Hello, friends and welcome to the Bikes for Death podcast.

As always, my name is Patrick and I am your host.

And on today's interview, I am interviewing Eden Taiji,

who just became the sixth place finisher

at this year's Idaho Smoke and Fire 400.

One thing that will quickly set Eden apart from the crowd is his age.

At only 13 years old, he signed up to take on this route, solo self-supported.

No friends or family was racing with him. He did this all on his own. And like I mentioned, he finished in sixth place with a time of two days, 15 hours, and 31 minutes. There was actually only an hour and a half that separated the third and sixth place finitures.

So this was a very tight race.

And Eden actually finished only eight hours behind the legend, Jay Peterbury.

As a father of a 12-year-old who is about to Terran 13, this story absolutely captivated me.

I was intrigued, impressed, and wanted to get to know Eden, wanted to understand what makes him tick and learn from him and his youthful wisdom.

So glad that he joined us on today's episode. I had a absolute delight talking to him and i cannot wait to see

what he does in the future if you're not familiar with the idaho smoke and fire 400 it's been

around for a while they first started in 2014 and as the name indicates it is held in in Idaho and it's about 400 miles.

Typically, it is a loop, but this year, and also true to its name,

Fire demanded a reroute, making the route a little bit closer to 375 miles.

And instead of being a traditional loop, it was actually an out and back,

which made for some interesting dot watching and also interesting from the participant standpoint.

I've often said on this podcast that the great thing about bikepacking and endurance sports

is that it is a great equalizer.

Bikepack racing doesn't care how old you are, what gender you are, if you're on the

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