Ep. 1185: Gravel Racing in East Africa Revisited with Simon Blake

You're listening to the Adventure Sports Podcast.

We talk with adventures from around the globe to give you the inspiration you need to get

started in the outdoors or keep moving if you're already there.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Adventure Sports Podcast.

This is Caleb.

I've got a secret for you.

Tomorrow February 28th is my dad Kurt Linville's birthday.

So if you feel so inclined to feel free to wish him happy birthday in the comments, I'm

sure that'll make his day.

In today's revisited episode, Mason interviews Simon Blake.

Simon is an avid bike racer, a specifically gravel bike racer, and he's spent at the time

of this episode airing in 2020.

He spent a good portion of time organizing and racing gravel races in East Africa, specifically

Kenya.

It's a really unique episode.

I hope you guys enjoy it.

Here's Mason.

You know, first of all, welcome to the show bit, but you're up early at 6.30am and where

are you coming from?

Yeah, thank you, Mason.

So yeah, talking about cycling in East Africa and what I'd been, I have been living

in Kenya for the past nine years.

But at the moment, I'm actually living in the desert in Australia, came home due to the

coronavirus because a lot of the things I was trying to get going in Africa weren't really

possible.

You can't have mass gatherings and then tourism had stopped as well.

And then big thing that I'm still working on in Australia is a migration gravel race

that we're putting on just outside the Masai Mara game reserve.

These pretty early in the morning, sun's just coming up here, top of the 10 of my desert.

Yeah, all good.

Thanks for having me on the show.

Oh, absolutely, man.

So you say that it was the coronavirus that pushed you home.

So how, you know, let's go back, you know, it sounds like, you know, I'm assuming here.

It sounds like you're from Australia.

That's great.

I apologize.

What would you grow up doing and how did you end up over in Kenya in the first

place?

I'd love to hear that story.

Yeah.

For sure.

So when I was in high school, I was like a relatively good distance runner for, you know,

a boy in Sydney and really loved it and then decided, I met a coach actually in Sydney and

he was taking distance runners over to Kenya to train with them and also to try and figure

out why we're Kenyans so much better than the rest of the world when I came to distance

running.

And so I was like, yeah, great.

I'd love to go over.

I just finished school.

I was at college doing graphic design and then I was like, yeah, cool.

And so I went over with him and we just sort of traveled around, trained with different

people, met different people.

And it was awesome.

Like I was 19 years of age when that happened.

I loved it.

I was just such an adventure and I was pretty wild and we didn't do the normal, touristy

things.

We visited a lot of athletes.

We stayed at some pretty rough places, but we're always welcome and it was pretty cool.

Then many, many years of actually going back to help out with distance running training

camps, mainly in Kenya, but also a little bit in Zimbabwe until Zim sort of got, yeah,

politically got a little bit unstable and so we had to sort of stop going there, but yeah,

I kept going to Kenya, helping out for distance running camps and we helped brother column,

not sure if anyone's ever heard of him before, but he's sort of, he's one of the guys that

made Kenya what it is when it comes to distance running.

So he originally started a female, a junior female training camp and then a lot of the

boys kept bugging him and saying, oh, I want to come and want to come and he ends up

now having coach David Rudisha, I think it's over more than 30 world champions to his

name, phenomenal and he's just a seriously downed earth, pretty cool old Irish guy.

So I was helping out with those camps, but then my running, I wasn't running as fast

so I have a hope tied run one day, especially when you go to Kenya, you realise you're

very good.

And so came back to Australia, like I was coming, but I was generally going for a couple

weeks or a couple months at a time back then and then came back and May and he started

to work in the outdoors and that was where I think I'd been always riding a mountain bike

as a child or as a BMX but then got into mountain biking in a much bigger way.

Yeah, it sort of took off from there so I started riding a lot more and then left a job

in Australia in the outdoors and I was really enjoying but wanted to move on and do other

things and at exactly the same time ran into my running coach and he was like, oh, look,

I've met this guy, he was running coaches now living in Kenya coaching runners and told

me that he'd met this guy who'd started up a cycling team up in U10 which was the main

running town in Kenya.

So the main distance runners come from or not really from U10 some do but they all gravitate

towards U10.

It's sort of, I feel in some ways it's like a university or a ski town where people come

from everywhere else but they all come here and end up living there and develop what they're

doing and it's pretty cool and it's not unusual to wake up in the morning and see the current

world record holder for a whole number of different events running down the road and people

don't really just go for a job there, everyone's moving, it's quite impressive.

One of those places you can't have to keep your head low because everyone else is just more

impressive.

Yeah, that's right and like there's a funny like you're seeing which is a Mazzungu is what

they call a white man over there, it's white healy and so you're expected to be hopeless

like it's just, ah, Mazzungu, you are trying, ah, Mazzungu, you have tried and it just

sort of essentially means that you're pretty slow but you don't keep having to go, you're

never beat us broken.

But there's a few white boys that have gone over and have done really well and have mixed

it with the Kenyans which is seriously impressive especially on their own home turf but it's

pretty rare.

But yeah, it's an amazing little town stunningly beautiful scenery-wise because it's on

that's a true, on top of a tributary in for the Great Rifali which is the Kerio Valley.

So there's lots of elevation to lose which is very good for mountain biking, goes from

about 12 or 2300m down to about 1100m so you lose about 1200m vertical from 10 essentially

down two hills so it goes down flat and it's our little one drops again so I have developed

trails down there, we ran in Enduro for the past, I think three years.

The first year was super low entrance, it was essentially one of my mates from me again

to came over and a friend from America was actually in Kenya and we would come over just

for a break and so I put the Enduro on then and so that was essentially us three but then

last year around the Enduro at this time of year actually and we had seven, no 18 entrants

and it was, that was fantastic, it was a really cool event, it was a lot of the boys in the cycling

team helped out, they made it a lot easier on me and the county got involved a little bit which

was really cool and then yeah we came to one night down by the Kerio River and then just rode

a lot of rush, sort of really natural trails which is I think is how I prefer to ride anyway,

yeah it was great, some of the trails pretty long like one of the stages could be five and a half

kilometers long but I split it in half just so that there's an amazing look out at halfway so I

thought we might as well just stop the stage there, I feel relaxed, had some food, it's in the middle

of the bush down this hill and then keep going for the second stage so one day I'd like to go

back and kick off the Kerio Valley Enduro again but we'll see what the world does over the next few

years, no absolutely, I mean wow you just shared so much so originally it was running that brought

you over there, and you know that transition into cycling, obviously there's so much talent,

I mean Africa is such a huge continent, you know there's always just these incredible athletes

out there, you know it all sorts of sports, do you feel that's kind of similar to running what

happened with running and just seeing how Kenyans have done specifically and some other surrounding

countries, do you think that's kind of similar with the cycling world as well, like it's

in a lot of ways untapped, the first of all the landscape for the ability to mountain by just

some incredible routes but also athletes, yeah 100% so and then yeah so the next bit to why I

ended up in Kenya with a cycling team was there had had had met my old running coach again,

actually back in Australia, we just caught up one day since after years of him being in Kenya,

I was working in the outdoors in Australia and then we just caught up and he was like I've met

this guy who started a bike team up in he 10 and I was like yeah wow that's actually initially

I thought it was pretty mad, I was like what a guy starting a bike team in Kenya, like road cycling,

like you've got to be crazy, but he's explained it to me more and he's like they're pretty amazing

going uphill, you know really high-powered away ratio, but they don't descend to well, they crash

quite often, their skills aren't too good and I had actually written up some really really basic

stuff for the outdoor, I was working for an outdoor aid company and like you know the three

points of cornering, the three points of going downhill, three points for going up a small drop

and so I shared that with the old running coach and he took that back to the guy that started

the bike team in Kenya a couple weeks later and then a couple phone calls, couple of skype

mean, couple of emails and then I was at the time actually doing freelance outdoor work so I

wasn't held down to anything and the like why don't you come help out and I was like yeah why not

life it doesn't work, you know I'm lucky I come from a country where I can essentially just get

onto an aeroplane, turn up, oh yes so here's your visa welcome and it's flexible if I don't like

it I can fly back home, so that's what I did and then enjoyed it enough to stay and then nine

years later I had to leave reluctantly because of coronavirus but yeah still got a lot of links

and I'm still talking to a lot of people back in Africa about organizing events and I'd started

that was one of the things I was moving into more was event organization so obviously the migration

travel race would be one of the biggest about the carrier value in Euro and then I was sort of

running a whole East African Euro series with mates so everyone was essentially putting on their

own race in different parts of Kenya but I essentially was probably the glue that was holding

it all together, did a lot of the artwork and promoted it and if anyone needed a hand then I could

at least tell them my experiences of organizing in Euro events in East Africa which is a little different

to other enjoy events I've done around the world just yeah and for yeah like for safety for

we try and keep our events together so like I know I did a really great event up in White Horse in

Canada years ago and you turn up you get a little chip you go with your mate you ride the whole

course you come hand you chip back in to print out the results for you and it was amazing date

like I absolutely loved it I thought it was a really cool event up in it was actually up in

carcross just out of White Horse but we feel in Kenya because there could be animals out there

not so much in some parts of Kenya there's a lot all the but the Safari animals aren't around it's

more domestic added animals cow sheets and goats but just the fact if you were to come off your bike

even parts of I ran my events and hurt yourself you'd be in quite a lot of trouble like

there's not a great way to get out there's not a great animal in the system the menace pool system

as not as good as Canada or Australia or Europe so we were sort of looking after each other so

and it was a really cool way that you'd finish your event yes you had to wait but that's why I put

the stages at in a beautiful location so you had something to look at and then just hang out and

with the other guys everyone comes and finishes made a really cool vibe to the ones

like cheering each other on and then laughing at everyone else's reactions it's like cross the line

and speak about that one bit of a trail of all that nasty climb or whatever it was and then we'd

move on as like a you know a weekend group ride to the beginning of the next stage and then off

we go again and I felt it's a really really social way to essentially race your bike you know

flogging yourself like a cross country race and then I'd started organising a criterion series

in Kenya as well which was pretty amazing right from the first race which you organised through

probably the biggest shopping mall in Nairobi which is the capital city of Kenya so the shopping

mall is called two rivers mall there's two rivers two rivers sorry meet app one location where

the mall is and they've got some grand plans for sort of a big obviously a really big shopping

mall but a whole lot of real estate as well so a lot of roads have been built but they've got nothing

around the roads yet so we're allowed to use these roads essentially 100% closed to traffic which is

also an issue in Kenya that the traffic safety or driving safety is a little bit different especially

to where I grew up in Australia and it's really unfortunate that every now and then guys around

the world get you know hit by cars but it's a little bit too common I'd say in Kenya so I thought if

I can organize a race that's off main roads and we essentially have control of the road ourselves

through the mall security and it went really well me you know I got some music going and I was

commentating with two other local guys and it was an absolute hit like it went really really well

it was much better than I expected it to go and that kicked off to another criterion that some other

mates were organizing and actually the first the first negative effect for me for the coronavirus is

the second addition of this criterion I remember I was at the mall setting up the course

barricading off-section getting everything ready getting gates opened and then I got a call from

one of the guys I was working with he runs a company called Swim Africa doing a lot of swimming

coaching James Mururi it's his name and then he rang me and said look I'm just at this meeting with

some quite official people of the area and we're being told that no mass gatherings are allowed to

happen starting today and it was I'd do it it's Friday the races on sat day come they just wait

till Monday all right come on let's get this event done and never happened so we had to care

it and the other cycling community was quite disappointed and I know racing is just kicking off

again in Kenya so I've seen a few things like social media have you ever gone through all the hassles

of getting on the plane security luggage long waits at the airport all that kind of stuff

and then when you finally arrive at your destination not only are you worn out but you also might

feel a little bit disconnected I know that I do when I hop scotch around the planet on a plane

that's one of the reasons why I love the great American road trips where you get to drive from one

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limited time offer that's outdoorsy.com promo code ASP it sounds like your your passion is for

planning planning the events themselves putting the events on themselves I suppose so yeah it was

something like I never thought like I want to be a race organizer like I thought that actually

right right that sounds really tough especially in another country you know yeah yeah print all

this stuff out and you're going to be organized you're gonna have spreadsheets and then and do

with the county deal with the police which is in Kenya unfortunately not easy to do but in the end

yeah it's great like when it works it's phenomenal and it was mainly like that first in

Giro Iheld it was just me and two mates just letting loose on some trails and I'd pushed it to get

people involved I think everyone was either a bit scared because I'm not like I come back to Australia

and I ride with mates and I get seriously schooled on in Giro mountain biking like some of my mates it's

just phenomenal but that's the scene they've got really nice bikes in their long travel not that I

didn't have nice bikes but I'd say Australia is a little bit ahead of the curve and and then there's

just so many more guys riding so I think all of that just pushes everyone and you just get a lot

better I was actually listening to a podcast of yours last night oh my guys that have got those

magnetic pedals and that's exactly what they were saying it's just ride with people that are

better than you and you get better I think so in Africa as well like it is that starting to happen

like I wouldn't say I'm a fantastic rider but last year I won the East African Giro Series but there's

a lot of guys that like two years ago were coming along and awesome guys but they were pretty

slow but this year like I'm seeing them putting up some results I was like wow he's really starting

to move like damn if I don't get back to Africa soon I'm never going to beat him ever again and

it's pretty cool like him I was an event on just before I left up in the in Gong Hills no in

Kajabi sorry there's a Kajabi is a small town and how I out of Nairobi and there's a young guy

that I've known for a couple years yeah I'd never he's never ever troubled me like I was like

yeah I shabazzes he's there cool whatever and then at the Kajabi in Giro he thrashed me and I was

like that is so awesome are these young guys they're really getting into it they're getting quite

jazzed about their mountain biking and they're starting to fly like so I was like oh that's cool

you know what have I created but yeah there's a lot of other guys now doing it organizing events

putting stuff on organizing weekend rides and that's the cool thing yeah like they've got you know

easy dirt road rides now they've got gentle single-track rides they've got guys that like to do

more endurance you know riding their bike for most of the day putting in huge kilometers there's

guys that are now looking for more of the enduro scene type riding so it's quite varied as to the

types of riding people are doing and different groups popping up all the time so Africa is

embracing cycling and I'd say it's probably economically the I think the middle class of Africa

or East Africa is growing and so people do have especially in the big cities have a little bit

disposable money now they might have sort of like what we would term as a proper job so they're

often inside or you know at meetings or at a computer or on the phone so I think on the weekend

they want to get out and and blast on that steam and and just ride their bike and see part of

their own country especially for East Africa I actually think the bike is one of the best ways to see

the country itself and even bikepacking trips I've done there are definitely better than any

well I've done a few bikepacking trips that involve seeing some animals as well which is just

mind blowing do feel like you're a little bit of the food chain again but it's just it's amazing

like but then get riding in other areas so north of each end where I live the beginning of the

Cheringani hills and they go much further north up into what is known as Bacot land so the different

tribes starts in Mariquette and I'll go Mariquette land and moves up the cot and it's getting sort of

getting a bit remote once you hit the area of the Bacot and for the riding up there is just stunning

so yeah like I remember when I first got there I was like oh I'm not sure that like cheering on a

bike it'd be good here and this but once you get used to it and you know that all the bad news

that Africa receives is just because bad news does better on the TV that's not that dangerous yes

is you know places you've got to be careful and don't do this don't do that but especially on the

rural areas I think I've only really had one bad moment out in the rural areas and it was a

bad moment but it was once in nine years but other than that like felt very safe the people are

very inquisitive you get yelled out a million times how are you Mazzungu especially from the young

kids which is quite hilarious at times I remember a bike-packing trip actually this has happened many

times just riding down the road me and a mate and you know especially on the up hills you go and

pretty slowly and then some small child at a school in the playground that recess on bunch will see

you and they don't see many white guys and bikes out there so you are quite a novelty and he'll

just scream Mazzungu how are you and then he will run down through the school field over to where

you are and then obviously all these mates hear him so then they all look up and scream out the

same thing and they'll run over and all of a sudden you have the entire school running over to the

fence we are just screaming at you Mazzungu how are you Mazzungu how are you Mazzungu how are you

they just go absolutely wild those start clapping and cheering and I'm pretty slow actually but

you can clap and cheer all over so that's right yep I'll sign all the graphs just here and that's

hilarious so and then sometimes we'll stop and interact with the kids and sometimes just keep riding

on but yeah it's a really cool spot to ride your bike and that was something I was going to move

into more was more bike tourism and bike packing trips and then you know moving from point to point

and then other sort of more cross country or in duo mountain bike trips as well or you might stay

in one place and ride then shuttle out to a different area then ride so it was more about the

descending and less about the traveling in the sense and then we were likely enough to run a trip

for raffer travel sort of through part of Kenya and all of it but if it was an eight day ride

ended up at the Masai Mara and yeah it was great when the clients had a good time and so we were

able to you know we were able to set up the trip for a clientele that rides a raffer so I know

initially the route was sort of planned about where can we find nice hotels and so we spoke

a long time which part of Kenya should we ride in and and then we tried to choose a good hotel

for another good hotel that was somewhere between 100 to 200 K day and a mixture of tarmac or dirt

roads yeah there was only one day we had to shuttle in the vehicles a little bit because we'd

had some horrendous rain overnight and the the red dirt roads or mud and roads as they call them in

Kenya can get pretty bad when it's really muddy and just clients were slipping over everywhere and

that the mud sort of cakes up on your tires and just gets stuck in the frame and you literally can't

even push your bike you have to shoulder the bike and start walking and so we thought well this

is not very enjoyable and so through everyone in the car and the forward drives and got to a bit

that hadn't been raining and then progressed on and that was yeah that was a day before we got to

the Masai Mara and then ended up in the Mara it had a safari drive that night which was pretty amazing

what the sun go down lots of animals and the safari company you know brought out drinks and

it's all quite lardy dark and I think it was part of that and a whole number of other reasons

that got us excited about organising a gravel race in in Kenya and um it's actually through

a mate who's an lawyer he's an American guy but a lawyer in in the Netherlands uh runs a bike shop

called Lola Bikes in Coffee and has now started up sort of like a high quality amateur cycling team

in the Netherlands in the Hague called Team Art Marnie and they have links through the coffee shop

with coffee beans coming from Africa but he'd also seen on his travels to Africa that again he'd

seen the talent that was available or that was the present in Africa and was like wow what if

is there a possibility of giving these guys opportunities then it was on the we just spoke I just spoke

about cycling in East Africa and told him pretty much everything that I had experienced over by then

must have been about eight years and this slat all blah and and what what I felt East Africa needed

like why do you turn on the the television to watch the Olympics and every middle distance race

is owned by a black east african athlete either Ethiopian now I even you again and which is

fantastic to see sometimes an era train but mainly a canyon you turn on the marathons London

Rotterdam Oslo all the big ones even the Dubai marathon and it's owned again by Kenya or an Ethiopian

so as well the talent is just a laringly obvious that endurance talent athletes out of East Africa are

just they're a cut above the rest and it's the odd woosungu white man that comes long

light theta bowman or even these two twins Zach I mean Zane and Jake that are living in

any tent at the moment robins and brothers that are running like sub 60 half marathons there's

another young guy Julian who's also running some seriously fast times I think he's Austrian but

you know I've just named him and I can remember all of them but the canyon is just less

and less and less of seriously fast men coming out of your tent and that region which is sort of

Elgar Marquette the 90s it's generally one tribe generally the Kalinjin but since other tribes

in Kenya have seen the Kalinjin being so successful they've in some ways taught themselves to run

as well so they could cue the mass eye some karma but it's generally your Kalinjin that win most

of the big races speaking to Markle from team Armani and Nola bikes it was like well you know

what can we do and then it was like what can we do to get a spotlight on on Kenya for cycling and

what can we do to excite people and and what does Kenya have that the rest of the world doesn't have

you know there's beautiful mountains in the Alps in France there's amazing mountains in the

Rockies in Canada and the Sawtooth Mountains in the USA and the Idaho so it's like yes there's

mountains in Kenya and they are beautiful but why would you travel all over the world when you

most people have them in their backyard well like well they don't have this scenery with animals

in it and so we thought if we can have a race next to one of the world's biggest game reserves

and the most popular game parks but keeping it essentially at a safe enough distance

which has been right from the beginning it's like yes we want people to see the animals but we

don't want them to essentially beat the animals so we've put on this this event and it's probably

going to be a four-day race over 650 kilometres we want it to be brutally hard and it seems to be

the the big gravel races now are very very hard races they're quite a test something we've been

looking at is like the Atlas Mountain race and obviously dirty cans and let Bill 100 and you know

they're not easy events and for I think average cyclists just to finish the race is the prize

like that's and that's what you get happy about the guys that are winning it are still seriously

flying is this the migration that I was reading about yep so that'll be the migration gravel race

and it's all of us those myself Michael another guy in the Netherlands and then I made a mind James

in Kenya who runs an outdoor adventure company called Savage Wilderness so he's doing most of

logistics on the ground at the moment because he's still in Kenya and he's worked in the outdoors

running outdoor company for many many years so luckily he has all the logistics the vehicles the

the contacts the knowledge he's been to the Mara many many times so yeah we feel we've pretty much

plotted the route now 650k and must have taken it's taken a lot of wreckies to get get it done

but we feel for a lot of races guys ride through the night I know a lot of these are like bike

packing slash gravel events you know it's like right start here and and you can finish there

and it's sort of you've got these checkpoints you have to check into on the way but you can sleep

as much or as little as you want but we feel that it won't be safe if we tried to go with that

tactic in Kenya sometimes you know you meet the wrong people at night time in Africa and then also

just animals and a lot of them a lot of them do feed at night time so we thought if we can get people

off off their bikes and off the road but essentially during the night and then we keep it safe so

we'll start and finish although quite a nice probably yeah caught like a game lodge whatever

it's just he's got the super fancy part he's also got a just a very comfortable basic section

called boundaries in the wild and the edge of the mass armor and one of the conservatives so

we'll start and finish the race there that'll be essentially race village yeah it's pretty spectacular

riding we ride through conservatives where you do see animals some of those roads are pretty rough

some of them are super smooth and then we go in between sort of game reserve safari park sort of

area or conservatives and then we hook up into some more rural like current African rule life

through villages and so it's sort of in and out of that some pretty wild places as well so

we'll feel it's a really you get sort of a good mix of the animals and then current African life

and most of the roads they're red dirt and some of those red dirt roads are so smooth like you just

you're flying going so fast especially with the riding with a mate or working together and

up through the African bush and then other parts you wish you had almost a dual suspension mountain

bike like it's pretty rough roads there's lots of ruts and really rocky um sometimes the

the roads are built there with a nice red soil but because in the wet season they get so muddy

then the council goes around and purposely throws rock into the road which is what they call the

and some of those moan roads can be rough that really really rough so when I was riding

they're the last wreckie I actually did a wreckie there just a fray came home I was riding a 40 mil

tire on the rear and actually a 2.1 tire on the front on a rigid gravel bike and I just felt

having that 2.1 tire front was a little bit more comfortable a little bit more traction on some

of the corners but having the 40 mil out the back was you know it wasn't slowing me down too much

yeah it's not a safari trip it is a real race but we're happy for people to come and just survive

as well and just finish but yeah so tie choices actually quite key I think that is fascinating how

how many people are you expecting to sign up for the migration and when is it taking place you

might have mentioned but I didn't catch it no that's cool yes I haven't mentioned that yet so the

date that we're aiming for in a corona world is the 20th to the 23rd of January 2021 so we're

sort of aiming for around 50 we don't want to go too big on the first one we really want to do

quite a good job we want to all the bells and whistles and make sure the logistics is right and

we want to make sure that it is a good event and then each year slowly grow it and

and you know organically whatever it is try and let the event just grow itself I think if

we feel in some ways if we try and be I know greedy the first year and get too many people involved

then it could actually you know we might miss things even though we've been doing this for a

long time with James's outdoors I've been organizing events in Kenya so as James and then Michael's

been heavily involved in the cycling scene in Europe for a long long time we're all coming

together and it's a new thing in Africa and it's just Africa time and and just things just happen

in Africa at times that slow you down probably not probably actually we will have a bunch of local

mass eye guys so this part of Kenya is mass eye land the mass eye mara national park so the tribe

that live in that area is the mass eye and we'll work with we're already working with a number of

the mass eye guys down there as sort of fixes and they know this guy knows that guy and this land

and whatever it is but we'll also work with some of the young mass eye guys get them on what they

call bow to bow to comes from the term border to border so if you're at some of the big

border posts in Africa so she back in the day you would get to one border get your passport

sign you'd have to walk quite a distance across no man's land get to the next one stamp your passport

and then you'll go into the new into the new country so often it used to be bicycles and you would

get to the first checkpoint stamp your passport and then there'll be all these young guys on bikes

and that's where it came bow to bow to and so you would jump on from border to border get a little

bike ride across make it faster get your next passport stamp and off you go and so now everything

that's sort of a bicycle taxi or a motorway taxi is become known as bow to bow to bow to

so we'll use these bow to bow to guys to some of the corridors that we feel have probably a few

too many animals or there could be an opportunity that we will be escorted by mass eye guys on

motorbikes through these areas so even if you come through alone and you come through

in a small group we'll have enough of them there that they'll just keep shuttling people through

you know it might be like a one kilometer section and a two k section of we know there's

animals around we've got really good links through the guys at the conservancy end for sort of

a mass eye fixes we know where the animals are at certain times by this elephant in this region

they're moving in that direction for this reason we've got a pride of line has been spotted over

here the last couple of days or there's a whole lot of wildebeest or zebra or giraffe whatever it is

and so it might just be that they can let people know and if you're not seriously racing hard

you can stop play at your camera and and have some photos or just enjoy seeing African wildlife

in the African wild you have to stop for a little bit because an elephant's crossing the road then

you have to stop that's part of the race but these guys they that's where they live it's where they

that's how they travel each day on these bow to bow to motorbikes and yeah they know what they're

doing so just a different way of again trying to hook into the community and work with

local community which is yeah a lot of those guys are struggling quite a bit at the moment with

coronavirus and it's not really for a lot of East African guys they can't really work from home

they don't have an office with a computer and blah blah they sell fruit inside the road and

they have their cows or whatever it is and they've got to travel into town to sell whatever it is

so I know initially when coronavirus hit and a lot of the lockdown rules are being implemented

into East Africa there was actually a lot of talk that should lockdown restrictions happen in

East Africa because so many people are going to be unemployed essentially overnight and then when

they go home they're off from large families or a community where there's a lot of people in a

small area so there's not going to be a lot of social distancing anyway and then well that huge

spike in unemployment then create other issues like you know people not eating and then turn to

crime and blah blah so I think it's been yeah very different for a lot of those nations different to

how Australia or America or New Zealand or whatever it is and I know every country is putting

their own own twist on it but I think I had to be done differently in Africa because of the

environment and the way people live in the current economic situation but it seems from what I'm

hearing that the virus is slowing down in East Africa which is fantastic but yeah from what I'm

hearing they're starting to try and open up tourism again because that's such a it's such a big

business in East Africa and a lot of people survive off off tourism so hopefully they can open it

up and people can start working again so that's yeah tapping into that with the migration

gravel race but also we think that the rest of the world is just loving that type of cycling

obviously and race format at the moment and we thought why not show off Kenya and introduce it

into Africa but then also having worked for a bike team for nine years and you know getting

to know the guys and living with them and traveling with them around the world to races

is like within the team ourselves as the coaching management staff I might take a bunch of

four to six guys to Europe to race and it's a different culture it's a different many many things

and so a few of them especially initially will not do well at all just everything's different

and then a few of them will sort of get a good idea then they'll start to race okay and then

some of them do well and some of them don't and then some of them never really get it and unfortunately

we have to take them to Europe to figure that out you can't just figure it out in Kenya but at the

same time that's a lot of money and so a lot of the funding for the team was essentially just

like damn I didn't work with that I've eaten yeah what do we do it's just cost a lot of money

and that's just part of it but it was always something that can we reverse that situation

in a way is bring top quality athletes into Kenya and then arm or Kenyans able to experience

how fast a guy from Belgium is in a criterion through corners or you know how fast can these

guys ride on gravel for multiple case every single day for a four day race so part of it is

is yeah showing off Kenya but then also can we expose the Kenyans guys by bringing talent

into Kenya and we're working out ways of getting especially some of the Kenyans riders would

definitely be involved in the race of our best guys we've currently got three of them signed to

a continental team in Germany so they're pretty good psychosite they're very fast and they're

strong and they understand racing and they haven't really raced gravel before they do a lot of

training on gravel roads but they've never been there all I know speaking to them even the last

couple of weeks they're pretty excited about the opportunity of racing gravel against them

by the really really good amateurs or maybe hopefully some X-PROs and then slowly growing that

that we can get more and more East Africans into that race and so you know it just there was

yeah I think there was a story that the guy that started Nicholas Leong here is the guy that

started the Kenyans rider cycling team we used to talk often that Kenyans weren't always the best

distance runners you know her balia posterity even flying fins there was a holo guys from New

Zealand like there was even the Americans and another was a guy wrong clerk you know all white

guys are running seriously fast 10k marathons 5,500 and then slowly Kenya started to come in but

still they weren't really any good and there's a story of this guy called Neftelli Tamu who was in

I think the 10,000 meters and he got lapt and off he go and he was just an unknown guy they got

lapt in the race I'm a hopeless runner the next Olympics he came back and he won the god metal

like how many people go in picks kettle hat and then the next time like oh go win gold it's like

that doesn't happen off my own opinion I don't think that guy got you know much more talented

it was just in that Olympics he was exposed to how fast fast is he's like oh okay so when you

okay yes okay they do run okay they're very fast my friend yes okay and so he went home and

either stepped up he's training or whatever it was and then he comes back and wins gold like

that's a massive step so we do we feel like competitively is that where Ken in cycling is at

the moment like we just need like everyone jockboy who first American to ride the Tour de France

I think he's won the race across America a few times he was in Rwanda for 10 years

with team Rwanda and the Africa Rising Centre and he was saying even more than me that they

just need exposure to proper racing and he and jock was a very very big part of the Tour de Rwanda

which I don't actually say he's probably the best road race in the entire world but it's probably

definitely one of the biggest in Africa and it's a phenomenal eight day race around Rwanda itself

really good for the the country and the people just go wild they absolutely love the race

Rwanda as a country is very very hilly so it's definitely a climber's race and it's been awesome

that a lot of European teams are traveling to the Tour de Rwanda especially for Rwanda

itself there's a lot of little year-rounding kids standing on the side of the road who want

balance to win they want Bosco to win whoever it is that they're Rwanda and champions

but they're seeing all these pro-European guys and and just they go wild it's similar to that story

I told about the kids at school they just run to the road and they're just screaming at the

cyclists they come past and I'd imagine that all those little kids are like I want to be that guy

I want to have that fancy lycra on I want that beautiful bike and like there goes a talent

identification development program so if you can get that many thousands of kids just like I want

to be that guy and so you're at least half the way there I'm sure and like then you've got a

source bike in a training program but they had to keep them training and blah blah blah but if the

want if that will is there so you know if Rwanda can keep it tacked together for the next 10 to

15 years and those five to 13-year-old boys start growing up and want to be that guy then you

know cycling world look out there's got a lot of very fast people so in Kenya it's very very

different even though we're essentially neighbors it's only Uganda in between Kenya and Rwanda

but I feel the way cycling is growing in Kenya is is quite different to Rwanda Rwanda's a little

bit more control a little bit more involvement from the government which I think is doing a pretty

good job at least with the cycling there and they did have some issues and just over a year ago

the president had to leave from doing some silly things but at the same time probably running a

little bit in sort like there they've got a proper team they're sponsored by a big company and

but yeah it's just a bit different it's sort of it's probably a little bit more controlled in

Rwanda but whereas in Kenya I feel that it's yes people like the Kenyan riders obviously where

I must have been a big part of the push for cycling and getting guys overseas was getting you know

your average Kenyan quite excited that there was a Kenyan going overseas and racing and occasionally

doing well and got a bit of name for himself but right now especially that this growth is happening

it's like the people are running Kenyan cycling it's sort of it's taking off all by itself and

they're coming up with their own versions of races or how to run a TT or a criteria or even the

enduro is like I was saying we do a little bit differently for a number of reasons because of the

environment and but I feel that the people are running cycling in Kenya and all the best races in

Kenya all run by privates they try and get some type of corporate support but now luckily slowly

some Kenyan companies are getting on board and there's a guy who's actually opened a bike shop

he's the distributor for Giant for East Africa now which is that's a massive step forward as well

now that like real bikes brand new are in Kenya and they're being served as property they've

got warranties so yeah you can go and get now any any giant bike you want now brand new in

Nairobi and he's it's being done that the bike shop's doing it that it is relatively competitive

especially if you're living in Kenya and you want to ship something in you've always got to go

through the shipping and then this company in that and that ends up costing a bit of money on

top of the original purchase so the bike shop in Nairobi is being quite competitive and a lot of

guys are doing their research online you know chain reaction cycles get it sent to a friend in the UK

that friend comes out six in his suitcase or get a courier company to bring it in and there's a

hole that a hassles there or the bike shop's already got the bike in Kenya and it's the same or

even a little bit less once you add everything up so it's fantastic to see that shop doing well and

people supporting it because he's been supporting all pretty much or not all but most of the bike

races which has been yeah really cool that there is a bike shop now supporting cycling events in

Kenya and I'm sure I really hope that is doing well for his business but like I was chatting to him

just the other day and he said the cycling business in East Africa at the moment is very very good

even with coronavirus and I think I've heard a lot of people are buying bikes around the

world because of the virus but apparently the East African market is just booming and I think it's

yeah partly the coronavirus partly people are realizing that that's a great way to exercise

it's a bit better for the knees for an older person than running is definitely it's a great way

to see Kenya you can get out into the rural areas quite easy but you can still interact with the

local people because like they see not in a boxly not in the car you're not going too fast you can

stop have a chat and a lot of the WhatsApp groups in Kenya it's quite funny there's little

everyone takes photos of the Chinese aparties or Mandazi or some potato and beans and it's just

the thing that happens like everyone's got their favorite little duck up which is like a shopping

Kenya it's like the cha po and cha here this is one is the best I know my friend this one is the best

and this is they prepare the cha po like this I listen so often the WhatsApp groups on the weekend

have a variety of photos of cha parties and chai and um but yeah it's it's it's pretty awesome that

you can go out for a ride often and even these bikepacking trips I've done we'd be riding and riding

riding and like pretty remote areas and get to a little spot and it's like oh do you have any

bottled water I'm like oh my friend no no no we do not have it's like oh do you have

chai ah Andy oh we have we have you come so you know the water's been boiled to make the

chai and the milk's been boiled so you know that it's healthy um there's a little bit too much sugar

in the drinks often but it's like oh well that's right and you know I'm riding my bike I've been

riding hard I'm going to keep riding hard so that sugar's going to be gobbled up pretty soon anyway

and then some chapatis and maybe some bananas and it's all there it's all fresh and it costs

you know 50 cents you know this is terrific um often just carry like a jar of peanut butter with

you and then spice up your your chapatis every now and then and so it's yeah that like it makes it

just easy like once you figure out the the the the the I wouldn't call a system but your way

you figure out how the environment works and it's like well I can just go for a ride and there's

always soda like every shopping can it's all soda which I think is not good but at the same time

if you're bonking and you're out in the middle of nowhere and just pop up a little ducca and

like oh I have soda please and if I enter coke there's a whole variation of different sodas in

Kenya yeah so there's all these little shops out in the middle of nowhere um or even just buying fruit

avocados really nice bananas mangoes poor poor um so yeah stopping and eating them mid ride is just

delightful and sort of really helps to get you back home again I mean you got me excited to

want to come back in East Africa honestly all these stories all this uh all this experience and all

this you know all the dreaming of what's to come of what's ahead and in the potential it's so

exciting and so I love talking to folks who are seeing that and working towards putting their

knowledge and experience to use in a place that maybe hasn't seen it is is really exciting and so

yep yeah gosh I'd love to I'd love to join at some point and love to hear how it goes I know

the migrations coming up and in the next honestly soon for four or so months now it is soon yep

you know what where can folks find more about what you're doing and about cycling in East Africa and

just uh you know maybe get involved somehow where can they where can they get in touch yeah for sure

so Instagram is the most current at the moment so that's at migration gravel race essentially

all one word um the website will be up very soon and that will be www.migrationgrabblerace.com

but that won't be out for a week or two but hopefully by the time people listen to this and

and get around to searching for it it will be there uh Facebook is the same at migration gravel

race um and I suppose yeah and then on those social media platforms there'll be email the addresses

on phone numbers um for the organizers um and then other links would be um at Kenyan underscore

writers is the the cycling team Instagram page and then my own one is at cycle underscore east

africa and that was or hopefully still will become um sort of a a bike tourism bike tour company

doing yeah gravel uh bike trip and bike packing and sort of enduring cross-country events

and a lot of different parts of Kenya and we've got yeah like endless GPX files that we've

slowly put together and uh myself and and then savage wilderness again that's uh at savage

wilderness on instagram um myself and jane's are working on a lot of different tours there's a

seriously beautiful conservancy um not too far actually from Mount Kenya uh called barana um and

that's I've never seen so many animals in one place in my life um but I just think barana is

it just blows me away and the animals I saw because there was no there was no security put out on

those days there was no chopper in the sky there was no wardens or or rangers in the bush

and so it was just me and a friend or two just riding around sometimes we had a forward drive

they would meet at different locations to make sure okay and a bit of extra water

and but man you had to have your eyes open that was uh it's like all these smokes like those real

animals that are like those big ones those dangerous ones are like just there and uh there was

I've come pretty close to elephant buffalo the two that I'm the most concerned about the cats

a lot of guys that run these conservancy don't seem to be too bothered about cats um and I'm

still not convinced yet they haven't after many years but I was like man if I came flying down the

hill I'm out and bite around some single track around a bush and there were the lion or a private

lion sitting there I would not be happy but these guys are just saying no no no it's the elephant

if you know a rogue elephant or if you get a bunch of buffalo and especially the you know the

alpha males that are in that group and you're in serious trouble so but um bear just gotta be really

just be sensible keep your eyes open and um so it's just yeah there's so many different areas to

riding um guys have been riding off mount Kenya a little bit and it's that's good but it's not

the best it's um like I try and tell friends you know if you would go to the pool on a mountain bike

trip yes it'd be a good fun to ride off Mount Everest but it's not the best mountain biking in the

pool right and I think mountain Kenya is the same like yeah you're cool it sounds great when you

stick it on Instagram and blah blah I rode mountain Kenya but I think there's other parts of Kenya that

are just yeah way more stunning even close to Nairobi like Kajabi is phenomenal there's some some

really good riding so you don't have to go too far but then there's the whole rest of the country

if there's mountains then yeah there's some some good riding so it's great well Simon man I'm out of time

but I really appreciate you joining us on the advantage thanks so much and I'll stay in touch uh

as the show as it's coming out and uh yeah I really appreciate you just jump it on and tell

us about Pup's cycling in East Africa sounds awesome yeah fantastic and thanks so much Mason just

for the opportunity to to let me yeah essentially tell the story and let the world know that there is

some amazing stuff happening in East Africa right now and it is a beautiful place to ride your bike

and um so if you've ever wanted to go on a holiday visit Africa see the animals and

do it on a bike it's way better than sitting in the car absolutely I'd have to agree

yeah and I think uh yeah hopefully a lot of people are getting itchy feet and they just want

to get out once this once the world is allowed to travel again absolutely well Simon have a great

day I know it's still early for you but uh hope you got some time to exercise or stretch or whatever

you're doing and we'll be uh we'll be in touch soon man thank you yep come mate thanks Mason

have a great day all right bye bye

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