low as you can, because it's going to make that's the biggest difference in terms of ride quality is higher pressure. So

Coach Tom (32:30.917)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (32:44.581)
Yeah, and that's gonna be an uncomfortable thing for most people because I get probably 75 % of my bike fit clients that come in, even if they're going tubeless now, are used to 100 plus PSI and they're still setting their 33 millimeter tires up to 100 PSI. And I'm like, oh my God, like, no, no, no, no, no, no, Silca, the Silca company makes a great little.

calculator online calculator, you put in your weight, you put in the type of writing you do a couple few other facts in there, and you hit the button and it tells you and it's always like everyone's shocked at how low it tells you you can go. You know, you can go you can go pretty low and then okay, now think about going to gravel and you can go even lower, right? You can you can drop off if you're looking at from a bumpy road to gravel, you're going to take another 1015 psi at least out.

Shannon Burke (33:32.387)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (33:39.718)
And experiment with it. Drop it down. You can get one of the great little pumps now. They've got these tiny little pumps that you can, know, that are battery operated, just stick in your pocket. That way you can try taking out more and go like, no, that was too much. Put a little more air pressure back into it. You find that sweet spot for you that you're comfortable with. It actually better handling with the lower tire pressure. It grips the road a little bit better. So that's a big key. Tire pressure. Tire pressure's huge. Now what about hydration?

Shannon Burke (33:47.149)
Yeah.

Shannon Burke (33:59.99)
Totally.

Shannon Burke (34:05.91)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Coach Tom (34:09.409)
Right? So you're bouncing around like you're going to have your bottles on the bike. They're going to just get chucked left and right when you hit some big bumps. Right? So are we talking hydration packets? Or better cages?

Shannon Burke (34:17.454)
Invest in good bottle cages. yeah, I mean, again, like it's that diversity that you see at the gravel event. You know, people swear by the hydration packs. I don't like stuff on my back. know, I particularly here in Tennessee in the summertime, I'm I'm sweating enough already. I don't need to have that thing on my back. So I've got three bottle cages and I bought good ones. And so the bottles don't eject.

Coach Tom (34:34.735)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (34:46.819)
Yeah. Yeah.

Shannon Burke (34:47.114)
I even got to, like some of the roads, the farther you go into the National Forest, like if you go in the higher elevations, the maintenance is just not there anymore. And so some of those roads are getting to where you really do need a fork and some front suspension. So I'll take my hard tail on those. And so I ask, know, buddies who've done the tour divide and have been on major bikepacking trips, like what do you do? And so I've got some really cool cages that are on my

Coach Tom (34:57.882)
Yeah.

Shannon Burke (35:18.667)
actual on the front suspension. So one on each side. And you can actually reach them from the cockpit. So yeah, so I've got, you know, one on the down tube and then I've got those two there and I'm good to go. And those grip really, they were expensive. I was like, I really need to pay this? He's like, trust me, you know, I've done everything and I've never lost a bottle. And he's right, because I beat the hell out of them and they have not rejected. Yeah. So, and the other thing,

Coach Tom (35:21.066)
Okay, so you can put them out there. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah

Coach Tom (35:41.477)
They're still going, yeah.

Shannon Burke (35:45.102)
in terms of like volume, I'll take a catadyne bee free water filter. So where we are in the Cherokee National Forest, there's creeks everywhere. it's part of the scenic appeal of the place is that there's these cascading creeks all over the place. But that also means you don't have to worry about water as long as you got a filter. So the catadyne is just, know, like it's a little filter you screw onto like a little bag.

Coach Tom (35:56.345)
Yep. Perfect.

Shannon Burke (36:12.106)
essentially and you can just wad that up and stick it in your in your jersey pocket and stop at a creek and then fill up that bag put the filter on it and then just squeeze it into your bottle. Yeah.

Coach Tom (36:21.957)
Squeeze it in, yeah, which is great to have as emergency. I have that in my trail running pack as well, just up there, just in case if you run someplace, get a little lost and you don't have any water, you need a filter. You can't just drink the water. So you need a filter. So that's great. That's a handy thing to have, because that would fit in your kit really easily. It doesn't take up much space.

Shannon Burke (36:27.746)
Yeah.

Shannon Burke (36:35.468)
Yeah, exactly.

Shannon Burke (36:41.368)
Yeah, exactly. It means I don't have to put five liters of water on my back to go out for a ride either. It's like I'm not carrying all that weight when I'm trying to climb the 10 mile climb. It's like it makes a huge difference.

Coach Tom (36:48.506)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (36:52.361)
Exactly. Yeah. And I would I would concur with you said with the getting the good bottle cages. Not just the cheap ones. I know some people like the metal the cheaper metal ones because you can bend them to hold tighter. But the fact is that they bend is not good. And there's a few there's a couple different brands, some of them carbon fiber as well, which I don't know if that makes a difference or not, but they hold really well.

like almost to a fault, like you're trying to get the bottle out and you have to twist and pull really hard. Like if you have to stop to pull the bottle out, I would much rather have that than having a bottle that just, know, cause the cage was a little bit cheaper and that's where you decided to save a couple of bucks. They're not that expensive, but in comparison, yeah, you can get a $2 cage or you can get a $75 cage, right? And it's...

Shannon Burke (37:23.438)
Give me my bottle back.

Shannon Burke (37:45.858)
Right.

Coach Tom (37:47.07)
Yes, it's expensive, but that's the spot to like, there's a reason why they hold better, right? Maybe you find them on sale for 50 and you're great. There's your win. But yeah, for sure, a good bottle cage to get the hydration. And then the filter is a safety thing. I mean, I'd probably carry that even if I had enough water going through, just because anytime you're off trail or on a trail someplace, you want to have a couple of

emergency safety things out there, maybe maybe a whistle, water filtration, you know, something like that. And then one of the I always I have this maybe I'm just like over scared or something is just the really the mylar blankets, right, that fold up and then next to nothing, right? If I'm anywhere in the woods, I have one of those. It's it's stuck in the back. Because it's something was to happen, like you could just wrap in that and keep your body warm.

Shannon Burke (38:39.679)
You never know.

Coach Tom (38:46.213)
You know kind of keep your temperature regulated on that. So that's my that's my Boy Scout pitch for always be prepared Always be prepared. What else? What else we got bottle cages? We've got we've covered hydration tire pressure Bikes, I like yeah. Yeah

Shannon Burke (38:52.302)
Yeah, exactly. Now you're on a spare leg.

Shannon Burke (38:58.454)
Yeah, well, handling. Yeah, I mean, I would say gravel is going to handle different obviously than asphalt because you don't have much grip in a corner. So, you what I'm telling people, if you're coming down into like a hairpin curve.

you know, obviously you got to brake, you've got to check your speed before you get into the curve. That applies to road and gravel both. Like you never want to like be braking in the middle of the curve. But with gravel, if you find yourself coming into a curve too hot, don't try to turn. You know, it's like, use the disc brakes. That's the beautiful thing. I didn't even have disc brakes until my first gravel bike. So, you I was still using the rim brakes on my Pentarello, which I was like, this is plenty. And then I got that gravel bike and I was like, wow, the stopping power.

Coach Tom (39:39.49)
Yes.

Coach Tom (39:49.775)
This is better.

Shannon Burke (39:50.592)
It's unbelievable. Yeah, so it's like you should never crash because as long as you can go straight You know as long as you're not trying to turn the front then bring the bike almost to a halt and then make the turn you know, it's just like People go down because they're trying to turn and they're going too fast And so if you've got the brake power Just go ahead and bring it just keep it in a straight line and bring it down to where you finally feel comfortable to lean into that curve

But to me that's just like a simple thing that a lot of people don't think about because they're trying to make the curve and so they're starting to lean but it's like do the opposite just go straight and slow down almost to a stop. Simple.

Coach Tom (40:28.183)
and slow down, yeah. The same for when you're riding across, maybe you're on more of a solid surface and you hit a sandy patch or a little loose patch, you're still going straight. What you don't wanna do is you don't wanna turn the front wheel at all. don't wanna, you can carry the speed, but don't try to change direction while you're doing that because that's when things go bad. You try to change direction.

Shannon Burke (40:38.064)
Exactly.

Coach Tom (40:56.377)
the bike slides out from underneath you and you go down right away. So you slow your speed down a little bit, but just stay steady and just don't go off that course and you'll be fine. So, and I think that's good bike handling skills to teach people on the road as well. Certainly break before you get into the corner and think about it. And the more you stiffen out, I probably talk about this with every single bike fit client I have is that stop locking your arms out and

Shannon Burke (41:10.893)
Yeah, yeah.

Coach Tom (41:24.207)
pilloring yourself on the front of the bike and just resting everything there because you can't, the front end needs to move. Your arms need to have a little bend in them. That's your suspension. So when it's bumping and bouncing around on some gravel and some loose stuff, your arms are the shock absorbers and allowing it to do that, that allows you to say centered over the bottom bracket and keep your center of gravity down at the bottom of the bike. So.

Shannon Burke (41:51.662)
Yeah, that even more important in gravel, 100%. Like you cannot lock your elbows and have everything, you know, have your shoulders hunched in gravel because you'll feel it so much during the ride and then the next day, you know, destroyed. Yeah.

Coach Tom (42:05.833)
afterwards you'll just feel awful. Yeah, you'll just be headaches and like you could do some damage to your neck if it's rough enough. So for sure. So good handling skills, always important. And to take it easy in the beginning when you're just getting started on it and feeling it out, know, experiment a little bit with it, feel a little bit, but do it at maybe somewhat slower speeds. Don't go bonsai-ing out onto the gravel.

Shannon Burke (42:34.414)
For sure.

Coach Tom (42:35.269)
because you just take everybody else out too. So we don't like that. We don't like crashing. We like someone else crashing us out even less. Yeah, yeah.

Shannon Burke (42:37.87)
Right.

Shannon Burke (42:45.642)
Right, it's like it wasn't my fault. Yeah, paste lining and gravel is weird. We don't really do a whole lot of that in where we are because we're mostly going up or down. You know, there's not a whole lot of flat to paste line on.

Coach Tom (42:53.359)
now.

Coach Tom (42:56.707)
Yeah, yeah, it's a different, if a different speed, yeah.

Shannon Burke (42:59.106)
But I did go, went to, there's an event called the Dust Bowl in Indiana and it's a great event. They'll draw over a thousand people. They sell out really quickly. It's amazing. But it's so different than what we have here. It's basically corn fields. And so you're in a straight line for a long time. And then you hit a 90 degree curve or corner. You know, it's not even a curve. just, it's literally 90 degrees. Yeah. And then you go on a straight line for a long time. So it was crazy like to

Coach Tom (43:16.463)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (43:23.747)
It's a hard pshhh yeah.

Shannon Burke (43:29.06)
do that into suddenly I'm back in roadie world. I'm like paste lining, except it's gravel. And so there's like dust everywhere and there's gravel getting kicked up. And I'm like, I don't know these people and I need to get a lot more space than I'm given right now. It's like the draft is not that important as staying alive, particularly when you get into those corners there. The 90 degree corners were crazy because that's where all the gravel kind of piles up. And so it's like, you want to slow down, you don't want to be hanging on that wheel.

Coach Tom (43:35.141)
Mmm.

Coach Tom (43:41.891)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Shannon Burke (43:54.562)
just to save a few watts to be drafting. yeah, pace lining on gravel and pace lining on asphalt is already a little bit sketchy. It's that much more on gravel. So give everybody plenty of space when you're riding on a gravel bike. I there's no need to be doing that kind of stuff. And particularly if you're just getting into gravel, yeah, it's not worth it.

Coach Tom (44:04.471)
I'd travel for sure, yeah.

Coach Tom (44:08.996)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (44:13.475)
Yeah. And, then be prepared for dust. Lots of, lots of dust. When it's dryer, when it's dryer, there's lots of dust. When there's, when it's not dry, there's lots of mud, but when there's, but, but we love all of that. Right. So just be prepared for that. Bring some extra eye drops if you've got contacts and, you know, maybe a bandana or something on the really dusty ones, especially doing the pace lines up there. I'm sure it's just a, it's called a dust ball for a reason. yeah. So you, so you get a lot of that.

Shannon Burke (44:17.954)
Yeah, lots and lots of them.

Shannon Burke (44:24.204)
Yeah, right.

Shannon Burke (44:30.722)
You

Shannon Burke (44:37.697)
Hurry up.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Coach Tom (44:43.109)
Cool. So talk to talk to me about tell us about the travel Tennessee, the bike Tennessee. Yeah.

Shannon Burke (44:50.434)
So Bike Tennessee. Yeah, so it is all about travel. is about bike tourism. It's about getting people to come to Tennessee, discover what we have to offer in terms of cycling, and spend some money while you're here. And so the governor, when he first got elected, he was like, we've got a lot of poor rural counties and we need to find some ways to...

creatively do some economic development because manufacturing is left, agriculture only does so much, and so how can we figure out how to get money in those places?

Coach Tom (45:16.773)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Shannon Burke (45:24.702)
So we made a proposal that was like, how about bicycle tourism? Because A, bicycle tourists have a lot of money. Look how much their bikes cost. And B, the rural counties are where we want to be anyway, because there's no cars there, the scenery is better. You know, it has more character typically with your mom and pop type places. You know, it's like that's where we want to go. So we proposed putting together a bunch of routes across the state that would highlight these areas.

these rural counties and basically say you know in this this county which they term you know economically distressed here's a beautiful route that starts and finishes in this little town where you can get a nice burger when you're done and a fried pie and it's going to this is an awesome route you should check it out here's some points of interest and so we we did that

ended up with 52 routes from, you know, the Mississippi River on the west end all the way through the mountains across the state. It was a great project. mean, I got to ride all these wonderful places and discover all these beautiful little areas that I, you know, I know Southeast Tennessee pretty well. It was great to see the rest of the state and to realize like, you know, West Tennessee gets knocked as not being as nice, but it's got its own charm. You know, it's beautiful. And there's actually hills out there. I discovered that there are hills. They don't have any mountains.

Coach Tom (46:21.029)
Wow.

Coach Tom (46:45.125)
Okay, so there are, yeah. I know there's a big scene. There's a big cycling scene in Memphis, from what I hear, which I'm not aware of. Like, I don't know much of West Tennessee at all. So this is fantastic. Yeah.

Shannon Burke (46:45.664)
you know, but our place isn't where you are.

Shannon Burke (46:51.184)
yeah.

Shannon Burke (46:57.026)
There's a lot to be discovered there. It really is nice. And so they published the websites, bike TN.com.

And so we have all these routes on there and there's a map of Tennessee and these little squiggly lines representing the mouse. You just click on one of those wherever you want to go and it'll have a full description. Basically I wrote up as if I were talking to you before the ride like okay here's where you're going to be going, watch out for this hill here, there's a little bit of traffic here, you know just kind of like what to think about when you're riding. So I've done that for each one of these routes and when we finished that they were all excited. This is like oh well

Coach Tom (47:04.079)
Okay.

Shannon Burke (47:34.084)
what a neat idea, like we should do gravel. So now I'm mapping gravel routes. Since gravel is the hottest thing in cycling, it's kind of like, okay, let's show off what we have in Tennessee in terms of gravel because we want to capture that market as well. And we want to have that available for people. So that's been great. So I'm maybe two thirds of the way through that now of mapping gravel routes. And that has been fantastic. It's been like a dream project to find all the...

Coach Tom (47:40.357)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (47:54.66)
Okay.

Coach Tom (48:00.377)
That's fantastic. So you get to ride all of these as you're mapping them out. You're basically going out there and you're physically mapping it.

Shannon Burke (48:06.518)
Yeah, so like, yeah.

Yeah, it's kind of like when I was running the bike tour company, you before I would take anybody to Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico, obviously, I need to go out there and do the routes and then I need to scout out, you know, what hotels we're going to stay in, what restaurants we're going to eat in. And so it's a very similar kind of thing where it's like if I were going to take a bunch of tourists to West Tennessee or Middle Tennessee, and I wanted to show them like some of the best gravel riding in that part of the state.

Coach Tom (48:21.861)
That's a rough gig.

Shannon Burke (48:38.094)
Where would I go? So I spent like a ton of time, way too much time with Google Maps, with Strava, with Ride with GPS, you're looking at heat maps, looking at road surfaces and all these kinds of different options. Because gravel's a little trickier than road in the sense that some of the gravel may be there, but you don't necessarily wanna take people on it because there could be loose dogs, it could be scary. So.

Coach Tom (49:02.498)
The dog thing is an issue for sure out here. Yeah.

Shannon Burke (49:04.212)
Yeah, in the rural South, it really is, you know, and the road rides kind of similar where you just, got to watch out for those things, but gravel, it's like exponential in terms of like some of these gravel roads. It's like.

Coach Tom (49:15.333)
Yeah, you're down farm roads and things. So yeah, there's the dogs run free. So

Shannon Burke (49:20.492)
Yeah, so we ended up kind of steering clear of some of that and staying more in the wildlife management areas, the state forest, the state parks, just the national forest, of course, and trying to find places that were uninhabited. And that made the best riding anyway.

Coach Tom (49:27.013)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (49:36.07)
Yeah, which there's lots of that. mean, Tennessee has amazing state park system. It's insane and they're all free, right? They don't cost anything to go visit these parks and they're well taken care of. I was totally impressed by the state park system when I got to Tennessee, I had no idea before and so, yeah.

Shannon Burke (49:44.578)
Hurry up.

Yeah, exactly.

Shannon Burke (49:58.738)
yeah, and they're putting more money into it too. It's fantastic. It's yeah, like we definitely, you know, we're kind of like if there's an opportunity to incorporate a state park into these routes, we're absolutely going to do it. So the road routes had, I forget how many, you know, like 12 or 16 or something state parks as part of the routes and same with the

Coach Tom (50:07.781)
Let's do it.

Coach Tom (50:13.359)
That's part of it. Yeah.

Shannon Burke (50:16.174)
the gravel stuff that'll probably end up, you 30 % of them will have a state park involved, which is also good because I'm not designing these routes as like all day killer. You know, like I don't want it to be your whole day. I don't want you to be wiped out at the end of it. I want you to have half a day to, you know, do the waterfall hike at the state park or, know, you definitely want to be able to go get some lunch. Or if you're in a small little town, maybe stroll main street and spend some money in some of these shops. And the idea was, was to be like half day rides.

so that you can enjoy the rest of your time.

Coach Tom (50:48.581)
And that's perfect. mean, some of these little mom and pop shops, this great people, you have great conversations with some, some people and some neat little, you know, get some hamburgers or get, you know, some basic sandwiches and things there that they've got. And it's, it's, it's great. It helps them tremendously. So we get, we get a little bit of joy out of that. So, okay, we're going to put all of that up there on the, on, on our notes and our show notes. And, and here I'll have the, all the websites to get.

to get on of that so we can get people here and going. mean, this is fantastic. This is a great conversation. I'm sorry, Kenny wasn't here to join us. He'd have lots of notes we'd probably still be babbling on about, know, gravel bikes and things as he gets going on it. But we'll have to figure out a way to go out and ride some of these and then talk about them again.

Shannon Burke (51:19.022)
Also.

Shannon Burke (51:26.668)
Yeah.

Shannon Burke (51:33.464)
Yeah.

Shannon Burke (51:40.062)
yeah. Tell him to bring that expensive bike to Southeast Tennessee. I'll take y'all into the mountains and we'll show you some real gravel.

Coach Tom (51:44.198)
We're gonna try. And I'm so jealous I have to add a different part to my training and my coaching. Like when I'm putting people out onto different rides, I should probably go actually ride them and explore a little bit. I'll be, I might be picking your brain a little bit more and going on and pulling down those routes to get more creative with some outdoor riding here and around so we can travel to.

Shannon Burke (52:04.419)
Yeah, totally.

Shannon Burke (52:11.926)
Yeah, yeah, I've got Leapers Fork. I've got a good road route from Leapers Fork. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Coach Tom (52:16.037)
Oh, there's some great, it's my favorite place to ride is all through Lubberschwerck in the Boston area and down there. And there's, there's a couple good little spots for, sandwiches and things as well. So we'll do more of that, but thank you for coming on. This is, this is a great conversation. It really good. Shannon and I met last year at the gravel revival, which is coming up like in another, what, two months? Next month, actually. How sad is that?

Shannon Burke (52:26.808)
perfect.

Shannon Burke (52:40.886)
Yeah, it's I think, second or third week, yeah, third weekend of October. We're here.

Coach Tom (52:45.923)
Yeah. So, I, and I mentioned to Shannon about coming on the podcast last year at the gravel revival. So it's less than a year. It was less than a year. so I managed to, to at least check that off my list of things to do. And, and, so if you're, if you're around and you hear this, you want to come out to gravel revival, come hang out with us because you said, you're going to bike Tennessee is going to be out there as well as, as, as gravel Tennessee gravel.

Shannon Burke (52:51.988)
just under the wire.

Shannon Burke (53:10.638)
Yep, that's Tennessee gravel.

Coach Tom (53:14.597)
as well as Triton R Endurance will be right next to right next door, because we're great neighbors. We'll be camping out there the whole weekend. So come hang out with us and talk with us, come run if you want. Maybe our listeners that are in Frankfurt, Germany, who I'm just fascinated with. love whoever you are, you're fantastic. Send us some notes, because I wanna know, I'd love to meet you, but we do have some steady listeners that are up in Germany, that's fantastic. So yeah, and come visit, come to Tennessee, we'll take you.

Shannon Burke (53:30.286)
You

Shannon Burke (53:39.948)
Come visit.

Coach Tom (53:43.887)
We'll take you places. We'll take you places and get some writing in and do some fun stuff. So once again, everybody, make sure that you subscribe to the channels, to the YouTube, to the audio channels, give us five stars, thumbs up, all that great stuff. Hey, if we're not doing good, send us notes, say, hey, what you'd like to see better, I'm trying to improve on this and get better each time. So all your feedback is fantastic. We really appreciate that. So.

Shannon Burke (53:45.102)
Absolutely.

Coach Tom (54:12.599)
Shannon, thank you so much. This is fantastic. And we'll talk some more on gravel. Definitely coming up. for every, yep, yep, we'll see you in a few weeks. And for everybody else, thanks for listening and we'll catch you on the next one.

Shannon Burke (54:14.126)
Thanks for having me. Yeah, I loved it.

Shannon Burke (54:20.79)
Yeah, see you in a few weeks.