Adventure season and the Ryder Cup
Bikepacking got fun.
This week has mostly been spent riding bikes, eating food, and exploring new roads. Nothing beats the feeling of riding so much that all evening you have no thoughts and just lie there in the bliss of being absolutely shattered.
The Ryder Cup
I’m not really a golf fan, but my Dad is, so I’ve spent my whole life catching it in the background. I know I have a lot of Americans on here, so I’m not going to wax lyrical or rub it in. I’m not going to write about how Europe won, or how the sports fan deep inside me thought it was even sweeter that the Americans started their comeback but still lost.
Anyway, over my morning coffee, I came across an interview with Luke Donald, the European captain.
“Ryder Cup weeks are the best weeks of our lives…those individual accolades are fun, we individually want to achieve as much as we can…but those weeks we spend together are the ones we remember the most, and we cherish the most because of the times we get to spend with each other. That’s a big part of my captaincy, to create an environment where these guys are having the best weeks of their lives. We will always remember this.”
Golf is an individual sport. Your reputation lives and dies on your own performance; there’s no team to cover your mistakes. In that sense, it’s not so different from being a privateer bike racer. But the Ryder Cup showed the other side of it, how much richer sport feels when you’re part of something bigger.
I’ve spoken to a lot of the Rebellion boys this year, and we all feel the same: racing isn’t quite as fun as it was last season. The spark is still there, the races still matter, but without that shared something, it’s just not quite the same. The Ryder Cup team had that heartbeat. Some players were brilliant on Saturday and faded on Sunday, while others were the opposite. It didn’t matter because the team made the whole stronger than the sum of its parts.
My cycling career, like that of golfers, will be judged on individual achievements, but it’s the weeks you spend side by side with teammates that you’ll always remember. It’s why I keep coming back to this team idea. Chasing success on my own is great, but I know the real fun for me lies in chasing them together. So, yes, I’m still trying.
Right, back to normal business, and no more comparing myself to the best golfers on the planet…
Adventure Season
This past week, I spent a silly amount of hours, just over thirty of them, riding my bicycle. We’re officially in adventure season, that time of year when training is almost solely dictated by morale. For me, the best way of riding for morale is going on adventures.
If you ever need a friend for a trip that involves an adventure, give Riley Pickrell a call. That man has adventure running through his veins. So, when I got a little too adventurous on Strava Route Builder last week, I messaged Riley.
This all coincided with a fresh delivery of Tailfin AeroPacks. I’m conscious not to make this sound too sponsor-y because it’s not. James at Tailfin was kind enough to send me a pack for my Namibia trip, but I never ended up using it. So, while the packs were technically ‘gifted’, we’d have bought them with our own money.
They’ree a complete game changer for training trips away. From Girona, we headed up and over the French border. There were many stops, including one to get the iPad out and watch Riley’s girlfriend, Franzi, compete in TTT World Champs.
We landed in Caramany, a town of less than 150 people, just after dark, as we’d procrastinated wayyy too much throughout the day. But what’s an adventure ride without chasing daylight?
For Day Two, we ditched the bags as we were coming back to the same accommodation. We figured the best plan for these trips is six or seven hours towards new territory, drop the bags and do a four-hour loop to the same place, and then six to seven hours home on new roads.
Riley is one hell of a route builder, so our Day 2 went in and out of gorges, over mountains and through wine country; it really was beautiful. We spent a long time searching for lunch as every cafe seemed to close at 2 pm, and then my former life as a French resident reminded me of the boulangerie move.
Side note, given how rocky my year in France was as a twenty-year-old, there’s a huge part of me that loves and misses it. I get a skip in my step - or I suppose pedal stroke - when I cross the border. I love speaking French, and I love the culture of the country.
I’ll forever be thankful for Chambery for making me learn French. Even all these years later, I’m confident enough in the language, and it’s one of those things that, while inconvenient at the time, was huge. I’ve been saying this since I was fifteen, but I will live in Nice one day, even if just for a winter. Luckily for me, Maggie is fluent in French and more than happy to go ahead with my crazy ideas, so maybe winter 2026…
Anyways, the ride back to Girona was long. We took twisty back-roads and I was on the ropes as Riley enjoyed watching me suffer. We even found some gravel. Has the spirit of gravel come full circle to bikepacking on road bikes?
We rode back into town on Friday evening, and then Saturday, we drove up to Andorra to sort some house and life stuff out. In my infinite wisdom I decided to ride home, adding another six-hours to my riding tally for this week.
It’s been a long time since I’ve done a thirty-hour week. I was on the phone with Jon Twigg of Pullwood Consulting earlier this week. I was telling him how there was so much I knew I needed to do, but nothing I could actually do so I just felt I was constantly waiting.
“Just go and ride your bike.”, he told me. He was right, sometimes I just need to disappear and ride my bike for a week. No laptop, no emails - nothing.
What’s Next?
We fly to Canada on Thursday to be with Maggie’s family for the off-season, and then I head to Big Sugar from there. Big Sugar will be the big line under the bike racing season that was 2025 - something that I’m happy to say.
From Bentonville, it’s a little holiday to NYC to catch up with my Good Guys teammates from Redlands, and then Maggie and I will do a holiday up the California coast before returning to Vancouver, and finally back to Europe with Rouleur Live.
There’s a time for me to talk about renewing contracts and my plans for 2026. But that’s not today. The only thing I will say, is that a TT bike will be coming back out next year. I’ve neglected the discipline that I love so much for too many years now.
Cheers,
Joe
The paid subscription and ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ link allow me to continue writing these posts. Thank you all for your contributions; they’re always appreciated.
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/joelaverick
The following brands are racing partners of mine which allow me to do cool stuff.
There's defitthe Ryder Cup angle you took. But there's a second one: do we need a Ryder Cup equivalent in gravel?
I mean the Euro vs US discussion is by now almost a meme in the sport. And because of the structure, we rarely see the best of the best from both sides of the scene face off against each other. So I think it could be a popular event.
Now, what format would that be? A gravel TTT? Nah, not dope enough. I'd propose a mini stage race, say 3 days, that has like 1 rolling terrain stage, 1 climby stage, 1 gravel crit. And we don't decide by GC time but best cumulative time of all riders in the 8-rider squads (4 men, 4 women, purposefully riding together).
A joint venture by Life Time and Klassmark, always swapping between happening in Europe and the US.
Doesn't that sound like fun prestige gravel?