In this episode, Chris Thomas sits down with Greg Wingo, race director of the Great Alabama 650, Last Paddler Standing, the Eliminator, and mastermind behind Roam Projects a multi-country trekking and adventure travel experience. We cover so much in this episode from his unique new race in the UK the Eliminator with partner race director Cassie Salter, the 2025 Alabama 650 and how it has compared to years past, all the variables that can impact performance in such a long distance race, the difficulty of Mobile Bay, app innovation for dot trackers, SUPs, still riding a high from a multi-record setting year at LPS, inspiration behind the location change, the overwhelming positive support from the community of Lake Placid, and new Roam Project trekking locations. Just as a side note, we did 2 takes for this episode, because on the first take Greg wasn’t ready to share new updates for his UK Eliminator race, but we got all of those updates fresh off the press at the end of the chat. There’s so much more to this episode, but I’ll let you hear it from Greg himself on this 35th episode of the Dabbling in Paddleism Podcast…

Greg’s Book Recommendations:

-Lost City of Z, by David Grann: https://a.co/d/68XrPwr

-Anything that Adam Shoalts writes [examples: Vanished Beyond the Map (https://a.co/d/52LJGAz), Beyond the Trees (https://a.co/d/3Zj3DEy), Where the Falcon Flies (https://a.co/d/imS2w9x), Along Against the North (https://a.co/d/3ENQ53c)]

Links:

-Alabama 650: https://www.alabamascenicrivertrail.com/great-alabama-650/

-Last Paddler Standing: https://lastpaddlerstanding.com/

-The Eliminator: https://www.facebook.com/p/The-Eliminator-61577037287882/

-Roam Projects: https://roamprojects.com/home.html

Socials (IG):

@greatalabama650

@lastpaddlerstanding

@roamprojects