Athletes Unfiltered – Strava Podcast

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.

This teaser is just a little taste of what’s to come – subscribe now and stay tuned for more.

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, and Scott Fauble, who finished seventh in the 2018 NYC Marathon. It was moderated by Runner’s World editor Jeff Dengate, at the New York Roadrunners RunCenter, not far from the marathon’s finish line.

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 the UK and could not attend his mother’s funeral back home. So to return to South Africa after so many years, running Comrades was about much more than covering that massive distance. It was about reclaiming his sense of home. And running 53 miles in your 70s after a lifetime of not really being that active... it was a triumph of stubbornness, too.

Listen to the season finale of Athletes Unfiltered.

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 just today – before we were recording – I had to delete two hateful comments on an Instagram post.”

In the newest episode of Athletes Unfiltered, we speak with Rachel about why she loves racing so much she’s willing to put up with a level of harassment and hatred that would make most of us afraid to leave the house.

“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 everything will continue to change – and he credits his longevity to his ability to adapt. Learn more about Laurens’ "Live Slow, Ride Fast" approach in the newest episode of our podcast, Athletes Unfiltered.