I'm Pace McElvin and this is the With Pace podcast.

It was clear three years ago at least that this is cross is not the hill.

I'm willing to, like, my career is going to die on.

You know, I'm tired of begging for scraps and not getting them. Yeah only you're begging for scraps, you're not getting scraps. Like you're getting nothing. You don't actually have any sport. You're not paying your bills with it. You're not doing anything with it. You know, it's just a different world. And as much as I love that world, it's like, you know, I actually want to have a professional. I want to be a

professional.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back. Today's conversation is not one that I expected to have, actually,

at least not in February, especially not in Gerona. Caleb Swartz is one of the newest selections for the Lifetime Grand Prix

going into 2026. He's one of the new names. I was out on a ride outside Gerona, kind of in the

foothills of the Pyrenees a week or so ago, just outside a small city called Olat,

and ran into Caleb, which was a big surprise.

And it was fun to finish the last hour of our ride together and catch up a little bit.

And I certainly had him penciled in as a name that I wanted to catch up with on the podcast

once the Grand Prix season got rolling with him being a new name and all. But I was really intrigued by his decision to come over to

Europe and do a few weeks of training on his own and really chase some adventure. So I figured

he'd have some good stories and luckily we were able to catch him right before he headed back

to the States. So big thanks to Caleb for hopping on with us. I also want to say thank you

to Osprey Pax for supporting today's episode. My season's about to kick off. I'm going to do

Sahara Gravel as my first race of the year, which I'm very excited for.

It's an event that I probably had the most fun at of all events last year.

One of the things that's really fun is it's a point-to-point race,

and so the race transports a bag for you from the start of one stage to the next and the next.

But because of that, you're confined to a certain size.

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