Athletes Unfiltered – Strava Podcast artwork

Athletes Unfiltered – Strava Podcast

13 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 4 years ago - ★★★★ - 274 ratings

We’re going deeper than ever before and exploring what it means to be an athlete. Our guests range from pro cyclist Laurens ten Dam, who speaks about his struggles in the pro peloton and the time when his career almost ended, to Mirna Valerio, author of the blog “Fat Girl Running” who is trying to change people’s perceptions about what it means to be fit. We’ll speak with Ricky Gates about what he found when he was running every single street in San Francisco – all 1,300 miles of them. And we’ll hear from Brian Williams about what it was like to run the Comrades Marathon in South Africa with his son Tom after he had been exiled from his home country for 15 years for protesting apartheid. These are just a handful of the guests featured on Athletes Unfiltered – subscribe now so you don’t miss any of our second season!

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Episodes

Becoming a Marathoner: Live from New York

November 15, 2019 17:38 - 38 minutes - 35.5 MB

Over 52,000 people ran the 2019 New York City Marathon. Some were fast, some were less fast, but they all ran the same course, and the same distance, and according to our panel of experts, they were mostly all still nervous, and hoping that they didn’t have a problem with a bowel movement. This episode features the best tips and tricks from a pre-race panel with marathon coach Jon Honerkamp, ultrarunner and filmmaker Billy Yang, 85-time marathon/ultramarathon finisher Mary Arnold, ...

Tom and Brian Williams: Chasing Ghosts at the Comrades Marathon

September 24, 2019 17:20 - 34 minutes - 31.7 MB

Before Brian Williams and his son Tom set off to run the Comrades Marathon – an 86.8 kilometer race in South Africa, Brian’s mind was already at the finish. He said, “If we succeed, it'll just be to be the fulfillment of a dream. It'll put to rest many of the ghosts of my past. It's hard to put into words what it means, but it means a lot.” For his role in the anti-apartheid movement, Brian was exiled from South Africa for decades. He grew old away from his country, had a family in...

Dr. Rachel McKinnon: Fighting For The Right to Ride

September 10, 2019 18:45 - 33 minutes - 30.2 MB

Most athletes don’t have to fight for the right to compete in the sport they love. The vast majority of us can just sign up and race. For Rachel McKinnon, it’s not that simple. She’s a transgender athlete, one of the first to win a world championship. And while she has competed in sports her whole life, now she faces harassment just for pinning on a number. “I've received a few death threats. I receive physical hate mail at work. I receive tons of electronic hate mail. And even jus...

Laurens ten Dam: Live Slow, Ride Fast

August 27, 2019 18:53 - 22 minutes - 20.9 MB

“I only won two races in my career and I had a 16-year career, so that would be a shit career if it was about winning for me.” Many cycling fans might be surprised to hear that from Larens ten Dam. In his long career, he finished 9th the Tour de France and stood on more than his fair share of podiums. But he also carried bottles, worked more in support of slightly faster riders, and got hit by a few cars. Throughout it all, he realized that the only certainty in pro cycling is that ...

Susie Chan: Overcoming Injury and Rediscovering Ultra

August 13, 2019 12:51 - 20 minutes - 18.8 MB

Susie Chan didn’t start running until she was almost 40 years old, but she didn’t waste any time. She went all in, racing ultras like the Marathon Des Sables – a multi-day epic through the Sahara Desert. Surviving cancer only motivated her to push harder. But when an injury threatened the possibility that Susie may never be able to run again, she was forced to ask why she was running in the first place. And the answer she finds might be one any runner who is struggling with injury n...

Rickey Gates: Every Single Street

July 30, 2019 17:55 - 26 minutes - 24.5 MB

After finishing a 3,000 mile run across the US, Rickey Gates had a strange feeling that he’d missed something. His route showed him a super thin slice of the country and left him with more questions than answers. He had ended in San Francisco, so for his next adventure he decided to run every single street in the city. “I thought it would be interesting to turn it into a project and treat it similarly to someone who is going after say the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trai...

Mirna Valerio: This Is What a Runner Looks Like

July 16, 2019 17:03 - 29 minutes - 27.5 MB

When Mirna first started running, she wasn’t very good at it. The body she has isn’t most people’s image of a “runner’s body”. “It's a fat body. It's definitely a fat body,” Mirna said. “And I have no trouble using that word. And I know that it makes people uncomfortable which is why I have no trouble using it because I want people to think about the words that they use and about the intention behind their words.” What Mirna does have is a runner’s mind. She has the drive to train...

How did I get here?

March 05, 2019 17:00 - 32 minutes - 30.3 MB

On this episode of Athletes Unfiltered, we’ll speak to three athletes who asked themselves, “How did I get here?” We’ll introduce you to Mimi Anderson, who was a normal British housewife – until she ran across the Sahara Desert. We’ll speak to Greg Erwin, who was touring the world as a rock drummer, but realized what he really wanted to do was ride his bike. And we’ll introduce you to Ayesha McGowan, who went from chasing cars on her fixie, to chasing a dream of becoming the first e...

Going Farther Together

February 19, 2019 16:40 - 32 minutes - 30 MB

In this episode, we show how sport can help us overcome self-doubt, help us make new friends and face up to problems we could never overcome alone. We’ll introduce you to Ernest Gagnon, who struggled with his weight, until the cycling community helped him break away from his anxiety. You’ll hear from Maggie, a runner in LA who wouldn’t let a broken foot keep her from running a half marathon with her friends. And you’ll meet Giuseppe Adeola Richard, who, with the help of a London cyc...

Getting Better With Age

February 05, 2019 17:57 - 29 minutes - 27.2 MB

In this episode, we speak with three athletes who are getting better with age. Gene has run 200-milers and has a marathon PR of 2:54:23 - the fastest ever run by a man in his 70’s. Patricia Berthelier learned to ride a bike at 38 and now, in her 60’s, has discovered a community of ultra-endurance mountain bikers and a sense of freedom she’s never felt before. Brad Huff was the oldest professional cyclist in the US men’s peloton, and now that he’s announced his retirement he has to f...

Rising From the Ashes

January 22, 2019 19:38 - 32 minutes - 30.2 MB

Three stories of people who were faced with overwhelming adversity and how they persevered. We’ll introduce you to a mountain biker who’s rebuilding trails after the California wildfires, an army veteran who battled cancer and a broken femur to get back on the bike, and a runner who turned to her community to find the courage to speak about her sexual assault.

When Everything Turns Upside Down

January 08, 2019 19:24 - 36 minutes - 33.4 MB

Imagine being a world-class trail runner one moment, and then the next thing you remember is waking up in a hospital bed, surrounded by unfamiliar faces telling you that you may never run again. That’s Hillary Allen’s story, which kicks off our first episode of Athletes Unfiltered – a new podcast of inspiring stories from the Strava community, told by the runners and cyclists who lived them.

Just a Little Warmup

December 19, 2018 01:49 - 1 minute - 1.62 MB

In the first season of the new podcast from Strava, Athletes Unfiltered, we’re exploring athlete motivations. We’ll introduce you to a rock drummer who tours the world, but passes up the party so he can get up to ride his bike. We talk with a mountain biker who watched the trails he loved burst into flames and then created an app to help rally his community around rebuilding them. And we try to keep up with a 70-year-old runner who is still racing - and breaking a few World Records....