Matt Lieto - Protect our Winters

This week we sit down with Protect our Winters ambassador and gravel athlete, Matt Lieto to talk about the importance of voting in relation to protecting the environment we love to ride in. Protect our Winters    Support the Podcast Join The Ridership  Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:   Matt Lieto [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show. I welcome Matt. Lieto from bend Oregon onto the show matzoh, former triathletes. We'll get into that a little bit. And a gravel racer been doing it out of bend for a number of years has been involved in organizing some of the great events up there in Oregon. But more importantly for today's show, Matt's been involved with protect our winters, a nonprofit organization founded by snowboarder Jeremy Jones back in 2007. But the basic premise that he was seeing the world that he calls home out there in the big mountains. Getting destroyed by climate change. He wasn't seeing the same kind of snowpack. He was observing change and decided to make some change. He decided that athletes outdoor enthusiasts of all kinds, we have a voice in the political process and he set about to create an organization to help passionate outdoor people, productive places, and lifestyle. They love. From climate change. We're sitting here in the first week in November next week's the midterm elections. There's still time to get out there and vote. Do your civic duty. I'm a little bit on a soap box with Matt during this conversation, but I think it's important. Head on over to protect your winters.org. You can find out everything you need to know about the voting process. In your local community, there's still time in many states to get registered and absolutely there's time to prepare your ballot and get it submitted for the midterm elections. Without said. Let's jump right into my conversation with Hey, Matt, welcome to the show. [00:01:59] Matt Lieto: Thanks, man. Appreciate you having me Excited. [00:02:01] Craig Dalton: I am looking forward to getting into gravel, your background, but I'm most excited to talk about p and we'll get into that later. [00:02:09] Matt Lieto: Yeah, it's, it's okay if you if you prioritize climate and the world in, in, in front of getting to know me, that's fine. I'll let it go. [00:02:16] Craig Dalton: Wow. Very modest ego. I like it. So Matt, we always start out just by getting a little bit of background about you, how you got into the sport, and how you got into gravel. We gotta talk a little bit about your, your, your skinny bike background and that arrow position you used to have, but not too much. I don't wanna scare the listeners off. [00:02:33] Matt Lieto: I can't ignore it. I know there's a, you know, no matter what the, the triathletes do and the time trialists do, they're always gonna have, they're gonna have their, their work cut out for 'em for sure. But the reason I've like always got along with Mount biker's, cyclists, and why I'm one myself as I don't mind making fun of myself. Self deprecation is my, my biggest strength slash weakness. So let's go [00:02:55] Craig Dalton: It's important. It's important that the regular listener will know that I have admitted to my Ironman triathlon past. I don't wear it like a badge, but I, I'm not afraid to say that I did that. [00:03:06] Matt Lieto: So you literally, like you don't have a tattoo or anything. [00:03:10] Craig Dalton: No, no, I would, if I could aim the camera down there, I would show you my calf. There's [00:03:15] Matt Lieto: don't move your, [00:03:16] Craig Dalton: down there, [00:03:17] Matt Lieto: I don't wanna see you. Move your canvas south, man. Keep it up. [00:03:21] Craig Dalton: So how did you, you're up in, you're up in Bend these days. Is that where you kind of found the bike and found triathlon originally? [00:03:28] Matt Lieto: No, actually I had started doing try when I lived in Northern California. So like, 98 maybe. And kind of the cheesy story is my brother actually was a, a great professional triathlete, was second at Kona and another world championships a couple times. And I watched him race a race in Hawaii and at the time I was like 260 pounds. And I was like, Wow, these guys are, have more fun than me. And Losts a bunch of weight. Went home and started training for triathlon, trying to get it across the finish line on one of those things. And turned out I. Decent at it and was training with my brother, had a good guide and you know, just kind of kept plugging away. Became a professional triathlete after maybe three years of that. And yeah, kind of just enjoyed that experience. And I, I'm telling you, off air, like the. If I would've started younger and if I had the better pain tolerance I probably would've tried to be a cyclist. Cause that was kind of my, my strength and what I loved doing. But turns out I'm kind of mediocre at three sports. So triathlon worked for me. [00:04:28] Craig Dalton: Nice. What distances were you running and racing in? Triathlon. [00:04:31] Matt Lieto: I did, I've done 'em all. Like I did the [00:04:34] Craig Dalton: Okay. [00:04:34] Matt Lieto: Olympic distance did Xera cuz again, I, I just enjoy riding all kinds of kinds of bikes. So I went to National World champs a couple times for Xera. I did half Ironman was probably my strength in triathlon, just because you could, like, as a cyclist you could Ironman at least then, or for me, was. What watts can you hold for the whole thing and not crack where the half distance is, Oh, I'm faster than you and I'm gonna try to rip your legs off. Like that to me was fun cuz I just love riding a bike hard. And then yeah, that's pretty much it. Did d Athlon, d Athlon, National Champion once, way back in the day. And yeah, just kind of, kind of did it all. But through all that I did road racing, crits, raced a bunch of pro like NRC stage races and all that good stuff. So [00:05:20] Craig Dalton: Gotcha, gotcha. And was finding kind of gravel, just a natural thing up there and bend. [00:05:25] Matt Lieto: Yeah, I mean it's, you know, we, we've got winter here, or we had winter. We'll get, you know, this great segue into what we'll talk about here eventually. But you know, so cinders on the roads, you know, instead of salt to, to keep the roads clear. Here we have cinders, so, those can be a little bit sketchy if you're riding a road bike. So, originally when I moved to town, I was working at a bike shop, wrenching and stuff. Bought a cross bike for that. And then once I had my cross bike, I was like, and I have good buddies with like Carl Decker and Rancher boat and those guys. And every ride we just ended up on dirt every, you know, whether it be single track or whatever. And after a while, like I. And there, those guys are all capable of anything, right? So we'd be on a ride and I'd be on my TT bike and we'd end up on single track and I'm like, Guys, this is like not that awesome. my time trail bike. So eventually I got the right, right bike for the job. And yeah. And in Bandish there's so many dirt and gravel roads, certainly in the winter to be able to to ride when a lot of the pavement isn't clear and you're going slower. So it's. You're less cold, you know, it's 35 degrees outside, going 20 on a road bike doesn't sound that fun. But going 12 on a travel bike is pretty sweet. So [00:06:35] Craig Dalton: Yeah. And when did you start to see like the gravel bike events take off and capture your attention? [00:06:40] Matt Lieto: Well yeah, in Oregon we had, we had like kind of a, we have a rad, I think a really cool like road racing scene. Are we used to? And. A guy actually ended up working with. Now, Chads Barry helped him put on the Oregon Tr