Lael Wilcox - The best of the best in Ultra Endurance Cycling

Life in the Peloton, presented by MAAP

Mitch Docker

Health & Fitness, Fitness, Sports, Wilderness

4.8 • 543 Ratings

🗓️ 21 September 2022

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rapha presents Life in the Peloton! Lael Wilcox is an American Ultra-distance cyclist and one of the absolute legends of the discipline. She is the record holder for some of the sport’s most famous races, such as the 2,475 mile Tour Divide and the 4,400 mile Trans Am Bike Race (If you don’t fancy the math – that’s roughly 4000km and 7000km!) - and that's against both men and women. ... Ultra-distance racing is an intriguing and new side of cycling that I have only started to discover in the last couple of years. Lael was the perfect person to explain and dive into the interesting ins and outs of this kind of racing. Having originally taken up cycling to get to work, she found her way into long-distance riding by pure accident, and within a year was already competing in her first 400-mile (640km) event! Since taking on that first challenge in her native Alaska, Lael began travelling the world and competing in other Ultra events. In almost no time at all, she was breaking records. Lael explained perfectly how the sport works, and the key differences between the types of events, either supported or self-supported. We had a great laugh at some of the stories from Lael’s many adventures and we went into the details of how she manages her equipment, her preparation, and even what she prefers to listen to on those long nights alone on the bike. I also wanted to know what makes Lael, and so many other women excel at Ultra-distance races. It was really interesting to hear her take on why women are so competitive and to hear her recount her excitement when she first started overtaking the men (passing them while they slept in hotels on the route, and then sleeping under a hedge for two hours to drop them all the next morning!) This chat also came at a great time for me, as I was in my final preparations for my own long-distance adventure riding 1,250km from my home in Lancefield, just outside of Melbourne, to the Road World Championships in Wollongong in five days. (Stay tuned for my On the Road to the Worlds episode in 2 weeks time). For now though, sit back, relax and enjoy this one. Lael was a fantastic person to chat all things Ultra-distance and more and I really enjoyed recording this one. Cheers, Mitch Listen Listen & subscribe to this series on the Life in the Peloton website, at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, GooglePlay, Stitcher, Youtube or your favourite pod app. Show Notes Check out more of Lael’s adventures: Tour Divide – Rapha Gone Racing – https://www.rapha.cc/es/en/stories/lael-wilcox Arizona Trail 2022 – https://youtu.be/4HOk0MmgFwE . . . This episode is brought to you by Rapha, makers of the world’s finest cycling clothing & accessories and the worlds largest cycling club, RCC. Find out more about Rapha: their kit, their club, their events and awesome clubhouses at rapha.cc. . . . Merch Talking Luft and Official LITP casquettes are back in stock. Shop now! Shop LITP casual Merch anytime online at our store. From casual caps to mugs, logo tees, sweaters and much more.. Keep in touch Find all our episodes, LITP news and merch on our website www.lifeinthepeloton.com Listen on all good podcast apps, and now on Youtube. Follow us on socials: Instagram: @lifeinthepeloton Twitter: @lifeinthepelo

Transcript

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0:00.0	Goody,
0:07.0	Giday, everyone, and welcome to Life in the Peloton.
0:25.5	I'm Mitch Docker and I've got a cracking episode for you this week.
0:29.2	I spoke about her last week, Lale Wilcox.
0:32.7	Now, you may have not heard of Lail in the pro cycling scene
0:35.8	because she's involved in ultra-distance cycling.
0:38.9	And I'm talking about bike packing, but actually racing. What is an ultra-distance cycling event?
0:44.4	We're going to talk about that in the podcast. It's a self-supported event over long distances,
0:49.2	anywhere from 300 kilometres, right through to thousands of kilometres. There's events like
0:53.9	the Tour to
0:54.5	Divide, the Transamerica. You've also got stuff over in Europe as well. Here in Australia,
1:00.0	there's things like Race to the Rock. These are crazy events. And I think it's so appropriate
1:05.5	that we're talking about this because as you're listening to this, I will be just completing
1:09.4	my ultra-distance sort of tour event
1:12.4	that I made myself, really. I'm riding from my house in Landsfield all the way up to Wollongong
1:17.8	and onto Sydney, and I should be rolling into Sydney right now as you're listening to this episode.
1:22.8	Hopefully things have gone to plan. A little bit about Lyle. She grew up in Alaska.
1:26.8	She graduated from
1:27.9	university in 2008 with degrees in natural science and French literature. And at age 20,
1:33.4	her boyfriend of the time, Nicholas Carman and her decided to tour the world by bike.
1:39.0	She's since now married Rue Caledite, a photojournalist and filmmaker who has documented
1:44.0	many of Lail's adventures. And in doing some research about Lail, I went and watched some of them. You've got to go and check them out. Now, ultra-distance cycling is just another beast that we don't know about unless you've gone out there and done it yourself. And Lail is the queen of them. She's mastered that. I really had a great time talking to her and
	...

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