The Slow Ride: A Cycling Podcast · WideAnglePodiumNetwork

Cocaine Gravel

·56 min·5 clips

Why did a rider take a principled stand on human rights just before winning a major race?

Things are happening now. The cold open sounds relieved that the calendar finally has race results that count, instead of preseason noise trying to pass as meaning. Episode 520 gets its cities in. Tim is in Orlando, Matt is in Minneapolis, and Spencer is in western Massachusetts, so the room already feels like a scattered group text with microphones. Rosa L. hangs over the start. Her Cobbled Gambit preview for Omloop gets treated like cycling fan fiction with real analytical ambition, even though the picked winner misses. The joke is affectionate, mostly. They enjoy the weirdness of a race preview turning into a story, then enjoy racing refusing to follow the story even more. From there, the excerpt swerves hard. The loudest energy lands on a ride report where family budget logic, bike-racing gear desire, and camping math all start fighting for the same lane. Sprinter vans get a sales pitch. A rooftop tent sounds just plausible enough to frame as family fun, even when the real goal is getting to bike races. The bike check gets wonderfully specific. Almost everyone is on carbon, with only two metal bikes spotted, including Graham's Firefly titanium and the host's Richie Swiss Cross. The setup is not perfect. A borrowed bike leaves the saddle a little low, the back starts complaining, and it all gets filed under the normal comedy of underprepared endurance riding. Car camping has one portalette. Somehow that becomes race infrastructure, personal crisis management, and the kind of logistical detail cyclists remember more clearly than scenery. The ride still works out. There is a flat tire, no sealant, and a mini pump that does just enough to keep air in until the finish. That is the trophy. The closing beat shifts into big crit-racing language about physics, bodies through space, city streets, and the golden age of criteriums. It is almost too polished for the room. After the saddle height, tent justification, and portalette pressure, that Criterium Nation gloss lands as a funny reminder that cycling can sell itself as pure sport while everyone else is fixing flats in a field.

As heard by us

Wrong predictions, real race talk, and a flat-tire save, delivered with bike-nerd mischief.

Episode 520 keeps the season moving with actual race results on the board, and last week’s Rosa L. preview lands in comic wrong-guess territory after Victor Kampart takes the win.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want cycling banter that happily swerves from Omloop to campsite chaos.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Slow Ride: A Cycling Podcast