Our partner in podcasting, The Gravel Ride Podcast, spoke with Kristi Mohn (Marketing Manager) & LeLan Dains (Event Manager) of Life Time. In this episode, all things Dirty Kanza and the new gravel event out of Bentonville, Arkansas, Big Sugar Gravel!
Big Sugar Gravel – Dirty Kanza
You can also find The Gravel Ride on iTunes and Spotify.
Automatic Transcription (please excuse all errors)
Craig : 00:00 Welcome everyone to this week’s Gravel Ride podcast. We are podcasting today from a basement in Bentonville, Arkansas. And I’ve actually got a couple of guests on the podcast today, who I’m going to ask to introduce themselves because it’s a little bit of a surprise. And we’ll talk about why we’re here in a few minutes.
Kristi: 00:18 Oh, ladies first?
Craig : 00:20 Of course, always.
Kristi: 00:21 I’m Kristi Mohn. I’m with the Lifetime and Dirty Kanza. What do you want to know about me? I’m from Emporia Kansas, home of Dirty Kanza.
Craig : 00:30 And you’ve been working on Dirty Kanza since the beginning, right?
Kristi: 00:33 Yeah, pretty much. I officially joined Jim and Joel at the time after the 2009 event. So Dirty Kanza started in 2006. Was the first race.
Craig : 00:45 And was Emporia your hometown?
Kristi: 00:46 Yeah, Emporia is my hometown.
Craig : 00:48 Were you a cyclist?
Kristi: 00:50 Yeah, I was a cyclist. I’d mostly been a runner, but had been graduating or transitioning to cycling more, so was a cyclist.
Craig : 00:59 And when we were talking offline, you told me you saw it as just this big opportunity for a rural community, to have an event that everybody could get behind.
Kristi: 01:09 Yeah, that it really that’s kind of what it was. Is after the first year, I thought this event could be something really cool. You could take your kids to the checkpoints. We had two young kids at the time, twins that were, I think they were four or five when it started. And just really looking for a way to be a family and participate in an event like that. Because Tim would go to mountain bike races and it wasn’t as conducive to having kids at mountain bike races. And the gravel scene really allowed that.
Craig : 01:39 What kind of friction did you experience with the town? Did everybody say, “Oh, this sounds like a great idea”? Or they-
Kristi: 01:44 Well, no, they thought it was crazy. You want to do what? And I’m like, “We’re going to have this bike race downtown Emporia and have 200 people. Or people ride 200 miles on gravel in one day. And they’re just like, “Nobody’s going to come and do that.” And it turned out not to be the case, luckily.
Craig : 02:04 Did it take a while for people to start coming?
Kristi: 02:06 To start coming to the event?
Craig : 02:08 Yeah.
Kristi: 02:08 I mean, we’d gotten to where it was at least regionally, it was fairly known. When we moved it downtown, we really wanted people to come and celebrate the cyclists finishing that distance. And so the finish line party and our finish line atmosphere, which our local Main Street helps us with that finish line party, you’ll have 10 to 12,000 people down there to greet riders coming in, after riding 200 miles. And I think it really celebrates the average, everyday athlete. And I love that about it. And Emporians love watching these people cross the finish line.
Craig : 02:43 Yeah. It’s so amazing from a community perspective to just bring that kind of weekend traffic into a town. And have people recognize that, as someone who’s not a cyclist, there’s some hassles involved. But the benefit to the community is so huge. It sounds like everybody just runs with it at this point.
Kristi: 03:02 Well, it’s referred to as our Christmas, our downtown merchants called. It’s their Christmas weekend is Dirty Kanza week, because people are there, and it’s an exciting time. And people are spending money and making cash registers ring. It’s an economic boom for Emporia, Kansas for sure.
Craig : 03:21 Yeah, no doubt. Lelan, I want to invite you into the conversation. Can you talk about your role?
Lelan: 03:25 Yeah. My name is Lelan Danes. I’m the race director for Dirty Kanza now. I’m a native Emporian as well, despite my repeated attempts to get away, I felt pulled back at various times. And for the last and what I think was final time, I think I’m stuck in Emporia for the better, for the remainder of my days. I came back about seven years ago, left Carmichael Training Systems to join Jim and Kristy and Tim on this Dirty Kanza venture.
Lelan: 03:53 At that time DK was at a point where it was a jump on board or abandoned ship. Meaning that they had all been operating this in their spare time, in their free hours, on evenings and weekends. And it was at a stage where it needed full time help. And so Jim and I made that commitment. We left our careers, and came back to make that happen.
Lelan: 04:16 And that was another one of those crucial turning points in DK. It had already moved downtown, the year or two prior. And it was gaining steam, and it needed full time attention. And so I was really fortunate to be able to come back home. It’s kind of one of those coming of age deals where when you’re 18 and graduating high school, you can think of nothing but getting out of there. And then as I matured a little bit, realized how wonderful Emporia was, and that there was an opportunity in my hometown to do what I love doing, which was bikes. It was just a no brainer.
Craig : 04:49 So you came in and it sounds like around the time where it started to be, if you don’t register for DK, the moment the registration goes up, you’re not getting in.
Kristi: 04:58 Yeah, I mean we were getting to our registration was filling very quickly. Yeah.
Craig : 05:02 And opening up new course distances, I’m sure, made it even more popular to try to get in.
Kristi: 05:08 Yeah, and we added the 25 mile mount distance fairly early on. And then added a 50. And then eventually, I think we added the 50 at the same time we moved. The 100 had been a relay at one point, so it was 200 miles but by two people. And then we eventually turned that into just its own 100 mile distance.
Craig : 05:29 Can we talk a little bit about the course?
Kristi: 05:31 The Dirty Kanza course?
Craig : 05:32 Yeah.
Lelan: 05:34 Yeah, of course. Well, for those that haven’t been to DK, they’ve probably likely heard the stories of the flats. And the way I like to tell people is DK is not one knockout punch. It’s death by a thousand cuts. And that comes from a variety of things. I’m not literally just talking about the Flint rock that will cut your tires. I’m talking about the literal thousand hills, the endless wind, the exposure to the sun. You just feel like nick after nick after nick, this thing’s beating you up. And the gravel itself is amongst the roughest and toughest in the country.
Lelan: 06:09 And that’s one of those things that maybe we had an idea how special it was, but maybe didn’t fully understand what we had in the Flint Hills. But it’s just one of those rare landscapes that it has remained untouched because it’s so rugged. There’s one thing you can do on that land, and that’s graze cattle. You can’t farm it, you can’t plow it. You can’t do anything because it is rock. And it’s sharp, sharp rock. So that’s what that course is like, and it’s pretty relentless.
Craig : 06:37 I haven’t been on it myself, so when you’re riding it, is the type of rock that is shifting the wheel around underneath your body?
Lelan: 06:45 Yeah, you’re going to get a variety. And depending on the time and the situation, if the graders come through or not, you might have a stretch where there’s some pretty clear double track, and you’re humming along and it feels pretty smooth and fast. But those sections are far and few between. The vast majority of what you’re going to get on, is what you’d described. It’s not a solid rock base. It’s not a solid surface. It’s shifting rock, and its fist size. We’re not talking crushed limestone gravel. We’re certainly not talking pea gravel that you find on a bike path. We’re talking fist size chunks of rock that they didn’t bother to take the time to break down. They just dumped it on the road and said, here you go.
Kristi: 07:23 And the rock was used to make arrowheads and…
Lelan: 07:26 Axes.
Kristi: 07:27 Axes, and so it serves that purpose on your tires. And [inaudible 00:07:31], sidewall protection are key.
Craig : 07:35 Yeah, I can imagine some of the pack riding that happens. There’s obviously the benefit of riding in the pack, but the detriment of not seeing your line.
Lelan: 07:43 Well this is a conversation that with the World Tour pros that came, people asked me repeatedly, this was talked about publicly on forums and such. It was, what is this gravels just to become road racing? Well, that can’t happen at Dirty Kanza. It physically can’t because you can’t actual on across the road in a crosswind. You can’t follow a wheel sometimes. It’s more like mountain biking in a sense that you have to ride your own line, you have to ride your own race. And you’re not going to get a huge benefit from the draft, because you can’t physically stay where you want to stay or choose where you want to be, based on where the wind’s coming and so.
Lelan: 08:20 And we saw that. What did we see at 2019 DK? Non world pro, World Tour pro Collins Strickland rode away at mile 100 basically, and solo the rest of the way, because no one behind him could organize, or had the strength to even bring him back in.
Craig : 08:36 Yeah. Now I love that about the race because I’m definitely one that I think Jeremiah Bishop said it best to me. He said, let’s keep gravel weird. And regardless of what the terrain looks like, I do want those parts of it to require a full bag of tricks.
Kristi: 08:57 Well and that, your comment there is interesting to me because a lot of times we hear that, I think of gravel as being super inclusive. And I stand by that. And people say, “They’re going to ruin gravel.” I’m like, “They’re not going to ruin gravel because we’re not going to let them.” Gravel is just that. And it’s about what we want to make it. And I think the one thing that’s special about Dirty Kanza in my mind is that we celebrate every person that comes across that finish line. We stay out there until 3:00 AM. And so yeah, it’s exciting when a pro crushes it in under 10 hours. But we shake Collins Strickland’s hand, and move him through the line, and are waiting there for the next person because it’s just about celebrating those people, those journeyman athletes that are stepping up and trying something outside of their comfort zone.
Craig : 09:47 Yeah. It gives me goosebumps to think about it. I love, it’s arguably harder for someone to do it in 15 hours than it is-
Kristi: 09:55 Yes, 100%.
Craig : 09:56 And probably they’re digging deeper, they’re certainly doing it for longer. And it’s a huge accomplishment for those athletes who just suck it up and get through that day.
Kristi: 10:05 And we do not lose sight of that in our event. Any critic that wants to say that about us, they’re just wrong.
Craig : 10:15 Yeah.
Kristi: 10:17 We’re passionate about what we’re doing for people and changing their lives, so.
Craig : 10:21 Yeah, well I think the reports of the event always say that exact same thing. It’s celebrating no matter where you’re finishing, and finishing is the big deal.
Kristi: 10:31 Yeah.
Craig : 10:32 One last question on DK. How did the 200 miles come about originally? It’s a heck of a distance.
Lelan: 10:38 Well, Jim Cummins who isn’t joining us here on this, he’s one of the original two co-founders of the event. They got the idea by actually going to other gravel events, that were much longer. And Jim will tell you, as he’s told us many times, that they settled on 200 because they didn’t want to go any further than that.
Lelan: 11:01 They thought that it was far enough. They knew 100 wasn’t enough. They wanted a challenge, a very hard challenge. But one that most people could grasp is achievable. And 200 seem to be the right number.
Craig : 11:12 Yeah. Yeah it’s fascinating to me because I think on the West coast we don’t see events of those distances. And I think it’s probably because you end up with elevation gains that happen more quickly. So you’re doing 1000 feet per 10 miles. So it’s just not really feasible to have people out doing 200 mile events. So I sort of look in awe and reverence to the athletes that crossed the DK 200 finish lines.
Kristi: 11:38 It’s an incredible finish line to cross.
Craig : 11:40 Yeah. So we’re in Bentonville, Arkansas, and not in Emporia.
Lelan: 11:45 We are not.
Craig : 11:46 And you guys just announced something very special that I think my listeners are going to be keen to hear about. So you guys can Roshambo for who gets to talk about it first. Let’s talk about why we’re in Bentonville.
Kristi: 11:59 Oh, you want to go?
Lelan: 12:00 Yeah of course. Well it has been a long time conversation for Jim Christy and myself around the DK office. We knew that there was gravel beyond the Flint Hills. Even as gravel has gone into its probably adolescents, is that where we’re at?
Kristi: 12:17 Probably.
Lelan: 12:18 Yeah, reaching maturity in adulthood yeah. But there’s events popping up everywhere, and they’re popping up in iconic locations. And there are events who have been going in decades strong. And have fantastic events. But we’ve still known all along that there are other locations that are ripe for a gravel event, and for a number of reasons. There’s great people all across the United States. There’s a great geography. And Bentonville is one of those places. Most people are probably recognizing it as a mountain bike Mecca, a cycling destination for single track trail. There’s over a hundred miles of single track, all accessible from downtown Bentonville. There’s great roads to ride. There’ll be hosting the Cyclo-cross World Championships coming up in a few years. But no one was talking about gravel in the NWA, Northwest Arkansas.
Lelan: 13:07 And Kristi and I had been in this area before. We have friends down here, not name you Ross. And just came up that gravel needs to happen here. And through our trips, we agreed. And as we scouted this stuff out and spent more time in this community, we were feeling at home. And so all the things were in place to say, let’s go forward and let’s create an event. And that’s what we’ve got.
Craig : 13:31 All right. So what is the event? And when is it?
Kristi: 13:36 It’s a new event called the Big Sugar. And we’ve got two distances. The Big Sugar, which is about 107 miles. And then we have the Little Sugar, which is about 50 miles. And there’s some significant elevation and lots of hills and hollows, highs and hollows, right? That’s what they call them. So we’re really excited. It goes through some absolutely beautiful scenery, some amazing roads. We’re really excited about the time of year, because the leaves will be in full color, change mode. And it’s just a beautiful course.
Kristi: 14:09 So, I think we’ve put together what I think is just a five-star course. So we’re really excited about that.
Craig : 14:17 Now coming from your wealth of experience in Emporia, what were you looking for as far as the terrain goes here in Bentonville?
Kristi: 14:27 I think we wanted it to be challenging but achievable. We wanted some climbing. We wanted some rough roads. Dirty Kanza-ish, so to speak. But also really celebrating the personality of the community is also important when you’re putting together a good course. And I think we’ve nailed it with this course.
Craig : 14:48 So I touched on a few gravel roads today, and I’ll do a bunch more tomorrow. In fact on the course. In your opinion, what are the roads like? I know what my sense was of the 20 odd miles I rode today.
Lelan: 15:03 Well, listen, guys, gals at home listeners, if you have not been to Bentonville and rid some of these gravel roads, it is far more akin to mountain biking than it is even gravel riding in Kansas and around Emporia in the Flint Hills. These are proper climbs. This is not a death by a thousand cuts like DK is. A DK, a typical hill will be a quarter mile, short but punchy. And just one after another.
Lelan: 15:31 But at Kanza you’ve got your periods of flat stretches where you can recover and lock it in a gear and go. You don’t have that here. For one, the surface is just about as gnarly as at DK. Kristi and I were just talking, it’s firmly category three gravel. If you’re familiar with Neil Shirley’s scale, which means it’s pretty rough. It’s big rock. It’s gravel, it’s proper gravel. And the climbs are big. They are anywhere from one to two and a half miles in length, and that means you get a corresponding descent to follow.
Lelan: 16:01 And I think this course, of any of the gravel events I’ve been on, this could be an equalizer for the more mountain bike crowd that does the gravel. And we were talking about that inclusivity. It’s one of the amazing things about gravel is you’ve got roadies, you’ve got mountain bikers, you’ve got triathletes. You’ve got people who have only gotten into the sport of cycling through gravel, and they’re only gravel riders. And they’re all coming together out there. And there’s different courses all across the United States that have their different flavors. Some are a little bit hard pack and faster. This Bentonville course is definitely a little bit chunkier up and down and gnarly.
Craig : 16:39 Yeah, I was surprised, even the 20 miles I rode today. It really was a lot chunkier than I thought it was. My listeners know, I’m typically riding 650 B’s, 47, 50 millimeter tires, but I specifically grabbed a 700 C wheel set thinking, I’m coming to a more mellow place, where we were just going to be rolling on dirt roads. And that was not the case whatsoever.
Lelan: 17:04 No.
Craig : 17:04 So how much climbing does it add up to in the 170 miles?
Lelan: 17:07 Well that’s always debatable, isn’t it? Depending on what program you use and what device you’re using. But I think firmly… Well, I don’t think we’ve mentioned the distance. It’s right about 108 miles in length for the Big Sugar distance. Right around 50 for our Little Sugar, half distance. And in that Big Sugar distance, it just over 100 miles, you’re going to approach 10,000 feet elevation, anywhere from nine to 10,000 feet, depending on the device a person is using.
Craig : 17:32 You’re going to feel it.
Lelan: 17:33 You’re going to feel that. That’s a lot for a hondo. You’re going to be hard pressed to find that elevation, especially throughout the South or Midwest in 100 miles.
Craig : 17:42 Do you have a sense of what a pro would ride that distance in, and the range that you might be expecting for athletes?
Lelan: 17:50 Well, we had some folks riding this past weekend, and Ted King, Paisan, McElveen, Ali Tetrick were out here. Uri Haswall of course. And I know Paisan and Ted were jabbing each other, making claims of six and a half. But it’s going to be tough, and it’s going to be interesting to see in an actual race setting how fast the front of the pack goes. And what those back in the packers are going to complete it in.
Craig : 18:20 Yeah, I think it’s going to be, tire choice and wheel choice is going to be important.
Kristi: 18:26 Oh yeah.
Craig : 18:26 And how hard you’re going to be willing to take those descents, given what’s going to be in front of you.
Lelan: 18:30 Well, and I’ll tell everyone this. This will not be the easiest hondo that you do. It’s simply won’t. This’ll be one of the more challenging 100 mile distance on gravel.
Kristi: 18:37 Well we even talked about that with the 50. We like to have those tier steps to get into the event, but at the same time, this 50 is going to be a tougher 50. It’s not going to be a cake walk.
Craig : 18:51 Yeah, it doesn’t seem like anything around here would be a cake walk. So that’s exciting. So the date was October when?
Kristi: 19:00 October 24th, 2020.
Craig : 19:02 Okay. And registration?
Kristi: 19:04 Yeah. Registration, November one.
Craig : 19:05 Okay. November 1st everyone. This is opening up. And is there a hard cap on the number of riders that course can allow at the time?
Lelan: 19:13 Yep. We’re aiming for 750 to start.
Craig : 19:16 Okay.
Lelan: 19:17 For the first year. Looking forward to welcoming that many people to town.
Kristi: 19:22 What’s our website? Big sugar gravel.com yeah.
Craig : 19:24 Okay.
Kristi: 19:25 Yeah.
Craig : 19:26 And DK allows how many athletes at this point?
Lelan: 19:29 Well in 2020, we’re looking to register 3,000 riders, across six different distances. And of course that ranges from the 350 mile XL, down to 200, 100, 50, 25, and then our high school distance. And the DK has just grown and grown. And so when we talk about it, most people recognize the 200, which is the feature distance. But we have all those different places for people to have their journey and their adventure. And Big Sugar will be the same. This is called Big Sugar, but you’ll have the Little Sugar that you can participate in. And then there’ll also be a 20 mile introductory level, more of a familial ride, a beginner ride type of opportunity. So you’ll still be able to get out of town on gravel. That’s another great thing about Bentonville, is a mile and a half to two miles, and you’re out on gravel. Bentonville is not this big metropolis. It’s still has a small town vibe, a small town feel. And it’s very easy to get around.
Craig : 20:25 Yeah. I think that’s going to be the fun thing for families and kids to come in and support the athletes. Husbands supporting wives who are out there riding and vice versa. And you’ve got this beautiful community that I’m seeing for the first time this weekend. And it’s a great little town.
Kristi: 20:40 It’s great, isn’t it? It’s a cool little town.
Craig : 20:41 Yeah. And I’ve been hearing about the mountain biking progressively over the last few years, but it’s no surprise looking at a topographic map that there’ll be a gravel ride-
Kristi: 20:50 That’s why we picked the weekend we picked. It’s out-a-bike weekend.
Craig : 20:54 Oh it is? Okay.
Kristi: 20:54 In Bentonville. And we’re synergizing with them a bit. So you can come down for a weekend and buy a demo pass for the out-a-bike, and test out their awesome trails that are here. And then hop on your bike and do a gravel race, and then come back and check out some more trails on Sunday. So it’s a full weekend of cycling. And then to top that off, the activities that are here for families in Bentonville alone are great. So it really lends itself to it being a family affair weekend.
Craig : 21:28 Yeah. I mean that must be comforting to you guys to know that there’s a town infrastructure to accommodate all these people coming in.
Kristi: 21:35 Yeah, it’s great.
Craig : 21:36 Yeah. And do they have similarly sized events that go on in the community already?
Kristi: 21:43 To this event?
Craig : 21:43 In Bentonville? Yeah.
Lelan: 21:44 Yeah. Oz Epic just took place a couple of weeks ago. And that was in its third or fourth running here in Bentonville. They’ve been out a few years. And I want to say that’s around 750 mountain bikers on single track. And so we’re starting out at 750, but gravel has the ability to grow a little bit larger in numbers just because of the road is wider. You can get more people out there. Single strap is a little tougher in that respect.
Lelan: 22:07 But Bentonville is no stranger to events. And I mentioned at the top of the podcast, they’ll be hosting those Cyclo-cross World Championships in a few years. There’s an event related to cycling probably every other weekend in this community? Yeah, whether it be just a group ride or an organization pulling people together. People for Bikes just had a big summit down here about a month ago or so. So there was always some type of activity related to cycling. And I think you’re really going to see that increase.
Craig : 22:39 How were you thinking about the event differently? So Bentonville, different town, different terrain. Are you trying to create something that obviously has the same kernels as DK, but its own unique channel?
Kristi: 22:53 Well, I think that’s part of the reason why we A, chose Bentonville, and B, are partnering or teaming up a little bit out-a-bike on that, from that perspective. Is that we think it’s going to lend really to the flavor of the community. We’re also really, I’m really excited about our race directors that we’ve got coming onboard. We’ve got Ned Ross who’s a hall of fame mountain biker. And really stoked that he’s joining us. And then we have Gaby Adams, which formerly Gabby Shelton, is a DK 200 single-speed champion. She’s just a badass on the bike, and it’s so fun to have a female, another female joining as a race director.
Kristi: 23:34 And she’s really worked the course hard. Lelan and I-
Lelan: 23:38 This is her course.
Kristi: 23:39 Yeah, it’s her course. Like Lelan and I came down and had given her some tips and some ideas of what we were looking for, and had scouted some roads and taken her with us. And then she put together the route. And it’s awesome. To me, being an advocate for women in cycling, I’m really proud that we’ve got Gaby on our team.
Craig : 24:01 Yeah. And is it typically on county dirt and gravel roads? Or are we going into back country trails at all with the event?
Lelan: 24:11 No, they’re all public access county roads. Although you might be questioning that at times based on the low maintenance [crosstalk 00:24:19] some of them. But so similar to DK in that sense, it’s all public roads. There’ll be slightly more pavement here, only out of necessity, than what you’d probably find in DK. But to be honest, I think you’ll be relieved to have a mile of recovery every now and again. And again, it’s 80, it’s probably 90% gravel.
Kristi: 24:42 Oh yeah.
Lelan: 24:43 It’s only a handful of miles that you’ll be on pavement. And that’s only to connect you to the next sweet ribbon of gravel.
Craig : 24:49 Yeah. And like you said, I do think it will be this welcome reprieve for people’s bodies, to just soft pedal on some pavement for a few minutes.
Kristi: 24:56 Yep, 100%.
Craig : 24:58 Amazing. Well it’s super exciting. It must be thrilling for you both to finally realize this part of the vision that you had at DK, to explore a new community and start something again. And I’m really excited for you guys to take that journey from inception to creating yet another great event on the calendar.
Kristi: 25:17 Well and I think that definitely has, like Lelan said, that’s been a goal of ours. And then the acquisition of Lifetime, or Dirty Kanza being acquired by Lifetime, was really, that’s been what’s given us the ability to do this. And that to me is one of the things that’s the most exciting about this, is that they’re trusting what Dirty Kanza has done, and letting us lead this charge into some additional events.
Craig : 25:47 Yeah. Do you imagine that each event will stay in its own lane? Or is there a possibility that they might be linked together in some type of series in the future?
Lelan: 25:57 That’s a great question. I’m glad you asked, because we haven’t really touched on this. Our big picture vision is, as I talked about earlier, there’s a lot of great places for gravels still in the US. And we certainly want to create a little family of events. And we are staying completely away from words like series and qualifiers, because that’s not what this is. That’s not what these events are. So they are a grouping, a family of like-minded events. It’s still the DK team leading this and directing it. Working with amazing people who share our vision, and passion for celebrating all these individual achievements.
Lelan: 26:36 But there will be a connection, and there will be opportunities at these events. So at Big Sugar for example, any finisher who completes the course within the time cutoff, their allotment of time, if they so desire, they can drop a ticket into a bucket, and we will have some DK entry opportunities. But it is not a, how fast can you go and get on a podium and get an entry, not to receive that golden ticket. It is every finisher is qualified, and has an opportunity. If DK has something they want to try and want an extra helping hand beyond the lottery, because the demand is so high there, there will be opportunities like that.
Craig : 27:12 Yeah. Amazing.
Kristi: 27:14 Yeah, I think it’ll be really cool.
Craig : 27:15 Anything else you guys would like to add about the event or the community?
Kristi: 27:18 Just make sure you go to Big Sugar gravel.com, and get signed up, so that you are in the know for when we dropped… When the registration opens.
Craig : 27:27 Okay.
Lelan: 27:27 This is an open registration, which is how DK used to be. Of course, DK is now a lottery. And I just want to reiterate what Kristi just said is, 750 maybe it sounds like a lot of people, but that’s going to go fast. And we want you here. We want you to be on it, and be a part of it. So if this sounds like something that gets your goat, then get signed up and come join us.
Craig : 27:49 Yeah, I think, everybody put it on your calendar. So I’ll put it in the show notes, so everybody has the link.
Kristi: 27:54 Awesome.
Craig : 27:54 Getting prepared. We’ll get this out quickly. I want to share the news to everybody. And I’ll give my feelings on social media about Bentonville, which has been great so far. So you guys, it’s really been a pleasure talking to you guys. I’ve wanted to talk to the DK team for a long time, ever since I started this thing 18 months ago. So yeah, thank you. And thanks for everything you’re doing for the sport.
Kristi: 28:16 Yeah, thanks for coming.
Lelan: 28:18 [crosstalk 00:28:18] take you to Bentonville to catch us.
Craig : 28:21 Right on. Thanks guys.
Kristi: 28:22 Thank you.