Professional mountain biker Payson McElveen sits down with some of the biggest names in sports and adventure to get an inside look at what sets them apart. With no script, the casual conversations are as diverse as the guests, with topics ranging from harrowing tales of survival, to debates on current events, to everyday tips and tricks and everything in between. As Payson travels the world for his two-wheeled day job, listen in as he rubs shoulders with and learns from some of the most inspiring athletes, entrepreneurs, academics, and others as they chase and inspire greatness.
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Matt Beers, professional mountain bike racer
South African cyclist Matt Beers has done a little bit of everything when it comes to racing on two wheels. Starting out in motocross, he turned to mountain biking after he was sidelined by an injury, going on to win the South African Marathon National Championships and the Cape Epic stage race in 2021. After an impressive but unlucky showing at Cape Epic in 2019, he was invited to guest ride on the WorldTour road team UAE Emirates. These days, he's spending more time state-side on the gravel circuit. At the beginning of the year, he placed second at Belgian Waffle Ride and elected to do the double-header, Leadboat, earlier this month.Matt joins Payson a few days after completing Leadboat to talk about why he's chosen to spend so much time in the US this year racing gravel and how his first Leadville went He reflects on his time as a stagiere with UAE, why it made him doubt his choice of career, and how it transformed the way he approaches training. He also talks about how winning Cape Epic changed his life, why he was out riding the day after Leadboat, and the impressive power numbers that caught the eye of the WorldTour.Instagram: @withpacepodcastYouTube: Payson McElveenEmail: howdy@withpace.cc
Leadboat recap, with Leadville winners Keegan Swenson and Hannah Otto, rider experiences, and a listener Q&A
Today on the show, we feature some of the experiences that riders in all categories had at Leadville and SBT GRVL last weekend. Payson answers listener questions about the races, including his training in the weeks leading up, using hydration packs instead of stopping at neutral aid stations, and his bike setup. He also chats with Keegan Swenson, the winner of Leadville, SBT, and the combination race ‘Leadboat’ about his dominance on the gravel circuit this season and a potential move to the road. Hannah Otto, the winner of Leadville, joins Payson as well to talk about how unexpected her win was after crashing and injuring her shoulder at Mont-Sainte-Anne the weekend before. Having not ridden her bike until the day before Leadville, she had low expectations about her chance of snagging a podium let alone the win and was nervous about how the forecasted rain might affect her ability to avoid crashing. When she found herself riding solo off the front, the fact that she might come away with the win began to sink in. Instagram: @withpacepodcastYouTube: Payson McElveenEmail: howdy@withpace.cc
Rose Grant, professional mountain bike and gravel racer
5x mountain bike Marathon National Champion Rose Grant joins Payson to talk about her recently announced retirement, how she hopes to finish out the season, and what she’s looking forward to post-professional cycling. Rose started racing later than many riders, only getting into the sport when she was nearing 30. During her first season, she became pregnant with her daughter, and has spent the height of her career juggling training, racing, and motherhood. She talks about some of her professional highlights, including winning her first Leadville, and some low points, including breaking her leg in Colombia and the mental battle of Unbound. Instagram: @withpacepodcastYouTube: Payson McElveenEmail: howdy@withpace.cc
Sarah Sturm on persistence, grief, and imagining life after professional racing
Sarah Sturm returns to the show for a wide-ranging conversation about the struggle to stay hungry in a profession full of uncontrollable inconsistency, Tour de France Femme, and the anxieties about what life might look like after retiring from professional cycling. They also discuss the many ways that grief is shaping the gravel community this season and how their mental and emotional connection to racing has permanently changed. Sarah also talks about her work with Protect Our Winters, and the athlete who she thinks is the gold standard for maintaining their integrity.Instagram: @withpacepodcastYouTube: Payson McElveenEmail: howdy@withpace.cc
Barry Wicks, Protect Our Winters bike team captain on curbing climate change
Barry Wicks started racing professionally in 2002, competing on both the mountain bike and cyclocross world circuits. These days, he continues to race off road, but focuses much of his attention on managing Kona Factory Racing, the team he's been with since he signed his first pro contract. Last week, it was announced that he would be leading the new Bike Alliance with Protect Our Winters, a nonprofit that advocates for better climate legislation and large-scale measures for safeguarding the environment. Barry catches up with Payson to talk about how he confronted his own apathy towards the climate crisis and decided to step up. He recounts his experience going to Washington with Protect Our Winters earlier this year to talk to politicians about climate legislation, and why he decided to use his voice as a professional athlete to promote the environment. Usufruct: A Biking Story About Beetles and the Future of Our ForestsProtect Our Winters: protectourwinters.org Instagram: @withpacepodcastYouTube: Payson McElveenEmail: howdy@withpace.cc
Sam Pickman, Director of Product and Engineering at Allied on their first mountain bike
Sam Pickman returns to the show to talk about Allied's first ever mountain bike, the BC40. He and Payson discuss how long it's been in the works, collaborating with Barcelona-based Cero Design to get the look just right, and why they changed the name of the bike just before the launch. They also get into the technical side of things, including bike geometry and the carbon manufacturing process. Instagram: @withpacepodcastYouTube: Payson McElveenEmail: howdy@withpace.cc
Crusher in the Tushar recap, with winner Haley Smith and a listener Q&A
Today on the show, we review the third race in the Lifetime Grand Prix, Crusher in the Tushar. Payson is joined by winner Haley Smith to discuss her emotional finish, her new position as a Grand Prix frontrunner, and the illness and self-doubt that made her path to this moment so uncertain. She also talks about how her mixed feelings about participating in the Tokyo Olympics are evolving with hindsight, and why she’s not fixating on the prospect of a Grand Prix win. Payson also answers all your questions about Crusher, from nutrition to Keegan Swenson’s dominance, and we hear from a few listeners who participated in the race.Instagram: @withpacepodcastYouTube: Payson McElveenEmail: howdy@withpace.cc
Daniel Oss checks in from the Tour de France
Daniel Oss has raced the Tour de France ten times and has noticed many changes over the years, from equipment to rider mentality. This year, he’s racing for a new team, TotalEnergies, where he followed friend and long-time teammate, Peter Sagan. He joins Payson from the first rest day of this year’s race to talk about how the Tour has changed since he first lined up for it in 2010, being Sagan’s right-hand man, and why the mental fatigue of The Giro d’Italia led him to start his Youtube series “Just Ride.”Payson also previews Crusher in the Tushar, the next installment of the Lifetime Grand Prix, and makes some predictions about this year's Tour de France.Instagram: @withpacepodcastYouTube: Payson McElveenEmail: howdy@withpace.cc
Annijke Wade, 11 months after her spinal cord injury
Annijke Wade joins Payson again, nearly a year after the mountain bike crash that left her paralyzed. The last time they talked on the show, she was living at Craig Hospital, a leading institute for spinal cord injuries. Now, she's home, learning the ins and outs of living with her injury. She talks about how she plans to spend the first anniversary of her crash, all the details about her new bike, and getting back on the trails with other adaptive athletes. She also talks about balancing optimism with realism. While she is technically paralyzed below the chest, she recently regained some musculature and sensation in parts of her body where she'd lost feeling. Now, she spends 40 hours per week on rehab, and talks to Payson about managing expectations while setting concrete goals for her recovery.Instagram: @withpacepodcastYouTube: Payson McElveenEmail: howdy@withpace.cc
Anton Krupicka, mountain runner
Anton Krupicka fell in love with running at an early age. He competed in his first marathon when he was 12 and started running mountain ultras when he left college. He went on to win the Leadville 100 twice, and place second at the Western States 100 in 2010. These days, he’s added cycling and ski-mo to his competition schedule, recently completing the Unbound XL.In this interview, he tells Payson about growing up on a 600-acre farm in Nebraska and discovering mountain running when he moved to Colorado for college. After completing a few marathons, he went from running the Leadville Marathon to running and winning the Leadville 100 in just six weeks. He also talks about how injury forced him to diversify his athletic pursuits and how the mental and physical demands of ultra running differ from gravel racing. Instagram: @withpacepodcastYouTube: Payson McElveenEmail: howdy@withpace.cc
Gus Morton, filmmaker and former pro cyclist
Gus Morton quit professional cycling at the age of 21 to pursue a career as a filmmaker. He was briefly pulled back into professional racing but left the sport for good in 2017, when he merged his two areas of expertise by creating the production company Thereabouts, which put an alternative lens on cycling that didn't revolve around competition or traditional, straightforward narratives of accomplishment. Instead, the projects focus on "conveying the feeling rather than recounting the experience" of cycling adventures.In January of 2021, Gus joined endurance athlete Rebecca Rusch and photographer Chris Burkard on the first winter crossing of Iceland by bike. They set out to make a film about the experience, but the project became much more than a portrait of athletic endurance when Gus found himself trapped in Mexico for two weeks following the expedition, confronting a very different kind of struggle. In this conversation, he tells Payson about how his battle with alcoholism came to a head during that two-week stay in Mexico City, and why he decided to re-frame the film around his relapse and recovery. They talk about how he wrestled with alcohol as a professional cyclist, the moment he revealed to Chris and Rebecca that he'd relapsed after their trip, and the process of turning his experiences with addiction into a creative project. The film, 'I Am Here,' is in production. A Kickstarter campaign was launched earlier this month to fund the remaining work. Link to the Kickstarter campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chrisburkard/i-am-here-0Instagram: @withpacepodcastYouTube: Payson McElveenEmail: howdy@withpace.cc
Unbound recap Q&A and rider experiences
In this week's episode, we hear from riders of all levels and distances of Unbound who tell us about their experiences participating in North America's biggest gravel event. Later in the show, Payson answers listeners' questions about the race. He addresses the muddy conditions, dynamics in the lead group of riders, the impact of WorldTour racers, aero bars, and all the crashes in the first 40 miles. Instagram: @withpacepodcastYouTube: Payson McElveenEmail: howdy@withpace.cc
Unbound Preview with Ryan Standish (and a few cameos)
Payson sits down with professional mountain biker and gravel racer Ryan Standish to preview the second race of the Lifetime Grand Prix, Unbound 200. They talk about the start list, a Who's Who of World Tour, gravel, and mountain bike racers, and make some predictions about the podium. They're also joined by unexpected guests Bobby Wintle, founder of The Mid South; and Howard Grotts, mountain bike Olympian and Grand Prix competitor.Ryan also talks about going all-in on racing after his father's MS diagnosis, his clothing line Rocket Sloth, and becoming an overnight celebrity after racing the Snowshoe World Cup short track in jorts. Instagram: @withpacepodcastYouTube: Payson McElveenEmail: howdy@withpace.cc
Joe Grant, ultra runner and underbiker
Joe Grant is an ultra runner and mountain athlete who holds the FKT on the Colorado Trail and has competed all over the world at races such as the Hardrock 100, Ultra-Trail Du Mont-Blanc, and the Iditarod in Alaska. He also explores the mountains by bike and competed in the Arizona Trail race in 2016 on a fully rigid drop bar bike. Born in England and raised in France, he now lives in Durango, Colorado. In this conversation, Joe talks about his complicated relationship with the premise of FKTs, why he tries to orient his projects around the place and the trail rather than himself, and where he stands on the documentation debate in bikepacking and ultra running. He also talks about some of his recent projects, including “Home to Home,” in which he and some friends captured his on-foot attempt at The Colorado Trail with only analog film cameras and a guitar. Even though he’s built a career on winning races and accomplishing unprecedented challenges in the mountains, he explains why he tries to make his projects about more than just the records. Joe's Home to Home project: https://lostcreekcollective.com/The Middle Way "Tour de 14ers" film: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/themiddlewayInstagram: @withpacepodcastYouTube: Payson McElveenEmail: howdy@withpace.cc
Hannah Otto, professional mountain bike and gravel racer
Payson sits down with professional mountain biker and former teammate Hannah Otto to discuss her new privateer program, splitting her 2022 schedule between North American gravel racing and UCI World Cups, and her childhood as a world champion triathlete. Hannah started racing triathlons at 9, eventually winning the XTERRA Amateur World Championship. After switching to cycling in college, she became a 5x collegiate national champion and signed with the CLIF Pro Team. After nine years of racing on factory-style teams, she's going private this year, pursuing both the LifeTime Grand Prix and a spot at the 2024 Olympics. In this conversation, Hannah talks about the internal drive and love of sports that propelled her to a very early start in racing, how she’s brought some of her triathlete mindset to her cycling career, and why privateering isn’t so different from racing on a factory team. She also talks about the other side of her job, in which she is a coach and regular contributor to VeloNews. Instagram: @withpacepodcastYouTube: Payson McElveenEmail: howdy@withpace.cc