The Grand Prix is back and Hannah Otto is here to give a rundown of the first race of the season. She and Payson discuss the opposite tactics that played out in the men's and women's races, which new and returning riders caught their attention, and how the Cape Epic might have influenced the podium. They also answer a few listener questions and reveal the nutrition tip Hannah gave Payson the day before the race that ended up saving him on the day. Watch Life Time's Sea Otter Race Highlights Inst...
Apr 23, 2024•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 271
After four years of pestering, Payson has finally convinced Nichole to return to the show to talk about her most recent trip to Uganda. In 2017, she visited the country for the first time to teach pathology residents and, based on her experiences and newfound connections there, started Path of Logic , a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving cancer diagnostics and outcomes in equatorial Africa. She’s returned every year since to expand Path of Logic, and even started a Master’s program in...
Apr 16, 2024•1 hr 45 min•Season 1Ep. 270
It takes a particular kind of grit to win the grueling 800-mile Atlas Mountain Race, and Cynthia Carson did it on less than five hours of sleep. The rising bikepacking star has had quite a year, winning Spain’s infamous desert race Badlands in September and becoming the first woman to finish in the top 10. Cynthia joins Payson this week to talk about how she rose so quickly from casual gravel cyclist to one of the top ultradistance racers in the world. She explains why she’s chosen to focus on n...
Apr 08, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 269
At 21 years old, Luke Lamperti is already riding for one of the biggest teams in the WorldTour, Soudal–Quick-Step, and he's hit the ground running. Since the season began, he’s racked up podiums at the Challenge Mallorca, the Muscat Classic, and the Tour of Oman, solidifying his place as a young rider to watch. Before signing with Quick-Step, he raced alongside Tom Pidcock on the Trinity Racing development team where he honed his reputation as a formidable sprinter, but he’s still figuring out w...
Apr 01, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 268
At approximately 12:30 a.m. last weekend, Beth McBride crossed the finish line of Mid South to a thunderous reception. The race is known for its celebration of riders of all levels, and the final rider to cross the finish line is arguably more of a celebrity than the first rider. Payson sat down with Beth to talk about her race, including overcoming her fear of riding in the dark, silencing the negative voices that she’s encountered over the years as a cyclist, and why the acknowledgment of the ...
Mar 25, 2024•54 min•Season 1Ep. 267
In 2019, Morgan Aguirre decided to step outside of her comfort zone. Having never competed in any sports, she rented a bike from her local Trek store with the goal of riding 50 miles. Things escalated quickly, and soon, fellow Seattle resident (and now WorldTour rider) Veronica Ewers saw her posts on Strava and asked her to join the Fount Cycling Guild, a Seattle-based team geared towards new riders. But just as her aptitude for road racing was becoming increasingly apparent, Morgan made an unus...
Mar 18, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 266
During his eight years in the WorldTour, Paul Voss rode for some of the most successful teams in the sport, including Milram, Endura Racing, and Bora-Argon 18. In that time, he raced in multiple Grand Tours, and even wore the polka dot jersey for a stage of Tour De France in 2016. But in that same year, he was pushed off the Bora team when Peter Sagan signed on and brought several of his teammates with him. At 30, Paul retired from road racing, became a director sportif for Wiggins, did some cyc...
Mar 11, 2024•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 265
In 2023, just four years after competing in his first bikepacking race, Ulrich Bartholmoes won the biggest race of them all, the Tour Divide. The 2,745-mile route is always at the mercy of the elements, but Ulrich and his two fellow race leaders found themselves in a particularly strange (and scary) predicament when cold temperatures and constant rain left more than a hundred miles of the route unrideable. In a stroke of luck, the three racers happened upon a porta potty in the Great Divide wild...
Mar 04, 2024•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 264
Danni Shrosbree knows a thing or two about multitasking. Having spent years juggling a full-time job in the footwear industry alongside professional road cycling, the British cyclist added the Life Time Grand Prix to her roster last year, traveling between races in Europe and the U.S. while holding down her in-person day job. Despite this grueling schedule, she placed 4th at Unbound a week after finishing the Ride London stage race. Payson caught up with Danni in Girona to talk about the differe...
Feb 26, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 263
In 2016, Christian Meier made an unusual decision: at the age of 31, he walked away from a successful WorldTour career a year before his contract was due to end to focus on the coffee shop he and his wife had just opened in Girona, Spain. That year, they opened two more businesses. After dabbling in off-road racing for a couple of years, he made a second unconventional transition. He started competing in trail running events and found so much fulfillment in it that his focus began to gravitate t...
Feb 21, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 262
Lawson Craddock grew up in the flatland of Houston but fought his way onto the WorldTour feeder team Trek-Livestrong when he was still a teenager. After turning pro three years later, he raced for Giant-Shimano, Cannondale, and his current team, Jayco–AlUla. In his 10 years in the WorldTour, he's taken podiums at the Vuelta, won the Time Trial National Championships in back-to-back years, and had a standout performance at the 2018 Tour de France, but not for the usual reasons. Lawson caught up w...
Feb 12, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 261
In 2022, Heidi Franz was approached with an enticing offer: B&B Hotels-KTM, a revamped team with a sky-high budget and some of the biggest WorldTour riders set to sign on, wanted her on its roster. But after months of unfulfilled promises and extensive press coverage, the team collapsed, leaving Heidi and dozens of other riders without a team right before the 2023 season. When an unknown team called Zaaf approached her and several other would-be B&B team members, there was nowhere else t...
Feb 04, 2024•1 hr 41 min•Season 1Ep. 260
Known to his fans as Jack Ultra Cyclist, Jack Thompson has been smashing world records left and right for close to a decade. Growing up in Perth, Australia, he struggled with depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder as a teenager and eventually entered rehab for a drug addiction. Once he was able to channel his focus into cycling, however, he found his element. Quitting his construction job and moving across the world, he found a niche tackling seemingly impossible ultra challenges and raisi...
Jan 28, 2024•1 hr 38 min•Season 1Ep. 259
In 2014, Sam Gaze was a privateering teenager from a rural farming town in New Zealand when he took the men's title in the opening round of an eliminator World Cup in Cairns, Australia. With this breakout ride, he caught the eye of Specialized Racing and relocated to Europe, where he went on to claim five world titles, including U23 World Champion and Elite Marathon and Short Track World Champion. He now races for UCI team Alpecin–Deceuninck where he competes in the WorldTour as well as the Worl...
Jan 21, 2024•1 hr 29 min•Season 1Ep. 258
Before migrating to off-road racing last year, Czech cyclist Petr Vakoč spent nearly 10 years racing in the WorldTour, most notably as a member of team Quick-Step. During his road career, he made the start list of multiple Grand Tours, including the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia, and won the Brabantse Pijl in Belgium in 2016 after years of focused preparation. Payson sat down with Petr in Girona this week to talk about growing up in Prague and starting out mountain biking with his brother...
Jan 15, 2024•1 hr 26 min•Season 1Ep. 257
Even by the standards of WorldTour racing, Dennis van Winden’s career has seen a lot of highs and lows. Starting out on the legendary Rabobank development team as a teenager, he landed a spot on the WorldTour team and was starting to distinguish himself as a promising new talent when a catastrophic health incident changed his trajectory. He returned to Rabobank (then LottoNL–Jumbo) through 2016, but eventually stepped away from road racing and began focusing on the U.S. gravel scene. Now, he coa...
Jan 09, 2024•1 hr 59 min•Ep. 256
In this final episode of the year, Payson answers your questions about training, the 2023 season, UCI points, mustaches, and much more. Instagram: @withpacepodcast YouTube: Payson McElveen Email: howdy@withpace.cc
Jan 01, 2024•50 min•Season 1Ep. 255
This week, cycling trainer Derek Teel returns to answer more questions about strength training for endurance cyclists. He goes over the importance of mobility, how to do a proper push-up, and the equipment-free exercises everyone should be incorporating into their pre-ride routine. He also talks about some of his own endurance efforts, including double Everesting, in which he climbed over 58,000 feet in 27 hours, Everesting Roam, in which he climbed over 29,000 feet over 326 miles. Instagram: @w...
Dec 25, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 254
Derek Teel began his career as a downhill mountain biker, only to pivot toward personal training when he became fascinated with his team’s trainers and nutritionists. Over time, he found a way to combine his two passions, and his company, Dialed Health, was born, a strength training program geared specifically toward cyclists. In this episode, Derek joins Payson to talk about why cyclists require a different kind of strength training than other athletes, and how conversations with his fellow gra...
Dec 18, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 253
Katie Burrell has been called the “action sports cult antihero” for her wildly popular videos satirizing the outdoor industry. Through YouTube videos and Instagram reels, the comedian has poked fun at everything from know-it-all mountain bikers to couples having relationship meltdowns in the middle of hiking expeditions. Now, she’s written, directed, and starred in her first feature-length film, ‘Weak Layers,’ which follows a woman in a ski town who tries to win a world-famous ski film competiti...
Dec 11, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 252
After finishing high school in his native Australia, Angus Neaves devised the ultimate gap year plan: a 9,000-mile solo bikepacking trip from Mongolia to Scotland. After seven months and 16 countries, he finally completed the journey this week and joined Payson to talk about it. From the hospitality he found in Kazakstan to an impromptu trip to Gravel Worlds in Italy and a detour to Berlin for the museums, Angus found unexpected highlights along the way, in addition to some low points. He was he...
Dec 04, 2023•1 hr 22 min•Season 1Ep. 251
Starla Teddergreen had an extensive professional cycling career behind her and a spot in the Life Time Grand Prix when she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2022. Despite dropping out of the series due to the diagnosis, she reapplied in 2023 and completed the series. Starla sat down with Payson this week to discuss the confusing mix of symptoms she began feeling during the pandemic and the skepticism and dismissal she received from doctors before finally receiving an MS diagnosis. Despite...
Nov 27, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 250
This week, photographer and adventurer Chris Burkard returns to the show to talk about moving to Iceland and his experience racing the Tour Divide this summer. Having spent the last decade exploring and documenting Iceland, Chris finally made the big move with his family. He tells Payson about why he decided the time was right, what it’s been like as a parent to watch his sons assimilate so quickly into the community, and how the current seismic activity has made him ponder the morality of docum...
Nov 19, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 249
For the past couple of weeks, Iceland has been shaking with earthquakes as an underground river of magma moves toward the surface. Over the weekend, more than 800 earthquakes were detected in 14 hours in the Reykjanes Peninsula in the southwest of the country, and nearly 4,000 people were evacuated from the small town of Grindavík. One of the people who has had a front-row seat to these events is Thrainn Kolbeinsson, a photographer who Payson worked with on both of his island crossing films. Thr...
Nov 14, 2023•1 hr 32 min•Season 1Ep. 248
If you haven’t already heard of Asa Vermette, chances are, that’s about to change in a big way this coming year. The 16-year-old Durango native has been making waves in the downhill scene since he was 14, showing up at pro races and beating some of the sport’s top riders for the podium. He won most of his races this year, including the Enduro National Championship where he beat 3x world champ Richie Rude. 2024 will be the first year that he can compete in World Cups, where he’ll be racing as a j...
Nov 06, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 247
It’s our final recap episode of the season, which means we’re not only looking back at the seventh and final round of the Grand Prix, but the 2023 Grand Prix as a whole. Payson first sits down with Velo Reporter Betsy Welch to talk about the dynamic race at Big Sugar. With podiums in both the men’s and women’s fields that looked significantly different from usual and plenty of on-course carnage, they break down the biggest stories of the weekend. They also look back on the series as a whole, inc...
Oct 30, 2023•2 hr 36 min•Season 1Ep. 246
Sofia Gomez Villafañe has many accolades to her name. Olympian, winner of the Cape Epic, winner of Unbound, and winner of Leadville are just a few of her claims to fame, and she also happens to be this year’s winner of the Life Time Grand Prix after clinching the overall victory in just five races. Payson caught up with Sofia a few days before the seventh and final round of the series in Bentonville, Arkansas for a wide-ranging and long overdue conversation. In this episode, Sofia talks about ho...
Oct 21, 2023•1 hr 25 min•Season 1Ep. 245
The second-ever Gravel World Championships took place in Veneto, Italy earlier this month, and we’re bringing you a full episode about it. Payson chats with Keegan Swenson about his fifth-place finish in a field dominated by Europeans who were well-versed in the kind of tight, twisty terrain that the course had to offer. They discuss road versus gravel tactics, the questionable start positions, and how his sprint with Alejandro Valverde played out. Payson also answers listener questions about th...
Oct 15, 2023•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 244
As a new addition to the Grand Prix series, the Rad Dirt Fest was an unknown quantity for many of the racers last weekend. Alexey Vermeulen and Lauren De Crescenzo came away with the wins, shaking up the standings and setting the stage for the final race in Bentonville at the end of the month. In this recap episode, Payson catches up with Velo reporter Betsy Welch to talk about the race. Did it resemble Steamboat as the rumors claimed? Was it techy enough? Was it strange to race without points l...
Oct 08, 2023•1 hr 34 min•Season 1Ep. 243
Cole Paton returns to the show after a transformative year in his career. When this conversation was recorded earlier this week, he was sitting in second place in the Life Time Grand Prix and had just won the Marathon Mountain Bike National Championship the week before. In this conversation, Cole tells Payson about the motivation and sense of community he's gained from becoming a privateer this season, and the mixed emotions of being in second place behind a nearly unbeatable opponent in the Gra...
Oct 01, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 242
