We've long wanted to incorporate interviews into our blog. Well, the wait is over.
We are proud to introduce our interview series: The Low-Down.
For our inaugural interview, we were fortunate enough to score time with World Champion cyclist Alison Dunlap and her equally talented husband, Greg Frozley.
Alison and Greg took time out of their very busy schedules to talk to us about Alison Dunlap Adventure Camps, their racing careers, advocacy, favorite trails, the Olympics, favorite books, and more.
In a time when sports figures are constantly marred with scandal and tabloids, it is a refreshing day when one encounters Alison and Greg – they are the epitome of the term role model. They truly fit the bill of American Hero, while being grounded and completely down to earth. It is immediately apparent that the bike is everything to these folks.
Well, enough gushing. Enjoy!
Alison Dunlap and Greg Frozley arrive at the deli in typical Coloradoan fashion – on bikes and with a dog.
Alison is a former Olympian and many-time World Champion. Reading her cycling resume is like reading the American Dream. She started cycling competitively while attending Colorado College, and has been winning ever since. Her husband, Greg, is also a former pro mountain bike racer with several wins to his name.
Greg and Alison*The two started Alison Dunlap Adventure Camps, Inc. (ADAC) together in 2003 while Alison was still racing. ADAC camps and clinics are currently offered in short weekend bursts and in 5-day Moab-a-thons complete with massages, good food, and good vibes.
You were still racing in 2003 when you started ADAC. How was it leading the Moab trips and training at the same time?
AD: It really wasn’t too bad because the Moab thing was in October.
GF: End of the year.
AD: End of the year, so I was really done anyway. And then we actually had two that we did in the Spring; those were a little more challenging because I did have to train through the camp. But there were only one or two of them a year, so it wasn’t a lot of busywork. The idea was to kind of start it slow and grow it little bit by little bit so when I did retire, it would be a viable business.
We’ve been drooling over the Moab clinics. Massages, good food…
GF: The biggest thing about Moab is you just need to know your boundaries. You’ll look at something and say ‘No way,’ ‘Not for me today,’ so you’re smart enough to walk down it. No big deal, you know.When in doubt, chicken out, right?A Moab Clinic Ride
GF: Yeah… the people that scare us are the ones who always get stuck in their pedals and tip over...
AD: Like they’ll try doing everything and anything, but they don’t have the skill to handle it, but also to even get out of the situation, so they do tip over. They have this disconnect between the brain and the feet and can’t get their feet out.
GregIn addition to the ADAC camps and clinics, Alison offers personal coaching, plus she helped found and remains closely involved with the LUNA Pro Team.
AD: The coaching has been for about three years. The LUNA thing since I retired. I’m still on the LUNA team. And the business – we’ve definitely made things a lot busier with the business. And this year has been the most full-time.There is a brief interruption as the waiter delivers our food. As Alison’s pancakes are set before her, she declines the butter outright. The waiter stammers out, “You don’t even want them near you?”
How many athletes do you generally have at a time?
AD: I’ve got…seventeen. It’s definitely on the full end. I’ve had five or six [potential clients] that I’ve turned down this spring. But I’d rather coach a smaller number and have it be high quality than try to do the model where you have a hundred athletes but you only talk to them once every six months.
With the personal coaching, you have seventeen athletes, and is it a wide range of athletes? Is it different skill levels, ages, backgrounds?
AD: Everything.
GF: Good question. There’s a 64 year-old lady…
AD: I have a 19 year-old girl that just graduated from Junior’s… a 43 year-old beginner, 200 lbs., trying to lose weight. Then I have a couple of pro women, a semi-pro man, and a couple of experts. Most are mountain bikers, but I do have one woman that just does road.Alison Giving Instruction
[To Greg] Do you help coach the athletes also, or is it all Alison?
GF: Pretty much her.
AD: He’s venturing. You’re actually working with an athlete in Moab, kind of casually, but it’s definitely a coaching situation. Somebody else inquired yesterday.
GF: I’m thinking about going along that trail a little more.
Apparently not. So we ask the question – vegan? “Not super hard-core,” she answers. It’s hard to believe that anything Alison Dunlap does is not super hard-core. We ask how being vegan affects cycling performance.
GF: Horribly.We all launch into our food and then come back around to the subject at hand.
AD: No, it does not. No, I don’t notice a single difference. I mean, you definitely eat more vegetables than you used to.Alison and Greg
Do you think you spend your time equally between the 3 things –coaching, LUNA, and the camps?These people are seriously busy.
AD: Yeah, it’s funny. The coaching is fairly consistent. As far as hours, you know, I don’t know how many hours I spend. But since that’s most consistent, it seems easiest to deal with. The LUNA thing kind of comes in waves. When it gets really busy, it’s incredibly stressful.
GF: She writes all the race reports. They get emailed out with all the pictures and all that. So after the weekend’s over, you know, we’ll have a mountain bike race, there’s a LUNA triathlon team, the Xterra team, and all this stuff, all these race reports that have to be due.
AD: So this week, the last 2 days were really crazy because we had the World Cup event, we had the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon, the Xterra Southeast Championships. Marla Streb did a big stage race in Costa Rica, and then there were clinics on the East Coast, so each one of those is a story.
GF: Just so you know, she has no time. She’s completely the over-booker.
AD: You’re way busier than I am right now.
GF: Well, right now. But it flip-flops.
AD: Everything we do is March/April/May/June. July and August we slow down. September and October are really busy, but in the winter -- I’m coaching, but there are no clinics, no travel.
GF: There’s a lot of prep work; web work, updating, permits, insurance.
AD: Yeah, it’s a year-round job, but it‘s sort of not a year-round job. You get slammed in this short window of time.
GF: I think what happens is people hear about our clinics, see the poster, they’ll either attend a clinic or a friend will attend and tell their friends. Then there’s this little bit of a lag, then a few months after our clinics, we’ll get all these inquiries: [semi-panicked voice] “When are you doing more clinics? I see you aren’t doing more clinics. Are you doing more clinics?” So there’s this kind of a wave that comes afterward.
Switchback Work in an ADAC ClinicYou obviously want to get more people into the sport, with your camps; I see you were the Grand Marshall for the Starlight Spectacular – what’s your involvement in that?Alison has many titles to her name, but one of her most memorable victories was at the UCI Mountain Bike Championships soon after 9/11.
AD: I didn’t help at all with the planning, but I did the ride. I’ve tried to stay involved with the city over the years. I always do Bike Week…
GF: Gave talks during Bike Week.
AD: Yeah, we’ve done talks for Bike Week, the Mayor’s Ride, Bike to Breakfast, that kind of thing. I enjoy that because our community cycling circle is really important. I know the racer community, but it’s nice to work with the people that just really love to ride.
The LUNA Chix team works to promote women in cycling. What do you think of the evolution of the organization? There are all sorts of LUNA teams now.
AD: We started with five people on the team. Since then, they’ve started the LUNA Ambassador program – groups of women around the country, anywhere from seven to ten women that are a team, that wear the LUNA kit. Their main goal is to get women involved in the sport, and they’re supposed to lead rides, run clinics, and then they do fund-raising for the Breast Cancer Fund. So there are twenty-six of those teams around the country (that started out as one team in Boulder), and it’s expanding, so that’s a really huge component of the program. They started with the mountain bike program and then they expanded to a triathlon team and an Xterra team. They’re looking to go even further, looking to have not necessarily teams, but individual athletes that wear the LUNA colors but maybe are rock climbing or skiing, some of the other sports.
When you won the UCI Mountain Bike Championships, you grabbed the American Flag in an iconic image. You had initially wanted them to stop the races in respect for 9/11 but then as it went on you thought it should go on. Can you describe the feeling of winning that race?Alison and Greg’s friend Steve Crosby arrives.AD: It’s probably the best feeling, on or off the bike, you could ever have. It’s something you think about. I truly obsessed about that race for months and months beforehand. I dreamed about it, thought about it. So to put it all together on that day, and have a good day, that’s one chance out of a million.Alison Dunlap at the 2001 UCI Championships**
GF: Yeah, it’s so hard. People don’t realize how hard it is to time your legs, your fitness, perfectly, to where you’re 100% on that day. Way harder than people think.
AD: It’s a total crapshoot. So to have it all work that day and it happened to be in Vail, CO, so it was pretty incredible.
GF: It all sort of started after Sydney, 2000, she was doing really well in the race, 2nd place, and then she had a crash.
AD: Hit a tree.
GF: So the focus went from the Olympics to the following year’s World Championships.
AD: I was there fighting for a medal. When they announced they were in Vail, I was like, "That’s it. I’m gonna win it." After it was over, I’ve never been so exhausted, mentally and physically. It was unreal.
GF: The stress and anxiety -- the pre-race anxiety is bad.
AD: This is Steve Crosby. Steve works at Colorado College doing the Outdoor Programs.Steve makes clubbing beats.
SC: Did you guys do the Bike to Breakfast this morning?
AD: No, we’re actually doing an interview with these guys. They’re doing a big blog thing.
SC: On…?
AD: …Us.
SC: The most famous couple in Colorado Springs. Greg’s a real high-profile guy – he schmoozes. You should see him; he dresses up in a tuxedo pretty much all the time. He goes out and parties.
GF: Yeah. I’m kind of a big deal… right. Steve and I lived in Breck in the same era. He’s a ski racer.Steve ambles off for coffee.
SC: Ski bum. Back in the 90s… 80s actually.
Handstand in MoabThe Olympics. Alison, you’re an Olympian. Greg, did you go to the Olympics?
GF: I never competed at that level. I watched her at the Olympics in ’96 and 2000.
So you’re not going to Beijing?
AD: No interest. They have a lot of opportunities with the USOC for people to go as athlete liaisons and various other positions helping out the athletes. You get to go, it’s a month, and you work a lot, 14, 18-hour days, all free, but you know, you’re at the Olympics. You get to go the events and all that. But the idea of spending a month in Beijing is just horrifying.
Why?
AD: Because of the pollution.
GF: The air quality is so poor.
AD: It would take 20 years off my life.
GF: Did you hear about the test event they had there? The mountain bikers got to race on the race venue and something like half the men, or a good, I don’t know how many, dropped out.
AD: Five finished, I think, or something like that.
GF: Because the air quality was so bad, guys were throwing up; their eyes were burning; they couldn’t breathe; their wind pipe was all constricted; they would literally stop to throw up. The air quality is so bad.
It should be interesting to see how it all plays out. With the political unrest, human rights issues, and pollution, and everything involved, it seems like the Olympics has been marred this year with stuff that takes away from the pure essence of the sport.
Greg DemonstratesThough not currently training for the Olympics or World Cup races, Alison and Greg are obviously still uber-fit individuals.
So, what do you do for cross-training? What’s your prescription?It’s obvious that these are two people who love bikes. LIVE bikes.
GF: We both still like to ride road bikes a lot. We probably jump on our road bikes almost equally these days; 50/50 these days.
AD: We did a lot of cyclocross in the winter. As far as cross-training, I never really did a lot of it because I just, I needed to be on the bike.
Can you describe your passion for the bike in a sentence?This question is followed by a long pause and then laughter.
We can come back to that.
AD: Well, we’re just passionately obsessed about it.
GF: It’s our life. Literally everything in our life revolves around cycling. What we eat…
AD: Vacations…
GF: Yeah, on vacations, we’re going to bring our bike.
AD: Jobs…
GF: Income. I was a mechanic, too, worked in bike shops since ’88.Greg Wrenchin'
So how many bikes are in your household?
GF: A few less than there used to be. Probably down to… fifteen. Something like that.
[To Greg] So, you’re a big single-speeder, right?
GF: Used to be. [Emphatically:] Ye-ah.
Now what do you think of the big trends of single speeds and fixies and 29ers?
GF: Single speed is super fun. I think it can actually help riders; help them with vision, you know, looking up the trail farther because they can’t shift gears, helps them with power, helps them with their spin when they’re on the flats, so there are good things about it. I had to get away from it because of a foot injury, but I really loved it. Did it for ten years.
So I do ride a 29er hard tail and I believe those things work, too. There’s definitely something to them – they roll over things; they have better traction.
Gravity droppers and whatnot – what’s too much? Where do you draw the line, technology-wise?
AD: It really comes down to how heavy of a bike are you willing to push? Not push, but ride. And if you’re willing to ride a 35 lb. bike, then go for it, because boy is it fun on the downhill.
It sure is.
GF: Our friends are a really sick mix of cross-country riders who can go downhill really, really fast. As fast as a lot of downhillers.
AD: Katie Compton, she’ll ride a hardtail.
GF: She’s won downhills on hardtails.
AD: She’ll stay with – I can’t descend with Greg, but Katie’ll stay right with him.
GF: It’s a tough day riding with some of our friends. They charge uphill and downhill. That’s hard to find. It’s usually like they’re 130 lb. guy on a 20 lb. bike that likes to go uphill all day but they can’t go downhill or conversely they have the 35 lb. bike and they have to push it uphill.
AlisonFavorite Trails. Let’s start local and then expand outward – CO and then National.We had covered a lot of ground with Alison and Greg, but now we thought we'd look up the trail a little further.
AD: I love…Red Rock Canyon…Falcon Trail is super fun. But probably the ‘most funnest’ is Jones Park, starting up at Rosemont Reservoir.
GF: The whole Cap’n Jacks.
AD: That’s a big ride, but it’s a classic.
What about you, Greg? Same consensus?
GF: Yeah, that’s a good one; that’s one of my favorites. There’s McNeally’s -- that’s really fun.
AD: That’s a goat path.
GF: It’s technical.
Where is that?
GF: I can tell you more. It’s a little hidden gem. Not many people know about it. We also like going up to Limbaugh Canyon, near Palmer Lake.
AD: Rampart Reservoir is a hoot.
Do you ride Palmer Park much?
GF: Yeah, we LOVE Templeton Trail. It’s so challenging, and if you have a good day, you can clean a lot of that trail.
OK, Colorado-wise. Do you think Colorado Springs has it?
AD: For the Front Range, I think it’s the best mountain biking.
GF: Yeah, for the Front Range.
AD: As far as accessibility, lack of crowds, and the trails just go for hours. And then, statewide, the Colorado Trail outside of Durango is just phenomenal. And then some of the Colorado Trail in Breckenridge is awesome.
GF: Some of our favorite trails are in Breckenridge.
AD: Monarch.
GF: Monarch Crest Trail.
I heard they might be closing that to mountain bikers.
GF: They’re doing a review of it right now.
AD: They haven’t decided yet. It’s one of many they’re looking at.
OK. Nationally?
G: Oh, also in Colorado, Fruita. We love everything in Fruita.Fruita or Moab? If you had to choose.Alison in Moab
AD & GF: Fruita.
AD: I never thought I’d say that, but Moab is just so inundated with Jeeps and ATVs. The trails are really really busy with Jeeps and ATVs.
GF: They’re torn up. Other than the Sovereign Trail, and we know some secret trails around Moab that are really fun – it’s hard to beat those, actually.
AD: Yeah, but Fruita has more singletrack and is more bike-friendly.
GF: It’s super fun.
OK, now nationally. Would Moab or Fruita rank there?
A: Oh yeah, and National Trail down in Phoenix.
So if you had to choose just one trail for the rest of your life? What would it be?
AD: Probably Fruita.
GF: I dunno… it’s a tough call, you know, there are days where you want to ride in the mountains on some long, long, hard-packed dirt downhill, where it flows really well.
AD: Summit County – you can ride there forever.
GF: If you crave real dirt – riding here, you’re on ball bearings all day.
So, where do you see the future of ADAC and your company, and your involvement in cycling? Do you think it’s just going to grow and grow?AD: You know, I definitely want it to grow, but pretty slowly. With what I do now, I can’t imagine having more events, more clinics. But I can see the coaching being a very viable long-term project.Alison Demonstrates
GF: Yeah, you don’t have to even ride a bike to be a coach, technically. So if you’re all crippled up from broken bones, you know, you can still coach.
AD: We’ll continue doing clinics, but I can’t see us doing clinics for twenty years. We’ll just get burned out. The LUNA thing will go away eventually because of the cyclical nature of sponsorship, but I see that program lasting for a while. So, for the time being, things will probably be very similar next year.
GregAs much as we wanted to continue our conversation with Alison and Greg, we had to bring it to a close so they could take Jiggs (their dog) to the vet. Alison seemed restless, anyway (we’re pretty sure she doesn’t normally sit still for very long periods of time). We had one last question, though.
Our blog tends to focus on books nearly as much as bikes. What do you like to read or what are you reading now?
AD: I’m reading… what’s it called?
GF: River of Traps.
AD: River of Traps! It’s a nonfiction about an old gentleman that lives outside of Taos in a tiny little mountain village. Kind of like an Ed Abbey, desert solitaire type story, where it’s just reflections on life. In general, I love historical fiction. I had a stretch of dog training books. I love Larry McMurphy, James Michener, a lot of the books written about the Arctic and South Pole exploration in the early 1900s.
GF: You were in an Oprah phase there for a while.
AD: Oprah???
GF: Not Oprah. The Pulitzer Prize winners.
AD: Yeah, I gave up because they’re all about dysfunctional American families, and it was so depressing.
OL: What about you, Greg?
GF: Lately? Not much.
AD: He falls asleep.
GF: We’ve been up really late, and I literally will get a sentence or two in before I fall asleep. But I always enjoyed a lot of Edward Abbey. That’s kind of my style.
AD: My favorite, favorite book, though, is East of Eden.
Alison & Greg, Master Switchback Riders
Alison & Greg had to go, and so we bid them Happy Trails.
Overnight Lows would like to extend our sincerest thanks to Alison Dunlap and Greg Frozley for taking the time to talk with us. It's not everyday that one gets to have breakfast with such good people. Their love for bikes is infectious.
Interview and article by Kimin and Melissa Kirkpatrick
Related links:
-Improve your mountain biking skills with ADAC’s camps and clinics
-See the Overnight Lows review of the ADAC intermediate skills clinic
-ADAC Flickr Stream
-LUNA Chix
-Alison Dunlap Junior Olympic Mountain Bike Series (ADJOMTB)
*All images in this post are from the ADAC Flickr Stream...
**Except this one. From here.
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1 comments:
Great read!
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