Velo Chumps

The Chumps are back for 2025, just in time for the start of road racing season. Eric and Chad talk about being fans of the professional sport of road cycling, and what the people running the show are doing, both good and bad, to impact the fan experience.

This week special guest Frank Overton from FasCat coaching talks about the past present and future of coaching and training for cyclists. Being chumps, we had an approachable conversation that is science based without overwhelming science talk. Frank shares some of his incredible knowledge around coaching and training, and at the end of the show he gives us some insight into the recent Strava API fiasco.

You can get more details on FasCat coaching here: https://fascatcoaching.com

*EMERGENCY EPISODE* Strava announced some changes to their API access and how third party applications would be able to use data going forward. This ruffled a lot of feathers, so the Chumps decided we needed an Emergency Episode to discuss this from the Chumps perspective. This emergency epidsode might not have the normal polish, but the content still hits.

This week we talk to Kyleigh Spearing about the women's UCI Gravel World Championships. Kyleigh takes you inside the race, she talks about US vs. European gravel racing, and she gives us insights about the nuances of women's gravel racing, both the competitive and business side of things. This week Kyleigh herself provides a great factoid to close the show.

This is the first of two special episodes where the Chumps bring you inside the UCI Gravel World Championships. We talk to Ethan Overson who races in the elite field in the US gravel scene and also represented the USA at the UCI Gravel World Championships in both 2023 and 2024. Listen for Ethan's insights on the race itself, the gear, and what is in store for the future of gravel racing.

The Chumps talk about some new features from some of our favorite apps - Strava and Zwift. Whether these new features are intelligent or not is still up for debate. In the course of those discussions, Chad drops some gems that these companies should pick up. Mike did not make it, but Eric ends the show with a (hopefully) fun story.

This week all the Chumps are back to discuss the demise of the Pro's Closet. We also discuss the UCI Gravel World Championships and how that is related to the US Federation (USAC). Mike Green showed us a leaked GRVL tire marketing graph, but (since this is a podcast) you will need to go to The Velochumps Instagram page to see it.

The rest of the Chumps were quite surprised to hear Chad's position about the future of SRAM. So much so that everyone joined the show this week to hear what he had to say. We start with a few news items, but you won't want to miss the discussion of the future of the bike industry and what that means for SRAM (and Shimano). Mike Green brings us a rumor instead of a factoid, but it leads to a fun way to end the show.

This week, a reduced Chumps cohort takes it old school and rants about some unfriendly (for Chumps) new products that cycling brands are using to try to extract money from us. Before we get to that though, we do have a funny corrections corner, and an even funnier look at the start of stage 6 of the Vuelta a Espana.

We are back. After our mid season break, while the cycling world was saturated with the Tour de France and the Olympics, we are back to tell you about the Chump relevant developments in the bike world. Of course we discuss the new SRAM Red XPLR group, but we start with another "interesting" product that also recently dropped. Mike Green could not join our triumphant return, so no factoid this week, but future factoids promise to be better than ever.