State 9 Racing: A NH Cycling Race Team Making an Impact

We had the pleasure of speaking with Andy Gould, the president of State 9 Racing, one of New Hampshire’s premier cycling teams. From its origins in 2015 to its growth into a powerhouse in New England's cycling scene, Andy shared the story of how State 9 Racing has evolved and what makes it stand out from other teams in the region.

As one of the largest cycling teams in New Hampshire, State 9 Racing brings together a diverse group of riders with different disciplines, including road, cyclocross, mountain biking, gravel, and enduro. Andy offered a deep dive into the team’s ethos, highlighting the importance of camaraderie, community, and the shared love of pushing limits on two wheels.

A key topic of the conversation was State 9 Racing’s significant role in the New England gravel and MTB scene. Andy discussed the highly anticipated Triple Crown of Gravel, which includes three premier events: Guilford Gravel, Mainely Gravel, and State 9's The Pavement Ends coming up in April! These events have become staple races for gravel racers in New England, offering a challenge for both seasoned riders and newcomers alike.

Andy also gave us the lowdown on another event the team hosts, the Bear Brook Classic mountain bike race. Known for its challenging course and scenic New Hampshire landscapes, the Bear Brook Classic is a must-do for anyone looking to test their endurance.

The episode also explored how the cycling scene in New England has evolved over the years and where it’s headed. With the rise in gravel riding and the growing popularity of off-road events, Andy’s perspective on the future of cycling in New England was both inspiring and insightful.

For those interested in joining or learning more about State 9 Racing, Andy shared how potential members can get involved and become part of the team. Whether you're a seasoned racer or just starting out, State 9 Racing offers something for everyone looking to be part of the cycling community.

A big thank you to Andy for joining us on the podcast and sharing the story of State 9 Racing. And thanks to our sponsors—Lark Fine Foods, creators of delicious small-batch cookies, and The Everyday Athlete, a book about balancing work, family, and fitness.

You can connect with State 9 Racing through our Instagram @newenglandendurance and don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on Spotify, Apple, Youtube, and Google.

Until next time—keep pushing your limits, drop some hammers, and get out there to explore the beautiful terrain of New England!

Art & Eric embark on a journey to showcase and celebrate the endurance sports community in New England.

Transcript

Art Trapotsis (00:06)
Hey, welcome to this edition of the New England Endurance Podcast where we celebrate the vibrant endurance community of New England. Our guest today is Andy Gold from State Nine Racing, one of New Hampshire's biggest cycling teams. And if you've listened to this podcast, you know that Eric, my co-host, welcome Eric, and I, we hail from the state of New Hampshire. So it's always wonderful to chat with someone else from the great 603 Granite State.

EAZY E (00:25)
What's up?

Art Trapotsis (00:35)
So welcome to you both.

EAZY E (00:37)
Yeah, State Nine has been making a name for itself in the New England cycling community. And Andy, we're super psyched to have you on. I think we talk a lot about science-based things on this podcast. I think scientifically it's been proven time and time again, New England is the greatest cycling region of the country. But not only that, that New Hampshire is probably the greatest state in all of the United States. So we're really happy to have you on, Andy. and talking a little bit about state nine racing. So tell us a little bit about state nine. Tell us what keeps, you know, what sets you guys apart from other cycling teams in the region membership. Give us the broad strokes.

Andy Gould (01:15)
All right, State 9 Racing, we started our club, or more appropriately, our race team back in 2015. Just sort of there was a hole in the race teams in the area, there wasn't many clubs around to choose from.

The club that we were on prior to this dissolved, the shop closed, basically the team dissolved. So everybody that was on that team wanted to stay together. So we got together, we had a meeting in our friend's living room, and we said, how are we going to do this? So we started a grassroots racing team, and up with the name State Nine Racing. And it grew from there. It grew to be the largest cycling team in New Hampshire and one of the largest in New England.  prior to State 9, a bunch of us were blue steel cyclers.

Art Trapotsis (02:05)
And how did you come up with the name State Nine?

EAZY E (02:05)
remember those guys.

Andy Gould (02:08)
So state nine racing comes from New Hampshire being the ninth state in the country established.

EAZY E (02:19)
Andy, said you were one of the largest in New Hampshire and then one of the largest in the region. Can you give us a sense of the membership size?

Andy Gould (02:26)
Yep, our membership ranges between 85 and 100 people every year.

Art Trapotsis (02:32)
Nice, and is it mostly roadies? We got mountain bikers? What's the disciplines here? Gravel?

Andy Gould (02:37)
Yes, we got all the above. We welcome all disciplines, gravel riders like cyclocross, mountain bike, downhill, enduro, cross country. Even have a couple triathletes on the team. So all disciplines and all abilities. We have beginners all the way up to elite riders on our team.

Art Trapotsis (02:54)
That's fantastic. So you and I met through someone I went to high school with named Brian Levine and he spoke very highly of the club. How would you describe sort of the vibe and the culture of State 9?

Andy Gould (03:06)
Very there's a lot of camaraderie we everybody gets along and sort of like a even though it's a huge team It's like a big family who really is everybody talks to each other post questions ask questions gets information There's a bunch of races. We try to do together very supportive Just we have some great team events which really helps this so we have some private club events gets everybody together and
casual and also a riding atmosphere. And I'd say overall just a very friendly, welcoming club to be on.

EAZY E (03:41)
Andy, give us a sense of where in New Hampshire you guys are primarily focused though, right? Like New Hampshire is a pretty tall state and just geographically, where do the most of your members reside?

Andy Gould (03:55)
Southern New Hampshire, but we have a fair amount from lakes region, handful from the seacoast area, got people in the Upper Valley, up in the Lebanon area, kind of all over, not too many people from the Great North, but yeah, sort of all over. We even have a couple people from Massachusetts that are on the team.

EAZY E (04:15)
Whoa, whoa, whoa. I guess Art and I could maybe be honorary members since we were both from New Hampshire but live in Massachusetts now. So perhaps there's like a certain kind of membership we could get.

Art Trapotsis (04:17)
Ha Yeah. So hey, there was a bit of buzz on the cycling chat channel in the club that I belong to down here in Massachusetts about one of your events coming up. And I was hoping you could talk about the events you put on this particular buzz was around. I think it's called the pavement ends gravel ride. Is that something that your team is putting on? And can you talk about that?

Andy Gould (04:53)
It is. First of all, it's a race, not a ride. There's not a ton of gravel races to choose from in New England, so that was one of the main reasons we decided to put this on. There's really only a handful of actual races. Most of the gravel events in New England are just rides. We wanted a true race experience for people, and we also wanted it to be affordable. Our pavement ends race is just as good. as any of the big races out there, but it's about half the price.

Art Trapotsis (05:19)
What is the cost? curious.

Andy Gould (05:21)
It's 85.

Art Trapotsis (05:23)
85, okay. And where's it based out of and what's the course like? What's the parkour like?

EAZY E (05:28)
Okay

Andy Gould (05:28)
Yeah, so

it's around 40 to 45 miles, 5 to 6,000 feet of climbing. Mostly gravel. There's a handful of pave or classic sections, which can be interesting in April in New Hampshire. Pat's Peak, that's the venue. So we have huge indoor bathrooms that are warm. We have a huge, there's a bar afterwards. There's, we rent out the whole lodge. So we have our, your admission,

includes a actually a very good meal that's catered by Pat's Peak Ski Area. We got a warm place to eat it. It's a huge deck there. If it's sunny out, you can sit outside and have a beer. Awards take place. are strong believers of the champagne experience on the podium, so we spray the winner of the categories get to spray champagne on everybody. A lot of cash, there's cash for the awards too and tons of prizes.

medals, trophies. I think one thing that really sets us apart with our events is that we're not in it to make money. So we don't charge more than we have to. We don't make much money on these events. We really just want to put on the best possible races that we can for everybody and give back to the races themselves.

EAZY E (06:38)
It's kind of an interesting conversation, Andy. And the reason I say that is a lot of the discussions we've been having on the podcast is actually events moving in, I would almost say, an opposite direction. Maybe that's what you're touching on, that you said there aren't that many gravel races, there's mostly gravel rides. And we've talked to a number of cycling clubs and race organizers to exactly your point.

Yes, you can race, a lot of them are less competitive. And it sounds like you guys are a little bit more to the throwback of the racing that Art and I kind of grew up here in New England, which is hardcore racing. Get yourself on the podium, celebrate, earn an award, and maybe have some beers and food afterwards. So I'm just interested in that maybe mindset. Is that a mindset of state nine or something that you guys are trying to?

encourage more of or coming back to in this community in New England.

Andy Gould (07:33)
I mean, of course we want to encourage it, but it was more just that we noticed that it was lacking. As you said, there wasn't a lot of choices for those types of events, especially at an affordable price. So kind of wanted to kind of want to fill that hole, put on a really good event. That's a true race. You know, it's not a, not a Strava segment race. It's not a, it's not a ride. It's a true race from beginning to end.

Art Trapotsis (08:00)
I'm thinking about signing up for it. Is there any single track? Is there anything technical that I can't ride?

Andy Gould (08:07)
There's no single track. Course is slightly different this year than previous years, but there will be some, like I said, some pave, some classic sections, which in April could be muddy, could still be snow. Yeah, I don't know.

Art Trapotsis (08:20)
It sounds fun.

EAZY E (08:21)
Good

for Pats Peak though, for I would say, whoever's relationship that is, Andy. I love when the ski resorts are embracing of, let's say in this case, the cycling event and bringing new people to a mountain maybe that they haven't visited in a while. I had ski club in high school at Pats Peak. So I love Pats Peak, but good for them to welcome and embrace the cycling community.

Andy Gould (08:50)
Yeah, it's really great. They've been a really good partner. They actually sponsor not only our race, but they sponsor the Triple Crown series, which we're part of, the gravel race series in New England. And they sponsor that by giving free ski lift tickets as prizes for all three events.

Art Trapotsis (09:05)
Wow. What

is the Triple Crown series?

EAZY E (09:07)
Yeah, what is that?

Andy Gould (09:09)
yeah, so we're part of the Triple Crown. Last year was our first year. Banded up in Lee Gravel in Maine and the Guilford Gravel in Guilford, Vermont. yeah, so Miles Billings and Camden Black and Ingersoll and some of those guys. Yeah, we decided to put on a series. All three races.

are with points and then if you race all three series and get points obviously You can win the series and win the winners jersey. We got a pretty nice winners jersey for each category Has a triple crown logo on it and some of the other logos. It's amongst other prizes Yeah, it's great. I didn't get to Last year. I you know, I did Guilford gravel for the first time last year. That was a great event that they put on That miles Billings and those guys put on

Yeah, it's the only series in New England, the only gravel series

Art Trapotsis (09:59)
What was the other race you mentioned? You Guilford Grabham. What was the other one? Mainly?

Andy Gould (10:03)
Called Manly Gravel.

Yep. And obviously it's in Mania.

EAZY E (10:08)
I didn't know about that. That's our, that could be our hidden gem question, Andy. So that's really good. Andy, what, what was your journey into endurance sports? Were you like Art and I failed team sport athlete in high school or have you always been into endurance sports?

Art Trapotsis (10:12)
you

Andy Gould (10:26)
No, I wasn't much of an athlete in high school. I was a skateboarder through born and raised skateboarder. And then eventually just sort of skateboard too much these days, but just sort of turned it over to biking. Some of my friends got me into mountain biking. I was sort of been around cycling my whole life, of here and there, know, BMX when I was a kid and would ride my bike.

10 miles each way to go skateboarding with my skateboard in the back of my bike every day. I've always kind of been around bikes even when I was younger. But yeah, I started getting into mountain biking around 2008, 2009 and just had fun of it. A lot of fun and started getting into, jumped into a couple of races. I remember my first couple of races, one was at Bear Brook, one was at Hampshire 100. I remember doing the Hampshire 100 race years ago, being so tired.

being a newbie but anyways yeah then eventually worked my way up to expert and eventually into pro and race pro for a number of years and then retired from pro

Art Trapotsis (11:30)
So do you run?

EAZY E (11:31)
I feel like we need to unpack, in a future episode, skateboarding and cycling, because it has come up in a number of conversations. Art, you are a skateboarder. There definitely seems to be some connection there, and that would be a fun one to explore perhaps in a future episode.

Art Trapotsis (11:37)
Yes.

Andy Gould (11:47)
Yeah,

have. number of the people I bike with now, I've used to skateboarding with, or kind of made the transition around the same time. It's definitely been there.

EAZY E (11:58)
I wonder what that connection is. So, interesting.

Andy Gould (12:01)
The independence of skateboarding is a very independent sport and cycling can be very independent if you want it to be. Do it how you want and there's some creativity there.

Art Trapotsis (12:13)
True. Do you run any other events? I thought I saw something else on the calendar. have your name next to it.

Andy Gould (12:19)
So along with pavement ends we put on the Barebrook Classic, which is the second largest mountain bike race in New England. That happens in October. And we've been doing that for, I believe, nine years now.

Art Trapotsis (12:31)
I've heard nothing but good things about that event.

EAZY E (12:32)
Yeah,

absolutely.

Andy Gould (12:33)
It's

really a great race. We, we changed the course every year. got all the usual categories, even have a marathon category to get into longer mountain bike racing. it's a good mix of smooth and flowy and technical riding. again, we do, you know, cash awards for the elite category, lots of prizes, medals. There's always a food truck on site. Then again, that's a very affordable race as well. That one's.

$45 for Marathon and Elite and I think it's around $40 for everybody else.

EAZY E (13:09)
Andy, let's talk a little bit about training. I imagine like other cycling clubs, you guys have some organized training rides. Could you talk a little bit about those and which ones might be open to the public, which ones are closed to members only? Give us a sense of what you guys are doing on a week-to-week basis.

Andy Gould (13:26)
Okay, so our weekly, our main weekly ride is what we call a TNT, which is a Tuesday night throwdown. And that used to have an A and a B group, but lately it's just been an A group. It's been hard to find a B leader. And that's a between 10 and 20 people. we start out of Manchester out of our sponsoring shop cycles, cetera. usually sometimes sometimes we'll start somewhere different. and that's usually a road ride. Sometimes we'll do gravel rides as well.

Switch it up a little bit just to keep things interesting change the route. It's always a different route every week and that is an a Between an a and an a-plus pace. It's it's a very hard ride and They're very fun. It's not it's not Sometimes it's a drop right sometimes. It's not depends Usually if you make it to the halfway point You can stay on the whole time, but it's a very fast ride. It's very hard ride. It's a great training ride

We work really well together. We try not to each other up too much. kind of try to have a really solid pace line and keep our average speed up by staying together rather than beating each other up.

Art Trapotsis (14:29)
I did show up to one of these rides and it was really fun. And you're right. If you can make it past halfway, then you can probably make it all the way home with the group.

Andy Gould (14:37)
We have other rides too, have more of a B ride out of the Trek store in Hooksett. I don't if that's the one you went on.

Art Trapotsis (14:45)
that is the one I did. Yes. Yes. The hooks that ride. Yeah. Tell us about that.

Andy Gould (14:50)
So that's our teammate Ron Chavette leads that and they also have a big group out of there and that's more of a, it's a slightly different ride. It's more of a B pace with some hard surges. I guess you could say is the best way to describe that. It's not, yeah, it's just slightly different. It's not, they work together but not in the same way that the our A group does out of cycles, et cetera. Some other group rides we do. We have a couple of big events. We see we have March Madness coming up.

St. Patty's Day weekend. do this every year. either a big road or a big gravel ride for early season. It's usually 50 miles, sometimes more, sometimes 60. That's usually has an A and a B group. That one's open to the public. The other two weekly rides I mentioned are open to the public. And we do our pastry earner ride the day after Thanksgiving, which is open to the public. And that's a big mountain bike ride. The turkey

I don't know you remember the turkey burner. There used to be a turkey burner event in the area that no longer took over. That concept created the pastry earner where instead of burning turkey, you go out for a hard ride and come back at the end of the ride and we buy pastries for everybody at the end of the ride.

EAZY E (15:55)
I'm enjoying the food theme of many of State 9's. This is my kind of club, think. So calorie positive kind of cycling. So I like it.

Andy Gould (15:59)
Yeah.

It's

like I said, just try to give back to the community. like I said, those are open to the public. So not only do we buy the pastries for our teammates, but we buy it to anybody, everybody that comes. As long as we know you're coming, we'll buy you one. But yeah, these are big events. We've had 50 people at Marsh Madness. We've had 60 people at the Pastry Erner. These are big events.

EAZY E (16:35)
Mm-hmm.

Art Trapotsis (16:36)
Do you run any Saturday and Sunday weekly group rides?

Andy Gould (16:40)
We do not. Everybody's out racing or doing other stuff so we don't.

Art Trapotsis (16:44)
Okay, fair enough.

EAZY E (16:44)
Interesting.

Andy, sounds like you've been in the cycling community here in New England for quite a while. Be interesting to get your perspective on how you might have, how have you seen the cycling community here, maybe specifically in New Hampshire, but in New England in general, change over the time that you've been riding?

Andy Gould (17:01)
well, just noticed there's a lot less road races these days. So seems like there's maybe a little bit less people on the road, less road races. just to get off track for a second here, we did put on, we did host the Concord Crit race for a couple of years. that was our event for a couple of years. We took that over and then we did not do it last year. So we did it for a couple of years and then we couldn't find anybody else that wanted to take it over after us. But.

That one's still, if there's any teams out there that want to take it over, I'd be happy to pass the torch to them. You know, I just don't have the manpower or a race director that can be committed to that at the moment. I'm really busy with pavement ends in Bear Brook and I just haven't found anybody else that wants to keep that one going.

EAZY E (17:42)
Mm-hmm.

Art Trapotsis (17:49)
What about Myles' team? Is it 5-4-5?

Andy Gould (17:52)
They thought about it. They almost did. They thought over the concrete crit. I don't know what happened with that idea. I don't know if they had the same problem. They just couldn't find someone that could be the race champion or something, but they thought about it. Yeah.

Art Trapotsis (17:54)
Damn.

EAZY E (18:04)
Maybe 603 could take it on because we've talked about how fun those Crip races, those city Crip races can be and how they can be great for a town and really engage a lot of people in cycling. So I'd love to see that. I'd love to see a conquered Crip stick around.

Andy Gould (18:19)
Yeah, yeah

kind of sad to see that end because that went on for like What 30 years? I don't even know that was like one. That's one of the oldest races in New England Yeah just yeah, you know, less road races seems a little bit less people on the road and a lot more people are feeling sort of unsafe on the road these days it seems like So maybe we're going towards mountain bike and gravel

EAZY E (18:30)
Wow.

Andy Gould (18:45)
But, know, I enjoy all the disciplines, so we still do all the disciplines. We have a lot of our teammates race Race Road at the track up in Loudoun. There's a weekly race series up in Loudoun on the NASCAR New Hampshire Motor Speedway track. So a lot of our teammates go up there and do that every Thursday.

so the Thursday series is called the, it's at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway where they actually have the real NASCAR races. So it's like a huge racetrack and they allow bike races. They have a bike race series every Thursday and that's put on by a different club, different group. Um, that's been going on for years. It's a great, it's a great train. It's basically a bunch of training races. They're really good. They're hard. Um, you talked to Dave LaFond who is also on state nine racing.

He goes to the track in Londonderry, not in Louden in Londonderry, and that's for track bikes, like fixed gear, single speed track racing.

EAZY E (19:39)
And I'm thinking now, I'm thinking about the racetrack in Epping, I think that used to be the final stage in the Working Man stage race, because it definitely wasn't as big as like a NASCAR. Am I correct in that? Am I thinking correctly now? OK.

Art Trapotsis (19:52)
Yeah, you are. Yeah.

Andy Gould (19:53)
You are.

Because I actually did that working man stage race and race that one in epic that you're talking about.

EAZY E (19:58)
Yeah, that's not a great memory for me. Maybe that's why, I think I blocked out that crit.

Art Trapotsis (20:04)
Andy, if folks wanted to go about becoming a member of state nine racing, how would they do that? And is there a cost?

Andy Gould (20:12)
Yes, so our annual dues are $40 and you get all the things that I previously mentioned along with some discounts and stuff from our sponsors. But yeah, you get all those events and all the free food and all that stuff that we buy. But yeah, it's $40. You can contact us. You can send a message through our Facebook page. can email state9racing at gmail.com. You can reach out to me or

any other of our team members, if you see them around and say, you know, interested in your team and just say, okay, that person will get a hold of me or Karen, Karen Kors, who is our membership coordinator. And yeah, get you set up. just ask, we ask, you know, we always tell everybody when they sign up that, you know, you're representing all nine to your hundred of us. So we expect a good representation out on the road, out on the trails. And just want

EAZY E (20:54)
Just,

Andy Gould (21:07)
everybody to be friendly and have a good time. And yeah, it's a great team.

EAZY E (21:11)
We are big advocates of friendly riders and like to call out people when they're not friendly that we pass on bike paths or on the road. So, and Andy, does the State Nine have sweet swag and sweet kits, would you say?

Andy Gould (21:24)
Yes. So our kits, we get our kits through Verge and yeah, they're very nice. get, Verge offers us the whole thing from jackets, windbreakers, arm warmers, leg warmers, the whole kit options, yes.

EAZY E (21:36)
Well, shout out to Charlie over at Verge. And I'm sure he'll be happy to hear that you guys think highly of the Verge kits. I mean, Verge has been a great supporter, I think, of New England racing for many years. So it's a good custom provider, for sure.

Art Trapotsis (21:52)
Definitely. So is there anything else as we wrap up here you'd like to mention or plug to our listeners who might not be familiar with state nine racing?

Andy Gould (21:59)
Yeah, just check us out. Come to our events, to our group rides, come to our bigger group ride events, or come to our races. Come to Pavement Ends, come to Bear Brook. They're affordable and we think you'll be very impressed. Great courses. I'm sort of OCD about course marking. I always want to make sure the course is marked perfectly. One thing I don't like is if someone...

EAZY E (22:17)
the

Andy Gould (22:24)
And one of our races makes a mistake, makes the wrong turn. like one thing I don't like, so I'm kind of...

EAZY E (22:29)
Is that

a PTSD thing? Or is that just a OCD thing? Okay.

Andy Gould (22:33)
little bit of both. I've definitely had experience

where I've missed turns and it really bothered me at races. And so I kind of told myself, I don't want that to ever happen to somebody else.

EAZY E (22:44)
That's great. Andy, final question. We ask all of our guests, tell us why you agree that New England is the greatest endurance region of the United States, if not the world.

Andy Gould (23:00)
We got it all. We got all the different types of terrain. And not only is it all types, it's hard. We got hills, we got rocks, we got roots. We got quiet roads. I think a lot of people don't realize that New England has a lot of quiet roads for road riding, for gravel. It's not just the main highways. We can actually get onto some smaller, quieter roads for road and gravel riding. And then we have a great variety of mountain biking.

for technical stuff, enduro type stuff, cross country stuff.

do whatever you want. Yeah, it's great. And then we have winter fat biking. Fat biking is huge around here. got all those events and places to go. People are out there packing trails probably as we speak right now for fat biking. We got trail running events. got snow showing, everything. Yeah, it's got a little bit of everything.

EAZY E (23:32)
Yeah.

Art Trapotsis (23:48)
feel very fortunate living here sometime as an athlete and you just reiterated why.

EAZY E (23:48)
That's great.

And

Andy, me just like one thing that I'll just sort of pick on one thing that you said in a positive way. And I agree, maybe for people don't realize it, but you talk about quiet roads. And I do agree, when I have been out riding in other parts of the country, I often find group rides are on really busy, big roads. And here in New England, no matter where you are, if you're, you know,

heading out from Arlington, out towards Harvard, if you're on the North Shore here of Massachusetts, if you're in Southern New Hampshire and Northern New Hampshire, you're absolutely right that if you look hard enough, you can find some incredibly nice, long, secluded, quiet roads where I do think the drivers are respectful of the riders. So I like what you said there about quiet roads. That's kind what I'm picking up from what you mentioned.

Andy Gould (24:42)
Yeah,

absolutely. You know, I used to work down, down your way in Bedford, Massachusetts. And there was some great road rides around there on quiet, quieter roads, know, didn't have to roads and up here, obviously same, same thing. Lots of quiet roads. Lots of, lots of nice routes, lots of variety. That's one thing I like about New England is you don't have to do the same route every day. Take a different gravel ride or different road route all the time. It's never, never gets boring.

EAZY E (24:52)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Good.

Art Trapotsis (25:10)
Nice.

So shall we wrap up, Eric?

EAZY E (25:12)
Yeah, let's wrap up. Before we wrap up, though, I do want to give a shout out to my fellow Pinkerton alumni, Jim Hall, who's on the State 9 team. I haven't spoken to him in a while, but I used to see him at the races. And maybe there's some other Pinkerton alumni. I can't remember, Art, were you at Central? Was that right? Yeah. mean, Pinkerton, again, is well known to be a superior school to Central. So I just wanted to make sure that that was mentioned here on this podcast. But shout out to Jim Hall and any of the other.

Art Trapotsis (25:27)
Yes. Yep.

EAZY E (25:38)
Pinkerton alumni on State 9.

Andy Gould (25:41)
Heh.

Art Trapotsis (25:42)
Awesome. Andy, thank you so much for joining us on the New England Endurance Podcast and telling us about State Nine Racing. You have a great organization there and I look forward to hooking up at one of your races or one of your group rides this spring and summer. Thank you.

Andy Gould (25:57)
You're welcome nice talking to you guys

EAZY E (25:59)
Yeah, no, it's great to hear about. actually really, my takeaway here is State 9 is bringing some racing back or bringing, and I really actually appreciate that because it's something that we have talked about many times on this podcast, what happened to the racing here in New England. So hopefully State 9 is the catalyst to maybe help continue to have that grow here in New England. And we couldn't do it without our sponsors. So Lark Find Foods, 100 % women-owned specialty food company.

making delicious small batch cookies. And of course, the Everyday Athlete, a book about balancing work, family, and fitness. And for those that want to learn more and get involved with State Nine Racing, we will tag them on our Instagram, which is at New England Endurance. And don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on Spotify, on Apple, on Google. And until next time.

Keep pushing your limits, drop some hammers, get out there and explore the beautiful terrain of New England.

Art Trapotsis (26:56)
Thanks.