'Chasing 350' Comes to Life
Pidcock out, Remco doored, Ironman's $200K finale, Race Lottery Szn, the best super shoes, our fav. books, and more...
👋 Good morning and happy Friday. As always, I’m Scott. Feel free to reach me here.
This is the Front Pack Newsletter, your weekly source for all things endurance. We give you the tasty morsels of everything happening in cycling, triathlon, and running. Enjoy!
Was it just me or did that time with family over Thanksgiving really hit differently this year? Yes, it’s always exhausting and feels like the soup de jour to complain, but having the kids at home and family from in out of town to just sit down and chat did me wonders. At no point did I feel the weight of rushing to make it home for bedtime or finish a conversation early because I had a deadline. For 4 straight sober days, we all just kind of got to reconnect and it was beautiful. It put a lot of the small stuff I worry about into perspective too. Life ain’t easy, yall and as I write this, I’ll be honest, pre-Thanksgiving I was feeling down about a lot but post Thanksgiving, I am feeling rejuvenated and eager to get going because I have some pretty incredible people around me. So yea, let’s all start thinking about 2025 and how we will do more, launch more, learn more, and god willing, succeed more. Because that Sweat Equity season never stops.
Stay moving…✌🏼
Join Chasing 350 - a group for all UB XL Riders
I mentioned I’ll be doing the Life Time Unbound Gravel XL at the end of May.
It’s 350 miles and less than 150 people tow the line for this race. In 2024, only 117 even tried, with 115 finishing within the 36 hour cut off. Overall, more than 5,000 athletes race Unbound each year.
XL is but a select, small group, but does NOT need to be lonely.
At Front Pack, we created ‘Chasing 350’ a group within the platform for any 350 athletes past and present.
If you’re 350 curious and interested in this race, join today. It is completely free.
We will have monthly video chats together, course recon, discuss gear, training, and more. Hell, maybe we even create some kits and merch should people be down.
Headlines
The Hunt Down Under: The Hunt 1000 is a self-supported bikepacking event traversing Australia’s high country. Around half of the riders finished the full 1,000-kilometer route between Canberra and Melbourne, navigating a challenging route through Australia’s high country. The winner, Tom Moschitz finished in 4 days, 12 hours, 3 minutes. More impressive (and cool), a father-and-son duo, Mark Gilbert and 13-year-old Nicky finished. Read more…
Nail biter in France: SaintéLyon is one of the biggest events in France, run at nighttime across five distances. The premier race is 82 kilometers (51 miles) and goes point-to-point to connect the cities of Saint-Étienne and Lyon. Thomas Cardin (FR) shook free from Ben Dhiman (USA) in the race’s second half to win in 5:52. Dhiman was second in 6:03 and Andrzej Witek (POL) was third in 6:12. Read more…
$200K Up for Grabs: I suspect this is probably what IRONMAN wanted. The first season of the IRONMAN Pro Series will come right down to the wire at the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in Taupo, New Zealand, as triathlon’s superstars bid for that massive $200k bonus prize. With the KONA King Patrick Lange having already called it a season, the men’s standings will see some jockeying for final positioning. On the women’s side, it is Kat Matthews who is the favorite to take the women’s Pro Series bonus. Full updated standings above. Read more…
Remco Evenepoel Doored: The 24-year-old Belgian superstar suffered a nasty crash during training that saw his bike split in half, him left with rib, shoulder blade and hand fractures, lung contusions, a dislocated right clavicle, and several torn ligaments after colliding with the open door of a postal vehicle. Read more…
Pidcock Out: It’s been rumored for months but the hammer finally dropped. Tom Pidcock and Ineos Grenadiers are parting ways by ‘mutual consent.’ The double Olympic champ has yet to confirm a new team for 2025. Read more…
Meanwhile
Other happenings in the world of endurance.
Analyzing Lottery Season: A Statistical Look at Lottery Entries for Popular Trail Races: iRunFar does such an epic job at deep diving things throughout the year. This go around, they created a dataset of 258 separate races to breakdown race lotteries, odds, YoY changes to registrations and some strategies for navigating race lotteries. Read more…
How to Maintain Cycling Fitness When Riding Isn’t an Option: Pick your poison. Is it that Winter is near. Or you have a busy schedule, or is it because you travel for work? Whatever the reason, maintain your cycling fitness with a few key strategies. Read more…
The 7 Best Competition Running Shoes of 2024: Be like me. Read this list. Put the shoes in your notes app, and when they’re heavily discounted in 2025, snag a few pairs. The list includes *Nike Vaporfly 3, *Alphafly 3, *ASICS Metaspeed Sky Paris, *Saucony Endorphin Pro 4, *Adidas Adizero Adios pro 3, and more. Read more…
Creating new kicks from old soles: I’m a huge proponent of recycling old running shoes. Look in my garage and you’ll see at least 8 pairs waiting to live on because I HATE the idea of simply dumping them in the trash. The shoe industry also comes at a great cost to the environment: from production to end-of-life, it generates about 700 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. Meet Dutch (of course) company, FastFeetGrinded who is recycling nearly 3,000 shoes per hour and turning the materials into other products. Read more…
ASICS OR GTFO: That headline comes straight from my heart and core. Look. I’m an ASICS guy through and through. I’ve tried all the running shoes but never do they compare to the love that my ASICS have shown me. They hug my feet ever so delicately, never presenting even the smallest of blisters. Sooo when I saw this (April 2024) article highlighting the best Asics right now, I had to drop it in for all of my holiday shopping runners. Includes Superblast, Novablast, Magic Speed and others. Read more…
Year of the Ranger: A lot of tech releases happen throughout the year but it was RaceRanger that may have been the most impactful. If you’re not in the know, those hockey puck looking trackers on the bike fork were new to 2024 anti-drafting devices in triathlon. Drafting is a serious issue in all kinds of races, especially when on course refs can’t be everywhere at once. RaceRanger essentially measures the distance from bike to bike at any given moment and indicates this through a series of lights on sensors fixed to each seat post. For Ironman racing, an orange light comes on when the following rider is at 17 meters, turns blue when they reach 14 meters and then flashes red when they enter the 12-meter draft zone. Take a peak behind the curtain at this revolutionizing tech and hear from the founders themselves in this in-depth story. Read more…
Don’t feed the stupid
Just a general PSA. [watch here]
BOOKS!
Yes, I read. And here are some awesome books that you might like too.
Ryan Van Duzer - The Long Way Home: Ever wonder how Ryan Van Duzer fell in love with bicycle travel? After finishing a two-year stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras, Ryan decided that the best (and most fun) way to return home to Boulder, CO, would be by bicycle. He'd never done anything like this before, but his enthusiasm for adventure and love of bikes fueled his 4,000-mile journey through Central America, Mexico, and across the southern border into the US. This is a story about exploration, friendship, and falling in love with the magic of the open road. [here]
Brad Fawley - The Frontrunner: A book that rivals any other about a runners journey. The author captures everything runners face—from the challenges of training and racing at all levels to life and love. [here]
Michael Crawley - To the Limit: To the Limit sets out to rediscover the joy of moving together as a group – whether it's running the length of the Lake District in a day, or navigating the descents of the Sindhupalchok International Trail Race in Nepal. It shows us how endurance activities can help bring people together, and even change the way we think about the natural world and our place in it. [here]
Michael Easter - Scarcity Brain: Our world is overloaded with everything we’re built to crave. The fix for scarcity brain isn’t to blindly aim for less. It’s to understand why we crave more in the first place, shake our worst habits, and use what we already have better. Then we can experience life in a new way—a more satisfying way. [here]
Kara Goucher - The Longes Race: In one of the most important athlete memoirs of its generation, Olympian Kara Goucher reveals her experience of living through and speaking out about one of the biggest scandals in running. [here]
Training Tips
Because training is life.
I Changed My Life In 7 Months: We’ve covered off on Dan’s journey before but if you haven’t paid attention, do so. You too can change your life.
How to Navigate Your Hardest Seasons of Life with Sally McRae: I’m reluctant to post podcasts here but this was a worthy listen as we all hit December and reflect on our 2024 and begin goal setting for what’s next.
Rewatchables
Content for long training days inside or just everyday life.
"JORTS Route" A Gravel Bike Adventure | 420 Miles: The Pennsylvania Dirtbags hit the gravel roads, going from west to east across the entire state in this short documentary.
Rider Resilience: Adversity comes in all flavors. This is a film dedicated to tackling adversity head-on.
The Build To Black Canyon 100K: Heather Jackson’s build up to the 2025 Black Canyon in Arizona.
Inside the Mind of an Ultra Runner: In this raw interview, Courtney shares her journey into running, her love for ultras, and the mental and physical strategies that keep her pushing through the toughest races.
Great issue, and good luck on the 350XL. Also, thanks for the re-watchables and keep the podcast episodes coming.