The Rundown: The guys are all in the studio for a good one: a 100-mile group ride to the coast, the opening weekend of cyclocross, the Vuelta heating up, and a listener question that hits the heart of why most of us ride at all. How do you keep cycling fun while still getting faster? The answer turns out to be most of what this episode is about. Still here, still riding, still making a podcast.
Backpedal: 100 miles to Astoria and a season ramping up
The standout was a Saturday group ride from downtown Portland to Astoria, about 100 miles with 15 riders, most of them led by local peloton patron Dickie Mallison on a loosely-defined birthday ride. Lance tacked on extra miles from his house to make it 111, and the whole thing rolled at a strong but social tempo, around 19 and a half miles an hour, because everyone in the group could genuinely ride. It stayed civil until a kicker into Astoria, where Lance lined up a leadout from Chris Phipps and the group reclaimed a KOM. One flat on Highway 30 and one driver rolling coal were the only blemishes on what Ian called the best day of the year. Sag support, beer, and pizza at the finish did the rest.
Matt has been buried in cross country coaching and barely on the bike. Ian is in the gym a couple days a week doing knee rehab for a tendon issue, still riding, waiting to get his van back from a transmission job. Lance, naturally, logged a 20-hour week: a three-and-a-half-hour gravel ride with newly-retired riding buddy Ed Dudlick up in the Gifford Pinchot, the Astoria century, and a Lone Butte route with a long singletrack section where he went over the bars on a pedal strike and messed up his hand, then rode two more big days on it anyway. His first cyclocross race of the season, Het Meer at Vancouver Lake with its sand sections, was 22 hours away. The guys also marked a milestone: Lance's YouTube channel crossed 1,000 subscribers, which kicked off an honest tangent on how channel income really works, views and advertiser category matter far more than subscriber count, and cycling sits in the modest middle.
Leadout: a Vuelta full of drama on and off the road
Champ takes the news, recorded mid-race so results stayed spoiler-free for Ian. Jonas Vingegaard held the Vuelta lead, around 50 seconds over Joao Almeida with Tom Pidcock third, and Visma Lease a Bike was riding superbly behind him, with Matteo Jorgenson, Sepp Kuss, and an all-star turn from Victor Campenaerts. UAE, by contrast, was a mess despite stage wins, because their young talent Juan Ayuso announced he was leaving the team mid-race, the team let him out of his contract, and both sides aired grievances publicly. Ayuso ejected on one mountain stage, then won the next one outright, which told its own story.
The bigger story was off the bike. Pro-Palestine protests targeted the race over the presence of the Israel Premier Tech team, blocking the road during the team time trial and, in Bilbao, overwhelming a thin police presence to flood the finishing straight. Organizers responded by taking times three kilometers out rather than risk chaos at the line, so the stage had no official winner just as Pidcock and Vingegaard were off the front, robbing everyone of a sprint the guys badly wanted to see. Pidcock rode through the line anyway, chalking it up to Pidcock things. The Mountain Bike Marathon World Championships in Switzerland were next, with Keegan Swenson heading over to contest them.
Balancing fun and training
The heart of the episode, from Jason in West Virginia: a 41-year-old gravel racer training 10 to 12 hours a week for years, bored of the same intervals on the same roads, who bought a mountain bike hoping to bring the fun back. How do you balance enjoyment with training benefit, and how does mountain biking fit a weekly plan?
Lance, who lives this question, made the case for mountain biking on its own merits: it is the most engaging riding there is, and you cannot help but do intervals on it, since trail sections force 700 to 800-watt surges whether you plan them or not. Jake added that the power profile of a mountain ride is nothing like a structured road workout, full of micro-spikes you do not even notice, and that staying in zone two on a mountain bike is almost impossible. Ian brought the coach's nuance: mountain biking is huge for motivation and unmatched for variable-effort fitness and bike-handling skills, but specificity is real, so if you are training for steady-state time trials it is not the most targeted tool. His sharper point was that the same intervals week upon week for years is not great training regardless; real structure needs periodization, rest, and a transition phase.
Where everyone agreed: fun has to be built into the schedule on purpose, or training becomes a chore, and the community side carries most riders through. Group rides do double duty, they hold you accountable, they let you hide in a big bunch or attack off the front, and they push you to do efforts at someone else's pace instead of your own. The other motivation hack was Garmin and Strava: Lance builds his interval workouts around specific Strava segments, rewinding the interval on his head unit to line up with a segment he wants to attack, and has made hundreds of his own. Chasing a KOM back from a rival turns out to be far better motivation than grinding generic intervals. For Jason specifically, the new mountain bike is exactly the right medicine, just do not expect it to replace targeted training for a steady-state goal.
One last thing
Matt posted a OnePlus Watch 3 review and is gearing up for a full cross country day in the Tillamook area, 8 in the morning to 8 at night, then a trip to Apple's headquarters, where he has, in past years, ended up seated next to Marques Brownlee with five followers to Brownlee's five million. Ian gave a shout to his friend Steve, who is launching a new cycling team and club, Ride 2 Rescue, tied to a dog-rescue charity, starting in San Diego with regional chapters and a nominal membership; the same Steve who first introduced Ian and Jake years ago.
Lance is into cyclocross season in full force and spent the close debating camera mounts for filming his races, chest mount versus stem mount, with Matt insisting chest looks best for the running sections. Jake signed off buried in work and sleep deprivation, half-joking it might be the last anyone hears from him, looking forward to a little college football and watching second-ranked Penn State, where his daughter goes to school. The guys will be back as soon as the dust settles.
That is 374. A century to the coast, the Vuelta in turmoil, and an honest answer to a question every committed rider eventually asks: how to keep the thing you love from turning into work. The short version, ride with your friends, chase a segment, and buy the mountain bike.
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