EP. 75 - Liam Glen, Winner of the HT550 on a Rigid SS
Bikes or Death
Patrick Farnsworth
4.8 • 563 Ratings
🗓️ 9 June 2021
⏱️ 97 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On May 22nd Liam Glen lined up at the start of the Highland Trail 550 on his fully rigid single speed Stooge Cycles Scrambler against the likes of James Hayden, Josh Isbett, and others. He would go on to win with a time of 3d, 10h, 55m which was good enough to get the SS Course Record and almost enough to best the Course Record set by Neil Beltchenko in 2017 (3d, 10h, 20m). Liam is no stranger to this event, he also won it in 2016 with a time of 4d, 2h, 48m. After a 2019 DNF on this route he switched up his bike and his mindset which proved to be the winning receipt.
No doubt about it, this was an impressive run at this course, but when you factor in that he was riding a steel, rigid, ss (34x20) it's kinda mind blowing.
The Highland Trail 550 is a route created by Alan Goldsmith in the northern region of Scotland, covering 550 miles with 52,500 ft of climbing through Scotland's rugged terrain and unpredictable weather.
It was great to catch up with Liam for a chat. I wasn't familiar with him prior to this event, but that's what's exciting about being a podcaster in this space right now. It's so much fun to talk to someone who accomplished something absolutely remarkable, but yet we know so little about them. I hope you'll enjoy hearing about this amazing accomplishment, but also what it took, and his path to get there.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, friends, and welcome to the Bikes or Death podcast. As always, my name is Patrick, and I am your |
| 0:05.5 | host. And we've got a great episode for y'all today. My guest is Liam Glenn. He just won |
| 0:12.6 | the Highland Trail 550, and he did it on a single speed, rigid bike. Truly an impressive effort, |
| 0:19.9 | especially whenever you consider that racers like James |
| 0:23.6 | Hayden and Josh Ibit were also in the field. And you know anytime you see those names, |
| 0:29.7 | at least when I see those names, I think, hey, this is going to be a pretty quick race. |
| 0:33.7 | So it was just even more impressive to me that he was able to complete this course and win it on a single speed rigid bike. |
| 0:41.2 | It really made me want to reach out and talk to him. |
| 0:44.8 | I have to be honest, you know, I'd never heard of Liam before. |
| 0:48.3 | And when I went to go research him, there wasn't a whole lot of information. |
| 0:52.0 | But that's one of the things that I really do love about podcasting at this time is that there's a guy like Liam who, as I find out, |
| 0:59.5 | was working towards being a professional road cyclist, went through a few different variations |
| 1:04.1 | in his cycling career, and has actually been at the Highland Trail Race for a while. He |
| 1:09.6 | originally won it in 2016, |
| 1:11.8 | which was his first time to enter it. And it's just been a journey all the way from then until now. |
| 1:17.9 | It was just a lot of fun to get to chat with them and pick his brain a little bit and just learn about him. |
| 1:24.0 | It's one of my favorite things to do is just get to know the people in this community who we may not know that much about. You can watch a dot and you can, you know, see some pictures of his |
| 1:33.4 | bike on the internet, but not a lot of information out there. So this was a really fun episode for me. I |
| 1:38.8 | really did enjoy getting to know Liam and was truly impressed by his story. I think he really does represent what is at the |
| 1:46.6 | heart of bikepacking. And he's really just a great steward for the sport and an all-around |
| 1:52.5 | nice guy. I really did enjoy talking to him and I'm looking forward to seeing what he does in the |
| 1:58.1 | future. I'm certainly not going to sleep on him anymore. Anytime I see |
... |
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