Penticton is fond of fondos.
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In mid-summer it’s the celebrated Okanagan Granfondo, where 2,000 road riders, give or take a few, test their speed on a fully-paved, fully-serviced course that snakes throughout the South Okanagan.
It's one of the year's premier events.
But there's a fondo in the late summer too, when it’s a bit less sunny and a bit less warm, and where dirt and sand and mud – and several awesome trestles and tunnels too and some of the most stunning views in the entire region – take the place of all that pavement.
It's called the Kettle Mettle Dirty Fondo and it's been part of the local landscape for the past decade. And the 2024 version unfolded this past weekend.
In it, entrants head north from Penticton's north shore along the scenic KVR Trail, past Chute Lake and then trestle-ized Myra Canyon before ultimately hitting the finish line in East Kelowna. It's a slight uphill grind almost the entire way, plunging downhill again only near the end.
The total distance covered depends on which option you select. The "Full Fondo" is 100K. The "Full Fondo Plus," with an added loop to make things interesting, is 135K. The shorty of the group, the "Medio Fondo," includes a bus ride to Chute Lake and totals 50K of riding.
The truly hardcore can go further than all of those by attempting a two-day 200K alternative.
The race is one-third of a born-in-BC challenge called the Triple Crown of Gravel – a three-event series that builds on and exploits the growing popularity of "gravel" (essentially unpaved roads and trails) riding.
This past Saturday morning at 8 am, approximately 200 participants lined up at the start, adjacent to Penticton's Marina Way Park, under partly cloudy skies, for their shot at gravel riding excellence.
Most rode "gravel" bikes, a hybrid of sorts between road bikes and mountain bikes that hadn’t even been invented 20 years ago. Gravel bikes feature drop handle bars like the former but added stability and room for extremely wide tires like the latter.
In short, they're perfect for spots like the KVR.
Three hours, 21 minutes and 27 seconds later it was North Vancouverite Jon Bula emerging triumphant in the day's most popular discipline, the 100K race.
Bula is no stranger to gravel riding…or gravel podiums. He's ridden the Kettle Mettle multiple times in the past and consistently finishes near the top.
His final time was a mere six seconds faster than that of runner-up Alex Senger of Kelowna, another guy who spends plenty of time riding the region's trail network.
But for residents of Penticton and vicinity, the name that arguably packs the most impact is that of Summerland's Lee Agur. Agur, not long ago the owner of Bad Tattoo Brewing, has more recently morphed into an endurance sport whiz.
This summer he finished fourth at the Peach Classic Triathlon and followed that up just a week later with an outright win at the 2024 Okanagan Granfondo.
So what did he do for an encore? He won again, this time in the 135K iteration of Saturday's Kettle Mettle. His time of 4:27:43 was more than 11 minutes up on second place and nearly a half hour up on third.
"You get outdoors and you get to travel long distances and then you go for a beer or a coffee and hang out," said the laid-back Agur in explaining how he got involved in all this endurance sport stuff in the first place.
"But I just picked up gravel riding this year. And I got into it because I thought it would be safer than mountain or road biking. But it turns out it's more dangerous than all of them."
Agur believes it was his high-level carb loading program that turned him from competitor to winner.
"All those years of drinking beer," he said with a smile. "That's first and foremost. That's commitment. Carb loading. And then it’s just enjoyment of the sport. I do about ten hours a week."
It was Agur's first time at Kettle Mettle. One attempt and one win. Not a bad track record.
"I did part of the BC Epic 1000 (ultra long distance race) about two months ago," he said. "So I've actually done most of this route.
"But I hadn’t had the (correct) bike for this event 'til this year. So many people in Penticton and Kelowna have raved about it. It's awesome and it's convenient and I get to see a lot of people I haven’t seen in a while."
Also at the start line Sunday was Karla Swanek of Sherwood Park, Alberta, who made the trip to the Okanagan with her hubby Todd specifically for the Kettle Mettle.
"My husband actually registered last year but it was canceled due to forest fires," she told PentictonNow. "So I registered this year to join him."
Swanek explained that gravel riding is a happy compromise for the couple.
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"I was a road cyclist and a triathlete," she said. "My husband was a downhill mountain biker. So we compromised to gravel cycling and we're excited about it, though it's a little nerve wracking because you don’t know what you're getting into."
We assured her the course is spectacular.
For founder and organizer (and former triathlete) Dean Stanton of North Vancouver, who also founded and runs all the other races in the Triple Crown of Gravel, switching from competition to management has been a protracted learning procedure. But a happy one.
"I used to be an elite athlete," he told us at Saturday's starting line. "And I thought I’d put on an event. And it was…interesting.
"When you participate in an event and when you do an event, it’s a totally different thing. That was well over 20 years ago."
Stanton jumped aboard the gravel riding trend early.
"We kinda saw what was going on in the states in 2013," he explained. "I did a race down there, and I figured we could do it better in Canada.
"When we first started, there were no gravel bikes. Trying to ride a cylocross bike back then, it was backbreaking and uncomfortable. But the technology has progressed so much. Now almost all our riders are on gravel bikes."
One of Stanton's highlights from the day involved the trio of Olivia, Darryl and Lorna Shoemaker. Darryl, from Vancouver, would finish 11th in the 135K variant. Olivia of Arlington, Virginia, finished 38th in the 100K. And Lorne of Kelowna managed 9th in the Medio.
Not a bad outing for three generations of the same family.
For more info on the Kettle Mettle Dirty Fondo, turn to its website here. To learn more about the Triple Crown of Gravel, turn here.
