Payson McElveen Talks About Breaking the White Rim FKT Record and MTB Training
Singletracks Mountain Bike Podcast
Singletracks.com
4.7 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 17 June 2019
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Professional mountain bike racer Payson McElveen shares how he got started in the sport and talks about his favorite places to ride. His latest competitive projects involve establishing the fastest known times (FKTs) for iconic mountain bike routes like the White Rim Trail in Utah. We ask Payson for his training tips and how racing against the clock is different from racing the field.
Follow Payson on Instagram @paysonmcelveen and check out his podcast, The Adventure Stache, available in podcast apps and on his website.
--Keep up with the latest in mountain biking at Singletracks.com and on Instagram @singletracks
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Something unexpected has arrived in Happy Meal. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Hello Kitty and |
| 0:05.6 | friends are teaming up for the ultimate collab. Joining your little ones on a fun-fueled adventure. |
| 0:11.0 | Some fun, some food, it's all inside this happy meal. Until the 2nd of February from 11am, |
| 0:18.0 | includes one pre-selected book or toy whilst it's last. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the single tracks podcast. My name is Matt, and today my guest is Payson McKelvin. Payson's a Red Bull and Orange Steel sponsored athlete. He races cross-country and endurance events, traveled across the country in his van to race. It's a two times marathon national champion, a single speed |
| 0:39.5 | world champ. He's taken third in Leadville, first in the firecracker 50, has a bunch of other |
| 0:44.5 | race and mountain bike accolades. Is there anything I miss Payson? I don't know. That's plenty. |
| 0:53.7 | So going back to the beginnings, how did you get your start mountain biking? |
| 0:58.0 | I believe, well, it depends on how you define that. |
| 1:00.6 | I mean, we grew up down a dirt road, so kind of everything was mountain biking. |
| 1:04.9 | But I first got on a bike, I guess, when I was four years old without training wheels. |
| 1:09.6 | I started going mountain biking on trail, |
| 1:12.2 | probably when I was, I don't know, eight or ten with my dad. And he had a health issue that |
| 1:18.6 | made it so that he couldn't ride shortly thereafter. And so riding kind of went away from my |
| 1:24.4 | life a little bit. And I got more into mainstream sports, primarily basketball |
| 1:27.8 | and track and field. And then when I was about 14, I had a couple injuries playing basketball |
| 1:33.9 | that kind of pushed me back towards the bike and haven't looked back since. And so it sounds like |
| 1:40.3 | your dad played somewhat of a part in getting you into mountain biking. |
| 1:50.5 | Yeah, absolutely. He actually, well, he was a very successful track and field athlete, |
| 1:59.1 | primarily a pole vaulter, really high level NCAA athlete. After that, he got into kayaking and came out to where I live now pretty frequently, long before I was |
| 2:04.0 | born, the Durango, Colorado, Four Corners area pretty often to kayak right when that sport was |
| 2:11.8 | taking off, even a little before it was taking off, honestly. And then kind of as his shoulders got more and more beat up, he transitioned more into |
| 2:22.0 | mountain biking because that was a sport that was beginning to explode. |
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