Neko Mulally on Frameworks Racing in 2024, Advice for New Racers, Conti DH Tires & More... Ep. 128 [Podcast]

Episode 101 with Neko

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ladies and gentlemen welcome to episode 128 of the MTB podcast presented and hosted by worldwide cyclery I am Jared I am Jeff and I'm Liam and I'm Neko on this episode we have our good friend Neko Mulally all the way from North Carolina I'm excited we're going to talk about all things Frameworks you've been on the podcast two times right this is your third time uh I think only once I sounds right I was here with you did the video call once yeah right or yeah that count a podcast okay I was in person once in person remote once so this is another iners podcast yeah good they're way better in person they're way better in person way better and uh what did you write here Jared we're going to pick his brain about all things Frameworks which is Nico's race team which has gone from a team of one to a team of three which is pretty cool big news you think about calling it Trace am Migos whoa Trace framewor I didn't until now but I like it sorry tangent uh and and uh good questions ranging from his favorite type of egg to the Lessons Learned egg yeah egg like a Ty of egg like what bird or how I like the eggs prepar we're going to get to that later I guess and Lessons Learned From racing and everything in between yeah guess it doesn't even have to be a bird could be do other things L reptiles yeah caviar yeah caviar eggs fish eggs all right we'll get to it yeah snake egg yep that'll make you strong dude speak speaking of being strong how do you know you last dude the main thing you have to do on podcast is say things that may or may not be true with confidence then people on the internet listen to it and they take that as fact oh no they prove us wrong we see at the bottom sometimes we have notes from episodes past and people proving us wrong stuff we say usually we ask for them to do that I'd like to ask people if they have exper have a lot of time yeah they do people do have a lot of time and they're just passionate people love it cool we have a very diverse you know our listeners they have all sorts of experience well yeah we just freed up 20 minutes of Nico's week by copy pasting your tags and your hashtags dude you guys are helping me with social media game yeah we're giving Nico some tips um if people didn't know a lot of professional mountain bike racers like Nico are not the most detail oriented techsavvy would you say I hate using Electronics

yeah damn it All Electronics yeah so all All Electronics that's a wide range of products it is a wide range of product well it's tough like we grew up like all we think about is riding bikes and now to like get paid to do that we have to do like social media and do posts and not really right riding a bike and doing marketing don't go hand inand all the time even though you're asked to do that right so anyway you can't do like the marketing while you're biking you be like I got to get into marketing mode yeah i' love to just bike me too man right everybody yeah sounds great Jeff you cool with that yeah just we'll just bike and if you didn't see it if you weren't there then sorry you didn't get to be a part of

it figure out how to make money later right speaking of which that that's a great segue for our words of wisdom yeah um rattle it off Mike's words of wisdom today don't worry about the problem worry about the solution there you go profound extremely actually extreme profound he just kind of spit that out today when we like whoa Replay that you think that was original I hope so maybe it was he wasn't oh which also Daniel's fun fact Africa is the only continent that can be found in all four hemispheres that's pretty cool huh I didn't really know there's four I thought there was two we get you know is the north southeast west prime meridian that's right yeah good job I only knew that too cuz I looked up earlier vertically in the equator horizontally there you go wow we're learning all sorts of geography podcast geography podcast Nico speaking of geography uh you just showed us a picture of your would that be your hip or your pelvis or your hip socket pelvis yeah yeah so give us a recap on last season you hurt yourself pretty bad in March yeah I'd say to go a little bit before that um the week before I got third at the crank Works downhill in roroa oh yeah that's and that was an awesome highlight it really was I switched to a new trainer I was training with Jarett kich who is actually local to here he's up in um I think Ventura area Santa Barbara yes so uh I started training with him he trains a couple of the other Riders like Luca Shaw and Bernard Kerr and his training he used to be a pro BMX racer so it was a little different a little bit more Sports specific and it took a while to adapt to that like learn all the new training techniques and I've been doing it for like four months at that point and I came in to the beginning of the season I thought feeling better form than I had for a while and went down there to New Zealand and there were a lot of top World Cup guys at that race like bruny won and he was less than one second ahead of me and I felt like it was really promising and motivating coming into the season yeah and then unfortunately went to the first national here in the US and crashed first run of practice on what I thought was a pretty sketchy sketchy built jump like it's on me I walked the track and I chose to ride my bike off it first lap but uh was it out wind rock it was yeah it was like a burm to burm Gap that you could kind of cut the corner by jumping the BM and it was kind of yeah just soft like made of top so it was supposed to be technically I didn't want everybody to just do that it was supposed to be a hard line and I just did it first lap and got kicked and sometimes it's crazy in mountain biking like you'll have the hugest crash and get up and be okay you'll be millimeters from a tree at 40 m an hour no problem but then once in a while it bites you and this was definitely my worst injury I was off my feet for 3 months which was crazy like just laying in a bed had to be on crutches um lost kind of like that guy in Willy won in the Chocolate Factory that just lays in the bed all the time yeah for at least I I got up on the crutches after like a month and like could be pretty too mobile I would say they were they were telling me to like rain it back a bit I was like hiking courses with crutches and stuff some of local races watching other people ride it's just so bored you know yeah you're pretty mobile SE I remember that you're on crutches but you're mobing around that was the first big trip that was like a month later um yeah SE obviously anybody's been there it's a lot of walking a lot cring across jeez um but yeah that that was pretty much the big thing of the year was not being able to through with many of my plans because I was just on crutches for the whole summer I did get back and race the last two World Cups which was through all that time really motivating to have that goal set obviously I was imagining I was going to come back and win the race but those goals you got to have or else you'll they motivate you to like put the work in to get out of the hole and I did those two World Cups I did okay I finished 55th at Snowshoe and then San I finished 61st like position out of qual but it was just cuz normal stuff that you'd have at the beginning of a season like Snowshoe run I overcooked and like made a ton of mistakes and then s an I was just too cautious because of it it's like that's stuff you work out in preseason races and because I've been off the bike for like four months it was just kind of like relearning it again yeah the fact you even made it to those races is a huge accomplishment yeah I'd say for sure like I went to my um 6mon checkup a month after that and the doctor was like dude I think you could get back on the bike next year I was dude I I raced Two Worlds I was like you told me three months ago I was cleared to to like do whatever I wanted he was like well maybe I wasn't specific enough I meant you were like cleared to start getting back on your feet he said like for an injury like this normally it's a year to like really get back to doing stuff so oh man and I always play like I don't know why I just don't want to like the injury to Define me but I always I've had a lot of them over my career like we were just saying how much lighter I'd be if I took out all the hardware that I have in my body um but yeah I've had a ton of injuries and I always play them down I don't want it to be like the the what defines me is talking about this injury that I had so I was just stoked to get back and um yeah it was an accomplishment to get to those last two races and uh I think it's put me in a better spot than if I just wrote the whole year off yeah for sure yeah it was I mean even whilst you were injured you guys were still making cool videos and adjusting the bike and putting out YouTube content that was awesome and how how was that experience just like how how do you how have you you know enjoyed or not enjoyed the all the videos and growing the YouTube channel and kind of showing off what you guys are doing with building your own frame and I guess now building a bike company right because now you guys are selling the frames yeah I mean generally it's cool when you can put the video together and it's the vision that you had and you can see it like create something that you're proud of but it's a lot of work too like you can't just expect to to like knock this video out really quick and it actually be as good as you had hoped so it's like anything you put more time into it and it's going to be better um so I would say I'm proud of the the videos like the whole channel in general think we told a pretty unique story and it's the type of thing that if somebody else did I would love to watch it so for for that like I'm stoked on it but um again it it it requires a lot of time and energy to make that stuff and I don't know I I almost some days I think like I'd rather just not do any of this and like I said earlier just man the real world is hard like it's when I when I've been a pro racer like even when I started like social media didn't exist like you you sent a resume of what place you got in the race last year and then you got paid and you just got ready for the race and and you went and did it and you didn't have to worry about taking it any pictures or telling any of the story it was like your team or your sponsor's responsibility to use what result you got in the race to Market their products and now the whole thing is totally different like the value proposition is different and if you want to be valuable to your sponsors you have to do a lot of that stuff so I'd say I like doing this because if I didn't do the things that I wanted then I would be asked to do other things that like somebody else came up with so I guess taking the initiative to take the first step I can do it in a way that I'm that's true to me and that I like to do y for sure well and I think the way you go about your YouTube is like really why it's resonated it's just like authentic you're just you're not hiding behind stuff you're not throwing out Big Marketing words you know saying your bike's this or your bike's that it's like yeah I tried this out and it didn't really work or I cracked every single frame I made this year you know like stuff like that like you don't hear that and then I think that's just why it's resonated so much is you're not hiding behind this like professional marketing screen you're just like yeah this me and these are the videos I made yeah yeah I think it builds trust too with the followers like then when we make a bike that I can say works it's like they actually believe it because they saw the whole process together they saw every little thing coming up to it and it's like every team I raced for we cracked just as many bikes we just couldn't talk about it look bad everyone knows yeah I mean wheels too yeah it makes a lot of sense I mean I don't know if if other companies I think did the same thing it be pretty cool but it's tough though because they have bikes currently in stock that they're trying to sell totally they can't do that like yeah this bike you might want to buy is we cracked a bunch of them and and there is like a lot of people still like we did um Red Bull did a video Series last year um I think it was called off track or something honestly I don't know remember the name of the video series but it was really cool and it was a really nice production and they did one about my project and it was like do it yourself I think it was it was like Aaron with his intense team and me creating my own bikes and then they had Seth bik hacks in there too and they leaned into the fact that I cracked all the frames oh and like I said that as like just being honest like I I made eight frames this year and we cracked them all like it took a lot of riding to crack them all but then once we saw how they were cracking they were cracking in the same way it was we found a solution now this year we didn't crack a single bike so it was like very much a learning experience and I knew how I wanted a bike to ride I didn't really know about the durability it was just a new thing for me I've never made a bike before and still people like that's all they watched or heard was that one sound bite on Red Bull that I cracked every frame I made and you'll see like some comments like isn't this the guy that cracks all his bikes like yeah I did like and and so did everybody else but at least I showed the process and people found the whole process of it interesting so I can see why brand wouldn't want to do that cuz people do hang on to those little things for sure yeah even people don't video him I mean you know people still like say like whatever oh y's crack or whatever it's like shut up yeah I mean it's still a small percentage but I also think too I guess from my perspective because I lived in the world of I've watched World Cups and I see how fast guys like you and other professional Racers Go versus the other 98% of people who ride mountain bikes 99 and yeah 99% I I just don't think I mean even all those frames you cracked I just I don't think if any of those went to the other 99% of people who weren't World Cup racers that probably any of them would have broke yeah so like you didn't just go into like trying to make a bike you went into trying to make a bike that was durable enough for a World Cup racer to race down down a World Cup track which is a totally different thing to try and do it's like trying to build an F1 car as opposed to trying to build a Honda Civic not not the same thing but any of us would have cracked yeah no way no it's crazy too with downhill the amount of time that it takes to put hours on a bike like we we made a bunch for the some of the local kids that it worked out really well there was like 10 local kids that paid for their frame the cost that it that it cost me to make it and and then they were stoked to get a frame and then they wrote it all season and gave me some feedback they put all their own Parts on it they worked on it themselves and that was like really valuable real world testing for me but they all kept track of the amount of time they put on the bike and they didn't put much time at all and these kids were racing and like they didn't have a their own job right like all they had to do is go to school and train and um yeah it just takes a long time to put hours on a downhill bike like most downhill TR tracks are 3 or 4 minutes long and the uplift is super inefficient you can be there all day and put 20 minutes on your bike y so for me like as a pro racer you put way way way more time than people will put on their their bikes so it just takes that time to figure that stuff out yeah well now that you guys have that bike I guess relatively or completely dialed in um yeah cuz I guess 2023 they were pretty solid and then coming into 24 the team has expanded you you've got kind of new plans two New Riders tell us tell us about the new team setup with the New Riders new sponsors like what your guys' plans are this year yeah it's awesome to see the team expand like I never really had an exact vision for it I just this was a passion of mine to like create the bikes and I always try to apply myself where I'm most effective and partially because of this injury this year I didn't feel like myself going to race against the best riders in the World Cup was where I was necessarily the most effective I do still plan to race and I love racing but I thought that if I could use all that I've learned to this project all the hard work for the past few years and allow some guys who are all they think about is racing they don't have to worry about the whole project of this they could take it further than I could myself as far as the race results go so ASA came into it um over a year ago was after the US in 2022 he test rode my bike the next day I met him there he actually beat me by a second in the race he's 15 I was like dude what are you doing tomorrow do you want to test ride one of these things and he's like yeah I'd love to stay here and ride some more and he rode the bike and loved it and I supported him with frames this year and actually when I got hurt I tried to use the budget that I had for myself to go racing to fund him to do as much as I could like he was still not contracted under under the same um same sponsors as me for everything he had some of his own sponsors but I just tried to help him as much as I could and he paid it back like 10 times over he won the national championship for Enduro beat Richie Roode on the Enduros frame that I made like the week before it's like his first right on it right yeah he wrote it one time at home at the big mountain uro which he won and like I didn't know he was racing like I sent it to him without a chain guide and the chain fell off in that big mountain uro and I was like dude I would have like taken more time I thought you were just going to get a couple hours on the bike and we we wanted to race the we wanted him to race the Enduro because he was only 16 and he couldn't Race Pro in downhill but for some reason they said it was okay if he signs up for pro and Enduro so I was like dude you're going to destroy your category and downhill like you probably could win the elite race you might as well focus on Enduro if they're going to let you Race Pro and he's like oh yeah sounds good like I've never done an Enduro race before um and he ends up beating Richie Roode who won the ews overall this year insane complete Phenom seem like he came out of nowhere he really is like and it's just because of his age like I think he's a really talented Rider he lives in Durango at 9,000 fet and he rides all the time so he's naturally so strong um he just genu genuinely loves riding his bike so yeah that's cool um he just kind of like came along at the perfect time I never was at that time really looking for somebody um but he was a perfect fit and he's such a nice kid he's super humble um he's so talented on a bike yeah like the harder the track gets the better he is he's going to do big things in the sport and is a perfect fit for the team um so yeah it made sense that like this year he'll be old enough to race the junior category in the world cup and um yeah we're fully supporting him on the team so he's a huge asset to us yeah um so I'm stoked to work with him try to like I've I've been there too like we were we were really close then Jeff when I was a junior and going to race the World Cup and I was coming in with high hopes and um I can understand like the position that he's in so I hope to use my experience to try to Mentor him and um yeah just try to block out distractions and and keep him in a good mindset with with everything I've learned over my career so I think it's a good we're a good fit to work together yeah and then all was just going to say at that big mountain uro that was in Durango so it's his home tracks but our buddy Aid and that's a friend of the shop uh was racing and he's like dude the gaps that Isa was doing were screwed up he's he like he hit like this 40 foot gap on single track and he's like no one else hit it like no no other Pro hit this Gap and he was just like hitting it every run he does that stuff all the time it it's cool cuz it like keeps me younger I think like we'll walk a track and I'm like I'm just going to like run Mainline like roll through this rock C and he's like dude I think we can jump the whole thing it's cool to have that and he's right most of the time that's amazing at crank Works in rarua there was this line that he did in the morning practice it was like over this log and the inside and he's like dude just go inside no breaks and you can just jump off the the whole inside of the corner and we looked at it in practice and I was like I don't know man snarly he's like no dude I did it it was perfect and um like it was a long time between practicing the race but I was doing the line but rolling it and I was like all right like he said it's good so I'm I trust him I'm going to do it if he did it I did it in my run and I was on the Red Bull TV broadcast and I was the only one to do the Gap in the whole race none the other Riders did it sick and it was just because Asa did it in the morning and told me that he did it so it's oh yeah now now time has passed I'm like I might be losing my ability to do the things that ASA says that he did and as he gets better too like he's only 17 right yeah he turns 17 next week 16 yeah wow yeah it's crazy so um like just the opportunity to have a guy like that working with you doesn't come around that often so I really wanted to take advantage of that and yeah hopefully keep him on thisam team cuz it's a great fit for his whole career would be awesome um obviously like with riders you go through contracts but um all we can do is try to provide him the best support that we can and he wants to stay a part of the family he's he's a kind of a shy kid and he really likes feeling part of this like family team like he really likes our mechanic Ono um he really likes hanging out with me and sometimes it can be intimidating going to a big team like that so I think ours is perfect cuz we're we're small but we have everything we need so it's a it's a good fit for him yeah and then we have Angel too which kind of came around a little bit late as you can see in the industry now like a lot of teams are folding um which is kind of a reflection on some of some of the market trends um a lot of times racing is when the first thing gets cut and you see a lot of teams pulling out and he actually had a contract to race with Uno for the next three years wow um Uno was the main sponsor of his team it was a privately run team and pretty late he got the word that the team didn't want to continue so they actually paid him his salary for this year and let him out of his contract because it was so late like obviously has a three-year deal he needs to be compensated some way um so it put him in a spot where he just needed a good ride and we could pay him a smaller salary than he would probably be worth but with the position he was in um we were able to get a lot better Rider than we could afford like our budget's a lot smaller most of the teams we're going up against with the Riders we have um they have four times the budget that we do so to be able to get Angel this year was like a huge value to us um and me specifically like I've been a teammate with him on YT and I see how talented he's like one of the most like if you just look at his technique on the bike I was riding with him all last week on his home trails in Spain just like Corners that I wouldn't put my outside foot down to like lean the bike more he's so good at like placing the bike putting his outside foot down and leaning the bike so much further than I would and keeping his weight like vertically over the tires driving it into the ground um just watching him ride he's like his technique is so good and I think he's had a lot of struggle over his career with injuries and just like team switches every year I think he's struggled a lot with that um and he knows me my mechanic Ono used to be his mechanic and they live in the same spot um Martin Whitley is our team manager who's helped me a lot over my career and was our team manager when we were on YT together so Angel knows that he knows like the whole structure um we don't have a huge semi there but we have an amazing bike probably the best bike in the race and we have a really good environment to work in so it' be awesome like it's exciting for me to have a guy like that on the team like I really love racing and trying to work together to see how we can achieve these results I think in my position like knowing everything I do um have learned through this bike development process and analyzing everything sometimes it's too much to think about when you're like it's a detriment to me racing but for another guy I can be the one to like carry that burden and give him exactly the setup that he needs or block out distractions like for both the Riders and allow them to focus on just getting in the right mindset and trust that like their bike's going to be good they're going to have everything they need all they need to focus on is the race so it's exciting I'm such a fan of World Cup riding and World Cup racing and to be in a position to like have a team like this is is really cool yeah so the is basically all all three of you guys you and Angel going to be Racing Elite and then ASA racing Juniors right doing the Whole World Cup Series this this 2024 season yeah yeah for sure um and for me like I'm going to do the first four races and see how it's going I don't want to be out there if I'm lame like I want to be out there like adding value in some way and a lot of that is is testing new things like we have some new bike stuff that we're working on that I don't want to put them on a bike that's unproven or unreliable I want to do all the testing you have to test it in a race like this whole Frameworks thing has developed so quickly because I did all the testing at World Cup races and we have some new stuff that we're going to work on um just ideas like future Concepts that I'll race and until it's proven to be reliable and also an advantage they won't race like the bike we have now is like I said more competitive than any other bike in the field um at least as competitive obviously a couple of the teams have really good bikes too but um that's kind of a cool spot to be in where I'm like guinea piging a lot of the stuff and pioneering it and then giving it to the boys and and helping them and being there on track as well like I can have a different perspective than another team owner team manager would yeah heck yeah I'm excited yeah same good set good season to watch for sure on uh how do you watch it that's what I was going to ask you actually it's on HBO Max this year oh is it that's the deal that got finalized I remember all the controversy and drama and then I don't remember what the verdict was where you can watch the World Cups yeah I think they're trying their best I got Max yeah oh excuse me it's it's just max now just max and I have Jeff login no I'll give anybody my HBO Max login wow just say what it is

now coming into a commercial break you will get by HBO Max login that's like a on Wade Simmons level of giving a cell phone out on the podcast yeah did he he did yeah no way and and then half an hour later he's like I didn't realize how many people is in this podcast maybe just take that

out oh man all right well speaking of which commercial break commercial break coming at you new sponsor and now a word from our sponsors excuses got you stuck in the Flatlands ditch the doubt dust off the potato chips downhill Southeast race series is calling he ain't your mom mountain bike races there a primal scream against Whata ifs shred fear conquer Trails Unleash Your Inner Beast downhill Southeast register now Glory awaits visit downhills southeast.com right now I I could just do a normal one too no you have stick with that one I think it's funny but I wouldn't actually use this as an ad it's perfect and now back to the show speaking of fudge Jared read the first question first question how did the centrifugal clutch weight prank call come about well i' I was injured and trying to do something valuable for the sponsors so obviously this idea was going to hit the nail on the head super valuable but uh dude Jeff and I used to when we were kids love prank phone calls like the amount of CKY videos Jerky Boys Jerky Boys we used to list out the same ones too they only had like two albums listen to the I was like dude what about like a I could do a prank phone call where I call in and say something funny about bikes and like I I wanted to do more technical like how I want to Mullet this thing like call in with a funny accent and be like Yo dude I got this 275 I'm I'm looking to Mullet this thing how what can I do to Mullet my Bronson and just like talk to somebody on the phone and Jeff was like oh you should do it like we made this funny centrifugal clutch weights for the Hub um he showed me the video he's like you should call and just act like you thought that wasn't a joke and just see whatever person on the other side says and uh who was it that picked up David yeah dude and I knew David because he's the nicest guy and he was just so genuinely caring to explain to you that that wasn't that was a prank video I know like I I've ordered a bunch of stuff like yo David I really need these bearings do you think you can get him for me from qbp and I'll come pick him up so I like knew him and I thought he was going to recognize my voice and uh but I anyway I called and I didn't know how anybody could think that that wasn't a joke but I rolled with it and oh you'd be surprised well even on that video itself there's a bunch of comments that people don't know it's so funny like people are confused or people comment and say I honestly thought this was real and then I went took my cassette off and then realized that's probably not real went back watched it again looked at the comments realized it's not real like that's their comment yeah we we did a floating frame one where we you know we do the loing frame shots and we threw it off like 5 foot off 10t and then off the entire building that we're in and people were like dude why would you ruin a frame for that shot they're like genuinely upset that we ruined a frame it's like no there a it was a blemished frame that Rebel sent us that triggered a lot of people triggered a lot of people to this day we'll post a a floating shot or whatever and people like I can't believe you dropped that fork for that shot yeah we just like Photoshop magic floating frame and people think that we dropped it next question this super vague and who is it Point directed to how are his cats you have cats yeah I have three oh wow cat we were down one and then while trying to find that cat another one came so back up to three go you've got the cat distribution system dialed in yeah you've got three but you did lose a cat and you never got it back we lost two actually but that we never got back you know they found greener pastures indoor outdoor or they just I'd rather the cats live a good life even if it's only short then be stuck inside the house that's fair okay you look at my cat that cat is like she was past the social Rel socialization period when we got her so she's just timid about everything so she would she would die immediately if she was an outdoor cat um but I totally see like I feel bad I wish I could take her out and stuff you know but it's just like get a leash one of those little harness they play dead dude when you put like a harness on them imagine that like they can't move like paralyzed you have you have to start that from a kitten you around the floor like a mop we would have to stroll her and hisat would be a mop like long hair totally but just want to check in and see how your cats were doing you know that question was for meam so oh yeah I mean we really just got to the real meato how do you get new cat should we just leave how you get a new cat like the cat you said another one came about a stray cat showed up well we had bowls of food outside hoping that the one would come back and then a new cat came to eat that food that's your cat now I like that new cat what's the new cat's name Steve nice um so I started bringing it inside and cie is very protective like one of our cats she likes more than me so she was like I don't want that outside cat that like feral cat around our cats I I don't know why I cared so much I took it to the vet to make sure that this cat didn't have any diseases before putting it with the other cats or it was like chipped or anything yeah check to see I wanted to like we were sad when we lost ours it was somebody else it was obvious Bly a pet this cat like it was really nice find out where it came from couldn't find anything so now we got Steve in the house so nice that's awesome look at that a wholesome cat story just got listeners are going to love I like how Nico's even like I don't even know why I took it to the vet I liked it though that's going to resonate with a lot of listeners they love cat talk and they probably didn't even know that Nico had cats yeah that's yeah thanks Jared you might get a lot of cat fan mail now like we do because of Jared's cat yeah yeah people are going to email Frameworks like can you come out with a cat themed bike or something we took the cat to the to the bike park the one day and posted on the canooga instagrram that the cat was there nice and the next day people were bringing gifts for the cat like little cat toys like I saw the cat is he still here that's so awesome crazy that's great that's amazing all right that's enough cat talk for you guys oh L cats um where does Nico stand on the crunchy or smooth peanut butter debate like for a PB&J I like the crunchy peanut butter butter me too nice yeah solid crunchy's good Jeff totally crunchy yeah

sick Liam do you want to read the next one yeah biggest Lessons Learned as a racer that trans transferred into personal life um I'd say with racing it's like an instant feedback chain the clock doesn't lie and normally the effort you put into something is the result you get out and a lot of things you in life you aren't compared to the best people in the world directly in numbers every time you do it so with racing like you learn pretty quickly whether you did it right or not and I think that feedback is super valuable to carry into anything you do nice awesome how about this one bike spec question what is the main reason you went with kti over Maxis for this year and also your favorite coni Tire setup um I'd say the first reason was performance I think the conty tires right now have a little Edge um especially the harder you push them like the more consistent they are I felt like we could get a little bit more out of that with the Maxis tires um and honestly those guys at Maxis were so good to work with they've been friends of mine for a long time so this was a tough decision and we had been like working on development enough tires to go this way so I kind of felt like I was trading teams um but the kti offer was really good financially and I felt like tires available right now they gave us an edge so um it just made sense to go that way nice um right now the cryptol front and rear is is really good I need to do more experimenting I saw a lot of guys um running the crypto front even on the back on some World Cup tracks and and vice versa um I really like the argal which is their more aggressive tire for how aggressive that tire is it's really consistent across a lot of different surfaces so a lot of times you go for a more open tread pattern with taller knobs or bigger void between them it's good when the tire can bite in but it can be pretty sketchy on hard pack stuff the tire can like squirm or like deflect you different ways like the further you go in one way it takes away from something else makes sense but that tire for how good it is on loose stuff it's still very very ridable on hard pack stuff nice that's an interesting thing on World Cup tracks like the track top to bottom is often not consistent they'll be at like older tracks where they'll build a new section so you could have like some section that's super hard packed and beat and then they they went for like a short section that's new and that's way softer so it's hard to like as a rider feel the ground when the the surface is changing on the trail you're riding and then when you get off of that new section you drug like loose dirt over the hard pack so um that tire I thought was really impressive the argal for how aggressive it was but still being consistent across hard pack Trin nice you're running that front and rear yeah what when I have run it and like we're we're only less than a month into this so I need to do more testing with the avail tires but I've run it front and rear and been really impressed Aral yeah nice pretty sick yeah my my tire prediction for 2024 at least in just the tires we sell um I think KY which it's already been trending this way in 2023 but I think it's going to continue just like chipping away into the second place of most popular tires MH I think so I think little Maxis domination is at at risk right now yeah yeah I think um you know Continentals are working on the distribution for this year so once they kind of really lock that in I think it's gravity side of things going be really even yeah gravity side of things is important because that that's the other thing that's going to take at least five to 10 years for Continental to build out is the amount of variance that Maxis has it's like every single type of casing and compound and width and diameter and then all the different riding disciplines it's unbelievable the amount of skew that offers so no one's going to beat him there for 5 to 10 years for sure but on gravity it's yeah I think in some senses there's too many though there definitely is a lot you you could certainly argue that but you say that and then you meet people like Liam who's like no no but I want to just like this and just like that because this one thing I'm doing next weekend so I want that tire for that I want the EXO plus Max grip a guy not the I don't just ride downhill like Nico so it's true I run downhill casing tires like for the past six years I don't think I've ever run another tire like the tires just feel so much more planted to me with the bigger case yeah they they definitely do I feel like they could get like if you have four casings you could probably take it down to two some companies do that yeah like wtbs two mhm just light and what do they call it light and tough is light and tough yeah yeah like Dum right two yeah two casings yeah I think I think you could probably narrow down some of Max's excuse but also there are people like me that kind of enjoy that one tire that has Max Tera versus max grip because you know I pay for most of my tires so max Terror lasts a couple weekends longer than Max grip backhanded compliment was last time you paid for tires ni I said most of them I still get floated tires you know I'm still you know spoiled yeah like all the tires I give you not two yeah wow that's true that is a lot of tires pretty much still new tires I got about 10 rides probably want anym roaches tires more than you do yeah for sure he bik significantly more how many tires we use like I think about that sometimes when like they want to use reusable coar tape because they think it's like producing less waste and how many riders came there and used a tire for four runs and then threw it away and not just the tire but like flew there on an airplane how many semick it's all understandable how many rims do they also go through like I know alloy rims it's like one every other run maybe for a lot of people I mean as far as like it being perfect yeah Alloy rims are always in some State between perfect and not ridable [Music] yeah about carbon like on an average race I remember one I don't remember which one it was but like it the track is just notoriously cracking like everybody's Wheels I think snowshoes especially hard is really bad without a soul too it's not as bad like Fort William is it was smoother this year but Mount an's really bad for wheels that that Stevie Smith dropped like so many people Taco Wheels on the live broadcast on that jez yeah I think they were probably on their last leg before they got there and put them over oh jeez I like carbon rims because they're only ever perfect or unridable that's true there's no in between yeah yeah and I really like the Envy ones we're using this year because they have a rim strip that even if you do crack the rim it keeps a seal between the tire and the and the rim nice which is pretty cool to me like it's something that's developed for racing there's not a lot of people that are like hm I want a product that when I break it I can keep riding it as hard as possible and for a race like you need to get to the finish for sure so that's a really nice little insurance and I think it also it goes over the bead of the rim so it adds protection nice um so I'm I've been liking those and like yeah I like carbon rims because they are more dur the what it takes to break a carbon Rim would also break an aluminum rim but when it does break normally it's more catastrophic than an aluminum one for sure yeah um inserts or no inserts this year um we don't have a sponsor for them uh normally I run it for an added protection some people think that the inserts make the rims break sooner but I don't believe that that's or maybe something um onto the rims surface and like that'ss other brands that I've worked with have done like lab testing and showed that the like a Kush cor is probably they go to it'll make the rim last longer I mean it be like you want to hit your knee on the ground with a knee pad or without one yeah I think the Kush core kind of does the same thing yeah so normally when I run it's not because I'm looking for some ride quality I'm looking for added protection cuz I know I'm going to hit a lot of stuff and I want to keep my bike rolling nice so if we need to at certain tracks like St an is is so tough with it maybe we'll have to throw one in but it'll just be a by case basis right now we're running them with none no pun intended the case basis sorry hope oh that was horrible all right great Segway to the next question this was submitted by five Dev so they might have a little more like Insider information onto this question but is it true that you only eat premium I think it's supposed to be $8 eggs premium 8.00 eggs what's a premium 8. fig it's suppos I know if it's submitted by five then it's that um we will went to this like healthier um grocery store where they have a deli and while we were there I'm like let's pick up a couple things we need food for breakfast tomorrow so I got the like local cagefree eggs and they I think they were eight bucks and he gave me such a hard time for for picking up those eggs like the dude's selling people $1,500 cranks and we can't get $8

eggs so oh that's hilarious I just thought like yeah the eggs are a little pricey but like we're talking about a $4 difference here yeah and they're local cage free yeah like they were they were good I normally try to get those but like honestly I'm not too picky like I'll eat whatever eggs we have but if we have the chance to get like the local like not even a business like somebody's handwritten on there like here the um like Farmers Market eggs yeah yeah but he he kept like hanging on to that and I was $48 beers while we're here and I can't eat an $8 egg well if you if you go anywhere with Japanese buying food he doesn't look at the prices of eggs or things like that he just buys what he wants so it's all about quality a is way further down the list I've seen you drop a lot of money at Sun lifee before

oh you know what they say if you got to ask if you got to ask how much it costs you probably can't afford

it all right Liam you want to read the next one will we be seeing any more development of the steel front end if not to why thanks uh yeah actually we we're going to be making a new one this year um a buddy of mine Adam proes he used to work for ree who he was prototyping a lot of their stuff just started his own company now so he's making CNC parts and he is like a small manufacturer and I've got some headset cups prototype with him and he's made me a few oneoff things for my bike I've got a lot of resources that I can go to now like depending on what type of thing that I need for the for the bikes and he's really good because he makes it all in Colorado so you can do it quick obviously is a little more expensive um but he has a lot of experience welding and making these Steel Ste steel bikes and I had the idea to like try to make my steel bike improve it and make it better um I found that it would just deflect to like the frame like the BB area would Flex too much in really loaded turns but it had like such a Supple feel like the frame absorbs so much vibration and I wanted it to be stiffer but it was already pretty heavy like 800 grams more than my aluminum frame wow so I was like how can we make this Frame stiffer but I don't want it to be heavier in fact I would like it to be lighter um and he he had some really good suggestions on tubing Choice instead of bending the down tube 3D printing the bend and then um like with a protrusion to get a full penetration weld apparently when you bend the tube you make it a lot weaker so um he came back with like a proposal for our same steel frame to be the same weight but 16% stiffer which is a lot it's a big gain we're like chasing a lot more marginal gains than that in racing most of the time so um he's going to weld us one um with some tubing that he chose and I'm going to try that out so it's it's cool like the steel had a really good feel to it um it was just like the harder you pushed it the more it would flex and I let ASA ride it um cuz I I was kind of torn I was like this thing is good in certain situations like on a muddy day when you don't have a lot of grip you can't push the frame like the tires are going to slide before the frame can be loaded so much that it flexes this thing would be awesome and like with a small 38 mil down tube it's crazy it does bike's actually so much lighter when it's covered in mud because it can't collect that much mud like a lot of carbon bikes have such a big down tube they get caked with mud and you've got 12 PBS of mud on the bike you've got these small steel tubes they actually can't collect that much mud um so yeah it has certain advantages but I let a R it and he like so humbly said I really think my dad would like this

butt okay I understand exactly what you mean yeah it's forgiving that's awesome so hopefully we can make one that like retains the good qualities and makes a little stiffer in the areas we need to I've I've heard only good things about those rebs so yeah but people that ride steel bikes are unique breed they're like loud and proud it could be worse and they'll still like it better yeah I we built up a ree here so I just parking lot rode it and it felt fun but I have no actual Trail feel on it yeah yeah would be cool test those more for sure the production priv is pretty good riding bike but yeah it's a little heavy I mean yeah kind of a pig but super fun on downhill and like you said it kind of has like that unique ride quality to it that I don't know what you saying about like a steel bike and the the mud do you feel like that's why a lot of like UK companies make steel hard tails and stuff like that or is that just coincidence it I'm I'm not sure um I don't have any I don't got any data on that I know I just feel like I always see these UK people come out of the woodwork like oh yeah steel hard mate Steel's really easy to work with yeah like to to make your own bike you don't have to heat treat it like if you weld aluminum 6061 you need to heat treat it and it's a whole process process to that it's also hard to then weld it and heat treat it and then get all your tolerances back I've learned like you have a perfect circle for a headset cup to go in you weld all around there and now your perfect circle is in egg shape oh and you got to get it back to the shape that it was and then ream it to fit that that cup in perfectly you're going to have problems wow and um with steel you don't have to heat treat it you're dealing with thinner walls and there still is heat affected zones but you don't have to follow the same processes as you do with aluminum it's possible for somebody to buy some steel tubing for cheap I think the steel is easy to weld but it's hard because you're normally dealing with really thin wall thicknesses mhm and then they don't have to do the final process so so a little easier for like a homegrown yeah I think that's why a lot of manufacturer to do steel yeah okay got to the bottom of that a little plus if you're doing a hard tail steel has a good ride feel comp to aluminum right aluminum I think the main reason is that it's got such a strength to weight ratio mhm like it's five times stronger than aluminum in the same volume but three times the weight so you can use a lot smaller tubes and get them to like what I've learned is it's more the geometry of the tube so like the crosssection of the tube the OD of it gives it its structural strength and its stiffness because Steel is so strong as a material you can use a lot thinner tubing um at smaller smaller diameter tubing and the geometry of those tubes makes it more forgiving and because the Steel's strong you get the same weight sweet you know a lot about bikes man this is not the type of stuff that I wanted to learn I was like yo where can we put the pivots and the geometry so it rid sick now I know this stuff that I just said that's awesome all right last question advice for new Racers H they got to spend time riding that's the main thing there's no substitute for putting time on your bike um whenever people ask like what they could do to get faster it's like go like depending on what type of race you're is uro or downhill like pick something something similar to what your race is and just replicate it like go find a trail and do your fastest run down it where your GoPro and like watch that and see where you could have done it better and then go do another one like until you get to the point where you're plateaued with that I think then you can start working on like training specific things and doing like breaking it down a lot more but there's so much to be gained from just like timing yourself doing like race simulation and then seeing like how that how that felt as you pushed and what the time equated to you could try a run where you just like charge as hard as you can you like feel like you're like super aggressive and then one where you try to be more relaxed and smoother and see like what your time actually says so if you can understand like the feeling of time then you can be a really good racer for like these gravity disciplines anyway to know like places where you can relax or where it's it's actually being smooth is faster versus places where it really pays off to be aggressive I think a lot of people only are on the clock when they're in a real race and if you can practice that think get give you an advantage I think it's pretty good advice that was a fantastic piece of advice great advice good job Nico nice work ni well if people want to follow you YouTube Instagram all the above phone what's your preferred you want to give you want to give out your phone number like wde Simmons

yeah I would I would rather that if it was possible like I'd prefer to actually not give out by social media so Instagram Frameworks racing you guys are going to cover everything on there right and then your personal Instagram which is what n m l a l l y correct and then same thing with YouTube search up Nik malali and uh yeah we'll we'll all be watching and seeing how the season goes I'm excited yeah it's not just you now got got a whole the Trace Amigos on there Trace Amigos ready to get out there and Shred it's going to be cool to see luckily I got a HBO Max subscription yep uh drop a festar review for our podcast on Spotify or apple and I will give you my HBO Max login details way I probably won't actually do that cuz five devices logged in at it's 500 500 yeah at least okay I won't give you the HBO Max login but we will give you a $15 gift card to the Rob gift card 15 you're paying people to give you five star reviews w w wow okay okay a little bit when you say it like that it's very helpful for the podcast and it's nice gesture it's a nice gesture they should do it because they believe it not because he's giv them well you know sometimes you got to bribe people all right yeah they're not all a festar there's a couple fours in there it's a light CP you don't give the fourstar reviews the gift card do you well we don't pay them for the five stars pay them for the review I'm just kidding there's only like I've only seen like one fourar review ever we are the highest rated mount bike podcasts in the Galaxy imagine taking the time to like give a review but only giving four stars you're Discerning rev it's like one or five huh yeah like this sucks or this is great yeah or I don't know like were they like I want to give him like some constructive criticism like I don't want him to think it's the best thing ever but they did pretty good job like four is pretty good I want to pump these guys up too much didn't give us any constructive criticism great podcast loved it four stars yeah that's that's what I think is the funniest the three or four stars and then the text is glowing it's like absolutely amazing four stars what maybe their perspective of like what a five star is is just a scaled thing sa objective shooting for the Stars man well anyways Nico thank you for being on if youve made it this far thank you very much for listening we appreciate it and we will talk to you guys in the next episode