Today we’re doing another update from our ongoing coast-to-coast bike relay from our Connecticut to our San Diego brewery. 

Athletic Ambassador, Julie Engler, joined the ride for our Wyoming portion. The route she’s riding is much different than the one she trained for. Find out what it has been like for her to learn to let go of plans and take on adventures, wherever they might lead. 

You can find out more about our cross-country journey here. 

You can find out more about and donate to Julie’s fundraising efforts for Wyoming Pathways here.

We have had a ton of wonderful experiences on this Coast to Coast adventure, but it hasn't been all fun and games. 

In the middle of the journey, we had an incident that has caused us to rework our trip to make it safer and more beneficial for everyone involved. 

Listen in to hear what happened and what we're doing about it!

A blog version of the story here. 

Find out more about Athletic Brewing here. 

Today we’re hearing from Chris Bayly, founder of Winstate Sports Consulting and rider on the ongoing Athletic Brewing coast-to-coast relay from our Connecticut to our San Diego brewery.  

Chris helps Athletic Brewing build relationships between organizations, athletes, and getting our beer out in the world.

Chris was gracious enough to join Mason on the mic after biking 121 miles across Iowa on our Athletic Brewing coast-to-coast, brewery-to-brewery bike relay.  

Instagram: @helmsbayly

Coast to Coast info: https://athleticbrewing.com/pages/coasttocoast

John & Bill share some happenings around the breweries as well as some news about our upcoming bike adventure. 

When Billy’s mother, Betty, was diagnosed with cancer he decided to return home to Massachusetts instead of leaving for his climbing trip to Nepal. Billy had just graduated from college in Colorado and the world was seemingly his oyster. 

As his mother’s cancer worsened, those free-spirited experiences became less and less important and were ultimately replaced with grief after Betty tragically passed away from cancer in 1974. 

After floundering a few years and wondering how to process the grief, Billy’s desire to “do something” continued to grow. He took action in 1980 by organizing the first Pan-Mass Challenge as a way to make sense of the grief and carry on the legacy of his mother. 

The challenge would be to ride a bicycle across Massachusetts and raise money for the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Foundation. 36 people joined that first year and they raised $10,000. The PMC was born. 

As founder and executive director of the Pan-Mass Challenge for over 40 years, Billy has grown the PMC into the largest single fundraising event in the country. To date, more than $700 million dollars has been raised, 6,000 riders participate every year with 4,000 volunteers and participation from 200 companies. 

Find out more at pmc.org.

Donate here.

Register to ride virtually here. Dates are Aug 1-2, 2020.

Instagram: @panmass  

John Barrack’s PMC Ride link here

Rachael Rapinoe is the Founder & CEO of Mendi, a sports recovery brand. Rachael won an NCAA national championship with the University of Portland in 2005, played pro soccer in Europe in 2010, and eventually retired to pursue her passion in the health and fitness industry. 

Leveraging her Masters in Health and Exercise Science from PSU, Rachael went on to build Rapinoe SC–a soccer performance training company & lifestyle apparel brand with her twin, US Soccer star sister, Megan. 

Having recently consulted as women’s soccer strength and conditioning coach for Division I Colleges, Rachael continues to apply her expertise in training, competition, and recovery in an effort to better understand the role recovery has in performance and the human body. With her network of influential athletes and passion for competing, Rachael shapes Mendi’s products to meet the relevant demand in sports.

Instagram: @rrapinoe @@themendico

themendico.com

Avery grew up in the midwest, far from the mountains of Colorado that he now calls home. He found running after years of playing basketball and the unique suffering of the sport quickly drew him into longer and longer events. That and the fact he was a broke college student that couldn’t afford a gym membership, running made total sense. 

Right as he began garnering big wins and making a name for himself, he and his girlfriend, Sabrina, were struck by a semi on the highway. Avery suffered some major injuries that caused him to rethink his direction in life and if he’d ever get back out on the trail. After an arduous six months, he was able to start to run again. 

Fast forward a few years and Avery is now one of the fastest ultrarunners in the world and frequently podiums at iconic races like the Georgia Death Race, Colorado 200, Fat Dog 120, Hurt 100, and dozens more. He finished 6th overall at Western States in 2017. 

In 2020, he’ll be attempting an FKT of the legendary Nolan’s 14 Route in Colorado, Tor des Geants in Italy, and the Snowman Race in Bhutan

We hope you enjoy listening to Avery’s story of living Without Compromise. 

Instagram: @runninhigh

Facebook: @avery.collins.77

SBNATION's writeup on Avery, Zen, Ultra-running and the Art of Suffering

Athletic Brewing’s commitment to stand for change and impact fund can be found here: https://athleticbrewing.com/pages/standing-for-change

Emily Day knows what it takes to live without compromise. She graduated from Loyola Marymount University with a degree in applied mathematics excelling as a student-athlete. Now, as a professional volleyball player on the AVP circuit, she still maintains her passion for math as a tutor on the side. 

Some career highlights include winning the AVP Team of the Year in 2017, the Manhattan Beach Open Champion in 2016 & 2017, The San Francisco and Seattle Open Champion in 2018, and the Hermosa Beach Champion in 2019. She narrowly missed making the 2016 Olympic team with high hopes of making the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. 

She was also recently inducted into the LMU Hall of Fame.

Instagram: @emday6

Joe De Sena is on a mission to get 100 million people off the couch through his company, Spartan, the world’s leading obstacle race. Many of you are probably familiar with Spartan, but might not be familiar with Joe. At his core, he’s an entrepreneur that grew up between his mom, a yogi, and his father, a successful businessman teaching him a balance between hard work and purpose. 

That balance, coupled with his intense desire to challenge himself and others, has led Joe to experience some of the harshest conditions on Earth while completing some of the most extreme competitions. His story has taken literally hundreds of interesting turns and his experiences are too vast to capture here. 

After a successful career on Wall Street, Joe moved his family to a 700-acre farm in Vermont where they grow organic produce, operate a bed and breakfast, and a general store for Appalachian Trail hikers. This setting was the perfect scenario for the idea of Spartan to be born. 

Spartan has now grown into a worldwide phenomenon, with over one million annual participants in more than 40 countries. 

Joe is also a two-time NY Times bestselling author and host of the @spartanuppodcast. Find out more about his books here: joedesena.com/books

Instagram:

@ealjoedesena

@spartan

Websites

Spartan.com

joedesena.com

Ethan knows what it takes to survive. He’s faced cancer twice, lost his father at the age of 14, had teammates die of AIDS while playing professional soccer in Africa, and has won the reality show Survivor: Africa.

Today Ethan is joining Without Compromise to talk about what it means to survive difficult situations and ultimately use those tragedies for good in a principle he calls “never letting a crisis go to waste”. For example, when he won the $1 million prize for Survivor: Africa he decided to use the money to start Grassroot Soccer, an adolescent health organization that uses the popularity of soccer to educate at-risk youth all over the world. To date, they’ve educated over 2 million young people through their program.

Ethan was most recently on Survivor Season 40: Winners at War

Instagram: @ethanzohn

His websites:

GrassrootSoccer.org

EthanZohn.com