The Rundown: The Christmas edition. The guys gather a week out from the holiday to talk about what they actually want in their stockings, the gear they have been reaching for, and the year they just put behind them. It runs from winter weight room confessions to cyclocross nationals to a long, honest detour into mini pumps and race nutrition, then closes with everyone looking back on what went right in 2025. Still here, still riding, still making a podcast.
Backpedal: weights, weather, and an ugly sweater ride
Everyone is in the gym this winter, which is new for most of them. Matt is two weeks into a push, pull, legs routine and owning the fact that he is mostly there to be a little sore the next day. Lance started lifting three weeks ago at Planet Fitness, going easy on a back that has bitten him before, and he is convinced that getting older has quietly stiffened his discs enough to keep them from herniating. Ian is two or three days a week at the gym and trying to claw his power numbers back before a Tenerife trip that includes a 108 mile day with over 12,000 feet of climbing. That is a seven hour day, the kind you do not want to show up to underbuilt.
The weather has been the other story. An atmospheric river parked over the Portland area, inches of rain, a windstorm, power outages, and canceled schools. Nobody wants to be out on the road in it. Jake got the one good day of the stretch for the team ugly sweater ride, somewhere between 35 and 40 people, no mechanicals, just the usual splintering at stoplights and a few riders going off the front. He also handed out his whole stash of loaner sweaters, including one that meant something: an ugly Christmas jersey that belonged to a late friend, passed on for the right person. And the Bikes for Kids campaign is back, already past 1,200 dollars before the real push has even started.
Leadout: cyclocross gets fresh names and a Namur slugfest
Champ takes the news. US Cyclocross Nationals ran in Fayetteville, Arkansas, dry but bitterly cold. Defending champ Andrew Strohmeier skipped it to race a full UCI block in Europe, which opened the door for Eric Brunner to finally take the elite men's title after years of trying. The podium behind him was full of names the guys did not recognize, which is a good sign for the depth coming up in American cross. Lizzy Gonzalez won the elite women's race, with the Sarkisov sisters second and third.
Across the pond, Mathieu van der Poel finally lined up for a cross race and won, though he did not run away with it. Thibau Nys and Michael Vanthourenhout pushed him at Namur, a course the guys love to watch for its cobbled climbs and brutal off-camber descents. Strohmeier actually led for a few laps before fading. Lucinda Brand won the women's race while carrying some heavy family news, showing up and racing through it, which hit harder than any result. The cursed period is about to start, nine or so races in ten days around Belgium and the Netherlands, with Wout van Aert set to jump in for a handful before the others head to training camp in southern Spain.
What we actually want in our stockings
Jake's first real question of the night: what is going in your stocking, cycling or not? Coal, obviously. After that, the honest answers turn into a gear conversation worth saving.
The big one is the mini pump. Ian asked his wife for one of those rechargeable USB inflators. Lance already runs the smaller Cycplus and likes it. The guys trade the real-world catches: the little ones only give you three or four pump-ups on a charge, less on a high-volume mountain tire, and the battery can be dead in your flat kit when you finally need it. There is also a heat problem worth knowing. These pumps warm up as they run, and a thin TPU tube has a plastic valve stem that can actually melt against a hot pump head, so a short extender hose is your friend. Lance even bricked one by letting tubeless sealant get sucked back into the pump while topping off a tire.
Where it lands for the lab: buy nice or buy twice. The market is flooded with mini inflators full of plastic bits that wear out, and the guys make the case for spending a little more on something built to last. The Silca inflators have been flying off the shelf, selling out and getting restocked through the holidays. The Electtrico Micro is the compact one and the Electtrico Ultimate has more capacity for bigger tires, and both are on sale right now. The same logic carries to floor pumps. Ian's Silca track pump uses a metal threaded chuck that never gives him trouble, and when something does eventually wear out you can buy the small replacement parts instead of throwing the whole pump in the landfill. That repairability is most of why the guys keep coming back to the brand.
Then the talk turns to fuel, because half of a good stocking is nutrition. Lance is running 40 gram carb gels, the SiS Beta Fuel line in the black package, and putting his electrolytes and a little Skratch in the bottle while he gets most of his carbs from gels. Ian likes the more solid 160 size gels because they do not coat your hands and shifter in syrup mid-race, a problem Lance has a lot of feelings about. The honest thread underneath it: grams of carbohydrate are not the same as calories, and a lot of riders misread a label and think they are taking in 100 grams when it is really 100 calories and 22 grams of carb. Most of them top out around 100 grams an hour before their gut turns on them, which is a trainable skill but not a free one.
Jake's bigger point on nutrition is one only a shop owner makes: a lot of these brands source from the same small handful of suppliers and compete mostly on flavoring and marketing. The way the lab vets a line is to hand a sample to a customer, ask for honest feedback and a little research, and only lean in if the product and the homework both check out. Buyer beware, read the label, and the good stuff rises to the top.
Looking back: the 2025 triumphs
Lance's year stands out twice. He nearly broke four hours for the El Tour de Tucson century, averaging 24 and a half miles an hour for a hundred miles, and he won several gravel races on race craft rather than raw speed. Knowing he would not be the fastest climber, he stopped blowing himself up to hang with the lead group, trusted that he could pull them back on the descents, and saved enough matches to gap them at the end. A few years ago he would have buried himself early and had nothing left. This year he played the cards right and won his age group more than once.
Ian called his race results unremarkable but was proud of holding his own in national level fields in Arizona and feeling like he belonged. His real highlight was personal: back home near Garmisch, Germany, he went after a KOM on a three kilometer climb called the Eibsee and beat the time his 22 year old self laid down on the same hill, pushing 300 watts for 10 to 15 minutes at 64. Beating your younger self up the same climb decades later is the kind of win that does not show on a results sheet.
Matt's proudest work was off the bike, coaching a cross country team through a long season, tuning out the parent noise, and getting a group of teenagers to run faster while making it fun. On the channel, his Garmin Fenix 8 after 100 days video did well, and he got invited back to Apple's product events, which is its own kind of milestone. He also sketched out a video series he wants to make called What Makes the Tech Tick, the journalism-flavored stuff that lets his real personality show.
Jake's was the website. Pulling the trigger and rebuilding the entire storefront on a new platform, consolidating two systems into one, sounds small until you live it. The payoff has been real: a best month earlier in the year of around 75 online orders, and a recent 30 day stretch north of 300. He still writes a personal thank you on every order, and tucks something extra into the ones that find the lab and pay close to full price when they could have shopped elsewhere. The reach, and the people on the other end of it, are the fun part.
One last thing
The obstacles were honest too. Lance overtrains and does not always let himself absorb the work. Matt did the 100 Mile Challenge and then never built on the fitness. Ian is managing right knee tendinopathy and learning how much a two-sided power meter exposes about his actual output. Jake finally admitted that 70 to 80 hour weeks are not sustainable, a lesson he is carrying into 2026.
Matt's One Last Thing is a run of videos coming to his channel, a COROS and Garmin watch comparison and the Apple Ultra 3 after 100 days. Ian's was gratitude, plain and a little heavy: he is thankful he gets to pour himself into cycling, and very aware that teammates dealing with a life-altering crash and serious diagnoses put the whole thing in perspective. Cycling can feel like a luxury fast, and it also gives back the relationships and the stories that make it matter. Lance pointed everyone to the Bikes for Kids GoFundMe, where even a few dollars adds up to new bikes for kids who need them. And Jake closed on the season itself, a house that looks like Christmas threw up on it, kids home from college, and four hours of sleep that was completely worth it.
That is the Christmas edition. Merry Christmas from the guys, and if you have a flat repair kit gathering dust on a shelf, this is your sign to rebuild it before the new year. A Dynaplug and a fresh tube beat a phone call home every time.
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