King of the Ride

Lauren's story of winning Unbound and having one of the most successful years the sport of gravel has ever seen is as impressive as it is improbable. Her comeback from a TBI is a journey through uncharted territory. Over the span of about a half dozen years, she went from being a professional road cyclist to a (very) traumatic brain injury to an intense recovery period to then earning a Masters in...

Hillary Allen's story is one for the ages. Her 150 foot fall off of a cliff while leading the skyrunning race series, where she broke 14 bones and risked never walking again, is the kind of story you see in the movies or read in a book. Well, you can read it in her book, Out and Back.  We touch on that today, as well as the mental and physical struggles she faced in the aftermath right up through...

Alex Dowsett is a recent retiree after a dozen years in cycling's professional ranks where he tallied 15 victories, including 2 in grand tours; Alex set the world hour record, owns two Commonwealth Games medals (gold and silver, since you asked), and probably has a dozen other accolades omitted here. He's a father, soon to be married to his fiance Chanel, and does tremendous work with the organiza...

Pete stepped away from the World Tour and planted his flag as a pro's pro, using professional road techniques to highlight speed and results. Gravel is a fluid sport and Pete's come to recognize the importance of some not so tangible aspects of gravel, such as chivalry, a moral code, unwritten rules, and more. As gravel takes a look into the mirror, so do Pete and I as we dive into this conversati...

One hundred episodes! Thanks for listening to King of the Ride my friends. What can be said about Laurens Ten Dam that hasn't yet been said? Well, a lot, actually. Tune into this conversation late in 2022 where LtD again returned to North America for another gravel race, this time Gravel Locos Pueblo. His schedule has seemingly gotten more complicated since retiring from an extensive World Tour ca...

Ian Boswell returns for the second time as a guest on King of the Ride. Over that time since 2019, he got married, retired from the World Tour, had a daughter, won Unbound, and has seen the screaming hot arch of gravel grow with meteoric speed.  So where does it go from here? This conversation covers lots of topics, but most of them revolve around where we see things going as gravel continues to e...

Our guest today is an icon in the endurance running space, Anton Krupicka. Winner of the Leadville 100 as a fresh faced 23 year old in 2006, fifteen years later he was once again on the podium in 2021 at Leadville after a spate of injuries, but not a shortage of adventures over that time. Early in his career, Anton's blog became requisite reading material for all aspiring runners. His social media...

Jan Heine is the president of Rene Herse Cycles and editor in chief of Bicycle Quarterly. He's a builder, an engineer, a story teller, a photographer, and as it turns out is pretty handy on the bike too with a recent FKT on the Arkansas High Country Race's southern loop which spans 475 miles across northwest Arkansas! I've wanted to have Jan on the podcast for years and this seemed like just the r...

Carl Decker has been a professional cyclist for longer than many professional cyclists have been alive. This 47 year old pro has been a mountain bike racer, cyclocross racer, Super-D extraordinaire, road racer, and now a stalwart gravel racer in the scene that is both burgeoning and reaching its adolescence. Thanks to Athletic Greens for supporting this episode and simplifying my nutrition routine...

This conversation is one for the ages. It took place on Kiel's sailboat, fresh on the tail end of a bike ride around Seattle, and right before both Kiel and I set off for Rebecca's Private Idaho.  Kiel is a great friend, a father, a husband, a sailor, a retired World Tour cyclist and a current gravel racer... err, rider? Naw, he's a racer at heart even though he has the completely right ethos for...

World Champion rower turned gravel cyclist, that's right, Brennan Wertz is our guest today. A linguist, a world traveler, a Stanford graduate, an incredibly friendly individual, Brennan is a speedy and excellent addition to the gravel peloton. At just 23 years old, the sky's the limit with the power numbers he's able to produce. Please enjoy the show! Here's the summary of my Last Best Ride exploi...

Sports cardiology is a well known field, but it really didn't exist prior to 2008 when our guest, Dr. Aaron Baggish put it on the map by creating Massachusetts General Hospital's Cardiovascular Performance Program. Dr. Baggish serves as team cardiologist and physician for numerous athletic organizations including as medical director for the Boston Marathon and cardiologist/team physician for US So...

The titles of these episodes usually have a little blurb to describe the guest. This ended up as "Professional Cyclist" but I thought of "winner of bike races all the freakin' time" or "winning bike races like it's his job" or "champion of all kinds" because frankly he's winning everything in sight. But better yet, Keegan is a super kind person and doesn't just ride bikes with a number of his hand...

He just couldn't get enough, so back he went in 2022. Roger Brown is my friend, business partner at UnTapped, and among the least trained riders for this grand daddy of all gravel bike races, Unbound 200. Let's hear from Roger how his second time taking on the mammoth gravel race across the Kansas countryside went.   To save on Saris, use code Saris-Social-1522 for 15% off anything at Saris.com

Brendan Quirk took the reins as CEO of USA Cycling late in 2021 with the hopes of reinvigorating the organization with the energy and enthusiasm that he remembers from his first races as a card carrying USAC member in 1986. Looking at the state of the cycling union: American racing needs help and hopefully Brendan is the person for the job. Brendan is the co-founder of the biggest cycling e-tailer...

Charles Aaron is the owner of America's longest running professional cycling team, Human Powered Health. Having spent a lifetime in cycling -- from the heyday of pro mountain biking in the 1990s through to the present -- Charles certainly has some stories to tell. The women's team will compete in this summer's Tour de France Femmes and the men's team has been making their way up the hierarchy of p...

I don't have a Best Episode of the Year category, but this conversation would be in the running. Meg Fisher is a decorated athlete across a variety of disciplines. A walk-on division 1 tennis player in college, she was involved in a tragic accident at the age of 19 that took the love of her life and resulted in an amputated portion of her leg. Not one to watch the grass grow and sit by the sidelin...

I like beer. You like beer. Beer is great! Hangovers, poor decision making, reduced performance, and alcohol induced accidents aren't that great. Bill Shufelt had a very successful career in finance, but he found that he inspired at work. It was work for the sake of work and he wasn't making healthy decisions. He saw a void in the craft beer market, specifically for non-alcoholic beer and leapt at...

With MidSouth now in the rearview mirror it's time to look back at the season opener. This conversation bookends the MidSouth festival amid a lovely Sunday brunch with my dear friend Bobby. Bobby Wintle is the event director of MidSouth as well as District Bicycles, the iconic bike shop in Stillwater, Oklahoma. His voice is shredded, the racers are left dusty with the telltale red Oklahoma dirt, b...

I'm excited introduce Olympian, current double national champion in both the road race and time trial, World Tour race winner, dancing queen and internet sensation Alison Jackson! I caught up with Alison Jackson while she was home in Canada before making her late winter pilgrimage to Europe and the traditional bike racing scene. We chatted shop that spans her careers, the highs and lows, the traje...

Tejay van Garderen is one of the best cyclists America has ever produced. With stage wins in the Giro, the Tour de Suisse, Volta Catalunya, and plenty more, overall wins at the USA Pro Cycling Challenge and the Tour of California, plus best young rider and 5th place (twice) at the Tour de France, Tejay's palmares are lengthy. He's also a fascinating conversationalist, is knowledgeable about wine,...

This is one for the ages. Every guest on this podcast has the thread of the bicycle woven through their lives and Mike Cohen is no different. He's just had a much different life unfold than perhaps he was expecting as a 17 year old. Mike is as upbeat as they come and as both a leukemia survivor and recipient of a heart transplant, he's got some very wild stories to tell. Mike is a cyclist, he now...

The world of professional cycling is full of characters and they don't get much more interesting than Mitch Docker. Between his many iterations of mullets and mustaches, he was a standout, but it's his hard work and talent that made him a stalwart member of the pro peloton. This Australian made his way to Europe in 2006 to start his pro cycling career which has extended right up until the present,...

Haley Batten stormed onto the professional scene in 2021. She earned a spot on the podium in her first ever World Cup race, won a short track World Cup soon thereafter, and had a red hot streak all through the rest of the calendar year. She is America's top finisher at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and she's just getting warmed up! It's fun to catch up with Haley who you'll soon realize has one of the m...

Let's welcome back Dr. Kevin Sprouse! It's no coincidence that the bigger issue topic Dr. Sprouse and Ted discuss here is recovery, as Ted is two weeks into healing from a surgically repaired elbow. What all goes into repairing a broken bone? Why is sleep disrupted, why is sleep a hot sweaty mess (literally), why do resting heart rates skyrocket, what the heck is HRV, and how are they all tied tog...