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

When I registered, I had been talking to the organizers and they said there were going to be world tour pros here and people from different disciplines.

And when they, when they told me that I knew that I needed

to be here because there's very few opportunities I've ever had to be lining up with people

who are in some you know who race world tour and I was really motivated by that because I've

always been intrigued by the road anyways yeah it's a it's a dense field. I'll say it that way.

Kaylee Smith, you had an awesome ride today. Do you know how to pronounce where we are?

Graffronet. So you do say the T? Yes, I heard someone, someone welcomed me to the town earlier.

Yeah.

So we are inland.

We are in what they call the Kuru, which is pretty arid.

How would you characterize an area in the U.S. or Canada?

Yeah, it kind of looks like Penticton or maybe Arizona or even like a little bit like

outback vibes.

Like if you do the drive from Melbourne across to Adelaide, like that, there's not a whole lot.

Kind of looks like that.

Agreed.

So before we talk about today's race, I thought it would be fun to just talk about your year quickly.

Can you share a bit about how the year has been and the good, bad, frustrating, all that?

Yeah, this is probably been the hardest year for me next to the Olympic year. It's been very challenging. I have not performed

well. And honestly, we knew that coming into the year. We knew it was going to be a challenging

year for me just with dealing with long COVID last year in the hole that I put my body into.

...