This week we are joined by Eric Sutter, race director and founder of the Open Range 200k in Kansas. Learn Eric’s unexpected journey to becoming a race director and why the southern region of Kansas deserves its own exploration.

Open Range 200k

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[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 podcast, I'm welcoming Eric Sutter. He's the race director and founder of open range gravel in Kansas . The event takes place in April every year and is going on to its seventh edition in 2024. I'm going to flag this right away. Registrations opening this coming weekend. November 25th after Thanksgiving.

So make sure to check it out. If you're interested after hearing. Eric's journey to becoming a gravel race organizer. It's quite a fascinating journey. It's not as someone who started. Riding gravel bikes ages ago. He picked it up

after coming into the world of endurance athletics via kayaking. Of all things. I hope you enjoy the conversation, but before we dive in, I do need to thank this week sponsor, hammerhead and the hammerhead crew to. Computer.

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So don't forget that promo code, the gravel ride. You'll get that free heart rate monitor with the purchase of your career to go to hammerhead.io today. Add both items to your cart and use the promo code, the gravel ride. Would that business behind us let's get right into my conversation with Eric.

[00:03:39 ]Craig Dalton (host): Eric, welcome to the show. Thanks, Craig. Thanks for having me on. I didn't think this was a long time coming, but as we just remembered, this is about three and a half years in the making since our first email exchange.

[00:03:52 ]Eric Sutter: That's right. Yeah. We, uh, we sent a couple of emails back and forth and then I think life just happened and, you know, stuff gets, uh, gets passed on and, and, uh, but it's good to, it's good to be here.

Good to finally be on and, uh, and get to talk with you and your, your listeners.

[00:04:05 ]Craig Dalton (host): Right on. Yeah. Shout out to Wade for reconnecting us. Telling me a little bit about your story, which I see you gave me in your 2020 email. So I'm excited to talk about both the OpenRange 200k, but also I think it's important when we talk about events and event organizing, just to hear a little bit about your backstory.

So to set the stage, why don't you just let the listener know, where'd you grow up? What'd you do as a kid? How'd you get into endurance athletics? I know there's a lot to this story, so we can take it

[00:04:33 ]Eric Sutter: slowly, bit by bit. Yeah. And feel free to interrupt me at any point to, to dive in more. Um, so I, I grew up in Pratt.

Um, it's about a, uh, an hour and a half West of Wichita, which most people were probably familiar with the general area of where Wichita is, uh, in, in South central Kansas. Um, it's a town of about 6, 000 and, um, just a small. Independent, isolated community, um, and so in high school, uh, played sports, played, uh, baseball and football and wrestled.

And then, um, yeah, uh, went from there, went to college at Kansas State. Um, I did Army ROTC. And so I knew, I knew at that point, like, going into the Army is what I wanted to do. And, uh, and so did that commissioned, um, and actually, uh, went into aviation. So flew, um, and still currently fly helicopters, uh, for the army.

Um, and

[00:05:25 ]Craig Dalton (host): did that initially take you outside of Kansas when you first

[00:05:28 ]Eric Sutter: deployed? Yeah, it did. So, um, and, and I really had, had only lived in the Midwest, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma growing up. And so, uh, my first, uh, first kind of visit outside besides just. You know, uh, having vacation somewhere was, yeah, down to Southern Alabama, yeah, which was kind of a culture shock.

So, um, went down there for, for flight training and then, um, I lived in, uh, Tennessee, Kentucky area for, uh, for most of my active duty, duty years.

[00:05:57 ]Craig Dalton (host): Okay. Yeah. I mean, I imagine most of us who haven't been in the military have an understanding that there's a physical fitness component of it. Do you, did the soldiers tend to recreate athletically?

Did you tend to? Yeah,

[00:06:10 ]Eric Sutter: yeah, definitely. So for, for aviation, uh, ultimate frisbee is kind of a, the, uh, the sport of choice. Um, okay. We play. So, uh, you know, and some people have like, you know, are, are doing marathons and stuff like that. But, um, you know, and I, I, I tried to keep, keep in shape, uh, it's always been important for me.

So, you know, trying to do, um, you know, we have our, our physical fitness tests and everything like that. So, uh, try to be in, in this.

[00:06:36 ]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah, so it sounds like probably a little bit of running here and there. Oh yeah, definitely.

[00:06:40 ]Eric Sutter: Ultimate frisbee.

[00:06:41 ]Craig Dalton (host): Yeah. Where else did the military journey take you?

[00:06:46 ]Eric Sutter: So yeah so, um, you know, Tennessee and Kentucky is where I was stationed, uh, and then did some deployments.

So, uh, deployed to Iraq in uh, 2005, 2006. Then went to Afghanistan in 2014, and then another deployment to Kuwait in 2017, 2018. Okay. So yeah.

[00:07:02 ]Craig Dalton (host): And then. Yeah. Go ahead. Then you end up back

[00:07:05 ]Eric Sutter: in Kansas. Yeah. So then, uh, so then ended up back in Kansas and kind of in the middle of that went off active duty and joined the National Guard and in reserves.

And so now I'm a reserve pilot.

[00:07:15 ]Craig Dalton (host): Okay, great. Well, first off, thank you for your service. Yeah. And it sounds like along the way you were sort of, as many of us do in our twenties and thirties, kind of Dipping a toe in the water into different sports. Yeah. So what

[00:07:29 ]Eric Sutter: were you doing along the way? Yeah, so Really is when I came off active duty and we moved back to Kansas City.

I was looking for something to stay active and I watched the news one night and they were showing these Kayakers that were going across the state of Missouri and I looked at my wife. I was like that that sounds kind of neat You know, I think I think I'd like to do that and again, looking for something to stay active.

I was, I was playing, um, uh, ultimate Frisbee with, uh, with a local little club, but I wanted something a little bit more to, to, to, um, really stay, stay involved in something to stay active. So the first year

[00:08:06 ]Craig Dalton (host): of waterways, did you have access to, to kind of learn the sport of kayaking?

[00:08:09 ]Eric Sutter:</stron